chickamauga: a short story | american battlefield trust chickamauga: a short story ambrose bierce, one of the most popular authors of the late 19th century, known for his short story "an occurrence at owl creek bridge," political satire pamphlet "the devil's dictionary," and for his mysterious disappearance in mexico in 1913.  he served with the union army in the western theater of the civil war.  he fought at shiloh and chickamauga and was seriously wounded at kennesaw mountain.  he wrote the following story based on his experiences at chickamauga. one sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. it was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest-victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. from the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage. ambrose bierce in 1866 wikimedia commons the child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. in his younger manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a civilized race to the far south. in the peaceful life of a planter the warrior-fire survived; once kindled, it is never extinguished. the man loved military books and pictures and the boy had understood enough to make himself a wooden sword, though even the eye of his father would hardly have known it for what it was. this weapon he now bore bravely, as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art. made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with illogical ease. but the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable in that small breast and would not be denied. finding a place where some bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary foe, putting all to the sword. now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to his base of operations. alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like one, the mightiest, he could not curb the lust for war, nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star. advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit! with a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother, weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little heart beating hard with terror-breathless, blind with tears--lost in the forest! then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a companion, sobbed himself to sleep. the wood birds sang merrily above his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away was a strange, muffed thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial enslavers. and back at the little plantation, where white men and black were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother's heart was breaking for her missing child. hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. the chill of the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. but he had rested, and he no longer wept. with some blind instinct which impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and came to a more open ground--on his right the brook, to the left a gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all, the gathering gloom of twilight. a thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. it frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward the dark inclosing wood. suddenly he saw before him a strange moving object which he took to be some large animal--a dog, a pig--he could not name it; perhaps it was a bear. he had seen pictures of bears, but knew of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. but something in form or movement of this object--something in the awkwardness of its approach--told him that it was not a bear, and curiosity was stayed by fear. he stood still and as it came slowly on gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the long menacing ears of the rabbit. possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait. before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. to right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him were alive with them—all moving toward the brook. surveying 760x with over 34,000 casualties, the results of the battle of chickamauga were stunning. chickamauga was the second bloodiest battle of the civil war, ranking only behind gettysburg, and was by far the deadliest battle in the west. library of congress they were men. they crept upon their hands and knees. they used their hands only, dragging their legs. they used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. they strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. they did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. they came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. the very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. he was dead. some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer. not all of this did the child note; it is what would have been noted by an elder observer; he saw little but that these were men, yet crept like babes. being men, they were not terrible, though unfamiliarly clad. he moved among them freely, going from one to another and peering into their faces with childish curiosity. all their faces were singularly white and many were streaked and gouted with red. something in this--something too, perhaps, in their grotesque attitudes and movements--reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus, and he laughed as he watched them. but on and ever on they crept, these maimed and bleeding men, as heedless as he of the dramatic contrast between his laughter and their own ghastly gravity. to him it was a merry spectacle. he had seen his father's negroes creep upon their hands and knees for his amusement--had ridden them so, "making believe" they were his horses. he now approached one of these crawling figures from behind and with an agile movement mounted it astride. the man sank upon his breast, recovered, flung the small boy fiercely to the ground as an unbroken colt might have done, then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw--from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone. the unnatural prominence of nose, the absence of chin, the fierce eyes, gave this man the appearance of a great bird of prey crimsoned in throat and breast by the blood of its quarry. the man rose to his knees, the child to his feet. the man shook his fist at the child; the child, terrified at last, ran to a tree near by, got upon the farther side of it and took a more serious view of the situation. and so the clumsy multitude dragged itself slowly and painfully along in hideous pantomime--moved forward down the slope like a swarm of great black beetles, with never a sound of going--in silence profound, absolute. instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. it struck the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. it fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many of them were freaked and maculated. it sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. instinctively the child turned toward the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions; in a few moments had passed the foremost of the throng--not much of a feat, considering his advantages. he placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. surely such a leader never before had such a following. alfred waud sketch of confederates advancing through the forest at chickamauga library of congress scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the leader's mind, were coupled no significant associations: an occasional blanket tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle--such things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the "spoor" of men flying from their hunters. everywhere near the creek, which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by the feet of men and horses. an observer of better experience in the use of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both directions; the ground had been twice passed over--in advance and in retreat. a few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in thousands. their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and reforming in lines, had passed the child on every side--had almost trodden on him as he slept. the rustle and murmur of their march had not awakened him. almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry, the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting." he had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory. the battle of chickamauga library of congress the fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek, reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing the whole landscape. it transformed the sinuous line of mist to the vapor of gold. the water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were many of the stones protruding above the surface. but that was blood; the less desperately wounded had stained them in crossing. on them, too, the child now crossed with eager steps; he was going to the fire. as he stood upon the farther bank he turned about to look at the companions of his march. the advance was arriving at the creek. the stronger had already drawn themselves to the brink and plunged their faces into the flood. three or four who lay without motion appeared to have no heads. at this the child's eyes expanded with wonder; even his hospitable understanding could not accept a phenomenon implying such vitality as that. after slaking their thirst these men had not had the strength to back away from the water, nor to keep their heads above it. they were drowned. in rear of these, the open spaces of the forest showed the leader as many formless figures of his grim command as at first; but not nearly so many were in motion. he waved his cap for their encouragement and smilingly pointed with his weapon in the direction of the guiding light--a pillar of fire to this strange exodus. confident of the fidelity of his forces, he now entered the belt of woods, passed through it easily in the red illumination, climbed a fence, ran across a field, turning now and again to coquet with his responsive shadow, and so approached the blazing ruin of a dwelling. desolation everywhere! in all the wide glare not a living thing was visible. he cared nothing for that; the spectacle pleased, and he danced with glee in imitation of the wavering flames. he ran about, collecting fuel, but every object that he found was too heavy for him to cast in from the distance to which the heat limited his approach. in despair he flung in his sword--a surrender to the superior forces of nature. his military career was at an end. shifting his position, his eyes fell upon some outbuildings which had an oddly familiar appearance, as if he had dreamed of them. he stood considering them with wonder, when suddenly the entire plantation, with its inclosing forest, seemed to turn as if upon a pivot. his little world swung half around; the points of the compass were reversed. he recognized the blazing building as his own home! for a moment he stood stupefied by the power of the revelation, then ran with stumbling feet, making a half-circuit of the ruin. there, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman--the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. the greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles--the work of a shell. the child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. he uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries--something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey--a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. the child was a deaf mute. then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck. with the old breed at peleliu and okinawa e. b. sledge ballantine books new york 2010 presidio press trade paperback edition copyright © 1981 by e. b. sledge introduction copyright © 2007 by presidio press, a division of random house, inc. all rights reserved. published in the united states by presidio press, an imprint of the random house publishing group, a division of random house, inc., new york. presidio press and colophon are trademarks of random house, inc. originally published in hardcover in the united states by presidio press, an imprint of the random house publishing group, a division of random house, inc., in 1981, and subsequently in trade paperback and mass market by ballantine books, an imprint of the random house publishing group, a division of random house, inc., in 2007. isbn 978-0-8914-1906-8 printed in the united states of america www.presidiopress.com 24 26 28 29 27 25 23 in memory of capt. andrew a. haldane, beloved company commander of k/3/5, and to the old breed the deaths ye died i have watched beside, and the lives ye led were mine. — r u d y a r d k i p l i n g 1 1 0 peleliu: a neglected battle "our battalion is ordered to hit the beach on ngesebus island tomorrow," an officer told us.* i shuddered as i recalled the beachhead we had made on 15 september. the battalion moved into an area near the northern peninsula and dug in for the night in a quiet area. it was sandy, open, and had some shattered, drooping palms. we didn't know what to expect on ngesebus. i prayed the landing wouldn't be a repeat of the holocaust of d day. early in the morning of 28 september (d + 3) we squared away our gear and stood by to board the amtracs that would take us across the 500-700 yards of shallow reef to ngesebus. "we'll probably get another battle star for this beachhead," said a man enthusiastically. "no we won't," answered another. "it's still just part of the peleliu operation." "the hell you say; it's still another beachhead," the first man responded. "i don't make the regulation, ole buddy, but you check with the gunny, and i'll betcha i'm right." several mumbled comments came out about how stingy the high command was in authorizing battle stars, which were little enough compensation for combat duty. we boarded the tractors and tried to suppress our fear. ships were firing on ngesebus, and we saw marine f4u corsair fighter planes approaching from the peleliu airfield to the south. "we gonna have lots of support for this one," an nco said. our amtracs moved to the water's edge and waited for h hour as the thunderous prelanding naval gunfire bombardment covered the little island in smoke, flame, and dust. the corsairs from marine fighter squadron (vmf) 114 peeled off and began bombing and strafing the beach. the engines of the beautiful blue gull-winged planes roared, whined, and strained as they dove and pulled out. they plastered the beach with machine guns, bombs, and rockets. the effect was awesome as dirt, sand, and debris spewed into the air.f our marine pilots outdid themselves, and we cheered, yelled, waved, •ngesebus had to be captured to silence the enemy fire coming into the 5th marines' flank and to prevent its use as a landing place for japanese reinforcements from the north. there was also an airfield on ngesebus—a fighter strip—that was supposed to be useful for american planes. tngesebus was one of the first american amphibious assaults where air support for the landing force came exclusively from marine aircraft. in earlier landings, air support came from navy and sometimes army planes. a n o t h e r a m p h i b i o u s assault and raised our clenched fists to indicate our approval. never during the war did i see fighter pilots take such risks by not pulling out of their dives until the very last instant. we were certain, more than once, that a pilot was pulling out too late and would crash. but, expert flyers that they were, they gave that beach a brutal pounding without mishap to plane or pilot. we talked about their spectacular flying even after the war ended. out to sea on our left, with a cruiser, destroyers, and other ships firing support, was a huge battleship. someone said it was the uss mississippi, but i never knew for sure. she ranked with the corsairs in the mass of destruction she hurled at ngesebus. the huge shells rumbled like freight cars—as the men always used to describe the sound of projectiles from fullsized battleships' 16-inch guns. at h hour our tractor driver revved up his engine. we moved into the water and started the assault. my heart pounded in my throat. would my luck hold out? "the lord is my shepherd," i prayed quietly and squeezed my carbine stock. to our relief we received no fire as we approached the island. when my amtrac lurched to a stop well up on the beach, the tailgate went down with a bump, and we scrambled out. with its usual din and thunder the bombardment moved inland ahead of us. some company k marines on the beach were already firing into pillboxes and bunkers and dropping in grenades. with several other men, i headed inland a short distance. but as we got to the edge of the airstrip, we had to dive for cover. a nambu (japanese light machine gun) had cut loose on us. a buddy and i huddled behind a coral rock as the machine-gun slugs zipped viciously overhead. he was on my right. because the rock was small, we pressed shoulder to shoulder, hugging it for protection. suddenly there was a sickening crack like someone snapping a large stick. my friend screamed, "oh god, i'm hit!" and lurched over onto his right side. he grabbed his left elbow with his right hand, groaning and grimacing with pain as he thrashed around kicking up dust. a bypassed sniper had seen us behind the rock and shot him. the bullet hit him in the left arm, which was pressed tightly against my right arm as we sought cover from the machine gun out front. the nambu was firing a bit high, but there was no doubt the sniper had his sights right on us. we were between a rock and a hard place. i dragged him around the rock out of sight of the sniper as the nambu bullets whizzed overhead. i yelled, "corpsman!" and ken (doc) caswell,* the mortar section •habitually and affectionately, marines call all u.s. navy corpsmen who serve with them "doc." assault on ngesebus. view from amphibious amtrac while crossing in third wave from peleliu. usmc photo. ngesebus: assault troops (k/3/5) move inland. usmc photo. another amphibious assault 113 corpsman, crawled over, opening his pouch to get at his first aid supplies as he came. another man also came over to see if he could help. while i cut away the bloody dungaree sleeve from the injured arm with my kabar, doc began to tend the wound. as he knelt over his patient, the other marine placed his kabar under the injured man's pack strap and gave a violent upward jerk to cut away the shoulder pack. the razor-sharp blade sliced through the thick web pack strap as though it were a piece of string. but before the marine could arrest its upward motion, the knife cut doc in the face to the bone. doc recoiled in pain from the impact of the knife thrust. blood flowed down his face from the nasty gash to the left of his nose. he regained his balance immediately and returned to his work on the smashed arm as though nothing had happened. the clumsy marine cursed himself for his blunder as i asked doc what 1 could do to help him. despite considerable pain, doc kept at his work. in a quiet, calm voice he told me to get a battle dressing out of his pouch and press if firmly against his face to stop the bleeding while he finished work on the wounded arm. such was the selfless dedication of the navy hospital corpsmen who served in marine infantry units. it was little wonder that we held them in such high esteem. (doc later got his face tended and was back with the mortar section in a matter of a few hours.) while i did as doc directed, i yelled at two marines coming our way and pointed toward the sniper. they took off quickly toward the beach and hailed a tank. by the time a stretcher team came up and took my wounded friend, the two men trotted by, waved, and one said, "we got the bastard; he ain't gonna shoot nobody else." the nambu had ceased firing, and an nco signaled us forward. before moving out, i looked toward the beach and saw the walking wounded wading back toward peleliu. after we moved farther inland, we received orders to set up the mortars on the inland side of a japanese pillbox and prepare to fire on the enemy to our company's front. we asked company k's gunnery sergeant, gy. sgt. w. r. saunders, if he knew of any enemy troops in the bunker. it appeared undamaged. he said some of the men had thrown grenades through the ventilators, and he was sure there were no live enemy inside. snafu and i began to set up our mortar about five feet from the bunker. number one mortar was about five yards to our left. cpl. r. v. burgin was getting the sound-powered phone hooked up to receive fire orders from sgt. johnny marmet, who was observing. i heard something behind me in the pillbox. japanese were talking in low, excited voices. metal rattled against an iron grating. i grabbed my carbine and yelled, "burgin, there're nips in that pillbox." 114 p e l e l i u : a neglected battle another amphibious assault 115 all the men readied their weapons as burgin came over to have a look, kidding me with, "shucks, sledgehammer, you're crackin' up." he looked into the ventilator port directly behind me. it was rather small, approximately six inches by eight inches, and covered with iron bars about a half inch apart. what he saw brought forth a stream of curses in his best texas style against all nippon. he stuck his carbine muzzle through the bars, fired two quick shots, and yelled, "i got 'em right in the face." the japanese inside the pillbox began jabbering loudly. burgin was gritting his teeth and calling the enemy sobs while he fired more shots through the opening. every man in the mortar section was ready for trouble as soon as burgin fired the first shot. it came in the form of a grenade tossed out of the end entrance to my left. it looked as big as a football to me. i yelled "grenade!" and dove behind the sand breastwork protecting the entrance at the end of the pillbox. the sand bank was about four feet high and l-shaped to protect the entrance from fire from the front and flanks. the grenade exploded, but no one was hit. the japanese tossed out several more grenades without causing us injury, because we were hugging the deck. most of the men crawled around to the front of the pillbox and crouched close to it between the firing ports, so the enemy inside couldn't fire at them. john redifer and vincent santos jumped on top. things got quiet. i was nearest the door, and burgin yelled to me, "look in and see what's in there, sledgehammer." being trained to take orders without question, i raised my head above the sand bank and peered into the door of the bunker. it nearly cost me my life. not more than six feet from me crouched a japanese machine gunner. his eyes were black dots in a tan, impassive face topped with the familiar mushroom helmet. the muzzle of his light machine gun stared at me like a gigantic third eye. fortunately for me, i reacted first. not having time to get my carbine into firing position, i jerked my head down so fast my helmet almost flew off. a split second later he fired a burst of six or eight rounds. the bullets tore a furrow through the bank just above my head and showered sand on me. my ears rang from the muzzle blast and my heart seemed to be in my throat choking me. i knew damned well i had to be dead! he just couldn't have missed me at that range. a million thoughts raced through my terrified mind: of how my folks had nearly lost their youngest, of what a stupid thing i had done to look directly into a pillbox full of japanese without even having my carbine at the ready, and of just how much i hated the enemy anyway. many a marine veteran had already lost his life on peleliu for making less of a mistake than i had just made. burgin yelled and asked if i were all right. a hoarse squawk was all the answer i could muster, but his voice brought me to my senses. i crawled around to the front, then up on top of the bunker before the enemy machine gunner could have another try at me. redifer yelled, "they've got an automatic weapon in there." snafu disagreed, and a spirited argument ensued. redifer pointed out that there p| surely was an automatic weapon in there and that i should know, because it came close to blowing off my head. but snafu was adamant. like much of what i experienced in combat, this exchange was unreal. here we were: twelve marines with a bull by the tail in the form of a well-built concrete pillbox containing an unknown number of japanese with no friendly troops near us and snafu and redifer—veterans—in a violent argument. burgin shouted, "knock it off," and they shut up. redifer and i lay prone on top of the bunker, just above the door. we knew we had to get the japanese while they were bottled up, or they would come out at us with knives and bayonets, a thought none of us relished. redifer and i were close enough to the door to place grenades down the opening and move back before they exploded. but the japanese invariably tossed them back at us before the explosion. i had an irrepressible urge to do just that. brief as our face-to-face meeting had been, i had quickly developed a feeling of strong personal hate for that machine gunner who had nearly blasted my head off my shoulders. my terror subsided into a cold, homicidal rage and a vengeful desire to get even. redifer and i gingerly peeped down over the door. the machine gunner wasn't visible, but we looked at three long arisaka rifle barrels with bayonets fixed. those bayonets seemed ten feet long to me. their owners were jabbering excitedly, apparently planning to rush out. redifer acted quickly. he held his carbine by the barrel and used the butt to knock down the rifles. the japanese jerked their weapons back into the bunker with much chattering. behind us, santos yelled that he had located a ventilator pipe without a cover. he began dropping grenades into it. each one exploded in the pillbox beneath us with a muffled bam. when he had used all of his, redifer and i handed him our grenades while we kept watch at the door. after santos had dropped in several, we stood up and began to discuss with burgin and the others the possibility that anyone could still be alive inside. (we didn't know at the time that the inside was subdivided by concrete baffles for extra protection.) we got our answer when two grenades were tossed out. luckily for the men with burgin, the grenades 116 peleliu: a neglected battle were thrown out the back. santos and i shouted a warning and hit the deck on the sand on top of the pillbox, but redifer merely raised his arm over his face. he took several fragments in the forearm but wasn't wounded seriously. burgin yelled, "let's get the hell outa here and get a tank to help us knock this damn thing out." he ordered us to pull back to some craters about forty yards from the pillbox. we sent a runner to the beach to bring up a flamethrower and an amtrac armed with a 75mm gun. as we jumped into the crater, three japanese soldiers ran out of the pillbox door past the sand bank and headed for a thicket. each carried his bayoneted rifle in his right hand and held up his pants with his left hand. this action so amazed me that i stared in disbelief and didn't fire my carbine. 1 wasn't afraid, as i had been under shell fire, just filled with wild excitement. my buddies were more effective than i and cut down the enemy with a hail of bullets. they congratulated each other while i chided myself for being more curious about strange japanese customs than with being combat effective. the amtrac rattling toward us by this time was certainly a welcome sight. as it pulled into position, several more japanese raced from the pillbox in a tight group. some held their bayoneted rifles in both hands, but some of them carried their rifles in one hand and held up their pants with the other. i had overcome my initial surprise and joined the others and the amtrac machine gun in firing away at them. they tumbled onto the hot coral in a forlorn tangle of bare legs, falling rifles, and rolling helmets. we felt no pity for them but exulted over their fate. we had been shot at and shelled too much and had lost too many friends to have compassion for the enemy when we had him cornered. the amtrac took up a position on a line even with us. its commander, a sergeant, consulted burgin. then the turret gunner fired three armorpiercing 75mm shells at the side of the pillbox. each time our ears rang with the familiar wham—bam as the report of the gun was followed quickly by the explosion of the shell on a target at close range. the third shell tore a hole entirely through the pillbox. fragments kicked up dust around our abandoned packs and mortars on the other side. on the side nearest us, the hole was about four feet in diameter. burgin yelled to the tankers to cease firing lest our equipment be damaged. someone remarked that if fragments hadn't killed those inside, the concussion surely had. but even before the dust settled, i saw a japanese soldier appear at the blasted opening. he was grim determination personified as he drew back his arm to throw a grenade at us. my carbine was already up. when he appeared, i lined up my sights on another amphibious assault 1 1 7 flamethrower gunner with supporting rifle fire team burns out enemy emplacement. peleliu. usmc photo. his chest and began squeezing off shots. as the first bullet hit him, his face contorted in agony. his knees buckled. the grenade slipped from his grasp. all the men near me, including the amtrac machine gunner, had seen him and began firing. the soldier collapsed in the fusilade, and the grenade went off at his feet. even in the midst of these fast-moving events, i looked down at my carbine with sober reflection. i had just killed a man at close range. that i had seen clearly the pain on his face when my bullets hit him came as a jolt. it suddenly made the war a very personal affair. the expression on that man's face filled me with shame and then disgust for the war and all the misery it was causing. my combat experience thus far made me realize that such sentiments for an enemy soldier were the maudlin meditations of a fool. look at me, a member of the 5th marine regiment—one of the oldest, finest, and toughest regiments in the marine corps—feeling ashamed because i had shot a damned foe before he could throw a grenade at me! i felt like a fool and was thankful my buddies couldn't read my thoughts. burgin's order to us to continue firing into the opening interrupted my musings. we kept up a steady fire into the pillbox to keep the japanese pinned down while the flamethrower came up, carried by corporal womack from mississippi. he was a brave, good-natured guy and popular 118 p e l e l i u : a neglected battle with the troops, but he was one of the fiercest looking marines i ever saw. he was big and husky with a fiery red beard well powdered with white coral dust. he reminded me of some wild viking. i was glad we were on the same side. stooped under the heavy tanks on his back, womack approached the pillbox with his assistant just out of the line of our fire. when they got about fifteen yards from the target, we ceased firing. the assistant reached up and turned a valve on the flamethrower. womack then aimed the nozzle at the opening made by the 75mm gun. he pressed the trigger. with a whoooooooosh the flame leaped at the opening. some muffled screams, then all quiet. even the stoic japanese couldn't suppress the agony of death by fire and suffocation. but they were no more likely to surrender to us than we would have been to them had we ever been confronted with the possibility of surrender. in fighting the japanese, surrender was not one of our options. amid our shouts of appreciation, womack and his buddy started back to battalion headquarters to await the summons to break another deadlock somewhere on the battlefield—or lose their lives trying. the job of flamethrower gunner was probably the least desirable of any open to a marine infantryman. carrying tanks with about seventy pounds of flammable jellied gasoline through enemy fire over rugged terrain in hot weather to squirt flames into the mouth of a cave or pillbox was an assignment that few survived but all carried out with magnificent courage. we left the craters and approached the pillbox cautiously. burgin ordered some of the men to cover it while the rest of us looked over the fallen japanese to be sure none was still alive; wounded japanese invariably exploded grenades when approached, if possible, killing their enemies along with themselves. all of them were dead. the pillbox was out of action thanks to the flamethrower and the amtrac. there were seven enemy dead inside and ten outside. our packs and mortars were only slightly damaged by the fire from the amtrac's 75mm gun. of the twelve marine mortarmen, our only casualties were redifer and leslie porter, who had taken some grenade fragments. they weren't hurt seriously. our luck in the whole affair had been incredible. if the enemy had surprised us and rushed us, we might have been in a bad fix. during this lull the men stripped the packs and pockets of the enemy dead for souvenirs. this was a gruesome business, but marines executed it in a most methodical manner. helmet headbands were checked for flags, packs and pockets were emptied, and gold teeth were extracted. sabers, pistols, and hari-kari knives were highly prized and carefully cared for until another a m p h i b i o u s assault 119 pill box concrete covered with sand 120 peleliu: a neglected battle another a m p h i b i o u s assault 121 they could be sent to the folks back home or sold to some pilot or sailor for a fat price. rifles and other larger weapons usually were rendered useless and thrown aside. they were too heavy to carry in addition to our own equipment. they would be picked up later as fine souvenirs by the rearechelon troops. the men in the rifle companies had a lot of fun joking about the hair-raising stories these people, who had never seen a live japanese or been shot at, would probably tell after the war. the men gloated over, compared, and often swapped their prizes. it was a brutal, ghastly ritual the likes of which have occurred since ancient times on battlefields where the antagonists have possessed a profound mutual hatred. it was uncivilized, as is all war, and was carried out with that particular savagery that characterized the struggle between the marines and the japanese. it wasn't simply souvenir hunting or looting the enemy dead; it was more like indian warriors taking scalps. while i was removing a bayonet and scabbard from a dead japanese, i noticed a marine near me. he wasn't in our mortar section but had happened by and wanted to get in on the spoils. he came up to me dragging what i assumed to be a corpse. but the japanese wasn't dead. he had been wounded severely in the back and couldn't move his arms; otherwise he would have resisted to his last breath. the japanese's mouth glowed with huge gold-crowned teeth, and his captor wanted them. he put the point of his kabar on the base of a tooth and hit the handle with the palm of his hand. because the japanese was kicking his feet and thrashing about, the knife point glanced off the tooth and sank deeply into the victim's mouth. the marine cursed him and with a slash cut his cheeks open to each ear. he put his foot on the sufferer's lower jaw and tried again. blood poured out of the soldier's mouth. he made a gurgling noise and thrashed wildly. i shouted, "put the man out of his misery." all i got for an answer was a cussing out. another marine ran up, put a bullet in the enemy soldier's brain, and ended his agony. the scavenger grumbled and continued extracting his prizes undisturbed. such was the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the violent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman's war. our code of conduct toward the enemy differed drastically from that prevailing back at the division cp. the struggle for survival went on day after weary day, night after terrifying night. one remembers vividly the landings and the beachheads and the details of the first two or three days and nights of a campaign; after that, time lost all meaning. a lull of hours or days seemed but a fleeting instant of heaven-sent tranquility. lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time. to the noncombatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement; but to those who entered the meat grinder itself, the war was a nether world of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. time had no meaning; life had no meaning. the fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of peleliu eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. we existed in an environment totally incompre' hensible to men behind the lines—service troops and civilians. a trip inside the pillbox by redifer and burgin solved the mystery of how some of the occupants had survived the grenades and shell bursts. (burgin shot a soldier inside who was feigning death.) concrete walls partitioned the bunker into compartments connected by small openings. three or four enemy soldiers occupied each compartment which had its own firing ports to the outside. each would have had to be put out of action individually had we not had the help of womack and his flamethrower. when our gunny came by and saw the results of our encounter with the pillbox he had thought was empty, he looked sheepish. he gazed in amazement at the enemy dead scattered around. we really razzed him about it— or rather, we gave him the nearest thing approaching the razz that we marine privates dared hand out to the austere personage of gy. sergeant saunders. i have thought often that burgin should have been decorated for the fine leadership he exhibited in coordinating and directing the knockout of the pillbox. i'm sure men have been decorated for less. we set up our two mortars in a large crater near the now knocked-out pillbox and registered in the guns for the night. the ammo carriers dug into the softer coral around the edge of the crater. an amtrac brought up rations and a unit of fire for the company. the wind began to blow briskly, and it got cloudy and heavily overcast. as darkness settled, heavy clouds scudded across the sky. the scene reminded me of hurricane weather on the gulf coast back home. not far behind us, the heat of the fire burning in the pillbox exploded japanese grenades and small-arms ammunition. all night occasional shifts of wind blew the nauseating smell of burning flesh our way. the rain fell in torrents, and the wind blew hard. ships fired star shells to illuminate the battlefield for our battalion. but as sdon as the parachute of a star shell opened, the wind swept it swiftly along like some invisible hand snatching 122 p e l e l i u : a neglected battle another amphibious assault 123 away a candle. in the few hundred yards they still held at the northern end of the island, the enemy was fairly quiet. the next morning, again with the help of tanks and amtracs, our battalion took most of the remainder of ngesebus. our casualties were remarkably low for the number of japanese we killed.* in midafternoon we learned that an army unit would relieve us shortly and complete the job on the northern end of ngesebus. our mortar section halted to await orders and dispersed among some open bushes. in our midst was the wreckage of a japanese heavy machine gun and the remains of the squad that had been wiped out by company k. the squad members had been killed in the exact positions to be occupied by such a squad "according to the book." at first glance the dead gunner appeared about to fire his deadly weapon. he still sat bolt upright in the proper firing position behind the breech of his machine gun. even in death his eyes stared widely along the gun sights. despite the vacant look of his dilated pupils, i couldn't believe he was dead. cold chills ran along my spine. gooseflesh tickled my back. it seemed as though he was looking through me into all eternity, that at any instant he would raise his hands—which rested in a relaxed manner on his thighs—grip the handles on the breech, and press the thumb trigger. the bright shiny brass slugs in the strip clip appeared as ready as the gunner, anxious to speed out, to kill, and to maim more of the "american devils." but he would rot, and they would corrode. neither he nor his ammo could do any more for the emperor. the crown of the gunner's skull had been blasted off, probably by one of our automatic weapons. his riddled steel helmet lay on the deck like a punctured tin can. the assistant gunner lay beside the gun. apparently, he had just opened a small green wooden chest filled with strip clips of machine-gun cartridges when he was killed. several other japanese soldiers, ammo carriers, lay strung out at intervals behind the gun. a company k rifleman who had been in the fight that knocked out the machine-gun crew sat on his helmet nearby and told us the story. the action had taken place the day before while the mortar section was fighting at the pillbox. the rifleman said, "the thing that i just couldn't believe was the •official accounts vary somewhat as to the actual casualty figures for ngesebus. however the marines suffered about 15 killed and 33 wounded, while the japanese lost 470 killed and captured. company k suffered the largest portion of the casualties in 3/5 by losing 8 killed and 24 wounded. this undoubtedly resulted from the presence of a ridge and caves on ngesebus in our sector. way those nip ammo carriers could chop chop around here on the double with those heavy boxes of ammo on their backs." each ammo box had two leather straps, and each ammo carrier had a heavy box on his back with the straps around his shoulders. i lifted one of the ammo chests. it weighed more than our mortar. what the japanese lacked in height, they certainly compensated for in muscle. "i'd sure hate to hafta lug that thing around, wouldn't you?" asked the marine. "when they got hit," he continued, "they fell to the deck like a brick because of all that weight." as we talked, i noticed a fellow mortarman sitting next to me. he held a handful of coral pebbles in his left hand. with his right hand he idly tossed them into the open skull of the japanese machine gunner. each time his pitch was true i heard a little splash of rainwater in the ghastly receptacle. my buddy tossed the coral chunks as casually as a boy casting pebbles into a puddle on some muddy road back home; there was nothing malicious in his action. the war had so brutalized us that it was beyond belief. i noticed gold teeth glistening brightly between the lips of several of the dead japanese lying around us. harvesting gold teeth was one facet of stripping enemy dead that i hadn't practiced so far. but stopping beside a corpse with a particularly tempting number of shining crowns, i took out my kabar and bent over to make the extractions. a hand grasped me by the shoulder, and i straightened up to see who it was. "what are you gonna do, sledgehammer?" asked doc caswell. his expression was a mix of sadness and reproach as he looked intently at me. "just thought i'd collect some gold teeth," i replied. "don't do it." "why not, doc?" "you don't want to do that sort of thing. what would your folks think if they knew?" "well, my dad's a doctor, and i bet he'd think it was kinda i interesting," i replied, bending down to resume my task. "no! the germs, sledgehammer! you might get germs from them." i stopped and looked inquiringly at doc and said, "germs? gosh, i never thought of that." "yeah, you got to be careful about germs around all these dead nips, you know," he said vehemently. "well, then, i guess i'd better just cut off the insignia on his collar and | leave his nasty teeth alone. you think that's safe, doc?" "i guess so," he replied with an approving nod. reflecting on the episode after the war, i realized that doc caswell 304 okinawa: the final t r i u m p h guns fired with admirable accuracy. several of their tracer-like armor piercing shells hit the turrets of the tanks and ricocheted into the air. the tanks returned fire. in a few minutes, the japanese guns were knocked out or ceased firing, and everything got quiet. the tanks sustained only minor damage. we went back onto the road and moved on south without further incident. until the island was secured on 21 june, we made a series of rapid moves southward, stopping only to fight groups of diehard japanese in caves, pillboxes, and ruined villages. the fresh 8th marines pushed south rapidly. "the eighth marines goin' like a bat outa hell," a man said as news drifted back to us. we were fortunate in not suffering many casualties in the company. the japanese were beaten, and the hope uppermost in every weary veteran's mind was that his luck would hold out a little longer, until the end of the battle. we used loudspeakers, captured japanese soldiers, and okinawan civilians to persuade the remaining enemy to surrender. one sergeant and a japanese lieutenant who had graduated from an ivy league college and spoke perfect english gave themselves up in a road cut. just after they came out and surrendered, a sniper opened fire on us. we eight or ten marines took cover next to the embankment, but the japanese officer and nco stood in the middle of the road with the bullets kicking up dirt all around them. the sniper obviously was trying to kill them because they had surrendered. we looked at the two japanese standing calmly, and one of our ncos said, "get over here under cover, you dumb bastards." the enemy officer grinned affably and spoke to his nco. they walked calmly over and got down as ordered. some company k men shot the gun crew of a 150mm howitzer emplaced in the mouth of a well-camouflaged cave. the japanese defended their big artillery piece with their rifles and died to the last man. farther on we tried to get a group of enemy in a burial vault to surrender, but they refused. our lieutenant, mac, jumped in front of the door and shouted in japanese, "do not be afraid. come out. i will not harm you." then he fired a complete twenty-round magazine from his submachine gun into the door. we all just shook our heads and moved on. about a half hour later, the five or six japanese rushed out fighting. some of our marines behind us killed them. our battalion was one of the first american units to reach the end of the island. it was a beautiful sight even though there were still snipers around. we stood on a high hill overlooking the sea. below to our left we end of the agony 305 saw army infantry advancing toward us, flushing out and shooting down enemy soldiers singly and in small groups. army 81mm mortar fire kept pace ahead of the troops, and some of our weapons joined in coordination. we got a bit edgy when the army mortar fire kept getting closer and closer to our positions even after the unit had been apprised of our location. one of our battalion officers became furious as the big shells came dangerously close. he ordered a radioman to tell the army officer in charge that if they didn't cease fire immediately, our 81s would open fire on his troops. the army mortars stopped shooting. the night of 20 june we made a defensive line on the high ground overlooking the sea. my mortar was dug in near a coral road and was to illuminate or fire he on the area. other guns of the section covered the seaward part of the company's sector. earlier we had seen and heard some sort of strange-looking rocket fired by the japanese from over in our army's sector. the projectiles were clearly visible as they went up with a terrible screaming sound. most of them exploded in the 8th marines area. the things sounded like bombs exploding. a call came for every available corpsman to help with casualties resulting from those explosions. the japanese on okinawa had a 320mm-spigot-mortar unit equipped to fire a 675-pound shell. americans first encountered this awesome weapon on iwo jima. i don't know whether what we saw fired several times during the last day or two on okinawa was a spigot mortar, but whatever it was, it was a frightful-sounding weapon that caused great damage. the night turned into a long series of shooting scrapes with japanese who prowled all over the place. we heard someone coming along the road, the coral crunching beneath his feet. in the pitch dark, a new replacement fired his carbine twice in that direction and yelled for the password. somebody laughed, and several enemy started firing in our direction as they ran past us along the road. a bullet zipped by me and hit the hydrogen cylinder of a flamethrower placed on the side of the adjacent foxhole. the punctured cylinder emitted a sharp hissing sound. "is that thing gonna blow up?" i asked anxiously. "naw, just hit the hydrogen tank. it won't ignite," the flamethrower gunner said. we could hear the enemy soldiers' hobnailed shoes pounding on the road until a fatal burst of fire from some other company k marines sent them sprawling. as we fieldstripped them the next morning, i noted that each carried cooked rice in his double-boiler mess gear—all bullet-riddled then. other japanese swam or walked along in the sea just offshore. we saw 306 okinawa: the final t r i u m p h them in the flarelight. a line of marines behind a stone wall on the beach fired at them. one of our men ran up from the wall to get more carbine ammo. "come on sledgehammer. it's just like lexington and concord." "no thanks. i'm too comfortable in my hole." he went back down to the wall, and they continued firing throughout the night. just before daylight, we heard a couple of enemy grenades explode. japanese yelled and shouted wildly where one of our 37mm guns was dug in across the road, covering the valley out front. shots rang out, then desperate shouts and cursing. "corspman!" then silence. a new corpsman who had joined us recently started toward the call for help, but i said, "hold it doc. i'll go with you." i wasn't being heroic. i was quite afraid. but knowing the enemy's propensity for treachery, i thought somebody should accompany him. "as you were, sledgehammer. ya might be needed on the gun. take off, doc, and be careful," an nco said. a few minutes later he said, "ok, sledgehammer, take off if ya wanta." i grabbed the tommy and followed the corpsman. he was just finishing bandaging one of the wounded marines of the 37mm gun crew when i got there. other marines were coming over to see if they could help. several men had been wounded by the firing when two enemy officers crept up the steep slope, threw grenades into the gun emplacement, and jumped in swinging their samurai sabers. one marine had parried a saber blow with his carbine. his buddy then had shot the japanese officer who fell backwards a short distance down the slope. the saber blow had severed a finger and sliced through the mahogany carbine forestock to the metal barrel. the second japanese officer lay dead on his back next to the wheel of the 37mm gun. he was in full-dress uniform with white gloves, shiny leather leggings, sam browne belt, and campaign ribbons on his chest. nothing remained of his head from the nose up—just a mass of crushed skull, brains, and bloody pulp. a grimy marine with a dazed expression stood over the japanese. with a foot planted firmly on the ground on each side of the enemy officer's body, the marine held his rifle by the forestock with both hands and slowly and mechanically moved it up and down like a plunger. i winced each time it came down with a sickening sound into the gory mass. brains and blood were splattered all over the marine's rifle, boondockers, and canvas leggings, as well as the wheel of the 37mm gun. the marine was obviously in a complete state of shock. we gently took end of the agony 307 him by the arms. one of his uninjured buddies set aside the gore-smeared rifle. "let's get you outa here, cobber." the poor guy responded like a sleepwalker as he was led off with the wounded, who were by then on stretchers. the man who had lost the finger clutched the japanese saber in his other hand. "i'm gonna keep this bastard for a souvenir." we dragged the battered enemy officer to the edge of the gun emplacement and rolled him down the hill. replete with violence, shock, blood, gore, and suffering, this was the type of incident that should be witnessed by anyone who has any delusions about the glory of war. it was as savage and as brutal as though the enemy and we were primitive barbarians rather than civilized men. later in the day of 21 june 1945, we learned the high command had declared the island secured. we each received two fresh oranges with the compliments of admiral nimitz. so i ate mine, smoked my pipe, and looked out over the beautiful blue sea. the sun danced on the water. after eighty-two days and nights, i couldn't believe okinawa had finally ended. i was tempted to relax and think that we would board ship immediately for rest and rehabilitation in hawaii. "that's what the scuttlebutt is, you guys. straight dope. we're headed for waikiki," a grinning buddy said. but long conditioning by the hardships that were our everyday diet in a rifle company made me skeptical. my intuition was borne out shortly. "get your gear on; check your weapons. we're moving back north in skirmish line. you people will mop up the area for any nips still holding out. you will bury all enemy dead. you will salvage u.s. and enemy equipment. all brass above .50 caliber in size will be collected and placed in neat piles. stand by to move out." a final chore if this were a novel about war, or if i were a dramatic storyteller, i would find a romantic way to end this account while looking at that fine sunset off the cliffs at the southern end of okinawa. but that wasn't the reality of what we faced. company k had one more nasty job to do. to the battle-weary troops, exhausted after an eighty-two-day campaign, mopping up was grim news. it was a nerve-wracking business at best. the enemy we encountered were the toughest of the diehards, selling their lives as expensively as possible. fugitives from the law of averages, we were nervous and jittery. a man could survive gloucester, peleliu, and okinawa only to be shot by some fanatical, bypassed japanese holed up in a 308 okinawa: the f i n a l t r i u m p h cave. it was hard for us to accept the order. but we did—grimly. burying enemy dead and salvaging brass and equipment on the battlefield, however, was the last straw to our sagging morale. "by lawd, why the hell we gotta bury them stinkin' bastards after we killed 'em? let them goddamn rear-echelon people git a w h i f f of 'em. they didn't hafta fight 'em." "jeez, picking up brass; that's the most stupid, d u m b jerk of a order i ever did hear of." fighting was our duty, but burying enemy dead and cleaning up the battlefield wasn't for infantry troops as we saw it. we complained and griped bitterly. it was the ultimate indignity to men who had fought so hard and so long and had won. we were infuriated and frustrated. for the first time, i saw several of my veteran comrades flatly refuse to obey an order. if some of us hadn't prevailed on them to knock off arguing hotly with an nco, they would have been severely punished for insubordination. i'll never forget cajoling, arguing with, and begging two veteran buddies to be quiet and follow orders as i unstrapped my entrenching shovel from my pack. we stood wearily in a trampled cane field beside a bloated jap corpse. both buddies were three-campaign men who were outstanding in combat but had reached the end of their ropes. they weren't about to bury any stinking japanese, no sirree. i prevailed, however, just as hank boyes came over grim-faced and yelling at them to turn to. so we dragged ourselves back north in skirmish line. we cursed every dead enemy we had to bury. (we just spaded dirt over them with our entrenching shovels.) we cursed every cartridge case "above .50 caliber in size" we collected to "place in neat piles." never before were we more t h a n k f u l to have the support of our tanks. the flame tanks were particularly effective in burning out troublesome japanese in caves.* fortunately, we had few casualties. in a few days we assembled in an open field and fell out to await further orders. the weather was hot, so we all took off our packs, sat on our helmets, drank some water, and had a smoke. we were to be there for several hours, an nco said, so we got the order to chow down. a friend and i went over to a little wooded area near the field to eat our k rations in the shade. we walked into a completely untouched scene that resembled a natural park in a botanical garden: low graceful pines cast dense shade, and ferns and moss grew on the rocks and banks. it was cool, *the total number of japanese killed by the five american divisions during the mop up was 8,975, a large enough number of enemy to have waged intense guerrilla warfare if they hadn't been annihilated. end of the agony 309 at battle's end, three weary k company mortarmen: l to r, john redifer, vincent santos, gene farrar. photo by gene farrar. 310 okinawa: the final triumph and the odor of fresh pine filled the air. miraculously, it bore not a single sign of war. "boy, this is beautiful, isn't it, sledgehammer?" "it looks unreal," i said as i took off my pack and sat down on the soft green moss beside a clump of graceful ferns. we each started heating a canteen cup of water for our instant coffee. i took out the prized can of cured ham i had obtained by trade from a man in the company cp. (he had stolen it from an officer.) we settled back in the cool silence. the war, military discipline, and other unpleasant realities seemed a million miles away. for the first time in months, we began to relax. "ok, you guys. move out. move! move! outa here," an nco said with authority ringing out in every word. "is the company moving out already?" my friend asked in surprise. "no, it isn't, but you guys are." "why?" "because this is off limits to enlisted men," the nco said, turning and pointing to a group of officers munching their rations as they strolled into our new-found sanctuary. "but we aren't in the way," i said. "move out and follow orders." to his credit, the nco appeared in sympathy with us and seemed to feel the burden of his distasteful task. we sullenly picked up our halfcooked rations and our gear, went back out into the hot sun, and flopped down in the dusty field. "some crap, eh?" "yeah," i said, "we weren't even near those officers. the fighting on this goddamn island is over. the officers have started getting chicken again and throwing the crap around. yesterday while the shootin' was still goin' on, it was all buddy-buddy with the enlisted men." our grumblings were interrupted by the sound of a rifle shot. a marine i knew very well reeled backward and fell to the ground. his buddy dropped his rifle and rushed to him, followed by several others. the boy was dead, shot in the head by his buddy. the other man had thought his rifle was unloaded when his young friend had stood over him and placed his thumb playfully over the muzzle. "pull the trigger. i bet it's not loaded." he pulled the trigger. the loaded rifle fired and set a bullet tearing up through the head of his best friend. both had violated the cardinal rule: "don't point a weapon at anything you don't intend to shoot." shock and dismay showed on the man's face from that moment until he left the company a few weeks later. he went, we heard, to stand a general court-martial and a probable prison term. but his worst punishment was end of the agony 311 living with the horror of having killed his best friend by playing with a loaded weapon. while the company was still sitting in the field, five or six men and i were told to get our gear and follow an nco to waiting trucks. we were to go north to a site where our division would make a tent camp after the mop-up in the south was completed. our job was to unload and guard some company gear. we were apprehensive about leaving the company, but it turned out to be good duty. during the long and dusty truck ride to the motobu peninsula, we rode past some areas we had fought through. by then we could barely recognize them—they were transformed with roads, tent camps, and supply dumps. the number of service troops and the amount of equipment was beyond our belief. roads that had been muddy tracks or coral-covered paths were highways with vehicles going to and fro and mps in neat khaki directing traffic. tent camps, quonset huts, and huge parks of vehicles lay along our route. we had come back to civilization. we had climbed up out of the abyss once more. it was exhilarating. we sang and whistled like little boys until our sides were sore. as we went north, the countryside became beautiful. most of it seemed untouched by the war. finally our truck turned off into a potato field not far from high rocky cliffs overlooking the sea and a small island which our driver said was le shima. the land around our future campsite was undamaged. we unloaded the company gear from the truck. the driver had picked up five-gallon cans of water for us. plenty of k rations had been issued. we set up a bivouac. corporal vincent was in charge, and we were glad of it. he was a great guy and a company k veteran. our little guard detail spent several quiet, carefree days basking in the sun by day and mounting one-sentry guard duty at night. we were like boys on a camp-out. the fear and terror were behind us. our battalion came north a few days later. all hands went to work in earnest to complete the tent camp. pyramidal tents were set up, drainage ditches were dug, folding cots and bed rolls were brought to us, and a canvas-roofed messhall was built. every day old friends returned from the hospitals, some hale and hearty but others showing the effects of only partial recovery from severe wounds. to our disgust, rumors of rehabilitation in hawaii faded. but our relief that the long okinawa ordeal was over at last was indescribable. very few familiar faces were left. only twenty-six peleliu veterans who had landed with the company on 1 april remained. and i doubt there were even ten of the old hands who had escaped being wounded at one time or another on peleliu or okinawa. total american casualties were 7,613 killed 3 1 2 o k i n a w a : t h e f i n a l t r i u m p h and missing and 31,807 wounded in action. neuropsychiatric, "non-battle," casualties amounted to 26,221—probably higher than in any other previous pacific theater battle. this latter high figure is attributed to two causes: the japanese poured onto u.s. troops the heaviest concentrations of artillery and mortar fire experienced in the pacific, and the prolonged, close-in fighting with a fanatical enemy. marines and attached naval medical personnel suffered total casualties of 20,020 killed, wounded and missing. japanese casualty figures are hazy. however, 107,539 enemy dead were counted on okinawa. approximately 10,000 enemy troops surrendered, and afiout 20,000 were either sealed in caves or buried by the japanese themselves. even lacking an exact accounting, in the final analysis the enemy garrison was, with rare exceptions, annihilated. unfortunately, approximately 42,000 okinawan civilians, caught between the two opposing armies, perished from artillery fire and bombing. the 1st marine division suffered heavy casualties on okinawa. officially, it lost 7,665 men killed, wounded, and missing. there were also an undetermined number of casualties among the replacements whose names never got on a muster roll. considering that most of the casualties were in the division's three infantry regiments (about 3,000 strength in each), it's obvious that the rifle companies took the bulk of the beating, just as they had on peleliu. the division's losses of 6,526 on peleliu and 7,665 on okinawa total 14,191. statistically, the infantry units had suffered over 150 percent losses through the two campaigns. the few men like me who never got hit can claim with justification that we survived the abyss of war as fugitives from the law of averages.* it was over as we finished building our tent camp, we began trying to unwind from the grueling campaign. some of the cape gloucester veterans rotated home almost immediately, and replacements arrived. ugly rumors circulated that we would hit japan next, with an expected casualty figure of one million americans. no one wanted to talk about that. on 8 august we heard that the first atomic bomb had been dropped on japan. reports abounded for a week about a possible surrender. then on 15 august 1945 the war ended. we received the news with quiet disbelief coupled with an indescribable "the 1st marine division received the presidential u n i t s citation for its part in the okinawa campaign. 1 author at the end of the campaign. tent camp on okinawa. unknown photographer. eugene b. sledge after return from peking in 1946. end of the agony 315 sense of relief. we thought the japanese would never surrender. many refused to believe it. sitting in stunned silence, we remembered our dead. so many dead. so many maimed. so many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past. so many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us. except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy, the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war. in september, the 1st marine division went to north china on occupation duty, the 5th marines to the fascinating ancient city of peking. after about four and a half months there, i rotated stateside. my happiness knew no bounds when 1 learned i was slated to ship home. it was time to say goodbye to old buddies in k/3/5. severing the ties formed in two campaigns was painful. one of america's finest and most famous elite fighting divisions had been my home during a period of the most extreme adversity. up there on the line, with nothing between us and the enemy but space (and precious little of that), we'd forged a bond that time would never erase. we were brothers. i left with a sense of loss and sadness, but k/3/5 will always be a part of me. it's ironic that the record of our company was so outstanding but that so few individuals were decorated for bravery. uncommon valor was displayed so often it went largely unnoticed. it was expected. but nearly every man in the company was awarded the purple heart. my good fortune in being one of the few exceptions continues to amaze me. war is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste. combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it. the only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. marine corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. but it also taught us loyalty to each other—and love. that esprit de corps sustained us. until the millenium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one's country—as my comrades did. as the troops used to say, "if the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." with privilege goes responsibility. 7.2.2. george gascoigne, the fruites of war 7.2.2. george gascoigne, the fruites of war the soldier poet george gascoigne (c. 1535-1577) set out from england to holland in april 1572, came back to england in november 1572, and returned to holland on 19 march 1573 along with captain thomas morgan’s first military detatchment. in 1573 gascoigne, together with his friends rowland york (a mutual friend of the earl of oxford) and william herle[1] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-001> had a narrow escape when the dutch pilot got drunk and ran their boat aground on the coast: twenty men were drowned. gascoigne finished his poem voyage to holland before the end of march, and sent it to england so that it could appear in the anthology a hundreth sundrie flowres, which was already in print. in england, the calendar year 1572 was over on 24th march 1573. in spite of the fact that the flowres did not appear until april 1573, the title page with the date 1572 was not changed. this means that "meritum petere grave", the co-author of a hundreth sundrie flowres, who was supervising the printing, had opportunity to include gascoigne's voyage to holland at the very last moment. as was demonstrated in 5.0 introduction the person behind the posy "meritum petere grave" was none other than the poet edward de vere, earl of oxford, who was very adept in hiding his contributions to a hundreth sundrie flowres. consequently, we can assume a certain closeness, perhaps even friendship existed between the two men up to that point. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-001 gascoigne belonged to morgan's regiment in 1573 and changed to edward chester's regiment in 1574, having probably quarrelled with morgan. after the disastrous defeat of chester's regiment near leiden in 1574 he was taken prisoner by the spanish who released him on payment of his ransom. "the poem the fruites of war," says henry morley, "is of some length and of higher aim. it is one of the best of gascoigne's poems, and includes incidentally a sketch of his adventures in the netherlands. written in the midst of an inevitable war for independence, it sets forth the truth that war is evil in itself, and always bom of evil. it is a poet's moralising on a saying found by gascoigne in the adages of erasmus, and of which erasmus also had enforced the truth: dulce bellum inexpertis. gascoigne's incidental record of his own experience deals mainly with service in and near the isle of walcheren. he was one of a little force that for seven days protected the small unwalled town of aardenburg, four miles from sluys, and saved it from attack. he was, like churchyard, in the trenches before ter-goes, or goes, a fortified town on the island of south beveland, held by spaniards.“ (henry morley, english writers, from surrey to spenser. london 1892). we may assume that oxford hurried to his friend's side with the necessary ransom money after his capture in may 1574. only when regarded in this context does oxford's trip to flanders, in july 1574, make any sense. (see 7.2.3 oxford in flanders.) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:jansoni.jpg <url: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:jansoni.jpg> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:jansoni.jpg 1. george gascoigne, the fruits of war, written upon this theme, dulce bellum inexpertis.[2] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-002> 95 for i have seen full many a flushing fray [attack, fight], and fleeced [combed] in flanders eke among the rest, the brag of bruges [3] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-003>, where was i that day? before the walls good sir as brave as best, and though i marched all armed withouten rest, from aerdenburgh [aardenburg] and back again that night, yet mad were he that would have made me knight. 96 so was i one forsooth that kept the town, of aerdenburgh [4] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-004> (withouten any walls) from all the force that could be dressed down, by alba duke for all his cries and calls, a high exploit. we held the flemings thralls, seven days and more without or brags or blows, for all that while we never heard of foes. 97 i was again in trench before tergoes [goes], [5] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-005> (i dare not say in siege for both mine ears) for look as oft as ever hell brake lose, i mean as often as the spanish peers, made sally forth (i speak this to my feres) it was no more but which cock for a groat, such troops we were to keep them up in coat. 98 yet surely this withouten brag or boast, our english bloods did there full many a deed, which may be chronicled in every coast, for bold attempts, and well it was agreed, that had their heads been ruled by wary heed, some other feat had been attempted then, to show their force like worthy english men. 99 since that siege raised i roamed have about, in zeeland, holland, waterland, and all, by sea, by land, by air, and all throughout, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-002 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-003 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-004 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-005 as leaping lots, and chance did seem to call, now here, now there, as fortune trilled the ball, where good guillam of nassau [6] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-006> bad me be, there needed i none other guide but he. 100 percase [perchance] sometimes s. gyptian's pilgrimage[7] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-007> did carry me a month (yea sometimes more) to brake the bowers[8] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-008>, and rack them in a rage, because they had no better cheer in store, beef, mutton, capon, plover, pigeons, boar, all this was naught, and for no soldier's tooth, were these no jars? (speak now sir) yes forsooth. 101 and by my troth to speak even as it is, such pranks were played by soldiers daily there, and though myself did not therein amiss, (as god he knows and men can witness bear,) yet since i had a charge, i am not clear, for seldom climbs that captain to renown, whose soldiers' faults so pluck his honour down. 102 well let that pass. i was in rolling trench, at ramykins [rammekens],[9] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-009> where little shot was spent, for gold and groats their matches still did quench, which kept the fort, and forth at last they went, so pained for hunger (almost ten days pent) that men could see no wrinkles in their faces, their powder packed in caves and privy places. 103 next that i served by night and eke by day, by sea, by land, at every time and tide, against mountdragon [10] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-010> whiles he did assay, to land his men along the salt sea side, for well he wist that ramykins [rammekens] went wide, and therefore sought with victual to supply, poor middleburgh[11] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-011> which then in suds did lie. 104 and there i saw full many a bold attempt, by seely souls best executed aye, and bravest brags (the foemen's force to tempt) accomplished but coldly many a day, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-006 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-007 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-008 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-009 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-010 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-011 the soldier charge, the leader lope away, the willing drum a lusty march to sound, whiles rank retirers gave their enemies ground. 105 again at sea the soldier forward still, when mariners had little lust to fight, and whiles we stay twixt faint and forward will, our enemies prepare themselves to flight. they hoist up sail (o weary word to write) they hoist up sail that lack both stream and winds, and we stand still, so forced by froward minds. 106 o victory: (whom haughty hearts do hunt) o spoil and pray (which greedy minds desire) o golden heaps (for whom these misers wont to follow hope which sets all hearts on fire) o gain, o gold, who list to you aspire, and glory eke, by bold attempts to win, there was a day to take your prisoners in. 107 the ships retire with riches full yfraught, the soldiers march (meanwhile) into the town, the tide scarce good, the wind stark staring naught, the haste so hot that (ere they sink the sound [12] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-012>) they came on ground, and strike all sails adown: while we (ay me) by backward sailors led, take up the worst when all the best are fled. 108 such triumphs chance where such lieutenants rule, where will commands when skill is out of town, where boldest bloods are forced to recoil by sim the boatswain when he list to frown, where captains crouch, and fishers wear the crown. such haps which happen in such hapless wars, make me to term them broils and beastly jars. 109 and in these broils (a beastly broil to write,) my colonel and i fell at debate,[13] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-013> so that i left both charge and office quite, a captain's charge and eke a marshal's state, whereby i proved (perhaps though all to late) http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-012 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-013 how soon they fall which lean to rotten bows, such faith find they, that trust to some men's vows. 110 my heart was high, i could not seem to serve, in regiment where no good rules remain, where officers and such as well deserve, shall be abused by every page and swain where discipline shall be but deemed vain, where blocks are strid [stridden] by stumblers at a straw, and where self-will must stand for martial law. 111 these things (with moe) i could not seem to bear, and thereupon i cracked my staff in two, yet staid i still though out of pay i were, and learn to live as private soldiers do, i lived yet, by god and lacked too: till at the last when beauvoir [14] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-014> fled amain [vehemently], our camp removed to strain [pass] the land van strain [strijen]. 112 when beauvoir fled, mountdragon came to town,[15] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-015> and like a soldier middleburgh he kept, but courage now was coldly come adown, on either side: and quietly they slept, so that myself from zeeland lightly leapt, with full intent to taste our english ale, yet first i meant to tell the prince my tale. 113 for though the wars waxed cold in every place, and small experience was there to be seen, yet thought i not to part in such disgrace, although i longed much to see our queen: for he that once a hired man hath been, must take his master's leave before he go, unless he mean to make his friend his foe. 114 then went i straight to delf [delft], a pleasant town, unto that prince, whose passing virtues shine, and unto him i came on knees adown, beseeching that his excellence in fine would grant me leave to see this country mine: not that i weary was in wars to serve, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-014 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-015 nor that i lacked what so i did deserve. 115 but for i found some conteck [discord] and debate, in regiment where i was wont to rule, and for i found the stay of their estate, was forced now in towns for to recoil, i craved leave no longer but till yule [christmas], and promised then to come again sans fail [without doubt], to spend my blood where it might him avail. 116 the noble prince gave grant to my request, and made me passport signed with his seal, but when i was with bags and baggage prest, the prince began to ring another peal, and sent for me, (desiring for my weal) that i would stay a day or two, to see, what was the cause he sent again for me. 117 my colonel was now come to the court [16] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-016>, with whom the prince had many things to beat, and for he hoped, in good and godly sort, tween him and me to work a friendly feat, he like a gracious prince his brains did beat, to set accord between us if he might, such pains he took to bring the wrong to right. 118 o noble prince, there are too few like thee, if virtue wake, she watcheth in thy will, if justice live, then surely thou art he, if grace do grow, it groweth with thee still, o worthy prince would god i had the skill to write thy worth that men thereby might see, how much they err that speak amiss of thee. 119 the simple sots do count thee simple too, whose like for wit our age hath seldom bred, the railing rogues mistrust thou darest not do, as hector did for whom the grecians fled, although thou yet wert never seen to dread, the slanderous tongues do say thou drinkst to much, when god he knows thy custom is not such. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-016 120 but why do i in worthless verse devise, to write his praise that doth excel so far? he heard our griefs himself in gracious wise, and mildly meant to join our angry jar, he meant to make that we began to mar: but wicked wrath had some so far enraged, as by no means their malice could be swayed. 121 in this mean while the spaniards came so near that delf was girt with siege on every side [17] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-017>, and though men might take shipping everywhere, and so be gone at any time or tide, yet truth to tell (i speak it for no pride) i could not leave that prince in such distress, which cared for me and yet the cause much less. 122 but see mishap how craftily it creeps, whiles fawning fortune flareth full in face, my heavy heart within my belly weeps, to reckon here a drop of dark disgrace, which fell upon my pleasant plight apace, and brought a pack of doubts and dumps to pass, whiles i with prince in love and favour was. 123 a worthy dame whose praise my pen shall write (my sword shall eke her honour still defend) a loving letter to me did indite and from the camp the same to me did send, i mean from camp where foes their force did bend: she sent a brief unto me by her maid, which at the gates of delf was stoutly stayed. 124 this letter tane [taken], i was mistrusted much, and thought a man that were not for to trust, the burghers straight began to bear me grudge, and cast a snare to make my neck be trust, for when they had this letter well discussed: they sent it me by her that brought it so, to try if i would keep it close or no. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-017 125 i red the lines, and knowing whence they came, my harmless heart began to pant apace, well to be plain, i thought that never dame should make me deal in any doubtful case, or do the thing might make me hide my face: so that unto the prince i went forthwith, and showed to him of all this pack the pith. 126 the thing god knows was of no great import, some friendly lines the virtuous lady wrote to me her friend: and for my safe passport the campo-master valdez [18] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-018> his hand was got, and seal therewith, that i might safely trot unto the hague [den haag] a stately pleasant place, whereas remained this worthy woman's grace. 127 and here i set in open verse to show, the whole effect wherefore this work was wrought, she had of mine (whereof few folks did know) a counterfeit, a thing to me dear bought, which thing to have i many time had sought and when she knew how much i did esteem it she vowed that none but i should thence redeem it. 128 lo here the cause of all this secret sleight, i swear by jove that nothing else was meant, the noble prince (who saw that no deceit was practised) gave trust to mine intent: and leave to write from whence the same was sent, but still the bowgers [butchers] (burghers should i say) increased their doubles [ruse] and watched me day by day. 129 at every port it was (forsooth) belast [forbidden], that i (die groene hopman [19] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-019>) might not go out, but when their foes came skirmishing full fast, then with the rest the green knight for them fought, then might he go without mistrust or doubt: o drunken plumps, i plain without cause why, for all cards told there was no fool but i. 130 i was the fool to fight in your defence, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-018 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-019 which know no friend, nor yet your selves full well, yet thus you see how pay proclaimed for pence, pulls needy souls instead of heaven to hell, and makes men hope to bear away the bell. whereas they hang in ropes that never rot, yet war seems sweet to such as know it not. 131 well thus i dwelt in delf a winter's tide, in delf (i say) without one penny pay: my men and i did cold and hunger bide, to show our truth, and yet was never day, wherein the spaniard came to make us play, but that the green knight was amongst the rest, like john grey's bird that ventured with the best[20] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-020>. 132 at last the prince to zeeland came himself to hunger middleburgh [middelburg], or make it yield, and i that never yet was set on shelf, when any sailed, or wind, or waves could wield, went after him to show myself in field. the self same man which erst i vowed to be, a trusty man to such a prince as he. 133 the force of flanders, brabant, guelders, frize [frisia], henault, artois, liegeland, and luxembourg, were all ybent, to bring in new supplies to middleburgh: and little all enough, for why the gueux would neither bend nor bow. but one of force must break and come to nought, all walkers [walcheren] theirs, or flushing dearly bought. 134 there once again i served upon seas, and for to tell the cause and how it fell, it did one day the prince (my chieftain) please, to ask me thus: gascoigne (quoth he) you dwell amongst us still: and thereby seemeth well, that to our side you bear a faithful heart, for else long since we should have seen you start. 135 but are (said he) your soldiers by your side? o prince (quoth i) full many days be past, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-020 since that my charge did with my coronel glide. yet bide i here, and mean to be with last: and for full proof that this is not a blast of glorious talk: i crave some fisher boat to show my force among this furious float. 136 the prince 'gan like my faith and forward will, equipped a hoy [21] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-021> and set her under sail, wherein i served according to my skill, my mind was such, my cunning could not quail, withouten brag of those that did assail the foemen's fleet which came in good array, i put myself in foremost rank alway. 137 three days we fought, as long as water served, and came to anchor neighbour like yfere [together], the prince himself to see who best deserved, stood every day attending on the peer, and might behold what bark went foremost there: ill heart had he that would not stoutly fight, when as his prince is present still in sight. 138 at last our foes had tidings over land, that near to bergh [bergen-op-zoom] their fellows went to wrack, on scheld they met by rymerswaell [22] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-022> a band of edellbloets [lusty gallants], who put their force aback, lewes de boyzott [23] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-023> did put them there to sack, and lost an eye, because he would resemble dan julian [24] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-024>, whom (there) he made to tremble. 139 when this was known sancho de avila [25] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-025>, who had the charge of those that fought with us, went up the hond [west scheldt] and took the ready way, to anwerp town: leaving in danger thus, poor middleburgh which now waxed dolorous to see all hope of succour shrink away, whiles they lacked bread and had done many a day. 140 and when mondrágon might no more endure[26] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-026>, he came to talk and rendered all at last, with whom i was within the city sure, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-021 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-022 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-023 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-024 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-025 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-026 before he went, and on his promise past, such trust i had to think his faith was fast: i dined, and supped, and lay within the town, a day before he was from thence ybown [about to go]. 141 thus middleburgh, armew [arnemuiden], and all the rest, of walkers ile [walcheren] became the prince's pray, who gave to me because i was so prest at such a pinch, and on a dismal day, three hundred guilders good above my pay. and bad me bide till his ability might better guerdon my fidelity. 142 i will not lie, these guilders pleased me well, and much the more because they came uncraved, though not unneeded as my fortune fell, but yet thereby my credit still was saved, my scores were paid, and with the best i braved, till (lo) at last an english new relief came over seas, and chester [27] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-027> was their chief. 143 of these the prince persuaded me to take a band in charge with colonel's consent, at whose requests i there did undertake, to make mine ensign once again full bent, and sooth to say, it was my full intent, to loose the saddle or the horse to win, such hapless hope the prince had brought me in. 144 soldiers behold and captains mark it well, how hope is harbinger of all mishap, some hope in honour for to bear the bell, some hope for gain and venture many a clap, some hope for trust and light in treason's lap. hope leads the way our lodging to prepare, where high mishap (oft) keeps an inn of care. 145 i hoped to show such force against our foes, that those of delf might see how true i was, i hoped indeed for to be one of those whom fame should follow, where my feet should pass, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-027 i hoped for gains and found great loss alas: i hoped to win a worthy soldier's name, and lite [rely] on luck which brought me still to blame. 146 in valkenburgh (a fort but new begone) with others moe i was ordained to be, and far before the work were half way done, our foes set forth our sorry seat to see, they came in time, but cursed time for me, they came before the curtain raised were, one only foot above the trenches there.[28] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-028> 147 what should we do, four ensigns lately prest, five hundred men were all the bulk we bare, our enemies three thousand at the least, and so much more they might always prepare: but that most was, the truth for to declare, we had no store of powder, nor of pence, nor meat to eat, nor mean to make defence. 148 here some may say that we were much to blame, which would presume in such a place to bide, and not foresee (how ever went the game) of meat and shot our soldiers to provide: who so do say have reason on their side, yet proves it still (though ours may be the blot) that war seems sweet to such as know it not. 149 for had our fort been fully fortified, two thousand men had been but few enough to man it once, and had the truth been tried, we could not see by any reason how the prince could send us any succour now, which was constrained in towns himself to shield, and had no power to show his force in field. 150 herewith we had nor powder packs in store, nor flesh, nor fish, in powdering tubs yput, nor meal, nor malt, nor mean (what would you more?) to get such gear if once we should be shut. and god he knows, the english soldier's gut, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-028 must have his fill of victuals once a day, or else he will but homely earn his pay. 151 to scuse ourselves, and colonel withal, we did foretell the prince of all these needs, who promised always to be our wall, and bad us trust as truly as our creeds, that all good words should be performed with deeds, and that before our foes could come so near, he would both send us men and merry cheer. 152 yea robin hood, our foes came down apace, and first they charged another fort likewise, alphen [29] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-029> i mean, which was a stronger place, and yet to weak to keep in warlike wise: five other bands of english fanteries [footmen], were therein set for to defend the same, and them they charged for to begin the game. 153 this fort from ours was distant ten good miles, i mean such miles as english measure makes, between us both stood leiden town there whiles [30] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-030> which every day with fair words undertakes to feed us fat and cram us up with cakes: it made us hope it would supply our need, for we (to it) two bulwarks were indeed. 154 but when it came unto the very pinch leiden farewell, we might for leiden sterve [starve], i like him well that promiseth an inch, and pays an ell, but what may he deserve that flatters much and can no faith observe? an old said saw, that fair words make fools fain, which proverb true we proved to our pain. 155 a conference among ourselves we called, of officers and captains all yfere, for truth (to tell) the soldiers were appalled, and when we asks, now mates what merry cheer? their answer was: it is no biding here. so that perforce we must from thence be gone, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-029 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-030 unless we meant to keep the place alone. 156 herewith we thought that if in time we went, before all straights were stopped and taken up, we might (perhaps) our enemies prevent, and teach them eke to taste of sorrows cup: at maeslandsluys [maassluis] we hoped for to sup[31] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-031>, a place whereas we might good service do to keep them out which took it after too. 157 whiles thus we talk, a messenger behold, from alphen came, and told us heavy news. captains (quoth he) hereof you may be bold, not one poor soul of all your fellows' crews, can 'scape alive, they have no choice to choose: they sent me thus to bid you shift in time, else look (like them) to stick in spanish lime. 158 this tale once told, none other speech prevailed, but pack and trudge [go away], all leisure was too long. to 'mend the mart, our watch (which never failed) descried our foes which marched all along, and towards us began in haste to throng, so that before our last could pass the port, the foremost foes were now within the fort. 159 i promised once and did perform it too, to bide therein as long as any would, what booted [of what avail was] that? or what could captains do, when common sort would tarry for no gold? to speak a troth, the good did what they could, to keep the bad in ranks and good array, but labour lost to hold that will away. 160 it needless were to tell what deeds were done, nor who did best, nor who did worst that day, nor who made head, nor who began to run, nor in retreat what chief was last alway, but soldier like we held our enemies' play: and every captain strave [strove] to do his best, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-031 to stay his own and so to stay the rest. 161 in this retire three english miles we trod, with face to foes and shot as thick as hail, of whose choice men full fifty souls and odd, we rayed on ground, this is withouten fail, yet of our own, we lost but three by tale: our foes themselves confess they bought full dear, the hot pursuit which they attempted there. 162 thus came we late at last to leiden walls, too late, too soon, and so may we well say, for notwithstanding all our cries and calls, they shut their gates and turned their ears away: in fine they did forsake us every way, and bad us shift to save ourselves apace, for unto them were fond to trust for grace. 163 they neither gave us meat to feed upon, nor drink, nor powder, pickaxe, tool nor spade, so might we starve, like miser's woe begone, and fend our foes, with blows of english blade, for shot was shrunk, and shift could none be made: yea more than this, we stood in open field, without defence from shot ourselves to shield. 164 this thus well weighed, the weary night was past, and day 'gan peep, we heard the spanish drums, which stroke a march about us round to cast, and forth withal their ensigns quickly comes, at sight whereof, our soldiers bit their thumbs: for well they wist it was no boot [profit] to fly, and biding there, there was no boot but die. 165 so that we sent a drum to summon talk, and came to parley middle way between, monsieur de licques[32] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-032>, and mario did walk, from foemen's side, and from our side were seen, myself, that match for mario might been: and captain sheffield born of noble race, to match de licques, which there was chief in place. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-032 166 thus met we talked, and stood upon our toes, with great demands whom little might content, we craved not only freedom from our foes, but shipping eke with sails and all full bent, to come again from whence we first were went: i mean to come, into our english coast, which soil was sure, and might content us most. 167 an old said saw, (and oft seen) that whereas thou comest to crave, and doubtst for to obtain, iniquum pete (then) ut æquum feras[33] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-033>, this had i heard, and sure i was full fain to prove what profit we thereby might gain: but at the last when time was stolen away, we were full glad to play another play. 168 we rendered then with safety for our lives, our ensigns splayed, and managing our arms, with further faith, that from all kind of gives, our soldiers should remain withouten harms: and sooth to say, these were no false alarms, for why? they were within twelve days discharged, and sent away from prison quite enlarged. 169 they were sent home, and we remained still, in prison pent, but yet right gently used, to take our lives, it was not licques will, (that noble blood, which never man abused,) nor ever yet was for his faith accused, would god i had the skill to write his praise, which lent me comfort in my doleful days. 170 we bode behind, four months or little less, but whereupon that god he knows not i, yet if i might be bold to give a guess, then would i say it was for to espy what ransom we would pay contentedly: or else to know how much we were esteemed in england here, and for what men ydeemed [judged]. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-033 171 how so it were, at last we were dispatched, and home we came as children come from school, as glad, as fish which were but lately catched, and straight again were cast into the pool: for by my fay i count him but a fool, which would not rather poorly live at large, than rest in prison fed with costly charge. 172 now have i told a tedious tale in rime of my mishaps, and what ill luck i had, yet some may say, that all to loud i chime, since that in wars my fortune was not bad, and many a man in prison would be glad, to fare no worse, and lodge no worse than we, and eke at last to 'scape and go so free. 173 i must confess that both we were well used, and promise kept according to contract, and that nor we, nor soldiers were abused, no rigour showed, nor lovely dealing lacked: i must confess that we were never racked, nor forced to do, nor speak against our will, and yet i count it froward fortune still. 174 a truth it is (since wars are led by chance, and none so stout but that sometimes may fall,) no man on earth his honour might advance, to render better (if he once were thrall) why who could wish more comfort at his call, than for to yield with ensign full displayed, and all arms borne in warlike wise for aid? 175 or who could wish dispatch with greater speed than soldiers had which tarried so few days? or who could wish, more succour at his need than used was to them at all assays? bread, meat, and drink, yea wagons in their ways, to ease the sick and hurt which could not go, all tane [taken] in wars, are seldom used so. 176 or who could wish (to ease his captive days) more liberty than on his faith to rest? to eat and drink at baron's board always, to lie on down, to banquet with the best, to have all things, at every just request, to borrow coin, when any seemed to lack, to have his own, away with him to pack? 177 all this and more i must confess we had, god save (say i) our noble queen therefore, hinc illæ lachrimæ [hence those tears], there lay the pad, which made the strange suspected be the more, for trust me true, they coveted full sore to keep our queen and country fast their friends, till all their wars might grow to lucky ends. 178 but were that once to happy end ybrought, and all stray sheep come home again to fold, then look to door: and think the cat is nought, although she let the mouse from out her hold: believe me now, methinks i dare be bold to think that if they once were friends again, we might soon sell all friendship found in spain. 179 well these are words and far beyond my reach, yet by the way receive them well in worth, and by the way, let never licques appeach [impede] my railing pen, for though my mind abhorreth, all spanish pranks: yet must i thunder forth his worthy praise, who held his faith unstained, and evermore to us a friend remained. 180 why said i then, that war is full of woes? or sour of taste, to them that know it best? who so demands, i will my mind disclose, and then judge you the burdens of my breast: mark well my words and you shall find him blest, that meddleth least with wars in any wise, but quiet lives, and all debate defies. 181 for though we did with truth and honour yield, yet yielding is always a great disgrace, and though we made a brave retire in field, yet who retires, doth always yield his place: and though we never did ourselves embase [lower], but were always at barons table fed, yet better were at home with barley bread. 182 i leave to tell what loss we did sustain, in pens, in pay, in wars, and ready wealth, since all such trash may gotten be again, or wasted well at home by privy stealth: small loss hath he which all his living selleth, to save his life, when other help is none, cast up the saddle when the horse is gone. 183 but what i said, i say and swear again, for first we were in holland sore [deeply] suspect, the states did think, that with some filthy gain the spanish peers us captains had infect they thought we meant our ensigns to erect in king's behalf: and eke the common sort thought privy pay had made us leave our fort. 184 again, the king's men (only licques except, and good verdugo [34] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-034>) thought we were too well, and that we were but played with in respect, when as their men in great distress did dwell: so that with hate their burning hearts did swell, and bad hang up or drown us everychone [everyone], these bones we had alway to bite upon. 185 this sauce we had unto our costly fare, and every day we threatened were indeed, so that on both sides we must bide the care, and be mistrust of every wicked deed, and be revealed, and must ourselves yet feed with lingering hope, to get away at last that self same hope which tied us there so fast. 186 to make up all, our own men played their part, and rang a peal to make us more mistrust, for when they should away from us depart, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-034 and saw us bide, they thought we stayed for lust, and sent them so in secret to be trust: they thought and said, thus have our captains sold us silly souls, for groats and glistering gold. 187 yea, when they were to england safely brought, yet talked they still even as they did before: for slanderous tongues, if once they tattle ought, with mickle pain will change their wicked lore: it hath been proved full many days of yore, that he which once in slander takes delight, will seldom frame his words to sound aright. 188 strange tale to tell, we that had set them free, and set ourselves on sands for their expense, we that remained in danger of the tree, when they were safe, we that were their defence, with arms, with cost, with deeds, with eloquence: we that saved such, as knew not where to fly, were now by them accused of treachery. 189 these fruits (i say) in wicked wars i found, which make me write much more than else i would, for loss of life, or dread of deadly wound, shall never make me blame it though i could, since death doth dwell on every kind of mould: and who in war hath caught a fatal clap, might chance at home to have no better hap. 190 so loss of goods shall never trouble me since god which gives can take when pleaseth him, but loss of fame or slandered so to be, that makes my wits to break above their brim, and frets my heart, and lames me every limb: for noble minds their honour more esteem than worldly wights, or wealth, or life can deem. 2. robert fruin, the siege and relief of leyden in 1574 (leiden 1927), p. 14-17. in the night of may the 25th 1574 the enemy [the spanish troops] returned unexpectedly to their old quarters at leyderdorp. we must allow due credit to the spanish general for the skill and energy with which he invested the town for the second time. it was most important to make the blockade complete, before the citizens [of leyden] were on their guard, and to allow them no time to strengthen the garrison or revictual the city. in this valdez was completely successful. his vanguard under don luis gaytan left amsterdam by water, and reached the rhine by way of the amstel and the dracht, past the oude wetering and across the brasemer lake. they landed at leyderdorp in the middle of the night, and at once began to fortify themselves in the old redoubts. at early dawn a party of freebooters from leyden, who were reconnoitring, fell into the trap laid for them by don luis, and were driven back with the loss of a few men, among whom was the brave corporal andries allertsz, the only professional soldier in the service of the town. convinced that after this failure no second sortie would be attempted, the spanish general, leaving a small force at leyderdorp, withdrew with the rest along the weypoortsche road, by zoeterwoude, thence by the stompwyker road to leidschendam, and so by voorburg to the hague. at all these places he posted a few soldiers in their old quarters. he met with no resistance anywhere except at the geestbrug, where nicolaas ruichhaver with a handful of men skirmished with him long enough to allow the beggars to escape from the hague to delft. on the evening of the day when he had reached leyderdorp, gaytan made his entry into the hague, where he was received with acclamation by the populace, whose livelihood was largely dependent upon the spanish government and its officials. thus in one day leyden was invested on the east and south and west sides. the besieging force was small, and the encircling line incomplete; yet it sufficed to prevent any provisions being brought into the town along the main roads, except by stealth. the next day, another company of soldiers was seen approaching from the direction of the haarlem dunes, by noordwyk and rynsburg, towards valkenburg, where a month ago the dutch had begun building a redoubt, which though never finished, had been garrisoned by five companies of english soldiers. the approach of the spanish troops was enough to put them to flight. they ran along the ryndyk towards the town, where they begged for admittance at the witte poort. the following is taken from the memoirs of bernardino de mendoza, the famous spanish general. 3. bernardino de mendoza, comentarios de lo sucedido en las guerras de los paises-bajos, desde el año de 1567-1577 (madrid 1592) with the firm intention of defending the hague, even if valdez couldn't advance to him, don luis gaytan [the spanish colonel] undertook to supply the town with provisions. after enduring this predicament for three days [may 26-28, 1574], don gaytan was informed that monsieur de licques [philippe de récourt, baron de licques] had left haarlem and was advancing toward the fortress of valkenburg with walloon cavalry and infantry, and that de licques expected support from don luis. therefore don gaytan and his troops set out to look for baron de licques. the two men met one another, after the [english] rebels had withdrawn from valkenburg to the village of ter waddingtaking position between a ditch (occupied by the soldiers of leiden), the bridge of boshuiz and the walls of leiden. the citizens of leiden shut their gates to the englishmen, because they feared spies and traitors among the english troops, and because supplies were so low. they advised the english captain to move back to the gates of the hague, where dutch artillery was posted. when a flag was raised above the city gate, the english should remove themselves from the line of fire and the dutch artillery would fire on the enemy. however the english were not in agreement with this strategy, instead of complying with it; they chose to surrender to our people. don luis gaytan returned to the hague and monsieur de licques took the english soldiers to haarlem, where he submitted a report of the events to the grand commander [luis de requesens]. in view of the fact that the english queen had categorically stated that england was not at war with spain and that the english soldiers had aided the rebels without her consent, the majority of the town council voted to have them executed. as it panned out, the grand commander determined that the high ranking men be retained in custody impending the payment of their ransom or their exchange for important spanish prisoners. the other four hundred soldiers[35] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-035> were first sent to brussels from whence they were sent back to england. [36] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-036> bernardino de mendoza [comentarios, xii, 251] says that the lives of the english prisoners were spared at his express solicitation. he was at that juncture sent by the grand commander on a mission to queen elizabeth [in july 1574], and obtained this boon of his superior as a personal favour to himself.[37] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-037> (john lothrop motley, the rise of the dutch republic, vol. ii, 1855, p. 553) 4. felix e. schelling, the life and writings of george gascoigne. boston 1893 the poet records that on 19 march 1573, he set out from gravesend to boorde our ship in quinborough that lay,[38] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-038> setting sail the next morning for holland, and arriving after all but shipwreck some days later at brielle [den briel]. during these very days of gascoigne's crossing, de la marck, the somewhat irregular admiral of william of orange, forced from his harbourage in english waters by a momentary spanish ascendency in the counsels of elizabeth, sailed from dover, intending to land at enkbuizen; but, abandoning his original intent, surprised and captured brielle, april 1, 1572. it is plain then that the party of gascoigne could not have started out for brielle, but were diverted hither by stress of weather, or through the treachery of their dutch pilot, who had deliberately sought to wreck them on a hostile coast. the capture of brielle was a fortunate accident for this party of englishmen, as there is nothing to show that they purposed to fight for the king of spain at this period. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-035 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-036 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-037 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-038 gascoigne's account of the drunkenness and debauchery of the dutch governor of brielle and his companions is entirely in keeping with what we learn elsewhere of de la marck and his fellow "beggars of the sea." i shall not attempt to follow gascoigne in his circumstantial account of the various military operations in which he was engaged. (see gascoigne's poem, the fruites of warre, dulce bellum inexpertis, on this subject.) indeed it is well-nigh impossible to draw his own distinction "twixt broyles and bloudie warres." (stanza 94.) it will therefore be sufficient to call attention to some of the more important occurrences, that we may at least trace the soldier-poet's whereabouts during this period. it is likely that gascoigne, holding a captain's commission, was in the detachment of two hundred volunteers sent from brielle to flushing under command of treslong [william de blois, seigneur de treslong] to support the citizens of that town in their rising against philip. (stanza 95: "for i have seen full many a flushing fraye.") we know that there was a large force of english volunteers at flushing a short time after, under treslong's successor, jerome van 't zeraerts, with whom gascoigne certainly served. between this and august [1572], gascoigne was engaged in several minor ventures, such as the "bragge of bruges" and aerdenburgh (=aardenburg). he also took part in both sieges of goes or tergoes, in the latter under sir humphrey gilbert who commanded the english forces. (st. 97: “i was again in trench before tergoes.” — gascoigne probably met sir humphrey for the first time here, and through him became acquainted with his half-brother, sir walter raleigh.) this second siege began august 26, and was at an end by october 21 [1572], through the brilliant exploit of mondragon, who relieved the place by marching three thousand picked men "eight miles across the drowned lands of the ooster schelde from bergen-op-zoom" in the dead of night . gascoigne speaks of his subsequent movements as follows : — 99. since that siege raysde i romed haue about in zealand, holland, waterland and all, by sea, by land, by ayre and all throughout as leaping lottes and chaunce did seem to call. now here, now there as fortune trilde the ball. where good guyllam of orange badde me be. after mention of rammekens, a castle on the island of walcheren, gascoigne says that he fought against mondragon "while he did assaie to lande his men . . . with victuall to supplie poore middleburgh." (st. 103.) it appears that a certain beauvoir went off, whom gascoigne describes as a commander of the king's side, which was gouverneur of middelburg next before mondragon, and that mondragon in turn was cooped up in middelburg. all this took place simultaneously with the siege of haarlem, by which more momentous event it has been obscured. at this stage of events gascoigne quarrelled with his colonel [39] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite039>, for which he assigns the following reasons : 110. my harte was high, i could not seeme to serue in regiment where no good rules remayne http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-039 where officers and such as well deserue shall be abused by euery page and swayne where discipline shall be but deemed vayne, where blockes are stridde by stumblers at a strawe, and where selfe will must stand for martiall lawe. gascoigne says of himself that he remained in camp as a private volunteer, after throwing up his "captaynes charge and eke a martials state," and removed with the rest to "lande van strayne." the war flagging by reason of the winter season, he went to delft to deliver up his commission to the prince, or at least obtain furlough for a visit home. in consequence of the prince's courteous reception of gascoigne and his earnest if futile effort to effect a reconciliation between gascoigne and his former colonel, william of orange receives the highest praises at the hands of the poet, who, whether he understood for what the dutch were fighting or not, was most earnest in the tribute that he pays to the greatness of their intrepid leader. i continue in the words of octavius g. gilchrist, censura literaria, vol. 3, 1806 : while this negociation was meditating, a circumstance occurred which had nearly cost our poet his life. a lady at the hague (then in the possession of the enemy) with whom gascoigne had been on intimate terms, had his portrait in her hands (his 'counterfayt' as he calls it), and resolving to part with it to himself alone, wrote a letter to him on the subject, which fell into the hands of his enemies in the camp; from this paper they meant to have raised a report unfavorable to his loyalty; but upon its reaching his hands gascoigne, conscious of his fidelity, laid it immediately before the prince, who saw through their design, and gave him passports for visiting the lady at the hague: the burghers, however, watched his motions with malicious caution, and he was called in derision 'the green knight.' although william's faith in gascoigne's integrity is probably quite sufficient evidence of the poet's guiltlessness, there is every reason to believe that the burgher's distrust of many of the english officers in their employ, was only too well warranted by subsequent traitorous conduct. from what we know of gascoigne's character and his hearty contempt for the dutch, it is far from likely that he could have so conducted himself as to have given no offence to his enemies. notwithstanding this, gascoigne again embraced the service of the states and served in the naval battle of reimerswaal [29 january 1574] "in a hoy" and in sight of the prince, who watched the whole engagement. 136. the prince gan like my fayth and forward will, equyppt a hoye and set hir under sayle, wherein i served according to my skill, my minde was such, my cunning could not quayle, withouten bragge of those that did assayle the foemens fleete which came in good aray, i put my selfe in formost ranke alway. 137. three dayes wee fought, as long as water served, and came to ancor neyghbourlike yfeere, the prince himselfe to see who best deserved, stoode every day attending on the peere, and might behold what barke went formost there: ill harte had he that would not stoutely fight, when as his prince is present still in sight. 138. at last our foes had tidings over lande, that neare to bergh their fellowes went to wracke, on scheld they mette by rymerswaell a bande of edellbloets, who put their force abacke, lewes de boyzott[40] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-040> did put them there to sacke, and lost an eye, bicause he would resemble dan julian,[41] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-041> whome (there) he made to tremble. gascoigne tells us that he was in middelburg the day before its surrender and passed thence on mondragon's "promise." (st. 140.) it is not improbable that he was in some capacity engaged in "the parleyings" prior to the surrender of the spaniards. middelburg surrendered feb. 21, 1574, and gascoigne received of the prince in consequence his pay, a personal reward of three hundred guilders and a promise of future promotion. (stanza 141.) soon after this, re-enforcements coming over from england, gascoigne was assigned a company under the command of colonel edward chester; and before long was ordered to valkenburgh, "a fort but new begun" and one of the out-posts of leyden. [may 1574.] 146. in valkenburgh (a fort but new begonne) with others moe i was ordeynde to be, and farre beforne the worke were half way done, our foes set forth our sorie seate to see, they came in time, but cursed time for me, they came before the courtine raysed were, one onely foote above the trenches there. in the meantime louis of nassau, bringing up an army from beyond the rhine, had suffered defeat at mookerheyde, may 26, 1574, and a renewal of the siege of leyden was the immediate result. "valdez [the spanish general] lost no time in securing himself the possession of maeslandsluis, vlaardingen and the hague. five hundred english under command of colonel edward chester, abandoned the fortress of valkenburg, and fled towards leyden." indeed, sir clements markham (the fighting veres, 1888) does not hesitate to say that the english under colonel chester were disgraced, and that "they surrendered valkenburg when they might have held out."[42] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#cite-042> according to gascoigne, the fortress was abandoned because it was impossible to hold it, with so small a garrison, a lack of provision, and insufficient muniment. moreover, on the arrival of a messenger from alphen with a statement that this fort, "a stronger http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-040 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-041 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#cite-042 place" than valkenburg, had fallen, a mutiny broke out among the soldiers and the ofificers were compelled to march with them to leyden, harassed by the enemy all the way. 161. in this retyre three english miles we trodde, with face to foes and shot as thicke as hayle, of whose choyce men full fiftie soules and odde, we rayed on ground, this is withouten fayle, yet of our owne, we lost but three by tale: our foes themselves confess they bought full deere, the hote pursute whiche they attempted there. 162. thus came we late at last to leyden walles, too late, too soone, and so may we well say, for notwithstanding all our cries and calles, they shut their gates and turnd their eares away: in fine they did forsake us every way, and badde us shifte to save ourselves apace, for unto them were fonde to trust for grace. john lothrop motley (rise of the dutch republic, ii. 553.) continues : "refused admittance by the citizens, who now, with reason, distrusted them, they surrendered to valdez, and were afterwards sent back to england." indeed gascoigne himself admits : 183 but what i sayde, i say and sweare againe, for first we were in hollande sore suspect, the states did thinke, that with some filthie gaine the spainish peeres us captaines had infect they thought we ment our ensignes to erect in kings behalfe: and eke the common sorte, thought privy pay had made us leave our forte. worse than that, it seems to have been the general opinion of the english soldiers that they had been sold to the spanish: an opinion which they hesitated not to avow alike before their departure and after their arrival in england.(stanzas 186-187.) be this as it may, in consequence of the ensuing parley in which gascoigne and captain sheffield were the spokesmen of the english, both soldiers and officers were well used, the latter being sent home, as we have seen, four months thereafter. gascoigne is loud in his praises of the spanish captains, who apparently treated him with great courtesy during his short durance, but can not forego the dramatic effect of telling how "the king's men" with hate their burning hartes did swell and bad hang up or drowne us euerychone. (st. 184.) the first siege of leyden was raised march 21, 1574, but was renewed soon after the defeat and death of lewis of nassau at the battle of mookerheyde, may 26, 1574. as motley states that leyden was thoroughly invested again "in the course of a few days," and as the capture of the party that had garrisoned valkenburg was one of the measures by which valdez brought about this result, gascoigne must have been a prisoner by june 1, and was consequently again in england by the following october. (don bernardino de mendoza says that ' the lives of these english prisoners were spared at his express solicitation.' comentarios, xii. 251. quoted by motley, rise of the dutch republic, ii. 553, note. ) from a general view of gascoigne' s career in holland, it may well be doubted if his earlier services to mercury are not greater than his later services to mars: and this despite "the considerable military reputation" granted him by some of his scholarly biographers. according to the fashion of an age which confounded naval warfare with privateering and war with petty marauding and adventuring, gascoigne was a fair specimen of the gentleman adventurer of his day. he was, doubtless, personally brave, but hot-headed and insubordinate, and as utterly devoid of any knowledge of the broader issues of the quarrel, in which he drew his sword, as was his queen herself or the sorriest of his countrymen that trailed a pike and starved through the inefficiency or betrayal of their english officers. gascoigne' s admiration for the personal qualities of the prince of orange is too genuine on its face to call for a moment's question, but his gentleman's contempt for the dutch as a lowborn race of burghers, embittered as it was by their suspicion of treachery, far from unjustifiable in similar cases, is quite as evident. if gascoigne was free from the taint of his fellow officers, and there is no proof to show that he was not, he was certainly strong where many men were weak. it was well known among the english officers, serving in the low countries, that elizabeth was only temporizing, and that she professed to have no real quarrel with philip; the queen's own policy was fast and loose: little better could be expected of her subjects. gascoigne was certainly in the worst possible company and judging from the tone of the last portion of the fruites of the war, we may, at least, doubt if he did not make a virtue of a necessity in the last act of his military career. whetstone says and we may well believe it that gascoigne was "the welthier not a whit" for his services abroad. notes: [1] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-001> rowland york and william herle. rowland york (c.15531588), the ninth of ten sons of sir john york, in his youth a narrow friend of oxford, volunteered for the netherlands under captain thomas morgan in 1572. he embarked at gravesend on 19 march that year with his two companions, the poet george gascoigne and william herle, but their ship was nearly lost on the coast of holland owing to the incompetence of the dutch pilot. reaching the english camp in safety, york took part in august that year in the attack on goes under captain (afterwards sir) humphrey gilbert and william of orange's captain jerome tseraerts. william herle (died 1588) was a pirate and spy who was imprisoned in the marshalsea prison in 1571. he became known for his part in elizabeth i's intelligence network inside the jail, http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-001 smuggling letters to william cecil, lord burghley, about people involved in the so-called ridolfi plot, a roman catholic plan to assassinate the queen and replace her with mary, queen of scots. [2] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-002> war is sweet to those who have never experienced it. a quote from pindar, made famous by erasmus as the title for his meditation on the subject of war. [3] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-003> the brag of bruges. a marginal conflict in bruges. felix e. schelling (see ahead) writes: "between may and august [1572], gascoigne was engaged in several minor ventures, such as the "brag of bruges" and aardenburg. [4] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-004> aerdenburgh. the city of aardenburg (near bruges) remained part of the spanish southern netherlands. [5] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-005> tergoes. goes is a city on zuid-beveland, in the province of zeeland. in autumn 1572, goes, in the spanish netherlands, was besieged by dutch forces with the support of english troops. the siege was relieved in october 1572 by spanish tercios, who waded across the scheldt to attack the besieging forces. [6] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-006> guillam of nassau. william i, prince of orange (15331584), also widely known as william the silent or more commonly known as william of orange (dutch: willem van oranje), was the main leader of the dutch revolt against the spanish habsburgs that set off the eighty years' war and resulted in the formal independence of the united provinces in 1581. he was born in the house of nassau as count of nassau-dillenburg. he became prince of orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the branch house of orange-nassau and the ancestor of the monarchy of the netherlands. [7] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-007> s. gyptian's pilgrimage. the pilgrimage of a vagrant or a gipsy. [8] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-008> brake the bowers. e. cobham brewer (character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama, 1892) interprets: to reject the food provided. [9] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-009> ramykins. english volunteers helped in the capture of fort rammekens (near middelburg) in august 5, 1573, and in the great sea-fight, when the zeeland ships attacked the spanish fleet from antwerp, with supplies for middelburg. [10] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-010> mountdragon. the spanish general cristà³bal de mondragà³n y mercado (1514-1596) was colonel of the tercios of flanders under the duke of alba, luis de requesens and alexander farnese. see note 15. [11] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-011> poor middleburgh. middelburg is the capital of the province of zeeland; situated on the central peninsula of the zeeland province, midden-zeeland (consisting of http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-002 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-003 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-004 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-005 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-006 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-007 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-008 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-009 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-010 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-011 former islands walcheren, noord-beveland and zuid-beveland). middelburg und arnemuiden were occupied by the spanish until the end of january 1574. the towns were held under siege by the dutch, causing a terrible famine. [12] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-012> ere they sink the sound. oed: sound. a relatively narrow channel or stretch of water, esp. one between the mainland and an island, or connecting two large bodies of water; a strait. also, an inlet of the sea. (the first quot. may represent the oe. sund 'sea, water'.) [13] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-013> my colonel and i fell at debate. the man in question is captain thomas morgan. [14] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-014> when beauvoir fled amain. philippe de lannoy, seigneur de beauvoir (c.1510-1574). gascoigne writes beauvois. [15] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-015> mountdragon came to town. cristobal de mondragon came to middelburg in november 1573. see note 10. [16] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-016> my colonel was now come to the court. see colonel thomas morgan's letter from 13 november 1573 to lord burghley (7.2.1 oxford and the ships.) [17] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-017> delf was girt with siege on every side. after the battle of delft in october 1573, fought by a small anglo-dutch force under thomas morgan and an attacking spanish force under francisco de valdez, the spanish were repelled and forced to retreat. delft amongst other dutch towns and cities had been saved and meant that leiden had better hope of relief. francisco valdez (see note 18) informed the duke of alba of his defeat showing him that victory could not be achieved without a larger force along with siege artillery. he requested more troops and guns or leave to retire himself from the area with the troops he had; the latter was chosen as alba refused more men or guns. julián romero (see note 24) meanwhile managed to capture maassluis but an attempt on delftshaven was repelled. for his action in helping to repel the spanish attack on the city the prince of orange promoted edward chester (see note 27) to the rank of lieutenant colonel. [18] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-018> the campomaster valdez. francisco valdez (c.1522-1580), a spanish general. he had command over the besieging imperial forces in the siege of leiden (1573-1574). [19] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-019> die groene hopman. the green captain. gascoigne describes himself as the green knight. [20] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-020> like john grey's bird that ventured with the best. a proverb. [21] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-021> equipped a hoy. a hoy was a small sloop-rigged coasting http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-012 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-013 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-014 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-015 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-016 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-017 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-018 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-019 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-020 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-021 ship or a heavy barge used for freight, usually with a burthen of about 60 tons. the word derives from the middle dutch hoey. note: rigged up and fully furnished. [22] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-022> rymerswaell. reimerswaal was granted city rights in 1374. the city was destroyed by repeated floods, and the last citizens left in 1632. nothing remains. it was located north of the current municipality, on the east end of the oosterschelde, on land which is now called the verdronken land van reimerswaal (drowned land of reimerswaal). [23] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-023> lewes de boyzott. lodewijk van boisot (c.1530-1576), lord of ruart, the admiral of flushing. the french huguenot entered the service of the dutch. in 1573 he became admiral of zeeland and in 1574 he was lieutenant-admiral of holland and zeeland. on 29 january 1574 he managed to defeat the fleet under the command of luis de resquesens y zúñiga (1528 1576). this battle freed the city of middelburg from the spanish rule. in 1576 boisot drowned near zierikzee during a battle to free this city from the spanish rule as well. [24] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-024> dan julian. julián romero de ibarrola (1518 1577) was one of the few common soldiers in the spanish army to reach the rank of maestro de campo. romero fought in the siege of mons (1572), where he nearly succeeded in killing william the silent, prince of orange, in a daring raid against the dutch camp. he was also present at the spanish fury at naarden and the siege of haarlem, where he lost an eye. in 1574, he failed to relieve middelburg after losing the battle of reimerswaal, and in 1576 he was present at the sack of antwerp. [25] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-025> sancho de avila. sancho d'avila (1523-1583) was a spanish general. in 1574, he was the castellan of antwerp. [26] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-026> and when mondrágon might no more endure. on 20 february 1574 the spanish garrison of middleburg under the command of mondragon surrendered. [27] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-027> edward chester (died 1579), was the fourth son of sir william chester, lord mayor of london in 1554-55. edward chester's first known military service was as a captain in gilbert's regiment in zeeland in 1572. he took over the second draft of the regiment, some three hundred strong, in july. he soon linked up with gilbert and campaigned with the rest of the regiment thereafter. chester raised two companies of his own in 1573, but they were subsumed into morgan's newly-commissioned regiment. in august 1573 colonel morgan's regiment and several scots companies were repulsing the attack of a detached spanish division on delft and other places between rotterdam and leyden, in which service captain chester highly distinguished himself at the head of two hundred english men-at-arms, for which he was promoted by the prince of orange to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. however orange relieved colonel chester of his duties in the middle of october 1573. at a later date, chester managed to reconcile with the prince. in march 1574 he then obtained a commission for a regiment of his own. though he faced some difficulties, he was able to fill his contract and transport the troops to the netherlands in march 1574, as the spanish were aware. but its poor performance outside leiden in maye 1574 led to it being disbanded. chester kept his own http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-022 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-023 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-024 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-025 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-026 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-027 company in dutch pay and kept on good terms with william of orange and presumably had a good chance of regaining a colonelcy. however he drowned whilst en route from england to holland in november 1577. (see david j. b. trim, fighting jacob's wars (diss. london 2002, p. 378). [28] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-028> in valkenburgh ... one only foot above the trenches there. the fort to which gascoigne is referring here is none other than the entrenchment in the vicinity of katwijk aan den riijn (katwijk on the rhine) where edward chester and gascoigne were situated along with 500 english soldiers. at that point in time building on the fort was still in progress. the english soldiers had run out of money and supplies. when faced by an impending attack of 3000 spaniards they surrendered the position without putting up a fight. they surrendered to the spanish at the end of may 1574. in william camden's history of the most renowned and victorious princess elizabeth (ed. 1688, p. 206) as well as in clements r. markham's the fighting veres (london 1888, p. 48) they were unjustly admonished for doing so. "the capture of valkenburg" is a mythbecause the "english" valkenburg has nothing whatsoever to do with valkenburg castle near maastricht and limburg. (the corresponding article on wikipedia confuses the entrenchment valkenburg and valkenburg castle.) sources: bernardino de mendoza:â commentaires de bernardino de mendoça sur les évènements de la guerre des pays-bas 1567 1577, vol. 2, bruxelles 1863, p. 242-243. robert fruin's verspreide geschriften, deel ii, (gravenhage 1900), 394-397. robert fruin, the siege and relief of leyden in 1574 (1927), p.14-17. [29] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-029> alphen aan den rijn, southwest of leiden. [30] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-030> this fort [alphen] from ours was distant ten good miles, / i mean such miles as english measure makes, / between us both stood leiden town therewhiles. these lines contain a concise cartographic definition of the position. see note 28. [31] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-031> at maeslandsluys we hoped for to sup. philips of marnix, lord of saint-aldegonde, started to build a defence wall around maassluis, but before its completion, the spanish captured the little town in november 1573 and marnix was taken prisoner. [32] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-032> monsieur de licques. philippe de récourt, baron de licques (died 1588), governor of haarlem in 1574. mario is unknown. [33] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-033> iniquum pete (then) ut æquum feras. seek more than what is right so that you may carry off the right amount. [34] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-034> and good verdugo. francisco verdugo (1537-1595), spanish military commander in the dutch revolt, became maestre de campo general, in the spanish netherlands. he was also the last spanish stadtholder of friesland, groningen, drenthe and overijssel between 1581 and 1594. verdugo has been described as a brave, courteous and very experienced soldier, who rose from the rank of musketeer, which he held at the siege of haarlem, to the governor of frisia. nominated governor of haarlem in 1573, as an admiral of the spanish fleet he helped to conquer flanders. in 1576, he became http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-028 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-029 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-030 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-031 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-032 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-033 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-034 councillor of state. [35] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-035> the other four hundred soldiers. all the other sources speak of five hundred soldiers. [36] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-036> the original french is as follows. don luis gaytan approvisonna le château (la haye), bien résolu à le défendre jusqu'à ce qu'il recût du secours, au cas qu'un événement quelquonque empêchât valdès de le rejoindre. il demeura à cette situation pendant trois jours. alors l'avis lui parvint que m. de licques était sorti de harlem; qu'il marchait, ainsi qu'il avait été convenu, avec de la cavalerie et de l'infanterie wallonne contre le fort de valkenbourg, et qu'il demandait à don louis le concours de quelques soldats dans le château la haye, et avec les autres se mit à la recherche du baron de licques. il le rencontra au moment où les rebelles, abondonnant le fort, se retiraient sur le village de wadding, et prenaient position entre une tranchée que tenaient ceux de leyde, le pont de boschhuys et les murailles de la ville. les bourgeois ne voulaient pas les recevoir, craignant le blocus et la disette. aussie dirent-ils au capitaine et à quelque soldats qu'ils laissèrent entrer que, si les espagnols les serraient, ils n'avaient qu'à se retirer à la porte de la haye, qui était le côté où était placé l'artillerie, et, quand ils verraient descendre le drapeau de la porte, de marcher sur le côté droit, parce qu'alors l'artillerie tonnerait contre l'ennemi. les anglais ne goutèrent pas ce conseil; ils jugèrent qu'il valait mieux se rendre à nos gens, ce qu'ils firent. don luis gaytan revint alors à la haye, et m. de licques, avec les anglais, se rendit à harlem, d'où il rendit compte au grand commandeur de ce qui s'était passé; la majorité du conseil proposait de mettre à mort ces prisonniers anglais, puisque la reine d'angleterre, reconnaissant n'être pas en guerre avec sa majesté, déclairait que s'était sans son aveu et son consentement que les anglais venaient aider les rebelles. (ces anglais, qui étaient au nombre de 400, furent d'abord enduits à harlem; le grand commandeur fit garder les principaux pour servir à la rancon des soldats espagnols prisonniers des ennemies; les autres furent amenés à bruxelles, puis renvoyés à la reine d'angleterre.) (bernardino de mendoza: commentaires de bernardino de mendoça sur les évènements de la guerre des paysbas 1567-1577, trad. nouv. par le colonel guillaume. t. 2, bruxelles 1863, pp. 242-43.) [37] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-037> mendoza ... obtained this boon of his superior as a personal favour to himself. at the end of june 1574, bernardino de mendoza set out for england. (this was exactly at the time when oxford arrived on the mainland). he arrived on 12th july in london and was granted an audience with queen elizabeth for the 17th july. the queen and her ministers gave him a truly affable welcome. she did, however protest quite vehemently about the fact that, in the netherlands, king philip ii had profferred support to englishmen who were the sword enemies of the crown [westmoreland etc.] elizabeth went as far as to say that true friendship could only exist between england and france if philip were to expel them from the provinces. the ministers went on to say that the british crown was pledged to the cause of holland and zeeland's return to philip's rule. see: correspondance de philippe ii sur les affaires des pays-bas http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-035 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-036 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-037 [1558-1577], t. iii, bruxelles 1858, p. 134. [38] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-038> to boorde our ship in quinborough that lay. george gascoigne's voyage into holland (written in march 1573) in: a hundreth sundrie flowres (1573) when from gravesend in boat i gan to jet to board our ship in queenborough that lay, from whence the very twentieth day we set our sails abroad to slice the salt sea foam, and anchors weighed gan trust the trustless floud. [39] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-039> gascoigne quarrelled with his colonel. the man in question is captain thomas morgan.see note 13. [40] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-040> lewes de boyzott. lodewijk van boisot. see note 23. [41] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-041> dan julian. julián romero de ibarrola. see note 24. [42] <url: front_content.php?idart=851#ref-042> they surrendered valkenburg when they might have held out. see note 28. http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-038 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-039 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-040 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-041 http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com/cms/front_content.php?idart=851#ref-042 against_war u 22 .f7413 2022 pope francis against war building a culture of peace pope francis against war building a culture of peace with an afterword by andrea tornielli orbis 0 books www.orbisbooks.com orbis 0 books www.orbisbooks.com 'm� fathers and brothers.. � arvknoll founded in 1970, orbis books endeavors to publish works that enlighten the mind, nourish the spirit, and challenge the conscience. the publishing la.. arm of the maryknoll fathers and brothers, orbis seeks to explore the global dimensions of the christian faith and mission, to invite dialogue with diverse ;) ;;;cultures and religious traditions, and to serve the cause of reconciliation and peace. 111e books published reflect the views of their authors and do not rep­ . �1'10 resent the official position of the maryknoll society. to learn more about maryknoll and orbis books, please visit our website at www.orbisbooks.corn. dnd� _ english edition copyright © 2022 by orbis books published by orbis books, box 302, maryknoll, ny 10545-0302. original edition: papa francesco, contro ia guerra, © 2022 rcs media­ group s.p.a., milan literary property reserved; © 2022 libreria editrice vatican a, vatican city all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. queries regarding rights and permissions should be addressed to: orbis books, p.o. box 302, maryknoll, ny 10545-0302. manufactured in the united states of america library of congress control number: 2022939137 cor inlro� with 1 h t� w acu contents introduction: war is a sacrilege. let's stop feeding it! 1 with war, no one wins ••• + • + •• + • + + • + + + • + • + ••• + • + •• + + •• +7 war destroys the future + + + • + • + + • + + + + • + • + + ••••• + + + • + • + + 7 we have accumulated weapons and lost the peace. + • + + + + +8 what's the point of showing your teetl)? + + + • + + • + + + ••• + • + •• 9 with war, no one wins + ••• + + •• + + + + + ••••• + •••• + + ••• 10 spending on weapons sullies the soul + ••••• + •••• 11 human life before any strategy ... + •••• + + ••••••••••• + + 12 abuse of power condemns the helpless. + • + ••••••• + ••••• 14 every conflict is a defeat of humanity + ••••••••• + + + • + • + 15 the good sense to negotiate .. + ••••• + •••• + ••• + •••••• +. 17 let's not forget the many wars around the world! . + ••••• 18 those who have weapons sooner or later end up using them + + • + + • + ••••• + + +. 19 a culture of death • + ••• + •• + + + ••• + •• + • + • + •• + ••••••••••• 23 the culture of indijj"erence .. + + + •• + •• + • + •••• + + •• + • + • + •• 23 war is born in human hearts + •••••• + ••• + •• 24 war eliminates all development + •• + • + • + • + + + + • + + + + + • •• 26 v vi contents a madness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 27 a monster that destroys humanity and the world 27 conflicts also disfigure the environment. 28 the «piecemeal" 1vorld war 29 affecting the little ones ... + • + ••• + • + • + ••••• + •••••••••• 29 we listen to the little ones + • + •••• + •••••••••••• + •••• + 30 looking at reality through the eyes of its victims 30 terrorism has nothing to do with true religion + •• 31 the criminal folly of nuclear weapons . + •••••••••••••••• 33 a global problem 33 a tremendous power + + .. + +. 36 a great deception. + + + + + 37 peace cannot be built on jvfutual distrust 38 atomic weapons are senseless .. + ..... + . + + + . + + 41 protect every life: from the apostolic journey to japan (november 23-26,2019) + + +. + . + .. + + + + .. 45 the dream of a world free of nuclear weapons. + + + + + 45 nuclear powerfor military purposes is immoral. + .. + + 49 hiroshima is a catechesis on cruelty. + + + + + 54 the only solution to conflicts is dialogue .. + + + . +. 55 peace and fraternity: from the apostolic journey to iraq (march 5-8, 2021)+ + + .. + + + •••••••••• 56 fraternity is nourished by solidarity 56 weaving a single fraternity 60 we look to heaven and journey on earth 62 coni je, ci abe� pel th pel tr n ana� pe pel fr contel1tl ........ , 2� .... , , .. -� l q ;0 ........ ,50 .......... 60 .......... 62 contents vll love wins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 69 jesus at our side 74 church and society open to all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 76 a better world 80 vvhen the seed dies) it bears much fruit 80 peace is a gift. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 82 there is no alternative to peace 84 peace comes from the cross 85 true peace costs 86 nonviolence: a style ofpolitics for peace 89 an artisanal path 95 peace is a path 95 peace is daily. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 99 dialogue opens the way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 99 pray for those who do not love us 100 learning the art of dialogue 101 architecture of reconciliation 102 overcoming evil with good 102 peace is the priority 103 ecological conversion 106 brothers and sisters 108 fraternity is the grace of god tl)e father 110 easter makes the encounter with the other sprout up 112 follow another logic 114 v11l contents prayers 116 a prayer to tjje creator 116 an ecumenical christian prayer 117 prayer for fraternity 117 prayer of the children of abraham 119 prayerfor the victims of war 120 afterword: a centurylong magisterium of peace by andrea tornielli 123 intr war] a rear to �ee lenee, woun woula 1v0ula fr i have areal have 0 manr imme war� leavet their reapp( these ....... il" ....... r introduction war is a sacrilege. let's stop feeding it! a year ago, on my pilgrimage to tormented iraq, i was able to see for myself the disaster caused by war, fratricidal vio­ lence, and terrorism; i saw the rubble of houses and the wounded hearts, but i also saw seeds of hope for rebirth. i would never have imagined then that a year later a conflict would break out in europe. from the beginning of my service as bishop of rome, i have talked about the third world war, saying that we are already living it, though still in pieces. those pieces have become bigger and bigger, welding together.... so many wars are going on in the world right now, causing immense pain for innocent victims, especially children­ wars that cause the flight of millions of people, forced to leave their land, their homes, their devastated cities, to save their own lives. 111ese are the many forgotten wars that reappear from time to time before our disenchanted eyes. these wars often seemed "far away"-until now, suddenly, 1 2 introduction when war has broken out so close to us. ukraine was attacked and invaded. many innocent civilians, women, children, and elderly people have been affected by the conflict, forced to live in shelters dug out of the earth to escape the bombs. families have been divided as husbands, fathers, and grandparents remain in the fight, while wives, mothers, and grandmothers seek refuge after long jour­ neys, hoping to cross the border to find shelter in other countries that receive them with open hearts. as every day we face heartbreaking images and hear the cry of children and women, we can only scream, "stop!" war is not the solution. war is madness, war is a monster, war is a cancer that feeds on itself, engulfing everything! what is more, war is a sacrilege that wreaks havoc on what is most precious on our earth: human life, the innocence of the little ones, the beauty of creation. yes, war is a sacri­ lege! i cannot fail to recall the plea with which saint john xxiii in 1962 asked the leaders of his time to halt an escalation that could have dragged the world into the abyss of nuclear conflict. i cannot forget the force with which saint paul vi, speaking in 1965 at the united nations general assembly, said, "never again war! never again war!" nor can i forget the many appeals for peace made by saint john paul ii, who in 1991 described war as han adventure without return:' what we are witnessing is yet another barbarity and unfortunately we have a short memory. yes, because if we had a memory, we would remember what our grandpar­ ents and our parents told us, and we would feel the need [or p( ory, w dollar! in�lr s( tne trar women in� to �toc� inmilil wnen � health \vewo mu�t 0 mmto there i� matic� ofouil, omao warl� renaer in whose slau�hd oomos rurpos a�ains afutu for pu atomi introduction 3 r arirr anj lju e i[w� . r jrjndpar' eei rhe need for peace just as our lungs need oxygen. if we had mern­ ory, we would not spend tens and hundreds of billions of dollars for rearmament, equipping ourselves with increas­ ingly sophisticated armaments, increasing the market and the trafficking of weapons that end up killing children, women, and old people: $1.981 trillion per year, accord ... ing to the calculations of an important research center in stockholm. that marks a dramatic increase of 2.6 percent in military spending in the second year of the pandemic, when all our efforts should have been focused on global health and saving lives from the virus. if we had memory, we would know that war, before it reaches the front lines, must be stopped in the heart. hate, before it is too late, must be eradicated from hearts. and in order to do so, there is a need for dialogue, negotiation, listening, diplo­ matic skills and creativity, and farsighted politics capable of building a new system of coexistence that is no longer based on the power of weapons, but on deterrence. every war is not only a defeat of politics but also a shameful sur­ render to the forces of evil. in november 2019, in hiroshima, a symbolic city whose inhabitants, along with those of nagasaki, were slaughtered during the second world war by two nuclear bombs, i reaffirmed that the use of atomic energy for the purposes of war is, today more than ever, a crime, not only against man and his dignity, but against any possibility of a future in our common home. the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of atomic weapons is immoral. 4 introduction who could have imagined that less than three years later the specter of a nuclear war would loom over europe? so, step by step, we are moving toward catastrophe. piece by piece the world risks becoming the scene of a unique third world war. we are moving toward it as if it were inevitable. instead, we must forcefully repeat: no, it is not inev­ itable! no, war is not inescapable! when we allow our­ selves to be devoured by this monster represented by war, when we allow this monster to raise its head and guide our actions, we lose everything, we destroy god's creation, we commit sacrilege and prepare a future of death for our children and grandchildren. greed, intolerance, ambition for power, and violence are motives that push forward the decision for war, and these motives are often justified by a war ideology that forgets the immeasurable dignity of human life, of every human life, and the respect and care we owe them. faced with the images of death that come to us from ukraine, it is difficult to hope. yet there are seeds of hope. there are millions of people who do not aspire to war, who do not justify war, but are asking for peace. there are millions of young people who are asking us to do every� thing possible and seemingly impossible to stop the war, to stop all wars. it is in thinking first of all of them, of young people and children, that we must repeat together: never again war! and together we must commit ourselves to building a world that is more peaceful because it is more just, where it is peace that triumphs and not the folly of intro warj ness, other, h the ve ruvo'l reace,ii root in oftneo!hertn qe�, tn ner ai�� in 1 monq u�ea to ana to rnatrne rive �oli rrie� in ire warm will on introduction 5 war; justice, and not the injustice of war; mutual forgive­ ness, and not the hatred that divides and makes us see the other, the person who is different from us, as an enemy. here i would like to quote an italian pastor of souls, the venerable don tonino bello, bishop of molfetta­ ruvo-giovinazzo-terlizzi, in puglia, a tireless prophet of peace, who loved to repeat: conflicts and all wars hfind their root in the fading away of faces:' when we erase the face of the other, then the noise of weapons crackles. when we keep the other person, his or her face and pain, before our eyes, then we are not allowed to violently disfigure his or her dignity. in my encyclical fratelli tutti i proposed that the money spent on arms and other military expenditures be used to set up a world fund to finally eliminate hunger and to foster the development of the poorest countries, so that their inhabitants would not resort to violent or decep­ tive solutions and would not be forced to leave their coun­ tries in search of a more dignified life. i renew this proposal today, especially today. because war must be stopped, all wars must be stopped, and they will only stop if we stop hfeeding" them. from the vatican march 29) 2022 r"�<mw warl dear �ince oe�in war/r wen moth ana �i erful of a �� a��res oeen in� th �m�l ofwa � shoul tow ment with war, no one wins war destroys the future dear brothers and sisters, more than a month has gone by since the beginning of the invasion of ukraine, since the beginning of this cruel and senseless war, that, like every war, represents a defeat for everyone, for everyone of us. we need to reject war, a place of death where fathers and mothers bury their children, where men kill their brothers and sisters without even having seen them, where the pow­ erful decide and the poor die. war does not devastate the present only, but the future of a society as well. i read that from the beginning of the aggression in ukraine, one out of every two children have been displaced from their country. this means destroy­ ing the future, causing dramatic trauma in the lives of the smallest and most innocent among us. this is the brutality of war-a barbaric and sacrilegious act! war should not be something that is inevitable. we should not accustom ourselves to war. instead, we need to convert today's indignation into tomorrow's commit­ ment, because if we emerge from these events the way we 7 8 against war were before, we will all be guilty in some way. faced with the danger of self-destruction, may humanity understand that the moment has come to abolish war, to erase it from human history, before it erases humans from history. i pray that every political leader may reflect on this, to commit themselves to this! and, looking on martyred ukraine, to understand how each day of war worsens the situation for everyone. therefore, i renew my appeal: enough. stop. may weapons be silenced. may peace be seriously pursued. let us continue to pray untiringly to the queen of peace, to whom we consecrated humanity, in particular russia and ukraine, with such a huge and intense participation for which i thank all of you. angelus march 27, 2022 we have accumulated weapons and lost the peace we have strayed from that path of peace. we have for­ gotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars. we have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations. we have betrayed peoples' dreams of peace and the hopes of the young. we grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their inter­ ests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns. we chose to ignore god, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. we stopped being wil our we our � who feren withl itisnl cultur sion, � ana hl this!1 warw delon harre this is nates entr wars; wari this 0 whol conti erfu det with war, no one wins 9 our neighbor's keepers and stewards of our common home. we have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters. we grew indif­ ferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. now with shame we cry out: forgive us, lord! act of consecration to the immaculate heart of mary march 25, 2022 what's the point of showing your teeth? it is now evident that good politics cannot come from the culture of power understood as domination and oppres .. ,0 .... sion, but only from a culture of care, care for the person and his or her dignity, and care for our common home. this is proven, unfortunately negatively, by the shameful war we are witnessing. i think that for those of you who belong to my generation it is unbearable to see what has happened and is happening in ukraine. but unfortunately this is the fruit of the old logic of power that still domi .. nates the so .. called geopolitics. the history of the last sev .. enty years shows that there has been no lack of regional wars; that's why i said that we were in the third world war in bits and pieces, all over the world, until we got to this one, which has a bigger dimension and threatens the whole world. but the basic problem is the same: the world continues to be governed as a "chessboard," where the pow .. erful study the moves to extend their dominance to the detriment of others. 10 against war the real answer is not more weapons, more sanctions. i was ashamed when i read that a group of states has pledged to spend 2 percent, i believe, of their gop on arms pur� chases, as a response to what is happening now. madness! the real answer, as i said, is not more weapons, more sanctions, more political-military alliances, but a different approach, a different way to govern the world, now global� ized-not by showing teeth, as now-but a different way to set up international relations. the model of care is already in place, thank god, but unfortunately it is still subservient to that of economic-technocratic-military power. address to meeting sponsored by the italian women's center sala clementina march 24, 2022 with war, no one wins the news of displaced persons, of people fleeing, killed, wounded, of so many soldiers fallen on both sides, is news of death. let us ask the lord of life to deliver us from this death of war. with war everything is lost, everything. there is no victory in a war; everything is defeated. may the lord send his spirit to make us under­ stand that war is a defeat of humanity, to make us under­ stand that instead we need to defeat war. may the spirit of the lord free us all from this self-destructive need that is manifested in waging war. let us also pray that lead­ ers may understand that buying and making weapons is wi not togl into centa' on1r � encin arec thisl tinul heau mitl with war} no one wins not the solution to the problem. the solution is to work together for peace and, as the bible says, to turn weapons into instruments for peace. general audience paul vi hall march 23} 2022 spending on weapons sullies the soul • lj unk ,., "e us unqrr' . hespinr ire need [nat t. \ [hac jeaq' i ., weapons is why, then, wage war on each other over conflicts that we should resolve by talking to each other as fellow people? why not rather join our forces and resources to fight together the real battles of civilization: the fight against hunger and thirst, the fight against disease and epidemics, the fight against today's poverty and slavery? why? certain choices are not neutral: to allocate a large part of spend ... ing to weapons means taking it away from something else, which means continuing to take it away yet again, from those who lack the basic necessities. and this is a scandal: spending on weapons. how much is spent on weapons, terrible! i don't know the exact figure, but it's a high per ... centage. and we spend on arms in order to wage wars, not only this one, which is very serious, and that we are experi ... encing now. we feel it more because it is closer, but there are continuous wars in africa, in the middle east, in asia. this is serious. we need to create the awareness that con ... tinuing to spend on weapons sullies the soul, sullies the heart, sullies humanity. what is the use of solemnly com ... mitting ourselves all together, on an international level, in 11 12 against war campaigns against poverty, against hunger, against the deg­ radation of the planet, if we then fall back into the old vice of war, into the old strategy of the power of armaments, which takes everything and everyone backward? a war always takes you backward, always. we walk backward. we will have to start over again. greeting to members of i was thirsty (volunteer organization) clementine hall march 21, 2022 human life before any strategy unfortunately, the violent aggression against ukraine has not stopped, a senseless massacre where slaughter and atrocities are repeated every day. there is no justification for this! i plead with all those who are involved in the international community to truly be committed to putting an end to this abhorrent war. again this week, missiles and bombs have fallen on civilians, the elderly, children, and pregnant mothers. i went to see the wounded children who are here in rome. one was missing an arm; another had a head injury ... innocent children. i think of the millions of ukrainian refugees who have to flee, leaving everything behind, and i feel a great pain for those who do not even have the opportunity to escape. many grandparents, sick and poor people separated from their own families. many children and fragile people are left to die under the bombs, withwitl out i even is ais ofhu whic� and w isinhj [arrha ltd domos tnese tl ternitf' durin� thank fortne manr cio) wn kuloo tnewal ence 01 reor1e witn rlease) ofwelj not 0 and do ev our� of th 'rainia:. � hind, anj . len haretne .. and poor . f ill' children mbs, with, with war} no one 1vim out being able to receive help and without finding safety even in the air raid shelters. all this is inhuman! indeed, it is also sacrilegious because it goes against the sacredness of human life, especially against defenseless human life, which should be respected and protected, not eliminated, and which comes before any strategy! let us not forget, it is inhuman and sacrilegious cruelty! let us pray in silence for those who are suffering. it comforts me to know that the people left under the bombs do not lack the closeness of their pastors, who in these tragic days are living the gospel of charity and ira­ ternity, i have spoken with some of them on the phone during these days. they are close to the people of god. thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for this witness and for the concrete support you are offering courageously to so many desperate people! i also think of the apostolic nun­ cio, who was just made a nuncio, archbishop visvaldas kulbokas, who has remained in kyiv since the beginning of the war along with his collaborators and who with his pres� ence brings me close every day to the martyred ukrainian people. let us be close to this people, let us embrace them with affection, with concrete commitment and prayer. and please, let us not get used to war and violence! let us not tire of welcoming [refugees] with generosity as is being done, not only now during the emergency, but also in the weeks and months to come. because you know that at first, we all do everything we can to welcome them, but then with habit our hearts are somewhat cooled and we forget. let us think of these women and children who in time, without work, 13 14 against war separated from their husbands, will be sought out by the "vultures" of society. please, let us protect them. i invite every community and all the faithful to join me on friday, march 25, solemnity of the annunciation, for the solemn act of consecration of humanity, espe� cially russia and ukraine, to the immaculate heart of mary, so that she, the queen of peace, may bring peace to the world. angelus march 20) 2022 abuse of power condemns the helpless what we have been experiencing in recent weeks is not what we had hoped for after the difficult health emergency caused by the pandemic, which made us experience a sign of powerlessness and fear, together with the fragile condi­ tion of our existence. the tragedy of the war that is taking place in the heart of europe leaves us astonished; we never thought we would see such scenes again, reminiscent of the great wars of the last century. the heartbreaking cry for help from our ukrainian brothers and sisters urges us as a community of believers not only to reflect seriously, but to cry with them and to do something for them-to share the anguish of a people whose identity, history, and tradition have been wounded. the blood and tears of chil­ dren, the suffering of women and men who are defend­ ing their land or fleeing from bombs rattle our conscience. wi on po\l peol and chan duty mum �nip a war! i� lia f lation rrovo an ar ivnic� tnew ever wea yem! �rac abou cap with war, no one wins 15 once again humanity is threatened by a perverse abuse of power and partisan interests, which condemns defenseless people to suffer all forms of brutal violence.... today more than ever it is urgent to review the style and effectiveness of the ars politica. in the face of the many changes we are witnessing at an international level, it is our duty to make possible "the development of a global com ... munity of fraternity based on the practice of social friend ... ship on the part of peoples and nations" (fratelli tutti, 154). war, which "leaves our world worse than it was before" and is "a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitu ... lation ... before the forces of evil" (261), may in this sense provoke an opposite reaction, a commitment to reestablish an architecture of peace at the global level (see 231), in which the european house, born to guarantee peace after the world wars, has a primary role. message on occasion of opening of european catholic social days bratislava march 15, 2022 every conflict is a defeat of humanity we are used to hearing news of wars, but far away: syria, yemen ... the usual. now the war has come closer, it is practically on our doorstep. and this makes us think about the "savagery" of human nature, how far we are capable of going. murderers of our brothers. thank you, 16 against war ri monsignor guy-real thivierge, for this letter that you brought, which is a wake-up call. it draws attention to what is happening. we talk about education, and when one thinks of education one thinks of children, young people.... let us think of so many soldiers who are sent to the front, very young russian soldiers, poor things. think of the many young ukrainian soldiers; think of the inhabitants, the young people, the boys and girls.... this is happening close to us. the gospel only asks us not to look the other way, which is precisely the most pagan atti­ tude of christians: when christians become used to look­ ing the other way, they slowly become pagans disguised as christians. this is why i wanted to begin with this, with this reflection. the war is not far away: it is on our door­ step. what am i doing� here in rome, at the bambino gesu hospital, there are children wounded by the bomb­ ings. at home, they take them home. do i pray? do i fast� do i do penance? or do i live carefree, as we normally live through distant wars? a war is always-always!-the defeat of humanity, always. we, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because [it is] "elsewhere"; we are responsible. there is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist! to m vit do [it dti tio dn dr speech to meeting promoted by the gravissium educationis foundation clementine hall march 18, 2022 it� to with war) no one wins the good sense to negotiate : {jl}�� pro/ll�ui •• i jj;.i i�j(//jdali�1i o jj1�nti1/e hal: tll'·/j 18, 2021 rivers of blood and tears are flowing in ukraine. it is not merely a military operation, but a war that sows death, destruction, and misery. the number of victims is increas­ ing, as are the people fleeing, especially mothers and chil­ dren. the need for humanitarian assistance in that trou­ bled country is growing dramatically by the hour. i make a heartfelt appeal for humanitarian corridors to be genuinely secured, and for access to the besieged areas to be guaranteed and facilitated, in order to offer vital relief to our brothers and sisters oppressed by bombs and fear. i thank all those who are taking in refugees. above all, i implore that the armed attacks cease and that negoti­ ation-and common sense-prevail. and that interna­ tionallaw be respected once again! and i would also like to thank the journalists who put their lives at risk to guarantee information. thank you, brothers and sisters, for this service! a service that allows us to be close to the tragedy of that population and enables us to assess the cruelty of a war. thank you, brothers and sisters. let us pray together for ukraine: here in the front are its flags. let us pray together, as brothers and sisters, to our lady, queen of ukraine. hail mary.... 111e holy see is prepared to do everything to put itself at the service of this peace. in these days, two cardinals went to ukraine to serve the people, to help. cardinal konrad 17 18 against war krajewski, the almoner, to bring aid to the needy, and car­ dinal michael czerny, interim prefect of the dicastery for promoting integral human development. the pres� ence of the two cardinals there is the presence, not only of the pope, but of all christian people who want to draw closer and say, "war is madness! stop, please! look at this cruelty!" angelus march 6, 2022 let's not forget the many wars around the world! in recent days we have been shaken by something tragic: war. several times we have prayed that this road would not be taken. and let us not stop praying; indeed, let us implore god more intensely. for this reason, i renew to all the invitation to make march 2, ash wednesday, a day of prayer and fasting for peace in ukraine. a day to be close to the sufferings of the ukrainian people, to feel that we are all brothers and sisters, and to implore god for the end of the war. those who wage war, those who provoke war, forget humanity. they do not start from the people, they do not look at the real life of people, but place partisan interests and power before all else. they trust in the diabolical and perverse logic of weapons, which is furthest from the will of god. and they distance themselves from ordinary peo� ple, who want peace, and who are the real victims in every wit cont i tbii these they �um� ukrai� tnewol rereat: mlno lover an in�t reorle ai�rut dialo� oure yet"ae lo�ei(on�io afpea aaare �icts with war, no one wins 19 conflict, who pay for the follies of war with their own skin. i think of the elderly, of those who are seeking refuge in these hours, of mothers fleeing with their children.... ti1ey are brothers and sisters for whom it is urgent to open humanitarian corridors, and who should be welcomed. with a heart broken by what is happening in ukraine-and let us not forget the wars in other parts of the world, such as in yemen, in syria, in ethiopia ... i repeat: silence all weapons! god is with the peacemak­ ers, not with those who use violence. because those who love peace, as the italian constitution states, reject "war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples and as a means for the settlement of international disputes:' angelus february 27) 2022 those who have weapons sooner or later end up using them dialogue and fraternity are two essential focal points in our efforts to overcome the crisis of the present moment. yet "despite numerous efforts aimed at constructive dia­ logue between nations, the deafening noise of war and conflict is intensifying" [message for the 2022 world day of peace, 1]. the entire international community must address the urgent need to find solutions to endless con­ flicts that at times appear as true proxy wars. 20 against war wit! i think first of syria, where the country's rebirth does not yet clearly appear on the horizon. even today, the syrendel ian people mourn their dead and the loss of everything, offefl( and continue to hope for a better future. political and ronbj( constitutional reforms are required for the country to be izatianj reborn, but the imposition of sanctions should not strike l�m�al directly at everyday life, in order to provide a glimmer of vulnera hope to the general populace, increasingly caught in the rei grip of poverty. �ion�n nor can we overlook the conflict in yemen, a human anala� tragedy that has gone on for years, silently, far from the !outne spotlight of the media and with a certain indifference on �voiae the part of the international community, even as it contindi ues to claim numerous civil victims, particularly women neeae and children. �i�tna in the past year, no steps forward were made in the mew ipeace process between israel and palestine. i would truly ��ntin like to see these two peoples rebuild mutual trust and n resume speaking directly to each other, in order to reach aanee the point where they can live in two states, side by side, in tno�ev peace and security, without hatred and resentment, but the aeeeiv healing born of mutual forgiveness. toai�� other sources of concern are the institutional tenaailr sions in libya, the episodes of violence by international tno�e terrorism in the sahel region, and the internal conflicts in !inee, sudan, south sudan, and ethiopia, where there is need \vitno lito find once again the path of reconciliation and peace oeto� through a forthright encounter that places the needs of the lo�ie people above all else" [urbi et orbi, december 25, 2021j. aiala with war) no one wins e here is neeu i ; cion nd pearl h� needs of tde et 25, 2021 j. profound situations of inequality and injustice, endemic corruption, and various forms of poverty that offend the dignity of persons also continue to fuel social conflicts on the american continent, where growing polar­ ization is not helping to resolve the real and pressing prob­ lems of its people, especially those who are most poor and vulnerable. reciprocal trust and readiness to engage in calm discus­ sion should also inspire all parties at stake, so that acceptable and lasting solutions can be found in ukraine and in the southern caucasus, and the outbreak of new crises can be avoided in the balkans, primarily in bosnia and herzegovina. dialogue and fraternity are all the more urgently needed for dealing wisely and effectively with the cri­ sis that for almost a year now has affected myanmar; its streets, once places of encounter, are now the scene of fighting that does not spare even houses of prayer. naturally, these conflicts are exacerbated by the abun­ dance of weapons on hand and the unscrupulousness of those who make every effort to supply them. at times, we deceive ourselves into thinking that these weapons serve to dissuade potential aggressors. history and, sadly, even daily news reports make it clear that this is not the case. those who possess weapons will eventually use them, since, as saint paul vi observed, "a person cannot love with offensive weapons in his hands" [address to the un, october 4, 1965j. furthermore, "when we yield to the logic of arms and distance ourselves from the practice of dialogue, we forget to our detriment that, even before 21 22 against war causing victims and ruination, weapons can create night­ mares" [meeting for peace, hiroshima, november 24, 2019j. today these concerns have become even more real, if we consider the availability and employment of auton­ omous weapon systems that can have terrible and unfore­ seen consequences, and should be subject to the responsi­ bility of the international community. among the weapons humanity has produced, nuclear arms are of particular concern. at the end of last decem­ ber, the tenth review conference of the parties to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which was to meet in new york, was once again post­ poned due to the pandemic. a world free of nuclear arms is possible and necessary. i therefore express my hope that the international community will view that conference as an opportunity to take a significant step in this direction. the holy see continues steadfastly to maintain that in the twenty-first century nuclear arms are an inadequate and inappropriate means of responding to security threats, and that possession of them is immoral. their production diverts resources from integral human development, and their employment not only has catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, but also threatens the very existence of humanity. address to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the holy see aula della benedizione january 10) 2022 ac intoaaj f�milr i juhice in�teaa tnce,b jtcerti wnile f tni� il le�a� t i we face ji�arr i own in �bout en(qun rulture a culture of death the culture ofindifference in today's world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. what reigns instead is a cool, comfortable, and globalized indiffer­ ence, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. this illusion, unmindful of the great fraternal values, leads to a sort of cynicism. for that is the temptation we face if we go down the road of disenchantment and disappointment.... isolation and withdrawal into one's own interests are never the way to restore hope and bring about renewal. rather, it is closeness; it is the culture of encounter. isolation, no; closeness, yes. culture clash, no; culture of encounter, yes. fratelli tutti, 30 23 24 against war wala is born in human hearts a hundred years after the end of the first world war, as we remember the young people killed in those battles and the civilian populations torn apart, we are more conscious than ever of the terrible lesson taught by fratricidal wars: peace can never be reduced solely to a balance between power and fear. to threaten others is to lower them to the status of objects and to deny their dignity. this is why we state once more that an escalation of intimidation, and the uncontrolled proliferation of arms, is contrary to morality and the search for true peace. terror exerted over those who are most vulnerable contributes to the exile of entire populations who seek a place of peace. political addresses that tend to blame every evil on migrants and to deprive the poor of hope are unacceptable. rather, there is a need to reaffirm that peace is based on respect for each person, whatever his or her background, on respect for the law and the common good, and on respect for the environment entrusted to our care and for the richness of the moral tra­ dition inherited from past generations. our thoughts turn in a particular way to all those chil­ dren currently living in areas of conflict, and to all those who work to protect their lives and defend their rights. one out of every six children in our world are affected by the violence of war or its effects, even when they are not enrolled as child soldiers or held hostage by armed groups. tile witness given by those who work to defend them and their dignity is most precious for the future of humanity. ac of tb in th usajs iiman rotne involv tneex� �ion o� atnm' pe e(t �r rende aeman ., na� tn a culture ofdeath 25 in these days, we celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights, adopted in the wake of the second world war. in this context, let us also remember the observation of pope john xxiii: "man's awareness of his rights must inevitably lead him to the recognition of his duties. the possession of rights involves the duty of implementing those rights, for they are the expression of a man's personal dignity. and the posses­ sion of rights also involves their recognition and respect by others" [pacem in terris, 44]. peace, in effect, is the fruit of a great political proj­ ect grounded in the mutual responsibility and interde­ pendence of human beings. but it is also a challenge that demands to be taken up ever anew. it entails a conversion of heart and soul; it is both interior and communal; and it has three inseparable aspects: • peace with oneself rejecting inflexibility, anger, and impatience; in the words of saint francis de sales, showing "a bit of sweetness towards oneself" in order to offer "a bit of sweetness to others:' • peace with others: family members, friends, strang­ ers, the poor and the suffering, being unafraid to encounter them and listen to what they have to say. • peace with all creation, rediscovering the grandeur of god's gift and our individual and shared re­ sponsibility as inhabitants of this world, citizens and builders of the future. 26 against war the politics of peace, conscious of and deeply con­ cerned for every situation of human vulnerability, can always draw inspiration from the magnificat, the hymn that mary, the mother of christ the savior and queen of peace, sang in the name of all mankind: hhe has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. he has shown the strength of his arm; he has scattered the proud in their conceit. he has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly; ... for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to abraham and his children forever" (lk 1:50-55). message for the lii world day of peace january 1, 2019 war eliminates all development "deceit is in the mind of those who plan evil, but those who counsel peace have joy" (prov 12:20). yet there are those who seek solutions in war, frequently fueled by a breakdown in relations, hegemonic ambitions, abuses of power, fear of others, and a tendency to see diversity as an obstacle. war is not a ghost from the past but a constant threat. our world is encountering growing difficulties on the slow path to peace upon which it had embarked and that had already begun to bear good fruit. since conditions that favor the outbreak of wars are once again increasing, i can only reiterate that war is the negation of all rights and a dramatic assault on the environm all,wl and pi a maji lnave: numoe million thi� te ne�� fro decau� , are �til tni� le� to una for�ive witnw amo a culture ofdeath 27 ronrnent. if we want true integral human development for all, we must work tirelessly to avoid war between nations and peoples. fratelli tutti) 256-57 a madness i have prayed for those who fell in the great war. the numbers are frightening: it is said that approximately eight million young soldiers fell and seven million civilians died. this tells us the extent to which war is madness! a mad ... ness from which humanity has not yet learned its lesson, because a second world war followed it and many more are still in progress today. but when will we learn from this lesson? i invite everyone to look to the crucified jesus to understand that hatred and evil are defeated through forgiveness and goodness, to understand that responding with war only increases evil and death! angelus september 14) 2014 a monster that destroys humanity and the wmld war is always that monster that transforms itself with the change of epochs and continues to devour humanity. but the response to war is not another war; the response to weap ... ons is not other weapons. and i ask myself: who is selling weapons to the terrorists? who sells weapons today to the 28 against war terrorists, who are carrying out massacres in other areas­ let us think of africa, for example? it is a question that i would like someone to answer. 111e response is not war, but the response is fraternity. 111is is the challenge not only for iraq: it is the challenge for many regions in conflict and, ulti­ mately, it is the challenge for the entire world: fraternity. will we be capable of creating fraternity among us, of building a culture of brothers and sisters? or will we continue with the logic cain began, war? brotherhood, fraternity. general audience library of the apostolic palace march 20, 2021 conflicts also disfigure the environment it is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims. war always does grave harm to the environment and to the cultural riches of peoples, risks that are magnified when one considers nuclear arms and biolog­ ical weapons. "despite the international agreements which prohibit chemical, bacteriological and biological warfare, the fact is that laboratory research continues to develop new offensive weapons capable of altering the balance of nature" [john paul ii, messagefor 1990 world day prayer, 12j. pol­ itics must pay greater attention to foreseeing new conflicts and addressing the causes that can lead to them. but pow, erful financial interests prove most resistant to this effort, and political planning tends to lack breadth of vision. what waul to be wasu �rotn of the di�ni maim the r� howl time a culture ofdeath 29 would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so? laudato si; 57 the "piecemeal" world war war, terrorist attacks, racial or religious persecution, and many other affronts to human dignity are judged differ­ ently, depending on how convenient it proves for certain, primarily economic, interests. what is true as long as it is convenient for someone in power stops being true once it becomes inconvenient. these situations of violence, sad to say, have become so common as to constitute a real "third world war" fought piecemeal fratelli tutti, 25 affecting the little ones brothers and sisters, never war! never war! i think mostly of the children, of those who are deprived of the hope for a dignified life, of a future: dead children, wounded children, maimed children, orphaned children, children who have the remnants of war as toys, children who do not know how to smile. stop, please! i ask you with all my heart. it is time to stop! stop, please! angelus july 27, 2014 30 against war we listen to the little ones hope has the face of children. in the middle east, for years, an appalling number of young people have been mourning violent deaths in their families and seeing their native land threatened, often with their only pros� pect being that of flight. this is the death of hope. all too many children have spent most of their lives looking at rubble instead of schools, hearing the deafening explosion of bombs rather than the happy din of playgrounds. may humanity listen-this is my plea-to the cry of children, whose mouths proclaim the glory of god (cf. ps 8:3). only by wiping away their tears will the world recover its dig� nity, address at the conclusion of the dialogue bari, italy july 7, 2018 looking at reality through the eyes of its victims every war leaves our world worse than it was before. war is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capit­ u1ation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil. let us not remain mired in theoretical discussions, but touch the wounded flesh of the victims. let us look once more at all those civilians whose killing was considered "collateral damage:' let us ask the victims themselves. let us think of the refugees and displaced, those who suffered the effects of atomic radiation or chemical attacks, the mothers who lost aept of th eres, in thi neart (noos tmol �in(e aiml tne s� of ot� [ho iiwo lovil ana tl ottn ranic even anac texts \ninstwar a culture of death 31 lost their children, and the boys and girls maimed or deprived of their childhood. let us hear the true stories of these victims of violence, look at reality through their eyes, and listen with an open heart to the stories they tell. in this way, we will be able to grasp the abyss of evil at the heart of war. nor will it trouble us to be deemed naive for choosing peace. fratclli tutti, 261 terrorism has nothing to do with true religion sincere and humble worship of god "bears fruit not in discrimination, hatred and violence, but in respect for the sacredness of life, respect for the dignity and freedom of others, and loving commitment to the welfare of all" [homily, colombo, sri lanka, january 15,2015]. truly, "whoever does not love does not know god, for god is love" (1 in 4:8). for this reason, terrorism is deplorable and threatens the security of peoplebe they in the east or the west, the north or the south-and disseminates panic, terror, and pessimism, but this is not due to religion, even when terrorists instrumentalize it. it is due, rather, to an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts and to policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression, and pride. that is why it is so necessary to stop supporting terrorist movements fueled by financing, the provision of weapons and strategy, and by attempts to jus ... tify these movements, even using the media. all these must be regarded as international crimes that threaten security 32 against war and world peace. such terrorism must be condemned in all its forms and expressions. religious convictions about the sacred meaning of human life permit us to recognize the fundamental values of our common humanity, values in the name of which we can and must cooperate, build and dialogue, pardon and grow; this will allow different voices to unite in creating a melody of sublime nobility and beauty, instead of fanatical cries of hatred. at times, fundamentalist violence is unleashed in some groups, of whatever religion, by the rashness of their lead­ ers. yet, "the commandment of peace is inscribed in the depths of the religious traditions that we represent.... as religious leaders, we are called to be true 'people of dia­ logue,' to cooperate in building peace not as intermediar­ ies but as authentic mediators. intermediaries seek to give everyone a discount, ultimately in order to gain something for themselves. the mediator, on the other hand, is one who retains nothing for himself but rather spends himself generously until he is consumed, knowing that the only gain is peace. each one of us is called to be an artisan of peace, by uniting and not dividing, by extinguishing hatred and not holding on to it, by opening paths of dialogue and not by constructing new walls" [address to the international meetingfor peace, september 30, 2013j. fratelli tutti} 283-84 the nua agio nude nation tnat i� reauc� marne rolitic iaarit� more� inmol are rr r1ace more in{� natiol fromi oanne the criminal folly of nuclear weapons a global problem nuclear weapons are a global problem, affecting all nations, and impacting future generations and the planet that is our home. a global ethic is needed if we are to reduce the nuclear threat and work toward nuclear disar ... mament. now more than ever, technological, social, and political interdependence urgently call for an ethic of sol ... idarity, which encourages peoples to work together for a more secure world, and a future that is increasingly rooted in moral values and responsibility on a global scale. the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons are predictable and planetary. while the focus is often placed on nuclear weapons' potential for mass killing, more attention must be given to the "unnecessary suffer ... ing" brought on by their use. military codes and inter ... national law, among others, have long banned peoples from inflicting unnecessary suffering. if such suffering is banned in the waging of conventional war, then it should 33 34 against war all the more be banned in nuclear conflict. there are those among us who are victims of these weapons; they warn us not to commit the same irreparable mistakes that have devastated populations and creation. i extend warm greetings to the hibakusha, as well as other victims of nuclear weapons testing who are present at this meet­ ing. i encourage them all to be prophetic voices, calling the human family to a deeper appreciation of beauty, love, cooperation, and fraternity, while reminding the world of the risks of nuclear weapons, which have the potential to destroy us and civilization. nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis for an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and states. the youth of today and tomorrow deserve far more. they deserve a peaceful world order based on the unity of the human family, grounded on respect, cooperation, solidar­ ity, and compassion. now is the time to counter the logic of fear with the ethic of responsibility, and so foster a eli­ mate of trust and sincere dialogue. spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations. to prioritize such spending is a mistake and a misallocation of resources that would be far better invested in the areas of integral human development, education, health, and the fight against extreme poverty. when these resources are squandered, the poor and the weak living on the margins of society pay the price. the desire for peace, security, and stability is one of the deepest longings of the human heart. it is rooted in the itary weapo (anna rower tator�n ju�ti(e, forfu a(tion� �war� torrol muho tru�t, : = iw rartie! nudea etr,a rrote wear \vorla ana w the criminal folly ofnuclear weapons 35 the creator who makes all people members of the one human family. this desire can never be satisfied by mil­ itary means alone, much less the possession of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. peace cannot "be reduced solely to maintaining a balance of power between enemies; nor is it brought about by dic­ tatorship" (gaudium et spes) 78). peace must be built on justice, socioeconomic development, freedom, respect for fundamental human rights, the participation of all in public affairs, and the building of trust between peo­ ples. pope paul vi stated this succinctly in his encycli­ cal populorum progrcssio: "development is the new name for peace" (76). it is incumbent on us to adopt concrete actions that promote peace and security, while remaining always aware of the limitation of shortsighted approaches to problems of national and international security. we must be profoundly committed to strengthening mutual trust, for only through such trust can true and lasting peace among nations be established .... i wish to encourage sincere and open dialogue between parties internal to each nuclear state, between various nuclear states, and between nuclear states and nonnuclear states. this dialogue must be inclusive, involving interna­ tional organizations, religious communities, and civil soci­ ety, and oriented toward the common good and not the protection of vested interests. ((a world without nuclear weapons" is a goal shared by all nations and echoed by world leaders, as well as the aspiration of millions of men and women. the future and the survival of the human 36 against war 'ihe family hinge on moving beyond this ideal and ensuring how that it becomes a reality. nuci( i am convinced that the desire for peace and fraternity centu planted deep in the human heart will bear fruit in concrete mum: ways to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and bl19 for all, to the benefit of our common home. the security deadl�1of our own future depends on guaranteeing the peaceful in \vn security of others, for if peace, security, and stability are tuallr not established globally, they will not be enjoyed at all. huma� individually and collectively, we are responsible for the present and future well-being of our brothers and sisters. it is my great hope that this responsibility will inform our efforts in favor of nuclear disarmament, for a world with­ out nuclear weapons is truly possible. message on the occasion of the vienna conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons natio december 7) 2014 ofais oetwe ana ia tremendous power we must recognize that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our dna, and many other abilities that we have acquired have given us tremendous power. more precisely, they have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world. never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely, particularly when we consider to tne aestr oasea mea affron wnich ther wear inlet ofth the criminal folly ofnuclear weapons 37 how it is currently being used. we need but think of the nuclear bombs dropped in the middle of the twentieth century, or the array of technology that nazism, com­ munism, and other totalitarian regimes have employed to kill millions of people, to say nothing of the increasingly deadly arsenal of weapons available for modern warfare. in whose hands does all this power lie, or will it even­ tually end up: it is extremely risky for a small part of humanity to have it. laudato si; 104 a great deception the preamble and the first article of the charter of the united nations set forth the foundations of the inter­ national juridical framework: peace, the pacific solution of disputes, and the development of friendly relations between the nations. strongly opposed to such statements, and in practice denying them, is the constant tendency to the proliferation of arms, especially weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear weapons. an ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction-and possibly the destruction of all mankind-are self-contradictory and an affront to the entire framework of the united nations, which would end up as "nations united by fear and distrust:' there is urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons, in full application of the non-proliferation treaty, in letter and spirit, with the goal of a complete prohibition of these weapons. 38 against war the recent agreement reached on the nuclear question in a sensitive region of asia and the middle east is proof of the potential of political goodwill and of law, exercised with sincerity, patience, and constancy. i express my hope that this agreement will be lasting and efficacious, and bring forth the desired fruits with the cooperation of all the parties involved. address to the un general assembly new york september 25) 2015 peace cannot be built on mutual distrust we must commit ourselves to a world without nuclear weapons, by fully implementing the non-proliferation treaty, both in letter and spirit. but why give ourselves this demanding and forward­ looking goal in the present international context characterized by an unstable climate of conflict, which is both cause and indication of the difficulties encountered in advancing and strengthening the process of nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation? if we take into consideration the principal threats to peace and security with their many dimensions in this multipolar world of the twenty-first century-as, for example, terrorism, asymmetrical conflicts, cybersecurity, environmental problems, and poverty-not a few doubts arise regarding the inadequacy of nuclear deterrence as an effective response to such challenges. these concerns are 1he even tarial from aimi, �imill;of re� wnicnl rrom� le�1 oftne �taoill unae in f��e � rowe nevel, on tn tion the criminal folly ofnuclear weapons 39 even greater when we consider the catastrophic humani­ tarian and environmental consequences that would follow from any use of nuclear weapons, with devastating, indis­ criminate, and uncontainable effects, over time and space. similar cause for concern arises when examining the waste of resources spent on nuclear issues for military purposes, which could instead be used for worthy priorities like the promotion of peace and integral human development, as well as the fight against poverty, and the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. we need also to ask ourselves how sustainable is a stability based on fear, when it actually increases fear and undermines relationships of trust between peoples. international peace and stability cannot be based on a false sense of security, on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, or on simply maintaining a balance of power. peace must be built on justice, on integral human development, on respect for fundamental human rights, on the protection of creation, on the participation of all in public life, on trust between peoples, on the support of peaceful institutions, on access to education and health, on dialogue and solidarity. from this perspective, we need to go beyond nuclear deterrence: the international commu­ nity is called upon to adopt forward-looking strategies to promote the goal of peace and stability and to avoid short­ sighted approaches to the problems surrounding national and international security. in this context, the ultimate goal of the total elimina­ tion of nuclear weapons becomes both a challenge and a 40 against war me moral and humanitarian imperative. a concrete approach should promote a reflection on an ethics of peace and multilateral and cooperative security that goes beyond the fear and isolationism that prevail in many debates today. achieving a world without nuclear weapons involves a long-term process, based on the awareness that "everything is connected" within the perspective of an integral ecol­ ogy (see laudato si'. 117, 138). the common destiny of humankind demands the pragmatic strengthening of dia­ logue and the building and consolidating of mechanisms of trust and cooperation, capable of creating the condi­ tions for a world without nuclear weapons. growing interdependence and globalization mean that any response to the threat of nuclear weapons should be collective and concerted, based on mutual trust. this trust can be built only through dialogue that is truly directed to the common good and not to the protection of veiled or particular interests. such dialogue, as far as possible, should include all: nuclear states, countries that do not possess nuclear weapons, the military and private sectors, religious communities, civil societies, and international organizations. and in this endeavor we must avoid those forms of mutual recrimination and polarization that hin­ der dialogue rather than encourage it. humanity has the ability to work together in building up our common home; we have the freedom, intelligence, and capacity to lead and direct technology, to place limits on our power, and to put all this at the service of another type of progress: one that is more human, social, and integral. dye andi alon� altho �oalj i mom acer fora mam� the criminal folly of nuclear weapons 41 this conference intends to negotiate a treaty inspired by ethical and moral arguments. it is an exercise in hope and it is my wish that it may also constitute a decisive step along the road toward a world without nuclear weapons. although this is a significantly complex and long-term goat it is not beyond our reach. message to the un conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination new york march 23,2017 atomic weapons are senseless a certain pessimism might make us think that "prospects for a world free from nuclear arms and for integral disar­ mament;' the theme of your meeting, appear increasingly remote. indeed, the escalation of the arms race continues unabated, and the price of modernizing and developing weaponry, not only nuclear weapons, represents a consid­ erable expense for nations. as a result, the real priorities facing our human family, such as the fight against poverty; the promotion of peace; the undertaking of educational, ecological, and health-care projects; and the development of human rights, are relegated to second place. nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. if we also take into 42 against war 1he account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned. for they exist in the service of a mentality of fear that affects not only the parties in conflict but the entire human race. interna­ tional relations cannot be held captive to military force, mutual intimidation, and the parading of stockpiles of arms. weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, create nothing but a false sense of security. they cannot constitute the basis for peaceful coexistence between members of the human family, which must rather be inspired by an ethics of solidarity. essential in this regard is the witness given by the hibakuslja, the survivors of the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, together with other victims of nuclear arms testing. may their prophetic voice serve as a warning, above all for coming generations! furthermore, weapons that result in the destruction of the human race are senseless even from a tactical stand­ point. for that matter, while true science is always at the service of humanity, in our time we are increasingly trou­ bled by the misuse of certain projects originally conceived for a good cause. suffice it to note that nuclear technolo­ gies are now spreading, also through digital communica­ tions, and that the instruments of international law have not prevented new states from joining those already in possession of nuclear weapons. the resulting scenarios are deeply disturbing if we consider the challenges of contem­ porary geopolitics, like terrorism or asymmetric warfare. aligl in a, tne n tnatl �� co nll�a wea�1 (lu�t� (onv� main] �r a! natio 1xre ii ofw unae rroe w�, !o(! ofw viau num of col i can men� (on�l teae the criminal folly of nuclear weapons 43 at the same time, a healthy realism continues to shine a light of hope on our unruly world. recently, for example, in a historic vote at the united nations, the majority of the members of the international community determined that nuclear weapons are not only immoral, but must also be considered an illegal means of warfare. this decision filled a significant juridical lacuna, inasmuch as chemical weapons, biological weapons, anti-personnel mines, and cluster bombs are all expressly prohibited by international conventions. even more important is the fact that it was mainly the result of a "humanitarian initiative" sponsored by a significant alliance between civil society, states, inter-­ national organizations, churches, academies, and groups of experts .... it is therefore necessary, first of all, to reject the culture of waste and to care for individuals and peoples laboring under painful disparities through patient efforts to favor processes of solidarity over selfish and contingent inter-­ ests. this also entails integrating the individual and the social dimensions through the application of the principle of subsidiarity, encouraging the contribution of all, as indi-­ viduals and as groups. lastly, there is a need to promote human beings in the indissoluble unity of soul and body, of contemplation and action. in this way, progress that is both effective and inclusive can achieve the utopia of a world free of deadly instru-­ ments of aggression, contrary to the criticism of those who consider idealistic any process of dismantling arsenals. the teaching ofjohn xxiii remains ever valid. in pointing to 44 against war the goal of an integral disarmament, he stated, "unless this process of disarmament be thoroughgoing and com­ plete, and reach men's very souls, it is impossible to stop the arms race, or to reduce armaments, or-and this is the main thing-ultimately to abolish them entirely" (pacem in terris, 113). the church does not tire of offering the world this wisdom and the actions it inspires, conscious that integral development is the beneficial path that the human family is called to travel i encourage you to carry forward this activity with patience and constancy, in the trust that the lord is ever at our side. may he bless each of you and your efforts in the service ofjustice and peace. thank you. to participants in the international symposium "prospects for a world free of nuclear weapons and for integral disarmament" clementine hall november la, 2017 rro, from (nov� tni� rortn on� a r�(en u� on ���n � o :�:l worla m�n of !�g on� t ann 0 att�� protect every life from the apostolic journey to japan (november 23-26) 2019) the dream of a world free of nuclear weapons this place makes us deeply aware of the pain and hor­ ror that we human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another. the damaged cross and statue of our lady recently discovered in the cathedral of nagasaki remind us once more of the unspeakable horror suffered in the flesh by the victims of the bombing and their families. one of the deepest longings of the human heart is for security, peace, and stability. the possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction is not the answer to this desire; indeed they seem always to thwart it. our world is marked by a perverse dichotomy that tries to defend and ensure stability and peace through a false sense of security sustained by a mentality of fear and mistrust, one that ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing any form of dialogue. peace and international stability are incompatible with attempts to build upon the fear of mutual destruction or 45 46 against war the threat of total annihilation. they can be achieved only on the basis of a global ethic of solidarity and cooperation in the service of a future shaped by interdependence and shared responsibility in the whole human family of today and tomorrow. here in this city, which witnessed the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of a nuclear attack, our attempts to speak out against the arms race will never be enough. 111e arms race wastes precious resources that could be better used to benefit the integral development of peoples and to protect the natural envi­ ronment. in a world where millions of children and fami� lies live in inhumane conditions, the money that is squan� dered and the fortunes made through the manufacture, upgrading, maintenance, and sale of ever more destructive weapons are an affront crying out to heaven. a world of peace, free from nuclear weapons, is the aspiration of millions of men and women everywhere. to make this ideal a reality calls for involvement on the part of all: individuals, religious communities and civil society, countries that possess nuclear weapons and those that do not, the military and private sectors, and international organizations. our response to the threat of nuclear weap� ons must be joint and concerted, inspired by the arduous yet constant effort to build mutual trust and thus sur­ mount the current climate of distrust. in 1963, saint john xxiii, writing in his encyclical letter pacem in terris, in addition to urging the prohibition of atomic weapons (see no. 112), stated that authentic and lasting international peac upot 1 tnatl lrm�jafm tn� �r lrrro int�rc (�l� 1f, mitte tni� goa never inter ana ditio lmnc tacn meeti a�ree erful tion that � wea� not � curr protect every life 47 peace cannot rest on a balance of military power, but only upon mutual trust (see no. 113). there is a need to break down the climate of distrust that risks leading to a dismantling of the international arms control framework. we are witnessing an erosion of multilateralism that is all the more serious in light of the growth of new forms of military technology. such an approach seems highly incongruous in today's context of interconnectedness; it represents a situation that urgently calls for the attention and commitment of all leaders. for her part, the catholic church is irrevocably com­ mitted to promoting peace between peoples and nations. this is a duty to which the church feels bound before god and every man and woman in our world. we must never grow weary of working to support the principal international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, including the treaty on the prohi .. bition of nuclear weapons. last july, the bishops ofjapan launched an appeal for the abolition of nuclear arms, and each august the church in japan holds a ten .. day prayer meeting for peace. may prayer, tireless work in support of agreements, and insistence on dialogue be the most pow .. erful "weapons" in which we put our trust and the inspira .. tion of our efforts to build a world ofjustice and solidarity that can offer an authentic assurance of peace. convinced as i am that a world without nuclear weapons is possible and necessary, i ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security. we 48 against war need to ponder the catastrophic impact of their deploy­ ment, especially from a humanitarian and environmental standpoint, and reject heightening a climate of fear, mis­ trust, and hostility fomented by nuclear doctrines. the current state of our planet requires a serious reflection on how its resources can be employed in light of the com­ plex and difficult implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, in order to achieve the goal of an integrated human development. saint paul vi sug­ gested as much in 1964, when he proposed the establish­ ment of a global fund to assist those most impoverished peoples, drawn partially from military expenditures (pop� ulorum prooressio, 51). all of this necessarily calls for the creation of tools for ensuring trust and reciprocal development, and counts on leaders capable of rising to these occasions. it is a task that concerns and challenges everyone of us. no one can be indifferent to the pain of millions of men and women whose sufferings trouble our consciences today. no one can turn a deaf ear to the plea of our brothers and sisters in need. no one can turn a blind eye to the ruin caused by a culture incapable of dialogue. i ask you to join in praying each day for the conversion of hearts and for the triumph of a culture of life, reconcil­ iation, and fraternity: a fraternity that can recognize and respect diversity in the quest for a common destiny. i know that some here are not catholics, but i am cer­ tain that we can all make our own the prayer for peace attributed to saint francis of assisi: i� from w� ti &�ctl to r�� know nhd� protect every life lord) make me an instrument ofyour peace: where there is hatred) let me sow love; where there is injury) pardon; where there is doubt) faith; where there is despair) hope; where there is darkness) light; where there is sadness) joy. in this striking place of remembrance that stirs us from our indifference, it is all the more meaningful that we turn to god with trust, asking him to teach us to be effective instruments of peace and to make every effort not to repeat the mistakes of the past. may you and your families, and this entire nation, know the blessings of prosperity and social harmony! message on nuclear weapons atomic bomb hypocenter park (nagasaki) november 24) 2019 nuclear powerfor military purposes is immoral for love of my brethren and friends) i say: ((peace upon you!" (ps 122:8) god of mercy and lord of history, to you we lift up our eyes from this place, where death and life have met, loss and rebirth, suffering and compassion. here, in an incandescent burst of lightning and fire, so many men and women, so many dreams and hopes, disappeared, leaving behind only shadows and silence. 49 50 against war pro ii in barely an instant, everything was devoured by a black hole of destruction and death. from that abyss of silence, we continue even today to hear the cries of those who are no longer. they came from different places, had different names, and some spoke different languages. yet all were united in the same fate, in a terrifying hour that left its mark forever not only on the history of this country but on the face of humanity. here i pay homage to all the victims, and i bow before the strength and dignity of those who, having survived those first moments, for years afterward bore in the flesh immense suffering, and in their spirit seeds of death that drained their vital energy. i felt a duty to come here as a pilgrim of peace, to stand in silent prayer, to recall the innocent victims of such vio­ lence, and to bear in my heart the prayers and yearnings of the men and women of our time, especially the young, who long for peace, who work for peace, and who sacrifice themselves for peace. i have come to this place of memory and of hope for the future, bringing with me the cry of the poor, who are always the most helpless victims of hatred and conflict. it is my humble desire to be the voice of the voice­ less, who witness with concern and anguish the growing tensions of our own time: the unacceptable inequalities and injustices that threaten human coexistence, the grave inability to care for our common home, and the constant outbreak of armed conflict, as if these could guarantee a future of peace. tnat toaa) nitf( ourci ro�e�1 wear� will d ronae toori cdnw wear a� we ai�(fi wora mate in�t tueji thi� c tiwla fore munl of eu (omn the� i �eeu protect every life with deep conviction i wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dig ... nity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home. the use of atomic energy for pur ... poses of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral, as i already said two years ago. we will be judged on this. future generations will rise to condemn our failure if we spoke of peace but did not act to bring it about among the peoples of the earth. how can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war? how can we speak about peace even as we justify illegitimate actions by speeches filled with discrimination and hate? i am convinced that peace is no more than an empty word unless it is founded on truth, built up in justice, ani ... mated and perfected by charity, and attained in freedom. building peace in truth and justice entails acknowledg ... ing that "people frequently differ widely in knowledge, vir ... tue, intelligence, and wealth" (pacem in terris) 87), and that this can never justify the attempt to impose our own par ... ticular interests upon others. indeed, those differences call for even greater responsibility and respect. political com ... munities may legitimately differ from one another in terms of culture or economic development, but all are called to commit themselves to work "for the common cause;' for the good of all (88). indeed, if we really want to build a more just and secure society, we must let the weapons fall from our 51 52 against war pm hands. ii no one can love with offensive weapons in their ton hands" (saint paul vi, united nations address, october 4, tnat 1965). when we yield to the logic of arms and distance and ourselves from the practice of dialogue, we forget to our will detriment that, even before causing victims and ruination, dna weapons can create nightmares; "they call for enormous worl expenses, interrupt projects of solidarity and of useful verr labor, and warp the outlook of nations:' how can we protnan pose peace if we constantly invoke the threat of nuclear tor�1 war as a legitimate recourse for the resolution of conflicts? oftn may the abyss of pain endured here remind us of bound­ aries that must never be crossed. a true peace can only be an unarmed peace. for "peace is not merely the absence of war ... but must be built up ceaselessly" (gaudium et spes, 78). it is the fruit ofjustice, development, solidarity, care for our common home, and the promotion of the common good, as we have learned from the lessons of history. mo to remember, to journey together, to protect. these llhd three moral imperatives here in hiroshima assume even nave more powerful and universal significance, and can open a ma] path to peace. for this reason, we cannot allow present and future generations to lose the memory of what happened a�o here. it is a memory that ensures and encourages the ana building of a more fair and fraternal future; an expansive memory, capable of awakening the consciences of all men and women, especially those who today playa crucial role uro in the destiny of the nations; a living memory that helps us say in every generation: never again! that is why we are called to journey together with a gaze of understanding and forgiveness, to open the horizon protect every life to hope and to bring a ray of light amid the many clouds that today darken the sky. let us open our hearts to hope, and become instruments of reconciliation and peace. this will always be possible if we are able to protect one another and realize that we are joined by a common destiny. our world, interconnected not only by globalization but by the very earth we have always shared, demands, today more than ever, that interests exclusive to certain groups or sec­ tors be left to one side, in order to achieve the greatness of those who struggle co-responsibly to ensure a common future. in a single plea to god and to all men and women of goodwill, on behalf of all the victims of atomic bombings and experiments, and of all conflicts, let us together cry out from our hearts: never again war, never again the clash of arms, never again so much suffering! may peace come in our time and to our world. 0 god, you have promised us that "mercy and faithfulness have met, justice and peace have embraced; faithfulness shall spring from the earth, and justice look down from heaven" (ps 84:11-12). come, lord, for it is late, and where destruction has. abounded, may hope also abound today that we can write and achieve a different future. come, lord, prince of peace! make us instruments and reflections of your peace! "for love of my brethren and friends, i say: 'peace upon you!'" (ps 122:8). meetingfor peace peace memorial (hiroshima) november 24, 2019 53 54 against war prol hiroshima is a catechesis on cruelty [aifc ariol hiroshima was a true human catechesis on cruelty. cru­ elty ... and there i reaffirmed that the use of nuclear weap­ ons is immoral-this must also be included in the cate­ chism of the catholic church-and not only its use, but also its possession because an accident [due to] possession, or the madness of some government leader, a person's mad­ ness can destroy humanity. let us think about that quote from einstein: "world war iv will be fought with sticks and stones:' i return to the possession of nuclear industries. an accident can always occur. you have experienced this, as well as the triple disaster [of fukashimaj that destroyed so much. nuclear power is at its limits. let us exclude weapons because they are destructive. but the use of nuclear power is very much at its limits because we have not reached complete safety yet. we have not reached it. you could say to me, (yes, you could have a disaster due to lack of safety with electricity too:' but it is a small disas­ ter. a nuclear disaster, from a nuclear plant, will be a huge disaster. and safety measures have not yet been developed. i-but it is my personal opinion-would not use nuclear energy until its use is completely safe. but i am profane in this and i am expressing an idea. some say nuclear energy goes against the care of creation, that it will destroy it and that it must stop. it is under discussion. i stop at safety. it does not have the safety measures to avoid a disaster. yes, there is one in the world every ten years, but then it lil�l� jillt ofr ture mn rew protect every life 55 [affects] creation: the disaster of a nuclear power on ere .. ation and also on people. press conference on return flightfrom japan november 26, 2019 the only solution to conflicts is dialogue in the footsteps of my predecessors, i have also come to implore god and to invite all persons of goodwill to encour.. age and promote every necessary means of dissuasion so that the destruction generated by atomic bombs in hiroshima and nagasaki will never take place again in human history. history teaches us that conflicts and misunderstandings between peoples and nations can find valid solutions only through dialogue, the only weapon worthy of humanity and capable of ensuring lasting peace. i am convinced of the need to deal with the nuclear question on the multilateral plane, promoting a political and institutional process capable of creating a broader international consensus and action. a culture of encounter and dialogue, marked by wisdom, insight, and breadth of vision, is essential for building a more just and fraternal world. japan has recognized the importance of promoting personal contacts in the fields of education, cul.. ture, sport, and tourism, knowing that these can contribute in no small measure to the harmony, justice, solidarity, and reconciliation that are the mortar of the edifice of peace. meeting with the authorities and diplomatic corps kantei, great hall (tokyo) november 25, 2019 peac peace and fraternity from the apostolic journey to iraq (march 5-8) 2021) fraternity is nourished by solidarity fraternal coexistence calls for patient and honest dialogue, protected by justice and respect for law. this task is not easy; it demands hard work and a commitment on the part of all to set aside rivalries and contrapositions and instead to speak with one another from our deepest identity as fel­ low children of the one god and creator. on the basis of this principle, the holy see, in iraq as elsewhere, tirelessly appeals to competent authorities to grant all religious communities recognition, respect, rights, and protection. i appreciate the efforts already being made in this regard, and i join men and women of goodwill in calling for these efforts to continue for the benefit of the nation. a society that bears the imprint of fraternal unity is one whose members live in solidarity with one another. "solidarity helps us to regard others + + + as our neighbors, companions on our journey" (message for the 2021 world �rro inre [�wi t� re neve fr�m tofo �ut ml�u innltran (ou 56 peace and fraternity 57 day of peace). it is a virtue that leads us to carry out con' crete acts of care and service with particular concern for the vulnerable and those most in need. here, i think of all those who have lost family members and loved ones, home and livelihood due to violence, persecution, or terrorism. i think too of those who continue to struggle for security and the means of personal and economic survival at a time of growing unemployment and poverty. the 'consciousness that we are responsible for the fragility of others" (fratelli tutti) 115) ought to inspire every effort to create concrete opportunities for progress, not only economically, but also in terms of education and care for our common home. fol­ lowing a crisis, it is not enough simply to rebuild; we need to rebuild well, so that all can enjoy a dignified life. we never emerge from a crisis the same as we were; we emerge from it either better or worse. as governmental leaders and diplomats, you are called to foster this spirit of fraternal solidarity. it is necessary, but not sufficient, to combat the scourge of corruption, misuse of power, and disregard for law. also necessary is the promotion of justice and the fostering of honesty, transparency, and the strengthening of the institutions responsible in this regard. in this way, stability within society grows and a healthy politics arises, able to offer to all, especially the young of whom there are so many in this country, sure hope for a better future.... i come as a penitent, asking forgiveness of heaven and my brothers and sisters for so much destruction and cru­ elty. i come as a pilgrim of peace in the name of christ, 58 against war peace the prince of peace. how much we have prayed in these entin years for peace in iraq! saint john paul ii spared no ini�calej tiatives and above all offered his prayers and sufferings ine�u, for this intention. and god listens, he always listens! it oftne, is up to us to listen to him and to walk in his ways. may nizati the clash of arms be silenced! may their spread be curbed, itdfial here and everywhere! may partisan interests cease, those tho�e outside interests uninterested in the local population. �helte may the voice of builders and peacemakers find a hear, outt� ing! the voice of the humble, the poor, the ordinary men dnarf and women who want to live, work, and pray in peace. d�wcl may there be an end to acts of violence and extremism, manr factions and intolerance! may room be made for all those thih citizens who seek to cooperate in building up this coun�rotn try through dialogue and through frank, sincere, and con, (cntti structive discussion-citizens committed to reconciliation the in and prepared, for the common good, to set aside their own ira�i i interests. iraq has sought in these years to lay the ioundamucl tions for a democratic society. for this, it is essential to of�n ensure the participation of all political, social, and religious imro groups and to guarantee the fundamental rights of all cit, izens. may no one be considered a second-class citizen. i reace encourage the strides made so far on this journey and i ju�ti� trust that they will strengthen tranquility and concord. the co the international community also has a role to play in niry the promotion of peace in this land and in the middle east will, as a whole. as we have seen during the lengthy conflict in tone neighboring syria-which began ten years ago these very coo� days!-the challenges facing our world today engage the calis, peace and fraternity 59 entire human family. they call for cooperation on a global scale in order to address, among other things, the economic inequalities and regional tensions that threaten the stability of these lands. i thank the countries and international orga� nizations working in iraq to rebuild and to provide human­ itarian assistance to refugees, the internally displaced, and those attempting to return home, by making food, water, shelter, health care, and hygiene services available through­ out the country, together with programs of reconciliation and peacebuilding. here i cannot fail to mention the many agencies, including a number of catholic agencies, that for many years have been committed to helping the people of this country. meeting the basic needs of so many of our brothers and sisters is an act of charity and justice, and contributes to a lasting peace. it is my prayerful hope that the international community will not withdraw from the iraqi people the outstretched hand of friendship and con­ structive engagement, but will continue to act in a spirit of shared responsibility with the local authorities, without imposing political or ideological interests. religion, by its very nature, must be at the service of peace and fraternity. the name of god cannot be used to justify acts of murder, exile, terrorism, and oppression. on the contrary, god, who created human beings equal in dig� nity and rights, calls us to spread the values of love, good� will, and concord. in iraq, too, the catholic church desires to be a friend to all and, through interreligious dialogue, to cooperate constructively with other religions in serving the cause of peace. the age�old presence of christians in this 60 against war land, and their contributions to the life of the nation, con­ stitute a rich heritage that they wish to continue to place at the service of all. their participation in public life, as citizens with full rights, freedoms, and responsibilities, will testify that a healthy pluralism of religious beliefs, ethnic­ ities, and cultures can contribute to the nation's prosperity and harmony. meeting with authorities) civil society) and the diplomatic corps baghdad march 5) 2021 weaving a single fraternity the love of christ summons us to set aside every kind of self-centeredness or competition; it impels us to uni­ versal communion and challenges us to form a commu­ nity of brothers and sisters who accept and care for one another. here i think of the familiar image of a carpet. the different churches present in iraq, each with its age­ old historical, liturgical, and spiritual patrimony, are like so many individual colored threads that, woven together, make up a single beautiful carpet, one that displays not only our fraternity but points also to its source. for god himself is the artist who imagined this carpet, patiently wove it, and carefully mends it, desiring us ever to remain closely knit as his sons and daughters. may we thus take to heart the admonition of saint ignatius of antioch: "let nothing exist among you that may divide you ... but let peact tnen jar,iii worlc �ffor! and a rrorn fruitft )n11: pi �mne lov�; and 0 trl� dimom i tvtrr ularl) arena tne[ tncr toae tnoli �ore for� peace and fraternity 61 there be one prayer, one mind, one hope, in love and in joy:' how important is this witness of fraternal union in a world all too often fragmented and torn by division! every effort made to build bridges between ecclesial, parish, and diocesan communities and institutions will serve as a prophetic gesture on the part of the church in iraq and a fruitful response to jesus's prayer that all may be one (see jn 17:21). pastors and faithful, priests, religious, and catechists share, albeit in distinct ways, in the responsibility for advancing the church's mission. at times, misunderstand­ ings can arise and we can experience certain tensions; these are the knots that hinder the weaving of fraternity. they are knots we carry within ourselves; after all, we are all sinners. yet these knots can be untied by grace, by a greater love; they can be loosened by the medicine of forgiveness and by fraternal dialogue, by patiently bearing one anoth­ er's burdens (see gal 6:2) and strengthening each other in moments of trial and difficulty.... i am thinking especially of the young. young people everywhere are a sign of promise and hope, but partic­ ularly in this country. here you have not only priceless archaeological treasures but also inestimable treasure for the future: the young! young people are your treasure; they need you to care for them, to nurture their dreams, to accompany their growth and to foster their hope. even though they are young, their patience has already been sorely tried by the conflicts of these years. yet let us never forget that, together with the elderly, they are the point of 62 against war peac we look to heaven and journey on earth [rate ae�c wtt te1r [one man ifivljtti��e u wnf orae the diamond in this country, the richest fruit of the tree. it is up to us to cultivate their growth in goodness and to nurture them with hope. meeting with bishops, priests, religious, seminarians, and catechists baghdad march 5, 2021 this blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of god's work, to the birth of our religions. here, where abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. it was here that abraham heard god's call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history. we are the fruits of that call and that journey. god asked abraham to raise his eyes to heaven and to count its stars (see gen 15:5). in those stars, he saw the promise of his descendants; he saw us. today we-jews, christians, and muslims-together with our brothers and sisters of other religions honor our father abraham by doing as he did: we look up to heaven and we journey on earth. we look up to heaven. thousands of years later, as we look up to the same sky, those same stars appear. they illumine the darkest nights because they shine together. heaven thus imparts a message of unity: the almighty above invites us never to separate ourselves from our neighbors. the otherness of god points us toward others, toward our brothers and sisters. yet if we want to preserve peace and fraternity 63 fraternity, we must not lose sight of heaven. may we-the descendants of abraham and the representatives of differ­ ent religions-sense that, above all, we have this role: to help our brothers and sisters to raise their eyes and prayers to heaven. we all need this because we are not self-sufficient. man is not omnipotent; we cannot make it on our own. if we exclude god, we end up worshiping the things of this earth. worldly goods, which lead so many people to be unconcerned with god and others, are not the reason why we journey on earth. we raise our eyes to heaven in order to raise ourselves from the depths of our vanity; we serve god in order to be set free from enslavement to our egos, because god urges us to love. this is true religios­ ity: to worship god and to love our neighbor. in today's world, which often forgets or presents distorted images of the most high, believers are called to bear witness to his goodness, to show his paternity through our fraternity. from this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father abraham, let us affirm that god is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters. hostility, extremism, and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion. we believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings. let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred! dark clouds of terrorism, war, and violence have gathered over this country. all its ethnic and religious communities have suffered. in particular, i would like to mention the yazidi 64 against war peac community, which has mourned the deaths of many men and witnessed thousands of women, girls, and children kidnapped, sold as slaves, and subjected to physical vio­ lence and forced conversions. today, let us pray for those who have endured these sufferings, for those who are still dispersed and abducted, that they may soon return home. and let us pray that freedom of conscience and freedom of religion will everywhere be recognized and respected; these are fundamental rights because they make us free to contemplate the heaven for which we were created. when terrorism invaded the north of this beloved country, it wantonly destroyed part of its magnificent religious heritage, including the churches, monasteries, and places of worship of various communities. yet, even at that dark time, some stars kept shining. i think of the young muslim volunteers of mosul, who helped to repair churches and monasteries, building fraternal friendships on the rubble of hatred, and those christians and muslims who today are restoring mosques and churches together. professor ali thajeel spoke too of the return of pilgrims to this city. making pilgrimages to holy places is important, for it is the most beautiful sign on earth of our yearning for heaven. to love and protect holy places, therefore, is an existential necessity, in memory of our father abraham, who in various places raised to heaven altars of the lord (see gen 12:7-8; 13:18; 22:9). may the great patriarch help us to make our respective sacred places oases of peace and encounter for all! by his fidelity to god, abraham became a blessing for all peoples (see gen 12:3); may our rres and worl love� let l ili�1 tem� �ea� uh wo t�m not peace and fraternity 65 presence here today, in his footsteps, be a sign of blessing and hope for iraq, for the middle east and for the whole world. heaven has not grown weary of the earth: god loves every people, everyone of his daughters and sons! let us never tire of looking up to heaven, of looking up to those same stars that, in his day, our father abraham con­ templated. we journey on earth. for abraham, looking up to heaven, rather than being a distraction, was an incentive to journey on earth, to set out on a path that, through his descendants, would lead to every time and place. it all started from here, with the lord who brought him forth from or (see gen 15:7). his was a journey outward, one that involved sacrifices. abraham had to leave his land, home, and family. yet by giving up his own family, he became the father of a family of peoples. something sim­ ilar also happens to us: on our own journey, we are called to leave behind those ties and attachments that, by keeping us enclosed in our own groups, prevent us from welcom­ ing god's boundless love and from seeing others as our brothers and sisters. we need to move beyond ourselves, because we need one another. the pandemic has made us realize that "no one is saved alone" (fratelli tutti) 54). still, the temptation to withdraw from others is never-ending, yet at the same time we know that lithe notion ofevery man for himself will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic" (36). amid the tempests we are currently experiencing, such isolation will not save us. nor will an arms race or the erection of walls 66 against war that will only make us all the more distant and aggressive. nor the idolatry of money, for it closes us in on ourselves and creates chasms of inequality that engulf humanity. nor can we be saved by consumerism, which numbs the mind and deadens the heart. the way that heaven points out for our journey is another: the way of peace. it demands, especially amid the tempest, that we row together on the same side. it is shameful that, while all of us have suffered from the cri­ sis of the pandemic, especially here, where conflicts have caused so much suffering, anyone should be concerned simply for his own affairs. there will be no peace with­ out sharing and acceptance, without a justice that ensures equity and advancement for all, beginning with those most vulnerable. there will be no peace unless peoples extend a hand to other peoples. there will be no peace as long as we see others as them and not us. there will be no peace as long as our alliances are against others, for alliances of some against others only increase divisions. peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity. let us ask for this in praying for the whole middle east. here i think especially of neighboring war-torn syria. the patriarch abraham, who today brings us together in unity, was a prophet of the most high. an ancient prophecy says that the peoples "shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks" (is 2:4). this prophecy has not been fulfilled; on the contrary, mo rrvo u� peace and fraternity 67 swords and spears have turned into missiles and bombs. from where, then, can the journey of peace begin2 from the decision not to have enemies. anyone with the courage to look at the stars, anyone who believes in god, has no enemies to fight. he or she has only one enemy to face, an enemy that stands at the door of the heart and knocks to enter. that enemy is hatred. while some try to have ene­ mies more than to be friends, while many seek their own profit at the expense of others, those who look at the stars of the promise, those who follow the ways of god, cannot be against someone, but for everyone. they cannot justify any form of imposition, oppression, and abuse of power; they cannot adopt an attitude of belligerence. dear friends, is all this possible? father abraham, who was able to hope against all hope (see rom 4:18), encour­ ages us. throughout history, we have frequently pursued goals that are overly worldly and journeyed on our own, but with the help of god, we can change for the better. it is up to us, today's humanity, especially those of us, believers of all religions, to turn instruments of hatred into instru­ ments of peace. it is up to us to appeal firmly to the lead­ ers of nations to make the increasing proliferation of arms give way to the distribution of food for all. it is up to us to silence mutual accusations in order to make heard the cry of the oppressed and discarded in our world: all too many people lack food, medicine, education, rights, and dignity! it is up to us to shed light on the shady maneuvers that revolve around money and to demand that money not end up always and only reinforcing the unbridled luxury of a 68 against war peace few. it is up to us to preserve our common home from our predatory aims. it is up to us to remind the world that human life has value for what it is and not for what it has. that the lives of the unborn, the elderly, migrants, and men and women, whatever the color of their skin or their nationality, are always sacred and count as much as the lives of everyone else! it is up to us to have the courage to lift up our eyes and look at the stars, the stars that our father abraham saw, the stars of the promise. the journey of abraham was a blessing of peace. yet it was not easy: he had to face struggles and unforeseen events. we too have a rough journey ahead, but like the great patriarch, we need to take concrete steps to set out and seek the face of others, to share memories, gazes and silences, stories and experiences. i was struck by the testi­ mony of dawood and hasan, a christian and a muslim, respectively, who, undaunted by the differences between them, studied and worked together. together they built the future and realized that they are brothers. in order to move forward, we too need to achieve something good and concrete together. this is the way, especially for young peo� ple, who must not see their dreams cut short by the con­ flicts of the past! it is urgent to teach them fraternity, to teach them to look at the stars. this is a real emergency; it will be the most effective vaccine for a future of peace. for you, dear young people, are our present and our future! only with others can the wounds of the past be healed. rafah told us of the heroic example of najy, from the sabean mandean community, who lost his life in an attern many world alwt force [ureo �lven ra�t ( rell�lo to�et� dream welca neave arevu maul peace and fraternity 69 attempt to save the family of his muslim neighbor. how many people here, amid the silence and indifference of the world, have embarked upon journeys of fraternity! rafah also told us of the unspeakable sufferings of the war that forced many to abandon home and country in search of a future for their children. thank you, rafah, for having shared with us your firm determination to stay here, in the land of your fathers. may those who were unable to do so, and had to flee, find a kindly welcome, befitting those who are vulnerable and suffering. it was precisely through hospitality, a distinctive iea­ ture of these lands, that abraham was visited by god and given the gift of a son, when it seemed that all hope was past (see gen 18:1-10). brothers and sisters of different religions, here we find ourselves at home, and from here, together, we wish to commit ourselves to fulfilling god's dream that the human family may become hospitable and welcoming to all his children; that looking up to the same heaven, it will journey in peace on the same earth. interfaith meeting ur plain march 6, 2021 love wins jesus, who is wisdom in person, completes this reversal in the gospel, and he does so with his very first sermon, with the beatitudes. the reversal is total: the poor, those who mourn, the persecuted are all called blessed. how is this 70 against war possible? for the world, it is the rich, the powerful, and the famous who are blessed! it is those with wealth and means who count! but not for god: it is no longer the rich who are great, but the poor in spirit; not those who can impose their will on others, but those who are gentle with all. not those acclaimed by the crowds, but those who show mercy to their brothers and sisters. at this point, we may won­ der: if i live as jesus asks, what do i gain� don't i risk let­ ting others lord it over me? is jesus's invitation worthwhile or a lost cause? that invitation is not worthless, but wise. jesus's invitation is wise because love, which is the heart of the beatitudes, even if it seems weak in the world's eyes, in fact always triumphs. on the cross, it proved stronger than sin; in the tomb, it vanquished death. that same love made the martyrs victorious in their trials-and how many martyrs have there been in the last century, more even than in the past! love is our strength, the source of strength for those of our broth­ ers and sisters who here too have suffered prejudice and indignities, mistreatment and persecutions for the name of jesus. yet while the power, the glory, and the vanity of the world pass away, love remains. as the apostle paul told us, "love never ends" (1 cor 13:8). to live a life shaped by the beatitudes, then, is to make passing things eternal, to bring heaven to earth. but how do we practice the beatitudes? they do not ask us to do extraordinary things, feats beyond our abili­ ties. they ask for daily witness. the blessed are those who live meekly, who show mercy wherever they happen to be, who are pure of heart wherever they live. to be blessed, wear mo evil peace and fraternity 71 we do not need to become occasional heroes, but to become witnesses day after day. witness is the way to embody the wisdom ofjesus. that is how the world is changed: not by power and might, but by the beatitudes. for that is what jesus did: he lived to the end what he said from the begin­ ning. everything depends on bearing witness to the love of jesus, that same charity that saint paul magnificently describes in today's second reading [1 cor 13:4-7j. let us see how he presents it. first, paul says that "love is patient" (v. 4). we were not expecting this adjective. love seems synonymous with goodness, generosity, and good works, yet paul says that charity is above all patient. the bible speaks first and foremost of god's patience. throughout history, men and women proved constantly unfaithful to the covenant with god, falling into the same old sins. yet instead of growing weary and walking away, the lord always remained faith­ ful, forgave and began anew. this patience to begin anew each time is the first quality of love, because love is not irritable, but always starts over again. love does not grow weary and despondent, but always presses ahead. it does not get discouraged, but stays creative. faced with evil, it does not give up or surrender. those who love do not close in on themselves when things go wrong, but respond to evil with good, mindful of the triumphant wisdom of the cross. god's witnesses are like that: not passive or fatal­ istic, at the mercy of happenings, feelings, or immediate events. instead, they are constantly hopeful, because they are grounded in the love that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (v. 7). 72 against war peace we can ask ourselves: how do we react to situations udo that are not right? in the face of adversity, there are always hhi two temptations. the first is flight: we can run away, turn look our backs, trying to keep aloof from it all. the second is to wnon react with anger, with a show of force. such was the case dna�[ of the disciples in gethsemane: in their bewilderment, �ooul many fled and peter took up the sword. yet neither flight ivona nor the sword achieved anything. jesus, on the other hand, g changed history. how? with the humble power of love, iroke with his patient witness. this is what we are called to do, r1dli� and this is how god fulfills his promises. w1e! promises. the wisdom ofjesus, embodied in the beat� notf� itudes, calls for witness and offers the reward contained in worl the divine promises. for each beatitude is immediately fol� r1tie lowed by a promise: those who practice them will possess li!ter the kingdom of heaven, they will be comforted, they will t01p be satisfied, they will see god ... (see mt 5:3-12). god's i!hea promises guarantee unrivaled joy and never disappoint. rou,l but how are they fulfilled? through our weaknesses. god ju�ti� makes blessed those who travel the path of their inner rour poverty to the very end. 1 this is the way; there is no other. let us look to the wner patriarch abraham. god promised him a great offspring, dn�e but he and sarah are now elderly and childless. yet it is rre(i precisely in their patient and faithful old age that god ruje� works wonders and gives them a son. let us also look to moses: god promises that he will free the people from slavery, and to do so he asks moses to speak to pharaoh. even though moses says he is not good with words, it is through his words that god will fulfill his promise. let peace and fraternity 73 us look to our lady, who under the law could not have a child, yet was called to become a mother. and let us look to peter: he denies the lord, yet he is the very one whomjesus calls to strengthen his brethren. dear brothers and sisters, at times we may feel helpless and useless. we should never give in to this, because god wants to work wonders precisely through our weaknesses. god loves to do that, and tonight, eight times, he has spoken to us the word tab'a [blessed], in order to make us realize that, with him, we truly are "blessed:' of course, we experience trials, and we frequently fall, but let us not forget that, with jesus, we are blessed. whatever the world takes from us is nothing compared to the tender and patient love with which the lord fulfills his promises. dear sister, dear brother, perhaps when you look at your hands they seem empty, perhaps you feel disheartened and unsat­ isfied by life. if so, do not be afraid: the beatitudes are for you. for you who are afflicted, who hunger and thirst for justice, who are persecuted. the lord promises yoll that your name is written on his heart, written in heaven! today i thank god with you and for you, because here, where wisdom arose in ancient times, so many witnesses have arisen in our own time, often overlooked by the news, yet precious in god's eyes. witnesses who, by living the beati­ tudes, are helping god to fulfill his promises of peace. homily baghdad march 6, 2021 74 against war peace our gathering here today shows that terrorism and death never have the last word. the last word belongs to god and to his son, the conqueror of sin and death. even amid the ravages of terrorism and war, we can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death. you have before you the example of your fathers and mothers in faith, who worshiped and praised god in this place. they persevered with unwavering hope along their earthly journey, trusting in god who never disappoints and who constantly sus­ tains us by his grace. the great spiritual legacy they left behind continues to live in you. embrace this legacy! it is your strength! now is the time to rebuild and to start afresh, relying on the grace of god, who guides the desti­ nies of all individuals and peoples. you are not alone! the entire church is close to you, with prayers and concrete charity. and in this region, so many people opened their doors to you in time of need. dear friends, this is the time to restore not just build­ ings but also the bonds of community that unite commu­ nities and families, the young and the old together. ti1e prophet joel says, (tour sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions" (3:1). when the old and the young come together, what happens? 111e old dream dreams, they dream of a future for the young. and the young can take those dreams and prophecy, make them reality. when old and young come together, we preserve and pass on the gifts that god gives. we look upon our (hild 1 wit that; 1ou:i do nl for�e� �i when forro in tn� atti don from to tn� lreal re�e �a! jesus at oula side �ift� ternt fort ture men teli�i ana tlrn (om peace and fraternity 75 children, knowing that they will inherit not only a land, a culture, and a tradition, but also the living fruits of faith that are god's blessings upon this land. so i encourage you: do not forget who you are and where you come from! do not forget the bonds that hold you together! do not forget to preserve your roots! surely, there will be moments when faith can waver, when it seems that god does not see or act. this was true for you in the darkest days of the war, and it is true too in these days of global health crisis and great insecurity. at times like these, remember that jesus is by your side. do not stop dreaming! do not give up! do not lose hope! from heaven the saints are watching over us. let us pray to them and never tire of begging their intercession. there are also the saints next door, "who, living in our midst, reflect god's presence" (gaudate et exsultate, 7). this land has many of them, because it is a land of many holy men and women. let them accompany you to a better future, a future of hope.... at all times, let us offer thanks to god for his gracious gifts and ask him to grant his peace, forgiveness, and fra­ ternity to this land and its people. let us pray tirelessly for the conversion of hearts and for the triumph of a cul­ ture of life, reconciliation, and fraternal love between all men and women, with respect for differences and diverse religious traditions, in the effort to build a future of unity and cooperation between all people of goodwill-a fra­ ternallove that recognizes lithe fundamental values of our common humanity, values in the name of which we can 76 against war peace and must cooperate, build and dialogue, pardon and grow" (fratelli tutti, 283). as i arrived on the helicopter, i saw the statue of mary on this church of the immaculate conception. to her i entrusted the rebirth of this city. our lady does not only protect us from on high but comes down to us with a mother's love. her image here has met with mistreatment and disrespect, yet the face of the mother of god contin­ ues to look upon us with love. for that is what mothers do: they console, they comfort, and they give life. i would like to say a heartfelt thank-you to all the mothers and women of this country, women of courage who continue to give life, in spite of wrongs and hurts. may women be respected and protected! may they be shown respect and provided with opportunities! w(ne �n to address to the community of qaraqosh march 7, 2021 rdl�� ll� o� lora church and society open to all in the gospel on 2:13-25), we see how jesus drove out from the temple in jerusalem the moneychangers and all the buyers and sellers. why did jesus do something this forceful and provocative? he did it because the father sent him to cleanse the temple-not only the temple of stone, but above all the temple of our heart. jesus could not tol­ erate his father's house becoming a marketplace (see jn 2:16); neither does he want our hearts to be places of tur­ moil, disorder, and confusion. our heart must be cleansed, peace and fraternity 77 put in order, and purified. of what? of the falsehoods that stain it, from hypocritical duplicity. all of us have these. they are diseases that harm the heart, soil our lives, and make them insincere. we need to be cleansed of the decep ... tive securities that would barter our faith in god with passing things, with temporary advantages. we need the baneful temptations of power and money to be swept from our hearts and from the church. to cleanse our hearts, we need to dirty our hands, to feel accountable, and not to simply look on as our brothers and sisters are suffering. how do we purify our hearts? by our own efforts, we can ... not; we need jesus. he has the power to conquer our evils, to heal our diseases, to rebuild the temple of our heart. to show this, and as a sign of his authority, jesus goes on to say, "destroy this temple, and in three days i will raise it up" on 2:19). jesus christ, he alone, can cleanse us of the works of evil. jesus, who died and rose! jesus, the lord! dear brothers and sisters, god does not let us die in our sins. even when we turn our backs on him, he never leaves us to our own devices. he seeks us out, runs after us, to call us to repentance and to cleanse us of our sins. las i live, says the lord, i have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (ezek 33:11). the lord wants us to be saved and to become living temples of his love, in fraternity, in service, iii mercy. jesus not only cleanses us of our sins, but he also gives us a share in his own power and wisdom. he liberates us from the narrow and divisive notions of family, faith, and 78 against war peace community that divide, oppose, and exclude, so that we lna� can build a church and a society open to everyone and liket concerned for our brothers and sisters in greatest need. at f�err the same time, he strengthens us to resist the temptation to futufi seek revenge, which only plunges lls into a spiral of endless retaliation. in the power of the holy spirit, he sends us forth, not as proselytizers, but as missionary disciples, men and women called to testify to the life-changing power of the gospel. ti1e risen lord makes us instruments of god's mercy and peace, patient and courageous artisans of a new social order. in this way, by the power of christ and the holy spirit, the prophetic words of the apostle paul to the corinthians are fulfilled: "god's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and god's wisdom is stronger than human strength" (1 cor 1:25). christian communities made up of simple and lowly people become a sign of the coming of his kingdom, a kingdom of love, justice, and peace. "destroy this temple, and in three days i will raise it up" on 2:19). jesus was speaking about the temple of his body, and about the church as well. the lord promises us that, by the power of the resurrection, he can raise us, and our communities, from the ruins left by injustice, division, and hatred. that is the promise we celebrate in this eucha­ rist. with the eyes of faith, we recognize the presence of the crucified and risen lord in our midst. and we learn to embrace his liberating wisdom, to rest in his wounds, and to find healing and strength to serve the coming of his kingdom in our world. by his wounds, we have been healed (see 1 pet 2:24). in those wounds, dear brothers peace and fraternity 79 and sisters, we find the balm of his merciful love. for he, like the good samaritan of humanity, wants to anoint every hurt, to heal every painful memory, and to inspire a future of peace and fraternity in this land. homily erbil march 7, 2021 abe witn a better world when the seed dies, it bears much fruit today is the day i keep in my heart, that february 15th of 2015. i hold in my heart that baptism of blood, those twenty-one men baptized as christians with water and the spirit, and that day also baptized with blood. they are our saints, saints of all christians, saints of all christian denominations and traditions. they are those who made their lives white in the blood of the lamb, they are those ... of the people of god, the faithful people of god. they had gone to work abroad to support their fami­ lies: ordinary men, fathers of families, men with the dream [ desire] to have children; men with the dignity of workers, who not only seek to bring home bread, but to bring it home with the dignity of work. and these men bore witness to jesus christ. their throats slit by the brutality of isis, they died uttering, "lord jesus!" confessing the name ofjesus. it is true that this was a tragedy, that these people lost their lives on the beach; but it is also true that the beach was blessed by their blood. and it is even truer that from their simplicity, from their simple but consistent faith, they received the greatest gift a christian can receive: bearing 80 ratio ana a better world 81 witness to jesus christ to the point of giving their life. i thank god our father because he gave us these cou­ rageous brothers. i thank the holy spirit because he gave them the strength and consistency to confess jesus christ to the point of shedding their blood. i thank the bishops, the priests of the coptic sister church that raised them and taught them to grow in the faith. and i thank the mothers of these people, of these twenty-one men, who "nursed" them in the faith: they are the mothers of god's holy people who transmit the faith "in dialect;' a dialect that goes beyond languages, the dialect of belonging. i join all of you, brother bishops, in this commemo­ ration. to you, great, beloved tawadros, brother bishop and friend. to you, justin welby, who also wished to come to this meeting. and to all the other bishops and priests, but above all i join the holy faithful people of god who in their simplicity, with their consistency and inconsistencies, with their graces and sins, carry forth the confession of jesus christ! jesus christ is lord. i thank you, twenty-one saints, christian saints of all confessions, for your witness. and i thank you, lord jesus christ, for being so close to your people, for not forgetting them. let us pray together today in memory of these twenty-one coptic martyrs! may they intercede for us all before the father. amen. video message in memory of the coptic martyrs killed in libya february 15, 2021 82 against war we do not have weapons. we believe, however, in the meek and humble strength of prayer. on this day, the thirst for peace has become a prayer to god, that wars, terrorism, and violence may end. the peace that we invoke from assisi is not simply a protest against war, nor is it ita result of negotiations, political compromises or eco­ nomic bargaining. it is the result of prayer" (john paul ii, address) october 27,1986). we seek in god, who is the source of communion, the clear waters of peace for which humanity thirsts! these waters do not flow from the des­ erts of pride and personal interests, from the dry earth of profit at any cost and the arms trade. our religious traditions are diverse. but our differ� ences are not the cause of conflict and dispute, or a cold distance between us. we have not prayed against one another today, as has unfortunately sometimes occurred in history. without syncretism or relativism, we have rather prayed side by side and for each other. in this very place saint john paul ii said, "more perhaps than ever before in history, the intrinsic link between an authentic religious attitude and the great good of peace has become evident to au:' continuing the journey that began thirty years ago in assisi, where the memory of that man of god and of peace who was saint francis remains alive, "once again, gathered here together, we declare that whoever uses religion to foment violence contradicts religion's deepest and truest inspiration" (john paul ii, address to representatives of the world religions) assisi, january 24, 2002). we further peace is a gift a better world 83 declare that violence in all its forms does not represent lithe true nature of religion. it is the antithesis of religion and contributes to its destruction" (benedict xvi, address, assisi, october 27, 2011). we never tire of repeating that the name of god cannot be used to justify violence. peace alone is holy. peace alone is holy, not war! today we have pleaded for the holy gift of peace. we have prayed that consciences will be mobilized to defend the sacredness of human life, to promote peace between peoples, and to care for creation, our common home. prayer and concrete acts of cooperation help us to break free from the logic of conflict and to reject the rebellious attitudes of those who know only how to protest and be angry. prayer and the desire to work together commit us to a true peace that is not illusory: not the calm of one who avoids difficulties and turns away, if his personal interests are not at risk; it is not the cynicism of one who washes his hands of any problem that is not his; it is not the virtual approach of one who judges everything and everyone using a computer keyboard, without opening his eyes to the needs of his brothers and sisters, and dirtying his hands for those in need. our path leads us to immersing our ... selves in situations and giving first place to those who suf ... fer; to taking on conflicts and healing them from within; to following ways of goodness with consistency, rejecting the shortcuts offered by evil; to patiently engaging processes of peace, in goodwill and with god's help. peace, a thread of hope that unites earth to heaven, a word so simple and difficult at the same time. peace means forgiveness, the fruit of conversion and prayer, that is born 84 against war from within and that, in god's name, makes it possible to heal old wounds. peace means welcome, openness to dialogue, the overcoming of closed-rnindedness, which is not a strategy for safety, but rather a bridge over an empty space. peace means cooperation, a concrete and active exchange with another, who is a gift and not a problem, a brother or sister with whom to build a better world. peace denotes education, a call to learn every day the challenging art of communion, to acquire a culture of encounter, puri­ fying the conscience of every temptation to violence and stubbornness which are contrary to the name of god and human dignity. address to representatives of churches, christian communities) and religions assisi september 20,2016 there is no alternative to peace encounter and unity are always to be sought, without fear of diversity. so it is with peace: it too must be cultivated in the parched soil of conflict and discord, because today, in spite of everything, there is no real alternative to peace� making. truces maintained by walls and displays of power will not lead to peace, but only the concrete desire to listen and to engage in dialogue. we commit ourselves to walk­ ing, praying, and working together, in the hope that the art of encounter will prevail over strategies of conflict-in a better world 85 the hope that the display of threatening signs ofpower will yield to the power of signs: men and women of goodwill of different beliefs, unafraid of dialogue, open to the ideas of others and concerned for their good. only in this way, by ensuring that no one lacks bread and work, dignity and hope, will the cries of war turn into songs of peace. address at the conclusion of the dialogue bari, italy july 7,2018 peace comes from the cross everyone who follows christ receives true peace, the peace that christ alone can give, a peace that the world cannot give. many people, when they think of saint francis, think of peace; very few people, however, go deeper. what is the peace that francis received, experienced, and lived, and which he passes on to us? it is the peace of christ, which is born of the greatest love of all, the love of the cross. it is the peace that the risen jesus gave to his disciples when he stood in their midst (see in 20:19-20). franciscan peace is not something saccharine. hardly! that is not the real saint francis! nor is it a kind of pan-­ theistic harmony with forces of the cosmos.... that is not franciscan either! it is not franciscan, but a notion that some people have invented! the peace of saint francis is the peace of christ, and it is found by those who "take up" their "yoke," namely, christ's commandment: love one 86 against war another as i have loved you (see jn 13:34; 15:12). this yoke cannot be borne with arrogance, presumption, or pride, but only with meekness and humbleness of heart. we turn to you, francis, and we ask you: teach us to be "instruments of peace;' of that peace that has its source in god, the peace that jesus has brought. homily assisi october 4) 2013 true peace costs before leaving, the lord greets his followers and gives the gift of peace (see jn 14:27-31), the lord's peace: ii peace i leave with you; my peace i give to you. not as the world gives do i give it to you. do not let your hearts be trou­ bled or afraid" (v. 27). it is not universal peace-that peace without wars that we all want there to be forever-but the peace of the heart, the peace of the soul, the peace that each one of us has inside. and the lord gives it, but, he emphasizesv''not as the world gives" (v. 27). how does the world give peace, and how does the lord give it? are they different forms of peace? yes. the world gives you "inner peace" -we are talking about this, peace in your life, living with your "heart at peace"-it gives you inner peace as if it were your own pos� session, like something that is yours and isolates you from others, that you keep for yourself, a personal acquisition: i am at peace. and without realizing it you close yourself wna� full� tnou rut i�jtlni�h ii),] tnen wner it i� )'ou; a better 'world 87 up in that peace. it is a peace that is only for you, for each person; it is a solitary peace, it is a peace that makes you serene, even happy. and in this tranquility, in this happi .. ness, it can lull you to sleep; it anesthetizes you and makes you stay within yourself in a certain tranquility. it is a bit selfish: peace for me, closed up in myself. this is how the hu�' world gives it to you (see v, 27). it is a costly peace, because .k you must continually change the "instruments of peace": o:·�i j'�:� when you are enthusiastic about something, one thing gives you peace; then it ends and you have to find another. it is costly because it is temporary and sterile. instead, the peace that jesus gives is another thing. it is a peace that puts you in motion: it does not isolate you. it puts you in motion, it makes you go toward others, it creates community, it creates communication. the world's peace is costly, whereas jesus's is freely given, it is free; it is a gift from the lord, the peace of the lord. it is fruitful, it always leads you forward. an example from the gospel that makes me think of what the world's peace is like is that man whose barns were full and whose harvest that year seemed to be very big, and thought, hi must build other warehouses, other barns to put this in, and then i will be fine.... 111is is my tranquil .. ity, this way i can live serenely:' "you fool;' says god, "rhis night your life will be demanded of you" (see lk 12: 1321). it is a temporary peace that does not open the door to the hereafter. instead the lord's peace opens to the place where he went, it is open to heaven, it is open to paradise. it is a fruitful peace that is open and brings others with you as well to paradise. 88 abelagainst war i think that it would help us to think a bit: what kind of peace do i have? where do i find peace? in things, in well-being, in travel-but nowadays one cannot travel­ in possessions, in many things, or do i find peace as a gift from the lord? must i pay for peace, or do i receive it freely from the lord? what kind of peace do i have? when i am missing something, do i get angry? this is not the lord's peace. this is one of the tests. am i calm in my peace, do i get "lulled to sleep"? it is not the lord's. am i in peace and do i want to communicate it to others, do i want to accomplish something? that is the lord's peace! even in bad or difficult moments, does that peace remain in me? it is the lord's. and the lord's peace is fruitful for me too, because it is full of hope-that is, it looks toward heaven. yesterday-excuse me if i say these things, but they are things about life that are good for me-yesterday i received a letter from a priest, a good priest. and he said to me that i speak little about heaven. i should speak about it more. and he is right, he is right. and because of this, i wanted to emphasize it today. that the peace jesus gives us is a peace for today and for the future. it is beginning to live heaven, with the fruitfulness of heaven. it is not anes­ thesia. the other peace is: you anesthetize yourself with things of the world, and when the dose of this anesthetic wears off, you take another one, and another.... this peace [of jesus] is a definitive peace, fruitful and "contagious," it is not narcissistic, because it always looks to the lord. the other form of peace is about looking at yourself; it is a bit narcissistic. a better world may the lord give us this peace, full of hope, that makes us fruitful, that makes us communicative with oth­ ers, that creates community, and that always looks to the definitive peace of paradise. homily chapel of the casa santa marta may 12) 2020 nonviolence: a style ofpolitics for peace this is the fiftieth message for the world day of peace.... on this occasion, i would like to reflect on nonviolence as a style of politics for peace. i ask god to help all of us to cultivate nonviolence in our most personal thoughts and values. may charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in interna­ tionallife. when victims of violence are able to resist the temptation to retaliate, they become the most credible promoters of nonviolent peacemaking. in the most local and ordinary situations and in the international order, may nonviolence become the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships, and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms. while the last century knew the devastation of two deadly world wars, the threat of nuclear war, and a great number of other conflicts, today, sadly, we find ourselves engaged in a horrifying world warfought piecemeal. it is not easy to know if our world is presently more or less vio­ lent than in the past, or to know whether modern means 89 90 against war abe of communications and greater mobility have made us neal( more aware of violence, or, on the other hand, increasingly recoi inured to it. iou; in any case, we know that this piecemeal violence, of nave different kinds and levels, causes great suffering: wars in 1 different countries and continents; terrorism, organized 1i1�1 crime, and unforeseen acts of violence; the abuses suf(mj1fered by migrants and victims of human trafficking; and oeca the devastation of the environment. where does this lead? 11111(11 can violence achieve any goal of lasting value? or does it �itua merely lead to retaliation and a cycle of deadly conflicts nwr� that benefit only a few "warlords"? \an violence is not the cure for our broken world. . . . cnri jesus himself lived in violent times. yet he taught that are the true battlefield, where violence and peace meet, is the human heart: for "it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come" (mk 7:21). but christ's mes­ sage in this regard offers a radically positive approach. he unfailingly preached god's unconditional love, which welcomes and forgives. he taught his disciples to love their non enemies (see mt 5 :44) and to turn the other cheek (see �ut mt 5:39). when he stopped her accusers from stoning ana the woman caught in adultery (see jn 8:1-11), and when, on the night before he died, he told peter to put away his na�1 sword (see mt 26:52), jesus marked out the path of nonmili violence. he walked that path to the very end, to the cross, �on whereby he became our peace and put an end to hostility m� (see eph 2:14-16). whoever accepts the good news of lor jesus is able to acknowledge the violence within and be nlrei a better world 91 healed by god's mercy, becoming in turn an instrument of reconciliation. in the words of saint francis of assisi, "as you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that you have greater peace in your hearts:' to be true followers of jesus today also includes embracing his teaching about nonviolence. as my prede­ cessor benedict xvi observed, that teaching his realistic because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and therefore that this situation cannot be overcome except by countering it with more love, with more goodness. this'more' comes from god" (angelus, february 18, 2007). he went on to stress, "for christians, nonviolence is not merely tactical behavior but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who is so con­ vinced of god's love and power that he or she is not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. love of ones enemy constitutes the nucleus of the 'christian rev­ olution:" the gospel command to love your enemies (see lk 6:27) his rightly considered the magna carta of christian nonviolence. it does not consist in succumbing to evil ... , but in responding to evil with good (see rom 12:17-21), and thereby breaking the chain of injustice:' the decisive and consistent practice of nonviolence has produced impressive results. the achievements of mahatma gandhi and abdul ghaffar khan in the libera­ tion of india, and of dr. martin luther kingjr. in combat­ ing racial discrimination will never be forgotten. women in particular are often leaders of nonviolence, as, for exam­ ple, were leymah gbowee and the thousands of liberian 92 against war abel women who organized pray-ins and nonviolent protests that resulted in high-level peace talks to end the second civil war in liberia. nor can we forget the eventful decade that ended with the fall of communist regimes in europe. the chris­ tian communities made their own contribution by their insistent prayer and courageous action. particularly influ­ ential were the ministry and teaching of saint john paul ii. reflecting on the events of 1989 in his 1991 encyclical centesimus annus, my predecessor highlighted the fact that momentous change in the lives of people, nations, and states had come about "by means of peaceful protest, using only the weapons of truth and justice:' this peaceful politi­ cal transition was made possible in part "by the nonviolent commitment of people who, while always refusing to yield to the force of power, succeeded time after time in finding effective ways of bearing witness to the truth:' pope john paul went on to say, "may people learn to fight for justice without violence, renouncing class struggle in their inter­ nal disputes and war in international ones" (ca 23). peacebuilding through active nonviolence is the nat­ ural and necessary complement to the church's continu­ ing efforts to limit the use of force by the application of moral norms; she does so by her participation in the work of international institutions and through the competent contribution made by so many christians to the drafting of legislation at all levels. jesus himself offers arnanual" for this strategy of peacemaking in the sermon on the mount. the eight beatitudes (see mt 5:3-10) provide a portrait of toep ticb toep wool 1 anau tion� �eati tie�, i ou�il ope d more in tn (du�� nonv auiv 1aliu iel men for� t�ro a better world 93 the person we could describe as blessed, good, and authen­ tic. blessed are the meek, jesus tells us, the merciful and the peacemakers, those who are pure in heart, and those who hunger and thirst for justice. this is also a program and a challenge for political and religious leaders, the heads of international institu­ tions, and business and media executives: to apply the beatitudes in the exercise of their respective responsibili­ ties. it is a challenge to build up society, communities, and businesses by acting as peacemakers. it is to show mercy by refusing to discard people, harm the environment, or seek to win at any cost. to do so requires "the willing� ness to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process" (evangelii gaudium 227). to act in this way means to choose solidarity as a way of making history and building friendship in society. active nonviolence is a way of showing that unity is truly more powerful and more fruitful than conflict. everything in the world is interconnected. certainly differences can cause frictions. but let us face them constructively and nonviolently, so that "tensions and oppositions can achieve a diversified and life�giving unity," preserving "what is valid and useful on both sides" (227). mary is the queen of peace. at the birth of her son, the angels gave glory to god and wished peace on earth to men and women of goodwill (see luke 2:14). let us pray for her guidance. all of us want peace. many people build it day by day through small gestures and acts; many of them are suffering, 94 against war yet patiently persevere in their efforts to be peacemakers. may we dedicate ourselves prayerfully and actively to ban­ ishing violence from our hearts, words, and deeds, and to becoming nonviolent people and to building nonviolent communities that care for our common home. nothing is impossible if we turn to god in prayer. everyone can be an artisan of peace. message for the fiftieth world day of peace january i, 2017 an ��ttt th� n tion� num mar �m�r cd!, foun1 1 lv�tnlr1j1c d(nt an artisanal path peace is a path setting out on a journey of peace is a challenge made all the more complex because the interests at stake in rela­ tionships between people, communities, and nations are numerous and conflicting. we must first appeal to people's moral conscience and to personal and political will. peace emerges from the depths of the human heart, and politi­ cal will must always be renewed so that new ways can be found to reconcile and unite individuals and communities. the world does not need empty words but convinced witnesses, peacemakers who are open to a dialogue that rejects exclusion or manipulation. in fact, we cannot truly achieve peace without a convinced dialogue between men and women who seek the truth beyond ideologies and differing opinions. peace "must be built up continu­ ally" (gaudium et spes, 78); it is a journey made together in constant pursuit of the common good, truthfulness, and respect for law. listening to one another can lead to mutual understanding and esteem, and even to seeing in an enemy the face of a brother or sister. 95 96 against war ana the peace process thus requires enduring commitment. (�eel it is a patient effort to seek truth and justice, to honor the fora memory of victims, and to open the way, step by step, to �ood a shared hope stronger than the desire for vengeance. in a (nr!: state based on law, democracy can be an important para1duel digm of this process, provided it is grounded in justice and a 1 commitment to protect the rights of every person, especially t1ml the weak and marginalized, in a constant search for truth. humithis is a social undertaking, an ongoing work in which each otne individual makes his or her contribution responsibly, at aau� every level of the local, national, and global community. mea as saint paul vi pointed out, these "two aspirations, �ut to equality and to participation, seek to promote a demo�re cratic society.... this calls for an education to social life, len� involving not only the knowledge of each person's rights, but also its necessary correlative: the recognition of his or folio her duties with regard to others. the sense and practice oftel of duty are themselves conditioned by the capacity for a� self-mastery and by the acceptance of responsibility and roll of the limits placed upon the freedom of individuals or the tn!! groups" (octogesima adveniens, 24). tne divisions within a society, the increase of social (ara inequalities, and the refusal to employ the means of ensur\vb ing integral human development endanger the pursuit of i�tl the common good. yet patient efforts based on the power of the word and of truth can help foster a greater capacity tned for compassion and creative solidarity. ate� in our christian experience, we constantly remember true christ, who gave his life to reconcile us to one another am an artisanal path 97 (see rom 5:6-11). the church shares fully in the search for a just social order; she continues to serve the common good and to nourish the hope for peace by transmitting christian values and moral teaching, and by her social and educational works. the bible, especially in the words of the prophets, reminds individuals and peoples of god's covenant with humanity, which entails renouncing our desire to dominate others and learning to see one another as persons, sons and daughters of god, brothers and sisters. we should never encapsulate others in what they may have said or done, but value them for the promise that they embody. only by choosing the path of respect can we break the spiral of vengeance and set out on the journey of hope. we are guided by the gospel passage that tells of the following conversation between peter and jesus: ii lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and i forgive him? as many as seven times?" jesus said to him, iii do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven" (mt 18:21-22). this path of reconciliation is a summons to discover in the depths of our heart the power of forgiveness and the capacity to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters. when we learn to live in forgiveness, we grow in our capac� ity to become men and women of peace. what is true of peace in a social context is also true in the areas of politics and the economy, since peace perme� ates every dimension of life in common. there can be no true peace unless we show ourselves capable of developing a more just economic system. as pope benedict xvi said 98 against war an) ten years ago in his encyclical letter caritas in veritate, uin order to defeat underdevelopment, action is required not only on improving exchange ... based transactions and implanting public welfare structures, but above all on grad­ ually increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion" (no. 39). the journey of reconciliation calls for patience and trust. peace will not be obtained unless it is hoped for. in the first place, this means believing in the possibility of peace, believing that others need peace just as much as we do. here we can find inspiration in the love that god has for each of us: a love that is liberating, limitless, gratu­ itous, and tireless. fear is frequently a source of conflict. so it is import­ ant to overcome our human fears and acknowledge that we are needy children in the eyes of the one who loves us and awaits us, like the father of the prodigal son (see lk 15:11-24). the culture of fraternal encounter shatters the culture of conflict. it makes of every encounter a possibil­ ity and a gift of god's generous love. it leads us beyond the limits of our narrow horizons and constantly encourages us to a live in a spirit of universal fraternity, as children of the one heavenly father. message for the liii world day of peace january l 2020 dia �u� not unt tion an artisanal path peace is daily peace is not a document that gets signed and then filed away. peace is built day by day! and peace is crafted; it is the work of our hands; it is built up by the way we live our lives. but someone may say, "tell me, father, how can i build peace? how can i be a peacemaker?" first: never hate anyone. if someone wrongs you, seek to forgive. no hatred! much forgiveness! let us all say this together: "no hatred! much forgiveness!" [all repeat in sango.] and if hatred does not dwell in your heart, if you forgive, then you will be a winner. because you will win the hardest bat­ tle in life; you will win in love. and from love comes peace. homily during the prayer vigil bangui (central african republic) november 29) 2015 dialogue opens the way social peace demands hard work, craftsmanship. it would be easier to keep freedoms and differences in check with cleverness and a few resources. but such a peace would be superficial and fragile, not the fruit of a culture of encoun­ ter that brings enduring stability. integrating differences is a much more difficult and slow process, yet it is the guarantee of a genuine and lasting peace. that peace is not achieved by recourse only to those who are pure and untainted, since "even people who can be considered ques­ tionable on account of their errors have something to offer 99 100 against war which must not be overlooked" (evangelii gaudium, 236). nor does it come from ignoring social demands or quell­ ing disturbances, since it is not "a consensus on paper or a transient peace for a contented minority" (208). what is important is to create processes of encounter, processes that build a people that can accept differences. let us arm our children with the weapons of dialogue! let us teach them to fight the good fight of the culture of encounter! fratelli tutti} 217 forpf w&( i� ro� 11arn iod it can be done with simplicity. perhaps the rancor remains; perhaps the resentment remains in us, but we are making the effort to follow the path of this god who is so good, merciful, holy, and perfect that he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good: he is for everyone, he is good for everyone. we must be good to everyone. and pray for those who are not good, for everyone. do we pray for those who kill children in war? it is diffi� cult, it's a long way off, but we have to learn to do it, for them to be converted. do we pray for those people who are closest to us and hate us or hurt us? "eh, father, it's hard! i would want to wring their necks!" -pray. pray that the lord changes their lives. prayer is an antidote against hatred, against wars, these wars that begin at home, that begin in the neighborhood, that begin in families.... just think of the wars in families over inheritance: how many families are destroyed. they hate each other because of inheritance. pray mu�t war! mnoe prayfor those who do not love us li�ten ru�o �ot 0 loren !hall tom onel �otn l� to i anul to ar� an artisanal path 101 for peace. and if i know that someone does not love me well, does not love me, i must pray especially for him. prayer is powerful, prayer defeats evil, prayer brings peace. homily castelverde di lunghezza (rome) february 19, 2017 learning the art ofdialogue to build a new world, a better world, every kind of cruelty must be eradicated. and war is cruelty. but this type of war is even crueler because it rages against those who are innocent. then, to listen to the other person, the capacity to listen, not to argue immediately, to ask-and this means dialogue, and dialogue is a bridge. dialogue is a bridge. do not be afraid to dialogue. now this is not about the san lorenzolanus match, which is being played today-we shall see who wins. it is about agreeing to proposals so as to move forward together. everyone wins in dialogue; no one loses. in an argument, one wins and the other loses or both lose. dialogue is gentleness, the capacity to listen; it is to put oneself in the other's place, it is to form a bridge, and within the dialogue, if i have a different opinion, not to argue, but rather to seek to persuade with gentleness. words at the world congress of the pontifical foundation "scbolas occurrentes" new synod hall may 29,2016 102 against war architecture of reconciliation (an 0 ll:21 (iii an noun l�aa�1intn wnen it� �tj r�ali ��am n�ver tnati tnatl n�ea� negotiation often becomes necessary for shaping concrete paths to peace. yet the processes of change that lead to lasting peace are crafted above all by peoples; each individ­ ual can act as an effective leaven by the way he or she lives each day. great changes are not produced behind desks or in offices. this means that everyone has a fundamental role to play in a single great creative project: to write a new page of history, a page full of hope, peace, and reconcilia­ tion. there is an "architecture" of peace, to which difler­ ent institutions of society contribute, each according to its own area of expertise, but there is also an "art" of peace that involves us all. from the various peace processes that have taken place in different parts of the world, we have learned that these ways of making peace, of placing reason above revenge, of the delicate harmony between politics and law, cannot ignore the involvement of ordinary people. peace is not achieved by normative frameworks and institutional arrangements between well-meaning political or economic groups .... it is always helpful to incorporate into our peace processes the experience of those sectors that have often been overlooked, so that communities themselves can influence the development of a collective memory. fratelli tutti, 231 overcoming evil with good to be sure, it is no easy task to overcome the bitter leg� acy of injustices, hostility, and mistrust left by conflict. it 1. 'neoimr1ii (' i r con�i(!,: i an artisanal path 103 can only be done by overcoming evil with good (see rom 12:21) and by cultivating those virtues that foster recon­ ciliation, solidarity, and peace. in this way, persons who nourish goodness in their heart find that such goodness leads to a peaceful conscience and to profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties and misunderstandings. even when affronted, goodness is never weak, but rather shows its strength by refusing to take revenge. each of us should realize that even the harsh judgment i hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a struggle that i carry within me, a little flame deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it turns into a great blaze. fratelli tutti, 243 peace is the priority the commandment of peace is inscribed in the depths of the religious traditions. believers have understood that religious differences do not justify indifference or enmity. rather, on the basis of our religious faith we are enabled to become peacemakers, rather than stand­ ing passively before the evil of war and hatred. religions stand at the service of peace and fraternity. for this rea­ son, our present gathering also represents an incentive to religious leaders and to all believers to pray fervently for peace, never resigned to war, but working with the gentle strength of faith to end conflicts. 104 against war we need peace! more peace! we cannot remain indif­ ferent. today the world has a profound thirst for peace. in many countries, people are suffering due to wars that, though often forgotten, are always the cause of suffering and poverty. the world, political life, and public opinion all run the risk of growing inured to the evil of war, as if it were simply a part of human history. "let us not remain mired in theoretical discussions, but touch the wounded flesh of the victims .... let us think of the refugees and displaced, those who suffered the effects of atomic radiation and chemical attacks, the moth­ ers who lost their children, and the boys and girls maimed or deprived of their childhood" (fratelli tutti) 261). today the sufferings of war are aggravated by the suffering caused by the coronavirus and the impossibility, in many coun­ tries, of access to necessary care. in the meantime, conflicts continue, bringing in their wake suffering and death. to put an end to war is a solemn duty before god incumbent on all those holding political responsibilities. peace is the priority of all politics. god will ask an accounting of those who failed to seek peace, or who fomented tensions and conflicts. he will call them to account for all the days, months, and years of war that have passed and been endured by the world's peoples! the words of the lord jesus are incisive and full of wis­ dom: "put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (mt 26:52). those who wield the sword, possibly in the belief that it will resolve difficult situations quickly, will know in their own lives, war luni �u niti� thi� an artisanal path 105 the lives of their loved ones, and the lives of their coun­ tries the death brought by the sword. "enoughl" says jesus (lk 22:38), when his disciples produce two swords before the passion. "enough!" that is his unambiguous response to any form of violence. that single word of jesus echoes through the centuries and reaches us forcefully in our own time: enough of swords, weapons, violence, and war! saint paul vi echoed that in his appeal to the united nations in 1965: hno more war!" this is our plea, and that of all men and women of goodwill it is the dream of all who strive to work for peace in the realization that "every war leaves our world worse than it was before" (fratelli tutti) 261). how do we find a way out of intransigent and fester­ ing conflicts? how do we untangle the knots of so many armed struggles? how do we prevent conflicts? how do we inspire thoughts of peace in warlords and those who rely on the strength of arms? no people, no social group can single�handedly achieve peace, prosperity, security, and happiness. none. the lesson learned from the recent pan­ demic, if we wish to be honest, is "the awareness that we are a global community, all in the same boat, where one person's problems are the problems of all once more we realized that no one is saved alone; we can only be saved together" (fratelli tutti) 32). fraternity, born of the realization that we are a single human family, must penetrate the life of peoples, commu­ nities, government leaders, and international assemblies. this will help everyone to understand that we can only be 106 against war ana saved together through encounter and negotiation, setting aside our conflicts and pursuing reconciliation, moderating the language of politics and propaganda, and developing true paths of peace (see fratelli tutti) 231). we have gathered this evening, as persons of different religious traditions, in order to send a message of peace. to show clearly that the religions do not want war and, indeed, disown those who would enshrine violence, that they ask everyone to pray for reconciliation and to strive to enable fraternity to pave new paths of hope. for indeed, with god's help, it will be possible to build a world of peace, and thus, brothers and sisters, to be saved together. address to the international prayer meetingfor peace piazza del campidoglio october 20) 2020 wee ir�ee mo� �f ii faced with the consequences of our hostility toward others, our lack of respect for our common home, or our abusive exploitation of natural resources-seen only as a source of immediate profit, regardless of local communities, the common good, and nature itself-we are in need of an ecological conversion. the recent synod on the pan-ama­ zon region moves us to make a pressing renewed call for a peaceful relationship between communities and the land, between present and past, between experience and hope. this journey of reconciliation also calls for listening to and contemplation of the world that god has given tntil iml thq ::1 f�rm �tne t� th (hri witn with ecological conversion an artisanal path 107 us as a gift to make our common home. indeed, naru­ ral resources, the many forms of life, and the earth itself have been entrusted to us lito till and keep" (gen 1:15), also for future generations, through the responsible and active participation of everyone. we need to change the way we think and see things, and to become more open to encountering others and accepting the gift of creation, which reflects the beauty and wisdom of its creator. all this gives us deeper motivation and a new way to dwell in our common home, to accept our difter­ ences, to respect and celebrate the life that we have received and share, and to seek living conditions and models of society that favor the continued flourishing of life and the development of the common good of the entire human family. the ecological conversion for which we are appealing will lead us to a new way of looking at life, as we consider the generosity of the creator who has given us the earth and called us to share it in joy and moderation. this con­ version must be understood in an integral way, as a trans­ formation of how we relate to our sisters and brothers, to other living beings, to creation in all its rich variety, and to the creator who is the origin and source of all life. for christians, it requires that lithe effects of their encounter with jesus christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them" (laudato si; 217). message for the liii world day of peace january 1, 2020 108 an}against war brothers and sisters in the name of god who has created all human beings equal in rights, duties, and dignity, and who has called them to live together as brothers and sisters, to fill the earth and make known the values of goodness, love, and peace; in the name of innocent human life that god has for; bidden to kill, affirming that whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity, and that whoever saves a person is like one who saves the whole of humanity; in the name of the poor, the destitute, the marginal; ized, and those most in need whom god has commanded us to help as a duty required of all persons, especially the wealthy and of means; in the name of orphans, widows, refugees, and those exiled from their homes and their countries; in the name of all victims of wars, persecution, and injustice; in the name of the weak, those who live in fear, prisoners of war, and those tortured in any part of the world, without distinction; in the name of peoples who have lost their security, peace, and the possibility of living together, becoming vic; tims of destruction, calamity, and war; in the name of human fraternity that embraces all human beings, unites them, and renders them equal; in the name of this fraternity torn apart by policies of extremism and division, by systems of unrestrained profit or by hateful ideological tendencies that manipulate the actions and the future of men and women; rw: our tw mel to�e to � tow wj an artisanal path 109 in the name of freedom, that god has given to all human beings, creating them free and distinguishing them by this gift; in the name of justice and mercy, the foundations of prosperity and the cornerstone of faith; in the name of all persons of goodwill present in every part of the world; in the name of god and of everything stated thus far; ai-azhar ai-sharif and the muslims of the east and west, together with the catholic church and the catholics of the east and west, declare the adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as the method and standard. we, who believe in god and all of this ... we call upon ourselves, upon the leaders of the world as well as the archi­ tects of international policy and world economy, to work strenuously to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace; to intervene at the earliest opportunity to stop the shedding of innocent blood and bring an end to wars, conflicts, environmental decay, and the moral and cultural decline that the world is presently experiencing.... moreover, we resolutely declare that religions must never incite war, hateful attitudes, hostility, and extremism, nor must they incite violence or the shedding of blood. these tragic realities are the consequence of a deviation from religious teachings. they result from a political manipulation of religions and from interpretations made by religious groups who, in the course of history, have taken advantage of the power of religious sentiment in the 110 against war an hearts of men and women in order to make them act in a way that has nothing to do with the truth of religion. this is done for the purpose of achieving objectives that are political, economic, worldly, and shortsighted. we thus call upon all concerned to stop using religions to incite hatred, violence, extremism, and blind fanaticism, and to refrain from using the name of god to justify acts of mur­ der, exile, terrorism, and oppression. we ask this on the basis of our common belief in god, who did not create men and women to be killed or to fight one another, nor to be tortured or humiliated in their lives and circumstances. god, the almighty, has no need to be defended by anyone and does not want his name to be used to terrorize people. from the document on human brotherhood abu dhabi february 4) 2019 signed by pope francis as well as the grand imam of al-azhar) ahmed eltayeb fraternity is the grace of god the father as he says farewell to his disciples (seejn 14:15-21),jesus gives them tranquility. he gives peace, with a promise: hi will not leave you orphans" (v. 18). he defends them from that pain, from that painful feeling of being orphans. in today's world, there is a great sense of being orphaned: many people have many things, but they lack the father. and in the history of humanity, this has repeated itself: when the father is missing, something is lacking and there is th the an artisanal path 111 always the desire to meet, to rediscover the father, even in the ancient myths. we can think of the myth of oedi­ pus, or telemachus, and many others: always in search of the father who is missing. today we can say that we live in a society where the father is missing, a sense of being orphaned that specifically affects belonging and fraternity. and so jesus promises, "i will ask the father and he will give you another paraclete" (v. 16). jesus says, "i am going away, but someone else will come who will teach you how to access the father. he will remind you how to access the father:' the holy spirit does not come to "make us his clients"; he comes to point out how to access the father, to remind us how to access the father. that is what jesus opened, what jesus showed us. a spirituality of the son alone or the holy spirit alone does not exist: the center is the father. the son is sent by the father and returns to the father. the holy spirit is sent by the father to remind us and to teach us how to access the father. only with this awareness of being children, that we are not orphans, can we live in peace among ourselves. wars, either small ones or large ones, always have a dimension of being orphans: the father who makes peace is missing. and so when peter and the first community respond to the people regarding why they are christians (see 1 pt 3:15-18), it says, "do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear" (v. 16), that is, the gentle­ ness that the holy spirit gives. the holy spirit teaches us this gentleness, this tenderness of the father's children. 1he holy spirit does not teach us to insult. and one of the consequences of this feeling like orphans is insulting, 112 against war wars, because if there is no father, there are no brothers, fraternity is lost. they are-this tenderness, reverence, gentleness-they are attitudes of belonging, of belonging to a family that is certain of having a father. iii will pray to the father and he will send you another paraclete" on 14:16) who will remind you how to access the father. he will remind you that we have a father who is the center of everything, the origin of everything, the one who unites everyone, the salvation of everyone because he sent his son to save everyone. and now he sends the holy spirit to remind us how to access him, the father, and of this paternity, of this fraternal attitude of gent1e� ness, tenderness, and peace. let us ask the holy spirit to remind us always, always about this access to the father, that he might remind us that we have a father. and to this civilization, with this great feeling of being orphaned, may he grant the grace of redis­ covering the father, the father who gives meaning to all of life, and that he might unite humanity into one family. homily chapel of santa marta house may 17) 2020 wo �ua m fraternity is the fruit of the easter of christ who, with his death and resurrection, conquered sin, which separated man from god, man from himself, man from his broth­ ers. but we know that sin always separates, always creates easter makes the encounter with the other sprout up an /srtisanal path 113 hostility. jesus broke down the wall that divides people and restored peace, beginning to weave the fabric of a new fra­ ternity. it is so important in our time to rediscover broth­ erhood as it was experienced by the early christian corn­ munities, to rediscover how to make room for jesus who never divides and always unites. there cannot be true corn­ munion and commitment to the common good and social justice without fraternity and sharing. without fraternal sharing, no ecclesial or civil community can be formed: there is only an ensemble of individuals moved or grouped together, according to common interests. but brotherhood is a grace that jesus creates. the easter of christ has caused another thing to erupt into the world: the novelty of dialogue and relationship, a novelty that has become a responsibility for christians. jesus in fact said, (i by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" on 13:35). this is why we cannot close ourselves off in our private world, within our group, but instead we are called to sale­ guard the common good and to take care of our broth­ ers and sisters, in particular those who are weakest and most marginalized. only fraternity can guarantee a lasting peace, can overcome poverty, can extinguish tension and war, can eradicate corruption and crime. may the angel who tells us, "he has risen;' help us to live the fraternity and the novelty of dialogue and relationships and of con­ cern for the common good. words before the regina coeli april 2, 2018 114 against war follow another logic calvary was the site of a great "duel" between god, who came to save us, and man, who wants to save only himself; between faith in god and worship of self; between man who accuses and god who excuses. in the end, god's vic­ tory was revealed; his mercy came down upon the earth. from the cross, forgiveness poured forth and fraternal love was reborn: "the cross makes us brothers and sisters" (benedict xvi, address at the way of the cross at the col­ osseum, march 21, 2008). jesus's arms, outstretched on the cross, mark the turning point, for god points a finger at no one, but instead embraces all for love alone extinguishes hatred, love alone can ultimately triumph over injustice. love alone makes room for others. love alone is the path toward full communion among us. let us look upon the crucified god and ask him to grant us the grace to be more united and more fraternal. when we are tempted to follow the way of this world, may we be reminded ofjesus's words: "whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (mk 8:35). what is counted loss in the eyes of the world is, for us, salvation. may we learn from the lord, who saved us by emptying himself (see phil 2:7) and becoming other: from being god, he became man; from spirit, he became flesh; from a king, he became a slave. he asks us to do the same, to humble ourselves, to "become other" in order to reach out to others. the closer we become to the lord jesus, the more we will be open and "universal," since we will feel responsible for others. an artisanal path 115 and others will become the means of our own salvation: all others, every human person, whatever his or her history and beliefs-beginning with the poor, who are those most like christ. the great archbishop of constantinople, saint john chrysostom, once wrote, "if there were no poor, the greater part of our salvation would be overthrown" (on the second letter to the corinthians xvil2). may the lord help us to journey together on the path of fraternity, and thus to become credible witnesses of the living god. homily at the international prayer meetingfor peace church of saint maria in aracoeli october 20) 2020 prayers a prayer to the creator lord, father of our human family, you created all human beings equal in dignity: pourforth into our hearts a fraternal spirit and inspire in us a dream of renewed encounter, dialogue) justice, and peace. move us to create healthier societies and a more dignified world, a world without hunger, poverty, violence) and war. may our hearts be open to all the peoples and nations of the earth. may we recognize the goodness and beauty that you have sown in each of us) and thus forge bonds of unity) common projects, and shared dreams. amen. fratelli tutti, 287 116 prayers an ecumenical christian prayer o god) trinity of love) from the profound communion ofyour divine life) pour out upon us a torrent offraternal love. grant us the love reflected in the actions ofjesus) in his family of nazareth) and in the early christian community. grant that we christians may live the gospel discovering christ in each human being) recognizing him crucified in the sufferings of the abandoned and forgotten of our world) and risen in each brother or sister who makes a new start. come) holy spirit) show us your beauty) reflected in all the peoples of the earth) so that we may discover anew that all are important and all are necessary) different faces of the one humanity that god so loves. amen. fratelli tutti) 287 prayerfor fraternity almighty and eternal god) good and merciju! father; creator of heaven and earth) of all that is visible and invisible; 117 118 against war god of abraham, god of isaac, god ofjacob, king and lord of the past, of the present, and of the future; sole judge of every man and woman, who reward your faithful with eternal glory! we, the descendants of abraham according to our faith in you, the one god, jews, christians, and muslims, humbly stand before you and with trust we pray to you for this country, bosnia and herzegovina, that men and women, followers of dijferent religions, nations, and cultures may live here in peace and harmony. we pray to you, a father, that it may be so in every country of the world! strengthen in each of us faith and hope, mutual respect and sincere love for all of our brothers and sisters. grant that we may dedicate ourselves courageously to building a just society, to being men and women ofgoodwill, filled with mutual understanding and forgiveness, patient artisans of dialogue and peace. may each of our thoughts, words, and actions be in harmony with your holy will. from ecumenical and interreligious meeting sarajevo june 6, 2015 prayers 119 prayer of the children of abraham almighty god, our creator, you love our human fam­ ily and every work of your hands: as children of abraham, jews, christians, and mus­ lims, together with other believers and all persons of good­ will, we thank you for having given us abraham, a distin­ guished son of this noble and beloved country, to be our common father in faith. we thank you for his example as a man of faith, who obeyed you completely, left behind his family, his tribe, and his native land, and set out for a land that he knew not. we thank you too, for the example of courage, resil­ ience, strength of spirit, generosity, and hospitality set for us by our common father in faith. we thank you in a special way for his heroic faith, shown by his readiness even to sacrifice his son in obedi­ ence to your command. we know that this was an extreme test, yet one from which he emerged victorious, since he trusted unreservedly in you, who are merciful and always offer the possibility of beginning anew. we thank you because, in blessing our father abra­ ham, you made him a blessing for all peoples. we ask you, the god of our father abraham and our god, to grant us a strong faith, a faith that abounds in good works, a faith that opens our hearts to you and to all our brothers and sisters; and a boundless hope capa­ ble of discerning in every situation your fidelity to your promises. 120 against war pi' make each of us a witness of your loving care for all, particularly refugees and the displaced, widows and orphans, the poor and the infirm. open our hearts to mutual forgiveness and in this way make us instruments of reconciliation, builders of a more just and fraternal society. welcome into your abode of peace and light all those who have died, particularly the victims of violence and war. assist the authorities in the effort to seek and find the victims of kidnapping and in a special way to protect women and children. help us to care for the earth, our common home, which in your goodness and generosity you have given to all of us. from interreligious meeting ur plain march 6} 2021 prayerfor the victims of war most high god, lord of all ages, you created the world in love and never cease to shower your blessings upon your creatures. from beyond the sea of suffering and death, from beyond all temptations to violence, injustice, and unjust gain, you accompany your sons and daughters with a father's tender love. yet we men and women, spurning your gifts and absorbed by all-too-worldly concerns, have often forgotten your counsels of peace and harmony. we were concerned prayers only with ourselves and our narrow interests. indifferent to you and to others, we barred the door to peace. what the prophet jonah heard said of nineveh was repeated: the wickedness of men rose up to heaven (see jonah 1:2). we did not lift pure hands to heaven (see 1 tim 2:8), but from the earth there arose once more the cry of innocent blood (see gen 4:10). in the book of jonah, the inhabi­ tants of nineveh heeded the words of your prophet and found salvation in repentance. lord, we now entrust to you the many victims of man's hatred for man. we too implore your forgiveness and beg the grace of repentance: kyrie eleison! kyrie eleison! kyrie eleison! [brief moment of silence] lord our god, in this city, we see two signs of the perennial human desire for closeness to you: the ai�nouri mosque, with its ai� hadba minaret, and the church of our lady of the hour, whose clock for more than a cen­ tury has reminded passersby that life is short and that time is precious. teach us to realize that you have entrusted to us your plan of love, peace, and reconciliation, and charged us to carry it out in our time, in the brief span of our earthly lives. make us recognize that only in this way, by putting it into practice immediately, can this city and this country be rebuilt, and hearts torn by grief be healed. help us not to pass our time in promoting our selfish concerns, whether as individuals or as groups, but in serving your loving plan. and whenever we go astray, grant that we may heed the voice of true men and women of god and 121 122 against war repent in due time, lest we be once more overwhelmed by destruction and death. to you we entrust all those whose span of earthly life was cut short by the violent hand of their brothers and sis, ters; we also pray to yoll for those who caused such harm to their brothers and sisters. may they repent, touched by the power of your mercy. eternal rest grant unto them, 0 lord, and let perpet, uallight shine upon them. may they rest in peace. amen. �i mosul, iraq march 7, 2021 ["llllr"• l)"1 � 'r:; i,lm: afterword a century-long magisterium of peace andrea tornielli one cannot understand francis's "magisterium of peace" without placing it in the sequence of papal proclamations of the last century. the lapses in memory and the sheer quantity of information available to us on a daily basis run the risk of making us regard as new or revolutionary attitudes and words imbued with realism and rooted in a solid tradition. in fact, that tradition led the successors of peter to launch numerous appeals for ceasefires and, step by step, to mark an increasingly clear and resolute rejection of war. tile beginning of this longjourney can be traced back to 1848, when the pope still had the papal states and its own army. at the outbreak of the first war of indepen­ dence, in 1848, pius ix, having initially decided to inter­ vene alongside the kingdom of sardinia against austria, proceed to retrace his steps. in an address on april 29, he pronounced that he could not make war on a christian 123 124 afterword ajle people, because as pope he was "father of all the faithful:' with the end of temporal power, the papacy, far from losing its strength, acquired an even greater power, and the pontiff has increasingly become a spiritual and moral authority above all others. unfortunately, this has not meant that his voice has been heard. on august 2, 1914, just a few days after the austro­ hungarian empire declared war on serbia following the assassination of archduke ferdinand in sarajevo, pope pius x, who would die only a few days later, sent the exhortation dum europa jere omnis to all catholics of the world, imploring an end to the conflict. pope sarto wrote, "while almost the whole of europe is being dragged into the whirlpools of a terrible war, whose dangers, massacres, and consequences no one can think of without feeling overwhelmed by pain and fear, we too cannot but be con­ cerned and feel our souls torn by the bitterest pain for the health and lives of so many citizens and peoples that are most dear to our hearts:' the uguerrone;' as pius x called it, flared up, marking the destinies of europe throughout the twentieth century. his successor, benedict xv, in his letter to the lead­ ers of the belligerent peoples in august 1917, described the great war as "useless slaughter" and reiterated, "the fundamental point must be that the material force of arms be replaced by the moral force of law. therefore, a just agreement of all in the simultaneous and reciprocal reduc­ tion of armaments according to norms and guarantees to be established, in the measure necessary and sufficient to rare mo �ta� oft kat iote u�e fou afterword 125 maintain public order in the single states; and, as a sub ... stitute for arms, the institution of arbitration with its high pacifying function, according to the norms to be agreed upon and the sanction to be agreed upon against the state that refuses either to submit international questions to the arbitrator or to accept his decision:' we know how it ended and how at the conclusion of peace the humiliation of germany favored the birth of nazism. it is interesting to note the red thread that also unites individuals in the magisterium of peace. eugenio pacelli, the future pius xii, who in 1917 also contributed to the drafting of benedict's letter, went on to be consecrated bishop and sent as apostolic nuncio to munich. on august 24, 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of world war ii, having now become pope, pacelli made an unheeded appeal to stop the conflict unleashed by hitler and uttered the following words: "nothing is lost with peace. all can be lost with war:' the draft of that speech had been pre ... pared by none other than monsignor giovanni battista montini, at that time substitute for the secretariat of state, and later pope paul vi. pius xii's magisterium of peace, during the dark years of the war and in the immediate postwar period, was ded ... icated to the reconstruction and promotion of a system of international relations based on dialogue and not on the use of violence. his successor, john xxiii, elected in october 1958, found himself living through the soviet missile crisis in 126 afterword ajle cuba in 1962, with the risk of a nuclear conflict. on octo­ ber 25 of that year, pope roncalli addressed the whole world and its powerful leaders, saying, "let all those who have responsibilities of power, with their hands on their consciences, listen to the cry of anguish ... from the inno­ cent children to the elderly, from individuals to commu­ nities, which rises to heaven: peace! peace! i implore all rulers not to remain insensitive to this cry of humanity! let them do everything in their power to save peace.... let them promote, encourage, and accept negotiations at every level and at every time!" and on april 11, 1963, less than two months before his death, john xxiii published the encyclical pacem in terris, the first by a pontiff dedicated to world peace. he wrote that "human beings live under the nightmare of a hurricane that could break out at any moment with unimaginable force. since the weapons are there, and if it is difficult to persuade ourselves that there are people capable of taking responsibility for the destruction and pain that a war would cause, it is not excluded that an unpredictable and uncontrollable event could set off the spark that could set the war apparatus in motion:' pope john also stated, "justice, wisdom, and humanity demand that the arms race be stopped, that the arms already in existence be simultaneously and reciprocally reduced, that nuclear weapons be banned, and that disarmament, inte­ grated with effective controls, finally be carried out:' and quoting verbatim the words of his predecessor pius xii, he writes, "the calamity of a world war with its economic and we! �io\ uni! nat! will of it nu� re�al ai�n laol� i tnelrami afterword 127 social ruins and aberrations and disturbances must not be allowed to overrun humanity for a third time:' john xxiii also reiterated the importance of the united nations: hwe hope, therefore, that the united nations organization-in its structures and resources­ will be increasingly adapted to the vastness and nobility of its tasks; and that the day will come when individual human beings will find in it effective protection with regard to the rights which flow immediately from their dignity as persons, and that are therefore universal, invio­ lable, inalienable rights:' his successor paul vi, before the general assembly of the united nations, on october 4, 1965, pronounced his famous cry against war, quotingjohn kennedy: "you are waiting for this word from us, which cannot be deprived of gravity and solemnity: not one against the other, not any more, not ever! the united nations organization was founded primarily for this purpose; against war and for peace! listen to the clear words of the great deceased john kennedy, who four years ago proclaimed.t'iurnanity must put an end to war, or war will put an end to humanity: not many words are needed to proclaim this supreme goal of this institution. it is enough to remember that the blood of millions of men and countless unprecedented sufferings have been shed, useless slaughters and formidable ruins sanction the pact that unites you with an oath that must change the future history of the world: no more war, no more war! peace, peace must guide the destiny of peoples and of all humanity!" 128 afterword aftt in addition to emphasizing continuity, a slow but the unstoppable progression should also be noted. this has venl led the bishops of rome to intervene more and more, to avo! appeal to international law and to consider as indispensrrof able the role of the united nations. john paul ii, elected �uel in october 1978, in fact manifests a rejection of war that wp� is even more radical and deep-rooted than his predecesunl� sors. and it is interesting to note that pope wojtyla's even ana, more decisive and radical rejection of war does not derive ture, only from considerations of principle, but rather from the 0 his own experience as a survivor of the catastrophe of tra�1 the second world war. he explained this himself, many ur�e times, even improvising on the last occasion, at the angelive ius of march 16, 2003, when he told "young" rulers of the ala fate of the world, namely saddam hussein, george bush, ala and tony blair, hi belong to the generation that rernernrom bers the war well, that has lived through and, thank god, �10 survived the second world war. that is why i also have moo the moral duty to remind the younger ones who do not toj have this experience. i have a duty to remember and to toel say: never again war:' woj in fact, none of his predecessors in the twentieth cenana tury knew the horrors of war so directly and so closely as the then-twenty-year-old karol wojtyla in nazi-occupied ant poland, one of the countries that paid the highest price, rre only to come under the influence of the soviet union. iw1 from the falklands conflict to the forgotten wars in bee africa, from lebanon to the holy land, from the gulf r1an war to the crisis in the former yugoslavia, to kosovo and rar afterword 129 the most recent war in iraq: john paul ii always inter­ vened personally, utilizing vatican diplomacy to try to avoid conflicts and then, once they had broken out, to propose mediation initiatives and to limit the con se­ quences for the civilian population. the pope strongly supported multilateralism and the irreplaceable role of the united nations. at the same time, he made ecumenism and dialogue with other religions one of the salient tea­ tures of his pontificate, emphasizing the importance of the commitment of religions to peace, decades before the tragic events of september 11, 200 1, demonstrated the urgency of this appeal. the role of the pontiff was deci­ sive in making sure that a large part of the islamic world did not experience the subsequent war as a "crusade" and did not identify the west with christianity. after the ter­ rorist attacks against the united states, he gathered reli­ gious leaders again in assisi, doing everything possible to mobilize religious opposition to the abuse of god's name to justify terrorism, violence, and wars. as the first pope to enter a mosque, in damascus, in may 200 1, karol wojtyla stressed that "there is no peace without justice and there is no justice without forgiveness:' this line did not change under benedict xvi, who, on the hundredth anniversary of the note of peace of his predecessor, with whom he shares the same name, said, "war, with its trail of grief and destruction, has always been rightly considered a calamity that contrasts with the plan of god, who created everything for existence and, in particular, wants to make the human race a family:' and 130 afterword he continued the "purification of memory" begun during the jubilee year 2000 by pope wojtyla, recognizing, in assisi, in october 2011, "as a christian i want to say at this point: yes, it is true, in the course of history, force has also been used in the name of the christian faith. we acknowledge it with great shame. but it is utterly clear that this was an abuse of the christian faith, one that evidently contradicts its true nature. the god in whom we christians believe is the creator and father of all, and from him all peo­ ple are brothers and sisters and form one single family. for us the cross of christ is the sign of the god who put suf­ fering-with' (compassion) and 'loving-with' in place of force:' the unequivocal choice to say "no to war;' which had already cost his predecessors in some crucial occasions var­ ious attempts at retrenchment, even within the church, has continued with even greater decision by francis. as emerges from the pages of this book, which gathers together the words he has spoken on this theme through­ out the first nine years of his pontificate, pope bergoglio has warned from the beginning against the risk of a third world war-a war that he sees as already underway, albeit "in pieces:' but these "pieces" are becoming larger and larger, more and more united, and with the outbreak of the conflict caused by the russian invasion of ukraine, more and more threatening to the very existence of humanity. for this reason, francis never tires of discouraging the use of weapons, appealing to everyone. for this reason he asks that hundreds of billions not be spent on increasingly sophisticated weapons, when there are no resources for rna be we qe� brll �lc me afterword : ·'�n�, m�rl . :r.umani�', . uravin� [�� : '�r�l;n�1 'litnjflcrea)ifl�, re:aurwfm families, to ensure care, for work, for shelter, and to fight poverty and hunger. francis's no to war, a radical and convinced no, like the one pronounced by his predecessors, has nothing to do with a partisan position nor is it motivated by political­ diplomatic calculations. in the war in ukraine there are the aggressors and there are the attacked. there are those who attacked and invaded, killing unarmed civilians, hypocritically disguising the conflict under the guise of a "special military operation"; and there are those who defend themselves by fighting for their land. francis has said this several times in very clear words, condemning the invasion and martyrdom of ukraine. this does not mean, however, that he "blesses" the acceleration of the arms race, because the pope is not the "chaplain of the west" and because he reiterates that today being on the right side of history means being against war and seeking peace without leaving any stone unturned. of course, the cate­ chism of the catholic church contemplates the right to self.. defense. it does, however, impose conditions, specifying that recourse to arms must not cause evils and disorders more serious than the evil to be eliminated, and remem .. bering that in the evaluation of this consideration, a great weight must be given to the "power of modern means of destruction:' who can deny that humanity is today on the brink of the abyss precisely because of the escalation of con .. flict and the power of the "modern means of destruction" r hwar," pope francis said at the angelus on sunday, march 27, 2022, 'cannot be something inevitable: we must 131 132 afterword not get used to war! instead, we must convert today's out­ rage into tomorrow's commitment. because, if we come out of this affair as we did before, we will all be guilty in some way. faced with the danger of self-destruction, let humanity understand that the time has come to abolish war, to erase it from human history before it erases man from history:' 11ii111 ii111 �li\i�'�(i�i���i\l\ilil[ii��\lil�li�lilllll 1111 1ii1 o 0000 038480323 the_corpse_exhibition indiana wesleyan university library 11111111111111111111111111 �1111111����i:���:�i:i!::� 3 9224 ��._��_� _ \ .., ---�-�---penguin books the cor p see x h i bit ion hassan blasim was born in baghdad in 1973 and stud­ ied at the baghdad academy of cinematic arts. a critic of saddam hussein's regime, he was persecuted and in 1998 fled baghdad to iraqi kurdistan, where he made films and taught filmmaking under the pseudonym ouazad osman. in 2004, a year into the war, he fled to finland, where he now lives. a filmmaker, poet, and fic­ tion writer, he has published in various magazines and anthologies and is a coeditor of the arabic literary web­ site www.iraqstory.com. his fiction has twice won the english pen writers in translation award and has been translated into finnish, polish, spanish, and italian. in 2012 a heavily edited version of his stories was finally published in arabic and was immediately banned in jordan. jonathan wright (translator) studied arabic at oxford university and has spent much of the past three decades in the arab world, mostly as a journalist with reuters. isbn 978-0-14-312326-2 penguin books published by the penguin group penguin group (usa) llc 375 hudson street new york, new york 10014 usa i canada i uk i ireland i australia i new zealand i india i south africa i china penguin. com a penguin random house company first published in penguin books 2014 the madman offreedom square copyright © 2009 by hassan blasim translation copyright © 2009 by jonathan wright collection copyright © 2009 by comma press the iraqi christ copyright © 2013 by hassan blasim translation copyright © 2013 by jonathan wright collection copyright © 2013 by comma press penguin supports copyright. copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. thank you for buying an authorizededition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning,or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. you are supporting writersand allowing penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. the stories in the corpse exhibition appeared in hassan blasim's the madman offreedom square and the iraqi christ, both published in great britain by commapress. the following selections appeared in the madman offreedom square:"the corpse exhibition," "an army newspaper," "the madman of freedom square,""the composer," "the reality and the record," "that inauspicious smile," and"the nightmares of carlos fuentes." the following stories were published inthe iraqi christ: "the killers and the compass," "the green zone rabbit," "crosswords," "the hole," "the iraqi christ," "a thousand and one knives," and"the song of the goats." "the reality and the record" was first published in madinah: city stories from the middle east, edited by joumana haddad (comma press, 2008)."the green zone rabbit" was first published by words without borders. excerpt from the forgotten language: an introduction to the understanding ofdreams, fairy tales and myths by erich fromm (new york: rinehart & co., inc., 1951). printed in the united states of america 13579108642 set in mercury text gl designed by sabrina bowers this is a work of fiction. names, characters, places, and incidents either are the productof the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. china contents the corpse exhibition 1 the killers and the compass 11 the green zone rabbit 25 an army newspaper 37 crosswords 49 the hole 67 the madman of freedom square 79 --'_ '-.il[ the composer 127 the iraqi christ 91 a thousand and one knives 103 the song of the goats 137 the real ity and the record 155 that inauspicious smile 171 the nightmares of carlos fuentes 185 i ..... the corpse exhibition · --. .� / before taking out his knife he said, uafter studying the client's file you must submit a brief note on how you propose to kill your first client and how you will display his body in the city. but that doesn't mean that what you propose in your note will be approved. one of our specialists will review the proposed method and either approve it or propose a different method. this sys­ tem applies to professionals in all phases of their work­ even after the training phase has ended and you have taken the test. in all phases you will receive your salary in full. i don't want to go into all the details now. i'll brief you on things gradually. after you receive the client's file you cannot ask questions as you could before. you have to submit your questions in writing. all your questions, pro­ posals, and written submissions will be documented in your personal file. you absolutely may not write to me about work matters bye-mail or call me on the phone. you will write your questions on a special form that i will provide you with later. the important thing is that you now devote your time to studying the client's file care­ fully and patiently. 3 4 hassan blasim "i want to reassure you that we won't stop dealing with you even if you fail in your first assignment. if you fail you'll be transferred to work in another department at the same salary. but i must remind you once again: giv­ ing up the job after you receive your first salary payment would be unacceptable and would not succeed. there are strict conditions for that, and if the management agrees to sever relations with you, you would have to undergo many tests, which could last a long time. in the archives we have files we preserve about volunteers and other agents who decided to terminate their contracts on their own initiative. if you're thinking of doing that, we'll show you some examples of the experiences of others. i'm con­ fident you'll be able to persevere with the work and enjoy it. you'll see how your whole life will change. "this is your first present; don't open it now. it's your pay in full. as for the documentaries about the lives of predatory animals, you can buy them and we'll cover the expenses later. pay particular attention to the images of the victims' bones. "always remember, dear friend, that we are not ter­ rorists whose aim is to bring down as many victims as possible in order to intimidate others, nor even crazy kill­ ers working for the sake of money. we have nothing to do with the fanatical islamist groups or the intelligence agency of some nefarious government or any of that kind of nonsense. "i know you now have some questions that are nag­ ging you, but you will gradually discover that the world is built to have more than one level, and it's unrealistic for everyone to reach all the levels and all the basements the corpse exhibition 5 caling with ease. don't forget the senior positions that await you it you in the hierarchy of the institution if you have an imaginartment tion that is fresh, fierce, and striking. \n: giv"every body you finish off is a work of art waiting for layment you to add the final touch, so that you can shine like a pre­ cious jewel amid the wreckage of this country. to display a corpse for others to see is the ultimate in the creativity we are seeking and that we are trying to study and benefit from. personally i can't stand the agents who are unimag­ inative. we have, for example, an agent whose code name is satan's knife, that i wish those in charge would get rid of as soon as possible. this guy thinks that cutting off the client's limbs and hanging them from the electrical wires in the slum neighborhoods is the height of creativity and inventiveness. he's just a conceited fool. i hate his classi­ cal methods, although he talks about a new classicism. all this lightweight does is paint the client's body parts and hang them from invisible threads, the heart in dark blue, the intestines green, the liver and testicles yellow. he does this without understanding the poetry of simplicity. "when i tell you some of the details i see that puzzled look in your eyes. calm down, breathe deep, listen to the rhythm of your secret spirit calmly and patiently. let me explain some points to you more clearly to dispel some of the misapprehensions you may have. let me waste some kino time with you. what i tell you may be just personal impressions, and another member of the group may have nag­ ld i� for nts a quite different opinion. "i like concision, simplicity, and the striking image. take agent deaf, for example. he's calm, and he has a smart, lucid eye, and my favorite work of his was that 6 hassan blasim woman who was breast-feeding. one rainy winter's morn­ ing a crowd of passersby and drivers stopped to look atthat woman. she was naked and fat, and her child, also naked, was suckling at her left breast. he put the woman under a dead palm tree in the central reservation of a busy street. there was no trace of a wound or a bullet on the woman's body or on the baby's. she and her babylooked as alive as a brook of pure water. that's a genius we lack in this century. you should have seen the wom­ an's enormous tits and how thin the baby was, like a pileof bones painted the color of bright white baby skin. no one could work out how the mother and her child were killed. most people speculated that he used some myste­rious poison that has not yet been classified. but youshould read in the archives in our library the brief, poetic report that deaf wrote on this extraordinary work of art. he now holds an important position in the group. hedeserves much more than that. "you must understand properly that this country presents one of the century's rare opportunities. ourwork may not last long. as soon as the situation stabilizes we'll have to move on to another country. don't worry,there are many candidates. listen, in the past we offered new students like you classical lessons, but now thingsare much changed. we've started to rely on the democd' racy and spontaneity of the imagination, and not on reinstruction. i studied a long time and read many boringbooks justifying what we do before i was able to work professionally. we used to read studies that spoke about peace, studies written with really disgusting eloquence.there were many naive and unnecessary analogies to b the corpse exhibition mornjustify everything. one of them was about how all the i look at medicines at the pharmacy, even plain old toothpaste, lild, also were produced after laboratory tests on rats and other e woman animals, so it would not be possible to bring about peace ltion of a on this earth without sacrificing laboratory humans as bullet on well. old lessons like these were boring and frustrating. her bad\' your generation is very lucky in this age of golden oppor­ tunities. a film actress licking an ice cream might give rise to dozens of photographs and news reports that reach the most remote village ravished by famine in this world, this grindstone of screaming and dancing. this at least achieves what i call 'the justice of discovering the insig­ nificance and equivocal essence of the world.' how much more so a corpse displayed creatively in the city center! "perhaps i've told you too much, but let me tell you frankly that i'm worried about you, because you're either an idiot or a genius, and agents like that excite my curios­ ity. if you're a genius, that would be gratifying. i still believe in genius, although most members of the group talk about experience and practice. and if you're an idiot, let me tell you before i go a short and useful story about one idiot who naively tried to mess with us. i didn't even like his nickname'the nail.' after the committee had approved the way the nail proposed to kill his client and display his body in a large restaurant, we waited for results. but this guy was very slow about finishing off his work. i met him several times and asked him what was causing the delay. he would say that he didn't want to repeat the methods of his predecessors and was thinking of bringing about a creative quantum leap in our work. but the truth was different. the nail was a coward who jdijizfl \l'orr�: offerea thing) erooe· at on oring work out ce to 8 hassan blasim had been infected with banal humanitarian feelings and, like any sick man, had started to question the benefit of killing others and to wonder whether there was some creator monitoring all our deeds, and that was the begin­ ning of the abyss. because every child born in this world is simply a possibility, either to be good or evil, according to the classification set by schools of religious education in this stupid world. but it's a completely different matter for us. every child that's born is just an extra burden on the ship that's about to sink. anyway, let me tell you what happened to the nail. he had a relative who worked as a guard in the hospital in the city center, and the nail was thinking of slipping into the hospital mortuary and choos­ ing a corpse instead of making a corpse himself. it was easy to carry that off after he'd given his relative half the pay he'd received from the group. the mortuary was full of corpses from those stupid acts of terrorism, corpses ripped apart by car bombs, others that had their heads cut off in sectarian feuds, bloated bodies from the riverbed, and many other stupid ones that had been finished off in random murders that had nothing to do with art. the n ail slipped into the mortuary that night and started looking for the right corpse to display to the public. the nail was looking for the children's corpses, because in his first report he had proposed an idea that involved killing a five-year-old child. "in the mortuary there were specimens of the corpses of schoolchildren who had been mutilated by car bombs or incinerated in some street market or broken into pieces after planes bombed houses. finally the nail chose a child who had been beheaded along with the rest of his family the corpse exhibition 9 �s and, nent of w ijd jjy for sectarian reasons. the body was clean, and the cut at the neck was as neat as a piece of torn paper. the nail thought of exhibiting this body in a restaurant and put­ ting the eyes of the other family members on the table, served in bowls of blood, like a soup. maybe it was a beau­ tiful idea, but before all else his work would have been a cheat and a betrayal. if he had beheaded the child himself it would have been an authentic work of art, but to steal it from the mortuary and act in this despicable manner would be a disgrace and cowardice at the same time. but he did not understand that the world today is linked together by more than a tunnel and a corridor. "it was the mortician who caught the nail before he was able to deceive the poor public. the mortician was in his early sixties, an enormous man. his work in the mor­ tuary had flourished after the increase in the number of mutilated bodies in the country. people sought him out to patch together the bodies of their children and other rela­ tives who were torn apart in explosions and random kill­ ings. they would pay handsomely to have him restore their children to the appearance by which they originally knew them. the mortician was truly a great artist. he worked with patience and with great love. that night he guided the nail into a side room in the mortuary and locked the door on him. he injected him with some drug that paralyzed him without making him unconscious. he laid him out on the mortuary table, strapped his hands and legs down, and gagged his mouth. he was humming a pretty children's song in his strange woman's voice as he prepared his worktable. it was a song about a child fishing for a frog in a small puddle of blood, and every , orne e begin. i worla tarreo . tn� inni) iljing pses rods 10 hassan blasim now and then he would stroke the nail's hair tenderly and whisper in his ear, 'ooh, my dear, ooh, my friend, there is something stranger than death-to look at the world, which is looking at you, but without any gesture or under­ standing or even purpose, as though you and the world are united in blindness, like silence and loneliness. and there is something a little stranger than death: a man and a woman playing in bed, and then you come, just you, you who always miswrite the story of your life.' "the mortician finished his work in the early morning. "in front of the gate of the ministry of justice there was a platform like the platforms on which the city's stat­ ues stand, but made of a pulp of flesh and bones. on top of the platform stood a pillar of bronze, and from the pillar hung the nail's skin, complete and detached from his flesh with great skill, waving like a flag of victory. in the front part of the platform you could clearly see the nail's right eye, set in the pulp of his flesh. it had a look rather like the insipid look your eyes have now. do you know who the mortician was? he's the man in charge of the most important department in the institution. he's the man in charge of the truth and creativity department." then he thrust the knife into my stomach and said, "you're shaking." abu hadid knocked back what remained of the bottle of arak.' he put his face close to mine and, with the calm of someone high on hashish, gave me this advice: "listen, mahdi. i've seen all kinds of problems in my life, and i know that one day i'll run out of luck. you're six­ teen, and today i'm going to teach you how to be a lion. in this world you need to be street-smart. whether you die today or in thirty years, it doesn't make any difference. it's today that matters and whether you can see the fear in people's eyes. people who are frightened will give you everything. if someone tells you, 'god forbids it' or 'that's wrong,' for example, give him a kick up the ass, because that god's full of shit. that's their god, not your god. you are your own god, and this is your day. there's no god without followers or crybabies willing to die of hunger or suffer in his name. you have to learn how to make your­ self god in this world, so that people lick your ass while you shit down their throats. don't open your mouth today, * arak: a traditional anise-flavored distilled spirit. 13 l/.� hassan blasim not a word. you come with me, dumb as a lamb. under­ stand, dickhead?" he thumped the arak bottle against the wall and aimed a friendly punch hard into my nose. we walked through the darkness of the muddy lanes. the wretched houses were catching their breath after re­ ceiving a whipping from the storm. inside them the peo­ ple were sleeping and dreaming. everything was soaked and knocked out of place. the wind that had toyed with the labyrinth of lanes all evening picked up strength, then finally left with a bitter chill hanging over the place­ this sodden neighborhood where i would live and die. many times i imagined the neighborhood as if it were some offspring of my mother's. it smelled that way and was just as miserable. i don't recall ever seeing my mother as a human being. she would always be weeping and wail­ ing in the corner of the kitchen like a dog tied up to be tor­ mented. my father would assail her with a hail of insults, and when her endurance broke, she would whine aloud, "why, good lord? why? take me and save me." only then would my father stand up, take the cord out of his headdress, and whip her nonstop for half an hour, spitting at her throughout. my nose was bleeding profusely. i was holding my head back as i tried to keep pace with abu hadid. the smell of spiced fish wafted from the window of majid the traffic policeman's house. he must have been blind drunk to be frying fish in the middle of the night. we turned down a narrow, winding lane. abu hadid picked up a stone and threw it toward two cats that were fighting on top of a pile of rubbish. they jumped through the window of abu inderrihab's abandoned house. the rubbish almost reached the roof of the place. the government had executed abu rihab iii and and confiscated his house. they say his family went back to the country where their clan lived. abu rihab had been in y \ane�, contact with the banned daawa party. after a year of tor­ ture and interrogation in the vaults of the security ser­ vices, he was branded a traitor and shot. it was impossible to forget the physical presence of his beautiful daughter, rihab. she was a carbon copy of jennifer lopez in u turn. i'd seen the film at the home of abbas, the poet who lived next door. he had films that wouldn't be shown on state television for a hundred years. most of the young men in the neighborhood had tried to court rihab with love let­ ters, but she was an idiot who understood nothing but washing the courtyard and pouring water over the hands of her daawa party father before he prayed. abu hadid, my giant brother, stopped in front of the door to umm hanan's house. she was the widow of allawi shukr, and people in the neighborhood made fun of her morals by calling her hanan aleena, which means some­ thing like "easy favors." we went inside and sat on a wooden bench with an uncomfortable back. umm hanan asked one of her daughters to wash my face and take care of me. the girl blocked my nose with cotton wool. umm hanan had three beautiful daughters, all alike as nurses in uniform. my brother slept with umm hanan. then he fucked her youngest daughter twice. after that he told umm hanan to fuck me. i was surprised he didn't ask that of the girl who was my age. then abu hadid took some money and three packs of cigarettes from umm to de rna and fa bu the killers and the compass 15 hanan, and gave me one of the packs. 16 hassan blasim we set off again, walking along the muddy lanes. abu hadid slowed down, then retraced his steps and stopped at the door of abu mohammed, the car mechanic. he knocked on the door with his foot. the man came out in his white dishdasha with his paunch sticking out. his eyes popped out of his head when abu hadid greeted him. me and the other kids used to call him "the gerbil who swallowed the watermelon." he used to give me and the gang pills in return for puncturing the tires of cars in the neighborhood, so that his business would flourish. we would bargain with him over how many pills for how many tires. my brother ordered me to take off my blood­ ied shirt and told the mechanic to fetch me a clean one. the gerbil obeyed at once and came back with a blue shirt that smelled of soap. it was the shirt his son, a student at medical college, had just been wearing. i was surprised that the size fit me exactly. my brother leaned over and whispered a few words in the mechanic's ear, and the mechanic's face turned even darker than usual. we crossed the main street toward the other neigh­ borhood. all along the way i was wondering what abu hadid had whispered in the gerbil's ear. abu hadid coughed loudly, and his chest wheezed like my uncle's old tractor. he didn't say a single word on the way. he lit two cigarettes at the same time and offered one to me. it was after midnight. i don't know anyone who lives in this neighborhood, other than an obnoxious boy who was at school with us. he once punched me, and i never did manage to stick a finger up his ass in return. when he found out i was abu hadid's brother, his father came to school and asked me to beat up his son. � . abu ttoppea nic he iitnro itwji 'n tnil ras at the killers and the compass 17 people were scared senseless of my brother's brutality. his reputation for ruthless delinquency spread throughout the city. he would baffle the police and other security agencies for many years-until, that is, the day he was exe­ cuted in public. even his enemies mourned him when the inevitable happened. occasionally in life he had defended people-against the cruelty of the ruling party, for exam­ ple. abu hadid didn't distinguish between good and evil. he had his own private demons. once he threw a hand gre­ nade at the party office when "the comrades" executed someone who had evaded military conscription. another time he mutilated the face of some wretched vegetable seller, simply because he was drunk and he felt like it. abu hadid would go on the rampage like that for eight years, until johnny the barber gave him away. the night it hap­ pened abu hadid was fucking johnny's pretty brown daughter on the roof of the house. the police surrounded him and shot him in the leg. they executed him a week later. my mother and my seven sisters would beat their breasts for a whole year, but my father was relieved to be rid of the antics of his wayward son. abu hadid knocked on a rusty door that still had a few spots of green paint, shaped like frogs, on it. we were received by a man in his forties with a thick mustache that covered his teeth when he spoke. we sat down in the guest room in front of the television. i gathered that the man lived alone. he went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of arak. he opened it and poured a glass. my brother told him to pour one for me too. we sat in silence, and the man and i watched a soccer match between two local teams, while my brother stared into a small fish tank. ---. . .1' hassan blasim18 "do you think the fish are happy in the tank?" my brother asked, calm and serious. "as long as they eat and drink and swim, they're fine," the man replied, without looking away from the televi­ sion screen. "do fish drink water?" "sure they drink; of course." "how can fish drink salt water?" "sure they have a way. how could they be in water and not drink?" "if they're in water, perhaps they don't need to drink." "why don't you ask the fish in the tank?" before the bald man could turn to look at him, my brother had jumped on top of him like a hungry tiger. he threw him to the ground, squatted on his chest, and pinned his arms down under his knees. in a flash he took a small knife out of his pocket, put it close to the man's eye, and started shouting hysterically in his face, "answer, you cocksucker! how can fish drink salt water? answer, you son of a bitch! answer! do fish drink water or don't they? answer, shit-for-brains!" abu hadid stuck a cucumber up the man's ass and we left the house. i never would understand what the man had to do with my brother. we headed toward the parking lot. a thin young man, a year younger than my brother, was leaning against a red chevrolet malibu dating from the seventies. he embraced my brother warmly, and i felt that abu hadid and he were genuine friends. we set off in the car, smoking and listening to a popular song about lovers parting. we took the highway toward the outskirts of the city. abu hadid turned off the tape player, lay back in his "sure, no problem," replied murad harba. "listen, mahdi. some years back i took the plunge and escaped to iran. i was thinking of going from there into turkey and putting this fucked-up country behind me. i lived in a filthy house in the north of iran, with people coming from pakistan, afghanistan, and iraq and everywhere on god's pimping earth. we waited for them to hand us over to the iranian trafficker who was going to take us across the mountainous border. that's where i met the pakistani kid. he was about your age, nice guy, . m!, young and very handsome. he spoke little arabic, but he had memorized the quran. he was always scared. and he had a strange object in his possession: a compass. he would hold it in the palm of his hand like a butterfly and stare at it. then he would hide it in a special pouch that hung around his neck like a golden pendant. he hanged himself in the bathroom the day before iranian security raided the house. they shoved us in jail and beat us up plenty. when they'd finished humiliating us, we got our breath back and started to get to know the other prison­ ers. one of the people we chatted with was a young iraqi who'd been jailed for selling hashish. he was born in iran. f,lraj the government had deported his family from baghdad ill toe after the war broke out on the grounds that he had irattoat nian nationality. i told him about the pakistani kid who n the had hanged himself. the man was really upset about the refs poor boy, said he had met him before, that he was a good the kid, and that he knew the whole story of the compass. i his "in 1989 in the pakistani city of peshawar, sheikh ?" my e nne," televi· in watt: the killers and the compass 19 seat, and said, "murad, tell my brother the story about the pakistani kid." ----. .., 20 hassan blasim abdullah azzam, the spiritual father of the jihad in afghanistan, was in a car on his way to pray in a mosque frequented by the afghan arabs-the arabs who went to fight in afghanistan. the car was blown up as it crossed a bridge over a storm drain. his two sons were with him and were torn to pieces. according to the muezzin' of the mosque, who rushed to the scene of the explosion as soon as it happened, azzam's body was seemingly untouched. not a single scratch. there was just a thin line of blood running from the corner of the dead sheikh's mouth. it was a dreadful disaster-al qaeda was accused of assassi­ nating the sheikh who had stood up to the might of the soviet union, perhaps to give them greater impunity as an organization. "before many others had gathered, malik the muezzin spotted the compass close to the wreckage of the car. when he wiped the blood off it, he felt a shiver run up his spine. it was an army compass with the words allah and muhammad engraved on it. it was clear to the muezzin that it was the sheikh's holy compass? blessed by god and a conduit for his miracles. many ofthe mujahideen claimed the compass turned blood-red when god intended good or evil for the person carrying it. azzam had never parted with it throughout his life in jihad. malik hid it at home for ten years. he took it out every night, polished it, and looked at it, as he shed tears of sorrow at the death of the mujahideen's sheikh. "the muezzin placed the compass gently into the hand of his son waheed, like someone setting down a * muezzin: the person who calls muslims to prayer. mefor r.anj oftne rn a the killers and the compass 21 precious jewel onto a piece of cloth. waheed had decided to smuggle his way into england. he might strike lucky there, help his family, and study to become a doctor. the muezzin told his son waheed the secret of the compass and advised him to guard it with his life. with firm faith, he told him the compass would help him on his journey and throughout his life, and that it was the most precious thing a father could offer his son. waheed was unaware of the compass's powers and significance, and didn't know much about those holy and special moments when the compass turned red to warn of good or evil, but his faith in his father made him treasure it. the compass then became inseparable from his person. waheed reached iran and lived in dilapidated houses run by traffickers. he had to work six months to save enough money to make the crossing to turkey. one day he went out with six young afghans to work on a building site. a rich iranian man picked them up in a small truck and drove them to the outskirts of the town, where he was building an enormous house in the middle of his farm. they were working for a pittance. the man dropped them off at his farm and asked them to clear away the bricks, plaster, sacks, and wood left over from the building work. the deal was that the owner would come back late that evening and take them back to town. he gave them half their wages in advance and advised them to finish the work properly. waheed and the afghans worked slowly and lazily all day long. when the sun set they all prayed and then sat down to relax in one of the large rooms. they poured some juice, rolled cigarettes, and started to chat about trafficking routes to europe. every now and then --._ ._ 111 22 hassan blasim the young afghans would give waheed sly looks of con­ tempt. the owner was late. the afghans decided to pass the time by playing a betting game, which was really a malicious trick. there was a group of barrels filled with water, next to some bags full of plaster. they told waheed the game was that they would mix the plaster with water in a barrel and everyone in the group would put his hands in the mixture up to his elbow, and whoever managed to keep them in the longest would win a sum of money. they suggested waheed go first. full of good cheer and inno­ cence, waheed stood up and went through the motions, burying his arms in the plaster mixture. within a few minutes the plaster set hard and waheed's arms were trapped in the barrel. the afghans pulled down waheed's trousers and raped him one by one." between us we smoked nine cigarettes while listening to the story about the pakistani. murad harba spat out his tale in one burst, then drank from the bottle of water next to him, cursing god. abu hadid took his pistol out of his belt and started to load it with bullets. the story about the pakistani had no effect on me. i was entranced by the company of my brother abu hadid and by the chance to enter his various worlds. we turned off into an extensive park with bare trees like soldiers turned to stone. murad switched off the engine. my heart was starting to pound, and i was curious to find out what they would do in the darkness of the cold park. obviously we hadn't come all this way to listen to the story about the pakistani. we got out of the car. abu hadid looked around while murad harba opened the trunk of the car and took out a pick and shovel. abu hadid ordered me to help murad dig. my the killers and the compass 23 con· blood began to race with excitement and fear. abu hadid, ) pass with his strong muscles, helped with the digging. we �any a began to sweat. the ground was tough. the tangled roots d with of a tree and a large stone hampered our work. before i'aheeo we'd had time to catch our breath, murad and abu hadid water headed back to the trunk of the car, while i stood close to hanoi the hole, bewildered like a deaf man at a wedding party. they took a man, bound and gagged, out of the trunk and dragged him along the ground to the hole. my brother told me to come close and look into the man's eyes. the look of fear i saw is stamped in my memory as though with a branding iron. abu hadid kicked him in the back, and the man slumped into the hole. we shoveled soil on top of him and leveled the ground well. abu hadid gave my hair a sharp tug and whispered in my ear: "now you're god." 'addu! o!· !n� nceta ensi\'� furaa auna, 'n tne e all and my • _ .'i" / before the egg appeared, i would read a book about law or religion every night before going to sleep. like my rabbit, i would be most active in the hours around dawn and sunset. salsal, on the other hand, would stay up late at night and wake up at midday. and before he even got out of bed he would open his laptop and log on to face­ book to check the latest comments on the previous night's discussion, then eventually go and have a bath. after that he would go into the kitchen, turn on the radio, and listen to the news while he fried an egg and made some coffee. he would carry his breakfast into the garden and sit at the table under the umbrella, eating and drinking and smoking as he watched me. "good morning, hajjar. what news of the flowers?" "it's been a hot year, so they won't grow strong," i told him as i pruned the rosebushes. salsallit another cigarette and gave my rabbit an ironic smile. i never understood why he was annoyed by the rab­ bit. the old woman umm dala had brought it. she said she had found it in the park. we decided to keep it while umm dala looked for its owner. the rabbit had been with us for 27 28 hassan blasim a month, and i had already spent two months with salsal in this fancy villa in the north of the green zone. the villa was detached, surrounded by a high wall with a gate fitted with a sophisticated electronic security system. we didn't know when zero hour would come. salsal was a profes­ sional, whereas they called me "duckling" because this was my first operation. mr. salman would visit us once a week to check how we were and reassure us about things. mr. salman would bring some bottles of booze and some hashish. he would always tell us a silly joke about politics and remind us how secret and important the operation was. this salman was in league with salsal and didn't reveal many secrets to me. both of them made much of my weakness and lack of experience. i didn't pay them much attention. i was sunk in the bitterness of my life, and i wanted the world to be destroyed in one fell swoop. umm dala would come two days a week. she would bring us cigarettes and clean the house. on one occasion salsal harassed her. he touched her bottom while she was cooking dolma. she hit him on the nose with her spoon and made it bleed. salsallaid off her and didn't speak to her after that. she was an energetic woman in her fifties with nine children. she claimed she hated men, saying they were despicable, selfish pricks. her husband had worked for the national electric company, but he fell from the top of a lamppost and died. he was a drunkard and she used to call him the arak gerbil. i built the rabbit a hutch in the corner of the garden and took good care of him. i know rabbits are sensitive creatures and need to be kept clean and well fed. i read about that when i was in high school. i developed a pas­ sion for reading when i was thirteen. in the beginning i read classical arabic poetry and lots of stories translated from russian. but i soon grew bored. our neighbor worked in the ministry of agriculture, and one day i was playing with his son salam on the roof of their house, when we came across a large wooden trunk up there with assorted junk piled up on top of it. salam shared a secret with me. the trunk was crammed with books about crops and irrigation methods and countless encyclopedias about plants and insects. under the books there were lots of sex magazines with pictures of turkish actresses. salam gave me a magazine, but i also took a book about the various types of palm trees that grow in the country. i didn't need salam after that. i would sneak from our house to the roof of theirs to visit the library in the trunk. i would take one book and one magazine and put back the ones i had bor­ rowed. after that i fell in love with books about animals and plants and would hunt down every new book that reached the bookshops, until i was forced to join the army. the pleasure i found in reading books was disconcert­ ing, however. i felt anxious about every new piece of infor­ mation. i would latch onto one particular detail and start ,s3!"i�� looking for references and other versions of it in other nd n�j writings. i remembered, for example, that for quite some ii from time i tracked down the subject of kissing. i read and read rd an� and felt dizzy with the subject, as if i had eaten some psychotropic fruit. experiments have shown that chimpanarden zees resort to kissing as a way to reduce tension, fatigue, sitive and fear among the group. it's been proven that female read chimpanzees, when they feel that strangers have entered hsa\sal the villa atefittec we didn't a prob au e tnii heck ji the green zone rabbit 29 -_. . 30 hassan blasim their territory, hurry to their mates, hug them, and start kissing them. and after long research, i came across another kiss, a long tropical kiss. a kiss by a type of tropi­ cal fish that kiss each other for half an hour or more with­ out any kind of break. my memory of those years of darkness under sanctions is of devouring books. the elec­ tricity would go off for up to twenty hours a day, especially after that series of u.s. air strikes on the presidential pal­ aces. i would snuggle into bed at midnight, and by the light of a candle i would stumble upon another species of kiss: by insects called reduvius, though they don't actually kiss each other. these only like the mouths of sleeping humans. they crawl across the face till they reach the corner of the mouth, where they settle down and start kissing. when they kiss they secrete poison in microscopic drops, and if the person sleeping is in good health and sleeping nor­ mally, he'll wake up with a poisonous kiss on his mouth the size of four large raindrops put together. i ran away from military service. i couldn't endure the system of humiliation there. at night i worked in a bakery. i had to support my mother and my five brothers. i lost the urge to read. for me the world became like an incompre­ hensible mythical animal. a year after i ran away, the regime was overthrown and i was free of my fear of pun­ ishment for my earlier desertion. the new government abolished conscription. when the cycle of violence and the sectarian decapitations began, i planned to escape the country and go to europe, but then they massacred two of my remaining brothers. they were coming back from work in a local factory that made women's shoes. the taxi driver handed them over at a fake checkpoint. the allahu start akbar militias took them away to an undisclosed location. they drilled lots of holes in their bodies with an electric drill and then cut off their heads. we found their bodies in a garbage dump on the edge of the city. i was completely devastated and i left home. i couldn't bear to see the horror on the faces of my mother and brothers. i felt lost and no longer knew what i still wanted from this life. i took a room in a dirty hotel until my uncle came to visit me and suggested i work with his sect. to exact revenge. the summer days were long and tedious. it's true that the villa was comfortable, with a swimming pool and a sauna. but to me it seemed like a palatial mirage. salsal took a room on the second floor, while i was content with a cover and a pillow on the sofa in the middle of the large sit­ ting room where the bookcase stood. i wanted to keep an eye on the garden and the outer gate of the villa, in case anything unexpected happened. i was stunned by the size of the bookcase in the sitting room. it had many volumes on religion and on local and international law. along the shelves, animals made of teak had been arranged in shapes and poses reminiscent of african totems. the animals also separated the religious books from the law books. as soon as it fell dark, i would grab a bite to eat and go and surren­ der myself to the sofa, reminisce a little about the events of my life, then take out a book and read distractedly. the world in my head was like a spiderweb that made a faint hum, the hum of a life about to expire, of breaths held. deli­ cate, horrible wings flapping for the last time. i found the egg three days before mr. salman's last visit. one day i woke up at dawn, as usual. i fetched some roof from taxi rahu the green zone rabbit 31 __ o_ ° or " 32 hassan blasim clean water and food and went to inspect my friend the rabbit. i opened his hutch and he hopped out into the gar­ den. there was an egg in the hutch. i picked it up and examined it, trying to understand the absurdity of it. it was too small to be a chicken's egg. i was anxious, so i went straight to salsal's room. i woke him up and told him about it. salsal took hold of the egg and stared at it for a while, then laughed sneeringly. "hajjar, you'd better not be pulling my leg," he said, pointing his finger toward my eye. "what do you mean? it wasn't me who laid the egg!" i said firmly. salsal rubbed his eyes, then suddenly jumped out of bed like a madman, firing curses at me. we headed to the villa gate and checked the security system. we inspected the walls and searched the garden and all the rooms. there were no signs of anything unusual. but an egg in a rabbit hutch! our only option was to think that someone was playing tricks 'on us, sneaking into the villa and put­ ting the egg next to the rabbit. "perhaps it's a silly stunt by that whore umm dala. damn you and your rabbit," said salsal, but then he went quiet. both of us knew that umm dala was sick and hadn't come to visit us for the past week. we were doubly afraid because we didn't have any guns in the house. we weren't allowed to have guns until the day of the mission. they were worried about random searches because the green zone was a government area and most of the politicians lived there. we were living in the villa on the pretense that we were bodyguards to a member of parliament. i i i ii , the green zone rabbit 33 the gar­ i ana it. it 1,501 tala itfor salsal threw a fit and asked me to slaughter the rabbit, but i refused and told him the rabbit had nothing to do with what had happened. "wasn't it your bloody rabbit that laid the egg?" he said angrily as he went up to his room. i made some coffee and sat in the garden, watching the rabbit, which was eating its own droppings. they say the droppings contain vitamin b produced by tiny organ­ isms in its intestines. after a while salsal came back car­ rying his laptop. he was mumbling to himself and cursing mr. salman from time to time. he looked at his facebook page and said we had to be on alert 24-7. he asked me to spend the night in his room on the second floor because it was good for monitoring the gate and the walls of the villa. we turned off all the lights, sat in salsal's room, and every now and then took turns making a tour of inspec­ tion around the villa. two nights passed without anything suspicious. the villa was quiet, sunk in silence and calm. while i was stay­ ing in salsal's room i learned he was registered with facedaia, book under the pseudonym war and peace and had posted went a charcoal drawing of tolstoy as his profile picture. he had more than a thousand facebook friends, most of them qn't raia en't he)' een ans nse nr. writers, journalists, and intellectuals. he would discuss their ideas and pose as an intelligent admirer of other face­ book people. he expressed his opinions and his analysis of the violence in the country with modesty and wisdom. he even tried it with me, rambling on about the character of the deputy minister of culture. he told me how cul­ tured and humane and uniquely intelligent he was. at the time i wasn't interested in talking about the deputy -_. . hassan blasim minister. i told him that people who work in our line of business ought to keep their distance from too much inter­ net chat. he gave me his sneering professional look and said, "you look after your egg-laying rabbit, hajjar." when mr. salman finally visited us, salsal exploded in anger in front of him, and told him about the rabbit's egg. mr. salman ridiculed our story and dismissed our suspi­ cions ofumm dala. he assured us the woman was honest and had worked with them for years. but salsal accused him of betrayal and they began to argue, while i sat watch­ ing them. from their argument i gathered that in the world of sectarian and political assassinations, people were often betrayed because of greater interests. in many cases the parties in power would hand over hired killers to each other for free, as part of wider deals over political positions or to cover up some large-scale corruption. but mr. salman denied all salsal's accusations. he asked us to calm down, because the assassination of the target would take place in two days. we sat down in the kitchen and salman explained the plan to us in detail. then he took two revolvers with silencers out of his bag and said we would be paid right after the operation and that we would then be moved to somewhere else on the edge of the capital. "a rabbit's egg. ha, duckling. you're a real joker now," salman whispered to me before he left. on the last night i stayed up late with salsal. i was worried about the rabbit, because it looked like umm dala would be on a long holiday. the rabbit would die of hunger and thirst. salsal was busy with facebook, as usual. i stayed close to the window, watching the garden. he said he was having a discussion with the deputy the green zone rabbit 35 o\\',� minister of culture on sectarian violence and its roots. i gathered from salsal that this minister had been a novel­ ist in saddam hussein's time and had written three nov­ els about sufism. one day he and his wife were at a party at a wealthy architect's home overlooking the tigris. his wife was attractive, stunningly so, and cultured like her husband. she had a particular interest in old islamic man­ uscripts. the director of security, a relative of the presi­ dent, was a guest at the party. after the party was over, the security chief gave his surveillance section orders to read our friend's novels. a few days later they threw him in jail on charges of incitement against the state and the party. the director of security bargained with the novel­ ist's wife in exchange for her husband's freedom. when she rejected his demands, the security chief had one of his men rape the woman in front of her husband. after that the woman moved to france and disappeared. they released the novelist in the mid-nineties and he went off to look for his wife in france, but he could find no trace of her. when the dictator's regime fell, he went home and was appointed deputy minister of culture. the story of the novelist's life was like the plot of a bollywood film, but i was surprised how many details of the man's life salsal knew. i felt that he admired the man's personality and sophistication. i asked him what sect the man was. he ignored my question. then i tried to draw him out on the identity of our target, but salsal replied that a novice duckling like me wasn't allowed to know such things. my only task was to drive the car, and it was salsal who would fire the shot, with his silenced revolver. the next morning we were waiting in front of the mill 'eof en, wty , i 36 hassan blasim parking garage in the city center. the target was meant to arrive in a red toyota crown, and as soon as the car went into the parking garage salsal would get out of our car, follow him inside on foot, and shoot him. then we would drive off to our new place on the edge of the capital. that's why i had brought the rabbit along with me and put it in the trunk of the car. salsal received a text on his cell phone, and his face turned pale. we shouldn't have had to wait for the target more than ten minutes. i asked him if all was well. he shouted out a curse and slapped his thigh. i was worried. after some hesitation he held out his phone and showed me a picture of a rabbit sitting on an egg. it was a silly photoshop job. "do you know who sent the picture?" he asked. i shook my head. "the deputy minister of culture," he said. "what!?!" "the deputy's the target, hajjar." i got out of the car, my blood boiling at salsal's stupid­ ity and all the craziness of this pathetic operation. more than a quarter of an hour passed, and the target didn't appear. i told salsal i was pulling out of the operation. he got out of the car too and asked me to be patient and wait a while longer, because both of us were in danger. he got back in the car and tried to contact salman. i walked to a shop nearby to buy a pack of cigarettes. my heart was pounding like crazy from the anger. as soon as i reached the shop the car blew up behind me and caught fire, burn­ ing the rabbit and salsal to cinders. we will go to the cemetery, to the mortuary, and ask the guardians of the past for permission. we'll take the dead man out to the public garden naked and set him on the platform under the ripe orange sun. we'll try to hold his head in place. an insect, a fly buzzes around him, although flies buzz equally around the living and the dead. we'll implore him to repeat the story to us. there's no need to kick him in the balls for him to tell the story honestly and impartially, because the dead are usually honest, even the bastards among them. thank you, dear writer, for brushing the fly from my nose and giving me this golden opportunity. i disagree with you only when you try to make the readers frightened of me by describing me as a bastard. let them judge for themselves, i beg you, and don't you too turn into a rabid dog. congratulations on being alive! just don't interfere with the nature of the animal that you are. your honor, ten years ago-that is, before i ended my life-i was working for an army newspaper, supervising the cultural page, which dealt with war stories and poems. 39 ltd hassan blasim i lived a safe life. i had a young son and a faithful wife who cooked well and had recently agreed to suck my cock every time we had sex. from my work at the newspaper i received many rewards and presents, worth much more than my monthly salary. as the editor will attest, i was the only genius able to enliven the cultural page through my indefatigable imagination in the art of combat. so much so that even the minister of culture himself commended me, gave me his special patronage, and promised me in secret that he would get rid of the editor and appoint me in his place. i was not a genius to that extent, nor was i a bastard, as the writer of this story wants to portray me. i was a dili­ gent and ambitious man who dreamt of becoming min­ ister of culture and nothing more. to that end i was dedicated in those days to doing my job with honor, as with the sweat of my brow i revised, designed, and per­ fected my cultural page like a patient baker. no, your honor, i was not a censor, as you imagine, because the sol­ diers who wrote were stricter and more disciplined than any censor i ever met in my life. they would scrutinize every word and examine each letter with a magnifying glass. they were not so stupid as to send in pieces that were plaintive or full of whining and screaming. some of them wrote because it helped them believe that they would not be killed and that the war was just an upbeat story in a newspaper. others were seeking some financial or other benefits. there were writers who were forced to write, but all that doesn't interest me now, because at this stage i have no regrets and i am not even afraid. the dead, your honor, do not agonize over their crimes and do not long to be happy, as you know. if from time to time we hear the opposite, then those are just trivial religious and poet­ ical exaggerations and ridiculous rumors, which have nothing to do with the real circumstances of the simple dead. but i do admit that i would often interfere in the struc­ ture and composition of the stories and poems, and try as far as possible to add imaginative touches to the written images that would come to us from the front. for god's sake, what's the point, as we are about to embark on war in poetry, of someone saying, "i felt that the artillery bom­ bardment was as hard as rain, but we were not afraid"? i would cross that out and rewrite it: "i felt that the artillery fire was like a carnival of stars, as we staggered like lovers across the soil of the homeland." this is just a small exam­ ple of my modest interventions. but the turning point in the story, your honor, came when five stories arrived at the newspaper from a soldier who said he had written them in one month. each story was written in a thick workbook of the colored kind used in schools. on the cover of each workbook the writer had filled in the boxes for name, class, and school, and none of the classes went beyond the elementary level, and each book bore a different name. each of the stories was about a soldier with the same name as the name written on the cover. the stories were written in a surprisingly elevated literary style. in fact i swear that the world's finest nov­ els, before these stories that i read, were mere drivel, vac­ uous stories eclipsed by the grandeur of what this soldier had written. the stories did not speak of the war, though do nor the heroes of them were all reluctant soldiers. they were e hear a transparent and cruel exploration of sexual beings from ifewho y cock paper! ch mort lwa t� rouahm" omucn�� an army newspaper 42 hassan blasim a point of view that was childlike and satanic at the same time. one would read about soldiers in full battle dress, cavorting and laughing with their lovers in gardens and on the banks of rivers; about soldiers who transformed the thighs of prostitutes into marble arches entwined with sad plants the color of milk; soldiers who described the sky in short lascivious sentences as they rested their heads on the breasts oflissome women-magical anthems about bodies that secreted water lilies. quickly and with fascination i made inquiries to find out on which front and with which military unit the author of these stories was fighting. i discovered that a few days before the stories were sent, the enemy had made a devastating attack on the army corps with which he was fighting, and the corps had suffered appalling losses in lives and equipment. i had a colleague who worked as an editor on the bravery and medals page in our newspaper, who would shout out whenever he saw me, "you have the brain of a tank, comrade!" i remembered this description of his when i felt the idea flash fully formed in the golden wires of my brain, as i skimmed through these miraculous workbooks. i decided to write the soldier a threatening letter, telling him firmly and frankly that he was liable to interrogation by the baath party, and perhaps would soon be tried and executed, because his stories were a deliber­ ate and manifest deviation from the party's program in the just war. i relied on the perpetual fear of a soldier, which is widely acknowledged, to persuade him to re­ nounce these stories or apologize to me and beg me bit­ terly to destroy what he had written, or to forgive him his atrocious act, which he would never repeat. only then an army newspaper 43 would i know what to do with these sublime stories of humanity. i doubt any great novelist could dream of writ­ ing more than five stories displaying such a high level of inventiveness, combining reality and the language of dreams to attain the tenth rank oflanguage, the rank from which fire is created, and from which, in turn, devils are spawned. heaven was not far off. it came to my side with light­ ning speed. one week after my letter to the soldier i received a message from his army corps to say that the sol­ dier had been killed in the latest attack and that no one in his detachment had come out alive. i almost wept for joy at the bounteous gift that destiny had brought as, indescrib­ ably elated, i read again the name of the dead soldier. your honor, five months after publishing the first story in my own name (after inventing a distinctive title), i was traveling the countries of the world to present my new story at seminars, where the most famous critics and intellectuals would introduce me. the biggest newspa­ pers and international literary magazines wrote about me. i could not even find enough time to give television and radio interviews. the local critics wrote long studies on how our just war could inspire in man such artistic largesse, such love, such poetry. many master's and doc­ toral theses were written in the nation's universities, and in them the researchers endeavored to explore all the insights into poetry and humanity in my story. they wrote about the harmonies between bullets and fate, between the sound of planes and the rocking of a bed, im his between the kiss and the piece of shrapnel, between the . then smell of gunpowder and the smell of a woman's vulva, hassan blasim although the story did not make the slightest mention of war, directly or indirectly. when i came home, at a lavish ceremony i was awarded the post of minister of culture with no trouble at all. i was in no hurry to publish the four remaining stories, because the first story still had more to yield. i exchanged my wife, my house, my clothes, and my car for new things that i coveted. i can say that i paid homage to the war and raised my hands to heaven in grat­ itude for the bounty and the priceless gifts. i was confi­ dent that the nobel prize in literature would be here on my desk in the ministry after the fifth story. the gates of happiness had opened, as they say. then one day three large parcels from the front arrived at my address at the ministry, containing twenty stories sent, it seemed, by the same soldier in the same manner: elementary school books bearing the names of soldiers, containing tales of love and destiny. at first i felt tremendous confusion, which soon turned into icy panic. i quickly picked up the stories and asked the man in charge of the ministry stores to give me the keys to one of the storerooms. i hid them in complete secrecy and made many and intensive contacts to find the soldier. all the messages would come directly to my office in the minis­ try, and all of them confirmed that the soldier had been killed. they were frightening days. on the following day other parcels arrived, with double the number of stories this time, from the same soldier and in the same manner. again i carried the stories to the storeroom and put extra padlocks on the door. cruel months passed, your honor, with me torn between hiding the stories, which contin­ ued to flood in at an amazing rate, and looking for the an army newspaper 45 soldier, of whom there was no trace the length and breadth of the front. in the meantime the second story had been printed and released. i received phone calls from the president, the minister of defense, and other state officials, lauding my loyalty and my genius. invita­ tions from abroad began to flood into the ministry, but this time i turned them all down on the grounds that the country was more precious and more important than all the prizes and conferences in the world, and the country needed all its righteous citizens in such trying circum­ stances. in fact i wanted to find a solution to the problem of the stories, which kept arriving every morning in vast numbers, like a storm of locusts: today a hundred stories, tomorrow two hundred, and so on. your honor, i almost lost my "tank brain." at last i obtained the address of the soldier's house and went to visit his family to make sure he was dead. his mother told me she did not believe he was dead. there was only a small hole in his forehead. it was a sniper's bullet. i took the address of his grave from his wife and left them some money. the other storerooms at the ministry were crammed with workbooks. how would i explain to the party and the government that i had written all these sto­ ries, and why was i writing them in workbooks, and why the names of the soldiers, seemingly in elementary school? and why was i storing them this way? there were dozens of questions, none of which had a logical answer. i bought some old flour warehouses on the edge of the city in case more stories poured in. i paid vast amounts to contino three workers in the ministry to help dig up the soldier's for the grave. there he was with his decayed body and a hole in hassan blasim his forehead. i shook his body several times to make sure he was dead. i whispered in his ear, then shouted and insulted him. i challenged him, if he could, to open his mouth or move his little finger. but he was dead enough. a worm came out of his neck, chasing another worm, then the two of them disappeared inside again somewhere near his shoulder. your honor, you may not believe this story, but i swear by your omnipotence that within a year the flour warehouses and the ministry storerooms were crammed with the soldier's stories. of course, i didn't have a chance to read all the stories, but i would take a sample of each batch, and i swear to you that they did not increase only in number, they also became increasingly brilliant and crea­ tive. but at the time i trembled and felt that my end would come soon if this flood of stories did not cease. certainly i left no stone unturned in my inquiries and research. i looked into the addresses from which the parcels were coming. they were being sent in the name of the soldier from various parts of the front, but there was no trace of him. nevertheless i could not go too far in asking about the parcels, for fear of being exposed. i went back to the grave and burned the soldier's body. i divorced my second wife and left my job after a psychia­ trist helped me by submitting a report saying that my health was deteriorating. i collected all the workbooks from the ministry storerooms and the old flour ware­ houses and bought some isolated agricultural land, where i built a special incinerator, a large storeroom, a bedroom, and a bathroom, and surrounded it with a high wall. i was sure that the stories would keep pouring in at this new hi new an army newspaper address, but i was prepared for them this time. as i expected, from the morning of the first day at the farm i was working hard day and night, burning the colored workbooks-all the stories, and all the soldier's names-in hopes that the war would end and that this madness of khaki sperm would also stop. the war did stop, your honor, after long and terrify­ ing years, but a new war broke out. the only option left to me was the incinerator fire, as you are the merciful, the forgiving. your honor ... so now, and before i'm put back in the mortuary, i know you are the omnipotent, the wise, the omniscient, and the imperious, but did you also once work for an army newspaper? and why do you need an incinerator for your characters? _-_. . / he wakes up. it's a mess of a morning. he hears the words: "for god's sake, i'm going to die of thirst!" he sits on the edge of the bed. he feels a numbness in his limbs. he pours himself a glass of water. he looks around the ward in a daze. he sees a bird hitting the windowpane. a plump nurse is giving an injection to a man with an arm missing. "aha! cold water! thank you," says the policeman somewhere deep inside him .... my lifelong friend marwan used to say, "across: man­ kind; down: the sea. the highest mountain peak in the world. a three-letter word. an unfamiliar reality." they published a picture of him smiling on the cover of the magazine! it was a picture taken two years ago during the ceremony at which he received the prize for being the best cross­ word writer. the prize was funded by a billionaire mem­ ber of parliament who came back to the country after the 51 52 hassan blasim change in regime. they say the great passion he acquired for crosswords during his long exile was behind his deci­ sion to finance the prize. it was worth fifteen thousand dollars. the prize aroused much envy among certain journalists and writers, who criticized it severely and at length. marwan won it on merit; i think marwan could be awarded the title poet laureate of crosswords. i found some of his old crossword puzzles at the farm once. they contained strange expressions such as "half a moon," "a semi-mythical animal," "a vertical tunnel," "a poisonous grass," and "a half-truth." in the olden days, when our eyes were like magnifying glasses, the moon was a giant that rose above the roof­ tops, and we wanted to break it with a stone. in those days marwan and i were like a single spirit. one autumn eve­ ning we lit a fire in a barrel of trash and swore an oath to be forever loyal to each other. we played often, and invented our own secrets, built our own world out of the strangeness of the world around us. we watched the adults' wars on television and saw how the front ate up our elders. our mothers baked bread in clay ovens and sat down in the sunset hour, afraid and with tears in their eyes. we would steal sweets from shops, climb trees and break our legs and arms. life and death was a game of running, climbing, and jumping, of watching, of secret dirty words, of sleep and nightmares. i remember you both well. ifelt like a third wheel when we all started high school. i was jealous ofyou! crosswords 53 marwan and i would chase the coffins. we would wait for them to reach the turn off the main road. the war was in its fourth year by this point. the coffins were wrapped in the flag and tied firmly to the tops of cars that came from the front. we wanted to be like grown-ups who, when a coffin passed by, would stand and raise their hands solemnly and sadly. we would salute the dead like they did. but when the death car turned a corner, we would race after it down the muddy lanes. the driver would have to slow down so that the coffin didn't fall off. then the car would choose the door of a sleeping house, and stop in front of it. when the women of the house came out they would scream and throw themselves in the pools of mud and spatter their hair with it. we would hurry to tell our mothers whose house the death car had stopped outside. my mother would always reply, "go and wash your face," or "go to umm ali next door and ask her if she has a little spice mixture to spare." and in the eve­ ning my mother would go and mourn with the local women in the dead man's house, slapping her face and weeping. once i was sitting with marwan waiting for a coffin to arrive. we were eating sunflower seeds. we had waited a long time and were about to give up hope and go back home disappointed. but then the death car loomed on the horizon. we ran after it like happy dogs and were betting of secrd on who could beat the car, when it finally stopped in front of marwan's house. his mother came out screaming hys­ terically. she ripped her clothes and threw herself in the i'hen we pool of mud. bassem, who was standing next to me, stood stock-still and stared in a trance. his big brother noticed okay. marwan had cute and interesting ideas when we were kids. once he asked me to help him collect time. we went down toward the valley, stretched out on our stomachs, and proceeded to stare at a weed without moving for more than an hour. we were as silent as stone statues. it was marwan's belief that if we stared at anything in nature for an hour we would store that hour in our brains. while other people lost time, we would collect it. it was a double explosion. first they detonated a taxi in front of the magazine's offices. if it hadn't been for the concrete barriers the building would have collapsed. the second vehicle was a watermelon truck, packed with explosives. the first police patrol to arrive after the first explosion brought three policemen. the murderers waited for people to gather and then detonated the second vehicle. 54 hassan blasim him and pulled him into the house. i ran back home, into my mother's arms, crying in torment. "mummy, my friend marwan's dad's died," i sobbed. she said, "wash your face and go to the shop and fetch me half a kilo of onions." i heard what you wrote yesterday. how the first explosion shredded marwan's face. the windows shattered and the cupboardsfell on top ofhim. his mouthfilled with blood. he spat out teeth and indistinctly heard the screams of his col­ league, the editor of the new woman section. the dust made it impossible to see. she crawled over the rubble screaming, "i'm going to die ... i'm going to die." then she fell silent suddenly and forever. marwan bled a long time and only recovered consciousness in the hospital. crosswords 55 , into that killed twenty-five people. two of the policemen were frieno killed on the spot, and their colleague caught fire and began running in every direction. finally he staggered through the door of the magazine building and collapsed, a lifeless corpse. in an old text ofyours you say: a pulp of blood and shit a monster a defiled planet a god-viper time spilled in that time. when we were in high school we used to fuck a prostitute who would give us her customers' shoes. she loved us like a mother. she bought us lots of chocolate and laughed when she slept with us. marwan used to steal spoons and knives from his house and offer them to her as presents. she was crazy about little knives and addicted to cross­ word puzzles. we called her "the drunken boat," after the poem by rimbaud. before the school year ended, we went on a school trip to explore the mountains. marwan tried to bring the drunken boat along with us, but the head­ master threatened to expel us from school. on top of a rock shaped like the head of an angry bull, overlooking the valley, we sat down to smoke and read the newspaper. the others went off to explore a cave where prehistoric man had once lived. it was small, like an animal's burrow, and full of spiderwebs, they told us later. i read the paper while marwan smoked, and then we would switch roles. it was a government newspaper and it was pathetic, from 56 hassan blasim the political news on the front page to the back page devoted to the mysteries of the other world, as if our own world weren't strange and incoherent enough. it was on top of the bull's head that marwan discovered his voca­ tion. he solved the crossword puzzle in the newspaper in an instant. after that he got a notebook and pen out of his bag and set to work writing his own crossword. he smoked six cigarettes before he finished his first puzzle. it was made up of synonyms from nature. from the rock he stared up at the treetops and said, "writing cross­ words is much easier than solving them." "perhaps it's like the real world," i said, blowing smoke and pretending to be a dreamy young man. "what a philosopher," he said sarcastically. then he gave an absurd, euphoric yell that filled the valley. that night he told you that the drunken boat was his rela­ tive. why did he hide this from you for so many years? we were separated when we went to college. marwan's family moved to another part of the city. he went to study agriculture, with dreams of ending up with a piece of land where he could plant pomegranate trees. i went to the school of mass communications. we would visit each other constantly, exchange ideas, laugh, and smoke and drink a lot. we would also exchange gossip about the drunken boat. we heard that some pimp had cut off her ear because she stole a ring from a customer who worked in state security. she got her revenge on him three days later. he was lying asleep on his stomach, so she sank a he sent you a text message that read: fire sign-you're com­ patible with all the signs. your blood group breathes disap­ pointment and happiness. you stick your tongue in the woman's mouth in order to cool down. the fog that burns on the ceiling is the steam of sweat. you buy pins and colored t otlnei pictures from the shop. you pin them on your flesh when you \rorkej receive a guest. the firewood comes to you throughout the ee dayi night, wrapped in nightmares. when you wake up you have a :3nk� bath onfire. you eat onfire. you read the newspapers on fire. k pa�� qurown crosswords 57 carving knife deep into his ass. she was given a jail sentence. marwan got married in his first year at college. it was passionate love at first sight. the fruit of his love with salwa was two children, and the fruit came while they were still studying. when they graduated, salwa stayed at home to look after the children, and marwan went look­ ing for work. things weren't easy for someone who had just graduated in agriculture. meanwhile i started to have articles published on historical esoteric a, which i had been writing since i was a student. after i graduated i began work straightaway at a magazine, boutique. we would vent our need to rebel by writing on ideological and social themes. i got in touch with a colleague who was working at the popular magazine puzzles and told him that marwan was skilled at writing crosswords and astrology columns. marwan was angry with me for lying about the astrology, but he had no options other than to work at the magazine. he started writing crosswords and even began studying up on astrology. , i 58 hassan blasim you smoke a cigarette on fire. in the coffee cup you come across prophecies offire. you laugh on fire. you have your lungs checked at the hospital, and they find a spring oferrors that looks like a tumor. you dream ofthe final act: it goes out. i bought a stuffed scorpion from the toy shop and went to visit marwan in the hospital. the doctor told me that marwan's injuries weren't serious. they had extracted some fragments of window glass from his scalp and said he would be fine. salwa, his wife, was anxious and fright­ ened by marwan's mental confusion. like her, i asked the doctor various questions about marwan's mysterious condition. the doctor asked me, "if you'd gone through a terrorist explosion like that, would you come out laughing and joking?" "maybe!" i said, looking at his pointed nose. he gave me a contemptuous look and took marwan's wife to one side. the doctor was wrong; marwan wasn't suffering just from shock. the burned policeman had got inside him and had taken control of his being. he would say he could hear the policeman's voice in his head, clear and sharp. aahh! perhaps like my voice ... you frame his sarcastic words and hang them on your living room wall. war peace god's ass crosswords 59 after coming out of the hospital marwan kept to himself at home and didn't want to meet any visitors. one day he contacted me and said he wanted to come visit. we bought a bottle of whiskey and went to my apartment. he told me he was reluctant to go to the policeman's house and find out who he was. he soon got drunk and started shouting and cursing, addressing thin air, saying, "eat shit," and "shut up, pimp." then he opened his eyes like an owl and threatened to break off our friendship if i didn't believe everything he told me. i took the policeman's address from him and drove him home. salwa was waiting for us at the window, downcast. marwan hadn't told her what had happened to him. he was struggling to deal with the disaster himself and was on the verge of madness. i knocked on the door, and an attractive woman in the spring of her life came out. she was dressed in black, and her eyes were swollen. standing in the doorway, i saw a little girl playing with a rabbit the same size as she was. i said i was a journalist and i wanted to write an article about the victims of the explosion at puzzles magazine. she said her husband had been killed because of the igno­ rance that prevailed in this wretched country and she didn't want to speak to anyone. she shut the door. i made discreet inquiries about the young woman's circum­ stances at a nearby shop. the shopkeeper told me about her husband, the policeman, and how kind he had been and how much he had loved his family. the policeman used to say, "god has blessed me with the three most beautiful women in the world-my mother, my daughter, 60 hassan blasim • i and my wife. i'm thankful to be alive, however tough it is in this country." in the three days marwan spent in the hospital, the policeman told him what had happened: "on the patrol we were telling each other jokes, my colleagues and me. we heard the explosion and headed straight to the puz­ zles building. my colleagues moved people away from the scene of the incident, and i tried to put out the fire in a car in which a woman and her daughter were burning. then the second explosion went off. "my body caught fire. i started to run and scream, then i collapsed in the lobby. i found myself sitting on the ground, a few paces away from my own burning body! i had split in two: one a lifeless corpse, the other shivering from the cold. i ran down the corridors of the magazine building. i saw a woman crawling on her stomach and screaming, but she died before i could do anything. i saw you under the rubble, so i went inside you and i felt warm again. and here i am, smelling what you can smell, tast­ ing what you taste, hearing what you hear, and aware of you as a living being, but i can't see anything. i'm in total darkness. can you hear me?" "yes," marwan had said. okay, this is what you wrote down .... tell me how you reacted to that . marwan was angry when i suggested he visit a man of religion. i was bewildered by what he had told me, and it had made me say stupid things. he told me i was crazy and that i was behaving like we were still childhood soul iiii, 'i[1",. _ crosswords 61 mates. ("it was just a trivial, childish game, you idiot!" he yelled.) then he started talking to me as calm as a mad­ man: "do you understand me? okay, he can share a bed with me, a grave, a window, a seat on the bus, but he's not going to share my body! that's too much; in fact it's com­ plete madness! he grumbles and cries and tells me off as though i'm the thief and it's not him who's stolen my life." if marwan went to sleep with only a thin blanket around him, the policeman would wake him up in the middle of the night and say, "i'm cold, mr. marwan, please!" if marwan drank whiskey, the other guy would com­ plain, "please, mr. marwan, that's wrong. you're burning your soul with that poison! stop drinking!" or, "why don't you go to the toilet, mr. marwan? the gas in your stomach is annoying." why couldn't it have been the policeman who incited mar­ wan to swallow the razor blade?! marwan's eyes turned bloodshot from staying up late and drinking too much, and the others got used to his behav­ ior. they treated him as a victim of the explosion. just another madman. his nerves would flare up for the slight'vwjc� est reason. his colleagues at work didn't abandon him, and he went on devising crosswords, though he stopped writing the horoscopes. he was given a warning when he started writing very difficult crosswords, using words he found in the encyclopedia, or when he wrote, for exam­ ple, "7 across: a purple scorpion, 5 down: a broken womb manoi . anait is ef8z:' ad qui (six letters, inverted)." 62 hassan blasim "this meat tastes salty. what's that horrible smell? don't you read the quran? why don't you pray? the water's hot in the shower." marwan started to take revenge, taking plea­ sure in tormenting the policeman. he would eat and drink and do things the policeman didn't like, like drink gallons of whiskey, which the policeman couldn't bear. marwan complained to you about the things that trou­ bled him most. he hadn't gone near his wife's body, except once, three months ago. he had the impression that he was sleeping with her along with another man, and the police­ man groaned and wailed like a crazed cat. the policeman didn't submit to his fate readily. he also knew how much authority he had. sometimes he would keep jabbering deliriously in marwan's head until his skull throbbed. the last time marwan told me about the policeman was while they had a truce. the policeman wanted marwan to visit his family. he told him some intimate details of his life so that marwan would seem like an oldfriend. yes, yes, yes. i'm not interested in all those details. when you write, you can choose the limits and call the rest our ignorance. marwan sat on the sofa and the policeman's wife brought him some tea, while his mother wiped her tears with the hem of her hijab. marwan hugged the policeman's little girl as if she were the daughter of a late dear friend. it was the same scene whenever he visited. he started buying presents for the family on instructions from the then one day i visited him at his magazine. he was take ali) ing swigs from a bottle of arak that he hid in the drawer of his desk and smoking furiously. i started talking about our problems working at boutique and the state of the country, in hopes of calming his nerves. he stopped writ­ ing as i spoke. when i stopped speaking, he stood up and asked if i'd go with him to visit the drunken boat in prison. i wasn't even sure she was still alive. i rang the depart­ ment in charge of women's prisons from his office and asked after her. they told me she was a patient in the city's central hospital. i was extremely uneasy all the way to the hospital. marwan smoked a lot and rocked back and forth in his seat. he began pressing me to take good care of his family, his voice full of emotion. i told him, "what are you talking about? marwan, what do you mean, 'going to die'? hey, you're like a cat with seven good lives left." on't otin plea­ drin� ansaf ftea the crosswords 63 policeman, and marwan even went to visit the police­ man's grave with the family. the policeman went into a deep silence when he heard his wife and mother weeping at his grave. he remained silent for several days. marwan breathed a sigh of relief each time, assuming the policeman had disappeared. he punched you on the nose when you were driving the car. i know ... good ... details ... everything in this story is boring and disgusting. 64 hassan blasim he punched me in the nose. then he lit me a cigarette with his and put it in my mouth. i had an urge to stop the car and give him a thorough beating. the drunken boat was lying in the intensive care ward. just a skeleton. she'd been unconscious for a fort­ night. we sat close to her on the edge of the bed. marwan took a small knife shaped like a fish out of his trouser pocket and put it close to her pillow. he held her hand, and tears flowed down his cheeks. and after that you came to visit me! yes, we bought a range of mezes, two bottles of arak, and twenty cans of beer, and we drove to your farm. i was so happy to see the two of you! time had flown, you guys! we had a wild time that night raising a toast to our memories of high school. we put a table out under the lemon tree and cracked open the drinks. marwan seemed cheerful and relaxed, without any obvious wor­ ries. he was laughing and joking, not to mention drinking frantically. somebody brought up that boy at school called "the genius." he was an eccentric student who had mem­ orized all the textbooks within months. the teachers were convinced he was a genius, and they were shocked when he got poor grades on the final exams, barely enough to qualify to study at the oil institute. in his first year of college, he sneaked in at night and set fire to the lecture hall, then shot himself with a revolver. it was all a bit of a tragedy! crosswords 65 arette you told us at length about your days of isolation on your top the farm, where you wanted to be free to write a book on the history of decapitation in mesopotamia. \"e cart the conversation eventually flagged, and we started to slur our words. we were drunk, and marwan fell back into a deep silence. we got up to go into the house. mar­ wan asked me to recite whatever i could remember by pessoa, his favorite writer. i'm not me, i don't know anything, i don't own anything, i'm not going anywhere, i put my life to sleep in the heart of what i don't know. it was a wonderful summer night. three best friends from school reunited. i lay on the grass, looked up at the clear sky, and began to imagine god as a mass of shadows. we heard marwan's screams coming from the bathroom. we couldn't save him. he died in the pool of blood he had vomited. you phoned me a week later, and we went to an art exhibi­ tion in my car. we were going along the highway when, by mistake, i overtook a truck loaded with rocks. enough, god keep you. what, you're tired! i want to sleep awhile. / --. . / 66 hassan blasim i i okay, let's sleep. i hope that when i wake up i can't hear you anymore and you're completely out of my life. me too, you fuck. i ii i i i i i ---. . / 1 i was stuffing the last pieces of chocolate into the bag. i had already filled my pockets with them. i took some bot­ tles of water from the storeroom. i had enough canned salmon, so i hid the remaining cans under the pile of toi­ let paper. then, just as i was heading for the door, three masked gunmen broke in. i opened fire and one of them fell to the ground. i ran out the back door into the street, but the other two started to chase me. i jumped over the fence of the local soccer field and ran toward the park. when i reached the far end of the park, down by the side of the natural history museum, i fell into a hole. "listen, don't be frightened." his hoarse voice scared me. "who are you?" i asked him, paralyzed by fear. "are you in pain?" "no." "that's normal. it's part of the chain." the darkness receded when he lit a candle. 69 / --. . / ii 70 hassan blasim "take a deep breath! don't worry!" he gave an unpleasant laugh, full of arrogance and disdain. his face was dark and rough, like a loaf of barley bread. a decrepit old man. his torso was naked. he was sitting on a small bench, with a dirty sheet on his thighs. next to him there were some sacks and some old junk. if he hadn't moved his head like a cartoon character, he would have looked like an ordinary beggar. he was tilting his head left and right like a tortoise in some legend. "who are you? did i fall down a hole?" "yes, of course you fell. i live here." "do you have any water?" "the water's cut off. it'll come back soon. i have some marijuana." "marijuana? are you with the government or the opposition?" "i'm with your mother's cunt." "please! is the place safe?" he lit a joint and offered it to me. i took a drag and examined him. he looked suspicious. he smoked the rest of the joint and tuned a radio beside him to a station that was playing a song in a strange language. it sounded like some african religious beat. "are you foreign?" "can't you tell by my accent? i'm speaking your lan­ guage, man! but you can't speak my language, because i was in the hole before you. but you'll speak the language of the next person who falls in." "ah, man. i hate the way you talk." he looked away, leaned his tortoise-like neck forward, and flan­ use i uage rard, the hole and lit another candle. i could see the place more clearly now. there was a dead body. i examined it in the candle­ light, a bitter taste in my mouth. it was the body of a sol­ dier, and there was an old rifle nearby. his legs were lacerated, possibly by some sharp piece of shrapnel. he looked like a soldier from ancient times. "it's true, it's a russian soldier." he'd read my thoughts, and on his face there was an artificial smile. "and what was he doing in our country? was he work­ ing at the embassy?" "he fell in the forest during the winter war between russia and finland." "you really are mad." "listen, i don't have time for the likes of you. i wanted to be polite with you, but now you're starting to get on my nerves. i'm in a shitty mood today." i began to examine the hole. it was like a well. its walls were of damp mud, but the pores in the mud gave off a sharp, acrid smell. maybe the smell of flowers! i lifted up the candle to try to see how deep the hole was. at the mouth, the lights in the park were visible. "do you believe in god?" he asked me in his disgust­ ingvoice. "we're always in his care. pray to him, man, to spare us the disasters of life." he rounded his hands into the shape of a megaphone and started to shout hysterically, "0 lord of miracles, almighty one, omniscient one, god, great one, send down a giraffe or a monkey as long as it's a hundred eighty cen­ timeters tall! make something other than a human fall in / --. . / 2 72 hassan blasim the hole! make a dry tree fall in the hole! throw us four snakes so we can make a rope out of them!" as if the craziness of this tortoise-like old man was what i needed! i humored him with his sarcastic prayer and said that if another man fell down the hole it would be easy to get out of it, because it wasn't deep. "you're right, and here's a third man!" he said, pointing at the russian soldier. "but he's dead." "dead here, but not in another hole." the old man suddenly pulled out a knife. i watched him warily, in case he attacked me. he crawled on his knees toward the body of the soldier and started cutting out chunks of flesh and eating them. he paid no attention to me, as if i didn't exist. that night i had picked up my revolver before heading out to the shop. i'd closed the place down months before, when the killing and looting started to spread across the capital. i would drop by the shop now and then when it was hard to get food or water from any of the shops near our house. the economy had quickly collapsed, and things had grown even worse due to the strikes. there were signs of an uprising, and chaos spread in the wake of the government's resignation. the first protests began in the capital, and within a few days panic and violence swept the country. bands of people occupied all the gov­ ernment buildings. they formed interim committees and attempted to govern. however, things suddenly turned sour again. people said that it was businessmen who backed the organized gangs that managed to take control of the northern part of the country. the rich and the sup­ porters of the fugitive government were convinced that the new faith-based groups would come to power and im­ pose their obscurantist ideology. that's what the spokes­ man for the northern region said, and he also threatened that the region would secede. the extremists in the faith­ based groups took no interest in speeches by politicians or revolutionaries. they were working silently behind the scenes, and in one shock assault they seized control of the country's nuclear missile base. "mankind has led us into ruination, so let's go back to the wisdom of the creator." that was their motto. as for the army, it fought on several fronts. in the coun­ try's main port, soldiers with machine guns killed more than fifty people who were trying to rob the main bank. people started to confront the army, which they began to i�gou! see as the enemy of change. there was plenty of weaponry. our southern neighbors were said to have given weapons to civilians. in the capital some sensible people called for calm and for a way out of the storm that was sweeping the country. the army surrounded the missile base and began negotiating with the extremist leader, who was living among armed tribes in another country. he was a colonel who had been expelled from the army because of his extremist ideas. it was also said that he had a slogan tat­ tooed on his forehead: purge the earth of devils. the old man chewed the meat and went back to his place as if he'd just finished eating a sandwich. he wiped four an in ence gar­ i and the hole 73 / --. . / hassan blasim his mouth with a dirty towel, pulled out a book, and began to read. i took out a bar of chocolate and devoured it ner­ vously. the old man was quite loathsome and disgusting. he looked up from his book and said, "listen, i'll get straight to the point. i'm a jinni." he put out his hand for me to shake. i looked at him inquisitively. what was it my grandfather had said in his last few weeks? he kept raving in front of the pomegranate tree (all he could do in this world was suck pomegranates and stare at the tree). how i wanted to get up and kick the old man. i noticed he was looking at me spitefully and smiling in a way that suggested contempt. then he said, "you seem to be braver and less disgusting than this russian. listen, i'm not interested in you and the people who visit the hole. all i'm looking for in your stories is amusement. when you spend your life in this endless chain, the pleasure of play­ ing is the only thing that keeps you going. wretches like this russian remind me of the absurdity of the game. the romance of fear transforms the chain into a gallows. as soon as our friend the russian fell in the hole, it terrified him that i was in it. he aimed his rifle at my head. and when i told him i was a jinni, he almost went crazy. he had one bullet. if it didn't kill me, he would die of fright, and if he didn't fire it he would remain hostage to his own paranoia." "very well, and what happened?" "ha! i told him i knew all the secrets of his life, and to make him more frightened i said i knew nikolai, his aunt's youngest son. the soldier was disturbed when he heard � ---i:owll the hole 75 the name. i talked about how he and nikolai raped a girl in his village. he broke down and fired a bullet at my head. it's a silly chain, full of your human stories. would you believe sayings such as this?" he read from his book: "'we are merely exotic shadows in this world.' trite talk, isn't it? life is beautiful, my friend. enjoy it and don't worry. i used to teach poetry in baghdad. i think it's going to rain. one day we might know one of the secrets or how to get out. there's no difference here. what matters is the music of the chain." i shouted, "you're eating a corpse, you disgusting old man!" "ha! you'll eat me too, and they'll eat you or use you as material for their batteries or for drinking." i punched him in the face and shouted again: "if you weren't an old man, i'd smash your skull in, you bastard!" he paid no attention to what i said. all he said was that there was no need for me to be upset, because he would leave the hole soon and i would fall into another hole from another time. he said his book would stay with me. it's a book full of hallucinations. it has detailed expla­ nations of the secret energy extracted from insects to cre­ ate additional organs to reinforce the liver, the pancreas, the heart, and all the body's other organs. 3 nato before leaving the hole, the old man told me he was from unt'� baghdad and had lived in the time of the abbasid caliphleard ate. he had been a teacher, a writer, and an inventor. he // --. . / 76 hassan blasim suggested to the caliph that they light the city streets with lanterns. he had already supervised the lighting of the mosques and was now busy on his plan to expand the house lighting system by more contemporary methods. the baghdad thieves were upset by his lanterns, and one day they chased after him after dawn prayers. close to his home the lantern man tripped on his cloak and fell down the hole. one of the things this baghdadi told me was that everyone who visits the hole soon learns how to find out about events of the past, the present, and the future, and that the inventors of the game had based it on a series of experiments they had conducted to understand coinci­ dence. there were rumors that they couldn't control the game, which rolls ceaselessly on and on through the curves of time. he also said, "anyone who's looking for a way out of here also has to develop the art of playing; oth­ erwise they'll remain a ghost like me, happy with the game .... ha, ha, ha. i'm fed up with trying to decipher symbols. there are two opponents in every game. each one has his own private code. it's a bloody fight, repetitive and disgusting. the rest is memory, which they can't erase easily. in your day, experiments with memory were in their infancy. the scientists went on working for more than a century and a half after those first attempts, the purpose of which was to discover the memory centers in rats' brains. it turned out that the rats remembered what they learned even if their brains had been completely destroyed in the laboratory. those would be amazing experiments if they were applied to humans. is memory a winning card in this game that we play so seriously till it's r"'"� .--_ eets g of d the hods, done toni) doli'll irner eacfl iti\'� can't more ,roe rsin rnat tely ing rya lit's ithe hole 77 all over, or should we merely have fun? everyone that falls down here becomes a meal or a source to satisfy the instincts, or energy for other systems. we who ... damn, who are we? no one knows!" the old man died and left me really helpless. day had broken and snowflakes fell from the mouth of the hole. the russian's body looked ghostly. i wanted to reach back to other times i might have lived in, the traces of which are scattered to places i previously thought imaginary. my consciousness was moving like a roller coaster at an amusement park. i watched the snowflakes swirling. the vision of the soldier had disappeared. my eyes were open and my mind was asleep. i may have been sleeping for hundreds of years. i imagined a dead cell. am i really just in my mind or in every cell in my body? a strong smell of flowers filled the hole. i closed my eyes, but then a young girl fell into the hole. she was carrying on her back an electronic bag tied around her chest with many straps, and to her thighs were tied metallic phosphorous clus­ ters. in her hand she was holding something that looked like an electronic gauge. "who are you?" she asked me, panting. there were wounds disfiguring her pretty face. "i'm a jinni. what happened to you?" i felt as if my voice went back to ancient times. "a blood analysis robot was chasing me," she said. she was sucking her finger, which was swollen like a mushroom. "that's normal," i said apathetically, then crawled toward the corpse of the old man. i ,i ;rj i \11' ii' / --. i in those unforgettable days before the miracle happened and i discovered the truth that everyone now denies or ignores, we used to guard the platform where the two statues stood. we had light arms, three mortars, and seven rpg launchers. the prominent people and opinion-makers in the neighborhood had rejected an order from the new government to remove the statues, and we had information that the army would storm the neighborhood by night. while deep down i didn't con­ sider this to be my battle, it was much easier to deceive myself than to bear the shame of running away. the bat­ tle might break out at any moment and i might lose my life for the sake of these two young men cut from stone who stood upright on the dais as though they were about to fall flat on their faces. it's clear that the sculptor was just a building worker who knew nothing of the art of sculpture. the fanatical islamists had a fatwa that all the statues in the country should be removed because they were idols and incompatible with islamic law. as for the government, it had decided to remove everything that symbolized the period of the former dictatorial regime. .i ii 81 / --. . / 82 hassan blasim the notables and other people of the neighborhood held the view that the statues had nothing to do with the for­ mer regime nor with repressive fatwas. i didn't believe in that kind of nonsense. my father said it was a symbolic battle of destiny for the sake of the neighborhood's future. i don't know how my father, as a science teacher at the high school, could believe such superstitions. of course, there are dozens of versions of the statues story, but per­ haps the version that my grandfather told was the one closest to the truth. the touch of realism in my grandfa­ ther's story made the people of the neighborhood seem even more naive, whereas his intention was to portray them as friendly, intelligent, and generous. this is what i was thinking at the time, before my life changed forever. perhaps it would be best if i first repeated to you in brief my grandfather's version of the story, before i tell you what happened to me on the night of the battle. with great sadness he would say, "no one knows when exactly the two young men appeared. they were the same age, the same height, and as alike as twins. people in the neighborhood thought they were from those rich dis­ tricts far away, but they could not guess where they were going. each of them carried a backpack, and they wore smart clothes suggesting they were wealthy and well bred. what struck the people of the neighborhood most was their blond hair and their white complexions. the darkness district was one of the most wretched in the city, and the inhabitants were skinny with swarthy com­ plexions they had inherited from their peasant ancestors. it was the people in nearby parts of the city who gave the name darkness to the neighborhood, the only one that :. tne in tne . com· tors. 'e the i that the madman of freedom square 83 did not have electricity. i imagine it was the first time the people of the neighborhood had seen visitors of this spe­ cies of humanity. "every morning the two young men would walk through the village toward the river in the distance, com­ ing from the direction of the wasteland that separates the darkness district from the arbanjiya district. they would smile tenderly and with affection at the half-naked chil­ dren of the neighborhood, and greet the elders with a slight nod that suggested respect. they would avoid the muddy patches in the lanes simply and unassumingly, without showing signs of disgust or haughtiness. the people of the neighborhood saw them as angels from heaven. nobody spoke to them or asked them any intru­ sive questions, or stood in their way for any reason what­ soever. the neighborhood was dazzled by the aura of light that radiated from the young men. they would walk with confident, measured steps, as though they had learned to walk in a private school. their silence added to the mystery of them. they were well mannered and dig­ nified, but with a light touch of good humor. the people of the neighborhood fell in love with the two young men and grew accustomed to their radiant appearance every morning. day by day people became more and more attached to the two handsome youths, and their coming and going became like the rising and the setting of the sun. the children were the first to grow attached to them: they would gather early in the morning on the edge of the quarter to wait for the young men to appear from across the wasteland. they would bet sinbad cards on which lane the men would come down today. when "the i' i blonds" arrived the children would be thrilled. the chil­ dren would tag along with them until they reached the other side of the neighborhood, jumping up around them, laughing, and touching the young men's clothes with their fingertips, in a mixture of fear and exhilaration. the children would be even happier when the men would gra­ ciously bend down, without stopping walking, to let the children touch their blond hair. the girls of the neighbor­ hood fell for the blonds, and before long it was as though a sacred and secret covenant had been concluded between them and the local people. "the days passed without either side daring to break the barrier of silence or ambiguity. before the blonds appeared it would have been suicide for a stranger to enter the neighborhood. but now the girls would stick their heads out from the balconies and windows to feast their eyes on the beauty of the two young men and sigh with the ardent passion of youth. as soon as the men were gone they would drift off in daydreams as they listened to love songs on the radio. when the blonds were coming, the girls would take their radios out on the balcony in hopes that the radio station would playa love song at just that moment, and if a love song was on they would turn the volume right up as though the song were a personal message of love from the girl with the radio. the two young men would react to all this respectfully, modestly, and amiably. "the days passed." my grandfather gave a deep sigh and prolonged the a of "passed." "an old woman died," my grandfather said. "and fifty children were born in the neighborhood, of skinny moth84 hassan blasim i i ers and unemployed fathers. the summer passed and the men who sell vegetables made more money. the local women attributed to the baraka or spiritual power of the blonds the fact that their husbands, who worked sweep­ ing the streets or as school janitors in the city center, had all received pay raises. the husbands, who had been skeptical about the baraka of the two men, soon stopped scoffing, when the government decided to install electric­ ity at the beginning of winter. after all these signs of baraka, the women began a campaign to plant flowers outside their front doors so that the blonds could smell the fragrance as they made their angelic passage through the darkness district. as for the men, they filled in the puddles so the blonds would not have to walk around them. "there was a spark of hope in the faces of the people, and this brought out their natural color, which in the past had been coated with the grime of sadness and misery. everyone started to make sure the children were clean, sewed new clothes for them, and told them to be more polite when they met the blonds. they taught them a lovely song about birds and spring to sing when they were with the blonds. "to reinforce all this veneration and faith, a man in the neighborhood was suddenly appointed to an impor­ tant position in the government, and he promised to pave the streets and extend the pipes to bring in drinking water. the young people told the man to ask the govern­ ment to bring telephone lines to the darkness district, and i also remember what the people did when they found �th. out that a group of evildoers were planning to attack the hu­ the the madman of freedom square 85 / ---. . / 86 hassan blasim blonds close to the river. they had a discussion in the mayor's house and then warned the evildoers that they and their families would be thrown out of the neighbor­ hood if they went ahead with their plans, and the bad guys backed down. "no more than two years after the blonds first ap­ peared, every wish had come true, just as miracles hap­ pen in myths and legends. the old maids got married, the muddy lanes were paved, everyone with a chronic disease was cured, most of the children passed their exams, whereas previously their results had been embarrassing. the biggest miracle of all was the overthrow of the mon­ archy through a coup by heroic officers who enjoyed the support of the people. it's clear that all this good fortune and felicity had come to the people by virtue of the blonds. from then on harmony and love reigned among the peo­ ple of the neighborhood, and enmity and violence almost disappeared. another new thing was that the schools became mixed, with boys and girls together, and the gov­ ernment built a clinic close to the neighborhood, and i used to sell chickpeas in front of it. the government did something very logical when it changed the name from the darkness district to the flower district. it chose the new name after a government official visited the neigh­ borhood and submitted a report in which he mentioned how many flowers there were and also how clean the neighborhood was. almost every house had a telephone line, and it was noticeable that more than a few of the inhabitants had come to have cars. the other new thing in the neighborhood was that the old people now took part in the adult literacy program and were enthusiastic '" �� .--_ thing took iastic ithe madman of freedom square 87 about discovering the mysteries of the alphabet and of language in general. in short the neighborhood acquired a new vitality and prosperity after the medicine began to take effect. but the happiness evaporated on that ill-fated morning, the day after the military coup, when the chil­ dren went out to the edge of the neighborhood to wait for the blonds to come. they waited long and the blonds did not come. their mothers joined them and sat with them on the wasteland. the government had built a wide road across the middle of the wasteland and now tanks and armored personnel carriers were driving along it. then the rest of the local people came along to join them, and everyone was looking at the tanks on the main road, belching out black smoke. they had a sense of bitterness inside them, lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes. "the sun had set and darkness had descended again." my grandfather blew out the lantern flame and gave a long sigh. it was after midnight, and the new government's tanks were invading the neighborhood to remove the statues of the blonds. the men of the neighborhood had taken up battle positions on the roofs of the houses and in the alley­ ways. a fierce battle broke out, and even the women took part. i had slipped through, along with three friends car­ rying grenade launchers to destroy a tank that was mov­ ing down the middle of the main road, but the helicopters firing from above restricted our movements. we hid behind a taxi parked on the pavement. then some of the shops and other buildings caught fire. it looked like we were doomed to lose the battle because of the constant i '. �=: iii ii 'i: ii : ii iii ii ii i i' i i i i 88 hassan blasim bombardment from the helicopters. we broke one of the windows of the taxi and hid inside, with plans to drive it off and escape. suddenly one of the helicopters in the sky burst into flames and crashed onto the roofs of the houses. then our fighters hit a tank with their missiles, and we saw the government troops withdrawing in panic. a while later we saw a group of young men from the neigh­ borhood rushing forward like madmen, shouting "allahu akbar" and spraying bullets around at random, jubilant and heedless of the battle. we got out of the taxi when the young men went by, and we heard from them that god had brought about a miracle. they told us the blonds had come back to the neighborhood and were now fighting ferociously against the government forces. they said it was the blonds alone who had set fire to the tank and brought down the helicopter. my friends cheered and shouted "allahu akbar" with the group as they ran toward the government troops, firing bullets in every direction. this neighborhood was surely just a vast mental hospital. i felt anger and hatred as i stood by the taxi, transfixed, watching the throngs celebrating the miraculous victory. i lit a cigarette and thought that the best way to end my torment would be to abandon this cave they call the dark­ ness district. just as i turned to walk home, a torrent of missiles suddenly rained down right across the neighbor­ hood. one of these missiles threw me and the wreckage of the taxi against a nearby wall. i saw flames around me on all sides. i did not feel any pain, but the sudden silence around me gave me a strange feeling of peace. when the blonds pulled me from under the wreckage of the car i saw that one of them was wearing a shirt stained the with my blood. my father says i was unconscious when ve it they found me in front of the door to our house, but i'm sure the blonds carried me on a white stretcher, and all along the way they smiled at me, and i reached out my hand to touch their beautiful blond hair. some of the young men from the new generation in the neighborhood now call me the madman of freedom square. the government planted some trees and put some iibenches where the statues of the blonds had stood. they put up a large plaque with the new name of the neighborhood: freedom district. i know what these idiots say. they claim that the piece of shrapnel that went into my head damaged my brain. but they are just villagers still living in the dark age. i have repeatedly asked the notables and others to contribute money to rebuild the statues of the blonds and protect the history of the neighborhood. this is the least i could do to repay them the favor of saving my life. what makes me angry is that even my father no longer believes in the story of the blonds, after the soldiers demolished the statues and killed many 11i young men that night. some people now claim that the ii story of how the blonds miraculously appeared that night i and fought on our side is just cheap propaganda, spread by certain youngsters to raise the morale of our fighters, and that the government army wiped out the resistance before morning broke. but i am quite sure it was the blonds who carried me on the white stretcher, and with these very fingers of mine i touched their angelic hair. ace, a few days ago i met a stranger whom i believe to be e of honest, not a fake like most of the people in the neighbornea hood, and he told me he believed my story of how the the madman of freedom square 89 90 hassan blasim blonds appeared that night. he spoke to me at length about how we have lost our history and heritage because of the agents of the west and because we have neglected our religion, and how freedom means not becoming stooges in the hands of the infidels, but what i don't fully under­ stand is the wide belt the man wrapped around my waist in his house this morning. i feel very hot because the belt is so heavy. i'll sit down in the shade of the tree .... damn, the women and children have taken all the benches. we were meant to camp in an old girls' school, and some of the soldiers decided the best place to spend the night was the school's air-raid shelter. daniel the chris­ tian picked up his blanket and other bedding and headed out into the open courtyard. "of course, chewgum christ is crazy," remarked one of the soldiers, a man as tall as a palm tree, his mouth stuffed with dry bread. "perhaps he doesn't want to sleep with us muslims," suggested another soldier. the young men were monkeys. they didn't know the truth about daniel. they were too busy masturbating on the benches in the classrooms where the girls used to sit. just one missile and they would shortly be charred pricks. in absurd wars such as this one, daniel's gift was a lifesaver. we had been together in the kuwait war, and if it hadn't been for his amazing powers we wouldn't have survived. aside from his gloomy nature, daniel could hardly be con­ sidered ordinary flesh and blood. he was a force of nature. i spread out my blanket close to him and lay on my back, like him, staring into space. 93 --. . / . / 94 hassan blasim "go to sleep, ali, my friend. go to sleep. there's no sign tonight. go to sleep," he said to me, and started snor­ ing straightaway. daniel was always chewing gum. the soldiers had baptized him chewgum christ. i often imagined that daniel's chewing was like an energy source, recharging the battery that powered the screen in his brain. his life's dream was to work in the radar unit. he had completed high school and volunteered to join the air force, but his application was rejected, maybe because his father had been a prominent communist in the seventies. he loved radar the way other men love women or soccer. he col­ lected pictures of radar systems and talked about signals and frequencies as though he was talking about a romp in the hay with some girlfriend. during the last war, i remember him saying, "ali, humans are the best radar receivers, compared with other animals. you just need to practice making your spirit leave your body and then bring it back, like exhaling and inhaling." he had tat­ tooed on his right arm the radar equation: after daniel's hopes of joining the air force were dashed, he volunteered for the medical corps. but he did not give up his passion for radar, and anyone who knew him would not have been surprised by this obsession, because chew­ gum christ was himself the strangest radar in the world. i remember those terrifying nights during the war over kuwait. the soldiers, as frightened as ducklings, would no follow him wherever he went. the coalition planes would orbe bombing our trenches, and we wouldn't be able to fire a single shot back. we felt like we were fighting some ultihad mate, almighty force. all we could do was dig more that trenches and scamper from place to place like rats. in the end we camped near the desert. all we had left was our faith in god and the powers of daniel the christian. one night we were eating in the trench with the other soldiers when daniel started complaining of a stomachache. the soldiers stopped eating, picked up their weapons, and prepared to stand, all of them looking at daniel's mouth. "i want to lie down in the shade of the large water tank," christ said finally. the soldiers joined him as he left the trench, jostling to keep close to him as if he were a shield against missiles. they sat around him in the shade. just thirty-five min­ utes later three bombs fell on the trench. it wasn't the only time. christ's premonitions saved many soldiers. in daniel's company the war played out like the plot of a car­ toon. in the blink of an eye, reality lost cohesion. it fell apart and you started to hallucinate. what could one make, for example, of the way a constant itching in dan­ iel's crotch foretold that an american helicopter would crash on the headquarters building? is it credible that three successive sneezes from daniel could foretell a dev­ astating rocket attack? they fired them at us from the sea. we soldiers were like sheep, fighting comic book wars. i heard many rumors that reports on christ had been submitted to the supreme command. but the chaos of those days and the defeat of our army, which was crushed like flies, prevented the authorities from paying any ewvet ;uld the iraqi christ 95 • '. �-=, /' --. . / i-----------�-------96 hassan blasim attention. there were many stories about the president's interest in magicians, the occult, and people with prodi­ gious powers. they claim it was at his suggestion that so many books on parapsychology were unexpectedly trans­ lated in iraq in the eighties, because he had heard that the advanced countries were developing telepathic techniques and using them for espionage. the president thought that science and the occult were one and the same; they just used different methods to reveal the same secrets. christ was not boastful about his premonitory powers and did not consider them unusual. he used to tell stories from history about mankind's ability to foretell the future. i came to the conclusion that daniel's melancholia made it impossible for him to take pleasure in the talent he possessed. even his interest in radar did not bring him pleasure. his ideas about happiness were mysterious. i understood from him that he was frightened by some inner gloom. he thought his talent was just another sign of how impotent and insignificant we are in this mysteri­ ous world. he told me that at an early age he read a story by an iraqi writer whose personality was simultaneously sarcastic and fearful. the hero in the story was swal­ lowed by a shark after a fierce battle in the imaginary river of time. the hero sits trapped in the darkness there and thinks alone, "how can i reconcile my private life with my awareness that a world is collapsing in front of my eyesi''" "that's a question that has weighed on my life. it has kept me awake like an open wound," said christ. when we woke up the next day the american forces * as ingmar bergman once asked in an interview. had reached the outskirts of baghdad. a few hours later they brought down the statue of the dictator. it was a sur­ real shock. we put on civilian clothes and went back to our families. it was just another war of the blind in which no one in our squadron fired a single shot. after it was all over, i met daniel several times. he that had gone back to live with his elderly mother. when chaos ju�t [nere elife maf rlife, t rees the iraqi christ 97 broke out in the country, i visited him in their house in baghdad. i wanted to speak to him about going back to the army. he said he had hated the dictator, but he would not contribute to an army under the auspices of the occu­ pier. after that i didn't meet him again. i myself returned to the army, and daniel went back to looking after his mother. he had two sisters who had migrated to canada years before, and his other relatives had left the country one by one, driven away by wars and the madness of sec­ tarian fanaticism. of his large family, only his mother remained. i found out that daniel spent most of his time at home reading novels and encyclopedias, following the news and caring for his mother, who had lost her hearing, her sight, and her memory. old age isolated her from the world. the old woman was incontinent. christ would change her diapers every few hours. his mother's death would sever the thread that tied him to the place. he didn't plan to emigrate. in a long letter, his older sister implored him to leave the country, but christ was as stub­ born as his mother. both of them rejected the devil's temptation-to abandon their lost paradise. after mass one sunday, christ took his mother to a local restaurant famous for its kebabs. he liked the cleanliness of the place and the way it set aside seats for 98 hassan blasim children. the restaurant had changed greatly. he couldn't remember the last time he had been there. christ chose an empty table in the corner and helped his mother to sit down. the waiter's good humor cheered him up. the man would mix up the names of the dishes with the names of daily instruments of slaughter. the customers laughed and loved him. he would call out orders such as "one explosive, mind-blowing, gut-wrenching kebab. one frag­ mentation stew. two ballistic rice and beans." christ asked for one and a half orders of kebab with hot peppers, a glass of ayran,' and a cold juice. the waiter came back with the order and made a joke about inquisi­ tive people. christ smiled politely. he picked up his moth­ er's fingers gently and placed them down to feel the hot kebabs and the grilled tomatoes. then he put them back in place on the edge of the table. he picked up a tasty mor­ sel and pressed it into her mouth, smiling at her with extraordinary, selfless love. a young man asked if he could sit down at christ's table. stocky in build and with a hard expression on his face, he was probably about twenty. he ordered a kebab with extra onions. he was actually quite handsome but was scratching his neck incessantly, like someone with scabies. his eyes shifted from table to table. daniel moved the plate of salad closer to his mother's fingers and left her to feel out the vegetables on the plate. he prepared another mouthful for her. the young man watched them stealthily. he seemed eccentric. he kept chewing his )' " * ayran: a cold beverage of yogurt mixed with ice water and some­ times salt. "iitn aiter piece of meat and trying to swallow it, as tears streamed from his beautiful eyes. daniel was wary of him. he leaned forward and asked if he could help. he repeated the question, but the young man kept his eyes on his plate and did not seem to have heard daniel. he kept chewing, and his tears flowed. he took out a handkerchief, wiped away his tears, and cleaned his nose. he looked around the restaurant, then stared into christ's eyes. his fea­ tures changed to reveal another face, as though he had taken off a mask. he grasped the flap of his jacket and pulled it aside like someone baring his chest. "it's an explosive belt. one word from you and i'll blow myself up," the young man said, with a threatening glance toward the old woman. the iraqi christ 99 in't lo e o sit lnan mor· \11tn i was killed by friendly fire, myself. we were on a joint patrol with the american forces after the invasion. some­ one opened fire on us from a house in the village. the americans responded hysterically, thinking we had opened fire on them. i was shot three times in the head. i met christ in our next world, and we were overjoyed. he told me how he was inexplicably drawn to that young man in the kebab restaurant. it wasn't just terror that had paralyzed him, but also some mysterious desire for salva­ tion. for some moments he stared into the young man's face. the man leaned toward him and asked him to stand up and go to the bathroom with him. at first he didn't budge from his place, as if turned to stone. then he kissed his mother's head and stood up. the young man led the way to the toilets. he closed the door and kept the tip of his finger on the button on the oark n ni� eoao dut witn area left area em hi� me· 100 hassan blasim explosive belt. with his other hand he pulled a pistol out of his belt and pointed it at daniel's head. the young man was practically hugging christ by this point, wrapping his arms around him because the space was so tight. he summed up what he wanted: daniel should wear the explosive belt in his place, in exchange for him saving the old woman's life. the young man was in a hysterical state and could hardly control himself. he said there would be someone filming the explosion from outside the restaurant and that ifhe didn't blow himself up they would kill him. dan­ iel said nothing in response. they started to sweat. one of the customers tried to push open the restroom door. the young man cleared his throat. then he again promised christ he would take the old woman safely out of the res­ taurant, but if daniel didn't blow himself up he would kill her. half a minute of silence passed, then he agreed with a nod of his head and stared blankly into the young man's eyes. the young man asked him to undo the belt and wrap it around his own waist. it was a difficult process because the room was so narrow. the young man withdrew cau­ tiously, leaving christ in the bathroom with the explosive belt on. then he rushed toward the old woman in the cor­ ner of the restaurant. he tapped her gently on the shoul­ der and took hold of her hand. she stood up and followed him like a child. the restaurant had started to fill up, and the noise level was rising, as people laughed and the cut­ lery clattered like a sword fight. christ fell to his knees. he could hardly breathe, and he pissed in his trousers. he opened the bathroom door and crawled into the restaurant. someone met him at the the iraqi christ door and ran back shouting, "a suicide bomber, a suicide bomber!" amid the panic, as men, women, and children tram­ pled on each other to escape, christ saw that his mother's chair was empty, and he pressed the button. door tthe 101 1 at noon jaafar the referee was waiting at the end of the lane, his army binoculars around his neck and a soccer ball in his lap. the boys arrived one after another and surrounded him, joking with him and talking excitedly about the striker on the sector 32 team. jaafar reassured them. "we have allawi al-saba. he's the messi of sector twenty-nine," he said. the boys took turns pushing jaafar's wheelchair. one of them said, "the sector thirty-two team might bring a referee of their own." jaafar wasn't bothered. he told them he knew how to handle that. they reached the field, jaafar threw the ball, and the boys ran after it. jaafar was forty-five years old, but he was still young at heart. with his passion for sports, his dynamism, and his determination, he amazed his friends and his few ene­ mies. he had been the most famous pool player in sector 29, and when he was an army deserter the military police couldn't catch him. he was like a fox, but his addiction to 105 1i1i il i ,i i ii 106 hassan blasim pool halls was his downfall. one evening the military police surrounded him at the khorasan pool hall in karada, where he used to take on the most famous players in the area. they sent him off to the kuwait war, and when he came back both his legs had been amputated. jaafar was a good lad, one of the boys-that's how the people of the sector saw him. but some of them found fault with his passion for soccer and the way he hung out with the local youth at his age. jaafar didn't take much notice of such talk, because the young had to learn the basics of the game. he would organize matches for them and act as referee. he would remind his critics of the famous national squad player who came from sector 29 and whom he claimed to have trained, adding each time, "a miracle that will save the whole country will be my doing too!" on the edge of the soccer field there was a large dump­ ster that gave off white smoke with a putrid stench that drifted over the playing area. women, some in abayas and some without, came out of the houses around the field with bags of trash. jaafar watched them through his bin­ oculars while the boys ran after the ball, shouting. with his binoculars jaafar also watched the boys playing. the sector 32 team arrived, accompanied by a young man with a beard, and he and jaafar agreed that jaafar would referee the first half and the other man the second half. the match began. jaafar pushed his wheelchair up and down the field at high speed in a frenzied passion. he shouted at the boys, either to encourage them or to repri­ mand them, and when they were too far off he would follow them with his binoculars. "goooooooooaaaaaal!" shouted jaafar. the sector 32 referee objected that jaafar was supa thousand and one knives 107 porting his own team and wasn't impartial. jaafar ignored his objections. he worried about his players as if they were his own children, and when they fell down he would check their knees and legs for any damage. sometimes his mind would wander and for a few moments he would see them as ghosts in battle and recall the boom of artillery on the front. but then he would go back to the match and blow his whis­ tle to award a penalty kick, as cheerful and enthusiastic as ever. he dripped with sweat as he pushed the wheelchair around with all his strength to keep up with the boys run­ ning after the ball like antelopes. jaafar blew the whistle. "foul!" "i swear it wasn't a foul, jaafar," objected one of the boys. "i tell you it's a foul. don't argue, you idiot." "but jaafar, you were far away." "what are these, then? do you think i'm blind?" said jaafar, holding up his binoculars. the match ended in a 2-2 draw, and the boys pushed jaafar's wheelchair to the coffee shop. he said good-bye to them and advised them to prepare for next week's match with the sector 52 team. jaafar played dominoes in the shaab coffee shop and gave the others his analysis of the quality of the various spanish clubs. his laugh echoed through the coffee shop and shook the big picture of the imam ali hanging on the wall. the coffee shop owner said the americans were going to search the sector that night for weapons. "what does that bunch of cowboys want? it's because of them i lost my legs in the kuwait war. what do they want next? fuck them. one day america's going to go to i ii ii ii ii ii ii ii il ii i j i 108 hassan blasim shit," jaafar said indignantly, then changed the subject back to soccer. he and the real madrid supporters started arguing and joking. jaafar was an avid supporter of bar­ celona and sometimes liverpool. i was waiting for him at the coffee shop door. he came out laughing loudly and gave me a friendly punch in the guts. i pushed his wheelchair and we crossed the street. he asked after his sister, who is my wife, and i said, "she's well." "are you going to do the disappearing knife trick today?" he asked, coughing. he was a chronic smoker. "no, but i may talk a little about the interpretation of dreams." i knocked on the door and souad opened it. "ah, both of you," she said as she kissed jaafar on the head. she helped me get his wheelchair through the narrow door­ way. i pinched her bottom and she slapped my hand dis­ creetly, but jaafar didn't notice. in the room there was a bare wooden bench, and salih the butcher was sitting on it. allawi was sitting cross­ legged on the ground with a set of green prayer beads in his hand-the same way he sat when he was making a knife disappear. jaafar shook salih's hand and said, "hey, allawi, come and sit on the bench." allawi answered proudly, "i've never sat on a chair or a bench." "you mean in all your life?" "of course." "but you're only fifteen, damn it. anyone who heard you would say you were as old as the dinosaurs." a thousand and one knives 109 jaafar laughed his booming laugh as he adjusted the photograph of his father on the wall. souad disappeared into the kitchen, and i sat next to the butcher. jaafar turned his wheelchair to face us. souad came back with a tray of tea, sat on the carpet close to allawi, and poured the tea, smiling amiably at every­ one and winking at me several times. i blew her a kiss. jaafar turned to me and said, "hey, lovebirds, we've got work to do. when the meeting's over you can throw each other as many kisses as you want." in his weird woman's voice, the butcher said, "now, jaafar. anyone who heard you would say this was a meet­ ing of some underground party that was going to change the world. we've made so many knives disappear, and souad always brings them back again.... and it's been going on like this for ten years." allawi laughed and said, "i've been making knives disappear all my life. but i want to go on making them disappear again and again, and i don't know why." jaafar changed the subject and asked allawi whether umm ibti­ sam would be coming today. he replied that he was cer­ tain this time, because she had sworn to him three times by ali's son abbas that she would come. "she must be on her way now. you know the shitty americans have closed half the roads." 2 o hearo we were like one family. our knife-handling skills weren't the only thing we had in common. we also shared our problems in life, our joys, and our ignorance. we were buffeted by all forms of misfortune, and several times we grew disappointed with the knives. there were other concerns in life. we almost split up on several occasions, but we were drawn back together by the strangeness and pleasure of our gift, by the feeling among all of us-except, perhaps, salih the butcher-that knives could be a solace and give our lives the thrill of uncertainty. ten years have passed since we became a team in the knife trick. allawi joined us three years ago. i continued my studies and went to the school of education. souad went into the sixth year of high school, specializing in the sciences, and dreamed of going to the school of medicine. salih the butcher has extended his shop, divorced the mother of his children, and married a young woman who had a bad reputation in the neighborhood. jaafar found allawi a job in the factory that makes women's shoes. he didn't want allawi to stay in the market playing with knives. jaafar himself was the same as always-busy with soccer, refereeing, dominoes, the coffee shop; always anx­ ious to ensure that our group didn't fall apart and con­ stantly seeking out new talent in soccer and also in the knife trick. he believed that our knife skills were a secret vocation that would change the world. as to how and why and when, these were all unanswered questions; he had nothing to do with them. "i've never even read a newspa­ per in my life. how could i understand the secret of the knives?" he said. the butcher, allawi, jaafar, and i had the ability to make knives disappear. souad was the only person who could make them reappear, but she couldn't make them 110 hassan blasim a thousand and one knives 11 wert disappear. souad's difference compounded the mystery of e:we our talents, which did not progress one step despite the passage of all those years. two years ago i was assigned to read books in order to find out what the knives meant, and i soon came to the idea that the knives were just a metaphor for all the terror, the killing, and the brutality in the country. it's a realistic phenomenon that is unfamiliar, an extraordinary game that has no value, because it is hemmed in by definite laws. i married souad a year and a half ago. it was jaafar who arranged this early marriage with my father. souad's cousin had approached jaafar with a proposal to marry her. jaafar didn't want souad to move away from us and go to live in the village. he wasn't unaware of the tenta­ tive affection we felt for each other. my father was per­ suaded straightaway, especially as jaafar made my father an attractive offer. he said he would buy souad and me a small house. my father agreed at once because he wanted to relieve the strain in his own house. we were nine brothers and three sisters all living in two rooms, and my father was struggling to keep the family afloat. he worked as a baker and my mother gave injections to sick people in the neighborhood, though she didn't have a nursing cer­ tificate. in fact she was illiterate, and because she was so kind, people called her the angel of mercy. when i was a youngster i played on jaafar's soccer team. he discovered my talent by chance. he was watch­ ing me as i made a knife that some boy was holding disap­ pear. he was ecstatic and started to hug me. he cheerfully took me to their house and introduced me to young souad, whose eyes projected the force of life like a strong and 112 hassan blasim beautiful flower. the next day jaafar took me to salih the butcher's shop and introduced me to him. in those days we used to meet in jaafar's house, but his mother and his five brothers would disturb us, so then we moved to salih's house. he had a room on the roof of the house, where he raised birds. we would put the knives on top of a round wooden table and make them disappear one by one, then souad would make them reappear. we would exchange views and try to analyze the trick. but the conversation soon moved away from knives and turned to jokes and stories about the people in the sector. we continued to meet in the pigeon loft until i got mar­ ried and jaafar bought us that small house. jaafar had considerable wealth from a business he'd been in since he was young. he used to deal in pornographic magazines, which were banned, but he was careful to cover his tracks, selling them only in wealthy neighborhoods. it was i who discovered allawi and brought him into the group. i was in the street market buying rat poison when i saw a group of children and adults in a corner of the market, gathered in a circle, full of curiosity. allawi was sitting cross-legged as usual, with a number of small knives of various types next to him. he didn't make knives disappear for free. people would give him a pack of ciga­ rettes or enough money for a sandwich or to buy a grape juice or pomegranate juice, and as soon as he felt it was worth his while he would throw one of the knives onto the ground in front of the spectators and ask them to touch it to make sure it was a real knife. then he would ask them to stand back in a slightly larger circle so that he could breathe and concentrate. allawi stared at the knife for a thousand and one knives 113 \ih he thirty seconds, as we all did, and as soon as tears started to glisten in his eyes the knife would disappear. the audi­ ence would applaud in amazement and admiration, and allawi would then wait for the spectators to come up with enough money for him to repeat the trick with another knife. his main problem was that he depended on stealing knives to replace the ones he made disappear. that put him in many tricky situations. the tears and the thirty seconds were the common denominator between us all when it came to making knives disappear and reappear. as i said, were it not for souad, the knives would have disappeared forever and we would all have been like allawi before he joined us-just knife thieves. salih the butcher faced the same problem before he met jaafar and souad. salih loved the trick; in his shop he would stare at knives at length until they dis­ appeared. but after the trick he had to buy new knives. allawi made money in the market from his gift, while salih would lose out. if it wasn't for souad, he said, he would have died of hunger. every day souad brought back the knives he had made disappear, and we were sure this was the only reason the butcher stayed with us all those years. we were constantly on the lookout for a new member of the group, with powers like those of souad. we would meet every thursday and make a set of knives disappear, and souad would make them reappear in the same way: tears and a few seconds! i could make knives disappear easily. i began by mak­ ing my mother's knives disappear in the kitchen when i was a child. in the beginning my mother would almost go 11.4 hassan blasim crazy, but when she discovered my secret she and my father took me to a cleric to consult him on the subject. the man with the turban told them in all confidence, "your son is in league with the jinn." he advised my father and mother to pray and wash the courtyard of the house twice-once at dawn and again at sunset. when i got interested in soccer and met jaafar i stopped making knives disappear at home or at the homes of friends and relatives. the knife trick didn't have a particular purpose. maybe salih the butcher saw his gift as a disease and as far as he was concerned souad was the only cure. the feelings and ideas that souad, jaafar, allawi, and i had were different to some extent. jaafar thought it was a secret and sacred vocation and believed that what we did, despite the absurdity of it, was a source of great pleasure, especially as he saw himself as the spiritual father and the leader of the group. allawi was addicted to the game. it was like a drug that erased his memory of the painful loss of both his par­ ents at an early age. his father had been a drunkard who argued with the neighbors and who killed a man with his pistol. before the police arrived one of the dead man's sons, who had seen his own father drowning in blood, came to the door of allawi's father's house with a kalash­ nikov in his hand. allawi's father was standing behind the closed door with the pistol in his hand, and his mother was trying to stop him from going out. the son emptied a whole magazine of bullets into the door. the door fell in and allawi's mother and father were killed. knives were my pastime and part of my life. seeking a thousand and one knives 115 the mystery of the game, i felt like someone looking for a single rare flower in a high mountain range. often it felt like an adventure in a fable. many a time i felt as though i was doing a spiritual exercise with the knife trick. the reality didn't interest me as much as the beauty of the mystery attracted me. maybe this is what drove me to write poetry after i gave up looking for the meaning of the knives. illiteracy was one of the obstacles that compounded our failure to understand the trick or even to develop our skills throughout the years. salih the butcher, allawi, and jaafar couldn't read or write. it's true that souad was educated, but she practiced the knife trick with a childish attitude. she would always remind me, saying, "why complicate things, my love? life is short and we are alive. treat the knives as a game to entertain us and leave it at that." souad repeatedly suggested we open a little theater in the neighborhood to amuse the local people by making knives disappear and then reappear, in hopes that this might relieve the gloom of war and the endless killing. but jaafar was worried about the clerics, because they were acting like militias at the time. i thought he was right to worry; at any moment they could have denounced us as infidels, maybe even accused us of undermining society with alien superstitions imported from abroad. their superstitions had become the law, and god had become a sword for cutting off people's heads and declar­ ing them infidels. my ignorance increased when i embarked on the task of researching the knife trick through reading. myeduca­ tion didn't help me much. it was religious books that i 116 hassan blasim first examined to find references to the trick. most of the houses in and around our sector had a handful of books and other publications, primarily the quran, the sayings of the prophet, stories about heaven and hell, and texts about prophets and infidels. it's true i found many refer­ ences to knives in these books, but they struck me as just laughable. they only had knives for jihad, for treachery, for torture and terror. swords and blood. symbols of des­ ert battles and the battles of the future. victory banners stamped with the name of god, and knives of war. after that i moved into works of literature. that was by chance. a single sentence had stirred up a whirlwind of excitement inside me. then one day, in a coffee shop, i came across an article in a local newspaper about a mas­ sacre by sectarian fighters in a village south of the cap­ ital. they had set fire to the houses of people sleeping at night. the only survivor of the conflagration was a young boy. the boy was purple, and in his hand he held a purple rat. they found him asleep in a wheat field. his story went unnoticed in the relentless daily cycle of bloody violence in the country. in the culture section of the newspaper there was an interview with an iraqi poet in exile who said, "a closed door: that's the definition of existence." the next day i went to mutanabbi street, where books are sold. i wasn't a regular visitor. i was terrified by the sight of the stacks of books there, in the bookshop win­ dows, in the stalls in the street, and on the wooden carts. hundreds of titles and covers. i couldn't buy a single book that day. i didn't know what to choose or where to begin. i went back to mutanabbi street every friday and gradu­ ally regained my confidence. i started to buy books of a thousand and one knives poetry, novels, and short stories, local and translated. then our group decided to contribute some money to help me buy more books, in hopes that i would come across the key to the mystery of the knives, and soon the house was full of books. we made shelves in the pigeon loft, the kitchen, and even in the bathroom. after a year of vora­ cious reading i was no longer drawn to research into the mystery of the knives, but to the pleasures of knowledge and reading generally. the magic of words was like rain that quenched the thirst in my soul, and for me life became an idea and a dream: the idea was a ball and the dream was two tennis rackets. i didn't understand many of the books on classical philosophy. but enjoyable and interesting intellectual books on dreams, the universe, and time began to attract my attention. i felt this created a problem with the group. they would shower me with questions on what i was reading and whether i had come across any clues to the mystery of the knives in my books. i didn't know how to explain things to them. i was like a small animal that had entered the den of an enormous animal. i felt both pleasure and excitement. perhaps i was lost, and my only compass was my passion and my fear of the diversity of life. one idea invalidated another, and one concept disguised another. one theory made another theory more mysterious. one feeling con­ tested another. one book mocked another book. one poem overshadowed another poem. one ladder went up and an­ other went down. often knowledge struck me as similar to the knife trick: just a mysterious absurdity or merely a pleasant game. i tried to explain to the group that research into knives 117 118 hassan blasim 3 through books wasn't easy. it was a complicated process, and certain things might take me many more years to understand. on the other hand i didn't want to disappoint the group, especially jaafar, who was enthusiastic about the books. so i started telling them stories about other extraordinary things that happen in this world and about man's hidden powers. i tried to simplify for them my mod­ est knowledge of parapsychology, dreams, and the myster­ ies of the universe and nature. i felt that we were getting lost together, further and further, in the labyrinths of this world, without sails and without a compass. souad opened the door and a stout woman in her fifties, dressed in black, came in. she greeted us shyly. salih the butcher made room for her on the bench and went to stand by the door. jaafar asked him to sit down, but he said he was fine. souad asked the woman, umm ibtisam, if she would like something to drink. "thank you; coffee please," she said. jaafar tried to dispel the woman's sense that she was unwelcome. he started talking about the high price of vegetables, deploring the fact that the country was im­ porting vegetables from neighboring countries when it had two great rivers and plenty of fertile land. then he jumped to the subject of the high price of propane and gasoline when we had the largest reserves of black shit in the world. souad brought umm ibtisam the coffee and a thousand and one knives 119 rocess. went back to her place. she sipped the coffee and told ear to allawi she was in a hurry and had to get back to her chil­ dren. it was allawi who had found umm ibtisam. he said he was wandering around the old lanes in the center of baghdad when he noticed a shop that sold only knives of various shapes and sizes. he went into the shop and started to browse through the knives. a woman in her fif­ ties came up to him and offered to help. he told her he was looking for a small knife he had lost years before, with a handle in the shape of a shark. the woman gave him a puzzled look and said her knife shop was not a lost property office. allawi preempted her, as he put it, by ask­ ing if she knew about making knives disappear. she said she didn't know what he meant and offered him a small knife with a snake wrapped around the handle. allawi examined it and told the woman he knew how to make it disappear. he sat in the middle of the shop, and after thirty seconds of concentration and two tears, the knife disappeared. the woman was upset and asked him to leave at once. allawi left and went back the next day. he said he only wanted to talk to her, but she didn't want to listen. maliciously and threateningly, allawi told her that he could make all the knives in the shop disappear at once. the woman pulled a large meat cleaver off one of the shelves and brandished it in allawi's face. "what do you want, you evil boy?" she cried. "nothing. just to talk." allawi sat cross-legged on the floor and asked her if she would like to see another demonstration of making knives disappear. she didn't reply, just stared at him p3ne ana 'h hirin {fee ana 120 hassan blasim suspiciously and held the cleaver in her hand. straight off, allawi started telling her about the gift of making knives disappear and reappear and about our group. this was very stupid of him, because we were wary of talking about the group to outsiders, but allawi had spent a long time in the market and thought nothing of showing off in front of others. allawi said, "the woman's face turned the color of tomato when i talked about the knife trick. she sat on a chair in front of me and put the cleaver on her lap. then she started to weep in anguish." then she suddenly stood up, closed the shop door, wiped away her tears, and told him the story of the knife shop, after making him promise never to reveal her secret. the woman had five daughters, and her husband had been killed when a car bomb exploded in front of the ministry of the interior, cutting his body in half. it was a disaster. the woman had no idea how she could support her daughters. her grief for her husband broke her heart and disrupted her sleep. she had nightmares in which she saw an enormous man slaughtering her husband with a knife. the nightmare recurred often, and every time the man would slaughter her husband with a different knife. dmm ibtisam told allawi she couldn't understand why the knives appeared in her dream. a month after the nightmares started, umrn ibtisam came across a knife in the backyard of her house. it was an old knife. she contacted her brother because she was alarmed by its sudden appearance. her brother started to ask the neighbors about it, but they denied it was theirs. the knife aroused his interest. he said it looked like an a thousand and one knives 121 antique. he calmed his sister down and told her he would ask his oldest son to stay a few nights with her and her daughters. the man came back a week later with a large sum of money, after selling the knife in the antique mar­ ket. he told her the knife was valuable and dated from the ottoman period. the brother joked with the woman, saying, "let's hope you find other knives and make us really rich." umm ibtisam said the nightmares then stopped. but in the same place in the yard six knives appeared, in this case kitchen knives. umm ibtisam kept the knives, and this time she didn't tell her brother. the knives continued to appear, and in the end she told him. he didn't tell any­ one the secret of the knives, because they were waiting to see how long they would continue to appear in the yard. they kept on appearing, but it was rare for an old one to turn up. once, a knife dating from the abbasid period turned up; her brother sold it on the black market for a large amount. he told his sister that god was providing a livelihood for her and her daughters because her husband had been killed without good cause. he suggested open­ ing a shop to sell the knives. the brother rented a small shop close to her house, and so umm ibtisam started sell­ ing knives. umm ibtisam asked jaafar to swear to keep her secret, because this was her livelihood. she added nothing to what she had told allawi, who had invited her to attend our meeting. jaafar swore to god and on his honor that he would keep her secret, and invited her to join the group. but she didn't take up the offer, because all she wanted was for us to leave her alone. souad embraced 122 hassan blasim umm ibtisam, with tears in her eyes, perhaps for the strangeness of life's agonies. souad took her to the door and handed her a bag full of cake, saying, "a simple present for the girls." none of us said anything. so there were knives appear­ ing in other places. that meant the plot had thickened. we were all smoking-jaafar, salih, allawi, and i, and even souad, who had slipped a cigarette out of my pack, although she didn't normally smoke. we noticed the thick cloud of smoke in the room and burst out laughing together. jaafar began to cough like a decrepit old man. we took out our knives and started to play. i told them about the earliest book on the interpretation of dreams, which appears on a tablet from the sumerian city of lagash. the story goes that gudea, the ruler of lagash, was praying in the temple when he suddenly fell asleep. "i'm off to work," salih said in his effeminate voice, and left. a year after i graduated from the school of education, jaafar the referee suddenly disappeared. we didn't leave a hospital or police station unsearched. we contacted people who had ties with some of the armed groups and kidnap gangs. but to no avail. the ground seemed to have swallowed him up, along with thousands of others in the country. souad was in her second month of pregnancy and had postponed her studies at the school of medicine. 4 pre nan� medicinl a thousand and one knives 123 i was very worried about her. she was frustrated and sad, like a bird whose wings have been broken in a storm. the kids in sector 29 were also sad that jaafar had disappeared. they organized a soccer tournament by themselves for teams from the other sectors and called it the referee jaafar tournament. they sent me an invita­ tion to referee in the final. the days passed slowly and sadly, like the miserable face of the country. the wars and the violence were like a pho­ tocopier churning out copies, and we all wore the same face, a face shaped by pain and torment. we fought for every morsel we ate, weighed down by the sadness and the fears generated by the unknown and the known. our knife trick was no longer a source of pleasure, because time had dispersed those mysterious talents of ours. we had been broken one after the other, like discarded man­ nequins. our group had fallen apart. there were no more meetings or discussions. hatred had crushed our childish fingers, crushed our bones. it wasn't easy for a recent graduate like me to find work. the religious groups had opened schools that taught children to memorize the quran. they offered me work in their schools until i could get a government job, so i got involved in teaching children the quran and gave up the knife business. from time to time i wrote angry, aggres­ sive, and meaningless poems. allawi moved out of the capital and wandered around the towns in the south. he toured the markets showing off his skill at making knives disappear, but earned a 124 hassan blasim pittance. then we heard fresh news about him: he had broken into a restaurant and was arrested for stealing knives from the kitchen. he was sent to prison and we heard no more of him. souad, friendly and loving, contin­ ued to visit salih the butcher to bring his knives back, and in return salih would give us the best cuts of meat he had. one winter morning i was at school teaching the chil­ dren the iron chapter of the quran when the principal came in and told me that a strange young man wanted to talk to me about something important. he was a tall man in his midtwenties, and his name was hassan. he said he wanted to talk to me about jaafar the referee. i asked the principal for permission to take a break and went to the nearby coffee shop with the man. we ordered tea and he told me what had happened to jaafar: the security forces had set free some hostages from a terrorist hideout; hassan was one of the people freed. he said he had met jaafar in the place where they were hold­ ing the hostages, a house on a farm on the outskirts of the capital. they had abducted jaafar because he was trading in pornographic magazines in a wealthy neighborhood where policemen lived. hassan said they had brutally tor­ tured him. the terrorists told jaafar that god had pun­ ished him when his legs were amputated during the war, but jaafar hadn't repented and had gone on selling pic­ tures of obscenities and debauchery. so the terrorists had decided to cut off jaafar's arms as a lesson to any unbe­ lieving profligate. the terrorists assembled all the hosw ai ul tages to witness the process of amputating jaafar's arms. �i they couldn't believe what happened next. hassan said wi a thousand and one knives hac that whenever the terrorists approached jaafar, the swords they were holding disappeared, and tears were streaming from his eyes. the terrorists didn't have a sin­ gle sword or knife left. they were terrified of jaafar and said he was a devil. they stripped him naked in front of us and crucified him against the wall. they hammered nails into the palms of his hands, and he started writhing in pain, naked, with no legs. they decided to amputate his arms with bullets. two men stood in front of him and sprayed bullets into his arms. one of the bullets hit his heart, and he died instantly. they dragged his body to the river, collected some dry branches, and poured some gas on him. they set fire to him and chanted, "god is most great." souad and i had a beautiful boy, and we called him jaafar. i continued working in the religious school. i never managed to tell souad what had happened to her brother. i suppressed the horror that his death caused, and i loved souad even more. she was my only hope in life. she went back to the school of medicine, and time began to heal the wounds, slowly and cautiously. umm ibtisam came to see us. her financial situation had greatly improved. she said we were good people and she hadn't forgotten us. she offered to open a large shop in the neighborhood for us to sell knives. our business was profitable, though sometimes i would unwittingly make one knife or another disappear. at night i would start by kissing souad's toes, then creep up to her thighs, then to her navel, her breasts, her arm­ pits and neck, until i reached her ear, and then i would whisper, "my love, i need help!" 125 126 hassan blasim she would pinch me on the bottom, then climb on top of my chest, strangle me with her hands, and say, "ha, you wretch, how many knives have you made disappear? i'm not going to get them back until you kiss me a thou­ sand and one times." i kissed every pore on her body with passion and rev­ erence, as if she were a life that would soon disappear. when young jaafar was five years old, his gift emerged: like his mother, he could make knives reappear. jaafar al-mutallibi was born in the town of ai-amara. in 1973 he resigned from the communist party and joined the ruling baath party. in the same year his wife gave birth to their second son. jaafar was a profes­ sional lute player and a renowned composer of patriotic songs. he was killed in the uprising in the city of kirkuk in 1991. today i can tell you about how he died. do you see this . old woman shouting out the price of fish? she's my mother. we've been selling fish since we came back to baghdad. let me help her empty the crate of fish, then let's go to a nearby coffee shop and talk. after the end of the war between iraq and iran my father started to proclaim his atheism blatantly and caused us many problems. one evening he came home with his shirt stained with blood. it seems he'd had a nosebleed after one of his friends punched him. they were playing domi­ noes in the coffee shop when my father launched into a tirade of obscene insults to god and the prophet. he made 129 them up and set them to music during the game. as you know, he was a well-known composer. at first my father whistled a tune composed in the military style, then he added a new insult: a nail in the testicle of your imam's sister. many people burst out laughing when they heard the insults my father's imagination came up with, but they soon began to keep away from him and ask god for for­ giveness. some of them avoided meeting him in the street. one of them told him in jest one day that he hoped a truck loaded with steel would run him over, but everyone was frightened of his connection with the government. the day after he was punched he wrote a report for party headquarters about abu alaa, the man who hit him, and two days later abu alaa disappeared. we were living in a neighborhood called the second qadissiya, which consisted of houses the government had assigned to junior army officers, other people who had moved from cities in the south and center of the country, and the families of kurds who worked for the regime. we were the only fam­ ily in the neighborhood that earned its living differently. all the families except ours lived off salaries from the army, the party, and the security services, while we lived off the patriotic songs that my father composed. my father had a status higher than that of the mayor and members of the local hierarchy of the party, because the president himself had more than once awarded him military medals for his no songs about the war, songs people remember to this day. m listen, brother, i'll sum up the story for you. one year hi after the war ended, my father suffered what the newspara pers call writer's block, and he was unable to compose tn 130 hassan blasim j i i ' i: i �i et ro ffi ffi' ro ill: the composer new music for the many poems celebrating the greatness of the president that famous poets would send him. months passed, then a year, and he still could not write a single new tune. do you know what he did in the mean­ time? he took it upon himself to write and set to music short depraved poems making fun of religion. one warm winter evening we were watching television when we heard my father singing a new song of his about the proph­ et's wives and how loose they were. suddenly my elder brother sprang up, took my father's pistol from the ward­ robe, jumped on top of my father, and put the pistol in his mouth. he would have killed him were it not for my mother, who tore open her dress, baring her breasts and screaming. my brother was transfixed for a moment as he looked at my mother's enormous breasts, which hung down over her stomach like an animal whose guts had spilled out. this was the first time we had ever seen my mother's breasts, except as babies. i went into the bath­ room, and my brother fled the sight of my mother by leav­ ing the house. she was illiterate, but she was smarter than my father, whom she looked after in a curious way. she spoiled him as if he were a son. she was the licensed mid­ wife in the qadissiya district, and people were very fond of her. my father decided to submit a report on my brother to the local party headquarters, but they did not react to it. my father's name had started to stink in the neighbor­ hood and in artistic circles. they said that jaafar al­ mutallibi had gone mad, and his old friends avoided him. he traveled to baghdad and submitted a request to the radio and television station asking them to rebroadcast the war songs he had composed, or at least one song a 131 132 hassan blasim week. they rejected his request and told him his songs were now inappropriate. they were only broadcasting patriotic songs twice a year: on the anniversary of the outbreak of the war and the anniversary of when it had ended. my father wanted to restore his past and his fame by any means possible. he tried but failed to meet the president. he submitted an application to the film and theater department, proposing a documentary film about his songs and his music, but that request was also ignored. while he was making all these attempts he finished composing the music to ten songs insulting god and exis­ tence, as well as a beautiful song about the first four caliphs. we realized he had gone completely mad when he started frequenting the studios and trying to persuade them to record him singing his songs making fun of reli­ gion. of course, his requests were rejected categorically, and some people threw him out and threatened to kill him. in the end my father decided to record his songs on tape at home. he sat in front of a tape recorder and started to sing and play the lute. of course, it was a poor record�; ing, but it was intelligible. he played it to us at breakfast; we were worried that people would find out about this tape. we tried to get hold of it and destroy it, but he would never let it leave his coat pocket, and when he went to sleep he would slip it into a special pocket he had made in the pillow. today there's no need to hide this copy, because others u� need it, and religion has made more progress than necesin sary, along with the murderers and thieves. the reaction w of the street might be hysterical, but let's fire a bullet in the ho air. go ahead, you're a journalist; it will be good for you d for you the composer 133 and good for everyone. a young singer offered to sing it and record it again in a modern studio, but i refused. these songs must remain as my father himself recorded them, as evidence of his story. they can only be copied. people soon forget the stories of this event. when you tell them these stories, after a time they think the stories are figments of imagination. take our neighbor in the market, for example: abu sadiq, who sells onions. when he now tells his story about the battle with the iranians at the river jassim, it sounds like a hollywood horror story he made up. the government army ran away, and the kurdish peshmerga militias entered kirkuk. the people of the city welcomed the uprising with great joy. there was overwhelming chaos, gunfire, dead bodies, kurdish danc­ ing, and songs everywhere. we were unable to escape. the insurgents set fire to houses in all the government districts and where party members lived. they killed and strung up the bodies of the baathists, police, and security people. we were holed up at home, and a group of young men broke down the reinforced door to my father's office. they took us out on the street to carry out the death sentence on us. my mother was on her knees pleading with them, but she did not rip her clothes this time. what? my father? no, no, my father wasn't with us. months before the uprising, he had become the madman of the city, wander­ ing the streets singing against god and carrying his lute, which no longer had a single string. a fire broke out in our house, and my mother collapsed unconscious as the rest of us leaned against the outer wall of the house. umm tariq, 13l.� hassan blasim our kurdish neighbor, turned up at the last moment, fr screaming at the young men and speaking to them in al their language. then she started imploring them to set us cu free. she told them how kind and generous my mother ml was and how she helped the kurdish women give birth tn and looked after pregnant women. she told them how my mother would give away bread to the neighbors in honor of abbas, the son of the imam ali, at feast time, and how brave my elder brother was and how he'd been best friends with her son who'd been killed fighting with the �r peshmerga forces during the anfal campaign, and that it was he who helped her late son escape from kirkuk (here she lied), and that i was a good, peaceful boy who wouldn't hurt a fly. she ended her defense of us on an angry note. "they're not responsible for what that pimp jaafar al­ mutallibi has been doing," she said. then she spat on the ground. we went into umm tariq's house and we didn't leave until the republican guard forces entered the city and the peshmerga militias withdrew. most of the insurgents ran away with the militias. in the end we found my father without a head, tied to a farm tractor with a thick rope. he had been dragged around the city streets for a whole day, and his corpse had been put on display in a manner that is impossible to imagine. at the time they were about to execute us my father was close to the local party headquarters, where the bodies of the party members filled the courtyard. my father went into the empty building and headed for the information room. he knew this room well because it was from this room that his patriotic songs used to be broad­ cast from loudspeakers on the roof during the first war. 135the composer from the same loudspeakers the party members would also speak to the public when someone was being exe­ cuted for deserting the army or for helping the peshmerga militias. my father put the tape into the tape player and the loudspeakers started broadcasting to the insurgents his songs attacking god and existence. my father was hugging his lute and smiling when the insurgents arrived. they took him outsideexcuse me, my friend. there's a fish dealer who's bringing some sacks of carp, so i have to go now. tomor­ row i'll tell you the secret of my father's relationship with umm tariq, the kurdish woman. firjii'ar, 139 people were waiting in lines to tell their stories. the police intervened to marshal the crowd, and the main street opposite the radio station was closed to traffic. pickpockets and itinerant cigarette vendors circu­ iated among them. people were terrified a terrorist would infiltrate the crowd and turn all these stories into a pulp of flesh and fire. memory radio had been set up after the fall of the dictator. from the start, the radio station had adopted a documentary approach to programming, without news bulletins or songs, just documentary reports and pro­ grams that delved into the country's past. the station had become famous after announcing that it was going to record a new program titled their stories in their own voices. crowds gathered at the broadcasting center from across the country. the idea was simple: to select the best stories and record them as narrated by the people involved, but without mentioning their real names; then the listen­ ers would choose the top three stories, which would win valuable prizes. i succeeded in filling out the application form but 140 hassan blasim ,i made it inside the radio station only with great difficulty. more than once an argument broke out because of the crush. old and young, adolescents, civil servants, stu­ dents, and unemployed people all came to tell their sto­ ries. we waited in the rain for more than four hours. some of us were subdued; others were bragging about their stories. i saw one man with no arms and a beard that almost reached his waist. he was deep in thought, like a decrepit greek statue. i noticed the anxiety of the hand­ some young man who was with him. from a communist who was tortured in the seventies in the baath party's prisons, i heard that the man with the beard had a story that was tipped to win, but that he himself had not come to win. he was just a madman, but his companion, one of his relatives, coveted the prize. the man with the beard was a teacher who went to the police one day to report on a neighbor who was trading in antiquities stolen from the national museum. the police thanked him for his coop­ eration. the teacher, his conscience relieved, went back to his school. the police submitted a report to the ministry of defense that the teacher's house was an al qaeda hideout. the police were in partnership with the antiquities smuggler. the ministry of defense sent the report to we the u.s. army, who bombed the teacher's house by helim copter. his wife, his four children, and his elderly mother w were killed. the teacher escaped with his life, but he suffered brain damage and lost his arms. co i personally had more than twenty stories teeming in til my memory about my long years of captivity in iran. i was til confident that at least one of them would really be the of clincher in the competition. an i , i the song of the goats 141 an.iii'� ly be tn1 they took in the first batch of contestants and then announced to the crowds left behind us that they had stopped accepting applications for the day. there were more than seventy of us who went in. they had us sit down in a large hall similar to a university cafeteria. a man in a smart suit then told us we were first going to lis­ ten to two stories to understand the format of the pro­ gram. he also spoke about legal aspects of the contracts we would have to sign with the radio station. the lights gradually dimmed and the hall fell silent, as if it were a cinema. most of the contestants lit up ciga­ rettes, and we were soon enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke. we started listening to a story by a young woman, whose voice reached us clearly from the four corners of the hall. she told how her husband, a policeman, had been held by an islamist group for a long time and how, during the sectarian killings, the killers had sent his body back decomposed and decapitated. when the lights came back on, chaos broke out. everyone was talking at the same time, like a swarm of wasps. many of them ridiculed the woman's story and claimed they had stories that were stranger, crueler, and more crazy. i caught sight of an old woman close to ninety waving her hand in derision and muttering, "that's a story? if i told my story to a rock, it would break its heart." the man in the smart suit came back on and urged the contestants to calm down. in simple words he explained that the best stories did not mean the most frightening or the saddest; what mattered was authenticity and the style of narration. he said the stories should not necessarily be about war and killing. i was upset by what he said, and i 142 hassan blasim la1noticed that most of the contestants paid no attention. a man the size of an elephant whispered in my ear, "it's bullshit what that bullshitter says. a story's a story, whether it's beautiful or bullshit." the lights went down again and we started listening to the second story. "they found her feeding me shit. a whole week she was mixing it with the rice, the mashed potatoes, and the soup. i was a sallow child, three years old. my father i�t threatened to divorce her, but she took no notice. her heart was hardened forever. she never forgave me for what i did, and i will never forget how cruel she was. by tn the time she died of cancer of the womb, the storms of life 1v had carried me far away. i escaped from the country tri sometime after the barrel incident, abject, defeated, paralyzed by fear. on the night i said good-bye to my father, he 1n walked with me to the graveyard. we read the first chapno ter of the quran over my uncle's grave. we embraced and he slipped a bundle of cash into my hand. i kissed his hand and disappeared. me "we were living in a poor part of kirkuk. the neigh1nt borhood didn't have mains drainage. people would have 11'e septic tanks dug in their yards for ten dollars. nozad the rri kurdish vegetable seller was the only person in the neigh­ borhood who specialized in digging those tanks. when nozad died his son mustafa took on the work. they found nozad burned to a cinder in his shop after a fire broke out one night. no one knows what nozad was doing that night. some people claim he was smoking hashish. my father didn't believe that. for all kinds of disasters his ing wa f�t ivil rno do ��e the song of the goats 143 ntion,.\ favorite proverb was 'everything we do in this ephemeral world is written, preordained.' so in my childhood i believed that 'our life' was tucked away somewhere in schoolbooks or in the shop where they sold newspapers. my father wanted to save my childhood with all the good­ will and love he possessed. he was gracious toward oth­ ers and toward life in a way that still puzzles me today. he was like a saint in a human slaughterhouse. disaster would strike us pretty much every other year. but my father didn't want to believe that fate could bring such a mysterious curse. perhaps he attributed it to destiny. we were vulnerable to assault from every direction-from the unknown, from reality, from god, from people, and even the dead would come back to torment us. my father tried to bury my crime through various means, or at least erase it from my mother's memory. but he failed. in the end he gave in. he left the task to the ravages of time, in hopes that this would efface the disaster. "i may have been the youngest murderer in the world: a murderer who remembered nothing of his crime. for me, at least, it was no more than a story, just a story to entertain people at any moment. what i noticed was that everyone would write, intone, or sing the story of my crime as they fancied. at the time, my father wasn't work­ ing in the pickle business. he was a tank driver, and the war was in its first year. my mother was nagging my father for a third child, but he refused because of the war, which terrified him. we were comfortably off. every month my father would send enough money to cover food, clothing, and the rent on the house. my mother would w '(ef ni� spend her time either asleep or visiting my aunt, with a :.0; .144 hassan blasim whom she'd talk all day about the price of fabric and the waywardness of men. "in the summer, my mother would go off into a dream world. she wouldn't listen, or talk, or even look. the midday heat would wipe her out. at noon she would take a bath and then sleep naked in her room like a dead houri.' when night fell she would recover some of her vitality, as if she had come out of a coma. she would watch her favorite soap opera and news programs in which the president awarded medals for bravery to heroic soldiers, thinking that my father might appear among them. "at noon one day, my mother dozed off with her arms and legs splayed open under the ceiling fan. my brother and i-he was a year younger-slipped off into the court­ yard. there was nothing out there but a solitary fig tree and the cover of the septic tank. i remember my mother used to cry under the fig tree whenever one of our relatives died or some disaster struck us. the mouth of the tank was covered with an old kitchen tray held down by a large stone. we, my brother and i, had trouble moving the stone. then we started throwing pebbles into the tank. it was our favorite game. umm alaa, our neighbor, used to make us paper boats, which we would sail on the surface of the pool of shit. "they say i pushed my brother into the tank and ran off to the roof of the house to hide in the chicken coop. when i grew up, i asked them, 'might he have fallen in, and i run away out of fear?' they said, 'you confessed yourself.' perhaps they questioned me like the dictator's f, m * houri: one of the beautiful virgins of the quranic paradise. the song of the goats nd th� police. i don't remember anything. but they would tell their stories about it as if they were describing the plot of a film they'd enjoyed. all the neighbors took part in the rescue attempt. they couldn't find the truck that used to come once a month to empty out the septic tanks in the . neighborhood. they used everything they could find to get the shit out of the tank: pots and pans, a large bucket, and other vessels. it was an arduous and disgusting task, like torture in slow motion. it was the height of summer, and the foul odors added to the horror and the shock. before the sun went down, they brought him out-a dead child shrouded in shit. "my father was late coming back from the front. my uncle wrote him a letter and then took care of arrange­ ments for the burial of my brother. we buried him in the children's cemetery on the hill. it may have been the most beautiful cemetery in the world. in the spring, wildflow­ ers of every color and variety would grow there. from a distance, the graveyard looked like the crown of an enor­ mous, colored tree: a cemetery whose powerful fragrance spread for miles around. a week later our neighbor umm alaa opened the door and saw my mother. the intensity of the grief had driven her to distraction. she had put shit in a small bowl, and was mixing it into my food very slowly with a plastic spoon, then filling my mouth with it as she wept. "my father sent me to live with my uncle, and i became a refugee of sorts. i would visit our house as a guest every friday, escorted by my aunt, who kept an eye on my mother. i felt like a ball that people kicked around. that's how i spent six years, trying to understand what was se hassan blasim happening around me. i had to learn what their feelings and their words meant, all the while wearing a chain of thorns around my neck. it was like crawling across a bed of nails. the septic tank was the bane of my childhood. on more than one occasion i heard how life apparently advances, moves on, sets sail, or, at worst, crawls slowly forward. my life, on the other hand, simply exploded like a firecracker in the sky of god, a small flare in his mighty firmament of bombardment. i spent the remaining years of my childhood and adolescence watching everyone carefully, like a sniper hidden in the darkness. watching and shooting. against the horrors of my life i unleashed other nightmares, imaginary ones. i invented mental images of my mother and others being tortured, and in my schoolbook i drew pictures of enormous trucks crush­ ing the heads of children. i still remember the picture of the president printed on the cover of our workbooks. he was in military uniform, smiling, and under his picture were written the words, 'the pen can shoot bullets as deadly as the rifle.' "there was a cart that brought kerosene, drawn by a donkey. it came through the lanes in the neighborhood in winter. the children would follow behind, waiting for the donkey's awesome penis to grow erect. i used to shut my eyes and imagine the donkey's penis, gross and black, going into my mother's right ear and coming out of the left. she would scream for help because of the pain. "a year before the war ended my father lost his left leg and his testicles. this forced my mother to take me back. my father decided to go back to the trade practiced by his father and his forefathers: making pickles. they say my .r fee\in� grandfather was the most famous pickle seller in the city chain� of najaf. the king himself visited him three times. i went i to: a : back home and acted as my father's drudge and obedient chi\ ooi servant. i was happy, because my father was a miracle of goodness. despite everything he had suffered in his life he remained faithful to his inner self, which had some­ how not been warped by the pain. he had an artificial leg fitted, and his capacity for love seemed to grow. he pam­ pered my mother and showered her with gifts-gold necklaces, rings, and lingerie embroidered with flowers. "my father tiled the courtyard and made a concrete cover for the septic tank. he left some space for the fig tree, but it died from the brine he used in the pickles. my mother wept beneath it for the last time when i was six­ teen. the government in baghdad had built a road for the highway and removed the old cemetery. her father's grave had been there. for a long time we were sad about the loss of my grandfather's bones. "the courtyard was full of plastic barrels for pickling; piles of sacks full of cucumbers, eggplants, green and red peppers, cabbages, and cauliflowers; bags of salt, sugar, and spices; bottles of vinegar; and tins of molasses. there were also large cooking pots, which were always full of boiling water, to which we would add spices, then all the vegetables one by one. my father wasn't as proficient as his father, let alone his grandfather. he started trying out new methods. he had spent a large part of his life in tanks and had forgotten many of the family recipes for making pickles. the tank had cost him his balls, his leg, and the trade of his forefathers. "i would sit opposite my mother for hours, cutting up the song of the goats 148 hassan blasim eggplants or stuffing cucumbers with garlic or celery. her tongue was as poisonous as a viper. the summer no longer bothered her. she had turned into a fat cow, burned by the sun, with a loose tongue, and she smoked to excess. nox­ ious weeds had sprouted in her heart. people took pity on her, with words as poisonous as hers. 'poor woman,' they said. 'an impotent husband and no children, just the bird of ill omen.' the bird-that was me, and i showed all the signs of ill omen. my father was busy all the time with the accounts and dealing with the shops in the market and moving barrels in the old pickup. after sunset he would collapse from fatigue. he would have dinner, pray, and tell us about his pickle problems, then take off his artifi­ cialleg and go to bed to tickle his gray-haired wife with his fingers. "when the war over kuwait broke out, i was meant to join the army. my father and my uncle sat down to discuss the question of my military service. my uncle had never seen the horrors of the front in the iran war. he was working in the security department in the city center. my father made up his mind: he would not give me up to die. 'how can i let them kill my only son?' my uncle argued with him, trying to explain how it would affect him in his branch of security if his nephew avoided serving the flag ('do you want them to execute us all-us and the women?'). my father stuck to his position. my uncle threatened to arrest me in person if i didn't join the army, but my father threw him out of the house. 'listen,' he said, 'it's true i'm a peaceful man, but this is my son, a piece of my flesh. if you persist in this, i'll slit your throat.' my uncle had been drunk that night and raging like a bull. he left shouting further insults. my father stood up, performed his prayers, and quickly calmed down. 'god save me from the accursed devil,' he said. 'he's my brother. it was just drunken talk. 1 know him. he has a good heart.' "1 was a prisoner in the house for three months. the streets were full of military police and all the security agencies. my father decided 1 shouldn't work by day in case the neighbors noticed me. at night 1 would slip out into the yard like a thief, with a lantern in my hand. 1 would sit next to the sacks of eggplants, cucumbers, and peppers, busy with my work and thinking about my life. 1 would mix arak with water in an empty milk can so as not to get caught by my father, then get drunk and snack on the many varieties of pickle this tank driver had to offer. the alcohol would flow in my blood, and 1 would crawl like a baby toward the septic tank, press my ear against the concrete cover, and listen. 1 could hear him laughing. 1 would shut my eyes and imagine the feel of his bare shoulder. his skin was hot from all the playing and exertion. 1 no longer remembered his face. my mother had the only photograph of him, and she wouldn't let anyone else go near it. she hid it in the wardrobe. she put the picture in a small wooden box decorated with a peacock. "at the crack of dawn my father would get up. he would usually find me asleep in my place. he would put his hand on my forehead and 1 would wake up to his touch. 'go inside, son. perform your prayers. may god prosper you.' he was well aware 1 was drinking arak, but religion to him didn't mean the words of any prophet, any 'houtjn� holy law or prohibitions. religion meant love of virtue, as the song of the goats 1 l� 9 ri / -. . / 150 hassan blasim he would put it to anyone with whom he was discussing questions of islamic law. "i will never forget the day he broke down in tears at the soccer field. he frightened the children, and i was embarrassed and disturbed that he was crying. the baath party members had executed three young kurds close to the soccer field. they tied them to wooden stakes and shot them dead in full view of the local people. before they did it, they announced over loudspeakers, 'these people are traitors and terrorists who do not deserve to eat from the bounty of this land or drink its water or breathe its air.' as usual, the baathists took the bodies and left the stakes in place to remind everyone of what had happened. my father had come to the square to take me to the cinema. he was crazy about indian films. when he saw that one goal was missing an upright he realized we had taken the stakes to make the goals. traces of blood had dried on the wood. my father broke down when one of the children said, 'we're still missing one goalpost. maybe they'll execute another one and we can have the stake.' "one summer evening we were invaded again. my uncle knocked frantically on the door. my mother was counting money and putting it in an empty tomato paste jar. my father and i were playing chess. he could beat me easily, but first he enjoyed giving me the pleasure of taking his pawns. he would sacrifice them and his other pieces without taking anything in return, keeping only his king and queen. then he would start to destroy my pieces with his black queen until he had me in checkmate. "my father went out to the yard to greet my uncle. my the song of the goats 151 mother threw on her shawl and followed. they all stood near the septic tank in anxious discussion, but in low voices. i watched them from behind the windowpane. i was still dizzy from drinking the day before. i was wait­ ing for night to come to get drunk again. my mother rushed to fetch something from under the stairs. my father and my uncle worked together to empty a barrel full of pickled cauliflower. my mother came back with a hammer and a nail. my father laid the barrel flat on the ground and started to punch holes in it at random with the nail. he didn't have his artificial leg on. he was hop­ ping around the barrel on one leg as if he were playing or dancing. my uncle parked the pickup outside the front door and loaded it with the barrels of pickles. then my father came into the living room sweating. '''listen, son,' he said, 'there's no time. your uncle has information that the police and the party are going to search all the houses at dawn. your uncle has loyal friends in the village of awran. stay there a few days till things calm down.' i climbed into the empty barrel and my mother closed the lid tight. my father and my uncle lifted me onto the pickup. "my father was right. they were brothers, after all, and they could read each other's minds. my uncle drove through the streets like a madman to save my life. he managed to reach the outskirts of the city safely, but all the roads to the provincial towns and villages had mili­ tary checkpoints. his only option was to take the back roads. he chose a road through the wheat fields to the east of the city. maybe in his panic he mistook the road. !de. mr even the city children knew the chain of rugged and 152 hassan blasim rocky hills that lay beyond the wheat fields. maybe images of the people tortured in his department had unhinged his brain. maybe he imagined his colleagues dissolving him in tanks of sulphuric acid and the headline security officer helps nephew escape in pickle barrel. as he drove through the wheat fields, he was barely in control of the steering wheel. the bumps were about to break my ribs, and only dust kicked up by the truck crept in through the holes in the barrel. the barrel stank like the dead cats on the neighborhood trash heap. did my uncle pull out fingernails, gouge out people's eyes, and singe their skin with branding irons in the vaults of the security depart­ ment? maybe it was the souls of his victims that drove him into the ravine, maybe it was my own evil soul, or maybe it was the soul that preordained everything that is ephemeral and mysterious in this transitory world. "seven barrels lay in the darkness at the bottom of the cliff like sleeping animals. the pickup had overturned after my uncle tried to take a second rocky bend in the hill. the barrels rolled down into the ravine with the truck. i spent the night unconscious inside the barrel. in the first hours of morning the rays of sunlight pierced the holes in the barrel, like lifelines extended to a drowning man. my mouth was full of blood and my hands were trembling. i was in pain and frightened. i started to observe the rays of the sun as they crisscrossed confusingly in the barrel. i wanted to escape the chaos that had played havoc with my consciousness. i felt as if i had smoked a ton of marijuana: a fish coming to its senses in a sardine tin, a dead worm in an abandoned well, a putrid fetus with crushed bones in a womb the shape of a barrel. then my mind fixed on the song of the goats 153 ima��\ another image: my brother sinking to the bottom of the nbin t� septic tank and me diving after him. "the bleating sounded faint at first, as though a choir was practicing. one goat started and then another joined in, then all the goats together, as if they had found the right key. the rays of the sun moved and fell right in my eye. i pissed in my pants inside that barrel, appalled at the cruelty of the world to which i was returning. the goat­ herd called out to his flock, and one of the goats butted the barrel." \1 everyone staying at the refugee reception center has two stories-the real one and the one for the record. the stories for the record are the ones the new refu­ gees tell to obtain the right to humanitarian asylum, written down in the immigration department and preserved in their private files. the real stories remain locked in the hearts of the refugees, for them to mull over in complete secrecy. that's not to say it's easy to tell the two stories apart. they merge and it becomes impossible to distinguish between them. two days ago a new iraqi refugee arrived in malmo, in southern sweden. he was in his late thirties. they took him to the reception center and did some medical tests on him. then they gave him a room, a bed, a towel, a bedsheet, a bar of soap, a knife, fork, and spoon, and a cooking pot. today the man is sitting in front of the immigration officer telling his story at amazing speed, while the immigration officer asks him to slow down as much as possible. they told me they had sold me to another group; they were very cheerful. they stayed up all night drinking 157 // -. . / ii 158 hassan blasim whiskey and laughing. they even invited me to join them bu in a drink, but i declined and told them i was a religious lar man. they bought me new clothes, and that night they in: cooked me a chicken and served me fruit and sweets. it seems i fetched a good price. the leader of the group even i�t, shed real tears when he said good-bye. he embraced me like a brother. "you're a very good man. i wish you all the best, and good luck in your life," said the man with one eye. i think i stayed with the first group just three months. they had kidnapped me on that cold accursed night. that was in the early winter of 2006. we had orders to go to the tigris; it was the first time we had received instruc­ tions directly from the head of the emergency depart­ ment in the hospital. at the bank of the river the policemen were standing around six headless bodies. the heads had been put in an empty flour sack in front of the bodies. the police guessed they were the bodies of some clerics. we had arrived late because of the heavy rain. the police piled the bodies onto the ambulance driven by my col­ league abu salim, and i carried the sack of heads to my ambulance. the streets were empty; the only sounds to break the forlorn silence of the baghdad night were some gunshots in the distance and the noise of an american helicopter patrolling over the green zone. we set off too ��ojtlo aii pro an on all neo de �al ter out along abu nawas street toward rashid street, driving at un medium speed because of the rain. i remembered the m words the director of the emergency department in the all hospital often used to say: "when you're carrying an sal injured person or a patient close to death, the speed of the fo ambulance shows how humane and responsible you are. the reality and the record 159 hem but when you are carrying severed heads in an ambu­ lance, you needn't go faster than a hearse drawn by mules in a dark medieval forest." the director saw himself as a philosopher and an art­ ist, but "born in the wrong country," as he would say. he took his work seriously nonetheless and considered it a sacred duty, because to him running the ambulance sec­ tion of the emergency department meant managing the dividing line between life and death. we called him the professor; my other colleagues hated him and called him mad. i know why they hated him, because the enigmatic and aggressive way he spoke made him seem screwed up in the eyes of others. but i retained much respect and affection for him because of the beautiful and fascinating things he said. once he said to me, "spilled blood and superstition are the basis of the world. man is not the only creature who kills for bread, or love, or power, because animals in the jungle do that in various ways, but he is the only creature who kills because of faith." he would usu­ ally wrap up his speeches by pointing to the sky and declaiming theatrically, "the question of humanity can be solved only by constant dread." my colleague abu salim had a notion that the professor had links with the terrorist groups because of the violent language he used, but i would loyally defend the man, because they did not understand that he was a philosopher who refused to make foolish jokes, as the stupid ambulance drivers did all day. i remembered every sentence and every word he said, for i was captivated by my affection and admiration for him. let me get back to that wretched night. when wej are. -. . ,/ � 160 hassan blasim ie o� turned toward the martyrs bridge i noticed that the ambulance driven by abu salim had disappeared. then in the side mirror i caught sight of a police car gaining on us at high speed. i pulled over to the side in the middle of the bridge. four young men in masks and special police uni­ forms got out of the police car. the leader of the group pointed his pistol in my face and told me to get out of the vehicle, while his colleagues unloaded the sack of heads from the ambulance. "i've been kidnapped and they are going to cut off my head." that was my first thought when they tied me up and stuffed me in the trunk of the police car. it took me only ten minutes to realize what was awaiting me. i recited the throne verse from the quran three times in the darkness of the trunk, and i felt that my skin was starting to peel off. for some reason in those dark moments i thought about my body weight, maybe 155 pounds. the slower the car went, or the more it turned, the more frightened i was, and when it picked up speed again a strange blend of tranquility and anxiety would pulse through me. perhaps i thought at those moments of what the professor had said about the correlation between speed and the imminence of death. i didn't understand exactly what he meant, but he would say that someone about to die in the forest would be more afraid than some­ one about to die in a speeding ambulance, because the first one feels that fate has singled him out, while the sec­ ond imagines there are others sticking with him. i also remember that he once announced with a smile, "i would like to have my death in a spaceship traveling at the speed of light." in in m oi to cl w n co ra cl the reality and the record 161 i imagined that all the unidentified and mutilated bod­ ies i had carried in the ambulance since the fall of bagh­ dad lay before me, and that in the darkness surrounding me i then saw the professor picking my severed head from a pile of trash, while my colleagues made dirty jokes about my liking for the professor. i don't think the police car drove very far before it came to a halt. at least they did not leave the city. i tried to remember the rahman verse of the quran, but they got me out of the car and escorted me into a house that smelled of grilled fish. i could hear a child crying. they undid my blindfold, and i found myself in a cold, unfurnished room. then three madmen laid into me and beat me to a pulp, until a darkness again descended. i thought i heard a cock crow at first. i shut my eyes, but i couldn't sleep. i felt a sharp pain in my left ear. with difficulty i turned over onto my back and pushed myself toward the window, which had recently been blocked up. i was very thirsty. it was easy to work out that i was in a house in one of baghdad's old neighborhoods. that was clear from the build of the room and particularly the old wooden door. in fact i don't know exactly what details of my story matter to you for me to get the right of asylum in your country. i find it very hard to describe those days of ter­ ror, but i want to mention also some of the things that matter to me. i felt that god, and behind him the profes­ sor, would never abandon me throughout my ordeal. i felt the presence of god intensely in my heart, nurturing my peace of mind and calling me to patience. the professor kept my mind busy and alleviated the loneliness of my captivity. he was my solace and my comfort. j !if_.. __ -_-162 hassan blasim i i i throughout those arduous months i would recall what the professor had said about his friend, dawoud the engineer. what did he mean by saying that the world is all interconnected? and where do the power and the will of god stand in such matters? we were drinking tea at the hospital door when the professor said, "while my friend dawoud was driving the family car through the streets of baghdad, an iraqi poet in london was writing a fiery arti­ cle in praise of the resistance, with a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him to help harden his heart. because the world is all interconnected, through feelings, words, nightmares, and other secret channels, out of the poet's article jumped three masked men. they stopped the fam­ ily car and killed dawoud, his wife, his child, and his father. his mother was waiting for them at home. dawoud's mother doesn't know the iraqi poet nor the masked men. she knows how to cook the fish that was awaiting them. the iraqi poet fell asleep on the sofa in london in a drunken stupor, while dawoud's mother's fish went cold and the sun set in baghdad." the wooden door of the room opened and a young man, tall with a pale and haggard face, came in carrying breakfast. he smiled at me as he put the food down in front of me. at first i was uncertain what i could say or do. but then i threw myself at his feet and implored him tear­ fully, "i am the father of three children.... i'm a religious man who fears god .... i have nothing to do with politics or religious denominations god protect you ... i'm just an ambulance driver before the invasion, and since the invasion.... i swear by god and his noble prophet." the young man put a finger to his lips and recall rushed out. i felt that my end had come. i drank the cup of oud tn� tea and performed my prayers in hopes that god would r\d i all forgive my sins. at the second prostration i felt that a layer of ice was forming across my body and i almost cried out in fear, but the young man opened the door, car­ rying a small lighting device attached to a stand, and accompanied by a boy carrying a kalashnikov rifle. the boy stood next to me, pointing the gun at my head, and from then on he did not leave his place. a fat man in his forties came in, taking no notice of me. on the wall he hung a black cloth banner inscribed with a quranic verse urging muslims to fight jihad. then a masked man came in with a video camera and a small computer. then a boy came in with a small wooden table. the masked man joked with the boy, tweaked his nose, and thanked him, then put the computer on the table and busied himself with setting up the camera in front of the black banner. the thin young man tried out the lighting system three times and then left. "abu jihad, abu jihad!" the fat man shouted. the young man's voice came from outside the room: "wait a minute. right you are, abu arkan." this time the young man came back carrying the sack of heads they had taken from the ambulance. everyone blocked their nose because of the stink from the sack. the fat man asked me to sit in front of the black banner. i felt that my legs were paralyzed, but the fat man pulled me roughly by my shirt collar. at that point another man came in, thick-set with one eye, and ordered the fat man to let me be. this man had in his hand an army uniform. the man with one eye sat close to me, with his arm across the reality and the record 163 f ...., .. _, __ -.__ my shoulders like a friend, and asked me to calm down. he told me they wouldn't slaughter me if i was coopera­ tive and kindhearted. i didn't understand fully what he meant by this "kindhearted." he told me it would only take a few minutes. the one-eyed man took a small piece of paper from his pocket and asked me to read it. mean­ while the fat man was taking the decomposing heads out of the sack and lining them up in front of me. it said on the piece of paper that i was an officer in the iraqi army and these were the heads of other officers, and that accompa)0 nied by my fellow officers i had raided houses, raped women, and tortured innocent civilians; that we had received orders to kill from a senior officer in the u.s. army, in return for large financial rewards. the man with one eye asked me to put on the army uniform, and the cameraman asked everyone to pull back behind the camera. then he ill came up to me and started adjusting my head, as a hair­ dresser does. after that he adjusted the line of heads, then went back behind the camera and called out, "off you go." the cameraman's voice was very familiar. perhaps it resembled the voice of a famous actor, or it might have been like the voice of the professor when he was making an exaggerated effort to talk softly. after they filmed the w videotape, i didn't meet the members of the group again, other than the young man who brought me food, and he prevented me from asking any questions. every time he m brought food he would tell me a new joke about politia( cians and men of religion. my only wish was that he hi would let me contact my wife, because i had hidden some fil money for a rainy day in a place where even the jinn would never think of looking, but they vehemently rejected my 164 hassan blasim ted my the reality and the record 165 request. the one-eyed leader of the group told me that everything depended on the success of the videotape, and in fact the tape was such a success so quickly that every­ one was surprised. al jazeera broadcast the videotape. they allowed me to watch television, and on that day they were jumping for joy, so much so that the fat man kissed me on the head and said i was a great actor. what made me angry was the al jazeera news anchor, who assured viewers that the channel had established through reliable sources that the tape was authentic and that the ministry of defense had admitted that the officers had gone miss­ ing. after the success of the broadcast they started treat­ ing me in a manner that was better than good. they took trouble over my food and bedding and allowed me to take a bath. their kindness culminated on the night they sold me to the second group. then three masked men from that group came into the room, and after the man with one eye had given me a warm farewell, the new men laid into me with their fists, tied me up and gagged me, then shoved me into the trunk of a car that drove off at a terri­ fying speed. the second group's car traveled far this time. perhaps we reached the outskirts of baghdad. they took me out in' a desolate village where dogs roamed and barked all over the place. they held me in a cattle pen; there were two men who took turns guarding the pen night and day. i don't know why, but they proceeded to starve me and humiliate me. they were completely different from the first group. they wore their masks all the time and never spoke a word with me. they would communicate with each other through gestures. in fact there was not a f ""... _ .. __ -.__ 166 hassan blasim human voice to be heard from the village, just the barking of dogs the whole month i spent in the cow pen. re the hours passed with oppressive tedium. i would �o hope that anything would happen, rather than this life rl, sentence with three cows. i gave up thinking about these tn people, or what religious group or party they belonged to. ni� i no longer bemoaned my fate but felt i had already lived ne through what happened to me at some time, and that time nu was a period that would not last long. but my sense of this time made it seem slow and confused. it no longer occurred to me to try to escape or to ask them what they wanted from me. i felt that i was carrying out some mis­ sion, a binding duty that i had to perform until my last breath. perhaps there was a secret power working in ad league with a human power to playa secret game for pur­ poses too grand for a simple man like me to grasp. "every man has both a poetic obligation and a human obliga­ tion," as the professor used to say. but if that was true, how could i tell the difference, and easily, between the limits of the human obligation and those of the poetic obligation? because my understanding is that, for exam­ ple, looking after my wife and children is one of my human obligations, and refusing to hate is a poetic obliga­ tion. but why did the professor say that we confuse the two obligations and do not recognize the diabolical element that drives them both? because the diabolical oblita� gations imply the capacity to stand in the face of a man when he is pushing his own humanity toward the abyss, and this is too much for the mind of a simple man like me, who barely completed his intermediate education, at least i think so. w( th ne sa what i'm saying has nothing to do with my asylum request. what matters to you is the horror. if the profes­ sor were here, he would say that the horror lies in the sim­ plest of puzzles that shine in a cold star in the sky over this city. in the end they came into the cow pen after mid­ night one night. one of the masked men spread one cor­ ner of the pen with fine carpets. then his companion hung a black banner inscribed, "the islamic jihad group, iraq branch." then the cameraman came in with his camera, and it struck me that he was the same camera­ man as the one with the first group. his hand gestures were the same as those of the first cameraman. the only difference was that he was now communicating with the others through gestures alone. they asked me to put on a white dishdasha and sit in front of the black banner. they gave me a piece of paper and told me to read out loud what was written on it: that i belonged to the mehdi army and i was a famous killer, i had cut off the heads of hundreds of sunni men, and i had support from iran. before i'd fin­ ished reading, one of the cows gave a loud moo, so the cameraman asked me to read it again. one of the men took the three cows away so that we could finish off the cow pen scene. i later realized that everyone who bought me was moving me across the same bridge. i don't know why. one group would take me across the martyrs bridge toward karkh on the west bank of the tigris, then the next group would take me back across the same bridge to rasafa on ike me, the east bank. if i go on like this, i think my story will at jeast never end, and i'm worried you'll say what others have said about it. so i think it would be best if i summarize arkin the reality and the record 167 168 hassan blasim tape. their decisive response was a beating i will never forget. throughout the year and a half of my kidnapping experience, i was moved from one hiding place to another. they shot video of me talking about how i was a treacher­ ous kurd, an infidel christian, a saudi terrorist, a syrian baathist intelligence agent, or a revolutionary guard from zoroastrian iran. on these videotapes i murdered, raped, started fires, planted bombs, and carried out crimes that no sane person would even imagine. all these tapes were broadcast on satellite channels around the world. experts, journalists, and politicians sat there dis­ cussing what i said and did. the only bad luck we ran into was when we made a video in which i appeared as a span­ ish soldier, with a resistance fighter holding a knife to my neck, demanding spanish forces withdraw from iraq. all the satellite stations refused to broadcast the tape bedol ing tnr the story for you, rather than have you accuse me of makca ing it up. they sold me to a third group. the car sped across the grl martyrs bridge once again. i was moved to a luxurious na house, and this time my prison was a bedroom with a in i lovely comfortable bed, the kind in which you see film tn stars having sex. my fear evaporated and i began to grasp tri the concept of the secret mission for which they had chofiv sen me. i carried out the mission so as not to lose my head, �cr but i also thought i would test their reaction in certain �n matters. after filming a new video in which i spoke about fro how i belonged to sunni islamist groups and about my lea work blowing up shiite mosques and public markets, i mal asked them for some money as payment for making the ca tne mi wn tne cra eve cnl tn it ca nl� col jl mak· the reality and the record 169 cause spanish forces had left the country a year earlier. i almost paid a heavy price for this mistake, when the group holding me wanted to kill me in revenge for what had happened, but the cameraman saved me by suggest­ ing another wonderful idea, the last of my videotape roles. they dressed me in the costume of an afghan fighter, trimmed my beard, and put a black turban on my head. five men stood behind me, and they brought in six men screaming and crying out for help from god, his prophet, and the prophet's family. they slaughtered the men in front of me like sheep as i announced that i was the new leader of the al qaeda organization in mesopotamia and made threats against everyone in creation. late one night the cameraman brought me my old clothes and took me to the ambulance, which was stand­ ing at the door. they put those six heads in a sack and threw it into the vehicle. at that moment i noticed the cameraman's gestures, and i thought that surely he was the cameraman for all the groups and maybe the master­ mind of this dreadful game. i sat behind the steering wheel with trembling hands. then the cameraman gave the order from behind his mask: "you know the way. cross the martyrs bridge, to the hospital." i am asking for asylum in your country because of everyone. they are all killers and schemers-my wife, my children, my neighbors, my colleagues, god, his prophet, the government, the newspapers, even the professor who i thought an angel, and now i have suspicions that the cameraman with the terrorist groups was the professor himself. his enigmatic language was merely proof of his connivance and his vile nature. they all told me i hadn't 170 hassan blasim been away for a year and half, because i came back the morning after working that rainy night, and on that very morning the professor said to me, "the world is just a bloody and hypothetical story, and we are all killers and heroes." and those six heads cannot be proof of what i'm saying, just as they are not proof that the night will not spread across the sky. three days after this story was filed away in the records of the immigration department, they took the man who told it to the psychiatric hospital. before the doctor could start asking him about his childhood memories, the ambulance driver summed up his real story in four words: "i want to sleep." it was a humble entreaty. --. . / 173 the saying "the body must be protected, not the thoughts'" sprang to his mind as he sat on the toilet seat in a chinese restaurant. he speculated that his mind wanted to solve the puzzle of "why that damned smile when i wake up in the morning?" he came out of the rest­ room and asked for a cup of green tea. he had left the house early that day, before his wife and daughter had gotten up. from the restaurant he sent his wife a text message saying he had gone out for a short walk and would be back in an hour. now the hour was running out. he remembered that yesterday she had asked him to buy a new vacuum cleaner on monday. just then he noticed two old women sitting in a corner of the restaurant, doing a crossword in the newspaper together. one of them was holding the pen and the other was thinking, with a finger on her nose. the day before, the vacuum cleaner had stopped working when he was cleaning the little girl's room. now he saw the reflection of his smile in the tea­ cup, and it turned green. * attributed to albert camus. /. i "'� _. __ -_ 174 hassan blasim he began to think about the question of thoughts and the body as he watched the two women. before going into the restaurant he'd witnessed a group of children standing at the traffic lights waiting for green. they stood in two lines with two teachers, one at the front and one at the back. he guessed how many children there were-twelve, of the future hope variety. his mind wagged its tail with delight. they would no doubt be doctors, engineers, mur­ derers, poets, alcoholics, and unemployed people, twelve children being the new cover of an old story. his mind slowly moved forward, and he began to smell the stench of death. those are our children and the ones who will visit our graves, he said. twelve ideas crossing the street, cheerful and energetic. they are the powerhouse of the future. he stood up and headed to the bathroom again. he washed his face for the tenth time, but the smile was still stuck there. if he had not had trouble with fantasies in the past, he would have behaved like any sensible man, looked in the mirror, and said, "impossible." but he was used to surprises, and his experiences had taught him not to waste time looking for reasons for his predicaments and to look for the emergency exit instead. his mind guessed that the smile had come to him from a previous dream. it was a naive, cinematic dream that had absolutely nothing to do with his past: he kisses her on the lips and tries to climb the stairs, then sits back down at the foot of them. he smiles and leans his head against the wall. she brushes her teeth in the kitchen and shouts out to him, asking him to bring the bedsheet. she wants to wash it. but now he's going down a we the yea ner nan tne tne ever now �ear �eau toot oeat' tne i ni� � toers wito lue like was were that inauspicious smile 175 ana well like a feather tumbling through the air. he is far from the light, a dead man who doesn't hear her last call. four years after this stair incident the woman dies. they find her lying on the kitchen table with the toothbrush in her hand and, on the brush, a piece of meat the size of an ant. shall we say that after the woman brushes her teeth, the rays of the sun stream through the window, or that the rain is beating the windowpane? the dream recurs every night. there's a need for this ancient music, and yet how many of these timeless death stories have disap­ peared? what eternal naivete there is in tales about our beautiful death! these little stories that are pointed like a toothbrush. why did we contrive to complicate these death stories? a giant shadow poses these questions to the man in the dream. in the morning the man woke up smiling, then he saw his smile in the mirror. it seemed to have stayed stuck there after the dream. once, in an unusual discussion with a member of the association for the defense of the luckless, he said: "i didn't want my wife and daughter to see me smiling like an idiot for no reason. it was an insignificant smile. it was wide, but it didn't show my damaged teeth. my lips were sealed like the lips of a clown. i rubbed my face with soap and water, but the smile was still stuck there. i brushed my teeth three times, but it stayed there like indelible ink. i thought, 'maybe it will disappear as the day proceeds, as the snow melts on a sunny morning.' i don't know how such thoughts occurred to me. then sud­ denly i felt intensely hot, although the season was winter. )wna i put on a light sports shirt printed on the back with a // ' ..... -. _-176 hassan blasim picture of a black crow standing on a basketball. the ball was marked like a map of the world. i put on a clean pair of jeans and my black winter coat. i resolved to solve the mystery of that smile. the wife and daughter have put up with much-i worry i might drive them mad-because i've had a succession of disasters in this world. i'm not luckless, so stop sticking that stupid label on me. "the snow was dancing down. it was amazing and beautiful. for the first time the sky was so munificent, when it yielded all these jewels to me. i had known feelings like these before. you wake up and smell a morning, then you think, 'life still suits me.' there are disguised moments of sadness that hide in various clothes and smells. you get drunk and weep and think you have cleared away a large rock blocking the channels of your day, which had come to an end with a painful blow. a man i don't know passed close by me, wearing a heavy winter coat, a woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, and on his head a black hat, on which the snowflakes had gathered. he kept looking and turning toward me with a smile as he walked in the oppowin site direction. i wanted to return his smile. i passed my fingers along my lips. so i didn't need a new smile. i made do ner with turning toward him quickly to offer him in return ore that dream smile of mine. ine ill nal girl out ine tni clas off� �itti oac ana ans tur i ii � "i went into the chinese restaurant to have some tea mo and check up on the smile in the mirror. i saw two old leslao bians doing the crossword puzzle. i sent my wife a second slov message on my phone, telling her i would be back a little late and would go straight to the shops to buy the vacuum cleaner. i had to find a solution for the damned smile. i thought of going to the hospital. perhaps i'm ill and the e ball smile is just an alarm bell. but instead of that i found � pair myself going into a cinema and buying a ticket. i felt a �e th� nasty fever spreading through my body. there were some pu u� girls under a large poster of next week's film. what stood out was dracula's fangs and the blood running down from the corners of his mouth. there was a smile on the face of this monster. the girls sat down as though they were in class at school. all of them gave me stiff looks, with a tinge of fear. then they smiled in turn, from right to left. i was sitting in front of them. i took off my coat and turned my back on them so that they could clearly see the basketball and the crow. don't ask me why i did that. do you have an answer to this damned smile? then i checked on the fea­ tures of my face in the mirrors in the foyer. i confess i was somewhat satisfied with this new smile. at least i don't have to contract my face muscles in order to smile, as other people do. i forgot to tell you that one of the old lesbians told me to keep this beautiful smile because the finns are gloomy in winter and look depressed, which makes the winter darker and more dreary. "the film was a disgusting, fast-paced tearjerker. the heroine set fire to her house with her husband and chil­ dren inside. now she's screaming and sobbing in front of the fire and the neighbors have their fingers on their mouths as though they are about to vomit. the elegant lady sitting near me was drowning in tears. she turned slowly toward me and muttered in shock, 'the pig!' i turned to her in disbelief. then she looked at me again but this time disdainfully. she began to look back and forth like an imbecile between the disaster of the heroine in the film and my beaming face. she looked as though she were that inauspicious smile 177 revolted and wanted to slap me because of my smile. i wanted to explain to her, 'i'm not smiling at what hap­ pened to the woman and her house, lady (although she's a bitch like you). i woke up this morning and found this smile had been forced upon me.' "i ignored the woman and tried to pretend i pitied the wh woman in the film, who took a revolver out of her belt and mun fired a bullet into her head amid a crowd of people, who quickly dispersed when the fire engines arrived. was "when the lights came on in the cinema, the elegant intn lady stood up and insulted me, this time out loud. 'ani�mil mal, son of a bitch!' she shouted. mitt "the audience turned toward me, but all they did was ath smile as they looked at my face. were they smiling at the wne insult, or at the crow on the ball, or because i answered rour the woman's insult with my cold smile? i have to get rid of lu�to this smile as soon as possible. my wife called me; i lied kind and said i was still looking for a suitable vacuum cleaner. was "the snow kept falling, and it sparkled even more notio when a light wind rose and made it fall at a slant. i was tnan frightened and confused, thinking that this smile might snav appear when some disaster happens. what if a bus runs realil over someone now and his guts come out of his ass? surely fun there would be a panicky crowd. what if they noticed my one smile as i joined them in watching this free spectacle? tne without doubt they would give me a thorough beating. it in how would i explain to them that my smile had nothing dar to do with what had happened? or who would put up with you smiling in his face when, for example, his baby was dying of hunger in front of his eyes? could you calmly explain to him that you are smiling in derision at life, 178 hassan blasim ,i which produced this child without reason and then took ap· it away with a kick in the guts, also without reason? wouldn't the father and mother of this child stab you and tear apart this hard-hearted animal? i hurried off to a bar nearby. the body must be protected, not the thoughts. what if you were to lose control over the inherited com­ munal gestures that unite us in fear and in happiness? "i felt a stomach pain when i went into the bar, which was suspiciously crowded. the finns start drinking early in the day. my arrival in the bar set off a smile-fest, but the smiles gradually waned and turned into laughs and inter­ mittent comments that were, technically, quick insults. at first i didn't understand why the bartender hesitated when i ordered a beer. then he said, 'you should drink up your beer quickly and leave.' in turn i looked at the other customers, angry at such an unfriendly reception. what kind of bar is this? i said that out loud, but as you know, i was smiling in spite of myself. perhaps they had the notion that i was just a tame animal that had taken more than his fair share. there were four young men with shaved heads in black leather jackets. only then did i realize that this was a neonazi bar. they were making fun of my daring or my stupidity, looking at me between one drink and another and making ugly jokes and insults. then one of them stood up, took out his cock, and waved it in my face. everyone burst out laughing, including the bartender. i thought i would keep myself under control, drink the beer quickly, and escape this filthy trap. but i was stupid. i pretended to be brave and indifferent. i sat there like a captain smiling on his ship. but the bartender, that son of a whore, asked me to leave at once, for fear of re:ea riaof i lid ant:, mor� lwai ,ruoi racle1 atin�, thin� imly : jife, that inauspicious smile 179 180 hassan blasim problems. of course, i was delighted with this expulsion. gn and so i left the nazis' bar like a frightened mouse. ha "it was sunday and i had thought it was monday. at least i remembered that, and then i thought my wife m would be angry when she read my text messages. which electrical goods stores are these that open on sunday? now, what other lie could i make up to cover my first lie? i thought of going home and confessing everything to my nr� wife. the smile would be proof i was telling the truth. but dut my feelings were contradictory. then i entered a small �na shop, bought six bottles of beer, and went to the park. do gan i really have bad luck? or was i born by mistake? for "the streets were empty, and the wind was playing oft havoc and making a racket when it tried to shift things left from their place. the wind blew over a price list parked tnei outside a closed restaurant, then it brought along a large tna cardboard box, which flew around like half of a dismembered body. there were empty cigarette packs racing wni each other about. unconsciously i hummed a tune. i ea�� wanted to sing, but i did not know which song to choose. out i didn't have the words to any song in my head. a slight nes anxiety came over me. had the words to songs been for sucked out of my memory to this extent? all i could do up i was make up some little songs. i kept humming in hopes win that i would come across some words in a while, but stu­ pid tears came instead of words. the wind blew an empty white bag, which passed close to my ear and made me for­ get the tune. it had frightened me. the bag did a somersault at the junction as though it was deciding which way its to go. it rose uncertainly for a moment, then fell in a lurch ha to the asphalt. this time the wind dragged it along the in' lion, that inauspicious smile 181 ground in spite of itself and left it next to the trash that had accumulated at the mouth of the street drain. "i reached the yard thinking about how i had lied to my wife. definitely she would be convinced i'd had a date with a woman. now she would be in a rage, stuffing my clothes into a suitcase in readiness to throw me out. "when i looked through the thick trees i thought at first that the wind had blown in some other black bags, but in reality it had brought those four young men with shaved heads. with the instinct of an animal i sensed danger. i caught their smell when they came close to me. for no reason i stood up to piss behind a giant tree. two of them surrounded me on the right and the others on the left. they looked like guardian angels. they took out their cocks and all of them pissed with vigor, like donkeys that had not pissed for years. as they pissed they looked at me stiffly and contemptuously because of my cock, which out of fear had not released a single drop. i was easy prey, and cowardly. the noise of their piss gushing out filled the air, like a waterfall cascading in the dark­ ness. the wind died down, or slowed down to make space for the symphony of their pissing. the smell of it drifted up to my brain like poisonous nerve gas, or perhaps the wind wanted to give the sky a free look. "everything was over with lightning speed. in just a few minutes they gave vent to all possible animal instincts, giving me a thorough beating. then they ran off, as though the wind had picked them up, hidden them in the folds of its solemn cloak, and gone back to work after the youths had carried out their mission to perfection. i was bleed­ ing from my ear, my nose, my teeth, and my eye, and from , ..,., .. --_ -_ 0 0 � o__ / 182 hassan blasim the blocked nostrils of my soul as well. i tried to get up. i th wished that this wind, a slave to the sky in blind obedi pa� ence and allegiance, would pick me up too, but it didn't. it was sweeping up everything but my empty body, which in lay bleeding by the tree, as though what had happened was part of a humorous story full of banal scrapes. i saw empty bags of every color and shape. they were hovering around me at crazy speeds, as though they were making me a special offer of leftover bones, times, and places. they did not seem happy with me, nor did the force blowing them. a torn gray bag flew past, and i realized it was my mother's shawl. a burned brain flew by on giant wings. a shoal of fish swam past, carrying scraps of a young girl's flesh. the flying vipers of economic sanctions flew by, wrapped around their food of humans and dreams. all my wife's underwear went past, one pair dripping blood, another semen, the next one ink, and so on. myoid notebooks passed by, clapping their covers. scorpions in a bottle went past, my summer shirts, medicines that had expired, and cartons of baby milk. bread went by on wings of shit. poems passed, pissing on themselves like disabled children. with their savage dogs the guards on the borders i had walked across went past. my cross-eyed brother, who wears the turban of an imam. my severed and bloodied fingers flew by, my daughter, mariam, in her pram, disfigured because i loved her too much. my wife went by, playing a trumpet that screeched like an owl. "my whole life passed page by page, all the jams and scrapes i had been through, page after page. even when i closed my eyes it didn't stop. pain and vertigo had me in ·up. i �bed\· in't.it which ppenea that inauspicious smile 183 their power. the pages went past in the darkness, white page after page." in the evening the man was laid out on a bed in the hospi­ tal, smiling at his wife and his daughter, who was holding a beautiful bunch of flowers. "why are you smiling like that, daddy?" mariam asked in surprise. 7 . �-� . -_ / / --"-'-ii in iraq his name was salim abdul husain, and he worked for the municipality in the cleaning depart­ ment, part of a group assigned by the manager to clear up in the aftermath of explosions. he died in holland in 2009 under another name: carlos fuentes. bored and disgusted as on every miserable day, salim and his colleagues were sweeping a street market after an oil tanker had exploded nearby, incinerating chickens, fruit and vegetables, and some people. they were sweep­ ing the market slowly and cautiously for fear they might sweep up with the debris any human body parts left over. but they were always looking for an intact wallet or per­ haps a gold chain, a ring, or a watch that could still tell the time. salim was not as lucky as his colleagues in finding the valuables left over from death. he needed money to buy a visa to go to holland and escape this hell of fire and death. his only lucky find was a man's finger with a valu­ able silver ring of great beauty. salim put his foot over the finger, bent down carefully, and with disgust pulled the silver ring off. he picked up the finger and put it in a black bag where they collected all the body parts. the ring 187 7 ' ""--_ -_ -_ ended up on salim's finger; he would contemplate the gemstone in surprise and wonder, and in the end he abanan doned the idea of selling it. might one say that he felt a tes secret spiritual relationship with the ring? when he applied for asylum in holland he also applied to change his name: from salim abdul husain to carlos fuentes. he explained his request to the official in the immigration department on the grounds that he was frightened of the fanatical islamist groups, because his request for asylum was based on his work as a translator for the u.s. forces, and his fear that someone might assas­ sinate him as a traitor to his country. salim had consulted his cousin who lived in france about changing his name. he called him on his cell phone from the immigration department because salim had no clear idea of a new for­ eign name that would suit him. in his apartment in france his cousin was taking a deep drag on a joint when salim called. suppressing a laugh, his cousin said, "you're quite right. it's a hundred times better to be from senegal or china than it is to have an arab name in europe. but you couldn't possibly have a name like jack or stephen i mean, a european name. perhaps you should choose a brown name-a cuban or argentine name would suit your com­ plexion, which is the color of burnt barley bread." his cousin was looking through a pile of newspapers in the kitchen as he continued the conversation on the phone, and he remembered that two days earlier he had read a name, perhaps a spanish name, in a literary article of me which he did not understand much. salim thanked his 188 hassan blasim anae lifef tnes tnd woul� ana tnet �new walk wny resp tfiey' �eac ' tfieid twen ern cousin warmly for the help he had given him and wished eve him a happy life in the great country of france. his the nightmares of carlos fuentes 189 the �an· fel a carlos fuentes was very happy with his new name, and the beauty of amsterdam made him happy too. fuen­ tes wasted no time. he joined classes to learn dutch and promised himself he would not speak arabic from then on, or mix with arabs or iraqis, whatever happened in life. "had enough of misery, backwardness, death, shit, piss, and camels," he said to himself. in the first year of his new life fuentes let nothing pass without comparing it with the state of affairs in his original country, sometimes in the form of a question, sometimes as an exclamation. he would walk down the street muttering to himself sulkily and enviously, "look how clean the streets are! look at the toilet seat; it's sparkling clean! why can't we eat like them? we gobble down our food as though it's about to disappear. if this girl wearing a short skirt and showing her legs were now walking across eastern gate square, she would disappear in an instant. she would only have to walk ten yards and the ground would swallow her up. why are the trees so green and beautiful, as though they're washed with water every day? why can't we be peaceful like them? we live in houses like pigsties while their houses are warm, safe, and colorful. why do they respect dogs as much as humans? why do we masturbate twenty-four hours a day? how can we get a decent gov­ ernment like theirs?" everything carlos fuentes saw amazed him and humiliated him at the same time, from reaoa the softness of the toilet paper in holland to the parliade of ment building protected only by security cameras. d hi) carlos fuentes's life went on as he had planned it. j-heo every day he made progress in burying his identity and his past. he always scoffed at the immigrants and other 190 hassan blasim foreigners who did not respect the rules of dutch life and who complained all the time. he called them "retarded gerbils." they work in restaurants illegally, they don't pay taxes, and they don't respect any law. they are stone age savages. they hate the dutch, who have fed and housed them. he felt he was the only one who deserved to be adopted by this compassionate and tolerant country, and that the dutch government should expel all those who did not learn the language properly and anyone who com­ mitted the slightest misdemeanor, even crossing the street in violation of the safety code. let them go shit there in their shitty countries. after learning dutch in record time, to the surprise of everyone who knew him, carlos fuentes worked nonstop, paid his taxes, and refused to live on welfare. the high­ light of his efforts to integrate his mind and spirit into dutch society came when he acquired a good-hearted dutch girlfriend who loved and respected him. she weighed two hundred pounds and had childlike features, like a cartoon character. fuentes tried hard to treat her as a sensitive and liberated man would, like a western man, in fact a little more so. of course, he always introduced himself as someone of mexican origin whose father had left his country and settled in iraq to work as an engineer with the oil companies. carlos liked to describe the iraqi people as an uncivilized and backward people who did not know what humanity means. "they are just savage clans," he would say. because of his marriage to a dutch woman, his profi­ ciency in dutch, his enrollment in numerous courses on dutch culture and history, and the fact that he had no erd� � wears nrsto newa ni� d car the we the nightmares of carlos fuentes 191 legal problems or criminal record in his file, he was able to obtain dutch citizenship sooner than other immi­ grants could even dream of, and carlos fuentes decided to celebrate every year the anniversary of the day he became a dutch national. fuentes felt that his skin and blood had changed forever and that his lungs were now breathing real life. to strengthen his determination he would always repeat, "yes, give me a country that treats me with respect, so that i can worship it all my life and pray for it." that's how things were until the dream problem began and everything fell to pieces, or as they say: prov­ erbs and old adages do not wear out; it's only man that wears out. the wind did not blow fair for fuentes. the first of the dreams was grim and distressing. in the dream he was unable to speak dutch. he was standing in front of his dutch boss and speaking to him in an iraqi dialect, which caused him great concern and a horrible pain in his head. he would wake up soaked in sweat, then burst into tears. at first he thought they were just fleeting dreams that would inevitably pass. but the dreams con­ tinued to assail him without mercy. in his dreams he saw a group of children in the poor district where he was born, running after him and making fun of his new name. they were shouting after him and clapping: "carlos the coward, carlos the sissy, carlos the silly billy." these irri­ tating dreams evolved night after night into terrifying nightmares. one night he dreamt that he had planted a car bomb in the center of amsterdam. he was standing in the courtroom, ashamed and embarrassed. the judges � no were strict and would not let him speak dutch, with the / . "-______.__ �----192 hassan blasim intent to humiliate and degrade him. they fetched him an iraqi translator, who asked him not to speak in his incomhavi prehensible rustic accent, which added to his agony and duyi distress. his fuentes began to sit in the library for hours looking through books about dreams. on his first visit he came ta a across a book called the forgotten language, by erich nasa fromm. he did not understand much of it, and he did not inwal like the opinions of the writer, which he could not fully at the grasp because he had not even graduated from middle decau school. "this is pure bullshit," fuentes said as he read of nig fromm's book: "we are free when we are asleep, in fact examp freer than we are when awake .... we may resemble angels in that we are not subject to the laws of reality. during sleep the realm of necessity recedes and gives way to the realm of freedom. the existence of the ego becomes the only reference point for thoughts and feelings." feeling a headache, fuentes put the book back. how can we be free when we cannot control our dreams? what nonsense! fuentes asked the librarian if there were any simple books on dreams. the librarian did not under­ stand his question properly, or else she wanted to show off how cultured and well read she was on the subject. she told him of a book about the connection between �o th thea dreams and food and how one sleeps, then she started to give him more information and advice. she also directed him to a library that had specialist magazines on the mysteries of the world of dreams. fuentes's wife had noticed her husband's strange be­ havior, as well as the changes in his eating and sleeping habits and in when he went into and came out of the read myst appr nak, to me roo the nightmares of carlos fuentes 193 bathroom. fuentes no longer, for example, ate sweet potato, having previously liked it in all its forms. he was always buying poultry, which was usually expensive. of course, his wife did not know he had read that eating any root vegetable would probably be the cause of dreams related to a person's past and roots. eating the roots of plants has an effect different from that of eating fish, which live in water, or eating the fruits of trees. fuentes would sit at the table chewing each piece of food like a camel, because he had read that chewing it well helps to get rid of nightmares. he had read nothing about poultry, for example, but he just guessed that eating the fowl of the air might bring about dreams that were happier and more liberated. in all his attempts to better integrate his dreams with his new life, he would veer between what he imagined and the information he found in books. in the end he . how came to this idea: his ambition went beyond getting rid of \\bi troublesome dreams; he had to control the dreams, to modify them, purge them of all their foul air, and inte­ grate them with the salubrious rules of life in holland. the dreams must learn the new language of the country so that they could incorporate new images and ideas. all the old gloomy and miserable faces had to go. so fuentes read more and more books and magazines about the ectea mysteries of sleep and dreams according to a variety of n toe approaches and philosophies. he also gave up sleeping naked and touching his wife's naked skin. in bed he began e deto wear a thick woolen overcoat, which gave rise to arguping ments with his wife, and so he had to go to the sitting f the room and sleep on the sofa. nakedness attracts the sleeper . � "_to the zone of childhood; that's what he read too. every day at 12:05 exactly he would go and take a bath, and after coming out of the bathroom he would sit at the kitchen table and take some drops of jasmine oil. before going to bed at night he would write down on a piece of paper the main sedative foods, which he would buy the following day. this state of affairs went on for more than a month, ana and fuentes did not achieve good results. but he was patient and his will was invincible. as the days passed he started to perform mysterious secret rituals: he would dye his hair and his toenails green and sleep on his stom\viln� ach repeating obscure words. one night he painted his urne face like an american indian, slept wearing diaphanous iijfln orange pajamas, and put under his pillow three feathers j�nin taken from various birds. @lne fuentes's dignity did not permit him to tell his wife nr)la what was happening to him. he believed it was his probaoqul lem and he could overcome it, since in the past he had survived the most trying and miserable conditions. in return his wife was more indulgent of his eccentric behavior, because she had not forgotten how kind and gen dule erous he was. she decided to give him another chance frenc before intervening and putting an end to what was hapinen pening. f iii 194 hassan blasim i , i on one beautiful summer night carlos fuentes was sleeping in a military uniform with a toy plastic rifle by his side. as soon as he began to dream, a wish he had long awaited came true for the first time: he realized in his dream that he was dreaming. this was exactly what he had been seeking, to activate his conscious mind inside the dream so that he could sweep out all the rubbish of the deed hes husa and her pav his the nightmares of carlos fuentes 195 the unconscious. in the dream he was standing in front of the door to an old building that looked as though it had been ravaged by fire in its previous life. the building was in central baghdad. what annoyed him was seeing things through the telescopic sights of the rifle he was holding in his hands. fuentes broke through the door of the building and went into one flat after another, mercilessly wiping out everyone inside. even the children did not survive the bursts of bullets. there was screaming, panic, and chaos. but fuentes had strong nerves and picked off his victims with skill and precision. he was worried he might wake up before he had completed his mission, and he thought, "if i had some hand grenades i could very soon finish the job in this building and move on to somewhere else." but on the sixth floor a surprise hit him when he stormed the first apartment and found himself face-to-face with salim abdul husain! salim was standing naked next to the win­ dow, holding a broom stained with blood. with a trem­ bling hand fuentes aimed his rifle at salim's head. salim began to smile and repeated in derision, "salim the dutchman, salim the mexican, salim the iraqi, salim the frenchman, salim the indian, salim the pakistani, salim the nigerian ... " fuentes's nerves snapped and he panicked. he let out a resounding scream and started to spray salim abdul husain with bullets, but salim jumped out the window and not a single bullet hit him. when fuentes's wife woke up to the scream and stuck her head out the window, carlos fuentes was dead on the pavement, and a pool of blood was spreading slowly under his head. perhaps fuentes would have forgiven the dutch ioe ;h of 196 hassan blasim newspapers, which wrote that an iraqi man had com­ mitted suicide at night by jumping from a sixth-floor window, instead of writing that a dutch national had committed suicide. but he will never forgive his brothers, who had his body taken back to iraq and buried in the cemetery in najaf. the most beautiful part of the carlos fuentes story, however, is the image captured by an ama­ teur photographer who lived close to the scene of the inci­ dent. the young man took the picture from a low angle. the police had covered the body; the only part that pro­ truded from under the blue sheet was his outstretched right hand. the picture was in black and white, but the stone in the ring on carlos fuentes's finger glowed red in the foreground, like a sun in hell. 8 rj 3 7 . ------�o:jl../.ji d..lu,j\." bal-asirn, hasan. the corpse"exhibition and other stories of iraq a penguin original fiction u.s. $15.00 can. $17.00 ean 9 7 8 0 1 4 3 1 mother_courage universitytf notre dame •;jill . libraries mother courage and her children --. ':""-;.-.:-�:, .' . _. , '".. -_ --------------------/ .. , works of bertolt brecht published by arcade the good person ofszeclmjan the good person ofszechl}jan) mother col/rage and her children) and fear and misery of tbe third reich life of gali/eo) the resistible rise ofarturo tn, and the caucasian cbalk circle mother courage and her children the threepenny opera) baa/, and the mother bertolt brecht mother courage and her children translated from the german by john willett edited by john willett and ralph manheim m arcade publishing • new york copyright © 1940 by arvid englind teaterforlag, a.b., renewed june 1967 by stefan s. brecht; copyright © 1949 by suhrkamp verlag, frankfurt am main translation copyright for the play and texts by brecht © 1980 by stefan s. brecht introduction and editorial notes copyright © 1980 by eyre methuen ltd. all rights reserved. no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. first arcade paperback edition 1994 mother courage and her children, originally published in german under the title mutter courage und ibre kinder, was first published in this translation in 1980. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data brecht, bertolt, 1898 1956. [mutter courage und ihre kinder. english] mother courage and her children / bertolt brecht; translated by john willett; edited by john willett and ralph manheim. 1st arcade pbk. ed. p. em. isbn 1-55970-234-6 i. willett,john. ii. manheim, ralph, 1907 . iii. title. pt2603.r397m793 1994 832'.912 dc20 93-25408 published in the united states by arcade publishing, inc., new york distributed by little, brown and company 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 printed in the united states of america caution this play is fully protected by copyright. all inquiries concerning the rights for pro­fessional or amateur stage production and concerning the music for this play shouldbe directed to jerold l. couture, fitelson, lasky, asian & couture, 551 fifth avenue, new york, ny 10176. outside of the united states of america, inquiries concerning the rights for professional stage production and concerning the music for this play should be directed to the international copyright bureau ltd., 22a aubreyhouse, maida avenue, london w2 1tq, england, and those for amateur stage pro­duction to samuel french ltd., 52 fitzroy street, london w1 p 6jr, england. inquiries about use of any material other than in performance should be directed to the publisher. . -------, cht contents [11 troduction vii mother courage and her children a chronicle of the thirty years war notes and variants texts by brecht note the story three diary notes the mother courage model two ways of playing mother courage misfortune in itself is a poor teacher editorial note [appro' !ld. ecred ro introduction that hitler meant war was clear to brecht by the beginning of 1937. this was some two and three-quarter years before the second world war actually broke out. during the previous november the german and italian fascist regimes had banded together to form the 'rome-berlin axis'; franco, whose rebellious armies were on the outskirts of madrid, was recognised by them as the legitimate ruler of spain; an anti-comintern alliance was forged between japan, then on the point of invading china, and the germans. hitler, who had already got away with the re­ militarisation of the rhineland in defiance of the versailles treaty, henceforward had no reason to moderate his aggressive aims. as brecht put in one of the 'german war primer' series of poems which he now began writing, on the calendar the day is not yet shown every month, every day lies open still. one of these days is going to be marked with a cross. for him it was the start of 'the dark times': a phrase that from now on permeates his poetry. living in denmark on fiinen island, less than fifty miles across the baltic from germany, he could follow the nazi advance along with the flight from one refuge after another of his own threatened friends: austria fell in march 1938, the german-speaking areas of czechoslovakia that september, prague and the remainder of czechoslovakia in march 1939, memel in lithuania the same month, madrid and the spanish republic with it. then hitler offered denmark a non­ aggression pact. in april 1939, with the italians in their turn starting to invade albania, brecht took advantage of a lecture invitation to move to sweden, where he was lent a sculptress's house on the island of viii introduction lidingo outside stockholm. from now on he and his immediate entourage were even more isolated than they had' been in den­ mark; while their object was no longer to await the collapse of thenazis but to move on to the united states, where piscator, fritz lang and ferdinand reyher had already begun working on theirbehalf. this isolation was also in part political, starting back in 1937 when brecht largely gave up writing those committed playsand poems which had reflected the day-to-day communist partyline. three things then combined to give him a much more sceptical attitude towards the soviet union and stalin's leader­ ship, which he now thought (as he put it at the beginning of theyear) should be like marx's attitude to the german socialists of the previous century, 'constructively critical'. the first and most painful of these was the purges of 1936-39, which had led to the death or internment not only of his two main comintern contacts but also of some of his closest friends. the second, unpleasantlyinterwoven with the purges, was the imposition of the socialistrealist aesthetic preached by his old adversary georg lukacs,which forbade any kind of 'formalism' in the arts; this became a serious factor from 1937 on. finally there was the switch in foreign policy which led to the soviet-nazi pact and the partitionof poland. the soviet union, noted brecht at the time, had thereby saved itself, 'but at the cost of leaving the workers of theworld without slogans, hopes or support'. the day marked with a cross proved to be 1 september 1939,when brecht somewhat uncharacteristically attended a lunch in honour of thomas mann at stockholm town hall. that day thesoviet-nazi pact was announced, and the nazis invaded poland; forty-eight hours later britain and france declared war. at first brecht carried on working at his old project love is the goods,which he had taken up before leaving denmark and renamed the good person of szechwan; he had also brought with him theunfinished julius caesar novel and the messingkauf dialogues, aby-product of the revision of galilee. but within ten days hefound work grinding to a halt. the szechwan play was laidaside; three diary entries comment disillusionedly on the 'singu­larly napoleonic' russian invasion of eastern poland, with its 'usurpation of all the fascist hypocrisy about "blood brother­ hood" '; then for nearly seven weeks, from 21 september to 7 november the diary too goes blank. ate en· the hi er­ ta introduction ix during this interval, and in clear reaction to events, brecht wrote his great play about a war which would range devastatingly across great tracts of europe, creating heroes and profiteers, imposing order and ideologies, and leaving the self-sentimentalis­ ing 'little people' particularly of germany as blindly unaware as they were at its start. mother courage was written under pressure. in the words of a later note to scandinavian audiences, as i wrote i imagined that the playwright's warning voice would be heard from the stages' of various great cities, pro­ claiming that he who would sup with the devil must have a long spoon. this may have been naive of me, but i do not consider being naive a disgrace. such productions never materialised. writers cannot write as rapidly as governments can make war, because writing demands hard thought. and the effort to speak out quickly made it one of the most spontaneous and, despite its length, most concentrated of all brecht's plays. it bears virtually no trace of any preliminary work or preparatory reading; there is none of the major rewriting that characterises so many of the other plays; there is for once no mention of any collaborator, nor any element of borrowing or adaptation; there are just two original typescripts, the one a straightforward revise of the other. as a feat of deeply felt anticipation it is amazing. though there is nothing to bear out brecht's claim (p. xxx) that the play was written in 1938 or (as the note to the 1949 edition had it) 'before the outbreak of the second world war' it undoubtedly dates from well before the start of any major fighting. this was still the period of 'we'll hang out the washing on the siegfried line', of the phoney war, what brecht termed 'the war that isn't waged'. at that time some kind of peace seemed quite possible, whether as a return to the prewar policy of appeasement or by means of an appeal to the german people over the heads of their government, as wishfully proposed by the communists. few foresaw the mass bombings, the de­ portations, the torture of resistants, the extermination of the jews; those vast tragedies which any modern audience tends to assume as the understood background to brecht's 'chronicle play'. x introduction where did his vrsion come from? it is rooted, certainly, inhis particular feeling for the seventeenth century, the period inwhich he had already set the life of galileo with its proclamation offaith in a 'new age' (even if that age might, in the words of the 1938 version, look like 'a bloodstained old harridan'). that last leap forward of the renaissance one of whose forms, the shakespearean history, he adopted for the play failed in his view to make a modern nation of germany because of the cata­ strophic effects of the thirty years war, which thus became the natural analogy for his pessimistic warnings. the obvious dramatic precedent here was schiller's wallenstein's camp with its picture of a mongrel seventeenth-century army milling round the canteen tents; and indeed there are two engravings showing a camp andwallenstein's siege of stralsund in one of the earliest scripts. stylistically however, and to some extent structurally too, brecht's example seems to have been the earlier german writer grimmelshausen, who himself served in the thrity years war before publishing his rambling picaresque novel simp/icis­simus in 1669. from a lesser offshoot of that wartime saga, pub­lished separately as die landes/ijrzerin courascbe, came the name of the play and of its central figure, though in fact grimmelshausen's amazonian adventuress sprang from a higher social class than brecht's canteen woman and enjoyed a 'career closer to that of yvette. 'a horrific picture of war', the critic bernhard diebold termed it, 'written about with deliberate detachment and seen from belotu : a frog's-eye view.' the swedish actress naima wifstrand, whom brecht wanted to play the leading part, alsointroduced him to the figure of lotta svard, a canteen woman in johan ludvig runeberg's early nineteenth-century balladsabout the russian-swedish war. but she, very unlike brecht's character, was 'a pearl on the pathway of war', always up with the troops. 'and the dear young soldiers' heroic mood i she loved in its full display.' (thus g. b. shaw's translation.) brueghel, of whom brecht had two books of reproductions, may have contributed something; his dulle griet is gummed intoanother script 'the fury', as he described her, defending her pathetic household goods with the sword. the world at the end of its tether. little cruelty, much hyper­sensitivity. in in of toe introduction xi callot too is visually relevant, with his miseres de la guerre, even though brecht nowhere mentions them. the character of brecht's mother courage, however, like her way of speaking, comes primarily from that other great war novelist jaroslav hasek; indeed brecht saw his own sch1!eyk play, when he came to write it four years later, as a 'companion play.' moreover there were also other significant links within brecht's own work. thus in one sense mother courage, battling to save her children, can be compared and contrasted with his earlier senora carrar, whom naima wifstrand had translated into swedish and acted. in another she is much closer to the widow begbick, the tough itinerant hostess of man equals man and rise and fall of the city of mahagomfj, two roles already associated with helene weigel. her language looks forward to the consciously schweik-like dialogue of puntila and the conversations between exiles. and the whole inverted morality of the play, with its suggestion that the conventional virtues sometimes have the opposite effect from what moralists imagine, is close to that of the seven deadly sins and the threepenny opera. this perhaps is why brecht could think of including 'surabaya-johnny' as well as the 'solomon song'. * * * quickly as the play was written, in brecht's view it came too late to serve as the intended warning. 'the great bandit [i.e. hitler] got his hooks on the theatres much too soon.' his immediate hope had been that it could be staged in stockholm with wifstrand as courage and helene weigel in the non-speaking part of kattrin, who is supposed to have been made dumb so that weigel could play her. that winter, while russia invaded finland, weigel gave some classes in wifstrand's acting school, for which brecht wrote his shakespearean practice scenes for actors; meanwhile brecht, on a commission from stockholm radio, wrote the trial of lucullus for the composer hilding rosenberg to set. given the threat represented by the nazis, however, neither work was performed in sweden; and in april the police searched the lidingo house, the german forces moved into denmark and norway, and brecht thought it wise to move on. the plan for a mother courage production was then resumed in finland, where xii introduction the brechts lived for a further year before the last of the party'samerican visas came through. the aim there was to secure a production in the helsinki swedish-language theatre during thewinter of 1940-41. to this end brecht worked on the songs withthe finnish composer simon parmet, who appears to have dropped out for fear of echoing weill too closely. once again,however, the reason for the play's rejection was evidently the increasing nazi pressure, and that january brecht listed it as one of his six unstaged plays 'which cannot at present be performed'.in german-speaking switzerland the zurich schauspielhaus was less inhibited. cut off from the dramatist himself by the war,this predominantly german company contained a high proportionof anti-nazi actors of whom some, like leonard steckel and the director leopold lindtberg, had worked in berlin with piscator,while wolfgang langhoff had subsequently been in a concentration camp. under the sympathetic management of ferdinand rieser and oskar walterlin they had given the premieres of a number of plays unacceptable in nazi germany, notably ferdinand bruck­ ner's die rassen and friedrich wolf's professor mafji/ock (both about anti-semitism) as well as others by kaiser, horvath, zuckmayerand such anglo-american authors as wilder, o'neill, priestleyand shaw. on 19 april 1941, a month before the brechts left helsinki on their long trip to california, they now gave thepremiere of mother courage before a predominantly swiss andgerman emigre audience, among those who saw the productionbeing thornton wilder. this was one of the great theatrical events of the second world war, and the play itself made a great impact, thanks above all to the performance of therese giehse (who oddly enough was abritish subject) in the title part and to the setting devised by teootto, who had worked with brecht before 1933. lindtbergdirected, and the swiss composer paul burkhard wrote a new score. langhoff and the austrian karl paryla played the two sons, wolfgang heinz the cook. meanwhile sigfrit steiner, thechaplain of this production, was staging the far more directlypolitical mother for the first time in switzerland with a cast of amateurs. and yet brecht, appreciative as he was, felt that to some extent his intentions had been traduced. thus bernhard diebold, who had been one of the outstanding german theatrecritics before 1933, wrote in die tat that this courage, far from introduction xiii being a 'hyaena of the battlefield' (as the chaplain calls her), made her commercial toughness 'almost too subsidiary' to the strength of her maternal feelings; while as for lindtberg's direction, it 'either failed to take enough account of the crude earthiness of the period and brecht's own malicious sarcasm, or else it de­ liberately softened them'. as it turned out, this was the play's sole wartime production. it was not one of these works which brecht expected to see put on in the usa, nor did he make any of the efforts which he and his friends there devoted to fear and misery of the third reich, galileo and the good person of szechujan, let alone the plays which he wrote after arriving. early in 1941, at the latest, the poet h. r. hays had made a translation from a copy lent him by hanns eisler (to whom brecht sent one of the first scripts), but although this appeared in new directions the same year there never seems to have been any move to stage it, not even as a college production. almost it might be said that brecht had decided to shelve mother courage as he shelved so many of his works, putting them out of his mind for years at a time. in 1943, however, he met the composer paul dessau, whose musical background was in some ways com­ parable to those of weill and eisler, and who had written some music for the original paris production of fear and misery of the third reich in which weigel had acted. at a brecht recital given at the new school in new york that march, dessau sang one of his own brecht settings with such verve that brecht encouraged him to write more, first inviting him to come and work in cali­ fornia, then at some undefined date asking him to write new settings for the mother courage songs. these were completed by 1946, when the zurich company used them for its guest per­ formances in vienna, and they became the standard music for the play. for the moment it seems that they, like the play itself, were really being reserved for the day when brecht should return to the german-language theatre and stage the kind of performance which he and helene weigel had in mind. though there is evidence in the fbi files of his intention to return from as early as 1944, it seems to have been at least a year after the ending of the war that he began to make serious plans. then he wrote to his old collaborator the designer caspar neher (who had remained in germany) to announce his conviction that 'we shall build up a theatre once more', followed by his decision xiv introduction to come to zurich during 1947 and prepare his return to berlin, where he had been offered the use of the theater am schiff­ bauerdamm 'for certain things'. this theatre, the original home of the tbreepenny opera, had now been made an offshoot of the revived volksbuhne, the great popular theatre organisation which the nazis had suppressed thirteen years earlier. the deutsches theater, where brecht had worked for max reinhardt on first coming to berlin, had been put under langhoff of the zurich mother courage; both theatres were in the soviet sector. early in 1947 brecht and piscator started corresponding with a view to a joint descent on that city. they were in some measure encouraged in this by friedrich wolf, who had returned with the red army and now hoped to draw piscator back to the volks­ buhne. before piscator made up his mind, however, the division of berlin had occurred, and in the event he remained in new york for another three years. meanwhile the brechts carried out their plan of going to zurich, and immediately on arrival began dis­ cussing plans with neher. within a month the two friends in collaboration had completed the adaptation of antigone which they proposed to stage at the small theatre in chur managed by klem­ perer's former dramaturg hans curjel. the object of this brilliant but short-lived exercise, so brecht noted in his diary on 16 de­ cember, was 'to do preparatory work with weigel and cas [neher] on courage for berlin'. for weigel had not acted on the pro­ fessional stage for fifteen years, and the schauspielhaus apparently had nothing for her. the antigone production took place on 15 february 1948, five days after brecht's fiftieth birrthday. the same occasion was celebrated in berlin by a programme organised by langhoff, who had staged a short version of fear and misery of the third reich only a fortnight or so earlier. thereafter it was agreed that the zurich schauspielhaus would give the first production of puntila, the fourth and last of their brecht premieres and the first to be staged with brecht's own participation (as unofficial director); this took place in june, with leonard steckel acting the name part. after that the brechts' attention was again focused on berlin (salzburg being an alternative bet), and the main problem was how to get there. eventually the necessary austrian and czech permits came through, allowing them to travel to the soviet zone of germany in late october (the us authorities n, ff· of ties introduction xv having refused them leave to cross bavaria). straightaway brecht began holding auditions at langhoff's theatre, then on 8 november his co-director erich engel arrived from munich and two months of intensive rehearsal began. brecht's idea at this time was to set up his own ensemble under the wing of the deutsches theater and invite prominent outsiders to act with it; he had in mind figures like fritz kortner and peter lorre as well as therese giehse from zurich. in mid-december he discussed this scheme with langhoff, seemingly still in the expectation of being able to use the theater am schiffbauerdamm. then three weeks later he was hauled out of a rehearsal to attend a formal meeting with the party authorities, the east berlin mayor friedrich ebert (son of the former social­ democratic president), langhoff and the schiffbauerdamm intendant fritz wisten. here he was told that the schiffbauerdamm was needed for the volksbiihne ; the mayor, who never addressed a word to him, spoke slightingly of half-baked schemes which might upset existing arrangements; and, in the words of the diary, 'for the first time since coming here i felt the foetid breath of provincialism' . within a few days, however, everything fell into the background as the white half-curtain of the deutsches theater fluttered open on a brilliantly lit stage. the band struck up 'you captains, tell the drums to slacken', and the dusty, tattered family came rolling on with its cart. suddenly, in this still devastated city hovering between peace and war, the world could see one of the un­ forgettable images of our time. * * * from that moment dates brecht's postwar reputation as a great director, which for non-germans has even overshadowed his reputation as a playwright. it was a formidable comeback planned from three overlapping aspects, and its triple success was stunning. first of all, here was a largely unknown ,german masterpiece, written in language of tremendous vitality and still with many shrewd things to say about war and people's reactions to it. second was an outstanding acting performance from a virtually forgotten actress, whose striking voice and features have become almost inseparable from the mother courage figure; that xvi introduction night a legendary character, as well as a star, was born. finally, embracing everything else, there was a new, outwardly subdued but inwardly authoritative spirit emanating from the whole company and from the new berliner ensemble which the brechts went on to found upon it. the object of this entire operation was of course rather different from brecht's original aim when he wrote the play. for he made it very clear in his notes and jottings that he wished not only to make his countrymen think about their blind involvement in hitler's war but also to help rebuild their shattered culture and bridge the long gap back to the progressive ideas of the weimar republic, thereby bringing on a new generation of actors and directors who would not have been debased by too much experience of nazi methods. given that he meant to tackle these worthwhile tasks from within the communist orbit, in his old spirit of sceptical allegiance, he had to establish his constructive intentions, which he set himself to do soon after his arrival by writing some slightly vapid political songs. at the same time he had to overcome or get round the obstacles to any kind of formal innovation embodied in the revived socialist realism now being preached by the russians and, once again, georg lukacs. as he put it in the foreword to antigone, 'it may not be easy to create progressive art in the period of reconstruction'. but nobody was now better placed to do it than he. the criticisms of the play which now came from both right and left arose from a feeling that brecht, having created a great human character, had deliberately stunted her, thereby stifling much of the emotion natural both to himself as the creator and also to his audience. some, like friedrich wolf in the dialogue printed on pp. 226-9 of brecht on theatre, felt that by the end of the play courage should have seen the light that is, the futility of war thereby emerging as (in communist aesthetic jargon) a 'positive' figure. others, on both sides of the barriers, pointed to what they considered a theoretical inconsistency between brecht's ideas of 'epic' or 'alienated' acting and the undoubted empathy experienced by audiences at emotional high spots like the death of kattrin. this notion that brecht, for purely intellectual reasons, was denying certain powerful elements which he had (or should have) instinctively put into the original play, was reinforced, if not actually sparked off, by the textual changes which he confesses to on pp. 89-92. of his notes. indeed to judge from some commentators' introduction xvii reactions one might imagine that he had rewritten the zurich version as extensively as he did so many of his other plays. in fact, of course, only two of his four alterations are significant the first, where courage's salesmanship distracts her from her son's enlistment, and the second, which makes her less ready than before to give her goods for humanitarian ends and they would scarcely have been noticed if he had not drawn attention to them himself. what he worked much harder to correct was not any 'softness' in the actual play but those features of lindtberg's production on which diebold had commented nearly eight years earlier, along with a certain 'curious aura of harmlessness' which he found emanating from his own first berlin rehearsals. this, with its smudging-over of all sense of background or development, he blamed on the bland conformism of the nazi theatre. but it is true that the point of the play had in some measure changed, and the audiences who saw it in berlin and munich (where he re-staged it with giehse as courage and a new cast), or during the berliner ensemble's various tours, were very different from that in wartime zurich. for these people had been through a european war; they did not have to be warned about it; they were actually beginning to experience the consequences, including some which brecht had not foretold. none the less he remained convinced that his countrymen were a long way from under­ standing how far they had contributed to the horror, the chaos and the suffering their own included. doubtful whether they had learnt anything, he was convinced that it would be misleading to make courage finish up any less short-sighted than they. in fact the surprising thing, to anyone familiar with brecht's restless revaluation of his own plays, is that he did not alter the text more. perhaps the reason for this is that his chronic itch to revise could in this case be worked out on the (alas, unrealised) film version, whose making by the east german defa was decided as early as september 1949. initially the work on its script was done by emil hesse burri, brecht's old collaborator of the mid-i920s, who had been a scriptwriter in munich under the nazis; and the intention was that engel should direct it. when engel fell out some time during 195 i he was replaced by the forty-five-year-old wolfgang staudte, a former piscator trainee whose defa film die morder sind unter uns had been the first great postwar success. though brecht himself did not actually do any of the writing, xviii introduction he was in on the planning, and many of the changes were in line with his suggestions. the film, said his first notes for defa, 'must bring out even more clearly than the play how reality punishes [mother courage] for her failure to learn'. the treatment was simplified to distinguish her from the 'little people' and show her marked urge to go forward and profit from the war; later the 'little people' too were criticised as 'the worst of the lot. why? the big shots plan it, and the little people carry it out'. kattrin in turn was given a lover, a young miller whose vision of popular resistance to the rulers and their foreign mercenaries is echoed during the scene of her death, when the peasants in the besieged town take up improvised arms and drive out the attackers (now made croats in order to seem more alien). this is clearly in ac­ cordance with the criticisms made of the play by wolf and others, who wanted a greater clement of optimism at the end; though the old woman herself, her eyes lighting up 'with an expression of greed and desperate hope' as she hears the troops marching off, finishes up more incorrigible than ever. after burri had completed this first script he and brecht agreed to make the story more relevant to the postwar occupation of germany by stressing the contrast between the german protagonists (eilif and yvette were now to be germans, like courage and kattrin) and their motley foreign invaders; there would be control barriers everywhere and a 'babylonian' mixture of strange tongues. evidence too would be given of persistent foreign attempts to recruit germans (including the young miller) for continued wars. brecht's feelings at this point are well summed up in the poem 'germany 1952' which was worked into the final script, where a group of deserters led by the young miller throw down their weapons in an abandoned house full of bourgeois comforts and one of them sings: o germany, so torn in pieces and never left alonel the cold and dark increases while each sees to his own. such lovely fields you'd have such cities thronged and gay; if you'd but trust yourself all would be child's play. e \, introduction xix but this film was never made. the trouble seems to have been that defa, instead of setting out from the brecht-engel produc­ tion and the actors associated with it, wished to make a grand international co-production with star appeal. simone signoret was booked as yvette, whose part was then disproportionately in­ flated; the french actor �rnard blier became the cook. angelika hurwicz, the unforgettable stage kattrin, was replaced by sigrid roth; difficulties were made over helene weigel, who had to be cast as courage on brecht's insistence. in many other ways, too, brecht's vision and staudte's proved deeply incompatible. statudte wanted to use colour, brecht to achieve 'daguerreotype­ like' effects in black and white; staudte commissioned period costumes, brecht rejected them as too operatic; staudte's french designer provided the heavy baronial setting seen in the surviving stills and located the camp scenes in a sandy waste, brecht objected that the thirty years war didn't take place in a desert. staudte's verdict was that brecht was 'utterly hostile to the cinema'. shooting nevertheless began, apparently on the assumption that brecht would feel forced to accept designs which had only been put before him at the very last moment. he did not, and as a result the whole operation had to be called off after about a fortnight's unhappy work. it was never resumed, though plans for some kind of mother courage film continued to be discussed, this time with engel and burri, right up to brecht's death in august 1956. the film which defa did finally realise some four years later was made on an entirely different basis, for it was a largely static film version, made in a studio and photographed in cinemascope, of the berliner ensemble stage production: a kind of model-book in motion, preserving brecht's original vision with minor changes. its directors were brecht's young assistants manfred wekwerth and peter palitzsch, who subsequently directed, respectively, the berliner ensemble itself and the frankfurt city theatres. * * * it was one of brecht's endless inconsistencies (or 'contradictions') that, while believing firmly in the need for change, he established certain standard productions which other directors of his plays were expected to study before deciding their own interpretations. mother courage was a prime candidate for this treatment, thanks on xx introduction the one hand to its high reputation with other theatres throughout the globe and on the other to the critical disagreements which it provoked. the 'mother courage model' therefore consists not only of the notes which we print on pp. 96-144 but of a series of carefully-keyed photographs of the berliner ensemble production which exists in a published version but was originally made as a much fuller and more detailed album for loan to prospective directors. brecht's purpose here has often been regarded as absurdly rigid, and the ensemble itself has been accused of putting brecht's works into some kind of airless museum show­ case. on the one hand there have been instances of lifeless copying or resentful friction whenever the standard model was imposed; on the other it has shocked more jealously 'original' producers to go as far as they can in some alternative, if not actually opposite, direction. seldom has any director done what brecht really had in mind: that is, gone through the 'model' to see exactly what problems brecht was trying to solve in each detail of his production, and how he arrived at his answers, and then gone on to think out an approach of his own based on the same understanding of the play. so the use of model-books has proved to be a somewhat two-edged device, hindering as much as helping the assimilation of this great play, particularly by non-german theatres. certainly mother courage has never become securely established in the english-speaking countries, where the size of the cast and the length of the play present a more formidable initial problem than they do in the german subsidised theatres. generally it has proved a box-office disaster, and the one production to enjoy a long run richard schechner's with the performance-group off­ broadway seems to have done so more because of its original treatment of the audience than by its conception and performance of the text; it became a vivid, sharply biting courage experience, almost a happening. the odd thing is that this overall failure in the professional theatre has not impaired the play's critical and academic reputation, nor even its attraction for amateurs, to whom of course a large cast often seems an advantage. as a result mother courage is still somehow lurking in the wings as an enormous challenge, even something of a reproach to our finest directors and actors. why have they never been able to communicate its pessimism, its savagery and its force? a large part of the reason surely lies in the language, which in the original is unique, the introduction xxi invention of a major poet who chose neither to imitate seven­ teenth-century dialogue nor to reproduce modern everyday speech but devised his own curt, sardonic lingo, full of elisions and with few conjunctions, vividly conveying not only courage's own character but also the hard pressures of the war. this is established in the very first speeches, and from then on it becomes the principal dynamic force of what is otherwise a stragglingly episodic play. those directors who have enough german to appreciate it have generally treated it as untranslatable, thereby losing their main chance of holding the audience's attention; the sense has been communicated at the cost of brecht's imaginative assault on the ear. our translation therefore sets out to tackle this key problem by using a somewhat analogous artificial diction, based this time on those north english cadences which can reflect a similarly dry, gloomily humorous approach to great events. it could have been done in other ways by a welsh or irish writer perhaps, or one versed in lallans but so far it has not. the aim must be to find a language which will keep the play moving across twelve years of history, a great slice of devastated europe and, last but not least, three or four hours in the theatre. add this to the barriers sometimes presented by the 'model', plus the widespread feeling among actors that performing brecht demands outlandish technical methods, and there is some danger of mother courage appearing a horribly complicated play. you only have to read it to see that it is not. even the changes which brecht made to it are only designed to clarify and bring out more strongly what was already meant to be there; they were correctives, not major switches of direction. all this belongs in the background, to be digested and understood certainly, but not to obstruct the story of the play and the long chain of small, conflicting episodes which goes to make it up. the stage must be cleared, as brecht cleared it in 1950 to tell german children 'the story of mother courage': there once was a mother mother courage they called her in the thirty years war she sold victuals to soldiers. xxii introduction the war did not scare her from making her cut her three children went with her and so got their bit. the editors her first son died a hero the second an honest lad a bullet found her daughter whose heart was too good. in the end it has to be as simple as that. mother courage and her children a chronicle of the thirty years war translator: john willett characters mother courage kattrin, her dumb daughter eilif, the elder son s w iss c he ese, the younger s01l the recruiter the sergeant the cook the general the chaplain the armourer yvette pottier the man with the patch another sergeant the ancient colonel a clerk a young soldier an older soldier a peasant the peasant's wife the young man the old woman another peasant his wife the young peasant the ensign soldiers a voice 1 spring 1624. the swedish commander-in-chief count oxenstierna is raising troops in dalecarlia for the polish campaign. the canteen woman anna fierling, known under the name of mother courage, loses one son country road near a town. a sergeant and a recruiter stand shivering. r e c r u it e r: how can you muster a unit in a place like this? i've been thinking about suicide, sergeant. here am i, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month, and people round here are so nasty i can't sleep nights. s'pose i get hold of some bloke and shut my eye to his pigeon chest and varicose veins, i get him proper drunk, he signs on the line, i'm just settling up, he goes for a piss, i follow him to the door because i smell a rat; bob's your uncle, he's off like a flea with the itch. no notion of word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. this place has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant. sergeant: it's too long since they had a war here; stands to reason. where's their sense of morality to come from? peace that's just a mess; takes a war to make order. peacetime, the human race runs wild. people and cattle get buggered about, who cares? everyone eats just as he feels inclined, a hunk of cheese on top of his nice white bread, and a slice of fat on top of the cheese. how many young blokes and good horses in that town there, nobody knows; they never thought of counting. i been in places ain't seen 4 mother courage and her children a war for nigh seventy years: folks hadn't got names to them, couldn't tell one another apart. takes a war to get proper nominal rolls and inventories shoes in bundles and corn in bags, and man and beast properly numbered and carted off, cause it stands to reason: no order, no war. recruiter: too true. sergeant: same with all good things, it's a job to get a war going. but once it's blossomed out there's no holding it; folk start fighting shy of peace like punters what can't stop for fear of having to tot up what they lost. before that it's war they're fighting shy of. it's something new to them. recruiter: hey, here's a cart coming. two tarts with two young fellows. stop her, sergeant. if this one's a flop i'm not standing around in your spring winds any longer, i can tell you. sound of a jew's-harp. drawn i!j two young fellou«, a covered cart rolls in. of' it sit mother courage and her dumb daughter kattrin. mother courage: morning, sergeant. sergeant blocking the way: morning, all. and who are you? mother courage: business folk. sings: you captains, tell the drums to slacken and give your infanteers a break: it's mother courage with her waggon full of the finest boots they make. with crawling lice and looted cattle with lumbering guns and straggling kit­ how can you flog them into battle unless you get them boots that fit? the new year's come. the watchmen shout. the thaw sets in. the dead remain. wherever life has not died out it staggers to its feet again. captains, how can you make them face it marching to death without a brew? ar scene i courage has rum with which to lace it and boil their souls and bodies through. their musket primed, their stomach hollow captains, your men don't look so well. so feed them up and let them follow while you command them into hell. the new year's come. the watchmen shout. the thaw sets in. the dead remain. wherever life has not died out it staggers to its feet again. sergeant: halt i who are you with, you trash? the elder son: second finnish regiment. sergeant: where's your papers? mother courage: papers? the younger son: what, mean to say you don't know mother courage? sergeant: never heard of her. what's she called courage for? mother courage: courage is the name they gave me because i was scared of going broke, sergeant, so i drove me cart right through the bombardment of riga with fifty loaves of bread aboard. they were going mouldy, it was high time, hadn't any choice really. sergeant: don't be funny with me. your papers. mother courage pulling a bundle ofpapersfro", a tin box and climbing down off the cart: that's all my papers, sergeant. you'll find a whole big missal from altotting in bavaria for wrapping gherkins in, and axoad map of moravia, the lord knows when i'll ever get there, might as well chuck it away, and here's a stamped certificate that my horse hasn't got foot-and-mouth, only he's dead worse luck, cost fifteen florins he did not me luckily. that enough paper for you? sergeant: you pulling my leg? i'll knock that sauce out of you. s'pose you know you got to have a licence. 6 mother courage and her chlldren mother courage: talk proper to me, do you mind, and don't you dare say i'm pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, 'tain't decent, i got no time for you. my honest face, that's me licence with the second regiment, and if it's too difficult for you to read there's nowt i can do about it. nobody's putting a stamp on that. recruiter: sergeant, methinks i smell insubordination in this individual. what's needed in our camp is obedience. mother courage: sausage, if you ask me. sergeant: name. mother courage: anna fierling. sergeant: you all called fierling then? mother courage: what d'you mean? it's me's called fierling, not them. sergeant: aren't all this lot your children? mother courage: you bet they are, but why should they all have to be called the same, eh? pointing to her elder son: for instance, that one's called eilif nojocki why? his father always claimed he was called kojocki or mojocki or something. the boy remembers him clearly, except that the one he remembers was someone else, a frenchie with a little beard. aside from that he's got his father's wits; that man knew how to snitch a peasant's pants off his bum without him noticing. this way each of us has his own name, see. s erg e ant: what, each one different? mother courage: don't tell me you ain't never come across that. sergeant: so i s'pose he's a chinaman? pointing to the younger son. mother courage: wrong. swiss. sergeant: after the frenchman? mother courage: what frenchman? i never heard tell of no frenchman. you keep muddling things up, we'll be hanging around here till dark. a swiss, but called fejos, and the name has nowt to do with his father. he was called callea scene i 7 something quite different and was a fortifications engineer, only drunk all the time. suiss cheese beams and nods ; dumb kattrin too is amused. sergeant: how in hell can he be called fejos? mother courage: i don't like to be rude, sergeant, but you ain't got much imagination, have you? course he's called fejos, because when he arrived i was with a hun­ garian, very decent fellow, had terrible kidney trouble though he never touched a drop. the boy takes after him. sergeant: but he wasn't his father ... mother courage: took after him just the same. i call him swiss cheese. pointing to her daughter: and that's kattrin haupt, she's half german. sergeant: nice family, i must say. mother courage: aye, me cart and me have seen the world. sergeant: i'm writing all this down. he turites. and you're from bamberg in bavaria; how d'you come to be here? mother courage: can't wait till war chooses to visit bamberg, can i? recruiter to eilij: you two should be called jacob ox and esau ox, pulling the cart like that. i s'pose you never get out of harness ? eilif: ma, can i clobber him one? i wouldn't halflike to. mother courage: and i says you can't; just you stop where you are. and now two fine officers like you, i bet you could use a good pistol, or a belt buckle, yours is on its last legs, sergeant. s erg e ant: i could use something else. those boys are healthy as young birch trees, i observe: chests like barrels, solid leg muscles. so why are they dodging their military service, may i ask? mother courage quickly: nowt doing, sergeant. yours is no trade for my kids. recruiter: but why not? there's good money in it, glory 8 mother courage and her children too. flogging boots is women's work. to eilif: come here, let's see if you've muscles in you or if you're a chicken. mother courage: he's a chicken. give him a fierce look, he'll fall over. recruiter: killing a young bull that happens to be in his way. wantj to lead him off. mother courage: let him alone, will you? he's nowt for you folk. recruiter: he was crudely offensive and talked about clobbering me. the two of us are going to step into that field and settle it man to man. eilif: don't you worry, mum, i'll fix him. mother courage: stop there! you varmint! i know you, nowt but fights. there's a knife down his boot. a slasher, that's what he is. recruiter: i'll draw it out of him like a milk-tooth. come along, sonny. mot her co u rag e: sergeant, i'll tell the colonel. he'll have you both in irons. the lieutenant's going out with my daughter. sergeant: no rough stuff, chum. to mother courage: what you got against military service? wasn't his own father a soldier? died a soldier's death, too? said it yourself. mother courage: he's nowt but a child. you want to take him off to slaughterhouse, i know you lot. they'll give you five florins for him. recruiter: first he's going to get a smart cap and boots, eh? eilif: not from you. mot her co u rag e: let's both go fishing, said angler to worm. to swiss cheese: run off, call out they're trying to kidnap your brother. she pulls a knife: go on, you kidnap him, just try. i'll slit you open, trash. i'll teach you to make war with him. we're doing an honest trade in ham and linen, and we're peaceable folk. or ut at u, ,at ra to re ts, to to ap ke a scene i 9 sergeant: peaceable i don't think; look at your knife. you should be ashamed of yourself; put that knife away, you old harridan. a minute back you were admitting you live off the war, how else should you live, what from? but how's anyone to have war without soldiers? mother courage: no need for it to be my kids. sergeant: oh, you'd like war to eat the pips but spit out the apple? it's to fatten up your kids, but you won't invest in it. got to look after itself, eh? and you called courage, fancy that. scared of the war that keeps you going ? your sons aren't scared of it, i can see that. ell if: take more than a war to scare me. sergeant: and why? look at me: has army life done all that badly by me. joined up at seventeen. mother courage: still got to reach seventy. sergeant: i don't mind waiting. mother courage: under the sod, eh? s erg e ant: you trying to insult me, saying i'll die? mother courage: s'pose it's true? s'pose i can see the mark's on you? s'pose you look like a corpse on leave to me?eh? s wi s s c he ese: she's got second sight, mother has. r e c r u i t e r: go ahead, tell the sergeant's fortune, might amuse him. mother courage: gimme helmet. regives it to her. sergeant: it don't mean a bloody sausage. anything for a laugh though. mot her co u rag e taking out a sheet ofparchment and tearing it up: eilif, swiss cheese and kattrin, may all of us be torn apart like this if we lets ourselves get too mixed up in the war. to the sergeant: just for you i'm doing it for free. black's for death. i'm putting a big black cross on this slip of paper. swiss cheese: leaving the other one blank, see? mother courage: then i fold them across and shake 10 mother courage and her children them. all of us is jumbled together like this from our mother's womb, and now draw a slip and you'll know. the sergeant hesitates. recruiter to eilif: i don't take just anybody, they all know i'm choosey, but you got the kind of fire i like to see. sergeant fishing in the helmet: too silly. load of eyewash. swiss c heese: drawn a black cross, he has. write him off. recruiter: they're having you on; not everybody's name's on a bullet. sergeant hoarsely: you've put me in the shit. mother courage: did that yourself the day you became a soldier. come along, let's move on now. 'tain't every day we have a war, i got to get stirring. sergeant: god damn it, you can't kid me. we're taking that bastard of yours for a soldier. eilif: swiss cheese'd like to be a soldier too. mother courage: first i've heard of that. you'll have to draw too, all three of you. she goes to the rear to mark crosses onfurtber slips. r e c r u i t e r to eilif: one of the things they say against us is that it's all holy-holy in the swedish camp; but that's a malicious rumour to do us down. there's no hymn-singing but sundays, just a single verse, and then only for those got voices. mother courage coming back ujith the slips, which she drops into the sergeant's helmet: trying to get away from their rna, the devils, off to war like calves to salt-lick. but i'm making you draw lots, and that'll show you the world is no vale of joys with 'come along, son, we need a few more generals'. sergeant, i'm so scared they won't get through the war. such dreadful characters, all three of them. she hands the helmet to eilif. hey, come on, fish out your slip. he fishes one out, unfolds it. she snatches it from him. there you are, it's a cross. oh, wretched mother that i am, 0 pain-racked giver of birth! shall he die? aye, in the springtime of life he is r he ow er scene i i i doomed. if he becomes a soldier he shall bite the dust, it's plain to see. he is too foolhardy, like his dad was. and if he ain't sensible he'll go the way of all flesh, his slip proves it. shouts at him: you going to be sensible? eilif: why not? mother courage: sensible thing is stay with your mother, never mind if they poke fun at you and call you chicken, just you laugh. recruiter: if you're pis sing in your pants i'll make do with . your brother. mother courage: i told you laugh. go on, laugh. now you draw, swiss cheese. i'm not so scared on your account, you're honest. he fishes in the helmet. oh, why look at your slip in that strange way? it's got to be a blank. there can't be any cross on it. surely i'm not going to lose you. she takes the slip. a cross? what, you too? is that because you're so simple, perhaps? 0 swiss cheese, you too will be sunk if you don't stay utterly honest all the while, like i taught you from childhood when you brought the change back from the baker's. else you can't save yourself. look, sergeant, that's a black cross, ain't it? sergeant: a cross, that's right. can't think how i come to get one. i always stay in the rear. to the recruiter: there's no catch. her own family get it too. swiss cheese: i get it too. but i listen to what i'm told. mother courage to kattrin: and now you're the only one i know's all right, you're a cross yourself; got a kind heart you have. holds the helmet up to her on the cart, but takes the slip out herself. no, that's too much. that can't be right; must have made a mistake shu ffiing. don't be too kind­ hearted, kattrin, you'll have to give it up, there's a cross above your path too. lie doggo, girl, it can't be that hard once you're born dumb, right, all of you know now. look out for yourselves, you'll need to. and now up we get and on we go. she climbs on to the cart. 12 mother courage and her children r e c r u i t e r to the sergeant: do something. sergeant: i don't feel very well. recruiter: must of caught a chill taking your helmet off in that wind. involve her in a deal. aloud: might as well have a look at that belt-buckle, sergeant. after all, our friends here have to live by their business. hey, you people, the sergeant wants to buy that belt-buckle. mother courage: half a florin. two florins is what a belt like that's worth. climbs down again. sergeant: 'tain't new. let me get out of this damned wind and have a proper look at it. goes behind the cart with the buckle. mother courage: ain't what i call windy. sergeant: i s'pose it might be worth half a florin, it's silver. mother couragejoining him behind the cart: it's six solid ounces. recruiter to eilif: and then we men'll have one together. got your bounty money here, come along. eilif stands undecided. mother courage: half a florin it is. sergeant: it beats me. i'm always at the rear. sergeant's the safest job there is. you can send the others up front, cover themselves with glory. me dinner hour's properly spoiled. shan't be able to hold nowt down, i know. mother courage: mustn't let it prey on you so's you can't eat. just stay at the rear. here, take a swig of brandy, man. gives him a drink. r e c r u i t e r has taken eilif by the arm and is leading him away up stage: ten florins bounty money, then you're a gallant fellow fighting for the king and women'll be after you like flies. and you can clobber me for free for insulting you. exeunt both. dumb kattrin leans downfrom the cart and makes hoarse noises. mother courage: all right, kattrin, all right. sergeant's just paying. bites the balf-florin. i got no faith in any kind of scene 2 13 money. burnt child, that's me, sergeant. this coin's good, though. and now let's get moving. where's eilif? swiss cheese: went off with the recruiter. mot her co u rag e stands quite still, then: you simpleton. to kattrin: 'tain't your fault, you can't speak, i know. sergeant: could do with a swig yourself, mao that's life. plenty worse things than being a soldier. want to live off war, but keep yourself and family out of it, eh? mother courage: you'll have to help your brother pull now, kattrin. brother and sister hitch themselves to the cart and start pulling. mother courage walks alongside. the cart rolls on. s erg e ant looking after them: like the war to nourish you? have to feed it something too. 2 in the years 1625 and 1626 mother courage crosses poland in the train of the swedish armies. before the fortress of wallhof she meets her son again. successful sale of a capon and heyday of her dashing son the general's tent. beside it, his kitchen. thunder of cannon. the cook is arguing 1jjith mother courage, who wants to sell him a capon. the coo k: sixty hellers for a miserable bird like that? mot her co u rag e: miserable bird? this fat brute? mean 14 mother courage and her children to say some greedy old general and watch your step if you got nowt for his dinner can't afford sixty hellers for him? the cook: i can get a dozen like that for ten hellers justdown the road. mother courage: what, a capon like this you can get justdown the road? in time of siege, which means hunger that tears your guts. a rat you might get: 'might' i say because they're all being gobbled up, five men spending best part of day chasing one hungry rat. fifty hellers for a giant capon intime of siege! the coo k: but it ain't us having the siege, it's t'other side. we're conducting the siege, can't you get that in yourhead? mother courage: but we got nowt to eat too, even worse than them in the town. took it with them, didn't they?they're having a high old time, everyone says. and look at us! i been to the peasants, there's nowt there. the coo k: there's plenty. they're sitting on it. mother courage triumphantly: they ain't. they're bust,that's what they are. just about starving. i saw some, were grubbing up roots from sheer hunger, licking their fingersafter they boiled some old leatherstrap. that's way it is.and me got a capon here and supposed to take fortyhellers for it. the coo k : thirty, not forty. i said thirty. mother courage: here, this ain't just any old capon. it was such a gifted beast, i been told, it could only eat to music, had a military march of its own. it could count, it was that intelligent. and you say forty hellers is too much? general will make mincemeat of you if there's nowt on his table. the coo k: see what i'm doing? he takes a piece of beef and puts his knife to it. here i got a bit of beef, i'm going to roastit. make up your mind quick. p if for just scene 2 15 mother courage: go on, roast it. it's last year's. the cook: last night's. that animal was still alive and kicking, i saw him myself. mother courage: alive and stinking, you mean. the coo k: i'll cook him five hours if need be. i'll just see if he's still tough. he cuts into it. mother courage: put plenty of pepper on it so his lord­ ship the general don't smell the pong. yhe general, a chaplain and eilifenter the tent. the general slapping eilif on the shoulder: now then, eilif my son, into your general's tent with you and sit thou at my right hand. for you accomplished a deed of heroism, like a pious cavalier, and doing what you did for god, and in a war of religion at that, is something i commend in you most highly, you shall have a gold bracelet as soon as we've taken this town. here we are, come to save their souls for them, and what do those insolent dung-encrusted yokels go and do? drive their beef away from us. they stuff it into those priests of theirs all right, back and front, but you taught' em manners, ha! so, here's a pot of red wine for you, the two of us'll knock it back at one gulp. tbey do so. piss all for the chaplain, the old bigot. and now, what would you like for dinner, my darling? eilif: a bit of meat, why not? the general: cook! meat! the coo k : and then he goes and brings guests when there's nowt there. mother courage silences him so she can listen. eilif: hungry job cutting down peasants. mother courage: jesus christ, it's my eilif. the cook: your what? mother courage: my eldest boy. it's two years since i lost sight of him, they pinched him from me on the road, must think well of him if the general's asking him to dinner, and what kind of a dinner can you offer? nowt. you heard 16 mother courage and her children what the visitor wishes to eat: meat. take my tip, yousettle for the capon, it'll be a florin. the general has sat down with eilij, and bellows: food, lamb, you foul cook, or i'll have your hide. the coo k: give it over, dammit, this is blackmail. mother courage: didn't someone say it was a miserable bird? the cook: miserable; give it over, and a criminal price,fifty hellers. mother courage: a florin, i said. for my eldest boy, the general's guest, no expense is too great for me. the coo k gives her the monry: you might at least pluck itwhile i see to the fire. mother courage sits dotun to pluck the fowl: he won't halfbe surprised to see me. he's my dashing clever son. then i got a stupid one too, he's honest though. the girl's nowt.one good thing, she don't talk. the general: drink up, my son, this is my best falernian ; only got a barrel or two left, but that's nothing to pay for a sign that's there's still true faith to be found in my army.as for that shepherd of souls he can just look on, because all he does is preach, without the least idea how it's to be carried out. and now, my son eilif, tell us more about the neat way you smashed those yokels and captured the twentyoxen. let's hope they get here soon. eili f: a day or two at most. mother courage: thoughtful of our eilif not to bring the oxen in till tomorrow, else you lot wouldn't have looked twice at my capon. ell if: well, it was like this, see. i'd heard peasants had been driving the oxen they'd hidden, out of the forest into one particular wood, on the sly and mostly by night. that'swhere people from the town were s'posed to come and pickthem up. so i holds off and lets them drive their oxen together, reckoning they'd be better than me at finding'em. ou ad, anle ree, scene 2 17 i had my blokes slavering after the meat, cut their emer­ gency rations even further for a couple of days till their mouths was watering at the least sound of any word beginning with 'rne-', like 'measles' say. the general: very clever of you. ell if: possibly. the rest was a piece ofcake. except that the peasants had cudgels and outnumbered us three to one and made a murderous attack on us. four of 'em shoved me into a thicket, knocked my sword from my hand and bawled out 'surrender!' what's the answer, i wondered; they're going to make mincemeat of me. the general: what did you do? eilif: i laughed. the general: you did what? eilif: laughed. so we got talking. i put it on a business footing from the start, told them 'twenty florins a head's too much. i'll give you fifteen'. as i was meaning to pay. that threw them, and they began scratching their heads. in a flash i'd picked up my sword and was hacking 'em to pieces. necessity's the mother of invention, eh, sir? the general: what is your view, pastor of souls? the chaplain: that phrase is not strictly speaking in the bible, but when our lord turned the five loaves into five hundred there was no war on and he could tell people to love their neighbours as they'd had enough to eat. today it's another story. the general laughs: quite another story. you can have a swig after all for that, you old pharisee. to eilif: hacked 'em to pieces, did you, so my gallant lads can get a proper bite to eat? what do the scriptures say? 'whatsoever thou doest for the least of my brethren, thou doest for me'. and what did you do for them? got them a good square meal of beef, because they're not accustomed to mouldy bread, the old way was to fix a cold meal of rolls and wine in your helmet before you went out to fight for god. 18 mother courage and her chlldren eilif: aye, in a flash i'd picked up my sword and was hacking them to pieces. the general: you've the makings of a young caesar. you ought to see the king. ell if: i have from a distance. he kind of glows. i'd like to model myself on him. the general: you've got something in common already. i appreciate soldiers like you, eilif, men of courage. some­ body like that i treat as i would my own son. he leads him over to the map. have a look at the situation, eilif; it's a long haul still. mother courage who has been listening and now angri(y plucks the101v/: that must be a rotten general. the coo k: he's ravenous all right, but why rotten? mother courage: because he's got to have men of courage, that's why. if he knew how to plan a proper cam­ paign what would he be needing men of courage for? ordinary ones would do. it's always the same; whenever there's a load of special virtues around it means something stinks. the coo k: i thought it meant things is all right. mother courage: no, that they stink. look, s'pose some general or king is bone stupid and leads his men up shit creek, then those men've got to be fearless, there's another virtue for yeu. s'pose he's stingy and hires too few soldiers, they they got to be a crowd of hercules's. and s'pose he's slapdash and don't give a bugger, then they got to be clever as monkeys else their number's up. same way they got to show exceptional loyalty each time he gives them im­ possible jobs. nowt but virtues no proper country and no decent king or general would ever need. in decent countries folk don't have to have virtues, the whole lot can be perfectly ordinary, average intelligence, and for all i know cowards. the general: i'll wager your father was a soldier. of rt �, er 10 scene 2 19 eilif: a great soldier, i been told. my mother warned me about it. there's a song i know. the general: sing it to us. roars: when's that dinner coming? ell if: it's called the song of the girl and the soldier. he sings it, dancing a war dance with his sabre: the guns blaze away, and the bay'nit'll slay and the water can't hardly be colder. what's the answer to ice? keep off's my advice! that's what the girl told the soldier. next thing the soldier, wiv' a round up the spout hears the band playing and gives a great shout: why, it's marching what makes you a soldier! so it's down to the south and then northwards once more: see him catching that bay'nit in his naked paw i that's what his comrades done told her. oh, do not despise the advice of the wise learn wisdom from those that are older and don't try for things that are out of your reach that's what the girl told the soldier. next thing the soldier, his bay'nit in place wades into the river and laughs in her face though the water comes up to his shoulder. when the shingle roof glints in the light 0' the moon we'll be wiv' you again, not a moment too soon! that's what his comrades done told her. mother courage takes up the song in the kitchen, beating on a pot with her spoon: you'll go out like a light! and the sun'll take flight for your courage just makes us feel colder. oh, that vanishing light! may god see that it's right! that's what the girl told the soldier. 20 mother courage and her children ell if: what's that? mother courage continues singing: next thing the soldier, his bay'nit in place was caught by the current and went down without trace and the water couldn't hardly be colder. the the shingle roof froze in the light 0' the moon as both soldier and ice drifted down to their doom _ and d'you know what his comrades done told her? he went out like a light. and the sunshine took flight for his courage just made 'em feel colder. oh, do not despise the advice of the wise i that's what the girl told the soldier. the general: the things they get up to in my kitchen these days. eilif has gone into the kitchen. he flings his arms round his mother: fancy seeing you again, mal where's the others? mother courage in his arms: snug as a bug in a rug. theymade swiss cheese paymaster of the second finnish; anyroad he'll stay out of hghting that way, i couldn't keep him out altogether. eilif: how's the old feet? mother courage: bit tricky getting me shoes on of a morning. the general hasjoined them: so you're his mother, i hope you've got plenty more sons for r e like this one. eilif: ain't it my lucky day? you sitting out there in the kitchen, ma, hearing your son commended ... mother courage: you bet i heard. slaps bisface. ei li f holding his cheek: what's that for? taking the oxen? mother courage: no. not surrendering when those four went for you and wanted to make mincemeat of you. didn't i say you should look after yourself? you finnish devil! the general and the chaplain stand in the doorway laughing. scene 3 2.1 3 three years later mother courage is taken prisoner along with elements of a finnish regi­ ment. she manages to save her daughter, like­ wise her covered cart, but her honest son is killed military camp. afternoon. a flagpole with the regimental flag. from her cart, festooned now witb all kinds ofgoods, mother courage has stretched a 1jjashing line to a large cannon, across iubicb she and kattrin are folding the washing. she is bargaining at the same time with an armourer over a sack of shot. swiss cheese, now wearing a pay­ master's uniform, is lookin�g on. a comely person, yvette pottier, is sewing a gai!j coloured hat, a glass of brandy before her. she is in her stockinged feet, having laid aside her red high-heeled boots. t he arm 0 u r e r: i'll let you have that shot for a couple of florins. it's cheap at the price, i got to have the money because. the colonel's been boozing with his officers since two days back, and the drink's run out. mother courage: that's troops' munitions. they catch me with that, i'm for court-martial. you crooks flog the shot, and troops got nowt to fire at enemy. the armourer: have a heart, can't you; you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours. mother courage: i'm not taking army property. not at that price. the armourer: you can sell it on the q.t. tonight to the fourth regiment's armourer for five florins, eight even, if 22 mother courage and her children you let him have a receipt for twelve. he's right out of ammunition. mother courage: why not you do it? the a rmourer: i don't trust him, he's a pal of mine. mother courage takes the sack: gimme. to kattrin: take it away and pay him a florin and a half. the armourer protests. i said a florin and a half. kattrin drags the sack upstage, the armourer following her. mother courage addresses swiss cheese: here's your woollies, now look after them, it's october and autumn may set in any time. i ain't saying it's got to, cause i've learned nowt's got to come when you think it will, not even seasons of the year. but your regimental accounts got to add up right, come what may. do they add up right? swiss cheese: yes, mother. mother courage: don't you forget they made you pay­ master cause you was honest, not dashing like your brother, and above all so stupid i bet you ain't even thought of clearing off with it, no not you. that's a big consolation to me. and don't lose those woollies. swiss cheese: no, mother, i'll put them under my mat­ tress. begins to go. the armourer: i'll go along with you, paymaster. mother courage: and don't you start learning him none of your tricks. the armourer leaves with swiss cheese without any farewell gesture. yve tte waving to him: no reason not to say goodbye, armourer. mother courage to yvette: i don't like to see them to­ gether. he's wrong company for our swiss cheese. oh well, war's off to a good start. easily take four, five years before all countries are in. a bit of foresight, don't do nothing silly, and business'il flourish. don't you know you ain't s'posed to drink before midday with your complaint? yvette: complaint, who says so, it's a libel. of tah dn� toscene 3 23 mother courage: they all say so. yve tte: because they're all telling lies, mother courage, and me at my wits' end cause they're all avoiding me like something the cat brought in thanks to those lies, what the hell am i remodelling my hat for? she throws it away. that's why i drink before midday. never used to, gives you crows' feet, but now what the hell? all the second finnish know me. ought to have stayed at home when my first fellow did me wrong. no good our sort being proud. eat shit, that's what you got to do, or down you go. mother courage: now don't you start up again about that pieter of yours and how it all happened, in front of my innocent daughter too. yvette: she's the one should hear it, put her off love. mother courage: nobody can put 'em off that. yve tte: then i'll go on, get it off my chest. it all starts with yours truly growing up in lovely flanders, else i'd never of seen him and wouldn't be stuck here now in poland, cause he was an army cook, fair-haired, a dutchman but thin for once. kattrin, watch out for the thin ones, only in those days i didn't know that, or that he'd got a girl already, or that they all called him puffing piet cause he never took his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job, it meant that little to him. she sings the song offraternisation: when i was only sixteen the foe came into our land. he laid aside his sabre and with a smile he took my hand. after the may parade the may light starts to fade. the regiment dressed by the right the drums were beaten, that's the drill. the foe took us behind the hill and fraternised all night. 24 mother courage and her children there were so many foes then but mine worked in the mess. i loathed him in the daytime. at night i loved him none the less. after the may parade the may light starts to fade. the regiment dressed by the right the drums were beaten, that's the drill. the foe took us behind the hill and fraternised all night. the love which came upon me was wished on me by fate. my friends could never grasp why i found it hard to share their hate. the fields were wet with dew when sorrow first i knew. the regiment dressed by the right the drums were beaten, that's the drill. and then the foe, my lover still went marching out of sight. i followed him, fool that i was, but i never found him, and that was five years back. she walks unsteadily behind the cart. mother courag e: you left your hat here. yvette: anyone wants it can have it. mother courage: let that be a lesson, kattrin. don't you start anything with them soldiers. love makes the world go round, i'm warning you. even with fellows not in the army it's no bed of roses. he says he'd like to kiss the ground your feet walk on reminds me, did you wash them yesterday? and after that you're his skivvy. be thankful you're dumb, then you can't contradict yourself and won't be wanting to bite your tongue off for speaking the truth; m, :� scene 3 25 it's a godsend, being dumb is. and here comes the general's cook, now what's he after? enter the cook and the chaplain. the chaplain: i have a message for you from your son eilif, and the cook has come along because you made such a profound impression on him. the coo k: i just came along to get a bit of air. mother courage: that you can always do here if you behave yourself, and if you don't i can deal with you. what does he want? i got no spare cash. the chaplain: actually i had a message for his brother the paymaster. mother courage: he ain't here now nor anywhere else neither. he ain't his brother's paymaster. he's not to lead him into temptation nor be clever at his expense. giving him money from the purse slung round her: give him this, it's a sin, he's banking on mother's love and ought to be ashamed of himself. the cook: not for long, he'll have to be moving off with the regiment, might be to his death. give him a bit extra, you'll be sorry later. you women are tough, then later on you're sorry. a little glass of brandy wouldn't have been a problem, but it wasn't offered and, who knows, a bloke may lie beneath the green sod and none of you people will ever be able to dig him up again. the chaplain: don't give way to your feelings, cook. to fall in battle is a blessing, not an inconvenience, and why? it is a war of faith. none of your common wars but a special one, fought for the faith and therefore pleasing to god. the cook: very true. it's a war all right in one sense, what with requisitioning, murder and looting and the odd bit of rape thrown in, but different from all the other wars because it's a war of faith; stands to reason. but it's thirsty work at that, you must admit. ld 1.6 mother courage and her children the chaplain to mother courage, indicating the cook: i tried to stop him, but he says he's taken a shine to you, you figure in his dreams. the cook lighting a stumpy pipe: just want a glass of brandy from a fair hand, what harm in that? only i'm groggy already cause the chaplain here's been telling such jokes all the way along you bet i'm still blushing. mother courage: him a clergyman too. i'd best give the pair of you a drink or you'll start making me immoral suggestions cause you've nowt else to do. the chaplain: behold a temptation, said the court preacher, and fell. turning back to look at kattrin as he leaves: and who is this entrancing young person? mother courage: that ain't an entrancing but a decent young person. the chaplain and the cook go behind the cart with mother courage. kattrin looks after them, then walks ajvay from her washing towards the hat. she picks it up and sits down, pullingthe red boots towards her. mother courage can be heard in the background talkingpolitics with the chaplain and the cook. mother courage: those poles here in poland had no business sticking their noses in. right, our king moved in on them, horse and foot, but did they keep the peace? no, went and stuck their noses into their own affairs, they did, and fell on king just as he was quietly clearing off. they committed a breach of peace, that's what, so blood's on their own head. the chaplain: all our king minded about was freedom. the emperor had made slaves of them all, poles and germans alike, and the king had to liberate them. the cook: just what i say, your brandy's first rate, i weren't mistaken in your face, but talk of the king, it cost the kingdear trying to give freedom to germany, what with givingsweden the salt tax, what cost the poor folk a bit, so i've heard, on top of which he had to have the germans locked up and drawn and quartered cause they wanted to carryon ed ou tl:e oral re scene 3 2.7 slaving for the emperor. course the king took a serious view when anybody didn't want to be free. he set out by just trying to protect poland against bad people, particularly the emperor, then it started to become a habit till he ended up protecting the whole of germany. they didn't half kick. so the poor old king's had nowt but trouble for all his kindness and expenses, and that's something he had to make up for by taxes of course, which caused bad blood, not that he's let a little matter like that depress him. one thing he had on his side, god's word, that was a help. because otherwise folk would of been saying he done it all for himself and to make a bit on the side. so he's always had a good conscience, which was the main point. mother courage: anyone can see you're no swede or you wouldn't be talking that way about the hero king. the c hap l a in: after all he provides the bread you eat. the cook: i don't eat it, i bake it. mother courage: they'll never beat him, and why, his men got faith in him. seriously: to go by what the big shots say, they're waging war for almighty god and in the name of everything that's good and lovely. but look closer, they ain't so silly, they're waging it for what they can get. else little folk like me wouldn't be in it at al1. the cook: that's the way it is. the chaplain: as a dutchman you'd do better to glance at the flag above your head before venting your opinions here in poland. mother courage: all good lutherans here. prosit! kattrin has pllt on yvette's hat and begun strutting around in imitation ofher way ofwalking. suddenly there is a noise of cannon fire and shooting. drums. mother courage, the cook and the chaplain rusb ott! from behind the cart, the two last-named still carrying their glasses. the armourer and another soldier run up to the cannon and try to push it away. � ....... ................�-"��-.,.---.:., ... ;:..... ".-:,,'"::�, .. ... 28 mother courage and her children mother courage: what's happening? wait till i've taken my washing down, you louts! she tries to rescue her washing. the armourer: the catholics! broken through. don't know if we'll get out of here. to the soldier: get that gun shifted! runs on. the coo k: god, i must find the general. courage, i'll drop by in a day or two for another talk. mother courage: wait, you forgot your pipe. the coo k in the distance: keep it for me. i'll be needing it. mother courage: would happen just as we're making a bit of money. the chaplain: ah well, i'll be going too. indeed, if the enemy is so close as that it might be dangerous. blessed are the peacemakers is the motto in wartime. if only i had a cloak to cover me. mother courage: i ain't lending no cloaks, not on your life. i been had too often. the chaplain: but my faith makes it particularly danger­ ous for me. mother courage gets him a cloak: goes against my conscience, this does. now you run along. the chaplain: thank you, dear lady, that's very generous of you, but i think it might be wiser for me to remain seated here; it could arouse suspicion and bring the enemy down on me if i were seen to run. mother courage to the soldier: leave it, you fool, who's going to pay you for that? i'll look after it for you, you're risking your neck. the soldier running away: you can tell 'em i tried. mother courage: cross my heart. sees her daughter with the hat. what you doing with that strumpet's hat? take that lid off, you gone crazy? and the enemy arriving any minute! pulls the hat off kattrin's head. want 'em to pick you up and make a prostitute of you? and she's gone and put those ve ner .ger· ffi, ose scene 3 29 boots on, whore of babylon! off with those boots! tries to tug them off her. jesus christ, chaplain, gimme a hand, get those boots off her, i'll be right back. runs to the cart. yvette arrives,powdering herface: fancy that, the catholics are coming. where's my hat? who's been kicking it around? i can't go about looking like this if the catholics are coming. what'll they think of me? no mirror either. to the chaplain: how do i look? too much powder? the chaplain: exactly right. yvette: and where are them red hoots? fails to find them as kattrin hides her feet under her skirt. i left them here all right. now i'll have to get to me tent barefoot. it's an outrage. exit. swiss cheese runs in carrying in a small box. mother courage arrives with her hands full of ashes. to kattrin: here some ashes. to swiss cheese: what's that you're carrying? swiss cheese: regimental cash box. mother courage: chuck it away. no more paymastering for you. swiss cheese: i'm responsible. hegoes to the rear. mother courage to the chaplain: take your clerical togs off, padre, or they'll spot you under that cloak. she rubs kattrin'sface with ash. keep still, will you? there you are, a bit of muck and you'll be safe. what a disaster. sentries were drunk. hide your light under a bushel, it says. take a soldier, specially a catholic one, add a clean face, and there's your instant whore. for weeks they get nowt to eat, then soon as they manage to get it by looting they're falling on anything in skirts. that ought to do. let's have a look. not bad. looks like you been grubbing in muckheap. stop trembling. nothing'll happen to you like that. to swiss cheese: where d'you leave cash box? swiss cheese: thought i'd put it in cart. mother courage horrified: what, my cart? sheer criminal 30 mother courage and her children idiocy. only take me eyes off you one instant. hang us all three, they will. swiss cheese: i'll put it somewhere else then, or clear out with it. mother courage: you sit on it, it's too late now. chaplain who is changing his clothes downstairs: for heaven's sake, the flag! mother courage hauls down the regimentalflag: bozhe moil i'd given up noticing it were there. twenty-five years i've had it. the thunder of cannon intensifies. a morning three days later. the cannon has gone. mother courage, kattrin, the chaplain and swiss cheese are sitting gloomily over a meal. swiss cheese: that's three days i been sitting around with nowt to do, and sergeant's always been kind to me but any moment now he'll start asking where's swiss cheese with the pay box? mother courage: you thank your stars they ain't after you. the chaplain: what can i say? i can't even hold a service here, it might make trouble for me. whosoever hath a full heart, his tongue runneth over, it says, but heaven help me if mine starts running over. mother courage: that's how it goes. here they sit, one with his faith and the other with his cash box. dunno which is more dangerous. the chaplain: we are all of us in god's hands. mother courage: oh, i don't think it's as bad as that yet, though i must say i can't sleep nights. if it weren't for you, swiss cheese, things'd be easier. i think i got meself cleared. i told 'em i didn't hold with antichrist, the swedish one with horns on, and i'd observed left horn was a bit un­ serviceable. half way through their interrogation i asked ne en scene 3 3 i where i could get church candles not too dear. i knows the lingo cause swiss cheese's dad were catholic, often used to make jokes about it, he did. they didn't believe me all that much, but they ain't got no regimental canteen lady. so they're winking an eye. could turn out for the best, you know. we're prisoners, but same like fleas on dog. the chaplain: that's good milk. but we'll need to cut down our swedish appetites a bit. after all, we've been defeated. mother courage: who's been defeated? look, victory and defeat ain't bound to be same for the big shots up top as for them below, not by no means. can be times the bottom lot find a defeat really pays them. honour's lost, nowt else. i remember once up in livonia our general took such a beating from enemy i got a horse off our baggage train in the confusion, pulled me cart seven months, he did, before we won and they checked up. as a rule you can say victory and defeat both come expensive to us ordinary folk. best thing for us is when politics get bogged down solid. to swiss cheese: eat up. s wi s s cheese: got no appetite for it. what's sergeant to do when pay day comes round? mother courage: they don't have pay days on a retreat. swiss cheese: it's their right, though. they needn't retreat if they don't get paid. needn't stir a foot. mother courage: swiss cheese, you're that conscientious it makes me quite nervous. i brought you up to be honest, you not being clever, but you got to know where to stop. chaplain and me, we're off now to buy catholic flag and some meat. dunno anyone so good at sniffing meat, like sleepwalking it is, straight to target. i'd say he can pick out a good piece by the way his mouth starts watering. well, thank goodness they're letting me go on trading. you don't ask tradespeople their faith but their prices. and lutheran trousers keep cold out too. el, 32 mother courage and her children the chaplain: what did the mendicant say when he heard the lutherans were going to turn everything in town and country topsy-turvy? they'll always need beggars. mother courage disappears into the cart. so she's still worried about the cash box. so far they've taken us all for granted as part of the cart, but how long for? swiss cheese: i can get rid of it. the chaplain: that's almost more dangerous. suppose you're seen. they have spies. yesterday a fellow popped up out of the ditch in front of me just as i was relieving myself first thing. i was so scared i only just suppressed an ejaculatory prayer. that would have given me away all right. i think what they'd like best is to go sniffing people's excrement to see if they're protestants. the spy was a little runt with a patch over one eye. mother courage clambering out of the cart with a basket: what have i found, you shameless creature? she holds up the red boots in triumph. yvette's red high-heeled boots! coolly went and pinched them, she did. cause you put it in her head she was an enchanting young person. she lays them in the basket. i'm giving them back. stealing yvette's boots! she's wrecking herself for money. that's understandable. but you'd do it for nothing, for pleasure. what did i tell you: you're to wait till it's peace. no soldiers for you. you're not to start exhibiting yourself till it's peacetime. the chaplain: i don't find she exhibits herself. mother courage: too much for my liking. let her be like a stone in dalecarlia, where there's nowt else, so folk say 'can't see that cripple', that's how i'd lief have her. then nowt'll happen to her. to swiss cheese: you leave that box where it is, d'you hear? and keep an eye on your sister, she needs it. the pair of you'll have me in grave yet. sooner be minding a bagful of fleas. she leaves with the chaplain. kattrin clears away the dishes. swiss cheese: won't be able to sit out in the sun in shirter �. scene 3 33 sleeves much longer. kattrin points at a tree. aye, leaves turning yellow. kattrin asks by gestures if he wants a drink. don't want no drink. i'm thinking. pause. said she can't sleep. best if i got rid of that box, found a good place for it. all right, let's have a glass. kattrin goes behind the cart. i'll stuff it down the rat-hole by the river for the time being. probably pick it up tonight before first light and take it to regiment. how far can they have retreated in three days? bet sergeant's surprised. i'm agreeably disappointed in you, swiss cheese, he'll say. i make you responsible for the cash, and you go and bring it back. as kattrin emerges from behind the cart with a full glass in her hand, two men confront her. one is a sergeant, the other doffs his hat to her. he has a patch over one eye. the man with the patch: god be with you, mistress. have you seen anyone round here from second finnish regimental headquarters? kattrin, badly frightened, runs downstage, spilling the brandy. the two men look at one another, then withdraw on seeing swiss cheese sitting there. swiss cheese interrupted in his thoughts: you spilt half of it. what are those faces for? jabbed yourself in eye? i don't get it. and i'll have have to be off, i've thought it over, it's the only way. he gets up. she does everything possible to make him realise the danger. he only shrugs her off. wish i knew what you're trying to say. sure you mean well, poor creature, just can't get words out. what's it matter your spilling my brandy, i'll drink plenty more glasses yet, what's one more or less? he gets the boxfrom the cart and takes it under his tunic. be back in a moment. don't hold me up now, or i'll be angry. i know you mean well. too bad you can't speak. as she tries to hold him back he kisses her and tears himself away. exit. she is desperate, running hither and thither uttering little noises. the chaplain and mother courage return. kattrin rushes to her mother. 34 mother courage and her children mother courage: what's all this? pull yourself together, love. they done something to you? where's swiss cheese? tell it me step by step, kattrin. mother understands you. what, so that bastard did take the box? i'll wrap it round his ears, the little hypocrite. take your time and don't gabble, use your hands, i don't like it when you howl like a dog, what'll his reverence say? makes him uncomfortable. what, a one-eyed man came along? the chaplain: that one-eyed man is a spy. have they arrested swiss cheese? kaltrin shakes her head, shrugs her shoulders. we're done for. mother courage fishes in her basket and brings out a catholic flag, 1}j/;ich the chaplain fixes to the mast: better hoist new flag. the chaplain bitterly: all good catholics here. voices are heard from the rear. the two men bring in sn/iss cheese. swiss cheese: let me go, i got nowt. don't twist my shoulder, i'm innocent. sergeant: here's where he came from. you know each other. mother courage:us?how? swiss cheese: i don't know her. got no idea who she is, had nowt to do with them. i bought me dinner here, ten hellers it cost. you might have seen me sitting here, it was too salty. sergeant: who are you people, eh? mother courage: we're law-abiding folk. that's right, he bought a dinner. said it was too salty. sergeant: trying to pretend you don't know each other, that it? mother courage: why should i know him? can't know everyone. i don't go asking 'em wat they're called and are they a heretic; ifhe pays he ain't a heretic. you a heretic? swiss cheese: go on. scene 3 35 the chaplain: he sat there very properly, never opening his mouth except when eating. then he had to. sergeant: and who are you? mother courage: he's just my potboy. now i expect you gentlemen are thirsty, i'll get you a glass of brandy, you must be hot and tired with running. serge.ant: no brandy on duty. to swiss cheese: you were carrying something. must have hidden it by the river. was a bulge in your tunic when you left here. mother courage: you sure it was him? s w iss c he ese : you must be thinking of someone else. i saw someone bounding off with a bulge in his tunic. i'm the wrong man. mother courage: i'd say it was a misunderstanding too, such things happen. i'm a good judge of people, i'm courage, you heard of me, everyone knows me, and i tell you that's an honest face he has. sergeant: we're on the track of the second finnish regiment's cash box. we got the description of the fellow responsible for it. been trailing him two days. it's you. swiss cheese: it's not me. sergeant: and you better cough it up, or you're a goner, you know. where is it? mother courage urgently: of course he'd give it over rather than be a goner. right out he'd say: i got it, here it is, you're too strong. he ain't all that stupid. speak up, stupid idiot, here's the sergeant giving you a chance. swiss cheese: s'pose i ain't got it. sergeant: then come along. we'll get it out of you. tbey lead him off. mother courage calls after them: he'd tell you. he's not that stupid. and don't you twist his shoulder! runs after them. evening of the same day. the chaplain and dumb kattrin are cleaning glasses andpolishing knives. 36 mother courage and her children the chaplain: cases like that, where somebody gets caught, are not unknown in religious history. it reminds me of the passion of our lord and saviour. there's an old song about that. he sings the song of the hours : in the first hour jesus mild who had prayed since even was betrayed and led before pontius the heathen. pilate found him innocent free from fault and error therefore, having washed his hands sent him to king herod. in the third hour he was scourged stripped and clad in scarlet and a plaited crown of thorns set upon his forehead. on the son of man they spat mocked him and made merry. then the cross of death was brought given him to carry. at the sixth hour with two thieves to the cross they nailed him and the people and the thieves mocked him and reviled him. this is jesus king of jews cried they in derision till the sun withdrew its light from that awful vision. scene 3 37 at the ninth hour jesus wailed why hast thou me forsaken? soldiers brought him vinegar which he left untaken. then he yielded up the ghost and the earth was shaken. rended was the temple's veil and the saints were wakened. soldiers broke the two thieves' legs as the night descended thrust a spear in jesus' side when his life had ended. still they mocked, as from his wound flowed the blood and water thus blasphemed the son of man with their cruel laughter. * mot her co u rag e entering excitedly: it's touch and go. they say sergeant's open to reason though. only we mustn't let on it's swiss cheese else they'll say we helped him. it's a matter of money, that's all. but where's money to come from? hasn't yvette been round? i ran into her, she's got her hooks on some colonel, maybe he'd buy her a canteen business. the cha plain: do you really wish to sell? mother courage: where's money for sergeant to come from? the chaplain: what'll you live on, then? mother courage: that's just it. yvette pottier arrives l1jith an extremely ancient colonel. yvette embracing mother col/rage: my dear courage, fancy * song translated by ralph manheim j 38 mother courage and her children seeing you so soon. u:?'hispers: he's not unwilling. aloud: this is my good friend who advises me in business matters. i happened to hear you wanted to sell your cart on account of circumstances. i'll think it over. mother courage: pledge it, not sell, just not too much hurry, tain't every day you find a cart like this in war­ time. yve tte disappointed: oh, pledge. i though it was for sale. i'm not so sure i'm interested. to the colonel: how do you feel about it? the colonel: just as you fee], pet. mother courage: i'm only pledging it. i yvette: i thought you'd got to have the money. \ mother couragefirm!j: i got to have it, but sooner run j myself ragged looking for a bidder than sell outright. and why? the cart's our livelihood. it's a chance for you, yvette; who knows when you'll get another like it and have a special friend to advise you, am i right? yvette: yes, my friend thinks i should clinch it, but i'm not sure. if it's only a pledge ... so you agree we ought to buy outright? tile colonel: i agree, pet. mother courage: best look and see if you can find any­ thing for sale then; maybe you will if you don't rush it, take your friend along with you, say a week or fortnight, might find something suits you. yvette: then let's go looking. i adore going around looking for things, i adore going around with you, poldi, it's such fun, isn't it? no matter if it takes a fortnight. how soon would you pay the money back if you got it? mother courage: i'd pay back in two weeks, maybe one. yvette: i can't make up my mind, poldi cheri, you advise me. takes the colonel aside: she's got to sell, i know, no problem there. and there's that ensign, you know, the scene 3 39 fair-haired one, he'd be glad to lend me the money. he's crazy about me, says there's someone i remind him of. what do you advise? the colonel: you steer clear of him. he's no good. he's only making use of you. i said i'd buy you something, didn't i, pussykins? yvette: i oughtn't to let you. of course if you think the ensign might try to take advantage ... poldi, i'll accept it from you. the colonel: that's how i feel too. yvette: is that your advice? the colonel: that is my advice. yvette to courage once more: my friend's advice would be to accept. make me out a receipt saying the cart's mine once two weeks are up, with all its contents, we'll check it now, i'll bring the two hundred florins later. to the colonel: you go back to the camp, i'll follow, i got to check it all and see there's nothing missing from my cart. she kisses him. he leaves. she climbs tip on the cart. not all that many boots, are there? mother courage: yvette, it's no time for checking your cart, s'posing it is yours. you promised you'd talk to ser­ geant about swiss cheese, there ain't a minute to lose, they say in an hour he'll be courtmartialled. yvette: just let me count the shirts. mot her co u rag e pit/ling her down by the skirt: you bloody vampire. swiss cheese's life's at stake. and not a word about who's making the offer, for god's sake, pretend it's your friend, else we're all done for cause we looked after him. yvette.: i fixed to meet that one-eyed fellow in the copse, he should be there by now. the chaplain: it doesn't have to be the whole two hundred either, i'd go up to a hundred and fifty, that may be enough. 40 mother courage and her children mother courage: since when has it been your money? you kindly keep out of this. you'll get your hotpot all right, don't worry. hurry up and don't haggle, it's life or death. pushes yvette off. the chaplain: far be it from me to interfere, but what are we going to live on ? you're saddled with a daughter who can't earn her keep. mother courage: i'm counting on regimental cash box, mr clever. they'll allow it as his expenses. the chaplain: but will she get the message right? mother courage: it's her interest i should spend her two hundred so she gets the cart. she's set on that, god knows how long that colonel of hers'll last. kattrin, polish the knives, there's the pumice. and you, stop hanging round like jesus on mount of olives, get moving, wash them glasses, we'll have fifty or more of cavalry in tonight and i don't want to hear a lot of 'i'm not accustomed to having to run about, oh my poor feet, we never ran in church'. thank the lord they're corruptible. after all, they ain't wolves, just humans out for money. corruption in humans is same as compassion in god. corruption's our only hope. long as we have it there'll be lenient sentences and even an innocent man'll have a chance of being let off. yvette comes in panting: they'll do it for two hundred. but it's got to be quick. soon be out of their hands. best thing is i go right away to my colonel with the one-eyed man. he's admitted he had the box, they put the thumbscrews on him. but he chucked it in the river soon as he saw they were on his track. the box is a write-off. i'll go and get the money from my colonel, shall i? mother courage: box is a write-off? how'm i to pay back two hundred then? yvette: oh, you thought you'd get it from the box, did you? and i was to be joe soap i suppose? better not count on that. you'll have to pay up if you want swiss cheese scene 3 41 back, or would you sooner i dropped the whole thing so's you can keep your cart? mother courage: that's something i didn't allow for. don't worry, you'll get your cart, i've said goodbye to it, jhad it seventeen years, i have. i just need a moment to think, , it's bit sudden, what'm i to do, two hundred's too much for me, pity you didn't beat 'em down. must keep a bit back, else any tom, dick and harry'll be able to shove me in ditch. go and tell them i'll pay hundred and twenty florins, else it's all off, either way i'm losing me cart. yvette: they won't do it. that one-eyed man's impatient already, keeps looking over his shoulder, he's so worked up. hadn't i best pay them the whole two hundred? mother courage in despair: i can't pay that. thirty years i been working. she's twenty-five already, and no husband. i got her to think of too. don't push me, i know what i'm doing. say a hundred and twenty, or it's off. yvette: it's up to you. rushes off. without looking at either the chaplain or her daughter, mother courage sits down to help kattrin polish knives. mother courage: don't smash them glasses, they ain't ours now. watch what you're doing, you'll cut yourself. swiss cheese'll be back, i'll pay two hundred if it comes to the pinch. you'll get your brother, love. for eighty florins we could fill a pack with goods and start again. plenty of folk has to make do. the chaplain: the lord will provide, it says. mother courage: see they're properly dry. she cleans knives in silence. kattrin suddenly runs behind the cart, sobbing. yvette comes running in: they won't do it. i told you so. the one-eyed man wanted to leave right away, said there was no point. he says he's just waiting for the drum-roll; that means sentence has been pronounced. i offered a hundred and fifty. he didn't even blink. i had to convince him to stay there so's i could have another word with you. 42 mother courage and her children mother courage: tell him i'll pay the two hundred. hurry! yvette runs off. they sit in silence. the chaplain has stopped polishing the glasses. i reckon i bargained too long. in the distance drumming is heard. the chaplain gets up and goes to the rear. mother courage remains seated. it grows dark. the drumming stops. it grows light once more. mother courage is sitting j exactly as before. yvette arrives, very pale: well, you got what you asked for, with your haggling and trying to keep your cart. eleven bullets they gave him, that's all. you don't deserve i should bother any more about you. but i did hear they don't believe the box really is in the river. they've an idea it's here and anyhow that you're connected with him. they're going to bring him here, see if you gives yourself away when you sees him. thought i'd better warn you so's you don't recognise him, else you'll all be for it. they're right on my heels, best tell you quick. shall i keep kattrin away? mother courage shakes her head. does she know? she mayn't have heard the drumming or know what it meant. mother courage: she knows. get her. yvettefetches kattrin, who goes to her mother and stands beside her. mother courage takes her hand. tl110 lansequenets come carrying a stretcher with something lying on it covered by a sheet. the sergeant marches beside them. they set down the stretcher. sergeant: here's somebody we dunno the name of. it's got to be listed, though, so everything's shipshape. he had a meal here. have a look, see if you know him. he removes the sheet. know him? mother courage shakes her head. what, never see him before he had that meal here? motber courage shakes her head. pick him up. chuck him in the pit. he's got nobody knows him. they carr:y him ajija_)'. scene 4 43 4 mother courage smgs the song of the grand capitulation outside an officer's tent. mother courage is waiting. a clerk looks out of the tent. the clerk: i know you. you had a paymaster from the lutherans with you, what was in hiding. i'd not complain if i were you. mother courage: but i got a complaint to make. i'm innocent, would look as how i'd a bad conscience if i let this pass. slashed everything in me cart to pieces with their sabres, they did, then wanted i should pay five taler fine for nowt, i tell you, nowt. cler k: take my tip, better shut up. we're short of canteens, so we let you go on trading, specially if you got a bad conscience and pay a fine now and then. mother courage: i got a complaint. c le r k: have it your own way. then you must wait till the captain's free. l¥7ithdralt's inside the tent. young soldier enters aggressive!j: bouque la madonne! where's that bleeding pig of a captain what's took my reward money to swig with his tarts? i'll do him. old e r sol die r running after him: shut up. they'll put you in irons. you n g sol die r: out of there, you thief! i'll slice you into pork chops, i will. pocketing my prize money after i'd swum the river, only one in the whole squadron, and now i can't even buy meself a beer. i'm not standing for that. come on out there so i can cut you up! 44 mother courage and her children older soldier: blessed mother of god, he's asking for trouble. mother courage: is it some reward he weren't paid? young soldier: lemme go, i'll slash you too while i'm at it. older soldier: he rescued the colonel's horse and got no reward for it. he's young yet, still wet behind the ears. mother courage: let him go, he ain't a dog you got to chain up. wanting your reward is good sound sense. why be a hero otherwise? young soldier: so's he can sit in there and booze. you're shit-scared, the lot of you. i done something special and i want my reward. mother courage: don't you shout at me, young fellow. got me own worries, i have; any road you should spare your voice, be needing it when captain comes, else there he'll be and you too hoarse to make a sound, which'll make it hard for him to clap you in irons till you turn blue. people what shouts like that can't keep it up ever; half an hour, and they have to be rocked to sleep, they're so tired. young soldier: i ain't tired and to hell with sleep. i'm hungry. they make our bread from acorns and hemp-seed, and they even skimp on that. he's whoring away my reward and i'm hungry. i'll do him. mother courage: oh i see, you're hungry. last year that general of yours ordered you all off roads and across fields so corn should be trampled flat; i could've got ten florins for a pair of boots s'pose i'd had boots and s'pose anyone'd been able to pay ten florins. thought he'd be well away from that area this year, he did, but here he is, still there, and hunger is great. i see what you're angry about. young soldier: i won't have it, don't talk to me, it ain't fair and i'm not standing for that. mother courage: and you're right; but how long? how long you not standing for unfairness? one hour, two scene 4 45 hours? didn't ask yourself that, did you, but it's the whole point, and why, once you're in irons it's too bad if you suddenly finds you can put up with unfairness after all. young soldier: what am i listening to you for, i'd like to know? bouque la madonne, where's that captain? mother courage: you been listening to me because you knows it's like what i say, your anger has gone up in smoke already, it was just a short one and you needed a long one, but where you going to get it from? young soldier: are you trying to tell me asking for my reward is wrong? mother courage: not a bit. i'm just telling you your anger ain't long enough, it's good for nowt, pity. if you'd a long one i'd be trying to prod you on. cut him up, the swine, would be my advice to you in that case; but how about if you don't cut him up cause you feels your tail going between your legs? then i'd look silly and captain'd take it out on me. older soldier: you're perfectly right, he's just a bit crazy. young soldier: very well, let's see if i don't cut him up. draws his sn/ord. when he arrives i'm going to cut him up. c l e r k looks out : the captain'll be here in one minute. sit down. the young soldier sits donm. mother courage: he's sitting now. see, what did i say? you're sitting now. ah, how well they know us, no one need tell 'em how to go about it. sit down! and, bingo, we're sitting. and sitting and sedition don't mix. don't try to stand up, you won't stand the way you was standing before. i shouldn't worry about what i think; i'm no better, not one moment. bought up all our fighting spirit, they have. eh? s'pose i kick back, might be bad for business. let me tell you a thing or two about the grand capitulation. she sings the song of the grand capitulation: 46 mother courage and her children back when i was young, i was brought to realise what a very special person i must be (not just any old cottager's daughter, what with my looks and my talents and my urge towards higher things) and insisted that my soup should have no hairs in it. no one makes a sucker out of me! (a1l or nothing, only the best is good enough, each man for himself, nobody's telling me what to do.) then i heard a tit chirp: wait a bit! and you'll be marching with the band in step, responding to command and striking up your little dance: now we advance. and now: parade, form square! then men swear god's there­ not the faintest chance! in no time at all anyone who looked could see that i'd learned to take my medicine with good grace. (two kids on my hands and look at the price of bread, and things they expect of you!) when they finally came to feel that they were through with me they'd got me grovelling on my face. (takes all sorts to make a world, you scratch my back and i'll scratch yours, no good banging your head against a brick wall.) then i heard that tit chirp: wait a bit r and you'll be marching with the band in step, responding to command and striking up your little dance: now they advance. and now: parade, form square! scene 4 47 then men swear god's there­ not the faintest chance! i've known people tried to storm the summits: there's no star too bright or seems too far away. (dogged does it, where there's a will there's a way, by hook or by crook.) as each peak disclosed fresh peaks to come, it's strange how much a plain straw hat could weigh. (you have to cut your coat according to your cloth.) then i hear the tit chirp: wait a bit! and they'll be marching with the band in step, responding to command and striking up their little dance: now they advance and now: parade, form square! then men swear god's there­ not the faintest chance i mother courage to tbe young soldier: that's why i reckon you should stay there with your sword drawn if you're truly set on it and your anger's big enough, because you got grounds, i agree, but if your anger's a short one best leave right away. young soldier: oh stuff it. he staggers off with the older soldierfollowing. clerk sticks his head out: captain's here now. you can make your complaint. mother courage: i changed me mind. i ain't complaining. exit. 48 mother courage and her children 5 two years have gone by. the war is spreading to new areas. ceaselessly on the move, courage's little cart crosses poland, moravia, bavaria, italy then bavaria again. 163 i. tilly's victory at leipzig costs mother courage four officers' shirts mother courage's cart has !topped in a badly shot-up village. thin military music in the distance. two soldiers at the bar being served by kattrin and mother courage. one of them has a lady's fur "oat over his shoulders. mother courage: can't pay, that it? no money, no schnapps. they give us victory parades, but catch them giving men their pay. soldier: i want my schnapps. i missed the looting. that double-crossing general only allowed an hour's looting in the town. he ain't an inhuman monster, he said. town must of paid him. the chaplain stumbles in: there are people sti11lying in that yard. the peasant's family. somebody give me a hand. i need linen. the second soldier goes off with him. kattrin becomes very excited and tries to make her mother produce linen. mother courage: i got none. all my bandages was sold to regiment. i ain't tearing up my officer's shirts for that lot. c hap l a i n calling back: i need linen, i tell you. mother courage blocking kattrin's way into the cart by scene 5 49 sitting on the step: i'm giving nowt. they'll never pay, and why, nowt to pay with. chaplain bending over a it/oman he has carried in: why d'you stay around during the gunfire? peasant womanfeeb!j: farm. mother courage: catch them abandoning anything. but now i'm s'posed to foot the bill. i won't do it. first soldier: those are protestants. what they have to be protestants for? mother courage: they ain't bothering about faith. they lost their farm. second soldier: they're no protestants. they're cath­ olics like us. first soldier: no way of sorting 'em out in a bombardment. a peasant brought in by the chaplain: my arm's gone. the chaplain: where's that linen? mother courage: i can't give nowt. what with expenses, taxes, loan interest and bribes. making guttural noises, kattrin raises a plank and threatens her mother with it. you gone plain crazy? put that plank away or i'll paste you one, you cow. i'm giving nowt, don't want to, got to think of meself. the chaplain lifts her off the steps and sets her on the ground, then starts pulling out shirts and tearing them into strips. my officers' shirts! half a florin apiece! i'm ruined. from the house comes the cry ofa child in pain. the peasant: the baby's in there still. kattrin dashes in. the chaplain to the tuoman : don't move. they'll get it out. mother courage: stop her, roof may fall in. the chaplain: i'm not going back in there. mother courage torn both wa:_ys: don't waste my precious linen. kattrin brings a ba�y out ofthe ruins. mother courage: how nice, found another baby to cart around? give it to its ma this instant, unless you'd have me 50 mother courage and her children fighting for hours to get it off you, like last time, d'you hear? to the second soldier: don't stand there gawping, you go back and tell them cut out that music, we can see it's a victory with our own eyes. all your victories mean to me is losses. the chaplain (ling a bandage: blood's coming through. kattrin is rocking the baby and making ifillaby noises. mother courage: look at her, happy as a queen in all this misery; give it back at once, its mother's coming round. she catches thefirst soldier, iuho has been attacking the drinks and is trying to make off with one of the bottles. psia krew l though t you'd score another victory, you animal? now pay. first soldier: i got nowt. mother courage pulling the fur coat off his back: then leave that coat, it's stolen any road. the chaplain: there's still someone under there. 6 outside the bavarian town of ingolstadt courage participates in the funeral of the late imperial commander tilly. discussions are held about war heroes and the war's duration. the chaplain complains that his talents are lying fallow and dumb kattrin gets the red boots. the year is 1632 inside a canteen tent. it has a bar towards the rear. rain. sound of drums and funeral music. the chaplain and the regi11lental clerk are plcrying a board game. mother courage and her dallghter are stocktaking. scene 6 51 the c hap l a in: now the funeral procession will be moving off. mother courage: too bad about commander in chief twenty-two pairs those socks he fell by accident, they say. mist over fields, that was the trouble. general had just been haranguing a regiment saying they must fight to last man and last round, he was riding back when mist made him lose direction so he was up front and a bullet got him in midst of battle only four hurricane lamps left. a whistle from the rear. she ..goes to the bar. you scrimshankers, dodging your commander in chief's funeral, scandal i call it. pours drinks. the c l e r k: they should never of paid troops out before the funeral. instead of going now they're all getting pissed. the chaplain to the clerk: aren't you supposed to go to the funeral? the clerk: dodged it cause of the rain. mother courage: it's different with you, your uniform might get wet. i heard they wanted to toll bells for funeral as usual, except it turned out all churches had been blown to smithereens by his orders, so poor old commander in chief won't be hearing no bells as they let the coffin down. they're going to let off three salvoes instead to cheer things up seventeen belts. shoutsfrom the bar: hey, missis, a brandy! mother courage: let's see your money. no, i ain't having you in my tent with your disgusting boots. you can drink outside, rain or no rain. to the clerk: i'm only letting in sergeants and up. commander in chief had been having his worries, they say. s'posed to have been trouble with second regiment cause he stopped their pay, said it was a war of faith and they should do it for free. funeral march. all look to the rear. the chaplain: now they'll be filing past the noble corpse. mother courage: can't help feeling sorry for those 5 2 mother courage and her children generals and emperors, there they are maybe thinking they're doing something extra special what folk'll talk about in years to come, and earning a public monument, like conquering the world for instance, that's a fine ambition for a general, how's he to know any better? i mean, he plagues hisself to death, then it all breaks down on account of ordinary folk what just wants their beer and bit of a chat, nowt higher. finest plans get bolloxed up by the pettiness of them as should be carrying them out, because emperors can't do nowt themselves, they just counts on soldiers and people to back 'em up whatever happens, am i right? the chaplain laughs: courage, you're right, aside from the soldiers. they do their best. give me that lot outside there, for instance, drinking their brandy in the rain, and i'd guarantee to make you one war after another for a hundred years if need be, and i'm no trained general. mother courage: you don't think war might end, then? the chaplain: what, because the commander in chief's gone? don't be childish. they're two a penny, no shortage of heroes. mother courage: ee, i'm not asking for fun of it, but because i'm thinking whether to stock up, prices are low now, but if war's going to end it's money down the drain. the chaplain: i realise it's a serious question. there've always been people going round saying 'the war can't go on for ever'. i tell you there's nothing to stop it going on for ever. of course there can be a bit of a breathing space. the war may need to get its second wind, it may even have an accident so to speak. there's no guarantee against that; nothing's perfect on this earth of ours. a perfect war, the sort you might say couldn't be improved on, that's some­ thing we shall probably never see. it can suddenly come to a standstill for some quite unforeseen reason, you can't allow for everything. a slight case of negligence, and it's bogged down up to the axles. and then it's a matter of scene 6 53 hauling the war out of the mud again. but emperor and kings and popes will come to its rescue. so on the whole it has nothing serious to worry about, and will live to a ripe old age. a soldier sings at the bar: a schnapps, landlord, you're late! a soldier cannot wait to do his emperor's orders. make it a double, this is a holiday. mother courage: s'pose i went by what you say ... the chaplain: think it out for yourself. what's to compete with the war? the soldier at the rear: your breast, my girl, you're late! a soldier cannot wait to ride across the borders. the clerk unexpectedly: and what about peace? i'm from bohemia and i'd like to go home some day. the chaplain: would you indeed? ah, peace. where is the hole once the cheese has been eaten? the soldier at the rear: lead trumps, my friend, you're late! a soldier cannot wait. his emperor needs him badly. your blessing, priest, you're late! a soldier cannot wait. must lay his life down gladly. the clerk: in the long run life's impossible if there's no peace. the chaplain: i'd say there's peace in war too; it has its peaceful moments. because war satisfies all requirements, 54 mother courage and her children peaceable ones included, they're catered for, and it would simply fizzle out if they weren't. in war you can do a crap like in the depths of peacetime, then between one battle and the next you can have a beer, then even when you're moving up you can lay your head on your arms and have a bit of shuteye in the ditch, it's entirely possible. during a charge you can't play cards maybe, but nor can you in the depths of peacetime when you're ploughing, and after a victory there are various openings. you may get a leg blown off, then you start by making a lot of fuss as though it were serious, but afterwards you calm down or get given a schnapps, and you end up hopping around and the war's no worse off than before. and what's to stop you being fruitful and multi­ plying in the middle of all the butchery, behind a barn or something, in the long run you can't be held back from it, and then the war will have your progeny and can use them to carryon with. no, the war will always find an outlet, mark my words. why should it ever stop? kattrin has ceased working and is staring at the chaplain. mother courage: i'll buy fresh stock then. if you say so. kattrin sudde1j!y flings a basketfull of bottles to the ground and runs off. kattrin! laughs. damn me if she weren't waiting for peace. i promised her she'd get a husband soon as peace came. hurries after her. the c l e r k standing up: i won. you been talking too much. pay up. mother courage returning with kattrin: don't be silly, war'll go on a bit longer, and we'll make a bit more money, and peacetime'll be all the nicer for it. now you go into town, that's ten minutes' walk at most, fetch things from golden lion, the expensive ones, we can fetch rest in cart later, it's all arranged, regimental clerk here will go with you. nearly everybody's attending commander in chief's funeral, nowt can happen to you. careful now, don't let them steal nowt, think of your dowry. scene 6 55 kattrin puts a cloth over her head and leaves with the clerk. --the chaplain: is that all right to let her go with the clerk? mother courage: she's not that pretty they'd want to ruin her. the c hap l a in: i admire the way you run your business and always win through. i see why they called you courage. mother courage: poor folk got to have courage. why, they're lost. simply getting up in morning takes some doing in their situation. or ploughing a field, and in a war at that. mere fact they bring kids into world shows they got courage, cause there's no hope for them. they have to hang one another and slaughter one another, so just looking each other in face must call for courage. being able to put up with emperor and pope shows supernatural courage, cause those two cost 'em their lives. she sits down, takes a little pipe from her purse and smokes.-you might chop us a bit of kindling. the c hap l a i n reluctantly removing his coat and preparing to chop up sticks: i happen to be a pastor of souls, not a wood­ cutter. mother courage: i got no soul, you see. need firewood, though. the chaplain: where's that stumpy pipe from? mother courage: just a pipe. the chaplain: what d'you mean, 'just', it's a quite particular pipe, that. mother courage: aha? the chaplain: that stumpy pipe belongs to the oxen­ stierna regiment's cook. mother courage: if you know that already why ask, mr clever? the chaplain: because i didn't know if you were aware what you're smoking. you might just have been rummag­ ing around in your things, come across some old pipe or other, and used it out of sheer absence of mind. ;et ".:: .. ·;'·.·.1.'· '. . . l 1 ' 56 mother courage and her children mother courage: and why not? the chaplain: because you didn't. you're smoking that deliberately. mother courage: and why shouldn't i? the chaplain: courage, i'm warning you. it's my duty. probably you'll never clap eyes on the gentleman again, and that's no loss but your good fortune. he didn't make at all a reliable impression on me. quite the opposite. mother courage: really? nice fellow that. the chaplain: so he's what you would call a nice fellow? i wouldn't. far be it from me to bear him the least ill-will, but nice is not what i would call him. more like one of those don juans, a slippery one. have a look at that pipe if you don't believe me. you must admit it tells you a good deal about his character. mother courage: nowt that i can see. worn out, i'd call it. the chaplain: practically bitten through, you mean. a man of wrath. that is the pipe of an unscrupulous man of wrath; you must see that if you have any discrimination left. 'mother courage: don't chop my chopping block in two. the chaplain: i told you i'm not a woodcutter by trade. i studied to be a pastor of souls. my talent and abilities are being abused in this place, by manual labour. my god­ given endowments are denied expression. it's a sin. you have never heard me preach. one sermon of mine can put a regiment in' such a frame of mind it'll treat the enemy like a flock of sheep. life to them is a smelly old foot-cloth which they fling away in a vision of final victory. god has given me the gift of speech. i can preach so you'll lose all sense of sight and hearing. mother courage: i don't wish to lose my sense of sight and hearing. where'd that leave me? the chaplain: courage, i have often thought that your " / .... 1 � i.� ., � -, • that scene 6 57 dry way of talking conceals more that just a warm heart. you too are human and need warmth. mother courage: best way for us to get this tent warm is have plenty of firewood. the chaplain: don't change the subject. seriously, courage, i sometimes ask myself what it would be like if our relationship were to become somewhat closer. i mean, given that the whirlwind of war has so strangely whirled us together. mother courage: i'd say it was close enough. i cook meals for you and you run around and chop firewood for instance. the chaplain coming closer: you know what i mean by closer; it's not a relationship founded on meals and wood­ chopping and other such base necessities. let your head speak, harden thyself not. mother courage: don't you come at me with that axe. that'd be too close a relationship. the chaplain: you shouldn't make a joke of it. i'm a serious person and i've thought about what i'm saying. mother courage: be sensible, padre. i like you. i don't want to row you. all i'm after is get myself and children through all this with my cart. i don't see it as mine, and i ain't in the mood for private affairs. right now i'm taking a gamble, buying stores just when commander in chief's fallen and all the talk's of peace. where d'you reckon you'd turn if i'm ruined? don't know, do you? you chop us some kindling wood, then we can keep warm at night, that's quite something these times. what's this? she gets up. enter kattrin, out of breath, with a wound above her eye. she is carrying a variety ofstuff: parcels, leather goods, a drum and so on. mot her co u rag e: what happened, someone assault you? on way back? she was assaulted on her way back. bet it was that trooper was getting drunk here. i shouldn't have let you go, love. drop that stuff. not too bad, just a flesh ....... ';,', '1." .. , l," /. r: -. _,_,._ ---_---_-. ... --... 58 mother courage and her children wound you got. i'll bandage it and in a week it'll be all right. worse than wild beasts, they are. she ties up the iuound. the chaplain: it's not them i blame. they never went raping back home. the fault lies with those that start wars, it brings humanity's lowest instincts to the surface. mother courage: calm down. didn't clerk come back with you? that's because you're respectable, they don't bother. wound ain't a deep one, won't leave no mark. there you are, all bandaged up. you'll get something, love, keep calm. something i put aside for you, wait till you see. she delves into a sack and brings out yvette's red hi._f!,h-heeled boots. made you open your eyes, eh? something you always wanted. they're yours. put 'em on quick, before i change me mind. won't leave no mark, and what if it does? ones i'm really sorry for's the ones they fancy. drag them around till they're worn out, they do. those they don't care for they leaves alive. i seen girls before now had pretty faces, then in no time looking fit to frighten a hyaena. can't even go behind a bush without risking touble, horrible life they lead. same like with trees, straight well-shaped ones get chopped down to make beams for houses and crooked ones live happily ever after. so it's a stroke of luck for you really. them boots'll be all right, i greased them before putting them away. kattrin leaves the boots where they are and crawls into the cart. the chaplain: let's hope she's not disfigured. mother courage: she'll have a scar. no use her waiting for peacetime now. the chaplain: she didn't let them steal the things. mother courage: maybe i shouldn't have dinned that into her so. wish i knew what went on in that head of hers. just once she stayed out all night, once in all those years. afterwards she went around like before, except she worked harder. couldn't get her to tell what had happened. worried " ,) .., ...... .... -, e rear!, 'jfkeo rorriea scene 7 59 me quite a while, that did. she collects the articles brou,ght ry kattrin, and sorts them angrily. that's war for you. nice way to get a living! sound of cannon fire. the chaplain: now they'll be burying the commander in chief. this is a historic moment. mother courage: what i call a historic moment is them bashing my daughter over the eye. she's half wrecked already, won't get no husband now, and her so crazy about kids; any road she's only dumb from war, soldier stuffed something in her mouth when she was little. as for swiss cheese i'll never see him again, and where eilif is god alone knows. war be damned. 7 mother courage at the peak of her business career highroad. the chaplain, mother cot/rage and kattrin are pulling the cart, lvhit:h is hung with new wares. mother courage is n-earing a necklace of silver coins. mother courage: i won't have you folk spoiling my war for me. i'm told it kills off the weak, but they're write-off in peacetime too. and war gives its people a better deal. she sings: and if you feel your forces fading you won't be there to share the fruits. some people think to live by looting the goods some others haven't got. you think it's just a line they're shooting until you hear they have been shot. 60 mother courage and her children but what is war but private trading that deals in blood instead of boots? and what's the use of settling down? them as does are first to go. sings: and some i saw dig six feet under in haste to lie down and pass out. now they're at rest perhaps they wonder just what was all their haste about. they pull itfurther. 8 the same year sees the death of the swedish king gustavus adolphus at the battle of liitzen. , peace threatens to ruin mother courage's busi­ ness. courage's dashing son performs one heroic deed too many and comes to a sticky end camp. a summer morning. in front of the cart stand an old woman and her son. the son carries a large sack of bedding. mother courage's voice from inside the cart: does it need to be this ungodly hour? " / ...... ""-�,, t .. i • -. are scene 8 61 the young man: we walked twenty miles in the night and got to be back today. mother courage's voice: what am i to do with bedding? folk've got no houses. the young man: best have a look first. the old woman: this place is no good either. come on. the young man: what, and have them sell the roof over our head for taxes? she might pay three florins if you throw in the bracelet. bells start ringing. listen, mother. v cn cv.sfrom the rear: peace! swedish king's been killed. mother cou rage sticks her head out of the cart. she has notyet done her hair: what's that bell-ringing about in mid-week? the chaplain crawling outfrom under the cart: what are they shouting? peace? mother courage: don't tell me peace has broken out just after i laid in new stock. the c hap l a i n falling to the rear: that true? peace? voices: three weeks ago, they say, only no one told us. the c hap l a i n to courage: what else would they be ringing the bells for? vol c e s: a whole lot of lutherans have driven into town, they brought the news. the young man: mother, it's peace. what's the matter? the old woman has collapsed. mother courage speaking into the cart: holy cow! kattrin, peace! put your black dress on, we're going to church. least we can do for swiss cheese. is it true, though? the young man: the people here say so. they've made peace. can you get up? the old woman stands tip dumbfounded. i'll get the saddlery going again, i promise. it'll all work out. father will get his bedding back. can you walk? to the chaplain: she came over queer. it's the news. she never thought there'd be peace again. father always said so. we're going straight home. they go off. mother courage's voice: give hera schnapps. 1',::",;"""", . • l," / ::n..------� 62 mother courage and her children the chaplain: they've already gone. mother courage's voice: what's up in camp? the chaplain: they're assembling. i'll go on over. shouldn't i put on my clerical garb? mother courage's voice: best check up before parading yourself as heretic. i'm glad about peace, never mind if i'm ruined. any road i'll have got two of children through the war. be seeing eilif again now. the chaplain: and who's that walking down the lines? bless me, the army commander's cook. the coo k somewhat bedraggled and carrying a bundle: what do i behold? the padre! the chaplain: courage, we've got company. mother courage clambers out, the coo k: i promised i'd drop over for a little talk soon as i had the time. i've not forgotten your brandy, mrs fierling. mother courage: good grief, the general's cook! after all these years! where's my eldest boy eilif? the coo k: hasn't he got here? he left before me, he was on his way to see you too. the chaplain: i shall don my clerical garb, just a moment. goes �fj behind the cart. mother courage: then he may be here any minute. calls into the cart: kattrin, eilif''s on his way. get cook a glass of brandy, kattrin i kattrin does not appear. drag your hair down over it, that's all right. mr lamb's no stranger. fetches the brandy herself. she don't like to come out, peace means nowt to her. took too long coming, it did. they gave her a crack over one eye, you barely notice it now but she thinks folks are staring at her. the coo k: ah yes. war. he and mother courage sit down. mother courage: cooky, you caught me at bad moment. i'm ruined. the cook: what? that's hard. " / of • ji/ 1'" 'i .... i'} ... 1 ,i � mother courage: peace'll wring my neck. i went and took chaplain's advice, laid in fresh stocks only t'other day. oyer. and now they're going to demobilise and i'll be left sitting on me wares. the coo k: what d'you want to go and listen to padre for? if i hadn't been in such a hurry that time, the catholics arriving so quickly and all, i'd warned you against that man. all piss and wind, he is. so he's the authority around here, eh? mother courage: he's been doing washing-up for me and helping pull. the coo k: him pull! i bet he told you some of those jokes of his too, i know him, got a very unhealthy view of women, he has, all my good influence on him went for nowt. he ain't steady. mother courage: you steady then? the cook: whatever else i ain't, i'm steady. mud in your eye! mother courage: steady, that's nowt. i only had one steady fellow, thank god. hardest i ever had to work in me life; he flogged the kids' blankets soon as autumn came, and he called me mouth-organ an unchristian instrument. ask me, you ain't saying much for yourself admitting you're steady. the cook: still tough as nails, i see; but that's what i like about you. mother courage: now don't tell me you been dreaming of me nails. the coo k: well, well, here we are, along with armistice bells and your brandy like what nobody else ever serves, it's famous, that is. mother courage: i don't give two pins for your armistice bells just now. can't see 'em handing out all the back pay what's owing, so where does that leave me with my famous brandy? had your pay yet? ioment. scene 8 63 --"':" • ';,', '1.' " •• �:_ =:::_;:=__ � -=_ --:..-:;;::;:;::.,.-�:::"'=:=--a/ 64 mother courage and her children the coo k hesitantly: not exactly. that's why we all shoved off. if that's how it is, i thought, i'll go and visit friends. so here i am sitting with you. mother courage: other words you got nowt. the cook: high time they stopped that bloody clanging. wouldn't mind getting into some sort of trade. i'm fed up being cook to that lot. i'm s'posed to rustle them up meals out of tree roots and old bootsoles, then they fling the hot soup in my face. cook these days is a dog's life. sooner do war service, only of course it's peacetime now. he sees the fhaplain reappearing in his old garments. more about that later. the chaplain: it's still all right, only had a few moths in it. the cook: can't see why you bother. you won't get your old job back, who are you to inspire now to earn his pay honourably and lay down his life? what's more i got a bone to pick with you, cause you advised this lady to buy a lot of unnecessary goods saying war would go on for ever. the chaplain heatedly: i'd like to know what concern that is of yours. the cook: because it's unscrupulous, that sort of thing is. how dare you meddle in other folks' business arrangements with your unwanted advice? the chaplain: who's meddling? to courage: i never knew this gentleman was such an intimate you had to account to him for everything. mother courage: keep your hair on, cook's only giving his personal opinion and you can't deny your war was a flop. the chaplain: you should not blaspheme against peace, courage. you are a hyaena of the battlefield. mother courage: i'm what? the cook: if you're going to insult this lady you'll have to settle with me. the c hap la in: it's not you i'm talking to. your inten..... .,..... 1 o\'ed ends, i wtenscene 8 65 tions are only too transparent. to courage: but when i see you picking up peace betwixt your finger and your thumb like some dirty old snot-rag, then my humanity feels out­ raged; for therf i see that you don't want peace but war, because you profit from it; in which case you shouldn't forget the ancient saying that whosoever sups with the devil needs a long spoon. mother courage: i got no use for war, and war ain't got much use for me. but i'm not being called no hyaena, you and me's through. the chaplain: then why grumble about peace when everybody's breathing sighs of relief? because of some old junk in your cart? mother courage: my goods ain't old junk but what i lives by, and you too up to now. the chaplain: off war, in other words. aha. the cook to the chaplain: you're old enough to know it's always a mistake offering advice. to cot/rage: way things are, your best bet's to get rid of certain goods quick as you can before prices hit rock-bottom. dress yourself and get moving, not a moment to lose. mother courage: that ain't bad advice. i'll do that, i guess. the chaplain: because cooky says it. mother courage: why couldn't you say it? he's right, i'd best go off to market. goes inside the cart. the coo k: that's one to me, padre. you got no presence of mind. what you should of said was: what, me offer advice, all i done was discuss politics. better not take me on. cock-fighting don't suit that get-up. the c hap l a in: if you don't stop your gob i'll murder you, get-up or no get-up. the coo k pulling off his boots and unwrapping his foot-cloths: pity the war made such a godless shit of you, else you'd easily get another parsonage now it's peacetime. cooks "';" , ';,', 'i," • ,. , • '._ ,.4 66 mother courage and her children won't be needed, there's nowt to cook, but faith goes on just the same, nowt changed in that direction. the chaplain: mr lamb, i'm asking you not to elbow me out. since i came down in the world i've become a better person. i couldn't preach to anyone now. enter yvette pottier in black, dressed up to the nines, can:ying a cane. she is milch older and fatter, and heavily ponidered. she is follou/ed by a manservant. yvette: hullo there, everybody. is this mother courage's establishment? the chaplain: it is. and with whom have we the hon­ our ... ? yvette: with the countess starhemberg, my good man. where's courage? the chaplain falls into the cart: the countess starhemberg wishes to speak to you. mother courage's voice: just coming. yvette: it's yvette. mother courage's voice: oh, yvette! y vet t e: come to see how you are. sees the cook turn round aghast: pieter! the cook: yvette! yvette: well i never! how d'you come to be here? t he coo k: got a lift. the chaplain: you know each other then? intimately? yvette: i should think so. she looks the cook over. fat . . the coo k: not all that skinny yourself. yvette: all the same i'm glad to see you, you shit. gives me a chance to say what i think of you. the chaplain: you say it, in full; but don't start till courage is out here. mot her co u rag e coming ost tvith all kinds ofgoods: yvette! tbey embrace. but what are you in mourning for? yvette: suits me, don't it? my husband the colonel died a few years back. "...... -.. � , .' � " scene 8 67 son mother courage: that old fellow what nearly bought the cart? yve tte: his elder brother. mother courage: then you're slttmg pretty. nice to find somebody what's made it in this war. yvette: up and down and up again, that's the way it went. mother courage: i'm not hearing a word against colonels, they make a mint of money. the chaplain: i would put my boots back on if i were you. to yvette: you promised you would say what you think of the gentleman. the cook: don't kick up a stink here, yvette. mother courage: yvette, this is a friend of mine. yvette: that's old puffing piet. the cook: let's drop the nicknames. i'm called lamb. mother courage lau._p,hs: puffing piet l him as made all the women crazy! here, i been looking after your pipe for you. the chaplain: smoking it, too. yvette: what luck i can warn you against him. worst of the lot, he was, rampaging along the whole flanders coast­ line. got more girls in trouble than he has fingers. the cook: that's all a long while ago. tain't true anyhow. yvette: stand up when a lady brings you into the conver­ sation! how i loved this man! all the time he had a little dark girl with bandy legs, got her in trouble too of course. the coo k: got you into high society more like, far as i can see. yvette: shut your trap, you pathetic remnant! better watch out for him, though; fellows like that are still dangerous even when on their last legs. mother courage to yvette: come along, got to get rid of my stuff afore prices start dropping. you might be able to put a word in for me at regiment, with your connections. calls into the cart: kattrin, church is off, i'm going to'ed a 68 mother courage and her children market instead. when eilif turns up, one of you give him a drink. exit lvith yvette. yvette as she leaves: fancy a creature like that ever making me leave the straight and narrow path. thank my lucky stars i managed to reach the top all the same. but i've cooked your goose, puffing piet, and that's something that'll be credited to me one day in the world to come. the chaplain: i would like to take as a text for our little talk 'the mills of god grind slowly'. weren't you com­ plaining about my jokes? the cook: dead out of luck, i am. it's like this, you see: i thought i might get a hot meal. here am i starving, and now they'll be talking about me and she'll get quite a wrong picture. i think i'll clear out before she's back. the chaplain: i think so too. the cook: padre, i'm fed up already with this bloody peace. e human race has to go through fire and sword cause it's sinful from the cradle up. i wish i could be roasting a fat capon once again for the general, wherever he's got to, in mustard sauce with a carrot or two. the chaplain: red cabbage. red cabbage for a capon. the cook: you're right, but carrots was what he had to have. the chaplain: no sense of what's fitting. the coo k: not that it stopped you guzzling your share. the chaplain: with misgivings. the cook: anyway you must admit those were the days. the chaplain: i might admit it if pressed. the cook: now you've called her a hyaena your days here are finished. what you staring at? the chaplain: eilifl eili] arrives, followed by soldiers lvith pikes. his hands are fettered. his face is chall;:)i-white. what's wrong? eilif: where's mother? the chaplain: gone into town. him scene 8 69 ell if: i heard she was around. they've allowed me to come and see her. the coo k to the soldiers: what you doing with him? a sol die r: something not nice. the chaplain: what's he been up to? the soldier: broke into a peasant's place. the wife's dead. the chaplain: how could you do a thing like that? eilif: it's what i did last time, ain't it? the cook: aye, but it's peace now. ell if: shut up. all right if! sit down till she comes? the soldier: we've no time. the chaplain: in wartime they recommended him for that, sat him at the general's right hand. dashing, it was, in those days. any chance of a word with the provost­ marshal? the soldier: wouldn't do no good. taking some peasant's cattle, what's dashing about that? the cook: dumb, i call it. ell if: if i'd been dumb you'd of starved, clever bugger. the cook: but as you were clever you're going to be shot. the chaplain: we'd better fetch kattrin out anyhow. ell if: sooner have a glass of schnapps, could do with that. the soldier: no time, come along. the chaplain: and what shall we tell your mother? eilif: tell her it wasn't any different, tell her it was the same thing. or tell her nowt. the soldiers propel him aj1j�'y. the c hap l a in: i'll accompany you on your grievous journey. eilif: don't need any bloody parsons. the chaplain: wait and see. follou/s him. the coo k calls after them: i'll have to tell her, she'll want to see him. the chaplain: i wouldn't tell her anything. at most that 70 mother courage and her children he was here and will come again, maybe tomorrow. by then i'll be back and can break it to her. hurries off. the cook looks after him, shaking his head, then walks restlessly around. finally he comes lip to the cart. the cook: hoy! don't you want to come out? i can under­ stand you hiding away from peace. like to do the same myself. remember me, i'm general's cook? i was wonder­ ing if you'd a bit of something to eat while i wait for your mum. i don't half feel like a bit of pork, or bread even, just to fill the time. peers inside. head under blanket. sound of gunfire off. mot her co u rag e runs in, out of breath and with all her goods still: cooky, peacetime's over. war's been on again three days now. heard news before selling me stuff, thank god. they're having a shooting match with lutherans in town. we must get cart away at once. kattrin, pack up! what you in the dumps for? what's wrong? the cook: nowt. mother courage: something is. i see it way you look. the cook: cause war's starting up again, i s'pose. looks as if it'll be tomorrow night before i get next hot food inside me. mother courage: you're lying, cooky. the coo k: eilif was here. had to leave almost at once, though. mother courage: was he now? then we'll be seeing him on march. i'm joining our side this time. how's he look? the cook: same as usual. mother courage: oh, he'll never change. take more than war to steal him from me. clever, he is. you going to help me get packed? begins to pack up. what's his news? still in general's good books? say anything about his deeds of valour? the cookglum(y: repeated one of them, i'm told. -� ....... -.. � '. � " scene 8 71 then mother courage: tell it me later, we got to move off. kattrin appears. kattrin, peacetime's finished now. we're moving on. to the cook: how about you? the cook: have to join up again. mother courage: why don't you ... where's padre? the coo k: went into town with eilif. mother courage: then you come along with us a way. need somebody to help me. the coo k: that business with yvette, you know ... mother courage: done you no harm in my eyes. oppo­ site. where there's smoke there's fire, they say. you com­ ing along? the cook: i won't say no. mother courage: the twelfth moved off already. take the shaft. here's a bit of bread. we must get round behind to lutherans. might even be seeing eilif tonight. he's my favourite one. short peace, wasn't it? now we're off again. she sings as the cook and kattrin harness themselves lip: from dim to metz, from metz to munich courage will see the war gets fed. the war will show a well-filled tunic given its daily shot of lead. but lead alone can hardly nourish it must have soldiers to subsist. it's you it needs to make it flourish. the war's still hungry. so enlist! 72 mother courage and her children 9 it is the seventeenth year of the great war of faith. germany has lost more than half her inhabitants. those who survive the bloodbath are killed off by terrible epidemics. once fertile areas are ravaged by famine, wolves roam the burnt-out towns. in autumn 1634 we find cou­ rage in the fichtelgebirge, off the main axis of the swedish armies. the winter this year is early and harsh. business is bad, so that there is nothing to do but beg. the cook gets a letter from utrecht and is sent packing outside a semi-dilapidatedparsonage. grry morning in ear!j winter. gusts of wind. mother courage and the cook in shabby sheepskins, drajving the cart. the cook: it's all dark, nobody up yet. mother courage: except it's parson's house. have to crawl out of bed to ring bells. then he'll have hot soup. the cook: what from when whole village is burnt, we seen it. mother courage: it's lived in, though, dog was barking. the cook: s'pose parson's got, he'll give nowt. mother courage: maybe if we sing.... the coo k: i've had enough. abmpt!j:' got a letter from utrecht saying mother died of cholera and inn's mine. here's letter if you don't believe me. no business of yours the way aunty goes on about my mode of existence, but have a look. -, .. -.. _, , 'ourl out scene 9 73 mother courage reads the letter: lamb, i'm tired too of always being on the go. i feel like butcher's dog, dragging meat round customers and getting nowt off it. i got nowt left to sell, and folk got nowt left to buy nowt with. saxony a fellow in rags tried landing me a stack of old books for two eggs, wiirttemberg they wanted to swap their plough for a titchy bag of salt. what's to plough for? nowt growing no more, just brambles. in pomerania villages are s'posed to have started in eating the younger kids, and nuns have been caught sticking folk up. the cook: world's dying out. mot her co u rag e: sometimes i sees meself driving through hell with me cart selling brimstone, or across heaven with packed lunches for hungry souls. give me my � kids what's left, let's find some place they ain't shooting, arid i'd like a few more years undisturbed. t h i' coo k: you and me could get that inn going, courage, think it over. made up me mind in the night, i did: back to utrecht with or without you, and starting today. mother courage: have to talk to kattrin. that's a bit quick for me; i'm against making decisions all freezing cold and nowt inside you. kattrin! kattrin climbs out of the cart. kattrin, got something to tell you. cook and i want to go to utrecht. he's been left an inn there. that'd be a settled place for you, let you meet a few people. lots of 'em respect somebody mature, looks ain't everything. i'd like it too. i get on with cook. say one thing for him, got a head for business. we'd have our meals for sure, not bad, eh? and your own bed too; like that, wouldn't you? road's no life really. god knows how you might finish up. lousy already, you are. have to make up our minds, see, we could move with the swedes, up north, they're some­ where up that way. she points to the left. reckon that's fixed, kattrin. the cook: anna, i got something private to say to you. 74 mother courage and her children mother courage: get back in cart, kattrin. kattrin climbs back. the cook: i had to interrupt, cause you don't understand, far as i can see. i didn't think there was need to say it, sticks out a mile. but if it don't, then let me tell you straight, no question of taking her along, not on your life. you get me, eh. kattrin sticks her head ou: of the cart behind them and listens. mother courage: you mean i'm to leave kattrin back here? the cook: use your imagination. inn's got no room. it ain't one of the sort got three bar parlours. put our backs in it we two'll get a living, but not three, no chance of that. she can keep cart. mother courage: thought she might find husband in utrecht. the cook: go on, make me laugh. find a husband, how? dumb and that scar on top of it. and at her age? mother courage: don't talk so loud. the coo k: loud or soft, no getting over facts. and that's another reason why i can't have her in the inn. customers don't want to be looking at that all the time. can't blame them. mother courage: shut your big mouth. i said not so loud. the cook: light's on in parson's house. we can try sing­ ing. mother courage: cooky, how's she to pull the cart on her own? war scares her. she'll never stand it. the dreams she must have... i hear her nights groaning. mostly after a battle. what's she seeing in those dreams, i'd like to know. she's got a soft heart. lately i found she'd got another hedgehog tucked away what we'd run over. the coo k: inn's too small. calls out: ladies and gentlemen, domestic staff and other residents! we are now going to nd, it, you life, n, to scene 9 75 give you a song concerning solomon, julius caesar and other famous personages what had bad luck. so's you can see we're respectable folk, which makes it difficult to carry on, particularly in winter. they sing: you saw sagacious solomon you know what came of him. to him complexities seemed plain. he cursed the hour that gave birth to him and saw that everything was vain. how great and wise was solomon! the world however didn't wait but soon observed what followed on. it's wisdom that had brought him to this state how fortunate the man with none! yes, the virtues are dangerous stuff in this world, as this fine song proves, better not to have them and have a pleasant life and breakfast instead, hot soup for instance. look at me: i haven't any but i'd like some. i'm a serving soldier but what good did my courage do me in all them battles, nowt, here i am starving and better have been shit­ scared and stayed at home. for why? you saw courageous caesar next you know what he became. they deified him in his life then had him murdered just the same. and as they raised the fatal knife how loud he cried: you too, my son! the world however didn't wait but soon observed what followed on. it's courage that had brought him to that state. how fortunate the man with none! 16 mother courage and her children 50110 voce: don't even look out. aloud: ladies and gentle­ men, domestic staff and other inmates! all right, you may say, gallantry never cooked a man's dinner, what about trying honesty ? you can eat all you want then, or anyhow not stay sober. how about it? ) you heard of honest socrates the man who never lied: they weren't so grateful as you'd think instead the rulers fixed to have him tried and handed him the poisoned drink. how honest was the people's noble son! the world however didn't wait but soon observed what followed on. it's honesty that brought him to that state. how fortunate the man with none! ah yes, they say be unselfish and share what you've got, but how about if you got nowt? it's all very well to say the do-gooders have a hard time, but you still got to have something. aye, unselfishness is a rare virtue, cause it just don't pay. saint martin couldn't bear to see his fellows in distress. he met a poor man in the snow and shared his cloak with him, we know. both of them therefore froze to death. his place in heaven was surely won! the world however didn't wait but soon observed what followed on. unselfishness had brought him to that state. how fortunate the man with none! that's how it is with us. we're respectable folk, stick together, don't steal, don't murder, don't burn places " ...... ",.. tl}'" i '" tie'ex scene 9 77 down. and all the time you might say we're sinking lower and lower, and it's true what the song says, and soup is few and far between, and if we weren't like this but thieves and murderers i dare say we'd be eating our fill. for virtues aren't their own reward, only wickednesses are, that's how the world goes and it didn't ought to. here you can see respectable folk keeping to god's own laws. so far he hasn't taken heed. you who sit safe and warm indoors help to relieve our bitter need! how virtuously we had begun 1 the world however didn't wait but soon observed what followed on. it's fear of god that brought us to that state. how fortunate the man with none 1 v cn cn from above: hey, you therel come on upl there's hot soup if you want. mother courage: lamb, me stomach won't stand nowt. 'tain't that it ain't sensible, what you say, but is that your last word? we got on all right. the cook: last word. think it over. mother courage: i've nowt to think. i'm not leaving her here. the cook: that's proper senseless, nothing i can do about it though. i'm not a brute, just the inn's a small one. so now we better get on up, or there'll be nowt here either and wasted time singing in the cold. mother courage: i'll get kattrin. the cook: better bring a bit back for her. scare them if they sees three of us coming. exeunt both. kattrin climbs out of the cart with a bundle. she looks around to see if the other two have gone. then she takes an old pair of 78 mother courage and her children trousers of the cook's and a skirt of her mother's, and icrys them side by side on one of the wheels, so that they are easiiy seen. she has finished and is picking up her bundle to go, when mother courage comes back from the house. mother courage with a plate of soup: kattrin! will you stop there? kattrin! where you off to with that bundle? has devil himself taken you over? she examines the bundle. she's packed her things. you been listening? i told him nowt doing, utrecht, his rotten inn, what'd we be up to there? you and me, inn's no place for us. still plenty to be got out of war. she sees the trousers and the skirt. you're plain stupid. s'pose i'd seen that, and you gone away? she holds kattrin back as she tries to break awcry. don't you start thinking it's on your account i given him the push. it was cart, that's it. catch me leaving my cart i'm used to, it ain't you, it's for cart. we'll go off in t'other direc­ tion, and we'll throw cook's stuff out so he finds it, silly man. she climbs in and throws out a few other articles in the direction of the trousers. there, he's out of our business now, and i ain't having nobody else in, ever. you and me'll carry on now. this winter will pass, same as all the others. get hitched up, it looks like snow. they both harness themselves to the cart, then wheel it round and drag it off. when the cook arrives-he looks blankly at his kit. scene 10 79 10 during the whole of 1635 mother courage and her daughter kattrin travel over the highroads of central germany, in the wake of the increasingly bedraggled armies high road. mother courage and kattrin are pulling the cart. they pass a peasant's house inside which there is a voice singing. the voice: the roses in our arbour delight us with their show: they have such lovely flowers repaying all our labour after the summer showers. happy are those with gardens now: they have such lovely flowers. when winter winds are freezing as through the woods they blow our home is warm and pleasing. we fixed the thatch above it with straw and moss we wove it. happy are those with shelter now when winter winds are freezing. mother courage and kattrin pause to listen, then continue pulling. 80 mother courage and her children ii january 1636. the emperor's troops are threaten­ ing the protestant town of halle. the stone begins to speak. mother courage loses her daughter and trudges on alone. the war is a long way from being over the cart is standing, much the worse for wear, alongside a peasant's house with a huge thatched roof, backing on a wall of rock. it is night. an ensign and three soldiers in heavy armour step out of the wood. the ensign: i want no noise now. anyone shouts, shove your pike into him. first soldier: have to knock them up, though, if we're to find a guide. the ens i g n: knocking sounds natural. could be a cow bumping the stable wall. the soldiers knock oft the door of the house. the peasant's wife opens it. they stop her mouth. two soldiers go in. man's voice within: what is it? the soldiers bring out the peasant and his son. the ensign pointing at the cart, where kattrin's head has ap­ peared: there's another one. a soldier drags her out. anyone else live here beside you lot? the peasants: this is our son. and she's dumb. her mother's gone into town to buy stuff. for their business, cause so many people's getting out and selling things cheap. they're just passing through. canteen folk. the ensign: i'm warning you, keep quiet, or if there's the least noise you get a pike across your nut. now i want n· ne one her scene ii 81 someone to come with us and show us the path to the town. points to theyoung peasant. here, you. the young peasant: i don't know no path. second soldier grinning: he don't know no path. the young peasant: i ain't helping catholics. the ensign to the second soldier: stick your pike in his ribs. the young peasant forced to his knees, with the pike threatening him: i won't do it, not to save my life. first soldier: i know what'll change his mind. goes towards the stable. two cows and an ox. listen, you: if you're not reasonable i'll chop up your cattle. the young peasant: no, not that! the peasant's wife weeps: please spare our cattle, captain, it'd be starving us to death. the ensign: they're dead if he goes on being obstinate. first soldier: i'm taking the ox first. the young peasant to his father: have i got to? the wife nods. right. the peasant's wife: and thank you kindly, captain, for sparing us, for ever and ever, amen. the peasant stops his wife from further expressions ofgratitude. first soldier: i knew the ox was what they minded about most, was i right? guided by the young peasant, the ensign and his men continue on their way. the peasant: what are they up to, i'd like to know. nowt good. the peasant's wife: perhaps they're just scouting. what you doing? the peasant putting a ladder against the roof and climbing up it: seeing if they're on their own. from the top: something moving in the wood. can see something down by the quarry. and there are men in armour in the clearing. and a gun. that's at least a regiment. god's mercy on the town and everyone in it! 82. mother courage and her children the peasant's wife: any lights in the town? the peasant: no. they'll all be asleep. climbs down. if those people get in they'll butcher the lot. the peasant's wife: sentries're bound to spot them first. the peasant: sentry in the tower up the hill must have been killed, or he'd have blown his bugle. the peasant's wife: if only there were more of us. the peasant: just you and me and that cripple. the peasant's wife: nowt we can do, you'd say.... the peasant: nowt. the peasant's wife: can't possibly run down there in the blackness. the peasant: whole hillside's crawling with 'em. we could give a signal. the peasant's wife: what, and have them butcher us too? the peasant: you're right, nowt we can do. the peasant's wife to kattrin: pray, poor creature, pray! nowt we can do to stop bloodshed. you can't talk, maybe, but at least you can pray. he'll hear you if no one else can. i'll help you. all kneel, kattrin behind the two peasants. our father, which art in heaven, hear thou our prayer, let not the town be destroyed with all what's in it sound asleep and suspecting nowt. arouse thou them that they may get up and go to the walls and see how the enemy approacheth with pikes and guns in the blackness across fields below the slope. tuming to kattrin: guard thou our mother and ensure that the watchman sleepeth not but wakes up, or it will be too late. succour our brother-in-law also, he is inside there with his four children, spare thou them, they are innocent and know nowt. to kattrin, who gives a groan: one of them's not two yet, the eldest's seven. kattrin stands up distractedly, our father, hear us, for only thou canst help; we look to be doomed, for why, we are weak and scene i i 83 have no pike and nowt and can risk nowt and are in thy hand along with our cattle and all the farm, and same with the town, it too is in thy hand and the enemy is before the walls in great strength. unobserved, kattrin has slipped away to the cart and takenfrom it something which she hides beneath her apron ; then she climbs up the ladder on to the stable roof the peasant's wife: forget not the children, what are in danger, the littlest ones especially, the old folk what can't move, and every living creature. the peasant: and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. amen. sitting on the roof, kattrin begins to beat the drum which she has pulled out from under her apron. the peasant's wife: jesus christ, what's she doing? the peasant: she's out of her mind. the peasant's wife: quick, get her down. the peasant hurries to the ladder, but kattrin pulls it up on to the roof the peasant's wife: she'll do us in. the peasant: stop drumming at once, you cripple! the peasant's wife: bringing the catholics down on us! the peasant lookingfor stones to throw: i'll stone you. the peasant's wife: where's your feelings? where's your heart? we're done for if they come down on us. slit our throats, they will. kattrin stares into the distance towards the town and carries on drumming. the peasant's wife to her husband: i told you we shouldn't have allowed those vagabonds on to farm. what do they care if our last cows are taken? the ensign runs in with his soldiers and the young peasant: i'll cut you to ribbons, all of you! the peasant's wife: please, sir, it's not our fault, we couldn't help it. it was her sneaked up there. a foreigner. the ensign: where's the ladder? 84 mother courage and her children the peasant: there. the ensign calls up: i order you, throw that drum down. kattrin goes on drumming. the ensign: you're all in this together. it'll be the end of you. the peasant: they been cutting pine trees in that wood. how about if we got one of the trunks and poked her off.... first soldier to the ensign: permission to make a sug­ gestion, sir! he whispers something in the ensign's ear. listen, we got a suggestion could help you. get down off there and come into town with us right away. show us which your mother is and we'll see she ain't harmed. kattrin goes on drumming. the ensign pushes him roughly aside: she doesn't trust you; with a mug like yours it's not surprising. calls up: suppose i gave you my word? i can give my word of honour as an officer. kattrin drums harder. the en s i g n: is nothing sacred to her? the young peasant: there's more than her mother in­ volved, sir. first soldier: this can't go on much longer. they're bound to hear in the town. the ensign: we'll have somehow to make a noise that's louder than her drumming. what can we make a noise with? first soldier: thought we weren't s'posed to make no noise. the ensign: a harmless one, you fool. a peaceful one. the peasant: i could chop wood with my axe. the en sign: good: you chop. the peasantfetches his axe and attacks a tree-trunk. chop harder! harder! you're chopping for your life. kattrin has been listening, drumming less loudly the while. she now looks wildly round; and goes on drumming. u; scene ii 85 the ens i g n: not loud enough. to the first soldier: you chop too. the peasant: only got the one axe. stops chopping. the ensign: we'll have to set the farm on fire. smoke her out, that's it. the peasant: it wouldn't help, captain. if the townspeople see a fire here they'll know what's up. kattrin has again been listening as she drums. at this point she laughs. the ensign: look at her laughing at us. i'm not having that. i'll shoot her down, and damn the consequences. fetch the harquebus. three soldiers hurry off. kattrin goes on drumming. the peasant's wife: i got it, captain. that's their cart. if we smash it up she'll stop. cart's all they got. the ensign to the young peasant: smash it up. calls up: we're going to smash up your cart if you don't stop drum­ ming. theyoung peasant gives the cart a few feeble blows. the peasant's wife: stop it, you animal! desperately looking towards the cart, kattrin emits pitiful noises. but she goes on drumming. the ensign: where are those clodhoppers with the har­ quebus? first soldier: can't have heard nowt in town yet, else we'd be hearing their guns. the ensign calls up: they can't hear you at all. and now we're going to shoot you down. for the last time: throw down that drum! the you n g pea san t stldden!j flings away his plank: go on drumming! or they'll all be killed i go on, go on.... the soldier knocks him down and beats him with his pike. kattrin starts to cry, but she goes on drumming. the peasant's wife: don't strike his back i for god's sake, you're beating him to death! the soldiers hurry in with the arquebus. in· 're 86 mother courage and her children second soldier: colonel's frothing at the mouth, sir. we're all for court-martial. the ensign: set it up l set it up! calls up while the gun is ) being erected: for the very last time: stop drumming i kattrin, in tears, drums as loud as she can. fire! the soldiers fire. kattrin is hit, gives a few more drumbeats and then slou4y crumples. the ensign: that's the end of that. but kattrin's last drumbeats are taken up by the town's cannon. in the distance can be heard a confused noise of tocsins and gunfire. fir st soldier: she's made it. i2 before first light. sound of the fifes and drums of troops marching off into the distance in front of the cart mother courage is sqtlatting by her daughter. the peasantfamily are standing near her. the peasants with hostility: you must go, missis. there's only one more regiment behind that one. you can't go on your own. mother courage: i think she's going to sleep. she sings: lullaby baby what's that in the hay? neighbours' kids grizzle but my kids are gay. neighbours' are in tatters and you're dressed in lawn cut down from the raiment an scene i2. 87 angel has worn. neighbours' kids go hungry and you shall eat cake suppose it's too crumbly you've only to speak. lullaby baby what's that in the hay? the one lies in poland the other who can say? better if you'd not told her nowt about your brother-in­ law's kids. the peasant: if you'd not gone into town to get your cut it might never of happened. mother courage: now she's asleep. the peasant's wife: she ain't asleep. can't you see she's passed over? the peasant: and it's high time you got away yourself. there are wolves around and, what's worse, marauders. mother courage: aye. she goes and gets a tarpaulin to cover the dead girl with. the peasant's wife: ain't you got nobody else? what you could go to ? mother courage: aye, one left. eilif. the peasant as mother courage covers the dead girl: best look for him, then. we'll mind her, see she gets proper burial. don't you worry about that. mother courage: here's money for expenses. she counts ou! coins into the peasant's hands. tbepeasant and his son shake hands with her and carry kattrin away. the peasant's wife as she leaves: i'd hurry. mother courage harnessing herself to the cart: hope i can pull cart all right by meself. be all right, nowt much inside it. got to get back in business again. --i ':'. i 'j'-4 ",,' t' ., with all its luck and all its danger the war is dragging on a bit another hundred years or longer the common man won't benefit. filthy his food, no soap to shave him the regiment steals half his pay. but still a miracle may save him: tomorrow is another day! the new year's come. the watchmen shout. the thaw sets in. the dead remain. wherever life has not died out it staggers to its feet again. 88 mother courage and her children another regiment with its fifes and drums marches past in the background. mother courage tugging the cart: take me along! singing is heardfrom offstage: the texts by brecht note the effect of the premiere of mother courage and her children, given in zurich during the second world war with the exceptional therese giehse in the title part, was to allow the bourgeois press to talk about a niobe-like tragedy and the heart-rending vitality of all maternal creatures. this despite the pacifist and anti-fascist convictions of the zurich schauspielhaus and its predominantly emigre german actors. thus forewarned, the playwright made certain changes for the berlin production. what follows is the original text. scene i, p. ii, line jj: mother courage: ••• look out for yourselves, you'll need to. and now up we get and on we go. the sergeant: i don't feel very well. the recruiter: perhaps you caught a chill taking your helmet off in that wind. the sergeant snatches back his helmet. mother courage: hey, gimme my papers, you. someone else might ask to see them, and there'd i be with no papers. she puts them all in her pewter box. the recruiter to eilif: have a look at them boots anyway. and then we men'll have one together. and come round behind the cart, i'll show you i got the bounty money on me. the sergeant: i don't get it, i'm always at the rear. sergeant's safest job there is. you can send the others up front, cover them­ selves with glory. me dinner hour's properly spoiled. shan't be able to hold nowt down, i know. mother courage addressing him: mustn't let it prey on you so's 90 notes and variants you can't eat. just stay at the rear. here, take a swig of brandy, man. gives him a drink from the cart. recruiter has taken eilif by the arm and is leading hi", a1vay up stage: if a bullet's got your name on there's nowt you can doabout it. you drew a cross, that's all. ten florins bounty money,then you're a gallant fellow fighting for the king and women'llbe after you like flies. and you can clobber me free for insulting you. exeunt both. dumb kattrin, having watched this seduction, makes hoarse noises. mother courage: all right, kattrin.tall right. sergeant's not feeling well, he's superstitious, i hadn't realised. and now let's get moving. where's eilif gone? swiss cheese: must have gone off with the recruiter. they was talking together the whole time. scene j, p. 48, line i i: mother courage to the other: can't pay, that it? no money, no schnapps. they give us military marches, but catch them giving men their pay. soldier: i want my schnapps. i missed the looting. that double­ crossing general only allowed an hour's looting in the town. he ain't an inhuman monster, he said. town must of paid him. the chaplain stumbles in: there are people still lying in that yard. the peasant's family. somebody give me a hand. i need linen. the second soldier goes of! with bim. mother courage: i got none. all my bandages was sold to regiment. i ain't tearing up my officers' shirts for that lot. c hap l a i n calling back: i need linen, i tell you. mother courage rummages in her cart: i'm giving nowt. they'll never pay, and why, nowt to pay with. chaplain bending over a woman he has carried in: why d'you stayaround during the gunfire? peasant womanfeebly: farm. mother courage: catch them abandoning anything. my lovelyshirts i tomorrow officers '11 be around and i'll have nowt for 'em. she throwsdown one which kattrin gives to the peasant woman.what's got into me, giving stuff away? wasn't me started this war. texts by brecht 91 first soldier: those are protestants. what they have to be protestants for? mother courage: they ain't bothering about faith. they lost their farm. second soldier: they're no protestants. they're catholics like us. first soldier: no way of sorting 'em out in a bombardment. a peasant brought in by the chaplain: my arm's gone. the painful screams of a child are heardfrom the house. the c hap l a i n to the peasant woman: lie where you arc. mother courage: get that child out of there! kattrin dashes in. mother courage tearing up shirts: a hundred florins apiece. i'm ruined. don't shift her as you're doing her bandage, it might be her back. to kattrin, who has rescued a baby from the ruins and is cradling it as she walks: how nice, found another baby to cart around? give it to its rna this instant, unless you'd have me fighting for hours to get it off you, like last time, d'you hear? kattrin pays no attention. all your victories mean to me is losses. that's enough, padre, come on, easy with my linen for christ sake. the chaplain: i need more, blood's coming through. mother courage referring to kattrin : look at her, happy as a queen in all this misery; give it back at once, its mother's coming round. as katlrin reluctantly hands the baby back to its mother, mother courage tears up another shirt. i can't give nowt, catch me, got to think of meself. to the second soldier: don't stand there gawping, you go back and tell them cut out that music, we can see it's a victory with our own eyes. help yourself to a glass of schnapps, padre, don't argue, i've enough troubles. she has to climb down off the cart to pull her daughter away from the first soldier, who is drunk. thought you'd score another victory, you animal? you're not getting away like that till you've paid. to the peasant: your kid won't go short. indicating the woma»: help yourself to something for her. to the first soldier: then leave that coat, it's stolen any road. the first soldier goes lurching away. mother courage tears lip further shirts. 'f h e c hap l a in: there's still someone under there. mother courage: don't worry, i'm tearing up the lot. 92 notes and variants scene 7, p. j9, line i6: high road. the chaplain, mother courage and kattrin are pulling the cart. it is filthy and neglected, but hllng ujith new wares none the less. mother courage sings: some people think to live by looting [etc. with one or two small variations not affecting the meaning] ... the refrain 'the newyear's come' is played fry her on her mouth-organ. scene i2, p. 86, line i6: the peasants: you must go, rrussis. there's only one more regiment behind that one. you can't go on your own. mother courage: she's still breathing. maybe she's falling asleep. the effect of the peasant wars, the greatest disaster in german history, was to draw the teeth of the reformation. that left busi­ ness and cynicism. along with her friends and guests and almost everyone else, courage and i say this as an aid to theatrical pro­ duction recognises the purely commercial nature of the war; indeed this is what attracts her to it. she believes in the war right to the end. it never even strikes her that in a war you need a big pair of scissors if you are to get your cut. observers of catastrophes are wrong to imagine that the victims will learn from these. so long as the masses remain the passive object of politics they will never be able to view what happens to them as an experiment, merely as a fate; they learn no more from the catastrophe than a guinea pig learns about biology. it is not the playwright's job to open courage's eyes at the end she catches a glimpse of some­ thing around the middle of the play, at the end of scene 6, then loses sight of it once more his concern is with the eyes of the audience. ['anmerkung' from versuche 9, suhrkamp, frankfurt 1949, reprinted in gw stucke 4.] the all texts by brecht 93 the story curve of the draljlaturgj i this scene emphasises that things are at the beginning. courage's canteen business and the new war as new undertakings of a familiar sort. (they begin and they continue; they begin by con­ tinuing.) needed: energy, enterprise, the prospect of new times, arrival of new business, together with new dangers. she longs for war and at the same time fears ;t she wants to join in, but as a peacea6ie business woman, not in a warlike way. she wants to maintain her family during the war and by means of it. she wants to serve the army and also to keep out of its clutches. her children: with her eldest son she is afraid of his bravery, but counts on his cleverness. with the second she is afraid of his stupidity but counts on his honesty. with her daughter she is afraid of her pity but counts on her dumbness. only her fears prove to be justified. she is anticipating business; she is going to go bankrupt. the play begins with the entrance (i.e. hanging about) of the men of war. the vast disorder of war begins with order, the vast disorganisation with organisation. the peaceful landscape and the men of iron. courage arrives four strong, goes away three strong. 2 war as a business idyll. courage swindles peasants out of a capon; her elder son robs peasants of their oxen. he wins fame and pos­ sessions; she profits. she pillages the army somewhat too. the danger for her son becomes more real. j being taken prisoner need be no disadvantage to her business. it seems that she had nothing to say against her younger son's join­ ing the army as a paymaster. all she thinks necessary in his case 94 notes and variants is honesty. this is the finish of him. if he had not been connected with the army he would not have been killed. her stubborn bar­ gaining over her cart costs her son his life. she stops her daughterfrom becoming a whore the only career open to her in wartime, and one which brings good fortune to yvette. in any case she is no antigone. 4 courage stifles her human reactions (any kind of outrage, rebellion or criticism) for the sake of her business. she thinks capitulationwill do something for her. j all the same, human reactions sometimes override her business principles. the general's victory leads to financial losses. 6 business, meant to earn her daughter's (peacetime) dowry, leads to her wartime disfigurement. courage counts on the length ofthe war, which is helpful to her finances but means spinsterhoodfor her daughter. finally for the first time she curses the war which, from a business standpoint, she must needs want. 7 peacetime is pleasant, if also ruinous. thanks to the peace she does not get her son back, but loses him for good. in her daughter's case peace arrives too late. the son falls because he has applied the principles of war in peacetime. the former camp prostitute yvettepottier has prospered as a result of the war and married a colonel. the war starts up again. will business start up again too? business is on the downgrade. the war is too long. disorgan­isation and disorder on every side. in a song courage (qua beggar) curses all the human virtues as not only uncommercial but posied texts by brecht 95 tively dangerous. for her daughter's sake she must give up the cook, who could have provided her with a roof over her head. she is bound to the war by pity for her daughter. !j the daughter perishes because of her pity for other people's children. courage goes on dragging her empty cart, alone, in the wake of the tattered army. [from werner hecht (ed.): materialien zu brechts 'mutter courage', frankfurt, suhrkamp, 1967, pp. 7-9.] three diary notes (i) going over mother courage i am quite pleased to see how war emerges as a vast field akin to the fields of modern physics, in which bodies experience peculiar deviations from their courses. any calculation about the individual based on peacetime experi­ ence proves to be unreliable, bravery is no help, nor is caution, nor honesty, nor crookedness, nor brutality, nor pity: all are equally fatal. we are left with those same forces that turn peace into war, the ones that can't be named. (ii) why is courage a realist work? it adopts a realist point of view on behalf of the people vis-a-vis all ideologies. to the people war is neither an uprising nor a busi­ ness operation, merely a disaster. its point of view is not a moral one: that is to say, it is ethical, but without being derived from the currently prevailing morality. the actions of the characters are given motives that can be recog­ nised and allowed for and will facilitate dealing with real people. the work functions in terms of the present state of conscious­ ness of the majority of mankind. (iii) rehearsing the new production of courage (with busch, geschon­ neck and lutz). paying particular attention to the dialectical ele96 notes and variants ments. cook and chaplain in scene 8, where peace brings them both to the edge of the precipice, are fighting for their quarters: their respective setbacks make them better people. the two enemies meet amicably on the plane of reminiscent nostalgia for the war. working on ruth's model book is a grind; but it has to be done if only to show how many things have to be taken into account for a production. [from brecht's arbeitsjournal, suhrkamp 1973, entries for 5 january 1941, 22 april 1941 and 4 june 1951. the new pro­ duction by the berliner ensemble had its premiere in september 195 1 and was then seen at the paris international theatre festival in 1954.] the mother courage model now, after the great war, life goes on in our ruined cities, but it is a different life, the life of different or differently composed groups, guided or thwarted by new surroundings, new because so much has been destroyed. the great heaps of rubble are piled on the city's invaluable substructure, the water and drainage pipes, the gas mains and electric cables. even those large buildings that have remained intact are affected by the damage and rubble around them, and may become an obstacle to planning. temporary structures must be built and there is always a danger of their becoming permanent. all this is reflected in art, for our way of thinking is part of our way of living. in the theatre we set up models to fill the gap. they immediately meet with strong op­ position from. all supporters of the old ways, of the routine that masquerades as experience and of the conventionality that calls itself creative freedom. and they are endangered by those who take them up without having learned to use them. while meant to simplify matters, they are not simple to handle. they were designed not to make thought unnecessary, but to provoke it; not to replace but to compel artistic creation. first of all we must imagine that the information which the printed text provides about certain events in this case the adven­ tures of mother courage and the losses she incurs _. has to some extent been complemented; it has now been established that when dry ej! of up op­ that calli who ean! 'ere eit; the ren­ me hen texts by brecht 97 the woman's dead son was brought to her she was sitting beside her mute daughter, and so on the kind of information which an artist painting some historic incident can arrive at by question­ ing eye-witnesses. later he can still change certain details as for one reason or another he may think advisable. until one has learned to copy (and construct) models in a living and intelligent way, one had better not copy too much. such things as the cook's makeup or mother courage's costume should not be imitated. the model should not be used to excess. pictures and descriptions of a performance are not enough. one does not learn much by reading that a character moves in a par­ ticular direction after a given sentence, even if the tone of the sentence, the way of walking, and a convincing motive can be supplied which is very difficult. the persons available for the imitation are not the same as those of the pattern; with them it would not have come into being. anyone who deserves the name of artist is unique; he represents something universal, but in his own individual way. he can neither be perfectly imitated nor give a perfect imitation. nor is it so important for artists to imitate art as to imitate life. the use of models is a particular kind of art, and there is a limit to what can be learned from it. the aim must be neither to copy the pattern exactly nor to break away from it too quickly. in studying what follows a number of explanations and dis­ coveries emerging from the rehearsal of a play one should above all be led by the solutions of certain problems to consider the problems themselves, music paul dessau's music for mother courage is not meant to be par­ ticularly easy; like the stage set, it left something to be supplied by the audience; in the act of listening they had to link the voices with the melody. art is not a land of cockaigne. in order to make the transition to the musical items, to let the music have its say, we lowered a musical emblem from the grid whenever there was a song which did not spring directly from the action, or which did spring from it but remained clearly apart. this consisted of a trumpet, a drum, a flag, and electric globes that lit up; a slight and delicate thing, pleasant to look at, even if scene 9 found it badly 98 notes and variants damaged. some people regarded this as sheer playfulness, as an unrealistic element. but on the one hand playfulness in the theatre should not be condemned out of hand as long as it is kept within bounds, and on the other it was not wholly unrealistic, for it served to set the music apart from the reality of the action. we made use of it as a visible sign of the shift to another artistic level­ that of music and in order to give the right impression that these were musical insertions, rather than to lead people to think quite mistakenly that the songs 'sprang from the action'. people who object to this are quite simply opposed to anything intermittent, inorganic, pieced-together this chiefly because they object to any shattering of illusion. what they ought to have objected to was not the tangible symbol of music, but the manner of fitting the musical numbers into the play: i.e. as insertions. the musicians were placed so that they could be seen, in a box beside the stage thus their performances became little concerts, independent contributions made at suitable points in the play. the box communicated with the stage, so that a musician or two could occasionally go backstage for trumpet calls or when music occurred as part of the action. we began with the overture. it was a bit thin, for it was per­ formed by only four musicians; still, it was a reasonably cere­ monious preparation for the confusions of war. stage design for the production we are describing, at the deutsches theater in berlin, we used the well-known model devised by teo otto during the war for the zurich schauspielhaus. there was a permanent framework of huge screens, making use of such materials as one would expect to find in the military encampments of the seventeenth century: tenting, wooden posts lashed together with ropes, etc. three-dimensional structures, realistic both as to construction and as to material, were placed on the stage to represent such buildings as the parsonage and the peasants' house, but in artistic abbreviation, only so much being shown as was necessary for the action. coloured projections were thrown on the cyclorama, and the revolving stage was used to give the impression of travel we varied the size and position of the screens and used them only for the camp scenes, so as to distinguish these from the texts by brecht 99 scenes on the highway. the berlin stage designer made his own versions of the buildings (in scenes 2, 4, 5, 9, 10 and ii), but on the same principle. we dispensed with the background projections used in zurich and hung the names of the various countries over the stage in large black letters. we used an even, white light, as much of it as our equipment permitted. i�ted any vesti� of 'atmosphere' that courd eas,jil: have given the jncidents a romantjc tiag@. we retained almost everything else down to the smallest details (chopping block, hearth, etc.), par­ ticularly the admirable positionings of the cart. this last was very important because it determined much of the grouping and move­ ment from the outset. surprisingly little is lost by the sacrifice of complete freedom of 'artistic creation' . you have to start somewhere, with some­ thing, and it may as well be with something that has already been fully thought out. freedom will be acquired through the principle of contradiction, which is continually active and vocal in all of us. realistic theatre and illusion writing in i r26, goethe spoke of the 'inadequacy of the english wooden stage' of shakespeare's day.. he says: 'there is no trace here of the aids to naturalness to which we have gradually become accustomed through the improvement in machinery, in the art of perspective and in costuming.' 'who?' he asks, 'would tolerate such a thing today? under those conditions shakespeare's plays would become highly interesting fairy tales, narrated by a number of persons who tried to increase their effectiveness somewhat by making up as the characters, by coming and going and carrying out the movements necessary to the story, but left it to the audi­ ence to imagine as many paradises and palaces as they pleased on the empty stage.' since he wrote these words, the mechanical equipment of our theatres has been improving for a hundred years, and 'aids to naturalness' have led to such emphasis on illusion that we late­ comers would be more inclined to put up with shakespeare on an empty stage than with a shakespeare who had ceased to require or provoke any use of the imagination. in goethe's day such improvement as had been made in the mechanics of illusion was relatively harmless, since the machinery 100 notes and variants was so imperfect, so much 'in the childhood of its beginnings', that theatre itself was still a reality and both imagination and ingenuity could still be employed to turn nature into art. the sets were still theatrical displays, in which the stage designer gave an artistic and poetic interpretation of the places concerned. the bourgeois classical theatre occupied a happy halfway point on the road to naturalistic illusionism. stage machinery provided enough elements of illusion to improve the representation of some aspects of reality, but not so much as to make the audience feel that they were no longer in a theatre; art had not yet come to signify the obliteration of all indications that art is at work. since there was no electricity, lighting effects were still primitive; where poor taste decreed sunset effects, poor equipment prevented total enchantment. the meiningers' authentic costumes came later; they were usually magnificent, though not always beautiful, and they were after all compensated by an inauthentic manner of speaking. in short, theatre remained the theatre, at least where it failed in its business of deception. today the restoration of the theatre's reality as theatre is a precondition for any realistic representation of human relations. too much heightening of the illusion in the setting, along with a 'magnetic' manner of acting which gives the spectator the illusion of being present at a fleeting, fortuitous 'real' event, create such an impression of naturalness that one can no longer interpose one's judgment, imagination or reactions, and must simply conform by sharing in the experience and becoming one of 'nature's' objects. the illusion created by the theatre must be a partial one, so that it can always be recognised as illusion. reality, however completely represented, must be changed by art, in order that it may be seen to be subject to change and treated as such. that is why we are demanding naturalness today because we want to change the nature of our human relations. elements of l!!usionno doubt the sight of the cyclorama behind a completely empty stage (in the prologue and in the seventh and last scenes) creates the illusion of a flat landscape with the sky above it. there is no objection to this, because there must be some stirring of poetry in the soul of the spectator if such an illusion is to come about. we ty tel ira try jt. texts by brecht 101 thanks to the ease with which it is created, the actors are able to suggest by their manner of playing, at the beginning that a wide horizon lies open to the business enterprise of the little family of provisioners, then at the end that the exhausted seeker after fortune is faced by boundless devastation. and we can always hope that this substantive impression of the play will combine with a formal one: that when the spectator sees the empty stage, soon to be inhabited, he will be able to share in the initial void from which everything arises. on this tabula rasa, he knows, the actors have been working for weeks, testing first one detail, then another, coming to know the incidents of the chronicle by portray­ ing them, and portraying them by judging them. and now the play is starting and mother courage's cart comes rolling on to the stage. if in big matters such a thing as a beautiful approximation is possible, in matters of detail it is not. a realistic portrayal requires carefully worked-out detail in costumes and props, for here the imagination of the audience can add nothing. all implements connected with working and eating must have been most lovingly made. and the costumes, of course, cannot be as for a folklore festival; they must show signs of individuality and social class. they have been worn for a longer or shorter time, are made of cheaper or more expensive material, are well or not so well taken care of, etc. jhe costumes for this production of mother courage were by __ �. what is a performance of mother courage and her children primarily meant to show? that in wartime the big profits are not made by little people. that war, which is a continuation of business by other means, makes the human virtues fatal even to their possessors. that no sacrifice is too great for the struggle against war. prologue by way of a prologue, mother courage and her little family were shown on their way to the war zone. mother courage sang her business song from scene i (so that in scene i her answer 'in business' is followed immediately by the sergeant's question: 102 notes and variants 'halt! who are you lot with ?'). after the overture, to spare the performer the exertion of singing against the rumbling of the revolve, the first stanza was played on a record, the house being darkened. then the prologue begins. the long road to war the linen half-curtain, on which in the following the titles of the scenes are projected, opens and mother courage's cart is rolled forward against the movement of the revolve. the cart is a cross between a military vehicle and a general store. a sign affixed to the side of it says: 'second finnish regi­ ment' and another 'mother courage, groceries'. on the canvas swedish pork sausages are displayed next to a flag with a price tag indicating 'four florins'. the cart will undergo several changes in the course of the chronicle. there will be sometimes more, sometimes less merchandise hanging on it, the canvas will be dirtier or cleaner, the letters on the signs will be faded and then again freshly painted, depending on the state of business. now, at the start, it is clean and richly covered with wares. the cart is pulled by the two sons. they sing the second stanza of mother courage's business song: 'generals, how can you make them face it i march off to death without a brew?' on the box sit dumb kattrin, playing the jew's harp, and mother courage. courage is sitting in lazy comfort, swaying with the cart and yawning. everything, including her one backward glance, indicates that the cart has come a long way. we had conceived of the song as a dramatic entrance, lusty and cocky we had the last scene of the play in mind. but weigel saw it as a realistic business song and suggested that it be used to picture the long journey to the war. such are the ideas of great actors. once this was settled, it seemed to us that by showing the business woman's long journey to the war zone we would be showing clearly enough that she was an active and voluntary participant in the war. but certain reviews and many discussions with persons who had seen the play showed that a good many people regarded mother courage merely as a representative of the 'little people' who 'become involved in the war in spite of them­ selves', who are 'helpless victims of the war', and so on. a deeply � . ....... .l� .. i -, • " r.l texts by brecht 103 engrained habit leads the theatregoer to pick out the more emo­ tional utterances of the characters and overlook everything else. like descriptions of landscapes in novels, references to business are received with boredom. the 'business atmosphere' is simply the air one breathes and as such requires no special mention. and so, regardless of all our efforts to represent the war as an aggregate of business deals, the discussions showed time and time again that people regarded it as a timeless abstraction. too short can be too long the two stanzas of the opening song plus the pause between them during which the cart rolls silently along, take up a certain amount of time, too much time it seemed to us at first in rehearsal. but when we cut the second stanza, the prologue seemed longer, and when we prolonged the pause between the stanzas, it seemed shorter. [ ... ] i the business woman anna fierling, known as mother courage, encounters the swedish army recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. mother courage introduces her mixed family, acquired in various theatres of war, to a sergeant. the canteen woman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife. she sees that her sons are listening to the recruiters and predicts that the sergeant will meet an early death. to make her children afraid of the war, she has them draw black crosses as well. thanks to a small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son. and the sergeant leaves her with a prophecy: 'want the war to nourish you? you must feed it something too.' 104 notes and variants overall arrangement recruiters are going about the country looking for cannon fodder. on the empty stage the sergeant and the recruiter are standing right front on the lookout, complaining in muffled voices of the difficulty of finding cannon fodder for their general. the city of which the sergeant speaks is assumed to be in the orchestra. mother courage's cart appears and the recruiters' mouths water at the sight of the young men. the sergeant cries 'halt!' and the cart stops. mother courage introduces her mixed fami(y, acquired in various theatres of war, to a sergeant. the professionals of commerce and of war meet, the war can start. at the sight of the military, the fierlings may hesitate for a moment as though afraid: the soldiers on their own side are also enemies; the army gives, but it also takes. mother courage's 'morning, sergeant' is spoken in the same curt, military monotone as his 'morning, all.' climbing down from her cart, she makes it clear that she regards showing her papers as a formality, superfluous among professionals ('all right, we'll run through the whole routine'). she introduces her little family, acquired in various theatres of war, in a jocular tone: she puts on a bit of a 'mother courage' act. the cart and the children are on the left, the recruiters on the right. mother courage crosses over with her tin box full of papers. she has been summoned, but she is also sallying forth to scout and do business. she describes her children from the other side of the stage, as though better able to take them in from a distance. the recruiter makes forays behind her back, stalking the sons, tempting them. the pivotal point is in the lines: 'i bet you could do with a good pistol, or a belt buckle?' and 'i could do with something else.' the canteen u/oman defends her sons against the recruiters with a knife. the sergeant leaves her standing there and goes over to the sons, followed by the recruiter. he thumps their chests, feels their calves. he goes back and stands before mother courage: 'why aren't they in the army?' the recruiter has stayed with the sons: 'let's see if you're a chicken.' mother courage runs over, thrusts herself between the recruiter and her son: 'he's a chicken.' the recruiter goes over to the sergeant (on the right) and complains: 'he was crudely offensive'; mother courage snatches her eilif away. the sergeant tries to reason, but mother courage pulls a knife and stands there in a rage, guarding her sons. the texts by brecht 105 mother courage sees that her sons are listening to the recruiter and predicts that the sergeant u'ill meet an early death. again she goes over to the sergeant ('give me your helmet'). her children follow her and look on, gaping. the recruiter makes a flank movement, comes up to eilif from behind and speaks to him. when after some hesitation the sergeant has drawn his black cross, the children, satisfied, go back to the cart, but the recruiter follows them. and when mother courage turns ('i've got to take advantage'), she sees the recruiter between her sons; he has his arms around their shoulders. to make her children afraid of the war, mother courage has them draw black crosses as well. the rebellion in her own ranks is in full swing. she runs angrily behind her cart to paint black crosses for her children. when she returns to the cart's shaft with the helmet, the recruiter, grinning, leaves the children to her and goes back (right) to the sergeant. when the sombre ceremony is over, mother courage goes to the sergeant, returns his helmet, and with flutter­ ing skirts climbs up on the seat of the cart. the sons have harnessed themselves, the cart starts moving. mother courage has mastered the situation. because of a small business deal, she nevertheless loses her brave son. but the sergeant has only been half defeated; on the recruiter's advice, he offers to make a purchase. electrified, mother courage climbs down from the cart and the sergeant draws her off left behind the cart. while the deal is in progress, the recruiter takes the harness off eilif and leads him away. kattrin sees this, climbs down from the cart and tries in vain to call her mother's attention to eilif's disappearance. but mother courage is deep in her bar­ gaining. only after she has snapped her moneybag shut does she notice his absence. for a moment she has to sit down on the cart shaft, still holding her buckles. then she angrily flings them into the cart, and the family, with one less member, moves gloomily off. and the sergeant leaves her with a prophecy. laughing, he predicts that if she wants to live off the war, she will also have to give the war its due. [ ... ] 106 notes and variants the recruiters the empty stage of the prologue was transformed into a specific locality by means of a few clumps of wintry grass marking the edge of a highway. here the military men stand waiting, freezing in their armour. the great disorder of war begins with order, disorganisation with organisation. the troublemakers have troubles of their own. we hear complaints to the effect that it takes intelligence to get a war started. the military are businessmen. the sergeant has a little book that he consults, the recruiter has a map to help him fight with geography. the fusion of war and business cannot be established too soon. grouping there will be some difficulty in persuading the actors playing the sergeant and the recruiter to stay together and in one place until mother courage's cart appears. in our theatre, groups always show a strong tendency to break up, partly because each actor believes he can heighten audience interest by moving about and changing his position, and partly because he wants to be alone, so as to divert the attention of the audience from the group to himself. but there is no reason not to leave the military men together; on the contrary, both the image and the argument would be impaired by a change of position. changes ofposition positions should be retained as long as there is no compelling reason for changing them and a desire for variety is not a com­ pelling reason. if one gives in to a desire for variety, the consequence is a devaluation of all movement on the stage; the spectator m ceases to look for a specific meaning behind each movement, he in stops taking movement seriously. but, especially at the crucial points in the action, the full impact of a change of position must not be weakened. legitimate variety is obtained by ascertaining the crucial points and planning the arrangement around them. al for example, the recruiters have been listening to mother courage; she has succeeded in diverting and entertaining them with her talk the until iways actor ut and inc the ing texts by brecht 107 and so putting them in a good humour; so far there has been only one ominous circumstance: the sergeant has asked for her papers; but he has not examined them his only purpose was to prolong their stay. she takes the next step (physically too: she goes up to the sergeant, takes hold of his belt buckle, and says: '1 bet you could do with a belt-buckle ?'), she tries to sell them something, and that is when the recruiters spring into action. the sergeant says ominously: 'i could do with something else' and along with the recruiter goes over to the sons at the cart's shaft. the recruiters look the sons over as they would horses. the crucial point is accented when the sergeant goes back to mother courage, comes to a standstill before her, and asks: '\\?hy are they dodging their military service?' (the effect of such movements should not be weakened by having the actors speak during them.) if changes of position are needed to make certain developments clear to the audience, the movement must be utilised to express something significant for the action and for this particular moment; if nothing of the sort can be found, it is advisable to review the whole arrangement up to this point; it will probably be seen to be at fault, because the sole purpose of an arrangement is to express the action, and the action (it is to be hoped) involves a logical develop­ ment of incidents, which the arrangement need only present. on 'n, ta im be mrelling t a com· on details on the brightly lighted stage every detail, even the smallest, must of course be acted out to the full. this is especially true of actions which on our stage are glossed over almost as a matter of principle, such as payment on conclusion of a sale. here weigel devised (for the sale of the buckle in i, the sale of the capon in 2, the sale of drinks in 5 and 6, the handing out of the burial money in 12, etc.) a little gesture of her own: she audibly snaps shut the leather moneybag that she wears slung from her neck. it is indeed difficult in rehearsals to resist the impatience of actors who are in the habit of trying to sweep an audience off its feet, and to work out the details painstakingly and inventively in accordance with the principle of epic theatre: one thing after another. even minute details are very revealing, e.g. the fact that when the recruiters step up to her sons and feel their muscles as if they were horses, mother courage displays maternal pride for a moment, until the sergeant'sourage; her talk 108 notes and variants question ('why are they dodging their military service ?') showsher the danger their qualities put them in: then she rushes between her sons and the recruiters. the pace at rehearsals should be slow, if only to make it possible to work out details; determining the pace of the performance is another matter and comes later. a detail in pulling a knife, mother courage shows no savagery. she is merely showing how far she will go in defending her children. the performer must show that mother courage is familiar with such situations and knows how to handle them. mother courage has her children draw lots. only by a mild tirade and by eloquently averting her face when swiss cheese draws his slip from the helmet in other words by a slightly exaggerateddisplay of impartiality (see for yourself, no sleight-of-hand, no tricks) does the actress show that mother courage knows she has been tampering with fate otherwise she fully believes what she says, namely, that in certain situations certain of her children's qualities and defects could be fatal. mother courage predicts that the sergeant will meet an eariy death. we discovered that mother courage had to turn around towards eilif before stepping up to the sergeant to let him draw his lot. otherwise it would not have been understood that she does this in order to frighten her warlike son away from the war. the belt-buckle deal. mother courage loses her son to the recruiter because she can't resist the temptation to sell a belt buckle. after climbing down from the cart to bring the sergeant the buckle, she must at first show a certain amount of distrust by looking around anxiously for the recruiter. once the sergeant, seizing the stringof buckles, has drawn her behind the cart, her distrust shifts to the area of business. when she goes to get schnapps for the ser­ geant, she takes the buckle, which has not yet been paid for, outof his hands; and she bites into the coin. the sergeant is dismayedat her distrust. if the distrust at the beginning were omitted, we should have a stupid, utterly uninteresting woman, or a person with a passionfor business but no experience. the distrust must not be absent, it must merely be too weak to do any good. ws een owl the ser­ out )'ed are jon t,it texts by brecht 1°9 pantomime the recruiter must act out the scene where he removes the harness from eilif ('women'll be after you like flies'). he is freeing him from his yoke. he has forced a florin on him; holding out his fist with the florin in it in front of him, eilif goes off as if in a trance. proportion weigel showed a masterful sense of proportion in playing mother courage's reaction to the abduction of her brave son. she showed dismay rather than horror. in becoming a soldier, her son has not been lost, he is merely in danger. and she will lose other children. to show that she knows very well why eilif is no longer with her, weigel let her string of belt buckles drag on the ground and threw it angrily into the cart after holding it between her legs while sitting on the shaft for a few moments to rest. and she does not look her daughter in the face as she puts her into eilif's harness. 2 before the fortress of wallhof mother courage meets her brave son again mother courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the swedish camp ; while driving a hard bargain oijer a capon, she makes the acquaintance of an army cook who is to play an important part in her life. the swedish general brings a young soldier into his tent and honour him for his bravery. mother courage recognises her lost son in the young soldier ; taking aduan­ tage of the meal in eilif's honour, she gets a steep price for her capon. eilif relates his heroic deed and mother courage, while pluckin<.� her capon in the kitchen a4joining the tent, expresses opinions about rotten generals. eilif does a sword dance and his mother answers lvith a song. eilif hugs his mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself in danger with his heroism. '\ \ 110 notes and variants overall arrangement mother courage sells provisions at exorbitant prices in the swedish camp before the fortress of wal/hof; while driving a hard bargain over a caponshe makes the acquaintance of an army cook who is to play an important part in her life. in this scene the movement occurs at the pivotalpoint ('you know what i'm going to do ?'). the cook stops peel­ing his carrots, fishes a piece of rotten meat out of the garbagebarrel and takes it over to the butcher's block. courage's attemptat blackmail has failed. the swedish general brings a young soldier into his tent and makes a short speech commending him for his bravery. a drumroll outside the tent announces the arrival of highly placed persons. it need not beclear whether the general drinks in order to honour the soldier or honours the soldier in order to drink. meanwhile in the kitchen adjoining the tent the cook is preparing the meal. courage staysright there with her capon. motber courage recognises her lost son in the young soldier ; takingaduantage of the meal in eilij's honour, she gets a steep price for her capon.mother courage is overcome with joy at seeing her son, but not too overcome to turn eilif's reappearance to her business advan­ tage. meanwhile, the general gets the chaplain to bring him a spillto light his clay pipe. eilij relates his heroic deed and mother courage, while plucking hercapon in the kitchen, expresses opinions about rotten generals. at firstthe mother beams as she listens to the story, then her face clouds over, and in the end she throws her capon angrily into the tubin front of her. resuming her work, she lets it be known what she thinks of the general; at the same time the general in the tentshows her son on the map what new deeds of heroism he needs him for. eilij does a sword dance and his mother answers with a song. eilif doeshis sword dance front stage near the partition between tent andkitchen. mother courage creeps up to the partition to finish the song. then she goes back to her tub but remains standing.eilif hugs his mother and gets a slap in the face for putting himself indanger with his heroism. texts by brecht i i i the capon deal the bargaining over the capon between courage and the cook served among other things to establish the beginning of their tender relationship. both showed pleasure in the bargaining, and the cook expressed his admiration not only for her ready tongue but also for the shrewdness with which she exploited the honour­ ing of her son for business purposes. courage in turn was amused at the way the cook fished the chunk of rotten beef out of the garbage barrel with the tip of his long meat knife and carried it, carefully as though it were a precious object though to be kept at a safe distance from one's nose over to his kitchen table. the actor bildt played the scene brilliantly, making the cook, a don juan fired by budding passion, prepare the capon with theatrical elegance. this dumb, show, it should be observed, was performed with restraint, so that it did not distract from the scene in the tent. bildt even took the trouble to acquire a dutch accent with the help of a dutchman. [ ... ] the general the general was made into something of a cliche. too much gruff bluster, and the performance showed too little about the ruling class. it would have been better to make him an effete swedish aristocrat, who honours the brave soldier as a matter of routine action, almost absently. if this had been done, his very entrance he is drunk, supports himself on the guest of honour, and heads straight for the wine jug would have been more instructive. as it was, one saw little more than rowdy drunkenness. [ ... ] the war of religion the general's treatment of the chaplain is meant to show the role of religion in a war of religion. this was played rather crudely. the general has him bring the burning spill for his pipe and contemptuously pours wine over his coat; with his eyes on eilif, the chaplain wipes the hem of his cassock, half protesting, half taking it as a joke. he is not invited to sit down to table like the i i 2 notes and varian tx young murderer, nor is he given anything to drink. but what shows his position most clearly is the undignified way, resulting from the indignity of his position, with which he sits down at table and pours himself wine when the general leads the young soldier, in whose presence all this is enacted, to the map on the tent wall, thereby leaving the table unoccupied. this position is the source of the chaplain's cynicism. eilif's dance the brave son's short sword dance must be executed with passion as well as ease. the young man is imitating a dance he has seen somewhere. it is not easy to make such things evident. costume: eilif has a cheap, dented breastplate and is still wear­ ing his frayed trousers. not until scene 8 (the outbreak of peace) does he wear expensi ve clothing and gear; he dies rich. a detail during her angry speech about rotten generals courage plucks her capon violently, giving the plucking a kind of symbolic significance. brief bursts of laughter from the amused cook inter­ rupt her blasphemies. [ ... ] 3 mother courage switches from the lutheran to the catholic camp and loses her honest son swiss cheese black-marketing in ammuninon. mother courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers. while courage flirts l1lith the cook and the chaplain, dumb kattrin tries on the whore's hat and shoes. surprise attack. first meal in the catholic camp. conversation between brother and sister and arrest of swiss cheese. mother courage mortgages her cart to the camp whore in order to ransom swiss cheese. tif' texts by brecht i 13 courage haggles over the amount of the bribe. she haggles too long and hears the volley that lays swiss cheese low. dumb kattrin stands beside her mother to wait for the dead swiss cheese. for fear ofgiving herself away, courage denies her dead son. overall arrangement during the whole scene the cart stands left with its shaft pointed towards the audience, so that those to the left of it are not seen by those on the right. centre rear there is a flagpole, right front a barrel serving as a dining table. the scene is divided into four parts: the surprise attack, the arrest of the honest son, the bargaining, the denial. after the first two parts the half-curtain is drawn; after the third part the stage is darkened. black-marketing in ammunition. mother courage enters from the left, followed by an ordnance officer who is trying to talk her into something. for a moment she stands front stage with him; after 'not at that price', she turns away from him and sits down on a box near the cart, where swiss cheese is already sitting. the business is conducted in an undertone. kattrin is called away from taking down the washing and goes behind the cart left with the ordnance officer. courage has started mending swiss cheese's pants; while working, she admonishes him to be honest. return­ ing from the other side of the cart, the ordnance officer takes him away with him. this and the following scenes have the tone of an idyll. mother courage serves a camp whore and warns her daughter not to take up with soldiers. taking her sewing, courage sits down with the pottier woman. kattrin listens to their conversation as she takes the washing off the line. after her song, pottier, with a conspicuously whorish gait, goes behind the cart. while courage flirts with the cook and the chaplain, dumb kattrin tries on the whore's hat and shoes. after some brief banter, mother courage leads her guests behind the cart for a glass of wine and they strike up a political conversation. after the inserted sentence 'this is a war of faith', the cook ironically starts singing the hymn 'a strong­ hold sure'. this gives kattrin time to tryon yvette's hat and shoes. surprise attack. the fixed point amid all the running and shout­ ing of the surprise attack is the chaplain, who stands still and gets 114 notes and variants in everybody's way. the rest of the arrangement follows from the printed text. first mea! ill the catholic camp. the chaplain, now mother courage's potboy, joins the little family around the cooking pot; swiss cheese keeps slightly to one side; he wants to get away. conversation between brother and sister and arrest of swiss cheese. the conversation between brother and sister takes place at the improvised dining table. when kattrin sees the spy behind the cart, she tries to stop her brother from climbing into it. when courage comes back with the chaplain, kattrin runs towards her as far as the centre of the stage. courage, the chaplain and kattrin group themselves around the table, waiting for the catholics. mother collra.f!,e tries to !jiorlgal!,e her wa(e,oll 10 the camp whore ill order 10 ransom siv;ss cheese. the chaplain runs to meet courage; she is exhausted and he catches her in his arms in front of the cart. she quickly frees herself from his embrace, which has restored her strength a little, and starts thinking. her plan is all ready when pottier comes along with the colonel. pottier leaves the colonel standing there, runs over to courage, gives her the kiss of judas, runs back to her cavalier, and then crawls avidly into the cart. courage pulls her out, curses her, and sends her off with a push to negotiate over swiss cheese. mother courage haggles over the amount of the bribe. courage has set kattrin and the chaplain to washing glasses and scouring knives, so creating a certain atmosphere of siege. standing centre stage between her family and the whore, she refuses to give up her cart entirely she has fought too hard for it. she sits down again to scour knives and does not stand up when pottier comes back with the news that the soldiers are asking two hundred florins. now she is willing to pay. mother courage hears the volley that lays swiss cheese imp. no sooner has courage sent pottier away than she suddenly stands up and says: '1 think 1 bargained too long.' the volley rings out, the chaplain leaves her and goes behind the wagon. it grows dark. for fear of giving herself away, courage denies her dead son. yvette walks slowly out from behind the wagon. she scolds courage, warns her not to give herself away, and brings kattrin out from behind the wagon. her face averted, kattrin goes to her mother and stands behind her. swiss cheese is brought in. his mother goes over to him and denies him. texts by brecht i i 5 movements and groupings the arrangement of the movements and groupings must follow the rhythm of the story and give pictorial expression to the action. in scene 3 a camp idyll is disrupted by the enemy's surprise attack. the idyll should be composed from the start in such a way as to make it possible to show a maximum of disruption. it must leave room for people to run to and fro in clearly laid-out confusion; the parts of the stage must be able to change their functions. at the beginning of the scene kattrin is hanging out washing on a clothes-line stretched between the cart and the cannon right rear so that courage can hurriedly take it down at the end of the scene. in order to rescue her washing, courage must go diagonally right across the stage. kattrin sits huddled by the barrel right front, where at the beginning yvette was being served as a customer; courage takes soot from the cart and brings it to the barrel to rub on her daughter's face. the same place which up until then had been devoted exclusively to business is now the scene of a private incident. carrying the cash-box, swiss cheese enters diagonally from right rear to the cart left front in such a way that his path crosses that of courage hurrying to her daughter. first she runs a few steps past him, but she has seen the cash box and turns round towards him just as he is about to enter the cart. she stands for a moment like a hen between two endangered chicks, undecided which to save first. while she is smearing her daughter's face, her son hides the cash box in the cart; she cannot reprove him until she has finished with her daughter and he comes back out of the cart. she is still standing beside him when the chaplain rushes out from behind the cart and points to the swedish flag. courage runs to it centre rear and takes it down. the camp idyll that is disrupted by the attack must be divided into distinct parts. after the shady little deal in black-market ammunition has been completed by the cart steps, swiss cheese followed by the ordnance officer goes out right. the ordnance officer recognises the camp whore who is sitting by the barrel, sewing her hat; he looks away in disgust. yvette shouts something after him, and then, when the centre of gravity has shifted to the right side of the stage, courage also comes slowly 116 notes and variants over to the barrel. (a little later kattrin follows, coming out from behind the cart and starting once more to hang up the washing.) the two women talk and kattrin listens as she hangs up the washing. yvette sings her song. with a provocative gait, she goes out from right front to left rear. kattrin watches her and is admonished by her mother. the cook and the chaplain come in from the right rear. after a brief bit of banter during which they attract the attention of the audience to kattrin by the attention they pay to her, mother courage leads them behind the wagon. the political discussion and kattrin's pantomine follow. she imitates yvette, walking over the same ground. the alarm begins with the ordnance officer and soldiers running in from right rear. the cook goes out in that direction after courage has run to the cannon to rescue her washing and kattrin to the barrel to hide her feet. . important courage's unflagging readiness to work is important. she is hardly ever seen not working. it is her energy and competence that make her lack of success so shattering. a tiny scene the tiny scene at the beginning of 3, in which army property is black-marketed, shows the general and matter-of-fact corruption in army camps during the great war of religion. the honest son listens with half an ear, as to something quite usual, his mother does not conceal the crooked business from him, but admonishes him to be honest because he is not bright. his heeding of this advice is going to cost him his life. yvette pottier kattrin has the example of yvette before her. she herself must work hard; the whore drinks and lolls about. for kattrin too the only form of love available in the midst of the war would be prostitution. yvette sings a song showing that other forms of love lead to grave trouble. at times the whore becomes powerful by selling herself at a high price. mother courage, who only sells texts by brecht i 17 boots, must struggle desperately to defend her cart against her. mother courage of course makes no moral condemnation of yvette and her special type of business. the colonel the colonel whom yvette lugs in to buy courage's cart for her is difficult to play, because he is a purely negative quantity. his only function is to show the price the whore must pay for her rise in life; consequently he must be repellent. [georg-peter] pilz portrayed the aged colonel subtly, making him mime an ardent passion of which he was not for one moment capable. the old man's lechery erupted as though in response to a cue, and he seemed to forget his surroundings. an instant later he forgot his lechery and stared absently into the void. the actor produced a striking effect with his stick. in his passionate moments he pressed it to the ground so hard that it bent; an instant later it snapped straight this suggested loathsome aggressive impotence and produced an irresistibly comic effect. considerable elegance is required to keep such a performance within the bounds of good taste. a detail having finished hanging up the washing, kattrin stares open­ mouthed at the visitors from the general's tent. the cook honours her with special attention as he follows courage behind the cart. this is probably what gives her the idea of stealing yvette's weapons. the two sides while on one side of the cart the war is being discussed with frank mockery, kattrin is appropriating some of the tools of the whore's trade and practising yvette's swaying gait, which she has just seen. here [angelika] hurwicz's facial expression was strained and deeply serious. i 18 notes and variants 'a stronghold sure' the first part of kattrin's pantomime occurs after 'i wasn't mis­ taken in your face.' (the cook added: 'this is a war of faith.') at this point courage, the cook and the chaplain placed themselves to one side of the cart in such a way that they could not see kattrin, and struck up 'a stronghold sure.' they sang it with feeling, casting anxious glances around them as though such a song were illegal in the swedish camp. the surprise attack it must be brought out that courage is used to such surprises and knows how to handle them. before she thinks about saving the cannon, she rescues her washing. she helps the chaplain to disguise himself, she smears her daughter's face, she tells her son to throw the cash box away, she takes down the swedish flag. all this she does as a matter of routine, but by no means calmly. [ ... ] the meal courage has prepared it. enlarged by the new employee who was a chaplain only that morning, the little family still seem somewhat flurried; in talking they look around like prisoners, but the mother is making jokes again; the catholics, she says, need trousers as much as the protestants. they have not learned that honesty is just as mortally dangerous among catholics as among lutherans. the chaplain the chaplain has found a refuge. he has his own bowl to eat from and he makes himself awkwardly useful, hauls buckets of water, scours knives, and so on. otherwise he is still an outsider. for this reason or because of his phlegmatic disposition he shows no exaggerated involvement in the tragedy of the honest son. while courage is engaged in her unduly prolonged bargaining, he looks upon her simply as his source of support. texts by brecht ii9 swiss cheese i t seems to be hard for an actor to repress his pity for the character he is playing and not to reveal his knowledge of his impending death. in speaking to his sister swiss cheese shows no forebodings; this is what makes him so moving when he is taken. brother and sister the short conversation between dumb kattrin and swiss cheese is quiet and not without tenderness. shortly before the destruction we are shown for the last time what is to be destroyed. the scene goes back to an old japanese play in which two boys conclude a friendship pact. their way of doing this is that one shows the other a flying bird, while the second shows the first a cloud. a detail kattrin gesticulates too wildly in telling her mother about the arrest of swiss cheese. consequently courage does not under­ stand her and says: 'use your hands, i don't like it when you howl like a dog, what'll his reverence say? makes him uncomfort­ able.' hurwicz made kattrin pull herself together and nod. she understands this argument, it is a strong one. a detail while the sergeant was questioning her in the presence of swiss cheese, courage rummaged in a basket a busy business woman with no time for formalities. but after the sentence: 'and don't you twist his shoulder' she ran after the soldiers who were leading him away. yvette's three trips yvette runs back and forth three times for the sake of courage's son and her cart. her anger changes from mere anger at courage's attempt to swindle her by paying her out of the regimental cash box to anger at courage's betrayal of her son. 120 notes and variants kattrin and the bargaining over swiss cheese the portrayal of dumb kattrin is not realistic if her goodness is stressed to the point of making her oppose her mother's attempt to get the amount of the bribe reduced. she runs off from scouring the knives when she begins to see that the bargaining has been going on too long. when after the execution yvette sends her ahead and she goes to her mother with her face averted, there may be a reproach in this but above all she cannot look her in the face. the denial courage is s1tting, holding the hand of her daughter \v ho is standing. when the soldiers come in with the dead boy and she is asked to look at him, she stands up, goes over, looks at him, shakes her head, goes back and sits down. during all this she has an obstinate expression, her lower lip thrust forward. here weigel's recklessness in throwing away her role reaches its highest point. (the actor playing the sergeant can command the spectator's astonishment by looking around at his men in astonishment at such hardness.) observation her look of extreme suffering after she has heard the shots, her unscreaming open mouth and backward-bent head probably derived from a press photograph of an indian woman crouched over the body of her dead son during the shelling of singapore. \veigel must have seen it years before, though when questioned she did not remember it. that is how observations are stored up by actors. actually it was only in the later performances that weigel assumed this attitude. [ ... ] texts by brecht 121 4 the song of the grand capitulation mother courage is sitting outside the captain's tent ; she has come to put in a complaint about damage to her cart ; a clerk advises her in vain to let well alone. a young soldier appears, also to make a complaint ; she dis­ suades him. the bitter 'song of the grand capitulation'. courage herself learns from the lesson she has given the young soldier and leaves without having put in her complaint. overall arrangement mother courage is sitting outside the captain's tent ; she has come to put in a complaint about damage to her cart ; a clerk advises her in vain to let well alone. the clerk comes up to the bench where courage is sitting and speaks to her kindly. she remains obstinate. ayoung soldier appears, also to make a complaint; she dissuades him, arguing that his anger is too short. two soldiers enter. the younger wants to rush into the captain's tent and the older is holding him back by main force. courage intervenes and involves the young man in a conversation about the danger of short attacks of anger. the bitter 'song of the grand capitulation'. the young soldier, tubose anger has evaporated, goes off cursing. courage herself learnsfrom the lesson she has givetl theyoung soldier, and leaves without putting in her complaint. courage's state of mind at the beginning of the scene in the first rehearsals weigel opened this scene in an attitude of dejection. this was not right. courage learns by teaching. she teaches capitulation and learns it. the scene calls for bitterness at the start and dejection at the end. 122 notes and variants courage's depravity in no other scene is courage so depraved as in this one, where she instructs the young man in capitulation to the higher-ups and then puts her own teaching into effect. nevertheless weigel's face in this scene shows a glimmer of wisdom and even of nobility, and that is good. because the depravity is not so much that of her person as that of her class, and because she herself at least rises above it somewhat by showing that she understands this weakness and that it even makes her angry. [ ... ] the scene played u'ithout alienation such a scene is socially disastrous if by hypnotic action the actress playing mother courage invites the audience to identify with her. this will only increase the spectator's own tendencies to resig­ nation and capitulation besides giving him the pleasure of being superior to himself. it will not put him in a position to feel the beauty and attraction of a social problem. 5 mother courage loses four officers' shirts and dumb kattrin finds a baby after a battle. courage refuses 10 (.�il'e the chaplain her officers' shirts to banda(.�e wounded peasants. kattrin threatens her mother. at the risk of her life kattrin saues an infant. courage laments the loss of her shirts and snatches a stolen coat alljay from a soldier who has stolen some schnapps, lj)hile kattrin rocks the balry in her arms. overall arrangement after a battle. courage is standing with two soldiers outside her cart; its sideboard is lowered for use as a bar. kattrin, sitting on �i, texts by brecht 123 the steps, is uneasy. courage gulps down two glasses of schnapps; she needs them to harden her to the sight of misery. courage refuses to give the chaplain her officers' shirts to bandage wounded peasants. from inside a peasant's wrecked house the chap­ lain shouts for linen. kattrin is prevented by her mother from taking officers' shirts from the cart. courage obstinately blocks the steps, letting no one in. kattrin threatens her mother. with the help of one soldier the chaplain has carried a wounded woman out of the house, then an old peasant whose arm is dangling. again he calls for linen and all look at courage who lapses into silence. angrily kattrin seizes a plank and threatens her mother. the chaplain has to take it away from her. he picks courage up, sets her down on a chest, and takes some officers' shirts. at the risk of her life kattrin saves an infant. still struggling with the chaplain, courage sees her daughter rush into the house that is threatening to cave in, to save a baby. tugged both ways, between kattrin and the officers' shirts: she runs about until the shirts arc torn into bandages and kattin comes out of the house with the infant. now she runs after kattrin to make her get rid of the baby. (movements: kattrin with the baby runs counter­ clockwise around the wounded, then clockwise around the cart.) her mother stops in the middle of the stage because the chaplain is coming out of the cart with the shirts. kattrin sits down on the chest right. courage laments the loss of her shirts and snatches a stolen coat away from a soldier who has stolen some schnapps, while kattrin rocks the baby in her arms. after springing like a tigress at the soldier who has failed to pay, mother courage stuffs his fur coat into the cart. a new courage a change has taken place in courage. she has sacrificed her son to the cart and now she defends the cart like a tigress. she has been hardened by the hard bargains she drives. a detail at the beginning of the scene (after 'they give us victory marches on all right, but catch them giving men their pay') weigel's courage 124 notes and variants tossed off two glasses of schnapps. apart from this extenuating circumstance, she provided no justification for courage's haggling, scolding and raging throughout the scene. a detail there was a kind of by-play between the soldier who gets no schnapps from courage and the soldier drinking schnapps at the bar. it expressed the hostility between the haves and the have-riots. the drinker grins scornfully and drains his glass with ostentatious enjoyment, the have-not gives him a long hostile stare before turning around in disgust and going defeated to the rear to wait for a chance to lay hands on the schnapps. later the drinker will show more sympathy than the thirsty man for the wounded peasant woman. the contradictions must not disappear the character of the chaplain is based on a contradiction. he is part scoundrel, part superior intelligence. the actor [werner] hinz gave him a wooden, awkward, comical quality, which he retained in his role of good samaritan. his manner was stiff and cold, as though it were only his clergyman's past that impelled him to turn against his present employer. but something else shone through: his former high position gives him the leadership on the battlefield where he acts in a spirit deriving from the realisation that in the last analysis he himself was one of the oppressed. when he helps the injured, it becomes clear that he too is to be pitied. the scene is dependent on mime the effect of the battlefield scene depends entirely on the scrupu­ lously detailed mime with which kattrin shows her mounting anger at her mother's inhumanity. angelika hurwicz ran back and forth like an alarmed hen between the wounded peasants and mother courage. up to the point when she began to argue, in gestures, with her mother, she made no attempt to repress the voluptuous curiosity that horror inspires in infantile persons. she carried the baby out of the house like a thief; at the end of the scene she lifted the baby up in the air, prodding it with both hands texts by brecht i z 5 as though to make it laugh. if her mother's share in the spoils is the fur coat, hers is the baby. kattrin in the battlefield scene kattrin threatens to kill her mother because she refuses the wounded peasants her linen. it is necessary to show an intelligent kattrin from the start. (her infirmity misleads actors into representing her as dull.) at the beginning she is fresh, gay and even-tempered hurwicz gave her a kind of awkward charm even in the conversation with her brother in scene 3. true, the helplessness of her tongue communicates itself to her body; but it is the war that breaks her, not her infirmity; in technical terms, the war must find something that remains to be broken. the whole point is missed if her love of children is depreciated as mindless animal instinct. her saving of the city of halle is an intelligent act. how else would it be possible to bring out what must be brought out, namely, that here the most helpless creature of all is ready to help? a detail at the end of the scene kattrin lifted the baby into the air, while courage rolled up the fur coat and threw it into the cart: both women had their share of the spoils. music and pauses music played an essential part in the fifth (battlefield) scene. victory march: from the start to 'somebody give me a hand'. from after 'my arm's gone' to 'i can't give nowt'. from after' ... happy as a queen in all this misery' to the end of the scene. pauses after: 'town must of paid him something.' 'where's that linen?' 'blood's coming through.' [this line spoken by the chaplain is deleted from the final text. it followed 'all your victories mean to me is losses'.] 126 notes and variants 6 prosperity has set in, but kattrin is disfigured mother courage, grown prosperous, is stocktaking; funeral oration for the fallen field marshal tilly. conversation about the duration of the war; the chaplain proves that the war is going to go on for a long time. kattrin is sent to buy merchandise. mother courage declines a proposal of marriage and insists on firewood. kattrin is permanently disfigured by some soldiers and rejects yvette's red shoes. mother courage curses the war. overall arrangements mother courage, grown prosperous, is stocktaking; funeral oration for the fallen field marshal tilly. courage interrupts her counting of merchandise to serve brandy to some soldiers who are playing hooky from the funeral. she virtuously reproves them, declaring that she feels sorry for generals because the common people don't give their grandiose plans proper support. meanwhile she is look­ ing for worms in a tin box. the regimental clerk listens in vain, hoping to catch her in a subversive utterance. conversation about the duration of the tuar ; the chaplain proves that the war will go on for a long time. the right section of the stage is the private quarters. to the left are the bar and the guest table at which the clerk and the chaplain are sitting. there is by-play between right and left when the drinking soldier sings for kattrin and she smiles at him, while courage, with a bundle of belt buckles which she is counting, comes over to the table to ask the chaplain­ potboy how long he thinks the war will go on. all through his cynical comments she stands deep in thought. should she lay in new supplies? kattrin is sent to buy merchandise. when the chaplain-potboy saysthe war will go on for a long time, kattrin runs angrily behind the cart. courage laughs, brings her back and sends her to the campwith a big basket to buy merchandise. 'don't let them take nowt, think of your dowry.' mother courage declines a proposal of marriage and insists on firewood. courage has sat down on a stool beside her cart; she fills a pipe texts by brecht 127 and tells the potboy to chop some firewood. he chops clumsily, complaining that his talents are lying fallow, and, probably with a view to avoiding physical labour, asks her to marry him. she hints that she doesn't want to take anybody into her business, and leads him gently back to the chopping block. kattrin is permanent(y disfigured by some soldiers and rejects yvette's red shoes. kattrin staggers in with a basket full of merchandise. she collapses at the entrance to the tent and courage has to drag her over to her stool and dress her wound. kattrin rejects the red shoes that her mother brings out to comfort her; they are now.useless. with silent reproach she crawls into the cart. mother courage curses the war. slowly courage brings forward the new supplies, which kattrin has defended at such cost, and gets down on her knees to look them over in the place where she was stock-taking at the beginning of the scene. she recognises that war is a miserable source of income and for the first and last time curses the war. inventory again courage has changed. increasing prosperity has made her softer and more human. both qualities attract the chaplain and he proposes to her. for the first time we see her sitting briefly at rest, not working. funeral oration for tilly in the course of many performances it was found that courage's funeral oration for the field marshal is more effective if during the pause, when all are looking to the rear and the funeral march has grown loud and solemn, the clerk, who is slightly tipsy, rises from his chair and watches courage closely, suspecting that in this oration she is ridiculing the field marshal. he sits down again in disappointment, because courage has not said anything demon­ strably incriminating. (the pause during the funeral march must be long; otherwise the funeral scene will not produce the right effect.) 128 notes and variants a detail in the funeral oration for field marshal tilly ('can't help feeling sorry for those generals and emperors') weigel added after 'how's he to know any better?' 'jesus christ, the worms have got into my biscuits.' while saying this she laughed. here mother courage releases the merriment which, with the clerk looking on, she was unable to express in her evasively subversive speech. mime the chaplain's remarks on the longevity of the war must not take on an independent existence. they are the answer to courage's anxious question as to whether she can risk taking in new mer­ chandise. while the chaplain was talking, weigel mimed courage's anxiety and calculations. a detail the drunken soldier addresses his song to kattrin. she smiles at him. for the last time before she is disfigured the spectator is reminded that she is capable of love. a point to consider violent occupations lead actors to shout. the actor playing the chaplain shouted occasionally while chopping wood. the scene suffered. [ ... ] kattrin again sitting huddled on the chest as during the drunken soldier's song, the injured girl merely touches her forehead gingerly once or twice to make sure where the wound is; otherwise, except forthe willingness with which she lets herself be bandaged, she gives no indication of knowing what the scar will mean to her. protest is expressed by her lack of interest in yvette's red shoes and by the way she crawls into the cart: she blames her mother for what has happened to her. texts by brecht 12.9 contradiction courage has cursed the war while gathering up the supplies in defence of which her daughter has been disfigured. resuming the stocktaking begun at the start of the scene, she now counts the new articles. 7 mother courage at the peak of her business career mother courage has corrected her opinion of the war and sings its praises as a goodprovider. overall arrangement mother courage has corrected her opinion of the war and sings its praises as a good provider. pulled by kattrin and the chaplain-potboy, the cart comes in from the rear and rolls along the footlights. courage walks beside them, arguing with them; then, while singing, she turns to the audience. pause. signs ofprosperity after some forty performances it seemed to us that in scene 6, for the stocktaking, courage should have rings on her fingers and a chain of silver talers round her neck as a sign of the relative prosperity she had achieved. but after a few more performances one of us discovered that this weakened her speech about the courage of the poor, and we decided to put the signs of prosperity in scene 7. here, where she retracts her condemnation of war, her recently acquired signs of prosperity show her up for what she is: bribed. in this short scene weigel showed courage in the full possession of her vitality, as previously only in scene 5 (the battlefield scene); in scene 5, however, she was gloomy; here she was cheerful. [ ... ] 130 notes and variants 8 peace threatens to ruin mother courage's busi­ ness. her dashing son performs one heroic deed too many and comes to a sticky end courage and the chaplain hear a tumour that peace has broken out. the cook reappears. the fight for the feedbag. an old friend who has made a good thing of the war; pufjing piet is unmasked. the downfall of eilif, mother courage's dashing son; he is executed for one of the misdeeds thai had brought him rewards during the war. the peace comes to an end; courage leaves the chaplain and goes on with the cook in the wake of the swedish army. overall arrangement courage and the chaplain hear a rumour that peace has broken out. on the right stand an old woman and her son who have come from the city with all sorts of household goods to sell. it is early in the morning, and courage, still half asleep, answers sulkily from the cart left. then bells are heard from the right, the chaplain crawls out from under the cart where he has been sleeping and courage sticks her head out of the cart. the bells seem to have made the old woman happy not so mother courage. the cook reappears. the bells of peace bring all sorts of visitors. first comes from the right like the rest the cook, ragged, with all his possessions in a bundle. the chaplain is not pleased to see him, but courage, who is braiding her hair, runs out to meet him and shakes his hand heartily. she invites him over to a wooden bench in front of the cart, while the chaplain goes behind the cart to put on his clerical garb. amid the ringing of the bells they sit there almost like lovers, telling each other about the bankruptcy that peace has brought them'. the fightfor thefeedbag. when the chaplain comes back he stands in the middle of the stage like a last incisor in a toothless mouth the cook begins to demolish him. courage climbs into her cart to get her pack ready; she is going to sell the merchandise she bought when the chaplain promised her a long war. the cook texts by brecht i 3 i starts unwrapping his feet because he means to stay, and the chaplain is obliged to beg him humbly not to drive him out. the cook merely shrugs his shoulders. an old friend who has made a good thing of the war; pujjing piet is unmasked. another visitor. fat and asthmatic, walking with the help of a cane, the countess starhemberg, the former camp whore, enters, clothed in black silk and followed by a servant. she has dismounted from her carriage to call on mother courage. she catches sight of the cook, known to her as puffing piet, and angrily denounces him to courage, who has difficulty in preventing her from attacking him with her cane. the downfall of eilif, mother courage's dashing son; he is executedfor one of the misdeeds that brought him rewards during the war. when the women have left, the cook gloomily puts his foot wrappings on again and the chaplain relishes his triumph. their conversation turns to melancholy recollections of the good old war days. blown in by the bells of peace, soldiers with arquebuses bring in a richly dressed lieutenant eilif. his courage deserts him when he hears that his mother is not there. the chaplain gives him a swallow of brandy and, a clergyman once again, accompanies him to the place of execution. the peace comes to an end; courage goes on with the cook, in the wake of the swedish army. the cook tries to get kattrin to come out of the cart so he can beg some bread from her. courage comes running in, overjoyed. the peace is over. the cook does not mention eilif's death. with the cook's help she packs her belong­ ings into the cart and they go on without the chaplain. advance preparation in her conversation with the chaplain in scene 6 weigel very care­ fully laid the groundwork for her conversation with the cook in scene 8. she said 'nice fellow that' a little more warmly and thoughtfully than required by her good-natured rebuff of the chaplain. consequently in scene 8 she had an audience who knew what was what. this enabled her to take a dry, matter-of-fact tone with the cook. knowing what it knew, the audience could be touched as well as amused that the subject of their love dialogue should be the fact that they were both ruined. 132. notes and variants the dignity of misery in the cockfight between the chaplain and the cook, hinz as the chaplain obtained a powerful and natural effect when, suddenly throwing all arrogance to the winds, he begged the cook not to squeeze him out of his place with courage because, having become a better man, he could no longer practise the clergyman's profession. his fear of losing his job lent him a new dignity. humiliations the cook too is capable of enduring humiliations. at the end of the dialogue in which he triumphs over the chaplain, he removes his shoes and foot wrappings like a man who has come to the end and goal of a long peregrination. yvette finds him barefooted, which embarrasses the ageing don juan. after he has been un­ masked and the chaplain has lectured him, he sorrowfully puts his footwear back on. the episode in which he begs kattrin for food was played brilliantly by bildt. his bundle slung over his shoulder, ready to hit the road, he first tapped his stick nonchalantly on the drum hanging from the cart. talking into the cart, he uttered the words 'pork' and 'bread' in the tone of a gourmet and con­ noisseur: the starving cook. good business yvette pottier is the only character in the play who strikes it rich; she has sold herself for a good price. she has been as badly dis­ figured by good food as kattrin by her scar; she is so fat one has the impression that eating has become her only passion. she speaks with the accent of the austrian aristocracy. [ ... ] war the provider courage comes back from the village exhausted from running but overjoyed that the war has started up again. in high spirits she lets the cook relieve her of her pack. the prospect of good business will enable her to take the cook in. she speaks light­ heartedly of the possibility of seeing her son again. 'now there's texts by brecht 133 war again, everything will work out all right' [not in the final text]. she is going to ride over his grave. a detail while they are packing, kattrin appears. she sees the cook staring at her scar, covers it with her hand and turns away. she has come to fear the light. again in scene i i, when the soldiers drag her out of the cart, she holds her hand over her eye. 9 times are hard, the war is going badly. on account of her daughter, she refuses the offer of a home the cook has inherited a tavern in utrecht. kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along there. the 'song of the temptations of the great'. kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make a decision, packs her bundle and leaves a message. mother courage stops kattrin from running awt!y and goes on alone with her. the cook goes to utrecht. overall arrangement times are hard. the cook has inherited a tavern in utrecht. in the early dawn of a stormy winter day courage and the cook, both in rags, bring the cart to a stop outside a parsonage. the cook morosely unharnesses himself and admits to courage that he means to go to utrecht where he has inherited a tavern. he asks her to go with him. sitting shivering on the shaft, courage complains of the bad business situation: the war is no longer finding much to feed on. kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along there. the cook inter­ rupts the conversation between mother and daughter about the peaceful life in utrecht, and motions courage to step to one side with him (to the right, in front of the parsonage). hidden beside the cart, kattrin hears the cook refuse to take her along. 134 notes and variants the cook and courage sing the 'song of the temptations of the great'. while they sing their begging song, courage desperately thinks over the cook's offer, presumably her last hope of settling down. kattrin decides to spare her mother the need to make a decision, packsher bundle and leaves a message. by the end of the begging song. courage has made up her mind to decline the offer. she still goesinto the parsonage with the cook for the sake of the soup. kattrin comes in with a bundle and deposits her mother's skirt with the cook's trousers over it on the cart's shaft. mother courage stops kattrin from running away and goes on alone with her. courage catches kattrin just as she is about to steal away. she has brought a dish of soup. feeding her as one would a child, she assures her that it has never occurred to her to desert the cart. she throws the cook's bundle and trousers out of the cart, putsherself and kattrin in harness and starts off with her (behind the house, to the right). the cook goes to utrecht. the cook sees that the women and cart are gone. he silently picks up his bundle and sets out on his way, right rear, to settle down in utrecht. the cook in this scene the cook must not under any circumstances be represented as brutal. the tavern he has inherited is too small to keep three people, and the customers cannot be expected to put upwith the sight of the disfigured kattrin. that's all there is to it. courage does not find his arguments unreasonable. weigelshowed plainly that courage thought the proposition over she thinks every proposition over. this she did by looking overtowards the cart during the first stanza of the begging song with an expression compounded of indecision, fear and pity. [ ... ] a detail in this scene, in which her arguments are rather thin, couragespoke to her daughter as one speaks to a person who is hard of hearing. her loud, slow delivery also gives the impression that sheis speaking in the name of the cook as well, but without being atall sure of herself in this. texts by brecht 135 kattrin's demonstration in laying out the trousers and skirt kattrin tries to leave her mother a message explaining why she has gone away. but hurwicz also indicated a note of resentment by glancing at the parsonage where her mother and the cook were presumably eating soup, then looking at her composition and stifling an uncanny, malignant giggle by raising her hand to her mouth before sneaking away. a detail while saying the words 'don't you go thinking it's on your ac­ count i gave him the push,' courage put a spoonful of soup into kattrin's mouth. [ ... ] the cook sets out for utrecht scenes of this kind must be fully acted out: courage and kattrin harness themselves to the cart, push it back a few feet so as to be able to circle the parsonage, and then move off to the right. the cook comes out, still chewing a piece of bread, sees his belongings, picks them up and goes off to the rear with long steps. we see him disappear. thus the parting of the ways is made visible. 10 still on the road mother and daughter hear someone in a peasant house singing the 'song of home'. the song in the munich production a fine variation used in the munich production: the song was sung with unfeeling, provocative self-assurance. the arrogant pride of possession expressed in the singing turned the listeners on the road into damned souls. 136 notes and variants expression not wanted the two women enter, pulling the cart. they hear the voice from the peasant house, stop, listen, and start off again. what goes on in their minds should not be shown; the audience can imagine. a detail in one of the later performances weigel, when starting off again, tossed her head and shook it like a tired cart horse getting back to work. it is doubtful whether this gesture can be imitated. ii dumb kattrin saves the city of halle a surprise attack is planned on the city of halle ; soldiers force a young peasant to show them the way. the peasant and his wife tell kattrin to join them in praying for the city. kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and beats the drum to awaken the city. neither the offer to spare her mother in the city nor the threat to smash the cart can make her stop drumming. death of dumb kattrin. oueral! arrangement a surprise attack is planned on the city of halle; soldiers force a young peasant to show them the way. an ensign and two soldiers come to a farm at night. they drag the peasants, still half asleep, out of the house and kattrin out of her cart. by threatening to kill the peasants' only ox they force the young peasant to serve as their guide. (they lead him to the rear; the party go out right.) the peasant and his wife tell kattrin to join them in praying for the city. the peasant moves a ladder over to the barn (right), climbs up and sees that the woods are swarming with armed men he comes down, he and his wife talk it over and decide not to endanger themselves by trying to warn the city. the peasant woman goes over to kattrin (right front) and tells her to pray god to help the city. the three of them kneel down and pray. texts by brecht 137 kattrin climbs up on the barn roof and beats the drum to awaken the city. from the peasant woman's prayer kattrin learns that the children in halle are in danger. stealthily she takes the drum from the cart, the same drum she had brought back when she was dis­ figured. with it she climbs up on the barn roof. she starts drum­ ming. the peasants try in vain to make her stop. neither the offer to spare her mother in the city nor the threat to smash the cart can make her stop drumming. at the sound of the drum the ensign and the soldiers come back with the young peasant. the soldiers take up a position by the cart and the ensign threatens the peasants with his sword. first one of the soldiers, then the ensign moves to the centre to make promises to kattrin. the peasant goes over to a log (left front) and chops at it with an axe to drown out the sound of the drum. kattrin is victorious in the noise contest, the ensign starts to go into the house to set it on fire, the peasant woman indicates the cart. one of the soldiers kicks the young peasant and forces him to batter the cart with a plank, the other soldier is sent off for an arquebus. he sets up the arquebus, the ensign orders him to fire. kattrin's death. kattrin falls forward, the drumsticks in her drooping hands strike one full beat followed by a feeble beat; for a moment the ensign is triumphant, then the cannon of halle responds, taking up the rhythm of kattrin's drumbeats. bad comedians are always laughing bad tragedians are always weeping in sad scenes just as in comic ones precision must be combined with ease; the hand that guides the arrangement must be both firm and relaxed. the actors take their positions and form their groups in very much the same way as the marbles tossed into a wooden bowl in certain roulette-like children's games fall into hollows, with the difference that in the games it is not decided in advance which marbles will fall into which hollows, whereas in theatrical arrangements there only seems to be no advance de­ cision. and indeed the reason for the stiffness or heaviness that is so characteristic of sad scenes in the german theatre is that in tragedy the human body is unjustifiably neglected and so seems to be afflicted with muscular cramp. which is deplorable. 138 notes and variants kattrin's two fears kattrin's dumbness does not save her. the war gives her a drum. with this unsold drum she must climb up on the barn roof and save the children of halle. conventional heroism must be avoided. kattrin is ridden by two fears: her fear for the city of halle and her fear for herself. 'the dramatic scene' audiences were especially stirred by the drum scene. some ex­ plained this by saying that it is the most dramatic scene in the play and that the public likes its theatre dramatic rather than epic. in reality the epic theatre, while capable of portraying other things than stirring incidents, clashes, conspiracies, psychological torments and so on, is also capable of portraying these. spectators may identify themselves with kattrin in this scene; empathy may give them the happy feeling that they too possess such strength. but they are not likely to have experienced such empathy through­ out the play in the first scenes, for example. alienation if the scene is to be saved from a wild excitement amid which everything worth noticing is lost, close attention must be given to alienation. for example: if the conversation of the peasants is swallowed up by a general hubbub, the audience will be in danger of being'carried away'; then they will fail to take note how the peasants justify their failure to act, how they fortify each other in the belief that there is nothing they can do, so that the only remaining possibility of 'action' becomes prayer. in view of this, the actors in rehearsal were made to add 'said the man' or 'said the woman' after each speech. for example:, "sentries are bound to spot them first," said the woman.' , "sentry must have been killed," said the man.' , "if only there were more of us," said the woman.' , "just you and me and that cripple," said the man.' , "nowt we can do, you'd say ... " said the woman.' , "nowt," said the man,' and so on. texts by brecht 139 kattrin's drufllming kattrin keeps watching what is going on down below. conse­ quently her drumming breaks off after the following sentences, 'jesus christ, what's she doing?' 'i'll cut you all to ribbons!' 'we got a suggestion could do you some good.' 'with a mug like yours it's not surprising.' 'we must set the farm on fire.' detail in tempestuous scenes such scenes as the one where the peasant tries to drown the noise of kattrin's drumming by chopping wood must be fully acted out. as she drums, kattrin must look down at the peasant and accept the challenge. in tempestuous scenes the director needs a certain amount of stubbornness to make miming of this sort last long enough. a detail hurwicz showed increasing exhaustion while drumming. the ritual character of despair the lamentations of the peasant woman, whose son the soldiers have taken away and whose farm they threaten when kattrin starts her drumming to wake the townspeople, must have a certain routine quality about it; it must suggest a 'set behaviour pattern'. the war has been going on too long. begging, lamenting, and informing have frozen into fixed forms: they are the things you do when the soldiery arrive. it is worth forgoing the 'immediate impression' of a particular, seemingly unique episode of horror so as to penetrate a deeper stratum of horror and to show how repeated, constantly recurring misfortune has driven people to ritualise their gestures of self­ defence though of course these ritual gestures can never free them from the reality of fear, which on the stage must permeate the ritual. [ ... ] 140 notes and variants 12 mother courage moves on the peasants have to convince courage that kattrin is dead. the lullaf?y for kattrin. mother courage pays for kattrin's burial and receives the condolences of the peasants. alone, mother courage harnesses herself to the empty cart ; still hoping to get back into business, she follows the ragged army. overall arrangement the peasants have to convince courage that kattrin is dead. the cart is standing on the empty stage. mother courage is sitting with the dead kattrin's head in her lap. the peasants are standing in a hostile knot at the dead girl's feet. courage speaks as if her daughter were only sleeping, deliberately disregarding the re­ proaches of the peasants who are saying that she is to blame for kattrin's death. the lullaby for kattrin. the mother's face is bent low over her daughter's face. her song fails to pacify the peasants. mother courage pays for kattrin's burial and receives the condolences of the peasants. when she realises that her last child is dead, she rises painfully to her feet and hobbles around the corpse (on the right) and along the footlights to behind the cart. she comes back with a sheet of canvas. the peasants ask her if she has no one else; she answers over her shoulder: ' aye, one left. eilif.' and with her back to the audience she lays the canvas over the body. then at the head end of the body she pulls it up over the face and stands behind the body, facing the audience. the peasant and his son give her their hands and bow ceremoniously before carrying the body away (to the right). the woman also gives courage her hand, goes to the right and stops again in indecision. the women exchange a few words, then the peasant woman goes away. alone, mother courage harnesses herself to her empty cart ; still hoping to get back into business, she follows the ragged army. slowly the old woman goes to the cart, unrolls the cord which kattrin had until then been pulling, takes a stick, examines it, pulls the loop of the texts by brecht 141 second cord through, wedges the stick under her arm and moves off. the last stanza of the 'mother courage song' has begun as she is bending down over the shaft. the revolve begins to turn and mother courage circles the stage once. the curtain falls as she turns right rear for the second time. the peasants the peasants' attitude towards courage is hostile. she has caused them great difficulties and they will have her on their hands if she cannot catch up with the departing army. as they see it, she is to blame for what has happened. besides, she is an unscdentary element, and now in wartime belongs with the incendiaries, cut­ throats and looters who follow in the wake of armies. in condoling with her by giving her their hands, they are only doing what is customary. the hoi/j during the whole scene weigel showed an almost bestial stupor. all the more beautiful was her deep bow when the body was carried away. the lulla�y the lullaby must be sung without any sentimentality or desire to provoke sentimentality. otherwise its significance is lost. the idea underlying this song is murderous: this mother's child must fare better than other children of other mothers. by slight emphasis on the 'you', weigel portrayed courage's treacherous hope of bringing her child, and perhaps hers alone, through the war. to this child who had lacked even the most ordinary things, she promised the most extraordinary. paying for the burial even in paying for the burial, weigel gave one last hint of cour­ age's character. she fished a few coins out of her leather bag, put one back and gave the peasants the rest. this did not in the least detract from the overpowering effect of desolation. 142 notes and variants the last stanza the last stanza of the 'mother courage song' was struck up by the musicians in the box while courage was slowly harnessing herself to the cart. it gives powerful expression to her still un­ shattered hope of getting her cut from the war. it gains in power if the illusion that the song is being sung by marching armies in the distance is dropped. [ ... ] timing at the end as at the beginning the cart must be seen rolling along.of course the audience would understand if it were simply pulled away. when it goes on roiling there is a moment of irritation ('this has been going on long enough'). but when it goes on still longer, a deeper understanding sets in. the pulling of the cart in the last scene for scene 12 the peasants' house and the barn with roof (from scene i i) were removed from the stage; only the cart and kattrin's body remained. the word 'saxony' in big letters is hoisted into the flies when the music starts. thus the cart was hauled off a completely empty stage recalling scene i. mother courage de­ scribed a complete circle with it on the revolving stage, passing the footlights for the last time. as usual, the stage was brilliantly lit. realist discoveries in giving the peasants the money for kattrin's burial, weigel quite mechanically puts back one of the coins she has taken out of her purse. what does this gesture accomplish? it shows that in all her grief the business woman has not wholly forgotten how to reckon money is hard to come by. this little gesture has the power and suddenness of a discovery a discovery concerning human nature, which is moulded by conditions. to dig out the truth from the rubble of the self-evident, to link the particular strikingly with the universal, to capture the particular that charac­ terises a general process, that is the art of the realist. texts by brecht 143 a change in the text after 'i'll manage, there isn't much in it,' courage added, first in the munich, then in the berlin production: 'i've got to get back into business.' mother courage learns nothing in the last scene weigel's courage seemed to be eighty years old. and she understands nothing. she reacts only to remarks con­ nected with the war, such as that she mustn't be left behind, and takes no notice when the peasants brutally accuse her of being to blame for kattrin's death. in 1938, when the play was written, courage's inability to learn from war's unprofitable character was a prophecy. at the time of the 1948 berlin production the wish was expressed that at least in the play courage would understand. in order that the realism of this play should benefit the spectator, that is, in order that the spectator should learn something, the theatre must work out a way of playing it which does not lead to audience identification with the principal character (heroine). to judge by press reviews and statements of spectators, the original production in zurich, for example, though artistically on a high level, merely pictured war as a natural catastrophe and ineluctable fate, confirming the belief of the petit-bourgeois mem­ bers of the audience in their own indestructibility and power to survive. but even for the equally petit-bourgeois mother courage the decision whether or not to join in was left open throughout the play. it follows that the production must have represented cour­ age's business activity, her desire to get her cut and her willingness to take risks, as perfectly natural and 'eternally human' phen­ omena, so that there was no way out. today the petit-bourgeois can no longer in fact keep out of the war, as courage could have done. and probably no performance of the play can give a petit­ bourgeois anything more than a real horror of war and a certain insight into the fact that the big business deals which constitute war are not made by the little people. a play is more instructive than reality, because in it the war situation is set up experimentally for the purpose of giving insight; that is, the spectator assumes the attitude of a student provided the production is right. the i 44 notes and variants proletarians in the audience, the members of a class which really can take action against war and eliminate it, must be given an insight which of course is possible only if the play is performed in the right way into the connection between war and commerce: the proletariat as a class can do away with war by doing away with capitalism. here, of course, a good deal depends on the growth of self-awareness among the proletariat, a process that is going on both inside and outside the theatre. the epic elen/ent as for the epic element in the deutsches theater production, indications of it could be seen in the arrangement, in the deline­ ation of the characters, in the accurate execution of detail, and in the spirited rhythm of the entire performance. moreover, the contradictions that pervade the play were not taken over ready­ made, but worked out, and the parts, visible as such, fitted well into the whole. nonetheless, the central aim of the epic theatre was not achieved. much was shown, but the element of showing was absent. only in a few rehearsals devoted to recasting was it brought out clearly. here the actors 'marked', that is, they merely showed the new members of the cast certain positions and tones, and the whole took on the wonderfully relaxed, effortless, and unobtrusive quality that stimulates the spectator to think and feel for himself. no one missed this fundamental epic element; and this is probably why the actors did not dare to provide it. concerning these notes it is to be hoped that the present notes, indicating a few of the ideas and devices of various kinds that are necessary for the per­ formance of a play, will not make an impression of misplaced seriousness. it is difficult in writing about these things to convey the carefree lightness that is essential to the theatre. even in their instructive aspect, the arts belong to the realm of entertainment. [from mutter courage und ibre kinder. text/allffiihrung/ .anmer­ kungen. henschel-verlag, east berlin, 1956.] texts by brecht 145 two ways of pla ying mother courage when the title role is played in the usual way, so as to communi­ cate empathy, the spectator (according to numerous witnesses) experiences an extraordinary pleasure: the indestructible vitality of this woman beset by the hardships of war leaves him with a sense of triumph. mother courage's active participation in the war is not taken seriously; the war is a source, perhaps her only source, of livelihood. apart from this element of participation. in spite of it, the effect is very much as in 5chweyk, where in a comic perspective, to be sure the audience triumphs with schweyk over the plans of the belligerent powers to sacrifice him. but in the case of mother courage such an effect has far less social value, precisely because her participation, however indirect it may seem, is not taken into consideration. the effect is indeed negative. courage is represented chiefly as a mother, and like niobe she is unable to protect her children against fate in this case, war. at most, her merchant's trade and the way she plies it give her a 'realistic, un-ideal' quality; they do not prevent the war from being seen as fate. it remains, of course, wholly evil, but after all she comes through it alive, though deformed. by contrast weigel, employing a technique which prevents complete empathy, treated the merchant's trade not as a natural but as a historical one that is, belonging to a historical, transient period and war as the best time for it. here too the war was a self-evident source of livelihood, but this spring from which mother courage drank death was a polluted one. the merchant-mother became a great living contradiction, and it was this contradiction which utterly disfigured and deformed her. in the battlefield scene, which is cut in most productions, she really was a hyaena; she parted with the shirts because she saw her daughter's hatred and feared violence; she cursed at the soldier with the coat 'and pounced on him like a tigress. when her daughter was disfigured, she cursed the war with the same pro­ found sincerity that characterised her praise of it in the scene immediately following. thus she played the contradictions in all their irreconcilable sharpness. her daughter's rebellion against her (when the city of halle is saved) stunned her completely and taught her nothing. the tragedy of mother courage and of her life, which the audience was made to feel deeply, lay in a terrible 146 notes and variants contradiction which destroyed a human being, a contradiction which has been transcended, but only by society itself in long and terrible struggles. what made this way of playing the part morally superior was that human beings even the strongest of them were shown to be destructible. [written 1951. from gw schriften zum theater, p. 895. first published in tbeaterarbeit, 19 p.] [mi sfo r tune in itself is a poo r teac her] the audience gave off the acrid smell of clothing that had not been properly cleaned, but this did not detract from the festive atmosphere. those who had come to see the play had come from ruins and would be going back to ruins. there was more light on the stage than on any square or in any house. the wise old stage manager from the days of max reinhardt had received me like a king, but what gave the production its hard realism was a bitter experience shared by all. the dress­ makers in the workshops realised that the costumes had to be richer at the beginning of the play than at the end. the stage hands knew how the canvas over mother courage's cart had to be: white and new at the beginning, then dirty and patched, then somewhat cleaner, but never again really white, and at the end a rag. weigel's way of playing mother courage was hard and angry; that is, her mother courage was not angry; she herself, the actress, was angry. she showed a merchant, a strong crafty woman who loses her children to the war one after another and still goes on believing in the profit to be derived from war. a number of people remarked at the time that mother courage learns nothing from her misery, that even at the end she does not understand. few realised that just this was the bitterest and most meaningful lesson of the play. undoubtedly the play was a great success; that is, it made a big impression. people pointed out weigel on the street and said: 'mother courage!' but i do not believe, and i did not believe at the time, that the people of berlin or of any other city where the play was shown understood the play. they were all con­ vinced that they had learned something from the war; what they texts by brecht 147 failed to grasp was that, in the playwright's view, mother courage was meant to have learned nothing from her war. they did not see what the playwright was driving at: that war teaches people nothing. misfortune in itself is a poor teacher. its pupils learn hunger and thirst, but seldom hunger for truth or thirst for knowledge. suffering does not transform a sick man into a physician. neither what he sees from a distance nor what he sees face to face is enough to turn an eyewitness into an expert. the audiences of 1949 and the ensuing years did not see mother courage's crimes, her participation, her desire to share in the profits of the war business; they saw only her failure, her suffer­ ings. and that was their view of hitler's war in which they had participated: it had been a bad war and now they were suffering. in short, it was exactly as the playwright had prophesied. war would bring them not only suffering, but also the inability to learn from it. the production of mother courage and her children is now in its sixth year. it is certainly a brilliant production, with great actors. undoubtedly something has changed. the play is no longer a play that came too late, that is, after a war. today a new war is threatening with all its horrors. no one speaks of it, but everyone knows. the masses are not in favour of war. but life is so full of hardships. mightn't war do away with these? didn't people make a very good living in the last war, at any rate till just before the end? and aren't there such things as successful wars? i am curious to know how many of those who see mother courage and her children today understand its warning. [written 1954. from gw schriften zum theater, p. 1147.] editorial note the first typescript of mother courage, in brecht's own typing with its characteristic absence of capital letters, was made in 1939, though there is also what may be a slightly earlier draft of the first few pages in verse. amended by brecht and by his collaborator margarete steffin, who died in 1941, it was then duplicated for the zurich production and again in 1946 by the kurt reiss agency in basel. this seems to have been the text which brecht circulated to some of his friends, and of which one scene was accordingly published in the moscow internationale lsteratur before the premiere, while a copy served as the basis for h. r. hays's first american translation. brecht made a few further additions and alterations to the 1946 version, which was once again duplicated for the deutsches theater production of 1949. brecht's own copies of this deutsches theater script bear yet more notes and small amendments, as well as cuts which were disregarded in the pub­ lished version. this appeared as versuche 9 in 1949, continuing the grey paperbound series of brecht's writings which had been inter­ rupted in 1933. the main shifts of emphasis in the play were indicated by brecht in his own notes which followed the first publication of the play in the versuche (1949) and have been reprinted in subsequent editions (pp. 89-92 above). the final versions of these passages, with the exception of the last (which concludes the play) are to be found in the additions to the deutsches theater typescript. the change in scene i, says brecht's diary, was proposed by his assistant kuckhahn. in the case of the last scene, the major change took place subsequently, between the versuche edition of 1949 and the reprint of 195 o. it consisted in the insertion of the stage directions showing mother courage first covering her daughter's body, then handing over money to the peasants who carry it away, and of the last sentence 'have to get back in business again'. in previous versions, too, she was made to join in the refrain of the final song. now, presumably, she was too old and exhausted to do more than pull her cart. editorial notes 149 these changes were, as brecht said, calculated to bring out courage's short-sighted concentration on business and alienate the audience's sympathies. thus in scene 1 she now became dis­ tracted by the chance of selling a belt buckle; in scene 5 she no longer helped the others to make bandages of her expensive shirts; while in scene 7 she was shown prospering (her lines up to 'them as does are the first to go' were new, while the scene title 'mother courage at the peak of her business career' and the silver necklace of the stage direction were added after the 1949 edition). besides these, however, brecht made earlier alterations to two of the main characters the cook and the camp prostitute yvette and to virtually all the songs, whose independent role in the play became considerably strengthened as a result. scene 8 seems to have called for repeated amendment, thanks partly to brecht's uncertainty about the yvette-cook relationship, which in turn depended on the choice of song for scene 3, where it is first expressed. another confusion which has perhaps left its mark on the final text concerns religion: the first typescript gave the chap­ lain the catholic title of 'kaplan' throughout, putting courage initially in the catholic camp, which the lutherans then overran in scene 3. though brecht corrected this on the script, to conform with the rest of the story, the religious antagonism emerges none too clearly even in the final version. brecht's first typescript also numbered the scenes rather dif­ ferently, so as to run from i to 11, omitting the present scenes 7 and 10. he altered this to make 9 scenes, a division which he retained in the 1946 script, writing the original scene titles, to correspond with it, very nearly in their present form. 'the story' (pp. 93-95. above) refers to this numbering, as also does a note attached to the typescript: the minor parts can easily be divided among a small number of actors. for instance the sergeant in scene i can also play the wounded peasant in scene 5 and the young man in scene 7 [8]; the general in scene 2 can be the clerk in scene 4 and the old peasant in scene 9 [i 1], and so on. moreover the soldier in scene 3, the young soldier in scene 4 and the ensign in scene 9 [ i i] can be performed by the same actor without alteration of make­ up. 150 notes and variants 5eltings and costumes high road with a swedish city in the background/inside the general's tent/camp/outside an officer's tent/in a bombarded village/in a canteen tent during rain/in the woods outside a city/outside a parsonage in the winter/near a thatched peasant dwelling. the chief item of scenery consists in courage's cart, from which one must be able to deduce her current financial situation. the brief scenes on the high road which are appended to scenes 6 and 8 [now scenes 7 and 10] can be played in front of the curtain. so far as the costumes are concerned, care must be taken to avoid the brand-new elegance common in historical plays. they must show the poverty involved in a long war. the following scene-by-scene resume of the changes follows the same numbering, the present scene numbers being given in square brackets. 2. [2] the cook's original name 'feilinger' is amended to 'lamb' on the first typescript. the general's reference to the king and eilif's reply were added to this; the general's following 'you've got something in common already' was an afterthought added on the deutsches theater script (according to manfred wekwerth it was meant to refer to the enthusiasm with which eilif drank). eilif's 'dancing a war dance with his sabre' was penned by brecht on the 1946 script. the song itself is taken over from brecht's first collection of poems, die hauspostille (1927), and derives originally from the verse at the end of kipling's short story love 0' women, itself taken from the song of the girl and the soldier in the story my great and only. 1. [i] in brecht's first typescript the family arrive to the sound of a piano-accordion, not a jew's harp, and there are some minor differences in the mother courage song. editorial notes 151 3· [3] the three sub-scenes (divided by the passage of time) are num­ bered 3, 3a and 3b, of which only the first has a title. yvette originally was jessie potter, amended on the first typescript to jeannette pottier; she had become yvette by 1946. the scene started with mother courage's remark to swiss cheese 'here's your woollies,' everything to do with the armourer being added to the first typescript (p. 21). instead of the 'song of fraternisation', jessie 'sings the song of surabaya-johnny' (from happy end), immediately after the words 'then i'll tell you, get it off my chest', courage having just said 'just don't start in on your johnny'. the text of this song is not reproduced in the typescript, but a first version of johnny's description is inserted, with jeannette 'growing up on batavia' and the man being a 'ship's cook, blond, a swede, but skinny'. in pen, batavia is changed to flanders, ship's cook to army cook and swede to dutchman. a 'song of pipe-and-drum henny' is added, which is a slightly adapted version of 'surabaya-johnny' in three verses (the refrain appears only in the 1946 script). in the text of this song, which still fits the weill music, burma is amended to utrecht and the fish market (in 'you were something to do with the fish market i and nothing to do with the army') to a tulip market. besides the beginning ('when i was only sixteen') the second quatrain of the second verse was absorbed in the 'song of fraternisation', which is substituted in brecht's amended copy of the 1946 script. this also adds that the cook was called 'pipe­ henny' because he never took his pipe out of his mouth when he was on the job. some light on the camp prostitute's vary ages is cast by her ensuing remark about her failure to run him to earth. in the first typescript it happened 'twenty years ago', in the 1946 and deutches theater scripts 'ten years ago', before being reduced to the present 'five' some time between 1949 and 1953. the chaplain's 'song of the hours' is adapted from a seven­ teenth-century hymn by michael weisse. it occurs for the first time in the deutsches theater script, where it consists of seven verses only and is sung before the curtain to introduce sub-scene 3 b, it was cut before the premiere. in mother courage's subsequent speech on corruptibility (p. 40) there is a section which was cut 152 notes and variants in this script but is of interest for its anticipation of the caucasian chalk circle: i used to know a judge in franconia who was so out for money, even small sums from poor people, that he was universally regarded as a good man right up into saxony, and that's some way. people talked about him as if he were a saint, he'd listen to everybody, he was tough about the amount wouldn't let anyone say they were penniless if they had anything widow or profiteer, he treated them all alike, all of them had to give. 4· [4] the young soldier was originally complaining about the delay in getting his basic pay. brecht's amendments to his typescript introduced the idea of a special reward, as well as giving mother courage more to say. the song was called 'the song of waiting' in this typescript and was amended at every stage, first and fore­ most by adding the (spoken) parentheses. 5· [j] see p. 90 above. the cry 'pshagreff!' polish psia krew (blood of a dog) near the end was simply 'stop!' until after the 1949 edition. 6. [6] this scene appeared in the moscow monthly internationale literatur (then edited by j. r. becher), no. 12, 1940. courage's speech beginning 'let's see your money!' was very much longer there, as also in the first two scripts. the drunken soldier and his song were additions to the first typescript; courage's suggestion that he may have been responsible for the attack on kattrin being an addition to the 1946 script. in lnternationale literatur and prior to the deutsches theater version kattrin accepts the red shoes at the end of the scene and 'sets about her work; she has calmed down'. editorial notes 1 5 3 6a. [7] see p. 92 above. 7. [8] this scene (eilif's death) is the most heavily amended, partly in order to get the confrontation of the cook and yvette straight. originally, on the first typescript, she denounces him as 'that's surabaya-johnny', which prompts courage to hum the refrain of the song. courage previously has a song of her own, following the chaplain's 'off war, in other words. aha!' (p. 65), which she introduces by the lines: if the emperor's on top now, what with king of sweden being dead, all it'll mean is that taxes go to the emperor. ever seen a water wheel? mills have them. i'm going to sing you a song about one of them water wheels, a parable featuring the great. (she sings the song of the water wheel) a song to eisler's music which is to be found in brecht's the round heads and the pointed heads. it was omitted from the 1946 script. 8. [9] the fourth (st. martin) verse of the 'solomon song' (itself of course partly taken over from the threepenny opera) made its appearance in the 1946 script. the cook's tavern was originally in uppsala, amended when he became a dutchman. 8a. [10] the scene was originally un-numbered. the title was added be­ tween the 1949 and 195 3 versucbe editions. 9. [ii] the date of the title was at first march 1635 and the threatened town havelberg. the only change of any substance took place 154 notes and variants after the peasant's 'suppose we got one of the trunks and poked her off ... ', where in all three scripts the soldiers proceeded to fetch one and actually tried to dislodge kattrin with it. this was deleted on brecht's deutsches theater script, which incidentally bears marks showing exactly where the drumbeats should fall. he gets his uniform and rations the regiment gives him his pay. the rest defeats our comprehension tomorrow is another day. 9a. [i2] see p. 92. on the first typescript lines 5-7 of the song originally read before brecht amended them to read as now . .. _'__ij.'v •••• . �. ",. ..,,:-.� i deacidified using the bookkeeper process. neutralizing agent: magnesium oxide treatment date: i " 6 keeper preservation technologies, inc. 111 thomson park drive cranberry twp., pa 16066 (412)n9-2111 isbn 1-55970-234-6 90 date due 11111111111111111111�i�ir��lllr[ll�i �llr�jlrl���111111111111111111111 a 0000 016 507 899 "i .', ' . . ;",',. ; .. storm of steel ernst junger was born in heidelberg in 1895. he ran away from school to enlist in the foreign legion and in 1914 volunteered to join the german army. he fought throughout the war and recorded his experiences in several books, most famously in in stahlgewittern (storm of steel). while admired by the nazis, he remained critical of them and through novels such as on the marble cliffs (1939) sought to understand the impasse into which germany was heading. throughout the nazi period he was a controversial "inner emigrant," distanced from the regime yet only obliquely in opposition. his most famous later books include heliopolis (1949), the glass bees (1957), eumeswil (1977), aladdin's problem (1983), and a dangerous encounter (1985). he died in 1998. michael hofmann has translated joseph roth, herta muller, zoe jenny, wim wenders, wolfgang koeppen, and franz kafka. his own books include corona, corona and behind the lines. he also coedited, with james ladun, after ovid. ernst junger storm of steel translated with an introduction by michael hofmann penguin books in stahlgewitten first published in german 1920 this final revsied edition first published 1961 this translation made from the edition prepared from the saemtliche werke, vol. i: der erste weltkrieg. klett-cotta, stuttgart, 1978 this translation first published in great britain by allen lane, an imprint of pengin books 2003 published in penguin books 2004 copyright © 1920, 1961 j. g. cotta'sche buchhandlung nachfolger gmbh, stuttgart introduction and translation copyright © michael hofmann, 2003 contents introduction bibliography storm of steel in the chalk trenches of champagne from bazancourt to hattonchatel les eparges douchy and monchy daily life in the trenches the beginning of the battle of the somme guillemont the woods of st-pierre-vaast retreat from the somme in the village of fresnoy against indian opposition langemarck regnieville flanders again the double battle of cambrai at the cojeul river the great battle british gains my last assault we fight our way through introduction storm of steel (in stahlgewittern is the original title) is one of the great books of world war i, if not the greatest. all sorts of trustworthy and unlikely people and trustworthy often precisely because unlikely: cosmopolites, left-wingers, non-combatants -have stepped up to express their admiration, often in suitably embarrassed or bemused fashion: boll and borges, enzensberger and brecht, gide and moravia. in 1942, gide wrote in his diary: 'ernst junger's book on the 1914 war, storm of steel, is without question the finest book on war that i know: utterly honest, truthful, in good faith.' its contrast with most of the others is stark. it has no pacifist design. it makes no personal appeal. it is a notably unconstructed book. it does not set its author and his experience in any sort of context. it offers nothing in the way of hows and whys, it is pure where and when and of course, above all, what. there is nothing in it about the politics of the war nothing even on its outcome and very little on the wider strategy of its conduct. it begins the moment private ernst junger first detrains in france, on 27 december 1914, at the age of nineteen, with (though we aren't told this) a rushed school-leaving certificate and a couple of months' training behind him, having volunteered on 1 august, the opening day of the war. (it is hard to imagine an english autobiographer or belletrist a graves or a sassoon, amateur and holistic wouldn't have included that, or indeed the fact that the year before, as a bored romantic youth full of wanderlust, he had run away to algeria to join the french foreign legion!) it ends, in one of a bare handful of scenes that are away from the action, back in germany four years later, when he is too badly hurt to carry on, a decorated lieutenant and the youngest-ever recipient of the pour le merite. war is all fighting is all -everything else is cropped away. and, from first to last, in the affirmative. it is the work of a man whom the war made and who, in world war ii, was to be again a professional soldier. it was published long before the likes of blunden, graves, remarque and sassoon, all of which appeared in the late 1920s, at a classic ten-year distance from the events they describe, giving their public and themselves time to recover; only barbusse's novel le feu (under fire), from 1917, came out much before ernst junger's account was first privately printed with a local firm (the family gardener, robert meier, was designated as the 'publisher') in 1920, at the instigation of junger's father. the impressively cumbersome original title was in storms of steel: from the diary of a shock troop commander, ernst jiinger, war volunteer, and subsequently lieutenant in the rifle regiment of prince albrecht of prussia (73rd hanoverian regiment). the initial print-run was 2,000, the intended readership presumably members of the regiment and other veterans, and the work, in literary terms, was undistinguished and at times, apparently hardly a surprise, considering its author's repeated rush to get out of school 'even fell short of the required standard for a sixth-form essay'. the 'diary' element, though never entirely suppressed later, was initially mostly all there was, closely following the sixteen notebooks junger filled during the war. the book steadily sold through its small printings, but it wasn't the instant bestseller it is sometimes thought to have been. junger was recruited by mittler & son, a noted publisher of militaria in berlin, and wrote more books on the war, including the viscerally as well as headily unpleasant treatise on battle as an inner experience (1922) of which i could not bring myself to read more than the excerpts i read years ago in a book on german history and a couple of spin-offs covering material from storm of steel in a more lingering and opinionated way: copse 125 (1925) and fire and blood (1925). a shot at a novel, sturm after one of the characters, nomen est omen was abandoned after a few installments. in the mid 1920s, then, junger was already a prolific and established war writer before such a thing really existed. (his first non-war book, a memoir of his childhood, didn't appear until 1929.) even so, acute observers were afraid they might lose junger the soldier to literature. on balance, i suppose, that's what happened, but it's a close call. junger has remained as much identified with world war i or war in general as with writing. i forget who it was who said they couldn't picture junger the author at all except in uniform. in the late 1920s, via stahlhelm and the veterans' scene, he found himself as a publicist in nationalist politics. because of the dearth of politics in weimar, everything, paradoxically, was politicized; even the defeated generals, ludendorff and hindenburg, were rehabilitated as political figures. this is when junger made his notorious remark that he 'hated democracy like the plague', but to some extent that was what one might call 'weimar talk'. junger was courted, not surprisingly, by the nazis, and twice offered a seat in the reichstag, but he wasn't interested. he didn't join the deutsche akademie der dichtung (chaired for a year by the poet gottfried benn), nor was he ever a member of the nazi party. he and hitler did exchange signed copies of their books, but even that seems like a mismatch: my struggle for fire and blood. there was always something aloof and solipsistic about junger the word 'aristocratic' is often misapplied to him that meant that as a soldier and a writer and even an ideologue he was in it for himself, and never quite, at that. he was not a novelist or a politician or a penseur, though with elements of all three. he may have described himself as 'a field marshal of ideas', but, as thomas nevin drily remarks, 'he calls no philosophical system to attention'. it is hugely to junger's credit (though it is as much a matter of temperament as of choice) that he was never an opportunist if anything, rather the opposite. the 1930s were a boom time for him sales of storm of steel shot into six figures but he retired from the public eye: left berlin, wrote essays that irritatingly for the nazis were aimed always beyond the present and the immediate future, wrote on entomology (the other passion of his life), travelled widely in europe and further afield, lived quietly with his family in rural seclusion. in 1939, he was back in uniform, and promoted to captain. he spent most of world war ii with the german occupation in paris, consorting with french intellectuals, eating and drinking and buying old books and keeping a record of all these activities, and of a discreet political dissent, in his diaries, later published as strahlungen (irradiations might be the best english equivalent). these confirm (along with storm of steel, of course) that his gifts as a writer are primarily those of a diarist: descriptiveness and an ear for speech, attention to detail, mobility of perspective, intellectual stamina and disjunctiveness, at his best over medium distances, as a writer of passages rather than of books or sentences. after the war, junger's stock was predictably lower, and for a time he was not allowed to publish in germany. but as early as 1955 he was (for the first time in his life) winning literary prizes, and in 1957 he began his association with the german publisher klett that saw not one but two editions of his collected works, one completed in ten volumes in 1965, the second in eighteen in 1983. (along with wieland, klopstock and goethe, jiinger is one of only four german authors prolific and important and long-lived enough to see their own 'second edition'.) by the time of his death in 1998, at the age of a hundred and two, he had been heaped with virtually all the literary and civic honours germany and indeed europe had to bestow. he enjoyed a particularly devoted following in france, where one critic reckoned up an astonishing forty-eight of his works in print. age both softened and exacerbated junger's provocativeness. on the one hand, it provided him with distractions and luxuries, made him venerable and respectable (he was an incarnation of yeats's senatorial 'smiling public man'); on the other, his mere continued existence was enough to goad to fury a wide band of literary and political enemies in germany. whether he wanted to or notand he was often travelling the globe, researching unusual life-forms in remote settings he remained a rallying-point and an object of fascination for the fascist right, and of horror and embarrassment for the left. honorific occasions involving junger, like the award of the goethe prize in 1982 which at the time was compared to something that might have happened in weimar would invariably degenerate into typisch deutsch literary-political showdowns very ugly and terribly principled. as an instance of the unbridled hatred felt for junger in certain quarters, in the 1990s, in berlin only in berlin! a gay musical version of storm of steel played to appreciative houses: a multiple and systematic persiflage of an experience and values that to him were sacred. one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. a very long life, like junger's (the name, by the way, does indeed mean 'younger'), brings with it a preoccupation with its form, with its meaning, with its straightness. this is something one sees as well in such survivor figures as the norwegian knut hamsun (who lived to ninety-three), ezra pound (eighty-seven), or boris pasternak (a stripling seventy). where richard ii says, 'arm, my name,' junger seems to say, 'arm, my age.' he refers, i don't know how humorously, to his early pre-1930? writing as his 'old testament'. he quotes ranke on the desirability for historians of attaining a great age. it must be tempting perhaps especially if one happens to be a diarist as well to look down on younger people and say: what do they know? according to octavio paz, the claim to be the father of one's antagonist is a serious snub in mexico. in 1984, a very old and spry junger turned out at verdun with helmut kohl (whose favourite author he was) and francois mitterand (another admirer) to celebrate franco-german reconciliation. book titles underline his authority: siebzig verweht (seventy gone, his journals of the 1970s), zwei mal halley (halley two times, a reference to the comet, which he saw in 1910, and again in 1986). junger made the claim that he had never regretted anything he had written, or taken anything back. in fact, his literary output and profile were subject to minute supervision and protection, by the author, his family, his publishers, his estate. (cocteau observed pricelessly that junger 'didn't have dirty hands, he had no hands'.) nothing resembling a biography appeared before the late 1980s. some books of his were retired, others promoted. one of the english studies on him, by elliot neaman, has a section heading lapidarily called: 'junger revididus'; it may not be good latin, but it's a good joke. the most revised of his books was the earliest of them, precisely storm of steel. typically, there is as yet no full-length study of the changes that were made though there is no shortage of adversarial and defensive and specialist writing on junger but it seems there were as many as eight different published versions of the book: the earliest in 1920, for first publication, the latest in 1961, for the first edition of the collected works. no junger text, one critic groused, has ever been called definitive. (even the copy i worked from seemed not to carry a date or ascription, although i'm sure it was the newest version.) in between, the most substantively different texts were those of 1924 and 1934. it is because of this that, even if i had wanted to, i couldn't have left out of my introduction all mention of junger's remaining eighty-odd years. storm of steel accompanied junger through most of his extremely long life, and he tinkered with it, one would have to say, obsessively. it was often tempting to put away the discussions of him once they got past the war, and pretend that junger had died, or disappeared into obscurity or uncontentiousness, but because the later ideas and contexts have some influence, to say the least, on a kind of text-fleuve that evolved over the best part of sixty years, i had at least to allude to them in passing. as well as being one of the earliest books on world war i, storm of steel is also one of the newest, and it seems likely that it gained in both respects. if one might put it like this, in addition to outflanking the competition by getting in ahead of them, storm of steel also outlasted them: the experience it offers the reader is both more immediate and more considered, more naively open-ended and more artistically complex, more sartre-ish and more what shall i say? paterian. the first revision was in 1924, when jiinger completely rewrote his book for his new publisher. this first revised edition has been called the first 'literary' version of storm of steel. it was also a vigorously, even aggressively, nationalist version, which may have played well with the domestic audience of that time, but perhaps less well abroad. it was, as luck would have it, this version that was translated into english in 1929, and french in 1930. in the copy of basil creighton's english translation that i have, there is a somewhat ingratiating 'author's preface to the english edition', with references to gibraltar and waterloo, where junger's hanoverian regiment or, rather, their predecessors had made common cause with the english against the french, and careful compliments on the bravery and manliness of the british: 'of all the troops who were opposed to the germans on the great battlefields the english were not only the most formidable but the manliest and the most chivalrous.' but, once into the book, for instance in the chapter 'the great offensive', there are passages like this: it [the trench] seethed with english. i fired off my cartridges so fiercely that i pressed [sic] the trigger ten times at least after the last shot. [... ] only a few got away. a nco was standing near me gaping at this spectacle with mouth agog. i snatched the rifle from his hands in an uncontrollable need to shoot. my first victim was an englishman whom i shot between two germans at 150 metres. he snapped shut like the blade of a knife and lay still. this explicit bloodlust is tempered by junger in later editions. also gone is most of the generalizing and editorializing, much of it completely banal, as for example this sentence (earlier on in the same chapter): 'no one who has lived through moments like these can doubt that the course of nations in the last resort rises and falls with the destiny of war.' gone too is the fanfare at the very end: though force without and barbarity within conglomerate in sombre clouds, yet so long as the blade of a sword will strike a spark in the night may it be said: germany lives and germany shall never go under!' i suspect that it was the awareness that he was now read by an international public, as well as tact and personal maturity and a sense of the prevailing levels of violence and irresponsibility in public speech in germany, that acted on junger. his 1934 revision was dubbed the 'quiet' version by one recent critic. the impartial dedication, 'for the fallen', was new. just as it was ironic that it was the most bloody and rhetorical version of storm of steel that was spread abroad, so it was ironic that the nazis presumably had to content themselves with this one when they boosted the book at home, in the years of the third reich. to me, the metamorphoses of storm of steel on its journey from fighting to writing principally go to show one thing: that this is an indestructible book, clear, trustworthy, close to events and full of matter. already it has survived its author, whose best-known work it will, i suspect, remain. it has also, i have to say, survived basil creighton's translation. in theory, it is always an advantage for a translator to be close to his original in time, and i imagine though i don't know that creighton would also have fought but his knowledge of german was patchy, his understanding of junger negligible, and his book seems much older and staler than his original. there are literally hundreds of coarsenesses, mistakes and nonsenses in his translation; open it at just about any page and you start to find them. these range from trivial mistakes over prepositions like, 'this typical forward movement made me sure that we were in for it till nightfall' (my italics), whereas what junger means, evidently, is 'that we were in for some action before nightfall' (p. 277); to errors of sense, like the 'unobtrusive' blowing up of church towers, to rob the enemy artillery of landmarks, where what is meant rather is their 'unceremonious' blowing up (p. 13 3), in such a way that it almost occasions casualties, or his 'airplanes tied with streamers', which should have been 'rosette-decorated aircraft' (i.e., royal air force planes) (p. 170); the loss of tone, as in a description of a type of shell being 'different and far worse', when junger's typical bravado demands 'altogether more exciting[ly]' (p. 45), or christmas being spent 'in this miserable fashion' (for 'recht ungemut-lich'), instead of the cooler and less plaintive 'less than merry christmas' (p. 59); to a failure to recognize german figurative speech, so that he has 'unfortunately, the enemy was so plentifully supplied with munitions that at first it took our breath away,' and not 'unfortunately, our opponents tended to have more munitions than ourselves, and so could play the game for longer' (the german phrase is 'einen langen atem haben', literally, 'to have a long breath', and hence stamina) (p. 66), or 'we were soon beyond the zone of the light field guns and slackened our pace, as only a bird of ill-omen need expect to be hit by an isolated heavy,' which is incomprehensible, unless you know what it means: 'before long, we were out of range of the light artillery, and could slow down, as the isolated heavy shells would only strike you if your number was up' (p. 253), which revolves around the german 'pechvogel', or 'unlucky person or thing'. at the most entertaining extreme, it is the sort of 'howler' beloved of classics masters, as in this sentence: 'the pleasure of my return was dashed by an unexpected alarm which had for me the peculiarly unpleasant consequence that i had to ride the company charger to beaumont.' was it really that bad? creighton is only one letter out, but unfortunately, as it often does, it makes quite a difference: the german is 'gefechtstross', not 'gefechtsross'. what junger actually had to do was 'accompany the baggage train to beaumont' (p. 131). an instance of a silent howler, a kind of literary whimper mistranslation shows more commonly as fatuity than disgrace is the following passage in creighton: 'streamers of black and white and red crossed the cloudless blue of the evening sky. the beams of the sunset dipped them in a tender rosy red so that they resembled a flight of flamingoes. we unfolded our trench-maps and spread them out to see how far we had penetrated the enemy lines.' this is not a children's party, or an even for junger unusually tender pastoral moment, rather it once again involves the air force: the cloudless evening sky was crossed by a squadron of planes marked with our black, red and white. the last rays of the sun, which had already gone down, daubed them a shade of delicate pink, so they looked like flamingoes. we opened out our maps, and turned them face down, indicating to those above how far we had already pushed into the enemy line. (p. 249) creighton's translation has had a good long innings, but i fancy it's time it was retired. if i might be allowed a couple of almost theoretical observations on what is a joyfully accessible and straight-ahead kind of book, i would like first to put the idea of a star shape in the reader's mind. the characteristic focus and form, it seems to me, of storm of steel is just such an in-and-out, the points and capes, the nooks and spines. it is not actually the most tightly drawn book one can imagine: that would have made it a small circle. junger is able, for instance, to accommodate the record of his brother friedrich's ordeal at st-pierre-vaast; he generalizes beyond his own particular experience; he offers thoughts on the conduct of war, and of future wars; he does take us out of france and flanders at moments; and, while the most characteristic depth of focus of the book is maybe ten yards or so the interiors, the trenches and dugouts, the cars and lorries, the ruined houses, the beautiful, cultivated catalogues of war junk (like the one on p. 94) still, there are also equally memorable distance shots, repeatedly of the sky, and of the colours and sounds of various ordnance, moments of eerie contemplation, like the background of a renaissance portrait, and with just that in-and-out effect: on the isolated heights on the way to ransart was the ruin of a one-time estaminet dubbed 'bellevue' on account of the wide view of the front that was afforded from it and that was a place i came to love, in spite of its exposed situation. from there, the view stretched over the dead land, whose defunct villages were linked by roads that had no traffic on them, and on which no living creature was to be seen. in the distance glimmered the outline of the abandoned city of arras, and round to the right the shining chalk mine-craters of st eloi. the weedy fields lay barren under the passing clouds and the shadows of clouds, and the tightly woven web of trenches spread its little white and yellow links, secured by lengthy communication trenches. from time to time, there was a puff of smoke from a shell, lobbed into the air as if by a ghostly hand; or the ball of a shrapnel hung over the wasteland like a great white flake slowly melting. the aspect of the landscape was dark and fantastic, the war had erased anything attractive or appealing from the scene, and etched its own brazen features, to appall the lonely onlooker, (pp. 38-9) in terms of feeling, there is a similar story, describable in terms of 'hot' and 'cold': moments of resolute sang-froid and others of near-panic; being alone or with companions; being bored or in great danger or great exhilaration, that 'wild, unsuspected hilarity' he sees and feels in his first engagement (p. 24); anonymity and dandyishness, hebetude and exquisite sensitivity; nature and warfare; living in cosy near-domesticity and like animals in a hole in the ground. the same with the style, sometimes kept to the technicalities of a military situation report, and sometimes in the almost provocatively cultivated, french symbolist notes on sound, colour, synaesthesia even, as in this notorious instance: 'frequently, yellow rockets were shot off that blew up in the air, and sent a rain of fire cascading down, of a colour that somehow reminded me of the tone of a viola' (p. 114). throughout, the book seems to me to have a hard, inorganic edge, which is why i have the impression of a star, rather than, say, an amoeba. the scenes, for example, with jeanne, the girl living by herself in her cottage, seem ruthlessly trimmed back; or the references to friends and fellow officers of junger, or to home and family, which are never allowed to get blobby and out of hand. as i've shown already, the accounts of trench-fighting or assaults are similarly more disciplined and restrained than they once were. even the composition of the book, veering between the minimalism of probably authentic diary entries in the chapter on 'daily life in the trenches', and highly polished, written-up pieces of description that evolved much later, follows the jaggedness of the star shape. this, it seems to me, is one of junger's great freedoms and innovations. the other is that, unlike any of the other world war i books i've read, storm of steel has found its way into natural epic form. the inspiration of most of the english books is lyrical or dramatic; they work with one-off contrasts and ironies; they fear repetition or excess of detail. they begin as they mean to go on, with misfortunes and reverses: graves shelled by his own artillery; blunden's grenade instructor blowing himself up with a bad grenade; sassoon breaking a leg while riding before he ever gets to france. there is something bleakly bracingly comic about all three. at the most, they are entwicklungsromane, narratives of the accrual of experience and the development of character. (there is nothing comic about junger whatsoever, and his few instances of rough humour do little to further german claims in that department.) storm of steel leaves all that behind: otherwise we should have had the escape to algeria and much more. similarly the twos and threes and fives of poetic and dramatic form are left behind: who can count the number of scenes and episodes in storm of steel? junger's first encounter with the war, after a few pages approaching it, is when the shell comes down in the gateway, and causes sudden carnage. there's nothing subversive about it, and nothing personal. it's not a book about survival, and i've never had that sense of that revelling (mistakenly) in one's own indestructibility that the political critics of jtinger say is a hallmark of fascist writing. (it is there in other books of his.) there's a later, hyper-nietzschean aphorism of junger's that goes: 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger; and what kills me makes me incredibly strong.' in the strangest way, storm of steel isn't really a personal book at all it's about the war. in his world war ii diaries, there is this very suggestive idea: 'war isn't like a cake that the two sides divide up between them to the last crumb; there is always a piece left. that's the piece for the gods, and it remains outside the argument, and it elevates the fighting from sheer brutality and demonic violence. homer knew and respected it.' storm of steel is about all of war, including that olympians' share. even the form of warfare in world war i a mutual or reciprocal siege -seems somehow suitable for epic. as in the iliad, it can be difficult to separate the momentous and the routine; that too is perhaps in the nature of war. thomas nevin notes: 'marx had asked: "is achilles possible with gunpowder and lead?" junger had answered: "that was my problem."' sometimes the progress seems slow and a little lumbering (junger's time as an observation officer i remember as a particularly quiet phase of the book), at other times the horror and excitement come pell-mell. there is repetition, there is detail of every sort, there is an effort to integrate war into nature, a military pastoral, the alternation of day and night, rain and shine, the wheel of the seasons: 'each spring marked the beginning of a new year's fighting; intimations of a big offensive were as much part of the season as primroses and pussy-willows' (p. 141). all this is epic and celebratory. war and time and being are compounded into one great narcotic experience. (i could never understand, unless it was for doctrinal political reasons, why sartre, asked about junger, said merely: 'i hate him.') at the same time, it's possible to read storm of steel without falling in thrall to war; one may even feel strengthened in one's pacifist convictions. it's a fair book, not a tract, and over the years and revisions i suspect it's become rather fairer. it has purpose many purposes, even but it's not designing or conniving. much of this is due to the way it ends. there is real weariness the weariness, one might even conjecture, of a much older man and a profoundly elegiac feeling in its last chapters. this is not a mendacious or literarily contrived withdrawal junger is still attending to what's in front of him, and around him but it is unexpected and, i think, deeply moving. it's the epic giving way to the tragic: the nights brought heavy bombardments like swift, devastating summer thunderstorms. i would lie on my bunk on a mattress of fresh grass, and listen, with a strange and quite unjustified feeling of security, to the explosions all around that sent the sand trickling out of the walls. or i would walk out to the fire-step to take in the mournful nocturnal scene, and the strange contrast between its heaviness and the fiery spectacle whose dance-floor it was. at such moments, there crept over me a mood i hadn't known before. a profound reorientation, a reaction to so much time spent so intensely, on the edge. the seasons followed one another, it was winter and then it was summer again, but it was still war. i felt i had got tired, and used to the aspect of war, but it was from this familiarity that i observed what was in front of me in a new and subdued light. things were less dazzlingly distinct. and i felt that the purpose with which i had gone out to fight had been used up, and no longer held. the war posed new, deeper puzzles. it was a strange time altogether, (p. 260) it is still the junger repertoire, the contemplation, the casual fearlessness, the observation of huge and tiny things, the melancholy, the idea of the war-as-nature, the big metaphors, but with a new quality of introspection. (though this too has a hard edge, it's momentary and continent and underplayed.) it's a moment of war-weariness, of taedium belli, surprising in such a one. for once, junger seems less like achilles sometimes he seems like ajax than like hector. influenza, enemy propaganda, bad food, silly accidents and foolish orders have all taken their toll, and twenty pages later, in the chapter called 'my last assault', there is what seems to me an utterly homeric moment: a figure in brown corduroy strode with equanimity across this fire-swept piece of terrain, and shook me by the hand. kius and boje, captain junker and schaper, schrader, schlager, heins, findeisen, hohlemann and hoppenrath stood behind a hedge raked with lead and iron and talked through the attack. on many a day of wrath we had fought on one and the same battlefield, and today once more the sun, now low in the western sky, was to gild the blood of all or nearly all. it was our last storm. how many times over the last few years we had advanced into the setting sun in a similar frame of mind! les eparges, guillemont, st-pierre-vaast, langemarck, passchendaele, moeuvres, vraucourt, mory! another gory carnival beckoned, (pp. 279-80) is this not majestic and surprising and beyond all contrivance in its sadness? this is the reward of epic. a skimpier, less focused, less excessive, less varied and venturesome book would never have mustered the layerings of repetition and endurance sufficient to produce this sudden deepening, this sudden qualitative change. the summaries (that 'hedge raked with lead and iron') might have been news, the heightening of the tone pretentious, the hint of alienation coquettish or already threadbare, and, in the two homeric catalogues, the names might have been those of 'characters', and the sites of the battles pretty indistinguishable. can you tell this, can you write about this? women queueing outside stalin's prisons in the hope of seeing their sons and husbands asked the russian poet anna akhmatova, there to see her own son, and, for whatever reason, she could. ernst junger, for whatever reason, over decades, learned to tell his story of world war i. michael hofmann february 2003 gainesville, florida bibliography general henri barbusse, le feu (paris, 1917) edmund blunden, undertones of war (london, 1928) geoff dyer, the missing of the somme (london, 1994) paul fussell, the great war and modern memory (new york, 1975) robert graves, goodbye to all that (london, 1929) homer, the iliad, trans. robert fagles (new york, 1990) ernst junger, auswahl aus dem werk in funf banden, volume ii (das erste pariser tagebuch; kaukasische aufzeichnungen; das zweite pariser tagebuch) (stuttgart, 1994) ------, copse 125, trans. basil creighton (london, 1930) ------, the storm of steel, trans. basil creighton (london, 1929) john keegan, the face of battle (london, 1976) gert ledig, die stalinorgel (hamburg, 1955) ------, vergeltung (frankfurt, 1956) ------, faustrecht (munich, 1957) sven lindqvist, a history of bombing, trans. linda haverty rugg (london, 2001) robin prior and trevor wilson, the first world war (london, 1999) erich maria remarque, im westen nichts neues (berlin, 1929) siegfried sassoon, the complete memoirs of george sherston (london, 1937) john silkin (ed.), the penguin book of first world war poetry (rev. edn., london, 1996) leon wolff, in flanders fields: passchendaele 1917 (london, 1959) particular heinz ludwig arnold, krieger, waldganger, anarch (gottingen, 1990) ------( ed.), text und kritik # 105/106 (gottingen, 1990) norbert dietka, ernst junger vom weltkrieg zum weltfrieden (bad honnef, 1994) gerhard loose, ernst junger (bloomington, 1974) steffen martus, ernst junger (stuttgart, 2001) elliot y. neaman, a dubious past: ernst junger and the politics of literature after nazism (berkeley and los angeles, 1999) thomas nevin, ernst junger and germany: into the abyss, 1914-1945 (durham, nc, 1996) paul noack, ernst junger eine biographie (berlin, 1998) heimo schwilk (ed.), ernst junger-leben und werk in bildern und texten (stuttgart, 1988) j. p. stern, ernst junger (new haven, 1953) johannes volmert, ernst junger: 'in stahlgewittern' (munich, 1985) storm of steel for the fallen in the chalk trenches of champagne the train stopped at bazancourt, a small town in champagne, and we got out. full of awe and incredulity, we listened to the slow grinding pulse of the front, a rhythm we were to become mightily familiar with over the years. the white ball of a shrapnel shell melted far off, suffusing the grey december sky. the breath of battle blew across to us, and we shuddered. did we sense that almost all of us some sooner, some later were to be consumed by it, on days when the dark grumbling yonder would crash over our heads like an incessant thunder? we had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches, and over the brief weeks of training, we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group. grown up in an age of security, we shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. we were enraptured by war. we had set out in a rain of flowers, in a drunken atmosphere of blood and roses. surely the war had to supply us with what we wanted; the great, the overwhelming, the hallowed experience. we thought of it as manly, as action, a merry duelling party on flowered, blood-bedewed meadows. 'no finer death in all the world than ...' anything to participate, not to have to stay at home! 'form up by platoon!' our heated fantasies cooled down on the march through the claggy soil of champagne. knapsacks, munition belts and rifles hung round our necks like lead weights. 'ease up! keep up at the back!' finally we reached orainville, one of the typical hamlets of the region, and the designated base for the 73 rd rifles, a group of fifty brick and limestone houses, grouped round a chateau in parkland. used as we were to the order of cities, the higgledy-piggledy life on the village streets struck us as exotic. we saw only a few, ragged, shy civilians; everywhere else soldiers in worn and tattered tunics, with faces weather-beaten and often with a heavy growth of beard, strolling along at a slow pace, or standing in little clusters in doorways, watching our arrival with ribald remarks. in a gateway there was a glowing field kitchen, smelling of pea soup, surrounded by men jingling their mess-tins as they waited to eat. it seemed that, if anything, life was a little slower and duller here, an impression strengthened by the evidence of dilapidation in the village. we spent our first night in a vast barn, and in the morning were paraded before the regimental adjutant, first lieutenant von brixen, in the courtyard of the chateau. i was assigned to the 9th company. our first day of war was not to pass without making a decisive impression upon us. we were sitting over breakfast in the school where we were quartered. suddenly there was a series of dull concussions, and all the soldiers rushed out of the houses towards the entrance of the village. we followed suit, not really knowing why. again, there was a curious fluttering and whooshing sound over our heads, followed by a sudden, violent explosion. i was amazed at the way the men around me seemed to cower while running at full pelt, as though under some frightful threat. the whole thing struck me as faintly ridiculous, in the way of seeing people doing things one doesn't properly understand. immediately afterwards, groups of dark figures emerged on to the empty village street, carrying black bundles on canvas stretchers or fireman's lifts of their folded hands. i stared, with a queasy feeling of unreality, at a blood-spattered form with a strangely contorted leg hanging loosely down, wailing 'help! help!' as if sudden death still had him by the throat. he was carried into a building with a red cross flag draped over the doorway. what was that about? war had shown its claws, and stripped off its mask of cosiness. it was all so strange, so impersonal. we had barely begun to think about the enemy, that mysterious, treacherous being somewhere. this event, so far beyond anything we had experienced, made such a powerful impression on us that it was difficult to understand what had happened. it was like a ghostly manifestation in broad daylight. a shell had burst high up over the chateau entrance, and had hurled a cloud of stone and debris into the gateway, just as the occupants, alerted by the first shots, were rushing out. there were thirteen fatalities, including gebhard the music master, whom i remembered well from the promenade concerts in hanover. a tethered horse had had a keener sense of the approaching danger than the men, and had broken free a few seconds before, and galloped into the courtyard, where it remained unhurt. even though the shelling could recommence at any moment, i felt irresistibly drawn to the site of the calamity. next to the spot where the shell had hit dangled a little sign where some wag had written 'ordnance this way'. the castle was clearly felt to be a dangerous place. the road was reddened with pools of gore; riddled helmets and sword belts lay around. the heavy iron chateau gate was shredded and pierced by the impact of the explosive; the kerbstone was spattered with blood. my eyes were drawn to the place as if by a magnet; and a profound change went through me. talking to my comrades, i saw that the incident had rather blunted their enthusiasm for war. that it had also had an effect on me was instanced by numerous auditory hallucinations, so that i would mistake the trundling of a passing cart, say, for the ominous whirring of the deadly shell. this was something that was to accompany us all through the war, that habit of jumping at any sudden and unexpected noise. whether it was a train clattering past, a book falling to the floor, or a shout in the night on each occasion, the heart would stop with a sense of mortal dread. it bore out the fact that for four years we lived in the shadow of death. the experience hit so hard in that dark country beyond consciousness, that every time there was a break with the usual, the porter death would leap to the gates with hand upraised, like the figure above the dial on certain clock towers, who appears at the striking of the hour, with scythe and hourglass. the evening of that same day brought the long-awaited moment of our moving, with full pack, up to battle stations. the road took us through the ruins of the village of betricourt, looming spectrally out of the half-dark, to the so-called 'pheasantry', an isolated forester's house, buried in some pine woods, where the regimental reserve was housed, of which, to this point, the 9th company had formed a part. their commander was lieutenant brahms. we were welcomed, divided up into platoons, and before long found ourselves in the society of bearded, mud-daubed fellows, who greeted us with a kind of ironic benevolence. they asked us how things were back in hanover, and whether the war might not be over soon. then the conversation turned, with us all listening avidly, to short statements about earthworks, field kitchens, stretches of trench, shell bombardment, and other aspects of stationary warfare. after a little while, a shout rang out in front of our cottage-like billet to 'turn out!' we formed up into our platoons, and on the order 'load and safety!' we felt a little twinge of arousal as we rammed clips of live ammunition into our magazines. then silent progress, in indian file, through the landscape dobbed with dark patches of forest to the front. isolated shots rang out from time to time, or a rocket flared up with a hiss to leave us in deeper darkness following its short spectral flash. monotonous clink of rifles and field shovels, punctuated by the warning cry: 'watch it, barbed wire!' then a sudden jingling crash and a man swearing: 'dammit, why couldn't you tell me there's a crater!' a corporal shuts him up: 'pipe down, for christ's sake, do you think the french are wearing earplugs?' more rapid progress. the uncertain night, the flickering of flares and the slow crackling of rifle fire produce a kind of subdued excitement that keeps us strangely on our toes. from time to time, a stray bullet whines past chilly into the distance. how often since that first time i've gone up the line through dead scenery in that strange mood of melancholy exaltation! at last we dropped into one of the communication trenches that wound their way through the night like white snakes to the front. there i found myself standing between a couple of traverses, lonely and shivering, staring hard into a line of pines in front of the trench, where my imagination conjured up all sorts of shadowy figures, while the occasional stray bullet slapped into the boughs and somersaulted down with a whistle. the only diversion in this seemingly endless time was being collected by an older comrade, and trotting off together down a long, narrow passage to an advance sentry post, where, once again, it was our job to gaze out into the terrain in front. i was given a couple of hours to try to find an exhausted sleep in a bare chalk dugout. when the sky lightened, i was pale and clay-daubed, and so was everyone else; i felt i had lived this sort of mole's life for many months already. the regiment had taken up a position winding through the chalky champagne soil, facing the village of le godat. on the right, it abutted a tattered area of woodland, the so-called 'shell wood', and from there it zigzagged across vast sugar-beet fields, where we could see the luminous red trousers of dead french attackers dotted about, to the course of a stream, across which communications with the 74th regiment were kept open by patrols at night. the stream poured over the weir of a destroyed mill ringed by brooding trees. for months, its water had been laving the black parchment faces of the dead of a french colonial regiment. an eerie place, especially at night, when the moon cast moving shadows through breaks in the clouds, and the sounds of the rushes and the murmuring water were joined by others less easily accounted for. the regimen was taxing, beginning at dusk, for which the entire complement was made to stand to in the trench. between ten at night and six in the morning, only two men out of each platoon were allowed to sleep at a time, which meant that we got two hours a night each, though they were eaten into by being woken early, having to fetch straw, and other occupations, so that there were only a few minutes left as a rule. guard duty was either in the trench or else in one of the numerous forward posts that were connected to the line by long, buried saps; a type of insurance that was later given up, because of their exposed position. the endless, exhausting spells of sentry duty were bearable so long as the weather happened to be fine, or even frosty; but it became torture once the rain set in in january. once the wet had saturated the canvas sheeting overhead, and your coat and uniform, and trickled down your body for hours on end, you got into a mood that nothing could lighten, not even the sound of the splashing feet of the man coming towards you to relieve you. dawn lit exhausted, clay-smeared figures who, pale and teeth chattering, flung themselves down on the mouldy straw of their dripping dugouts. those dugouts! they were holes hacked into the chalk, facing the trench, roofed over with boards and a few shovelfuls of earth. if it had been raining, they would drip for days afterwards; a desperate waggishness kitted them out with names like 'stalactite cavern', 'men's public baths', and other such. if several men wanted to rest at the same time, they had no option but to stick their legs out into the trench, where anyone passing was bound to trip over them. in the circumstances, there was not much chance of sleep in the daytime either. besides, we had two hours of sentry duty in the day too, as well as having to make running repairs to the trench, go for food, coffee, water, and whatever else. clearly, this unaccustomed type of existence hit us hard, especially since most of us had had only a nodding acquaintance with real work. furthermore, we were not received out here with open arms, as we'd expected. the old-stagers took every opportunity to pull our legs, and every tedious or unexpected assignment was put the way of us 'war-wantons'. that instinct, which had survived the switch from barracks yard to war, and which did nothing to improve our mood, ceased after the first battle we fought in side by side, after which we saw ourselves as 'old-stagers'. the period in which the company lay in reserve was not much cosier. we dwelt in fir-branch camouflaged earth huts round the 'pheasantry' or in the hiller copse, whose dungy floors at least gave off a pleasant, fermenting warmth. sometimes, though, you would wake up lying in several inches of water. although 'roomy-dizzy' was just a name to me, after only a few nights of this involuntary immersion i felt pain in every one of my joints. i dreamed of iron balls trundling up and down my limbs. nights here were not for sleeping either, but were used to deepen the many communication trenches. in total darkness, if the french flares happened not to be lighting us up, we had to stick to the heels of the man in front with somnambulistic confidence if we weren't to lose ourselves altogether, and spent hours traipsing around the labyrinthine network of trenches. at least the digging was easy; only a thin layer of clay or loam covered the mighty thicknesses of chalk, which was easily cut by the pickaxe. sometimes green sparks would fly up if the steel had encountered one of the fist-sized iron pyrite crystals that were sprinkled throughout the soft stone. these consisted of many little cubes clustered together, and, cut open, had a streakily goldy gleam. a little ray of sunshine in all this monotony was the nightly arrival of the field kitchen in the corner of the hiller copse. when the cauldron was opened, it would release a delicious aroma of peas with ham, or some other wonder. even here, though, there was a dark side: the dried vegetables, dubbed 'wire entanglements' or 'damaged crops' by disappointed gourmets. in my diary entry for 6 january, i even find the irate note: 'in the evening, the field kitchen comes teetering up, with some god-awful pigswill, probably frozen beets boiled up.' on the 14th, by contrast: 'delicious pea soup, four heavenly portions, till we groaned with satisfaction. we staged eating contests, and argued about the most favourable position. i contended that it was standing up.' there were liberal helpings of a pale-red brandy, which had a strong taste of methylated spirits, but wasn't to be sneezed at in the cold wet weather. we drank it out of our mess-tin lids. the tobacco was similarly strong, and also plentiful. the image of the soldier that remains with me from those days is that of the sentry with his spiked, grey helmet, fists buried in the pockets of his greatcoat, standing behind the shooting-slit, blowing pipe smoke over his rifle butt. most pleasant were days off in orainville, which were spent catching up on sleep, cleaning our clothes and gear, and drilling. the company was put in a vast barn that had only a couple of hen-roost ladders to facilitate entrances and exits. although it was still full of straw, there were braziers lit in it. one night i rolled up against one, and was woken only by the efforts of several comrades pouring water over me. i was horrified to see that the back of my uniform was badly charred, and for some time to come i had to go around in what bore a passing resemblance to a pair of tails. after only a short time with the regiment, we had become thoroughly disillusioned. instead of the danger we'd hoped for, we had been given dirt, work and sleepless nights, getting through which required heroism of a sort, but hardly what we had in mind. worse still was the boredom, which is still more enervating for the soldier than the proximity of death. we pinned our hopes on an attack; but we had picked a most unfavourable moment to join the front, because all movement had stopped. even small-scale tactical initiatives were laid to rest as the trenches became more elaborate and the defensive fire more destructive. only a few weeks before our arrival, a single company had risked one of these localized attacks over a few hundred yards, following a perfunctory artillery barrage. the french had simply picked them off, as on a shooting-range, and only a handful had got as far as the enemy wire; the few survivors spent the rest of the day lying low, till darkness fell and they were able to crawl back to their starting-point. a contributory factor in the chronic overtiring of the troops was the way that trench warfare, which demanded a different way of keeping one's strength up, was still a novel and unexpected phenomenon as far as the officer corps was concerned. the great number of sentries and the incessant trench-digging were largely unnecessary, and even deleterious. it's not a question of the scale of the earthworks, but of the courage and condition of the men behind them. the ever-deeper trenches might protect against the odd head wound, but it also made for a defensive and security-conscious type of thinking, which we were loath to abandon later. moreover, the demands made by the maintenance of the trenches were becoming ever-more exorbitant. the most disagreeable contingency was the onset of thaw, which caused the frost-cracked chalk facings of the trenches to disintegrate into a sludgy mess. of course we heard bullets whistling past our trench, and sometimes we got a few shells from the forts at rheims, but these little trifling reminders of war came a long way below our expectations. even so, we were occasionally reminded of the deadly earnest that lurked behind this seemingly aimless business. on 8 july, for instance, a shell struck the 'pheasantry', and killed our battalion adjutant, lieutenant schmidt. the officer in command of the french artillery was, apparently, also the owner of that hunting lodge. the artillery was still in an advanced position, just behind the front; there was even a field gun incorporated in the front line, rather inadequately concealed under tarpaulins. during a conversation i was having with the 'powderheads', i was surprised to notice that the whistling of rifle bullets bothered them much more than the crumps. that's just the way it is; the hazards of one's own line of service always seem more rational and less terrifying. on the stroke of midnight, on 27 january [ the birthday of kaiser wilhelm ii (1859-1941).],we gave the kaiser three cheers, and all along the front sang 'heil dir im siegerkranz' ['hail thee mid the conquerors' round']. the french responded with rifle fire. some time round about then, i had a disagreeable experience which might have brought my military career to a premature and somewhat inglorious end. the company was on the left of the line, and towards dawn, following a night on duty, a comrade and i were detailed to go on double sentry duty by the stream bed. on account of the cold, i had, in breach of regulations, wrapped a blanket round my head, and was leaning against a tree, having set my rifle down in a bush next to me. on hearing a sudden noise behind me, i reached for my weapon only to find it had disappeared! the duty officer had snuck up on me and taken it without my noticing. by way of punishment, he sent me, armed only with a pickaxe, towards the french posts about a hundred yards away a cowboys-and-indians notion that almost did for me. for, during my bizarre punishment watch, a troop of three volunteers ventured forward through the wide reed bed, creating so much rustling that they were spotted right away by the french, and came under fire. one of them, a man called lang, was hit and never seen again. since i was standing hard by, i got my share of the then-fashionable platoon salvoes, so that the twigs of the willow tree i was standing next to were whipping round my ears. i gritted my teeth and, out of sheer cussedness, remained standing. as dusk fell, i was brought back to my unit. we were all mightily pleased when we learned that we would finally leave this position, and we celebrated our departure from orainville with a beery evening in the big barn. on 4 february, we marched back to bazancourt, and a regiment of saxons took our place. from bazancourt to hattonchatel in bazancourt, a dull little town in champagne, the company was quartered in the school, which, as a result of our exceptional tidiness, soon came to resemble a peacetime barracks. there was an orderly sergeant, who woke everyone punctually, barracks duty, and roll-call every evening, held by the corporal. in the morning, the companies moved out for a couple of hours' brisk drill and exercise on the barren fields outside town. i was taken out of this environment after a few days; my regiment was sending me on a training course to recouvrence. recouvrence was a remote little village, nestling in pretty chalk hills, to where all the regiments in the division dispatched a few of their young men to receive a thorough schooling in military matters from a staff of hand-picked officers and ncos. we of the 73 rd had cause to be grateful to lieutenant hoppe for this -and for much else besides. life in this secluded hamlet was a strange mixture of barracks drill and academic leisure, attributable to the fact that the bulk of the participants had, until a few months before, been attending various lecture halls and faculties all over germany. by day, the young people were honed into soldiers by all the rules of the art, while in the evenings, they and their teachers assembled around vast barrels brought over from the stores at montcornet to display much the same degree of discipline and commitment to drinking. when the various units trickled back from their respective watering-holes in the early hours, the little chalk village houses were treated to the unfamiliar sight of student high jinks. the course director, a captain, had the pedagogical habit of expecting redoubled efforts in class the following morning. on one occasion, we were even kept going for forty-eight hours straight. it was for the following reason. we had the respectful custom, at the end of a night's drinking, of giving our captain an escort home. one evening, an ungodly drunken fellow, who reminded me of magister laukhard [a debased version of a renaissance man (1758-1822): theologian, drunkard, soldier and spy. he fought in the prussian army against napoleon, was captured in 1792, and in 1795 managed to escape and return to germany.], was entrusted with this important task. he was back in next to no time, grinning widely and reporting that he had dropped the 'old man' off, not in his billet but in the cowshed. our comeuppance was not slow to follow. just as we had got back to our own quarters for a good lie-down, the alarm was raised by the local watch. swearing, we buckled on our gear and ran to our stations. we found the captain already there, in a towering temper, as might be imagined, and displaying an extraordinary zeal. he greeted us with the call: 'fire-practice, the watch-house is on fire!' before the eyes of the astonished villagers, the fire-engine was trundled out of the fire station, the hose attached to it, and the guardroom was inundated with well-aimed sprays of water. the 'old man' stood on the stone steps with increasing ire, directing the exercise, and calling on us for unstinting efforts. every so often, he bawled out some soldier or civilian who happened to provoke him especially, and gave orders for whoever it was to be led off. the unhappy fellow in question was quickly hauled off behind the building, safely out of sight. as dawn broke, we were still standing there, knees shaking, manning the pump. at last we were allowed to dismiss, though only to get ready for morning drill. when we reached the drill ground, the old man was already there, clean-shaven, fresh and alert, all ready to devote himself with particular zeal to our training. relations between the men were very cordial. it was here that i made close friendships, which were to stand the test of many battlefields, with several outstanding fellows, among them clement, who fell at monchy, with the painter tebbe (at cambrai), and with the steinforth brothers (at the somme). three or four of us roomed together, and shared a household. i particularly remember our regular scrambled egg and fried potato suppers. on sundays, we ran to rabbit a local speciality or chicken. as i was the one in charge of making the purchases, our landlady once showed me a number of vouchers or promissory notes she had received from soldiers requisitioning food; a wonderful selection of earthy humour, generally to the effect that rifleman a. n. other, having paid his homage to the charms of the daughter of the house, had needed a dozen eggs to help him recoup his strength. the villagers were quite astonished that we simple soldiers could all speak more or less fluent french. the circumstance gave rise to the occasional droll incident. once, for instance, i was at the village barber's with clement, when one of the waiting frenchmen called out in his thick champagne accent to the barber, who was just shaving clement: 'eh, coupe la gorge avec!' complete with sawing motions at his throat. to his horror, clement calmly replied: 'quant a moi, j'aimerais mieux la garder,' [ 'why don't you just cut his throat with it!'. .. 'if it's all one to you, i'd just as soon hang on to it.'] showing the kind of sang-froid that a warrior ought to have. in mid-february, we of the 73 rd felt consternation to hear of heavy losses taken by the regiment at perthes, and felt desperate to be so far from our comrades at the time. the fierce defence of our sector of the front in that 'witches' cauldron' got us the sobriquet 'the lions of perthes' that was to accompany us wherever we went on the western front. besides that, we were also known as 'les gibraltars', on account of the blue gibraltar colours we wore in memory of the regiment from which we traced our descent, the hanoverian guards, who defended the island fortress against the french and spanish from 1779 to 1783. the heavy news reached us in the middle of the night, as we were carousing as usual under the eye of lieutenant hoppe. one of the revellers, 'beanpole' behrens, the selfsame man who had dropped the captain off to bed in the cowshed, wanted to walk out the instant he heard, 'because the beer had lost its taste'. hoppe held him back, observing that to do so would be unsolddierly. and hoppe was right too; he himself fell a few weeks later at les eparges, in front of his company's extended line. on 21 march, following a little exam, we were returned to our regiment, which was once more at bazancourt. then, following a big parade and a valedictory address from general von emmich, we left the 10th army corps. on 24 march, we were put on trains and taken towards brussels, where we were amalgamated with the 76th and 164th regiments, to form the iiith infantry division, which is what we remained till the end of the war. our battalion was billeted in the little town of herinnes, set in a cosy flemish landscape. on 29 march, i celebrated my twentieth birthday. although the belgians had room enough in their houses, our company was installed in a large and draughty barn, which the cutting sea wind whistled through on the cold march nights. that apart, our stay in herinnes was quite restorative, with plenty of drill, but good victualling, and the food also very cheap to buy. the half-flemish, half-walloon population was very friendly. i had frequent conversations with the owner of one particular estaminet, a keen socialist and freethinker of a distinctively belgian type. on easter sunday, he invited me to lunch, and would take no money, even for what we drank. before long, all of us had struck up our various friendships and relationships, and on our afternoons off we could be seen striding through the countryside, making for this or that farmstead, to take a seat in a sparkling clean kitchen round one of the low stoves, on whose round tops a big pot of coffee was kept going. we chatted away in a blend of flemish and lower saxon. towards the end of our stay, the weather improved, and we happily went for walks in the attractive, rather watery countryside. the landscape, in which yellow marsh marigolds seemed to have sprouted overnight, was set off by the sight of numbers of half-naked soldiers along the poplar-lined river banks, all with their shirts over their knees, busily hunting for lice. fairly unscathed myself thus far by that scourge, i helped my comrade priepke, an exporter from hamburg, wrap his woollen waistcoat as populous as once the garment of the adventurous simplicis-simus [eponymous hero of the novel by grimmelshausen (1622-1676), a picaresque set during the thirty years war. ]round a heavy boulder, and for mass-extermination, dunk it in the river. where, since we left herinnes very suddenly, it will have mouldered away quietly ever since. on 12 april 1915, we were put on trains at hal, and, to mislead any possible spies, took a wide detour across the northern part of the front to the battlefield of mars-la-tour. in the village of tronville, the company moved into its customary barn quarters, in a boring and squalid dump typical of the lorraine, put together from flat-roofed, windowless stone crates. because of the danger from aeroplanes, we were forced to stay in the crowded township most of the time; once or twice, though, we managed to get to the renowned nearby sites of mars-la-tour and gravelotte. only a few hundred yards away from the village, the road from gravelotte crossed the frontier, where a smashed french border marker lay on the ground. in the evenings, we sometimes took melancholy satisfaction from going on walks to germany. our barn was so ramshackle that you had to pick your way carefully over the joists if you weren't to crash through the mouldy planking on to the threshing-floor beneath. one evening, as our unit, under our decent corporal kerkhoff, was busy doling out portions on a manger, a huge lump of oak detached itself from the rafters and came crashing down. it was pure chance that it stuck fast a little way over our heads in the crook of two walls. we were more frightened than hurt; only our precious meat portions lay covered in rubble and debris. then, no sooner had we crawled into the straw after this ill omen, than there was a pounding on the gate, and the alarming voice of the sergeant-major got us out of our resting-places in no time. first off, as always with these surprises, there was a moment of silence, then total confusion and din: 'my helmet!' 'where's my haversack?' 'i can't get into my boots!' 'you stole my ammunition!' 'shut up, august!' in the end, we were all ready, and we marched off towards the station at chamblay, from where a train took us, minutes later, to pagny-sur-moselle. the next morning, we were climbing the hills of the moselle, and stopped in preny, a charming hill village, with the ruins of a chateau looming over it. our barn this time turned out to be a stone construction filled with fragrant mountain hay. through its window-slits we had a view out over the wine-grown slopes of the moselle, on to the little valley town of pagny, which was regularly targeted by shells and aerial bombardment. several times, shells landing in the river brought up vast columns of water. the balmy spring weather was enlivening, and spurred us on to long walks in the wonderful hill country. so exuberant were we that we carried on larking about long into the evening, before finally settling to sleep. one much-loved prank was pouring water or coffee from a canteen into a snoring sleeper's mouth. on the evening of 22 april, we marched out of preny and covered over twenty miles to the village of hattonchatel, without registering any footsoreness, in spite of our heavy packs. we pitched camp in the woods on the right of the famous grande tranchee. all the indications were that we would be fighting in the morning. bandage packs were issued, extra tins of beef, and signalling flags for the gunners. i sat up for a long time that night, in the foreboding eve of battle mood of which soldiers at all times have left report, on a tree stump clustered round with blue anemones, before i crept over the ranks of my comrades to my tent. i had tangled dreams, in which a principal role was played by a skull. in the morning, when i told priepke about it, he said he hoped it was a french skull. les eparges the tender green of young leaves shimmered in the flat light. we followed hidden, twisting paths towards a narrow gorge behind the front line. we had been told that the 76th was to attack after a bombardment of only twenty minutes, and that we were to be held in reserve. on the dot of noon, our artillery launched into a furious bombardment that echoed and re-echoed through the wooded hollows. for the first time, we heard what was meant by the expression 'drumfire'. we sat perched on our haversacks, idle and excited. a runner plunged through to the company commander. brisk exchange. the three nearest trenches have fallen to us, and six field guns have been captured!' loud cheers rang out. a feeling of up-and-at-'em. at last, the longed-for order. in a long line, we moved forward, towards the pattering of heavy rifle fire. it was getting serious. to the side of the forest path, dull thumps came down in a clump of firs, bringing down a rain of branches and soil. one nervous soldier threw himself to the ground, while his comrades laughed uneasily. then death's call slipped through the ranks: 'ambulancemen to the front!' a little later, we passed the spot that had been hit. the casualties had already been removed. bloody scraps of cloth and flesh had been left on bushes around the crater a strange and dreadful sight that put me in mind of the butcher-bird that spikes its prey on thorn bushes. troops were advancing at the double along the grande tranchee. casualties huddled by the roadside, whimpering for water, prisoners carrying stretchers came panting back, limbers clattered through fire at a gallop. on either side, shells spattered the soft ground, heavy boughs came crashing down. a dead horse lay across the middle of the path, with giant wounds, its steaming entrails beside it. in among the great, bloody scenes there was a wild, unsuspected hilarity. a bearded reservist leaned against a tree: 'on you go now, boys, frenchie's on the run!' we entered the battle-tramped realm of the infantryman. the area round the jumping-off position had been deforested by shells. in the ripped-up no man's land lay the victims of the attack, still facing the enemy; their grey tunics barely stood out from the ground. a giant form with red, blood-spattered beard stared fixedly at the sky, his fingers clutching the spongy ground. a young man tossed in a shell-crater, his features already yellow with his impending death. he seemed not to want to be looked at; he gave us a cross shrug and pulled his coat over his head, and lay still. our marching column broke up. shells came continually hissing towards us in long, flat arcs, lightnings whirled up the forest floor. the shrill toot of field artillery shells i had heard quite often even before orainville; it didn't strike me as being particularly dangerous. the loose order in which our company now advanced over the broken field had something oddly calming about it; i thought privately that this baptism of fire business was actually far less dangerous than i'd expected. in a curious failure of comprehension, i looked alertly about me for possible targets for all this artillery fire, not, apparently, realizing that it was actually ourselves that the enemy gunners were trying for all they were worth to hit. 'ambulancemen!' we had our first fatality. a shrapnel ball had ripped through rifleman stoker's carotid artery. three packets of lint were sodden with blood in no time. in a matter of seconds he had bled to death. next to us, a couple of ordnance pieces loosed off shells, drawing more fire down on us from the enemy. an artillery lieutenant, who was in the vanguard, looking for wounded, was thrown to the ground by a column of steam that spurted in front of him. he got to his feet and made his way back with notable calm. we took him in with gleaming eyes. it was getting dark when we received orders to advance further. the way now led through dense undergrowth shot through by shells, into an endless communication trench along which the french had dropped their packs as they ran. approaching the village of les eparges, without having any troops in front of us, we were forced to hew defensive positions in solid rock. finally, i slumped into a bush and fell asleep. at moments, half asleep, i was aware of artillery shells, ours or theirs, describing their ellipses in a trail of sparks. 'come on, man, get up! we're moving out!' i woke up in dew-sodden grass. through a stuttering swathe of machine-gun fire, we plunged back into our communication trench, and moved to a position on the edge of the wood previously held by the french. a sweetish smell and a bundle hanging in the wire caught my attention. in the rising mist, i leaped out of the trench and found a shrunken french corpse. flesh like mouldering fish gleamed greenishly through splits in the shredded uniform. turning round, i took a step back in horror: next to me a figure was crouched against a tree. it still had gleaming french leather harness, and on its back was a fully packed haversack, topped by a round mess-tin. empty eye-sockets and a few strands of hair on the bluish-black skull indicated that the man was not among the living. there was another sitting down, slumped forward towards his feet, as though he had just collapsed. all around were dozens more, rotted, dried, stiffened to mummies, frozen in an eerie dance of death. the french must have spent months in the proximity of their fallen comrades, without burying them. during the morning, the sun gradually pierced the fog, and spread a pleasant warmth. after i'd slept on the bottom of the trench for a while, curiosity impelled me to inspect the unoccupied trench we'd captured the day before. it was littered with great piles of provisions, ammunition, equipment, weapons, letters and newspapers. the dugouts were like looted junk-shops. in amongst it all were the bodies of the brave defenders, their guns still poking out through the shooting-slits. a headless torso was jammed in some shot-up beams. head and neck were gone, white cartilage gleamed out of reddish-black flesh. i found it difficult to fathom. next to it a very young man lay on his back with glassy eyes and fists still aiming. a peculiar feeling, looking into dead, questioning eyes a shudder that i never quite lost in the course of the war. his pockets had been turned inside out, and his emptied wallet lay beside him. unmolested by any fire, i strolled along the ravaged trench. it was the short mid-morning lull that was often to be my only moment of respite on the battlefield. i used it to take a good look at everything. the unfamiliar weapons, the darkness of the dugouts, the colourful contents of the haversacks, it was all new and strange to me. i pocketed some french ammunition, undid a silky-soft tarpaulin and picked up a canteen wrapped in blue cloth, only to chuck it all away again a few steps further along. the sight of a beautiful striped shirt, lying next to a ripped-open officer's valise, seduced me to strip off my uniform and get into some fresh linen. i relished the pleasant tickle of clean cloth against my skin. thus kitted out, i looked for a sunny spot in the trench, sat down on a beam-end, and with my bayonet opened a round can of meat for my breakfast. then i lit my pipe, and browsed through some of the many french magazines that lay scattered about, some of them, as i saw from the dates, only sent to the trenches on the eve of verdun. not without a certain shudder, i remember that during my breakfast i tried to unscrew a curious little contraption that i found lying at my feet in the trench, which for some reason i took to be a 'storm lantern'. it wasn't until a lot later that it dawned on me that the thing i'd been fiddling around with was a live hand-grenade. as conditions grew brighter, a german battery opened up from a stretch of woods just behind the trench. it didn't take long for the enemy to reply. suddenly i was struck by a mighty crash behind me, and saw a steep pillar of smoke rising. still unfamiliar with the sounds of war, i was not able to distinguish the hisses and whistles and bangs of our own gunnery from the ripping crash of enemy shells, and hence, to get a sense of the lines of engagement. above all, i could not account for the way i seemed to be under fire from all sides, so that the trajectories of the various shells were criss-crossing apparently aimlessly over the little warren of trenches where a few of us were holed up. this effect, for which i could see no cause, disquieted me and made me think. i still viewed the machinery of conflict with the eyes of an inexperienced recruit the expressions of bellicosity seemed as distant and peculiar to me as events on another planet. this meant i was unafraid; feeling myself to be invisible, i couldn't believe i was a target to anyone, much less that i might be hit. so, returned to my unit, i surveyed the terrain in front of me with great indifference. in my pocket-diary i wrote down a habit of mine later on as well the times and the intensity of the bombardment. towards noon, the artillery fire had increased to a kind of savage pounding dance. the flames lit around us incessantly. black, white and yellow clouds mingled. the shells with black smoke, which the old-timers called 'americans' or 'coal boxes', ripped with incredible violence. and all the time the curious, canary-like twittering of dozens of fuses. with their cut-out shapes, in which the trapped air produced a flute-like trill, they drifted over the long surf of explosions like ticking copper toy clocks or mechanical insects. the odd thing was that the little birds in the forest seemed quite untroubled by the myriad noise; they sat peaceably over the smoke in their battered boughs. in the short intervals of firing, we could hear them singing happily or ardently to one another, if anything even inspired or encouraged by the dreadful noise on all sides. in the moments when the shelling was particularly heavy, the men called to each other to remain vigilant. in the stretch of trench that i could see, and out of whose walls great clumps of mud had already been knocked here and there, we were in complete readiness. our rifles were unlocked in the shooting-slits, and the riflemen were alertly eyeing the foreground. from time to time they checked to left and right to see whether we were still in contact, and they smiled when their eyes encountered those of comrades. i sat with a comrade on a bench cut into the clay wall of the trench. once, the board of the shooting-slit through which we were looking splintered, and a rifle bullet flew between our heads and buried itself in the clay. by and by, there were casualties. i had no way of knowing how things stood in other sectors of the labyrinthine trench, but the increasing frequency of the calls for 'ambulancemen!' showed that the shelling was starting to take effect. from time to time, a figure hurried by with its head or neck or hand wrapped in fresh, clean and very visible bandages, on its way to the rear. it was a matter of urgency to get the victim out of the way, because of the military superstition by which a trifling wound or hit, if not immediately dealt with, is certain to be followed by something rather worse. my comrade, volunteer kohl, kept up that north german sang-froid that might have been made for such a situation. he was chewing and squeezing on a cigar that refused to draw, and apart from that looked rather sleepy. nor did he allow himself to be upset when, suddenly, to the rear of us, there was a clattering as of a thousand rifles. it turned out that the intensity of the shelling had caused the wood to catch fire. great tongues of flame climbed noisily up the tree trunks. while all this was going on, i suffered from a rather curious anxiety. i was envious of the old 'lions of perthes' for their experience in the 'witches' cauldron', which i had missed out on through being away in recouvrence. therefore, each time the coal-boxes came down especially thick and fast in our neck of things, i would turn to kohl, who had been there, and ask: 'hey, would you say this was like perthes now?' to my chagrin, he would reply each time with a casually dismissive gesture: 'not by a long chalk!' when the shelling had intensified to the extent that now our clay bench had started to sway with the impact of the black monsters, i yelled into his ear: 'hey, is it like perthes now?' kohl was a conscientious soldier. he began by standing up, looked about himself carefully, and then roared back, to my satisfaction: 'i think it's getting there!' the reply filled me with foolish delight, as it confirmed to me that this was my first proper battle. at that instant, a man popped up in the corner of our sector: 'follow me left!' we passed on the command, and started along the smoke-filled position. the ration party had just arrived with the chow, and hundreds of unwanted mess-tins sat and steamed on the breastwork. who could think to eat now? a crowd of wounded men pushed past us with blood-soaked bandages, the excitement of the battle still etched on their pale faces. up on the edge of the trench, stretcher after stretcher was swiftly lugged to the rear. the sense of being up against it began to take hold of us. 'careful of my arm, mate!' 'come along, man, keep up!' i spotted lieutenant sandvoss, rushing past the trench with distracted staring eyes. a long white bandage trailing round his neck gave him a strangely ungainly appearance, which probably explains why just at that moment he reminded me of a duck. there was something dreamlike about the vision terror in the guise of the absurd. straight afterwards, we hurried past colonel von oppen, who had his hand in his tunic pocket and was issuing orders to his adjutant. 'aha, so there is some organization and purpose behind all this,' it flashed through my brain. the trench debouched into a stretch of wood. we stood irresolutely under huge beech trees. a lieutenant emerged from dense undergrowth and called to our longest-serving nco: 'have them fall out towards the sunset, and then take up position. report to me in the dugout by the clearing.' swearing, the nco took over. we fell out in extended order, and lay down expectantly in a series of flattish depressions that some predecessors of ours had scooped out of the ground. our ribald conversations were suddenly cut off by a marrow-freezing cry. twenty yards behind us, clumps of earth whirled up out of a white cloud and smacked into the boughs. the crash echoed through the woods. stricken eyes looked at each other, bodies pressed themselves into the ground with a humbling sensation of powerlessness to do anything else. explosion followed explosion. choking gases drifted through the undergrowth, smoke obscured the treetops, trees and branches came crashing to the ground, screams. we leaped up and ran blindly, chased by lightnings and crushing air pressure, from tree to tree, looking for cover, skirting around giant tree trunks like frightened game. a dugout where many men had taken shelter, and which i too was running towards, took a direct hit that ripped up the planking and sent heavy timbers spinning through the air. like a couple of squirrels having stones thrown at them, the nco and i dodged panting round a huge beech. quite mechanically, and spurred on by further explosions, i ran after my superior, who sometimes turned round and stared at me, wild-eyed, yelling: 'what in god's name are those things? what are they?' suddenly there was a flash among the rootwork, and a blow on the left thigh flung me to the ground. i thought i had been struck by a clump of earth, but the warm trickle of blood indicated that i'd been wounded. later, i saw that a needle-sharp piece of shrapnel had given me a flesh wound, though my wallet had taken the brunt of it. the fine cut, which before slicing into the muscle had split no fewer than nine thicknesses of stout leather, looked as though it might have been administered by a scalpel. i threw down my haversack and ran towards the trench we had come from. from all sides, wounded men were making tracks towards it from the shelled woods. the trench was appalling, choked with seriously wounded and dying men. a figure stripped to the waist, with ripped-open back, leaned against the parapet. another, with a triangular flap hanging off the back of his skull, emitted short, high-pitched screams. this was the home of the great god pain, and for the first time i looked through a devilish chink into the depths of his realm. and fresh shells came down all the time. i lost my head completely. ruthlessly, i barged past everyone on my path, before finally, having fallen back a few times in my haste, climbing out of the hellish crush of the trench, to move more freely above. like a bolting horse, i rushed through dense undergrowth, across paths and clearings, till i collapsed in a copse by the grande tranchee. it was already growing dark by the time a couple of stretcher-bearers who were looking for casualties came upon me. they picked me up on their stretcher and carried me back to their dressing-station in a dugout covered over with tree branches, where i spent the night, pressed together with many other wounded men. an exhausted medic stood in the throng of groaning men, bandaging, injecting and giving calm instructions. i pulled a dead man's coat over me, and fell into a sleep that incipient fever lit with lurid dreams. once, in the middle of the night, i awoke, and saw the doctor still working by the light of a lamp. a frenchman was screaming incessantly, and next to me a man growled: 'bloody frenchies, never happy if they've not got something to moan about!' and then i was asleep again. as i was being carried away the following morning, a splinter bored a hole through the stretcher canvas between my knees. along with other wounded men, i was loaded on to one of the ambulance wagons that shuttled between the battlefield and the main dressing-station. we galloped across the grande tranchee, which was still under heavy fire. behind the grey canvas walls we careered through the danger that accompanied us with giant stamping strides. on one of the stretchers on which like loaves of bread into an oven we had been pushed into the back of the cart lay a comrade with a shot in the belly that occasioned him intense pain. he appealed to every one of us to finish him off with the ambulanceman's pistol that hung in the wagon. no one answered. i was yet to experience the feeling where every jolt seems like a hammer blow on a bad injury. the chief dressing-station was in a forest clearing. long rows of straw had been laid out and covered with foliage. the stream of wounded was proof, if proof were needed, that a significant engagement was in progress. at the sight of the surgeon, who stood checking the roster in the bloody chaos, i once again had the impression, hard to describe, of seeing a man surrounded by elemental terror and anguish, studying the functioning of his organization with ant-like cold-bloodedness. supplied with food and drink, and smoking a cigarette, i lay in the middle of a long line of wounded men on my spill of straw, in that mood which sets in when a test has been got through, if not exactly with flying colours, then still one way or another. a short snatch of conversation next to me gave me pause. 'what happened to you, comrade?' 'i've been shot in the bladder.' 'is it very bad?' 'oh, that's not the problem. i can't stand it that i can't fight later that same morning, we were taken to the main collection point in the village church at st maurice. a hospital train was there, already getting up steam. we would be back in germany in two days. from my bed on the train, i could see the fields just coming into spring. we were well looked after by a quiet fellow, a philosophy scholar in private life. the first thing he did for me was to take out his penknife and cut the boot off my foot. there are people who have a gift for tending others, and so it was with this man; even seeing him reading a book by a night-light made me feel better. the train took us to heidelberg. at the sight of the neckar slopes wreathed with flowering cherry trees, i had a strong sense of having come home. what a beautiful country it was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives. never before had i felt its charm so clearly. i had good and serious thoughts, and for the first time i sensed that this war was more than just a great adventure. the battle at les eparges was my first. it was quite unlike what i had expected. i had taken part in a major engagement, without having clapped eyes on a single live opponent. it wasn't until much later that i experienced the direct coming together, the climax of battle in the form of waves of attackers on an open field, which, for decisive, murderous moments, would break into the chaos and vacuity of the battlefield. douchy and monchy two weeks later, my wound was healed. i was released to the reserve battalion in hanover, and was given a short home leave there to get used to walking again. 'why not report as a gentleman-cadet?' my father suggested to me on one of my first mornings at home, as we were walking round the orchard to see how the trees would bear; and i did as he suggested, even though it had seemed much more attractive to me at the beginning of the war to be a simple rifleman, responsible only for myself. so the regiment sent me off to doberitz, on another course, which i left six weeks later with the rank of ensign. from the hundreds of young men who had come from all over germany, i could tell that the country was not short of good fighting stock. while the training i had received in recouvrence had been directed at the individual, here we were instructed in various ways of moving across terrain in small groups. in september 1915, i travelled back to my regiment. i left the train in the village of st leger, the divisional headquarters, and marched at the head of a small detachment of reservists to douchy, where the regiment was based. ahead of us, the french autumn offensive was in full swing. the front manifested itself as a long, billowing cloud over open country. overhead the machine-guns of the air squadrons pattered away. sometimes, when one of the french planes came down very low – their colourful rosettes seeming to scan the ground like big butterflies' eyes my little troop and i took cover under the poplars that lined the road. the anti-aircraft guns threaded long fleecy lines through the air, and whistling splinters pinged into the tilth. this little march was to give me an opportunity of putting my newly acquired skills into practice right away. we knew we had been spotted, probably by one of the many captive balloons whose yellow forms glimmered in the western sky, because, just as we were turning into the village of douchy, the black cone of a shell exploded in our faces. it struck the entrance to the little village cemetery, just beside the road. for the first time, i found myself in the position of having to react to an unexpected development with an immediate decision. to the left in extended order quick march!' the column spilled out over the fields at the double; we formed up again to the left, and entered the village by a large detour. douchy, where the 73rd rifles were billeted, was a middle-sized village that had not, as yet, suffered much from the war. this place, nestled on the wavy ground of artois, became, over the year and a half of stationary warfare in that region, a kind of second garrison to the regiment, a place of rest and recreation after gruelling days of fighting and working on the front line. how many a time we drew a deep breath to see the lonely light at the entrance to the village winking towards us through the black and rainy night! it meant having a roof over our heads again, and a bed in the dry. we could sleep without having to go out into the night four hours later, and without being pursued even into our dreams by the fear of a surprise attack. it made us feel reborn, on the first day of a rest spell, when we'd had a bath, and cleaned our uniforms of the grime of the trenches. we exercised and drilled out on the meadows, to return suppleness to our rusty bones, and to reawaken the esprit de corps of individuals isolated over the long watches of the night. that gave us the ability to resist during the long and taxing days ahead. at first, the companies took it in turn to march to the front for work on the fortifications. the strenuous double roster was dropped later on, on the orders of our understanding colonel von oppen. the security of a position depends less on the elaborate construction of its approach routes and the depths of the firing trench than on the freshness and undiminished courage of the men defending it. for off hours, douchy had much to commend it to its grey inhabitants. numerous bars were still plentifully provided with eatables and drinkables; there was a reading room, a coffee bar and, later on, a cinema was improvised from a large barn. the officers enjoyed an excellently equipped mess-room and a bowling alley in the rectory garden. there were regular company parties, in which officers and men, in the timeless german fashion, vied with one another in drinking. not to forget the killing days, for which the company pigs, kept fat on the refuse from the field kitchens, gave their lives. since the civilian population was still living in the village, it was important to exploit all available space. gardens were partly taken up with huts and various temporary dwellings; a large orchard in the middle of the village was turned into a public square, another became a park, the so-called emmichplatz. a barber and dentist were installed in a couple of dugouts covered with branches. a large meadow next to the church became a burial ground, to which the company marched almost daily, to take their leave of one or more comrades to the strains of mass singing. in the space of a single year, a crumbling rural village had sprouted an army town, like a great parasitical growth. the former peacetime aspect of the place was barely discernible. the village pond was where dragoons watered their horses, infantry exercised in the orchards, soldiers lay in the meadows sunning themselves. all the peacetime institutions collapsed, only what was needed for war was maintained. hedges and fences were broken through or simply torn down for easier access, and everywhere there were large signs giving directions to military traffic. while roofs caved in, and furniture was gradually used up as firewood, telephone lines and electricity cables were installed. cellars were extended outwards and downwards to make bomb shelters for the residents; the removed earth was dumped in the gardens. the village no longer knew any demarcations or distinctions between thine and mine. the french population was quartered at the edge of the village, towards monchy. children played on the steps of dilapidated houses, and old people made hunched figures, slinking timidly through the new bustle that had remorselessly evicted them from the places where they had spent entire lifetimes. the young people had to stand-to every morning, and were detailed to work the land by the village commandant, first lieutenant oberlander. the only time we came into contact with the locals was when we brought them our clothes to be washed, or went to buy butter and eggs. one of the more remarkable features of this army town was the way a couple of young orphaned french boys followed the troops around. the two boys, of whom one was eight or so, the other twelve, went around clad entirely in field grey, and both spoke fluent german. they referred to their compatriots as the soldiers did, as 'schangels'. [ i would hazard, derived from the german pronunciation of the french 'jean'. ] their keenest desire was to go with 'their' company up the line. they drilled faultlessly, saluted their superior officers, formed up on the left flank for roll-call, and put in for leave when it was time to accompany the kitchen-helpers on shopping expeditions to cambrai. when the 2nd battalion went to queant for a couple of weeks of instruction, one of the two, louis, was ordered by colonel von oppen to remain behind in douchy; no one spotted him anywhere on the way, but when the battalion arrived, there he was leaping happily out of the baggage cart where he had been hiding. the elder of the two, i was told, was later sent to petty-officer school in germany. barely an hour's march from douchy lay monchy-au-bois, where the regiment's two reserve companies were billeted. in the autumn of 1914, it had been bitterly fought over, and had ended up in german possession, as the battle slowly fought to a standstill in a half-circle round the ruins of this once-affluent town. now the houses were burned down and shot up, the neglected gardens raked by shells, and the fruit trees snapped. the rubble of stones had been heaped into a defensive installation with the aid of trenches, barbed wire, barricades and concrete strongpoints. all the approach roads could be covered by machine-gun fire from a pillbox called 'torgau redoubt'. another strongpoint went by the name of 'altenburg redoubt', an entrenched post to the right of the village that was home to a detachment of company reserves. also pivotal to the defence was a quarry that in peacetime had provided the limestone for the village houses, and which we had stumbled upon rather by chance. a company cook who had lost his water-pail in a well had had himself lowered after it, and had noticed a spreading cavern-like hole. the place was investigated and, after a second entrance had been knocked through, it offered bomb-proof accommodation for a large number of fighters. on the isolated heights on the way to ransart was the ruin of a one-time estaminet dubbed 'bellevue' on account of the wide view of the front that was afforded from it and this was a place i came to love, in spite of its exposed situation. from there, the view stretched over the dead land, whose defunct villages were linked by roads that had no traffic on them, and on which no living creature was to be seen. in the distance glimmered the outline of the abandoned city of arras, and round to the right the shining chalk mine-craters of st eloi. the weedy fields lay barren under the passing clouds and the shadows of clouds, and the tightly woven web of trenches spread its little white and yellow links, secured by lengthy communication trenches. from time to time, there was a puff of smoke from a shell, lobbed into the air as if by a ghostly hand; or the ball of a shrapnel hung over the wasteland like a great white flake slowly melting. the aspect of the landscape was dark and fantastic, the war had erased anything attractive or appealing from the scene, and etched its own brazen features, to appall the lonely onlooker. the desolation and the profound silence, sporadically broken by the crump of shells, were heightened by the sorry impression of devastation. ripped haversacks, broken rifles, scraps of cloth, counterpointed grotesquely with children's toys, shell fuses, deep craters from explosions, bottles, harvest implements, shredded books, battered household gear, holes whose gaping darkness betrayed the presence of basements, where the bodies of the unlucky inhabitants of the houses were gnawed by the particularly assiduous swarms of rats; a little espaliered peach tree despoiled of its sustaining wall, and spreading its arms pitifully; in the cattle byres and stables and barns the bones of livestock still dangling from their chains; trenches dug through the ravaged gardens, in among sprouting bulbs of onions, wormwood, rhubarb, narcissus, buried under weeds; on the neighbouring fields grain barns, through whose roofs the grain was already sprouting; all that, with a half-buried communication trench running through it, and all suffused with the smell of burning and decay. sad thoughts are apt to sneak up on the warrior in such a locale, when he thinks of those who only recently led their lives in tranquillity. as already mentioned, the front line described a semi-circle around the village, connected to it by an array of communication trenches. it was divided in two, monchy south and monchy west. these in turn were formed up into six company sections, from a to f. the bulge in the front afforded the british a good opportunity for flanking fire, the skilful use of which occasioned us heavy losses. they deployed a gun hidden immediately behind their own lines that sent out little shrapnels, which seemed to be fired and to reach us practically simultaneously. out of the blue a hail of lead balls would flash down over the length of a trench, as often as not taking a sentry with it. next, let us take a quick turn through the trenches as they were at that time, to familiarize the reader with some of the recurring terminology. to reach the front line, the firing trench, we take one of the many 'saps', or communication trenches, whose job it is to afford the troops some protection on their way to battle stations. these, often very long, trenches are broadly perpendicular to the front, but, to make it less easy to rake them with fire, they most often follow a zigzag or curving course. after a quarter of an hour's march, we enter the second trench, the support trench, which is parallel to the firing trench, and serves as a further line of defence should that be taken. the firing trench is wholly unlike those frail constructions that were dug in the early days of the war. nor is it just a simple ditch either, but it is dug to a depth of ten or twenty feet. the defenders move around as on the bottom of a mine gallery; to observe the ground in front of the position, or to fire out, they climb a set of steps or a wide wooden ladder to the sentry platform, which is set at such a height in the earth that a man standing on it is a head taller than the top of the rampart. the marksman stands at his sentry post, a more or less armoured niche, with his head protected by a wall of sandbags or a steel plate. the actual lookout is through tiny slits through which a rifle barrel is pushed. the quantities of earth that were dug out of the trench are piled up in a wall behind the trench, a parados affording protection from the rear; machine-gun emplacements are built into these earthworks. on the front side of the trench, the earth is kept level, so as to leave the field of vision as clear and uncluttered as possible. in front of the trench, often in multiple lines, is a wire entanglement, a complicated web of barbed wire designed to keep the attacker busy, so that he presents an easy target for the defensive sentries. rank weeds climb up and through the barbed wire, symptomatic of a new and different type of flora taking root on the fallow fields. wild flowers, of a sort that generally make only an occasional appearance in grain fields, dominate the scene; here and there even bushes and shrubs have taken hold. the paths too are overgrown, but easily identified by the presence on them of round-leaved plantains. [german wegerich: the weed plantain (etymologically derived from the french plante, 'sole of the foot') which flourishes along footpaths, rather than the tropical vegetable of the same name (from the spanish platano, 'banana'). anna akhmatova's 1921 book of poems was called plaintain in the same sense. ] bird life thrives in such wilderness, partridges for instance, whose curious cries we often hear at night, or larks, whose choir starts up at first light over the trenches. to keep the firing trench from being raked by flanking fire, it's laid out in a meandering line, forever doubling and tripling back on itself. each of these turns forms a traverse, to catch any shells fired from the side. the fighter is thus protected from behind, from the side and, of course, from the front. to rest in, there are dugouts, which have evolved by now from rudimentary holes in the ground to proper enclosed living quarters, with beamed ceilings and plank-cladded walls. the dugouts are about six feet high, and at a depth where their floors are roughly level with the bottom of the trench outside. in effect, there is a layer of earth on top of them thick enough to enable them to survive oblique hits. in heavy fire, though, they are death-traps, and it's better to be in the depths of the shelters. the shelters are braced with solid wood joists. the first is fixed in the front wall of the trench, level with the bottom, and from this entrance each successive joist is set a couple of hand's breadths lower, so that the amount of protection is rapidly increased. by the thirtieth step, there are nine yards of earth overhead, twelve counting the depth of the trench. then there are slightly wider frames set straight ahead or perpendicular to the steps; these constitute the actual living quarters. communication is possible by lateral tunnels, while branchings-off towards the enemy lines are used for mining or listening posts. the whole thing should be pictured as a huge, ostensibly inert installation, a secret hive of industry and watchfulness, where, within a few seconds of an alarm being sounded, every man is at his post. but one shouldn't have too romantic an idea of the atmosphere; there is a certain prevailing torpor that proximity to the earth seems to engender. i was sent to the 6th company, and, a few days after my arrival, moved into line at the head of a platoon, where i was straightaway welcomed by a few english 'toffee-apples'. these are brittle iron shells, filled with high explosive, somewhat resembling fruit on a stalk; or imagine a fifty-kilogram dumbbell, with one of the weights missing. they went off with a muffled thud, and, moreover, were often masked by machine-gun fire. it therefore made an eerie impression on me when sudden flames lit up the trench just next to us, and a malignant wave of air pressure shook us. the men quickly pulled me back into the platoon dugout, which we were just passing. we felt the next five or six mortar thumps from within. the mine doesn't actually impact, it seems more to nestle down; the calmness of its devastation was somehow the more unsettling. the following day, when i first inspected the trench by daylight, i saw those big emptied steel casings hanging up by their stalks outside dugouts, serving as alarm gongs. c sector, which our company held, was the regiment's most forward sector. in lieutenant brecht, who had hurried back from the united states at the outbreak of war, we had the very man to defend such a position. he loved danger, and he died in battle. life in the trenches was a matter of unbending routines; i will now describe the course of a single day of the kind that we had, one after another, for a year and a half, except when normal levels of fire were intensified to what we called 'turbulence'. day in the trenches begins at dusk. at seven o'clock someone from my platoon comes in to wake me from my afternoon nap, which, with a view to night duty, i like to have. i buckle on my belt, stick a verey-light pistol in it and some bombs, and leave my more or less cosy dugout. as i walk through the by now highly familiar sector, i automatically check that the sentries are all in position. the password is given in low tones. by now, it is night-time, and the first silvery flares climb aloft, while peeled eyes scrutinize no man's land. a rat skitters about among the tin cans thrown over the ramparts. another joins it with a squeak, and, before long, the whole place is swarming with the lithe shapes emerging from their holes in ruined village basements or among the shot-up bomb shelters. hunting rats is a much-loved change from the tedium of sentry duty. a piece of bread is put out as bait, and a rifle is leveled at it, or gunpowder from dud shells is sprinkled in their holes and torched. then they come squeaking out with singed fur. they are repellent creatures, and i'm always thinking of the secret desecrations they perform on the bodies in the village basements. once, as i was striding through the ruins of monchy on a warm night, they came oozing out of their hiding-places in such indescribable numbers that the ground was like a long carpet of them, patterned with the occasional white of an albino. some cats have moved in with us from the ruined villages around; they love the proximity of humans. one large white torn with a shot-off front paw is frequently seen ghosting about in no man's land, and seems to have been adopted by both sides. of course, i was telling you about trench duty. but one loves these digressions; it's an easy matter to start nattering, to fill up a dark night and the slow hours. i would many times stop and listen to the tales of some character from the front, or a fellow nco, and take in his chatter with rapt attention. as an ensign, i am often engaged in conversation by a kindly duty officer, who suffers equally from the boredom. yes, the man even gets to be quite pally, talks in a soft, low voice, reveals secrets and desires. and i attend, because i too feel oppressed by the heavy black walls of the trenches; i too am yearning for warmth, for something human in this eerie desolation. at night, the landscape emanates a curious cold; a sort of emotional cold. it makes you start to shiver when you cross an unoccupied part of the trench that is reserved for sentries; and if you cross the wire entanglements, and set foot in no man's land, the shivering intensifies to a faint, teeth-rattling unease. the novelists haven't done justice to this teeth-chattering; there's nothing dramatic about it, it's more like having a feeble electric current applied to you. most of the time you're just as unaware of it as you are of talking in your sleep at night. and, for another thing, it stops the moment anything actually happens. the conversation winds down. we are tired. sleepily we stand in a fire-bay, propped against the trench, and stare at our cigarettes glimmering in the dark. when there's frost, you stomp up and down so hard that the earth echoes. the sound of incessant coughing carries for miles through the cold air. often enough, if you're creeping forward in no man's land, that coughing is your first warning that you're nearing enemy lines. or a sentry will be whistling or humming to himself, in contrast to yourself, creeping up on him with murderous intent. or again it's raining, in which case you stand sadly with your collar turned up under the eaves of the dugout entrance, listening to the regular drip drip drip. but if you hear the footfall of a superior on the duckboards, you step out smartly, walk on, suddenly swing about, click your heels together, and report: 'nco on duty. sector all quiet, sir!' because standing in doorways is not permitted. your thoughts drift. you look at the moon, and think of lovely, cosy days at home, or of the big city miles to the rear, where people are just now streaming out of the cafes, and big arc lamps light up the lively commotion of the city centre. it feels like something in a dream incredibly remote. something rustles in front of the trench, a couple of wires clink together. straightaway all your dreams are out the window, your senses are stretched to the point of pain. you climb on to the fire-step, fire off a tracer round: nothing stirs. it must have been a rabbit or a pheasant, nothing more. often you can hear the enemy working on his wire entanglements. then you empty your magazine in his direction. not only because those are the standing instructions, but also because you feel some pleasure as you do it. 'let them feel the pressure for a change. who knows, perhaps you even managed to hit one of them.' we too go unspooling wire most nights, and take a lot of casualties. then we curse those mean british bastards. on some sectors of the line, say at the sap heads, the sentries are barely thirty yards apart. here you sometimes get personally acquainted with your opposite numbers; you get to know tommy or fritz or wilhelm by his cough or his whistle or his singing voice. shouts are exchanged, often with an edge of rough humour. 'hey, tommy, you still there?' 'yup!' 'then get your head down, i'm about to start shooting at you!' sometimes you hear a whistling, fluttering sound, following a dull discharge. 'watch out, trench mortar!' you rush to the nearest dugout steps and hold your breath. the mortars explode differently, altogether more excitingly than common-or-garden shells. there's something violent and devious about them, something of personal vitriol. they are treacherous things. rifle-grenades are a scaled-down version of them. one rises like an arrow out of the opposite lines, with its reddish-brown metal head scored into squares like chocolate, to make it splinter better. if the horizon lights up at night in certain places, all the sentries leap up from their posts, and take cover. they know from long experience where the mortars trained on c sector are. at last the luminous dial shows that two hours are up. now wake up the relief, and head for the dugout. maybe the ration party will have brought post, or a parcel, or a newspaper. it's a strange feeling to read news from home, and their peacetime anxieties, while the shadows cast by a flickering candle flame brush over the rough low beams. after scraping off the worst of the mud from my boots with a piece of stick, and giving them a finishing touch against a leg of the crudely fashioned table, i lie down on my pallet, and pull the blanket over my head for a quick four-hour 'gargle', as the slang has it. outside, the shots monotonously ring against the parapet, a mouse scrabbles over my face and hands, nothing disturbs my sleep. even the 'wee-er beasties' don't bother me, it's only a few days since we thoroughly fumigated the dugout. twice more, i am torn from my sleep to do my duty. during the last watch, a bright streak behind the sky to the east announces the coming day. the contours of the trench are sharpened; in the flat light, it makes an impression of unspeakable dreariness. a lark ascends; its trilling gets on my wick. leaning against the parapet, i stare out at the dead, wire-scarred vista with a feeling of tremendous disillusion. these last twenty minutes seem to go on for ever. at last there's the clatter of the coffee-bringers coming down the communication trench: it's seven o'clock in the morning. the night-watch is over. i head for the dugout and drink coffee, and wash in an old herring can. that freshens me up; i no longer want to lie down. at nine o'clock, after all, i need to go to my platoon and give them the day's tasks. we're real renaissance men who can turn our hands to anything, and the trenches make their thousandfold demands of us every day. we sink deep shafts, construct dugouts and concrete pillboxes, rig up wire entanglements, devise drainage systems, revet, support, level, raise and smooth, fill in latrines; in a word, we do all possible tasks ourselves. and why wouldn't we, given that we have representatives of every rank and calling in our midst? if one man doesn't know, then another will. only lately a miner took the pick out of my hand as i was working on our platoon dugout, and remarked: 'keep cutting at the bottom, the dirt at the top will come down by itself!' strange not to have thought of something so elementary oneself. but here, stood in the middle of the bleak landscape, suddenly compelled to take cover, to wrap up against wind and weather, to knock together beds and tables, to improvise stoves and steps, we soon learn to use our hands. the value of skills and crafts is there for all to see. at one o'clock, lunch is brought up from the kitchens, which are in a basement in monchy, in large containers that were once milk churns and jam boilers. the food is of martial monot-onousness, but plentiful enough, provided the ration parties don't 'evaporate' it on the way, and leave half of it on the ground. after lunch, we nap or read. gradually the two hours approach that are set aside for the trench duty by day. they pass more quickly than their nocturnal counterparts. we observe the front line opposite through binoculars or periscopes, and often manage to get in a head shot or two through a sniper's rifle. but careful, because the british also have sharp eyes and useful binoculars. a sentry collapses, streaming blood. shot in the head. his comrades rip the bandage roll out of his tunic and get him bandaged up. 'there's no point, bill.' 'come on, he's still breathing, isn't he?' then the stretcher-bearers come along, to carry him to the dressingstation. the stretcher poles collide with the corners of the fire-bays. no sooner has the man disappeared than everything is back to the way it was before. someone spreads a few shovelfuls of earth over the red puddle, and everyone goes back to whatever he was doing before. only a new recruit maybe leans against the revetment, looking a little green about the gills. he is endeavouring to put it all together. such an incredibly brutal assault, so sudden, with no warning given. it can't be possible, can't be real. poor fellow, if only you knew what was in store for you. or again, it's perfectly pleasant. a few apply themselves with sportsmanlike enthusiasm. with connoisseurial expressions, they follow the bursts of our artillery in the enemy trench. 'bull's-eye!' 'wow, did you see the dirt go up after that one! poor old tommy! there's mud in your eye!' they like lobbing rifle-grenades and light mortar-bombs across, to the disapproval of more timorous souls. 'come on, stop that nonsense, we're getting enough of a pounding as it is!' but that doesn't keep them from pondering incessantly about how best to propel grenades with handmade catapults or some other hellish contraptions to imperil the ground in front of the trench. now, they might clear a small passage in the wire in front of their sentry post, so that the easy access might lure some unsuspecting scout in front of their sights; another time, they creep across and tie a bell to the wire on the other side, and pull on it with a long string to drive the british sentries crazy. they get kicks out of fighting. at teatime, things can get quite cosy. the ensign is often required to provide company for one or other of the senior officers. things are done with formality and some style; a couple of china cups on a hessian tablecloth. afterwards, the officer's batman will leave a bottle and glasses out on the wobbly table. conversation becomes more personal. it's a curious thing that even here other people remain the most popular subject of conversation. trench gossip flourishes in these afternoon sessions, almost as in a small town garrison. superiors, comrades and inferiors may all be subjected to vigorous criticism, and a fresh rumour makes its way through all six commanders' dugouts along the line in no time at all, it seems. the observation officers, spying on the regimental position with field glasses and sketch pad, are not without some of the responsibility. in any case, the position is not hermetically sealed; there's a perpetual coming and going. during the quiet morning hours, staff officers come round and make work, much to the fury of the poor grunt, who has just lain down following his last watch, only to hear the call: 'the divisional commander is present in the trench!' and plunges out of his dugout looking fairly impeccable once more. then, after that, there's the pioneer and the trench-construction and the drainage officer all of them carrying on as if the trench existed only for their particular specialism. the artillery observer gets a frosty reception a little later, as he seeks to hold a trial barrage, because no sooner has he gone, taking his periscope with him having stuck it up out of the trench at various points, like an insect its antennae than the british artillery will start up, and the infantry are always the ones who catch it. and then the commanders of the advance party and the entrenching detachments put in an appearance as well. they sit in the platoon commander's dugout until it's completely dark, drinking grog and smoking and playing polish lotto, until they've cleaned up as thoroughly as a band of rats. then, at some ungodly hour, a little chappie comes ghosting down the trench, creeps up behind the sentry, shouts 'gas attack!' in his ear, and counts how many seconds it takes the fellow to get into his mask. he, obviously, is the gas-attack protection officer. in the middle of the night, there's one more knock on the plank door of the dugout: 'what's going on here? you asleep already? here, will you sign receipt of twenty knife-rests and half a dozen dugout frames?' the carrying-party is there. so, on quiet days anyway, there's a continual coming and going, enough finally to induce the poor inhabitant of the dugout to sigh: 'oh, if only there'd be a bit of bombardment so we could get some peace!' it's true too: a couple of heavy bombs only contribute to the overall feeling of cosiness: we're left to ourselves, and the tedious pen-pushing stops. 'lieutenant, permission to take my leave, sir, i'm going on duty in half an hour!' outside, the clay walls of the parados are gleaming in the dying rays of the sun, and the trench itself is completely in shadow by now. soon the first flares will go up, and the night sentries will begin their back and forth. the new day for the trench warrior begins. daily life in the trenches and so our days passed in strenuous monotony, interspersed with short rest periods in douchy. but even in the front line, there were some good times to be had. often i would sit with a feeling of cosy seclusion at the table in my little dugout, whose unplaned gun-hung plank walls had for me something of the wild west about them, drinking a cup of tea, smoking and reading, while my orderly busied himself at the tiny stove, and the aroma of toasting bread gradually filled the air. what trench warrior has not experienced the sensation? outside, along the fire-bays, came the heavy rhythmic tramp of feet, and a rough shout when sentry met sentry in the trench. my desensitized hearing no longer took in the incessant rifle fire, the smart impacts of bullets thudding into cover, or the flares expiring with a slow hiss beside the opening of my air-shaft outside. then i would take my notebook out of my map pocket, and jot down the salient events of the day. and so there came about, as part of my diary, a conscientious account of life in c sector, the small zigzag part of the long front where we were at home, where we knew every overgrown bit of trench and every ramshackle dugout. round about us in the mounds of earth rested the bodies of dead comrades, every foot of ground had witnessed some sort of drama, behind every traverse lurked catastrophe, ready day and night to pluck its next chance victim. and yet we all felt a strong bond to our sector, as though we had grown together with it. we had seen it when it was a black ribbon winding through the snowy landscape, when the florid thickets round about flooded it with narcotic scents at noontide, and when pallid moonbeams wove webs round its dark corners, while squeaking clusters of rats went about their ghastly business. we sat on long summer evenings cheerfully on its clay ramparts, while the balmy air wafted the sounds of our busy hammering and banging and our native songs in the direction of the enemy; we plunged over beams and chopped wire while death with his steel club assaulted our trenches and slothful smoke slunk out of our shattered clay ramparts. many times, the colonel wanted to transfer us out to a quieter section of the regimental line, but each time the company begged him as one man to let us remain in c sector. there now follows a selection from my diary entries taken down at the time, from those nights at monchy. 7 october 1915. standing at dawn on the fire-step opposite our dugout next to the sentry when a rifle bullet ripped through his forage cap without harming a hair of his head. at the same time, two pioneers were wounded on the wires. one had a ricochet through both legs, the other a ball through his ear. in the morning, the sentry on our left flank was shot through both cheekbones. the blood spurted out of him in thick gouts. and, to cap it all, when lieutenant von ewald, visiting our sector to take pictures of sap n barely fifty yards away, turned to climb down from the outlook, a bullet shattered the back of his skull and he died on the spot. large fragments of skull were left littering the sentry platform. also, a man was hit in the shoulder, but not badly. 19 october. the middle platoon's section of trench was attacked with six-inch shells. one man was hurled against a post by the blast so hard that he sustained serious internal injuries, and a splinter of wood punctured the artery in his arm. in the early morning fog, as we were repairing our wires on the right, we came upon a french corpse that must have been there for many months. that night, two men were wounded while unspooling wire. gutschmidt was shot in both hands and one thigh, schafer took a bullet in the knee. 30 october. following a torrential downpour in the night, all the traverses came down and formed a grey sludgy porridge with the rain, turning the trench into a deep swamp. our only consolation was that the british were just as badly off as we were, because we could see them baling out for all they were worth. since our position has a little more elevation than theirs, we even managed to pump our excess their way. also, we used rifles with telescopic sights on them. the crumbled trench walls exposed a line of bodies left there from the previous autumn's fighting. 9 november. was standing next to territorial wiegmann in front of altenburg redoubt when a long shot passed through his bayonet, which he was carrying over his shoulder, and gave him a bad wound in the groin. those british bullets with their brittle points are dumdum by any other name. [ 'a soft-nosed bullet (1897); f. dum dun, name of a military station and arsenal near calcutta, india' (oxford dictionary of etymology). they have been, at different times, disapproved of and declared illegal. ] staying in these little earthworks tucked into the landscape, where i am based with half a platoon, offers more freedom of movement than the front line. a gentle slope comes between us and the front; behind us there's an ascent to the wooded hill of adinfer. fifty paces behind the fortifications, in a rather poorly selected location, is our latrine a long beam supported on two trestles over a ditch. the men like to spend time there, either reading the paper, or for companionship, in the manner of canaries, say. this is the font of all the various sinister rumours that course around the front, and that go by the name of 'bog talk'. in one instance, admittedly, the cosiness is shattered by the fact that the place, while not overlooked by the enemy, is still vulnerable to fire over the low rise. if they aim just over the ridge, the bullets pass through the dip at chest height, and a man has to lie flat on the floor to be safe. so it sometimes happens that in the same 'session', two or three times, more or less clothed, you have to measure your length, to allow a machine-gun burst, like a musical scale, to pass over your head. it's the occasion for all sorts of ribaldry, of course. among the more positive aspects of our situation is the availability of game, in particular pheasants, untold numbers of which inhabit the fallow fields. for want of shotguns, we have to try and sneak up on the rather dim 'cookpot volunteers' and blow their heads off, otherwise there's not too much left to eat. you have to remember not to get too carried away in the heat of the chase, otherwise the huntsman risks becoming the quarry, if the trenches below get a sight of you. rats we go after with steel traps. admittedly, the beasts are so strong that they try and take the traps with them; their noisy efforts bring us charging out of our dugouts to finish them off with clubs. we've even devised a type of hunt for the mice who nibble our bread; we all but empty a cartridge, and, using a paper pellet for a bullet, we try to shoot them with that. last but not least, with a fellow nco, i've thought up another type of shooting sport, quite exciting though again not without its perils. in conditions of fog, we go out collecting up unexploded shells, little ones and big ones, some weighing a hundredweight or more, all usually in plentiful supply. we set these up at some distance away, and then, hidden behind shooting-slits, we bang away at them. we don't need anyone to examine the targets to tell us how we've done, because a hit a shot on the fuse -announces itself right away with a hideous blast, which is greatly increased if it's a case of 'all nine'; in other words, if the explosion carries through a whole row of these unexploded duds. 14 november. last night i dreamed i was shot in the hand. as a result i'm more than usually careful all day. 21 november. i was leading an entrenchment party from altenburg redoubt to c sector. then territorial diener climbed up on a mound behind the trench to shovel some soil over the defences. no sooner had he got up there than a bullet fired from the sap went right through his head, and dropped him dead in the trench. he was a married man with four children. his comrades stayed a long time at their shooting-slits afterwards, hoping to exact revenge. they were weeping with frustration. they seemed to feel personal enmity for the britisher who had fired the mortal shot. 24 november. a machine-gunner was gravely wounded in the head in our sector. half an hour later, another man in our company had his cheek laid open by infantry fire. on 29 november our battalion moved back for a fortnight to the little town of queant, in the back area of the division, which later was to achieve such bloody renown, to drill and indulge in some of the blessings afforded by the hinterland. during our stay there, my commission as lieutenant came through, and i was posted to the 2nd company. in queant and its environs, we were often invited to drinking sessions by the local commandants, and i was given an insight into the near-absolute authority these local bosses exercised over their subordinates and the local populations. one captain of horse dubbed himself the king of queant, and made his appearance every night at our round table, where he was greeted by upraised right hands and a thunderous 'long live the king!' he held sway over us till daybreak, a moody monarch, punishing every breach of etiquette and every violation of his infinitely subtle conduct regulations with the imposition of a round of drinks. we grunts, as new arrivals, had a predictably hard time of it. the following day, we would see him after lunch, a little the worse for wear, touring his estates in a dogcart, and paying his respects to neighbouring monarchs (with many libations to bacchus), in readiness for the evening ahead. these visits he referred to as 'ambuscades'. on one occasion, he got into a tiff with the king of inchy, and had a mounted mp call out an official feud between them. after several engagements, in the course of which rival detachments of squires bombarded each other with clods of earth from their respective fortified trenches, the king of inchy was incautious enough to regale himself with bavarian beer at the mess in queant, and was apprehended while visiting a lonely place. he was forced to purchase a vast tun of beer by way of ransom. and so ended the epic war between the two monarchs. on 11 december, i went over the top to the front line, to report to lieutenant wetje, the commander of my new company, which occupied c sector in turn about with my former company, the 6th. as i was about to leap into the trench, i was shocked at the change to the position in just a fortnight. it had collapsed into a huge, mud-filled pit in which the occupants sloshed around miserably. already up to my hip in it, i thought ruefully back to the round table of the king of queant. we poor grunts! almost all the dugouts had collapsed, and the shelters were inundated. we had to spend the next weeks working incessantly, merely to get something resembling terra firma underfoot. for the time being, i stayed with lieutenants wetje and boje in a shelter, whose ceiling in spite of tarpaulins suspended beneath it -leaked like a sieve, so that the servants had to carry the water out in buckets every half-hour. when i left the shelter completely sodden the following morning, i couldn't believe the sight that met my eyes. the battlefield that previously had borne the stamp of deathly emptiness upon it was now as animated as a fairground. the occupants of both trenches had emerged from the morass of their trenches on to the top, and already a lively exchange of schnapps, cigarettes, uniform buttons and other items had commenced between the two barbed-wire lines. the throng of khaki-clad figures emerging from the hitherto so apparently deserted english lines seemed as eerie as the appearance of a ghost in daylight. suddenly a shot rang out that laid one of our men dead in the mire, whereupon both sides quickly scuttled back into their trenches. i went to that part of our line which fronted on to the british sap, and called out that i wanted to speak to an officer. and lo, i saw several british soldiers going back, and returning with a young man from their firing trench who had on, as i was able to see through my field glasses, a somewhat more ornate cap than they did. we negotiated first in english, and then a little more fluently in french, with all the men listening. i reproached him for the fact that one of our men had been killed by a treacherous shot, to which he replied that that hadn't been his company, but the one adjacent. 'il y a des cochons aussi chez vous!' he remarked when a few shots from the sector next to ours plugged into the ground not far from his head, causing me to get ready to take cover. ['there are some unscrupulous bastards on your side too!' ] we did, though, say much to one another that betokened an almost sportsmanlike admiration for the other, and i'm sure we should have liked to exchange mementoes. for clarity's sake, we gave a solemn mutual declaration of war, to commence three minutes after the end of our talks, and following a 'good-night!' on his part, and an 'au revoir!' on mine, to the regret of my men i fired off a shot that pinged against his steel loophole, and got one myself that almost knocked the rifle out of my hands. it was the first time i had been given an opportunity of surveying the battlefield in front of the sap, seeing as otherwise one couldn't even show the peak of one's cap in such a perilous place. i saw that immediately in front of our entanglements there was a skeleton whose bleached bones glimmered out of scraps of blue uniform. from the british cap-badges seen that day, we were able to tell that the regiment facing ours were the 'hindustani' leicestershires. shortly after our negotiations were concluded, our artillery fired off a few rounds at the enemy positions, whereupon, before our eyes, four stretchers were carried across the open field without a single shot being loosed off at them from our side. i must say i felt proud. throughout the war, it was always my endeavour to view my opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a man on the basis of the courage he showed. i would always try and seek him out in combat and kill him, and i expected nothing else from him. but never did i entertain mean thoughts of him. when prisoners fell into my hands, later on, i felt responsible for their safety, and would always do everything in my power for them. as christmas approached, the weather seemed to worsen; we had recourse to pumps in our efforts to do something about the water. during this muddy phase, our losses also worsened. so, for instance, i find in my diary for 12 december: 'today we buried seven men in douchy, and two more were shot.' and for 23 december: 'mud and filth are getting the better of us. this morning at three o'clock an enormous deposit came down at the entrance to my dugout. i had to employ three men, who were barely able to bale the water that poured like a freshet into my dugout. our trench is drowning, the morass is now up to our navels, it's desperate. on the right edge of our frontage, another corpse has begun to appear, so far just the legs.' we spent christmas eve in the line, and, standing in the mud, sang hymns, to which the british responded with machine-gun fire. on christmas day, we lost one man to a ricochet in the head. immediately afterwards, the british attempted a friendly gesture by hauling a christmas tree up on their traverse, but our angry troops quickly shot it down again, to which tommy replied with rifle-grenades. it was all in all a less than merry christmas. on 28 december, i was back in command of the altenburg redoubt. on that day, rifleman hohn, one of my best men, lost his arm to a shell fragment. heidotting received a bad thigh wound from one of the many bullets that were whizzing round our earthworks in the hollow. and my faithful august kettler, the first of many servants to die in my service, fell victim to a shrapnel that passed through his windpipe as he was on his way to monchy to get my lunch. as he was setting off with the mess-tins, i had called out to him: 'august, mind how you go, won't you.' 'i'll be fine, lieutenant!' and then i was summoned and found him lying on the ground close to the dugout, gurgling, as the air passed through the wound into his chest with every breath he took. i had him carried back; he died a few days later in hospital. it was a feature of his case, as it was of quite a few others, that his inability to speak made him even more pathetic, as he stared at the nurses in bewilderment like a tormented animal. the road from monchy to altenburg redoubt cost us a lot of blood. it led along the rear slope of a modest elevation, perhaps five hundred paces behind our front line. our opponents, perhaps alerted by aerial photographs to the fact that this road was indeed much frequented, set themselves to rake it at intervals with machine-gun fire, or to unload shrapnels over the area. even though there was a ditch running along beside the road, and there were strict orders to walk in the ditch, sure enough everyone tended to stroll along this dangerous road, without any cover, with the habitual insouciance of old soldiers. generally, we got away with it, but on many days fate snatched a victim or two, and over time they added up. here, too, stray bullets from all directions seemed to have arranged a rendezvous for themselves at the latrine, so that we were often compelled to flee, holding a newspaper and trousers at half-mast. and for all that, it seemed not to have occurred to anyone to move this indispensable facility to a place of greater safety. january also was a month of back-breaking work. each platoon began by removing the mud from the immediate vicinity of its dugout, by means of shovels, buckets and pumps, and then, having firm ground underfoot once more, set about establishing communications with its neighbours. in the adinfer forest, where our artillery was positioned, teams of woodcutters were set to strip the branches off young trees and split them into long struts. the trench walls were sloped off and entirely reveted with this material. also, numerous culverts, drainage ditches and sumps were dug, so that things were once more made bearable. what really made a difference were those deep sumps that were dug through the surface clay and enabled water to drain into the absorptive chalk beneath. on 28 january 1916, a man in my unit was wounded in the body by a splinter from a bullet that shattered against his plate. on the 30th, another got a bullet in the thigh. when we were relieved on 1 february, the communication trenches were subjected to intense fire. a shrapnel shell landed at the feet of rifleman junge, my former cleaner in the 6th company, failed to go off, but flared up instead with a tall flame, so that he had to be carried away with grave burns. it was round about then too that an nco with the 6th, whom i knew well, and whose brother had fallen only days before, was fatally injured by a 'toffee-apple' that he had found. he had unscrewed the fuse, and, noticing that the greenish powder he tipped out was highly inflammable, he put a lit cigarette in at the opening. the mortar of course blew up, and he received fifty separate wounds. we suffered many casualties from the over-familiarity engendered by daily encounters with gunpowder. a rather alarming neighbour in this respect was lieutenant pook, who was housed by himself in a dugout in the maze of trenches behind our left flank. he had collected a number of enormous dud shells, and amused himself by unscrewing their fuses, and tinkering with them as if they were bits of clockwork. every time i had to go past his lair i made a wide detour. even when the men were only chipping the copper rings off the shells to work them into paper-knives or bracelets, there were incidents. on the night of 3 february we were back in douchy, following a taxing time at the front. the next morning, i was enjoying my first morning of ease, drinking a cup of coffee in my billet on the emmichplatz, when a monster of a shell, the herald of a heavy bombardment, went off outside my door and sent the window glass jangling into my room. with three bounds i was in the cellar, where the other inhabitants also presented themselves in quick time. since the cellar was half above ground, and was only separated from the garden by a thin wall, we all pressed together into a short tunnel that had been embarked on only a few days previously. with animal instincts, my sheepdog forced his whimpering way between the tight-pressed bodies into the deepest, furthest corner of the shelter. far in the distance, we could hear the dull thud of a series of discharges, then, when we'd counted to thirty or so, the whining approach of the heavy iron lumps, ending in crashing explosions all round our little abode. each time, there was an unpleasant surge of pressure through the cellar window, and clods of earth and shards came clattering on the tiled roof, while the anxious horses whinnied and stamped in their stables near by. the dog whined throughout, and a fat bandsman screamed as if he were having a tooth pulled each time a whistling bomb approached. at last the storm was over, and we could risk going out in the open again. the wrecked village street was swarming like a disturbed anthill. my quarters looked in a bad way. the earth had been blown open in several places against the cellar wall, fruit trees were snapped, and smack in the middle of the path lay a long and malign-looking shell that hadn't gone off. the roof was riddled with holes. a big fragment of shell had removed half the chimney. in the regimental office next door, a few sizeable splinters had drilled through the walls and the large wardrobe, shredding the uniforms that were kept there for wear on home leave. on 8 february, the sector received a vigorous pummelling. it began early in the morning when our own artillery dropped a dud on the dugout of my right flank, to the consternation of those within, pushing through the door and toppling the stove. this event, which could have passed off so much worse, was immortalized in a sketch of eight men trying to get out past the smoking stove through the shattered door, while the bomb lay in the corner, rolling its eyes wickedly. in the afternoon, three more dugouts were hit, but luckily only one man was slightly hurt in the knee, because all the others, except for the sentries, had withdrawn into the shelters. the following day, fusilier hartmann from my platoon was fatally hit in the side by the flanking battery. on 25 february, we were particularly affected by a fatality that robbed us of an outstanding comrade. just before we were to be relieved, i was brought the news in my dugout that volunteer karg had just fallen in the shelter next door. i went there, to see, as so often before, a serious-looking group of men around a motionless figure, lying with rigid fingers on the bloodied snow, staring at the darkening winter sky with glassy eyes. another victim for the flanking battery! karg had been in the trench when it had started up, and had straightaway leaped into the shelter. a shell had struck the opposite wall of the trench high up, and at just such an angle as to cast a large splinter into the entrance to the shelter. karg, who must have thought he had already reached safety, was struck on the back of the head; his death was instant and unexpected. that flanking battery was quite a feature of those days. on average once an hour, it would fire a round at us, out of the blue, whose fragments precisely swept out the trench. in the six days from 3 to 8 february, it cost us three dead and seven wounded, three of them seriously. even though it was located on a hillside no more than a mile away from our left flank, our artillery seemed to be unable to do anything about it. we therefore tried, by adding to the number of traverses and building them higher, to restrict its effectiveness to small parts of the trench at any given time. those stretches that were visible from it, we masked with screens of hay or material. also, we beefed up the sentry posts with wooden beams and slabs of reinforced concrete. but even then, because of the way the trench was used as a thoroughfare, the odds favoured the english gunners in their effort to 'pick us off without excess use of munitions. by early march, we had seen the worst of the mud. the weather turned dry, and the trench was now securely supported. every night, i sat in my dugout at a little desk, reading, or chatting if i had company. there were four of us officers, including the company commander, and we lived together very harmoniously, drinking coffee in one or other of our dugouts, or having supper together, often over a bottle or two, smoking, playing cards, and enjoying rather baronial conversations. on some days, there was herring with boiled potatoes and dripping, which was considered quite a feast. in the memory, such congenial hours made up for other days of blood, filth and work. also, they were only possible in this long stationary phase of the war, where we had all bonded together, and an almost peacetime routine had evolved. our principal source of pride was our building work, which hq broadly left us to get on with by ourselves. through constant work, one thirty-step shelter after another was dug out of the chalk and clay soil, and linked by cross-passages, so that we could go from right to left of our frontage in safety and comfort, entirely underground. my own favourite project was a sixty-yard underground passage linking my dugout with the company commander's, with other dormitories and munitions depots off to either side, just like a regulation corridor. all this was to come in handy in the fighting to come. when we met in the trenches after morning coffee we even had newspapers delivered to the front, at least some of the time all clean and with our footrules in our hands, we compared progress, and our talk was of shelter-frames, dugout designs, rate of progress, and other such matters. a popular subject was the construction of my 'boudoir', a little cubby-hole off the underground passage, dug into dry chalk; a sort of warren where we could have happily dozed through the end of the world. for a mattress i had set aside some fine-meshed wire, and the wallcoverings were of some special sandbag material. on 1 march, as i was standing by territorial ikmann, who was to fall not long afterwards, a shell landed the other side of a tarpaulin next to us. the splinters fizzed past us without hurting either of us. when we examined them later, we found hideously long and sharp steel needles that had sliced through the cloth. we called these things 'whizz-bangs' or 'grapeshot', because we could never hear them coming; it was like suddenly being in the middle of a whirring cloud of splinters. on 14 march, the sector on our right took a direct hit from a six-inch shell, and three men were killed, three others badly wounded. one simply vanished off the face of the earth, another was burned black. on the 18th, the sentry in front of my dugout was struck by a shell fragment that cut open his cheek and took off the tip of his ear. on the 19th, on our left flank, fusilier schmidt ii was shot in the head. on the 23rd, to the right of my dugout, fusilier lohmann fell, shot in the head. that same evening, a sentry reported that an enemy patrol were stuck in our wire. i led a party to look see, but we found no one. on 7 april, on the right flank, fusilier kramer received head wounds from some bullet fragments. this type of wounding was very common, because the english munitions were so soft as to fragment on contact. in the afternoon, the area immediately around my dugout came in for some heavy and sustained bombardment. the skylight was smashed, and, on every new impact, a hail of dried clay came sprinkling through the opening, though we made a point of finishing our coffee together. afterwards, we fought a duel with a daredevil englishman, whose head peeped out over the rim of a trench that couldn't have been more than a hundred yards away, and who sent a stream of extremely well-aimed shots pinging round our shooting-slits. i returned fire with a few of the men, but immediately a shrewdly aimed ball on the edge of our plate kicked sand in our faces, and gave me a scratch on the neck. we weren't to be put off, though, popping up suddenly, taking swift aim, and disappearing again. then a bullet smashed the rifle of fusilier storch, the splinters bloodying his face in at least a dozen places. the next shot nicked a piece out of our armour plating; and another shattered the mirror we were using for observation, but we had the satisfaction of having our opponent disappearing for good after a series of shots had struck the clay ramparts directly in front of his face. for good measure, with three rounds of hard munitions, i made a mess of the armour behind which this fellow had done his mischievous worst. on 9 april, two british planes flew repeatedly low over our position. all the men raced out of their dugouts and started banging away into the sky like crazy. i was just remarking to lieutenant sievers: 'i hope to god the flanking battery don't get any ideas!' and already the steel shreds were flying about our ears, and we had to leap into the nearest shelter. sievers was standing by the entrance; i urged him to go further in, and smack! an inch-thick splinter dug itself into the damp clay in front of his feet, still smoking. for afters, we were sent shrapnel mortars, whose black balls exploded over our heads with great violence. one man was hit in the armpit by a piece of one, no bigger than the head of a pin, but extremely painful. in return, i planted a few 'pineapples' in the british trenches, as we called those five-pound mortars that resembled tropical fruit. there was a tacit agreement between the infantry on both sides to restrict themselves to rifle fire; all recourse to explosives was punished by a double load back. unfortunately, our opponents tended to have more munitions than ourselves, and so could play the game for longer. to get over the shock, we downed several bottles of red wine in sievers's dugout, which got my dander up to such a degree that i took the high road back to my cubby-hole, in spite of the bright moon. before long, i lost my way, wound up in a vast shell-hole, and heard the british working in their trench hard by. after causing a breach of the peace with a couple of hand-grenades, i hurriedly withdrew into our trench, in the process catching my hand on the prong of one of our lovely mantraps. these consist of four sharp iron spears assembled in such a way that one of them is always vertical. we left them out on scouting paths. there was a lot of activity in the field altogether in those days, some of it not without its funny or bloody funny side. for instance, a soldier on one of our patrols was shot at because he had a stammer and couldn't get the password out in time. another time, a man who had been celebrating in the kitchens in monchy till past midnight, clambered over the wire, and started blazing away at his own lines. after he'd shot off all his ammunition, he was taken in and given a sound beating. the beginning of the battle of the somme in mid-april 1916, i was detailed to attend an officer-training course under the overall direction of the divisional commander, major-general sontag, at croisilles, a little town behind the divisional lines. there, we received instruction in a variety of practical and theoretical military subjects. particularly fascinating were the tactical excursions on horseback, under major von jarotzky, a fat little staffer, who would get terribly excited about things. we called him the 'pressure-cooker'. a series of excursions and inspection visits to the very often improvised units in the hinterland gave us, who were in the habit of viewing slightly askance everything that happened there, an insight into the incredible work that goes on behind a line of fighting men. and so we visited the abattoir, the commissariat and gunnery repair workshop in boyelles, the sawmill and pioneer park in the woods of bourlon, the dairy, pig farm and rendering plant in inchy, the aviation park and bakery in queant. on sundays we went to the nearby towns of cambrai, douai and valenciennes, to remind ourselves of what 'ladies in hats' looked like. it would be rather mean of me, in this book that has so much blood in it, if i were to withhold from you an account of a scrape in which my part was a somewhat comical one. back in winter, when our battalion was a guest of the king of queant, i had, as a young officer, been called upon to inspect the guard for the first time. on the edge of town, i had promptly lost my way, and, meaning to ask for directions to the little station guard post, i had walked into a tiny cottage that stood there all by itself. living there, i found, all alone, as her father had lately died, was a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of jeanne. when she gave me directions, she laughed, and when i asked what was so funny, she said: 'vous etes bien jeune, je voudrais avoir votre devenir.'* because of the spiritedness of her remark, i had dubbed her jeanne d'arc, and in the subsequent trench-fighting, i had occasionally thought of that isolated little house. ['you're so young, i wish i could have your future.' ] one evening in croisilles, i suddenly felt an urge to go over there. i had a horse saddled up, and before long had left the town behind me. it was a may evening, perfect time for a ride. the clover lay like heavy burgundy cushions on the fields stitched with hawthorn, and outside the village gates the huge candles of flowering chestnuts flickered in the gloaming. i rode through bullecourt and ecoust, never guessing that in two years' time i would find myself making ready to attack the hideous ruins of these villages, now nestling so peaceably among ponds and hills at eventide. at the little station i had inspected in the winter, civilians were still busy unloading cylinders of propane. i greeted them, and watched them for a while. before long, the house appeared in front of me, with its reddish-brown, bemossed roof. i rapped on the shutters, which were already bolted shut. 'qui est la?' 'bonsoir, jeanne d'arc!' 'ah, bonsoir, mon petit officier gibraltar!' i was made as pleasantly welcome as i'd hoped i would be. after tying up my horse, i went inside and was asked to share her supper of eggs, white bread and butter, all nicely laid out on a large cabbage leaf. seeing such things, one really doesn't need a second invitation. everything would have been fine and dandy, but as i stepped out to leave, i found a torch shining in my eyes, and a military policeman asking me for my documentation. my talking to the civilians, the attentiveness with which i'd observed the gas cylinders, my unexplained appearance in this sparsely garrisoned district, all had aroused the suspicion of espionage. of course i hadn't brought my service-book with me, and so had to be led before the king of queant, who was, as usual at this time of night, presiding over his round table. luckily, i found a sympathetic ear there. i was identified and made welcome. on this occasion, i came away with a rather different impression of the king; the hour was late, and he was talking about tropical jungles where he had spent a lot of time in charge of the building of a railway line. on 16 june, the general sent us back to our units with a little speech, from which we were given to understand that our opponents were preparing a large-scale offensive on the western front, with its left flank facing our own position. this was our first inkling of what was to be the battle of the somme. it marked the end of the first and mildest part of the war; thereafter, it was like embarking on a different one altogether. what we had, admittedly almost unbeknown to ourselves, been through had been the attempt to win a war by old-fashioned pitched battles, and the stalemating of the attempt in static warfare. what confronted us now was a war of materiel of the most gigantic proportions. this war in turn was replaced towards the end of 1917 by mechanized warfare, though that was not given time fully to develop. the sense that something was imminent hardened once we returned to our regiments, because our comrades told us of the increasing activity of the enemy. the british had twice, albeit unsuccessfully, essayed a raid in force against c sector. we had retaliated with a well-prepared assault by three officers' patrols against the so-called trench triangle, in the course of which we had taken several prisoners. while i'd been away, wetje had been wounded by a shrapnel ball on the arm, but resumed command of the company shortly after my return. my dugout was somewhat changed as well, a direct hit had just about halved its dimensions. during the aforementioned raid, the british had fumigated it with a few hand-grenades. my replacement had managed to squeeze his way out through the skylight, while his batman had perished. his blood was still visible in great brown stains across the lining boards. on 20 june i was ordered to eavesdrop on the enemy trenches, to find out whether they were trying to undermine us, and with ensign wohlgemut, lance-corporal schmidt and fusilier par-thenfelder, i set out a little before midnight across our own, pretty high wire entanglements. the first stretch we did hunched forward, and then we crept side by side over the densely grown field. fourth-form memories of karl may [german author and polygrapher (1842-1912), whose tendentious, patriotic, neo-colonialist tales were routinely read by generations of young germans.] came to me as i slithered along on my front through dewy grass and thistles, anxious to avoid the slightest rustle, with the british lines visible barely fifty yards in front of us as a black stroke against the grey. from a great distance, a spray of machine-gun bullets came down almost perpendicularly on top of us; an occasional flare went up and threw its chill light on our already rather inhospitable patch of land. then there was a loud rustling behind us. two shadows were dashing between the trenches. even as we made ready to throw ourselves upon them, they had disappeared. moments later, the thunder of two hand-grenades in the british trenches indicated that we had brushed past some of our own. we continued to creep forward. suddenly the ensign gripped my arm: 'watch out, right, very close, ssh, ssh!' and then, no more than ten paces away, i heard sundry rustlings in the grass. we had lost our orientation, and had been creeping along parallel to the english lines; presumably the enemy had heard us, and had now emerged from his trenches to see what was going on. these moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass is an unutterably menacing thing. your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. there is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. the encounter will be short and murderous. you tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsman, and the terror of the quarry. you are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape. a line of dim forms surfaced, their whispers carried across to us. we turned to look at them; i heard the bavarian parthenfelder biting the blade of his knife. they took a few more steps towards us, and then started working on their wires, seemingly not having noticed us. we crept very slowly backwards, keeping our eyes fixed on them. death, which had already loomed up expectantly between us, slunk away dejectedly. after a little, we stood up and went on, till we reached our sector safely. our expedition's fortunate conclusion gave us the idea of taking a prisoner, and we decided to go again the next night. i had just lain down, therefore, for an afternoon nap when i was startled up by a thunderous din outside my dugout. the british were lobbing 'toffee-apples' across, which, even though they made very little noise as they were fired, were so heavy that their splinters ripped away the massive posts of the revetment. swearing, i clambered up from my bed and went into the trench, only, the next time i saw one of the black weights arcing towards us, to shout: 'mortar coming left!' and nip into the nearest shelter. in the course of the next few weeks, we were so abundantly graced with trench mortars of all shapes and sizes that we got in the habit, each time we found ourselves walking along the trench, of keeping one eye aloft, and the other on the entrance to the nearest deep dugout. that night, my three companions and i once more crept out between the trenches. we crawled along on our toes and elbows till right up to the british entanglements, where we hid behind clumps of grass. after a while, some british came out, dragging a roll of wire after them. they stopped close in front of us, put the roll down, snipped at it with wire-cutters, and talked in whispers. we sidled together, and had a hasty discussion: toss a hand-grenade in there, and pick up the pieces!' 'come on, there's four of them!' 'don't talk rubbish!' 'quiet! quiet down!' my warning came too late; as i looked up, the british were darting lizard-like under their wires, and disappeared into their trench. the feeling now got a little clammy. the thought: 'now they're going to bring up a machine-gun' gave me a bad taste in my mouth. the others entertained similar fears. we slid back as quickly as we could, with quite a jangle. the british lines woke up. drumming of feet, whispers, running hither and thither. pssht ... a flare. all around it was as bright as day, while we tried to press our heads into the grass. another flare. tricky moments. you wish the earth would swallow you up, you'd rather be anywhere than where you are, ten yards in front of enemy lines. another one. paow! paow! the unmistakably crisp and deafening report of rifle shots fired at almost point-blank range. 'christ! they've seen us!' no longer worried about making a noise, we called to each other to run for our lives, and leapt up and raced towards our lines through the now pattering gunfire. after a few bounds, i stumbled and landed in a small and very shallow crater, while the other three raced past me, thinking i was done for. i pressed myself to the ground, pulled in my head and my legs, and allowed the bullets to brush over me. every bit as menacing were the burning lumps of magnesium from the flares, which burned down very close to me in some cases, and which i tried to pat away with my cap. eventually the shooting relented, and, after a further quarter of an hour, i left my hiding-hole, slowly and cautiously to begin with, and then as fast as my hands and feet could carry me. since the moon had set by now, i soon became utterly disorientated and had no idea where the british or the german lines were. not even the distinctive shape of the ruined mill at monchy was visible against the horizon. the odd bullet from one side or the other streaked over the ground. in the end i lay down in the grass and determined to wait for morning. suddenly i heard some whispers very close by. i prepared to do battle, and then cautiously made a series of indeterminate natural sounds that i thought might pass equally well for english as german. i resolved to reply to the first english call i received with a hand-grenade. then, to my delight, it turned out that the whispering was that of my little troop, who were just in the process of taking off their belts, to carry my body back. we sat a while longer in a bomb-crater, and were overjoyed at seeing each other again. then we made our way back to our trenches. all told, our adventure had taken three hours. i was back on trench duty again at five. in no. 1 platoon's part of the line, i ran into sergeant hock standing outside his dugout. when i expressed surprise at seeing him out so early, he informed me that he was lying in wait for a large rat whose gnawing and rustling had kept him up all night. and from time to time he would look ruefully at his absurdly small dugout, which he had christened 'villa fat-of-the-land chicken'. while we were standing together, we heard a distant sound of firing, which boded nothing in particular to us. but hock, who the day before had almost been brained by a large mortar-bomb, and was therefore very apprehensive, dived into the nearest shelter, sliding down the first fifteen steps in his haste, and finding space in the next fifteen for three virtuoso somersaults. i stood up by the entrance, laughing so hard i forgot all about mortars and shelters, when i heard the poor chap bewailing this painfully curtailed rat-hunt, all the while rubbing various sore joints and attempting to put back a dislocated thumb. the unhappy man went on to tell me he'd just been sitting down to eat the night before when the mortar-bomb had come along. as a result he'd got grit all over his dinner, and had made a first painful acquaintance with the flight of steps. he had just arrived here from home, and wasn't yet used to our roughneck ways. after this incident, i betook myself to my dugout, but today too there was no chance of any restorative kip. from early morning on, our trench was subjected to mortar attack, at shorter and shorter intervals. by noon, i'd had enough. with a few other fellows, i got our lanz mortar set up, and aimed at our opponent's trenches a pretty feeble reply, admittedly, to the heavy bombs we'd been ploughed with. sweating, we squatted on a little dip in the trench the clay baked hard by the june sun and sent bomb after bomb towards their lines. since the british seemed quite unperturbed, i went with wetje to the telephone, where, after some thought, we agreed on the following form of words: 'helen's spitting in our trenches. we need potatoes, big ones and little ones!' we used this type of language when there was a chance that the enemy might be listening in; and before long we were pleased to hear back from lieutenant deichmann that the fat policeman with the stiff moustaches and a couple of his little friends would be brought up, and before long the first of our two-hundredweight bombs flew into the enemy trench, followed by a few units of field artillery, with the result that we were left in peace for the rest of the day. midday the following day the dance began again, but significantly intensified. at the first shot, i took my subterranean passage to the second line, and from there to the communications trench where we had set up our own mortar emplacement. we opened fire in such a way that every time we received a 'toffee-apple' we replied with a lanz. after exchanging about forty mortars, the enemy gunner seemed to be finding his range. his missiles were coming down to the right and left of us, without being able to interrupt our activity until one was seen heading straight for us. at the very last moment we pulled our trigger one last time, and then ran as fast as we could. i had just made it to a mucky, wired stretch of trench when the monster blew up just behind me. the enormous air pressure threw me over a bundle of barbed wire into a shell-hole full of greenish water, and sent a sprinkling of hard clay shards on top of me. i picked myself up, feeling very groggy and dishevelled. my boots and trousers were ripped by the barbed wire, my hands and my uniform were stuck with thick clay, and my knee was bleeding from a long wound. rather the worse for wear, i slunk back through the trench to my dugout to get over the experience. other than that, the mortars hadn't done much in the way of damage. the trench had taken a battering in a few places, a priester mortar was smashed, and the 'villa fat-ofthe-land chicken' was no more. it had received a direct hit, while its unlucky owner was down in the deep dugout, otherwise in all probability he would have practised his third freestyle descent of the steps. the firing went on all afternoon without a break, and by evening it had been increased to drumfire by numbers of cylindrical bombs. we referred to these missiles as 'washbasket mortars' because it sometimes looked as though they had been shaken down from the sky by the basketload. the best way of picturing their design is imagining a rolling-pin with two short handles on it. apparently they were fired from special revolver-like drums and were sent spinning end over end through the air, making a somewhat laboured wheezing sound. from a distance they resembled flying sausages. these came down so thick and fast that their landing was like the torching of a batch of rockets. the 'toffee-apples' had something crushing or stamping about them, these had more of a rending effect on the nerves. "we sat tensed and ready in the shelter entrances, prepared at any moment to repel invaders with rifles and hand-grenades, but the bombardment died back after half an hour. in the night we had two more bouts of firing to withstand, during which our sentries stood at their posts and indomitably kept watch. as soon as the gunning relented, numerous flares lit up the defenders charging out from their shelters, and a brisk fire persuaded the enemy that there was still life in our lines. in spite of the heavy bombardment, we lost only one man, fusilier diersmann, whose skull was smashed by a mortar-bomb landing on the parapet in front of him. another man was wounded in the back. on the day after this unquiet night, numerous bursts of firing prepared us for an imminent attack. in that time, our trenches really were shot to pieces, and the smashed timber from their revetment made them almost impassable; a number of dugouts were also flattened. brigade headquarters sent an intelligence report to the front: 'intercepted british telephone message: the british have precise descriptions of the gaps in our lines, and have requested "steel helmets". it is not known whether "steel helmet" is code for heavy mortars. be prepared!' we resolved to be on the alert for anything the coming night, and agreed that anyone who didn't give his name in response to a 'hallo!' would be immediately fired at. every officer had his pistol loaded with a red flare, to alert the artillery. the night was still wilder than the last. in particular, one concentration of fire at quarter past two outdid anything there had been up to that point. a hail of heavy shells struck all round my dugout. we stood fully armed on the shelter steps, while the light of our little candle stumps reflected glitteringly off the wet, mildewed walls. blue smoke streamed in through the entrances, and earth crumbled off the ceiling. 'boom!' 'good god!' 'a light! a light!' 'get everything ready!' everyone's hearts were in their mouths. hands darted to release the pins on bombs. 'that was the last of them!' 'let's go!' as we charged out of the entrance, a mine with a delay fuse went off, and hurled us back inside. all the same, as the last of the iron birds came whooshing down, all the sentry positions were manned by us. bright as day, a firework display of flares lit the cloud-swathed field. these instants, in which the entire complement of men stood behind the traverses, tensed and ready, had something magical about them; they were like the last breathless second before a hugely important performance, as the music is turned off and the big lights go up. for several hours that night, i stood leaning against the entrance to my dugout, which, irregularly, faced the enemy, from time to time looking at my watch, to take down notes about the levels of fire. i eyed the sentry, an older man with children, standing completely impassive with his rifle, lit from time to time by the flash of an explosion. oddly, it was after the shooting had subsided that we took another casualty. fusilier nienhauser suddenly fell from his sentry post, and came crashing down the shelter steps to join his comrades who were all assembled at the bottom. when they inspected the eerie arrival, all they could find on him was a small wound on the forehead, and a puncture over the right nipple from which blood was flowing. it remained unclear whether the wound or the sudden fall had killed him. at the end of this night of terror, we were relieved by the 6th. in the grumpy mood produced by the appearance of the sun following a sleepless night, we marched down the communications trench to monchy, and from there to the reserve line set back at the edge of the adinfer forest, that afforded us box seats for the overture to the somme battles. the sectors to our left were still swathed in black and white smoke, one massive explosion after another sent the dirt spewing up past rooftop height; and over them, hundreds of speedy lightnings produced by bursting shrapnels. only the coloured signals, the mute appeals to the artillery for help, indicated that there was still life in the trenches. this was the first time i had seen artillery fire to match a natural spectacle. in the evening, just as we hoped for a good night's sleep at last, we were given orders to load trench-mortar ammunition at monchy, and had to spend all night waiting up in vain for a lorry that had got stuck, while the british made various, fortunately unsuccessful, attempts on our lives, either by means of high-angled machine-gun fire or sweeping the road with shrapnels. we were especially irritated by one machine-gunner who sprayed his bullets at such an angle that they came down vertically, with acceleration produced by sheer gravity. there was absolutely no point in trying to duck behind walls. that night, the enemy gave us an example of his painstaking observation skills. in the second line, perhaps a mile and a quarter from the enemy, we had left a heap of chalk in front of what was to be a subterranean munitions dump. the british drew the unfortunately correct conclusion that this dump was to be masked over in the course of the night, and fired a group of shrapnels at it, succeeding in gravely wounding three of our men. in the morning, i was shaken out of my sleep yet again by the order to lead my platoon on a digging detail to c sector. my sections were broken up and divided among the 6th company. i accompanied some of them back to the adinfer woods, to get them chopping timber. on the way back to the trench, i stopped in my dugout for a quick catnap. but it was no good, i was unable to get any rest in those days. no sooner had i pulled off my boots, than i heard our artillery firing with unwonted animation from their position on the edge of the woods. at the same time my batman paulicke materialized in the entrance to the shelter, and shouted down: 'gas attack!' i broke out the gas mask, got into my boots, buckled up, ran out and saw a huge cloud of gas hanging over monchy in thick white swathes, and drifting under a slight breeze in the direction of point 124 on the low ground. since my platoon was for the most part in the front line, and an attack was probable, there wasn't much time to stop and think. i leaped over the ramparts of the reserve line, raced forward, and soon found myself enveloped in the gas cloud. a penetrating smell of chlorine confirmed for me that this was indeed fighting gas, and not, as i had briefly thought, artificial fog. i therefore donned my mask, only to tear it off again right away because i'd been running so fast that the mask didn't give me enough air to breathe; also the goggles misted over in no time, and completely whited out. all this of course was hardly the stuff of 'what to do in a gas attack', which i'd taught so often myself. since i felt pain in my chest, i tried at least to put the cloud behind me as fast as i could. at the entrance to the village, i needed to get through a barrage of gunfire, whose impacts, topped by numerous clouds of shrapnel, drew a long and even chain across the barren and otherwise unfrequented fields. artillery fire in open country never has the same effect, either physically or on one's morale, as it does among dwellings or fortifications. i had therefore broken through the line of fire, and found myself in monchy, which lay under an extraordinary hail of shrapnel. a shower of balls, splinters and fuses came hissing and whizzing through the branches of the fruit trees in the neglected gardens, or smacked against the masonry. in a dugout in the garden, i saw my company comrades sievers and vogel sitting; they had lit a merry wood fire, and were leaning over the cleansing flame to escape the effects of the chlorine. i joined them there, until the fire had slackened off a little, and then went forward down communication trench 6. as i went on, i looked at all the little animals lying in the pit of the trench, killed by the chlorine, and thought: 'the barrage is bound to start up again any moment, and if you continue taking your time, you'll be caught in the open, like a mouse in a trap.' and yet, i continued phlegmatically at my own pace. exactly what i had anticipated happened: not more than fifty yards away from the company shelter, i found myself in a whole new and much worse bombardment, in which it seemed completely impossible to get through even this short stretch of trench without being hit. luckily for me, i saw right by me one of the occasional niches that were carved into the trench walls for dispatch runners. three dugout frames, not a whole lot, but better than none at all. so i pressed myself in there and allowed the storm to pass. unwittingly, i seemed to have chosen the liveliest corner going. light and heavy 'toffee-apples', stokes bombs, shrapnels, rattles, shells of all kinds -i could no longer identify everything that was buzzing and whizzing and crashing around me. i was reminded of my corporal at les eparges, and his exclamation: 'what in god's name are those things?' occasionally my ears were utterly deafened by a single fiendish crashing burst of flame. then incessant hissing gave me the sense of hundreds of pound weights rushing down at incredible speed, one after the other. or a dud shell landed with a short, heavy ground-shaking thump. shrapnels burst by the dozen, like dainty crackers, shook loose their little balls in a dense cloud, and the empty casings rasped after they were gone. each time a shell landed anywhere close, the earth flew up and down, and metal shards drove themselves into it. it's an easier matter to describe these sounds than to endure them, because one cannot but associate every single sound of flying steel with the idea of death, and so i huddled in my hole in the ground with my hand in front of my face, imagining all the possible variants of being hit. i think i have found a comparison that captures the situation in which i and all the other soldiers who took part in this war so often found ourselves: you must imagine you are securely tied to a post, being menaced by a man swinging a heavy hammer. now the hammer has been taken back over his head, ready to be swung, now it's cleaving the air towards you, on the point of touching your skull, then it's struck the post, and the splinters are flying that's what it's like to experience heavy shelling in an exposed position. luckily, i still had a bit of that subliminal feeling of optimism, 'it'll be all right', that you feel during a game, say, and which, while it may be quite unfounded, still has a soothing effect on you. and indeed even this shelling came to an end, and i could go on my way once more, and, this time, with some urgency. at the front, the men were all busy greasing their rifles in accordance with the nostrums of 'what to do in a gas attack', because their barrels had been completely blackened by chlorine. an ensign dolefully showed me his new sword-knot, which had quite lost its silver sheen, and had turned a greenish black. since our opponents seemed not to be making a move, i took my troops back to the rear. outside the company office in monchy, we saw a lot of men affected by gas, pressing their hands against their sides and groaning and retching while their eyes watered. it was a bad business, because a few of them went on to die over the next several days, in terrible agony. we had had to withstand an attack with chlorine, which has a burning, corrosive effect on the lungs. henceforth, i resolved never to go anywhere without my gas mask, having previously, incredibly foolishly, often left it behind in my dugout, and used its case -like a botanist as a container for sandwiches. seeing this taught me a lesson. on the way back, meaning to buy something, i had gone into the 2nd battalion canteen, where i found a dejected canteen boy standing surrounded by broken crockery. a shell had come through the ceiling and gone off in the store, converting its treasures into a mélange of jam, liquid soap and punctured containers of this and that. he had just, with prussian pernicketiness, done his accounts, showing a loss of 82 marks and 58 pfennigs. in the evening, because of the uncertain position, my platoon, which had so far been withdrawn to the second line, was moved forward to the village, and was housed in the quarry. we settled ourselves into its numerous nooks and crannies, and lit an enormous fire, whose smoke went up through the well-shaft, greatly to the annoyance of some of the company cooks, who were almost asphyxiated as they pulled up their buckets of water. since we had been issued with strong grog, we sat on limestone blocks round the fire, and sang and talked and smoked. round about midnight, all hell was let loose in the curved front enclosing monchy. dozens of alarm clocks rang, hundreds of rifles went off, and white and green flares went up unceasingly. next, a barrage of fire went off, heavy trench mortars crashed, drawing plumes of fiery sparks after them. wherever in the maze of ruins there was a human soul, the long-drawn-out cry went up: 'gas attack! gas attack! gas! gas! gaaas!' by the light of the flares, a dazzling flow of gas billowed over the black jags of masonry. since there was a heavy smell of chlorine in the quarry as well, we lit large straw fires at the entrances, whose acrid smoke almost drove us out of our refuge, and forced us to try and cleanse the air by waving coats and tarpaulins. the next day, we were able to marvel at the traces the gas had left. a large proportion of the plants had withered, snails and moles lay dead, and the horses that were stabled in monchy for use by the messengers, had watering eyes and muzzles. the shells and ammunition splinters that lay all over the place had a fetching green patina. the cloud had been noticed as far away as douchy, where rattled civilians had assembled outside colonel von oppen's quarters and demanded gas masks. instead, they were loaded on to lorries, and driven to towns and villages set back from the front. the following night we were in the quarry again; in the evening, i was given news that coffee would be provided at quarter past four in the morning, as an english deserter had said an attack was planned for five. and, indeed, no sooner had the coffee-bringers roused us the next morning than the almost familiar shout of 'gas attack!' rang out. there was a sweetish smell in the air; and, as we were later to find out, this was phosgene to which we were being treated. in the ring around monchy, powerful drumfire was raging, but that ebbed away before long. this anxious hour turned into a bracing morning. from communication trench 6, lieutenant brecht emerged on to the village street, with a bloody bandage wrapped round his hand, accompanied by a soldier with fixed bayonet and an english captive. brecht was given a triumphant reception in headquarters west, and told us the following: the british had let off clouds of gas and smoke at five in the morning, and had gone on to rattle our trench with mortar fire. our soldiers, as was their custom, had leapt out of their shelters while the bombing was still in progress, and we had taken more than thirty casualties. then, still hidden in the smoke, two large british raiding parties had appeared, one of which had got into the trench, and taken a wounded nco of ours. the other never made it past the wire entanglement. the single exception brecht who, before the war, had been a plantation owner in america now seized by the throat, and greeted with the words, 'come here, you son of a bitch!' the captive was presently being treated to a glass of wine, and looking with half-frightened, half-puzzled eyes at the previously deserted village street, now filling with ration parties, ambulancemen, dispatch-carriers and various nondescript onlookers. he was a tall fellow, very young, fresh-faced, and with fair hair. 'what a shame to have to shoot at such people!' went through my head as i saw him. soon a long line of stretchers arrived at the dressing-station. a lot of wounded men came from monchy south as well, because the enemy had also succeeded in breaking into the line – briefly in e sector. one of the assailants must have been an amazing character. he had leaped into the trench, apparently unremarked, and run along it, past the backs of the sentries, who all had their eyes on the field in front of them. one after the other, he leaped on them from behind the gas masks restricted further their field of vision and, having felled a number of them with blows of a club or rifle butt, returned, equally unremarked, to the british lines. when the trench was tidied up later, eight sentries were found with broken skulls. around fifty stretchers, with men lying groaning on them in blood-soaked bandages, were laid out in front of some sheets of corrugated metal, under which the doctor did his business, with sleeves rolled up. one young fellow, whose blue lips shone rather ominously from his ghostly white face, was mumbling to himself: 'i'm too badly ... they won't be able ... i'm sure i'll die.' a fat nco from the medical corps looked at him pityingly, and several times breathed a comforting: 'come on, mate, come on!' even though the british had thoroughly prepared this little attack designed to tie up our forces here, to favour their offensive on the somme with plenty of trench-mortar attacks and clouds of poison gas, they only managed to take alive a single, wounded, prisoner, whereas they left plenty of dead on our wires. of course our losses were also substantial; the regiment later that morning mourned over forty dead, among them three officers, and a good number of wounded as well. the following afternoon we finally moved back for a few days to our beloved douchy. that same evening, we celebrated the success of the engagement with several well-earned bottles. on 1 july, it was our sorry task to bury a proportion of our dead in our churchyard. thirty-nine wooden coffins, with the names written in pencil on the unplaned planks, were laid side by side in the pit. the minister spoke on the text: 'they have fought a good fight,' beginning with the words, 'gibraltar, that is your motto, and why not, for have you not stood firm like the rock in the sea surge!' it was in the course of these days that i learned to appreciate these men, with whom i was to be together for two more years of the war. what was at stake here was a british initiative on such a small scale as barely to find mention in the histories of both armies, intended to commit us to a sector where the main attack was not to be. nor did the men have very much to do, only cover the very small amount of ground, from the entrance of the shelter to the sentry posts. but these few steps needed to be taken in the instant of a great crescendo of fire before an attack, the precise timing of which is a matter of gut instinct and feeling. the dark wave that so many times in those nights welled up to the traverses through raging fire, and without even an order being possible, remained with me in my heart as a personal yardstick for human trustworthiness. especially strongly marked is the memory of the position, broken and still steaming, as i walked through it shortly after the attack. the day's sentries were already in position while the trenches had yet to be cleared. here and there, the sentry posts were covered with dead, and, in among them, as it were, arisen from their bodies, stood the new relief with his rifle. there was an odd rigidity about these composites it was as though the distinction between alive and dead had momentarily been taken away. on the evening of 3 july, we moved back up to the front. it was relatively quiet, but there were little indications that there was something afoot. there was soft and insistent hammering from the mill at all times, as though metal were being fashioned. we intercepted numerous telephone calls to an english pioneer officer at the very front, concerning gas cylinders and explosions. from dawn to the last gleam of light at the end of the day, english aeroplanes kept up a dense pattern of overflying, to keep us and the hinterland apart. the trench bombardments were substantially harder than usual; also, there was a suspicious change of target, as though new batteries were set to finding their range. in spite of it all, we were relieved on 12 july, without too much disagreeableness, and went into the reserve in monchy. on the evening of the 13th, our dugouts in the garden came under fire from a ten-inch naval gun, whose massive shells rumbled at us in a low arc. they burst with a terrific bang. at night, we were woken up by intense fire and a gas attack. we sat round the stove in the dugout in our gas masks, all except vogel, who had lost his, and was running around like a madman, looking in all the corners, while a few sadistic fellows whom he'd given a hard time reported that the smell of gas was getting stronger and stronger. in the end, i gave him my refill, and he sat for an hour behind the smoking stove, holding his nose, and sucking on the mouthpiece. on that same day i lost two men from my platoon, wounded as they went around the village: hasselmann had a bullet through the arm, while maschmeier caught a shrapnel ball through the throat. there was no attack that night; even so, the regiment lost another twenty-five dead and a great many wounded. on the 15 th and 17th, we had further gas attacks to endure. on the 17th, we were relieved and twice suffered heavy bombardment in douchy. one of them came just as we were having an officers' meeting with major von jarotzky in an orchard. it was dangerous, but it was still ridiculous to watch the company suddenly burst apart, fall on their faces, force their way through hedges in an absolute trice, and disappear under various cover before you could count to ten. a shell falling in the garden of my lodgings killed a little girl who had been digging around for rubbish in a pit. on 20 july we moved back up. on the 28th, i arranged with ensign wohlgemut and privates bartels and birkner to go on another one of our patrols. we had nothing more in mind than to wander around between the lines and see what was new in no man's land, because we were beginning to get a bit bored with the trench. in the afternoon, lieutenant brauns, the officer in the 6th company who was relieving me, paid me a call in my dugout, bringing a fine burgundy with him. towards midnight we broke up; i went out into the trench, where my three companions were already assembled in the lee of a traverse. after i'd picked out a few bombs that looked dry and in working order, i climbed over the wire in a high good humour, and brauns called out a jovial: 'break a leg!' after me. in quick time, we had crept up to the enemy barrier. just before it, we came across a pretty stout and well-insulated wire in some long grass. i was of the opinion that information was important here, and instructed wohlgemut to cut off a piece and take it with him. while he was sawing away at it with for want of more appropriate tools a cigar clipper, we heard something jingling the wire; a few british soldiers appeared and started working without noticing us, pressed as we were in the long grass. mindful of our hard time on the previous expedition, i breathed: 'wohlgemut, toss a hand-grenade in that lot!' 'lieutenant, shouldn't we let them work a bit more first?' 'ensign, that was an order!' even here, in this wasteland, the magic words took effect. with the sinking feeling of a man embarking on an uncertain adventure, i listened to the dry crackle of the pulled fuse, and watched wohlgemut, to offer less of a target, trundle, almost roll the grenade at the british group. it stopped in a thicket, almost in the middle of them; they seemed not to have seen anything. a few moments of great tension ticked by. 'c-crashh!' a flash of lightning lit up their sprawling figures. with a shout of 'you are prisoners!' we launched ourselves like tigers into the dense white smoke. a desperate scene developed in fractions of seconds. i held my pistol in the middle of a face that seemed to loom out of the dark at me like a pale mask. a shadow slammed back against the barbed wire with a grunt. there was a ghastly cry, a sort of 'wah!' of the kind that people only produce when they've seen a ghost. on my left, wohlgemut was banging away with his pistol, while bartels in his excitement was throwing a hand-grenade in our midst. after one shot, the magazine had clicked out of my pistol grip. i stood yelling in front of a briton who in his horror was pressing his back into the barbed wire, and kept pulling the trigger. nothing happened it was like a dream of impotence. sounds came from the trench in front of us. shouts rang out, a machine-gun clattered into life. we jumped away. once more i stopped in a crater and aimed my pistol at a shadowy form that was pursuing me. this time, it was just as well it didn't fire, because it was birkner, whom i had supposed to be safely back long ago. then we raced towards our lines. just before our wire, the bullets were coming so thick and fast that i had to leap into a water-filled, wire-laced mine-crater. dangling over the water on the swaying wire, i heard the bullets rushing past me like a huge swarm of bees, while scraps of wire and metal shards sliced into the rim of the crater. after half an hour or so, once the firing had abated, i made my way over our entanglements and leaped into our trench, to an enthusiastic reception. wohlgemut and bartels were already back; and another half an hour later, so was birkner. we were all pleased at the happy outcome, and only regretted that once again our intended captive had managed to get away. it was only afterwards that i noticed that the experience had taken its toll on my nerves, when i was lying on my pallet in my dugout with teeth chattering, and quite unable to sleep. rather, i had the sensation of a sort of supreme awakeness as if i had a little electric bell going off somewhere in my body. the following morning, i could hardly walk, because over one knee (over other, historic injuries) i had a long scrape from the barbed wire, while the other had caught some shards from bartels's hand-grenade. these short expeditions, where a man takes his life in his hands, were a good means of testing our mettle and interrupting the monotony of trench life. there's nothing worse for a soldier than boredom. on 11 august there was a black riding stallion loose outside berles-au-bois, which a territorial was finally able to kill with three bullets. the british officer it had escaped from wouldn't have been too pleased to see it in that condition. in the night, fusilier schulz caught a spent part of an english bullet in his eye. in monchy, too, there were more casualties, as the walls brought down by shelling now afforded less and less protection from random sprays of machine-gun bullets. we started to dig trenches right across the village, and erected new walls near the most dangerous places. in the neglected gardens, the berries were ripe, and tasted all the sweeter because of the bullets flying around us as we ate them. the 12th of august was the long-awaited day when, for the second time in the war, i had a home furlough. no sooner had i got home and settled in, though, than a telegram came winging after me: 'return immediately, further details from local command cambrai.' and three hours later, i was on the train. on the way to the station, three girls in light dresses swayed past me, clutching tennis racquets a shining last image of that sort of life, which was to stay with me for a long time. on the 21 st i was back in familiar country, the roads swarming with soldiers on account of the departure of the iiith and the arrival of a new division. the 1st battalion was based in the village of ecoust-st-mein, whose wreckage we were to reoccupy on our advance two years from now. i was welcomed by paulicke, whose days were also numbered. he told me that the young fellows from my platoon must have inquired about a dozen times whether i wasn't back yet. it stirred and revived me to hear that; i realized that in the hot days that were ahead of us, i had a following based not only on rank, but also on character. that night i was put up with eight other officers in the loft of an empty house. we stayed up a long time, and, for want of anything stronger, sat drinking coffee that a couple of frenchwomen made for us in the house next door. we knew there was a battle impending, the like of which the world had not seen. we felt no less aggressive than the troops who had marched over the border two years before, but we were more experienced and therefore more dangerous. we were up for it, in the best and most cheerful condition, and expressions like 'avoid contact with the enemy' were not in our vocabulary. anyone seeing the men round this jolly table would have to tell themselves that positions entrusted to them would only be lost when the last defender had fallen. and that indeed proved to be the case. guillemont on 23 august 1916, we were put on lorries and driven as far as le mesnil. even though we had already heard we were to be posted to the legendary heart of the battle of the somme, namely the village of guillemont, the mood was extraordinarily high. jokes and witticisms flew from one vehicle to another, to the general merriment of all. during one stop on the way, a driver split his thumb in the course of crank-starting his lorry. the sight of the wound almost made me ill, i have always been sensitive to such things. i mention this because it seems virtually unaccountable as i witnessed such terrible mutilation in the course of the following days. it's an example of the way in which one's response to an experience is actually largely determined by its context. from le mesnil we marched, after dark, to sailly-saillisel, where the battalion took off their knapsacks in a large meadow and prepared a storm pack. ahead of us rumbled and thundered artillery fire of a volume we had never dreamed of; a thousand quivering lightnings bathed the western horizon in a sea of flame. a continual stream of wounded, with pale, sunken faces, made their way back, often barged aside by clattering guns or munitions columns heading the other way. a runner from a wurttemberg regiment reported to me to guide my platoon to the famous town of combles, where we were to be held in reserve for the time being. he was the first german soldier i saw in a steel helmet, and he straightaway struck me as the denizen of a new and far harsher world. sitting next to him in the roadside ditch, i questioned him avidly about the state of the position, and got from him a grey tale of days hunkered in craters, with no outside contact or communications lines, of incessant attacks, fields of corpses and crazy thirst, of the wounded left to die, and more of the same. the impassive features under the rim of the steel helmet and the monotonous voice accompanied by the noise of the battle made a ghostly impression on us. a few days had put their stamp on the runner, who was to escort us into the realm of flame, setting him inexpressibly apart from us. 'if a man falls, he's left to lie. no one can help. no one knows if he'll return alive. every day we're attacked, but they won't get through. everyone knows this is about life and death.' nothing was left in this voice but equanimity, apathy; fire had burned everything else out of it. it's men like that that you need for fighting. we were marching along a wide road, which ran in the moonlight like a white ribbon across the dark countryside, towards the thunder of guns, whose voracious roar grew ever more immeasurable. abandon all hope! what gave the scene a particularly sinister aspect was the way all the roads were clearly visible, like a network of white veins in the moonlight, and there was no living being on them. we marched as on the gleaming paths of a midnight cemetery. before long the first shells landed left and right of us. conversations grew quieter and stopped altogether. we listened to the whining approach of each shell with the strange tenseness that seems somehow to sharpen one's hearing. the first real challenge that confronted us was crossing fregicourt-ferme, a small cluster of houses just past the graveyard at combles. that was where the noose that had been drawn around combles was tightest. everyone wanting to enter or leave the town had to pass through here, and so incessant very heavy fire, like the focused beams of a magnifying glass, was concentrated on this one little lifeline. our guide had warned us about this notorious bottleneck; we passed through it at the double, while the ruins clattered around us. over the ruins, as over all the most dangerous parts of the terrain, lay a heavy smell of death, because the fire was so intense that no one could bother with the corpses. you really did have to run for your life in these places, and when i caught the smell of it as i ran, i was hardly surprised it belonged to there. moreover, this heavy sweetish atmosphere was not merely disgusting; it also, in association with the piercing fogs of gunpowder, brought about an almost visionary excitement, that otherwise only the extreme nearness of death is able to produce. here, and really only here, i was to observe that there is a quality of dread that feels as unfamiliar as a foreign country. in moments when i felt it, i experienced no fear as such but a kind of exalted, almost demoniacal lightness; often attended by fits of laughter i was unable to repress. so far as we were able to see in the dark, combles was a mere skeleton of its former self. great amounts of wood and jettisoned household objects told us that its destruction was very recent. after crossing numerous piles of junk, sped on our way by a stream of shrapnels, we reached our quarters, a large house riddled with holes, which i chose for my base with three of my sections, while the other two settled into the basement of a ruin across the way. at four o'clock already we were roused from our beds put together from bits of furniture, to be given our steel helmets. coincidentally, we also stumbled upon a sack of coffee beans hidden in the cellar a discovery swiftly followed by an eager brew-up. after breakfast, i took a little look around the place. in the course of a very few days, heavy artillery had transformed a peaceable town in the hinterland to the image of dread. whole houses had been flattened or ripped apart by shells, so that the rooms and their furnishings were left hanging over the chaos like theatre flats. the smell of corpses oozed from some buildings, because the first abrupt assault had taken the inhabitants by surprise, and buried many of them in the ruins before they could leave their dwellings. on one doorstep lay a little girl, stretched out in a lake of crimson. all that was left of the streets were narrow footpaths that went snaking through huge mounds of beams and masonry. fruit and vegetables were mouldering away in the ravaged gardens. after lunch, which we put together in the kitchen from an over-supply of iron rations, and which was concluded, of course, by a potent cup of coffee, i went and stretched out in an armchair upstairs. from letters that were lying around i saw that the house had belonged to a brewer by the name of lesage. there were open cupboards and wardrobes in the room, an upset washstand, a sewing-machine and a pram. on the walls hung smashed paintings and mirrors. on the floor were drifts, sometimes several feet deep, of drawers pulled out of chests, linen, corsets, books, newspapers, nightstands, broken glass, bottles, musical scores, chair legs, skirts, coats, lamps, curtains, shutters, doors off their hinges, lace, photographs, oil paintings, albums, smashed chests, ladies' hats, flowerpots and wallpaper, all tangled together. through the splintered shutters, the view was of a square furrowed by bombs, under the boughs of a ragged linden. this confusion of impressions was further darkened by the incessant artillery fire that was raging round the town. from time to time, the gigantic impact of a fifteen-inch shell drowned out all other noise. clouds of shards washed through combles, splattering against the branches of the trees, or striking the few intact roofs, sending the slates slithering down. in the course of the afternoon, the bombing swelled to such a pitch that all that was left was the feeling of a kind of oceanic roar, in which individual sounds were completely subordinated. from seven o'clock, the square and the houses on it were subjected to fifteen-inch-shell bombardment at thirty-second intervals. there were many that did not go off, whose short, dull thumps shook the house to its foundations. throughout, we sat in our basement, on silk-upholstered armchairs round a table, with our heads in our hands, counting the seconds between explosions. the witticisms dried up, and finally the boldest of us had nothing to say. at eight o'clock the house next door came down after taking two direct hits; its collapse occasioned a huge cloud of dust. from nine till ten, the shelling acquired a demented fury. the earth shook, the sky seemed like a boiling cauldron. hundreds of heavy batteries were crashing away at and around combles, innumerable shells criss-crossed hissing and howling over our heads. all was swathed in thick smoke, which was in the ominous underlighting of coloured flares. because of racking pains in our heads and ears, communication was possible only by odd, shouted words. the ability to think logically and the feeling of gravity, both seemed to have been removed. we had the sensation of the ineluctable and the unconditionally necessary, as if we were facing an elemental force. an nco in no. 3 platoon went into a frenzy. at ten o'clock, this infernal carnival gradually seemed to calm itself, and settled into a sedate drumfire, in which, admittedly, one still was not able to make out an individual shot. at eleven o'clock, a runner arrived with orders to take the men out on to the church square. we joined up with the other two platoons in marching order. a fourth platoon, under lieutenant sievers, had dropped out because they were to take provisions up to the front. they now ringed us as we assembled in this perilous location, and loaded us with bread, tobacco and canned meat. sievers insisted i take a pan of butter, shook hands, and wished us luck. then we marched off in indian file. everyone was under strict orders absolutely to stay in touch with the man in front. no sooner were we out of the village, than our guide realized he'd gone wrong. we were forced, under heavy shrapnel fire, to retrace our steps. then, mostly at a jog, we crossed open country, following a white ribbon laid out to guide us, though it was shot in pieces. we were forced to stop periodically, often in the very worst places, when our guide lost his way. to keep the unit together, we were not allowed to lie down or take cover. even so, the first and third platoon had suddenly vanished. on, on! in one violently bombarded defile, the sections backed up. take cover! a horribly penetrating smell told us that this passage had already taken a good many lives. after running for our lives, we managed to reach a second defile which concealed the dugout of the front line commanding officer, then we lost our way again, and in a painful crush of excited men, had to turn back once more. at the most five yards from vogel and me, a middle-sized shell struck the bank behind us with a dull thump, and hurled mighty clods of earth over us, as we thought our last moment had come. finally, our guide found the path again a strangely constellated group of corpses serving as landmark. one of the dead lay there as if crucified on the chalk slope. it was impossible to imagine a more appropriate landmark. on, on! men collapsed while running, we had to threaten them to use the last energy from their exhausted bodies. wounded men went down left and right in craters we disregarded their cries for help. we went on, eyes implacably on the man in front, through a knee-high trench formed from a chain of enormous craters, one dead man after another. at moments, we felt our feet settling on soft, yielding corpses, whose form we couldn't make out on account of the darkness. the wounded man collapsing on the path suffered the same fate; he too was trampled underfoot by the boots of those hurrying ever onwards. and always the sweetish smell! even little schmidt, my orderly, who had accompanied me on the odd perilous reconnaissance, was beginning to reel. i snatched his rifle out of his hands, which even in his extremity, the good lad tried to resist. at last we reached the front line, which was occupied by men huddled together in little holes. their dull voices trembled with joy when they learned that we were come to relieve them. a bavarian sergeant handed over the sector and his flare pistol to me with a few words. my platoon's sector was on the right flank of the regiment's position, and consisted of a defile hammered by constant shelling into little more than a dip, running through open country from a couple of hundred paces to the left of guillemont, to a little less than that to the right of the bois de trones. some five hundred paces separated us from the troops to our right, the 76th infantry. the shelling here was so heavy that nothing could survive. suddenly the bavarian sergeant had disappeared, and i stood all alone, with my flare pistol in my hand, in the midst of that eerie cratered landscape, masked now by patches of creeping fog. behind me i heard a stifled, unpleasant sound; with a degree of calm that astonished me, i registered that it came from a bloated disintegrating corpse. since i had no idea as to the enemy's possible whereabouts, i went back to my men and told them to be ready for the worst. all of us stayed awake; i spent the night with paulicke and my two orderlies in a foxhole no bigger than a cubic yard. when morning paled, the strange surroundings gradually revealed themselves to our disbelieving eyes. the defile proved to be little more than a series of enormous craters full of pieces of uniform, weapons and dead bodies; the country around, so far as the eye could see, had been completely ploughed by heavy shells. not a single blade of grass showed itself. the churned-up field was gruesome. in among the living defenders lay the dead. when we dug foxholes, we realized that they were stacked in layers. one company after another, pressed together in the drumfire, had been mown down, then the bodies had been buried under showers of earth sent up by shells, and then the relief company had taken their predecessors' place. and now it was our turn. the defile and the land behind was strewn with german dead, the field ahead with british. arms and legs and heads stuck out of the slopes; in front of our holes were severed limbs and bodies, some of which had had coats or tarpaulins thrown over them, to save us the sight of the disfigured faces. in spite of the heat, no one thought of covering the bodies with earth. the village of guillemont seemed to have disappeared without trace; just a whitish stain on the cratered field indicated where one of the limestone houses had been pulverized. in front of us lay the station, crumpled like a child's toy; further to the rear the woods of delville, ripped to splinters. no sooner had day broken than a low-flying raf plane whirled towards us, and, vulture-like, began drawing its circles overhead, while we fled into our holes and huddled together. the sharp eye of the observer must have noticed something anyway, because before long the plane began to emit a series of low, long-drawn-out siren tones, coming at short intervals. they put one in mind of the cries of a fabulous creature, hanging pitilessly over the desert. a little later, and the battery seemed to have taken the signals. one heavy, low-arcing shell after the other came barging along with incredible force. we sat helplessly in our refuges, lighting a cigar and then throwing it away again, prepared at any moment to find ourselves buried. schmidt's sleeve was sliced open by a large shard. with only the third shell the fellow in the hole next to ours was buried by an enormous explosion. we dug him up again right away; even so, the weight of the masses of earth had left him deathly tired, his face sunken, like a skull. it was private simon. his experience had made him wise, because each time anyone moved around in the open while there were aeroplanes about, i could hear his furious voice and a fist waving from the opening of his tarpaulin-covered foxhole. at three in the afternoon my sentries came to me from the left and stated that they were unable to hold out where they were any longer, as their holes had been shot away. i had to display my full authority to get them back to their stations. what helped me make my case was the fact that i myself was in the place of greatest danger. a little before ten o'clock at night, a fire-storm was directed at the left flank of the regiment, which, twenty minutes later, had moved over to us. soon we were completely wrapped in smoke and dust, but most of the shells came down just behind or just in front of our trench, if one can use that word for our smashed hollow. as the storm raged around us, i walked up and down my sector. the men had fixed bayonets. they stood stony and motionless, rifle in hand, on the front edge of the dip, gazing into the field. now and then, by the light of a flare, i saw steel helmet by steel helmet, blade by glinting blade, and i was overcome by a feeling of invulnerability. we might be crushed, but surely we could not be conquered. in the platoon to the left of us, sergeant hock, the unfortunate rat-catcher of monchy, aimed to discharge a white flare, picked up the wrong flare, and instead sent up a red barrage light, which was taken up in all quarters. straight away our own artillery opened up, and it was a joy to behold. one shell after another came yowling down out of the sky and showered the field ahead of us in a fountain of shards and sparks on impact. a mixture of dust, stale gases and the reek of flung carcasses brewed up from the craters. after this orgy of destruction, the shelling quickly flooded back to its previous levels. one man's slip of the hand had got the whole titanic machinery of war rolling. hock was and remained an unlucky fellow; that same night, as he was loading his pistol, he shot a flare into his bootleg, and had to be carried back with grave burns. the following day, it rained hard, which was no bad thing so far as we were concerned, as once the dust turned to mud the feeling of dryness in our mouths wasn't so tormenting, and the great clumps of monstrous blue-black flies basking in the sun -they were like velvet cushions to look at were finally dispersed. i spent almost the whole day sitting on the ground in front of my foxhole, smoking and eating, in spite of the surroundings, with a healthy appetite. the following morning, fusilier knicke in my platoon got a rifle shot from somewhere through the chest and against his spine, so that he lost the use of his legs. when i went to see how he was, he was lying soberly in a hole in the ground, looking like a man who had come to terms with his own death. that evening he was carried back through the bombardment, in the course of which, when the stretcher-bearers suddenly had to dive for cover, he suffered an additional broken leg. he died at the dressing-station. that afternoon one of my men had me come over and look in the direction of guillemont station, from behind a torn-off british leg. hundreds of british soldiers were running forward through a flat communication trench, little troubled by the weak gunfire we were able to direct at them. the scene was indicative of the inequality of the resources with which we had to fight. had we essayed the same thing, our units would have been shot to pieces in a matter of minutes. while on our side there wasn't a single captive balloon to be seen anywhere, the british had about thirty clustered into one vast luminous-yellow bunch, watching with argus eyes for the least movement to show itself anywhere in the crumpled landscape, to have a hail of steel directed against it. in the evening, as i gave out the password, a large shell fragment came buzzing into my stomach. fortunately, it was almost spent, and so merely struck my belt buckle hard and fell to the ground. i was so astonished that it took the concerned cries of my men, and their offers of water from their canteens, to show me that i'd had a near thing. at dusk, two members of a british ration party lost their way, and blundered up to the sector of the line that was held by the first platoon. they approached perfectly serenely; one of them was carrying a large round container of food, the other a longish tea kettle. they were shot down at point-blank range; one of them landing with his upper body in the defile, while his legs remained on the slope. it was hardly possible to take prisoners in this inferno, and how could we have brought them back through the barrage in any case? it was almost one o'clock in the morning when i was roused by schmidt from my half-sleep. instantly i leaped up, and reached for my rifle. our relief had come. we handed over what there was to be handed over, and as quickly as possible made our way out of this fiendish place. but no sooner had we reached the shallow communication trench than a first clutch of shrapnels blew up in our midst. one ball smashed the wrist of the man in front of me, sending the arterial blood spurting everywhere. he reeled, and made to lie down on his side. i took him by the arm, pulled him to his feet in spite of his complaints, and only let go of him when we'd reached the dressing-station next to battle headquarters. things were pretty 'hot' along both the defiles, and we were panting for breath. the worst place was a valley we ended up in, where shrapnels and light shells seemed to go up uninterruptedly. prruch! prruch! went the spinning iron, sending a rain of sparks into the night. wheel another volley! i gasped because, seconds in advance, i knew from the increasing noise that the arc of the next projectile was heading almost exactly for me. an instant later, there was a heavy crash at my feet, and soft scraps of clay flipped into the air. it was a dud! everywhere groups of men, either relieving or being relieved, were hurrying through the night and the bombardment, some of them utterly lost, and groaning with tension and exhaustion; shouts fell, and orders, and in monotonous repetition the long-drawn-out cries for help from the abandoned and the wounded. as we raced on, i gave directions to the lost, pulled some men out of shell-holes, threatened others who wanted to lie down, kept shouting my name, and so brought my platoon, as if by a miracle, back to combles. then we needed to march via sailly and gouvernements-ferme to hennois woods, where we would bivouac. it was only now that the degree of our exhaustion became fully clear. heads brutishly down, we slunk along the road, often forced off it by cars or munitions columns. in my unhealthy irritation, i couldn't help but think that these vehicles followed no other purpose than to annoy us as they sliced past us, and more than once i caught myself reaching for my pistol. after our march we had to put up tents, and only then could we throw ourselves on the hard ground. during our stay in the forest camp, we endured great storms of rain. the straw in the tents started to moulder, and many men got sick. we five company officers were not much put out by this external wetness, spending our evenings sitting on our cases in our tent, with a few goodly bottles that had been magicked up from somewhere. in such situations, red wine is the best medicine. on one of these evenings, our guards counter-attacked and captured the village of maurepas. while the two sets of artillery were raging against each other over a wide area, a violent storm broke loose overhead, so that, as in the homeric battle of gods and men, the disturbance below seemed to be vying with that on high. three days later, we moved back to combles, where my platoon this time occupied four smallish basements. these basements were hewn from blocks of chalk, long and narrow and with arched ceilings; they promised security. they seemed to have belonged to a vintner or that, at any rate, was my explanation for the fact that they afforded small fireplaces broken into the walls. after i'd posted sentries, we stretched out on the many mattresses that our predecessors had lugged into place here. the first morning, things were relatively calm; i took a walk through the ravaged gardens, and looted delicious peaches from their espaliered boughs. on my wanderings i happened into a house surrounded by tall hedges, which must have belonged to a lover of antiques. on the walls of the rooms hung a collection of painted plates, holy water basins, etchings and wooden carvings of saints. old china sat in piles in large cupboards, ornate leather-bound volumes were scattered about the floor, among them an exquisite old edition of don quixote. i would have loved to pick up a memento, but i felt like robinson crusoe and the lump of gold; none of these things were of any value here. so great bales of beautiful silks rotted away in a workshop, without anyone paying them any attention. you had only to think of the glowing barrage at fremicourtferme, which cut off this landscape, and you soon thought better of picking up any extra baggage. when i reached my lodgings, the men were back from foraging trips of their own through the gardens, and had boiled up a soup in which you could stand your spoon out of bully beef, potatoes, peas, carrots, artichokes and various other vegetables. while we were eating, a shell landed on the house, and three others came down near by, without us lifting our heads. we had seen and been through too much already to care. the house must have seen some bloody happenings already, because on a pile of rubble in the middle room there was a rough cross with a list of names scratched into it. the next day at lunchtime i went back to the china collector's house and picked up a volume of the illustrated supplements to le petit journal, then i sat myself down in a reasonably well-preserved room, made a little fire in the hearth with some sticks of furniture, and settled down to read. i had frequent occasion to shake my head, because i had picked up those issues that had appeared at the time of the fashoda affair. [town in the sudan, and site of an anglo-french colonial standoff in 1898 involving general kitchener. the french climb-down paved the way for the entente cordiale. rueful reading matter for a german officer in world war i. ] the time i spent reading was punctuated by four bombs hitting the house. at just about seven o'clock i turned the last page, and went down to the passage outside the basement, where the men were preparing supper at a small stove. no sooner was i standing with them than there was a sharp report outside the front door, and, in the same moment, i felt a piercing blow low down on my left calf. with the immemorial warrior's refrain 'i've been hit!' i took off, pipe of shag tobacco in my mouth, down the stairs. quickly someone brought light, and the thing was examined. as ever in these affairs, i had someone tell me about it, while i stared at the ceiling; in case it wasn't a pretty sight. there was a jagged hole in my putties, out of which a fine spray of blood ran down to the floor. on the opposite side of the leg there was the round bulge of a shrapnel ball under the skin. the diagnosis was straightforward enough a typical ticket home: nothing very bad, but nothing too light either. admittedly, i'd left it to the latest possible moment to get 'a puncture' if i wasn't to miss the bus to germany. there was something deeply improbable about that hit, because the shrapnel had burst on the ground on the other side of the brick wall that surrounded the courtyard. a shell had previously knocked a little round hole in this wall, and a tub with an oleander plant stood in front of it. the ball must therefore have gone through the shell-hole, then through the oleander's leaves, crossed the yard and the open door, and, of the many legs in front of it, had picked precisely this one of mine. after my comrades had bandaged up the wound, they carried me across the street needless to say, through fire to the catacombs, and there laid me on the operating table. while a breathless lieutenant wetje held my head, our medical major cut out the shrapnel ball with scissors and knife, and told me i was a lucky man, because the ball had passed between shinbone and fibula without harming either. 'habent sua fata libelli et balli,' the old corps student observed, while he left a medical orderly to bandage up the wound. ['books and bullets have their own destinies.' ] while i lay on a stretcher in a niche in the catacombs waiting for nightfall, i was pleased that a lot of my men came to say goodbye to me. they had a heavy ordeal ahead of them. my revered colonel von oppen managed to pay me a short visit. in the evening i was carried along with the other casualties to the edge of town, and there loaded on to an ambulance. paying no attention to the cries and screams of his passengers, the driver raced over the craters and other hindrances along the road, heavily bombarded as ever around fregicourt-ferme, and finally passed us on to a car that delivered us to the village church at fins. the switch of cars took place in the middle of the night outside an isolated group of houses, where a doctor examined the bandages and decided our destiny. half feverish as i was, i had an impression of a young man whose hair had turned completely white, but who tended our wounds with unimaginable care. the church at fins was full of hundreds of wounded men. a nurse told me that in the course of the last few weeks; more than thirty thousand casualties had been tended and bandaged here. faced with numbers of that order, i felt pretty insignificant with my silly leg wound. from fins, i was taken along with four other officers to a hospital that had been set up in an affluent house in st-quentin. when we were unloaded, all the window-panes were jangling; it was exactly the moment when the british, with maximal help from their artillery, were taking guillemont. when the stretcher next to mine was lifted out of the car, i heard one of those toneless voices that have remained with me: 'take me to the doctor right away, if you will i'm very poorly -i have a gas phlegmon.' that was the term for a horrible form of blood poisoning that often sets in after a man has been wounded, and kills him. i was carried into a room, where twelve beds stood so close together that one had the impression of a room entirely filled with snow-white pillows. most of the wounds were grave, and there was a commotion in which, in my feverish state, i dreamily participated. soon after my arrival, for instance, a young man with a bandage wrapped round his head like a turban, leaped up from his bed and addressed us all. i thought it was some rather extravagant sort of joke, only to see him collapse as suddenly as he'd leaped up. his bed was rolled out through a dark little door, amid a rather grim silence. next to me lay a pioneer officer. he had trodden on an explosive in the trench, and the contact had caused a long tongue of flame to leap up. his mutilated foot had been placed under a translucent gauze wrapper. he seemed to be in a good humour, and was happy to have found a listener in me. on my left, a very young ensign was on a diet of claret and egg yolks; he was in the very last stages of emaciation. when the sister wanted to make his bed, she picked him up like a feather; through his skin, you could see all the bones in his body. when the sister asked him at night whether he wouldn't like to write his parents a nice letter, i guessed it was all up with him, and, indeed, later that night, his bed too was rolled through the dark door to the dying ward. by noon the next day i was lying in a hospital train that was taking me to gera, where i was extremely well looked after in the garrison hospital there. a week later, and i was already skipping out in the evenings, though i had to be careful not to run into the head doctor. it was here that i signed away the three thousand marks that were my entire fortune at the time as a war loan. i never saw them again. as i held the form in my hand, i thought of the beautiful fireworks that the wrong-coloured flare had sparked off a spectacle that surely couldn't have cost less than a million. i return now to the dreadful defile, to view the final act of the drama. my sources are the reports of the few men who were wounded and survived, in particular my orderly, otto schmidt. following my wounding, my subordinate, sergeant heister-mann, took over the command of the platoon, and it was he who a few minutes later led the men to the cratered field at guillemont. with barely a handful of exceptions those men who were hit during the march, and were fit enough to get back to combles -the outfit disappeared without trace in the fiery labyrinths of the battle. the platoon relieved their predecessors, and settled into the now familiar foxholes. the gap on the right flank had now widened, thanks to the incessant withering fire, so that there was no longer any visual communication. on the left side as well, there were now spaces, so that the position resembled a little island adrift in titanic streams of fire. the whole sector was made up of nothing more than similar islands, greater and lesser, but all of them dwindling. the attacker found himself confronting a net whose meshes had grown too wide to catch anything. and so the night passed, with increasing disquiet. towards morning, a two-man patrol from the 76th showed up, having groped their way through with incredible difficulty. they went away again into the sea of fire, and that was the last the platoon saw of the outside world. the fire concentrated with ever-growing force on the right flank, and slowly worked to widen the gap, knocking out one pocket of resistance after another. towards six in the morning, schmidt reached for the cooking tin that he kept outside our old foxhole, to get some breakfast, but all he found was a piece of flattened and riddled aluminium. soon the shelling started up again, and slowly raised itself to a crescendo that was inevitably interpreted as the sign of an imminent attack. aeroplanes appeared, and, like jabbing vultures, began circling low over the ground. heistermann and schmidt, the only occupants of the tiny hole in the ground that had miraculously survived so long, knew that the moment had come for their stand. as they stepped out into the smokeand dust-filled defile, they saw they were utterly alone. in the course of the night, the bombardment had smashed the last sparse bits of cover between themselves and the right flank, and buried their occupants under quantities of earth. but to the left of them as well, the rim of the defile turned out to be devoid of defenders. the last remnants of the platoon, among them a machine-gun unit, had withdrawn to a narrow shelter, covered over with planks and a thin layer of soil, half-way along the defile, and in its rear slope, with an entrance at either end of it. heistermann and schmidt now made for this refuge. on the way there, however, the sergeant, whose birthday it happened to be that day, disappeared. he was following schmidt, coming up to a bend, and was never seen again. the only man who made it to the little group in the shelter from the right flank was a lance-corporal, with a bandaged face, who suddenly stripped off his bandage, spewed a torrent of blood over the men and their weapons, and lay down to die. all this time, the power and intensity of the bombardment was still waxing; at any moment, the overcrowded shelter, in which no one now could speak, could reckon on being hit. further left, a few soldiers from no. 3 platoon were still tenaciously defending their crater, and it seems that the position was crushed from the right, where the breach had been forced, which was by now a huge cavity. these soldiers must have been the first to have become aware of an incursion of british storm troops following one final inferno of bombing. at any rate, it seems the occupants of the shelter were alerted to the presence of the enemy by a shouted warning from the left. schmidt, the last man to have reached the shelter, and therefore sitting nearest the entrance, was the first man to emerge into the defile. he leaped into the spurting cone of a shell. as the smoke cleared, he saw to his right, just by the site of the foxhole that had so stoutly sheltered us, some lurking khaki figures. simultaneously, the enemy broke through in numbers on the left of the position. what was happening beyond the projecting rim of the defile could not be seen, because of its depth. in this desperate situation, the next occupants of the shelter, in particular sergeant sievers, plunged out with the intact machine-gun and its operator. to set it up on the floor of the defile and aim it at the enemy on the right was the work of seconds. but even as the gunner had his fist on the belt and his finger on the trigger, british hand-grenades were hobbling down the front slope. the two men fell beside their weapon, without managing to get off a shot. anyone else leaping out of the shelter was received with rifle bullets, so that in the space of a few moments there was a cluster of dead round both entrances. schmidt was laid out by the first volley of hand-grenades. one splinter hit him in the head, others tore off three of his fingers. with his face down, he remained close to the shelter, where an exchange of rifle fire and hand-grenades continued for some time. at last there was silence, and the british took over the last part of the position. schmidt, perhaps the last living soul in the defile, heard footfalls announcing the approach of the attacker. shortly after, rifle shots rang out, and explosions and gas bombs, as the shelter was pumped clear. even then, towards evening, a last few survivors came crawling out of the shelter, from some nook at the back. they probably made up the little group of prisoners that fell into the hands of the enemy storm troops. british stretcher-bearers picked them up and took them away. shortly afterwards, combles too fell, once the noose had been drawn tight around fregicourt-ferme. its last defenders, who had taken refuge in the catacombs during the bombardment, were mown down fighting round the ruins of the church. then things went quiet in the area, until we retook it in spring 1918. the woods of st-pierre-vaast after a fortnight in hospital and another fortnight recuperating, i returned to the regiment, which was positioned at deuxnouds, hard by the familiar grande tranchee. for the first two days after my arrival, it remained there, and then two more days in the old-world hill village of hattonchatel. then we steamed out of mars-la-tour station back to the somme. we were taken off the train at bohain, and put up in brancourt. this area, which we often brushed by later, is arable farmland, but almost every house boasts a loom as well. i was quartered with a couple and their very beautiful daughter. we shared the two rooms of their little cottage, and at night i had to go through the family's bedroom. on the very first day, the father asked me to compose a letter of complaint to the local commandant, against a neighbour who had grabbed him by the throat, beaten him and, crying 'demande pardon!', threatened to kill him. as i was on my way out of my room to go on duty, the daughter pushed the door shut against me. i took this to be one of her little jokes, pushed back, and our combined efforts were enough to lift the door off its hinges, and we waltzed round the room holding it between us for a few moments. suddenly it came down, and to our mutual embarrassment, and her mother's great hilarity, i saw she was standing there completely naked. never in all my life, incidentally, have i heard anyone swear and scold as volubly as that rose of brancourt did, when a neighbour accused her of having once worked in a certain street in st-quentin. 'ah, cette plure, cette pomme de terre pourrie, jetee sur un fumier, c'est la creme de la creme pourrie,' she bubbled, as she criss-crossed the room with her hands out in front of her like claws, lacking only a victim for her pent-up rage. [this affair of honour is conducted in almost literally 'earthy' language, in which the essential item is a 'mouldy potato'. ] things in this village had quite a baronial flavour to them altogether. one evening i was on my way to call on a comrade, who was quartered with the aforementioned neighbour, a rather coarse flemish beauty, who went by the name of madame louise. i went the back way through the gardens of the two houses, and saw madame louise through the kitchen window, sitting at the table helping herself from a large pot of coffee. suddenly, the door opened and in strode the man who had been given such a cosy billet, with the full self-confidence of a sleepwalker and about as fully dressed as one too. without saying a word, he picked up the coffee pot, and poured a goodly jet of it through the spout straight into his mouth. then, every bit as laconically, he walked out again. feeling i would only get in the way of such an idyllic set-up, i quietly went back the way i had come. there was a relaxed tone in this area, which was in odd contrast to its agricultural character. i think it must have been something to do with the weaving, because in towns and regions where the spindle rules, there seems to be a different spirit to those where, say, there are a lot of blacksmiths. as we had been settled in various villages and hamlets by the company, there was only a small group of us in the evenings. our clique normally consisted of lieutenant boje, who commanded the 2nd company, lieutenant heilmann, a dogged warrior who had lost an eye, ensign gornick, later to join the paris airmen, and me. every night we dined on boiled potatoes with tinned goulash, and afterwards the playing cards came out and the odd bottle of 'polish rider' or benedictine. the dominant personality was heilmann, who was one of those people who are resolutely unimpressed by anything. he was staying in quite a nice billet, had had quite a bad wound, had witnessed quite a sizeable funeral. the only exception was anything relating to his native upper silesia, where you could find the biggest village, the biggest goods station and the deepest mineshaft anywhere in the world. i was now to be used as a scouting officer, and had been assigned to the division with a scout troop and two ncos. special assignments like that were really not my line, because to me the company was like a family, and i was loath to leave it before a battle. on 8 november, the battalion travelled through streaming rain to the now entirely depopulated village of gonnelieu. from there, the scout troop was detailed to lieramont and put under the command of the divisional intelligence officer, captain bockelmann. along with four of us troop leaders, a couple of observation officers, and his personal adjutant, the captain occupied a priest's spacious house, whose rooms we divided among ourselves. on one of our first evenings there, there was a long conversation in the library about the german peace proposals, which had just been made known. bockelmann put an end to it by remarking that during a war no soldier should be permitted to say the word 'peace'. our predecessors familiarized us with the position of the division. every night, we had to go to the front. our task was to reconnoitre the situation, test the communications between the units, and make a picture of everything, so as to put in reinforcements if need be and perform special duties. my own allotted area was just left of the woods of st-pierre-vaast, and against another 'nameless' wood. the scene at night was muddy and wild, often with heavy exchanges of artillery. frequently, yellow rockets were shot off that blew up in the air, and sent a rain of fire cascading down, of a colour that somehow reminded me of the tone of a viola. that very first night, i lost my way in the pitch black and almost drowned in the swamps of the tortille stream. it was a place of unfathomable mystery; only the night before, a munitions cart had disappeared without trace in a vast shell-crater hidden under a crust of mud. having made good my escape from this wilderness, i tried to make my way to the 'nameless woods', where there was a low-level, but unremitting shelling going on. i headed for it pretty insouciantly, because the dull sound of the detonations suggested that the british were shooting off some rather veteran ammunitions. suddenly, a little puff of wind brought up a sweetish, oniony smell, and at the same time i heard the shout go up in the wood: 'gas, gas, gas!' from a distance, the cry sounded oddly small and plaintive, not unlike a chorus of crickets. as i heard the next morning, in that hour in the woods a lot of our men died of poisoning from the clouds of heavy phosgene nestling in the undergrowth. with weeping eyes, i stumbled back to the vaux woods, plunging from one crater into the next, as i was unable to see anything through the misted visor of my gas mask. with the extent and inhospitableness of its spaces, it was a night of eerie solitude. each time i blundered into sentries or troops who had lost their way, i had the icy sensation of conversing not with people, but with demons. we were all roving around in an enormous dump somewhere off the edge of the charted world. on 12 november, hoping for better luck, i undertook my second mission, which was to test the communications between units in our crater positions. a chain of relays concealed in foxholes led me to my destination. the term 'crater positions' was accurate. on a ridge outside the village of rancourt, there were numerous craters scattered, some occupied by a few soldiers here and there. the dark plain, criss-crossed by shells, was barren and intimidating. it wasn't long before i had lost communication with the chain of craters, and so i headed back, in case i fell into the hands of the french. i encountered an officer i knew from the 164th, who warned me not to hang around as it got lighter. therefore, i strode rapidly through the nameless woods, staggering through deep pits, over felled trees and an almost impenetrable tangle of branches. by the time i emerged from the woods, it was day. the cratered field stretched out ahead of me, apparently endlessly, with no sign of life. i paused, because unoccupied terrain is always a sinister thing in a war. suddenly a shot rang out, and i was hit in both legs by a sniper's bullet. i threw myself into the nearest crater, and tied up the wounds with my handkerchief, having of course forgotten my field dressing. a bullet had drilled through my right calf and brushed the left. extremely carefully, i crawled back into the woods, and hobbled from there through the heavily shelled terrain towards the dressing-station. just before i reached it, there was an instance of the way tiny imponderables can determine one's fate in a war. i was roughly a hundred yards from a crossroads when the commander of a digging detail i'd been with in the 9th company called out to me. we had been speaking for barely a minute when a shell landed on the crossroads, which, but for this chance meeting, would probably have cost me my life. it is hard to see these things as completely random. after dark, i was carried on a stretcher as far as nurlu, from where the captain picked me up in a car. on the road lit up by enemy searchlights, the driver suddenly braked. there was a dark obstacle in the way. 'don't look!' said bockelmann, who had his arm around me. it was a group of infantry with their leader, who had just been killed by a direct hit. the comrades looked like peaceful sleepers as they lay together in death. in the priest's house i was given some supper, at least inasmuch as i lay on the sofa in the common room, enjoying a glass of wine. but this cosiness was quickly interrupted by lieramont's evening blessing. bombardments of towns and buildings are especially disagreeable, and so we hurriedly moved down to the cellar, having heard a few times the hissing song with which the iron messengers announced themselves, before they finished in the gardens or among the roofbeams of neighbouring houses. i was rolled up in a blanket and carried downstairs first. that same night, i was brought to the field hospital at villeret, and then on to the military hospital in valenciennes. the military hospital had been set up in a school building close to the station, and it was presently housing four hundred severe cases. day after day, a procession of corpses left its portals to a leaden thump of drums. doctors did their bloody best at a row of operating tables. here, a limb was amputated, there a skull chipped open, or a bandage that the flesh had grown over was peeled away. whimpers and cries echoed through the harshly lit room, while white-clad sisters bustled efficiently from one table to the next with instruments or bandages. in the bed next to mine lay a sergeant who had lost a leg, and was fighting a bad case of blood poisoning. mad periods of fever alternated with cold shivering. his temperature chart performed leaps like a wild mustang. the doctors tried to keep him alive on champagne and camphor, but the needle seemed to be pointing unmistakably to death. what was strange, though, was that, having been delirious for the past few days, at the hour of his death he was once more completely lucid, and made some arrangements for what was to be done afterwards. for instance, he had the sister read him his favourite chapter from the bible, then he took his leave of us all, by asking our forgiveness for having kept us up at night so often with his fever attacks. at the end, he whispered in a voice to which he tried to give a humorous inflection: 'ey, fritz, have yer got a bit of bread for me?' and, a few minutes later, he was dead. that last sentence was a reference to our male nurse, fritz, an elderly man, whose accent we sometimes imitated, and we were profoundly moved by it because it showed the dying man's wish to cheer us up. it was during this stay in hospital that i suffered an attack of the glooms, a contributing factor in which was surely the memory of the cold, slimy landscape where i had been wounded. every afternoon, i would hobble along the banks of a bleak-looking canal under bare poplars. i was especially upset not to have been able to participate in the regiment's attack on the woods of st-pierre-vaast a shining effort that won us several hundred prisoners. after two weeks, when my wounds had pretty much closed, i returned to my troop. the division was still based where i had left it. as my train rolled into epehy, there was a series of explosions outside. the twisted wreckage of freight wagons lying by the rails showed that the attack was in earnest. 'what's going on here?' asked a captain who appeared to be fresh out of germany. without stopping to give him an answer, i tore open the door of the compartment and took cover behind the railway embankment, while the train rolled on a little. none of the passengers had been hurt; but a few bleeding horses were led out of the cattle car. since i wasn't able to march properly yet, i was given the job of observation officer. the observation post was on a downhill slope between nurlu and moislains. it was nothing more than a periscope through which i could view the familiar front line. if the bombing was stepped up, or there were coloured flares or anything else out of the ordinary, i was to inform the divisional command by telephone. for days i perched shivering on a little stool behind the two layers of glass, and the only variety on offer was if the line broke down. if the wire had been shot through, i had to get it repaired by my breakdown squad. in these men, of whose activity i had been all but unaware hitherto, i now found a special type of unappreciated worker in the most perilous conditions. while most others strained to leave a shelled zone, the breakdown squad had to enter it calmly and professionally. day and night, they went into still-warm shell-holes to tie together the ends of two severed wires; their job was as dangerous as it was unglamorous. the observation post was well camouflaged in the landscape. all that could be seen from outside was a narrow slit half hidden behind a grassy knoll. only chance shells ended up there, and, from my safe hiding-place, i was able to follow the activities of individuals and units that i hadn't paid that much attention to when i myself had also been under fire. at times, and most of all at dawn and dusk, the landscape was not unlike a wide steppe inhabited by animals. especially when floods of new arrivals were making for certain points that were regularly shelled, only suddenly to hurl themselves to the ground, or run away as fast as they could, i was put in mind of a natural scene. such an impression was so strong because my function was a little like that of an antenna, i was a sort of advance sensory organ, detailed to observe calmly all that was happening before me, and inform the leadership. i really had little more to do than wait for the hour of the attack. every twenty-four hours, i was relieved by another officer, and i recovered in nurlu, where there were relatively comfortable quarters set up in a large wine cellar. i still remember long, pensive november evenings, smoking my pipe by the stove in the little vaulted space, while outside in the ravaged park, the fog dripped from the bare chestnut trees and the occasional echoing blast of a shell broke the stillness. on 18 december, the division was relieved, and i rejoined my regiment, now on rest in the village of fresnoy-le-grand. there, i took over the command of the 2nd company from lieutenant boje, who had a spell of leave. in fresnoy, the regiment had four weeks of uninterrupted rest, and everyone tried to make the most of it. christmas and new year were marked by company parties, at which the beer and grog flowed. only five men were left of the 2nd company with whom i had celebrated christmas in the trenches at monchy, a year ago. with ensign gornick and my brother fritz, who had joined the regiment for six weeks as cadets, i occupied the living room and two bedrooms of a french rentier. there i started to relax again a little, and frequently only got home when it was light. one morning, as i lay half asleep in bed, a comrade came in to escort me to duty. we were chatting, and he was toying with my pistol, which as usual was on my bedside table, when he fired a shot that narrowly missed my skull. i have witnessed several fatal accidents in war that were caused by careless handling of weapons; cases like that are always especially irritating. in the first week, there was an inspection by general sontag, at which the regiment was praised for its deeds in the assault on the woods of st-pierre-vaast, and numerous medals were given out. as i led the 2nd company forward on parade, i caught a glimpse of colonel von oppen leaning across and talking to the general about me. a few hours later, i was ordered to divisional hq, where the general awarded me the iron cross first class. i was all the more delighted, as i had followed the order half thinking i was going to be carpeted for something. 'it seems you have a habit of getting yourself wounded,' the general said, 'well, i've got a little plaster for you.' on 17 january 1917, i was ordered to leave fresnoy for four weeks, to take a company-command course at the french manoeuvring ground of sissonne near laon. the work was rendered very agreeable by the head of our section, captain funk, who had the gift of distilling the great plethora of regulations into a small number of basic principles; it is a method that always works, no matter where it is applied. at the same time, the victualling left something to be desired. potatoes seemed to have become a thing of the past; day after day, when we lifted the lids of our dishes in the vast mess hall, we found nothing but watery swedes. before long, we couldn't stand the sight of them. even though they're better than they're cracked up to be so long as they're roasted with a nice piece of pork, and plenty of black pepper. which these weren't. retreat from the somme at the end of february 1917, i returned to the regiment, which had now for some days been in position near the ruins of villers-carbonnel, and there i took over command of the 8th company. the approach route to the front line snaked through the eerie and devastated area of the somme valley; an old and already badly damaged bridge led across the river. other approach paths were on log-roads laid over the swampy flats; here we had to walk in indian file, crashing through the wide, rustling reed beds, and striding over the silent oil-black expanses of water. when shells came down on these stretches, and sent up great liquescent columns of mud and water, or when sprays of machine-gun bullets erred over the swampy surface, all you could do was grit your teeth, because it was like walking on a tightrope, there was nowhere for you to go on either side. hence, the sight of several fantastically shot-up locomotives that had been stopped in their tracks on the high bank on the other side, roughly level with our destination, was each time greeted with relief that otherwise might have been hard to account for. in the flats lay the villages of brie and st-christ. towers, of which only one slender wall remained, and in whose window openings the moonlight flittered, dark piles of rubble, topped off by smashed beamwork, and isolated trees despoiled of their twigs on the wide snowy plain scarred by black shell-holes accompanied the path like a mechanical scenery, behind which the ghostly quality of the landscape still seemed to lurk. the firing trenches had been tidied up slightly following a bad, muddy stretch. the platoon commanders told me that, for a while, relief had only been possible with the use of flares; otherwise there would have been every chance of men drowning. a flare shot diagonally over the trench signified: 'i'm going off watch,' and another, coming the other way, confirmed: 'i've taken over.' my dugout was in a cross trench about fifty yards behind the front line. it housed my small staff and myself, and also a platoon that was under my personal command. it was dry and quite extensive. at each of its entrances, which were draped with tarpaulins, were little iron stoves with long pipes; during heavy bombardments, clumps of earth often came down them with an awful rumble. at right angles to the principal shelter were a number of little blind passages that were used as dormitories. i had one of these to myself. apart from a narrow cot, a table and a few hand-grenade chests, the only amenities were a few trusty items, such as a spirit stove, a candle-holder, cooking equipment and my personal effects. this was also the place where we sat together cosily of an evening, each of us perched on twenty-five live hand-grenades. my companions were the two company officers, hambrock and eisen, and it seemed to me that these subterranean sessions of ours, three hundred yards from the enemy lines, were pretty curious affairs. hambrock, astronomer by vocation, and a great devotee of e. t. a. hoffmann, liked to hold forth about venus, contending that it was impossible to do justice to the pure light of this astral body from anywhere on earth. he was a tiny chap, thin and spidery and red-haired, and he had a face dotted with yellow and green freckles that had got him the nickname 'the marquess of gorgonzola'. over the course of the war, he had fallen into some eccentric habits; thus, he tended to sleep in the daytime and only came to life as it got dark, occasionally wandering around all alone in front of our trenches, or the british ones, it seemed to make little difference to him. also, he had the worrying habit of creeping up to a sentry and firing off a flare right by his ear, 'to test the man's courage'. unfortunately, his constitution was really far too weak for a war, and so it happened that he died of a relatively trivial wound he suffered shortly afterwards at fresnoy. eisen was no taller, but plump, and, having grown up in the warmer climes of portugal as the son of an emigrant, he was perpetually shivering. that was why he swore by a large red-chequered handkerchief that he tied round his helmet, knotted under his chin, claiming it kept his head warm. also, he liked going around festooned with weapons apart from his rifle, from which he was inseparable, he wore numerous daggers, pistols, hand-grenades and a torch tucked into his belt. encountering him in the trench was like suddenly coming upon an armenian or somesuch. for a while he used to carry hand-grenades loose in his pockets as well, till that habit gave him a very nasty turn, which he related to us one evening. he had been digging around in his pocket, trying to pull out his pipe, when it got caught in the loop of a hand-grenade and accidentally pulled it off. he was startled by the sudden unmistakable little click, which usually serves as the introduction to a soft hiss, lasting for three seconds, while the priming explosive burns. in his appalled efforts to pull the thing out and hurl it away from him, he had got so tangled up in his trouser pocket that it would have long since blown him to smithereens, had it not been that, by a fairy-tale stroke of luck, this particular hand-grenade had been a dud. half paralysed and sweating with fear, he saw himself, after all, restored to life. it was only temporary, though, because a few months later he too died in the battle at langemarck. in his case, too, willpower had to come to the aid of his body; he was both shortsighted and hard of hearing, so that, as we were to see on the occasion of a little skirmish, he had to be pointed in the right direction by his men if he was to participate in the action in a meaningful way. even so, brave puny men are always to be preferred to strong cowards, as was shown over and over in the course of the few weeks we spent in this position. if our sector of the front could be described as quiet, mighty poundings of artillery that sometimes came hammering down on our lines proved there was no shortage of fire-power in the area. also, the british were full of curiosity and enterprise here, and not a week passed without some attempt by little exploratory groups to gain information about us, either by cunning or by main force. there were already rumours of some vast impending 'materiel battle' in the spring, which would make last year's battle of the somme appear like a picnic. to dampen the impetus of the assault, we were engaged in an extensive tactical withdrawal. there follow a few incidents taken from this phase: 1 march 1917. hefty exchanges of fire, to take advantage of the good visibility. one heavy battery in particular with the help of an observation balloon practically levelled the no. 3 platoon's section. in an effort to fill in my map of the position, i spent the afternoon splashing about in the completely inundated 'trench with no name'. on my way, i saw a huge yellow sun slowly sinking, leaving a black plume of smoke after it. a german aeroplane had approached the pesky balloon and shot it in flames. followed by furious fire from the ground, it made off happily in steeply banking curves. in the evening, lance-corporal schnau came to me and reported that for four days now there had been chipping sounds heard below his unit's shelter. i passed on the observation, and was sent a pioneer commando with listening apparatus, which registered no suspicious activity. it later transpired that the whole position was undermined. in the early hours of 5 march, a patrol approached our position and began to cut at our barbed wire. alerted by the sentry, eisen hurried over with a few men and threw bombs, whereupon the attackers turned to flee, leaving two casualties behind. one, a young lieutenant, died shortly after; the other, a sergeant, was badly wounded in the arm and leg. from the officer's papers, it appears his name was stokes, and that he was with the royal munster fusiliers. he was extremely well dressed, and his features, though a little twisted in death, were intelligent and energetic. in his notebook, i came upon a lot of addresses of girls in london, and was rather moved. we buried him behind our lines, putting up a simple cross, in which i had his name set in hobnails. this experience taught me that not every sally ends as harmlessly as mine have to date. the next morning, after brief preliminary bombardment, the british with fifty men attacked the adjacent section, under the command of lieutenant reinhardt. the attackers had crept up to our wires, and after one of them had given a light signal to their own machine-gunners, by means of a striking surface attached to his sleeve, they had charged our lines as the last of the shells were falling. all had blackened faces, so as not to show against the dark. our men had arranged such a consummate reception for them, that only one made it into our trenches, running straight through to the second line, where, ignoring calls to surrender, he was shot down. the only ones to get across the wires were a lieutenant and a sergeant. the lieutenant fell, in spite of the fact that he was wearing body armour, because a pistol bullet, fired into him by reinhardt point-blank, drove one of its plates into his body. the sergeant practically had both legs sheared off by hand-grenade splinters; even so, with stoical calm, he kept his pipe clenched between his teeth to the end. this incident, like all our other encounters with the britishers, left us pleasantly impressed with their bravery and manliness. later that morning, i was strolling along my line when i saw lieutenant pfaffendorf at a sentry post, directing the fire of a trench mortar by means of a periscope. stepping up beside him, i spotted a british soldier breaking cover behind the third enemy line, the khaki uniform clearly visible against the sky. i grabbed the nearest sentry's rifle, set the sights to six hundred, aimed quickly, just in front of the man's head, and fired. he took another three steps, then collapsed on to his back, as though his legs had been taken away from him, flapped his arms once or twice, and rolled into a shell-crater, where through the binoculars we could see his brown sleeves shining for a long time yet. on 9 march, the british once again slathered our sector with everything they had. early in the morning i was awakened by a noisy barrage, reached for my pistol and staggered outside, still half asleep. pulling aside the tarpaulin in front of my shelter entrance, i saw it was still pitch black. the lurid flaming of the shells and the whooshing dirt woke me in no time. i ran along the trench without encountering anyone at all, until i came to a deep dugout, where a leaderless bunch of men were cowering together on the step like chickens in the rain. i took them with me, and soon livened up the trench. to my satisfaction, i could hear hambrock's squeaky voice in another sector, also galvanizing. after the shelling abated somewhat, i went irritably back to my shelter, only for my temper to be further exacerbated by a call from the command: 'what in god's name is going on here? why does it take you so long to answer the bloody telephone?' after breakfast, the bombardment resumed. this time, the british were nailing our position slowly but systematically with heavy bombs. finally, it got a bit boring; i went down an underground passage to pay a call on little hambrock, see what he had to drink, and play a few rounds of cards. then we were disturbed by a gigantic noise; clumps of earth clattered through the door and down the stove-pipe. the entrance had collapsed, the wooden revetment was crushed like a matchbox. sometimes an oily bitter-almond smell seemed to waft through the passage -were they hitting us with prussic acid now? well, cheers anyway! once, i needed to answer the call; because of the continual interruptions from heavy shells, i did it in four separate instalments. then the batman rushed in with the news that the latrine had been blown to smithereens, prompting hambrock to comment approvingly on my dilatoriness. i replied: 'if i'd stayed out there, i'd probably have as many freckles as you do.' towards evening, the shelling stopped. in the mood that always befell me after heavy bombardments, and which i can only compare to the feeling of relief after a storm, i inspected the line. the trench looked awful; whole stretches had caved in, five dugout shafts had been crushed. several men had been wounded; i visited them, and found them relatively cheerful. a body lay in the trench, covered by a tarpaulin. his left hip had been ripped away by a shell fragment as he stood right at the bottom of the dugout steps. in the evening, we were relieved. on 13 march, i was assigned by colonel von oppen to hold the company front with a patrol of two platoons until the regiment had withdrawn across the somme. each one of the four sectors was to be held by one such patrol, under the command of its own officer. from right to left, the sectors were to be under the command of lieutenants reinhardt, fischer, lorek and myself. the villages we passed through on our way had the look of vast lunatic asylums. whole companies were set to knocking or pulling down walls, or sitting on rooftops, uprooting the tiles. trees were cut down, windows smashed; wherever you looked, clouds of smoke and dust rose from vast piles of debris. we saw men dashing about wearing suits and dresses left behind by the inhabitants, with top hats on their heads. with destructive cunning, they found the roof-trees of the houses, fixed ropes to them, and, with concerted shouts, pulled till they all came tumbling down. others were swinging pile-driving hammers, and went around smashing everything that got in their way, from the flowerpots on the window-sills to whole ornate conservatories. as far back as the siegfried line, every village was reduced to rubble, every tree chopped down, every road undermined, every well poisoned, every basement blown up or booby-trapped, every rail unscrewed, every telephone wire rolled up, everything burnable burned; in a word, we were turning the country that our advancing opponents would occupy into a wasteland. as i say, the scenes were reminiscent of a madhouse, and the effect of them was similar: half funny, half repellent. they were also, we could see right away, bad for the men's morale and honour. here, for the first time, i witnessed wanton destruction that i was later in life to see to excess; this is something that is unhealthily bound up with the economic thinking of our age, but it does more harm than good to the destroyer, and dishonours the soldier. among the surprises we'd prepared for our successors were some truly malicious inventions. very fine wires, almost invisible, were stretched across the entrances of buildings and shelters, which set off explosive charges at the faintest touch. in some places, narrow ditches were dug across roads, and shells hidden in them; they were covered over by an oak plank, and had earth strewn over them. a nail had been driven into the plank, only just above the shell-fuse. the space was measured so that marching troops could pass over the spot safely, but the moment the first lorry or field gun rumbled up, the board would give, and the nail would touch off the shell. or there were spiteful time bombs that were buried in the basements of undamaged buildings. they consisted of two sections, with a metal partition going down the middle. in one part was explosive, in the other acid. after these devil's eggs had been primed and hidden, the acid slowly, over weeks, eroded the metal partition, and then set off the bomb. one such device blew up the town hall of bapaume just as the authorities had assembled to celebrate victory. on 13 march, then, the 2nd company left the position, and i took it over with my two platoons. that night, a man by the name of kirchhof was killed by a shot in the head. oddly, that one fatal shot was the only one fired by our enemy in the space of several hours. i arranged all sorts of things to deceive the enemy about our strength. shovelfuls of earth were flung over the ramparts up and down the trench, and our solitary machine-gun was to fire off bursts now from one flank, now from the other. even so, our fire-power couldn't help sounding rather thin when low-flying aeroplanes buzzed the position, or a digging party was seen crossing the enemy hinterland. it was inevitable that patrols were sent out every night to different points, to attack our wire entanglements. on our second-to-last day, i had a close shave. a dud shell from an anti-balloon gun came plummeting down from the sky, and exploded on the traverse where i happened to be leaning. the air pressure picked me up and hurled me across the trench, fortunately into the mouth of a shelter, where i picked myself up, feeling rather confused. on the morning of the 17th, we sensed that an attack was imminent. from the advanced english trench, which was very muddy and usually unoccupied, we heard the splashing of many boots. the sounds of laughter and shouts from a strong detachment of men suggested they were nicely lubricated inside and out. dark forms approached our wires, and were driven back by rifle fire; one of them collapsed wailing, and lay there. i withdrew my groups in hedgehog formation to the mouth of one communication trench, and tried to keep the field ahead lit up by flares, as artillery and mortar fire suddenly commenced. we soon ran out of white lights, and moved on to coloured; it was a veritable firework display that we put on. as the designated hour of five o'clock rolled round, we quickly blew up our foxholes with bombs, those of them at any rate that hadn't already been fitted with fiendish contraptions of one sort or another, on which we expended the last of our munitions. it was several hours now since i'd last laid hands on a chest, a door or a water-bucket, for fear of blowing myself up. at the appointed time, the patrols, some of them already involved in hand-grenade battles with the enemy, withdrew towards the somme. we were the last to cross the river, before the bridges were blown up by a sapper detachment. our position was still coming in for drumfire. it wasn't for another few hours that the first enemy outposts reached the somme. we withdrew behind the siegfried line, then still in the process of construction; the battalion took up quarters in the village of lehaucourt, on the st-quentin canal. with my batman, i moved into a cosy little house, whose cupboards and chests were still well supplied. my faithful knigge would not be persuaded by anything to set up his bed in the warm living room, insisting, as ever, on the chilly kitchen typical of the restraint of our lower saxons. our first evening off, i invited my friends round for mulled wine, using all the spices left behind by the previous occupants of the house, because, in addition to praise from our superiors, our patrol had won us all a fortnight's furlough. in the village of fresnoy on this occasion, the furlough, which i took up a few days later, was to remain uninterrupted. in my journal, i find the brief but eloquent sentence: 'spent my furlough very well, in the event of my death i shall have no complaints.' on 9 april 1917, i was back with the 2nd company, who were quartered in the village of merignies, not far from douai. what took the edge off my pleasure at the reunion was consternation at being required to accompany the baggage train to beaumont. through showers of rain and driving snow, i rode at the head of a crawling column of vehicles, till we finally reached our destination at one in the morning. after men and horses had variously been found shelter, i went looking for quarters for myself, but could find nowhere that wasn't already taken. finally, a commissariat orderly had the clever idea of offering me his own bed, seeing as he was manning the telephone exchange anyway. even as i flopped on to it, still booted and spurred, he told me that the british had taken vimy ridge from the bavarians, and quite a bit of land around. kindly as he was to me, i could tell he was secretly resentful of the way his quiet village in the back area was being adapted to a meeting-point for front-line forces. the following morning, the battalion marched off into the direction of heavy firing, to the village of fresnoy. there i received orders to establish an observation post. with a few men, i found a little house on the western edge of the village, and we knocked through the roof to make a viewing-place. we set up residence in the cellar of the same building. as we were clearing it, we made the welcome discovery of a sack of potatoes, to supplement our extremely meagre supplies. thereafter, i had knigge make me boiled potatoes with salt every evening. also, gornick, now occupying the deserted village of villerwal with his platoon, sent me a few bottles of claret and a large tin of liver sausage a comradely gift raised from the suddenly abandoned supplies in a foodstore. a booty expedition thereupon immediately dispatched by me, with baby carriages and similar conveyances to recover further treasures, was forced to return empty-handed, as the british lines had already reached the edge of the village. gornick told me later that following the discovery of the cache of wine a spontaneous drinking session had ensued, even as the village was being bombarded, and that it had been difficult to reimpose control. in similar situations later, we were simply to shoot holes in barrels and carboys and other containers of alcohol. on 14 april, i was given instructions to set up an intelligence-clearing station in the village. to that end, i had dispatch-riders, bicyclists, telephoneand light-signal stations and underground telegraph wires, carrier pigeons and a chain of flare positions all put at my disposal. in the evening, i looked out a suitable basement with annexes, and then returned for the last time to my old lodgings on the west of the village. there had been a lot to do that day, and i was pretty tired. i had the impression, that night, of hearing a few dull crashing sounds and of knigge calling to me, but i was so fast asleep that i merely mumbled, 'oh, let them shoot!' and turned over on my side, even though the room was as thick with dust as a chalk mill. in the morning i was woken by little schultz, colonel von oppen's nephew, shouting: 'good god, do you mean to tell me you slept through that?' when i got up and surveyed the debris, i quickly realized that a heavy shell had exploded on the roof, and smashed all the rooms, including our observation post. the fuse would only have had to be a little bigger, and they could have scraped off our remains with a spoon, and buried us in our mess-tins, as the grunts were given to saying. schultz told me his runner had taken one look at the wreckage and said: 'there was a lieutenant quartered in there yesterday, better see if he's still there.' knigge was terribly impressed by my deep sleep. in the morning, we moved to our new basement. as we were about that, we were almost crushed by the debris of the church tower, which was quite unceremoniously and without any prior notification blown up by our engineers, to make it harder for the enemy artillery to get their bearings. in one of the neighbouring villages, no one had troubled to warn a couple of lookouts who had been posted up their church. miraculously, the men were pulled out of the wreckage alive and unhurt. that one morning saw over a dozen church towers in the area bite the dust. we settled into our spacious cellar, and furnished it pretty much as we pleased, helping ourselves equally to items from the rich man's castle and the poor man's hovel. whatever we ended up not liking, fed the fire. also during these days, there was a whole series of dogfights, which almost invariably ended with defeat for the british, since it was richthofen's squadron they were up against. often five or six planes in succession would be chased away or shot down in flames. once we saw a pilot tumble out in a great arc, and come down separately from his plane, no more than a little black dot. admittedly, looking up to watch was not without its attendant dangers; one soldier in the 4th company was fatally wounded in the throat by a falling splinter. on 18 april i visited the 2nd company in their position in an oxbow around the village of arleux. boje told me that so far he'd only had a single man wounded, since the pedantic preliminary bombardments of the british left ample time to vacate the target area. after wishing him luck, i left the village at a gallop, as heavy shells had begun to fall. when i was about three hundred yards away, i stopped to watch the clouds thrown up by the spurting explosions, red or black, depending on whether they'd struck brickwork or garden soil, and mingled with the soft white of bursting shrapnels. when a few clusters of small shells began to fall on the narrow footpaths linking arleux and fresnoy, i decided i'd seen enough, and cleared the field to avoid being 'a little bit killed', as the current expression in the 2nd company had it. such excursions, sometimes as far as the little town of henin-lietard, were pretty frequent in the first fortnight because, in spite of my large staff and resources, i was given no intelligence whatsoever to clear. beginning on 20 april, fresnoy came under fire from a ship's cannon, whose shells came whining up with a hellish hiss. following every explosion, the village was wrapped in a vast reddish-brown cloud of picric acid gas, which mushroomed out. even the dud shells were enough to cause a minor earthquake. one soldier in the 9th company, who was caught by a shell like that while in the castle grounds, was launched high over the trees and broke every bone in his body when he hit the deck. one evening, i was on my bicycle, heading back down to the village from a local vantage-point, when i saw the familiar reddish-brown cloud go up. i dismounted and stood in a field to wait for the bombardment to finish. about three seconds after each explosion i heard the gigantic crash, followed by a vast twittering and whistling, as if a dense flock of birds were approaching. then hundreds of splinters would come dusting the dry fields around. this happened several times, and each time i waited feeling half embarrassed, half simply nosy, for the relatively slow arrival of the splinters. in the afternoons, the village was under bombardment from all sorts of weapons and calibres. in spite of the danger, i was always loath to leave the attic window of the house, because it was an exciting sight, watching units and individual messengers hurrying across the field of fire, often hurling themselves to the ground, while the earth whirled and spat to the left and right of them. peeping over destiny's shoulder like that to see her hand, it's easy to become negligent and risk one's own life. as i entered the village at the end of one of these ordeals by fire as that's what they were i saw a basement flattened. all we could recover from the scorched space were the three bodies. next to the entrance one man lay on his belly in a shredded uniform; his head was off, and the blood had flowed into a puddle. when an ambulanceman turned him over to check him for valuables, i saw as in a nightmare that his thumb was still hanging from the remains of his arm. with each day, the bombardment became more intensive, and it soon seemed all but certain that an attack must follow. on the 27th, at midnight, i had the following telegraph message: '67 beginning 5 a.m.', which in our code meant that from five o'clock tomorrow we were to be on a heightened state of alert. i promptly lay down right away, so as to be up to the anticipated exertions, but as i was on the point of sleep, a shell struck the house, smashed the wall against the basement steps, and filled our room with rubble. we leaped up and hurried into the shelter. as we sat on the steps, by the light of a candle, tired and sullen, the leader of my lightsignalling troop, whose station had been destroyed that afternoon, including two valuable signalling lamps, dashed in to report: 'lieutenant, the basement of no. ii has taken a direct hit, there are some men buried in the rubble!' since i had two bicyclists and three telephonists among them, i hurried over with some of my men. in the shelter, i found one lance-corporal and one wounded man, and received the following report: as the first shells began to land ominously close, four of the five inhabitants decided to take to the shelter. one of them ran down right away, one of them stayed in his bed imperturbably, and the other three sat down to pull their boots on. the most cautious man and the most carefree, as so often in the war, survived, one of them being quite uninjured, the sleeper receiving a splinter in the thigh, while the other three were torn apart by the shell that flew through the basement wall and blew up in the far corner. following this account, i lit a cigar and entered the smoky room, in the middle of which was piled almost to the ceiling a bolus of straw sacks, smashed bedsteads, and other furniture. after we had set down a few candles in niches in the wall, we set about the sorry task. we seized hold of the limbs sticking out from the wreckage, and pulled out the corpses. one man had lost his head, and the end of his torso was like a great sponge of blood. splintered bones stuck out of the arm stump of the second, and his uniform was drenched with blood from a great wound in his chest. the intestines of the third were spilling out of his opened belly. as we pulled him out, a splintered piece of board caught in the wound with a hideous noise. one orderly passed a remark, and was rebuked by knigge with the words: 'shut up, man, you don't waste words over something like this!' i made an inventory of their personal belongings. it was a ghastly job. the candles flickered reddishly in the dusty air, while the men handed me wallets and rings and watches, as if we were a bunch of gangsters. fine yellow brick-dust had settled on the dead men's faces, and gave them the rigid appearance of waxen effigies. we draped blankets over them, and hurried out of the basement, having first wrapped the wounded man in a tarpaulin. with the stoical advice 'better grit your teeth, comrade!' we dragged him through wild shrapnel fire to the dressing-station. once back in my lodging, i first of all took some cherry brandy to recover. before long, the firing got worse again, and we hurriedly gathered in the shelter, having just been given a vivid demonstration of the effects of artillery on cellars. at precisely fourteen minutes past five, the bombardment, in the space of a few seconds, reached an extraordinary pitch. our intelligence service had been dead right. the shelter was shaking and trembling like a ship in a storm, while all around came the sounds of crashing walls and the splintering of the houses near by collapsing. at seven o'clock i received a light signal addressed to the 2nd battalion: 'brigade requires immediate report on the situation.' an hour later, a deathly tired runner came back with the news: 'enemy occupying arleux and arleux park. 8th company ordered to counter-attack. no news as yet. rocholl, captain.' that was the single, albeit crucial, item of news that i was able to pass on with my big staff in the course of my three-week stay in fresnoy. now, when my being there was of the utmost value, the artillery had put almost all my means of communication out of commission. i myself was caught like a rat in a trap. the setting up of this intelligence post had proved mistaken; it was a case of over-centralization. this surprising bit of news now explained to me why rifle bullets had been rattling against the walls for some time and from fairly close. no sooner had we grasped the extent of the regiment's losses, than the bombardment recommenced with full power. knigge was the last man standing on the shelter stairs when a thunderous crash told us that the british had at last managed to score a direct hit on our cellar. the stolid knigge caught a lump of rock on the back, but was otherwise unhurt. above, everything was in pieces. daylight reached us through a couple of bicycles that had been crushed into the shelter entrance. we retreated to the bottom step, while the continuing thud and rattle of masonry reminded us of the uncertainty even of this refuge of ours. as if by a miracle, the telephone was still working; i informed the divisional chief of intelligence of our situation, and was given orders to withdraw with my men to the nearby dressing-station dugout. so we packed up our few essentials, and set off towards the shelter's alternative exit, which was at least still intact. even though i didn't stint with threats and orders, the rather un-battle-hardened telephonists took such a long time to leave the relative protection of the shelter and expose themselves to direct fire that that entrance was hit by a heavy shell and collapsed with a great crash. it was fortunate that no one was hit, only our little dog set up a howl, and was never seen again. now we had to heave aside the bicycles that were blocking the cellar exit, creep on all fours over the debris, and slip through a crack in the wall into the open. without stopping to take in the unbelievable change that had come over the place, we headed out of the village as fast as we could. no sooner had the last man of us got past the front gate, than the house took one more huge hit, and that was the coup de grace. the terrain between the edge of the village and the dressing-station was receiving a total artillery barrage. light and heavy shells with impact-, fireand time-delay fuses, duds, empty cases and shrapnels all participated in a kind of madness that was too much for our eyes and ears. in amongst it all, going either side of the witches' cauldron of the village, support troops were advancing. fresnoy was one towering fountain of earth after another. each second seemed to want to outdo the last. as if by some magical power, one house after another subsided into the earth; walls broke, gables fell, and bare sets of beams and joists were sent flying through the air, cutting down the roofs of other houses. clouds of splinters danced over whitish wraiths of steam. eyes and ears were utterly compelled by this maelstrom of devastation. we spent the next two days in the dressing-station dugout, in conditions of great overcrowding, because in addition to my men it housed the staffs of two battalions, two relief detachments, and the inevitable odds and sods. the coming and going around the entrances, where there was a continual buzz of activity as around a beehive, of course didn't go unnoticed by our opponents. soon wickedly aimed shells landed at one-minute intervals on the footpaths outside, and the calls for the ambulancemen were never-ending. to this unpleasant bit of target-practice i lost four bicycles, which i had left next to the entrance. they were comprehensively remodelled and cast to the four winds. at the entrance, stiff and silent, rolled in a tarpaulin, his big hornrims still on his face, lay lieutenant lemiere, the commander of the 8th company, who had been brought here by his men. he had received a shot in the mouth. his younger brother was to fall only a few months later, hit in the same way. on 30 april my successor took over from me with the relief regiment, the 25th, and we moved to flers, the rendezvous for the 1st battalion. leaving the heavily shelled limekiln, 'chezbontemps', on our left, we strolled blissfully across the fields to beaumont in the balmy afternoon. our eyes once more appreciated the beauty of the earth, relieved to have escaped the unbearable constriction of the shelter hole, and our lungs drew in the intoxicating spring air. with the rumble of guns behind us, we were able to say with the poet: a day that god the maker of the world made for sweeter things than fighting. in flers, i found my designated quarters had been occupied by several staff sergeantmajors, who, claiming they had to guard the room on behalf of a certain baron von x, refused to make room, but hadn't reckoned on the short temper of an irritated and tired front-line officer. i had my men knock the door down, and, following a short scuffle in front of the peacetime occupants of the house, who had hurried along in their nightgowns to see what the matter was, the gentlemen, or gentleman's gentlemen, were sent flying down the stairs. knigge was sufficiently gracious to throw their boots out after them. after this successful attack, i climbed into my nicely warmed-up bed, offering half of it to my friend kius, who was still wandering around looking for an abode. the sleep in this long-missed fixture did us so much good that the following morning we woke, as they say, fully refreshed. since the 1st battalion had not lost many men during the recent fighting, the mood was pretty cheerful as we marched to the station at douai. our destination was the village of serain, where we were to rest and recuperate for a few days. we had a friendly welcome and good accommodation from the villagers, and already on our first evening the happy sounds of reunited comrades could be heard from many of the dwellings. such libations after a successfully endured engagement are among the fondest memories an old warrior may have. even if ten out of twelve men had fallen, the two survivors would surely meet over a glass on their first evening off, and drink a silent toast to their comrades, and jestingly talk over their shared experiences. there was in these men a quality that both emphasized the savagery of war and transfigured it at the same time: an objective relish for danger, the chevalieresque urge to prevail in battle. over four years, the fire smelted an ever-purer, ever-bolder warriorhood. the next morning, knigge appeared and read out some orders, from which i understood that i was to take over the command of the 4th company at around noon. this was the company in which the lower saxon poet hermann lons fell in the autumn of 1914 outside rheims, a volunteer at the age of almost fifty. against indian opposition the 6th of may 1917 already found us back on the march, heading once more for the familiar destination of brancourt, and on the following day we moved, via montbrehain, ramicourt and jon-court, to the siegfried line that we had left only a month before. the first evening was stormy; heavy rain clattered down on the already flooded terrain. soon, though, a succession of fine warm days reconciled us to our new place. i enjoyed the splendid landscape, untroubled by the white balls of shrapnel and the jumping cones of shells; in fact, barely noticing them. each spring marked the beginning of a new year's fighting; intimations of a big offensive were as much part of the season as primroses and pussy-willows. our sector was a semi-circular bulge in front of the st-quentin canal, at our rear we had the famous siegfried line. i confess i am at a loss to understand why we had to take our place in these tight, undeveloped limestone trenches, when we had that enormously strong bulwark just behind us. the front line wound its way through meadowland shaded by little clumps of trees, wearing the fresh green of early spring. it was possible to walk safely in front of and behind the trenches, as many advance positions secured the line. these posts were a thorn in the enemy's side, and some weeks not a night would pass without an attempt to remove the sentries, either by guile or by brute force. but our first period in position passed pleasantly quietly; the weather was so beautiful that we spent the nights lying on the grass. on 14 may, we were relieved by the 8th company, and moved, the fires of st-quentin on our right, to our resting-place, montbrehain, a large village that had as yet taken little harm from the war and afforded very agreeable accommodation. on the 20th, as the reserve company, we occupied the siegfried line. it was summer holidays; we spent the days sitting in little summer huts erected on the slopes, or swimming and rowing on the canal. i spent the time lying stretched out on the grass reading the whole of ariosto to my great enjoyment. these idyllic positions have the one drawback that one's superior officers like to visit them, which is a great dampener to the cosiness of trench life. that said, my left flank, posted against the already 'nibbled at' village of bellenglise, had no shortage of fire to complain of. on the very first day, one man was hit by a shrapnel in the right buttock. on hearing the news, i rushed to the scene of the misfortune, and there he was, happily sitting up on his left, waiting for the ambulancemen to arrive, drinking coffee and munching on a vast slice of bread and jam. on 25 may, we relieved the 12th company at riqueval-ferme. this farm, formerly a great landed estate, served each of the four companies in the position alternately as base. from there, units went out to man three machine-gun nests positioned in the hinterland. these diagonally positioned support-points, covering each other like chess pieces, represented the first attempts in this war at a more supple, variable form of defence. the farm was a mile at the most behind the front line; even so, its various buildings, dotted about in a rather overgrown park, were still completely unscathed. it was also densely populated -dugouts had yet to be created. the blooming hawthorn avenues in the park and the attractive surroundings gave our existence here an intimation of the leisurely country idyll that the french are so expert at creating and that, so close to the front. a pair of swallows had made their nest in my bedroom, and were busy from very early in the morning with the noisy feeding of their insatiable young. in the evenings, i took a stick out of the corner and strolled along narrow footpaths that went winding through the hilly landscape. the neglected fields were full of flowers, and the smell grew headier and wilder by the day. occasional trees stood beside the paths, under which a farmworker might have taken his ease in peacetime, bearing white or pink or deep-red blossoms, magical apparitions in the solitude. nature seemed to be pleasantly intact, and yet the war had given it a suggestion of heroism and melancholy; its almost excessive blooming was even more radiant and narcotic than usual. it's easier to go into battle against such a setting than in a cold and wintry scene. the simple soul is convinced here that his life is deeply embedded in nature, and that his death is no end. on 30 may, this idyll was over for me, because that was the day lieutenant vogeley was released from hospital, and resumed command of the 4th company. i returned to my old 2nd, on the front line. two platoons manned our sector from the roman road to the so-called artillery trench; a third was at company headquarters, some two hundred yards back, behind a little slope. there kius and i shared a tiny plank lean-to together, trusting to the incompetence of the british artillery. one side was built into the downhill slope the direction the shells would be coming from while the other three offered their flanks to the enemy. every day as the morning greetings were wafted up to us, one might have heard a conversation between the occupants of the top and bottom bunks that went roughly like this: 'i say, ernst, are you awake?' 'hm?' ‘i think they're shooting!' 'oh, i don't want to get up yet; i'm sure they'll be finished soon.' a quarter of an hour later: 'i say, oskar!' 'hm?' 'they seem to be going on for ever today; i thought i heard a shrapnel ball come flying through the wall just now. i think we'd better get up after all. the artillery observer next door seems to have scarpered ages ago!' we were unwise enough always to take our boots off. by the time we were finished, the british usually were too, and we could sit down at the ridiculously small table, drink our sour, stewed coffee, and light a morning cigar. in the afternoons, we mocked the british gunners by lying out on a tarpaulin and doing some sunbathing. in other respects, too, our shack was an entertaining place to be. as we lay idly on our wire-sprung beds, enormous earthworms would come nosing out of the earthen wall; if we interfered with them, they would show a surprising turn of speed, disappearing back into their holes. a gloomy mole occasionally came snuffling out of his warren; his appearances always greatly enlivened our siesta time. on 12 june, i was told to take a troop of twenty men and invest an outpost on the company front. it was late when we left the trench and headed along a footpath winding through the hilly countryside, into the pleasant evening. dusk was so far advanced that the poppies in the abandoned fields seemed to merge with the bright-green grass. in the declining light, i saw more and more of my favourite colour, that red which shades into black that is at once sombre and stimulating. whatever thoughts we might have had we kept to ourselves as we walked silently over the flowery slopes, with our rifles over our shoulders, and twenty minutes later we had reached our destination. in whispers the post was taken over, a guard was mounted, and then the men who had been relieved slipped off into the dark. the outpost leaned against a steep little slope, with a line of hurriedly dug foxholes. behind it, a hundred yards or so back, a small tangle of woodland merged with the night. in front and to the right rose two hills across which ran the british lines. one of them was crested by the ruins of the auspiciously named 'ascension farm'. a little path led between the hills, in the general direction of the enemy. that was where, while inspecting my sentries, i ran into sergeant-major hackmann and a few men from the 7th; they were just about to go out on patrol. even though i wasn't supposed to leave the outpost, i decided to join them for the hell of it. adopting a type of movement of my own devising (of which more later), we had crossed two entanglements, and crested the hill, strangely without encountering any sentries, when we heard the sounds of the british digging to the right and left of us. later on, i realized that the enemy must have withdrawn his sentries to have them out of the way for the ambush i will go on to describe. the movement that i alluded to a moment ago consisted in letting members of a patrol go forward one at a time when there was a chance that we might encounter the enemy at any moment. so there was never more than one man in front, taking it in turn to risk being the one shot by a hidden sentry, while the others were all at his back ready to lend support at a moment's notice. i took my turn with the rest, even though my presence with the rest of the patrol might have mattered more; but there is more to war than such tactical considerations. we crawled around several digging parties, as there were unfortunately large wire obstacles between them and ourselves. after quickly rejecting the rather eccentric sergeant-major's suggestion that he might pretend to be a deserter, and keep the enemy distracted until we had gone around the first enemy sentries, we crept back to the outpost. there is something stimulating about such excursions; the heart beats a little faster, and one is bombarded by fresh ideas. i resolved to dream away the mild night, and rigged up a nest for myself in the tall grass on the slope, lining it with my coat. then i lit my pipe as discreetly as i could, and drifted off on the wings of my imagination. in the middle of my 'pipe dreams', i was startled by a distinct rustling coming from the woods and the meadow. in the presence of the enemy, one's senses are always on the qui vive, and it's a strange thing that one can feel sure, even on the basis of rather ordinary sounds: this is it! straight away the nearest sentry came rushing up to me: 'lieutenant, sir, there are seventy british soldiers advancing on the edge of the wood!' though somewhat surprised at such a precise count, i hid in the tall grass on the slope, along with four riflemen, to wait and see what happened next. a few seconds later, i saw a group of men flitting across the meadow. as my men levelled their rifles at them, i called down a soft: 'who goes there?' it was nco teilengerdes, an experienced warrior from the znd, collecting up his excited unit. the other units quickly arrived. i had them form into a line stretching from the slope to the wood. a minute later, they were standing ready, with fixed bayonets. it couldn't hurt to check the alignment; in such situations, you can't be too pedantic. as i was upbraiding a man who was standing a little back, he replied: 'i'm a stretcher-bearer, sir.' he had his own rules to follow. relieved, i ordered the men to advance. as we strode across the strip of meadow, a hail of shrapnel flew over our heads. the enemy was laying down a dense fire in an attempt to disrupt our communications. involuntarily, we slipped into a jogtrot, to reach the lee of the hill in front of us. suddenly, a dark form arose out of the grass. i tore off a hand-grenade and hurled it in the direction of the figure, with a shout. to my consternation, i saw by the flash of the explosion that it was teilengerdes, who, unnoticed by me, had somehow run on ahead, and tripped over a wire. fortunately, he was unhurt. simultaneously, we heard the sharper reports of british grenades, and the shrapnel fire became unpleasantly concentrated. our line melted away, in the direction of the steep slope, which was experiencing heavy fire, while teilengerdes and i and three men stayed put. suddenly one of them jogged me: 'look, the british!' like a vision in a dream, the sight, lit only by falling sparks, of a double line of kneeling figures at the instant in which they rose to advance, etched itself into my eye. i could clearly make out the figure of an officer on the right of the line, giving the command to advance. friend and foe were paralysed by this sudden, unexpected meeting. then we turned to flee the only thing we could do the enemy, it seemed, still too paralysed to fire at us. we leaped up and ran towards the slope. even though i tripped over a wire laid treacherously in the tall grass and flew head over heels, i made it safely, and ordered my excited troops into a compressed line. our situation was now such that we were sitting under the bowl of fire, as under a tightly woven basket. what appeared to have happened was that in our advance we had disturbed the enemy's flanking manoeuvre. we were at the foot of the slope, on a somewhat worn path. the wheel-ruts were enough to afford us some minimal protection against their rifles, because one's instinctive response to danger is to press oneself as close as possible to mother earth. we kept our guns pointed at the wood, which meant that the british lines were behind us. this one circumstance unsettled me more than anything that might be going on in the wood, so, during the ensuing action, i took care to send occasional lookouts up the slope. suddenly the shelling ceased; we needed to steel ourselves for an attack. no sooner had our ears grown used to the surprising silence, than sounds of crackling and rustling were heard coming from the wood. 'halt! who goes there? password!' we must have shouted for about five minutes, including the old 1st battalion watchword 'luttje lage' an expression for beer and a short, familiar to all hanoverians; but all we got back was a muddle of voices. finally i decided to give the order to shoot, even though there were some of us who felt certain they had heard some words of german. my twenty rifles discharged their bullets into the wood, bolts rattled, and soon we heard the wailing of wounded from the brush. i had an uneasy feeling, because i thought it was within the bounds of possibility that we were firing at a detachment sent to help us. i was relieved, therefore, to see little yellow tongues of flame flash back, although they soon stopped. one man was hit in the shoulder, and the stretcher-bearer tended to him. 'hold your fire!' slowly the order took effect, and the shooting stopped. the tension in any case had been broken by our taking some action. further calls for the password. i scraped together what little english i had, and shouted a few (i hoped, persuasive) words of encouragement: 'come here, you are prisoners, hands up!' thereupon, more confused shouting, which sounded to us like the german word 'rache, rache!' ['revenge, revenge!']. a single man emerged from the edge of the wood and came towards us. one of the men made the mistake of shouting 'password!' to him, causing him to stop irresolutely and turn back. obviously a scout. 'shoot him down!' a volley of a dozen shots; the figure subsided into the tall grass. the little episode filled us with satisfaction. from the edge of the wood, once more there was the strange jabbering; it sounded as though the attackers were encouraging one another to advance against the mysterious defenders. we stared intently at the dark line of wood. it began to get light, and a thin morning fog rose off the meadow. then we saw something that was a rarity in this war of long-range weapons. out of the dark brush, a line of figures emerged and stepped on to the open meadow. five, ten, fifteen, a whole line. trembling fingers took off safety-catches. a distance of fifty yards, thirty, fifteen ... fire! the rifles barked for several minutes. sparks flew as spurts of lead struck weapons and steel helmets. suddenly a shout: 'watch out, left!' a mob of attackers was running towards us from the left, headed by an enormous figure with an outstretched revolver, and swinging a white club. 'left section! left front!' the men spun round, and welcomed the new arrivals in a standing posture. a few of the enemy, among them their leader, collapsed under the hurriedly fired-off shots, the others vanished as quickly as they had appeared. now was our moment to charge. with fixed bayonets and loud hurrahs, we surged into the little wood. hand-grenades flew into the tangled undergrowth, and in no time at all we were back in control of our outpost, although admittedly without having come to grips with our elusive foe. we assembled in an adjacent cornfield and gazed at each other's pale and exhausted faces. the sun had risen radiantly. a lark was ascending, getting on our wicks with its trilling. it was all unreal after that feverishly intent night. while we handed round our canteens and lit cigarettes, we heard the enemy leaving along the path, with a few loudly lamenting wounded in tow. we even caught a glimpse of them, but not long enough to chase after and finish them off. i went off to survey the battlefield. from the meadow arose exotic calls and cries for help. the voices were like the noise that frogs make in the grass after a rainstorm. in the tall grass we discovered a line of dead and three wounded who threw themselves at our feet and begged us for mercy. they seemed to be convinced that we would massacre them. in answer to my question 'quelle nation?' one replied: 'pauvre rajput!' so these were indians we had confronted, who had travelled thousands of miles across the sea, only to give themselves a bloody nose on this god-forsaken piece of earth against the hanoverian rifles. they were delicate, and in a bad way. at such short range, an infantry bullet has an explosive effect. some of them had been hit a second time as they lay there, and in such a way that the bullets had passed longitudinally, down the length of their bodies. all of them had been hit twice, and a few more than that. we picked them up, and dragged them towards our lines. since they were screaming like banshees, my men tried to hold their mouths shut and brandished their fists at them, which terrified them still more. one died on the way, but he was still taken along, because there was a reward for every prisoner taken, whether alive or dead. the other two tried to ingratiate themselves with us by calling out repeatedly: 'anglais pas bon!' why these people spoke french i couldn't quite understand. the whole scene the mixture of the prisoners' laments and our jubilation had something primordial about it. this wasn't war; it was ancient history. returned to the line, we were received in triumph by the company, who had heard the sounds of fighting, and had been pegged back by a heavy artillery barrage, and our captives were much gawped at. here i was able to set the minds of our captives at rest they seemed to have been told the direst things about us. they thawed a little, and told me their names; one of them was amar singh. their outfit was the first hariana lancers, a good regiment, i'm told. then i retired with kius, who took half a dozen photographs, to our hut, and had him treat me to celebratory fried eggs. our little skirmish was mentioned in the divisional orders for the day. with only twenty men we had seen off a detachment several times larger, and attacking us from more than one side, and in spite of the fact that we had orders to withdraw if we were outnumbered. it was precisely an engagement like this that i'd been dreaming of during the longueurs of positional warfare. it turned out, by the way, that we lost a man in addition to the one who was wounded, and that in mysterious circumstances. the fellow in question was barely fit for active service any longer, because an earlier wound had left him morbidly fearful. we only noticed he was missing the next day; i assumed that in a fit of panic he ran off into one of the cornfields, and there met his end. the following evening, i received orders to occupy the outpost again. as the enemy might have dug himself in there by now, i took the wood in a pincer movement; i led one detachment, kius the other. here, for the first time, i adopted a particular mode of approaching a dangerous site, which consisted of having one man after another going around it. if the place was in fact occupied, a simple leftor rightward movement created a possibility for flanking fire. after the war, i included this manoeuvre in the infantry engagement manual, under the name of 'flanking file'. the two detachments met up without incident at the slope -aside from the fact that kius barely missed shooting me as he cocked his pistol. there was no sign of the enemy, it was only on the path between the two hills that i had reconnoitred with sergeant-major hackmann that a sentry challenged us, fired a flare and some live rounds. we made a note of the noisy young man for another time. in the place where the night before we had beaten back the flank attack we found three bodies. they were two indians and a white officer with two gold stars on his shoulderstraps a first lieutenant. he had been shot in the eye. the bullet had exited through his temple and shattered the rim of his steel helmet, which i kept as a souvenir. in his right hand he still held the club reddened with his own blood and in his left a heavy colt revolver, whose magazine had only two bullets left in it. he had evidently had serious intentions towards us. in the course of the following days, more bodies were discovered in the undergrowth evidence of the attackers' heavy losses, which added to the gloomy atmosphere that prevailed there. as i was making my way through a thicket once, on my own, i was dismayed by a quiet hissing and burbling sound. i stepped closer and encountered two bodies, which the heat had awakened to a ghostly type of life. the night was silent and humid; i stopped a long time before the eerie scene. on 18 june, the outpost was again attacked; on this occasion, things didn't go so well for us. panic developed; the men fled in all directions, and couldn't be brought together again. in the confusion, one of them, corporal erdelt, ran straight towards the slope, tumbled down it, and found himself in the midst of a group of lurking indians. he flung hand-grenades around, but was seized by the collar by an indian officer, and hit in the face with a wire whip. then his watch was taken off him. he was kicked and punched to make him march; but he successfully escaped when the indians once lay down to avoid some machine-gun fire. after wandering around for a long time behind the enemy lines, he came back with nothing worse than a few bloody welts across his face. on the evening of 19 june, i set off with little schultz, ten men and a light machine-gun on a patrol from the now distinctly morbid-feeling place, to pay a call on the sentry on the path who had reacted so noisily to our presence there a few days ago. schultz and his men went right, and i went left, to meet at the path, promising to come to one another's aid if there was any trouble. we worked our way forward on our bellies through the grass and furze, stopping to listen every so often. suddenly, we heard the sharp rattle of a rifle bolt. we lay completely riveted to the ground. anyone who's been on a patrol will be familiar with the rapid succession of disagreeable feelings that flooded us in the next few seconds. you've at least temporarily lost the freedom of action, and you have to wait and see what the enemy will do. a shot rang out through the oppressive silence. i was lying behind a clump of furze; the man on my right was dropping hand-grenades down on to the path. then a line of bullets spurted in front of our faces. the sharp sound of the reports told us the marksmen were only a few feet away. i saw that we had fallen into a trap, and ordered retreat. we leaped up and ran back like crazy, while i saw that rifle fire had engaged my left-hand troop as well. in the middle of all this clatter, i gave up all hope of a safe return. every moment i was expecting to be hit. death was at our heels. from the left, we were attacked with shrill hurrahs. little schultz admitted to me later he'd had a vision of a long tall indian behind him with a knife, reaching out to grab him by the scruff of the neck. once, i fell and brought down corporal teilengerdes in the process. i lost steel helmet, pistol and hand-grenades. on, on! at last we reached the protective slope, and charged down it. little schultz and his people came round the corner at about the same time. he reported to me breathlessly that at least he'd given the cheeky sentry a stiff rebuke in the form of a few hand-grenades. a man was dragged in who had been shot in both legs. all the others were unhurt. the worst thing was that the man who'd been carrying the machine-gun, a recruit, had fallen over the wounded man, and had left the machine-gun behind. while we were still arguing the toss, and planning a follow-up expedition, an artillery bombardment began that reminded me of the one we'd had on the 12th, down to the hopeless confusion it started. i found myself with no weapon, alone on the slope with the wounded man, who dragged himself forward on both hands, creeping up to me, and wailed: 'please, lieutenant, sir, don't leave me!' i had to, though, to go and organize our defences. the wounded man was at least taken in later the same night. we occupied a row of shallow firing positions on the edge of the wood, feeling heartily relieved to see day break without further incident. the following evening found us in the same place, with the aim of getting our machine-gun back, but suspicious noises we heard as we approached suggested there was once again a welcoming committee waiting for us, and we turned back. we were therefore ordered to get the gun back by main force. at twelve o'clock the next night, following three minutes' preliminary bombardment, we were to attack the enemy sentries and look for our gun. i had privately feared that its loss would make difficulties for us, but i put on a brave face and fired some ranging shots with some of the batteries myself in the afternoon. at eleven o'clock, therefore, my companion in misfortune, schultz, and i found ourselves back at that eerie spot where we had already had so many adventures and scrapes. the smell of decomposition in the humid air was too much. we had brought a few sacks of quicklime with us, and now sprinkled that on the bodies. the white stains loomed like shrouds out of the blackness. tonight's other 'undertaking' began with our own machine-gun bullets whistling round our legs, and smacking into the slope. i had a furious argument with schultz, who had given the machine-gunners their range. we made it up again, though, when schultz discovered me behind a bush with a bottle of burgundy, which i had brought along to strengthen me for the dubious venture. at the agreed time, the first shell went up. it landed fully fifty yards behind us. before we could wonder at this peculiar gunnery, a second had come down right next to us on the slope, and dusted us with earth. this time, i wasn't even allowed to curse, as the artillery had been my responsibility. after this somewhat discouraging overture, we went ahead, more for the sake of honour and duty than with any particular hope of success. we were lucky the sentries seemed to have quit their posts, otherwise we should have been accorded a rough welcome this time too. unfortunately, we didn't manage to find the machine-gun; admittedly, we didn't spend that much time looking for it either. it was probably long since safe in british hands. on the way back, schultz and i gave each other a piece of our minds: i over his instructions to the machine-gunners, he over the artillery targeting. and yet i had done my work so scrupulously i couldn't understand what had gone wrong. it wasn't till later that i learned that guns always shoot short at night, and that i should therefore have added another hundred yards to the range. then we discussed the most important aspect of the affair: the report. we wrote it in such a way that we were both satisfied. as we were relieved the next day by troops from another division, there was no more argy-bargy. we were returned for the time being to montbrehain, and marched from there to cambrai, where we spent almost the entire month of july. the outpost was finally lost the night after our departure. langemarck cambrai is a sleepy little town in the artois, with a name full of historical associations. its narrow old streets wind their way round an imposing town hall, ancient town gates, and many churches where the great archbishop fenelon once preached his sermons. hefty towers rise out of a mass of pointed gables. wide avenues lead to the well-kept town park, which is graced by a memorial to the aviator bleriot. the inhabitants are quiet, friendly people, who lead comfortable lives in their large, plain but well-furnished houses. a lot of pensioners spend their declining years there. the little town is justifiably known as 'la ville des millionnaires', because shortly before the war it could boast no fewer than forty such. the great war pulled the place out of its enchanted sleep, and turned it into the focal point of enormous battles. brisk new life went clattering over the cobbles, and jangled the little windows, behind which anxious faces peeped out to try and see what on earth was going on. strangers drank lovingly maintained cellars dry, jumped into mighty mahogany beds, and in their continual succession disturbed the contemplative ease of the people, who now stood huddled together on corners and in doorways of their unrecognizable little town, telling each other not too loudly -horror stories about the occupation, and the certain prospects for the ultimate victory of their own. the men lived in barracks, the officers were accommodated along the rue des liniers. during our time there, that street came to resemble a street of student digs; wide-ranging conversations out of windows, bouts of nocturnal singing, and various scrapes and adventures were the things with which we largely concerned ourselves. every morning, we moved out to exercise on the large square by the subsequently renowned village of fontaine. i had the sort of task that was congenial to me, as colonel von oppen had entrusted me with assembling and training a body of storm troops. i had plenty of volunteers for this body, but found i preferred to stick to the tried-and-tested associates from my various patrols and missions. and since this was a new unit, i devised the rules and training myself. my billet was most agreeable; my hosts, a kindly jewellers' couple by the name of plancot-bourlon, rarely let me eat my lunch without sending up some delicacy or other. and in the evenings we often sat up over a cup of tea, played cards and chatted. the perennial question came up a lot, of course: why does mankind have wars? in these hours together, monsieur plancot often related tricks and pranks played upon one another by the idle and witty folk of cambrai, who in peacetime had caused the streets and bars and markets to ring with laughter, and reminded me of my dear 'uncle benjamin'. for example, one particular joker had sent a letter to all the hunchbacks of the area, summoning them to appear before a certain notary over an important matter of an inheritance. then, hiding behind a curtain in a house across the way at the hour in question with a few friends, he enjoyed the spectacle of seventeen furious rowdy goblins, assailing the poor notary. there was another good story about an old spinster who lived opposite, who had a strange long and skew neck. twenty years before, she had been known as a girl who was in a rush to get married. six young fellows presented themselves, and to each she gladly gave permission to speak to her father. the following sunday, a substantial coach drew up with the six suitors inside, each one with a bouquet of flowers. in her alarm and confusion, the girl locked the door and hid herself, while the young fellows delighted the street with their larking about. or this one: one day at the market, a notorious young man of cambrai goes up to a farmer's wife and, pointing to a soft white cheese prettily sprinkled with herbs, asks her: 'how much do you want for that cheese?' 'twenty sous, monsieur!' he gives her the twenty sous. 'so the cheese belongs to me now, is that right?' 'of course, monsieur!' 'so i can do whatever i want with it?' 'but of course!' splat! he throws the cheese in her face, and leaves her standing there. on 25 july, we left our pleasant temporary home, and travelled north to flanders. we had read in the newspapers that an artillery battle had been raging there for weeks already, outdoing the battle of the somme, if not in intensity then in range. in staden, we detrained to the distant roar of cannon, and marched through the unfamiliar landscape towards the camp at ohndank. either side of the dead-straight military road were green, fertile, elevated beet fields and juicy pastures surrounded by hedges. tidy farmhouses lay scattered about, with low overhanging thatched or tiled roofs, and bunches of tobacco hung on the walls to dry in the sun. the country people we passed were flemish, and spoke in that rough tongue that we almost thought we understood. we spent the afternoon in farm gardens, where the enemy aviators could not see us. occasional ships' ordnance would fly over our heads, with a gurgling sound we could hear from far off, and hit near by. one dived into one of the many little streams in the area, and killed several men of the 91st, who happened to be bathing in it. as evening approached, i went up to the front line with an advance detachment, to prepare the relief. we passed through the forest of houthulst and the village of koekuit to the reserve battalion, and on the way were forced to break stride by a few heavy shells. in the dark i could hear the voice of one recruit who was still unversed in our ways: 'that lieutenant never seems to take cover.' 'he knows what's what,' he was told by a member of the storm troop. 'if there's one on its way, then he's the first to lie down.' we only took cover now when it was necessary, but then we didn't hang around. the degree of necessity is something that only an experienced man can determine, who can sense the course of the shell before the new soldier can hear the light fluttering of its approach. to hear better when things got hot, i would even exchange my steel helmet for a forage cap. our guides, who didn't inspire complete confidence, advanced along endless box trenches. that's the term for passages that are not dug into the ground, because they would instantly fill with water, but are built up between lines of sandbags and fascines. after that we brushed an amazingly dishevelled-looking wood, out of which, our guides told us, a regimental staff had been pushed back a few days ago by the small matter of a thousand ten-inch shells. 'such prodigality,' i thought to myself. after traipsing this way and that through the thick brush, we were finally left standing completely lost, and abandoned by our guides, on a rush-covered spot, surrounded by marshy pools of black water that gave back the moonlight. shells plunged into the soft soil, sending up great sprays of mud that splattered down. at last our unhappy guide, with whom we were now pretty incensed, came back, claiming to have remembered the way. then he proceeded to lead us astray again, as far as a dressing-station, over which, in short, regular intervals, shrapnels broke up, sending their balls and empty casings clattering through the boughs. the doctor on duty provided us with a better guide, who escorted us to the mauseburg, the headquarters of the reserve line. i straight away went on to the company of the 225th regiment, which was to be relieved by our 2nd, and after a long search found a few houses in the cratered landscape that had been discreetly toughened on the inside with reinforced concrete. one of these had been smashed in the day before by a direct hit, and its inhabitants crushed as in a mousetrap by the collapsing roof plate. for the rest of the night, i squeezed into the overcrowded concrete box of the company commander, a decent grunt, who whiled away the time with his servant over a bottle of schnapps and a large tin of salt pork, stopping often to shake his head and listen to the steadily increasing roar of the artillery. then he would sigh for the good old days on the russian front, and curse the way his regiment had been pumped out. in the end, my eyes simply fell shut. my sleep was heavy and troubled; the high explosive shells falling all round the house in the impenetrable dark evoked extraordinary feelings of solitude and abandon in me. i pressed myself unconsciously against a man lying beside me on the pallet. once, i was startled awake by a powerful impact. we lit the walls to check if the house had been breached. it turned out to have been a small shell that had exploded against the outer wall. the following afternoon i spent with the battalion commander in the mauseburg. in rapid sequence, the six-inch shells came down close to the command centre, while the captain, his adjutant and the orderly played unending rounds of skat, and handed round a soda bottle full of rotgut. sometimes he would put down his cards to attend to a messenger, or, with concerned expression, wonder about the safety of our concrete blockhouse against the bombardment. in spite of his loyal conviction to the contrary, we finally convinced him that it wouldn't stand up to a direct hit from above. in the evening, the shelling waxed to a demented fury. ahead of us, coloured flares went up in a continual stream. dust-covered runners reported that the enemy was attacking. after weeks of drumming, the infantry battle was about to begin; we had come at the right time. i returned to company headquarters, and waited for the company to arrive. they finally got in at four in the morning, during a vehement shelling session. i took charge of my platoon, and led it to its place, a concrete construction disguised by the ruins of a demolished house, in the middle of a huge cratered field of desperate horror. at six in the morning, the dense flanders fog lifted, and permitted us to view our situation in its full hideousness. straight away, a swarm of enemy aeroplanes flew in low over our heads, surveying the battered terrain, and giving siren signals, while isolated infantrymen jumped for cover in shell-holes. half an hour later, the shelling commenced, washing over our little refuge like a typhoon. the forest of explosions gradually thickened into a solid whirling wall. we squatted together, every second expecting the annihilating hit that would blow us and our concrete blocks away, and leave our strongpoint level with the pitted desert all around. and so the day passed, with mighty outbursts of shelling, and momentary quieter phases during which we sat and gritted our teeth. in the evening, an exhausted runner turned up, and gave me an order from which i understood that the 1st, 3rd and 4th companies would commence a counter-attack at ten to eleven in the morning, and the 2nd should wait to be relieved and then swarm into the front line. to gain strength for the hours ahead, i lay down, never guessing that my brother fritz, whom i had supposed to be still in hanover, was even now hurrying forward with a platoon from the 3rd company, through the fire-storm close by our hut. i was long kept from sleep by the cries of a wounded man whom a couple of saxons had brought in. they had lost their way and had fallen asleep, completely exhausted. when they woke up the following morning, their comrade was dead. they carted him to the nearest shell-hole, scooped a couple of shovelfuls of earth over him, and mooched off, leaving behind them another of the countless unknown and unmarked graves of this war. i didn't wake from my deep sleep until eleven o'clock, washed myself in my steel helmet, and sent for further instructions to the company commander, who, to my consternation, had moved off without leaving word where. that's war for you; things happen in a way you wouldn't have thought possible on the exercise ground. while i was still sitting on my pallet, cursing and wondering what to do, a runner arrived from battalion hq and told me to take over the 8 th company. i learned that the 1st battalion's counter-attack last night had collapsed with heavy casualties, and that the survivors were defending themselves in a small wood ahead of us, the dobschutz woods, and either side of it. the 8 th company had been given the task of swarming forward to the wood to give support, but had been roughed up on open ground before even getting there by a heavy barrage, taking bad losses. since their commander, first lieutenant budingen, was among those wounded, i should take them along myself. after taking leave of my orphaned platoon, i set off with the orderly across the shrapnel-strewn wastes. a despairing voice stopped us on our stooping, scurrying progress. in the distance, a figure half out of his shell-hole was waving a bloodied stump at us. we pointed to the blockhouse we'd just left, and hastened on. the 8 th, when i found them, were a despondent little bunch, clustered behind a row of blockhouses. 'platoon commanders!' three ncos came forward and declared that a second advance in the direction of the dobschutz woods could not be undertaken. true, heavy explosions reared up in front of us like a wall of fire. first, then, i had the platoons assemble behind three huts; each one numbered fifteen or twenty men. just then, the shelling turned to us. the confusion was indescribable. by the left blockhouse, a whole section went up in the air, then the right took a direct hit and buried lieutenant budingen, still lying there wounded, under several tonnes of rubble. it was like being pounded in a mortar and pestle. deathly pale faces stared at each other, as the wounded wailed all round. by now it probably didn't matter whether we stayed put, took to our heels, or advanced. so i gave the order to follow me, and leaped into the midst of the shelling. after no more than a couple of bounds, a shell covered me with earth, and hurled me back into the last crater. i couldn't think why i hadn't been hit, because the shells were coming so thick and fast they practically brushed my head and shoulders, and they scoured open the ground under my feet like huge beasts. the fact that i ran through them without being touched could only be due to the way the ploughed earth gulped the shells down, before its resistance caused them to detonate. the plumes of the explosions didn't travel laterally like bushes, but steeply up in a spear shape, like poplars. others only brought up a little bell. also, i began to notice that further forward the force of the shelling was lesser. after i had worked my way through the worst of it, i looked about me. the terrain was empty. at last, two men emerged from clouds of dust and smoke, then another, then two more. with these five, i succeeded in reaching my objective. in a half-exploded blockhouse sat the commander of the 3rd company, lieutenant sandvoss, and little schultz, with three heavy machine-guns. i was welcomed with loud hellos and a gulp of cognac, then they explained the situation to me, and a very disagreeable one it was too. the british were right up against us, and we had no contact with troops to the left or right. we could see that this corner was one fit only for warriors grizzled in powder fumes. out of the blue, sandvoss asked me if i'd heard about my brother. the reader may imagine my consternation when i learned that he'd taken part in the night attack, and had been reported missing. he was the dearest to my heart; a feeling of appalling, irreplaceable loss opened up in front of me. then in walked a soldier, who told me that my brother was lying wounded in a nearby shelter. he pointed at a desolate-looking blockhouse, covered over by uprooted trees, that had already been vacated by its defenders. i dashed through sniper fire, across a clearing, and walked in. what a reunion! my brother lay in a room full of the stink of death, surrounded by the groans of gravely wounded men. i found him in poor shape. as he'd advanced, he'd been hit by a couple of shrapnel balls, one of them had penetrated his lung, the other shattered his right shoulder. there was a gleam of fever in his eyes; an opened-out gas mask was perched on his chest. it was only with great difficulty that he could move, speak, breathe. we squeezed each other's hands, and said what had to be said. it was clear to me that he couldn't remain where he was, because at any moment the british might attack, or a shell might crush the already badly damaged hut. the best thing i could do for my brother was get him taken back right away. even though sandvoss was opposed to any further weakening of our numbers, i told the five men who had come with me to take fritz to the medical shelter, 'columbus's egg', and there pick up some men to collect the other casualties. we tied him up in a tarpaulin, slid a long pole through it, and two of the men shouldered it. one more handshake, and the sorry procession set off. i watched the swaying burden being taken off through a forest of towering shell bursts. with each explosion i winced, till the little group had vanished into the haze of battle. i felt both that i was representing my mother, and that i would have to account to her for whatever happened to my brother. after bandying a little with the slowly advancing british from the shell-holes at the front edge of the wood, i spent the night with my men, who had grown a little more numerous by now, and a machine-gun crew among the wreckage of the blockhouse. high-explosive shells of quite exceptional ferocity were coming down all the time, one of which just missed killing me that evening. towards morning, the machine-gun suddenly started rattling away, as some dark figures were approaching. it was a patrol from the 76th regiment come to get in touch with us, and one of them was left dead. mistakes like that happened quite frequently at that time, and one didn't spend too much time anguishing over them. at six in the morning, we were relieved by a detachment of the 9th, who gave me orders to occupy the rattenburg with my men. on the way there, i had a cadet disabled by shrapnel. the rattenburg [rats' castle or fortress] turned out to be a shot-up shell of a building reinforced with concrete slabs, close to the swampy course of the steenbach. the name fitted. we made our way in, feeling pretty shattered, and threw ourselves down on straw-covered pallets till a plentiful lunch and a revivifying pipe afterwards more or less restored us. in the early afternoon, shelling with large and very large calibres began. between six o'clock and eight, it was simply one explosion after the next; often the building was shaking and threatening to collapse from the horrible jolts of duds impacting near by. there were the usual conversations about the safety or otherwise of the structure. we thought the concrete ceiling was fairly trustworthy; but as the 'castle' was close to the steep bank of the stream, we thought there was a chance that a shell with a low trajectory might undermine us, and send us, concrete and all, skittering down into the stream bed. when the firing died down in the evening, i clambered over a slope, which was being buzzed around by a hornets' nest of shrapnel, to the hospital shelter, 'columbus's egg', to ask the doctor, who was just then examining the horribly mutilated leg of a man who was about to die, about my brother. i was overjoyed to learn that he had been shipped back in reasonably good shape. later on, the ration party appeared, bringing the company, now reduced to just twenty men, hot soup, canned beef, coffee, bread, tobacco and schnapps. we ate heartily, and handed the bottle of '98 proof round. then we settled off to sleep, disturbed only by the swarming mosquitoes that bred along the stream, shelling, and occasional bombardments with gas. at the end of that restless night, i was so fast asleep that my men had to wake me when the fire intensified to in their eyes -an alarming degree. they reported that men were drifting back from the front line all the time, saying the line had been given up and the enemy was advancing. following the old soldier's watchword that a good breakfast will hold body and soul together, i took some nourishment, lit a pipe, and then took a look around outside. my view was somewhat restricted because we were swathed in thick smoke. the shelling grew more imposing by the minute, and soon reached that climactic stage that was so thrilling as to produce an almost amused indifference. the earth showered on to our roof incessantly; twice the building itself was hit. incendiaries threw up heavy milk-white clouds, out of which fiery streaks dribbled to the ground. a piece of that phosphoric mass smacked down on to a stone at my feet, and i was able to watch it burn for minutes. later on, we were told that men it had landed on had rolled around on the ground, without being able to quench the flames. delay shells drilled themselves into the ground with a roar, throwing up flat casts of earth. swathes of gas and fog crept slowly across the terrain. rifle and machine-gun fire rang out from just ahead of us, a sign that the enemy must already be very near. down on the bed of the steenbach, a group of men were wading through the constantly changing scenery of leaping geysers of mud. i saw among them the battalion commander, captain von brixen, with a bandaged arm, being supported by two ambulancemen, and i hurried down to him. he called to warn me that the enemy were pressing forward, and i should see that i found cover quickly. before long the first infantry bullets were smacking into the surrounding craters or bursting against masonry debris. more and more fleeing figures were disappearing into the haze behind us, while furious rifle fire spoke for the implacable defence of those holding on further forward. the hour was at hand. we had to defend the rattenburg, and i told the men, some of whom looked troubled, that we were not about to run away. they were allotted various loopholes, and our one and only machine-gun was set up in a window-opening. a crater was designated as a dressing-station, and a stretcher-bearer, who before long found himself with plenty of work on his hands, sat in it. i picked up a rifle off the floor, and hung a belt of cartridges round my neck. as our band was very small, i tried to bolster it from the numbers of those who were drifting around leaderless. most of them heard our appeal willingly enough, glad of the chance to join in somewhere, while others hurried on their way, having stopped in disbelief and seen what poor prospects we offered. it was no time for niceties. i ordered my men to aim at them. magnetically drawn by the barrels of the rifles, they slowly came nearer, even though one could see from their expressions that they were really most reluctant to keep us company. there were various excuses, prevarications, more or less compelling arguments. 'but i don't even have a gun!' 'then wait till someone gets shot, and use his!' in the course of one last, massive intensification of the shelling, during which the ruins of the house were struck several times, and the pieces of brick came hurtling down on to our helmets, i was thrown to the ground by a fearful blow. to the amazement of the men, i picked myself up, unhurt. after that titanic final drumroll, things got quieter. the shelling now passed over our heads, on to the langemarck-bixschoote road. we weren't even that happy to see it. so far we hadn't seen the wood for the trees; danger had come down at us on such a massive scale and in so many guises that we couldn't really begin to cope with it. after the storm had passed over our heads, everyone had time to prepare themselves for what inevitably must come. and come it did. the guns ahead of us fell silent. the defenders had been finished off. out of the haze, a dense line of men began to approach. my men shot, concealed behind the ruins, the machine-gun was clicking away. as though smeared away, the attackers disappeared into the craters, and tied us down by their return of fire. on either flank, strong detachments began to march forward. before long, we were surrounded by rifles. the situation was hopeless; there was no point in merely sacrificing the soldiers. i gave the order for withdrawal. now it was difficult to get the committed and tenacious soldiers to stop. taking advantage of a long cloud of smoke that hung down near the water, we made good our escape, partly wading through streams whose water went up to our hips. although the noose around us was all but drawn tight, we still squirmed our way out. i was the last man out of our little strongpoint, supporting lieutenant hohlemann, who was bleeding badly from a wound to the head, but was still making jokes at his own expense. as we crossed the road, we ran into the 2nd company. kius had heard of our situation, from wounded men going back, and had come, not at his own prompting, but in response to the urging of his men, to get us out. it was a spontaneous initiative. we were moved, and it created in us a kind of happy euphoria, the sort of mood in which you want to pull up trees by the roots. after a short discussion, we decided to stop and allow the enemy to catch us up. here, too, there were artillerymen present, signallers, telephonists, and various stray bits and bobs, who could only be persuaded by force that, given the particular circumstances, they too were required to lie down with a rifle in the front line. by means of cajoling, ordering and rifle butts, we established a new defensive line. then we sat down in a trench that was more imagination than reality, and breakfasted. kius pulled out his inevitable camera and took pictures. on our left there was a sudden commotion, coming from the outskirts of langemarck. our men fired at various figures who were running around, until i called a halt. unhappily, an nco came up and reported that a company of fusilier guards had dug in by the road, and had suffered casualties from our fire. thereupon i ordered us to advance, through dense rifle fire, to join them. we lost a few men, and lieutenant bartmer of the 2nd company was gravely wounded. kius stayed at my side, munching what was left of his bread and butter as he advanced. when we had occupied the road from where the terrain fell away down into the steenbach, we saw that the british had purposed exactly the same thing. the nearest khaki-clad figures were only twenty yards away. the field was full of lines of men and marching columns, as far as the eye could see. even the rattenburg was already being swarmed all over. they were completely unconcerned, so engrossed were they in what they were doing. one man had a roll of wire on his back, which he was slowly unspooling. obviously they had seen hardly any fire, and were just cheerfully advancing. even though they were in vastly superior numbers, we thought we would put a spoke in their wheel. there was a good deal of shooting, but aimed shooting. i saw a stout corporal from the 8th company calmly rest his rifle on a splintered tree trunk; with every shot an attacker fell. the enemy were bewildered, and started hopping about this way and that, like rabbits, while clouds of dust were whirled up between them. some were hit, the rest crept into shell-craters, to lie low until it got dark. the wheels had come off their advance; they had paid for it dearly. at around eleven o'clock, rosette-decorated aircraft circled down towards us, and were driven away by fierce fire. in the middle of that crazy banging away, i had to laugh at one soldier who came up to me and wanted me to confirm that it was he with his rifle who had brought down one plane in flames. right after i'd occupied the roadway, i'd reported to regimental headquarters and called in support. in the afternoon, infantry columns, engineers and machine-gunners came to reinforce us. taking a leaf from old fritz's [frederick the great] tactical handbook, they were all stuffed into our already over-full front line. from time to time, the british snipers managed to kill one or two men who crossed the road without looking. almost four, and a very nasty bout of shrapnel ensued. the loads were flung right at the road. there was no doubt about it, the flyers had identified our new position, and it looked as if we were going to be in for some rough times. and soon a violent bombardment followed, with light and heavy shells. we lay pressed together in the overcrowded, dead-straight roadside ditch. the fire danced before our eyes, twigs and clumps of clay whistled down upon us. to the left of me, a bolt of lightning flared up, leaving white, acrid steam. i crept over to my neighbour on all fours. he was motionless. blood trickled from little jagged splinter wounds too numerous to count. further right there were more heavy losses. after a half-hour of this, there was quiet. quickly we dug deep holes in the flat sides of the ditch, so as to have at least some protection against splinters in the event of a second attack. as we dug, our shovels encountered guns, ammunition belts and cartridges from 1914 proof that this wasn't the first time this ground had drunk blood. our predecessors here had been the volunteers of langemarck. as dusk was falling, we were treated to a second helping. i squatted next to kius in a little sitz-shelter, that had cost us a fair few digging blisters. the ground was being tossed around like a ship's plank under the close and very close explosions. we thought this might well be it. my steel helmet pulled down over my brow, staring at the road, whose stones shot sparks when iron fragments flew off them, i chewed my pipe and tried to talk myself into feeling brave. curious thoughts flashed through my brain. for instance, i thought hard about a french popular novel called he vautour de la sierra that had fallen into my hands in cambrai. several times i murmured a phrase of ariosto's: 'a great heart feels no dread of approaching death, whenever it may come, so long as it be honourable.' that produced a pleasant kind of intoxication, of the sort that one experiences, maybe, on a rollercoaster. when the shells briefly abated, i heard fragments of the lovely song of 'the black whale at askalon' coming from the man next to me, and i thought my friend kius must have gone mad. but everyone has his own particular idiosyncratic method. at the end of the shelling, a large splinter hit me in the hand. kius flashed his torch at it, and saw it was only a flesh wound. after midnight, it started to rain gently; patrols from a supporting regiment that had advanced as far as the steenbach found only craters full of mud. the british had retreated behind the stream. exhausted by the strains of this momentous day, we settled down in our holes, except for the sentries. i pulled the ragged coat of my dead neighbour up over my head, and fell into an unquiet slumber. towards dawn, i woke up shivering, and discovered my situation was sorry indeed. it was bucketing down, and the little rivulets on the road were all emptying themselves into my foxhole. i rigged up a dam, and baled out my resting-place with the lid of my mess-tin. as the rivulets deepened, i put up successive parapets on my earthworks, until in the end the weak construction gave way to the growing pressure, and, with a grateful gurgle, a dirty rush of water filled my foxhole up to the top. while i was busy fishing my pistol and helmet out of the mire, i watched my bread and tobacco go bobbing along the ditch, whose other denizens had suffered similar misfortunes to mine. shivering and trembling, without a dry stitch on our bodies, we stood there knowing the next bombardment would find us utterly helpless, on the muddy road. it was a wretched morning. once again, i learned that no artillery bombardment is as capable of breaking resistance in the same measure as the elemental forces of wet and cold. in the wider scheme of the battle, however, that downpour was a real godsend for us, because it doomed the english push to bog down in its first, crucial days. the enemy had to get his artillery through the swampy cratered landscape, while we could trundle our ammunition along intact roads. at eleven in the morning, as we were in the pit of despair, a saving angel appeared to us in the guise of a dispatch-rider who brought the order for the regiment to assemble in koekuit. on our march back, we saw just how difficult forward communications and supply must have been on the day of the attack. the roads were thick with soldiers and horses. alongside a few limbers sieved with holes, twelve gruesomely shot-up horses blocked the road. on a rain-slicked pasture, over which the milk-white balls of a few shrapnels hung like clouds, the rest of the regiment came together. it was a little band of men, of about company strength, and a couple of officers in the middle. the losses! almost the entire complement of two battalions in officers and men. grimly the survivors stood in the teeming rain, and waited to be assigned quarters. then we got dried in a wooden hut, huddled round a burning stove, and, over a hearty breakfast, we once more felt courage flow back into our limbs. in the early evening, the first shells hit the village. one of the huts was hit, and several men from the 3rd company killed. in spite of the bombardment, we lay down betimes with the desperate hope that we wouldn't be called upon to counter-attack or reinforce or otherwise be thrown out into the rain. at three in the morning, the order came to move out. we marched down the corpseand wreckage-strewn road to staden. the shelling had come this far; we came upon an isolated crater ringed by twelve bodies. staden, which at our arrival had seemed such a lively place, already had quite a few bombed houses to show. the bleak market-place was littered with domestic rubble. a family left the little town at the same time as us, driving ahead of them their only possession: a cow. they were simple people; the man had a wooden leg, the woman was leading the crying children by the hand. the wild sounds behind us cast a further pall over the sad scene. the remnants of the 2nd battalion were housed in an isolated farmyard, in the midst of juicy high pastures, behind tall hedges. there i was put in command of the 7th company, with whom i was to share sorrow and joy until the end of the war. in the evening, we sat in front of the old tiled stove, sipping a stiff grog, and listening to the renewed thunder of the battle. a sentence caught my eye from a military communique in a newspaper: 'the enemy was held along the line of the steenbach.' it was an odd thing that our apparently confused actions in the depths of the night had had such pronounced and public consequences. we had done our part towards bringing the attack, which had begun with such mighty force, to a halt. however colossal the quantities of men and materiel, the work at decisive points had been done by no more than a few handfuls of men. before long, we went up to the hayloft to lie down. in spite of our nightcaps, most of the sleepers still had vivid dreams, and tossed and rolled, as though the battle of flanders had to be fought all over again. on 3 august, weighed down with the meat and fruits of this deserted province, we marched off to the station of the nearby town of gits. in the station canteen, the reduced battalion, once more in fine fettle, drank coffee together, spiced by the earthy language of a couple of heavy flemish beauties as waitresses. what especially tickled the men was the way that, following the regional custom, they addressed everyone, officers included, as 'du'. after a few days, i got a letter from my brother fritz, by now in hospital in gelsenkirchen. he wrote that he would probably have a stiff arm and a rattling lung till the day he died. from his account i excerpted the following passage, to complement my own narrative. it gives a vivid sense of how it felt to be an inexperienced soldier, dropped into the hurricane of the materiel battle. ' "fall in for the attack!" my platoon commander's face peered down into our little foxhole. the three men with me ended their conversation and, cursing, got to their feet. i stood up, tightened my steel helmet, and stepped out into the gloaming. 'the scene had changed; it had grown foggy now, and cool. the bombardment had moved off and its dull thunder was now assailing other parts of the vast battlefield. planes were droning through the air, calming the anxiously raised eye by displaying large maltese crosses painted on the undersides of their wings. 'i went one more time to the spring, which still looked remarkably clean and pure amidst all the rubble and debris, and filled my water-bottle. 'the company formed up by platoons. quickly i clipped four hand-grenades on to my belt, and went to my section, from which two men were missing. there was barely time to take down their names before the whole thing was set in motion. the platoons proceeded in single file through the cratered landscape, skirted around bits of timber, pressed against hedges, and jangling and thumping made their way towards the enemy. 'the attack was to be carried out by two battalions; ours and one battalion from the regiment next to ours. our orders were short and sharp. british units who had got across the canal were to be repulsed. my role in this undertaking was to remain with my section far forward, to be in position for a british counter-attack. 'we reached the ruins of a village. out of the hideously scarred soil of flanders rose black, splintered trunks of trees, all that was left of what had once been a large forest. vast swathes of smoke hung around, and dimmed the evening with their heavy, gloomy clouds. over the naked earth, which had been so pitilessly and repeatedly ripped open, hovered choking yellow or brown gases that drifted sluggishly about. 'we were ordered to prepare for a gas attack. at that moment, a huge bombardment set in the british must have been made aware of our advance. the earth leaped up in hissing fountains, and a hail of splinters swept over the land like a shower of rain. for an instant, each man froze motionless, then they started running in all directions. i heard the voice of our battalion commander, captain bockelmann, shouting some command at the top of his voice, but i was unable to understand. 'my men had vanished. i found myself with some other platoon, and together we pressed towards the ruins of a village that the implacable shells had levelled. we broke out our gas masks. 'everyone threw themselves to the ground. next to me on the left knelt lieutenant ehlert, an officer whom i'd come across first at the somme. next to him was an nco, lying down, peering into the distance. the force of the barrage was terrific; i confess it exceeded my wildest notions. it was a wall of yellow flame flickering in front of us; a hail of clods of earth, bricks and iron splinters that battered down on our heads, striking sparks from our steel helmets. i had the sensation that it had become harder to breathe, and that whatever air was left in this iron-charged atmosphere was no longer quite sufficient for my lungs. 'for a long time i stared into that glowing witches' cauldron, the furthest point of which was the jabbing fire from the mouth of a british machine-gun. the thousandfold bee-swarm of these shells that flowed over us was past hearing. i realized that our attack, which had been prepared by a mere half-hour's drumfire, was already smashed before it could properly begin by this immense defensive shelling. twice in quick succession, an incredible din seemed to swallow up all the other noise. shells of the very largest calibre exploded. whole fields of rubble took off, revolved in the air and smashed to the ground with an infernal racket. 'in response to a yell from ehlert, i looked right. he raised his left hand, gestured to people behind him, and leaped up. i got to my feet cumbersomely, and took off after him. my feet still felt as if they were burning, but the stabbing pain had relented somewhat. 'i had covered barely twenty yards before, cresting a shell-crater, i was dazzled by a flaring shrapnel that exploded less than ten paces away from me, and about ten feet off the ground. i felt two blows against my chest and shoulder. i let go of my rifle, and staggered backwards, before rolling back into the crater. i could dimly hear ehlert calling out as he rushed past: "he's hit!" 'he was not to see another day. the attack failed, and on his way back, he and all his surviving comrades were killed. a shot through the back of the head ended the life of this brave officer. 'when i woke up after being unconscious for i don't know how long, things had quietened down. i tried to pull myself up, as i was lying head down in the crater, but felt violent pain in my shoulder with every move. my breathing was shallow and sporadic, my lungs couldn't take in enough air for me. hit in lung and shoulder, i thought, remembering the two buffets i'd received (they hadn't hurt at all) earlier. i abandoned my pack and belt and, in an access of utter indifference, even my gas mask. i kept my steel helmet on, and hung my water-bottle off a loop on my tunic. 'i managed to get out of the crater. after no more than about five steps of a laborious crawl, i broke down in another crater. after another hour, i made another attempt, since the battlefield was once more being shaken by light drumfire. that attempt also got me nowhere. i lost my precious water-bottle, and sank into a state of total exhaustion, from which i was woken, much later, by a burning thirst. 'it started raining gently. i managed to collect some dirty water in my helmet. i was utterly disorientated, with no notion of where the german lines were running. it was one crater next to another, one wider and deeper than the one before, and from the bottom of these deep pits all you could see were clay walls and a grey sky. a storm drew up, its thunders rather stolen by the onset of a new drumfire. i pressed myself tight against the wall of my crater. a lump of clay struck my shoulder; heavy splinters passed over my head. gradually, i lost all sense of time as well; i didn't know if it was morning or evening. 'two men appeared, crossing the field in great bounds. i shouted out to them in german and english; they vanished into the mist like shadows, without appearing to have heard me. at last, three other men came towards me. i recognized one of them as the nco who had lain next to me the previous day. they took me with them to a little hut near by it was full of wounded men, who were being tended by a couple of medical orderlies. i had lain thirteen hours in the crater. 'the huge bombardment of the battle was working away like a monstrous hammering and rolling mill. shell after shell smacked down next to us, often drenching the roof with sand and earth. i was bandaged up, and given a fresh gas mask, a piece of bread and red jam, and a little water. the orderly looked after me as though i'd been his own son. 'the british were beginning to press forward. they approached with little leaps and bounds, then ducked away in the craters. shouts and calls were heard from outside. 'suddenly, bespattered with mud from his boots to his helmet, a young officer burst in. it was my brother ernst, who at regimental hq the day before had been feared dead. we greeted one another and smiled, a little stiffly, with the emotion. he looked about him and then looked at me with concern. his eyes filled with tears. we might both be members of the same regiment, true, but even then this reunion on the battlefield had something rare and wonderful about it, and the recollection of it has remained precious to me. after just a few minutes, he left me, and brought in the last five members of his company. i was laid on a tarpaulin, they stuck a sapling through the straps, and shouldered me off the battlefield. 'my carriers took it in turn to carry me. our little sedan-chair veered now right, now left, zigzagging to avoid the frequent shells. forced on occasion to take cover abruptly, they dropped me a few times, sending me bashing into shell-holes. 'at last we reached the tinand concrete-cladded shelter that went by the odd name of "columbus's egg". i was dragged down the stairs and laid on a wooden pallet. with me in the room were a couple of officers i didn't know, sitting and listening in silence to the hurricane concert of the artillery. one, i later heard, was lieutenant bartmer, the other a medical orderly by the name of helms. never have i enjoyed a drink more than the mixture of rainwater and red wine that he gave me to sip. i was burning up with fever. i struggled for breath, and felt oppressed by the notion that the concrete ceiling of the shelter was on my chest, and that with each breath i had to heave it up. 'the assistant surgeon koppen came in, himself quite out of breath. he had run across the battlefield, shells following him at every step. he recognized me, bent over me, and i saw his face contort to a soothingly smiling grimace. after him came my battalion commander, and when, strict man that he was, he patted me kindly on the back, i had to smile because i got the idea that the kaiser himself would appear any moment, and ask how i was doing. 'the four of them sat together, drinking out of tin cups and whispering among themselves. i realized that they must have been talking about me at one stage, and then i heard odd words like "brothers", "lung" and "wound", which i couldn't quite make sense of. then they went back to talking aloud, about the state of the battle. 'mortally tired as i was, a feeling of happiness now sneaked in that grew stronger and stronger, and which stayed with me throughout the ensuing weeks. i thought of death, and the thought did not disturb me. everything within me and around me seemed stunningly simple, and, with the feeling "you're all right," i slid away into sleep.' regnieville on 4 august, we left the train at the famous station of mars-la-tour. the 7th and 8th companies were billeted at doncourt, where we led a life of calm contemplation for a few days. the only thing that made difficulties for me were the short rations. it was strictly forbidden to go foraging; and, even so, every morning the military police brought me the names of men they'd caught lifting potatoes, and whom i had no option but to punish 'for being stupid enough to get yourselves caught' was my own, unofficial, reason. that it doesn't do to steal was brought home to me as well in those days. tebbe and i had snaffled a glass coach from an abandoned flemish mansion and managed to get it on the transport, away from prying eyes. now, we wanted to undertake a jaunt to metz, to live life at the full once more. so we harnessed up one afternoon, and drove off. unfortunately, the carriage, constructed for the plains of flanders rather than the hills of lorraine, had no brakes. we left the village already doing quite a lick, and before long we were on a wild ride that could only end badly. first to go was the coachman, then tebbe, who made a hard landing on a pile of agricultural implements. i stayed behind on the silken upholstery, feeling rather unhappy. a door sprang open, and was knocked off by a passing telegraph mast. at last the carriage raced down a steep slope, and smashed against a wall at the bottom. leaving the wrecked conveyance by a window, i was to my astonishment unhurt. on 9 august, the company was inspected by the divisional commander, major-general von busse, who praised the men for the way they had comported themselves in the recent battle. the following afternoon, we were put on trains and taken up towards thiaucourt. from there we marched straight to our new position, which was on the wooded hills of the cote lorraine, facing the much-shelled village of regnieville, a name familiar from dispatches. on the first morning, i took a look at my sector, which seemed rather long for one company, and consisted of a confused mass of half-collapsed trenches. the firing trench had been flattened in quite a few places by a type of heavy mortar-bomb much in favour in these parts. my dugout was a hundred yards back, down the so-called commercial trench, close to the main road out of regnieville. it was the first time in quite a while that we were up against the french. a geologist would have enjoyed the posting. the approach trenches cut through six distinct types of rock, from coral rag to the gravelotte marl that the firing trench had been cut into. the yellow-brown rock was full of fossils, especially of a flattish, bun-shaped sea urchin, which one could see literally thousands of along the trench walls. each time i walked along the sector, i returned to my dugout with my pockets full of shells, sea urchins and ammonites. it was a pleasant feature of the marl that it stood up to bad weather much better than the clay we were used to. in places the trench was even carefully bricked up, and the floor concreted, so that even quite large amounts of water drained away easily. my dugout was deep and drippy. it did have one quality i didn't much care for: instead of the lice we were used to, this area offered their more mobile cousins. the two sorts apparently stand in much the same adversarial relationship to one another as black rats and rattus norvegicus. in this instance, even the usual complete change of undergarments didn't help, as the thoughtful parasites would stay behind in the straw bedding. the sleeper on the brink of despair would be driven to unmake his bed, and have a thorough hunt. the food also left quite a bit to be desired. aside from a rather watery soup at lunchtime, there was just a third of a loaf of bread with an offensively small quantity of 'spread', which usually consisted of half-off jam. and half of my portion was invariably stolen by a fat rat, which i often vainly tried to catch. the companies in reserve and on rest lived in curious villages of blockhouses hidden deep in the forest. i was particularly fond of my quarters in reserve, which were glued on to the steep slope of a wooded ravine, in a blind corner. there i lived in a tiny hut that was half bedded into the slope, surrounded by rampant hazel and cornel-cherry bushes. the window looked out on to a wooded facing slope, and a narrow strip of meadow at the bottom, which a stream flowed through. here, i amused myself by feeding innumerable garden spiders, who had set up their huge webs across the bushes. a collection of bottles of all sorts against the back wall of the hut suggested that my eremitic predecessors must have spent some contemplative times here, and i endeavoured to keep up the proud tradition of the place. in the evening, when the mists rose off the stream bed, and mingled with the heavy white smoke of my wood fire, and i sat in the gloaming with the door open, between the chill autumnal air and the warmth of the fire, i thought i had come up with just the right peaceful sort of drink: a fifty-fifty mixture of red wine and advocaat in a big-bellied glass. i would sip the mixture, and read or keep my diary. these quiet soirees helped me to get over the fact that a gentleman from the depot who had seniority over me had popped up to claim command of my company from me, and that, as a platoon commander, i was relegated to boring trench duty. i tried to vary the endless sentry spells as before, with regular jaunts 'up-country'. on 24 august, the gallant captain bockelmann was wounded by a shell splinter the third commanding officer the battalion had lost in a very short space of time. in the course of trench duty, i struck up a friendship with kloppmann, an nco, an older, married man who distinguished himself by his great zest for battle. he was one of those men in whom, in respect of courage, there isn't the slightest deficiency anywhere; a man among hundreds. we agreed we should like to visit the french in their trenches, and decided to make a date for our first call on 29 august. we crawled towards a gap in the enemy wires, which kloppmann had cut the night before. we were unpleasantly surprised, then, to find it had been patched up; therefore we cut it again, rather noisily, and climbed down into the trench. after lurking for a long time behind the nearest traverse, we crept on, following a telephone wire to its end in a bayonet stuck in the ground. we found the position blocked off several times by wire, and once by a heavy gate, but all of it unoccupied. after taking a good look at it all, we went back the same way, and patched the wire to conceal the fact that we'd been. the following evening, kloppmann went snuffling around the place again, only this time to be received by rifle fire and those lemon-shaped hand-grenades also known as 'duck's eggs', one of which landed perilously close to his head as he pressed it into the ground, but failed to detonate. he needed to show a turn of speed. the evening after, we were both out there again, and found the front trench occupied. we listened to the sentries and identified their positions. one of them was whistling a pretty tune. at last, they started firing at us and we crept back. when i was back in the trench, my comrades voigt and haver-kamp suddenly appeared. they had obviously been celebrating, and had had the bizarre idea of leaving our cosy reserve camp behind, walking through the pitch-black wood to the front line and, as they said, go on patrol. it's always been a principle of mine that a man should be responsible for himself, and so i let them climb out of the trench, even though our opponents were still agitated about something. their patrol, admittedly, consisted of nothing beyond looking for the silk parachutes of french rockets, and swinging these about their heads, chasing one another back and forth under the enemy's noses. of course, they were fired at, but after a long time they returned happily enough. bacchus looks after his own. on 10 september, i went from the reserve camp to regimental headquarters to ask for leave. 'you've been on my mind,' the colonel gave back, 'but the regiment needs to embark on some clearing action, and i want to entrust that to you. pick a few men, and go and practise with them in the souslceuvre camp.' we were to enter the enemy trench in two places and try to take prisoners. the patrol was divided into three, a couple of storm units and one detachment that was to sit in the enemy trench and guard our rear. i was in overall command, and led the left-hand group, the right i entrusted to lieutenant von kienitz. when i called for volunteers, to my surprise it was, after all, late in 1917 about three fourths of the men in all companies of the battalion stepped forward. i chose the participants in my wonted way, passing them in review, and choosing the 'good faces'. a few of those that didn't make it were almost in tears over their rejection. myself included, my party consisted of fourteen men, including ensign von zglinitzky, the ncos kloppmann, mevius, duje-siefken, and a couple of pioneers. all the free spirits of the 2nd battalion were there. for ten days, we practised throwing hand-grenades, and rehearsed the undertaking on a piece of trench that was made in the image of the original. it was astonishing that with so much realism, i only had three men hurt by splinters. we were excused all other duties, so that on 22 september when i returned to the company position for the night, i was in charge of a semi-wild but useful band of men. in the evening, kienitz and i walked through the wood to the regimental headquarters, where captain schumacher had invited us for a farewell dinner. then we lay down in our dugouts for a few hours' rest. it's a strange feeling, knowing that the next day you'll be risking your life, and before falling asleep you examine your conscience. at three in the morning we were woken, got up, washed, and had breakfast prepared for us. i had a scene right away with my servant, who had used too much salt and ruined the fried eggs i had ordered especially to give me strength for the occasion; not a good beginning. we pushed away our plates and went over all the possible contingencies. we passed around the cherry brandy, and kienitz told us some fine old jokes. at twenty to five, we gathered up the men and led them to the jumping-off point in the firing trench. gaps had already been cut in the wire, and long arrows whitened with lime pointed us to our objectives. we said goodbye with a handshake and waited for whatever was to pass. i had got together some kit appropriate to the sort of work i meant to be doing: across my chest, two sandbags, each containing four stick-bombs, impact fuses on the left, delay on the right, in my right tunic pocket an 08 revolver on a long cord, in my right trouser pocket a little mauser pistol, in my left tunic pocket five egg hand-grenades, in the left trouser pocket luminous compass and whistle, in my belt spring hooks for pulling out the pins, plus bowie knife and wire-cutters. in my inside tunic pocket i carried a full wallet with my home address, in my right back pocket, a flat flask of cherry brandy. we had removed shoulder straps and gibraltar badges, so as to give our opponents no clue as to our regiment. for identification, we had a white band round each arm. at four minutes to five, the division on our left started a little diversionary fire. on the dot of five, the sky opened up behind our front, and the shells arced and whooshed over our heads. i stood with kloppmann outside the dugout, smoking one last cigar; then, because a number of the shells were falling short, we were forced to take cover within. watch in hand, we counted off the minutes. at precisely five past five, we were out of the dugout and on to the prepared paths through the enemy wires. i ran ahead, a hand-grenade in my raised hand, and saw the right-hand party rushing out through the first glimmer of dawn. the enemy entanglement was feeble; i cleared it in a couple of bounds, then stumbled over a trip-wire and plunged into a crater from which kloppmann and mevius had to pull me out. 'in!' we leaped into the first trench, encountering no resistance, while to our right we heard the crash of a hand-grenade battle commence. paying no attention to it, we crossed a line of sandbags, ducked into more craters, and surfaced again in front of a line of knife-rests in the second line. since that too was completely shot up, and offered no prospect of prisoners, we hurried on along a communication trench. finding it blocked, i first sent our pioneers forward to deal with it; but then, as they seemed to be making no progress, i took up a pickaxe myself. this was no time for fiddling about. as we entered the third trench, we made a discovery that gave us pause: a burning cigarette end on the ground told us the enemy were in the immediate vicinity. i made a sign to my men, clutched my grenade a little harder, and crept through well-constructed trenches, with many rifles leaning against their walls. in situations like this, your memory latches on to the tiniest thing. here, it was the image as in a dream of a mess-tin with a spoon standing in it. in twenty minutes' time, that piece of observation was to save my life. suddenly we saw shadowy figures disappear in front of us. we gave chase, and found ourselves in a dead end, with the entrance to a dugout in one wall. i stood there and called out: 'montez!' a tossed-out hand-grenade was the only reply. evidently, it was a timed fuse; i heard the little snap, and had time to leap back. it tore out part of the opposite wall at head height, ripped my silk cap, gave me several lacerations on my left hand, and took off the tip of the little finger. the pioneer officer next to me had his nose pierced. we took a few steps back, and bombed the dangerous place with hand-grenades. one enthusiast threw in a smoke stick, thereby making any further attack on the place impossible. we doubled back, and followed the third line in the opposite direction, looking for enemy. everywhere we saw discarded weapons and bits of equipment. the question, where were the owners of all these rifles and what did they have in mind for us, kept putting itself ever-more insistently, but with primed grenade and pistol at the ready, we went grimly on, ever deeper into the bare, gunpowdery trench. it was only thinking about it later that i understood our subsequent course. without realizing it, we had turned into a third communication trench, and well into the middle of our own barrage were approaching the fourth line. from time to time, we ripped open one of the boxes built into the trench walls, and popped a hand-grenade into our pockets as a souvenir. after running down a series of cross and parallel trenches, no one knew where we were, or where the german lines were. gradually we were getting flustered. the needles of our luminous compasses danced in our unsteady hands, and as we scanned the heavens for the pole star, all our school lore suddenly left us. the sound of voices in a nearby trench indicated that the enemy had got over his initial surprise. soon they would be on to us. after turning back yet again, i found myself the last in line, and suddenly saw the mouth of a machine-gun swinging to and fro over a sandbag traverse. i leaped towards it, stumbling as i did so over a french corpse, and saw nco kloppmann and ensign von zglinitzky busying themselves with it, while fusilier haller was going through a blood-stained corpse for papers. we struggled with the gun, barely conscious of where we were, obsessed with the idea of bagging some booty. i tried to undo the screws; another man severed the loading belt with his wire-cutters; finally we plucked up the thing, tripod and all, and dragged it away with us entire. at that instant, from a parallel trench, in the direction where we thought our own lines were to be found, came an excited but threatening enemy voice: 'qu'est-ce qu'il y a?' and a black ball, dimly visible against the still-dark sky, came flying towards us in a high arc. 'watch it!' there was a flash between mevius and me; a splinter drove into mevius's hand. we dispersed, getting further and further tangled up in the mesh of trenches. the only men i still had with me at this stage were the pioneer nco, blood pouring from his nose, and mevius, with his damaged hand. the only thing that delayed our end was the confusion of the french, who still hadn't dared to come out of their holes. even so, it could only be a matter of minutes till we encountered some detachment of sufficient strength and resolve, who would happily put us out of our misery. mercy wasn't exactly in the air. i had already given up hope of getting out of this hornets' nest in one piece, when i suddenly gave a shout for joy. my eye had lit on the mess-tin with the spoon standing in it; now i got the picture. as it was already quite light, there wasn't a second to lose. we raced across the open field, the first rifle bullets whistling past us, towards our own lines. in the furthest french trench, we ran into lieutenant von kienitz's patrol. as the cry of 'liittje lage!' came back, we knew we were over the worst. unfortunately, i dropped on to a badly wounded man. kienitz hurriedly told me he'd driven off french sappers in the first trench with hand-grenades, and, going on, had taken some losses, dead and wounded, from our own artillery fire. after a longish wait, two more of my men appeared, nco dujesiefken and fusilier haller, who at least had some comforting news for me. as he'd wandered around, he had ended up in a remote sap, and had found three machine-guns, one of which he had taken off its mount and picked up with him. as it was getting lighter all the time, we raced over no man's land back to our own front line. of the fourteen who had set out, only four returned, and kienitz's patrol had suffered heavy losses as well. my dejection was a little helped by the words of the stout oldenburger dujesiefken, who, while i was getting my hand bandaged up in the dugout, was outside telling his comrades what had befallen, finishing with the sentence: 'i must say, though, that lieutenant junger is really something else: my word, the sight of him vaulting over those barricades!' then, almost all of us with bandaged heads or hands, we marched through the woods to the regimental headquarters. colonel von oppen welcomed us, and sat us down to coffee. he was disappointed at our lack of success, but still told us we'd done our best. we felt comforted. then i was put in a car, and taken to divisional command, who wanted a full report. a few hours before, i had had enemy hand-grenades exploding in my ears; now i was enjoying sitting back in a powerful car, being whisked along the highway, eating up the miles. the general staff officer received me in his office. he was pretty cut up, and i saw to my irritation that he was trying to leave the blame for the failure of our mission at my door. when he jabbed his finger at the map and asked questions like: 'don't you think you should have turned right into this communication trench instead?' i realized that the kind of confusion where notions like right and left just go out the window was quite outside his experience. for him the whole thing had been a plan; for us an intensely experienced reality. the divisional commander greeted me kindly, and soon improved my mood. i sat next to him at lunch with my ragged tunic and bandaged hand, and tried, without false modesty, to make him see this morning's action in the best way, in which i think i succeeded. the next day, colonel von oppen summoned the members of the patrol once more, and gave out iron crosses and two weeks' furlough apiece. in the afternoon, those of the fallen who were brought in were buried in the military cemetery at thiaucourt. in among the fallen of this war, there were also fighters from 1870. one of those old graves was marked by a mossy stone with the inscription: 'distant to the eye, but to the heart forever nigh!' a large stone slab was etched with the lines: heroes' deeds and heroes' graves, old and new you here may see. how the empire was created, how the empire was preserved. that evening i read in a french communique: 'a german attack at regnieville was foiled; prisoners were taken.' wolves had broken into the sheep-pen, but lost their bearings nothing more. at any rate, the short item told me that among our lost comrades there were some who had survived. some months later, i got a letter from one of the missing men, fusilier meyer, who had lost a leg in the hand-grenade battle; after wandering around a long time he, with three companions, had been engaged in a fight, and, heavily wounded, had been taken prisoner, after the others, nco kloppmann among them, had died. kloppmann was one of those men you couldn't imagine being taken alive. i experienced quite a few adventures in the course of the war, but none was quite as eerie as this. it still makes me feel a cold sweat when i think of us wandering around among those unfamiliar trenches by the cold early light. it was like the dream of a labyrinth. a few days later, after some preliminary shrapnel fire, lieutenants domeyer and zurn with several companions leaped into the enemy firing trench. domeyer ran into a heavily bearded french reservist who, when called upon to 'rendez-vous!' replied with an irascible 'ah non!' and threw himself at him. in the course of a bitter tussle, domeyer shot him through the throat with his pistol, and was forced to return, as i had done, sans captives. in our mission alone we had used enough munitions to have furnished forth a whole battle in 1870. flanders again the day i returned from my furlough, we were relieved by bavarian troops, and billeted at first in the nearby village of labry. on 17 october we were entrained, and after travelling for a day and a half found ourselves back on flemish soil, having last left it barely two months previously. we spent the night in the small town of izegem, and the following morning marched to roulers, or, to give it its flemish name, roeselare. the town was in the early stages of destruction. there were still shops with goods in them, but the inhabitants were already living in their cellars, and the ties of bourgeois existence were being loosened by frequent bombardment. with the war raging on all sides, a shop window opposite my quarters containing, of all things, ladies' hats, seemed the height of absurd irrelevance. at night, looters broke into the abandoned houses. i was the only person in my billet on the ooststraat to be living above ground. the building belonged to a draper, who had fled at the beginning of the war, leaving an old housekeeper and her daughter to look after it. the two of them were also minding a little orphan girl whom they had found wandering the streets as we were marching in, and of whom they knew nothing, not even her name or her age. they all were terrified of bombs, and begged me, practically on their knees, not to leave light on upstairs for the wicked aeroplanes. i have to say, i laughed on the other side of my face when i was standing in the window with my friend reinhardt, watching an english plane flitting over the rooftops in the beam of a searchlight, a huge bomb came down near by, and the air pressure wrapped the window-panes about our ears. for the next round of fighting, i had been designated as an intelligence officer, and sent to regimental staff. to learn a little more, i looked up the 10th bavarian regiment, whom we were to relieve, ahead of time. i found their commander to be friendly enough, even though he chided me over the non-regulation 'red ribbon' on my cap, which ought really to have been covered over with grey, so as not to draw any gunfire to the spot. two orderlies took me to the clearing-station, which was said to have a very good view of the front. no sooner had we left headquarters than a shell stirred up the meadow. my guides were quite adept at avoiding the shelling which towards noon turned into an uninterrupted rumble by taking byways through the poplar woods that were dotted about. they worked through the gold-gleaming autumnal landscape with the instincts of the experienced modern warrior, who, even in the densest bombardment, can hit on a path that offers at least reasonable odds of getting through. on the doorstep of an isolated farmyard that appeared to have been freshly bombed, we saw a man lying face down on the ground. 'he's stopped one!' said the stolid bavarian. 'air's got a high iron content,' said his companion, looking around appraisingly, and strode quickly on. the clearing-station lay the other side of the heavily shelled passchendaele-westroosebeke road. it was rather like the one i had commanded in fresnoy, having been installed next to a building that had been reduced to a pile of rubble, and having so little cover that the first half-accurate shell would knock it for six. i was briefed by three officers, who seemed to be leading a very companionable cave-life in the place and were pleased that they were to be relieved, about the enemy, the position and how to approach, and then went by way of roodkruis-oostnieuwkerke, back to roulers, where i reported to the colonel. as i passed through the streets of the little town, i kept an eye out for the cosy names of the numerous little pubs that are such an apt expression of whatever the flemish equivalent for dolce vita is. who wouldn't feel tempted by a pub-sign called 'de zalm' [salmon], 'de reeper' [heron], 'de nieuwe trompette', 'de drie koningen' or 'den oliphant'? even to be welcomed in the intimate 'du' form in that pithy and guttural language puts one right at ease. may god permit this splendid country, which has so often in its history been the battlefield for warring armies, to rise again from this war with its old quality intact. in the evening, the town was once again bombed. i went down into the cellar, where the women were huddled trembling in a corner, and switched on my torch to settle the nerves of the little girl, who had been screaming ever since an explosion had knocked out the light. here was proof again of man's need for home. in spite of the huge fear these women had in the face of such danger, yet they clung fast to the ground which at any moment might bury them. on the morning of 22 october, with my reconnaissance group of four men, i started off for kalve, where the regimental staff were to be relieved this morning. at the front, there was very heavy fire, whose lightnings tinged the mist blood red. at the entrance to oostnieuwkerke a building was hit by a heavy shell and collapsed just as we were about to pass it. lumps of debris trundled across the street. we tried to go around the place, but ended up having to go through it after all, as we weren't sure of the direction to kalve. as we hurried on, i called out for directions to an nco who was standing in a doorway. instead of giving me an answer, he thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, and shrugged his shoulders. as i couldn't stand on ceremony in the midst of this bombardment, i sprang over to him, held my pistol under his nose, and got my information out of him that way. it was the first time in the war that i'd come across an example of a man acting up, not out of cowardice, but obviously out of complete indifference. although such indifference was more commonly seen in the last years of the war, its display in action remained very unusual, as battle brings men together, whereas inactivity separates them. in a battle, you stand under external pressures. it was on the march, surrounded by columns of men moving out of the battle, that the erosion of the war ethos showed itself most nakedly. in roodkruis, a little farmstead at a fork in the road, things got really worrying. limbers chased across the shelled road, troops of infantry wended along through the brush either side of the road, and innumerable wounded men dragged themselves back. we encountered one young artilleryman who had a long, jagged splinter sticking out of his shoulder, like a spear. he passed us, wandering like a somnambulist, never once looking up. we turned right off the road, to the regimental headquarters, which stood in a ring of fire. near by, a couple of telephonists were laying their wires across a cabbage field. a shell landed right next to one of them; we saw him crumple, and thought he was done for. but then he picked himself up, and calmly continued laying his wire. as the headquarters consisted of a tiny concrete blockhouse that barely had room for the commander, an adjutant and an orderly, i looked for a place near by. i moved in, with intelligence, gas-protection and trench-mortar officers, to a wooden shack that didn't exactly strike me as the embodiment °f a bomb-proof abode. in the afternoon, i went up the line, seeing as news had come in that the enemy had that morning attacked our 5th company. my route went via the clearing-station to the nordhof, essentially a former farmhouse, in whose ruins the commander of the battalion in reserve was staying. from there, a path, not always recognizable as such, led to the commander of the fighting troops. the heavy rains of the past few days had turned the crater field into a morass, deep enough, especially around the paddelbach, to endanger life. on my wanderings, i would regularly pass solitary and abandoned corpses; often it was just a head or a hand that was left protruding from the dirty level of the crater. thousands have come to rest in such a way, without a sign put up by a friendly hand to mark the grave. after the extremely sapping crossing of the paddelbach, which was only possible after improvising a bridge from fallen poplars, i came across lieutenant heins, the commander of the 5th company, along with a handful of loyal men, in an enormous shell-crater. the crater position was on a hill, and as it wasn't completely inundated, undemanding grunts might find it habitable. heins told me that that morning a british line had appeared and then disappeared again, when it had come under fire. they in turn had shot a few men from the 164th, who had run off at their approach. other than that, everything was tiptop; i returned to headquarters, and reported to the colonel. the following day, our lunch was rudely interrupted by some shells landing hard by our wooden walls, sending up spurts of dirt that slowly spiralled down on to our tar-paper roof. everyone streamed out of the hut; i fled to a nearby farmhouse, and, because it was raining, went inside. that evening, precisely the same chain of events, only this time i stayed in the open, as the rain had stopped. the next shell flew into the middle of the collapsing farmhouse. that's the role of chance in war. more than elsewhere, small causes can have a vast effect. on 25 october, we had already been driven out of our shacks by eight o'clock, one of them being nailed by only the second shell to be fired. further shells flew into the damp pastures. they gave the impression of just expiring there, but they tore up considerable craters. alerted by my experience of the day before, i sought out an isolated and confidence-inspiring crater in the large cabbage field behind headquarters, and didn't leave it for quite some time afterwards. it was on that day that i got to hear the bad news of the death of lieutenant brecht, who had fallen in battle as a divisional observation officer in the crater field just right of the nordhof farm. he was one of those few who, even in this war of materiel, always had a particular aura of calm about him, and whom we supposed to be invulnerable. it's always easy to spot people like that in a crowd of others they were the ones who laughed when there were orders to attack. hearing of such a man's death inexorably led to thoughts of my own mortality. the morning hours of 26 october were filled by drumfire of unusual severity. our artillery too redoubled its fury on seeing the signals for a barrage that were sent up from the front. every little piece of wood and every hedge was home to a gun, whose half-deaf gunners did their business. as wounded men going back were making exaggerated and unclear statements about a british advance, i was sent off to the front at eleven o'clock with four men, for more accurate information. our way led through heated fire. we passed numerous wounded, among them lieutenant spitz, the commander of the 12th, with a shot in the chin. even before we got to the command dugout we came under aimed machine-gun fire, a sure sign that the enemy must have forced our line back. my suspicion was confirmed by major dietlein, the commander of the 3rd battalion. i found the old gentleman engaged in crawling out of the doorway of his three-parts inundated blockhouse, and fishing in the mud for his meerschaum cigar-holder. the british had forced a way through our front line, and had occupied a ridge from where they commanded the paddelbach basin and our battalion headquarters. i entered the change in the position with a couple of red strokes on my map, and then geed the men up for their next sapping run through the mud. we bounded across the terrain overlooked by the british, got behind the crest of the next elevation, and from there, more slowly, advanced to the nordhof. to the right and left of us shells splashed down in the swamp and sent up vast mud mushrooms ringed with innumerable lesser splatters. the nordhof also needed to be got through in a hurry, as it was under fire from high-explosive shells. those things went off with a peculiarly nasty and stunning bang. they were fired over, a few at a time, with only short intervals between them. each time, we had to make some rapid ground and then wait for the next round in a shell-hole. in the time between the first distant whine and the very close explosion, one's will to live was painfully challenged, with the body helpless and motionless left to its fate. shrapnels were also present in the compound, and one threw its freight of balls in our midst, with a multiple clatter. one of my companions was struck on the back of the helmet, and thrown to the ground. after lying there stunned for some time, he struggled to his feet and ran on. the terrain around the nordhof was covered with a lot of bodies in frightful condition. since we went about our work with some diligence, we often got to see places that until very recently had been strictly no go. it gave us an insight into all the other things that went on in out-of-the-way places. everywhere we saw traces of death; it was almost as though there wasn't a living soul anywhere in this wasteland. here, behind a dishevelled hedge, lay a group of men, their bodies covered with the fresh soil that the explosion had dropped on them after killing them; there were two runners lying by a crater, from which the acrid fumes of explosive were still bubbling up. in another place, we found many bodies in a small area: either a group of stretcher-bearers or an errant platoon of reservists that had been found by the centre of a ball of fire, and met their end. we would surface in these deadly places, take in their secrets at a glance, and disappear again into the smoke. after hurrying unscathed across the heavily bombarded stretch the other side of the passchendaele-westroosebeke road, i was able to report to colonel von oppen. the next morning, i was sent to the front at six o'clock with instructions to establish whether, and if so where, the regiment was in touch with the units on its flanks. on my way, i ran into sergeant-major ferchland, who was taking the 8th company orders to advance to goudberg, and, in the event of there being a gap between us and the regiment on the left, to close it. in the speedy performance of my duty, i could do nothing better than fall in with him. after searching for some time, we finally found the commander of the 8th, my friend tebbe, in a rather inhospitable part of the crater landscape close to the clearing-station. he was not pleased with the order to perform such a visible movement in broad daylight. during our laconic conversation, further oppressed by the indescribable dreariness of the craters in the early light, we lit cigars, and waited for the company to collect itself. after no more than a few paces, we came under carefully aimed infantry fire from the opposing heights, and had to go on alone, each man dodging from crater to crater. crossing the next ridge, the fire became so intense that tebbe gave orders to occupy a crater position until nightfall. puffing on his cigar, he reviewed his line. i made up my mind to go forward and check on the size of the gap myself, and rested awhile in tebbe's crater. the enemy's artillery was soon finding its range, to punish the company for its bold advance. a projectile smashing down on the rim of our little refuge and leaving both my face and my map spattered with mud, told me it was time to go. i bade goodbye to tebbe, and wished him all the best for the hours ahead. he called after me: god, just let it be night, the morning will come by itself!' we picked our way across the paddelbach basin, where we were within view of the enemy, ducking behind the foliage of shot-over poplars, and using their trunks to balance along. from time to time one of us would disappear up to the hips in mire, and would certainly have drowned but for the presence of his comrades and their helpfully extended rifle butts. i aimed for a blockhouse that had a group of soldiers standing around it. in front of us, a stretcher carried by four bearers was heading in the same direction as we were. puzzled to see a wounded man being carried towards the front, i took a look through my binoculars, and saw a line of khaki-clad figures with flat steel helmets. at the same instant, the first shots rang out. as there was nowhere to take cover, we had no option but to run back, with the bullets plugging into the mud all round us. the chase through the morass was very fatiguing; but the minute we stopped, completely out of breath, and offered the british a still target, a clutch of high-explosive shells gave us our second wind. the shells had the virtue, moreover, of obscuring us from view with their smoke. the least pleasant aspect of this chase was the prospect that almost any sort of wound was enough to see you to a watery grave. we hurried along the crater rims, as along the narrow walls of a honeycomb. trickles of blood here and there indicated that some unlucky men must have gone there before us. dog tired, we reached the regimental headquarters, where i handed in my sketches, and gave a report on the situation. we had investigated the gap. tebbe would advance under cover of night to fill it. on 28 october, we were relieved in turn by the 10th bavarian reserves, and, prepared to step in if needed, were put up in villages in the back area. the general staff withdrew as far as most. at night we sat in the bar of an abandoned public house, and celebrated the promotion and engagement of lieutenant zurn, who had just got back from leave. for such behaviour we were duly punished the following morning by being woken at six by a gigantic drumfire, which, though far away, still shattered my windows. the alarm went off immediately. obviously, the closing of the gap had not gone completely according to plan. the rumour was going around that the british had broken through. i spent the day waiting for orders at the observation point, in an area lying under sparse fire. a light shell drove through the window of one building, sending three wounded artillerymen staggering out, covered in brick dust. three more lay dead under the rubble. the next morning, i received the following orders from the bavarian commander: 'by repeated enemy pressure, the position of the regiment to the left of us has been further pushed back, and the gap between the two regiments greatly widened. in view of the danger that the regiment might be outflanked on the left, yesterday evening the 1st battalion of the 73 rd fusiliers moved forward to counter-attack, but was apparently dispersed by the barrage, and never reached the enemy. this morning, the 2nd battalion was sent forward into the gap. we have at present no news of either. information is required on the position of the 1st and 2nd battalions.' i set off on my way, and had only got as far as nordhof when i met captain von brixen, the commanding officer of the 2nd battalion, who had the position sketched in his pocket. i copied it, and had thereby effectively carried out my task, but i went on anyway to the headquarters of the troops in the line, to effect a personal reconnaissance. the way was littered with dead, their pale faces staring up out of water-filled craters, or already so covered with mud that their human identity was almost completely masked. many of the sleeves had the blue gibraltar brassard. the commanding officer was a bavarian, captain radlmaier. this extremely diligent officer told me in some detail what captain von brixen had already told me in hasty outline. our 2nd battalion had suffered heavy casualties; among many others, the adjutant and the commander of the brave 7th. the adjutant, lemiere, was the brother of the lemiere who had commanded the 8th company, and had fallen at fresnoy. both were from liechtenstein, and both had volunteered to fight on the german side. both died, shot in the mouth. the captain pointed to a blockhouse a couple of hundred yards away, that had been particularly doggedly defended yesterday. shortly after the attack had begun, the man in command of it, a sergeant-major, saw a british soldier leading back three german prisoners. he picked him off, and acquired three more men for the defence. when they had used up all their ammunition, they tied a british captive to the door, in order to put a temporary stop to the firing, and were able to retire unobserved after nightfall. another blockhouse, this one under a lieutenant, was called upon to surrender; by way of reply, the german leaped out, grabbed the englishman, and pulled him inside, to the astonishment of his watching troops. that day, i saw little troops of stretcher-bearers going around the battlefield with raised flags, and not coming under fire. the only time the warrior got to see such scenes in this often subterranean war, was when the need for them had become too dire. my return was impeded by a nasty irritant gas that smelled of rotten apples from the british shells that had saturated the ground. it made breathing difficult, and caused the eyes to tear up. after i'd made my report to headquarters, i met two officer friends of mine on stretchers outside the dressing-station, both gravely wounded. one was lieutenant ziirn, in whose honour we had celebrated only two nights before. now he was lying on a door, half stripped, with the waxy colour that is a sure sign of imminent death, staring up at me with sightless eyes as i stepped out to squeeze his hand. the other, lieutenant haverkamp, had had an arm and a leg so badly smashed by shell splinters that a double amputation seemed probable. he lay, deathly pale, on his stretcher, smoking cigarettes which his bearers lit for him and put in his mouth. once again, our losses were appalling, especially of young officers. this second battle of flanders was a monotonous affair; it was fought on sticky, muddy ground, and it caused immense casualties. on 3 november, we were put on trains at the station in gits, still fresh in our memory from the first flanders campaign. we saw our two flemish waitresses again, but they weren't what they had been either. they too seemed to have been through some heavy action. we were taken to tourcoing, a pleasant sister town of lille, for a few days. for the first and last time in the entire war, every man of the 7th company slept on a feather bed. i was put up in a magnificent room in the house of a rich manufacturer on the rue de lille. i greatly enjoyed my first evening on a leather armchair in front of an open fire in a marble fireplace. those few days were used by all of us to enjoy the life that we'd had to fight so hard to cling on to. we still couldn't quite grasp that for the time being we'd given death the slip, and we wanted to feel the possession of this new lease of life, by enjoying it in every way possible. the double battle of cambrai the delightful days at tourcoing were soon over. for a short while we were at villersau-tertre, where we were brought up to strength by new drafts, and on 15 november we were put on trains for lecluse, the resting-place of the battalion in reserve on the new front now assigned to us. lecluse was a fairly large village in the lake country of the artois. extensive reed beds were home to ducks and water-fowl, and the waters were full of fish. fishing was strictly forbidden, yet even so there were mysterious noises coming from the water at night. one day i was sent the pay-books of men in my company who had been caught by the town commandant fishing with bombs. i refused to make an issue of it, because the good spirits of the men mattered far more to me than the protection of french fishing-rights or the dinner-tables of the military bigwigs. from then on, i found, almost every night, a giant pike anonymously left outside my door. the day after i treated my two company officers to lunch with 'pike a la lohengrin' as the piece de resistance. on 19 november, i took my platoon commanders to see the part of the line where we would be going in a day or two. it was in front of the village of vis-en-artois. but then we didn't enter the line as soon as we'd thought, because there was an alarm nearly every night and we were variously sent off to the wotan line, the reserve gun positions, or the village of dury to be in readiness for an expected british attack. experienced warriors knew that nothing good could come of this. and indeed we heard on 29 november from captain von brixen that we were to take part in a sweeping counter-offensive against the bulge that the tank battle at cambrai had made in our front. even though we were pleased to play the part of the hammer, having so long been the anvil, we wondered whether the troops, still exhausted from flanders, would be up to the job. that said, i had every confidence in my company; they had never let anyone down yet. on the night of 30 november to 1 december, we were put on lorries. in the process, we took our first losses, as a soldier dropped a hand-grenade which for some reason exploded, gravely injuring him and another man. someone else feigned insanity in an attempt to get out of the battle. after a lot of toing and froing, a buffet in the ribs from an nco seemed to sort him out, and we were able to go. it showed me that that sort of play-acting is difficult to keep up. we drove, squashed together, almost as far as baralle, where we were made to stand for hours in a ditch and wait for orders. in spite of the cold, i lay down in a meadow and slept till dawn. since we had been prepared for the attack, it came as something of a disappointment to learn that the 225th, whom we were to support, had decided to go it alone. we were to stay in readiness in the castle grounds of baralle. at nine o'clock in the morning our artillery began a powerful pounding, which from quarter to twelve to ten to twelve achieved the intensity of drumfire. the woods of bourlon, which were not even under direct attack as they were too heavily defended, simply vanished in a chartreuse fog of gas. at ten to twelve we observed through our binoculars lines of riflemen emerging on to the empty crater landscape, while in the rear the batteries were harnessed up and rushed forward to new positions. a german aeroplane brought down a british barrage balloon in flames; we saw the occupants parachute clear. the fact that he circled round them as they drifted through the air, and fired tracer rounds at them, was further evidence of the growing bitterness of the conflict. after following the progress of the attack avidly from the elevation of the castle grounds, we emptied a dixie of noodles and lay down for a nap on the frozen ground. at three o'clock we received orders to advance as far as the regimental hq, which was situated in the lock-chamber of a drained canal bed. we went there by platoons, through a feeble scattered fire. from there the 7th and 8 th were sent forward to the officer commanding the troops in reserve, to relieve two companies of the 225th. the five hundred yards of canal that were to be got through lay under a dense barrage. we got there by running in a tight mass, without sustaining any losses. numerous corpses showed that other companies had been made to suffer heavily. reserves were squeezed up against the banks, busily trying to dig foxholes in the canal walls. as all the places were taken, and the canal, as a landmark, was a magnet for artillery fire, i led my company to a crater field to the right of it, and left it up to each individual to settle down as they liked. a splinter jangled against my bayonet. together with tebbe, who had followed our example with his 8th company, i looked out a suitable crater, which we covered with a tarpaulin. we lit a candle, ate supper, smoked our pipes, and had a shivering conversation. tebbe, who even in these insalubrious surroundings always remained something of a dandy, was telling me some long and involved story about a girl who had sat for him once in rome. at eleven o'clock, i received orders to advance into the erstwhile front line, and report to the commander of the fighting troops. i gathered up my men and moved forward. mighty shells were falling only singly now, but then one promptly smashed down at our feet like a greeting from hell, and filled the canal bed with dark smoke. the men fell silent, as if an icy fist had them by the neck, and stumbled along over barbed wire and debris in my wake. it is an eerie feeling to be striding through an unknown position by night, even when the shelling isn't particularly strong; your eyes and ears are subject to all sorts of deceptions. everything feels cold and alien as in some cursed other world. at last, we found the spot where the front line met the canal, and wended our way through the crowded trenches to the battalion headquarters. i stepped in, and found a bunch of officers and orderlies standing around in an atmosphere one could have cut with a knife. then i learned that the attack had not prospered so far, and was to be taken up again in the morning. the feeling in the room was rather doomy. a couple of battalion commanders started on lengthy negotiations with their adjutants. from time to time special weapons' officers tossed an item into the conversation from the height of their bunks, which were swarming like hen-roosts. the cigar smoke was dense. servants tried to cut bread for their officers in the middle of the bustle; a wounded man charged in, and caused pandemonium by announcing an enemy hand-grenade attack. finally, i was able to take down my orders for the attack. at six o'clock in the morning we were to roll up dragon alley and as much as possible of the siegfried line. the two battalions of the regiment in the line were to commence attacking on our right at seven o'clock. the discrepancy in times made me suspect that our high-ups didn't quite trust this attack, and were giving us the role of guinea-pigs. i objected to the two-phase attack, and our time was duly commuted to seven o'clock. the next morning was to show what a difference that made. since i had absolutely no idea where dragon alley was, i asked tor a map as i was leaving, but was told they had none to spare. i drew my own conclusions, and went out into the fresh air. other commanders don't often give strange units a cushy time. after i'd spent a long time wandering around the position with my heavily laden soldiers, one man spotted a sign with the half-effaced writing 'dragon alley' on a small sap going forward, which was blocked off by knife-rests. when i went down there, after a few steps, i heard the sound of foreign voices. silently i crept back. it was evident that i had encountered the spearhead of the british attack, either through over-confidence or, in ignorance of where they were, behaving incautiously. i had the sap blocked off right away by a platoon. right next to dragon alley was an enormous hole in the ground that i took to be a tank-trap, and there i had the whole company assemble, to explain our orders, and to give the different platoons their places. while speaking, i was several times interrupted by small shells. once, a dud even plummeted into the back wall of the hole. i was standing up on the rim, and, with every explosion, i could see the steel helmets assembled below me perform a deep and synchronous bow in the moonlight. in case of the possibility of us all being wiped out by a chance hit, i sent the first and second platoons back into the trench, and settled myself into the pit with the third. men from another unit, which had been roughed up on dragon alley that morning, had a worrying impact on my men, telling them that an english machine-gun fifty yards away was an insurmountable obstacle across the trench. we decided therefore, at the first sign of resistance, to fan out left and right and make a concerted bombing attack. the endless night hours i spent huddled up against lieutenant hopf in a hole in the ground. at six o'clock i got up and, with the curious feeling that precedes any attack, settled a last few details. you have butterflies in the stomach as you talk to the platoon commanders, try to make jokes, run around as if you were facing a parade in front of the commander-in-chief; in a word, you try and make yourself as busy as possible, to avoid any troubling thoughts. a soldier offered me a mug of coffee that he'd warmed up on a paraffin stove, and that had a magical effect on me, spreading warmth and confidence throughout my body. on the dot of seven, we drew up in the determined order in a long, snaking line. we found dragon alley untenanted; a row of empty ammunitions drums behind a barricade attested to the fact that the notorious machine-gun had been withdrawn. that cheered us up no end. after i'd blocked off a well-constructed trench that led off to the right, we entered a defile. it slowly climbed, and before long we found ourselves on the open field just as day was breaking. we turned about and tried the trench off to the right, where we found plenty of signs of yesterday's failed attack. the ground was littered with british corpses and hardware. this was the siegfried line. suddenly, the leader of the shock troops, lieutenant hoppenrath, seized the rifle from one of his soldiers, and fired. he had encountered a british sentry, who threw a few hand-grenades and then took to his heels. we went on, and soon encountered further resistance. hand-grenades were thrown by both sides, and exploded with loud bangs. the shock troops attacked. bombs were passed from hand to hand; snipers took up position behind traverses to deal with the enemy throwers; the platoon commanders peered over the edge of the trench to see if a counter-attack might be coming; and the light machine-gun units set up their weapons in suitable places. we attacked the trench from the front with grenades, and covered its length with our rifles. things now started to perk up all around, and swarms of bullets crossed over our heads. after a short fight, excited voices called out from the other side, and before we understood what was happening, the first british soldiers came out towards us with their hands above their heads. one after another, they rounded the traverse and unbuckled, while our guns and pistols remained levelled at them. they were young, good-looking fellows in new uniforms. i let them go by me, and said 'hands down!' and summoned a platoon to lead them away. most of them showed us by their confident smiles that they didn't expect us to do anything too terrible to them. others tried to propitiate us by holding out cigarette packets and bars of chocolate. with the waxing joy of the huntsman, i saw we had made a huge catch; the line seemed unending. we had counted past a hundred and fifty, and more were still coming out. i stopped an officer and asked him about the rest of the position, and its defence. he replied very politely; he really didn't need to stand to attention. he took me to the company commander, a wounded captain, who was in a nearby foxhole. i saw myself face to face with a young man of about twenty-six, with fine features, leaning against the shelter door with a bullet through his calf. when i introduced myself to him, he lifted his hand to his cap, i caught a flash of gold at the wrist, he said his name, and handed over his pistol. his opening words showed me he was a real man. 'we were surrounded.' he felt obliged to explain to his opponent why his company had surrendered so quickly. we talked about various matters in french. he told me there were quite a few german wounded, whom his men had bandaged and fed, in a nearby shelter. when i asked him how strong the rearward defences of the line were, he would give me no information. after i had promised to have him and the other wounded men sent back, we parted with a shake of the hand. outside the dugout, i ran into hoppenrath, who told me we'd taken about two hundred prisoners. for a company that was eighty strong, that wasn't bad going. after i'd posted sentries, we took a look around at the captured trench, which was bristling with weapons and all manner of equipment. in the fire-bays lay machine-guns, mortars, handand rifle-grenades, water-bottles, sheepskin jerkins, waterproofs, tarpaulins, tins of meat, jam, tea, coffee, cocoa and tobacco, bottles of cognac, tools, pistols, flare pistols, undergarments, gloves; in short, pretty much anything you could think of. like an old feudal commander, i allowed a few minutes for taking plunder, to give the men a chance to draw breath, and to take a look at some of the items. i, for my part, was unable to resist ordering up a little breakfast for myself in a dugout entrance and filling my pipe with some fine navy cut tobacco while i scribbled out my report to the commanding officer of the troops in the line. painstaking man that i am, i also sent a copy to our battalion commander. half an hour later, we set off again in euphoric mood perhaps the british cognac might have contributed a little and made our way forward along the siegfried line, dodging from traverse to traverse. we were fired on from a pillbox built into the trench, and we therefore climbed out on to the nearest fire-step to have a look around. whilst we were trading bullets with the occupants, one man was knocked flat as if by an invisible fist. a bullet had drilled through the top of his helmet, and ploughed a furrow along the top of his skull. i could see the brain rise and fall in the wound with every heartbeat, and yet he was capable of going back on his own. i had to remind him to leave his knapsack behind, he had been going to take it, and i implored him to take his time and be careful. i asked for some volunteers to break the resistance by an attack across the open field. the men eyed each other doubtfully; only an awkward pole, whom i had always taken for a cretin, climbed out of the trench, and trudged off towards the pillbox. unfortunately, i've forgotten the name of this simple man, who taught me that you can't say you really know a man if you haven't seen him under conditions of danger. then ensign neupert and his section leaped out of the line, while we continued along the trench at the same time. the british fired off a few shots and fled, leaving the pillbox for us. one of our attackers had collapsed in mid-charge, and was lying on the ground a few steps away from it. he had received one of those shots to the heart that lay a man out as if he were asleep. as we proceeded, we encountered some stiff resistance from some hand-grenade throwers we couldn't see, and gradually found ourselves pushed back to the pillbox. there we locked ourselves up. in the contested line of trench, both sides sustained losses. unfortunately, one of ours happened to be nco mevius, whom i had discovered to be a bold fighter on the night of regnieville. he was lying face down in a puddle of blood. when i turned him over, i saw by a large hole in his forehead that it was too late for any help. i had just exchanged a few words with him; suddenly a question i'd asked went unanswered. a few seconds later, when i looked round the traverse to see what was keeping him, he was already dead. it was an eerie feeling. after our opponents had also pulled back a little, a protracted exchange of fire ensued, with a lewis gun barely fifty yards away from us forcing us to keep our heads down. we responded with one of our own light machine-guns. for maybe half a minute, the two guns fought it out, with the bullets spraying and bouncing everywhere. then our gunner, lance-corporal motullo, collapsed with a shot in the head. even though his brains were dribbling down past his chin, he was still lucid as we carried him into the nearest shelter. motullo was an older man, one of those who would never have volunteered; but once he was standing behind his machine-gun, i had occasion to observe that, even though he was standing in a hail of bullets, he didn't duck his head by so much as an inch. when i asked him how he was feeling, he was capable of replying in complete sentences. i had the sense that his mortal wound didn't hurt him at all, maybe that he wasn't even aware of it. gradually, things calmed down a little, as the british for their part were also busy digging themselves in. at twelve o'clock, captain von brixen, lieutenant tebbe and lieutenant voigt came by; they offered their congratulations on the company's successes. we sat down in the pillbox, lunched off british provisions, and discussed the position. in between times, i was having to negotiate with about two dozen britishers, whose heads appeared out of the trench a hundred yards away, and who seemed to want to surrender. but as soon as i put my own head over the parapet, i found myself under fire from somewhere further back. suddenly, there was some commotion at the british barricade. hand-grenades flew, rifles banged, machine-guns clattered. 'they're coming! they're coming!' we leaped behind sandbags and started shooting. in the heat of battle, one of my men, corporal kimpenhaus, jumped up on to the parapet, and fired down into the trench until he was brought down by two bad wounds in his arms. i took a note of this hero of the hour, and was proud to be able to congratulate him two weeks later, on the award of the iron cross, first class. no sooner had we got back from this interruption to our lunch than there was more pandemonium. it was one of those curious incidents that can suddenly and unpredictably transform an entire situation. the noise was coming from a subaltern in the regiment on our left who wanted to line up with us, and seemed inflamed by a berserk fury. drink seemed to have tipped his innate bravery into a towering rage. 'where are the tommies? lemme at 'em! come on boys, who's coming with me?' in his insensate fury, he knocked over our fine barricade, and plunged forward, clearing a path for himself with hand-grenades. his orderly slipped ahead of him along the trench, shooting down anyone who survived the explosions. bravery, fearless risking of one's own life, is always inspiring. we too found ourselves picked up by his wild fury, and scrabbling around to grab a few hand-grenades, rushed to form part of this berserker's progress. soon i was up alongside him, tearing along the line, and the other officers too, followed by riflemen from my company, weren't slow in coming. even captain von brixen, the battalion commander, was up there in the van, rifle in hand, bringing down enemy grenade-throwers over our heads. the british resisted manfully. every traverse had to be fought for. the black balls of mills bombs crossed in the air with our own long-handled grenades. behind every traverse we captured, we found corpses or bodies still twitching. we killed each other, sight unseen. we too suffered losses. a piece of iron crashed to the ground next to the orderly, which the fellow was unable to avoid; and he collapsed to the ground, while his blood issued on to the clay from many wounds. we hurdled over his body, and charged forward. thunderous crashes pointed us the way. hundreds of pairs of eyes were lying in wait behind rifles and machine-guns in the dead land. we were already a long way in front of our own lines. from all sides, bullets whistled round our steel helmets or struck the trench parapet with a hard crack. each time a black iron oval broke the horizon, one's eye sized it up with that instantaneous clarity of which a man is only capable in moments of life and death. during those instants of waiting, you had to try to get to a place where you could see as much of the sky as possible, because it was only against its pale backdrop that it was possible to see the black jagged iron of those deadly balls with sufficient clarity. then you hurled your own bomb, and leaped forward. one barely glanced at the crumpled body of one's opponent; he was finished, and a new duel was commencing. the exchange of hand-grenades reminded me of fencing with foils; you needed to jump and stretch, almost as in a ballet. it's the deadliest of duels, as it invariably ends with one or other of the participants being blown to smithereens. or both. in those moments, i was capable of seeing the dead -i jumped over them with every stride without horror. they lay there in the relaxed and softly spilled attitude that characterizes those moments in which life takes its leave. during my leaping progress, i had a difference of opinion with the subaltern, who was really quite a card. he wanted to be first, and insisted that i supply him with bombs, rather than throw them myself. in amongst the short terrible shouts that accompany the work, and by which you alert the other to the presence of the enemy, i would sometimes hear him: 'one man to throw! and after all i was the instructor at the storm troop training!' a trench that led off to the right was cleaned up by soldiers of the 225th, who were trailing in our wake. british soldiers caught in a cleft stick tried to flee across the open fields, but were mown down in the fire that straight away was directed at them from all sides. and those soldiers we were pursuing gradually felt the siegfried line becoming too hot for them. they tried to disappear down a communications trench that led off to the right. we jumped up on to the sentry steps, and saw something that made us shout with wild glee: the trench they were trying to escape down doubled back on itself towards ours, like the curved frame of a lyre, and, at the narrowest point, they were only ten paces apart! so they had to pass us again. from our elevated position, we were able to look down on the british helmets as they stumbled in their haste and excitement. i tossed a hand-grenade in front of the first lot, bringing them up short, and after them all the others. then they were stuck in a frightful jam; hand-grenades flew through the air like snowballs, covering everything in milk-white smoke. fresh bombs were handed up to us from below. lightnings flashed between the huddled british, hurling up rags of flesh and uniforms and helmets. there were mingled cries of rage and fear. with fire in our eyes, we jumped on to the very lip of the trench. the rifles of the whole area were pointed at us. suddenly, in my delirium, i was knocked to the ground as by a hammer blow. sober, i pulled off my helmet and saw to my terror that there were two large holes in it. cadet mohrmann, leaping up to assist me, assured me that i had a bleeding scratch at the back of my head, nothing more. a bullet shot from some distance had punched through my helmet and only brushed my skull. half unconscious, i reeled back with a hurriedly applied bandage, to remove myself from the eye of the storm. no sooner had i passed the nearest traverse than a man ran up behind me and told me that tebbe had just been killed in the same place, by a shot in the head. that news floored me. a friend of mine with noble qualities, with whom i had shared joy, sorrow and danger for years now, who only a few moments ago had called out some pleasantry to me, taken from life by a tiny piece of lead! i could not grasp the fact; unfortunately, it was all too true. in this murderous sector of trench, all my ncos and a third of my company were bleeding to death. shots in the head rained down. lieutenant hopf was another one of the fallen, an older man, a teacher by profession, a german schoolmaster in the best sense of the word. my two ensigns and many others besides were wounded. and yet, the 7th company held on to the conquered line, under the command of lieutenant hoppenrath, the only able-bodied officer remaining, until we were relieved. of all the stimulating moments in a war, there is none to compare with the encounter of two storm troop commanders in the narrow clay walls of a line. there is no going back, and no pity. and so everyone knows who has seen one or other of them in their kingdom, the aristocrat of the trench, with hard, determined visage, brave to the point of folly, leaping agilely forward and back, with keen, bloodthirsty eyes, men who answered the demands of the hour, and whose names go down in no chronicle. on the way back, i stopped with captain von brixen for a moment, who with a few troops was shooting at a row of heads over a nearby parallel trench. i stood between him and the other marksmen, and watched the bullets striking home. in the dreamlike mood that followed the shock of my wounding, it never occurred to me that my white turban-like bandage must be visible miles away. suddenly a blow to the forehead knocked me to the floor, while my eyes were drenched with blood. the man next to me fell at the same time, and started to moan. shot in the head through steel helmet and temple. the captain feared he had lost two company commanders on one day, but on inspection could make out only two surface wounds near the hairline. they must have been caused by the bursting bullet, or perhaps splinters from the helmet of the wounded man. this same man, with whom i shared pieces of metal from the same bullet, came to visit me after the war; he worked in a cigarette factory, and, ever since his wound, had been sickly and a little eccentric. weakened by further loss of blood, i accompanied the captain, who was returning to his command post. skirting the heavily shelled village of mceuvres at a jogtrot, we got back to the dugout in the canal bed, where i was bandaged up and given a tetanus injection. in the afternoon, i got on a lorry, and had myself driven to lecluse, where i gave my report to colonel von oppen over supper. after sharing a bottle of wine with him, feeling half asleep but in a wonderful mood, i said good-night, and, following this immense day, hurled myself with a meritorious feeling on to the bed that my trusty vinke had made up for me. a couple of days after that, the battalion moved into lecluse. on 4 december, the divisional commander, general von busse, addressed the battalions involved, singling out the 7th company. i marched them past, bandaged head held high. i had every right to be proud of my men. some eighty men had taken a long stretch of line, capturing a quantity of machine-guns, mortars and other materiel, and taken some two hundred prisoners. i had the pleasure of being able to announce a number of promotions and distinctions. thus, lieutenant hoppenrath, the leader of the shock troops, ensign neupert, the stormer of the pillbox, and the brave barricade defender, kimpenhaus, all got to wear the well-earned iron cross, first class, on their breasts. i didn't bother the hospitals with my fifth double-wounding, but allowed them to heal over the course of my christmas leave. the scrape to the back of my head got better quickly, the shards in my forehead grew in, to provide company for two others that i'd got at regnieville, one in my left hand, the other in my earlobe. at this time, i was surprised by the knight's cross of the house of hohenzollern, which was sent to me at home. that gold-edged cross and a silver cup bearing the legend 'for the victor of mceuvres', which the other three company commanders in the battalion presented to me, are my souvenirs of the double battle of cambrai, which will enter the history books as the first attempt to break out of the deadly stasis of trench-fighting by new methods. i also brought back my holed helmet, and keep it as a pendant to the other one that the lieutenant-colonel of the indian lancers had worn when leading his men against us. at the cojeul river even before my furlough, on 9 december 1917, we were called upon to relieve the 10th company in the front line after not many days of rest. the position was, as already mentioned, in front of the village of vis-en-artois. my sector was bordered on the right by the arras-cambrai road, and on the left by the boggy course of the cojeul river, across which we stayed in touch with the neighbouring company by means of nocturnal patrols. the enemy lines were obscured from sight by a little rise in the ground between our two positions. apart from occasional patrols who fiddled with our wires at night, and the hum of an electricity generator at hubertus-ferme not far off, the enemy infantry gave few signs of life. distinctly unpleasant, though, were frequent attacks by gas shells, which caused quite a few casualties. these were delivered by several hundred iron pipes fitted into the ground, torched electrically in a flaming salvo. as soon as it lit, the cry of gas went up, and whoever didn't have his mask in front of his face by the time the things landed was in a bad way. in some places, the gas had such density that even the mask didn't help, because there was simply no oxygen left in the air to breathe. and so we incurred losses. my shelter was dug back into the vertical wall of a gravel pit that gaped behind the line, and was shelled almost every day. behind it rose the blackened iron skeleton of a destroyed sugar factory. that gravel pit was an eerie place indeed. in amongst the shell-holes where used weaponry and materials were dumped were the crooked crosses marking graves. at night, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and had to wait from the expiry of one flare to the going up of another if you weren't to leave the duckboard path and come to a watery end in the cojeul. if i wasn't busy with the construction of the trench, i spent my days in the icy shelter, reading and drumming my feet against the dugout frames to keep them warm. a bottle of creme de menthe in a niche in the limestone served the same purpose, and my orderlies and i swore by it. we were freezing; but if the least little plume of smoke had gone up into the murky december sky from the gravel pit, the place would soon have been rendered uninhabitable, because the enemy seemed to take the sugar factory for our headquarters, and expended most of their powder on that old iron shell. so it was only really after dark that the life came back into our frozen bones. the little stove was lit, and spread a cosy warmth, as well as thick smoke. before long the ration parties were back from vis, and came clattering down the steps with their canteens, which were much awaited. and then, if the endless succession of swedes, barley and dried vegetables happened to be interrupted for once by beans or noodles, why then, there was no limit to our contentment. sometimes, sitting at my little table, i would listen happily to the earthy conversations of the orderlies, as they hunkered, wreathed in tobacco smoke, round the stove, where a pot of grog was steaming headily. war and peace, fighting and home-life, rest-billet and leaves were discussed in great detail, and there were a good few pithy sayings besides. for instance, the orderly went away on leave with the words: 'there's nothing like being in your own bed at home, and your old woman nuzzling you all over.' on 19 january, we were relieved at four in the morning, and marched off through thick snow to gouy, where we were to spend some time training for the imminent offensive. from the instructions issued by ludendorff as far along the chain as company commanders, we concluded that there was a mighty do-or-die offensive in the offing. we practised the almost-forgotten forms of skirmishing in line and open warfare, also there was a lot of target-practice with rifle and machine-gun. since every village behind the line was full up to the last attic, every roadside was used for a target, and the bullets sometimes went whizzing around all over the shop, as if in a real battle. a machinegunner from my company shot the commander of another regiment out of the saddle while he was reviewing some troops. luckily, it was nothing more than a flesh wound in the leg. several times i had the company practise attacks on complicated trench networks, using live hand-grenades, to turn to account the lessons of the cambrai battle. here, too, there were casualties. on 24 january, colonel von oppen left to take command of a battalion in palestine. he had led the regiment, whose history is inextricably bound up with his name, from the autumn of 1914 without interruption. colonel von oppen was living proof that there is such a thing as a born leader. he was always surrounded by a nimbus of confidence and authority. the regiment is the largest unit whose members know one another; it's the largest military family, and the stamp of a man like von oppen shows clearly in thousands of common soldiers. sad to say, his parting words: 'see you back in hanover!' were never to come about; he died shortly afterwards of asiatic cholera. even after i'd heard the news of his death, i received a letter from him. i owe him a very great deal. on 6 february, we returned to lecluse, and on the 22nd, we were accommodated for four days in the cratered field left of the dury-hendecourt road, to do digging work in the front line. viewing the position, which faced the ruined village of bullecourt, i realized that part of the huge push which was expected up and down the whole western front would take place here. everywhere there was feverish building, dugouts were constructed, and new roads laid. the cratered field was plastered with little signs stuck in the middle of nowhere, with ciphered letters and numbers, presumably for the disposition of artillery and command posts. our aeroplanes were up all the time, to keep the enemy from getting a look. to keep everyone synchronized, on the dot of noon every day a black ball was lowered from the observation balloons, which disappeared at ten past twelve. at the end of the month, we marched back to our old quarters in gouy. after several battalion and regimental drills, we twice rehearsed an entire divisional breakthrough, on a large site marked with white ribbons. afterwards, the commander addressed us, giving us to understand that the storm would be let loose in the next few days. i have happy memories of the last evening we sat round the table, heatedly discussing the impending war of movement. even if, in our enthusiasm, we spent our last pennies on wine, what else did we need money for? before long, we would either be through the enemy lines, or else in the hereafter. it was only by reminding us that the back area still wanted to live that the captain kept us from smashing all the glasses, bottles and plates against the wall. [in accordance with the german proverb 'scherben bringen gluck', shards or breakages are lucky. ] we had no doubt but that the great plan would succeed. certainly, if it didn't, it wouldn't be through any fault of ours. the troops were in fine fettle. if you listened to them speak in their dry lower saxon tones of the forthcoming 'hindenburg sprint', you knew they would handle themselves as they always did: tough, reliable, and with a minimum of fuss. on 17 march, after sundown, we left the quarters we had come to love, and marched to brunemont. the roads were choked with columns of marching men, innumerable guns and an endless supply column. even so, it was all orderly, following a carefully worked-out plan by the general staff. woe to the outfit that failed to keep to its allotted time and route; it would find itself elbowed into the gutter and having to wait for hours till another slot fell vacant. on one occasion we did get in a little jam, in the course of which captain von brixen's horse impaled itself on a metalled axle and had to be put down. the great battle the battalion was quartered in the chateau of brunemont. we heard that we were to move up on the night of 19 march, to be put in reserve in the dugouts in the line near cagnicourt, and that the great push was to begin on the morning of 21 march 1918. the regiment had orders to punch through between the villages of ecoust-st-mein and noreuil, and to reach mory on the first day. we were well acquainted with the terrain; it had been our back area in the trench-fighting at monchy. i dispatched lieutenant schmidt, known universally as 'schmidtchen' as he was such a lovely fellow, on ahead to secure quarters for the company. at the pre-arranged time, we marched out of brunemont. at a crossroads, where we picked up our guides, the companies fanned out. when we were level with the second line, where we were to be quartered, it turned out our guides had lost their way. we found ourselves roving around in the poorly lit, boggy, cratered landscape, and asking other, equally uninformed troops for directions. to avoid overtiring the men, i called a halt, and sent the guides out in different directions. sections piled arms and squeezed into a vast crater, while lieutenant sprenger and i perched on the rim of a smaller one, from which we could see into the big one, as from a box in the theatre. for some time now, shells had been landing a hundred paces or so in front of us. a shell landed quite close by; splinters splattered into the clay sides of the crater. a man yelled and claimed he'd been hurt in the foot. while i felt the man's muddy boot, looking for a hole, i called to the men to disperse among the surrounding shell-holes. there was another whistle high up in the air. everyone had the choking feeling: this one's heading our way! then there was a huge, stunning explosion the shell had hit in our midst. half stunned i stood up. from the big crater, burning machine-gun belts spilled a coarse pinkish light. it lit the smouldering smoke of the explosion, where a pile of charred bodies were writhing, and the shadows of those still living were fleeing in all directions. simultaneously, a grisly chorus of pain and cries for help went up. the rolling motion of the dark mass in the bottom of the smoking and glowing cauldron, like a hellish vision, for an instant tore open the extreme abysm of terror. after a moment of paralysis, of rigid shock, i leaped up, and like all the others, raced blindly into the night. i tumbled headfirst into a shell-hole, and only there did i finally grasp what had happened. not to see or hear anything any more, out of this place, off into deep darkness! but the men! i had to tend to them, they were my responsibility. -i forced myself to return to that terrible place. on the way, i saw fusilier haller, who had captured the machine-gun at regnieville, and i took him with me. the wounded men were still uttering their terrible cries. a few crawled up to me, and when they recognized my voice, wailed: 'lieutenant, sir, lieutenant!' one of my best-loved recruits, jasin-ski, whose thigh had been crumpled by a splinter, grabbed hold of my legs. cursing my inability to be of assistance, i patted him feebly on the back. moments like that are not easily shaken off. i had to leave the unlucky ones to the one surviving stretcher-bearer in order to lead the handful of unhurt men who had gathered around me from that dreadful place. half an hour ago at the head of a full battle-strength company, i was now wandering around a labyrinth of trenches with a few, completely demoralized men. one baby-faced fellow, who was mocked a few days ago by his comrades, and on exercises had wept under the weight of the big munitions boxes, was now loyally carrying them on our heavy way, having picked them up unasked in the crater. seeing that did for me. i threw myself to the ground, and sobbed hysterically, while my men stood grimly about. after spending several hours, often menaced by shells, running hopelessly up and down trenches, where the mud and water were feet deep, we crept exhausted into a few cubby-holes meant for munitions that were set in the walls of a trench. vinke covered me with his blanket; even so, i couldn't close my eyes, and smoked cigars while i waited for the dawn, feeling completely apathetic. first light showed the cratered scene full of unsuspected life. troops were trying to find their units. artillerymen were lugging crates of ammunition, trench-mortar men pulled their mortars along; telephonists and light-signallers were rigging up their lines. there were all kinds of chaotic activities going on, barely half a mile from the enemy, who, extraordinarily, seemed to have no idea. at last, in lieutenant fallenstein, the commander of the machine-gun company, an old front officer, i met someone who was able to show me our quarters. he greeted me with: 'good christ, man, you look frightful! you look like you've got jaundice.' he pointed out a large dugout that we must have passed a dozen times that night, and there i saw schmidtchen, who knew nothing of our calamity. the soldiers who had been supposed to guide us were also there. from that day forth, each time we moved into new quarters, i took care to choose the guides myself. in war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high. after i had seen my men settled in, i returned to the site of last night's horror. the place looked grisly. scattered around the scorched site were over twenty blackened bodies, almost all of them burned and flayed beyond recognition. we had to enter some of the dead as 'missing' later, because there was simply nothing left of them. soldiers from the adjacent parts of the line were busy pulling the bloodied effects of the dead out of the horrible tangle, and looking through them for booty. i chased them off, and instructed my orderly to take possession of the wallets and valuables to save them for the men's families. as it turned out, we had to leave it all behind the next day, when we went over the top. to my delight, sprenger emerged from a nearby dugout with a whole lot of men who had spent the night there. i had the section leaders report to me, and found out that we had sixty-three men. and the previous night, i'd set out in high spirits with a hundred and fifty! i was able to identify over twenty dead and sixty wounded, many of whom later died of their injuries. my inquiries involved a lot of looking around in trenches and craters, but it had the effect of distracting me from the horror. my one, feeble consolation was that it might have been even worse. fusilier rust, for instance, was standing so close to the bomb blast that the straps on his munitions box caught fire. nco pregau, who, admittedly, went on to lose his life the next day, was not even scratched as he stood between two comrades who were torn to ribbons. we spent the rest of the day in pretty low humour, much of it sleeping. i was frequently called away to see the battalion commander, as there were many details of the attack to be settled. otherwise, lying on a bunk, i conversed with my two officers on all kinds of trivial subjects, all to escape our tormenting thoughts. the refrain was: 'well, thanks be to god, all that can happen is we get shot.' a few remarks that i addressed to the men gathered on the dugout steps, to try to cheer them up, seemed to have little effect. i was hardly in a cheer-bringing mood. at ten, a messenger arrived with instructions to go to the front line. a wild animal dragged from its lair, or a sailor feeling the deck sinking under his feet, must have felt like us as we took our leave of the warm, secure dugout and headed out into the inhospitable darkness. there was already some activity. we dashed down felix lane under sharp shrapnel fire, and reached the front line without casualties. while we were wending our way along the trenches, over our heads the artillery was being trundled across bridges into forward positions. the regiment, whose most-advanced battalion we were to be, had been given a very narrow sector of the front. every dugout was immediately jammed. those left in the cold dug themselves holes in the trench walls, so as to have at least minimal protection against the artillery barrage that was to be expected before the attack. after a lot of toing and froing, it seemed everyone had some kind of foxhole. once more captain von brixen assembled the company commanders to talk through the plan. for the last time, watches were synchronized, and then we all shook hands and went our separate ways. i sat down with my two officers on the dugout steps, to wait for five past five, when the preliminary shelling was due to start. the mood had lifted somewhat, as the rain had stopped, and the starry night gave promise of a dry morning. we chatted and smoked. at three o'clock there was breakfast, and a flask went the rounds. during the early morning hours, the enemy artillery was so lively we feared the british might have caught a whiff of something. a few of the numerous munitions dumps dotted around blew up. shortly before the show, the following flash signal was circulated: 'his majesty the kaiser and hindenburg are on the scene of operations.' it was greeted with applause. the watch-hands moved round; we counted off the last few minutes. at last, it was five past five. the tempest was unleashed. a flaming curtain went up, followed by unprecedentedly brutal roaring. a wild thunder, capable of submerging even the loudest detonations in its rolling, made the earth shake. the gigantic roaring of the innumerable guns behind us was so atrocious that even the greatest of the battles we had experienced seemed like a tea party by comparison. what we hadn't dared hope for happened: the enemy artillery was silenced; a prodigious blow had laid it out. we felt too restless to stay in the dugout. standing out on top, we gasped at the colossal wall of flame over the english lines, gradually obscuring itself behind crimson, surging clouds. the only thing that took the edge off our enjoyment of this spectacle were our watering eyes and inflamed mucous membranes. the clouds of our gas shells, beaten back by a headwind, wrapped us in a powerful aroma of bitter almonds. i looked on in concern as some of the men started coughing and choking, and finally tore the masks off their faces. i was therefore at pains myself to suppress any cough, and breathe slowly and carefully. finally, the cloud dispersed, and after an hour it was safe to take off our gas masks. it had become light. at our rear, the massive roaring and surging was still waxing, even though any intensification of the noise had seemed impossible. in front of us an impenetrable wall of smoke, dust and gas had formed. men ran past, shouting cheerily in our ears. infantrymen and artillerymen, pioneers and telephonists, prussians and bavarians, officers and men, all were overwhelmed by the elemental force of the fire-storm, and all were impatient to go over the top at nine-forty. at twenty-five past eight our heavy mortars, which were standing massed behind our front lines, entered the fray. we watched the daunting two-hundredweight bombs loop high up into the air, and come crashing down with the force of volcanic eruptions on the enemy lines. their impacts were like a row of spurting craters. even the laws of nature appeared to have been suspended. the air swam as on hot summer days, and its variable density caused fixed objects to appear to dance to and fro. shadows streaked through the clouds. the noise now was a sort of absolute noise you heard nothing at all. only dimly were you aware that thousands of machine-guns behind you were slinging their leaden swarms into the blue air. the last hour of the preparation was more dangerous than all four of its predecessors, during which we had moved around insolently on the parapets. the enemy brought in a heavy battery that hurled shell after shell into our overcrowded lines. to move out of the way, i turned left and met lieutenant heins, who asked me if i'd seen lieutenant solemacher: 'he's wanted to take over command, captain von brixen's fallen.' shaken by this news, i went back, and sat myself in a deep foxhole. by the time i got there, i had forgotten what i'd been told. i was as in a dream, sleepwalking through this storm. nco dujesiefken, my comrade at regnieville, was standing in front of my foxhole, begging me to get into the trench as even a light shell bursting anywhere near would cause masses of earth to come down on top of me. an explosion cut him off: he sprawled to the ground, missing a leg. he was past help. i jumped over him, and darted into a foxhole on the right, where a couple of pioneers had already sought shelter. heavy shells continued to rain down all round us. you suddenly saw black clumps of earth spinning out of a white cloud; the sound of the explosion was engulfed by the noise level. in the sector to our left, three men from my company were torn to pieces. one of the last hits, a dud, killed poor schmidtchen as he sat on the dugout steps. i was standing with sprenger, watch in hand, in front of my foxhole, waiting for the great moment to come. the rest of the company had clustered round. we managed to cheer and distract them with a few crude jokes. lieutenant meyer, who briefly stuck his head round the traverse, told me later he thought we were out of our minds. at ten past nine, the officer patrols who were to cover our advance left the trench. since the two positions were perhaps half a mile apart, we had to move forward during the artillery preparation, and lie ready in no man's land, to be able to leap into the first enemy line as soon as nine-forty came. a few minutes later, then, sprenger and i climbed up on to the top, followed by the rest of the company. 'now let's show them what the 7th are made of!' 'i'm past caring what happens to me!' 'revenge for the 7th company!' 'revenge for captain von brixen!' we drew our pistols and climbed over the wires, through which the first of the wounded were already dragging themselves back. i looked left and right. the moment before the engagement was an unforgettable picture. in shell craters against the enemy line, which was still being forked over and over by the fire-storm, lay the battalions of attackers, clumped together by company. at the sight of the dammed-up masses of men, the breakthrough appeared certain to me. but did we have the strength and the stamina to splinter also the enemy reserves and rend them apart? i was confident. the decisive battle, the last charge, was here. here the fates of nations would be decided, what was at stake was the future of the world. i sensed the weight of the hour, and i think everyone felt the individual in them dissolve, and fear depart. the mood was curious, brimming with tension and a kind of exaltation. officers stood up and exchanged banter. i saw solemacher standing there in a long coat in the midst of his little staff, a short pipe with a green bowl in his hand, like a huntsman on a cold day, waiting for the gillies to do their work. we exchanged a fraternal wave. often a mortar would fall short, and a shower of earth as high as a steeple would cover the waiting men, and no one would even flinch. the noise of battle had become so terrific, that no one was at all clear-headed. three minutes before the attack, vinke beckoned to me with a full water-bottle. i took a long pull, as though it were indeed only water i was drinking. now just the cigar was missing. three times the air pressure snuffed out my match. the great moment was at hand. the wave of fire had trundled up to the first lines. we attacked. our rage broke like a storm. thousands must have fallen already. that was clear; and even though the shelling continued it felt quiet, as though it had lost its imperative thrust. no man's land was packed tight with attackers, advancing singly, in little groups or great masses towards the curtain of fire. they didn't run or even take cover if the vast plume of an explosion rose between them. ponderous, but unstoppable, they advanced on the enemy lines. it was as though nothing could hurt them any more. in the midst of these masses that had risen up, one was still alone; the units were all mixed up. i had lost my men from sight; they had disappeared like a wave in the crashing surf. all i had with me were my vinke and a one-year volunteer by the name of haake. in my right hand, i gripped my pistol, in my left, a bamboo riding-crop. even though i was feeling hot, i was still wearing my long coat, and, as per regulations, gloves. as we advanced, we were in the grip of a berserk rage. the overwhelming desire to kill lent wings to my stride. rage squeezed bitter tears from my eyes. the immense desire to destroy that overhung the battlefield precipitated a red mist in our brains. we called out sobbing and stammering fragments of sentences to one another, and an impartial observer might have concluded that we were all ecstatically happy. the shredded wire entanglements provided no obstacle at all, and we cleared the first trench, barely recognizable as such, in a single bound. the wave of attackers danced like a row of ghosts through the white seething mists of the flattened dip. there was no one here to oppose us. quite unexpectedly, the clatter of machine-gun fire rattled at us from the second line. i and my companions jumped into a crater. another second, and there was a fearsome crash, and i sprawled on my face. vinke grabbed me by the collar, and twisted me round on to my back: 'lieutenant, are you hurt?' there was no sign of anything. the one-year volunteer had a hole in his upper arm, and assured us in groans that the bullet had lodged in his back. we tore the tunic off him and bandaged him up. a smooth furrow showed that a shrapnel shell had struck the lip of the crater on a level with our faces. it was a miracle we were still alive. it seemed the enemy were more obdurate than we'd given them credit for. others by now had overtaken us. we plunged after them, leaving our wounded man to his fate, having put up a piece of wood with a white strip of gauze hanging from it as a sign for the wave of stretcher-bearers that would follow. half left of us the great railway embankment of the ecoust-croisilles line loomed up out of the haze; we had to get across that. from built-in loopholes and dugout windows, the rifle and machine-gun fire was pattering at us so thickly it was like having a sack of dried peas emptied over you. they could see what they were doing too. vinke had disappeared somewhere. i followed a defile, from whose sides flattened dugouts gaped. i strode along furiously, across the black opened ground that the acrid fumes of our shells seemed to cling to. i was quite alone. then i saw my first enemy. a figure in brown uniform, wounded apparently, crouched twenty paces away in the middle of the battered path, with his hands propped on the ground. i turned a corner, and we caught sight of each other. i saw him jump as i approached, and stare at me with gaping eyes, while i, with my face behind my pistol, stalked up to him slowly and coldly. a bloody scene with no witnesses was about to happen. it was a relief to me, finally, to have the foe in front of me and within reach. i set the mouth of the pistol at the man's temple -he was too frightened to move while my other fist grabbed hold of his tunic, feeling medals and badges of rank. an officer; he must have held some command post in these trenches. with a plaintive sound, he reached into his pocket, not to pull out a weapon, but a photograph which he held up to me. i saw him on it, surrounded by numerous family, all standing on a terrace. it was a plea from another world. later, i thought it was blind chance that i let him go and plunged onward. that one man of all often appeared in my dreams. i hope that meant he got to see his homeland again. men from my company were jumping down into the defile from above. i was boiling hot. i tore off my coat, and threw it away. i remember shouting: 'now lieutenant junger's throwing off his coat!' several times, and the fusiliers laughing, as if it had been the funniest thing they'd ever heard. everyone was pouring across the open terrain, careless of the machine-guns that can have been no more than four hundred yards away. i too ran blindly towards the fire-spitting embankment. in some crater, i landed on top of a pistol-potting figure in brown corduroy. it was kius, who was in a similar mood to me, and who passed me a fistful of cartridges by way of greeting. i concluded from that that our penetration into the cratered area in front of the railway embankment must have hit upon some resistance, because i had taken a good supply of pistol bullets with me before we set out. probably it was the rest of the troops who had been dislodged from the trenches and had settled here, popping up in various places in among the attackers. but as far as this part of the story goes, i have no recollection. all i know is i must have got through it, and unhurt, even though there was firing from craters on all sides, not to mention the bullets fizzing down from the embankment on friend and foe alike. they must have had an inexhaustible supply of ammunition in there. our attention now shifted to that obstacle, which loomed up in front of us like a menacing wall. the scarred field that separated us from it was still held by hundreds of scattered british. some were trying to scramble back, others were already engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with our forward troops. kius later told me things that i took in with the same sort of feeling as when some eyewitness tells you of amazing japes or stunts that you performed while drunk. for instance, he had been chasing a british soldier through a section of trench with hand-grenades. when he ran out of missiles, to keep his opponent on the run, he continued the chase with lumps of earth, while i stood up above, splitting my sides with laughter. amid such scenes, we had come up to the embankment, barely realizing it. it was still spewing fire like a great machine. here my recollection begins again, with the registration of an extremely advantageous position. we hadn't been hit, and now that we were right up against it, the embankment changed from being an obstacle to being cover for us. as though waking from a deep dream, i saw german steel helmets approaching through the craters. they seemed to sprout from the fire-harrowed soil like some iron harvest. at the same time, i noticed that right by my foot there was the barrel of a heavy machine-gun, stuck through a dugout window covered over with sacking. the noise was such that it was only the vibration of the barrel that told us that it was firing. the defender was only an arm's length away from us then. it was that degree of proximity that kept us safe. and that spelled his doom. hot haze rose from the weapon. it must have hit a great many men, and it was still mowing. the barrel moved little; its fire was aimed. i fixed the hot, shaking piece of steel that was sowing death, and that i could almost brush with my foot. then i shot through the sacking. a man who turned up next to me ripped it clean away, and dropped a hand-grenade in the hole. a shock and the issue of a whitish cloud told the rest of the story. the means were rough, but satisfactory. the muzzle no longer moved, the weapon had stopped firing. we ran along the embankment to treat the next holes in similar fashion, and so we must have broken a few vertebrae out of the spine of the defence. i raised my hand to let my troops, whose shots were ringing round our ears, know who we were and what we were about. they waved happily back. then we and a hundred others scaled the embankment. for the first time in the war, i saw masses of men collide. the british were defending a couple of terraced trenches the other side of the embankment. shots were exchanged at point-blank range, hand-grenades looped down. i leaped into the nearest trench; plunging round the traverse, i ran into an english officer in an open jacket and loose tie; i grabbed him and hurled him against a pile of sandbags. an old white-haired major behind me shouted: 'kill the swine!' there was no point. i turned to the lower trench, which was seething with british soldiers. it was like a shipwreck. a few tossed duck's eggs, others fired colt revolvers, most were trying to run. we had the upper hand now. i kept firing off my pistol as in a dream, although i was out of ammunition long ago. a man next to me lobbed hand-grenades at the british as they ran. a steel helmet took off into the air like a spinning plate. it was all over in a minute. the british leaped out of their trenches, and fled away across the field. from up on the embankment, a wild pursuing fire set in. they were brought down in full flight, and, within seconds, the ground was littered with corpses. that was the disadvantage of the embankment. german troops were also down among them. an nco stood next to me watching the fighting open-mouthed. i seized his rifle and shot an englishman who was tangling with a couple of germans. they stopped in bafflement at the invisible assistance, and then ran on. our success had a magical effect. there was no question of leadership, or even of separate units, but there was only one direction: forwards! every man ran forward for himself. for my objective i selected a low rise, on which i could see the ruins of a house, a cross, and the wreckage of an aeroplane. others were with me; we formed a pack, and in our eagerness ran into the wall of flame laid down by our own artillery. we had to throw ourselves in a crater and wait while the shelling moved forward. next to me there was a young officer from another regiment, who, like me, was delighted with the success of this first charge. in a few minutes, the intensity of our mutual enthusiasm gave us the feeling we'd known each other for years. then we leaped up, and never saw each other again. even in these frightful moments, something droll could happen. a man next to me pulled his rifle to his cheek and pretended to shoot at a rabbit that suddenly came bounding through our lines. it all happened so abruptly, i had to laugh. nothing is ever so terrible that some bold and amusing fellow can't trump it. beside the ruined cottage lay a piece of trench that was being swept with machine-gun fire from beyond. i jumped into it, and found it untenanted. immediately afterwards, i was joined by oskar kius and von wedelstadt. an orderly of wedelstadt's, the last man in, collapsed in mid-leap, and was dead, shot through one eye. when wedelstadt saw this last member of his company fall, he leaned his head against the wall of the trench and cried. he wouldn't get through the day either. below us was a strongly fortified position across a defile, with a couple of machine-gun nests on the slopes in front of it, one either side. our artillery had already steamrollered past; the enemy seemed to have recovered, and was shooting for all he was worth. we were perhaps five hundred yards away, and the spurts of fire buzzed across it like swarms of bees. after a short pause for breath, not many of us headed over the top towards the enemy. it was all or nothing. after a few paces, there was just me and one other man facing the left-hand machine-gun. i could clearly see the head under a flat helmet behind the earthworks, next to a fine spout of steam. i approached in very short steps, to leave him no time to aim, and ran in a zigzag, to elude rifle bullets. each time i hit the deck, my man offered me another clip of ammunition with which to carry the fight. 'cartridges! cartridges!' i turned round, and saw him lying on his side, twitching. from the left, where the resistance seemed to be weaker, some men came running up and were almost within hand-grenade range of the defenders. i covered the final yards and tumbled over some wire right into the trench. the british, under fire from all sides, abandoned their position and the machine-gun, and fled across to the other position. the machine-gun was half buried under an enormous pile of brass cartridges. it was steaming and red-hot. stretched out in front of it lay my adversary, an athletic-looking englishman with one eye put out by a shot to the head. the colossus with the big white eyeball against his smoke-charred skull looked gruesome. as i was almost fainting with thirst, i didn't hang around but went looking for water. a dugout entrance looked promising. i put my head round the corner, and saw a man sitting at the bottom, fitting bullets into a belt over his knee. he seemed to have no idea that the situation had been transformed. i calmly levelled my pistol at him, but instead of squeezing the trigger, as common sense dictated, i called out: 'come here, hands up!' he jumped up, looked at me wildly, and scampered into the back of the dugout. i threw a grenade after him. the dugout probably had a further entrance, because a soldier came round a traverse and observed laconically: 'he won't be doing no more shooting.' at last, i managed to find a canister of cooling-water. i gulped down the oily liquid, slushed some more into an english canteen, and handed it to comrades who suddenly filled the trench. as a curious footnote, i should like to mention that my first thought on forcing my way into this machine-gun nest concerned the cold from which i was suffering. all my life, i've had a tendency to throat inflammation; therefore, when i pressed my thumbs under my jaw, i was pleased to note that the vigorous exercise i'd taken had like a sauna helped me sweat off this latest bout. meanwhile, the right-hand machine-gun nest and the defenders of the defile sixty yards in front of us were still putting up a grim fight. the fellows really were giving it everything. we tried to aim their own machine-gun at them, but didn't manage that; instead, as i was trying that, a bullet whizzed past my head, brushed the jager lieutenant who was standing behind me, and finished up giving a private a very nastylooking wound in the thigh. a light machine-gun crew had better luck setting up their weapon on the edge of our little semi-circle and began raking the british from the flank. the troops attacking on the right took advantage of the distraction we provided and attacked the defile head-on, led by our still-intact 9th company under the command of lieutenant gipkens. and now from every shell-hole figures poured forth, swinging rifles and chasing with a fearsome hurrah towards the enemy position, from where defenders emerged in great numbers. they started running away with their arms aloft, to escape the initial fury of the first wave of shock troops, in particular that of lieutenant gipkens's orderly, who was rampaging like a berserker. i observed the confrontation, which took place just beyond our little earthworks, with rapt attention. here i saw that any defender who continued to empty his pistol into the bodies of the attackers four or five paces away could not expect any mercy when they were upon him. the fighter, who sees a bloody mist in front of his eyes as he attacks, doesn't want prisoners; he wants to kill. the captured defile was lined with weapons, uniforms and supplies. dotted all about were dead men in grey and brown uniforms, and groaning wounded. soldiers from all different regiments were standing together in a thick knot, all shouting and chattering at once. officers pointed out to them the continuation of the dip, and the heap of fighters, gradually, with surprising indifference, started moving forward again. the dip ran up into higher ground, where enemy columns appeared. occasionally stopping to shoot, we advanced until we were stopped by fierce fire. it was a sobering feeling, having the bullets smash into the ground round our heads. kius, who had turned up again, picked up a flattened bullet that had stopped inches from his nose. at that instant, a man far to the left of us was hit on the helmet, and the ringing echoed throughout the dip. we took advantage of a momentary lull in the firing to scoot into one of the not very many shell-holes there were hereabouts. there i met up with the other surviving officers of our battalion again, which was now being commanded by lieutenant lin-denberg, since lieutenant von solemacher had been fatally shot in the stomach during the storming of the embankment. on the right edge of the little valley, to the general amusement, lieutenant breyer who had been seconded to us from the 10th jagers was strolling about seemingly oblivious of the flying bullets, walking-stick in hand, and long huntsman's pipe in mouth, rifle slung over his shoulder, every bit as though out shooting rabbits. we told each other quickly what we'd been through, and handed round canteens and bars of chocolate, then, 'by popular demand', we resumed our advance. the machine-guns, apparently under threat from the flank, had been withdrawn. we had probably taken two or three miles back already. the dip was now swarming with attackers. as far back as the eye could see, they were advancing in open order, ranks and columns. it was unfortunate that we were so densely packed; how many we left behind on the attack we luckily had no way of knowing. without meeting any resistance, we climbed to the top. to our right, khaki-clad figures were spilling out of a trench. we followed the example given us by breyer, who, without taking the pipe out of his mouth, briefly stood still to loose off a round or two, and then marched on. the heights were fortified by an unevenly distributed series of dugouts. they were not defended; probably our approach had gone unnoticed by the men in them. in some cases, clouds of smoke showed that they had already been flushed out, elsewhere it was the men themselves that emerged, pale and with their hands in the air. they were made to hand over canteens and cigarettes, then they were pointed to our rear, in which direction they vanished with some alacrity. one young british soldier had already surrendered to me when he suddenly turned round and disappeared back in his dugout. then, as he stayed there, apparently ignoring my call to come out, we put an end to his dithering with a few hand-grenades, and went on. a narrow footpath disappeared over the crest of the hill. a signpost said it led to vraucourt. while the others were still busy looking over the dugouts, i passed the crest of the hill, with heins. down below lay the ruins of vraucourt. in front of it we could see the flashing muzzles of an artillery battery whose men took flight as our first wave approached and they came under fire. the occupants of a row of dugouts along the side of the path also ran away. i encountered one such as he was just about to leave the last one. [a little gnomic, but i think we are to understand ej shoots him. hence, below, 'my british soldier'. earlier editions were much more explicit on this point and others similar. ] along with a couple of men from my company who had hooked up with me, i proceeded down the path. to the right of it was a fortified line, from where we came under heavy fire. we retreated to the first of the dugouts, over which the bullets of both sides were soon flying back and forth. it looked as though it had been a base for messengers and bicyclists attached to the artillery. outside it lay my british soldier, little more than a boy, who had been hit in the temple. he lay there, looking quite relaxed. i forced myself to look closely at him. it wasn't a case of 'you or me' any more. i often thought back on him; and more with the passing of the years. the state, which relieves us of our responsibility, cannot take away our remorse; and we must exercise it. sorrow, regret, pursued me deep into my dreams. ignoring the crescendo of firing, we settled into the dugout, and helped ourselves to the supplies left behind, since our stomachs reminded us that we hadn't eaten anything since the beginning of the attack. we found ham, white bread, jam and a stone jar of ginger beer. after i had fortified myself, i sat down on an empty biscuit case, and browsed in some english newspapers, all of them full of invective against 'the huns'. after a while, we got bored, and scampered back to the beginning of the path, where a large number of men had by now assembled. from up there, we could see a battalion of the 164th already up alongside vrau-court to the left. we decided to storm the village, and hurried back down the path. just outside the village, we were stopped by our own artillery, which was pounding the same spot over and over again. a heavy shell landed plumb on the path, and killed four of our men. the others ran back. as i found out later, the artillery had been given orders to carry on firing at the furthest extent of their range. this incomprehensible order snatched the fruits of victory from our hands. grinding our teeth with fury, we had to make a halt before the wall of fire. to look for a chink, we moved right, where a company commander of the 76th hanseatic regiment was just giving orders for an attack on vraucourt. we joined in with gusto, but no sooner had we got into the village than we once more found ourselves under fire from our own artillery. three times we charged in, and three times we were forced back. cursing, we set up in a few craters, where a grass fire that the shelling had started, and that took off many wounded men, was extraordinarily unpleasant. also, english rifle bullets accounted for a few men, among them corporal grutzmacher from my own company. gradually, it got dark. except for occasional flare-ups, the rifle fire gradually died down. the tired fighters looked for somewhere to lie down. officers yelled their own names till they were hoarse, in an attempt to reassemble their companies. in the course of the last hour, a dozen men of the 7th company had grouped themselves round me. as it was starting to get cold, i led them back to the little dugout outside which my englishman lay, and sent them out to find coats and blankets from the fallen. once i had settled them all, i surrendered to my curiosity, and had a shufti at the artillery in the valley below. it was a bit of free enterprise, so i only took fusilier haller with me, who was adventurously inclined. rifles at the ready, we strode down to the valley, which was still taking a pounding from our artillery, and began by inspecting a dugout that had apparently only recently been abandoned by british officers. on a table sat a huge gramophone, which haller straight away set going. the cheery melody that purred off the roll had a ghostly effect on both of us. i threw the box on the ground where it scraped on a little longer, and then fell silent. the dugout was the height of luxury, even down to a little open fireplace with a mantelpiece with pipes and tobacco on it, and armchairs pulled round in a circle. merry old england! of course we didn't stint ourselves, but helped ourselves to whatever we fancied. i took a haversack, undergarments, a little flask full of whisky, a map case and some exquisite little items from roger & gallet, no doubt keepsakes from some romantic leave in paris. we could see that the inhabitants had left here in a hurry. an adjacent space harboured the kitchen, whose supplies we stared at in wonder. there was a whole crate of eggs, which we sucked on the spot, as eggs were little more than a word to us at this stage. on shelves along the walls were stacks of canned meat, tins of delicious english jam, and bottles of camp coffee, tomatoes and onions; everything to delight an epicure's heart. it was a scene i often came back to later, when we lay for weeks in trenches, on meagre bread rations, watery soup and thin nondescript jam. after that peek into the enviable circumstances of our foes, we left the dugout and investigated the valley, where we found two spanking-new artillery pieces. great piles of gleaming, freshly fired shell-casings indicated that they had had a thing or two to say in the course of our attack. i picked up a piece of chalk, and chalked up the number of my company. i hadn't yet learned that the victor's rights were accorded scant respect by the following units; each one wiped away the mark of their predecessor, and wrote up their own, till the last one was that of some digging outfit. then, with our artillery still slinging iron about our ears, we went back to the others. our front line, formed now from reserve troops, was a couple of hundred yards behind us. i posted two men outside the dugout, and told the others to keep their rifles handy. then, after arranging the reliefs, having a little more to eat, and jotting down the day's happenings, i went to sleep. at one o'clock in the morning, we were roused by hurrahs and brisk fire from our right. we grabbed our rifles, plunged out of the dugout, and took up positions in a large shell-hole. from ahead of us came a few scattered german soldiers, who received fire from our ranks. two of them remained on the path. alerted by this incident, we waited for the initial excitement behind us to die down, shouted out who we were, and returned to our own line. there we found the commander of the 2nd company, lieutenant kosik, with a wound in the arm and such a heavy cold he couldn't speak, with roughly sixty men of the 73 rd. since he had to go back to the dressing-station, i took over the command of his detachment, which included three officers. apart from them there were also the similarly thrown-together companies under gipkens and vorbeck. the rest of the night i spent with some ncos of the 2nd, in a little dugout where we all but froze to death. in the morning, i breakfasted off looted supplies, and dispatched runners to que-ant, to fetch coffee and food from the kitchens. our own artillery started its bloody cannonade again, its first good-morning to us being a direct hit in a crater that was housing four men from a machine-gun company. at first light, our group was reinforced by vice-sergeant-major kumpart and some men under him. no sooner had we managed to stamp the cold out of our chilly bones than i received orders to band together with what was left of the 76th and storm the vraucourt positions which we had already begun to take to the right of where we presently were. in thick morning fog, we moved off to the jumping-off position, a plateau south of ecoust, where many lay dead from the previous day. there was, as generally happens when orders are unclear, some argy-bargy among the officers, which was only settled when a machine-gun sent a spray of bullets whistling round our legs. everyone dived into the nearest crater, except for vice-sergeant-major kumpart, who was left lying on the ground, groaning. i hurried across to him with a medical orderly, to get him bandaged up. he had a bad wound in the knee. with a bent pair of tongs, we pulled out several fragments of bone from the wound. he died a few days later. i was more than usually upset, because kumpart had been my drill instructor three years previously, in recouvrence. in discussion with captain von ledebur, who was now in overall command of our assorted units, i spoke of the futility of a frontal attack, arguing that with part of the vraucourt position already in our hands, we could roll it up from the left with far fewer casualties. we decided to spare our men the ordeal, and the events were to prove us right. for the time being, we made ourselves comfortable in some craters on the plateau. by and by, the sun broke through, and british aeroplanes appeared, dusting our holes with machine-gun bullets, but they were driven away by our own planes. in the ecoust valley, we saw a battery drive up, a rare sight for an old front soldier; it was pretty promptly demolished too. a horse broke loose and galloped over the landscape; a pale roan, looking ghostly as it flew over the wide, lonely plains under the shifting and variable clouds of explosive. the enemy aeroplanes were not long gone before we came under fire. first, there were a few shrapnels, then lots of shells, big and small. they had us on a plate. timorous natures multiplied the effect of the fire by running mindlessly here and there, instead of getting their heads down in a crater somewhere and taking their punishment. you have to be a fatalist in such situations. i confirmed my adherence to that creed by sampling the delicious contents of a can of gooseberry jam i'd picked up from the british stores. and i pulled on a pair of scottish woollen socks i'd found in the dugout. gradually, the sun climbed higher. for some time, we'd been able to observe activity on the left of the vraucourt position. now we could see the arc and the white puffs of german stick-bombs. that was our cue. i gave the order to advance or, rather, i raised my right arm, and set off towards the enemy position. we got into their trench without encountering much in the way of fire, and jumped in, getting a joyous welcome from a storm troop of the 76th. we made slow progress, rolling up the line with hand-grenades, as we'd done at cambrai. unfortunately, it soon dawned on the enemy artillery that we were making remorseless progress along their line. a sharp bombardment with shrapnels and light shells just caught the back of those of us who were in the van, and did worse to reserve troops who were just running up towards the trench. we noticed the artillerymen could see what they were firing at. that gave us the gee-up we needed to finish off the job as soon as we could, and slip in under the fire. it appeared that the vraucourt position was still being built, because some stretches of trench were merely indicated by the removal of the turf. each time we came across a piece like that, we drew fire on us from several sides. we repaid the enemy in kind when it was their turn to dash across these death-strips, so that these undug places were before long thickly sown with the injured and dead. there was a wild hunt under clouds of shrapnel. we raced past stout figures, still warm, with strong knees under their short kilts, or we crawled past them. they were highlanders, and their way of fighting showed us that we were dealing with real men. when we had made a few hundred yards in this fashion, the ever-thicker hail of rifleand hand-grenades forced us to pause. it seemed the tide was about to turn. there was some fear in the air; i heard agitated voices. 'tommy's counter-attacking!' 'hold your ground!' ‘i want to check that we're in touch!' 'more hand-grenades to the front; hand-grenades, for christ's sake, hand-grenades!' 'watch out, lieutenant!' small reverses can be a serious matter in trench-fighting. a little troop makes its way to the van, shooting and throwing. as the grenade-throwers leap backwards and forwards to get out of the way of the lethal projectiles, they encounter the men coming up behind, who have got too near. the result is confusion. maybe some men will jump over the top, and get themselves picked off by snipers, which encourages the rest of the enemy like nobody's business. i managed to summon up a handful of men with whom i formed a focus of resistance behind a wide traverse. there was an open stretch of trench between the highlanders and ourselves. at a distance of only a few yards, we exchanged shots with our invisible opponents. it took pluck to hold your head up when the bullets were pinging around, and the sand was being sprayed out of the traverse. one man beside me from the 76th, a huge herculean dockworker from hamburg, fired off one shot after another, with a wild look on his face, not even thinking of cover, until he collapsed in a bloody heap. with the sound of a plank crashing down, a bullet had drilled through his forehead. he crumpled into a corner of the trench, half upright, with his head pressed against the trench wall. his blood poured on to the floor of the trench, as if tipped out of a bucket. his snore-like death-rattle resounded in lengthening intervals, and finally stopped altogether. i seized his rifle, and went on firing. at last there was a pause. two men who had been just ahead of us tried to make it back over the top. one toppled into the trench with a shot in the head, the other, shot in the belly, could only crawl into it. we hunkered down on the floor to wait, and smoked english cigarettes. from time to time, well-aimed rifle-grenades came flying over. we were able to see them, and take evasive action. the man with the wound in the belly, a very young lad, lay in amongst us, stretched out like a cat in the warm rays of the setting sun. he slipped into death with an almost childlike smile on his face. it was a sight that didn't oppress me, but left me with a fraternal feeling for the dying man. even the groaning of his comrade gradually fell silent. he died in our midst, shuddering. we made several attempts to work our way forward at the undug places, by crawling in among the bodies of the highlanders, but were driven back each time by sniper fire and rifle-grenades. almost every hit i saw was deadly. and so, the fore part of the trench was gradually filling up with the dead and wounded; but all the time reinforcements were arriving at the back. before long, every traverse had a light or heavy machine-gun behind it. with the help of these, we held the british end of the trench in check. i took my turn behind one of the lead-spitters, and fired till my index finger was black with smoke. it might have been here that i hit the scotsman who wrote me a nice letter from glasgow afterwards, with an exact description of the location where he got his wound. each time the cooling-water had evaporated, the canisters were passed around and topped up by a natural procedure that occasioned some crude humour. before long the weapons were red-hot. the sun was low over the horizon. it seemed as though the second day of battle was over. for the first time, i took a close look at my whereabouts, and sent back a report and sketch. five hundred paces from where we were, our trench intersected the vraucourt-mory road, which was camouflaged by lengths of cloth. on a slope behind it, enemy troops were hurrying across the field, with shells bursting all around them. the cloudless evening sky was crossed by a squadron of planes marked with our black, red and white. the last rays of the sun, which had already gone down, daubed them a shade of delicate pink, so they looked like flamingoes. we opened out our maps, and turned them face down, indicating to those above how far we had already pushed into the enemy line. a cool breeze gave promise of a bitter night. wrapped in my warm english coat, i leaned against the trench wall, chatting with little schultz, who had accompanied me on the patrol against the indians, and had turned up, in the timeless way of comrades, just where things were looking tough, toting four heavy machine-guns. men of all companies sat on the fire-steps, the young, keen faces under the steel helmets, eyeing the enemy lines. i saw them looming stock-still out of the dim of the trench, as though on turrets. their officers had fallen; it was by their own instincts that they were standing in exactly the right place now. we were already settling in for a night of what we have we hold. i laid my pistol and a dozen british duck's egg grenades next to me, and felt myself a match for all comers, even the most obdurate scotsman. then there came the sound of more hand-grenades from the right, while on the left german flares went up. out of the gloaming rose a faint distant cheer. it caught on. 'we've got round the back of them! we've got round the back of them!' in one of those moments of enthusiasm that precede great actions, all reached for their rifles, and stormed forward along the trench. a brief exchange of hand-grenades, and a bunch of highlanders were seen running for the road. now there was no stopping us. in spite of warning cries: 'watch out, the machine-gun on the left is still shooting!' we leaped out of the trench, and in no time had reached the road, which was swarming with disorientated highlanders. they were fleeing, but their own entanglement was in the way. briefly they paused, then they started running parallel to it. to our tumultuous shouts, they had to run the gauntlet. and that was the moment little schultz turned up with his machine-guns. the road presented an apocalyptic scene. death was reaping great swathes. the echoing cry of war, the intense fire of handguns, the dull force of bombs, all exhilarated the attackers and lamed the defenders. all that long day the battle had been smouldering away; now it caught and burned. our superiority grew with every second, because the narrow wedge of shock troops, now fanning out, was followed by broad sections of reinforcements. when i reached the road, i looked down on to it from a steep embankment. the scottish position was in a deepened ditch on the other side, it was some way below where we were. in those first few seconds, though, we were distracted from it; the vision of the highlanders charging along the wire entanglement was all we had eyes for. we threw ourselves down along the top of the embankment, and fired. it was one of those very rare moments when the opposition have been driven into an impasse, and you feel the burning desire to be everywhere at once. swearing and trying desperately to fix my jammed pistol, i felt someone striking me hard on the shoulder. i spun round and looked into the contorted face of little schultz. 'the bloody bastards are still firing!' i followed the direction he was pointing in, and finally spotted a line of figures in the little warren of trenches barely the other side of the road from us, some loading, some with their rifles to their cheeks, feverishly busy. from the right came the first hand-grenades, one tossing the body of a scotsman high up into the air. common sense advised staying where we were and disabling the enemy from there. he was an easy target. instead, i threw away my rifle and plunged between the lines with my bare fists. unluckily, i was still in my english coat, and my red-trimmed forage cap. there i was already, on the other side, and in enemy clothes! in the midst of the rush of victory, i felt a sharp jolt on the left side of my breast. night descended on me! i was finished. i supposed i'd been hit in the heart, but the prospect of death neither hurt nor frightened me. as i fell, i saw the smooth, white pebbles in the muddy road; their arrangement made sense, it was as necessary as that of the stars, and certainly great wisdom was hidden in it. that concerned me, and mattered more than the slaughter that was going on all round me. i fell to the ground, but, to my astonishment, i got to my feet again straight away. as i could see no hole in my tunic, i turned to the enemy once more. a soldier from my company ran up to me: 'lieutenant, sir, take your coat off!' and he ripped the dangerous garment from my shoulders. a new cheer rent the air. from the right, where all afternoon they had been working with hand-grenades, a number of germans now ran across the road in support, headed by a young officer in brown corduroy. it was kius. he was lucky enough to have been sent flying by a trip-wire in the very instant that an english machine-gun was about to fire its last rounds. the spray of bullets flew past him so close, admittedly, that a bullet ripped open a wallet he carried in his trouser pocket. the scots were now dealt with in moments. the area around the road was covered with the dead, while the few survivors were pursued by bullets. in the brief seconds of my unconsciousness, little schultz had also met his fate. as i was to hear later on, in that raving of his with which he had infected me, he had leaped into the trench to carry on rampaging there. when a scot, who had already taken off his belt to surrender, saw him charging towards him in that condition, he picked up a rifle off the ground, and brought him down with a mortal bullet. i stood, talking to kius, in the conquered stretch of trench, heavy with the fog of hand-grenades. we were talking about how we should take the field guns that must be very near by. suddenly he interrupted me: 'are you wounded? there's blood coming out under your tunic!' indeed, i could feel a curious lightness and a sensation of damp on my chest. we tore open my shirt, and saw that a bullet had passed through my chest directly under my iron cross, and diagonally over my heart. there was a little round entry wound on the right, and a slightly larger exit wound on the left. since i had been leaping from left to right across the road, at a sharp angle, there was no doubt but that one of our troops had taken me for a britisher, and shot at me from very close range. i strongly suspected it might be the man who had torn off my coat, and yet he had meant well by me, so to speak, and i had myself to blame. kius wrapped a bandage round me and with some difficulty prevailed upon me to leave the battlefield. we parted with a: 'see you in hanover!' i chose a fellow to accompany me, and returned to the fire-swept road, to pick up my map case, which my unknown helper had pulled off me along with the english coat. it contained my diary. then we walked back, through the trench we had fought so hard to take. our battle cries had been so loud that the enemy artillery had woken up. the area beyond the road and the trench itself was under an extraordinarily thick barrage. since the wound i had was quite sufficient for me, i made my way back cautiously, dodging from traverse to traverse. suddenly there was a deafening crash on the edge of the trench. i got a blow on the skull, and fell forward unconscious. when i came round, i was dangling head down over the breech of a heavy machine-gun, staring down at a pool of blood that was growing alarmingly fast on the floor of the trench. the blood was running down so unstoppably that i lost all hope. as my escort assured me he could see no brains, i took courage, picked myself up, and trotted on. that was what i got for being so foolish as to go into battle without a steel helmet. in spite of my twofold haemorrhage, i was terribly excited, and told everyone i passed in the trench that they should hurry to the line, and join the battle. before long, we were out of range of the light artillery, and could slow down, as the isolated heavy shells would only strike you if your number was up. in the sunken road leading from noreuil, i passed the brigade headquarters, had myself announced to major-general hobel, reported to him on our triumph, and asked him to send reinforcements to help the storm troops. the general told me i'd been reported dead the day before. it wasn't the first time that had happened in this war. perhaps someone had seen me collapse in the assault on the first trench where the shrapnel wounded haake. i learned further that our progress had been slower than had been hoped. evidently, we had been up against some elite troops of the british; our advance had gone through a series of strong-points. the railway embankment had barely been grazed by our heavy artillery; we had simply charged it, in defiance of all the rules of warfare. we had not managed to reach mory. perhaps we could have done, had our artillery not got in our way. the opposition had been reinforced overnight. everything that could be achieved by will-power had been, and perhaps more; the general conceded that. in noreuil, we passed a great stack of grenade boxes well ablaze. we hurried past with very mixed feelings. just after the village, a driver gave me a ride on his empty munitions lorry. i had a sharp difference of opinion with the officer in charge of the munitions column, who wanted to have two wounded britishers who had supported me for the latter part of the journey thrown off the lorry. the traffic on the noreuil-queant road was quite indescribable. no one who has not seen such a thing for himself can have any idea of the endless columns of vehicles and men that go towards making an offensive. beyond queant, the crush became mythical. i felt a momentary pang when passing little jeanne's house, which was reduced to its foundations. i sought help from one of the traffic officers, distinguished by white armbands, who gave me a place in a private car to the field hospital at sauchy-cauchy. we were regularly made to wait for up to half an hour while wagons and lorries got disentangled on the road. even though the doctors in the field hospital were feverishly busy, the surgeon found time to be surprised at the luck i'd had with my injuries. the wound to my head also had entry and exit wounds, and the skull had not been fractured. far more painful than the wounds, which to me had felt like dull blows, was the treatment i received from a hospital assistant, once the doctor had stylishly pushed a probe through both wounds. that treatment consisted of scraping the edges of the wound to my head with a blunt blade and no soap. after an excellent night's sleep, i was driven the following morning to the casualty clearing-station at cantin, where i was delighted to see sprenger, whom i hadn't seen since the beginning of the offensive. he had a bullet wound to the thigh. i also found my baggage waiting for me further proof, if proof were needed, of vinke's dependability. he had, once we had lost sight of one another, been wounded in the attack on the railway embankment. before taking himself to the field hospital, and thence back to his farm in westphalia, he would not rest until he knew that the things of mine that were in his care were safely in my possession. that was him all over; not so much a servant as my older comrade. often enough, when rations were meagre, i would find a piece of butter waiting at my place at table, 'from a member of the company who wishes to remain nameless', though it was never hard to guess who. he was no adventurer, like haller, but he followed me into battle like the squires of yore, and he thought his responsibility lay in nothing less than the care of my person. long after the war was over, he wrote to me for a photograph 'so that i can tell the grandchildren about my lieutenant'. it is to him that i owe an insight into the stolidity and decency of the common people, of the character of the territorial soldier. after a brief stay in the bavarian field hospital at montigny, i was put on a hospital train in douai and taken to berlin. there, this sixth double-wound of mine healed in a fortnight, just as well as all its predecessors had. the only unpleasant after-effect was an incessant ringing in my ears. as the weeks passed, it grew fainter and finally went away altogether. it wasn't until i was back in hanover that i heard that, along with many other friends and acquaintances, little schultz had fallen in the fighting. kius had got away with a harmless abdominal wound. at the same time, his camera had been broken, and a number of photographs of our attack on the railway embankment were lost. anyone who witnessed the celebration of our reunion in a little bar in hanover, at which my brother with his stiff arm and bachmann with a stiff knee also attended, would hardly have thought that barely a fortnight previously we had all been listening to other music than the merry popping of champagne corks. even so, there was a shadow over those days, because before long we understood from the news reports that the offensive had bogged down, and that, in strategic terms, it had failed. this was confirmed for me by the french and british newspapers i read in cafes in berlin. the great battle was a turning-point for me, and not merely because from then on i thought it possible that we might actually lose the war. the incredible massing of forces in the hour of destiny, to fight for a distant future, and the violence it so surprisingly, stunningly unleashed, had taken me for the first time into the depths of something that was more than mere personal experience. that out the white ribbon of road from the surrounding darkness. the various whinings of the heavy bombs were engulfed by the rolling blasts of their detonation. then searchlights probed the skies for the treacherous night birds, shrapnels exploded like toys, and tracer shells loped after one another in long chains like fiery wolves. a persistent smell of carrion hung over the conquered territory, sometimes unbearable, sometimes not so bad, but always nettling the senses like an embassy from another country. 'eau d'offensive,' i heard the voice of an old veteran next to me, as we seemed to have been going down an avenue lined with mass graves for the past several minutes. from achiet-le-grand, we marched along the railway line leading to bapaume, and then went cross-country to our position. the shelling was pretty lively. when we paused to rest once, a couple of medium shells landed very close. the memory of that unforgettable night of terror on 19 march assailed us. we were approaching the front line when we marched past a rowdy company that had obviously just been relieved, and was standing by; a few dozen shrapnels soon shut them up. with a hail of obscenities, my men dived into the nearest trench. a couple weren't so lucky, and needed to go back to the field dressing-station to get themselves patched up. at three o'clock, completely exhausted, i pitched up at my dugout, whose cramped dimensions promised a rather uncomfortable stay. the reddish light of a candle was burning in a thick fug. i tripped over a tangled mass of legs, and the magic word 'relief!' brought some animation to the place. from an oven-shaped hole came a series of oaths, and then by and by there appeared an unshaven face, a pair of tarnished shoulder-pieces, an ancient uniform, and two clumps of clay, which presumably contained boots. we sat down at the rickety table and sorted out the hand-over, each trying to do the other out of a dozen iron rations and a couple of flare pistols. then my predecessor was disgorged through the narrow entryway, predicting that the rotten hole wouldn't last another three days. i remained behind, the newly promoted captain of a sector. the position, when i came to inspect it the following morning, was not a gladsome sight. no sooner had i left the dugout than i saw two bloodied coffee-carriers coming towards me, who had been hit by shrapnel in the communication trench. a few steps along, and fusilier ahrens reported himself hit by a ricochet and unfit to continue. we had the village of bucquoy ahead of us and puisieux-au-mont at our backs. the company was without support in a shallow position, separated from our neighbours on the right, the 76th infantry, by a wide untenanted gap. the left edge of our sector was formed by a piece of splintered woodland, known as copse 125. in compliance with orders, no deep dugouts had been excavated. we were not to dig in, but remain on the offensive. we didn't even have any wire entanglements in front of the line. the men sheltered by twos in little holes in the ground with so-called tin siegfrieds in front of them curved ovals of corrugated metal about three feet high, which we put in front of the tight oven-shaped hide-outs. since my own dugout was behind another sector, i started by looking for new accommodation. a hut-like construction in a collapsed bit of trench looked like just the thing to me, once i had made it into a defensible proposition by hauling together various murderous weapons. there, with my orderlies, i led a hermit's life in the open, only occasionally bothered by runners or messengers who brought their pieces of bumf even into this secluded spot. i would shake my head as i read, between the explosions of shells, of how, among other less-than-earth-shattering items, the local commandant of x had lost his black-and-brown terrier who answered to the name of zippi; that is, if i didn't happen to be reading about a suit for maintenance brought by a serving girl, makeben, against one corporal meyer. sketches and frequent announcements kept us continually on the hop. but to get back to my refuge, which i named 'casa wahnfried'. my only worry was its relative porosity; though it was secure enough, so long as nothing landed on top of it. at any rate, i was comforted by the thought that i was no better off than my men. at lunchtime, haller would lay a blanket in a huge crater, which we had made a path to, for me to use as a suntrap. there, i would work on my tan, disturbed, on occasion, by shells or whizzing fragments of metal coming too near. the nights brought heavy bombardments like swift, devastating summer thunderstorms. i would lie on my bunk on a mattress of fresh grass, and listen, with a strange and quite unjustified feeling of security, to the explosions all around that sent the sand trickling out of the walls. or i would walk out to the fire-step to take in the mournful nocturnal scene, and the strange contrast between its heaviness and the fiery spectacle whose dance-floor it was. at such moments, there crept over me a mood i hadn't known before. a profound reorientation, a reaction to so much time spent so intensely, on the edge. the seasons followed one another, it was winter and then it was summer again, but it was still war. i felt i had got tired, and used to the aspect of war, but it was from this familiarity that i observed what was in front of me in a new and subdued light. things were less dazzlingly distinct. and i felt that the purpose with which i had gone out to fight had been used up, and no longer held. the war posed new, deeper puzzles. it was a strange time altogether. the front line had relatively little to suffer from the enemy bombardment, which was just as well, because it could not have held if it had. it was principally puisieux and the hollows around that were targets for the bombardments that in the evenings worked themselves up into extraordinary ferocity. bringing food and relieving other units were both greatly complicated. now here, now there, a chance hit would knock out a link of our chain. on 14 june, i was relieved at two in the morning by kius, who like me had come back and was now commanding the 2nd company. we spent our rest period at the railway embankment at achiet-le-grand, in barracks and shelters in the lee of its protective bulk. the british often sent heavy low-trajectory shells our way. rackebrand, a sergeant with the 3rd company, fell victim to one such. he was killed by a shard that drilled through the wall of the flimsy hut that he had set up as a company office on top of the embankment. a few days before that, there had been a real catastrophe. a bomber pilot had dropped a bomb right on top of the 76th regimental band as it was playing, surrounded by listeners. among its victims were many men from our regiment. in the vicinity of the embankment, looking like stranded hulls, were many shot-up tanks, which i would inspect closely in the course of my peregrinations. also, i would have my company cluster round them to study methods of combating them, their tactics and their weak points these ever-more commonly seen elephants of the technical war. they carried names and emblems and designs that were variously ironic, menacing or lucky; there was the clover leaf and the pig (for luck), and the white death's head. one was distinguished by a gallows with a noose dangling from it; that one was called 'judge jeffries'. all of them were in a bad way. to be in the narrow turret of such a tank, going forward, with its tangle of rods and wires and poles, must have been extremely unpleasant as these colossuses, in efforts to outmanoeuvre the artillery, were forced to zigzag over the country like huge helpless beetles. i felt keen sympathy for the men in those fiery furnaces. also, the countryside was dotted about with the skeletal wreckage of downed aeroplanes, an indication that machines were playing an ever greater part on the battlefield. one afternoon, not far from us, the huge white bell of a parachute came down, as a pilot leaped from his burning aeroplane. on the morning of 18 june, on account of the volatile situation, the 7th was obliged to go back to puisieux ahead of time, to be at the disposal of the commanding officer of the line troops for carrying parties and other purposes. we moved into shelters and basements facing out towards bucquoy. just as we arrived there, a group of heavy shells came down in the surrounding gardens. even so, i wasn't deterred from taking my breakfast in a little gazebo in front of my shelter. after a while there was another one came whistling across. i dropped flat on the ground. flames spurted beside me. an ambulanceman in my company by the name of kenziora, who was just bringing several cooking pans full of water, fell, hit in the stomach. i ran over to him, and with the help of a signalman, dragged him into the dressing-station, whose entrance, as luck would have it, was just opposite the place where the shell burst. 'well, did you at least have a proper breakfast inside you?' asked doctor koppen, a real old sawbones, who had had me under him once or twice in his time, as he bandaged up the big wound in his belly. 'yes, i did, a big dixie full of noodles!' whimpered the unhappy fellow, perhaps catching a ray of hope. 'well, there you are then,' koppen said reassuringly, before turning aside to me and nodding at me with a grave expression on his face. but gravely wounded men have very acute instincts. suddenly the man groaned, and large beads of sweat stood out on his forehead: 'that shell's done for me, i can feel it.' but in spite of his prediction, i was able to shake his hand six months later, when the regiment returned to hanover. in the afternoon, i took a solitary walk through the devastated village of puisieux. it had already received a hammering in the course of the battles of the somme. the craters and ruins had been overgrown with thick grass, dotted about here and there with the gleaming white plates of elderflower, which loves ruins. numerous fresh explosions had ripped holes in the cover, and exposed the soil all over again. the main village street was lined with the debris of our recent stalled advance. shot-up wagons, discarded munitions, rusty pistols and the outlines of half-decomposed horses, seen through fizzing clouds of dazzling flies, commented on the nullity of everything in battle. all that was left of the church standing on the highest spot of the village was a wretched heap of stones. while i picked a bunch of half-wild roses, landing shells reminded me to be careful in this place where death danced. a few days later, we relieved the 9th company in the line of resistance, some five hundred yards behind the front. in the process, we of the 7th suffered three men wounded. the following morning, just by my dugout, captain von ledebur was wounded in the foot by a shrapnel ball. even though he had galloping consumption, he felt the war was his vocation. it was his fate to succumb to that slight wound. he died soon after, in hospital. on the 28th, the commander of my ration party, sergeant gruner, was hit by a shell splinter. that was our ninth casualty in a short space of time. following a week on the front line, we were again moved back to the resistance line, since the battalion which was to relieve us was almost wiped out by spanish influenza. several men a day reported sick in our company as well. in the division next to ours, the epidemic raged to such an extent that an enemy airman dropped leaflets promising that the british would come and relieve them, if the unit weren't withdrawn. but we learned that the sickness was also spreading among the enemy; even though we, with our poor rations, were more prone to it. young men in particular sometimes died overnight. and all the time we were to be battle-ready, as there was a continuous cloud of black smoke hanging over copse 125 at all times, as over a witches' cauldron. the shelling was so intense there, that on days of no wind the explosive vapours were strong enough to poison part of the 6th company. we had to go down into the shelters, like divers with oxygen masks, to drag the unconscious men back to the surface. their faces were cherry-red, and their breath came in nightmarish gasps. one afternoon, stepping out of my sector, i came upon several half-buried boxes of british munitions. to study the construction of a rifle-grenade, i unscrewed one, and took out the detonator. something was left behind, which i took to be the percussion cap. however, when i tried to unpick it with my nail, it turned out to be a second detonator, which exploded with a loud bang, took off the tip of my left index finger, and gave me several bleeding wounds in the face. that same evening, as i was standing talking to lieutenant sprenger on top of my dugout, a heavy shell hit near us. we disagreed about the distance, sprenger reckoning it was about ten paces off, i nearer thirty. to see how trustworthy my estimates might be in this respect, i stepped it out, and found the crater -of a size to accord with an unpleasant manufacture to be twenty-five yards away. the 20th of july found us back in puisieux. i spent all afternoon standing on a piece of crumbling wall, and watched the condition of the line, which looked rather ominous to me. occasional details i wrote down in my notebook. copse 125 was regularly sheeted in thick smoke rising from the massive explosions, under red and green flares that rose and fell. if the artillery was silent for any time, you could hear the tactactac of machine-guns, and the dull crack of hand-grenades going off in the distance. from where i stood, the whole thing looked almost like a game. it lacked the brutish scale of a big battle, but one could feel the tenacious wrestling for all that. the copse was like a festering wound that both sides nagged and worried at. both sets of artillery toyed with it, like a couple of beasts of prey, wrangling over a victim; they shredded its trees and flicked them into the air. it never had very large numbers of men in it, but it could be defended, and, as it was so conspicuous in that wasteland all around, it was always available as an instance of the way that even the most gigantic confrontation of forces is nothing but a mechanism by which today, as in every era throughout history, a man's weight is taken. towards evening, i was summoned to the commander of the troops in reserve, where i was told that the enemy had managed to penetrate the trench network on our left flank. in order to clear a little space in front of us again, the instructions were that lieutenant petersen with the storm company was to clear the hedge trench, while i with my men cleared the communication trench that ran in a hollow parallel to it. we set out at daybreak, but immediately came under such strong infantry fire that we postponed our mission. i ordered elbinger alley to be occupied, and caught up on some sleep in a huge cavern of a dugout. at eleven in the morning i was woken up by cracks of hand-grenades coming from our left, where we had put up a barricade. i hurried over, and found the usual scene of close-quarters fighting. white hand-grenade clouds whirling over the barricade, machine-guns on either side set back a few traverses clattering away at each other. and in between men, leaping forward and darting back. the minor essay by the british had already been repulsed, but it had cost us a man lying behind the barricade, shredded by hand-grenade splinters. in the evening i received orders to lead the company back to puisieux, and when i arrived there i found i had instructions to go on a small-scale initiative with two sections of men the next morning. the purpose was to roll up the so-called valley trench from red point k to red point z, and this was to happen at three-forty in the morning, following a five-minute artillery and mortar barrage. unfortunately, this enterprise, for which lieutenant voigt would lead a storm troop, and i a couple of platoons, had clearly been dreamed up from the map, because the valley trench, as its name suggested, followed the lowest line, and could be seen into from many vantagepoints from top to bottom. i wasn't at all happy with the whole thing, or at least i wrote in my diary, after the order: 'well, with luck i'll be able to describe it tomorrow. on account of pressure of time, i must reserve my opinion of the order i'm sitting in the bunker in f sector, it's midnight, and i'm being woken at 3.' still, orders are orders, and so three-forty found voigt and me with our men all ready in the breaking light at the jumping-off point by elbinger alley. we were in a knee-deep trench from which we could look down into the valley, which began to fill at the agreed hour with smoke and flames. a large splinter that flew up from this seething mass to our position hurt fusilier klaves in the hand. i had the same spectacle before me that i had had so often already before attacks: the image of a group of men waiting in poor light, inclining their heads each time the guns fall short, or else prostrating themselves on the ground, all the while excitement steadily mounts a scene that grips the spirit like some terrible silent ceremonial that portends human sacrifice. we jumped off precisely on time, and were favoured by the dense pall of smoke that the bombardment had cast over the valley trench. shortly before z, we encountered resistance, and forced our way through with hand-grenades. as we had reached our objective, and were not keen to continue fighting, we erected a barricade and left behind a platoon with a machine-gun. the only satisfaction i took from the whole event was from the way the storm troops comported themselves they strongly reminded me of old simplicissimus. they were a new breed of fighter so far as i was concerned, the volunteers of 1918: still raw, but instinctively brave. those young dashers with long hair and puttees would start quarrelling among themselves twenty yards in front of the enemy because one had called the other a scaredy-cat, and yet they all swore like troopers and threw their weight around no end. 'christ, we're not all such funks as you are!' yelled one, and rolled up another fifty yards of trench single-handed. the platoon i'd left at the barricade came back in the afternoon. they had taken casualties, and not been able to hang on any longer. i must confess, i'd already given them up for lost, and was amazed that anyone could make it back alive down the long line of the valley trench in daylight. in spite of that, and various other counter-punches, the enemy was well entrenched in the left flank of our front line, and in the barricaded communications trenches, and threatening our line of resistance. this kind of semi-detached arrangement, with no no man's land dividing us, felt distinctly uncomfortable in the long run; we had a clear sense of not being safe even in our own lines. on 24 july, i went off to reconnoitre the new c section of the line of resistance, which i was to take over on the following day. i had the company commander, lieutenant gipkens, show me the barricade along the hedge trench, which was unusual inasmuch as on the british side it comprised a disabled tank, which had been integrated into the fortifications like a strongpoint. to take in the details, we sat down on a little seat cut into the traverse. as we were talking away, i was suddenly grabbed and pulled down. the next second, a bullet struck the sand where i had been sitting. by a lucky chance, gipkens had noticed a rifle barrel slowly being poked through a loophole in the block only forty paces away. his sharp painter's eyes had saved my life, because at that range i was a sitting duck. we had happened to sit down in the short stretch between the lines, and were as visible to the british sentry as if we'd been facing him across a table. gipkens had acted promptly and sensibly. when i came to analyse the scene later, i wondered whether i might not have frozen at the sight of the rifle. i was told that this harmless-looking place had seen three men of the 9th company shot in the head; it was a bad place. in the afternoon, a not especially heavy burst of shelling lured me out of my coal-hole, where i had just been sitting and reading comfortably over a cup of coffee. in front of us, the signals for a barrage were going up in monotonous succession. wounded men hobbling back told us that the british had entered the resistance line in b and c sectors, and were approaching it in a sector. straight afterwards, we had the bad news that lieutenants vor-beck and grieshaber had been killed. they had fallen in defence of their sectors, and lieutenant kastner was badly wounded. he had had a near miss only a few days previously, when his right nipple had been sheared off by a bullet. it was as neatly done as if by a scalpel, and he suffered no other injury. at eight o'clock sprenger, who was in temporary command of the 5 th, came into my dugout with a splinter in his back, took a pull at a bottle to 'steady his nerves', and exited with the words: 'go back, go back, don rodrigo.' his friend domeyer followed shortly afterwards with a bleeding hand. his parting words were a little less literary. the following morning, we reoccupied c sector, which had once more been cleared of the enemy. we had pioneers there, boje and kius with part of the 2nd, and gipkens with what was left of the 9th. there were eight dead germans in the trench, and two british, with the badge on their caps reading 'south africa -otago rifles'. hand-grenades had made a mess of all of them. their contorted faces were horribly mutilated. i gave instructions for the block to be manned and the trench to be tidied up. at a quarter to twelve, our artillery opened fire rather wildly on the positions in front of us, doing more damage to us than they did to the british. shortly afterwards tragedy struck. the cry 'stretcher-bearers!' was passed along the line from the left. hurrying to the spot, i found the scattered remnants of my best platoon sergeant at the barricade in the hedge trench. he had taken a direct hit from our own shell amidships. tatters of his uniform and underwear, ripped away by the force of the explosion, were spread out across the ragged branches of the hawthorn hedge that gave the trench its name. i had a tarpaulin draped over him, to spare us the sight. immediately afterwards, on the same spot, three more men were hurt. lance-corporal ehlers, deafened by the air pressure, writhed on the ground. another man had both hands severed at the wrist. he tottered back, his arms laid across the shoulders of a stretcher-bearer. the little procession reminded me of a heroic relief, the helper was walking stooped, while the wounded man struggled to remain upright a young fellow, with black hair and a fine, determined, and now marmoreally pale face. i sent one runner after another to headquarters, demanding that the shelling either stop forthwith, or else that artillery officers present themselves in the line. instead of any form of reply, we had a still-heavier mortar, which turned the line into a complete shambles. at seven-fifteen, i received very belated orders, from which i understood that at seventhirty a strong bombardment would commence, and that at eight o'clock two sections of the storm company under lieutenant voigt were to break out across the barricade in the hedge trench. they were to roll up the trench as far as point a, and meet up with a shock troop that would proceed along a parallel line to the right of them. two sections of my company were to follow on behind and occupy the trench. i quickly issued the necessary commands the artillery barrage was already beginning picked out the two sections, and had a brief discussion with voigt, who set out a few minutes afterwards, as per the instructions i'd received. as i thought of the whole business as a kind of glorified evening constitutional, with no further consequences, i strolled behind my two sections, in a cap, and with a stick-bomb under my arm. at the moment of the attack, announced by clouds of explosions, every rifle anywhere near was directed at the hedge trench. we darted forward from traverse to traverse, and made good headway. the british retreated to a line behind, leaving one casualty. to explain what happened next, i must remind the reader that we were not following the line of a trench, but one of many communication lines, where the british, or rather the new zealanders, had established a foothold. (we were fighting, as i learned after the war, from letters addressed to me from the antipodes, against a contingent from new zealand.) this communications line, the so-called hedge trench, led along a ridge; on the left and below was the valley trench. the valley trench, which i had rolled up with voigt on 22 july, had been abandoned, as described, by the section we had left there; it was now once more occupied, or at least controlled, by the new zealanders. the two lines were connected by various cross trenches; from the lower parts of the hedge trench, we were not able to see down into the valley trench. i was following the section as it worked its way forward, feeling quite chipper, for as yet all i had seen of the enemy had been several figures fleeing over the top. ahead of me, nco meier was bringing up the rear of the section, and, ahead of him, i could sometimes see, depending on the twists and turns of the trench, little wilzek from my own company. and so we passed a narrow sap, which, climbing up out of the valley, connected with the hedge trench, like a kind of tributary. in between its two separate entrances, there was a sort of delta, a mound of earth perhaps five paces long, which had been left to stand. i had just passed the first juncture, meier was approaching the second. in trench-fighting, with forks of this kind, one usually posts two men as a sentry to guard the rear. this voigt had either forgotten to do, or in his haste he had overlooked the sap altogether. in any case, i now heard the nco ahead of me shout out in alarm, and saw him raise his rifle and fire just past my head into the second fork of the sap. since the block of earth meant i couldn't see into it, i was mystified by this, but all it took was a step back for me to be able to look down the first fork. what i saw was enough to freeze my blood, for there was a strongly built new zealander practically near enough to touch. at the same time i heard the shouts of still-unseen attackers running up from the valley to cut us off. the new zealander who had, as if by magic, appeared at our rear, and whom i stood gawping at helplessly, was unhappily for him unaware of my being there. all his attention was on the nco, to whose shot he replied with a hand-grenade. i watched him detach one of his lemon-shaped bombs to throw at meier, who tried to escape his death by charging forward. at the same time, i took out the stick-bomb, which was the only weapon i had on me, and didn't so much throw it as lob it at the feet of the new zealander in a short arc. i wasn't there to see him go up, because it was the last possible moment in which i had any chance of being able to make it back. so i dashed back, and just caught a glimpse of little wilzek, who had been sharp and calm enough to duck under the new zealander's grenade, dash past meier and follow me. one steel egg that was hurled in his direction ripped his belt and the seat of his trousers, but did no further damage. that was how tight the noose was that had been drawn around us, leaving voigt and the other forty attackers surrounded and doomed. without guessing anything of the strange event i had witnessed, they felt pressure behind them pushing them to their deaths. shouts and numerous explosions suggested that they were selling their lives dearly. to come to their aid, i led cadet mohrmann's section forward along hedge trench. we were forced to pause by a rain of stokes bombs. one splinter struck me in the chest, but was stopped by the clasp of my braces. a vehement artillery bombardment now began. all around geysers of earth spouted up out of various-coloured steam, and the dull thump of shells bursting deep in the earth mingled with a high-pitched metallic yowl that sounded like a circular saw. blocks of iron burst with incredible vehemence, interspersed with the singing and flickering of clouds of splinters. as there was every prospect of facing an attack, i put on one of the steel helmets i saw lying around, and hurried back to the firing trench with a few companions. figures surfaced in front of us. we laid ourselves on the mangled trench walls and fired away. next to me, a very young soldier was fumbling with the trigger of his machine-gun, and not getting off a single shot, so i tore the thing from him. i fired some shots, but then as in a nightmare the thing failed again; luckily, though, the attackers vanished into trenches and craters as the artillery heated up. as for our own it seemed to be directed equally against both sides. as i went into my bunker, followed by an orderly, something struck the trench wall between us, ripping the helmet from my head and hurling it away into the distance. i thought i had caught a whole load of shrapnel, and lay half numbed in my foxhole, whose rim a moment later was struck by a shell. the little space was filled with thick smoke and a long splinter shattered a jar of gherkins at my feet. so as not to be crushed to death, i crawled back out into the trench, and from below urged the two orderlies and my batman to be alert. it was a grim half-hour; the already reduced company was further mangled. after the artillery fire had abated, i walked the line, inspected the damage, and established that we were down to fifteen men. the long sector could not be held by so few. therefore i assigned mohrmann and three men to defend the barricade, and with the rest formed a hedgehog in a deep crater behind the back wall. from there, we could take a hand in the fight for the barricade, or, if the enemy succeeded in breaking into our line, attack him with hand-grenades from above. in the event, further action was limited to a few light mortars and rifle-grenades. on 27 july, we were relieved by a company of the 164th. we were utterly exhausted. the commander of the relieving company was badly wounded on the way out; a few days later, my bunker was hit, and his successor buried. we all sighed with relief when we finally turned our backs on puisieux and the storm of steel of the finale. their advances showed how much the enemy's strength was increasing, supplemented by drafts from every corner of the earth. we had fewer men to set against them, many were little more than boys, and we were short of equipment and training. it was all we could do to plug gaps with our bodies as the tide flooded in. there wasn't the wherewithal for great counter-attacks like cambrai any more. later on, when i thought of the way the new zealanders triumphantly ran up and forced our sections into that deadly bottleneck, it struck me that that was exactly what had happened on 2 december 1917 at cambrai, but with roles reversed. we had looked into a mirror. my last assault on 30 july 1918, we moved into rest quarters in sauchy-lestree, a delightful spot in the artois, surrounded by water. a few days later, we marched further back to escaudoeuvres, a quiet working-class suburb, cast out, as it were, by the rather fancier cambrai. i occupied the best bedroom of a northern french working-class family, on the rue-des-bouchers. the usual massive bed was the principal item of furniture, a hearth with red and blue glass vases on the mantelpiece, a round table, chairs, and a few colour prints on the walls: such things as 'vive la classe' and 'souvenir de premiere communion'. a few postcards completed the decor. the view out of the window was of a graveyard. the bright full-moon nights favoured the visitations of enemy aircraft, which gave us an appreciation of the growing superiority they enjoyed in terms of weaponry. every night, several squadrons of bombers floated up and dropped bombs of extraordinary destructiveness on cambrai and its suburbs. what bothered me throughout was less the mosquito-like drone of the engines and the clumps of echoing explosions than the timorous scuttling downstairs of my hosts. the day before my arrival, admittedly, a bomb had gone off just outside the window, which had hurled the master of the house, who had been sleeping in my bed, clear across the room, broken off one bedpost, and riddled the walls. it was, perversely, this circumstance that gave me a feeling of security, because i did at least partly subscribe to the old warrior's superstition that the safest place to be is in a new crater. after one day of rest, the old training regimen set in again. drill, lessons, roll-calls, discussions and inspections filled a great part of the day. we took up an entire morning agreeing on a verdict in a court of honour. for a while we were given nothing to eat in the evenings except cucumbers, which the men dubbed 'vegetarian sausages'. most of all, i was busy with the training of a small shock troop, since i had come to understand in the course of the last few engagements that there was an increasing rearrangement of our fighting strength in progress. to make an actual breach or advance, there was now only a very limited number of men on whom one might rely, who had developed into a particularly resilient body of fighters, whereas the bulk of the men were at best fit to lend support. given these circumstances, it might be better to be at the head of a small and determined group than the commander of an uncertain company. i spent my free time reading, swimming, shooting and riding. some afternoons, i would fire over a hundred bullets in target-practice at tin cans and bottles. when i rode out, i would come upon propaganda leaflets which the enemy had taken to dropping in ever greater numbers as morale bombs. they were made up of political and military whisperings, and glowing accounts of the wonderful life to be had in british prisonerof-war camps. 'and just remember,' one of them said, 'it's not that hard to lose your way at night, on your way back from getting food, or a digging detail!' another reproduced the text of schiller's poem, 'free britannia'. these leaflets were sent up on hot-air balloons, and were carried by favourable winds across the lines; they were bundled up with thread, and set adrift by a timed fuse after floating for a certain period of time. a reward of thirty pfennigs apiece showed that the high command did not underestimate the threat they posed. the costs were levied on the population of the occupied territory. one afternoon, i got on a bicycle and pedalled into cambrai. the dear old place was in a dire state. the shops and cafes were closed down; the streets seemed dead, in spite of the field-grey waves that kept washing through them. i found m. and mme plancot, who had entertained me so kindly a year ago, delighted to see me again. they told me that things in the town had got worse in every respect. most of all, they complained about the frequent air attacks, which compelled them to rush up and down stairs, often several times a night, arguing whether it was better to be killed outright by a bomb in their first basement, or buried alive in the second. i felt very sorry for these old people with their worried expressions. a few weeks later, when the guns began to speak, they were finally forced to leave the house they had spent their lives in. at eleven o'clock on 23 august, i had just dropped off to sleep when i was woken by loud knocking on the door. an orderly had come with marching orders. all day, the rolling and stamping of unusually heavy artillery fire had blown across from the front, and had reminded us on the exercise grounds, over our lunch and over games of cards, not to be too hopeful as far as the further duration of this rest period was concerned. we had coined an onomatopoeic front-line expression for this distant sound of cannons: 'it's whumping.' we hurriedly got packed up and were on the road to cambrai during a cloudburst. we arrived at our destination of marquion a little before five in the morning. the company was placed in a large yard enclosed by the ruins of farm outbuildings, and told to take shelter wherever we could. with my one company officer, lieutenant schrader, i crept into a little brick building, which as its acrid aroma indicated, must have served as a goat-shed in peacetime, though our immediate predecessors were several large rats. in the afternoon there was an officers' meeting, at which we were told that the following night we were to take up a position of readiness to the right of the main cambrai-bapaume road, not far from beugny. we were warned of the danger from a new breed of rapid, agile tanks. i paraded my company in battle order in a small apple orchard. standing under an apple tree, i addressed a few words to the men, who were drawn up in front of me in a horseshoe arrangement. they looked serious and manly. there wasn't much to say. in the course of the last few days, and with a kind of sweepingness that is only to be explained by the fact that an army is not only men under arms, but also men fused with a sense of a common purpose, probably every one of them had come to understand that we were on our uppers. with every attack, the enemy came forward with more powerful means; his blows were swifter and more devastating. everyone knew we could no longer win. but we would stand firm. on a table improvised from a wheelbarrow and a door, schrader and i ate our supper and shared a bottle of wine in the open. then we bedded down in our goat-shed until two in the morning, when the sentry announced that the trucks were waiting in the market-place. in spectral light, we clattered through the war-torn country of last year's cambrai battles, wending our way through eerily devastated villages, along roads lined with walls of rubble. just before beugny, we were unloaded and led to our position. the battalion occupied a hollow on the beugny-vaux road. in the morning, an orderly brought instructions for the company to advance to the fremicourt-vaux road. this pattern of small advances afforded me the certainty that we were in for some action before nightfall. i led my three platoons strung out in file across the terrain, with circling aeroplanes bombing and strafing overhead. when we reached our objective, we dispersed into shell-holes and dugouts, as occasional shells came lobbing over the road. i felt so bad that day that i lay down in a little piece of trench and fell asleep right away. when i woke up, i read a few pages of tristram shandy, which i had with me in my map case, and so, apathetically, like an invalid, i spent the sunny afternoon. at six-fifteen, a dispatch-rider summoned the company commanders to captain von weyhe. 'i have some serious news for you. we are going on the offensive. after half an hour's artillery preparation, the battalion will advance at seven o'clock tonight from the western edge of favreuil, and storm the enemy lines. you are to march on the church tower at sapignies.' after a little further discussion, and handshakes all round, we raced back to our companies, as the bombardment was to start in barely ten minutes' time, and we still had quite a stretch ahead of us. i informed my platoon commanders, and had the men fall in. 'by sections in single file twenty yards apart. direction half-left, treetops of favreuil!' testimony to the good morale we still enjoyed was that i had to nominate the man to stay behind to inform the cookers where to go. no one volunteered. i marched along in the van with my company staff and sergeant-major reinicke, who knew the area very well. our artillery fire was landing behind hedges and ruins. it sounded more like furious yapping than anything seriously destructive. behind us, i saw my sections advancing in perfect order. alongside them, shots from aeroplanes sent up puffs of dust, bullets, empty shells and driving bands from shrapnels whizzed with fiendish hissing in between the files of the thin human line. away on the right lay beugnatre, heavily attacked, from where jagged lumps of iron buzzed across and stamped themselves on the clayey soil. the march got a little more uncomfortable still once we were over the beugnatrebapaume road. all of a sudden, a spate of high-explosive shells landed in front of, behind and in the midst of us. we scattered aside, and hurled ourselves into craters. i landed with my knee on something a frightened predecessor had left behind, and had my batman scrape off the worst of it with a knife. around the edge of favreuil, the clouds from numerous shell-bursts congregated, and up and down in between them in rapid alternation went the geysers of soil. to find a position for the company, i went on ahead to the first ruins, and then with my cane gave a signal to follow. the village was fringed with badly shelled huts, behind which parts of the 1st and 2nd battalions gradually came together. during the last part of the march, a machine-gun had taken its toll. i watched from my vantage-point the little string of puffs of dust, in which one or other of the new arrivals would sometimes find himself caught as in a net. among others, vice-sergeant-major balg of my company got a bullet through the leg. a figure in brown corduroy strode with equanimity across this fire-swept piece of terrain, and shook me by the hand. kius and boje, captain junker and schaper, schrader, schlager, heins, findeisen, hohlemann and hoppenrath stood behind a hedge raked with lead and iron and talked through the attack. on many a day of wrath we had fought on one and the same battlefield, and today once more the sun, now low in the western sky, was to gild the blood of all or nearly all. elements of the 1st battalion moved into the castle grounds. of the 2nd, only my company and the 5th had got through the flaming curtain unscathed, or nearly so. we made our way forward through craters and debris to a sunken road on the western edge of the village. on the way i picked up a steel helmet off the floor and put it on something i only ever did in very dicey situations. to my amazement, favreuil seemed to be completely dead. it appeared as though the defensive line had been abandoned, because the ruins had the oddly tense feeling of a place that is unoccupied, and that spurs the eye to utmost vigilance. captain von weyhe who, though we didn't know this at the time, was lying all alone and badly hurt in a shell-hole in the village had ordered the 5th and 8th companies to form the first attacking line, the 6th the second, and the 7th the third. as there was no sign of the 6th or 8th anywhere yet, i decided to go on the attack without worrying too much about the plan of battle. by now it was seven o'clock. i saw, against a backdrop of ruined houses and tree stumps, a line of men advancing across the field under moderate rifle fire. it must be the 5th. i drew up my men in the sunken road, and gave orders to advance in two waves. 'hundred yards apart. i myself shall be between the first wave and the second.' it was our last storm. how many times over the last few years we had advanced into the setting sun in a similar frame of mind! les eparges, guillemont, st-pierre-vaast, langemarck, passchendaele, moeuvres, vraucourt, mory! another gory carnival beckoned. we left the sunken road as if it had been the exercise ground, except for the fact that 'i myself, as i had expressed it just now, suddenly found myself walking alongside lieutenant schrader on open ground way ahead. i felt a little better, but there were still butterflies. haller told me later, as he said goodbye to me before leaving for south america, that the man next to him had said: 'you know something, i don't think our lieutenant is going to come out of this show alive!' that strange man, whose wild and destructive spirit i so loved, told me things on that occasion which made me realize that the simple soldier weighs the heart of his commanding officer as in a goldsmith's scales. i felt pretty weary, and i had thought all along that this attack was a mistake. even so, this is the one i most often recall. it didn't have the mighty impetus of the great battle, its bubbling exuberance; on the other hand, i had a very impartial feeling, as if i were able to view myself through binoculars. for the first time in the entire war, i heard the hissing of individual bullets, as if they were whistling past some target. the landscape was utterly pellucid. isolated rifle shots rang out in front of us; perhaps the village walls in the background kept us from being too clearly seen. with my cane in my left hand, and my pistol in my right, i tramped on ahead, not quite realizing i was leaving the line of the 5 th company behind me and to my right. as i marched, i noticed that my iron cross had become detached and fallen on the ground somewhere. schrader, my servant and i started looking for it, even though concealed snipers were shooting at us. at last, schrader picked it up out of a tuft of grass, and i pinned it back on. we were coming downhill. indistinct figures moved against a background of red-brown clay. a machine-gun spat out its gouts of bullets. the feeling of hopelessness increased. even so, we broke into a run, while the gunners were finding their range. we jumped over several snipers' nests and hurriedly excavated trenches. in mid-jump over a slightly better-made trench, i felt a piercing jolt in the chest as though i had been hit like a game-bird. with a sharp cry that seemed to cost me all the air i had, i spun on my axis and crashed to the ground. it had got me at last. at the same time as feeling i had been hit, i felt the bullet taking away my life. i had felt death's hand once before, on the road at mory but this time his grip was firmer and more determined. as i came down heavily on the bottom of the trench, i was convinced it was all over. strangely, that moment is one of very few in my life of which i am able to say they were utterly happy. i understood, as in a flash of lightning, the true inner purpose and form of my life. i felt surprise and disbelief that it was to end there and then, but this surprise had something untroubled and almost merry about it. then i heard the firing grow less, as if i were a stone sinking under the surface of some turbulent water. where i was going, there was neither war nor enmity. we fight our way through often enough i have seen wounded men dreaming in a world of their own, taking no further part in the noise of battle, the summit of human passions all around them; and i may say i know something of how they must have felt. the time i lay completely unconscious can't have been that long in terms of chronometry it probably corresponded to the time it took our first wave to reach the line where i fell. i awoke with a feeling of distress, jammed in between narrow clay walls, while the call: 'stretcher-bearers! the company commander's been hurt!' slipped along a cowering line of men. an older man from another company bent over me with a kindly expression, undid my belt and opened my tunic. he saw two round bloody stains one in the right of my chest, the other in my back. i felt as though i were nailed to the earth, and the burning air of the narrow trench bathed me in tormenting sweat. my kindly helper gave me air by fanning me with my map case. i struggled to breathe, and hoped for darkness to fall soon. suddenly a fire-storm broke loose from the direction of sapign-ies. no question, this smooth rumbling, this incessant roaring and stamping signified more than merely the turning back of our ill-conceived little attack. over me i saw the granite face of lieutenant schrader under his steel helmet, loading and firing like a machine. there was a conversation between us that was a little like the tower scene in st joan. albeit, i didn't feel amused, because i had the clear sense i was done for. schrader rarely had time to toss me a few words, because i didn't really figure any more. feeling my own feebleness, i tried to glean from his expression how things stood for us up there. it appeared that the attackers were gaining ground, because i heard him call out more frequently and with greater alarm to his neighbours, pointing out targets that must be very close at hand. suddenly, as when a dam breaks under the pressure of flood water, the cry went up: 'they've broken through on the left! they're round the back of us!' going from mouth to mouth. at that terrible instant, i felt my life force beginning to glimmer again like a spark. i was able to push two fingers into a mouse-or mole-hole level with my arm. slowly i pulled myself up, while the blood that was bogging my lungs trickled out of my wounds. as it drained away, i felt relief. with bare head and open tunic, i stared out at the battle. a line of men with packs plunged straight ahead through whitish swathes of smoke. a few stopped and lay where they fell, others performed somersets like rabbits do. a hundred yards in front of us, the last of them were drawn into the cratered landscape. they must have belonged to a very new outfit that hadn't been tested under fire, because they showed the courage of inexperience. four tanks crawled over a ridge, as though pulled along on a string. in a matter of minutes, the artillery had smashed them to the ground. one broke in half, like a child's toy car. on the right, the valiant cadet mohrmann collapsed with a death shout. he was as brave as a young lion; i had seen that at cambrai already. he was felled by a bullet square in the middle of his forehead, better aimed than the one that he had once bandaged up for me. the affair didn't seem to be irrevocably lost. i whispered to corporal wilsky to creep a little left, and enfilade the gap in the line with his machine-gun. he came back straight away and reported that twenty yards beyond everyone had surrendered. that was part of another regiment. so far i had been clutching a tuft of grass with my left hand like a steering column. now i succeeded in turning round, and a strange sight met my eyes. the british had begun to penetrate sectors of the line to the left of us, and were sweeping them with fixed bayonets. before i could grasp the proximity of the danger, i was distracted by another, more startling development: at our backs were other attackers, coming towards us, escorting prisoners with their hands raised! it seemed that the enemy must have broken into the abandoned village only moments after we had left it to make our attack. at that instant, they tightened the noose round our necks; we had completely lost contact. the scene was getting more and more animated. a ring of british and germans surrounded us and called on us to drop our weapons. it was pandemonium, as on a sinking ship. in my feeble voice, i called upon the men near me to fight on. they shot at friend and foe. a ring of silent or yelling bodies circled our little band. to the left of me, two colossal british soldiers plunged their bayonets into a piece of trench, from where i could see beseeching hands thrust out. among us, too, there were now loud yells: 'it's no use! put your guns down! don't shoot, comrades!' i looked at the two officers who were standing in the trench with me. they smiled back, shrugged, and dropped their belts on the ground. there was only the choice between captivity and a bullet. i crept out of the trench, and reeled towards favreuil. it was as in a bad dream, where you can't pick your feet off the floor. the only thing in my favour was perhaps the utter confusion, in which some were already exchanging cigarettes, while others were still butchering each other. two englishmen, who were leading back a troop of prisoners from the 99th, confronted me. i aimed my pistol at the nearer of the two, and pulled the trigger. the other blazed his rifle at me and missed. my hurried movements pushed the blood from my lungs in bright spurts. i could breathe more easily, and started running along the trench. behind a traverse crouched lieutenant schlager in the middle of a group of blazing rifles. they fell in with me. a few british, who were making their way over the field, stopped, set down a lewis gun on the ground, and fired at us. except for schlager and me and a couple of others, everyone went down. schlager, who was extremely shortsighted, told me later that all he had been able to see was my map case flying up and down. that was his signal. the loss of blood gave me the lightness and airiness of intoxication, the only thing that worried me was that i might break down too soon. finally, we reached a semi-circular earthworks to the right of favreuil, from where half a dozen heavy machine-guns were spitting lead at friend and foe alike. either the noose hadn't been completely drawn tight, or else this was one last pocket of resistance; we had been lucky to find it. enemy bullets shattered on sandbags, officers yelled, excited men leaped here and there. a medical officer from the 6th company ripped my tunic off, and told me to lie down immediately, otherwise i might bleed to death in a matter of minutes. i was rolled in a tarpaulin and dragged to the entrance of favreuil, accompanied by some of my soldiers, and some from the 6th. the village was already heaving with british, so it was inevitable that we soon came under fire from very short range. the medical officer of the 6th, who was holding the back end of my tarpaulin, went down, shot in the head; i fell with him. the little group had thrown themselves flat on the ground, and, lashed by bullets, were trying to creep to the nearest dip in the ground. i stayed behind on the field, bundled up in my tarpaulin, almost apathetically waiting for the shot that would put an end to this odyssey. but even in my hopeless plight i was not forsaken; my companions were keeping an eye on me, and soon fresh efforts were made to rescue me. at my ear i heard the voice of corporal hengstmann, a tall blond lower saxon: 'i'll take you on my back, sir, either we'll get through or we won't!' unfortunately, we didn't get through; there were too many rifles waiting at the edge of the village. hengstmann started running, while i wrapped my arms around his neck. straight away they started banging away, as if it were a prize-shoot at a funfair. after a few bounds, a soft metallic buzz indicated that hengstmann had stopped one. he collapsed gently under me, making no sound, but i could feel that death had claimed him even before we touched the ground. i freed myself from his arms, which were still securing me, and saw that a bullet had drilled through his steel helmet and his temple. the brave fellow was the son of a teacher in letter near hanover. as soon as i was able to walk, i called on his parents, and gave them my report on their son. this discouraging example didn't deter the next volunteer from making a bid to rescue me. this was sergeant strichalsky of the medical corps. he put me on his shoulders, and, while a second shower of bullets whistled around us, he carried me safely to the shelter of a little hump of ground. it was getting dark. my comrades took the tarpaulin off a body and carried me across a deserted stretch of ground, under the jagged flash of ordnance, near or far. i got to know what a terrible thing it is to have to struggle for breath. smoke from a cigarette that someone ten steps ahead of me was smoking almost choked me. at last we got to a dressing-station, where my friend dr key was in charge. he mixed me some delicious lemonade, and gave me a morphine injection that put me to revivifying sleep. the wild drive to the hospital the next day was the last difficult challenge to my powers of survival. then i was in the hands of the sisters, and was able to carry on reading tristram shandy from where i had had to put it down for the order to attack. friendly solicitude got me safely through a period of setbacks something that seems to be typical of lung shots. men and officers from the division came to visit. those who had taken part in the storm at sapignies, admittedly, were no more, or else, like kius, they were in british captivity. with the first shells landing in cambrai as the enemy slowly gained the upper hand, m. and mme plancot sent me a kind letter, a tin of condensed milk they could ill afford to spare, and the only melon their garden had produced. there were bitter times ahead for them. my last batman was in the tradition established by his many predecessors; he stopped with me, even though he wasn't entitled to hospital rations, and had to go begging down in the kitchen. during the endless hours flat on your back, you try to distract yourself to pass the time; once, i reckoned up my wounds. leaving out trifles such as ricochets and grazes, i was hit at least fourteen times, these being five bullets, two shell splinters, one shrapnel ball, four hand-grenade splinters and two bullet splinters, which, with entry and exit wounds, left me an even twenty scars. in the course of this war, where so much of the firing was done blindly into empty space, i still managed to get myself targeted no fewer than eleven times. i felt every justification, therefore, in donning the gold wound-stripes, which arrived for me one day. a fortnight later, i was lying on the rumbling bed of a hospital train. the german landscape was already bathed in the lustre of early autumn. i was fortunate enough to be taken off the train at hanover, and was put up in the clementine infirmary. among the visitors who soon arrived, i was particularly glad to see my brother; he had continued to grow since his wounding, although his right side, which was where he was hurt, hadn't. i shared my room with a young fighter pilot from richthofen's squadron, a man named wenzel, one of the tall and fearless types our nation still produces. he lived up to the motto of his squadron, 'hard and crazy with it!' and had already brought down a dozen opponents in single combat, although the last had splintered his upper arm with a bullet first. the first time i went out, i went with him, my brother, and a few comrades who were awaiting their transport, to the rooms of the old hanoverian gibraltar regiment. since our war-worthiness was being put into question, we felt the urgent need to prove ourselves by vaulting an enormous armchair. we didn't do too well; wenzel broke his arm all over again, and the following day i was back in bed with a temperature of forty yes, my chart even threatened the red line beyond which the doctors are powerless to help. at such high temperatures, you lose your sense of time; while the sisters were fighting for my life, i was in those fever dreams that are often very amusing. on one of those days, it was 22 september 1918, i received the following telegram from general von busse: 'his majesty the kaiser has bestowed on you the order pour le merite. in the name of the whole division, i congratulate you.' cover contents introduction bibliography storm of steel in the chalk trenches of champagne from bazancourt to hattonchatel les eparges douchy and monchy daily life in the trenches the beginning of the battle of the somme guillemont the woods of st-pierre-vaast retreat from the somme in the village of fresnoy against indian opposition langemarck regnieville flanders again the double battle of cambrai at the cojeul river the great battle my last assault we fight our way through the_warriors ti re�e� j. glj introa hanm univl li�c thb warrj:ors i reflections on, men in battle 1. glenn gray with a foreword, 1970, by the author introduction by hannah arendt university of nebraska press lincoln and london indiana university south bhid schurz library to ursula, my wife, formerly one of "the enemy" © 1959 by j. glenn gray introduction © 1967 by hannah arendt foreword, 1970, © 1970 by j. glenn gray all rights reserved manufactured in the united states of america first bison books printing: 1998 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data gray, j. glenn (jesse glenn), 1913-1977. the warriors: reflections on men in battle / j. glenn gray; with a new foreword, 1970, by the author; introduction by hannah arendt. p. cm. originally published: 1st. ed. new york: harcourt, brace, 1959. isbn 0-8032-7076-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. war. 2. world war, 1939-1945-personal narratives, american. 1. title. u21.g75 1998 355.02-dc21 98-8030 cip reprinted by arrangement with the author. contents page vii introduction by hannah arendt xv foreword, 1970 xxiii a note to the reader 3 chapter one remembering war and forgetiulness 25 chapter two the enduring appeals 0/ battle 59 chapter three love: war's ally and foe 97 chapter four the soldier's relations to death 131 chapter five images oj the enemy 171 chapter six the ache oj guilt 215 conclusion the future oj war c'lt is quite in keeping with man's curious intellectual history that the simplest and most important questions are those he asks least ojten:" -norman angell :11'.' � someth� it was p uon't g ena up everrthl printea succes a otherwi� rear ou this rulfj tellectua exceptio introduction hannah arendt something strange and disquieting happened to this book when it was published seven years ago. as a rule, very good books don't go unnoticed, just as we hope that only very bad books end up on the junk piles in editorial offices. to be sure, almost everything imaginable can and does happen to the majority of printed matter which must fall between such extremes-neglect, succes d'estime, best-seller list; and since this could hardly be otherwise in view of the flood of publications which, year in and year out, deluge critics and readers alike, much depends upon this rule for the presence of a minimum of standards and in­ tellectual integrity in the general climate of our culture. but exceptions prove the rule, and when we see that glenn gray's vll introduction the warriors is among them, we can only pray that they may be rare. the book was almost entirely overlooked when it first appeared, and yet, by force of sheer availability on the market, it has acquired, slowly and surely, its own circle of not just admirers but lovers, a group of readers in very different walks of life who cherished it as a triumph of personal discovery and, perhaps for this very personal reason, began to think of its author in terms of affinity, closeness and affection, which are very rarely felt even in the presence of masterpieces. so let us console ourselves with the hope that such fraternal welcome, unmediated by critical and public opinion, awaits those authors who, for one reason or another, have not been sucked into the dubious mainstream of notoriety. moreover, with regard to this book, there is something oddly appropriate to its slow and intimate success. the author, an intelligence officer during the second world war, tells what he experienced and learnt during more than four years of battle and enemy occupation; and since this particular warrior, of whom a friend even then had "thought as the soldier," hap­ pened to be a philosopher (he received, ironically enough, his induction notice into the army with the same mail that brought him his doctorate from columbia university) it took him four­ teen years of remembrance and reflection to understand and come to terms with what had happened in these four years. this much time was needed to learn "simplicity" and to unlearn "the simplification of abstract thinking," to become fluent in the art and the language of "concrete" thoughts and feelings, and thus to comprehend that both abstract notions and abstract emotions are not merely false to what actually happens but are viciously interconnected; for "abstract thinking is strictly comparable to the inhumanity of abstract emotions," the love and hatred of collectives-my own people, the enemy, especially in wartime, viii or, jine blind a as pred hene iliatilie "acivili be mor, course, hold ab one for tions flendura greate becam agree tl perish i oneself �m, n which only co fighting fidelity whose f war is i voice t modes� on ilie � read his tbe� may ben it fast tbe market, ot not just in wartime, or, finally and in a mood of disillusionment, either hatred of or blind allegiance to "mankind collectively [which] is doubtless as predisposed to injustice as nations are." hence, the first lesson to be learned on the battlefield was that the closer you were to the enemy, the less did you hate him­ "a civilian far removed from the battle area is nearly certain to be more bloodthirsty than the front-line soldier," unless, of course, the soldier happens to be a killer, and only pacifists who hold abstract notions and emotions about war will mistake the one for the other. thus, "soldiers who cherished concrete emo­ tions found the moral atmosphere at the front so much more endurable than in rear areas that they willingly accepted the greater strain and personal danger of combat." these soldiers became our author's spiritual brothers for they, too, would agree that nietzsche was "surely right" when he wrote: " 'rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared.' " and the second lesson was that no ism, not nationalism and not even patriotism, no emotion in which men can be indoctrinated and then manipulated, but only comradeship, the "loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale." this self-taught concreteness, an unswerving fidelity to the real, as difficult to achieve for the philosopher, whose formal education had been abstract thought, as for the common run of men who indulge in no less abstract feelings and emotions, is the hallmark of this singularly earnest and beauti­ ful book. what must strike the reader to begin with in a book about war is its peculiar stillness, the softly reflecting tone of this voice that never teaches or preaches but tells in the greatest modesty what the author remembers. the remembrance begins on the first page; after fourteen years, gray has begun to re­ read his war journals and letters. this sets the scene. he finds ix introduction them "sad and laughable and strange" as they remind him of plato's description of the people in limbo at the end of the republic. but they also make him aware of how much he has forgotten, of an "absence of continuity between those years and what i have become," and now he is afraid "to continue to forget" since such oblivion might indeed confirm "the deepest fear of my war years ... that these happenings had no real purpose," that they "might well signify nothing or nothing much." this fear, he confesses, "is still with me." from which we may conclude that he never forgot but that only now the time had come to tell. surprisingly enough-as though he did not know how much what he has to tell would go against the grain of fashionable convictions and modern sensibilities in these matters-he begins his tale with "the enduring appeals of battle:" the "confra­ ternity of danger;" the "powerful fascination" of the "spec­ tacular;" the "poignancy and intensity" of life in the face of death, for "just as the bliss of erotic love is conditioned by its transiency, so life is sweet because of the threats of death that envelop it;" the "lightheartedness" that comes from being "liberated from our individual impotence and [getting] drunk with the power that union with our fellows brings," a feeling akin to intense aesthetic pleasure when we are so absorbed by its objects that our "ego deserts us" and we feel no longer "shut up within the walls of the self and delivered over to the insuffi­ ciencies of the ego;" finally, the wondrous "compulsiveness" of love in wartime when "it falls upon us 'like a mountain wind upon an oak, shaking us leaf and bough,' in the striking simile of the poet sappho." gray sums up these enduring appeals, quoting general robert e. lee's remark, "it is well that war is so terrible-we would grow too fond of it," in the word "ecstasy" that occurs again and again; for what all these experiences have x nature, and tha ship bu down tl andke is who] other farthes of the aroused re·re ilius de] pleasun abouth and de1 and recl about "i stereot� person, smallest nation), ecstasy, andwit� no ion o'er "��ijl r 10 iliein5�' uhirene.'''o! ountain w!n� ,uiking sim!l� rinu appeal!, ii that war!! rd "ecstasy" in common is that men are literally standing, or rather thrown, outside their selves, whether their " 'i' passes insensibly into a 'we' " or they feel so much "part of this circling world", so much alive that, in seeming paradox, death no longer matters to them. it is easy to agree that erotic love is of such an ecstatic nature, but the point of the matter is that comradeship is too, and that friendship is not just a more intense form of comrade­ ship but its very opposite: "while comradeship wants to break down the walls of self, friendship seeks to expand these walls and keep them intact. the one relationship is ecstatic, the other is wholly individual," the one is amoral (not immoral), the other guided by moral responsibility. but since all morality depends upon self-awareness, and hence a certain amount of self-love, self-sacrifice is inspired by comradeship rather than by friendship; for "friendship makes life doubly dear," and the "unendurable fear that grips friends on the battlefield is at the farthest remove from the recklessness of the soldier-killer" and of the "love for self-sacrifice" which, as we well know, can be aroused with equal ease for good and bad causes. re-reading the book, one is tempted to quote endlessly and thus deprive the reader of his own discoveries and the great pleasure that goes with them. on the surface of it, this is a book about homo furens and homo sapiens, but in fact it is about life and death, love, friendship, and comradeship, about courage and recklessness, about sensuality and the "surge of vitality", about "inhuman cruelty" and "superhuman kindness," not as stereotype opposites but as simultaneously present in the same person, (for "war compresses the greatest opposites into the smallest space and the shortest time," that is its greatest fasci­ nation), and at the end about conscience, the very opposite of ecstasy, since conscience means "to set oneself against others and with one stroke lose their comforting presence." to be sure, xi introduction these are no more nor less than the elementary data of human existence but "unless human beings are pushed to the extreme, we are not so likely to confront simple and primal realities," or to reflect about them. opposition to war comes easy today and for glenn gray it is a matter of course. it did not need hiroshima and nagasaki nor the fact that even in world war ii more civilians were killed than soldiers in combat to teach him "the ache of guilt" which to his great surprise has been almost totally neglected in con­ temporary novels that deal so freely with every other agony of combat. among the great merits of the book is that it makes opposition to war forceful and convincing by not denying the realities and by not just warning us but making us understand why "there is in many today as great a fear of a sterile and un­ exciting peace as of a great war." and to make his point, he tells the story of a frenchwoman whom he had known in the years of dangers and sufferings and then met again in peace and comfortable circumstance. she said: "anything is better than to have nothing at all happen day after day. you know that i do not love war or want it to return. but at least it made me feel alive, as i have not felt alive before or since." gray com­ ments: "peace exposed a void in them that war's excitement had enabled them to keep covered up," and he warns of the "emptiness within us," of the exultation of those who feel bound "to something greater than the self." could boredom be more terrifying than all of war's terrors? the book, in its undemonstrative subdued fashion, turns about a little episode that happened in the hills of the apen­ nines. there, not too far away from the front lines, he had en­ countered an old man, illiterate and apparently a hermit, who was peacefully smoking his pipe in the neighborhood of no xii welcoj old m which was go the two realiti "famili men co about i is my � becaus "the g' haa be subtly happen forwn puny il civiliza only hi inade� pected compa outsidl throwr keep h becam herau1 of human living being except his donkey. the soldier was immediately welcomed beside him on the grass because it turned out that the old man was greatly mystified by the din and dust of battle which could be seen in the distance; he did not know that a war was going on. this was strange enough. but it was stranger that the two men, the soldier and the hermit, "began to talk at once of important things as naturally as if we knew one another well." here our author was again confronted with "simple and primal realities," but now far away from the exultation of war and the extremities of battle, in "peaceableness and sanity," where the "familiar and the evident" seemed no longer remote because two men could share, outside, so to speak, of history, their concern about "the important questions: who am i? why am i? what is my function in life?" this was fraternity, and it was possible because one of them, the old man and hermit, was blessed with "the gift of simplicity" and the other, soldier and philosopher, had been stripped of his normal sophistications, of all that is subtly false in what we teach and learn. for this is what had happened: "the professors who had taught me philosophy and for whom i had had great respect and esteem became all at once puny in my imagination .... even the great thinkers of western civilization seemed suddenly to lose their stature and become only human beings.... their wisdom was almost grotesquely inadequate for the occasion." no such wisdom could be ex­ pected from the illiterate peasant beside him on the grass; his company was not inadequate. both were outside civilization, outside tradition and culture, the soldier because war had thrown him into one of those lonely foxholes with nothing to keep him company but "watching the stars at night," the hermit because it was "as though he had sprung from nature herself ... her authentic child;" so the one had unlearnt and the other never xiii introduction possessed "the arrogance" that makes men "exaggerate the significance of the human story in relation to the rest of nature's household. " the book concludes as it should with reflections about "the future of war" and the prospects for "eternal peace." rejecting optimism and pessimism as equally "irrelevant" and convinced that "peace will never occur as a consequence of weakness, ex­ haustion, or fear," he hopes that the day will come when the strong and the mighty-"a people distinguished by wars and victories," in the words of nietzsche, quoted by the author-will " 'break the sword' " because they can afford to say "that men ought to choose death twice in preference to being feared and hated" and that "survival without integrity of conscience is worse than perishing outright." nowhere perhaps than in these passages does one understand better that glenn gray's friend thought of him as "the soldier." for they express but the last and, under today's circumstances, inevitable conclusions of the soldier's basic credo-that life is not the highest good. new york, february, 1966 xiv like m� with the chaos, 1 -or rei up the sought � of the pi an iota i at thi is wronl this fet in whic etate the of nature's foreword, 1970 like many americans i have been trying to come to terms with the peculiar horrors of the vietnam war and the violence, chaos, and emotional perplexity these horrors have occasioned -or reflected-in our own land. in me they once more open up the intellectual wounds of world war ii, which i had sought to heal by writing this book a decade ago. at the close of the present decade is there any reflection that might lessen an iota the mounting confusion in my own and other minds? at that time i felt, more than understood, that "something is wrong, dreadfully wrong" with contemporary civilization. this feeling was a consequence of the character of total war in which terroristic bombing of cities and civilians became xv foreword, 1970 for the first time the rule. the culmination was the destruc­ tion of nagasaki and hiroshima with the most abstract of all death-dealing instruments. in this book i tried to comprehend what the practice of total war did to man as warrior. for the warrior who slays an impersonal enemy has traditionally not been regarded as a criminal, a murderer. yet in the era of total war the distinc­ tion becomes ever more blurred. and the dissociation in our lives between soldiering and civilian pursuits grows at the very period when distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants threatens to disappear altogether. as i now see it, in the 1950s this was the source of my emotional con­ viction that something was dreadfully awry in the contempo­ rary world. today few would dispute the fact that something has gone wrong, though exactly what it is eludes us. a few months ago i got some intellectual insight into what is wrong by means of two unrelated experiences. at the university of hawaii i heard a japanese philosopher speak of "the monstrous character" of modern civilization. he was referring to japan's adoption of western science and tech­ nology � which has resulted in one of the highest gross na­ tional products in the world. at the same time japan has become, according to him, the most godless nation of all, with no real motivations other than impulses for material goods and sex. his words were for me more impressive be­ cause i learned to know him, in a week's association, as no cassandra bemoaning the loss of religious faith and indulging in reactionary nostalgia. though a serious man, he was any­ thing but gloomy. his lecture and discussion centered on the issue of whether men of the east or west can survive without any god or gods. and his answer to explicit questions about this was an unyielding no. xvi at painfu oisea to lan' martial 1�66, h we a di�erenq ihemon counled­ nadtot me oelie called it answer f -maybe with veteran long b, straus � aoeslt] ans, ence of �reat pa tuis boo one as� reality i abstr destruc. act of all rire wi thou! • tion about foreword, 1970 at the time i had just completed a review of daniel lang's painful account of "the incident of hill 192," the subject of his casualties of war, in which a veteran of vietnam recounts to lang why he resolved to report and bring before a court­ martial the other members of his patrol, who in november, 1966, had abducted, raped, and then deliberately murdered a vietnamese girl. while pondering his motivation for not participating in the crime and for undertaking the hazardous task of bringing his comrades to trial for it, this simple ex­ soldier spoke the following to lang: we all figured we might be dead in the next minute, so what difference did it make what we did? but the longer i was over there, the more i became convinced that it was the other way around that counted-that because we might not be around much longer, we had to take extra care how we behaved. anyway, that's what made me believe i was interested in religion. another man might have called it something else, but the idea was simply that we had to answer [or what we did. we had to answer to something, to someone -maybe just to ourselves. with their words the japanese professor and the vietnam veteran brought something to a focus in me with which i had long been contending. are these manifestations of our mon­ strous age a consequence of the death of all gods? what does it mean to attempt to live godlessly? answering the first question affirmatively, as my experi­ ence of the present decade prompts me to do, depends in great part on my interpretation of the second. when i wrote this book at the end of the last decade i already perceived one aspect of godlessness, namely, that remoteness from reality in warfare that i called abstraction . abstractness is illustrated once again in the furor ocxvii foreword, 1970 casioned by the songmy massacre. to the usual judgment this deed seems far more of an atrocity than the actions of the pilots who bomb such hamlets from the sky or of the artillery men who lob in shells from a great distance. the reason given is that the infantrymen are brutalized by their deeds. yet brutalization is hardly the worst that can happen to a man, for it can be healed in time and in circumstances of peaceful living. but the man who kills from a distance and without consciousness of the consequences of his deeds feels no need to answer to anyone or to himself. his is an uncon­ scious depravity that can increase imperceptibly in civilian life. dissociated from his deeds he can become far more monstrous than the infantry soldier or lower-echelon officer who occasionally goes beserk under battle strain. the "ter­ rifyingly normal" men, who are ever in the vast majority, are those who make our age a monstrous one. now i understand better than i did that such normal men are everywhere. they need not be bombardiers or captains of artillery. the atrocities and "incidents" of vietnam are hardly isolated occurrences and unrelated to the american or any other tradition. despite the assurances of administration officials to the contrary, reflection teaches a deeper truth, to wit, that such deeds are more or less a product of modern culture, which has increasingly grown godless. what are the further implications of living godlessly? for one thing it implies forgetfulness of the encompassing world to which we are so totally bound, both as individuals and as a species. no longer do we feel answerable to this encompassing which is within us, as memory, imagination, and conscious­ ness, or without us as soil and sun and air and water. we are forgetful of the fact that these latter are not simply things of our environment but natural powers and fibres of xviii which exister aaverb tivese1 thou tninkin be "non as mucl ing, cr ilke. p our sci suc� species perhapl!ceivabl broken fulness late·co oissoci ilmitles constit zation. in cl godless typical toam putting lailo-1 vislici of our �on s lion. t )udgment action 01 ! or 01 the � tanee, tne led by tneif t can ha��en foreword, 1970 which we are made and which enable us to be sustained in existence every moment. they are verbs, not nouns, and the adverb "godlessly" qualifies these verbs, alas now in a nega­ tive sense. thoughtlessly we conceive nature as external environment. thinking, and presumably remembering, too, is supposed to be "non-natural." but that which sustains us in being is surely as much these nonmaterial activities of thinking, remember­ ing, creating as digesting, breathing, locomotion, and the like. possibly they are not so different in kind, as perhaps our sciences will one day establish. such godless living means for another thing that our species fancies itself to be the purpose and goal of creation­ perhaps not merely of our tiny earth but also of the incon­ ceivable range and extent of the cosmos now that we have broken through earth's atmosphere. this suggests a forget­ fulness of the most obvious fact of our mortality, that we are late-comers to creation and probably early departers. the dissociation of man as individual and species from the limitless backgrounds of his being is another quality which constitutes the monstrous character of contemporary civili­ zation. in curious ways conventional religionists illustrate such godlessness as surely as avowed atheists, if not more so. too typically they abjure thinking man's backgrounds by clinging to a man-centered universe and fashioning god in our image. putting emphasis on believing-which they equate with faith-they distrust contemporary insights and become ata­ vistic in the worst sense. the god they seek is ever "the god of our fathers," never of our children's children. their reli­ gion seems to be little more than superstition and consola­ tion. to them living godlessly would connote the denial of xix foreword, 1970 the physical existence of the judaic or christian god, always imagined as a person and thought of in capital letters, some­ one to whom they pray when in dire straits or praise in good times. to speak of gods, as the japanese philosopher did, would seem primitive to them, for everyone knows that monotheism is "higher" than polytheism. few consider seriously that other world religions have their own god or gods, much less do they take seriously the obvious fact that the jewish or christian god is hardly the same god for different believers. nor would they understand any better the simple, profound remark of the ex-soldier that "we had to answer to something, to someone-maybe just to ourselves." if man's attempt to live without gods appears, in the harsh light of present realities, a failed attempt, is a reversal of our course possible? some perplexed thinkers are persuaded that nothing can be done. they see our new technetronic culture as a destiny that must be lived out to the end. according to them, the problem of godlessness is not a moral crisis, not a failure of man, rather it is a withdrawal of the divinities from human view. such withdrawal has been gradual, long in the making over the last centuries, and coincidental with the slow coming to dominance of man over external nature and its exploitation by him. mind sundered from its fount and original habitat inevitably gives rise to subjectivistic ideolo­ gies in conflict with one another. these become the very shape and substance of present reality. to believe that we can change this fate through a moral reformation in any meaning­ ful sense is to abide in illusion. the powers of history are superior to any willed determination of men, even of man. i agree that moral reformation is hardly an appropriate response to the withdrawal of the sense of divinities in human xx exisi than tnat i found is not lessel clear,)tn( tnems tney or eh like � se'vei prof01 of th6 kind oe no tni citizeu tions puses not if thoug humal oeing aiseo main of the the ra ia oattle &0<1, alwa�s �\\e:r , some. :alve in gooij \0 o�her di� e know inl! f w consiijfl foreword, 1970 existence. religion is not morality; it is both more and less than morality. yet i am unwilling to accept the conclusion that nothing can be "done" to alter our fate. though a pro­ found religious consciousness, of the sort i imply in this book, is not something willed or within our powers, it may neverthe­ less come over us when our true situation becomes sufficiently clear. that is to say, the absent and hidden gods may reveal themselves once again when we are prepared for their coming. they are unlikely to come in the form of a revival of judaism or christianity, much less in the shape of a "foreign" religion like zen buddhism or others. they are likely to show them­ selves, if at all, in a new manner and form. yet, as always in profound changes, the new is in so many respects "the oldest of the old." such a recovery of religious faith would be a kind of self-recovery of our society. hence it would surely be not without our doing though hardly within our control. this way of thinking can scarcely help our nonplused citizens to come to terms with atrocities in vietnam, assassina­ tions of our public figures, and increasing violence on cam­ puses and in cities of america and europe. it certainly will not if we rest content with surface features and fail to give thought to the disappearance of the limitless backgrounds of human life. only if we regain contact with the sources of our being in that nature within and about us will we be able to discover new road markers on the path ahead for the re­ mainder of this century. only those who have bridged some of the discontinuities in western tradition will dare to think the radical new thoughts that set up these road markers. i am far from the claim that the reflections on men in battle which compose this book are sufficiently profound to xxi foreword, 1970 establish any markers. but i am confident that the struggle to comprehend my experience as a soldier in world war ii pro­ vides a perspective on past and future that helps to reduce the discontinuities of the monstrous present. j. glenn gray december, 1969 xxii �ince ) ence u mymi may � in the myd� was hi comml durg, anar olilie in the sent t� iront. ilielta paign proces spons! spies � or lear the 'na� fran on the �trugg\e to �ar ii �ro. to reduce a note to the reader since much of the material for this book is drawn from my experi­ ence in world war ii, it is best to set down here a brief record of my military service. i was inducted into the army as a private on may 8, 1941, having received my "greetings from the president" in the same mail that brought word from columbia university that my doctorate in philosophy was conferred. on october 28, 1945, i was honorably discharged as a second lieutenant, a battlefield commission having been granted me in december 1944 at strass­ burg, france. these four years of service covered nearly a year in an armored division, over a year in washington, d.c., as an agent of the counter intelligence corps, and not quite two years overseas in the european theater of operations. at the end of 1943, i was sent to africa to join an infantry division en route to the italian front. as a member of the counter-intelligence unit i participated in the italian campaign, the invasion of southern france, and the cam­ paign in middle europe until the end of the war, being, in the process, attached successively to three infantry divisions. the re­ sponsibility of our unit was the safeguarding of troops against spies and saboteurs which the enemy might send across the front or leave behind among the civilian population. the nature of our task demanded an unusual amount of freedom snd mobility. because we worked constantly with civilians in italy, france, and germany, it was possible to observe the effects of war on the native populations as well as on our own soldiers. an addixxlll j. glenn gray the tional year in educational reconstruction after the close of the war gave me opportunity to observe postwar reactions in shattered europe. the book was largely written during a recent year in germany, made possible for my family and me by generous fellowships from the fulbright commission and the ford foundation. this year of leisure afforded me a new chance for long talks about the war in the perspective of a decade with germans from all walks of life. they ranged from general hans speidel, rommel's former chief of staff, to hitler youth recruits of the last days of the war; from nonmilitary men and women, students, housewives, ministers, to survivors of the july 20 revolt against hitler. despite the fact that we had fought each other not long before, as individuals and nations, it was possible to discuss the past with little rancor or distrust, one of the most curious phenomena of human relations. during this year, my reading in german war literature extended from von clausewitz to contemporary novels, memoirs, letters, and personal accounts of world war ii, much of it as yet unknown in america. for several years i have studied widely, if unsystemati­ cally, comparable writings of our own tradition and of britain, france, and russia. though comparatively little of it is cited in the following pages, i should not want to minimize the effect of this reading in correcting and expanding my own experience of warfare. it is only because the intention and the aim of my book are so different that i was able to make little direct use of this literature, but i am no less indebted to it as background. for critical reading of the manuscript and for friendly encour­ agement, i wish to express my gratitude to mrs. lillian mccue, professor william hochman, and dr. ellsworth mason. professors frank krutzke and lewis pino have been wise counselors in the practical matter of finding the proper publisher. xxiv colorado college ie of the war in s'natteroo it in gennanr, �l\owshlps hom m, thisyealij! �out thewal� a� walks 01 llit the warriors j. gzmgui one dear f long, � fjled u inter times} long u cmnge many come no at twnw t�ml auden nave o/14� one remembering war and forgetfulness dear fred: it has been long since i wrote you. i don't know how long, whether a week or three. the last weeks have been hard, filled with many bitter, hateful things and only a few short happy interludes. what a heritage the nazis leave behind them! some­ times i feel very old. what my eyes have seen! we have been a long time in the line and the picture at times seems never to change. only the personalities are different. joy and beauty have many different faces but brutality and hatred have but few. i have come to the extremity of knowing beyond all doubt that there is no other way for me to survive this period except the hard chris­ tian way of finding the finer points in my associates and loving them for those characteristics. the bare cold, prophetic words 01 auden, we must love one another or die have rung in my mind on several 01 these frigid, sleepless nights 01 late. 3 the warriors perhaps even you cannot participate enough in this life over here to understand. you would have to see a fine, fine family broken, people you had learned to love, destroyed because of petty personal grudges. you would have to see people slapped and beaten because they might possibly be telling a lie or because certain sadistic impulses need to be satisfied. you would have to see old men and women on the roads with a few pitiful belongings in a driving rain, going they know not where, trying to find shelter and a little food in a scorched-earth area. oh, you would have to see many things, fred, to know why i should come to realize such a primitive truth as that i have only one alternative to death and that is to love, to care for people whom i, as a natural man, want to strike down. the time may not be far 00, if it is not already here, when millions of people will not want to live. it has been prophesied and the prophecy is a true one. today i talked with a young at­ tractive woman with three children who told me she did not care what happened to her. she wanted to die. there was no theatri­ cality about her at all. she was not suoering from any physical illness and she was not hungry. separation from her husband, bombing, living in cellars, no future--all of it had become too much for her. always the same picture-immer das gleiche bild. but i find courage and strength from somewhere. i shall go on. plato wrote of the wise man caught in an evil time who refuses to take part in the crimes of his fellow citizens and takes refuge behind a wall until the storm is past. plato understood. but i am too deeply involved. such a course is not possible for me any longer. so i am driven to the christian way out. it is hard, yet there is great comfort in finding it. i sleep better now, and because i give love i find it oftener. you will not like such writing as this, yet i cannot write anything else at the moment. it is late and 1 am tired.... december 9,1944 after fourteen years it is a disquieting experience to read my war journals and letters like this one. sad and laughable and stranj at we feeline what s perilou ea�i1y, letters occasio whlch 1 this �� tro� a�vanl conun1l rest, � resista� ana aal �cutio) 10 be p well as aone� reverse �uspect vosges afler ill sod as a c a�es al fuek b slream ito naa pi �assin s life over �ne fami1r tuse of peur 5lapped and e or becaw! vould have � /ut be!on�n�, to �nd snel� \could mtl� to reali:elu(! . e to dea�arj become � ; :ieicbe �tla t. 15nau �oo� 'm ,wre�u w�e$rem! 51000. b� i � 'b� jor mean) it � oora,rd and oecguji i[;ih'ngoj j, t ij /ate ami ember9,l�� to reaa mr ghahle an� remembering war and forgetjulness strange, so plato described the behavior of the people in limbo at the end of the republic, and this best expresses my present feelings. what had brought me to such a state of mind? and what significance can remembering it have in our present perilous world? the first question i can answer honestly, if not easily, by means of memory aided by my journals and by letters returned to me by a friend. the second has already occasioned much pondering, hesitation, and doubt, the end of which i cannot yet foresee . this particular letter was written in alsace, where fanatical ss troops had finally halted our division after its precipitous advance from the beaches of southern france. we had been committed to the front lines well over a hundred days without rest, and it is easy to recall how tired we were. the fierce resistance at the borders of germany made our days nasty and dangerous. almost worse were the recriminations and per­ secutions among the unfortunate alsatians of those thought to be pro-german. shopkeepers were changing their signs as well as their language from german to french after having done the reverse in 1939; political opinions were not so easily reversed in a vengeful atmosphere where nearly everyone was suspect. moreover, we had just come into this area from the vosges mountains, from which the germans withdrew only after they had set fire to everything in order to deprive us of all shelter in the menacing winter temperatures soon to come. as a consequence, the roads were filled with refugees of all ages and conditions. loaded with what they could carry on their backs, on bicycles, or on carts, men, women, and children streamed to the rear. it had not been very different in italy, where my division had participated the previous spring in a similar race from cassino to the amo, a campaign 80 aptly described by 5 6 w8j civil theii roost lana, �arbl �pect ana freshl overl ni�ht: surfaj saw 1 ;�i away, in m� myfil col inese ana, ' d tnese orae no 00 it many nowe� 1riefl] our 'i the warriors churchill as "the fiery rake," except that this was a crueler climate and the rain that beat upon the refugees seemed more pitiless than in the south. there was another difference. here we frequently met huge covered wagons drawn by steers or oxen and piled high with farm implements and cooking pots. on top of the gear under the canvas tops perched women and children while the men goaded the beasts in front and boys led the cows at the rear. somehow these peasants had per­ suaded the germans to let them salvage a portion of their possessions. inevitably, these conveyances reminded me of our american pioneers in the nineteenth century. nothing else was similar, for, unlike pioneers, they had no destination. their goal was behind them and there was no light in their faces. with an aching heart i reflected on this regression from pioneers to refugees and wondered if some future historian might not find these terms most characteristic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. there was something patently symbolical about the contrast, which i have not since been able to put from mind. the enemy was cruel, it was clear, yet this did not trouble me as deeply as did our own cruelty. indeed, their brutality made fighting the germans much easier, whereas ours weak­ ened the will and confused the intellect. though the scales were not at all equal in this contest, i felt responsibility for ours much more than for theirs. and the effect was cumula­ tive. it had begun before my division had even reached the front in italy at the beginning of 1944. bivouacked some thirty miles to the rear, i had watched hungry italian women and children standing in february rains, holding crude cans with wire handles to collect leftover food from our mess. the american soldiers were generous, and it was easy to notice that more food than usual was left in the mess kits, to find its our! lor a erence. hen b1 steers � cooking po� ed womenij� hont and oo� ts baa�, �rtiqn 01 ��i frommin�, " aia dol tro ilieirdru� ·bet as ours ww, ougn ilie �� responsiliili� !� ect was cud1� ren reacneo�! ivou8ckea �� italian wom� ing ctuae c� our mess, rm remembering war and forgetiulnes« way into the eagerly extended cans of the thin and shivering civilians. rarely did they eat it on the spot, however tempted; their dependents in the village nearby were evidently upper­ most in their thoughts. inexperienced and fearful in a strange land, higher headquarters soon put out stern orders that all garbage was to be buried forthwith. then began the hideous spectacle of unwilling soldiers forced to push back the women and children while garbage cans of food were dumped in freshly dug pits. other soldiers hastily shoveled the wet dirt over the meat, bread, and vegetables. to prevent scavenging at night, it became necessary to fetch dry earth and tramp the surface of the "sump" until it was packed. more than once we saw the despairing children and women break through the lines and scrabble in the rain and mud to rescue dirty pieces of food before the soldiers could seize them and push them away. "and though it wrenches my heart to see them," i wrote in my journal, "i soon grow accustomed to the sight and eat my fill. how hard is the heart of man!" could it have been i who witnessed this scene and wrote these words in this journal? my memory does not deceive me, and, if it did, the pages are before me. it is true that most of us did not want to behave in this way; in fact, the faces of these green troops registered utter disgust with such senseless orders. but we did not protest; we steeled ourselves, thinking, no doubt, that much worse sights were in store. it would be superfluous, as well as too painful, to recall many of those worse sights. because of its peculiar character, however, one other episode haunts my mind and may be briefly set down. it happened in southern france shortly after our invasion. one day an attractive french girl appeared at our temporary headquarters and confessed that she had worked for a time with the local gestapo and now feared the revenge 7 8 the warriors of the maquis. the french security officer with whom i was working interrogated her calmly at some length and soon found out that she had been in love with the gestapo captain in charge of this district and had been persuaded to aid him on occasion in his repressive measures against the resistance. since our unit had to move on almost at once, the french officer wrote a report of his interrogation for the civil author­ ities of the liberated city-and closed it with his recommenda­ tion that the girl be shot! on the way to the city jail with the girl, he picked up some pictures of his wife and children, which he had had developed in a local photography shop during our brief stay. after showing them to me for my com­ ment and approval, he carried them to the girl in the car ahead. ignorant of the fate he had decreed for her (and which would almost certainly be carried out at once under conditions at that time), the girl admired the family snapshots and the two of them laughed and joked for many minutes. passers-by might easily have mistaken them for lovers. there was little savagery or blood lust in this french officer. he did not hate the girl, so far as i could tell, though he hated her deeds. he would, in fact, have been quite willing to sleep with her the night before ordering her execution. when i remonstrated with him about such callousness, he made clear to me that he regarded himself as an army officer in a quite different way from himself as a human being. the two per­ sonalities could succeed each other with lightning rapidity, as i was to see on numerous occasions. as a human being, he was capable of kindness, even gentleness, and within limits he was just and honest. in his capacity of functionary, he could be brutal beyond measure without ever losing his out­ ward amiability and poise. i observed precisely the same qu wh �t1 8n� ofl and lake 1m �ptl cam kit to cer nis va! but stapo captah to aid him 01 ltle resistan� ce, the frenrl he civil autom, 'o5wlna�i • ;:' the twow '(1 tninu ranirucr, 0 r i human deid�i� d within j� functiod8i'j1 � losing his o� ely the sami remembering war and forgetiulnes« qualities in the fascist and nazi politicians and police with whom it was my fate to deal. after months of this sort of experience, i began to detect with a kind of horror that i was becoming inured to cruelty and not above practicing it myself on occasion. in the spring of 1945 i find entries like the following in my journal: ... and as spring comes and the days lengthen, and sunshine and warmth penetrate, one becomes aware what toll the winter has taken. last spring i saw in italy the lush red fields of poppies, the death flower, and knew that mines lay beneath them. this spring there are only the mines. so it is with our lives. the camouflage, beautiful if treacherous, is falling away and we are left with the ugly deadly surface. i grow bitter and sarcastic. today i yelled at a character who had lied to me and took a certain pleasure in seeing the perspiration come to his face and his hands tremble. he knew the power i had over him. so do one's values become corrupted and conscience coarsened by this ordeal. but enough of this . . . and a few months later, in a letter to my friend, i wrote: one becomes incredibly hardened. now i often despair of my­ self. i interrogate these "bastards," as we call them, sneeringly, insultingly, and sometimes take cold delight in their cringing. i have declared that if ever i find one who will say: "i am, i was, and will remain a national socialist and you can like it or not," i will clasp his hand and cry: "at last i have found a brave and honest, if an evil, man. we don't want to arrest such a one as you." but i think i shall not find such a man. they are all as disgusting as the fascists in italy--all arrant cowards who say they were forced to do what they did, even if it was to enter the party in 1928. from high to low--and i have had some big shots-the story is the same. i am tempted to think that the key to the whole rotten mess is lack of courage and fear. cowards best understand the psychology of fear. that sentence explains much to me. few 9 10 the warriors of them have the courage to take their own lives, though the fellows in the detachment accuse me of losing my cases or solving them by this route. i do not like such jokes, but on the other hand i have not had a bad conscience about those who have "cheated" me by that route. oh, it is all a dirty, lousy business and i some­ times ask god why i have to be chosen for this particular work. now i realize how tenuous were the links to my friends and to my journal, which kept me integral and not too deeply stained by the monstrous cruelty of war. becoming a func­ tionary is not entirely foreign to the nature of the majority of us. however overwhelmed by brutality and suffering i became at times, they represent, after all, only one aspect of war. it would be false to dwell solely on them and ignore other features of war experience that are equally important. there was also the intense nervous excitement of great moments, in which even the dullest of us were conscious of participating in historical events of overawing importance. thousands of vet­ erans must remember our entry into rome in june 1944, after the dreary, lethal, and endless winter on the anzio beachhead or the cassino front. suddenly and as if by magic we were in a beautiful city, full of sunshine and of excited people intent on showering us with favors. in place of the sad and dumpy creatures we had supposed all italians were, here were fresh­ faced, bare-legged, wonderful girls, hungry for men, who seemed to regard us when we first entered the city as akin to demigods. there was something primitive and archaic about the emotions that swept over all of us on that first glorious day in rome. the eternal city was welcoming another conqueror, and, as we were hugged and embraced for hours by the exas wi ew en r conqueror, i by the ex· remembering.".ar and forget/ulne$i uberant populace, i felt like one of the soldiers who took the city thousands of years before. and the capture of rome was nothing more than the most massive of these welcomings. in france it happened in many a town and city that we felt like conquering heroes, that delicious, boyish sense of triumph and elation, ridiculous but irresistible. in my journal i find a brief account of one such occasion, which could stand for many. my heart is full tonight. we are at vienne, near lyons, and were the first americans in the town. our reception was un­ equaled, even by rome. everybody was out on the streets, even though it was raining, and we were kissed and showered with flowers for hours. we took the flowers to the grave of the un­ known soldier after awhile and then we were really mobbed. surely no emperor has ever received more sincere and enthusi­ astic welcome than we. they took us to the famous point res­ taurant, and we ate as i have never eaten before in europe or elsewhere. then to hotel rooms where each has a room to him­ self and wonderful beds. tonight the others have gone on, and 1 got the owner of the hotel to show me the churches and the town. my first pure gothic cathedral, 11th century, a refreshment to the spirit like nothing else; then a view of the town from the heights, beautiful under the evening sky, with its red roofs, its roman remains on adjacent hills. then later i arranged a coffee-drinking party with the lady in charge of the hotel-an italian by birth. we had fifteen or twenty men and women there and how they enjoyed the coffee and cigarettes! we are almost like gods to these people. i laugh at myself but i get excited too. how characteristic that last line is of many moods in those days. one laughed joyously and felt a bit sheepish at the same time. at some level we knew that we were far from being what these people thought us, but it was unbelievably pleasant, nevertheless. it was compensation for the opposite situation 11 the warriors and mood, which were our usual lot, for everyone knows that war can be the most excruciatingly boring of all human activ­ ities. the alternation of dullness and excitement in their ex­ treme degrees separates war from peace sharply and promotes the discontinuity in our memories. war compresses the great­ est opposites into the smallest space and the shortest time. not only do boredom and throbbing excitement succeed each other rapidly, but other emotions as well. in a town near vienne the people divided their attention between cheering us and persecuting collaborators who were being rounded up by the resistance youth. in the delirium of liberation, many individuals were constantly going from a group that was hug­ ging and kissing returned ffi comrades to join another that was torturing isolated collaborators. we could observe love and hatred, tenderness and brutality, succeed each other in many a person within moments. excitement was at fever pitch. german soldiers with hands high in the air were being marched to a prisoner collection point by triumphant boys. with a sense of horror, a comrade and i walking the streets watched a group beating a girl whose hair had been crudely sheared off and her face bloodied and bruised. she was crying bitterly as her tormentors kicked her along, taunting and jeer­ ing and hooting; evidently she had been the mistress of some german and possibly had spied on the local resistance. a little further on we saw a man, with his face cut, running like a hurt and frightened beast before men who were doing worse things to him than were happening to the girl. it was clear that he had no chance of remaining alive if and when his pursuers cornered him. suddenly from a group perhaps twenty yards ahead of us a girl detached herself and ran directly toward me. slim and fleet as a deer, she was in my startled arms before i knew 12 wh she seal hap] lrie( �ur� ::: houl tl whio ha�! d�� ness i dine was cnoo lana infa felt 10 ex ��s, ana nr wale nan� iskn clea null �ear lullj me nows that man activo n their ex. ,d promotes � the great. �est time, ue �'as cr;1n� • u ana jeer· tre:' of som� re'istance, a runnin� �� doin� wom it was clear d when hll remembering war and forgetfulness what was happening. a hug, a quick kiss on the mouth, and she spun away with flaming cheeks into another crowd in scarcely the time it takes to draw a breath. everybody laughed happily and applauded, while i picked up my fallen cap and tried to conceal my red face and inner confusion. the act was purely spontaneous; doubtless, in her excitement she hardly knew what she was doing. nothing could be more typical of the confused emotions of war than that town in the first few hours of freedom from german occupation. there were other kinds of excitement, not so gleeful, in which the nervous tension was, if possible, even greater. per­ haps no soldier could describe adequately his feelings on a d-day landing under fire. moods of fear, anticipation, helpless­ ness, praying and cursing, adventure and longing succeed each other like lightning. though the landing in southern france was a comparatively easy one, its details emerge clearly when i choose to remember them. i crouched under my jeep on a landing craft that went in a few hours after the first waves of infantry. shells were exploding in the water all around, and i felt sure the next one would land squarely on us. it was silly to expect the jeep to afford any protection against the german 88s, but i could not get up. then through the tangle of gear and machines i saw an american officer, a captain, standing by the edge of our boat. he was smoking a cigarette, and i watched fascinated as he flicked the ashes into the water. his hand trembled not at all; he might have been on the staten island ferry. then i felt unreasonably grateful to him .. it was clear that he was exposing himself no more nor less than i; but his reason was in control. i longed to creep through the gear, clasp him around the knees, and look up to him worship­ fully. yet the ridiculousness of such an action did not chain me so much as the fancied danger of moving from my spot. 13 14 hl to pel roo ofl the warriors nevertheless, the sight of him gradually calmed me, so that when our craft reached the shore i was able to get into my jeep and drive it hurriedly through the surf and up onto dry land. in a grove a few hundred yards inland, we had to stop and peel the protective putty from our motors, which had kept them from drowning out in the shallow water. again the shells began to discover our location and to get close. finally one plopped among us, and as i threw myself down i waited for the fragments to dig into my flesh. all that hit me was dirt and little stones thrown up by the shell. but it scared me unreason­ ably; the next one, i was sure, would be the end for me. i had no cover, so i got up and ran for the nearest protection i could find, which was very inadequate. there i discovered other soldiers as near to mother nature as they could get. i followed their example and began digging a slit trench among the rocks with my fingernails. the next explosion was farther off, and we began to breathe easier. after a while we went hack, and discovered that the jeep next to mine had huge holes through the engine. other nearby vehicles were in similar condition. such external descriptions give little idea of the racing excitement that underlies the occasion. and landings are only an outstanding instance. anyone who has lived through an air raid of any magnitude at all knew a quality of excitement scarcely experienced before or since. fear may have been the dominant feature of such excitement; rarely was it the only ingredient. in such an emotional situation there is often a surge of vitality and a glimpse of potentialities, of what we really are or have been or might become, as fleeting as it is genuine. in these situations some are able to serve others in simple yet fundamental ways. inhuman cruelty can give way to superor, ave cea fell ilia orl we me, so thai get into m) up onto � ad to stop ani hich had k!� again the �!� ose. finillr om ()wn 1 w81lealm i me wasoirt�� ed me unre8&). eo forme.a� ea of ilie r��m! jandin� areoruj ed throu�n ani� ty of exci!emf�1 v have deen �� �as it ine owl ay to suw remembering war and forgetiulnes« human kindness. inhibitions vanish, and people are reduced to their essence. if afterward they seem quickly to forget, perhaps the memory is not wholly lost. again and again in moments of this kind i was as much inspired by the nobility of some of my fellows as appalled by the animality of others, or, more exactly, by both qualities in the same person. the average degree, which we commonly know in peacetime, con­ ceals as much as it reveals about the human creature. then there was the strange. i think every soldier must have felt at times that this or that happening fitted into nothing that had gone before; it was incomprehensible, either absurd or mysterious or both. if many events of this sort came to us, we began to feel foreign to our own skins, intruders in the world. more often than at home, we would wake up in the night and wonder where we were. and, our senses fully re­ covered in a few seconds, we might begin to ponder what it meant to be where we were. i suppose this feeling of strange­ ness came over us so often because of our comrades. since they were not chosen and usually had no prewar connection with each other or each other's home towns, however dear they had become in military life, they represented discon­ tinuity with all but the present and the immediate past. i confess that a large number of americans i met in the army amazed me by their differentness. i had not known their like before, nor have i met them since. nothing else could have made me realize how narrow the circle in which we move in peacetime is. most of us hardly get an inkling of how ninety per cent of our fellows live or think. naively we assume that they must be like us or not very different. whatever the cause, i was surely not alone in being under the spell of the strange. sometimes i moved through days and 15 16 the warriors weeks trying to reach the familiar, the accustomed, and the intimate. through the study of hegel in college and graduate school, i had adopted the life goal of becoming at home in the world. now it became remote to the vanishing point, for i could not banish the alien character of much of my experience. again my journal bears witness to the recurring nature of this dominant mood. november 6, 1944. a curious incident occurred today, which, like the lorelei tale, will not leave my mind. this morning two ffi [french forces of the interior] boys who are working for us came in with a story of having seen a suspicious soldier in the forest who had german weapons and who spoke only french or perhaps german. he was by himself and collected rations which were strewn about the woods. they thought he was possibly a german who had got into american uniform and was hiding out. i decided to go with them this afternoon to investigate. it was a rainy, dark day. we drove the jeep through a forest trail that had evidently been the scene of a bitter battle. trees were razed; once we had to remove one from the trail. i was nervous about mines, since the road showed little trace of american ve­ hicular traffic, though the boys kept assuring me that it had been traversed. finauy we could go no farther by jeep and had to pro­ ceed by foot. the woods were rain-soaked and dripping and the ground was soggy underfoot. the stillness was impressive and somehow threatening. no sign of life was visible and the evidence of recent battle was everywhere. deep and elaborate foxholes lined the trail, around which were strewn all manner of equip­ ment, german and american: ammunition, helmets, clothing, let­ ters from home, everything. we finally came upon the body of a german soldier, missed by the collection unit. he was lying in the distorted position common to all who are killed in action. some­ one had pulled his coat over his head, and when one of us raised it we saw that he had been shot in the head and was already de­ composing. his diary and other papers were lying near, but 1 did not read them. he seemed to fit in with this dark scene and co co � an experienc�. ature of t� today, vjnk�, morning iw� e lcorking f�r j 50uierinim i y frenc� or honj vjnk� as po!siolr � gj hiding ow. 1ie. amer�anvl' titmdoun 00 md w �r� 'pping and � pressive am theevidencl ate /oxm� r 0/ e�ui� clothing, k� he oody o/a lying intm lion. some· 0/ us ra�ea already �. near, oat 1 scene and remembering war and forgetfulness dark day. i noticed as we continued our tramp that i felt a little sick in my stomach. the macabre aspect of this adventure was like something out of edgar allan poe. next we came upon a peasant couple digging busily at the remains of an entrenchment, obviously on the search for whatever of value they could find. they looked up a little guiltily when we bore down on them and responded hastily to the question of one of the ffi that they had seen no one. we continued on our way and at last arrived at a little depres­ sion in the woods, formed like a basin. on its floor there was con­ structed a rude hut from a foxhole, about three feet high and covered over with all manner of materials from logs to uniforms. this was apparently our quarry, for the boys silently deployed around it, guns at the ready. i had forgotten mine, so merely stood by. one of them called out: hande hoch! almost at once there emerged a head from the single opening, and then a tall, unshaven, and unkempt soldier crawled out and stood up. he was in american uniform, and after a moment's hesitation, i asked: "are you an american?" he answered: "yes." then i knew that he was a deserter. i jumped down into the basin and approached him. it was evident that his nerves were bad because he was near to crying. he had been there about a week and had made himself fairly comfortable. inside the hut he had a fire going and htld just cooked a meal. at first he lied to me a little about his unit, but when he saw that i was disposed to be kind, he told me all. he had been overseas more than two years and had fought with the --th in africa, sicily, and italy, then got transferred to the -for france. "all the men i knew and trained with have been killed or trans­ ferred," he said with a quaver in his voice. "i'm lonely. they promised me i would be relieved and rotated, but nothing ever happens. i can't stand the infantry any longer. why won't they transfer me to some other outfit? the shells seem to come closer all the time and i can't stand them." he shivered. i let him tal" and tried to be as sympathetic as i could. i felt terribly sorry for 17 the warriors him. he was from pennsylvania, not a bright lad but very literate. he begged me to let him stay there for a few more days, after which he promised to rejoin his unit voluntarily. "i'm used to living out in the woods," he said. "at home] always camped out a lot." but he did not argue much when] explained that] could not do it and that a few days later would not help him much. "i'm glad you took me in and not the military police," he said and offered me his german p-38 pistol, evidently a prized possession. "the mps will take it away from me and i'd rather you had it." ] protested but finally suggested that he should give it to me and ] would send it to his home after the uiar, l took down his mother's address and shall return it to him someday. he was grateful, par­ ticularly when i made the ff] give him his german field glasses, which he thought the mps would allow him to keep. we started the long walk back through the dripping woods, after the ffi boys had gathered up the rations, blankets, and other equipment. the deserter was certain that they had reported him in order to get his rations because they had been there before and tried to take them. he said they were aware that he was an ameri.. can. after a while ] strongly suspected that he was right. ] let them lug the food and keep it but i took the blankets and equip .. ment to the prisoner of war cage and turned him and his belong.. ings over to the military police. they appeared to receive him matter-of-factly and] suspect that he will not be punished but simply put back into the line again, as he bitterly predicted. to ask the question ernst junger asks in his war diary 0/ 1940: why was i brought before this scene? there may be a good reason. despite the seeming arbitrariness of everything, i still believe that our lives are directed. when i cease to believe that i shall be ready for death. gro all hen sma as stra mel tion tery was nell �ooj d the on lane ne� dec strangest of all to me, and from present perspective most significant, was an encounter in italy a few weeks after we were committed to the front lines. in a free hour one day i climbed one of the nearby hills of the apennines and got off by myself in the late afternoon sud. passing through olive wa ani wl on th 18 ry literate, days, after 'm used to camped oul that i coulj much. "i'm he said ana d pos$ess�n, you md il." it to me ana h�mot�r'l rolem,�r' �ugiruj�, ip�ng wooa!, :ets, and olmr eporled nim ieoefoream . ()jonamen', n rignt.! ul � and e��� !d his oelon�' eceive n� pun��d ow edlcled, lj.ar diarr 0/ re mar de a et'ery�in�, ! e 10 oeueve ctive molt after wf one dar i �d got o� iugh olivf remembering war and forgetfulne&& groves, i soon got away from the evidences of war and gradu­ ally came near the top of the ridge. there i came upon an old hermit, who was sitting upon the grass of a cleared space, smoking a battered old pipe while his donkey grazed nearby. a sod hut into which i peered contained only a clean pallet of straw and a few simple cooking utensils. the old man greeted me amiably, and we fell into conversation, though communica­ tion was not easy owing to his dialect and my imperfect mas­ tery of italian, which was drawn largely from grammars. he was smoking dried grass, and his grizzled features took on a delighted smile when on my invitation he replaced this with good american tobacco. down in the valley the evening cannonade began, and in the distance we could see where the shells from both sides originated and, a few seconds later, where some of them landed with huge dust clouds and explosions. the hermit began to gesticulate and to question me, and it gradually became clear to me that he was mystified by all this and wanted an explanation of what was going on. could it be, i asked myself, that he does not know about the war? and there flashed into my mind a remark of tolstoi's in war and peace to the effect that many russian peasants who suffered loss of everything in napoleon's invasion of russia had not the faintest idea from first to last who was making war or what the campaigns were about. that, however, was in a novel. here, more than a century later, i had stumbled on a man who was totally detached from what was absorbing my whole life and the lives of millions like me. perplexed, i tried to explain simply in my halting italian what world war ii was all about. then it gradually dawned on me how impossible my task really was and would be even though i spoke a perfect dialect italian. how could one ex19 20 the warriors plain to this illiterate old man why americans and british and germans, with some of his countrymen on both sides, were fighting in italy? did i myself know in other than a super­ ficial sense? the strangeness of the conflict and my part in it made me shiver. why were we fighting individuals whom we had never seen and who had never seen us, soldiers who were probably as miserable and ignorant as we? what was i doing here? how did this mad war concern me? for a few minutes i could observe this spectacle through the puzzled eyes of the old hermit, long enough to realize that i understood it as little as he. it is hard to put into words the conflicting ideas that raced through my mind as i said good-by to the innocent old man and started down the ridge. i felt keenly what the philosopher karl jaspers calls the bottomlessness of the world. the pro­ fessors who had taught me philosophy and for whom i had had great respect and esteem became all at once puny in my imagination. i pictured them at this moment sitting around their radios at home listening for news of what we were doing here and understanding it as little as the hermit and i. even the great thinkers of western civilization seemed suddenly to lose their stature and become only human beings, unable to help me fathom what millions of europeans and asians were undergoing at this moment. their wisdom was almost gro­ tesquely inadequate for the occasion. i knew then that i could rely no longer on them for help; there was no one but myself. if there was a dominant mood in my whirling thoughts, it was one of exposure, resulting from my loss of hold on tradi­ tion and the protection of nature now tom by conflict. i was amazed at my former simple-mindedness and glad, despite everything, to be finally aware of it. there was a rare element of liberation about this experience of strangeness, not present in inv be. a i imp fron in i fro� wa� pro thil noi im] int an pe ac th sel ou es b� us 8ritish ana sides, were e but mr��' iliougn�, il old on tram, nilict. i w� ad, despit� e element ot present remembering war and forgetfulness in the others. i realized my powerlessness to escape further involvement in the war, mad and meaningless though it might be. but by the time i had reached my quarters, i had achieved a degree of detachment, through heightened self-awareness, impossible to those unfortunate men who gained no respite from battle. i was not again to enter the conflict as a victim in quite the same way as before. inwardly i was shielded from the danger of false hopes and faith in the outcome of the war, to some extent, also, from false loves and hates. in some sense i had come to myself, as is reported of the prodigal son, and this meant that some simple and familiar things were seen for the first time in a proper light. in our normal state we seem to be remote from the plainest and most important truths. "it is quite in keeping with man's curious intellectual history," writes norman angell, "that the simplest and most important questions are those he asks least often." perhaps the reason is that the required naivete is not easy to acquire or retain. the insights of one hour are blotted out by the events of the next, and few of us can hold on to our real selves long enough to discover the momentous truths about ourselves and this whirling earth to which we cling. this is especially true of men at war. the great god mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm, and when we leave he gives us a generous cup of the waters of lethe to drink. though i did not forget my encounter with the hermit, the necessities of action took hold of me once more. when the war finally ended for me, in the heart of germany sixteen crowded months later, the cruel, the momentous, and the strange were blended as never before. emotionally i had grown numb, so i thought, but to my surprise i discovered on v-e day that i could not keep tears from my eyes. most of all, i was pained 21 the warriors at the thought of those who had lost their lives in the last few days of fighting. how could i ever make sense of the tragedy of those, in concentration camp and front line, who had longed for this day through the years only to perish a few hours or days before its dawn? why had i heen spared? to these questions no answer came. the next months were a severe struggle with restlessness, a nearly universal disease of that period and not at all confined to veteran soldiers. at times i wanted to transfer to unrra and help rebuild the shattered countries i had done my bit to tear down. at other times i wanted to escape the charnel house of europe and seek to find myself in the profession i had prepared for in years that now appeared incredibly re­ mote. when a job offer unexpectedly came from an american college president, i did not know whether i was glad or sorry. it set me dreaming of teaching sober, interested students, working out with them some of the tormenting problems of life and thought. but could i endure big, blustering, unrepentant america? i speculated in my journal on what i would answer if the college president were to ask me what my philosophic position was, and decided i would answer that i was a broken­ hearted idealist, realizing that, while such an answer would not stand for much in formal philosophy, it had a significance for me that he could scarcely fathom. however, the passage of time puts a new face on everything. i soon got out of the army and gradually i got used to peace­ time ways again. it seems scarcely credible to me now that for a period i felt curiously undressed without a pistol on my hip, and i trod softly for a while on all loose sod, unconsciously fearing booby traps, those devilish antipersonnel mines de­ signed to kill or castrate the unwary soldier who stepped on one. when a new generation of college students replaced the 22 vet out than y how elth� thel ilie in�t war �eri j littl war legi the abl e last few e tragedy ad longed w hours or ? to these stlessness, ! au confin� t to unrij done mr 111 ilie charn�1 remembering war and forgetjulness veterans with whom i could philosophize meaningfully with­ out mentioning our common past, the war receded even faster than before. now it is almost as though it never took place. yet something is wrong, dreadfully wrong. when i consider how easily we forget the millions who suffered unbearably, either permanently maimed in body or mind, or who gave up their lives before they had realized their purposes, i rebel at the whole insane spectacle of human existence. had i been one of them, how little difference it would make to anyone today. are we, the survivors, changed at all in significant ways as a consequence of world war ii? am i? and if so, how? answering for myself only, i must say: not nearly enough. despite the mood of my letter from alsace, i have not adopted the christian injunction or heeded auden's warning. instead, i have yielded to an old temptation. so often in the war i felt an utter dissociation from what had gone before in my life; since then i have experienced an absence of con­ tinuity between those years and what i have become. as a teacher of philosophy and would-be philosopher, i strive to see at least my own life as a whole and to discover some pur­ pose and direction in at least the major parts. yet the effort to assimilate those intense war memories to the rest of my ex­ perience is difficult and even frightening. why attempt it? why not continue to forget? it is a real temptation, urged upon us by many. there is a popular belief that the men who knew war at firsthand talk little or not at all about it. those who do are suspected of wanting to magnify their little egos, of being professional legionnaires. besides, people are tired of war; one can hear the refrain in a thousand living rooms. they want to read about it as fiction, and so transmute war into art, or have it as 23 the warriors history, in memoirs of generals and statesmen. these, admir­ able as the good ones are, do not make heavy demands on us to assimilate, to bridge the abyss between peace and war. they rarely ask why and to what purpose, and are strangely incuri­ ous concerning the psychological and moral interrelations of man as warrior and as civilian. i am afraid to forget. i fear that we human creatures do not forget cleanly, as the animals presumably do. what protrudes and does not fit in our pasts rises to haunt us and make us spiritually unwell in the present. the discontinuities in con­ temporary life are cutting us off from our roots and threaten­ ing us with the dread evil of nihilism in the twentieth century. we may become refugees in an inner sense unless we remem­ ber to some purpose. surely the menace of new and more frightful wars is not entirely unrelated to our failure to under­ stand those recently fought. if we could gain only a modicum of greater wisdom concerning what manner of men we are, what effect might it not have on future events? it is exceedingly unlikely that i shall ever be able to under­ stand the why and wherefore of war. but sufficient reflection through the mirror of memory may enable me to make sense of my own small career. the deepest fear of my war years, one still with me, is that these happenings had no real purpose. just as chance often appeared to rule my course then, so the more ordered paths of peace might well signify nothing or nothing much. this conclusion i am unwilling to accept with­ out a struggle; indeed, i cannot accept it at all except as a counsel of despair. how often i wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost. lied �rim mart knt'l worst �y� �al� inea, nut ( nevel "per soldi e, admir. two the enduring appeals of battle i feel cheerful and am well-pleased.... what is ahead mar be grim and dreadful but i shall be spiritually more at rest in the heart of the carnage than somewhere in the rear. since i have lent myself to the war, i want to pay the price and know it at its worst. (war journal, january 31, 1944) my friend wrote once late in the war that he often thought of me as the soldier. to him i had come to stand for the qualities that he associated with universal man at war. the idea, i recall, both battered and insulted me a little at first but ended by impressing me with its truth, though i should never have conceived it on my own. i wrote in my journal: "perhaps the worst that can be said is that i am becoming a soldier. to be a soldier! that is at best to be something less 25 26 web of d peol han! accic in cirill'1001 they iney but tilnass liveollon�e wneln ana 0 the warriors than a man. to say nothing of being a philosopher." since then i have frequently wondered what it meant to be a "soldier" and why i regarded myself then, insofar as i was a soldier, as less than a man. at the time i wrote these lines i faced the grim realization of how narrowed all our desires had become. the night before, one of the women in the town where we were staying had declared: "das essen ist die hauptsache." food is the main thing. and the words had burned into my brain with the force of a proverb. the majority of my fellows seemed content with the satisfaction of their natural urges--eating, drinking, and lusting for women. interests and refinements that transcended these primitive needs, and that i had built up over the years, were rapidly falling away, and i felt that i was becoming simply one of the others. in a german newspaper, taken from a prisoner, i read a letter from a soldier long years on the russian front, who lamented that the war had robbed him of any sense of self­ identity and that he no longer possessed an ego and a personal fate. i realize now, much better than i did then, that there was another force much more determining than simple need and desire. it was the emotional environment of warfare, more specifically, the atmosphere of violence. the threat to life and safety that the presence of the opponent, "the enemy," repre­ sented created this climate of feeling. near the front it was impossible to ignore, consciously or unconsciously, the stark fact that out there were men who would gladly kill you, if and when they got the chance. as a consequence, an individual was dependent on others, on people who could not formerly have entered the periphery of his consciousness. for them in turn, he was of interest only as a center of force, a wielder of wean renae!1m tnl wnat !�s� more lome �ea �ener !iaere od,as rel,f lonn' er," sinc� t to be i as i was i realhati�� nightbeloll, stayin� nl� dis ilie film 'iiiili ilieloru oner, i reao! ian front, wn� i sense of &�, i ana a �er!on� ,lnat tnerew� , �ie ne� an� fnemr," re�r� e front it w� sly, ilie stari 'j] you, if ana djridu8lw� ormerly n8vt the enduring appeal& oj battle weapons, a means of security and survival. this confraternity of danger and exposure is unequaled in forging links among people of unlike desire and temperament, links that are util­ itarian and narrow hut no less passionate hecause of their accidental and general character. in such a climate men may hold fast in memory to their civilian existence of yesterday and stubhornly resist, as i tried to do, the encroachments of the violent and the irrational. they may write home to their parents and sweethearts that they are unchanged, and they may even he convinced of it. but the soldier who has yielded himself to the fortunes of war, has sought to kill and to escape heing killed, or who has even lived long enough in the disordered landscape of hattie, is no longer what he was. he hecomes in some sense a fighter, whether he wills it or not-at least most men do. his moods and disposition are affected by the presence of others and the encompassing environment of threat and fear. he must sur­ render in a measure to the will of others and to superior force. in a real sense he becomes a fighting man, a homo [urens, this is surely part of what it means to be a soldier, and what it has always meant. homo [urens is, so to speak, a subspecies of the genus homo sapiens. obviously, man is more than a fighter and other than a fighter, in our age and formerly. in some generations-alas! too few as yet-organ­ ized war has been little more than an episode. even those generations who have had to spend much time in combat con­ sidered themselves farmers, teachers, factory workers, and so on, as well as fighters. man as warrior is only partly a man, yet, fatefully enough, this aspect of him is capable of trans­ forming the whole. when given free play, it is able to sub­ ordinate other aspects of the personality, repress civilian 27 the warriors habits of mind, and make the soldier as fighter a different kind of creature from the former worker, fanner, or clerk. pen millions of men in our day-like millions before us--have !na� learned to live in war's strange element and have discovered foun in it a powerful fascination. the emotional environment of � warfare has always been compelling; it has drawn most men und under its spell. reflection and calm reasoning are alien to it. lust i wrote in my war journal that i was obsessed with "the con tyranny of the present"; the past and the future did not con�rim cern me. it was hard for me to think, to be alone. when the som signs of peace were visible, i wrote, in some regret: "the in m purgative force of danger which makes men coarser but nas perhaps more human will soon be lost and the first months of on ti peace will make some of us yearn for the old days of conflict." wno beyond doubt there are many who simply endure war, �eeil hating every moment. though they may enjoy garrison life or nein! military maneuvers, they experience nothing but distaste and requl horror for combat itself. still, those who complain the most satia may not be immune from war's appeals. soldiers complain as n an inherited right and traditional duty, and few wish to admit imp to a taste for war . yet many men both hate and love combat. para they know why they hate it; it is harder to know and to be men articulate about why they love it. the novice may be eager at confl times to describe his emotions in combat, but it is the battleappeihardened veterans to whom battle has offered the deeper monl appeals. for some of them the war years are what dixon unadl wecter has well called "the one great lyric passage in their tnat i lives. " they what are these secret attractions of war, the ones that have notoi persisted in the west despite revolutionary changes in the offe� methods of warfare? i believe that they are: the delight in opp� 28 a difierenl i or clerk .ore u�hall �ve discover� nviromnent �i y endure wm y garrison ll!�� out d�taste�! mplain tne m� . rs com�i�id! . wisn to �gml the enduring appeals 0/ battle seeing, the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction. some fighters know one appeal and not the others, some ex­ perience all three, and some may, of course, feel other appeals that i do not know. these three had reality for me, and i have found them also throughout the literature of war. war as a spectacle, as something to see, ought never to be underestimated. there is in all of us what the bible calls "the lust of the eye," a phrase at once precise and of the widest connotation. it is precise because human beings possess as a primitive urge this love of watching. we fear we will miss something worth seeing. this passion to see surely precedes in most of us the urge to participate in or to aid. anyone who has watched people crowding around the scene of an accident on the highway realizes that the lust of the eye is real. anyone who has watched the faces of people at a fire knows it is real. seeing sometimes absorbs us utterly; it is as though the human being became one great eye. the eye is lustful because it requires the novel, the unusual, the spectacular. it cannot satiate itself on the familiar, the routine, the everyday. this lust may stoop to mindless curiosity, a primordial impulse. its typical response is an open-minded gaping at a parade or at the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. how many men in each generation have been drawn into the twilight of confused and murderous battle "to see what it is like"? this appeal of war is usually described as the desire to escape the monotony of civilian life and the cramping restrictions of an unadventurous existence. people are often bored with a day that does not offer variety, distraction, threat, and insecurity. they crave the satisfaction of the astonishing. although war notoriously offers monotony and boredom enough, it also offers the outlandish, the exotic, and the strange. it offers the opportunity of gaping at other lands and other peoples, at 29 the warriors curious implements of war, at groups of others like themselves marching in order, and at the captured enemy in a cage. however, sensuous curiosity is only one level of seeing. the word "see," with its many derivatives, like "insight" and "vision," has an imaginative and intellectual connotation which is far more expansive than the physical. frequently we are unable to separate these levels of seeing, to distinguish the outer from the inner eye. this is probably no accident. the human being is, after all, a unity, and the sensuous, imagina­ tive, and intellectual elements of his nature can fuse when he is absorbed. mindless curiosity is not separated as much as we like to believe from what art lovers call the disinterested contemplation of beauty. the delight in battle as a mere spectacle may progress almost insensibly to an aesthetic con­ templation or to a more dominantly intellectual contempla­ tion of its awfulness. from the simplest soldier who gazes openmouthed at the panorama of battle in his portion of the field to the trained artist observing the scene, there is, i be­ lieve, only a difference of degree. the "seeing" both are engaged in is for them an end in itself before it becomes a spur to action. the dominant motive in both cases appears to be neither the desire for knowledge, though there is much that is instructive in the scene, nor the need to act, though that, too, will become imperative. their "seeing" is for the sake of seeing, the lust of the eye, where the eye stands for the whole human being, for man the observer. there is a popular conviction that war and battle are the sphere of ugliness, and, since aesthetic delight is associated with the beautiful, it may be concluded that war is the natural enemy of the aesthetic. i fear that this is in large part an illusion. it is, first of all, wrong to believe that only beauty can give us aesthetic delight; the ugly can please us too, as eve] is h that iliat colo] :� ilien mass �ight gene well of ana] neff, make authc tunes ora tney �nips, tical lame pria neff i�!ic whe war, 30 e as u1re aes1etic�� al contem��' :er wbo ��� �rtionol�f iliereis ire • c"dotn!re battle are ilif is associ8t� i the nalurru rge part an only beau� � us too, i the enduring appeal& oj battle every artist knows. and furthermore, beauty in various guises is hardly foreign to scenes of battle. while it is undeniable that the disorder and distortion and the violation of nature that conflict brings are ugly beyond compare, there are also color and movement, variety, panoramic sweep, and some­ times even momentary proportion and harmony. if we think of beauty and ugliness without their usual moral overtones, there is often a weird but genuine beauty in the sight of massed men and weapons in combat. reputedly, it was the sight of advancing columns of men under fire that impelled general robert e. lee to remark to one of his staff: "it is well that war is so terrible-we would grow too fond of it." of course, it is said that modern battles lack all the color and magnificence of spectacle common to earlier wars. john neff, in his valuable study entitled wat and human progress, makes much of the decline in our century of the power and authority of what he calls "the claims of delight." in earlier times men at war, he points out, were much more dominated by artistic considerations in the construction of their weapons. they insisted on the decorative and beautiful in cannons, ships, and small arms, even at the obvious expense of the prac­ tical and militarily effective. then, artists of great skill and fame worked on weapons of war, and gunsmiths took great pride in the beauty of their products. the claims of beauty, neff believes, have had to give way more and more to material­ istic and pragmatic aims in this century of total warfare. when i remember some of the hideous implements of battle in world war ii, it is hard indeed not to agree with him. standardization and automatization of weapons have fre­ quently stripped them of any pretense to beauty. this, though, is only one aspect of battle and of modern war. what has been lost in one realm is compensated for in 31 32 cre8 hahi mag hard absoi hrinl irali\ reca� �uch �etl hon1 ceme aeligl as the warriors another . war is now fought in the air as well as on land and sea, and the expanse of vision and spectacle afforded by com­ bat planes is hard to exaggerate. because these powerful new weapons usually remove those who use them further from the gruesome consequences of their firing, they afford more op­ portunity for aesthetic satisfaction. combat in the skies is seldom devoid of the form, grace, and harmony that ground fighting lacks. there are spectacular sweep and drama, a colorfulness and a precision about such combat which earlier centuries knew only in a few great sea battles. it is true that the roar of fighting planes can be unpleasant in its assault upon the ears, and their dives upon their victims for strafing or bombing can be terror-inspiring. but the combatant who is relieved from participation and given the spectator's role can nearly sate the eye with all the elements of fearful beauty. i remember most vividly my feelings while watching from a landing boat, on the morning of august 25, 1944, the simultaneous bombardment of the french riviera by our planes and by our beet of warships. we had come rela­ tively close to the targets under the cover of darkness. as dawn broke and the outline of the coast appeared, thousands of us watched motionless and silent, conscious that we would be called upon to act only after the barrage and bombing were over. then we saw the planes, appearing from nowhere, and in perfect alignment over their targets. suddenly, fire and smoke issued from huge cannon on our ships, and the invasion had begun. our eyes followed the planes as they dived into the melee of smoke and flame and dust and emerged farther down the coast to circle for another run. the assault of bomb and shell on the line of coast was so furious that i half expected a large part of the mainland to become somehow detached and fall into the sea. lenn appe8 mani �pirit ports perie fort aiffed thls sell 1 fore] this n land ana ed by com. awerlul new her from lli� ard more o� the sklesi y that �o�� and drama, i a\ whlen earu� .1t is true �� t in i� aiia� tor'srolet41 ul�aury. ea,fuousanru iliat we woill� a bomdin�were nownere, an� enlr fire an� od �einvasio! dived into �e fartherao� of bomd an� 8li expected! detachea an� the enduring appeals of battle when i could forget the havoc and terror that was being created by those shells and bombs among the half-awake in­ habitants of the villages, the scene was beyond all question magnificent. i found it easily possible, indeed a temptation hard to resist, to gaze upon the scene spellbound, completely absorbed, indifferent to what the immediate future might bring. others appeared to manifest a similar intense concen­ tration on the spectacle. many former soldiers must be able to recall some similar experience. however incomprehensible such scenes may be, and however little anyone would want to see them enacted a second time, few of us can deny, if we are honest, a satisfaction in having seen them. as far as i am con­ cerned, at least part of that satisfaction can be ascribed to delight in aesthetic contemplation. as i reflect further, it becomes clear, however, that the term "beauty," used in any ordinary sense, is not the major appeal in such spectacles. instead, it is the fascination that manifestations of power and magnitude hold for the human spirit. some scenes of battle, much like storms over the ocean or sunsets on the desert or the night sky seen through a tele­ scope, are able to overawe the single individual and hold him in a spell. he is lost in their majesty. his ego temporarily deserts him, and he is absorbed into what he sees. an aware­ ness of power that far surpasses his limited imagination trans­ ports him into a state of mind unknown in his everyday ex­ periences. fleeting as these rapt moments may be, they are, for the majority of men, an escape from themselves that is very different from the escapes induced by sexual love or alcohol. this raptness is a joining and not a losing, a deprivation of self in exchange for a union with objects that were hitherto foreign. yes, the chief aesthetic appeal of war surely lies in this feeling of the sublime, to which we, children of nature, 33 34 taint with the warriors are directed whether we desire it or not. astonishment and wonder and awe appear to he part of our deepest heing, and war offers them an exercise field par excellence. as i wrote: yesterday morning we left rome and took up the pursuit oj the rapidly fleeing germans. and again the march was past ruined, blackened villages, destroyed vehicles, dead and mangled corpses of german soldiers, dead and stinking horses, blown bridges, and clouds of dust that blackened our faces and filled our clothes. • • • later i watched a full moon sail through a cloudy sky . . . saw german bombers fly past and our antiaircraft bursts around them. . . . i felt again the aching beauty of this incomparable land. i remembered everything that i had ever been and was. it was pain­ ful and glorious. what takes place in us when we are under the spell of this powerful mood? it is often said that its deepest satisfaction lies in the sense of personal exemption from the fate of others. we watch them exposed to powers that overwhelm them, and we enjoy the feelings of superiority of the secure. when human beings are not involved, and feelings of the sublime steal over us at the majestic in nature, this can be traced to a heightened sense of the ego in one way or another. as spectators we are superior to that which we survey. in my journal are these words: the we at th) !elvel nessl neave know olind aescfi laliod lor in lor! �uper� bul liisl ilian us at on ih this evening we watched a beautiful sunset over the tyrrhenian sea. from our window we looked out on the wall-enclosed gardens of carano, where flowers blossomed and peach trees made the air sweet with their white blossoms. beyond them stretched fields and, farther, the mountains, formia, gaeta, the sea. as the sun sank behind the mountains, it illumined a cloud that was hanging low. as we watched the wonderful pageantry of nature, the sound of cannon was earned in on the evening air. we were forced to realize that a few miles away, in this area we were gazing at, men lurked with death in their hearts. we were looking over no man's we a !rom able scenq la! moae reacn wner, ing � o/vl whit mnent ana being, ana as i wrote: � pursuit 01 s past ruinea ngted cor�!� n bridges, am ut cwtms"" y sky, ,,!al l! around t�m paraok �m,i u(lj, itujas�� e spe� 01 �� . satisfactio� ate of otn��, the t)rrnenw! .iosed garaeru 5 ade tneair hed fieusa�, thesunsonl hanging low, the soumo/ ere forced ro a:ing ai, men mnoman'! the enduring appeals 0/ battle land. as it grew dark, huge signs 0/ fire appeared on the moun­ tain. it was mysterious, but we had no doubt that it had to do with death and destruction. the feeling of momentary depression, as kant puts it, which we initially succumb to when looking through a telescope at the vastness of the heavens and the insignificance of our­ selves in comparison is soon supplanted by the conscious­ ness that we are the astronomers. it is we who know that the heavens are empty and vast, and the heavens presumably know nothing of us. the human spirit triumphs over these blind forces and lifeless powers of nature. such scenes as i described above could be explained, by this view, as the exul­ tation of the spectators that they were not actors or sufferers, for the sublime mood derives from a separation of the specta­ tor from the spectacle, and its pleasantness consists in the superiority the ego feels. but such a view is wrong, or, at the very least, one-sided. it is the viewpoint of an egoistic, atomistic psychology rather than the product of close observation. the awe that steals over us at such times is not essentially a feeling of triumph, but, on the contrary, a recognition of power and grandeur to which we are subject. there is not so much a separation of the self from the world as a subordination of the self to it. we are able to disregard personal danger at such moments by tran­ scending the self, by forgetting our separateness. last evening i sat on a rock outside the town and watched a modern battle, an artillery duel • . . the panorama was so far­ reaching that i could see both the explosion of the guns and where their speedy messengers struck.... several shells of reply­ ing batteries landed fairly close and made my perch not the safest of vantage points. but it was an interesting, stirring sight. after a while the firing died down and evening shadows came over the 35 36 ilian worll ai dook �ialir asses! word �incel unde� lion ,1 requl! 10lhelwere withol idge) ones i lary leldoi !rom ilie n the warriors valley. a townsman carrying a pail of swill for his hogs came by, fell into conversation, and then asked me to await his return, when he would take me to his home for a glass of wine. perhaps the majority of men cannot become so absorbed in a spectacle that they overcome fear of pain and death. still, it is a common-enough phenomenon on the battlefield that men expose themselves quite recklessly for the sake of seeing. if ever the world is blown to bits by some superbomb, there will be those who will watch the spectacle to the last minute, without fear, disinterestedly and with detachment. i do not mean that there is lack of interest in this disinterested­ ness or lack of emotion in this detachment. quite the contrary. but the self is no longer important to the observer; it is ab­ sorbed into the objects with which it is concerned. i think the distinctive thing about the feeling of the sub­ lime is its ecstatic character, ecstatic in the original meaning of the term, namely, a state of being outside the self. even in the common experience of mindless curiosity there is a mo­ mentary suppression of the ego, a slight breaking down of the barriers of the self, though insignificant in comparison with the rarer moods when we are filled with awe. this ecstasy satisfies because we are conscious of a power outside us with which we can merge in the relation of parts to whole. feelings neither of triumph nor of depression predominate. the per­ vasive sense of wonder satisfies us because we are assured that we are part of this circling world, not divorced from it, or shut up within the walls of the self and delivered over to the in­ sufficiency of the ego. certain psychologists would call this just another escape from the unpleasant facts of the self's situation. if so, it is an escape of a very different sort from the usual. we feel rescued from the emptiness within us. in losing ourselves we gain a relationship to something greater my' mr ii fuen wast worla fues yoi were letter nave mucn read, nave mparison m� .mecst� o�iae us wi� nole. feelin� ate. toe �fr· e�ureailiil om it, ors�ijl wtotne� uld ca� tlili of the se�'1 nt sort from 'thin us. i� the enduring appeals 0/ battle than the self, and the foreign character of the surrounding world is drastically reduced. a good example of what i am saying can be found in a little book entitled letzte briefe aus stalingrad (last letters from stalingrad). in 1943 the german high command, anxious to assess the morale of the encircled soldiers at stalingrad, sent word that mail would be forwarded to their homes by plane. since the situation had become desperate, most of the men understood that this would probably be their last communica­ tion with home. after the letters were written, they were requisitioned by german security officers and never delivered to the addressees. at the end of the war, the packets of letters were discovered in police buildings, and a selection from them, without the names of the men who wrote them, was published in germany. these letters, intended only for the eyes of loved ones by men who were experiencing the bitter shock of mili­ tary defeat after spectacular victories, have a stark quality seldom found in war literature. the following translation is from the first one in the little volume, and is obviously from the hand of a military meteorologist: my life has not changed at all. just as it was ten years ago, my life is blessed by the stars and shunned by man. i had even then no friends and you know why they avoided me. my happiness was to sit in front of the telescope and peer at the sky and the world of the stars, pleased as a child who is allowed to play with the stars. you were my best friend, monika. no, you read it aright; you were my best friend. the time is too serious for joking. this letter will need fourteen days to reach you. by that time you will have read in the papers what has happened here. don't think too much about it. the facts will be quite different from what you read, but let other people worry about setting them straight. i have always thought in light-years and felt in seconds. here too 37 the warriors i am busy with recording weather conditions. four of us are working together and if things would go on like this, we would be content. the work itself is easy. we have the task of recording temperature and humidity, reporting on cloudiness and visibility. if one of these bureaucrats were to read what i am writing, his eyes would pop-violation of security! monika, what does our life amount to in comparison with the millions of years of the starry heavens! andromeda and pegasus are just over my head on this lovely night. i have been looking at them for a long time; soon i shall be near them. i can thank the stars for my contentment and serenity. you are, of course, for me the most beautiful star! the stars are immortal and the life of man is like a particle of dust in the universe. everything around us is collapsing, a whole army is dying, and night and day are aflame. and four people are busily record­ ing temperatures and cloud conditions! i don't understand much about war. no human being has ever fallen by my hand. i never even aimed my pistol at a target. but this i do know: our op­ ponents do not demonstrate our lack of intelligence. i would have liked to continue counting stars for a few decades but nothing will come of it now. sure, was a and h of ca� lngs t iney � rarely 1ft this letter, from a german soldier, reveals, i think, the writer's power to attach himself to the things of nature and feel their kinship to him even in a world aflame. at moments he does feel his moral responsibility to a human being who probably loves him and will mourn for him. "you are, of course, for me the most beautiful star!" the "of course" sounds like a twinge of conscience which reveals where his real heart lies, for his thoughts whirl immediately back again to his vision of the truly important and immortal things of the universe, which he hopes soon to be approaching. even in a situation where safety and life itself are at stake, this soldier holds fast to his feelings of kinship with the universe about him and loses himself in contemplating its wonders. to be �ears sallenl and al lust 0 moral lugl!i ecsla!l ineae ine h� lion 0 not b killin ecsla! moral cann] aller �oals � coml mon seld( vesti relal 38 arisen with � da and pe�� ve been loo� em. 1 canlhitt a e of coil!se,j� ortaj and llie� e liofcolmi' ea� wnere w ely back a�!w rtal thin� �i bing. evenw e, this sojai� 'verse �om iders, to � the enduring appeau 0/ battle sure, he is doubtless an exception. he tells us himself that he was accustomed to being alone with his thoughts a great deal, and he is an astronomer. perhaps most soldiers are incapable of carrying absorption so far. yet many have felt similar urg­ ings toward the infinite in moments of extremity, and, though they cannot be articulate about such experiences, they are rarely quite the same afterward. if the delight in seeing, especially in its higher reaches, ap­ pears to be a noble quality in men, we should not forget one salient fact: it nearly always involves a neglect of moral ideals and an absence of concern for the practical. that is why the lust of the eye is roundly condemned in biblical context. morality involves action, while seeing, in all of its meanings, is a fugitive from action. morality is based on the social; the ecstatic, on the other hand, is transsocial. the fulfillment of the aesthetic is in contemplation, and it shuns the patience and the hard work that genuine morality demands. the deteriora­ tion of moral fervor, which is a consequence of every war, may not be entirely due to the reversal of values that fighting and killing occasion. may it not be also a consequence of aesthetic ecstasy, which is always pressing us beyond the border of the morally permissible? the experience in memory may be un­ canny and leave no desire for repetition. yet we find it difficult after the war to regain the full conviction of previous moral goals. another appeal of war, the communal experience we call comradeship, is thought, on the other hand, to be especially moral and the one genuine advantage of battle that peace can seldom offer. whether this is true or not deserves to be in­ vestigated. the term "comradeship" covers a large number of relationships, from the most personal to the anonymous and 39 40 call: littl the warriors general, and here i will consider only some essentials of mili­ tary comradeship. what calls it into being in battle, what strengthens or weakens it, what is its essential attraction? the feeling of belonging together that men in battle often find a cementing force needs first to be awakened by an ex­ ternal reason for fighting, but the feeling is by no means de­ pendent on this reason. the cause that calls comradeship into being may be the defense of one's country, the propagation of the one true religious faith, or a passionate political ide­ ology; it may be the maintenance of honor or the recovery of a helen of troy. so long as there is a cause, the hoped-for objective may be relatively unimportant in itself. when, through military reverses or the fatiguing and often horrible experiences of combat, the original purpose becomes obscured, the fighter is often sustained solely by the determination not to let down his comrades. numberless soldiers have died, more or less willingly, not for country or honor or religious faith or for any other ab­ stract good, but because they realized that by fleeing their post and rescuing themselves, they would expose their com­ panions to greater danger. such loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale. the commander who can preserve and strengthen it knows that all other psychological or physical factors are little in comparison. the feeling of loyalty, it is clear, is the result, and not the cause, of comradeship. com­ rades are loyal to each other spontaneously and without any need for reasons. men may learn to be loyal out of fear or from rational conviction, loyal even to those they dislike. but such loyalty is rarely reliable with great masses of men unless it has some cement in spontaneous liking and the feeling of belonging. though comradeship is dependent on being together physicomj aang havir erb t ticu!a volve room longi] respo clear! gel camp :;�iiilierunde a�o e �iowll natu� confil than expl peopl if po occ� a vel mod tot the lals of mill. battle, what ltaction1 , battle o!t�� ,ed by an �!, no meansq�, radeshi� int� e pro�a�ati�� e political iq�' r the recov�ry . the ho�eq.!m itseu. \v1�� olten norridll e �oll� is�1 o can �resem 'cal or�nrsi� f iojalt11 it � adesni�, lo� witholltad! ul of fear m y dislike. �m f men unl� e feelin� 01 the enduring appeals 01 battle cally in time and space, it is not a herding animal instinct. little can be learned, i am convinced, from attempting to compare animal and human forms of association. in extreme danger and need, there is undeniably a minimal satisfaction in having others of your own species in your vicinity. the prov­ erb that "misery loves company" is not without basis, par­ ticularly in situations where defense and aggression are in­ volved. but it is equally true that men can live in the same room and share the same suffering without any sense of be­ longing together. they can live past each other and be ir­ responsible toward each other, even when their welfare is clearly dependent on co-operation. german soldiers who endured russian prisoner-of-war camps in the decade after world war ii have described con­ vincingly how the communist system succeeded in destroying any sense of comradeship among prisoners simply by making the results of individual labor the basis of food allotments. under a system like this, men can not only eat their fill but also enjoy superfluity without any concern for a mate who may slowly be starving to death. this lamentable fact about human nature has too often been observed to require much further confirmation. the physical proximity of men can do no more than create the minimal conditions of comradeship. it no more explains the communal appeal of war than it explains why people love cities. what then are the important components of comradeship, if physical presence is only a minimal condition? the one that occurs immediately is organization for a common goal. even a very loose type of organization can induce many people to moderate their self-assertiveness and accommodate themselves to the direction of a superpersonal will. everyone is aware of the vast difference between a number of men as a chance col41 42 the warriors iection of individuals and the same number as an organized group or community. a community has purpose and plan, and there is in us an almost instinctive recognition of the connec­ tion between unity and strength. those who stand in disorganized masses against smaller groups of the organized are always aware of the tremendous odds against them. the sight of huge crowds of prisoners of war being herded toward collection centers by a few guards with rifles slung over their backs is one filled with pathos. it is not the absence of weapons that makes these prisoners help­ less before their guards. it is the absence of a common will, the failing assurance that others will act in concert with you against the conquerors. but organization is of many kinds, and the military kind is special in aiming at common and concrete goals. the or­ ganization of a civilian community, a city, for example, is not without goals, but they are rarely concrete, and many members are hardly aware of their existence. if a civilian community has goals with more reality and power to endure than military goals, as i believe it does, its goals are, nevertheless, unable to generate the degree of loyalty that a military organization can. in war it is a commonplace of command that the goals of the fighting forces need to be clear and to be known. natu­ rally, the over-all goal is to win the war and then go home. but in any given action, the goal is to overcome the attacking enemy or, if you are the attacker, to win the stated objective. any fighting unit must have a limited and specific objective, and the more defined and bounded it is, the greater the will­ ingness, as a rule, on the part of soldiers to abandon their natural desire for self-preservation. officers soon learn to dread hazy and ill-defined orders from above. if the goal is physical, q desl like com obst unit detel indi 01 orgal radel dang fon deat! ilie i answ end di mon awa� the or 0 mit si�ni sex i vita� ofro coilll ti ofa denl eve] tremenaoul prisoners oj a few guarm �tb pailio�,lt prisoners nel� mmon will, t�� cert with roij theenduring appeau of battle a piece of earth to take or defend, a machine-gun nest to destroy, a strong point to annihilate, officers are much more likely to evoke the sense of comradeship. they realize that comradeship at first develops through the consciousness of an obstacle to be overcome through common effort. a fighting unit with morale is one in which many are of like mind and determination, unconsciously agreed on the suppression of individual desires in the interest of a shared purpose. organization for a common and concrete goal in peacetime organizations does not evoke anything like the degree of com­ radeship commonly known in war. evidently, the presence of danger is distinctive and important. men then are organized for a goal whose realization involves the real possibility of death or injury. how does danger break down the barriers of the self and give man an experience of community? the answer to this question is the key to one of the oldest and most enduring incitements to battle. danger provides a certain spice to experience; this is com­ mon knowledge. it quickens the pulse and makes us more aware of being alive by calling attention to our physical selves. the thrill of the chase in hunting, of riding a horse very fast, or of driving an automobile recklessly is of this sort. but the excitement created in us by such activities has little communal significance. its origin appears to be sexual, if we understand sex in the wide sense given to it by freud. the increased vitality we feel where danger is incidental is due to awareness of mastery over the environment. it is an individualist, not a communal, drive. the excitement and thrill of battle, on the other hand, are of a different sort, for there danger is central and not inci­ dental. there is little of the play element about combat, how­ ever much there may have been in training for it. instead, for 43 the warriors most soldiers there is the hovering inescapable sense of ir­ reversibility. "this is for keeps," as soldier slang is likely to put it. this profound earnestness is by no means devoid of lightheartedness, as seen in teasing and horseplay, but men are conscious that they are on a one-way street, so to speak, and what they do or fail to do can be of great consequence. those who enter into battle, as distinguished from those who only hover on its fringes, do not fight as duelists fight. almost automatically, they fight as a unit, a group. training can help a great deal in bringing this about more quickly and easily in an early stage. but training can only help to make actual what is inherent. as any commander knows, an hour or two of combat can do more to weld a unit together than can months of intensive training. many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit, i believe, that the experience of communal effort in battle, even under the altered conditions of modern war, has been a high point in their lives. despite the horror, the weariness, the grime, and the hatred, participation with others in the chances of battle had its unforgettable side, which they would not want to have missed. for anyone who has not experienced it himself, the feeling is hard to comprehend, and, for the participant, hard to explain to anyone else. probably the feeling of libera­ tion is nearly basic. it is this feeling that explains the curious combination of earnestness and lightheartedness so often noted in men in battle. many of us can experience freedom as a thrilling reality, something both serious and joyous, only when we are acting in unison with others for a concrete goal that costs something absolute for its attainment. individual freedom to do what we will with our lives and our talents, the freedom of self-de­ termination, appears to us most of the time as frivolous or burc undi i �o� joyoi and c nom w�: nas � ilie e� aeriv� innivilwe atwith t like t� �epar nave i men a kin into iijcel at uniik ca�iol lon� �ame war or th toge� �ity, less war sense of u. is likely to devoid 01 �ayl but men 1 so to spe�, consequenc�, om those wn� fight. a��t frivolous or the enduring appeals of battle burdensome. such freedom leaves us empty and alone, feeling undirected and insignificant. only comparatively few of us know how to make this individual freedom productive and joyous. but communal freedom can pervade nearly everyone and carry everything before it. this elemental fact about free­ dom the opponents of democracy have learned well, and it constitutes for them a large initial advantage. the lightheartedness that communal participation brings has little of the sensuous or merely pleasant about it, just as the earnestness has little of the calculating or rational. both derive instead from a consciousness of power that is supra­ individual. we feel earnest and gay at such moments because we are liberated from our individual impotence and are drunk with the power that union with our fellows brings. in moments like these many have a vague awareness of how isolated and separate their lives have hitherto been and how much they have missed by living in the narrow circle of family or a few friends. with the boundaries of the self expanded, they sense a kinship never known before. their "i" passes insensibly into a "we," "my" becomes "our," and individual fate loses its central importance. at its height, this sense of comradeship is an ecstasy not unlike the aesthetic ecstasy previously described, though oc­ casioned by different forces. in most of us there is a genuine longing for community with our human species, and at the same time an awkwardness and helplessness about finding the way to achieve it. some extreme experience--mortal danger or the threat of destruction-is necessary to bring us fully together with our comrades or with nature. this is a great pity, for there are surely alternative ways more creative and less dreadful, if men would only seek them out. until now, war has appealed because we discover some of the mysteries 45 the warriors of communal joy in its forbidden depths. comradeship reaches its peak in battle. the secret of comradeship has not been exhausted, how­ ever, in the feeling of freedom and power instilled in us by communal effort in combat. there is something more and equally important. the sense of power and liberation that comes over men at such moments stems from a source heyond the union of men. i believe it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self-sacrifice at these moments 80 relatively easy. men are true comrades only when each is ready to give up his life for the other, without reflection and without thought of personal loss. who can doubt that every war, the two world wars no less than former ones, has pro­ duced true comradeship like this? such sacrifice seems herd and heroic to those who have never felt communal ecstasy. in fact, it is not nearly so diffi­ cult as many less absolute acts in peacetime and in civilian life, for death becomes in a measure unreal and unbelievahle to one who is sharing his life with his companions. immor­ tality is not something remote and otherworldly, possibly or probably true and real; on the contrary, it becomes a present and self-evident fact. nothing is further from the truth than the insistence of cer­ tain existentialist philosophers that each person must die his own death and experience it unsharably. if that were so, how many lives would have been spared on the battlefield! but in fact, death for men united with each other can be shared as few other of life's great moments can be. to be sure, it is not death as we know it usually in civilian life. in the german language men never die in battle. they fall. the term is exact for the expression of self-sacrifice when it is motivated by the feeling of comradeship. i may fall, but i do not die, for tha comrad let r iliousall oittered any oth niers ha \nevery has lost i there dier-comj anama accident ilieirmi "onwan inat our thelrue auhf \o�, fo �tn a lerenc! notvisl illr di, � inh� capabl capab]01 res i� stl comf t1 by i spol 46 austed, how, t�ed in us 1, hing more ani liberation �ii a source b�r�!1 an the assui� th� mom�!ijm nly when ��� out rebec!i�!� doubt �al �� er ones, n� �r� �ose wno �ir� o! nearlrsoi e and in civili@ and unljeu�f�j� panions, i1ll1ij�r' idly, pos!wlr �r omes a pr�di ,is!enceofw, n must aiem twereso,how ene/d! bu! id be shared � ne term � motivale� ro not die, the enduring appeals oj battle for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom i gave up my physical life. let me not be misunderstood. it is unquestionably true that thousands of soldiers die in battle, miserable, alone, and em­ bittered, without any conviction of self-sacrifice and without any other satisfactions. i suspect the percentage of such sol­ diers has increased markedly in recent wars. but for those who in every battle are seized by the passion for self-sacrifice, dying has lost its terrors because its reality has vanished. there must be a similarity between this willingness of sol­ dier-comrades for self-sacrifice and the willingness of saints and martyrs to die for their religious faith. it is probably no accident that the religions of the west have not cast away their military terminology or even their militant character­ "onward, christian soldiers! marching as to war . . ." nor that our wars are defended in terms of devotion and salvation. the true believer must be ready to give up his life for the faith. and if he is a genuine saint he will regard this sacrifice as no loss, for the self has become indestructible in being united with a supreme reality. there are, of course, important dif.. ferences. the reality for which the martyr sacrifices himself is not visible and intimate like the soldier's. the martyr usu­ ally dies alone, scorned by the multitude. in this sense his lot is infinitely harder. it is hardly surprising that few men are capable of dying joyfully as martyrs whereas thousands are capable of self-sacrifice in wartime. nevertheless, a basic point of resemblance remains, namely, that death has lost not only its sting but its reality, too, for the self that dies is little in comparison with that which survives and triumphs. this is the mystical element of war that has been mentioned by nearly all serious writers on the subject. william james spoke of it as a sacrament, and once remarked that "society 47 i knew this rock well. i had lived under the shadow of it all my life. all our western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing. here it could be seen how the meaning of the crucifixion had heen hidden from us, though it was written clear. a supremely good man was born the warriors would rot without the mystical blood payment." and g. f. nicolai, in his book the biology of war, is persuaded that "the boundless capacity for self-sacrifice" is what is intoxicat­ ing and great about war. it is this that occasions frequent doubt in lovers of peace whether men will ever give up war­ fare, and, at times, the vagrant question whether it is desirable that they should. this capacity for self-sacrifice is what all defenders of war (in our day grown few) use as their final argument for the necessity and ultimate morality of war: since men can only be brought by such extreme means to a recogni­ tion of their true nature and their essential relationships, these defenders tell us, it is folly to seek to abolish war, because it would be to abolish death itself. many humanists and humanitarians, on the other hand, at­ tack the impulse to self-sacrifice as the very core of moral evil. it offends their whole rational image of the distinctively hu­ man. and the more forthright do not hesitate to express their abhorrence for the christian faith insofar as it is founded on the theme of self-sacrifice. readers of rebecca west's black lamb and grey faleon will not easily forget the bitterness with which she deals with the notion of sacrifice and her re­ jection of saint paul, saint augustine, and luther for burden­ ing the christian faith with "this ugly theme." her reflections, after witnessing a rather gruesome cere­ mony in the backwaters of yugoslavia in which black lambs are sacrificed in the belief that they will heal the local peasants of sundry diseases, conclude as follows: on mal fatu seeu this ii the peo] trac aur diff bee me will ilial oil of t leol pre 1 48 intoxicat. . s frequent ve up war. is desir�le is what � s their hnru of war:�inre the enduring appeals of battle on earth, a man who was without cruelty, who could have taught mankind to live in perpetual happiness; and because we are in­ fatuated with this idea of sacrifice, of shedding innocent blood to secure innocent advantages, we found nothing better to do with this passport to deliverance than to destroy him. esome cere· lack lamd! al peasan� it is true that we in the west are frequently infatuated with the idea of sacrifice, particularly self-sacrifice. why are some people so strongly repelled and others again and again at­ tracted by the impulse to self-sacrifice? or why do both attraction and repulsion have place in the same breast at different moments? as moralists, we are repelled, i suspect, because the impulse to sacrifice is not subject to rational judg­ ment and control. it takes hold of us and forces us against our will, later claiming justification from some higher authority than the human. as often as not, it puts itself at the service of an evil cause, perhaps more frequently than in the service of the good. the mysterious power that such leaders as napo­ leon, hitler, and stalin had in their being that enabled them to create a love for self-sacrifice perplexes us endlessly. we cannot condemn it with full conviction, since it seems likely that both leaders and led were in large degree powerless to prevent the impulses that dominated them. yet such power is appalling beyond measure and from a rational viewpoint deserving of the deepest condemnation. the limits of free will and morality are transgressed, and man is forced to seek religious and metaphysical justification for self­ sacrifice, even when committed in an evil cause. as in the aesthetic appeal of war, when we reach the impulse of the sublime, so in the communal appeal of comradeship, when we reach the impulse to self-sacrifice, we are confronted with contradictions that are deeply embedded in our culture, if not in human nature itself. what our moral self tells us is abhorf il allmr ve prelence ilcoula� dden from was born 49 the warriors rent, our religious self and our aesthetic self yearn for as the ultimate good. this is part of the riddle of war. if we are truly wise, perhaps we should not want to alter these capacities of our human nature, even though we suffer from them immeasurably and may yet succumb to their threat. for the willingness to sacrifice self, like the attraction of the sublime, is what makes possible the higher reaches of the spirit into the realms of poetry, philosophy, and genuine religion. they prevent our best men from losing interest in and hope for our species. they stand in the way of discouragement and cynicism. as moralists, we can condemn saint paul and saint augustine for their mystical conviction that without sacrifice no purgation from sin is possible. but we should be cautious in so doing, for they were convinced that without the supra­ moral act, we human beings are not able to lead even a nor­ mally moral existence. though they were not disposed to be­ lieve that god was without moral qualities, they were quite certain that there was more in his universe than the deter­ minations of good and evil. for them the "i am" preceded logically and in time the "i ought." and vast numbers of people have agreed with them that the religious order is su­ perior to the moral, though they continue to be confused about how the two are related. are we not right in honoring the fighter's impulse to sacri­ fice himself for a comrade, even though it be done, as it so frequently is, in an evil cause? i think so. it is some kind of world historical pathos that the striving for union and for immortality must again and again be consummated while men are in the service of destruction. i do not doubt for a moment that wars are made many times more deadly because of this striving and this impulse. yet i would not want to be without the assurance their existence gives me that our species has a dine often too. if our f confi( in od fare i much on t� eyes descn targe light thq pers cal e the appe plan m dev cape pret ene) hau ion! the lite ane 50 for as the ant to alter ;h we suffer their threat ction of lli� of thespiri! ine reli�on, in ana no� out sacrilic� be cau!ioll! tiliesupra. were�!f ilie ae!�r· " preceaea numbers 01 e, as i! �o e kina 01 while men amomen! of tlll� e wiiliou! ies has a the enduring appeau 0/ battle different destiny than is granted to other animals. though we often sink below them, we can at moments rise above them, too. if the lust of the eye and the yearning for communion with our fellows were the only appeals of combat, we might be confident that they would be ultimately capable of satisfaction in other ways. but my own observation and the history of war­ fare both convince me that there is a third impulse to battle much more sinister than these. anyone who has watched men on the battlefield at work with artillery, or looked into the eyes of veteran killers fresh from slaughter, or studied the descriptions of bombardiers' feelings while smashing their targets, finds hard to escape the conclusion that there is a de­ light in destruction. a walk across any battlefield shortly after the guns have fallen silent is convincing enough. a sensitive person is sure to be oppressed by a spirit of evil there, a radi­ cal evil which suddenly makes the medieval images of hell and the thousand devils of that imagination believable. this evil appears to surpass mere human malice and to demand ex­ planation in cosmological and religious terms. men who have lived in the zone of combat long enough to be veterans are sometimes possessed by a fury that makes them capable of anything. blinded by the rage to destroy and su­ premely careless of consequences, they storm against the enemy until they are either victorious, dead, or utterly ex­ hausted. it is as if they are seized by a demon and are no longer in control of themselves. from the homeric account of the sacking of troy to the conquest of dienbienphu, western literature is filled with descriptions of soldiers as berserkers and mad destroyers. perhaps the following account from the diary of ernst 51 the warriors juenger in world war i may stand for many because it is so concise and exactly drawn. it describes the beginning of the last german offensive in the west. the great moment had come. the curtain of fire lifted from the front trenches. we stood up. with a mixture of feelings, evoked by bloodthirstiness, rage, and intoxication, we moved in step, ponderously but irresistibly toward the enemy lines. i was well ahead of the company, fol­ lowed by vinke and a one-year veteran named haake. my right hand embraced the shaft of my pistol, my left a riding stick of bamboo cane. i was boiling with a mad rage, which had taken hold of me and all the others in an incomprehensible fashion. the overwhelming wish to kill gave wings to my feet. rage pressed hitter tears from my eyes. the monstrous desire for annihilation, which hovered over the hattlefield, thickened the hrains of the men and submerged them in a red fog. we called to each other in sobs and stammered dis­ connected sentences. a neutral observer might have perhaps be­ lieved that we were seized hy an excess of happiness. happiness is doubtless the wrong word for the satisfaction that men experience when they are possessed by the lust to destroy and to kill their kind. most men would never admit that they enjoy killing, and there are a great many who do not. on the other hand, thousands of youths who never suspected the presence of such an impulse in themselves have learned in military life the mad excitement of destroying. the appe­ tite is one that requires cultivation in the environment of dis­ order and deprivation common to life at the front. it usually marks the great difference between green troops and veterans. generals often name it "the will to close with the enemy." this innocent-sounding phrase conceals the very substance of the delight in destruction slumbering in most of us. when soldiers step over the line that separates self-defense from figl ex� sol� coni stru a urg who his his abo hay joyl his an ca 52 ted from�! tiness, ra�!, ut inesi!lini, companr, !oi. aake, mr ri��1 riding stick 01 ien nad lah! lefasruon,th! rage preiloo e satisfacti�� y ilie lustt� never admit woo aod�!. er suspectoo ave learnoo , the apj» entof� ,it usu�r e enemr," stance 01 us, when rnse from the enduring appeals of battle fighting for its own sake, as it is so easy for them to do, they experience something that stirs deep chords in their being. the soldier-killer is learning to serve a different deity, and his concern is with death and not life, destruction and not con­ struction. of the many writers who are pteoccupied today with man's urge toward destruction, ernest hemingway stands out as one who has succeeded in incorporating the spirit of violence in his men and women. in his for whom the bell tous, he has his hero say at one point: "stop making dubious literature about the berbers and the old iberians and admit that you have liked to kill as all who are soldiers by choice have en­ joyed it at some time whether they lie about it or not." and his old colonel in the more recent book a cross the river and into the trees is as profound a portrait of the soldier-killer as we have seen in recent literature. the colonel is so far aware of this impulse to destruction in himself that he tries to counterbalance it by the contrary appeal, namely, eros, in the form of the young and beautiful countess. this latter book has been harshly criticized from an artistic point of view, and not many have seen, i believe, how well hemingway grasps the two primordial forces that are in conflict within the colonel, as within many a professional warrior, conflicts that can be resolved in a fashion only by death. sigmund freud has labeled these forces in human nature the eros drive or instinct, the impulse within us that strives for closer union with others and seeks to preserve and con­ serve, and the thanatos (death) drive or instinct, the impulse that works for the dissolution of everything living or united. freud felt that these two are in eternal conflict within man, and he became, consequently, pessimistic about ever eradi­ cating war as an institution. men are in one part of their being 53 the warriors in love with death, and periods of war in human society repre­ sent the dominance of this impulsion. of course, this idea of an independent destructive force in life is age-old. the early greek philosopher empedocles gave imaginative form to a cosmology in which two universal prin­ ciples explain the universe. empedocles taught that the uni­ verse is in ceaseless change, in generation and decay, because love and strife are ever at work in the animate and the in­ animate. love unites all forms of life, for a period holding the upper hand, and strife tears them apart and breaks down what previously belonged together. the original components are not annihilated, but simply dispersed in various forms by strife. they are able to form new unions once more, and the endless process of composition and decomposition continues. empedocles conceived both forces as of equal strength, both eternal, and both mixed equally in all things. in this imagina­ tive vision of the world process, he sees, also, a necessary relationship between these cosmological powers, an insight that is sounder and more fruitful than most modern concep­ tions. we are tempted under the influence of darwinian thought to explain away man'8 delight in destruction as a regressive impulse, a return to primitivism and to animal nature. we picture, sometimes with the help of freudians, all our cul­ tural institutions as a kind of mask covering up the animalistic instincts that lie beneath the surface of all behavior. such a view tends to explain all phenomena of human destructive­ ness, from the boyish pleasure in the tinkle of broken glass to the sadistic orgies of concentration camps, as a reassertion of man's animal nature under the veneer of culture. man when he destroys is an animal; when he conserves he is distinctively human. 54 as pe oui ao t'w th iety repre. ve force in docles gave iversal prin. at the unl. cay, beca� and the � holdin�ln� breab aown � componenu 'ous fonn� dr more, ana ili� the enduring appeals of battle i cannot escape the conviction that this is an illusion, and a dangerous one. when man is at his destructive work, he is on a different plane from the animal altogether. and destruc­ tive urges are as capable of being found in highly cultivated natures as in the simpler ones, if not more so. the satisfaction in destroying seems to me peculiarly human, or, more exactly put, devilish in a way animals can never be. we sense in it always the mephistophelean cry that all created things deserve to be destroyed. sometimes there is no more concrete motive for destroying than this one, just as there is no expressible motive for creating. i described this kind of wanton behavior in my journal one night. it was an unforgivable spectacle. they shamed us as americans, as colleagues and junior officers, they shamed us before our hired people. our president lay on his bier in washington, boys from our division lay wounded and dying on the battlefields round about, and these lordly colonels drank themselves senseless and wantonly destroyed property with their pistols. it was a commen­ tary on the war, on the uselessness of fighting for ideals, on the depravity of the military life. indeed, there are many important similarities, i feel, be­ tween the creative and destructive urges in most of us. surely the immediate sense of release that is the satisfaction in ac­ complishment and mastery is not very different in the two impulses. one may become a master in one field as in the other, and there are perhaps as many levels of accomplish­ ment. few men ever reach superlatives in the realm of destruc­ tion; most of us remain, as in the domain of creation, mod­ erately capable. but artistry in destruction is qualitatively different in its effects upon the individual, in a way that minimizes similari­ ties. it loosens one by one our ties with others and leaves us 55 the warriors in the end isolated and alone. destruction is an artistry di­ rected not toward perfection and fulfillment, but toward chaos and moral anarchy. its delights may be deep and within the reach of more men than are the joys of creation, but their capacity to reproduce and to endure is very limited. just as creation raises us above the level of the animal, destruction forces us below it by eliminating communication. as creativity can unite us with our natural and human environment, de­ struction isolates us from both. that is why destruction in retrospect usually appears so repellent in its inmost nature. if we ask what the points of similarity are between the appeal of destruction and the two appeals of war i have al­ ready examined, i think it is not difficult to recognize that the delight in destroying has, like the others, an ecstatic character. but in one sense only. men feel overpowered by it, seized from without, and relatively helpless to change or control it. never­ theless, it is an ecstasy without a union, for comradeship among killers is terribly difficult, and the kinship with nature that aesthetic vision often affords is closed to them. nor is the breaking down of the barriers of self a quality of the appeal of destroying. on the contrary, i think that destruction is ulti­ mately an individual matter, a function of the person and not the group. this is not to deny, of course, that men go herserk in groups and kill more easily together than when alone. yet the satisfaction it brings appears to lie, not in losing them­ selves and their egos, but precisely in greater consciousness of themselves. if they hold together as partners in destruction, it is not so much from a feeling of helonging as from fear of retaliation when alone. the willingness to sacrifice self for comrades is no longer characteristic of soldiers who have become killers for pleasure. war henceforth becomes for them increasingly what the phi56 iosq huill dier pres char deli the mak fierc for sam men h inh and man erotr into are ikno enol we frig frui �uc artistry di. ward chaos l within ilie n, but theu ited, just 3! i, destruction ascreatitiry , onment,oe, destruction m the enduring appeals 0/ battle losopher hobbes thought to be the primal condition of all human life, a war of every man against every man. that sol­ dier-killers seldom reach this stage must be attributed to the presence of other impulses in their nature and to the episodical character of battle and combat. i can hardly doubt that the delight in destruction leads in this direction. this is not the only melancholy consequence of this im­ pulse, for its very nature is to be totalitarian and exclusive. unlike other delights, it becomes, relatively soon in most men, a consuming lust which swallows up other pleasures. it tends to turn men inward upon themselves and make them inacces­ sible to more normal satisfactions. because they rarely can feel remorse, they experience no purgation and cannot grow. the utter absence of love in this inverted kind of creation makes the delight essentially sterile. though there may be a fierce pride in the numbers destroyed and in their reputation for proficiency, soldier-killers usually experience an ineffable sameness and boredom in their lives. the restlessness of such men in rest areas behind the front is notorious. how deeply is this impulse to destroy rooted and persistent in human nature? are the imaginative visions of empedocles and freud true in conceiving that the destructive element in man and nature is as strong and recurrent as the conserving, erotic element? or can our delight in destruction be channeled into other activities than the traditional one of warfare ? we are not far advanced on the way to these answers. we do not destruction, know whether a peaceful society can be made attractive from fear enough to wean men away from the appeals of battle. today we are seeking to make war so horrible that men will be no longer frightened away from it. but this is hardly likely to be more r pleasure, fruitful in the future than it has been in the past. more proat ilie pm· ductive will certainly be our efforts to eliminate the social, 57 the warriors economic, and political injustices that are always the immedi­ ate occasion of hostilities. even then, we shall be confronted with the spiritual emptiness and inner hunger that impel many men toward combat. our society has not begun to wrestle with this problem of how to provide fulfillment to human life, to which war is so often an illusory path. the weather has been unspeakably bad also, and what with the dawning realization that the war may continue through the winter, it has been sufficient to lower my previous high spirits. perhaps "high spirits" is not the proper term for the nervous excitement and tension of this war front. i experience so much as in a dream or as on a stage, and at times i can step aside, as one does in a dream, and say: is this really i? "sad and laughable and strange" is the best combination of adjectives to describe these twilight days of our old world-the words that plato used to describe his great myth at the end of the republic. i would say, first strange, then sad, then laughable-but the laugh is not the same as the laugh of one in love when his beloved has delighted him with some idiosyncrasy of love. it is the laugh of the fallen angels who have renounced heaven but find hell hard to endure. (war journal, october 2, 1944) thl in i 58 three ilmtwilnlm o!ghl�winrerl i '/s, perm�1 ou$ excitemern 'qjinaaream one does ina ie and slran�e" these iwili�� iodescride� )', first slran�11 lesamed �d nim wi� la�n an�eu endure, (war love: war's ally and foe ... the greeks were wise men when they mated the god of war with the goddess aphrodite. the soldier must not only kill, he must give birth to new warriors. (a letter to a friend, august 28, 1944, from southern franee) in my journal i find no description of a cave in one of italy's most despoiled towns where the whole population was forced to spend several days while the front passed. why i did not record an incident that happened to me there, i do not know, possibly because i thought it incomprehensible. on the chance that german deserters or fascist partisans might be concealed among the civilian populace, i decided to inspect this cave. the exploration was the nearest thing to a journey in dante's inferno that i was to know in the war. each family group had 59 the warriors tried to establish a tiny living space in the dank, unlighted get dungeon where one had constantly to stoop to avoid the dirt an� roof. the only light came from various small fires and the occasional candles of those families who had had the foresight to bring a few provisions with them. because there was no th ventilation, no water, no toilet facilities, the stench was nearly unendurable. i stumbled and groped my way forward, trying to avoid stepping on bodies, afraid i would faint from lack of oxygen. acrid smoke burned my eyes and made it difficult to avoid collision with hundreds lying, sitting, or crouching about on all sides. children were screaming, old men and women coughing in or moaning, while others tried to prepare some gruel over smoking coals. far back in the cave, which seemed never-endde ing, i struck my head against the roof and slipped to my knees. my hand, thrown out to steady me, touched not the filthy floor but the fingers and palm of a woman's hand, quickly raised to prevent my falling on her. in the darkness i could discern only aut a half-recumbent form directly beneath me. mumbling an 10 ' apology i hastily withdrew my hand, but not before i felt a 10j responsive clasp from hers, unmistakably amorous. �n at the entrance and in the fresh air at last, i held my splita v ting head in my hands and slowly recovered from the foulness. ilio but to understand how anyone in this situation could possibly �ei feel desire was completely beyond me. in the perspective of ina memory, however, this incident may well be taken as symbolimj cal of the curious affinities between love and war. i there is a familiar greek myth about the goddess of love, ree aphrodite, becoming the mistress of ares, god of war, whose in youth and passion captured her heart, though she was the de: bride of hephaestos, who forged the weapons and armor of an the gods. the two of them spent many sweet, illicit hours tof( 60 , unligbtea void the dirt flres and ili! the ioresi�nl there was dij nch was near!) 'omen cou��! . me gruel om mea never��� d !omrh� o ilie fililir �oo, qillchlr raisearo aoiscerno� e. �fumlj�� � before i fdtl love: war's ally and foe gether, and one of their children was the beautiful harmonia, another the ever-youthful eros. this liaison between love and war, familiar early in western history, might occasion more wonder and reflection than it usually does. how can it be that these two, outwardly so unlike, have any attraction for each other at all? what is the source of this affinity? is the attrac­ tion really an adulterous one, as in the myth, or is it more legitimate than the early greeks wanted to believe? how durable can we expect this liaison to be between love and war? questions like these arise almost spontaneously when i begin to reflect on modern enactments of the aphrodite-ares story in world war ii . anyone entering military service for the first time can only be astonished by soldiers' concentration upon the subject of women and, more especially, upon the sexual act. the most common word in the mouths of american soldiers has been the vulgar expression for sexual intercourse. this word does duty as adjective, adverb, verb, noun, and in any other form it can possibly be used, however inappropriate or ridicu­ lous in application. many soldiers seem hardly able to utter a sentence without using it at least once. apparently they derive a vague satisfaction by invoking the word itself, habitual and thoughtless as its employment becomes. it must serve to recall fleeting memories or fond desires. at all events, its overuse indicates clearly a predominant interest for nearly all military men in wartime. if we are honest, most of us who were civilian soldiers in recent wars will confess that we spent incomparably more time in the service of eros during our military careers than ever before or again in our lives. when we were in uniform almost any girl who was faintly attractive had an erotic appeal for us. for their part, millions of women find a strong sexual attrac61 the warriors tion in the military uniform, particularly in time of war. this fact is as inexplicable as it is notorious. many a girl who had hitherto led a casual and superficial existence within a pro­ tective family circle has been suddenly overwhelmed by in­ tense passion for a soldier met by chance on the street or at a dance for servicemen. it seems that the very atmosphere of large cities in wartime breathes the enticements of physical love. not only are inhibitions on sexual expression lowered, but there exists a much more passionate interest of the sexes in each other than is the case in peacetime. men and women normally absorbed by other concerns find themselves caught up in the whirlpool of erotic love, which is the preoccupation of the day. in wartime marriages multiply and the birth rate increases. we can safely assume that the number of love affairs, if they could be reduced to statistics, would show an even greater rate of expansion. i find it hard to accept the usual sociological and psycho­ logical explanations of this phenomenon, though they must be true in part. sociologists fasten upon the uprooting character of war experience. war always signifies an artificial separation of the sexes or, at best, a maldistribution. the soldier is torn loose from his home moorings and community context, and exposed to worry, threats, isolation, and loneliness. in an un­ friendly male environment he yearns for the protective, or­ deriy existence that is symbolized by women and home. pre­ occupation with sex becomes a form of compensation for what he has lost; it is an expression of his maladjustment. a healthy interest in sex is likely only when the individual moves in his own social sphere. undoubtedly, a great deal of wartime love can be ascribed in part to the loss of our proper environment. what is not explained, however, is why women whose external lives have not been greatly deranged by war are equally sub62 je� vo, per rna ao in pie on erofloff oula snow an ana psrcn� iliey must d� love: war".s ally and foe ject to love's fever. evidently other and deeper forces are in­ volved as well. biological psychologists are fond of reminding us that civilized controls over sex impulses impose a severe strain on the psyche. war offers us an opportunity to return to na­ ture and to look upon every member of the opposite sex as a possible conquest, to be wooed or forced. for such a view, ares and aphrodite are kindred gods who need and under­ stand each other. both are under the control, however, of some larger evolutionary principle, usually called the struggle for existence or the will to live. because war poses a special threat to the survival of the species, this principle calls up in the individual members unconscious but powerful counterforces. we reproduce our kind more rapidly because we are also en­ gaged in destroying other members of the species. as indi­ viduals we have no freedom to do otherwise, since the needs of the species are imperious. as one of nature's numerous progeny, we are subject to the same laws as the rest. love in wartime does have a compulsiveness about it that peacetime seldom knows. it falls upon us "like a mountain wind upon an oak, shaking us leaf and bough," in the striking simile of the poet sappho. it overleaps national boundaries and overcomes obstacles that at other times might appear in­ superable. nevertheless, the biological basis of this love is transformed by its human qualities and becomes something other than the urge to reproduce. the determinism we ex­ perience in love stems not alone from nature, but is an inti­ mate determinism arising out of our gift of freedom. there is doubtless truth in the naturalistic claim that forces are at work in war and love that we rarely make conscious and never com­ pletely understand. but these forces are not merely biological; on the contrary, they are distinctively human as well. 63 the warriors love has many levels, and we use the same word to cover a multitude of relationships between two human beings, re­ lationships that are different but not separable from each other. even erotic love between men and women where sexual need appears to be the foundation of the relationship has, as everyone knows, a thousand nuances. reflection upon war experience in relation to love has convinced me of this, at least, that the liaison between the gods of love and of war rests at some levels upon the attraction of opposites, at others upon their essential kinship. neither ares nor aphrodite is a simple or a simple-minded god, and their union is no easy thing to comprehend. of the various kinds of love that de­ termine men at war, which are called forth by and are kin to war and which, opposed to destruction and death, may become the instruments of peace? i have observed three distinct kinds of love operating dur­ ing war. they are erotic love between the sexes, preserva­ tive love, which is independent of sex distinctions, and the love called friendship. these loves are, of course, not unknown to peace. but in times of strife they are sometimes more clearly defined, and the ornamentations in which love abounds are more likely to be stripped away . war has its own conventions, to be sure, and it quickly camouflages true relations and origi­ nal impulses among human creatures. yet there are moments of lucidity, even terrible clarity, which can be enlightening when we succeed in re-creating them in memory without dis­ tortion. for many soldiers of world war ii, love between the sexes appeared to be nothing else than an outlet in the purely physi­ cal sense, which physiologists of love are fond of describing. there was an unmistakable similarity in it to eating and drink64 seel ili' won her men love ii call sold anrn and oruy late dem thln lies of oe s atij for the � atec appl coul ids' 'd to cover beings, reo from eac� 1here sexuru �hip has, ij n upon w� e of fu�,!! and of w� ites, at olli�� phrodite � i n � no e8!j love iliat a� a arekin!� unknown !� more c1earlj ahoun� are conventiolll, os ana ori�' re momenb edlightenin� wiiliou! ru. n the sexe3 ely physi, escribin�1 d drink' love: war'$ auy and foe ing, a devouring of the woman as object. even the appetite seemed to recur with the same regularity as do hunger and thirst. to these soldiers it did not much matter who the woman was they used to satisfy themselves. their claims on her were only on her external features, so that prostitutes gave such soldiers as much as any other girl could, and were usu­ ally much more in accord with military needs. it is not at all surprising that many army commanders have over the cen­ turies sought to organize love by providing legal brothels for soldiers. from a narrow military standpoint, these establish­ ments have always appeared to limit the dangers of physical love and insure efficiency of soldiering. it is not easy to grasp the full coarseness of this gross physi­ cal love. those who are repelled by the descriptions of it some soldiers like to give are accustomed to class it as bestial and animalistic without reflecting upon it further. in the memories and imaginations of these soldiers, women were reduced not only to objects, but to sexual organs which they could manipu­ late to their complete satisfaction. there was little or no ten­ derness in their passion, and gentleness in its expression was a thing unknown. the sexual need of these soldiers appeared to lie so near the surface as to be associated with only one part of their being. to put it more exactly, the need appeared to be separable as a passion that shook them from without and at intervals only. such soldiers could not be called sensualists, for they knew little about the real pleasures of physical love. their passion was too external and superficial for that. for a time during the war in france, i was closely associ­ ated with an officer to whom love was purely an external appetite. his favorite expression was that he was a man who could not sleep alone. in fact, he usually found a girl to share his bed, and frequently several different girls in the course of 65 the warriors a week. yet it was apparent to those of us who knew him well that these relationships gave momentary satisfaction only. despite his highly developed capacity for physical love, he knew extremely little about making the act more pleasurable for himself. it would never have occurred to him to cultivate affection for some of his many girls as a way of increasing his pleasure. so far as i could tell, he derived his greatest satis­ faction from recounting his conquests to any of us who would listen. the girls he conquered sustained his ego and per­ suaded him that he was more than adequate as a lover. i do not need to furnish any further description of this level of erotic love. any veteran who reads these lines will have a thousand memories of it, personal or vicarious. even those who escaped much contact with such love know well enough its appeal and realize that we are not separated from it by any absolute barrier. fastidiousness, moral restraint, or the habit of treating the opposite sex as human beings may prohibit sympathy for soldiers such as these. but there is enough of the rapist in every man to give him insight into the grossest manifestations of sexual passion. hence it is presumptuous for any of us to scorn the practitioners of this lowest kind of passion as beings with whom we have no kinship. surely this kind of love is intimately associated with the impersonal violence of war. ares and aphrodite here attract one another as true mates. copulation under such circum­ stances is an act of aggression; the girl is the victim and her conquest the victor's triumph. preliminary resistance on her part always increases his satisfaction, since victory is more intoxicating the harder the winning may be. it is not without significance that the language of physical love and the lan­ guage of battle have a large correspondence, and the phrase "the war of the sexes" can be rich in connotation. love like 66 this of t1 whoi t selve heinl and har& silile form as a does man crea par who des� rapl lerr cam on or ch whim weu ction onlj, �allove, h� pleasurabl� , to cultivare ncreasin� � eatest sat� who wolli� ratea fr�m ance on nt! ory is mort not '�1tnollt nd the lan, the phrase , love likt love : war's ally and foe this can be as cruel as battle, because it arises from one part of the human being only, a part that is sundered from the whole. that we can respond with only one aspect of our total selves is the frightening quality of our human life. far from being weaker, this abstract response is usually more virulent and violent than response by the whole person. it seems hardly necessary to remark that such degradation is not pos­ sible for other than the human species. the animal cannot trans­ form his mate into an object because it does not regard itself as a subject. a human being who thus deserts his humanity does not become like an animal, but, in the expressive ger­ man term, an untier (an "unanimal"), in an exact sense, a creature without parallel in nature. the conquest of the sexual partner thus becomes very like the conquest of the enemy, who has forfeited any right to human status or equality. i described this experience in my journal one day: stories are constantly brought to us of the moroccan soldiers raping women and children, robbing and pillaging, and generally terrorizing the italians. just an hour ago, a group of italians came to the pw cage, where i am working, with fearful stories of how their small daughters are taken to the woods and violated by these french moroccan soldiers. i spoke to the mp officer in charge about it. he said, "there is nothing we can do. the com­ plaints have been taken to the french general in charge, who merely laughed and said, 'this is war.' we cannot control these soldiers or convince them that the italians are not their enemies when a year or two ago the italians were doing the same thing in africa." . . . the incident made me wonder about the idea 0/ kindness in culture, made me remember how the greeks, highly cultured athenians, were heartlessly cruel to their enemies, yet preserved their own humanity.... perhaps humanitarianism needs to be reconsidered and re-evaluated. an interesting study 67 the warriors would be the growth 0/ the idea 0/ humanitarianism and, related to it, the idea 0/ sadism. because sadism is an antithesis 0/ every­ thing humanitarianism signifies, it should be correlated with it. the tion tl dem factil coan de n attra pere erly affec huml sensl ques he rl huml or t men ture! shlll f opp� viol{ imp] refin it would be folly, i believe, to minimize the similarity be­ tween war and this gross form of love. observation of others and being honest about our own sensations must convince us that sexual passion in isolation and the lust for battle are closely akin. such sexual passion and war have been married from the beginning, and there is no cause to speak of an illicit relationship. to be sure, the sexual partner is not actu­ ally destroyed in the encounter, merely overthrown. and the psychological aftereffects of sexual lust are different from those of battle lusts. these differences, however, do not alter the fact that the passions have a common source and affect their victims in the same way while they are in their grip. we should not forget, either, that sometimes the consequences are not so different, after all. sexual lust often leads to murder, and in wartime, particularly, the same person often suffers rape and murder. both reveal man as a berserker, outside of his humanity, a dangerous beast of prey. there is another level of love in which ares and aphrodite are at one in sympathy, but here the specifically human ele­ ment is present. i refer to the thoroughgoing sensualist. many a soldier has learned all the physiological and psychological delights of erotic love while remaining blind to its higher satisfactions. for such a soldier, love is an appetite, closely associated in fact with eating and drinking, but far superior to them, since it yields both a more pervasive and intense kind of pleasure. eating and drinking become for him pre­ liminary stages; they are put in the service of his supreme earthly bliss. his dreams are of romantic conquests in which 68 and, re��� sis of everr' [lted with it imilarity n� ion of oilien convince w or battle an been marri� "peak 01 � sequenc�an � to mui�erl ohen su�en er, ou�i�e �l ng apnroilite }' numan ele, uallit.m�, ,cnolo@�ru o i� hl�n� tite,clo!tl, far su�ri�r and inte� r him pr� , supreme in wdicn love: war's auy and foe the final act of physical release is preceded by lengthy seduc­ tion byplay. though selfish to the core, the sensualist possesses real ten­ derness in his love-making, and he strives for his girl's satis­ faction as the most delightful part of his own. unlike the coarser soldier, whom he scorns, he is selective. his girls must be refined enough to conceal and help him cover up the less attractive aspects of physical passion. his promiscuity is tem­ pered by the recognition that a love partner can only be prop­ erly enjoyed when time is given to develop tenderness and affection on both sides. he is not inclined to overlook her humanity, though that is not an end for him but a means. a sensualist looks at every attractive woman as a possible con­ quest. she is for him of interest solely because of her sex. and he regards himself as a male before he thinks of himself as a human being. in memory he luxuriates in comparisons of this or that ladylove with others, recalling the distinctive refine­ ments of his various loves. girls are for him gorgeous crea­ tures, instruments on which he strives to play with infinite skill and patience. for the sensualist as soldier, war is not only a convenient opportunity for new and wider fields of erotic conquest; the violence associated with it corresponds to something deeply implanted in his nature. he can be, and often is, the most refined sadist in dealing with helpless enemy soldiers. he is capable of fierce anger and is likely to be the most unrelenting exponent of brute force in solving all problems of war. the surprising thing about the sensualistic soldier is that his erotic experiences have no softening effect on his personality. if anything, they appear to harden him. the tenderness he dis­ plays toward his girl of the moment turns to harshness and cruelty toward men under his control or toward the captured 69 the warriors enemy. i can only conclude that for the sensualist, as for his coarser brother, love signifies a devouring of the object and not a union with the subject. the beauty of loving is for him an outer cloak only; inwardly he is either empty or rapacious. moreover, he is essentially uncontrollable by reason; his nature is in the service of passion exclusively. the deities of love and war have never given birth to more dangerous offspring than these complete sensualists. mytho­ logically, they are the children of anteros (passion), who was also a son of the union of ares and aphrodite. these soldiers make war with the same participation of their whole being as they make love. the absence of external coarseness and ob­ scenity in them is a poor compensation for the increased possibilities of degradation and genuine wickedness they dis­ play. sensualists usually have complex natures, and frequently intelligent ones as well. since they are given over to passions of love and violence, they live in war's element more internally secure than anyone else. it is as though they find in the union of love and war the only fulfillment of which they are capable. unlike the simpler soldier already described, whose sexual needs appear relatively external and separable from the rest of him, the sensualists are integral; they are whole men in the expression of their passions. hence they can more easily step over the line to become killers and to delight in destruc­ tion for its own sake than any other kind of soldier . fewer inhibitions restrain them and their interests are usually nar­ row, being concentrated on conquest, erotic or martial. but, a skeptical reader may ask, are there such soldiers in reality or is this not an abstraction you are depicting? i con­ fess that i have never known a complete sensualist before or since my army days and so can understand a reader's doubts. perhaps it is because i have moved in more restricted circles, as n time and mero unit, testij fe cont attra fort into need ment me kno prese and) quali phys they in inde� and i cuins to co not, uttle comr pearl and i speci 70 love: war's ally and foe as most of us do in civilian life. sensualists thrive in peace­ time, no doubt, but their nature of necessity is more concealed and their desires disguised by interests of business and com­ merce. but that undisguised sensualists exist in every combat unit, nearly every former soldier with any perception can testify. n birth to m�� "uallsts, m� ··ion), wnow� e, these �olrul� : 'ftoole dein�! sen� ana �� for other soldiers at war, the erotic appeal is evidently in contrast with the ugly realities of combat. ares and aphrodite attract as opposites and not as soul mates. such soldiers long for the gentleness and affection that only women can bring into the very male character of martial existence. physical need might well be a basis of this love, and sensuous excite­ ment its very breath, but its sweetness and beauty make it memorable and worthy. a soldier who feels this may not know what it is that stirs him so profoundly about a girl's presence, but he surmises dimly that it is her presence itself and not merely her body that moves him. it is the feminine quality of being that he unconsciously wants to fulfill him. physical and spiritual elements are so fused in his desire that they are indistinguishable. in the battle areas of world war ii, there was something indescribably poignant about many such love liaisons. plain and commonplace as the women might be under normal cir­ cumstances, they appeared as angels of beauty and tenderness to combat soldiers starved for these qualities. more often than not, the soldier and his newly found sweetheart understood little or nothing of each other's language. but the inability to communicate and the strangeness of different customs ap­ peared to heighten the joy of discovery for them. the brevity and often stolen character of their love gave every incident a special imprint on the memory. those tingling guarded memeu5uallrn!r' r martial, ucn solaimm icting� i cofr alist before or ader's aoud� ictea circl�, 71 the warriors ories of tenderness and beauty were frequently sufficient to preserve the courage of the soldier and strengthen him for the return to battle. to have a yielding, caressing girl in his arms after hideous or nondescript days and nights in battle was to have impossibly much when he had got used to so little. here the physical relationship was frequently veiled by an all-encompassing tenderness, and came to seem, in their need of each other, an incident only. almost of necessity there was much illusion in this love. the soldier who returned after the war to marry his sweetheart of a night or two often found heartache and disillusion, as the statistics of such marriages reveal, for the attraction on both sides was too obviously a product of the immediate situation and the war. another soldier or another girl under similar conditions might have satisfied as well the need for affection and physical love. for the soldier who did not return, his memories remain unsullied and inextinguishable. a love like this has for relatively uncorrupted natures a wonderfully beneficent effect as a counterpoise to the imper­ sonal slaughter around them. transient though it may be, and much less individual than either the soldier or his girl will admit, their love has the power to conserve the precious qualities of their being. these qualities are the most widely shared and most generally human that our species knows. for men and women who are cast about in time and space by the fortunes of war, no other response is left than to find occa­ sionalloves and to pour into them all their longing for beauty and gentleness and charm. moralists should not quarrel about the nonspecific character of this love; hence its transience and the illusions it cherishes. of all wartime loves, it is likely, possibly, to be most moral in its effects. without loves like 72 these neve series how 6 /amilj spea a englb and i after sel/·o sciou awa lher frig� bws hole a !iuu bee! and can lhe j at sir w 1m m cu pe ufficient t� en him for g �rl in hij hts in baw� d to so uttlfl veiled dr � in theirn� :ity there w& ed alter� o olten loum love : war's ally and foe these, the human spirit would be much slower in recuperating from the psychical wounds of conflict. indeed, many would never recover at all. . . . and because you are a good friend i can risk telling you of a wonderful "femme fatale" in my recent experience. by a series of chance circumstances we were thrown together, why and how and wherefore i hardly know. the girl comes from a good family, has everything in the world, and is, quite objectively speaking, enchantingly beautiful. a hundred times she said to me in her quaint and hesitant english: "i am happy," or in her liquid french: "je suis content," and i laughed each time like a man whose eyes have been opened after years of darkness. after a thousand forced, sardonic, or self-conscious laughs, there is the laugh of pure joy, of uncon­ scious, uninhibited delight in beauty and freedom. "where hushed awakenings are dear ... " in the night a german plane came over, there was flak, she stirred in my arms, awoke, and was a little frightened, crept closer in my arms, whispered dear words. i blessed the plane and could not have been frightened had the hotel shaken under bombs. and because you must laugh at me and at this experience a little, i shall tell you that since knowing her my lips and ears have been opened in french and i can now understand the language and make myself understood in it! it is amazing what two nights can do when one has to make oneself understood. she would say the same about english. shall i tell you why i believe such an experience is given to me at such a time as this? at this you must not laugh. to give me strength and courage to bear the present and the near future, when we enter germany and must endure horrible things. 1 think these events are heaven-directed and instilled with purpose and meaning. i shall henceforth be less willing in difficult times "to curse god and die," a little more certain that i have something to perform in the world. as life becomes more disordered and a waste over here, and there are only memories to sustain us, how 73 the warriors important it is to have pure memories, strong, sweet, eternal memories. still other soldiers find in war erotic love that goes deeper than the appeals of tenderness and beauty, love that fills them completely and is painfully specific and individual, painfully, because such love is exposed to the arbitrariness of bullets and bombs in a cruel way and painfully, too, because this love is no respecter of persons and frequently chooses archenemies as its unhappy principals. how often in recent wars has the tragedy of romeo and juliet been re-enacted, without benefit of shakespeare's lyric music to moderate the agony! to the lovers, their love appears to be independent of and unrelated to the war and all its madness. their love is written in the stars and not in the march orders and manipulations of a military headquarters. they would have met and found each other had the war never been. if in fact their attachment is not so dissevered from the abysses of war as they think, the prin­ cipals are quite certain that its issue is all that really matters. their passionate recognition that they belong together causes them to disregard every claim to their allegiance that con­ flicts with their love. loyalty to country and ccmrades, to family and to established habits of life, cannot withstand the demands and claims of such a relationship. in france in 1944, as our forces liberated town after town from the germans, many of us were unwilling spectators of unforgettable scenes. the french resistance forces insisted on a public shaving of the heads of those girls who had had german lovers during the occupation. this gruesome cere­ mony was commonly performed on a platform in the public square, and was attended by a numerous, sometimes mocking, crowd. a good number of the girls were evidently prostitutes, and their shearing was a spectacle only, unpleasant for an 74 outs and, grou been au uneal betra suma the n not ( men publ! did, light war, credl of t� virt and puni a gil rega mus intel sam fort real ins in! sufi wi� et, eternal oes deeper .t fills them i, painfullj, bune� ana tbis lovell benemie� � ars nas lli� iliout oeneol onr� to lli� d unrelal�a n in ine slar! i amililary eacn olntl nt is nolm . tne �rin. all! malle�, elner cau!e1 eilialcon, cmrades,lo 'ihsland in� aflerlown ectatorsoi insisled on o haa hag orne cere' the pudlic rnockin�, rostitules, t for an love: war's ally and foe outsider to behold, satisfying for the french who had lived and suffered under the threat of being informed upon as under­ ground workers by girls like these. but where the girl had been genuinely in love with her foreign soldier, the scene took on an uncanny character, producing in many of us a deep unease. i thought that french faces in the crowd of onlookers betrayed all the contradictions implicit in the drama. pre­ sumably, the french, better than other nations, understood the nature of love and realized that national boundaries can­ not contain or restrain it. they recognized that their young men of the resistance were punishing, by attempting to shame publicly, girls who could not have done other than what they did. as such, this was an act of injustice, and not to be taken lightly by frenchmen, even though commonplace enough in war. but as passionate political partisans they found it in­ credible that a truly french girl could have traffic with one of the hated enemy. a love that set all national and familial virtues at naught, a love that defied the claims of fatherland and natural loyalties must be monstrous and deserving of the punishment being meted out. no matter how erect and proud a girl might stand on the platform before her tormentors, and regardless of her reputed good character in other ways, she must conceal within her being some evil stain. thus i chose to interpret the strange and baffled expressions on the faces of some of the quieter and more sensitive bystanders. it is hard for anyone reading about these events, in a com­ fortable armchair far removed in time and space from their reality, to experience any of the desolation of spirit they inspired in some of us. evil was not triumphing over good in the usual sense, for the ffi youths and their families had suffered cruelly from this enemy whom they felt to be at war with all mankind. in most cases, the girl herself did not ap75 the warriors see chu worl rnor ilie heri � prove of either the german nation or its policies in france. she felt herself to he a passionate defender of french ideals and french democracy. but . . . her lover was different. he was not one of the hated enemy, though he wore their uniform, spoke their language, and was forced to obey their commands. his soul was not foreign; it was free of all contagion by the alien and hostile, for it belonged to her completely. she could look out upon her townspeople and persecutors with a certain pity, not unmixed with scorn, because only she knew what a gulf separated her from them. the shudder that went through me at such sights was called forth by a premonition that the punishment was not only unjust, but also unholy. this love of hers was not only uncontrollable, it was a blessing, and to punish one of the principals was to play, unwittingly or not, a satanic role. there was, of course, nothing specifically french about manifestations like this. later, many of us were to see in germany that a girl could love an allied soldier who was fighting and killing her brothers or father. and the soldier could love her in return and genuinely hate her people. sepa­ rated and estranged from everyone but each other, these lovers felt secure and morally impregnable, though their fates might tomorrow become unbearably hard. other lands must also have witnessed similar scenes in recent wars. in fact, they must have happened in most wars in western history, if war literature can be trusted. many happy marriages have been consummated between former enemies where the husband has heen the slayer of his wife's closest relatives. the theme sounds primitive and archaic enough, something from the early sagas, but it is no doubt as contemporary as the war raging some­ where today. few of us can comprehend the mystery of this love. we this suc� rno hen fulfi of s con) ing 1 gail the dep sun joy' act an fat co fa be 76 cal in franc�, rench idea� uifferent. h! heir uniform ir commanw, ta�on brllit ely. she c��� with a cfrta� e hew wnali vien! tnr�u� c'lonilid olf' this i�w bl"lng, ana i� :�glr or n�i,! e early sa�8l, raging som�' 's love, wi love: wat's auy and foe see ares and aphrodite mated and so well mated that their child might well be named harmonia. at the same time the world lies in ruins around them, not only physically but morally, too, for their union tears apart the firmest beliefs in the worth of family, nation, and the whole complex of in­ herited tradition. yet we may well ask whether this love of a man and a woman for each other in which both have their whole being is really a mating of love and war. is not war in this case an absurd accompaniment only? what can war and tragedy give this love that it would not have in time of peace? certainly such love takes place in peace and among fellow countrymen more commonly than among members of opposed nations. hence it does not require perverse outer circumstances for its fulfillment. nevertheless, the presence of danger and the threat of separation do add something in the way of perfection or completeness, perhaps the realization of good fortune in hav­ ing found the true love. too many of us as yet are so constituted that we cannot gain under peaceful skies an awareness of our own nature and the possibility of its union with another. when death and deprivation lurk near at hand, and only then, can many of us summon the necessary seriousness and wisdom, the necessary joy, to recognize love's true form. genuine love can hardly actualize itself in utopia, and certainly cannot there produce an awareness of its nature. the infinite uncertainty of outer fate is required, i fear, for profounder lovers to become fully conscious of inner certainty. we express this often in the familiar phrase: lovers must know heartbreak in their love before it is secure. the most necessary insight, however, that such tragic love can bring to participants and observers alike is that it has its 77 the warriors being beyond the physiological and psychological, that it is indeed a cosmic force. when we see lovers assert the unity of their being in the face of desolation and destruction, a being in the midst of, but also above, conflict, we are forced to acknowledge the transcendent character of love. the lovers exemplify it, they do not create it; they are caught up in it rather than possess it. love's very nature is to be ecstatic, to draw single units out of themselves and into a higher unity. its roots are in the widest reaches of being itself, uniting the human entity to the rest of creation. when we confront a love of this tragic kind, we are nearly forced to say, foolishly wise: this is the way the world is. though we may forget tomorrow what it teaches us today, we are dimly aware that other dimen­ sions of reality exist than are disclosed to everyday moods. that such love is inexorably wedded to war, we may justly doubt, but that war has often enabled lovers to understand the true fount and origin of their love is also beyond dispute. it is, of all the forms of erotic love, the least wedded to violence. clearly, the reason is that it is the most integral, uniting, as it does, not only two individuals to each other, but two indi­ viduals to the wider realms of being. that even this does not always bring them peace is an indication that the world sub­ stance itself, whatever it may be, is not harmonious, complete, or single. true lovers hate war with all their heart, since it demonstrates too well that others have not found the secret of life that they know. but perhaps even they may sometimes admit that they learned the secret only when suspended over the abyss of death. we human beings are not very creative, otherwise we should have discovered other extreme situations that could serve better than war to teach us what we need to know, and without war's loss and unintelligibility. it is my belief that there is no higher form of love than this total other man ship, · more canna ing it nature to val towhl �urely' ner time a relate it mil �erve irom lovel nest are clear �erve ad� help resc/ if cha di sol 78 1, that it u the unity 01 tion, a hein! are forcen � e. the lov!n aught up inl be ecstatlc, � a hi�eruni�, ti, unitin� � conhontalol1 i.fool�hlr�: forgettomorroi iliat oilier ilim!!, .-aaymoo�, , �'emarj� unaelstan�� i uniting,&l i but two inm, lolls, com�l�tl, heart, sinceil q the secret 01 ay somet�� spended ovii ery creativ�, e gituatioru t we deed to love: war's ally and foe total involvement of a man and a woman in each other. no other kind can grant us deeper glimpses into the nature of man or the world he inhabits. christian love or greek friend­ ship, so often declared superior, are simply different, but not more limitless or rewarding. that this is a faith for which i cannot adduce evidence, i freely confess. my reason for hold­ ing it is simply the belief that no love has a deeper base in nature or, perhaps, a higher reach in the spirit. its blindness to values that other loves know how to cherish is a limitation to which all forces in human life are subject. the greeks were surely wise to deify aphrodite and to make eros a child of her union with ares. the threat to life and limb and to all man-created things in time of war calls up in some men a sentiment of love not closely related to the erotic, but extending beyond the human sphere. it might best be designated as an impersonal passion to pre­ serve and succor that which is threatened, or to hold back from annihilation as much life and material as possible. this love is protective and maternal in kind. its nature is perhaps best expressed in the old english word "concern." what men are concerned about, as the derivation of the word makes clear, they are implicated in and related to. the urge to pre­ serve from destruction sometimes takes on comical and even absurd aspects. but its presence is deeply reassuring, for it helps to humanize partly the most ferocious battles and to rescue many spirits for the peace that always follows combat. if we do not find it in many men as a dominant motive of character, i think love as concern is widely distributed, and is discoverable frequently in the least likely prospects. yes, soldier-killers, intent upon the inverted creativeness of destruc79 the warriors tion, have been known to show more than traces of such love in moments and on occasion. what is it that men are concerned to preserve and to care for in battle? the most obvious answer is self-preservation, taking care of their own lives. this is true in a different sense from the common biological teaching of self-preservation as a basic instinct that men share with other animals. it is also true in a different sense from the egoistic psychology that traces all motivation to self-interest. he who has seen men throwaway their lives in battle when caught up in communal passion or expose themselves recklessly and carelessly to mortal danger will be cured forever of such easy interpretations of human motivation. nothing is clearer than that men can act contrary to the alleged basic instinct of self-preservation and against all motives of self-interest and egoism. were it not so, the history of warfare in our civilization would be completely different from what it has been. nevertheless, self-preservation is a dependable and per­ vasive feature of human existence in a deeper sense than ego­ istic theories suppose. the philosopher spinoza called it the striving to persevere in our own being, and the phrase is exact. though striving to persevere in our own being is not absolute (for men may deliberately choose suicide) and not merely biological selfishness (since men are capable of dying for others), it is a power that lies both in and beyond the con­ scious, rational life. many a soldier has been surprised to discover the desire to continue in being as a final hold and support, after superhuman exertion and mental strain had robbed him of conscious will, and any religious faith he may have possessed had ceased to be meaningful. the literature of war is full of the accounts of armies, beaten and bled, starved and weakened, yet tenaciously staying alive and rescuing a rem anc clas. maj feats ashe lovel nak pos prot� often wea� ana 10 h) ofte) menj po �ioru iliey ilie enec 1 ilie la nan n. � he dol sev llil 80 ·preservation • i lfierent se� rvation �! also it � a� :ycnolo� ilial nas seen m�n p in comrnun� 1eil1rlomor!8l erprelalions 01 hrase �eml. ,dol �solul� a dol mmlr of aring for oda ine cod' surprisea 10 al holo ad� strain n�� faiili he mar literalureo! led, starvea rescuing a love: wat's ally and foe remnant of their strength and numbers. the account of the ancient greek xenophon in the anabasis may be taken as a classic example of this survival power in soldiers. hardly a major war since xenophon's time has been without similar feats of endurance, though few have had a chronicler such ashe. what is the relation of possessions to this self-preservative love? can men, in extreme peril separate the rescue of their naked lives from the preservation of their nearest possessions? possessions are for the combat soldier his only assurance of protection against a threatening world. he cares for them, often with more attention than he pays to his own body. his weapons are in this category, and also some articles of dress and precious souvenirs. the intimate relation of the soldier to his weapons involves more than any love of possessions. often the vehicles and implements of war come to be a replace­ ment for home. this appears to be the crucial relation of possessions to the impulse of sell-preservation. such posses­ sions are not only an extension of the soldier's own power, but they are his link with past and future. in one of the letters in the volume letzte briefe aus stalingrad, we read of a hard­ ened german tank soldier sobbing irresistibly because his tank had been destroyed. its loss meant more to him than did the loss of his comrades. why? i think it was because the tank had become an imaginative equivalent of the home he had left. it was a second skin, a protective layer against the harsh outer world. modern uniforms are so thin and penetrable. unlike the heavy mail of earlier times, they offer little protection for body or spirit. therefore, soldiers tend to hug to themselves several layers of possessions as a symbolic protection and, at the same time, as a link with past security and future hopes. 81 the warriors much of the american soldier's passion for souvenirs in recent wars may have stemmed not so much from a primitive desire to loot or even from the desire to establish in postwar memory his claim "to having been there," though both these motives were undoubtedly present in some degree. primarily, souvenirs appeared to give the soldier some assurance of his future beyond the destructive environment of the present. they repre­ sented a promise that he might survive. they protected him from the feeling of being unbearably exposed and vulnerable, and, so, prevented him from being reduced to his naked life. perhaps all of us, in peace or in war, use possessions for a similar purpose, as a defense against the world. in cases of extreme exposure, nevertheless, the majority of soldiers seem able to grasp the difference between life and possessions, and will commonly sacrifice all they have to pre­ serve their own being. as prisoners of war, or on long forced marches, or in campaigns of extreme hazard, soldiers learn more often than civilians ever do that everything external is replaceable, while life is not. when a soldier has had to face death often enough, something like a rough hierarchy of values develops in even the simplest mind, and life is nearly always ahead of possessions in the scale. selfish, egotistical natures prove in such situations to possess less of the genuine love of self-preservation than do others who on the surface are not so eager for life. i suppose the shallow nature is not easily able to view his naked existence, since part of his being is having. hence soldiers like this often lose their lives in the effort to hold on to some treasured possession. one would think that learning to do without possessions, experiencing the loss of external holdings, might produce a peculiar blessing for the soldier in his future life as a civilian. but in fact most soldiers quickly forget their wartime order of valu forg erty to p to pi as th mon p in a thin) nurs ami reeo of �yn sud mot hev life as 82 lus in recent mitive desu� �twar memory tbese motlv� ari\y, souvenm � of b� futmt llt.lherff�re, protected nm and rulnef�l� i o :s nakedlik '""ions iof! ce are not!o ot easilr adi� ng is na�d�, ilieeffortto possessiod!, t produce a a civilian, e order 01 love: j1"ar'$ au" and foe values when they return to the security of peace, as most of us forget the blessings of health when we are no longer ill. prop­ erty comes to be once more an inseparable part of the drive to persevere in our own being. pure awareness of the struggle to preserve ourselves is not granted to us often in life, just as the imminence of death at any moment of our lives is com­ monly concealed from us by unconscious suppression. preservative love, or concern, is clearly observed in combat in a soldier's care for life other than his own. there is some­ thing endlessly instructive in the spectacle of doctors and nurses fighting stubbornly to preserve life and minimal health amid chaos. and the medical corpsman whose duty it is to recover the wounded from front lines often overcomes his fear of death and frightful weariness in performing his work. sympathy and tenderheartedness are not notably present in such people; they quickly grow calloused to suffering. the motive that drives them forward, more than any other, i be­ lieve, is an impersonal passion for protecting and conserving life itself. this impulse is not restricted at all to those whose official duty it is to preserve; it sometimes becomes a general passion and finds a place in the majority of soldiers. waifs and orphans and lost pets have a peculiar claim on the affections of combat soldiers, who lavish upon them unusual care and tenderness. for the most part, there is little affinity between protector and protected in these cases. the soldiers are moved by the impersonal compassion that the fragility and helpless­ ness of mortal creatures can call up in most of us. this fre­ quently extends to the enemy wounded. medical men will risk their lives on occasion to rescue wounded enemy soldiers, and doctors in field hospitals will fight as obstinately for the one as the other. the distinction between friend and foe has here 83 the warriors been erased by the recognition of the helplessness of a creature powers whose life is threatened with extinction. both ar superficially, this concern for preserving life other than nightm one's own appears to be separated by a deep gulf from the the con instinct for self-preservation. the one begins, many will say, ret pie only when the other is assured. yet this is not so. often on the even red battlefield the desire to persevere in our being and the presille and ervation of other life are seen to be closely related below the not grea conscious level. the thousand anonymous acts of concern for lather's the life that is exposed to shot and shell is testimony to an earth, ] ultimate unity between these impulses. threat among the many examples in war literature of concern for if w preserving others, two in particular have a haunting quality in discov my memory. in stephen crane's the red badge 0/ courage, lrom ( the young soldier who is the focus of the story has fled the love, '[ battlefield in panic and is wandering around lost and nearly ilian 1 demented somewhere in the immediate rear of the confused own 1 struggle. then an older soldier, a simple man who is an island to the of gentleness, aids him through the falling darkness back to his the regiment and company, where he regains his bearings and the courage once again. the act is a wholly gratuitous one. the iliat young soldier does not even see the face of his anonymous resb savior, much less have the presence of mind to thank him. and lov� the old soldier, for his part, has no thought of doing anything sell deserving of praise. his was not so much an act of choice as th' an act of unconscious preservation without much specific ili feeling on his part for the youth. though crane has dealt with fictional characters in this remarkable story, there are thour� sands of soldiers who will testify to the authenticity of such incidents in combat. in tolstoi's war and peace, it is the wealthy and cultured pierre who is kept in possession of his physical and moral 84 e other ilian gulf from in! many will sari 0, often on i�! !1 and the �r� \ated below lli� 01 concern lor unonr 10 an re of concern lor _�inu quauryfu e 0/ coura�11 cry bas �ea lli� 10:1 ana near!) of ilie conll1&� 'no is an is!an� e"back 10m :s bearin� an� 'taus one, thl 1lli anonymow ank bim, an� love: wat's ally and foe powers by the childlike peasant karatiev during the period both are prisoners of the french in moscow and later on the nightmarish retreat with the disorganized army of napoleon. the contrast between these two men could hardly be greater, yet pierre becomes aware of how infinitely preservative, and even redeeming, the concern of this simple man for another's life and well-being can be. for karatiev, taking care of pierre is not greatly different from taking care of the animals on his father's farm, or, indeed, taking care of plants and the good earth. his instincts are all directed toward countering the threat of annihilation that surrounds life everywhere. if we ask about the nature of love as concern, i think we can discover some characteristic features that make it different from other forms of love. unlike the highest type of erotic love, it is directed to general goals and is of communal, more than individual, character. whether the concern is for one's own being and chances of survival or whether it is directed to the preservation of other life, i doubt if its nature is altered. the object of one's care is less essential than the presence of the need to take care and to preserve. the characteristic mood that accompanies love as concern is neither deep joy nor un­ restrained grief, so often typical of erotic love. concerned love knows relief and it knows anxiety in its depths, but seldom does it put everything at stake on the preservation of this or that life or treasure. its care is for the whole and not the part. this love is, in men, evidently pervasive and immanent rather than ecstatic. it does not seize us from without, but arises out of our own nature. hence it may be less periodic and more dependable than erotic love, though less able to dominate many men in moments of crisis. after we have raged through wars that lasted years, we have always had to make 85 the warriors peace again. then we are dependent upon this desire, which has long been subordinated in us by war, to cultivate and reconstruct. were this impulse not pervasive and dependable, the race of man would hardly have survived and grown so powerful on this planet, surrounded as we are by manifold dangers of nature and torn by murderous lusts within our own species. i think it is concerned love that, more than anything else, helps us find our way back to peace again and heals the hatred of belligerents for each other. when soldiers lose this need to preserve and become impersonal killers, they are truly figures of terror. fortunately, few men ever obliterate this kind of love altogether, though they may well become indif­ ferent to their own fate and full of hatred for a large segment of mankind. few of us reflect enough on the good fortune that attends us as human beings in being pervaded by pre­ servative love. if our wars were to make killers of all combat soldiers, rather than men who have killed, civilian life would be endangered for generations or, in fact, made impossible. concern in its farther reaches is directed beyond human life to the works of man and to the things of nature. it is present in the builder of dwellings and the tiller of the soil as well as in the thousand modifications of these basic occupa­ tions. we see it, if we have thoughtful eyes, at work every­ where, and the slightest incident in war can teach us more about it than the longest campaign. i remember riding through ger­ many in the last days of world war ii, in pursuit of the dis­ organized enemy. outside a battered city somewhere in wiirt­ temberg there was a lovely terraced plot of ground on which a house had stood. it had been razed by bombs and fire, and even the fence around it had been destroyed. only the front gate remained, though it was awry on its hinges and partly 86 sid care first on n lng, s i our to duila conse after these ever neen nom this � iilea �uch i� str ana pe ture tlon not �sire, which llltivate ana dependable, ld grown � by manlfolij lthin our o� anythin� e�, and heah �� \diers lo� 1m liner are irul, oolilerate lli� oecome in�, impo&lilile, e�·ona numa� nature, it � of ilie soll� asic occll�a, work mry' more�oll! ough �l' t of ilie ai� rein wiirt, on whlcha d nre, ana iliefron! d partir love: wat's ally and foe smashed. as my jeep passed, i caught a glimpse of the owner carefully working to repair the gate. the sight struck me at first as absurd and comical in the extreme, for the gate opened on nothing any longer. but the recollection was deeply cheer­ ing, and much later i realized why. the repair of the gate symbolized perfectly the civilizing impulse in human creatures, our urge to preserve and conserve, to take care and to cultivate. today many are astonished by the way germans, for exam­ ple, rebuild their shattered cities with houses meant to last for a century, when they can hardly be sure that the uneasy peace will endure for five years. such observers may conclude that germans are incurably optimistic. in fact, of course, they are not. they themselves scarcely know why they work so hard and build so permanently when they lie under the shadow of the iron curtain. realistically seen, they are probably foolish. but, after a period of destructive lust, such permanent building satisfies a deep impulse in this people to give full play to conservative and constructive powers. one might think that after three decades or more of extreme disorder and conflict, these powers would be paralyzed, or at least lamed. yet what­ ever else has been lost in the german nation, and much has been lost, resistance to destruction and to chaos is still strong. no modern war has until now lasted long enough to contract this preservative love to mere survival of the individual naked life or to make men in large numbers unregenerate killers. such wars are possible in the future. but the civilizing impulse is strong indeed, and frequently carries us along after reason and will have been temporarily overpowered. pervasive as this love is, and connected with the very struc­ ture of civilization, its appeal is always greatest when destruc­ tion is close at hand and threatening to overwhelm us. i can­ not believe that wars are necessary for the fulfillment of this 87 the warriors form of love, but it does get called into play most prominently in periods of calamity and raging wars. the delight in destruc­ tion is its complete antagonist; therefore, we ought not to be surprised that love as concern is most impressive in time of conflict. it was very important to me. perhaps it is this inactivity of the past few days that is affecting me. but despair is clutching at me often of late, particularly as 1 lie in bed at night. i need to believe more. i need faith in love and in god. i guess i need to love more.... i want so much to come out of it a chastened and wiser person, so that i may be something to others in the postwar world. i need to overcome my gloomy and foreboding spirit. again, as in the highest form of erotic love, this kind of love produces a kind of awareness that is lacking in normal life. our deeper powers lie dormant and undeveloped unless we are pushed to the abyss. perhaps those philosophers of history are right who read civilization in terms of alternating periods of conservation and destruction, and hold that both are necessary for any real progress. for them, the delight in destruction and preservative love are necessary powers in human history, in some manner complementing each other. the exclusive interest in conserving the already existent would lead to stagnation were it not balanced by destructive forces which periodically sweep away ossified forms as a means of renewal. love as concern for preserving in being is only meaningful, these philosophers would hold, when it is pitted against revolutionary forces of destruction. i do not know. at all events, i have never again in my life been so aware of the beneficent character of concern as during the war years. w8j ena twe wei mos i�el man relal anol saiu nis i � youl wne is are lml iriel !rie affin oln, ini 1 fort inl erel soil enc col there is another kind of love, with no relation to destruc­ tion, that men sometimes experience in war in the most crucial em fnl int 88 �!ominentl1 ht in destru� gbt not to d� ve in time 01 that � a�ec�� rticuwr!yaji oith in love am o much locofm .0 be somellu� co e mr g�oml . gin nonnru � °elopea unllsl hilo opne� �i . of allernatini a iliat doili�re �e aelignt id love: war's ally and foe way. it is the love we call friendship. now friendship has often enough been defined in our tradition as that relationship be­ tween human beings in which each dispassionately seeks the welfare of the other. friendship is thus thought to be the most unselfish form of love, since in the pure state it devotes itself without reserve to the interests of the other. accordingly, many societies have exalted friendship as the noblest of all relationships, and even the founder of christianity, to whom another form of love took precedence, is declared to have said: "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." what meaning has friendship for warriors? how can a young man endure battle when the fear of death is doubled, when not only his own life but that of his friend is at stake? is the quality of this relationship heightened or reduced by the dread strain of war? before trying to answer these questions, i must first attempt to make clear a basic difference between friends and comrades. only those men or women can be friends, i believe, who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. they must be predetermined for each other, as it were, and then must discover each other, some­ thing that happens rarely enough in peace or war. though many men never have a friend, and even the most fortunate of us can have few, comradeship is fortunately with­ in reach of the vast majority. suffering and danger cannot create friendship, but they make all the difference in comrade­ ship. men who have lived through hard and dangerous experi­ ences together are frequently deceived about their relationship. comrades love one another like brothers, and under the influ­ ence of shared experience commonly vow to remain true friends for the rest of their lives. but when other experiences intervene and common memories dim, they gradually become 89 the warriors strangers. at veterans' conventions they can usually regain the old feelings only with the aid of alcoholic stimulation. the false heartiness and sentimentality of such encounters are oppressive and pathetic. men who once knew genuine close­ ness to each other through hazardous experience have lost one another forever. and since most men rarely attain anything closer to friendship than this, the loss of comradeship cannot be taken lightly. when veterans try to feel for their old buddies what they felt in battle and fail, they frequently cherish some­ where in their secret memories the unsentimental original passion. the essential difference between comradeship and friend­ ship consists, it seems to me, in a heightened awareness of the self in friendship and in the suppression of self-awareness in comradeship. friends do not seek to lose their identity, as comrades and erotic lovers do. on the contrary, friends find themselves in each other and thereby gain greater self-knowl­ edge and self-possession. they discover in their own breasts, as a consequence of their friendship, hitherto unknown poten­ tialities for joy and understanding. this fact does not make friendship a higher form of selfishness, as some misguided people have thought, for we do not seek such advantages in friendship for ourselves. our concern, insofar as we are genuine friends, is for the friend. that we ourselves also benefit so greatly reveals one of the hidden laws of human affinity. while comradeship wants to break down the walls of self, friendship seeks to expand these walls and keep them intact. the one relationship is ecstatic, the other is wholly individual. most of us are not capable of meeting the demands on self that friendship brings, whereas comradeship is in most respects an easing of these demands. comrades are content to be what they are and to rest in their emotional bliss. friends mlls roam ano of ill raae. "� fiara live f �acro i *iy raaes war, � coural in tfie ana fo olner; is not orain -i �vin� can ine 10 of grl isbre can h and � wi seem seide frien iliat 90 � regain the alation. tne �ounters are enuine clo� have lost on! \am an�nini de hip cann�1 it old ouddi� cherisn som!, ental ori�ru p. misguiaf� aayanla�es id as we an urselves a� 's of nuidan tne wa�ol keep inero r is wnollr oe aemanas is in most content 10 . friend! love: war's auy and foe must always explore and probe each other, in the attempt to make each one complete through drawing out the secrets of another's being. yet each recognizes that the inner fountain of the other is inexhaustible. friends are not satiable, as com­ rades so often are when danger is past. "that a man lay down his life for his friends" is indeed a hard saying and testifies to a supreme act of fortitude. friends live for each other and possess no desire whatsoever for self­ sacrifice. when a man dies for his friend, he does it deliber­ ately and not in an ecstasy of emotion. dying for one's com­ rades, on the other hand, is a phenomenon occurring in every war, which can hardly be thought of as an act of superhuman courage. the impulse to self-sacrifice is an intrinsic element in the association of organized men in pursuit of a dangerous and difficult goal. for friends, however, dying is terribly hard, even for each other; both have so much to lose. the natural fear of dying is not so hard for them to overcome. what is hard is the loss or diminution of companionship through death. friends know -i am tempted to say, only friends know-what they are giving up through self-sacrifice. it is said, to be sure, that they can communicate with one another even beyond death, but the loss is nevertheless cruel and final. too often at moments of greatest need, when one's friend is dead, communication is broken off and one's dialogue becomes monologue. friends can hardly escape the recognition of death as unmitigated evil and the most formidable opponent of their highest value. war and battle create for this love both a peculiar kind of security and a kind of exposure, which other forms of love seldom know. the security arises from the insulation that friendship affords against the hatreds and the hopelessness that combat often brings. even though one friend may be in 91 the warriors safety at home, the friend who fights knows that somewhere the other is participating in his life. through letters he can communicate his deepest feelings and his explorations of the evil experiences through which he is passing. even when let­ ters are cut off, friends can communicate in their memories of each other, each explaining in imagination to the other and having the assurance of being understood. there is joy in having a person who understands completely and whom you understand. it insulates the soldier's heart without closing his mind to the experiences he is undergoing. the german poet goethe put nearly perfectly the situation of friends even in wartime. the english translation is by j. s. dwight. can sort to pat� and affii str�1acci ance area b) ahselig, wer sich vor der welt ohne hass verschliesst, einen freund am busen halt und mit dem geniesst, was, von menschen nicht gewusst oder nicht bedacht, durch das labyrinth der brust wandelt in der nacht. even ayna frien oftl easil the att kmel withl cono in �ossl horn ex�c ae�! earl not} ana happy he who, hating none, leaves the world's dull noise, and with trusty friend alone, quietly enjoys what, forever unexpressed, hid from common sight, through the mazes of the breast softly steals by night! friends can indeed close themselves without hatred from the world and draw from the labyrinth of each other's being 92 t somewhere etters he can rations of tn! .ven when ie!, i memories�1 the other an� ere is jor rn an� whom r�ij out clo�in� � e german ��i 'en� even i� nunt batrea from �er's bein� love : war's ally and foe inexhaustible wealth. they can thus endure much of war's horror without losing the zest for life. more than that, they can discover meaning in experiences of the most gruesome sort which others do not see. friendship opens up the world to us by insulating us against passions that narrow our sym­ pathies. it gives us an assurance that we belong in the world and helps to prevent the sense of strangeness and lostness that afflicts sensitive people in an atmosphere of hatred and de­ struction. when we have a friend, we do not feel so much accidents of creation, impotent and foredoomed. the assur­ ance of friendship has been enough to help soldiers over many dreadful things without harm to their integrity. but friendship makes life doubly dear, and war is always a harvest of death. hence friends are exposed to an anxiety even greater than that of other lovers. there is no destructive dynamic in friendship, no love of death or sacrifice. because friends supplement each other, they cannot face the prospect of the other's death without shuddering. comforts can be easily abjured, dangers easily borne, if death is not the issue. the unendurable fear that grips friends on the battlefield is at the farthest remove from the recklessness of the soldier­ killer. among friends war's ultimate horror is experienced without much counterbalancing compensation. like love as concern, it is directed toward preservation of being. in every slain man on the battlefield, one can recognize a possible friend of someone. his fate makes all too clear the horrible arbitrariness of the violence to which my friend is exposed. therefore, in love as friendship we have the most dependable enemy of war. the possible peaks of intensity and earlier maturity which war may bring. to friendship are as nothing compared with the threats of loss it holds. the feelings and the affinities that are the core of friendship are the true 93 the warriors opposites of the hostile disposition that underlies all warfare. that the one disposition can so easily destroy the other tempts every man who knows friendship to despair and hopelessness. when death comes to one's friend in the natural course, his loss is cruel enough, reducing the possibility of comprehend­ ing events. but friends in time can grow resigned to the finitude of existence, and old age, with its infirmities, helps to reconcile most of us to death. friendship cut off in its flower by war's arbitrariness is likely to seem the height of unreason and madness. what earlier had been luminous, ordered, and purposeful in experience becomes suddenly emptied of mean­ ing. unlike other loves, the preciousness of friendship has no connection with its precariousness. hence no ultimate consola­ tion is possible for the loss of a friend. love as concern can find new being to preserve and care for; its affection is not individualized. erotic love can usually, though not always, find itself renewed when time has passed. the companionship of a lost friend is not replaceable. i do not mean to assert that erotic love, in which the whole person is involved, and love as concern for preservation are less inimical to war than is love as friendship. analysis of the distinctive forms of love should not betray us into forgetting their blood relationship. these three forms alike stand to lose in battle what makes life dear to them. love in all three forms stands clearly in opposition to ares and carries the hope of ultimate freedom from his reign. we do well to remember that love is a genus with many species, and there is little danger of exhausting the inner relations of the species. those psychol­ ogists who find erotic elements in friendship and in maternal love are hardly wrong. and i have intimated already that there is a close affinity between love as concern and love as friend­ ship. on fiel ieal its' ani the expi ha� can stru tho or h pres and iu8tf it8il the j a\l warlare, other tempu hopelessntsl, al course, hij comprehena, igned to ili! 'ties, hel�� tij 1ft in its �ow� :: \ of unreajo! s ordereo, �� ptied of me�, 'en�ni� nasm imate consol� , into for�ettid! le stano to lo� allthreefonru : ilie no�o! rememherili!! j. little aan��l those psrcnol, din ma!ernru dy that !ner� re as friena, love: war's ally and foe what has become clear to me, however, as i have meditated on love and war, is that battle offers a very different exercise field for these different forms of love. insofar as eros is phys­ ical passion and sensual impulsion, war has been from of old its true mate and bedfellow, as the ancient myth makes clear. and erotic love of the fuller sort can find a dwelling place in the violence of war that forever astounds us and remains in­ explicable. here ares and aphrodite meet as opposites who have a powerful attraction for each other. love as concern can achieve at times its greatest satisfaction and triumph in struggling to preserve what ares is intent on destroying. though deeply opposed to conflict, this love is not as exposed or helpless as is friendship. in the exercise of its ancient rights, preservative love sanctifies even the battlefield by its presence and holds men back from being delivered over wholly to the lustful powers of destruction. but love as friendship, despite its insulation, must subsist haphazardly and as best it may in the midstof war. its true domain is peace, only peace. 95 at� cemel germ with dog rankj or s' neat joake oelk joum wilel roun �en four the soldier's relations to death at the end 01 the division area we came upon a recent american cemetery. one hundred and ninety americans and a lew dozen germans were interred there in plain temporary graves, marked with simple wooden crosses on which were tacked one 01 their dog tags and a bronze plate with their names, service numbers, ranks, units, and date 01 death..•• officers and privates lay side by side, distinctions 01 rank being abolished here. the plot was neat and enclosed by a wire [ence.... it was a cloudy, rain­ soaked day, with a chilling breeze.•.. somehow i had never believed in the reality 01 war's destructiveness until then. (wat journal, february 11, 1944) when i was in france during the war, i met and lived with a young parisian brain surgeon, a rare and wonderful and generous person, whose favorite expression was: "everything 97 the warriors i have, i give away." i never wrote in my journal-i did not have the heart to write--about the last of my visits to him. on this occasion he had received me with the warmth only those know who have long had to associate with people who cannot reach the most cherished areas of the self. but then he launched into an account of a scene he had just witnessed, an execution by the local ffi of a captured mongolian soldier who had been a member of a german repression unit in the area. eager to tell me his impressions of the blindfolding and the shooting, the behavior of participants and spectators, he did not notice my dismay. had he struck me with his fist in­ stead of embracing me, as he had a moment before, i could not have been so dumbfounded and suddenly sick at heart. how could this sensitive, high-principled man, for whom i had felt an affinity of the deepest kind, attend of his own free will, without hatred, the slaughter of a fellow human being? often enough he had assured me of his loathing for cruelty and his refusal to participate in the hatreds that consumed the young people associated with him in the resistance. even at this moment i knew he was incapable of destroying life. why would he attend such a spectacle, and why would he want to talk about it? for a while i did not dare ask him because of the coldness that came over me. then, since his friendship was dear, i was able to resist the impulse to return to my jeep and drive away and was able to speak of my abhorrence of his deed. we talked at length about the subject of death and of dying. he was convinced that the mongolian had no thoughts at all about what was happening to him. he had died as an animal does. for this reason, he had been able to view the scene with de­ tachment. i was not so sure. though the incident remained a barrier between us, which i was not able to overcome, the are he 98 -1 did no! ,sits to him, warmth onlr \ �eople wh� [, butthen n! ying, he w� at a� aboul animalooe!, eoe with de· remained! ercome, tne the soldier's relations to death night's conversation made me think about the elementary facts of facing death, as i had not hitherto done. on the way back to my unit the following day, i began to ponder the question how men at war consider the possibility of their own imminent death. what relations to death can warriors attain, or can they gain any relation to death at all? in the months that followed, however, i was influenced more than i cared to admit by the regnant mood of recklessness with human life. men are expendable, as the current phrase had it; life was a commodity to be doled out and used up by a superpersonal will. probably few of us consciously reorganized our values owing to this fact, but even the simplest mind among us could sense that it mattered relatively little to the collective body whether he survived or not. though we could not comprehend why death struck others and not us, we learned to accept it as a brute fact. as long as it did not strike one's friends, there was the great temptation to react to it no differently than one did to other occurrences. the dead legan to seem both unreal and yet commonplace: we are now at artena, very near the front, and are in some danger from artillery fire. this morning when we came up over a fearfully dusty road, we entered artena far enough to see a dead american soldier over whom flies were swarming. the town is still under shellfire, and there are some twelve dead in the streets. we withdrew to a house on the edge of the town, where i am writ­ ing this now.... small cemeteries, hastily constructed, line the road and are everywhere. the roads are a churning mass of traffic and dust, dangerous, unpleasant, necessary-the very substance of war. the gloomy october air is rent by the roar of big guns. they are not frightening after the first startled awakening. but then one hears the whistle and the rending explosion.... i am less fright99 the warriors ened than most of the others, i know not why. eventually one becomes more or less used to it all, if not indifferent. the shock administered by my friend was enough eventu­ ally to arouse me from this collective torpor. from then on i became intensely curious to discover how soldiers react to this absolute, death, in human existence, particularly when they are alone in foxholes without the comfort of comrades. it is not difficult to understand, as i have already pointed out, that communal ecstasy can lead men to forget death and seek im­ mortality in pursuit of shared goals. but ecstasy of any sort is essentially periodic and transient; it cannot be long sus­ tained. how then could youths who had hardly yet begun to live endure the prospect of their own probable death? the fact that thousands of them could do it was palpable enough; the how of doing it was something of a mystery. get by you one ilie lati� are aea ineo ing me� fral tod one might argue that death in war is merely a matter of increased probability, not different in principle from death in time of peace. but this would be a superficial view, for not the frequency of death but the manner of dying makes a qualita­ tive difference. death in war is commonly caused by members of my own species actively seeking my end, despite the fact that they may never have seen me and have no personal reason for mortal enmity. it is death brought about by hostile intent rather than by accident or natural causes that separates war from peace so completely. and the fact that death's chief victims in war are young men or youths who are just becoming men contributes greatly to the general mood. for the most part, these youths must take leave of their lives under condi­ tions of exposure, away from home, without the possibility of the dignity and ceremony that help to moderate death's shock­ ing character. the difference is not only between dying and ous, una l(ia� in i aea fuel 10 all de 100 uentluluy one :nt. nough eventij, rom then onl �r react to � .arly when t�!l mrades. it i! �� \nte� out, �t fu and mkur: .j of anr �� 01 � lonu!�o �y jetde�� i de�tn? thdmi able enou�n; � new. fornot� axes a �all� . hjme�� de-pile the i!rl personal real�� y hostile intf�1 just hecomln! for the mo!1 under con�' possiliilitrol ea�'s shod, dying an� the soldier's relations to death getting killed. it is much more the difference between dying by disease or accident among people who know and cherish you and having your life cut off without preparation by some­ one who cares not at all for the anguish he causes. this creates the terrible hatred of war, particularly among civilian popu­ lations. the majority of soldiers in modern wars, i am convinced, are able to gain only a negative relation to death. for them, death is a state and a condition so foreign and unreal as to be incomprehensible. they reject it with aversion without bring­ ing its reality to the level of consciousness. thus, in the sum­ mer of 1944, when i was waiting for the invasion of southern france to begin, an invasion i was to join, i wrote: what do i think of this new adventure looming before me? today i have thought about it for the first time. it will be danger­ ous, that is certain. it will also be difficult. but somehow i am unable to anticipate. i simply await-and dream of the end of the war. i daydream more than i used to. in peacetime, young people are likely to dismiss the fact of death as something that happens to somebody else; seldom do they take seriously the certainty that they themselves will have to cope with it. in war soldiers cannot ignore death, for it is all too prevalent. but imagining what it is like to be dead is endlessly difficult. imagination and intellect must be operative if we are to bridge the gap between life and death, and many soldiers understandably try to avoid exercising either. battle­ field dead are so passive, and life is, to our western youth at least, bound up totally with activity and action. soldiers fall and die in such contorted and unnatural positions, as a rule, that even their comrades find it hard to believe that, shortly before, they were alive. this is part of the mystery of death: 101 the warriors those who enter its realm are quickly far removed from the living. in battle, where the demands of action are insistent, the process is, if possible, even more speeded up. this morning we got word early that we had been selected as the group to enter rome.... everywhere was the picture of an army pursuing another, ruined tanks and vehicles of all sorts, houses burned, everything hastily done. the sight of the dead soldiers did not trouble me as much as i had expected. they seemed almost part of the general wreckage, and one found it hard to believe that they had ever been alive, much less a few hours ago. in mortal danger, numerous soldiers enter into a dazed condition in which all sharpness of consciousness is lost. when in this state, they can be caught up into the fire of com­ munal ecstasy and forget about death by losing their indi­ viduality, or they can function like cells in a military organ­ ism, doing what is expected of them because it has become automatic. it is astonishing how much of the business of war­ fare can still be carried on by men who act as automatons, behaving almost as mechanically as the machines they operate. most of us remember with a shudder those endless pictures of hitler's troops, before world war ii, riding into one con­ quered country after another. they were frightening because they not only looked identical in clothing and equipment, but the set expression on their faces appeared to be vacant and purposeless. all humanity had eroded from those faces, so it seemed, and we were confronted by deadly efficient robots who were controlled by a powerful, inhuman will. so it often is in combat itself. death comes to thousands who are only min­ imally conscious and snatches them away from life without their awareness of the moment or its significance. c( m w( ne as to �i ml us g tn ar 102 �d from ilie ne insistent i en sekc�a � p�ture of a� is of all soru t of tm al� expec�a. t� one fou� � uch �!! a i� rntoaaazfij u:ness � loll, ilie fire 01 com· t automatomi achine� ilifl ndless pictum into one con· ening oecaj ipment,dul e vacant anij faces,soil nt rohotswno it often ism e only min· life witnoul the soldier's relations to death there are two things that promote this drugged state so common in combat: training and fatigue. the routine of military life, the repetition, drill, and uniformity of response, works to dampen and dull any individual intensity of aware­ ness. even the civilian soldier who finds the military way quite alien and strange can learn to hold fast to the few simple rules, to be a proper cog in the vast machine, and to suspend thoughts that might unfit him for his appointed mission. he learns to expect orders from above and to pass them along to those under his control. thinking tends to become not only painful but more and more unnecessary. to be sure, battle often presents the soldier with novelty, demanding initiative, for which he has been unprepared. but this, too, distracts him from thought of death. he is much too busy trying to fit the novel situation into the well-worn pat­ terns of response he has been practicing for many months or years. what does his commander expect of him in this un­ precedented situation? should he advance, stay where he is, or retreat? his mind becomes so preoccupied with the mechanics of action that larger issues never enter, and self-awareness is dimmed to the vanishing point. this is as true of the general as it is of the private soldier, perhaps more true of the general, to whom the battle must conform to some pattern of his long training in strategy and tactics. a psychologist would probably insist that this absorption with routine and details was the mind's escape from its fear of extinction. if so, the escape is usually effective. the second hindrance to realization of death's imminence is the physical weariness that is usually precedent to any en­ gagement in battle. loss of sleep, long marches, cold food, and the nervous tension that the destruction common to forward areas evokes combine to exhaust the combat soldier. this 103 the warriors weariness can go beyond borders that most of us ever know at 01 other periods in our lives. it alone can so stupefy the senses fe that soldiers behave like sleepwalkers. continued over a bi period of time, such exhaustion can induce men to welcome or death as a rest and a change from what they have been doing. en i wrote in my journal of my own feeling after hard, bitter th months: en ti the days pass and i become duller of mind and tireder of the war. the way is long and sometimes i question the wisdom of it all, of continuing to live. there may be a real purpose in it all, which is perceived only at the end of the journey. somehow i feel that is true. this is part of the unromantic answer to the question how young men can face nearly certain death in war. it comes as a relief from what they are doing. death appears to be rest; it is quiet, sleep, and even the most stupefied can gain some appre­ ciation of what that means. i have seen exhausted soldiers sleeping while exposed to the greatest danger of death. it might be said that these soldiers had won some positive relationship to death in conceiving it as sleep and rest. but in most cases, i think, this would be going too far. men overcome by weariness are not really relat­ ing death to rest or sleep; they have simply an overwhelming feeling that change is a necessity and death is a change. their aversion to the incomprehensible state of death has not been altered, as a few hours' rest makes clear. it has only been superseded by physical need of the most insistent kind. yet these explanations do not account completely for the large percentage of soldiers who die in war without being able to face death or gain any relationship to it save one of horror and aversion. the dazed consciousness must have en co in � co ot s� ii! a th 01 pi il1 104 erofthr, om 01 itall,�1 '/ all, wn�hu . i feeltmlu question 1�w itcomesah o de rest; it� xpo:ea to ili� these solai�� concei�ln� it his woula m treallrrelat. rerwhehin� hange. tnell as not been 5 on1r been kina. telr for ilie iliout dein� ve one 01 must have the soldier's relations to death other sources as well. in part it is also due, i believe, to the fear of pain and mutilation which bullets and shrapnel can bring. pain is something very real in the memories of every­ one, as death is not, and most combat soldiers have witnessed enough gaping wounds and listened to the agonized cries of the wounded often enough so that they cannot consciously endure the thought of the same thing happening to them. though the dread of death may be at the bottom of conscious processes at such moments, the fear of being painfully injured is much in the foreground. this fear dulls self-awareness as effectively as fatigue and routine can and has a more lasting influence. fear can prey on the mind to the point where it makes a soldier unfit for combat. usually it rises just high enough to prevent reason, and with it the detachment of self­ consciousness, from governing. above all, this stupefaction of consciousness is doubtless a function of the total environment of war. to some extent it afflicts everyone much of the time. after a few months in the combat zone, i, at least, found it hard indeed to believe in any other reality than war or to contrast it with any other state. sometimes i am overcome with the desire to go off by myself and live in a hermitage. i cannot face the prospect of going back to any of my old haunts after the war. i shall not want to speak of these war years, and i cannot be as i was. what is left? one does not want to die and cannot live as he would. the past had grown so distant and unreal that another way of life was hard to imagine. the realization of oneself and the objective conditions of one's life can come in wartime with piercing intensity and unforgettable clarity. but the environ­ ment of violence and hatred commonly insulates us against 105 revelations of ourselves by making any break-through to conim: sciousness doubly difficult. fidl coil the warriors if the majority of soldiers gain no positive relationship to death, there are others who do, and the relationships are of numerous kinds, from the more abstract and conventional to the concrete and personal. there is a type of soldier who con­ siders death very real for others but without power over him. these soldiers cherish the conviction that they are mysteri­ ously impervious to spattering bullets and exploding shells. the little spot of ground on which they stand is rendered secure by their standing on it. death is an impersonal force that can rob other men of their motion and their powers, but for them it has no body or substance at all. some soldiers even manage to get through a long war with this conviction unim­ paired. it is a conviction tbat is responsible for much rashness in battle, misnamed courage. since such soldiers are freed from anxiety, they are frequently able to see the ridiculous and amusing aspects of combat life and provide much price­ less cheer and humor for their comrades. fortunate is the unit that can count one or more of these soldiers in its ranks; and in fact most units do appear to con­ tain them. they are a perennial phenomenon in war, a cause of wonder and admiration, as though their like had never been. sometimes they become the subject of war tales, which quickly take on mythlike proportions. if such soldiers com­ mand men, as frequently happens, they have the capacity to inspire their troops to deeds of recklessness and self-sacrifice. in most of these soldiers, the source of their relationship toward death-as a reality for others only-is not too dif­ ficult to discover. they have simply preserved their childish illusion that they are the center of the world and are therefore 106 of s of li st �gh to can. lationship to l hips are 01 tales, wni�� ldiers com· capaci!r !o u·sacrince, ela!ionsni� ! too aif· chilaisn therefore the soldier's relations to death immortal. their ego is incredibly nafve and their self-con­ fidence absurd to anyone who is capable of regarding them coldly. civilian life contains many such naive egoists, i am convinced, but the presence of danger and the seemingly arbitrary fortunes of war weaken the illusion of indestruc­ tibility in most delayed adolescents. in others, stronger shocks are required. until a drastic occurrence touches them closely, they preserve their fantastic faith. perhaps their own wound­ ing is necessary. the look of shock and outrage on such a soldier's face when that happens is likely to be unforgettable. at one cruel stroke he loses forever the faith in his physical immortality. his psychological adjustment to the new world he has to inhabit is certain to be harder than the physical recovery from his wounds. most of us learn when we are younger, at home and gradually, to accept the sad truth that the world does not revolve around us. even then the discovery is not easy or simple. at the front or in a field hospital, this truth is disillusioning in the extreme. the soldier who learns it there will never be the same again. sometimes he becomes a cynic, his former humor and lightheartedness utterly corroded by a lost trust in the world he inhabits. he may also become a coward, with blanching fear of all danger, a man henceforth useless to his military unit. when the belief in one's indestructibility is due to a defect of imagination, other experiences than being wounded may suffice to waken the soldier to his situation. it may be the death of an acquaintance in his arms, where the transition between life and death is made imaginatively visible for the first time, or it may be the rare sight of death in lifelike form that startles him into self-consciousness. animals on the battlefield sometimes afford the most memorable examples of the latter. those american soldiers who came up route six in italy 107 the warriors on the way to rome on april 4 or 5, 1944, will scarcely have forgotten the magnificent horses that were shot down, ap­ parently by our hiers, as they were fleeing madly northward. the retreating germans had run out of fuel for their vehicles and must have commandeered the horses from the estate of some wealthy fancier of such creatures. the horses had fallen in harness, with their heads high in the air, eyes opened and distended in terror. their legs had folded under them, as though paralyzed, and they lay upright on their bellies, look­ ing as if they wanted to continue their hight without means of locomotion. there were many of them, in columns, and the strafing bullet wounds were hardly visible. the dead sol­ diers who lay around, german and american, in the usual distorted postures, could not persuade us that they had been alive a few hours before, but hardly anyone was able to look at the horses without a shudder. little imagination was re­ quired to see what death was like, for the eyes of those thor­ oughbred animals contained its image in painful clarity. such scenes, repeated on different battlefields and in every war, often suffice to imprint on the minds of some soldiers the indelible truth that death plays no favorites. i learned this truth. in mi this morning we went to laiatico, a town that had been shelled to pieces by german artillery in the past two days and presented as grim an aspect as any we have yet seen. a huge dead horse was lying inside one of the ruined houses, and the smell of death was everywhere. at first there was no sight of civilians, but we found them later, collected in shelters, many wounded, all miserable, au frightened because the town was still receiving an occasional shell.... in many ways this town was no different from the others, but it left a grimmer impression. it made me realize afresh what war is.... the citizenry was bitter. there was much pillaging and theft on the part of civilians, also soldiers, while the populace wlu m t� los �arce\y have �t down, a� ly northwarq, their vehlcl� l the estate 01 rses had fa�!! es openea an� nder them, � lr bellies, 100(. '1\liliou!m� . col_,an� . the aeaa �i. in ilie usij� iliernaaofe! '�ie!olool beensm�� and presenu� tad horse w� 0/ death w� but ice joum mijerabk,� n occasiond mimotmil, almh wmj diagingarj puiacewgj the soldier's relations to death in air-raid shelters. what a brute man is. he thrives on his fellow's misery. we are in laiatico.... the smell of death is everywhere. five civilians were killed and lay in the bombed-out church for a week until the smell was unbearable. yesterday i took a walk to the outskirts of the village and discovered an american soldier of our division lying dead in a potato patch. he had not been dead long. i could discover no bullet wound, but he had fallen backward with his head downhill and the blood had run into his face and filled up his throat and mouth. . . . looking closer i discovered that he was very young, a lad from louisiana, his dog tag re­ vealed. i have forgotten his name. the flies had arrived already and were feasting on the blood in his open mouth. . . . a little farther on were the carcasses of four huge oxen, killed by shells. they, too, presented a horrible sight, with their huge bodies stiff and their legs in the air. a farmhouse stood nearby, riddled by shot and shell. the inhabitants had fled. inside the house a door banged with the gusts of air. chickens and a few white rabbits were around the yard and one live ox stood stoically and uncon­ cerned nearby.... but in some few men the illusion of indestructibility is oc­ casioned by deeper causes than deficient imagination or de­ layed adolescence. it is a function of an indomitable will to power which refuses to recognize ordinary mortality. such men have a fanatic faith in their destiny which is only strengthened by narrow escapes and the sight of death in manifold forms. they are commonly leaders and win recogni­ tion as fearless warriors whose iron nerves and will to victory are out of all proportion to those of other men. we know these exceptional persons from the pages of military history, and perhaps many of us have seen their smaller counterparts in our own ranks. nothing but their own death will rob them of their illusion, and it is one of the mysteries of combat that they so 109 the warriors rarely get killed. little do they have to recommend them as friends or comrades. as a rule, they are vain and empty, con­ temptuous of all who are not like themselves. battle appears to be their very element, and in that element men will not hesitate to pay them homage. nevertheless, it is not courage they display, not the human will triumphing over fate. if their vitality and their will are admirable in themselves, there is little that is specifically human about their whole mentality. they hardly recognize other men as such and are capable of walking over bodies, living or dead, without a qualm. in their secret hearts they despise friend and foe equally, these supreme egoists. if nature brought many such forth, the world would be more of a shambles after warfare than it customarily is. for those who have never shared this illusion that death is something that happens only to others, it is probably fool­ hardy to try to formulate the relation to death this type of soldier sustains. at all events it is a relation, something that can hardly be said of the earlier-mentioned and much more common type. for this soldier, death is envisioned as an ex­ ternal power which subjects others to its realm and makes them fearful. the naive egoist has thus no wish to banish this power. from his fearlessness before it, he gains his distinc­ tiveness. he can control it and deal it out, but into its mys­ teries he has no wish to penetrate. perhaps he sometimes wonders why others appear to know more about death than he, though he is normally incurious. his vitality and egoism are in an utterly separate sphere from death, and they, too, are equally taken for granted. there can be no intimacy be­ tween these spheres; at most, an empirical recognition on the part of the living that death is real, for it has swallowed up some of "the others." this soldier's mind is clear enough when he thinks of death and his eye is undazed when he views rna on! uni ta wit are c( ci 110 end them a! empty, con. attle appean men will n�1 not coura�1 r fate. if tn�u lves, ther� u �ole mentatl�, are cap�l��! qualm. in 11�u y. tnesesuprem1 llie world w�wl i!omarilr�, n iliat dea�� prod�lr loo� us t��! • meiliin�iliil a muen morl • nis aislid�' e sometim� t deaili ilian and egoism d they, !o�, ntimaey d� '!ion on ine allowed ll� fat enoug� f he riewi the soldier's relations to death dead bodies, but neither penetrates far. without communica­ tion with each other, life and death remain powers that exist side by side, unfathomed and lacking mystery. an opposite relation to death is possibly more prevalent among soldiers in modern wars and more understandable to americans in general, even if scorned. here death is an inti­ mate and repugnant enemy before whose threat and presence one can only flee in terror. there are soldiers in nearly every unit who can endure every hardship and humiliation of mili­ tary life without flinching, yet cannot face personal danger with any composure at all. such soldiers feel that all bullets are intended for them and every shell likely to land on the particular spot they have selected as temporary shelter. insa­ tiable death lurks everywhere ready to pounce upon them, and everyone of his victims they see makes them the more cer­ tain they will be the next one. these soldiers are quickly found out in combat and become the butt of their comrades' ridi­ cule and contempt. there is a peculiar derogation in the epithet "coward" in wartime, for war of course glorifies cour­ age above all other virtues. hence the men who are unable to face the prospect of death without terror are so branded and must endure, at least in military service, insults and con­ tumely of every sort. few people ask why the coward fears death excessively or seek to understand the complex motives underlying his relation to the world or to death. in inquiring into this relation toward death as one of unreasoning terror on the part of the soldier-coward, i want to emphasize that the term "coward" is used in a more restrictive sense than is commonly done. it is necessary to distinguish the person who is an occasional coward in the face of death from the constitutional coward. in 111 the warriors almost everyone at times, there is a coward lurking. the litera­ ture of war is replete with instances of elite troops seized with panic fear, of the bravest soldiers fleeing in terror at some time in their career. cowardice in this sense is, like rashness, a group phenomenon and greatly contagious. when the indi­ vidual is caught unprepared, he becomes a victim of the mass will, which overflows him and sweeps him away. students of mass psychology believe they know when and under what conditions the individual is likely to respond to these mass emotions. commanders of troops can never be sure how their units will respond to the effect of surprise or close-contact fighting. but the constitutional coward hardly surprises any­ one; he simply cannot endure combat when personal danger becomes acute. under peaceful conditions, this excessive fear of death might remain unknown, even to the coward himself, and after a war the coward is quite capable of concealing or forgetting it for the further duration of his life. cowardice, like courage, is a complex quality, and it does not follow that an excessive fear of death always colors all other relations a coward sus­ tains to life. in fact, the coward may be a good citizen, a considerate husband and father, a successful legionnaire. in most respects he is likely to be a more pleasing peacetime companion than the man who believes himself indestructible. as moral courage is distinguishable from physical courage, a man being capable of possessing the one without the other, so physical cowardice is different from moral cowardice. civil­ ian life seldom gives men opportunity to test their capacity to face death. doubtless there are thousands who have no idea whether they are cowards in the military sense. only when they come to their deathbed will their fortitude or lack of it be revealed to themselves, and even there it may be hidden 112 the litera. seized willi or at some e rashness, n the inm. of the ma� studenij 01 under wnal thesem� e now tn�rr c]ose-conlatl r 01 aeaili h, ana after or forgetlln� like coura�e, an excessive cowara �w. cilizen, � 'onnaire, in peacelime aestruclilile, alcourage, tilieoilier, alee, civil, ir capaciry ve no ioea nly wnen lack of it e hiooen the soldier's relations to death because we have learned well how to avoid the issue through the art and science of medicine. the coward in battle, however, dies a thousand deaths, as the proverb has it, and each one is mentally painful beyond measure. actually, of course, his physical death is more likely than is that of the courageous soldier, for he cannot remain still. continually he suffers the illusion that another piece of earth is more secure than the one he presently inhabits. even his sleep is troubled, since he follows in his unconscious mind the sound of incoming or outgoing shells. the slightest change in direction or distance of firing is sufficient to wake him and cause him to seek a presumably safer spot elsewhere. most veterans have their own memories of this kind of soldier, but none could be more typical than a companion of mine during the italian and french campaigns. this handsome youth, of irish descent, first aroused our merriment because he was so attached to his helmet that he wore it while sleeping, despite the obvious discomfort. when incoming shells exploded any­ where within miles of us, he would pull a table over his sleep­ ing bag or, more often, get up, cursing horribly, and descend to the cellar of the building we were using, no matter how dank, for the remainder of the night. it was his lamentable fate to land on d day in southern france, and our chafing was mixed with pity at what tom had to suffer in prospect. fortunately, his landing craft was not fired upon, and, when our unit was reunited in a chalet a few hundred yards from shore, we found tom pale yet reasonably composed. just then, however, a german plane came over and released a bomb which landed squarely, with a terrific explosion, on another craft nearing the shore. there was great destruction, for the boat contained, in addition to soldiers, a lot of ammunition, which exploded at intervals until the boat sank hours later. 113 the warriors though we were at a safe distance from it, tom immediately lost his voice. he could not speak above a hoarse whisper for two or three days. in spite of our horror at the carnage on the beach, we were forced to laugh at our companion, who could not refrain from chattering, in a semiaudible croak, the rest of the evening. not trusting the security of the chalet for sleeping, he carried his sleeping bag into a ravine for the night, and was nearly eaten up by red ants. they were not sufficient, needless to say, to make him return to the luxury of a comfortable bed with the rest of our unit. what is it that this man possessed or lacked that separates him so sharply from the soldier beside him who could remain reasonably calm in the presence of danger to his life? i think the answer can only be that he lacked, above all else, a sense of union with his fellows. the coward may have comrades, but they are not able to sustain him emotionally. his relation to them is not one of depth or inner community. they are merely part of the external furniture of his life. he is unable to comprehend those who throwaway their lives from rash­ ness or joy in sacrifice. indeed, it is impossible for him to comprehend how other values can equal or surpass the value of his own life. to all arguments concerning duty, honor, or the respect of friends, his retort is sure to be: "what do they matter if i am no longer alive to know about them?" this question is unanswerable, because for the coward it is no question but a dogmatic certainty. the solomonian wisdom "it is better to be a living dog than a dead lion" exactly fits his conviction. if the coward does not know the sense of a common effort and a common fate, he has, unfortunately, not gained in its place any strong individuality or any full awareness of self. it is a fact often enough noticed that people who are deficient 114 in te no the an pol by of co an en ca the soldier's relatiot:s to death in the capacity for love hold onto life with the greatest tenacity. the coward's fear of death stems in large part from his incapacity to love anything but his own body with passion. he is an egotist because he does not possess enough self­ assurance to be an egoist. the inability to participate in others' lives stands in the way of his developing any inner resources sufficient to overcome the terror of death. his is truly a pitiable figure in combat, for fear and danger drive him more and more into the confines of his own skin and make him more and more into a mindless body. this soldier's relation to death is a genuine one, and by no means negative. before the dread and monstrous reality, the coward feels all the frailty and exposure of his existence, and senses that the struggle is an unequal one. even tem­ porary survival must be procured by careful stratagems and by yielding dignity here and there. death is a personal enemy of his, a relentless, absolute, all-encompassing enemy. but the coward's inner poverty of life and love makes him no fit for nim i� antagonist. i think it must be said that his fear is not to be , ine valll� separated from a dim recognition that he belongs to this opnonor, or ponent. in spite of himself, death is not remote from his inner al ao iner self and all his impulses. the coward, unrelated to his fellows, fir" tn!! has an insufficient hold on life and is not in charge of himself il is no or his fate. a brave man might fear death as an opponent n wl�om possessing all the qualities opposite to those which he himxact1r n� self possesses. his discipline in the face of this enemy is governed by the recognition that death is implacable and will on effort ultimately triumph in an outward sense. but for the coward ea in ils death is within him. he is related to this most gruesome of self, enemy, and the more he struggles to escape the greater is his captivity. when the coward's body is finally yielded up to 115 the warriors death, there is nothing instructive or solemn about the specit 1 tacle. few scenes are more deeply unpleasant. col to if the majority of american soldiers find it impossible to 1 attain any other relation to death than that of rejection or ca negation, we should not hastily conclude that a positive and fic� acceptive relation is evidence of an unnatural or deviant menete tality. there are soldiers in the anglo-saxon world and peran haps many more in teutonic and slavic lands, to say nothing of of the orient, for whom death is a fulfillment. unless we try sh( to understand the motivation of this kind of soldier, we can ev make no claim to grasping the full nature of homo [urens. of here again, however, it is impossible to treat the genus and su disregard the numerous species. not all soldiers who find fulfai fillment in death seek the same kind of fulfillment, and their motivations are frequently very diverse. for some, death is only a means to fulfillment. thus it is, for example, with the soldier who sacrifices his life willingly out of love for his country or for a glorified leader or for an ideal like fascism or communism. such a soldier can enter into death in selfca forgetfulness and treat it merely as an incident in comparison at with the reality that fills his being. he uses death as a means by which to prove his love and devotion to something beyond is himself. death is welcomed not for itself, but as a sign of his pi utter faithfulness. some leaders can call forth in their men 01 this unbounded eagerness to die for them. the simple soldier th who obeys such an impulse to self-sacrifice feels in an irrafl tional way that his leader will be mightily satisfied with him for so doing. any wrath his leader may nurse at a perverse turn of events will be appeased by this act of selflessness. a soldier like this steps into death, as it were, with his eyes fixed elsewhere. he has not thought much or at all about what 116 the spec. possilile 10 rejection or positive ana devianl mfn, orb ana �r, o sar noiliin� r lesswe� laier, we c�n o jurerts, ilie genus ana wdonnam i. ana ineu perverse ness, a his eyes �ut whal the soldier's relations to death it is like to be dead or what dying signifies, because he is over­ come by enthusiasm for some living ideal or person sufficient to render his own independent existence of lesser value. for the deeply religious soldier, on the other hand, death can be a fulfillment in a very different sense from self-sacri­ fice. if he chances to be a follower of those religions that teach eternal life, then physical death is a portal for him to a greater and immeasurably happier life beyond. though the numbers of such soldiers have decreased markedly in our century, we should not forget that thousands of them still take part in every rnaj or war. i was, in fact, astonished to find how many of the farewell letters written by those condemned for the un­ successful attempt on hitler's life in 1944 were pervaded by faith in a life to come. sometimes this is a minimal faith, a forlorn hope, but there can be little doubt that many soldiers cherish it still. the genuinely otherworldly consciousness, so much scorned as an escape in recent times, is increasingly misunderstood by people who take little time for reflection. their customary charge that the hope of life after death is camouflaged egotism and vanity applies only to those who attempt to use religious faith rather than to be used by it. for the soldier who is not a foxhole convert to faith, death is something other than a barrier placed between him and the painless life on the other side. on the contrary, genuine otherworldliness regards death as an enemy only so long as the individual has not discovered his purpose in being alive, for reaching the goal is no simple process of stepping over a dark threshold. death is, instead, a power on earth to be overcome; it is a last great obstacle and a necessary trial for the pilgrim on life's way. in the end it will prove, of course, to be a veil of illusion to the faithful one, but he must over­ come the world to learn this secret. his proper posture will 117 the warriors be to meet death face-to-face and gain the assurance that the ii closer he comes the more peaceful and indeed joyous his al journey. if anyone doubts that such people can confront death with serenity and cheer, let him read the communications of m true believers condemned to die and awaiting execution. their of one concern is commonly those who are left behind without the calm and peace that they, the condemned, have won. perhaps i can state this otherworldly relation to death in al more concrete form. death is a fulfillment, not in the sense of c� a consummation, but as the final triumph of the spirit over the c� forces that would hinder it from life everlasting. there are, s� to be sure, some kinds of otherworldliness that conceive of w trials continuing after death, when the soul is in purgatory, m but there any aid it receives must be external to it and not c( something that the soul can itself accomplish. rather than w being a barrier between me and true bliss, death is the path f� that brings me there when i have learned to tread it. christian in and non-christian otherworldliness are at one in teaching that ci life is a process of overcoming the natural and instinctive. a rebirth is required, a change in direction which is radical, to the point where life will not be considered any longer as self-sustaining or self-explanatory, but, rather, as a gift that is redeemable by the giver at any moment under any condition. those who are born again to the spirit, as the christian puts it, regard death as that part of life which does not belong to one's essence. the religious man is constantly dying to those aspects of self and the world that becloud the true eternal existence. physical death is only the final stage in a long-continued struggle to overcome "the world." in this sense, otherworldli­ ness regards death as a fulfillment of life's mission in this world; death is what the believer has been constantly surpass118 the soldier's relations to death ing. when physical death approaches, it is easy to enter into and full of promise. for some it is the final stripping away of the self and its tiny concerns, all that is particular and merely personal. others regard death as the final purification of the self, freeing it from what remains of all imperfections and blemishes. can the otherworldly soldier who is caught up in action and thrown together with violent men preserve his peacetime convictions of death as a final conquest? or is not this whole conception and mentality peculiar to older and more weary spirits, as many assert? the answer is, i think, that other­ worldliness is as likely to flourish among men at war as among men at peace. if there is a difference, it lies in the fact that combat matures men quickly and perhaps particularly in their ways of regarding life and death. there may be more time for thinking and more loneliness in foxholes at the front than in secure homes, and time is measured in other ways than by clocks and calendars. for soldiers who have entered military service with a firm otherworldly faith, there is frequently little difficulty in continuing to regard death as they did before, and the violence all about may well strengthen, rather than weaken, their convictions. on the other hand, soldiers whose religious faith is chiefly this-worldly, that is, social and ethical in con­ tent, often find war's destruction wreaking havoc with their belief. the otherworldly soldier may prudently seek to stay alive aspec� 01 as long as the worldly one. unless he is a fanatic, he tries to existence, listen to inner commands before acting rashly. but the dif�ontiduea ference becomes apparent when the chances of surviving a envori&i· given engagement are reduced and death becomes as nearly in tb� certain as it ever does in combat. then such an otherworldly surpasssoldier rarely cringes from his fate, does not become de119 the warriors spondent or bitterly reproachful of others. inwardly he may he exultant or simply collected. what is coming has been de­ termined by greater and wiser forces than he commands, and he is content to repeat: "thy will be done" or its equivalent. the destroyers of such soldiers are astounded at how "bravely" they die and are sometimes deeply shaken by it. it seems to be contrary to nature. but the steadfastness of that will which is fixed on a life beyond death can endure the pain of dying and sumetimes achieve exaltation in the act. there is another element that commonly makes death easier for such a soldier . for the otherworldly christian, at least, there is a contradiction in combat and a fearful moral peril. he is conscious of the pacifistic injunctions of his faith and has not been able, in all likelihood, to make the easy dis­ tinctions between destroying life in pe�ce and in war that governments insist upon. even though he may have privately determined that no one shall fall by his hand, his conscience seldom leaves him in peace. the biblical dictum that "all who take the sword will perish by the sword" has persuaded him, perhaps, that it is no more than just that he should leave his young life in this unholy war. this is also particularly true for the soldier whose religious search is not guided by life after death, hut is strongly moral. death can become for him, a participant in what he considers the crime of warfare, a way of atonement, especially appropri­ ate, even if insufficient. though he cannot greet death joy­ ously, as one expecting a great translation into the eternal, he can greet it calmly and inwardly at peace as the path to a mind at one with itself. occasionally on the battlefield one is haunted by the face of a dead soldier on which there is stamped a kind of un­ earthly serenity. i remember a handsome young german 120 sold by t few bree trave body held featu on a how exec neck and i rouu �iadl if in nrdle vol i thro cepti era scie� mor1unue meal �e� i! reje full tho he may been de. ands, ana quivalent. at how en by it.!! ess of tna! re the �am he act. conscien� at "a� w�� uaded n�, d leave� i the face d of un· german the soldier's relations to death soldier, near the end of world war ii, who had been hanged by the ss troops, possibly because he wanted to surrender a few hours earlier than they. his body was swaying in the breeze beneath a tree along the road on which my jeep was traveling. i stopped and cut the rope that held him. as his body fell to the earth, face upward, my gaze was caught and held for some minutes by the expression on his regular features. seldom have i seen a look of greater inner happiness on a human face, dead or alive. it was hard to understand how he could have maintained such an expression, for his executioners had hardly granted him the mercy of a broken neck. he had no other wound, and everything about his person and uniform was in perfect order. i could not rid myself of the conviction that, despite his youth and the approaching end of hostilities, he had suffered gladly this death by execution at the hands of his own people. if in this particular case it is a supposition that cannot be con­ firmed, we do have evidence of other german soldiers who voluntarily escaped torments of conscience in hitler's war through death brought about by his hired killers. the per­ ceptive among them knew well enough that dying does not erase guilt, but they also knew that it is the most that con­ science and religious faith can demand in situations where more appropriate atonement is not available. we need be under no illusions that only enemy nationals sought similar means of atonement, though the number in any army is not great. is there not a relationship to death different from either rejection as an abhorred enemy or acceptance as a path to fulfillment or expiation? is there not a relationship that, though not so common, is closer to representing the essence 121 the warriors of the fighting man? i think so, but to characterize it is not easy. this attitude is more concrete and objective, as a rule, less conventional and perhaps less emotional than the ones i have been concerned with thus far. first let me attempt a general statement of this relation to death and then tum to examples, which are in effect subspecies, or different varieties, of the type. as a consequence of temperament and experience, some soldiers can learn to regard death as an anticipated experience among other experiences, something they plan to accept when the time comes for what it is. they take death into life, as it were, and seek to make it a part of experience, sometimes winning thereby an intimate relationship. because they re­ spect death as a power and do not fear it as a blind fate, they are able to reckon their chances in warfare with greater calm­ ness than other soldiers. for them, death is as much a self­ evident fact as birth, and they regard as foolish the man who refuses to accept the one as the other. since moral or re­ ligious considerations hardly occupy first rank with such sol­ diers, they are unlikely to choose death as a means or an end to self-improvement or atonement. however, the more imagina­ tive and thoughtful of this type do regard death as that ab­ solute in human existence which gives life its poignancy and intensity. they do not desire to live forever, for they feel that this would be a sacrifice of quality to gain quantity. in phil­ osophical terms, such soldiers are affirming human finiteness and limitation as a morally desirable fact. just as the bliss of erotic love is conditioned by its transiency, so life is sweet because of the threats of death that envelop it and in the end swallow it up. men of this sort are usually in love with life and avid for experience of every sort. indeed, experience is the word that best stamps a kind of uni i that for of t� delili verb, ilie f ilie storn gard be, , inten offe teles issue more their pe reckl may proto soldi nom end caus on d of � fou by dea i �q 122 the soldier's relations to death unity on a diverse group. their common relation to death is that of regarding it as neither friend nor foe, but as a possibility for a supreme kind of experience. the less reflective members of this group would certainly never describe this relation in deliberate terms like these; on the contrary, they scorn such verbalizing. action is their element, and their hearts are in the future as it enfolds itself every day. they look out upon the world as adventure and upon themselves as capable of storming all its ramparts. they are not naive enough to re­ gard themselves as indestructible, and do not even desire to be. what they desire is experience, and the fuller and more intense that experience is, the more content they are. war offers them something that peace cannot: the opportunity to telescope much experience into short compass. if death be the issue, they are normally fatalists by instinct and can accept it more calmly than the prospect of a boring, empty period in their lives. perhaps the least complicated of this type is the dashing, reckless soldier whose perennial charm consists in his devil.. may-care attitude toward all the solemn rituals of military protocol. all men at war have known one or two such soldiers and doubtless have blessed them in their hearts. normally, such a carefree youth is not very curious about the end of his life, though keenly aware that living is sweet be .. cause life is fragile and ringed by danger. if he did reflect on death, he would doubtless be in accord with the sentiments of feeble in the second part of shakespeare's henry the ife is sweet fourth: i in the ena e wiili ule by my troth, i care not; a man can die but once; we owe god a death..•. and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year a kina 01 is quit for the next. te it is no! �, as a rule) l the ones i ,e attempt i then turn t� rent varie!l�) nence) 10m! ede�rien� to acce�t w�e� lli inlo iile) & ee, somellln� ause ilier � !ina fale)�e1 grealercal mucn a ��, ilie man w�� or an en� 123 the warriors to the otherworldly soldier, a man like this is incomprehensible, explainable only as an unawakened one; to the of coward, he is an utter fool; to the soldier who can face mortal so danger only in a daze, he is a subject for admiration and es puzzlement. it does not occur to many of them that this carede lessness about his life stems from overabundance of it. consequently, he values other things more highly than life, above ot all, adventure and full experience. if he were careful and circumspect with his life, most of the joy in living would be gone, for guarding the harne is a way of keeping it from full brilliance. when such a soldier acquires a family and civilian responsibilities, he usually loses some of his gaiety and recklessness. yet death can never be to him what it is to most other inl soldiers, for without much reflection he has made it a part of life, and his response to it will be of a piece with his other tn responses. his is an affirmation of death but without the pathos of the average man or soldier. war is a game for him, exciting and dangerous because a man may strike out or foul out at any time. such possibilities make both life and war worth the effort expended. it is tempting and easy to make such a soldier appear more complicated than he is. much of what i have already made �o explicit is with him simply implicit and impulse. he does not oj consciously know why he is careless and lighthearted about ili his life nor why he sets such value upon new experience. he 1 is what he is for no reason, self-analysis and reflection being onamong the things he prizes least. yet his very simplicity is hard to understand. the absence of love as concern for preserving his own and other life makes him seem slightly inhuman. and his innocence of any conventional moral inhibitions, his lack of any real stake in the conservation of existing goods, reinforces this impression. 124 � incompre. dne; to ili� l face mortru miration an� hat this car& te of it. con, an life, a10f� e careful an� ''ilng wow� � \naittromm 'y ana citill� aieryanarfcl' nence, h� ection dein� implici� � rn for pr� slignt1r in· ral inhldi· f existin� the soldier's relations to death the soldier as lighthearted adventurer may still be a figure of charm and romance in our modern wars. he possesses what so many lack and wish they had. but he troubles us, too, and especially so when we become reflective. his attitude toward death evokes, i think, our admiration whether we are at peace or war. but his irresponsibility toward society and toward all other values except personal experience cannot but perpetuate most of the evils of our tradition. frankly, i find myself morally confused by him, both when i knew his like in war and now in memory and meditation. of one thing i am sure, this kind of soldier or man will be of small service in the struggle to eliminate war. without wishing it, his nature is too intoxicated by war's promise of intense, forbidden experience. in some sense, the counterpart of the soldier-adventurer is the more serious professional soldier whose relation to death is governed by the feeling of fate. death will come to him, he reasons, when the time is ripe and will, he hopes, afford him the opportunity to show himself worthy and unafraid. some­ times he hopes that death will come to him in full career, that he can die with his boots on, as the phrase has it, for the fatalistic soldier wants to face death as he has faced danger so many times, with a calm, matter-of-fact air. the proper discipline in the event of leaving one's life is, for him, no other than the discipline needed to master life itself. such a soldier may seem cold and heartless to those around him, without being so in fact. he may be moved deeply enough, but has no intention of letting others see anything that looks like weakness. duty is, for this professional, the highest value, and courage in performance of his duty is a shining ideal. death must not be shunned if the interests of duty and honor require it, however unpleasant dying may be. it cannot be avoided, in any event, when your number comes up. 125 the warriors such a soldier cannot be gay or reckless about death, for he has not taken life in that way. but, like the adventurous to soldier, he does not consider it alien or apart from his life, be2 either. he seeks to look upon death soberly and objectively, roo as a normal hazard, to be avoided if possible but never at any fat, cost. even when such a professional has a premonition of his co imminent death, it does not change his actions at all, as the feso literature of war makes clear. he takes great pride in perhis forming as usual to the end. for example, in a few of the oro letters from stalingrad, professional army sons writing to their ael german fathers, also of high military rank, could not refrain attl from a formal farewell, taking final leave of their fathers as pr! they would announce, with appropriate salute, their departure res for another post. to die was their last mission, and they were on orders here as elsewhere. never fear that the orders would sit not be carried out. tin it can be said, i think rightly, that this type of soldier has ret taken death into life and made the end of life a piece with pr the rest of it. unlike the carefree adventurer, this is for him ci customarily a conscious process. he has thought about death ev and dying, and his discipline in daily life is partly a consequence of this fact. that is, he strives to build up in himself tn an inner fortress that will be impregnable to the worst asp saults. as a professional soldier, he becomes aware early that the trial of death is normally the ultimate trial the military life can ask of its own. hence he fortifies himself with the sentiments military men have endorsed for ages, again well expressed by shakespeare, in coriolanus: it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. 126 death, for dventurous in hislilei objectivelr, never at anr nition of� at all, as�! pride in �ro a few 01 �i ititingtollilu uld not retrirn eir {allie�ru eir departure and ilier will orders wolli� f soldier nru ya cod.!& in him�� e worst 8j. early iliit e military � lriili ilif �g8in we� �; the soldier's relations to death this fatalism about the day and the hour may be thought to be rationalization, a way of making the ordeal easier to bear. but i believe it stems more often than not from other motives. though others than professional soldiers may be fatalists, of course, this view of death appears to be especially congenial to the military mind. the reason is that the pro­ fessional soldier feels the need to reduce the capriciousness of his world as much as possible. he chooses to conceive an orderly universe with stable and traditional values, in which death must have its rank and time like everything else. in this attempted reduction of all things to the matter of fact and predictable, the fatalistic soldier does not lose his subjective responses, but they do become subordinated. hence, when his time comes to die, he tends to be governed by the objective situation more than by his feelings. in effect, he can some­ times say: "my passing is an event, too, like all others to be recorded in the proper 'morning reports.' it would have been predictable had i had the necessary data available." he con­ cludes that there is nothing haphazard about the progress of events, whatever the outward appearance may be. that the course of war is as wayward and unpredictable as the imaginations of men is a conviction as old as the ancient pericles. but how many professional military men ever accept it? on the contrary, the world they inhabit, both outer and inner, must be governed by iron laws, and any individual fate is an insignificant part of a universal determinism. it is prob­ ably undeniable that dying is easier for one who holds fast to such a faith, but we have no reason to conclude that this is the reason the fatalist holds it. much more self-conscious and articulate, yet probably still of the same species, is the relation to death that certain poetic and philosophic natures win through war. for them, the hover127 the warriors ing presence of death becomes intimately experienced reality, whereby life gains not only in poignancy but also in creative possibility. death's finality and certainty can even become a hold and a stay in the threatening chaos of feeling. perhaps for this reason poets write so much of death, and war poets frequently become obsessed with the subject. they are at­ tracted to death as the moth is to the flame. in the war poems of a rupert brooke, for example, death is longed for as the only possibility of giving life authenticity and creative power. this kind of soldier can gain an intimacy with death denied to the less imaginative. he knows from experience that all creation is a kind of dying, in the sense that every experience to which he has given poetic form has been left behind him forever. in the maelstrom of conflict this soldier believes he is experiencing the very pulse of life in its dedication to death. sometimes he falls in love with death rather than with life, though when this happens he betrays his creative talents, or at least weakens them, for it is life that is being compressed and intensified and rendered genuine by death's presence. means and ends dare not be confused here, though they some­ times are. if his creative nature is strong enough to resist the temptations, the poet can frequently find fulfillment of his life in combat, as he might never have found it at home. the heightened awareness of man's transience, vulnerability, and proud courage, which the poet experiences in warfare, can reconcile him to his fate and even promote a love for it. philosophical poets, like philosophical soldiers in general, are capable of anticipating death as an adventure in knowl­ edge. this extends also in some cases to the experience of dying. the poet browning in the well-known poem "prospice" speaks of dying as "one fight more, the best and the last!" and proclaims himself as a fighter who would not want to hav cont and oea� eage appf tholtol �aj tua osi j on i ion naa eeal �ili' kno its! dol tu� cal m thi � 128 mced realitr, 10 in creativ! {en become! �ling, perha� and war poe� they are ii, the war poew ged for a1 � creative powel, '\h death aeni� nence iliat � every experien� left dehina� idier believ�m icatiod toaeail iliad witn ill!' ive talen�,& ido'comprem ath's r= ugh toer �� �h to resist �i ent of hisllll wanare,c!! e for it. s in gener� e in know]· perience 01 "prospice" the las!!" the soldier', relations to death have"death bandage his eyes" and bid him creep past. on the contrary, he wants to bear the brunt of the struggle of dying and so anticipate what lies beyond. such a relationship to death is a combination of heroic acceptance and intellectual eagerness for knowledge. hence, the philosophical poet can appease both the emotional and intellectual drives of his being. though the ability to look upon one's own death as a chance to learn what has been hitherto denied may not be widely shared, it' is an element, surely, in all the more rational atti­ tudes toward death. there are men with an insatiable curi­ osity about what it is like to be dead. the french philosopher descartes, who spent his youth as a hired soldier under foreign hags, is reported to have said on his deathbed that he was about to experience what he had long eagerly wished to know. and socrates, who as a soldier had looked death in the face more than once, could not con­ ceal his curiosity about the experience of dying and the pos­ sibility of a transformation of life beyond death. the love of knowledge, so rarely found in its pure state, can, neverthe­ less, impel men of superior mentality to regard death as a boundary they' should transgress in order to see whether it in turn may be bounded. for them, the unknown is neither un­ canny nor frightening. it is, above all, interesting. death may hold the solution to the riddles of existence, and some­ thing within them will not accept resignation to human finitude. they must burst the bonds and gain some firsthand experience of this encompassing presence into which they see so many entering daily. such a relation to death can be won in peace as well as in war, i realize, but unless human beings are pushed to the extreme, we are not so likely to confront simple and primal realities. 129 five images of the enemy i am quite uncertain of the date, and, as a matter of fact, 0/ many other things. but i do know that i am very tired tonight, that it is raining outside, and that i am sitting in a dingy hotel room, somewhere in france, writing this by candlelight-german candlelight, incidentally, since here in france we use much aban­ doned equipment and food. sometimes the sheets on the hotel beds don't get changed between german and american occupation. perhaps last night or night before a german officer sat where i now sit writing to a friend in germany. perhaps, too, he is the one i saw lying along the road today with hands neatly folded over the chest, one of the few corpses i have seen who didn't look alto­ gether horrible. and the french officer with me spoke gleefully in german: "so miichte ich sie alle sehen" (i'd like to see them au this way). so is the war here. (war journal, september 12 (?), 1944) the basic aim of a nation at war in establishing an image of the enemy is to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of 131 the warriors killing from the act of murder by making the former into one deserving of all honor and praise. if twentieth-century wars were not such desperate conflicts, we might be satisfied to regard destroying the enemy as morally neutral and so avoid the extreme discontinuity between the morality of war and peace. in fact, the distinction between taking life in battle at the command of the state and taking life as a private citizen at one's own will is a customary distinction with which western civilization has managed these many centuries. unfortunately, modem war has changed its character so greatly that the old distinction no longer satisfies. previously, armed forces and civilian populations were reasonably distinct. now, combat men, particularly artillerymen and fliers, find themselves de­ stroying women and children as well as armed opponents; in­ deed, whole populations come more and more to be regarded as legitimate objects of annihilation. with the disappearance of accepted standards of military ethics--what we used to call "chivalry"-restraints on the way the enemy's will to resist is broken down have disappeared. even in democratic lands, soldiers are systematically trained "to fight dirty," which means to disregard all civilian rules of fair play. "never give your enemy a chance" is the byword of this training. the baseness and inhumanity of such tactics commonly shock the recruit at first, but fear and hatred aid greatly in their early acceptance. nowadays, we quickly reach, by the benefit of propaganda, that terribly simplified morality with a single absolute: "any act that helps my side win the war is right and good, and any act that hinders it is wrong and bad." this drive toward moral absolutism of a totalitarian sort affects all other aspects of warfare in our age. restraints and restrictions are falling away everywhere. thus, the typical image of the enemy is conditioned by the need to hate him ga wit rna rive psyileas com tski oh dy l call few for en tli �trll an� con de to 132 ,er into on! entury wail satisneu !� and so avoi� of war an� ,e in batt\!ru �ate citizen!i 'nlen w�tern tclortunaterr, lj tnat �!�il eo lorre! �� i now, �o�ru iliemselv� ij� � �nfn�;� o�re�arijoo images of the enemy without limits. war has lost its former character of a deadly game, and becomes increasingly a struggle for national sur­ vival, in which all moral principles except the one concerning victory are strategic instruments. most soldiers are able to kill and be killed more easily in warfare if they possess an image of the enemy sufficiently evil to inspire hatred and repugnance. in this century, when mili­ tary enemies .hecome friends and friends become enemies with bewildering rapidity, agencies of public opinion are taxed to manipulate mass emotions in ways beneficial to national sur­ vival. all forward-looking governments have learned to rate psychological preparations for war as of equal importance, at least, with the physical training of citizens and soldiers. as a consequence, the image of the enemy a contemporary soldier takes with him to the front is certain to be a synthetic product of the mass media, more or less consciously instilled in him by his government to make him a better fighter. when radi­ cally altered political needs force a reversal of this image a few years later, governments are greatly aided by modern forgetfulness and bewilderment at the complexity of political change. the capacity of most of us to pursue a continuous thread through the welter of events is severely limited. we strive to keep an equilibrium amid a thousand impressions and to make sense of our world by elimination when it be­ comes impossible to do so by synthesis. hence, we can often be persuaded by the mass media to hold an opinion opposite to the one held a few years ago, without remembering that it is the opposite. we do well to reflect for a moment on the term "the enemy" as it is used in wartime. its meaning is as protean and diverse as can be, ranging all the way from a purely formal designa­ tion of a military adversary to the emotional expression of 133 the warriors greatest detestation. always, the definite article is used with the noun, not an enemy or our enemy. the implication easily drawn is that the opponent is mankind's enemy as well as ours, and also that this enemy is a specific, though undifferentiated group, an implication that is only pseudo-concrete. that is, by reference to the enemy we seem to mean a unified, concrete universal, whereas in fact the enemy is probably not more uni­ fied than is our side and possesses many other characteristics than those that are hostile to us. by designating him with the definite article, it is made to appear that he is single and his reality consists in hostility to us. thus do the moral ab­ solutisms of warfare develop through the medium of language, and, all unconsciously, we surrender reason to the emotional contagion of the communal. the abstractness of the term promotes in this emotion­ drenched atmosphere of war the growth of abstract hatred. i think it is abstract hatred and not the greater savagery of con­ temporary man that is responsible for much of the blood lust and cruelty of recent wars. this word "abstract" signifies in origin to "draw out from," to take from any larger whole one particular feature or aspect. the opposite of "abstract" is, of course, "concrete," which in its fullest sense still means to examine anything in its entirety, together with its relations to other things. hence, abstract hatred arises from concen­ trating on one trait of a person or group while disregarding other features, not to speak of the larger context in which all the traits coexist and modify each other. the simplification of abstract thinking is strictly comparable to the inhumanity of abstract emotions, particularly abstract hatred. intellectually, all of us can grant that the reality and truth of a human being can only be found in his total environment, including his past and his inner motives. it is possible to know a pj rare neal isul that com ::1 upoj res�pos a this aan� dr � certl whol resp in frie ofb re 134 used wi� ation easuj mtell as ouni ifferentiat� . that�,dl ed, concr�� at mareoni, haracteris�� him willi�! ingle ana � e moral � of lan���!1 ilie emotio�& this emotio� ract halr�a,l vagery ofto& the 01000 i�� til signmesm ger wholeo!1 tract"i!,ol till mean! 10 its relation! rom conw, disregaroid! in which � liecationol lumanilrol r and tru� rironmenl, ,e to know images oj the enemy a person concretely and still hate him, but such hatred is much rarer and of a very different quality. in a sense, hatred is nearly always abstract to some degree, since as a passion it is unable to view anyone or anything in entirety. the hatred that arises for the enemy in wartime, whether it be for nazis, communists, or capitalists, for white, yellow, or black, is peculiarly one-sided, for it is a fear-filled image. the enemy is not an individual man or woman, but a hostile power intent upon destroying our people and our lives. our unreflective response is normally total enmity for the image of evil that possesses our imagination. as the war progresses, we are hardened and consumed by this hatred of a shadowy image. the farther we are from dangerous contact with this image, the more we are consumed by it. a civilian far removed from the battle area is nearly certain to be more bloodthirsty than the front-line soldier whose hatred has to be responsible, meaning that he has to respond to it, to answer it with action. many a combat soldier in world war ii was appalled to receive letters from his girl friend or wife, safe at home, demanding to know how many of the enemy he had personally accounted for and often re­ questing the death of several more as a personal favor for her! similarly, soldiers who cherished concrete emotions found the moral atmosphere at the front so much more endurable than in rear areas that they willingly accepted the greater strain and personal danger of combat. progression in abstract hatred was detectable at every level, from company to regi­ ment to division to army and farther back. as one approached the combat area, relations between officers and men became more natural and functional; the spit and polish of army book discipline disappeared. though i did not understand the reasons then as well as i now do, a letter i wrote in february 135 the warriors 1945 expresses the facts of this transformation concisely enough: kn and pris life om tak, be i to 1 ... you would be amazed at the changed aspect of military rules and regulations in frontal areas. everything assumes a personal aspect. "the book" is pretty much thrown out the window, par­ ticularly in the experienced units, and it becomes "who do you know?" and "what can you get away with?" this is particularly true in our service. there is a surprising lack of orders from above; each man becomes more or less his own authority. the amount of individual responsibility is both frightening and heart­ ening. some of us have become very resourceful as a consequence, which is, of course, all to the good. . . . the gi aspects have almost all fallen away, and we work with each other from cor­ porals to colonels on pretty much an equal basis. the farther bach one is, of course, the less true this becomes. pgh an4 equally important, the enemy, too, seemed nearly human and, like us, tired, and fearful of his life. reduction of physi­ cal distance did not necessarily reduce psychical distance, i suppose, but there was usually a relationship, startling enough in character. to be sure, much of the improvement in spiritual climate was undoubtedly due to the presence of danger and not to a concretizing of the image of the enemy. hand-to-hand combat grows increasingly rare in our century. modern weap­ ons keep hostile armies at an ever-greater distance from each other, as a rule. i realize that thousands of soldiers fired in­ cessantly in recent wars without once seeing their targets, and bombardiers destroyed uncounted lives with no conception of the manner of people who were cowering under the falling bombs. only after a modern war is past and the victorious army is occupying the land of the conquered is the image of the enemy really rendered concrete, and by that time he is likely to be no longer an enemy. an $o� ow line wer at ci 136 concisel� s a perso� window, ��r, 'who do r�1 is particular/) f orders fr�rn authoritr, r� ning and k�� a conse�ue�� cl aspec� mu other from c�r, he jarlner o�1 nearlr num� lion of �n)lf � distan�e,l rtling enou� nt in sprritu� f danger mi hadd·to·n!!� fodern we!� e from ear� iers nrea i� targe�, an� dception �i tbe falli!! victorio� jmage�j ime beil images of the enemy nevertheless, one opportunity the front-line soldier has to know the enemy as a human being is when he takes prisoners, and this is frequently a crucial experience for soldiers. the prisoner of war reveals to his opponent that he, too, cherishes life and that he has at least a minimal trust in your humanity, otherwise he would not be surrendering. the soldier who has taken, or himself been made, a prisoner of war will inevitably be a changed man and fighter. his foe has been demonstrated to be comprehensible and of the same stuff, at least out­ wardly, as he himself is made of. i once wrote of this: while we were waiting there and listening to the sound of the fighting a few hundred yards away, the chatter of machine guns and heavier artillery, german prisoners began to come in.•.. for an hour [l searched them for weapons]. as j talked to these soldiers, j found no hatred for them. • •• but later, when our own infantry soldiers came up the road and advanced into the line, j felt the same attachment to these uncomplaining men who were covered with sweat and grime, had marched far and for many days, fighting most of the way and with few prospects. they were carrying heavy burdens but none complained. truly, a mad warfare. an incident that happened in my presence in italy during the war illustrates perfectly what i have in mind. a certain infantry division, freshly committed to a sector of the front, had transformed its band unit into military police in charge of prisoners of war. i happened to be at the prisoner cage shortly after these music-loving soldiers had received their first batch of prisoners. a group of these youths stood, guns at the ready and very tense, facing the disarmed germans in a stable of an old farmhouse. they were half expecting the captives at any moment to snarl and spring upon them. as soldiers fresh from the united states, their image of all ger137 the warriors mans was that they were treacherous and fanatical storm bel troopers. for their part, the captured soldiers were apparently jd1 glad to be prisoners, though they, too, were apprehensive dis about the menacing rifles. so we stared at one another with a confused mixture of hosmo tility and fear, all alike victims of ignorance. suddenly i heard ch some of the prisoners humming a tune under their breath. fill four who were a trained quartet and had contrived to be capall tured together started to sing. within a few minutes, the transformation in the atmosphere of that stable was complete, sid and amusing, too, in retrospect. the rifles were put down, some of them within easy reach of the captives. everybody clustered closer and began to hum the melodies. cigarettes were offered to the prisoners, snapshots of loved ones were displayed, and fraternization proceeded at a rapid rate. when the iw commanding officer, just as new to combat as his men, arrived sol on the scene, he was speechless with fury and amazement. the en contrast between abstract image and this glimpse of reality qe could hardly have been more striking. do k� however shadowy and unknown in their essential nature de enemy soldiers remain for the man in combat, their physical nearness forces a change in his abstract image of them, even qi if not necessarily in the way of concreteness. they are no longer one vast and undifferentiated power of evil, but more detached centers of violence and danger who must be resisted ri and destroyed if possible by himself and comrades. very often his abstract hatred is changed by degrees into personal hatred. are they not responsible for the hard, uncomfortable life he is forced to lead ? were it not for them he would be at home with his wife or girl friend, enjoying his favorite food or sport or other amusement. his mood may become one of deep re· 138 ute of ho� nly i hear� err brea�, d to beca� minutes,ful 'a com�i�!i, re pu! oown, " every10�1 es, ci�ar�tl� imagel oj the enemy sentment or smoldering anger against the cause of his present misery. he wants to make them pay for this long-continued disruption of his life, "they" being not the enemy in general so much as that group opposite his position at the front. the more cramped, painful, and unbearable his physical and psy­ chological environment becomes, the more he is likely to be filled with a burning vengeance, which demands action for its alleviation. when the soldier has lost a comrade to this enemy or pos­ sibly had his family destroyed by them through bombings or through political atrocities, so frequently the case in world war ii, his anger and resentment deepen into hatred. then the war for him takes on the character of a vendetta. until he has himself destroyed as many of the enemy as possible, his lust for vengeance can hardly be appeased. i have known soldiers who were avid to exterminate every last one of the enemy, so fierce was their hatred. such soldiers took great delight in hearing or reading of mass destruction through bombings. anyone who has known or been a soldier of this kind is aware of how hatred penetrates every fiber of his being. his reason for living is to seek revenge; not an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a tenfold retaliation. i described one of these men in my journal: he said that he would not be happy until every german was killed-said it in a careless, offhand manner and with a laugh told how he was complaining this morning about too many pris­ oners being brought in and the soldier who had brought one said, "i am doing my best, sir, i started with six!" the others laughed. i thought: it is the fortunes of war. those who were shot might have expected it. i need not feel sorry for them. but for those who want people killed because it will spare them work and because they cherish revenge . . . for those i feel sorrow and also anger. 139 the warriors understandable as this hatred is, it would nonetheless be false to think of it as concrete because motivated by personal grievance. such a soldier's hatred would be concrete only if it were directed toward the immediately guilty party, or group, who was conscious of and responsible for his evil deed. for example, a jewish soldier might cherish a concrete hatred for the nazi police charged with persecuting his family and perhaps could concretely hate the convinced members of the whole nazi party. but the soldier burning with vengeance feelings has commonly made a vast extension of his personal hatred to all who speak the language and wear the uniform of the enemy. to him, they become all alike and to kill one is as good as to kill any other. hence, he is not fighting men but embodiments of undifferentiated evil. the change in him is not so much a result of a new relationship toward the enemy as it is an emotional response to loss and exposure. he has not really broken through the barrier of the abstract. all that he has done is to give his enmity for the antagonists a new spring from which to drink. instead of the enemy, they have become my enemies. no one should underestimate the cruelty and the delight in cruelty when a soldier-or a civilian-is impelled by such personal, abstract hatred. for this reason, civil wars are usu­ ally replete with refinements of personal torture and are com­ monly more terrible than international wars. yet, paradoxical as i it n whe hate soldi respipers have just) bili� this'1posl eha� ma� tiodi �he� !neil reeo lea� fron hay hah bla� ... coming up this morning we saw an italian youth lying in a field close by the road, crumpled up in death. further on, a german soldier with face black and distended sprawled in death behind a straw stack; farther on still, was a horribly mangled soldier on the road with our vehicles passing over him. there was some artillery fire, and shells landed not far away, but i was not much frightened. slowly i am becoming insensitive to everything. wea of rea fer ene fo st 140 tying in a ther on, a din deatn !y mangk� . there i(j� t 1 wasnol everytnin!, netbele� � by pmon� crete onlr � rty, or �oij�1 \11 deea, rm ncrete natr� " familr an� mbers ofilit th ven�ean� f h� personru r ilie uniform d to km 001 e anla�o� enemy,ilill e deligntm d by su�1 are usu' are com' �adoxic� images of the enemy as it may seem, personal hatred even of this sort carries with it more possibility of humaneness than does abstract hatred where no personal injury has been suffered and where the hater is without responsibility and not in danger. the combat soldier knows that the figures opposite him are in some sense responsible for his plight, even if they have done him no personal wrong. they would kill him if they could, as they have killed friends of his. of that he is sure. that they may justly cherish the same sentiments toward him is a possi­ bility that may occur to the combat man at any moment. and this possibility-namely, the justice of the enemy soldier's position vis-it-vis you as an individual-can effect a radical change in the relationship. the recognition of a common hu­ manity, sinful and pathetic, is not at all remote in this situa­ tion. soldiers of opposite sides, dying together in the same shell hole, have frequently transcended their hatred and ended their war in reconciliation. anything is possible through the recognition of your enemy's common humanity, even if it leads to fierce rejection of him. close friendships have arisen from bitter enmities more than once, and these friendships have been fruitful and especially dear. but from abstract hatred, which remains remote from action and danger, only blank forgetfulness can result and an unrelenting heart which weakens the sympathies of its possessor. to designate as abstract the usual images of the enemy is, of course, only a beginning toward understanding why men so readily kill and get killed in wartime. abstractions are of dif­ ferent orders. there were four common attitudes toward the enemy held by soldiers of recent wars. three of them will be found to be abstract in the extreme, the fourth of a different order altogether. though separated for purposes of under­ standing, no one would assert that these attitudes are distinct 141 the warriors in individual soldiers. actually, most of us probably held in the course of our combat service two or more of them, possibly also others that i did not myself experience or observe. those i want to reflect upon are exceedingly common, and have an important effect not only upon the character of the soldiers cherishing them, but upon the historical situation of our age as well. cult olo� like tl an il and thes!not ilie1 non] rega mu1 terrapp speo aubloe i lim rule cipl � one of the most time-honored and persistent images of the enemy, today very suspect in democratic lands, is the one held by the professional soldier, who regards all military men as comrades in arms. what are the essential features of this attitude? it is governed in the first instance by the profession.. ai's concept of his task in war. war is his vocation, however hard he may have hoped in long years of peacetime service that it would not come. he is entrusted with a task, or a mis­ sion, in military vocabulary, and it is all-important to him that the mission be successfully accomplished. as a technolo­ gist of war, the professional asks himself: "how am i to ful­ fill my mission?" the enemy has to be outwitted, outmaneu­ vered, and outkilled. he is a human obstacle to be overcome on the way to a clearly defined objective. if the professional is a regular officer of some rank, he has spent the years of peace overcoming an imaginary enemy in simulated cam­ paigns, and this experience dominates his mind on the field of battle. he feels not unlike the captain of a football team pitted against the opponent. the enemy is for him at first only a concentration of capabilities, probable plans, and troop dispo­ sitions. to learn as much about him as you can while keeping him ignorant of yourself and your intentions is a fundamental task. for the professional military man, battles are still huge games, man's greatest sport, an ancient feeling he finds diffi.. sim an� hal ar oe! sa sc tn 142 �y held � m,possililr erve. th� and have � the solru�n n of our �!i ima�esol� �,�h mili�rym� eaturesol� llie prolesli�� tion, bowff� elime �m� a lecnn�)� 'am 110m q, oulmanf� ihe overcornl prof�ion� ilie years �i ulateac8rn' ilie nela �i images 0/ the enemy cult to resist, even if it does conflict with the dominant ide­ ology of our day and even if wars do become less and less like sports in their consequences. the professional as a technologist likes to regard himself as an instrument of the state. though he has natural sympathies and antipathies for this or that foreign people, he can suppress these feelings and adopt a hostile attitude toward any state not his own-on orders. as an "arm" and not the "head" of the state, the professional soldier often prides himself on being nonpolitical. this frees him, he feels, to act in war without regard for consequences other than the military. responsibility must be clearly defined and portioned out; it is always a mat­ ter for angry puzzlement on his part that such definition and apportionment are rarely possible in actual combat. as a specialist in warfare, he wants none of the half-light and dubiety of morals and politics in his profession. he desires to be under orders and to know what is expected of him all the time. since war is so much simpler if played according to rules, he yearns for the security and stability of formal prin­ ciples in fighting. his attitude toward his opponent is likely to be at once simple and complex. in one sense, the enemy is necessary, and, like voltaire's god, if he did not exist it would be essen­ tial to create him. the true military man is pleased if he has a resourceful and courageous enemy opposing him. "the next best thing to a good friend is a good enemy" is no doubt a saying of military origin. on the other hand, the professional's scorn for an easily beaten or unskillful foe passes all bounds. though he will show a courageous enemy no mercy in combat so long as that foe possesses destructive power, the military man is likely to cherish for him respect and even admiration. consequently, when he is captured and disarmed, the impulse 143 the warriors of the victor is to be magnanimous and friendly. sensible rules require, according to this code, humane treatment of a sur­ rendering enemy, who a few minutes before was intent on destroying your life and who probably succeeded in blasting life and limbs from numerous soldiers under your command. such reasoning appears to be crystal clear to a professional mind. the enemy was simply doing his duty, as you are ex­ pected to do yours. the more damage he has wreaked, the greater your pride in finally subduing him. such a conception antedates, of course, the sentiments of modern nationalism and democracy. it harks back to the days when professional soldiers were mercenaries, serving for the love of fighting as well as for money. because military organi­ zation and thinking appear to be inherently conservative, not to say atavistic, it lingers on to play an important role in our century. in worid war ii literature we find this image in its pure state in the person of field marshal erwin rommel. rom­ mel belonged heart and soul to the professional tradition of the german army, where this medieval ideal of knighthood (ritterlichkeit) persisted in little-impaired form until the ad­ vent of hitler. noted for his correct treatment of prisoners, rommel was frequently outraged by the failure of the allies to respond in kind. in his professional opponents, he inspired admiration and awe. this is most evident in the well-known book rommel, the desert fox, where british author desmond young makes an explicit plea for the retention of the tradi­ tion that all soldiers of whatever nation are comrades in arms. the complexity of this image lies in the reversal of atti... tude toward the enemy as an opponent and as a prisoner. as an armed adversary, he is to be destroyed without mercy. morally, he has no human status whatever, and no one can hate this enemy so cordially and execrate him so roundly as the tio all eve] mg hls im as m in ev he 144 you are ei' ,"1eaked,lli� f prisone�, f ine mll� r desmod� fine iram, images oj the enemy the professional in pursuit of his aim. the degree of abstrac­ tion in his hatred is immense. he is capable of disregarding all other considerations except the single one of destroying everything that stands in the way of successfully accomplish­ ing his mission. he would be the last to grant to himself or his men that the enemy is a human being on the same level as themselves. yet he is ready to grant it when the enemy is subdued and at his mercy. generosity and humanity are only possible where there is no equality, where the relation is one of conqueror and conquered. in this the predemocratic nature of the military ideal is apparent. often as i have been tempted in reflection to consider this attitude irrational, even absurd, something holds me back. to the professional, it appears self-evident and any other suspect. and since war is actual and real, not merely a concept, this image of the enemy may be preservative of human integrity, as some other images are not. if it regards only one aspect of man, his technical proficiency as a destroyer, it is rational in part and not built of fantasy. the professional does surmise in secret the latent humanity of the opponent as opponent, even if recognition can come only when he is disarmed and helpless or after the war is past. actually, many a professional soldier cherishes human sym­ pathy for his opponent even before the decisive battle, but he dare not give it rein lest it incapacitate him for his destructive mission. the understanding of his opponent's motives, a pre­ condition of sympathy, is usually easier for a trained military man than is the comprehension of the motives of his own political superiors or the civilian mentality of his people. though loyalty is ingrained in him by his professional code, and cannot be easily dislodged, he may discover in himself, if he is reflective, more genuine respect for the enemy he is 145 the warriors annihilating than for a great number of those he is risking his life to protect. this commonly recognized fact should surprise nohody, for the military profession, like few others, is a way of life that forms its subjects in relative isolation from modern sentiments and political metamorphoses. when we ask why this image of the enemy grows increas­ ingly unpopular in our day, honest answers are hardly flatter­ ing to the antimilitarists. to he sure, the professional's predi­ lection for regarding war as a game is out of contact with present realities. it violates our moral sense to consider the slaughter and misery of modern wars as anything less than the catastrophe they are. since they are no longer fought with the weapons of chivalry, and since drafted soldiers are not warriors in the medieval sense, chivalric hehavior to the foe appears grotesquely inappropriate. even if democratic coun­ tries find it necessary to use men as means in the wars they fight, it seems degrading to regard them as such, and we there­ fore resent the military propensity for looking at men as so much material potentiality. in short, the lack of regard for the individual as individual, which is part and parcel of pragmatic military calculation, irritates our modern mentality deeply. but there is clearly another and more important source for our dislike of this professional image of the enemy. because our wars are hecoming ever more totalitarian in character, this professional attitude is suspect. increasingly, we cannot fight without an image of the enemy as totally evil, for whom any mercy or sympathy is incongruous, if not traitorous. our wars are tending to become religious crusades once more, and the crusader's image of the enemy is in sharp opposition to the militarist's. curiously enough, general eisenhower, a professional mili­ tary man who is very untypical, provides a good example of this relat staff to c tradi "for thin �ew betw and ievil beea worll aitio with cone ber eng quit wa i of of 146 risking hi! d surpri� ana we ili�r� 01 source 1m my. becall!l aracler,lm cannol n��1 r whom an) taro us. o� f more, an� position i� ronal mlli· fampleo/ l,,",&u o/im enemy this attitude toward the enemy. in hi! crusade in europe he relates how he refused to follow the urging of some of his staff to allow the captured german general jiirgen von arnim to call on him, and in this connection explicitly rejects the tradition that all professional soldiers are comrades in arms. "for me," he writes, "world war ii was far too personal a thing to entertain such feelings. daily as it progressed there grew within me the conviction that as never before in a war between many nations the forces that stood for human good and men's rights were this time confronted by a completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated. because only by the utter destruction of the axis was a decent world possible, the war became for me a crusade in the tra­ ditional sense of that often misused word." it is easy to agree with this evaluation of the axis powers without drawing the conclusions for personal behavior toward an individual mem­ ber of those nations that general eisenhower does. ironically enough, a few years later he found it necessary to adopt a quite different attitude toward the german soldier of worid war ii and many german general officers as well. if the professional soldier reduces the enemy to the status of an object until he is subdued, the crusader denies his hu­ manity by making him into a devil before and for a time after his subjugation. the one might well be regarded as a pre­ democratic image, the other as a postdemocratic one. it is hard to say which image is more abstract, though certainly the crusader's is destined to be more unrelenting in battle. the military man finds it almost a condition of his vocation that he regard men in terms of force, that is, as objects, and dis­ regard all those subjective factors that distinguish every man from every other. the personality of each man becomes of interest to him, not for itself alone, but for its military 147 the warriors effectiveness. hence, the professional is caught in a world of means and instruments, himself one among others. he makes war a means for furthering political ends, and his pre­ occupation, like his occupation, is seldom with things for their own sake. this is the abiding curse of the military pro­ fession. the total human being has no chance to break through to consciousness because there is no official interest in the whole human being. so the professional image of the enemy is a consequence of the pattern of life imposed on those who serve as instruments and not ends. the abstraction of the image is more or less inevitable. itfj stren magi come foe h n state war waf] offic� ing! nava naequally ancient, and apparently as persistent, is the image of the enemy as a creature who is not human at all. especially common to simple, uneducated soldiery when fighting a foe of another color or race, it is by no means unknown to educated, unimaginative men. they regard the opponent as subhuman, a peculiar species of animal with indeterminable qualities and habits, all evil. war against him does not, however, become simply a hunt or chase, even though he is hunted down and exterminated wherever possible. the enemy is considered to be a peculiarly noxious kind of animal toward whom one feels instinctive abhorrence. he is often compared to a snake, since most western peoples feel a superstitious fear and aver­ sion for snakes and attempt to destroy them on sight. this image of the enemy is fear-filled as no other is, since no one attributes calculable ways of behavior to the foe, but, on the contrary, expects any manner of enormity from him. though he be animalic in being without human emotions and reason, he is thought to be capable of treachery, recklessness, and blood lust to superhuman extent. based as it is on ignor­ ance and primitive dread, this image prevents those who hold saci wi so fa t 148 a worla others. h� nd his pre. things for ilitary pr� reak throu� terest in ili1 of the eneml on those w�; action 01 ilil ,� !ne�a� a�, �[jeci� cll!ing a loem 1i!0 eaucal�, suhnumad,i quall!ies� {earanaav1r· images of the enemy it from any reasonable calculation of the enemy's actual strength or weakness. if modern soldiers no longer believe in magical powers after the manner of uncivilized peoples, they come perilously close to attributing mysterious potencies to a foe like this. the obvious, though already painful, example for the united states of this attitude toward the enemy was in our recent war with japan. anyone acquainted with the literature of this war realizes how prevalent such an image was in the minds of officers and enlisted men alike. herman wouk, in a surpris­ ingly detached comment in the caine mutiny, tells of the naval battle of kwajalein and describes the indifference of the navy men to the suffering of the enemy as follows: this cold-bloodedness, worthy of a horseman of genghis khan, was quite strange in a pleasant little fellow like ensign keith. mili­ tarily, of course, it was an asset beyond price. like most of the naval executioners at kwajalein, he seemed to regard the enemy as a species of animal pest. from the grim and desperate taciturnity with which the japanese died, they seemed on their side to believe they were contending with an invasion of large armed ants. this obliviousness on both sides to the fact that the opponents were human beings may perhaps be cited as the key to the many mas­ sacres of the pacific war. when soldiers are driven to battle by this image, they are freed from the possibility of remorse for their deeds. their hunting impulses are released to seek the most dangerous of all beasts and the one most deserving of death. in this sense, war does become a desperate kind of game. the enemy is sought out to be exterminated, not subdued. there is no satis­ faction in capturing him and exacting obedience and respect. there is also, of course, no safety in it, since he is held to be incapable of grasping civilized rules of warfare. therefore the 149 the warriors enemy when disarmed and helpless tends to become the object of target practice for the opposing soldiers. an intelligent veteran of the war in the pacific told a class of mine a few years ago how his unit had unexpectedly "flushed" a japanese soldier from his hiding place well behind the com­ bat area. the unit, made up of relatively green troops, was resting and joking, expecting to be sent forward to combat areas. the appearance of this single enemy soldier did not frighten them, because they knew that this particular island had been effectively cleared of japanese troops. but they seized their rifles and began using him as a live target while he dashed frantically around the clearing in search of safety. the soldiers found his movements uproariously funny and were prevented by their laughter from making an early end of the unfortunate man. finally , however, they succeeded in killing him, and the incident cheered the whole platoon, giving them something to talk and joke about for days afterward. in relat­ ing this story to the class, the veteran emphasized the similar­ ity of tile enemy soldier to an animal. none of the american soldiers apparently even considered that he may have had human feelings of fear and the wish to be spared. what puzzled the veteran in retrospect was why his comrades and he found the incident so humorous. now, a few years later, it appeared to him grisly and cruel enough; at the time, he had had no conscience about it whatever. this and similar stories by soldiers of world war ii in the pacific make clearer than analysis can the effect of this image on the person holding it. on first reflection, the enemy con­ ceived as beasts might be thought to be morally the most satisfactory of any image, since it avoids feelings of guilt. granted the fact of war, the pursuit of killing without com­ punction could be considered the most healthy and rational 150 pos! com wod effeo post ever. the d co ness meat brut his f of un parti a�o ii wlni al�a lorei thej �kin ana twe� othj ro ima i tol tro( eit' tirr exl the object d a classo! y"fiushenli nd the com, troops, w� to comnm dier din �� lcular ijl� \it\be1se� rget w�� � of .afetr, thl ! and w�re l�' end ol� ed lnk� �\'in� in�m md, in r�lll, the �im��, pared, i!1 omrades an� mrslaler,il time, he nl� f this iml�� enemr �od' ilie moil of guilt, out com· � rationsl images oj the enemy possible. war will be a dirty job, but with this attitude the compulsion exercised on soldiers to carry out the unpleasant work of extermination will be minimal and bad psychological effects will be reduced both during the operation and in the postwar world. this standpoint has an illusory character, how­ ever. the lack of compunction in such taking of life deprives the destroyer of any emotional purgation. nothing offsets the corrupting influences of fear and hatred with which the busi­ ness of slaughter is carried out. consequently, soldiers per­ meated with this image of their opponent are subject to rapid brutalization. the veteran referred to above was dismayed by his former attitude because he could not now grasp the degree of unrecognized cruelty that had enabled him then not only to participate in the torture of a defenseless human being but also to find the spectacle amusing. i suspect that at some level of consciousness many of these soldiers recognize their image to be false and that their ration­ alization is a way of making things easier for themselves. the foreign, strange, and uncanny only partially victimize them. they allow differences in language and customs and perhaps skin color to persuade them that internally the mind, emotions, and soul are also utterly unlike theirs. but nations in the twentieth century are not so isolated and ignorant of each other as previously, and, in addition, there is always a "tokyo rose" or similar phenomenon in our wars to contradict the image of the beast. if soldiers are completely taken in by this image, it is hard to grasp what their reactions must be when as occupation troops they mingle with the pacified and friendly "enemy." either they keep detached the wartime image and the peace­ time reality, which is what often happens apparently, or they experience in moments when memories intrude hidden doubts 151 the warriors and regrets at previous cruelty. the enemy could not have changed, they must reason, so quickly from a beast to a likable human being. thus, the conclusion is nearly forced upon them that they have been previously blinded by fear and hatred and the propaganda of their own government. rarely does the veteran need to take the blame on himself to any great extent, since the psychical cost is too great. but his bewilderment at the experience of warfare is surely all the greater. as important as these moral effects and closely related to them are what might be called the anesthetic effects of this image of the enemy. the ugliness of war against an enemy conceived to be subhuman can hardly be exaggerated. there is an unredeemed quality to battle experience under these conditions which blunts all senses and perceptions. traditional appeals of war are corroded by the demands of a war of extermination, where conventional rules no longer apply. for all its inhumanity, war is a profoundly human institution, and to be satisfying in any sense, it must retain peculiarly human aspects. yet this image of the enemy as beast lessens even the satisfaction in destruction, for there is not proper regard for the worth of the objects destroyed. in the recent war against japan, not only was the fear of death increased because few prisoners were taken and torture of the helpless was common, hut also the compensations, the joys of comradeship, keenness of perception, and sensual delights were lessened. though pacific veterans can speak with greater authority than i, it is probable that the war against japan was particu­ larly revolting not because the terrain on which it was fought was treacherous and unsuited for conventional warfare. it was ugly because the image of the enemy, apparently on both sides, was so far removed from reality. no aesthetic reconciliation with one's fate as a warrior was likely because no moral 152 purl day! beal moil hidel fashi enen devi ine num sess ad mor is 01 ilios ene mo� evil de� wn rev uno of co inl not have o a likable upon them hatred an� y does ilie ;! an enelll era!ea, there unaer ilie& " traai!ionru of a war �! r applr, fm !i!u!ion, an� iarlr bumaj lessens eve� roper re�81� twara�aiml oecause few as common, ip, keennesl r au!nori� 'as particll' was fou�n! are, ii wa! oth sloes, ncilia!lon ro morru images 0/ the enemy purgation was possible. thousands of veterans can testify to days that were grim and relentless and terrible, utterly without beauty and almost without human quality of any sort. at moments the novel the naked and the dead catches this hideous ugliness of world war ii in the east in unforgettable fashion. there is another image of the enemy closely related to this one, yet even more abstract and deadly in its psychological effects. in this the enemy is conceived to be not merely a loathsome animal, below the human level, but also above it in being a devil or at least demon-possessed and, as such, an enemy of god. here his humanity is not questioned, for a devil ranges the scale of possibilities from the subhuman to the superhuman. yet the enemy as devil never achieves the human level because of his will to evil or because he is pos­ sessed. the modern soldier who is totalitarian in his thinking, a devoted follower of communism or fascism, feels perhaps more intensely than did the moslem of medieval times that he is on the side of the divine. his mission is extermination of those who oppose the truth, and it is a holy mission. the enemy in trying to destroy the only revealed truth, the only moral order, the chosen nation, embodies the very essence of evil, which is the devil, or at best he is possessed of some demonic power which renders him incapable of perceiving what is plain as day to the faithful. the enemy, in short, is in revolt against god, interpreted as modern political religions understand god, namely, their highest value. to be sure, there is considerable difference in the effect of this image upon the soldier if "the fascist beasts" or "the communist dogs" or "the capitalist hyenas" are regarded as inherently incapable of conversion because their nature is to 153 the warriors be devilish or if they are regarded as merely possessed. in the former case, there is nothing to do but annihilate them. killing them becomes a kind of sacrament; after enough of it, the killers come to feel like high priests. where the enemy is thought to be possessed only, it is permitted to make him prisoner, so that he can be confronted with the truth, before which even devils sometimes yield. though this latter inter­ pretation moderates one's hatred of the enemy to some extent, it does not change greatly its fanatical, abstract character. in combat the foe possessed of the devil is as wholly treacherous as the foe who is a devil. both are unworthy to continue in existence when they make war against soldiers who are fight­ ing for truth and right. let us look at this totalitarian image of the antagonist in war more closely, for it is fateful in the wars of our day and, alas, does not belong only to states and governments that are dictatorships. the image is abstract to a degree hardly equaled in other images because it refuses to see any quality of the foe except his ideology. it has no interest whatsoever in the con­ crete differences that may be found in his ranks, nor does it care to seek out causes for demon possession or to understand why creatures who are capable of being men have chosen to be devils. indeed, the most characteristic aspect of this image is its utter disregard for the individuality of the foe. if this refusal to individualize the enemy is characteristic of all hostile attitudes, only in this totalitarian one is it made into a prin­ ciple. the fanaticism of the totalitarian soldier lies in his ter­ rible pure ..mindedness, in which none of the complicated mixtures of motives that characterize ordinary human life and action are allowed to intrude. his image of the ene :"ly is a logical consequence of his own dogmatic certainty about being in the right. he is insulated against other truth in a way that stup bas 1 to th life, only �asl vl ceiv tern driv app' aec� the to h ete co sinl of mil ili sol wi 154 of a� no�lu� inlo a �rin· in nis if!' omplica!f� n life an� fe ;jy is! fut bein� way that images 0/ the enemy stupidity or ignorance could never insulate because his reason has been made captive and all experience is made to conform to the revelation that pervades his emotional and intellectual life. experience is confirmatory and no longer exploratory. only that part of it is digested which accords with the soldier's grasp of reality. when the enemy devils do not behave in the fashion con­ ceived to be their true nature, the totalitarian soldier is not tempted to revise his dogmas. on the contrary, he is simply driven to discover motives for their behavior other than the apparent ones. like all devils, the enemy is deceiving and deceitful. he can feign mercy or fairness in order to catch the foolish and innocent off guard. since his actions are never to be taken at face value, trust cannot be accorded him. only eternal suspicion and vigilance are pathways to safety. all this is heightened when the totalitarian fighter, as commonly happens, conceives that the enemy is not respon­ sible for his devilish nature. for the rational mind, the absence of freedom in the forming of the individual predisposes to mildness and tolerance in his punishment. but something like the reverse is true for the totalitarian fanatic. if the enemy soldiers are driven forward by a power outside themselves to war against god's truth, there is no need to feel sorry for them or to spare them. since they are determined by this evil principle and are not free agents, they cannot be happy or content in their present state. in theological terms, devils are all creatures of god and cannot complain when he sends his angels to eradicate them in his own good time. is he not permitted to do what he likes with his own? the abstractness involved in this image is a double one, as i have tried to point out. the enemy is not regarded as an individual, but a representative of a principle of evil, and he 155 the warriors is only an embodiment of this principle. his image is general­ ized and terribly simplified, resulting in enmity in battle that is probably unsurpassed. one cannot hate subhuman creatures, however vile, so cordially as one hates the violator of a re­ ligious image. an extreme in human separation is here reached which shakes the foundation of the personality. when two totalitarian powers make war on each other, the anger and hatred that arise can be appeased only by the death of one or the other. more than this, such killing is profoundly satisfying. anger and hatred are "fulfilled" in destruction insofar as such emotions know satiety. the more lives the soldier succeeds in accounting for, the prouder he is likely to feel. to his people he is a genuine hero and to himself as well. for him, war is in no sense a game or a dirty mess. it is a mission, a holy cause, his chance to prove himself and gain a supreme purpose in living. his hatred of the enemy makes this soldier feel su­ premely real, and in combat his hatred finds its only ap­ propriate appeasement. a skeptic may doubt whether many men are really capable of clinging to such an image of the enemy. are we not here dealing with an insignificant number of soldiers in any war? i do not think so. western history has seen many armies in which this image of the foe was widespread, from the days of the old testament, where, indeed, the opponent was nearly always regarded as an enemy of jehovah, to the contemporary communists. many believe that the age of enlightenment put an end to religious wars in the west, but they have reappeared in political form with a vengeance in the twentieth century. when voluntary german ss troopers engaged fanatic com­ munists in russia in worid war ii, a climax in enmity and hatred was reached in which all traces of chivalry vanished and all moderation was utterly abandoned. even to read about 156 so� stan tim ing, past ultin both ally, it ing req visi for wlt� �sl war pia! 1 ina ine �ta to as general. attle thai creature�, r of a r� re reachea when tw� anger an� h of one �r y satisfvinaj 0' ofar as su�� ucceeasm o h� peo�l� a�r cap�l� we not nere in anr war1 r armies ill ine qar� �j was nearlr ntemporary enmentput eappearea images of the enemy some of those battles with an attempt at imaginative under­ standing is sufficient to shake anyone to the depths. in peace­ time surroundings, such murderous hatred is hardly convinc­ ing, and fact melts into fable in our endeavor to make the past believable in the present. yet even in these battles, the ultimate was not reached because the majority of soldiers on both sides were unconvinced of their official faiths; emotion­ ally, they were far from fanatic nazis and communists. it is probably true that most men are incapable of support­ ing over a long period the devil image of the enemy. it requires an imperviousness to common sense and daily experi­ ence, which many are fortunately unable to gain. the dark vision of armageddon, which has been an ultimate possibility for many centuries and which is essentially a religious war with the devil image of the foe, may hopefully remain a vision merely. with present technological advances, such a war could only result in the virtual extinction of life on our planet and possibly the destruction of the planet itself. there is, however, no cause for satisfaction in the fact, if, indeed, it is a fact, that most men are incapable of holding the devil theory of the enemy for an extended time. the united states and russia have come dangerously close in recent years to that extreme of estrangement where each regards the other as the enemy of the divine. in the united states, a generation is growing up without personal contact with anyone of com­ munist faith. how abstract their image of the communist is, only those of us can guess who broach the subject in our classrooms. it would come as a profound surprise to these young americans if they could see an educated communist discussing his faith in a conventional classroom or lecture hall. what he said would be less important than a view of him. in russia, the image of the american capitalist exploiter is even 157 the warriors more distorted and unreal. if a world war were really to come at this stage, it would be fatally easy to propagate religious fury among masses of men who are already half persuaded. at the moment this is written there is hope that the two systems will come to tolerate more concrete knowledge of each other and thus abate the intolerable danger of a religious war. the worst effect of absorbing this image is probably not the contraction of personality and outlook which its unreality entails, bad as that is. those who hold this image of the enemy attest the fact that it is not wholly abstract and unreal. men are capable of being possessed by an evil spirit, or a devil, if one likes to use a metaphor, and, though it is not their whole nature, an impartial judgment must concede that this posses­ sion requires fierce resistance if it is to be overcome. the worst effect is that it usually instills in the soldier a conception of himself as avenging angel. the self-satisfaction of such a soldier, his impenetrable conceit, makes him essentially in­ capable of growth. he is caught in a vise of sterile self-admira­ tion. his ego expands in direct proportion as his bigotry in­ creases. insulated against experience and free reflection, he is more or less an automaton without ever suspecting it. neither his hatred of the enemy nor his satisfaction with him­ self is organic and natural; on the contrary, both are mechan­ ical and pathological. only a profound shock can convert him from the idea of himself that his image of the enemy has done so much to implant. the image of the enemy which appeals most to reasonable men after a war is past can be cultivated while war is in progress only by the minority of combat soldiers who are at the same time reflective and relatively independent in their judgment. i refer to the image of the opposing enemy as an 158 es fal adi of im: en jar tn or th a� c! ei to come religious aded, at unrealitr theenemr eal. men a nevil, il heir wnol� his possel' orne, tn� conception of suen � ntia�r in· li·aaldir�· 'ar is in o are at 'n their r as an images of the enemy essentially decent man who is either temporarily misguided by false doctrines or forced to make war against his better will and desire. the foe is a human being like yourself, the victim of forces above him over which he has no control. since this image is a concrete one, the soldier who possesses this image does not think in terms of the enemy, but recognizes similar differences of opinion and temperament in the opposing forces as in his own. in fact, he is most likely to have gained it through observation of his own comrades. he reasons that people are much alike all over the world, and only an accident of history has made the soldier across the front into a foe rather than an ally. more important than this is his intuitive certainty that closer acquaintance with enemy soldiers would reveal that they have reasons of their own for fighting which must seem to them compelling. the more he is aware of his­ torical causes and the guilt of both sides for hostilities, the greater is his capacity to feel justification for his foe. even when such a soldier is deeply convinced that his enemies are motivated by false notions of the mission of their land or ideology and must he defeated at all costs, he feels that these notions are explainable in terms of their history or by the duplicity and evil genius of their leadership. after the shock of defeat, they will require re-education to come once more into peaceful ways. he reasons that many of those across the front are quite clear about the injustice of their cause. but they are caught in a painful dilemma, and must either fight or be disgraced and possibly executed. or they fight for love of their fatherland, from ignorance of the true causes of the war, or simply because they do not know what else to do, like so many in the soldier's own army. the vast majority of them are thought to be victims of evil leadership. this is the image of the enemy that many governments en159 the warriors courage at the beginning of wars in our day. government agencies proclaim that they have no quarrel with the populace as such, only with their political leaders. to be sure, this is some­ times a propaganda device to bring disunion to enemy coun­ tries, but it has also been an image held in good faith by large numbers of people. after all, it is easier for a people who have had a reasonably happy history to believe that they are not hated by the rank and file of another nation than it is to be­ lieve the opposite. many soldiers enter the battle zone with the secret belief that their opponent does not really desire to end their lives. perhaps these soldiers have been in the enemy coun­ try under happy auspices and know for themselves that the foe is human and likable. possibly they have learned to cher­ ish some of his customs, music, and literature. a german making war upon a frenchman or an american upon an italian, to cite only two examples, finds it difficult at first to hold any other image than this, for he is likely to have rela­ tives or at least acquaintances in the camp of the enemy. however, there is a deep contradiction in this attitude which makes its retention for the combat soldier extremely difficult. how is the misguided enemy to be reformed by the use of bullets? if he is a victim of force majeure, how can he be liberated from his leaders without destroying him? it is nearly impossible for a combat soldier to prepare himself psycho­ logically for bloody combat with a will to victory while holding such an image of his foe. how can he become enthusiastic about operation killer or look forward with eagerness to carrying out a superior's command to close with the enemy? the war itself is more likely to seem the greatest folly and criminality ever perpetrated. if he kills, he is troubled by conscience, and if he does not do his share in the communal life imposed by combat, he is also tormented. the soldier who 160 is! iny int is a lane p vanl pas! by pail agg1 psyi ana �oe ilie �an mal ge for je an� a' col cr� se� enl otl orl ou ernrnent ulacea� is some. y coun· by lar�e ho have are not istooe. �lth tne retoena tocner· german upon an tfirs!!o ave rela· y. ae whicn aifficult e use 01 n he de is nearlr psycno. holqin� usiaslic �ess 10 enemy� illy ana rlea br rmunal ft who images of the enemy is on the borders of his own country, fighting against an invading enemy, can more easily find the will to oppose the intruders, but in modern wars it more often happens that he is asked to enter combat on faraway shores and in unfamiliar lands. professional officers readily perceive the military disad­ vantages of this view of the foe and oppose it, as a rule, with passion. if victory is to be achieved, the enemy must be hated by the soldiery to the utmost limit. hence his character is painted as black as possible and his reputed mercilessness ex­ aggerated on all sides. professional officers consider part of the psychological training of their troops to be training in hatred, and this becomes more systematized and subtler as the war goes on. the identification between leaders and followers in the enemy ranks soon becomes a dominant theme of the propa­ ganda on both sides. in world war ii, for example, all ger­ mans became nazis, all japanese fanatic shintoists, for the germans all russians became communists and all americans, for their enemies, were bloated imperialists or dupes of satanic j ews. war has its own logic, as i have already emphasized, and such a transformation doubtless requires little conscious directing. the humane image of the enemy is increasingly combated in our century by field commanders of both demo­ cratic and totalitarian lands. perhaps the professionals them­ selves are more torn than we know by the double image of the enemy as devil on the one hand and a comrade in arms on the other. but their long training enables them to suppress on order all sympathy for their opponents and destroy them with­ out mercy at the proper time. there is an instructive passage in tolstoi's war and peace where kutusov, the russian general who defeated napoleon, speaks to a segment of his troops who are relentlessly pursuing 161 the warriors and destroying the broken grande armee. mounted on his horse, the old general, whom tolstoi depicts as a combination of professional soldier and kindly grandfather, is made to speak as follows: "you see, brothers, i know it's hard for you, but it can't be helped. bear up; it won't be for long now! we'll see our visitors off and then we'll rest. the tsar won't forget your services. it is hard for you but still you are at home while they-you see what they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "worse off than our poorest beggars. while they were strong, we did not spare ourselves, but now we may even pity them. they are human beings, too. isn't it so, lads?" then he looks perplexed for a few moments, in tolstoi's account, suddenly changes his whole demeanor, and finishes his speech: "but after all who asked them here? serves them right, the bloody bastards!" he cried suddenly, lifting his head. and flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time during the whole campaign. the rational soldier will perceive the illogic of this attitude and reject it for himself. the enemy cannot be at the same time human beings in need of sympathy and "bloody bas­ tards." to the man who sees the enemy as misguided indi­ viduals, the kutusovs are the victims of a military code that is deeply inimical to him. yet he is certain to be even more alienated from the other views of the enemy, as animals and as devils. he can understand the soldier who possesses a deep personal hatred and a longing for revenge because of wrongs suffered, even if he shudders sometimes at the inhumanity of his rages. but the other views are incomprehensible to him, based as they are on magic and primitive superstition. he would like to believe that these images could be expelled 162 thr uns stra 1 in fl 10n€ did and �in tim del� tota trenr cow �iv� viet for wit! an of ion ca t can't � ur vislto� lces,ltu usee wnal "worseo� we 010 nol are numan in to�lol'! a bnisn� inenlooal �ouri!nin! gtne wnoll '5 attitu�� f wron�! anitr 01 [to lint ron, he rxpellea images of the enemy through more knowledge and genuine education, but he is unsure because the power of blind passion has been demon­ strated daily in his war experiences. the combat soldier who refuses to yield to abstract hatred in forming an image of the enemy is accordingly isolated and lonely on a modern battlefield. often he will wonder why he did not yield to earlier impulses and declare himself a pacifist and conscientious objector to the senseless cruelties of warfare. since an absolutist position is overwhelmingly popular in war­ time, he is quite certain that, if a choice must be made, he belongs to the absolute pacifists as opposed to the apostles of total destruction. yet he feels himself opposed to both ex­ tremes. normally, he believes enough in the rightness of his country's cause and the wrongness of the opponent to fight and give his life if need be for that conviction. that many innocent victims must suffer and die as a consequence of the struggle for a limited justice is for him an ancient lesson of history with which he can cope in some fashion. it is not the suffering and dying that sickens him so much as it is the brutalization of the emotions and the corruption of the heart which pro­ longed fighting brings. i could not escape it: i know that i hate my work in this war, that the war itself is slowly attempting to destroy all that i hold jealously as my own. when i read tonight in the voelkischer beobachter, which was captured on a prisoner, the words of a german soldier's diary, that he had lost his "ich," his personality in the long years of this war, i shuddered. he spoke for me.... formerly i tried to be mild and kind, now i interrogate the miserable civilians and take pride in sternness and indifjerency to their pleas. perhaps the worst that can be said is that i am becoming a soldier. we broke the glass on the door and unbolted the door from the inside. . . . [the nazi who had committed suicide was] 163 the warriors sprawled in a corner dead, a bullet through his temple. it was a pitiless spectacle, but not particularly moving lor me. i took his revolver and leit him.... i felt that his end was just and the solu­ tion 01 a problem. somehow i have grown quite hard in the past months.... god in heaven, help me to keep my humanity.... the pacifist who refuses to bear arms may not deny the moral superiority of one cause over the other, but he will not grant that violence can determine or establish that superiority. war as a means is to him worse than the evil it seeks to eliminate. if the rational soldier trusted his emotions more, he would concur wholeheartedly with this doctrine. surely, war is the worst possible way to resolve man's problems. better than any pacifist, he knows after a few months in combat the essential evils of war. but the voice of reason will contradict his sympathies, assuring him that the pacifist renunciation of the outer self and retreat to some stronghold of inner freedom and resistance is no answer to this world's woes. he can be assured, his reason whispers, that his place is in the midst of it all. if he is forced to do more evil than the pacifist could endure, he is also in a position to accomplish more good. his guilt is heavy, but there is a chance to atone for it here; at home or in some camp for conscientious objectors, there would be none. such a soldier knows no peace or security of mind in war. the middle ground that he has chosen is unstable, for the extremes threaten to overwhelm him. it is not only a conflict between reason and emotion, for reason has a powerful voice in some situations in war on the side of pacifism. increasingly as the war progresses, his choices seem choices among evils, and the greater and lesser evils harder and harder to discern. he longs for the end of the war, when reconciliation with the foe can begin and when he can help to reconstruct what he 1m has as tl spod of wi majo his i sililel wert oattl! how lee t� nake� ho whe� !tree� two 0 ine ci�a� limit nave war �ino ilie ove oft 10 fan 10 coe it was a took h� the so!u. 'n the pajl anity, '" deny tn� he wlllnot eonlraaitt ciationol erneeaom he eand! e mi&tol ellst eoill� gooo,lfu it nere; it tors, ilim dinwar, e,forilif aco�id dul voice reasin�lr ng e��, discern, ith tne �hat he images of the enemy has had a hand in destroying. sometimes he longs for death as the only way out of the inextricable web of events, the re­ sponsibility for which he partly shares. if the moral enormities of war preoccupy him too exclusively, it is partly because the majority of his fellows seem oblivious to moral considerations. his insistence upon a concrete image of the enemy is respon­ sible for the conflicts of conscience in which he is entangled. were he able to choose the easier way of his comrades, the battlefield would lose half its horror. as i wrote: how tired of this war i have got so quickly. it breaks my heart to see these italian homes broken up, miserable people, shivering and naked, torn from all they have in this world. where is the end? how i feel about allied occupation of italy is difficult to say. when i see, as yesterday, an american soldier walking down the street holding the hands of two italian children who in turn held two others by the hand, i feel that all will yet be well. but when i hear how 5th army cic in mondragone is dominated by a cigar-smoking agent who constantly yells: "hit the f-bum in the mouth," and "throw the guinea in the clink," and similar expressions, i grow doubtful. the concrete image of the enemy is compatible with the limited war of an earlier day. a soldier holding it then might have fought with relative cheerfulness and perhaps regarded war as a confused but not contradictory pattern of human life. since his view of human nature is realistic, he would possess the virtue of patience with the slow processes of history. what overwhelms his modem counterpart is the antihuman character of total war in our generation. the reasonable soldier is unable to grasp the total unreasonableness of abstract hatred and fanaticism. absolute virtue and absolute vice are as unreal to him as collective innocence or guilt. he has his limits, this conscientious soldier, both of sympathy and understanding, 165 the warriors how many soldiers hold these images of the enemy in a modern war? this question is unanswerable, of course. the image in many cases will be, or become, a composite one, with little of the sharp distinctness i have found necessary to make in analysis. yet this last image is compounded much more rarely with the other three than they are with each other. this image is a reflective one, and he who has learned to think concretely will not hate abstractly, at least not for long. this image alone holds large hope for the future. the question pregnant with possibility is: can we not expect under modem conditions of communication and transmission of knowledge that realistic attitudes toward potential enemy nations will increase and fewer individuals will be able to generate beast and devil images? this is inseparably connected with the future of war. i have heard it said in germany of late that another war between france and germany is unthinkable because the two peoples have come to know each other so intimately that hostility sufficient for war could no longer be propagated. the assertion is often broadened to include all the countries of western europe. by virtue of travel and manifold communi­ cations of every sort since the last war, they have come so close to each other that another conflict of european states could not happen. the reasoning behind these statements is iliat way adjac of nei argun that ti sense of eao increa image let ness � closenlliven t i�ora civil, �ove wno lessen extern thin�s �atrea la!1 who! u under maae wilh i evenl, haao and modern war exceeds these limits. consequently, he is a lost soul in total warfare and in global war. there is no place for him at home or in prison, in pacifist work camp or in the military machine. unless nations return to old-fashioned ways of war and peace, he will be able to breathe freely and move in his proper atmosphere only when modern nations renounce war altogether. :� franl 166 , be is a no place or in ili� ned waj! and lnov� renoun� nemj inl ourse, th! te one, m� ry to m�h muco more oilier, thu ed to toin! lon�, thu e questio� der moo!rn knowleo�! ations m! notner w!r se tne two atelrili!t ated, th! juntnes �! f°midum. come !o �n sta!� �entsis images of the enemy that former abstract images and hatreds have gradually given way to concrete knowledge and even friendship. nowadays adjacent peoples know each other better than did inhabitants of neighboring cities in the same nation a generation ago. the argument appears to be a reasonable one. noone would deny that the world's peoples are coming closer to each other in the sense of physical contacts and at least superficial knowledge of each others' customs, origins, and aspirations. will it not be increasingly difficult for governments to create a believable image of the beast or the devil in respect to other peoples? let us hope so. but i am not too confident. physical near­ ness provides us no assurance of understanding or genuine closeness of spirit. often enough, classes within a country have lived together for hundreds of years and remained exceedingly ignorant of each other. examples abound in the world today. if civil wars are not as numerous as formerly, is it not more because governments have learned to make better use of secret police, who detect trouble signs early, than because hostility has lessened? we are likely to judge relations among groups too externally and to put great confidence in the appearance of things. i met. many who hated their own people with a fierce hatred: last evening four of us went to the house of a french lady who spoke english. she and her mother live in a pleasant villa in st. raphael.... to hear her speak of the work of the french underground and how they were killing french collaborators made one's flesh creep. there is no question that the french hate with the greatest bitterness. she spoke with delight of a coming event, supposed to take place today, when forty french girls who had been too friendly with the germans were to have their heads shaved in public by the maquis and other resistance groups. she seemed, and was, a charming lady, but how brutally she spoke of france's enemies! 167 the warriors these people live on hatred. what they can do to their victims is almost unbelievable. they carry around with them horror pic­ tures of german atrocities committed on resistance groups. they feed themselves on hatred. it is all strange and horrible. death is in the very air here and things far worse than death.... i think, too, that there is no religion here, no piety. it is perhaps a great error to think, as we all have, that suffering brings humility and piety. the own aspe yet we know upon reflection that only the slow, unpredict­ able development of conscientiousness and concern for others brings us close to them, not mere acquaintance and surface intercourse, not mere knowledge. when we ask whether our generation knows more friendship and concern for other peoples than did our forefathers, our answers become hesitant. the pathway to a more peaceful world lies hidden in very complex motives of the human heart. the capacity for com­ passion and for tolerance of the immense differences among individuals and peoples is only one of the conditions that are important. another is the strength and insight to recognize our individual freedom and consequent responsibility for our deeds in war and peace. few things are more revealing about man as warrior than his tendency to slough off responsibility for the suffering and tragedy he inflicts. and if we could read aright the portent of this absence of guilt feelings in most modern soldiers, it would not be difficult to predict what is yet in store for us in the twentieth century. why can men do together without con­ science things that would torment them unendurably if done singly? seated in our living rooms, remote from action and passion, most of us like to believe that we shall never yield again to abstract hatreds. we take pride in feeling our independence of 168 eir victim! horror pk, oups, thej le, death � " , i think haps a gre�; humility am , unpreaid, rn for otnen ana surii� wnetner �m m for oili� omenesitanl, aaen in vi� city for c�m, ences am��! tions inat iu to reco�ul i1ilr for �m warrior in� ufferin� an� e portent �i ers, it li'ow� rusinilil ·jthou! c��, ly if aone id pa�ioo r again 10 rdenceoi images of the enemy the mass media, and easily persuade ourselves that we are our own men. many of us are, indeed, impervious to the worst aspects of mass hysteria; we cannot readily be won by the insistent voices of radio, newspaper, and television screen, though hitherto we have always been swept along with the others. historically, our record for stemming the tide has not been good, and to me, at least, this is a sobering thought. do we not have a penchant for overestimating our strength in times of crisis, we moderates? perhaps even worse, few of us ever know how far fear and violence can transform us into creatures at bay, ready with tooth and claw. if the war taught me anything at all, it convinced me that people are not what they seem or even think themselves to be. nothing is more tempting than to yield oneself, when fear comes, to the dominance of necessity and to act irresponsibly at the behest of another. freedom and re­ sponsibility we speak of easily, nearly always without recog­ nition of the iron courage required to make them effective in our lives. 169 sa six the ache of guilt the man i interrogated and took to army proved to be a spy.••• 1 went to army two days later, after he had been "broken" by endless interrogation and considerable beating.... it recalled the memory of scarpelini in italy, whom i also apprehended and turned over.... one thing contents me, that these were not in­ nocent soldiers. they knew what they were facing. the german had been an idealistic nazi for fifteen years.... am i responsible for their deaths? both might well have escaped had it not been for me.... certainly they had blood on their hands, and desired to have more. is their blood on mine? but i am more fortunate than many soldiers who must kill more innocent men. perhaps the hardest thing of all is that i feel no guilt. (war journal, november 4, 1944) nothing revolts the sensitive spirit so much as the bloody and unjust deeds of warfare that leave no trace of guilt in the 171 the warriors doers and are from every human perspective unavenged. if we were not accustomed to evasions of responsibility in our­ selves, such behavior would force us into cynicism of the most nihilistic sort or, at the best, to complete bewilderment about human nature. yet a voice within each of us echoes the senti­ ments of hamlet: "use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?" the fighting man is disinclined to repent his deeds of vio­ lence. men who in private life are scrupulous about conven­ tional justice and right are able to destroy the lives and happi­ ness of others in war without compunction. at least to other eyes they seem to have no regrets. it is understandable, of course, why soldiers in combat would not suffer pangs of con­ science when they battle for their lives against others who are trying to kill them. and if the enemy is regarded as a beast or a devil, guilt feelings are not likely to arise if he is slain by your hand. but modern wars are notorious for the destruction of nonparticipants and the razing of properties in lands that are accidentally in the path of combat armies and air forces. in world war ii the number of civilians who lost their lives exceeded the number of soldiers killed in combat. at all events, the possibilities of the individual involving himself in guilt are immeasurably wider than specific deeds that he might commit against the armed foe. in the thousand chances of warfare, nearly every combat soldier has failed to support his comrades at a critical moment; through sins of omission or commission, he has been responsible for the death of those he did not intend to kill. through folly or fear, nearly every officer has exposed his own men to needless destruction at one time or another. add to this the unnumbered acts of injustice so omnipresent in war, which may not result in death but in­ evitably bring pain and grief, and the impartial observer may 172 won agail tl veter, and a respo they inestr felt al won i amon �eat fre� eneml inge inat tl navln �art, dornn crusn �rmp adsel own n �olal lor toe iha litt lat la wa enged.lf y in our. the most ent about the senti. , and wno rfficer h� r ti,meor �stlce �o but in· er mar the ache of guilt wonder how the participants in such deeds could ever smile again and be free of care. the sober fact appears to be that the great majority of veterans, not to speak of those who helped to put the weapons and ammunitions in their hands, are able to free themselves of responsibility with ease after the event, and frequently while they are performing it. many a pilot or artilleryman who has destroyed untold numbers of terrified noncombatants has never felt any need for repentance or regret. many a general who has won his laurels at a terrible cost in human life and suffering among friend and foe can endure the review of his career with great inner satisfaction. so are we made, we human creatures! frequently, we are shocked to discover how little our former enemies regret their deeds and repent their errors. americans in germany after world war ii, for instance, feel aggrieved that the german populace does not feel more responsibility for having visited hitler upon the world. the germans, for their part, resent the fact that few americans appear to regret the bombing of german cities into rubble and the burning and crushing of helpless women and children. it appears to be symptomatic of a certain modern mentality to marvel at the absence of guilt consciousness in others while accepting its own innocence as a matter of course. no doubt there are compelling historical reasons why soldiers in earlier times have felt comparatively little regret for their deeds and why modern soldiers in particular are able to evade responsibility so easily. it is wise to assume, i believe, that the soldiers who fight twentieth-century wars are morally little better or worse than their grandfathers or great-grand­ fathers in previous wars. nevertheless, there are some nove] factors in our time that, taken together with the traditional ways of escape, make it easier for the majority of soldiers to 173 the warriors carry the guilt for the destruction of the innocent in contempo­ rary conflicts. these novel factors lie both in our contemporary interpretation of guilt and in the nature of recent combat. our age seems peculiarly confused about the meaning of guilt, as well as its value. with the rise of modern psychology and the predominance of naturalistic philosophers, guilt has come to be understood exclusively in a moral sense. its older religious and metaphysical dimensions have been increasingly forgotten. moreover, these naturalistic psychologists have tended to view guilt feelings as a hindrance to the free devel­ opment of personality and the achievement of a life-affirming outlook. they like to trace guilt to the darker, subconscious levels of the soul and emphasize its backward-looking char­ acter as opposed to the future-directed impulses of the natural man. hence guilt, when reduced to moral terms, has more and more been branded as immoral. to some, it is associated with a species of illness, which must be cured by psychiatric treat­ ment. though these modern doctors of the soul realize that the uninhibited man is not an attainable ideal, they still strive for the goal of acceptance of oneself and one's nature for what they are. the individual is released as far as possible from regret for past deeds and from the hard duty to improve his character. even if these doctrines get modified in actual practice and are seldom read in their deeper meanings, the basic ideas filter into the broadest strata of our population and help to form the dominant mood of our day. even the simplest soldier suspects that it is unpopular today to be burdened with guilt. everyone from his pastor to his doctor is likely, if he brings up feelings that oppress him, to urge him to "forget it." pre­ cisely this is what he often longs to hear, and, so, forgetting becomes such a disquieting phenomenon of the modern mind. in evide and i "high soldie himse likely guilt i the c origin on the 174 increasln�1 ogists n�l! e free �ey!f liie·affinnm! suhcon�i�w loobn� ch�o of the nalurru has more ani ·ociate� 111� hiatric tr��lo auze that i�! y slill sinn ure forwn!1 "illle from asic id�� nd help t� est soldi�r ith guilt. re brin�! it." pr� rrgettin� � mind, the ache of guilt in war itself, the most potent quieters of conscience are evidently the presence of others who are doing the same things and the consciousness of acting under the orders of people "higher up" who will answer for one's deeds. so long as the soldier thinks of himself as one among many and identifies himself with his unit, army, and nation, his conscience is un­ likely to waken and feel the need to respond. all awareness of guilt presupposes the capacity to respond as an individual to the call of conscience. i am using the term "respond" in its original meaning of answer to a question or a demand made on the self. we respond to conscience only when we can sepa­ rate ourselves from others and become conscious, often pain­ fully so, of our differentness. though the call of conscience may seem to be an impersonal voice outside of one, the re­ sponse is peculiarly within the individual self. why did you do this? why did you not do that? if we hear at all and if we attempt to answer, the response must begin with the first person singular pronoun. i must begin with myself as i was: my conscience seems to become little by little sooted.... ii i can soon get out of this war and back on the soil where the clean earth will wash away these stains! i have also other things on my conscience.... [a man named h., accused of being the local gestapo agent in one small town] was an old man of seventy. his wife and he looked frightened and old and miserable.... i was quite harsh to him and remember threatening him with an in­ vestigation when i put him under house arrest.... day before yesterday word came that he and his wife had committed suicide by taking poison. fain and i went back and found them dead in their beds, he lying on his back and reminding me, gruesomely enough, of my father, she twisted over on her side with her face concealed. at the bedside was a card on which he had scrawled: "wir mussten elend zu grunde gehen. der herr gott verzeihe uns. wir haben niemandem leid getan."... [we must perish miserably. 175 the warriors god forgive us. we have done no one any harm.] the incident affected me strongly and still does. i was directly or indirectly the cause of their death.... i hope it will not rest too hard on my conscience, and yet if it does not i shall be disturbed also. since conscience normally awakens in guilt in the sense that a troubled conscience is usually our first indication of its existence, it is clear that an important function of guiltiness is to make us aware of our selves. whatever his response, the person who hears the call of conscience is aware of freedom in the form of a choice. he could have performed differently than he did; an act of his might have been different. the whole realm of the potential in human action is opened to him and with it the fateful recognition that he is in charge of his own course. conscience is thus in the first instance a form of self-consciousness. it is that form that gives to us an un­ mistakable sense of free individuality and separates for us the domains of the actual and the ideal. therewith the life of reflection begins, and the inner history of the individual no longer corresponds to his outer fate. but the individual need not waken, and, indeed, everything in warfare conspires against such response to the call of free­ dom. enemy and ally enclose his little life, and there is little privacy or escape from their presence. loyalty to his unit is instilled by conscious and unconscious means; the enemy is seeking to destroy that unity and must be prevented from doing so at all costs. he is one with the others in a fraternity of exposure and danger. his consciousness of the others may be vague but is an omnipresent reality; it has much similarity to dream awareness. directly, he is aware of his pals, the half­ dozen or more men he knows relatively well, with a few dozen more who are on the periphery of his consciousness. beyond them there are thousands who encircle him, whose presence he 176 sens( front in th( endul pressf withi�jiduna fate h �e1led the un in j consci nlm in �ucce, or mal ana il'me," . rifle 0 �o�si� compl ansol mu�t, many simpl perso kill, unit acco nee proj bee � incident indirect!r o hard on ed a�o, the serue ation of iij f guiltin�� sponse, lli! freedomm differenll) ifierent. th! penealon� char�e ol� ce a lorm �l ,eve�id! ca� oliw to his udilu the enemr � \'entea irom a fraterni� othersid!1 h similan� , then�' few doze� , beyon� esence ne the ache of guilt senses. there is a vast assemblage of unknown "friends" con­ fronting an equally vast mass of unknown "enemies," and he is in the midst of all of them. their presence makes his situation endurable, for they help to conquer the loneliness that op­ presses him in the face of death, actual or possible. something within him responds powerfully to the appeal of the com­ munal. the orders that he receives from those in charge of his fate hold him where he is in the midst of disorder. he is com­ pelled and controlled as though by invisible threads through the unseen presence of the others, friend and foe. in an exposed position on the battlefield during action, his consciousness of being a part of an organism is likely to plunge him into contradictory feelings of power and impotence which succeed one another rapidly. "if i don't hit that guy out there or man this machine gun to the last, my buddies will be killed and i'll be the cause of their death. everything depends on me." a few minutes later he is likely to ask himself what one rifle or machine gun on one tiny portion of the field can possibly matter to the final outcome. his place in the whole complex is lost to sight, and he is in danger of feeling how absolute is his dependence. all the time, he acts as he feels he must, swept by moods of exultation, despair, loyalty, hate, and many others. much of the time he is out of himself, acting simply as a representative of the others, as part of a super­ personal entity, on orders from elsewhere. he kills or fails to kill, fights courageously or runs away in the service of this unit and unity. afterward, he hears no voice calling him to account for his actions, or, if he does hear a voice, feels no need to respond. in less sophisticated natures, this presence of the others is projected also into the weapons and instruments of war. they become personalized, and the soldier becomes attached to them 177 the warriors as an extension of himself. they afford him a vast comfort in difficult positions as a protection and a shield, a second skin. on the one hand, these weapons help to prevent the soldier from feeling responsible for the lives he takes. "i did not kill, my gun or grenade did it" is the subconscious suggestion. on the other hand, guns help to fill the intermediate spaces be­ tween him and the others. they help to cement the wall of comradeship that encloses him and ties him to his own side while at the same time preventing the enemy from becoming too real. unless he is caught up in murderous ecstasy, destroy­ ing is easier when done at a little remove. with every foot of distance there is a corresponding decrease in reality. imagina­ tion hags and fails altogether when distances become too great. so it is that much of the mindless cruelty of recent wars has been perpetrated by warriors at a distance, who could not guess what havoc their powerful weapons were occasioning. where weapons and comrades are insufficient to dampen self-awareness and personal responsibility, the soldier can often draw aid and comfort from the earth itself. his relation to nature is likely to be quite different from that elemental sense of belonging, which can also arouse in the perceptive per­ son the most poetic and blissful feelings. the combat soldier hugs earth and trees as protection, as "cover" in the expressive military phrase. he does not now think of nature as the source of his life, but as his possible means of preserving it against those who would isolate and destroy him. nature is part of his situation; it, too, is a presence in the special way that his weapons and his buddies are. if earth becomes dear, for example, the walls of his foxhole, trees, breastworks, clouds, and sud, it is not as part of nature that these things are dear. they are dear as instruments that shield him from the enemy. everything is there for him, as it were, and yet he is 178 then men abo ins hims accol rebel orin� in bin ent an1r ana �m acte ilie� ana wnel ana ln� tar ire� �rel � :1 thi en w� 01 mfort in nd skin, e solilier not kill, stion, on paces ne. e wall 01 own sioe becomin� y, aesrr01' eryfootol ,ima�!. eeent win eoulomi ionin�, o aam�� ldier � is relati�� elemenw ptive�er' atsojaier xpressive re a,s t�e rvjn� ii es dear, rtworh, rgs are om ilie r he is the ache oj guilt there only for the others. he makes everything into an instru­ ment, himself included. he is a trigger finger, a tank driver, a bombardier, a scout, and he can take delight in being an instrument. so everything conspires to prevent his coming to himself, and, as often as not, the soldier is a semiconscious accomplice in it as well. why should he undergo the pain of reflection, the dangerous isolation acute self-awareness can bring with it? in highly mechanized armies, many a soldier gains a cer­ tain fulfillment in serving the machine with which he is entrusted. the automatism of military life has been immeasur­ ably increased by the perfection and intricacy of instruments and weapons, and it is certain that the human beings who serve them are actually influenced by their automatic char­ acter. combat soldiers must adjust themselves to the laws of these mechanisms, and their habits become of necessity more and more mechanized. individuality is inevitably suppressed when a group of soldiers have to co-ordinate their movements and all their daily activities in the proper functioning of an instrument of war. but the significant thing is that so many take pleasure in it. there is, i suppose, a perverse kind of freedom here, the freedom from reacting in novel and un­ predictable ways. whatever the source, love for the machine­ and the more complicated and exacting, often the greater the love-is an important element in modern combat. the hard­ ened german tanker cited earlier who broke down and cried at the loss of his tank is far from an isolated instance. those thinkers who believe that a new type of man is bound to emerge as a product of our technological development might well study in detail over the last century the varying relation of men to their weapons of war. in totalitarian countries, this willingness to become a func179 the warriors tionary is much further developed because it is consciously pursued by the dictator at the summit. self-awareness is fought as an enemy of communal enthusiasms. in 1944 and 1945 i had to listen to fascist and nazi police and party function­ aries exclaim with nauseating regularity when they were cap­ tured: "my conscience is clear!" it made no difference how heinous the deeds were in which they had taken part, always the refrain was the same: "i have done nothing wrong. my conscience is clear." despite early suspicions that these pro­ testations masked real guilt feelings, i became convinced in the end that most of these men knew no genuine regrets for what they had done. as functionaries, guilt was for them, in any case, an empty word. if their consciences had ever awak­ ened, the lack of response had long since silenced the call. the inhumanity that so appalled me about them was more often than not a kind of absence of feeling rather than sadistic perversion. machines cannot respond; they can only perform, being at the service of something or someone else. it was peculiarly abhorrent to me that these people expected the same treatment at my hands that they had meted out to their victims. one particularly repulsive officer of the security service, nicknamed "genickschuss" from his reputation for shooting polish underground fighters and hapless jews in the back of the neck, hastily wrote a farewell note to his wife and children after i had interrogated him and consigned him to a jail cell. the jailer brought me his letter within the hour, asking me what to do with it. when i had read it, i was puzzled by the references to his imminent death. "does he mean to commit suicide?" i asked the german jailer. he looked incredulous and answered simply, "not a chance. he expects you to treat him as he treated his prisoners." 180 fro) "ull � an wd ill w) fe iously fought 1945 i ction. ere cap. ce how always ng, my ese pro. , ced in e�for smore sad�lic erionn, peclea loui,toecun1r ion for linilie �e ana m to a i hour, i was � �ce, the ache of guilt in a kind of baffled rage at the thought of his fearful crimes, i cried out, "and if i did what was right, that is just exactly what i should do." i shall never forget the jailer's quiet reply. "sir, it is necessary," he said. for many soldiers, however, a much more conscious escape from responding to conscience is the fact that they are acting "under orders." their superiors who issue the orders must take the blame and bear the consequences. when one asked, as i did, which superiors would bear responsibility, the answer was usually vague. pressed far enough, it usually turned out to be the commander in chief who was to carryall the weight of guilt for deeds that, if committed in peacetime, would have brought heavy penalties. i was amazed how many american civilian soldiers ap­ peared to put great weight on taking the oath of the soldier. frequently, i heard the remark: "when i raised my right hand and took that oath, i freed myself of the consequences for what i do. i'll do what they tell me and nobody can blame me." of course, in a legal sense it is and has been customary in military organizations to hold the highest ranking officer re­ sponsible for deeds of his men committed under orders. but anglo-saxon lands have long since learned to distinguish be­ tween legal and moral responsibility, at least in peacetime. it was clear, however, that most of the soldiers who cited the oath felt that the moral responsibility was being shifted as well. the satisfaction in thus sloughing off responsibility was often plainly visible. becoming a soldier was like escaping from one's own shadow. to commit deeds of violence without the usual consequences that society visits upon the violent seemed at first a bit unnatural but for many not unpleasant. all too quickly it could become a habit. 181 the warriors in a more legalistic nation like germany, where the distinc­ tion between law and right or between state justice and private morality has never been sharply drawn, the abrogation of personal responsibility for one's deeds is even less com­ plicated. it is hard for civilian america to comprehend the mental and moral conversion involved for a professional ger­ man soldier to oppose in full consciousness a military com­ mand. to most of us, it sounded like an easy excuse when hitler's officers protested at nuremberg and elsewhere that they were "carrying out orders" when they committed atroc­ ities. to most of them, however, this was a sufficient explana­ tion and excuse for their deeds. i suspect that the majority of germans remain unconvinced that any soldier should be legally punished for "doing his duty," regardless of its in­ humane character. i hardly need to add that many americans, both professional military men and others, are also unper­ suaded. to be sure, since the nuremberg trials, western nations have officially denied the soldier's right to obey orders that involve him in crimes. he must distinguish between illegiti­ mate orders and those that are in line with his duty as a soldier. presumably, the distinction is always clear according to official pronouncements, but in reality under the conditions of total war few things are more difficult to distinguish. our age is caught in a painful contradiction for which there is no resolution other than the renunciation of wars or at least of the way we have been waging them in this generation. on the other hand, we have come to believe in total victory over the foe, with the use of every means thinkable to effect this goal. since the opponent's residual strength rests in his industrial potential and civilian labor force, we have found it necessary to disregard the age-old distinction between combatant and non182 we in of �m co� i�t cr !stine. � and ger. com· when that the ache oj guilt combatant. in these wars moral considerations become, as a con­ sequence, increasingly irrelevant while the war is in progress. the longer they last the more nearly do the opposing sides approach that boundary where everything is allowed. however, once the question of victory is decided, we are shocked beyond measure at such moral license and require stern punishment of the vanquished for violations of the rules of war. when reason gains some ascendancy over pas­ sion at the end of a war, nearly everyone can see that to turn over individual rights to desperate men, intent on victory at whatever cost, is to invite moral chaos. it seems that the more we transgress in recent wars upon everything essential to individual dignity, the more convinced we become afterward of the necessity of maintaining individual rights inviolate. small wonder, however, that the majority of soldiers, dimly conscious of this contradiction, refuse to involve themselves in issues so confused and troubling. not at all certain whether they will later be considered by their own people as heroes or as scoundrels, great numbers find it simpler to ignore the moral problems by thinking of them as little as possible. better to let the conscience sleep, to do as the others are doing and as one is told to do, and the future will bring what it will. who knows whether there will be a future anyway? most soldiers in wartime feel caught in the present so completely that they surrender their wills to their superiors and exist in the comforting anonymity of the crowd. though the above may be a correct, external description of the response or lack of response on the part of most soldiers to individual guilt in waging war, it nevertheless misses all the subtle ways in which guilt is incurred in conflict and made 183 the warriors present to the conscience of the minority. there are degrees and kinds of guilt, and not merely a formal declaration of simple guilt or innocence by the inner tribunal. those soldiers who do respond to the call of conscience find themselves involved in the most bafhing situations, in which any action they could take is inappropriate. they learn soon that nearly any of the individual's relations to the world about him can involve him in guilt of some kind, particularly in warfare. it is as per­ vasive in life and reflection as is human freedom itself. awak­ ened to his personal responsibility in one aspect of combat action, the soldier is not necessarily awakened to finer nuances of guilt. yet it sometimes happens that the awakening is thorough and absolute in character, demanding of the subject an entirely different set of relations to friend and enemy. it is a crucial moment in a soldier's life when he is ordered to perform a deed that he finds completely at variance with his own notions of right and good. probably for the first time, he discovers that an act someone else thinks to be necessary is for him criminal. his whole being rouses itself in protest, and he may well be forced to choose in this moment of awareness of his freedom an act involving his own life or death. he feels himself caught in a situation that he is powerless to change yet cannot himself be part of. the past cannot be undone and the present is inescapable. his only choice is to alter himself, since all external features are unchangeable. what this means in the midst of battle can only inade­ quately be imagined by those who have not experienced it themselves. it means to set oneself against others and with one stroke lose their comforting presence. it means to cut oneself free of doing what one's superiors approve, free of being an integral part of the military organism with the expansion of the ego that such belonging brings. suddenly the soldier feels 184 men such iro coni ore sno� learlne mas evio repl seu as � and imple who olved fng � ubject rea to lli his fe, he is for d he one eseu � an n of ree� the ache of guilt himself abandoned and cast off from all security. conscience has isolated him, and its voice is a warning. if you do this, you will not be at peace with me in the future. you can do it, but you ought not. you must act as a man and not as an instrument of another's will. i shall always remember the face of a german soldier when he described such a drastic awakening as this. at the time we picked him up for investigation in the vosges in 1944, he was fighting with the french maquis against his own people. to my question concerning his motives for deserting to the french resistance, he responded by describing his earlier involve­ ment in german reprisal raids against the french. on one such raid, his unit was ordered to burn a village and to allow none of the villagers to escape. (possibly the village was oradour and the soldier was one of the participants in that grisly atrocity; at that time we knew little of what was happen­ ing elsewhere and i did not ask him for names.) as he told how women and children were shot as they fled screaming from the flames of their burning homes, the soldier's face was contorted in painful fashion and he was nearly unable to breathe. it was quite clear that this extreme experience had shocked him into full awareness of his own guilt, a guilt he feared he would never atone. at the moment of that awakening he did not have the courage or resolution to hinder the massacre, but his desertion to the resistance soon after was evidence of a radically new course. terrible as was his self­ reproach at what now could not de undone, he had won him­ self through this experience and would never again be available as a functionary. in the netherlands, the dutch tell of a german soldier who was a member of an execution squad ordered to shoot innocent hostages. suddenly he stepped out of rank and refused to 185 the warriors participate in the execution. on the spot he was charged with treason by the officer in charge and was placed with the hostages, where he was promptly executed by his comrades. in such an act the soldier has abandoned once and for all the security of the group and exposed himself to the ultimate demands of freedom. he responded in the crucial moment to the voice of conscience and was no longer driven by external commands. in this case we can only guess what must have been the influence of his deed on slayers and slain. at all events, it was surely not slight, and his example on those who hear of the episode cannot fail to be inspiriting. were it not for the revelation of nobility in mankind, which again and again appears in time of war, we could scarcely endure reading the literature of combat. these are, of course, extreme examples and not to be taken as typical. normally, the awakening of guilt is much more gradual, and the achievement of clarity about duty to one's country and duty to oneself a matter of anguished doubt, sometimes lasting for months or years. but the primary realiza­ tion is the same in all cases: there is a line that a man dare not cross, deeds he dare not commit, regardless of orders and the hopelessness of the situation, for such deeds would destroy something in him that he values more than life itself. he may decide that his commander, his army, or his people may justly demand his life hut may not command him to do what is in violation of his deepest self. however clear he may be about this momentous conclusion in moments of quiet and repose, the soldier is not thereby steeled against anxiety and fear of death. in the melee of conflict he may at times feel as do his unawakened comrades, that life is all he has, after all. per­ sonal resolution is constantly attacked by the strain and dis­ order of combat life. his body, he discovers, is not always 186 subj causi right gutlt. powel resol pulses ne ��ons' �mng justic livest means minsel muitaloccasl who 0 must \ conscl'�ufficinimse rronte gu: mac are!1 oetwi dark it nol ana aain� laken more one'! ioudl, laliza· dare � ana �iror mar iustlr is in idout rose, aror � nis per· dis· rars the ache oj guilt subject to his will. impulses and emotions sweep him away, causing him to act again and again contrary to his sense of right. against his innermost desire, he involves himself in guilt. conscience within him is a voice long before it is a power; he desires to respond long before he has the required resolution. though the voice is insistent, more clamorous im­ pulses are able to dominate him in moments of violent action. nevertheless, his conscience has established an image of the ideal, a man who will acquit himself in whatever situation with independence and dignity. his inner history henceforth in combat will be the struggle to live up to this ideal. it may be that the soldier is contending against fear that he will involun­ tarily desert his comrades in a critical moment and be re­ sponsible for their death. it may be that he has qualms against killing enemy soldiers. or he may be utterly persuaded of the justice of his country's cause and of the necessity of destroying lives to realize that cause, yet strongly opposed to this or that means his side is employing. he may be struggling to acquit himself well in a tangle of personal relationships common to military organizations in times of tension and peril. the occasions and situations are manifold in which the soldier who can no longer pass responsibility for his acts to others must struggle to gain full possession of himself. the voice of conscience is forever convicting him of inadequacy and in­ sufficiency, urging him to better efforts. the ideal of acquitting himself like a man comes to appear utopian when he is con­ fronted with certain situations. guilt is likely to come upon him in many other ways than as a consequence of natural fear of pain or death. modern wars are full of border situations where a soldier is forced to choose between evils and where every choice is like leaping into the dark because its consequences are unforeseeable. rarely will 187 the warriors he find a situation as clearly wrong as the shooting of hostages or the strafing of fleeing civilians. on the contrary, he will often have to choose between helping a wounded comrade to safety or remaining at his post to protect others whom he does not know. sometimes he will have to choose the welfare of his unit at the expense of other units or the civilian populace. hunger and cold and animal needs are everywhere in war in the midst of superfluity of food and warmth and delicacies. when he gives up his food or warm room in favor of some pitiful urchin or haggard mother, such charity can hardly comfort him because it is so transient. in the face of the need, his efforts will seem inconsequential to the point of futility. even though the soldier may become a relatively selfless man in the service of the civil populace and his weaker comrades, he will seldom he at ease with himself. in some degree he will feel guilty of omitting to do what he ought, or doing what he ought not. this is inevitable, of course, for he is an individual who thinks of himself and others as ends in themselves in a situation where human beings are means for superpersonal goals. men are materials to be expended for national interests, real or imagined. all the awakened soldier can hope to do in such a society is to meliorate the lot of the less fortunate, to act in an inhumane environment as humanely as possible. opportunities to be humane are ordinarily plentiful enough in combat zones, but his freedom is constricted on all sides. it is like moving on a rack. such a soldier is likely to suffer most of all from the com­ mands of military superiors when they are close to the border zone of the forbidden, that is, when they transgress the line that he cannot cross if he is to live with his conscience. the satisfaction that the unawakened conscience takes in making itself an instrument of higher wills is for the awakened con188 scie out freq orde fami survi aisol it ence whe� hah spidlaiffio en�el evenl scien ins lives cons( fatefl ne w h war inte trrar una� olo of job istages le will :ade to le does � of rus ipulace. war in lcacies. f some harair e neea, iulili!r· r= panes, he� teres�, , 00 in ia!e,to ,ssiliie, � com· oroer e line , the akin� i con· the ache 01 guilt science a leading source of its misery. to be required to carry out orders in which he does not believe, given by men who are frequently far removed from the realities with which the orders deal and often motivated by abstract hatred-this is the familiar lot of the combat soldier. the man of conscience can survive morally only by following the letter of such orders and disobeying their intention. it is a great boon of front-line positions that this disobedi­ ence is frequently possible, since supervision is not very exact where danger of death is present. many a conscientious soldier has discovered he could reinterpret military orders in his own spirit before obeying them. the fortunate ones have escaped difficulties with their commanders; the unfortunate have often ended in disciplinary barracks or even a death cell. at all events, the tension in such a soldier between the voice of con­ science and the demands made upon him as a means and instrument of higher authority will rarely relax. the alterna­ tives to this tension are for him either the surrender of his conscience to superiors or open defiance of their orders with fateful consequences to his life and freedom. both alternatives he will seek to avoid as long as possible. here is a personal example. for several months in world war ii, i was attached to an infantry division whose divisional intelligence officer, a colonel, was an insensitive military tyrant. he was pleased to have our detachment of six men under his control and at the same time was deeply resentful of our superior educational backgrounds and independence of mind. he liked to meddle with our somewhat specialized job of interrogating the civilian populace in the search for spies and saboteurs the retreating germans might have left behind or sent over the front. increasingly, i found myself resenting and resisting his often harsh orders for civilian re189 the warriors strictions and prohibitions. as linguists, we were his only means of communication with the civilian populace, who were regarded by him as an infernal nuisance to be tolerated only because they could not be conveniently expelled from combat areas. when our division entered the first towns of alsace, we encountered numerous young alsatians in civilian clothes who had deserted from the german armies when on furlough and hidden out at the risk of their lives while awaiting our advance. the alsatians had helped to hide these youths from the ruth­ less clutches of the gestapo. some of them had previously served with the french against the germans, but when alsace and lorraine were incorporated in germany with the defeat of france in 1940, they had been conscripted into hitler's armies, only to desert at the first opportunity. there was, of course, much rejoicing now that they could at last leave their hiding places and greet old friends and neighbors publicly once more. many of them came to us and offered their help in intelligence work. hard pressed as we were for help (only two in our detachment knew german well enough to be effec­ tive) , we found much for them to do. but the colonel had noticed the appearance of young men on the streets here in contrast to france, where male youth had been conspicuously absent. he called our detachment commander by telephone and demanded an explanation. with our briefing, the captain gave him the facts of the situation. the colonel's response was immediate: "do they have dis­ charge papers from the german army?" it was explained to him that deserters were never supplied with discharge papers, that being contrary to the usage of the german army. his conclusion was breath-taking. in that case, these men were prisoners of war, and we were to round them up and ship 190 iliem camj captb begge hi a str� aescel �, orner'l �ietel� �arenl from � germ� emdit� moreor men, v to aia �implj wnich anaw iliou� onel ooeyil date time! his stup the s only o were d only combat ace, we es woo ugh ana advance, the ru�, reviouslr en abace e aefeat e was,o! ave ilieu pcljliclr heir nel� elp (onl1 be effec· ung men lerouili tacnment 100. wiili lituation,ave a� �inea to ipapen, by, h� p were � shl, the ache oj guilt them in prisoner trucks through regular channels to the huge camps in france. the colonel insisted oil' quick action. our captain, who was sympathetic with us but afraid of the colonel, begged us to arrest the deserters the next day as ordered. i was fortunate in having as a german-speaking colleague a strong-minded and intelligent young man of boston irish descent. he was profane, not overly scrupulous on moral issues, but fair-minded. he and i determined not to obey the order. to obey it would be the one way to alienate com­ pletely this friendly and much-mistreated alsatian people. for parents to see their sons, who had risked their lives escaping from the german army, loaded on the same trucks with hated german soldiers and transported to prison camps would be to embitter relations with their "liberators" from the beginning. moreover, the orders were manifestly unjust to these young men, who felt themselves to be allies and wanted in every way to aid our cause. the two of us hoped to avoid the issue by simply ignoring the order and continuing our other work, of which we had more than enough. but the colonel called again and was this time insulting and insistent. still we ignored him, though our captain begged us to act. the third day, the col­ onel was threatening us with court-martial and worse for dis­ obeying a direct order. what were we to do? the two of us talked it over and decided to continue to refuse. it was not so much courage on my part as physical weariness and moral disgust at the in­ justices of warfare. in the most obscene language, my asso­ ciate declared that the army could court-martial him a hundred times and he would not obey such a stupid, senseless command. his mood was one of weary, sullen resistance to the vast stupidity of higher headquarters. he had been much longer in the war than i, having served with distinction in africa and 191 the warriors sicily as well as in italy and france. if his concern with the injustice of the order was not as great as mine, his resoluteness was greater, and fortified me. i had visions of the forbidding disciplinary barracks we had glimpsed in north africa, of a dishonorable discharge and the disgrace it would bring on my aged father, who would not be able to understand why i had to disobey. still, i knew that if i did not draw the line here i would be unable to draw it anywhere. if i did not refuse to become a party to the arrest of innocent, wronged men, i could not refuse to do anything that this or any other colonel ordered. i felt myself to be at the end of a tether. this was to be a showdown, and i had little doubt as to the winner. the loneliness and isolation of spirit that swept over me served to teach me how much i had hitherto been sustained by the silent approval of "the others." even my partner in disobedi­ ence could not lift from me the heavy spiritual burden, for he was bitter and cynical about the whole affair. fortunately, things turned out in very different fashion from the expected. the colonel decided to call up army head­ quarters and report our insubordination before taking further action. he chanced to reach an intelligent officer who knew us both slightly, and this officer wanted to know why we persisted in disobeying orders. this the colonel had never stopped to determine, but when he did communicate the cause, army intelligence found our reasons good and within a day or two sent through an order that all alsatian deserters were to be left with their families and in no case to be transported anywhere with german prisoners of war. we had unexpectedly won the day and drew comfort after­ ward from the report that where our division had gone through alsace the population was distinctly more pro-american than in other parts of alsace-lorraine. in areas where the deserters 192 had hard enou by 0 regul th exce� ilie tum' mor no] on m� all sc with the )luteness rbiddln� iea, of a 19 on mr 'hy i naa line nere refuse 10 men, i rcolonel 'swaslo er. the fashion iy heaa· furtner r knew hywe never cause, dar s were rortea afler· rough than ,rtel's the ache 0/ guilt had been arrested, they had been forced to undergo manifold hardships and humiliations in prisoner-of-war camps, ironically enough because they were not in uniform, and were treated by our troops as cowardly and unworthy the respect accorded regular prisoners. this was only an incident of war, not objectively important except as it influenced sectors of a population for or against the allied cause. but subjectively it was for me a kind of turning point. as a result of it, i gained no great confidence in my ability to withstand extreme pressures from official authority, yet i had determined that a line could be drawn between personal rights and military demands. though i knew that sheer good fortune had prevented the normal con­ sequences of disobedience from falling upon me, i felt, never­ theless, immensely strengthened for a possible second refusal. more important, the incident cleared my mind on the vexed question of the relation of the individual to his state. hard as they were to assert, i now felt convinced that the individual had his absolute rights even in the desperate struggle for survival that is modern war. and survival without integrity of conscience is worse than perishing outright, or so it seemed to me. nothing had furthered my self-knowledge so much since my encounter with the old man of the mountain in italy the year before. i have no doubt that many others have found themselves in much more crucial difficulties in warfare than this example illustrates. yet, curiously enough, most contemporary war novels deal with nearly every agony of combat except this one. where matters of conscience are taken up, as in the im­ mensely popular caine mutiny, there is frequently an ambiv­ alence in the attitude of the author toward the rights of con­ science against military organization. in wouk's novel, for 193 the warriors instance, the reader is left in doubt about the moral justifica­ tion for "the mutiny," despite the fact that the captain of the caine is portrayed in the worst possible light. he is cowardly, completely neurotic, a pathological liar, and incapable of giving orders that will save his ship from destruction. yet, the author reminds us, he is a commander in the united states navy, of long service, and as such an early fighter against the evil enemies of his country. perhaps he should be obeyed despite his incapacity, since the principles of obedience and discipline count for more in a war of survival than individual conscience and private morality. this is typical of the modern confusion about the spheres of individual right and state authority in the era of total war. however, the man of awakened conscience actually caught in this dilemma, as contrasted with the author writing a book about it, will usually be clear that duty to himself prohibits him from acting contrary to his voice, regardless of his fears and the personal consequences. he may obey such orders, but at the cost of his moral integrity. the safe observer has no right to blame him, for the sternest self-discipline is demanded. few men in any age have had the moral stamina of a socrates, who many centuries ago decided for himself that it was a right and duty to disobey his state and people when he felt they were wrong, but not his right to flee from their punishment for that disobedience. if few young men can be expected to attain the resolution of a mature socrates, the reflective soldier is nearly certain to share the socratic trust in the reliability of his conscience when it is in conflict with the group will. this is particularly true of the conscience that is supported by faith in its divine origin. a secure religious faith has enabled many a soldier to act in defiance of unjust commands or to overcome the temptation to save himself at the cost of 194 othe: cond 1944 hom of the had r coura in the in shl those rellevl tem a �etwelilieir�ome � s�on� �olai counl snare lorce co� ilian contl he 0 5yst, wn y cau�nl g a nook prooidiij his fean ners, nul r has m mangeo, isocrale!, �s a ri�nl ifel!lner �enlfor loa!!aln �jdi�il ��jicy 01 rportea jth has bands lost of the ache oj guil' others. as i have pointed out elsewhere, the testimony of those condemned officers and soldiers who struck against hitler in 1944 is eloquent and instructive evidence of this fact. judging from their last letters to friends and family members, not all of them had religious support for their consciences. those who had no religious faith or hope for life after death acted as courageously as the others and faced the end with confidence in the justice of their cause. nevertheless, their sadness stands in sharp contrast with the tranquillity and even exaltation of those who were believers. both groups seemed immensely relieved to be freed from the pressure of conformity to a sys­ tem and a party they had learned to despise. the difference between them was that those of religious faith took leave of their lives as though the physical end was the beginning of something mysterious yet marvelous. there is a kind of guilt that transcends the personal re­ sponsibility of the sensitive conscience and burdens that soldier particularly who retains faith in the cause and the country for which he is fighting. it is the guilt the individual shares as a member of a military unit, a national fighting force, a people at war . we may call it social or political or collective guilt; it is not essentially different for the civilian than for the soldier, and it is inescapable. no matter how self­ contained and isolated in spirit the man of conscience may feel, he cannot avoid the realization that he is a participant in a system and an enterprise whose very essence is violence and whose spirit is to win at whatever cost. for the soldier, it is his squad or company or division that performs deeds abhorrent to him. no matter how strongly he abjures personal respon­ sibility for this or that deed, he cannot escape social respon­ sibility. so long as he wears the same uniform as his fellows, 195 the warriors he will be regarded by outsiders as one of them. his fellows, too, treat him as a member of the fraternity of men at arms. the conscience within him may be more and more appalled by the heedlessness of group behavior and the mechanical ruthlessness of an organization whose dedication to violence gives it an unholy character. i was appalled and yet i could not escape it. i wrote in my journal one day at the height of the war: yesterday we caught two spies, making our recent total five. we are getting a reputation as a crack detachment. one had to be severely beaten before he confessed. it was pretty horrible, and 1 kept away from the room where it was done ... though i could not escape his cries of pain..•. i lay awake until three o'clock this morning.... i thought of the hamlet line as most appropriate, "tis bitter cold and i am sick at heart." a soldier with an awakened conscience who is a member of such a community, coarse, vulgar, heedless, violent, realizes with overpowering clarity the possibility of being alienated from his own kind. this uniformed, machine-like monster, the combat unit, drives him back into himself and repels him utterly. toward individuals who make it up, he can gain many relationships, but the collectivity itself chokes him with­ out mercy. toward his nation as a nation he may well come to experi­ ence in his innermost self the same lack of relationship. a state at war reveals itself to the penetrating eye in its clearest light and the spectacle is not beautiful. nietzsche's likeness of it to a cold snake is, from one perspective, not greatly exag­ gerated. the awakened conscience will recognize a part of this spirit of the nation in the hate-filled speeches of politician­ patriots, in the antipathy toward dissenting opinions about the utter virtue of its cause, in the ruthlessness with which the 196 indiv it wi moral i� per misery at iliat t� airecti :�l than ii ilies�ilierlorry �iace j douna iultenj ta�h !ense, hlsinl 01 its the �1 ana 'iconsc . not w he nom, respa natia vari, the citi2 :ellows, t arms. ppallea :hanical iiolence i couln � heignt �taj pve, lobe k, and i imherol realizes �enateo ter,thf r� n� �n gam � wiili· expen· nip, a learest essof exag· of tnis ician· ut the h ilie the ache of guilt individual is sacrificed for real or alleged national advantages. it will despise the fanaticism with which this state makes morally dubious and historically relative ends into absolutes, its perversity in maintaining pride at whatever price in human misery. at the same time, justice will force this soldier to admit that these are his people, driven by fear and hatred, who are directing this vast mechanism. if he is honest with himself he will admit that he, too, is a violent man on occasion and capable of enjoying the fruits of violence. legally, and more than legally, he belongs to the community of soldiers and to the state. at some level of his being he can understand why they perform as they do and can find it in his heart to feel sorry for some of the politicians and higher officers. in their place he wonders if he would do any better than they. he is bound to reflect that his nation has given him refuge and sustenance, provided him whatever education and property he calls his own. he belongs and will always belong to it in some sense, no matter where he goes or how hard he seeks to alter his inheritance. the crimes, therefore, that his nation or one of its units commits cannot be indifferent to him. he shares the guilt as he shares the satisfaction in the generous deeds and worthy products of nation or army. even if he did not consciously will them and was unable to prevent them, he can­ not wholly escape responsibility for collective deeds. he belongs and yet he does not belong. "i did not ask to be born," he is likely to tell himself while struggling with his responsibility for collective deeds, "and i did not choose my nation. had i been given a choice of places to grow up at various stages in my education i might have chosen other than the nation in which i was accidentally born. i am, of course, a citizen of this nation and am willing to expose my life in its 197 the warriors defense. but in my inner being i belong only to the com­ munity that i have freely chosen, my friends, my club, my church, my profession. all other associations of mine are external and accidental, however little i may have realized it earlier. this does not free me from the guilt that this nation is heaping upon itself, so long as i participate in its defense. i shall always be guilty as long as i belong to a nation at all. yet there is no good life apart from some nation or other." it is clear to him that his political guilt is of a different sort from the personal, since the latter stems from his freedom in a direct way, the former only in part. the nation was in being long before him and will presumably continue in being after his death. hence his capacity to change its course is im­ measurably limited by its history as well as by his own powers. for the politically conscious soldier, this does not mean, however, that it is negligible. insofar as his political guilt is in direct relation to his freedom, he will become conscious of what he has done or failed to do to promote or hinder the humanizing-of military or political means and objectives. he will be certain at all events that he has not done enough. on this or that occasion he has been silent when he should have spoken out. in his own smaller or larger circle of influence he has not made his whole weight felt. had he brought forth the civil courage to protest in time, some particular act of in­ justice might have been avoided. whatever the level of influ­ ence the soldier commands, from the squad or platoon to the command of armies, in some manner he is able to affect the course of group action. when the nation for which he is fighting has enjoyed a free government and been previously responsive to its citizens' wishes, he will be conscious of greater responsibility than will the soldier whose government is authoritarian or totalitarian. 198 the sphe: nadlf asses: equal 100 � even� 10� in lo� of hi� nei�h much �on i of col goml e� awar cnan �ul nls �n , inel war , a\ri �\] • im� rouj an ato h' the ache 0/ guilt the greater the possibility of free action in the communal sphere, the greater the degree of guilt for evil deeds done in the name of everyone. still, the degrees of guilt are impossible to assess for anyone else, and hardly any two people share an equal burden of communal guilt. the soldier may have been too young as a civilian to have exerted much influence on events or he may have been too poorly informed or confused to know where his political duty lay. as a soldier, he may be in too isolated or insignificant a location to make effective use of his freedom. no citizen of a free land can justly accuse his neighbor, i believe, of political guilt, of not having done as much as he should to prevent the state of war or the commisis 1m. sion of this or that state crime. but each can--and the man of conscience will-accuse himself in proportion to the free­ dom he had to alter the course of events. the peculiar agony of the combat soldier's situation is that, even more than in his struggle with his own ideal self, he is aware of the puniness of his individual powers to effect a 'ves, he change. war not only narrows the limits of personal freedom, ugh, on but it likewise constricts the individual's communal liberty, 10 have his capacity to make his power felt in significant ways. the encene sense of impotence will weigh upon him day after day. though ffth the the man of awakened conscience will hardly believe that the of in· war is a natural catastrophe, he will not know how any inf in�u, dividual can alter its seemingly inexorable course. personal to the guilt can be in some measure atoned and the struggle to improve can be taken up every morning anew. but com­ munal guilt comes upon him in ever increasing measure in a free any war, and he is likely to feel utterly inadequate either to tizens' atone for it or prevent its accumulation. n wi� for instance, when the news of the atomic bombing of , hiroshima and nagasaki came, many an american soldiernan, 199 the warriors felt shocked and ashamed. the combat soldier knew better than did americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. the man of conscience wherever he was realized intuitively that the vast majority of the japanese in both cities were no more, if no less, guilty of the war than were his own parents, sisters, or brothers. in his shame, he may have said to himself, as some of us did: "the next atomic bomb, dropped in anger, will probably fall on my own country and we will have deserved it." such a conviction will hardly relieve him of the heavy sense of wrong that his nation com­ mitted and the responsibility for which he must now in some measure share. all the arguments used in justification-the shortening of the war by many months and the thousands of american lives presumably saved-cannot alter the fact that his government was the first to use on undefended cities, with­ out any warning, a monstrous new weapon of annihilation. worst of all about such deeds is that millions accepted and felt relief. hearing this near-exultation in the enemy's an­ nihilation, one can only conclude that political guilt has an­ other source than the freedom of the individual to affect group action. it lies in the degree of his identification with the goals and the means of realizing them that his nation adopts. the person who inwardly approves an immoral action of his government or military unit testifies to his own probable deci­ sion had he possessed the freedom and opportunity of the actors. freedom is possible, therefore, not only in the power to do or prevent, but also in inner assent and consent to action by others. with a relative criterion like this it is, of course, impossible to be exact in estimating even one's own guilt. yet the jubilation in evil deeds allows little room for doubt that inner consent is often forthcoming. so do thousad' we t wal the am in h cenl mis( com violl ad �i� to � his ami !ol� re se 200 w better eant in rever ne japanese war than harne, ne xt atomic country ill narillr tl0n com. usanas 01 fact tn�1 'ties,wiln. lation. acce�lea emr'san. t has an· ect grou� ilie go�� fp!s, tne r. of ni! fie deci· r of tde �e power rsen! !o i!is,oi e's own om for r thouthe ache 0/ guilt sands of people increase their political guilt in wartime beyond the range of their direct action. to some extent after world war i and explicitly after world war ii, doctrines of collective guilt have become common. the german nation, for example, and particularly the german army is often said to be guilty for having fought for hitler in his aggressive wars of conquest and rapine. however inno­ cent the individual soldier may have been of any personal misconduct, the fact that he was a member of a criminal conspiracy to deprive other peoples of their independence by violent means made him guilty. what justice is there in such a claim? to what extent is a german soldier in the last war guilty who kept himself free of personal crimes but was forced to experience, more or less directly, atrocities committed by his fellow soldiers and who was not blind to hitler's mad ambitions? is he not in an utterly different position from the soldier of a nation like ours who fought the war defensively to repel aggression? in terms of what i have previously said, the answer can only be that no outsider has a moral right to make such an accusa­ tion about either the soldiery or the people as a whole. for an anti-nazi soldier to have interfered with some act of injustice carried out by his fellow countrymen would have resulted in his prompt execution, as enough recorded instances prove. apart from the demands of courage and determination that such an act requires, the question that tormented some soldiers in this situation was: what political purpose will my sacrifice serve? many a conscientious german soldier might have screwed up his courage to open interference had he seen clearly in what way his death would have helped prevent further crimes. fortunate soldiers found the right moment and the right deed with which to strike against the system they 201 the warriors despised, and their chance to witness made them content to die. others fought to the end of the war without such oppor­ tunities or without the necessary courage. only those who sacrificed themselves in similar situations have the right to accuse them, and probably few of them would care to do so, if they were alive and able. for my own deeds i am responsible and can be held accountable, even if i act under the orders of another. for the deeds of my fellow men, specifically my fellow countrymen, my responsibility cannot be a public or legal one, for it is too dependent on my estimate of my ability to hinder criminal acts and of my inner consent to their commission. yet if accusations of collective guilt are unjustified, the sensitive german soldier could hardly escape the consciousness of his own political guilt. a burning sense of shame at the deeds of his government and the acts of horror committed by german soldiers and police was the mark of a conscientious german at the close of the war. "i am ashamed to be a ger­ man" was a not infrequent remark when friend was speaking to friend as the revelations of what the third reich had done became generally known. to be sure, those without conscience considered that they had atoned sufficiently for their political "mistakes" by their suffering during and after the war, and rejected with indignation any imputation of collective guilt. they wanted to hear nothing of their vicarious part in the crimes of their fellow citizens. the reflective man knows in his heart what rarely crosses his lips, that the sins of his fellows are not so remote from him as he would like. if he is a soldier, he, too, has yielded at times to the temptations of power and the license that violence evokes in all of us. however free he may have kept himself from external participation in evil deeds and however foreign cruelty may be to his better nature, he will be aware that there 202 �in obsc :j chim� suffe� all 0 occasj r�/u lalio mor g�r 0/ u · libel and the) 10m /ar inn the ntent to h oppor. ose who right to to do so, esponsioie orders 01 myfellow r legal ant, y to hinatr eonscienti�� 10 de a�r' was speakid� 'en haa aon� iconscifore eir politit� ne war, ao� eclive�t part in ilit ely cro� mote from yielded at t violen�t t himse� forei� lat there the ache 01 guilt is in nearly all men the capacity for criminal deeds and the obscure yearning for license to act without consequences, hence his recognition of the chains of communal responsibility and his knowledge that atonement in this sphere is largely chimerical. no human power could atone for the injustice, suffering, and degradation of spirit of a single day of warfare. all of us shared the guilt, as i wrote in my journal on two occasions. 1 talked yesterday to a young viennese deserter . . . he had had nothing to eat but potato soup.... the picture he gave of the prison was grim enough..•. one man, suspected of being a spy, was given nothing to eat for six days and was now past hunger. if he talked he would be shot as a spy, if he didn't he would starve --a difficult choice. the youth was strong, courteous. . . . he finally asked me in german, "do 1 have to go back to epinal?" and his whole soul was in the question and in his eyes. 1 said no, that was all past for him, and his face was suddenly illumined. 1 felt in a moment the whole stark tragedy of this war. what bitter cruelty all of us exercise ! we are guilty and deserve the extreme penalty. nothing that happens to me in future will i ever feel unjust and unmerited. this morning was spent in attempting to control the mass of refugees streaming around here, some 2000 in a town whose popu­ lation hardly exceeds 5000. this fate is pathetic, and more and more this problem of displaced persons becomes tremendous. germany was really a slave state on a gigantic scale. almost all of these foreign workers are on the roads, a few hours after their liberation, going they know not where, but away from the front and toward home, they hope, though thousands must know that they have no longer a home. but this afternoon seitz and i saw something ten times worse. there was a concentration camp not far from here, and last saturday the german guards loaded the inmates onto freight trains and tried to haul them away. when they discovered that the trains could not proceed, they left them 203 the warriors near a town named oster burken. we found them there this after. noon, some 880, half-dead, horribly starved people, among them 300 french maquis, political prisoners.... to see these living deaths in their striped suits in rags, dragging their feet, was a sight that i would have done without. to add to its gruesomeness, there was a dead german soldier deserter, who had been hanged and whose body was lying by the road under a tree. someone had cut him down but the rope was still around his neck and his feet were tied. he had been an attractive youngster, and one could pretty well guess his story. the ss who had hanged him will one day have to pay, and those who were responsible for the unim­ aginable suffering of these concentration-camp inmates will pay also. the realization of political guilt is poignantly expressed in a poem by albrecht haushofer, one of the determined and long-standing opponents of hitler, who was imprisoned and finally executed near the end of the war. his little book of poems entitled moabiter sonette, written in a berlin prison while his hands were shackled, testifies to political guilt of a man who had already atoned more than is required of most of us. in the sonnet entitled schuld (guilt), he begins by noting how easy it is for him to carry the guilt that his nazi court trial wanted to load upon him. to them he was a traitor to his people in the plot against hitler. then he concludes in the german version, to which i have added a literal translation: doch schuldig bin ich arulers als ihr denkt, ich miisste [riiher meine pflicht erkennen ich miisste schdrjer unheil unheil nennen­ mein urteil hab ich viel zu lang gelenkt ... ich klage mich in meinem herzen an: ich habe mein geioisseti lang betrogen ich hab mich selbst urul andere belogen204 ti �olit ontl regu ofn was . ina ca � alli ern , silll cau j sl� loti m1 . all ill! • to resseain inea an� prison '!tofa mosloi y no!in� tit:o:iniliela!ion: the ache oj guilt ich kannte fruh des jammers ganze bahn­ ich hab gewarnt-nicht hart genug und klar! und heute weiss ich, was ich schuldig war . • • yet i am guilty otherwise than you think. i should have known my duty earlier and called evil by its name more sharply­ my judgment i kept flexible too long . . . in my heart i accuse myself of this: i deceived my conscience long i lied to myself and othersearly i knew the whole course of this misery­ i warned-but not hard enough or clearly! today i know of what i am guilty ..• thus the conscientious german soldier may well feel greater political guilt than a conscientious allied soldier, depending on the measure of assent he had given to the national socialist regime and the freedom of action he possessed. but the quality of his political guilt will hardly be different, for the warfare was not carried on by angels against devils, but by soldiers in a relatively just cause fighting soldiers in a relatively unjust cause. if the character of hitler and his paladins gave to the allied side a moral justification unusual in warfare, the west­ ern nations have no reason to forget their share of respon­ sibility for hitler's coming to power or their dubious common cause with the russian dictator. the reflective soldier on both sides of the conflict will see no escape from political guilt as long as he remains a member of a state. if, in his disillusion­ ment, he is tempted to renounce his nation and pledge his allegiance to the human race alone, this, too, will prove illusory, for mankind collectively is doubtless as predisposed to injustice as nations are. 205 the warriors it is precisely this realization that may lead the soldier to a recognition that personal and political guilt are hardly re­ solvable on their own levels. they involve a guilt that can only be called metaphysical, because it concerns man's very being and its relations to the rest of the cosmos. the root of the guilt problem lies in human nature itself, in our failure as human beings to live in accordance with our potentialities and our vision of the good. because we do fail, our spirits are isolated and closed to each other. none of us can be to an­ other as we really desire to be, for we strike against some­ thing strange and alien in him. the sympathies of even the most reflective and sensitive do not extend far enough to overcome entirely the antipathy toward his fellows that is in nearly all of us. in some facet of our being we are closed and indifferent, not open to others or concerned with their fate. though most of us are capable of feeling compassion for the suffering of men, and recognize our common kinship in isola­ tion and loneliness, this recognition is rarely strong enough to influence our action decisively . we cannot love enough either our fellow men or our common mother, the nature from which we originate and to which we return. as human beings, we are in a perpetual state of disequilibrium with the rest of creation, neither humble enough to recognize our dependence nor bold enough to actualize our powers. if this is capable of oppressing many of us in time of peace, it is easy to imagine with how much greater force it strikes a reflective soldier in combat. everywhere he experi­ ences himself and his comrades as violators of the earth. the ruthlessness with which organized warriors deal with the order of nature in order to defend their miserable lives will appall him, all the more so in modern times, when the scorched-earth policy has been succeeded by atomic destruction. the crimes 206 8ga: setv huill geni ated kind tivejcher on s him! fl his i de � i aj tioo dier to 8 ardly re­ t can onlr ery bein� ot of tne failure a! tentialitie! spiri�are be to an, inst som� f even�! enougn 10 ihat �m closen an� ilieirfal!, 'onfd 'p in iso�, enougn 10 ugh eiili!r om wru�n ein�, w! ereslo! epennence time o! r force il e experi, i,rth, tn! re order rallhim, fd.eartn crimes the ache oj guile against horses and other animals that men press into the service of their insane passions, the recklessness in destroying human habitations and works of art, full of the dignity and genius of human labor, will rob him forever of any exagger­ ated hope for the species. when his martial passions are kindled, this pygmy of creation is capable of defying the crea­ tive source of all life and flinging away all that he has formerly cherished. like the ancient titans of fable, he seems intent on storming the ramparts of heaven and calling down upon himself a novel kind of punishment. faced with this presumptuousness of the human creature, his closedness and dearth of love, the awakened soldier will be driven to say in his heart: "i, too, belong to this species. i am ashamed not only of my own deeds, not only of my na­ tion's deeds, but of human deeds as well. i am ashamed to be a man." this is the culmination of a passionate logic which hegins in warfare with the questioning of some act the soldier has been ordered to perform contrary to his conscience. con­ sciousness of failure to act in response to conscience can lead to the greatest revulsion, not only for oneself, but for the human species. how many soldiers have experienced in battle a profound distaste for the human creature! i wrote of my own despair: it is eleven o'clock at night, and raining. the town is quiet, a fresh breeze, rain-laden, is blowing. i sit alone in my room and ponder my own limitations, wondering why the whole mystery oj the universe must be closed, why i must plod on in the path of so many others, subject to the same temptations and weaknesses. such nights as these have for years beaten in upon me my failures, my blindness, and the impenetrable nature of the world. the combat soldier who experiences this guilt of the human creature deeply is likely to he caught in a serious inner crisis. 207 the warriors on the one hand, he perceives the degraded and degrading level of human life, as battle experiences can so well teach it. and this degradation does not seem to be a consequence of war conditions so much as war conditions are a consequence of it. his whole being rebels against this condition; his con­ science warns him that it ought not to be. neither he nor the others deserve to be spared. all are such caricatures of what they should be that death appears to be the only fitting reso­ lution. on the other hand, he is plunged into doubt about the possibility of attaining to any other state. perhaps men are what they are by virtue of some hidden necessity in the nature of things. is it wise to expect anything else than the spectacle now offered? the despairing soldier seeks for a reason why men are the creatures they show themselves to be in combat, and the reason that has appealed over many generations is the idea of necessity. freedom may be after all an illusion, and the conscience within me, always protesting, be fatally wrong. this classic struggle between freedom and necessity often tears the heart of one who has advanced a little in the con­ sciousness of guilt. perhaps the feeling of necessity is the final refuge of that spirit in us which resists all attempts at self­ reproach, that uncivilizable ego which stops at nothing to justify the self in its lowest, most aggressive manifestations. or it may be simply the hopelessness of the effort to rid one­ self of metaphysical guilt that makes belief in necessity so attractive. at any rate, for the soldier in battle, the arguments for necessity look very strong indeed. the voice of conscience can be so easily explained away in terms of childhood indoc­ trination and religious superstition. it is tempting to attack the validity of the feeling of freedom through its questionable origin. some survive this crisis of faith only by yielding up their 208 belie] mora testif shallo able t1 realit) ously every ilieir th ilieo� �ict u inner hemi cept) con ever, fmns ann very � lutul limi � freelesca ( vino wa� 1 lq� nor qui th� � mi grading teach it. ence of nor tne of wnst ing reso. bout tne men are e nature spectacle n wnr conilistl tions is ionl ana wron�. iyoften he cod· efin� = inaoc· 18ttack rnadle ilieir the ache of guilt belief in the individual's responsibility for his actions. the moral cynics, which modem wars generate in great numbers, testify to a lost hope in mankind. where cynicism is not mere shallowness and show, it is the cry of men who have not been able to endure the tension between their inner ideal and outer reality. they resolve not to take the world or themselves seri­ ously any longer and give themselves over to enjoyment. but everyone notices that there is a pathos about their gaiety, and their frivolity is hardly contagious. the soldier who does not succumb to the seductions of a theory of necessity, but attempts, instead, to resolve the con­ flict through reason finds himself long exposed to indecisive inner doubts. gradually he may come to realize that neither freedom nor determinism can be established satisfactorily ex­ cept in an emotional sense. in practice, it is not difficult to convince himself that he is free to change. on reflection, how­ ever, the clarity that practice generates searches the past and finds necessity, the other looks to action in present and future and asserts freedom. in serene moments the soldier may be very clear that he is partly free, in projecting himself into the future and striving for an ideal; partly determined, in being limited by what he has done and been. yet whether his own freedom is not a tiny aspect of some larger necessity will escape his best efforts at analysis. at times he becomes con­ vinced that the two are not opposed at all, but in a mysterious way two sides of the same coin. the logic of most soldiers with a deep sense of guilt is a logic of passion, and all the subtleties of the problem will normally be lost on them. if at times such a soldier is too tired out or occupied with other cares to feel distressed in any way, the conflict is likely to be driven deeper into his unconscious mind, there to weigh on his spirit and foster melancholy. what 209 --�-� ---// , � �-_ _ ---------. '.;;ii.\�l-; !l hhe longs for essentially is a simple piety, an attitude of grateu fulness and acceptance for the created. he loses whatever lipsio'llilsatisfaction he formerly took in the destructive ways of war. oman as homo furens appears now to be a monster to him, are i for this soldier has learned to cherish solely the human funclion tion as preserver and conserver of created things. f many a soldier in this predicament has found a blessed � n release in the certainty that there is a higher order of reality ifsu where the irresolvable is resolved. it can be-indeed, often is-a rather primitive trust in the ultimate justice and mercy of a heavenly father, in whom justice and mercy are not at odds. in a sense, the surrender here is similar to the satisfac­ tion in believing that necessity is ruler of all. but the difference is apparent in the richness of meaning that religious trust evidently brings. all previous struggles are seen to have been necessary preparation and purification for present assurance. in god all that appears endlessly difficult for human reason is mysteriously purposeful and clear. apart from the validity of the religious resolution of guilt (and for the nonbeliever it appears to be little more than an escape mechanism), the efficacy of this path is beyond any other that mortal man has dul found. if the soldier possesses a primary religious nature, he can derive absolution and exaltation from his capacity for re­ pentance and surrender to the will of the divine. he loses any need for death and sometimes, too, the fear of death as well, for he has gained the great virtue of hope, which is perhaps t\� the strongest hold in life and is that virtue which is peculiar m to religion. if it does not free him from the usual troubles of is the flesh, religious hope does assure him that there is a realm ie on the other side of human weakness and guilt. his one desire is to act in accord with his hope in this supreme reality, and, the warriors 210 e of grate. whatever ys of war, ter to him, uman fun�. d a bles�fq er of reaury deed, oft�n e and mertr anism), ili� rtal man dm ture, ne can dry for n· elosesanr aili as we�, is perna�! is peculiar troubles 01 is a realm �ne desire �jty, ana, the ache 0/ guilt if he is a christian, the prayer that will be most often on his lips is: not my will but thine be done. personal and political guilt, which may have weighed upon him unendurably before, are now resolved in this childlike trust in a single interpreta­ tion and interpreter. for the more philosophical temperament, however, there is no immediate solution or resolution to metaphysical guilt. if such a soldier is strong enough, the insight gained through his recognition of this most comprehensive form of guilt may help him gradually win a new relationship to his fellows and to the cosmos. guilt can teach him, as few things else are able to, how utterly a man can be alienated from the very sources of his being. but the recognition may point the way to a re­ union and a reconciliation with the varied forms of the created. in short, he may pass beyond his rejection of the human species and gain a new grasp of his world. such a soldier will discover his future mission in life to be as far removed as possible from the destructive work of war. he will be absorbed in the reconstructive, the simple, and the truly humane arts. atonement will become for him not an act of faith or a deed, but a life, a life devoted to strengthening the bonds between men and between man and nature. he will not be in any obvious way a reformer or a social worker or a preacher. but among his friends he will be known as extraordinarily gentle, sane, and wise. these are some of the outcomes of a metaphysical convic­ tion of guilt. some it can drive mad; some to the barely covert wish for death. others are overwhelmed by the belief that all is necessary, and conclude very often that nothing really mat­ ters except pleasures of the senses. still others triumph through religious faith or through a philosophical reconciliation with man and nature, thus using guilt as a means to a firmer and 211 the warriors more enduring hold on life. metaphysical guilt may well be as prevalent in peace as in war, since all men incur it to greater or lesser extent. frequently, however, it necessitates an excess of moral and political guilt to force our acceptance of this reality. in this sphere, too, some men require the utter exposure and extreme experiences of combat to come to their true selves. i find it hard to believe that in the wars of our day any great number of soldiers attain the possibilities that lie in the acceptance of guilt. as i indicated earlier, the reasons appear to lie in a dominant mood of our times and in the different nature of warfare. yet it is hard to be sure, for few people care to admit the guilt they sometimes feel. possibly the pro­ found aversion to war that is widespread at the mid-century is not entirely due to the political and economic fruitlessness of recent wars and their unprecedented fury. many who reveal no outward evidence may be aware at some level of their being that the moral issues of war are hardly resolvable on present capital. they may realize that since wars cannot teach nations repentance and humility, they must be abandoned if we are not to lose our inherited humanistic culture. cut loose from traditional ties, homo [urens is seen to be too exclusively devoted to the devastation of the natural and human soil on which he has hitherto been nourished. if guilt is not experienced deeply enough to cut into us, our future may well be lost. possibly more people realize this than i suspect; and veterans who did not show any traces of it as warriors may now be feeling it keenly. at all events, there are some who have made that secret journey within the conscience and are building their lives on principles very different from those they knew as unawakened ones. 212 la thee 1m some phras partu a wa !ired this � joum the ache 0/ guilt well be last night i lay awake and thought 0/ all the inhumanity 0/ it, the beastliness of the war.... i remembered all the brutal things i had seen since i came overseas, all the people rotting in jail, some of whom i had helped to put there.... i thought of plato's phrase about the wise man caught in an evil time who refuses to participate in the crimes 0/ his fellow citizens, but hides behind a wall until the storm is past. and this morning when i rose, tired and distraught from bed, i knew that in order to survive dayanr this time i must love more. there is no other way. . . . (wat lie in tn� journal, december 8, 1944) os appear e different ew peopl� y ilie pr� -century� cut loo� fclusivelr n soil on intoub, �lizeilil! �lraces 01 f, even�, jthin ilie es very 213 �// � � -. _ ___________" __ � _____' .�:��r. cone foaay overu !�rin win!el then in� p tinue unm sistel ran · fact. �re� iliar i ilii� conclusion the future of war today we return to the [ront! a great change 01 mood has come over us all.... peace is in sight, or the illusion 01 peace. and we spring forward in the hope that there will be no more weary winters to spend on war-torn fronts. (war journal, july 6, 1944) there is in many today as great a fear of a sterile and unexcit­ ing peace as of a great war . we are often puzzled by our con­ tinued failure to enlist in the pursuit of a peaceful world the unified effort, cheerfulness in sacrifice, determination, and per­ sistence that arise almost spontaneously in the pursuit of war. rarely do we like to face the ultimate explanations of this fact. the majority of us, restless and unfulfilled, see no su­ preme worth in our present state. we want more out of life than we are getting and are always half-ready to chance every­ thing on the realization of great expectations. though most of 215 , -�-�-/ , ��----___:_ _�-� .. :&�j. i� the warriors us do not know what we expect of life, we reject inwardly the fate present existence has in store for us: isolation, petty routines, the stale entrapments society sets for us. reality is so different from our dreams and the confident hopes of our youth. happiness is so elusive, won by the privileged few alone. it is this crushing disappointment of our confident ex­ pectations that makes us welcome a chance to exercise the military virtues, to escape into adventure, to feel the genuine excitement of the communal and the sacrificial. if by some magic all the peoples of the world could be assured of eternal peace, a discerning observer would detect genuine regret and disappointment, mingled, of course, with heartfelt sighs of relief and joy. i confess that in my adolescence and early manhood, before world war ii, i longed for one more war, in which i might participate. though i never spoke of such a wish, and regard it today with considerable dismay, i cannot deny that it was an important part of the aspirations of my youth. and i have no reason to believe that my case is unique or singular. these secret impulses cannot be disregarded. the ways of peace have not found-perhaps cannot find-substitutes for the com­ munal enthusiasms and ecstasies of war. unless we find a way to change men's hearts, there appears to be small chance that they will fall out of love with destructive violence. in 1955 i talked with a frenchwoman who had suffered cruelly during the war from lack of food and anxieties for her family, but was now living in comfortable bourgeois fashion with her husband and son. we reviewed the misadventures of those war days, and then she confessed to me with great earnestness that, despite everything, those times had been more satisfying than the present. "my life is so unutterably boring nowadays!" she cried out. "anything is better than to 216 havt not 1 alive at from cigar the cl harri� hom pier t some� was al taneol �rospi menti with � excite vi pain milli lence movi ofth ior, plo man , nefil sep eus eft un ardly the on, pet� reality is pes of our lleged few mlldent ex. xerc�e lli� ,he genuinf \d could k 'ould det�t course, mtn ar. th� 'esforner isfashlon ntures 01 itb greal ad been tterab1r tban to the future of war have nothing at all happen day after day. you know that i do not love war or want it to return. but at least it made me feel alive, as i have not felt alive before or since." and a few days later i listened to a strikingly similar report from a german friend. overweight, and with an expensive cigar in his mouth, he spoke of our earlier days together at the close of the war, when he was shivering and hungry and harried with anxieties about keeping his wife and children from too great want. "sometimes i think that those were hap­ pier times for us than these," he concluded, and there was something like despair in his eyes. neither one of these people was accustomed to such a confession; it came from both spon­ taneously and because i had known them in distress and in prosperity. they were not longing for the old days in senti­ mental nostalgia; they were confessing their disillusionment with a sterile present. peace exposed a void in them that war's excitement had enabled them to keep covered up. violence has been, i think, a perennial refuge from this painful malady. it is hard to overestimate the extent to which millions in our day feed upon violence and the threat of vio­ lence for their emotional nourishment. magazines, newspapers, movies, and television afford a kind of vicarious satisfaction of this appetite. and potential violence is apparent everywhere, in relations of parents and children, of workers and their em­ ployers, of racial minorities and majorities within society, and many others. though organized state violence, which is the definition of war, is different from these, they are hardly separable, for without the secret love of violence and the ac­ customing of the psyche to it, which daily experience provides, effective fighting in war would be unthinkable. sometimes it takes penetrating eyes to notice the violent undercurrents of daily life in our western society, so common217 the warriors place do they seem and so adept are public officials in keeping the more overt out of sight. one can live in germany, for example, and be impressed with the harmlessness of social life. underneath the surface, however, slumber volcanic forces no less restless than in previous decades of this century. violence remains, in the most subtle recesses of the cultural life of this people, a dominant principle. the situation in other countries of europe, old and tradition-dominated as they are, is only better in degree, if at all. nor is it at all different in our own land. given the unfavorable circumstances to which most of these countries have been subjected, we would be appalled at the sinister and brutal forces our country could spawn over.. night. what happened under the nazis in germany might well serve as an object lesson to all of us for a century to come. every nation, i believe, conceals in itself violent criminal forces, waiting only for an opportunity to appear in daylight. most sobering of all to me is the realization my experience has forced upon me that suffering has very limited power to purge and purify; with the vast majority it is as likely to deteriorate the character and will, or, at best, to leave no lasting mark for good or ill. a theoretical observer might have believed that the anguish of two world wars in a half-century would have guaranteed a mood of repentance and reform, freeing the next decades at least from the pride and arrogance of nations. it has not worked out that way. suffering appears to improve characters already strong and sensitizes consciences already awake; with others it produces most often the opposite effect. in wiirttemberg near the close of the war our division over­ ran a concentration camp which had been recently emptied of inmates and guards. it turned out that the prisoners had been hastily pushed into a string of freight cars and carried as far 218 int( abru dooj stra� took long natul in and i in th� the 0) tratio anasl ana, i �nitl �ar� cally men wea . opp� ilian the� < burg the • liev ilie i who • �etl cou ion in keeping lany, for )ciallife, lorces no violence lie of th� countrie� ,isonlr to come, criminru dayli�nt. xperience power to likely to leave do ight have li-century reform, rrogance appea� dscience� opposite 'on over· ptied 01 ad been as far the future oj "ar into the interior of germany as possible before the guards abandoned them. our troops came upon them, opened the doors of the freight cars, and allowed the starving band to straggle into the nearest town, where the shocked citizenry took up the task of nursing and caring for them. i spent one long day in their midst and learned a few lessons about human nature in extreme situations i shall not soon forget. in their condition, glances were more eloquent than words, and an extra pound of flesh on the bones, slightly more color in the cheeks, told more plainly than denunciations could who the oppressors within the camp had been. like all the concen­ tration camps, this one contained men of a dozen nationalities and social strata, imprisoned anti-nazis, jews, captured soldiers, and, as always, a few professional criminals, transferred from penitentiaries to prey upon the others and thus make the guards' task an easier one. the only ones of the group physi­ cally strong, these criminals were looked upon by the liberated men with unutterable hatred. only their emaciation and weakness prevented the inmates from tearing to pieces the oppressors, who had been, by unanimous testimony, worse than the nazi guards. never have i seen more evil eyes than these i looked into during questioning. though these eyes burned with rage and contempt, there was fear, too, and i had the impression that most of the criminals were probably re­ lieved to be made prisoners by us and quickly separated from the rest. i noticed at once that all the others rallied around one man, who was praised extravagantly as one who had held them to­ gether against guards and internal traitors, had preserved their courage and dignity, and become a natural leader over the long months and years. when frenchmen, of whom there were many of education and position in the camp, lauded this man, 219 the warriors i was astonished to learn that he was a german, a political prisoner of long standing and a veteran of many concentra­ tion camps. i spent several hours in conversation with him and discovered a man in whom deprivation had accomplished that rare thing, a cleansing of all hatred and revenge from his heart, leaving him almost uncannily sane and wise. at my request, he outlined his ideas of what should happen in post­ war germany and europe, and i was as overwhelmed by the moderation of his proposals for punishing our political foes as by the practicality of his positive economic and govern­ mental programs. here was that man among ten thousand, more accurately, perhaps, among a million, who had used dreadful experiences as means for advancement of his knowl­ edge and compassion. after a few hours with him i under­ stood why all the inmates, even those who hated with passion everything german, spoke of him and to him with uncon­ cealed veneration. the whole range of human character seemed to be exhibited there by these few hundred survivors during the first day of their liberation, and i was conscious of having stumbled onto an hour of truth that would hardly be repeated, even by them, in later days. there was for me in addition a kind of dread portent of the future in the final words i had with their leader. as i rose to leave, i asked him what he intended to do in the immediate future. "look for my family," he answered. "my wife has been in concentration camps almost as long as i, and i fear she is long since dead. my two boys were taken by the ss as slave laborers to build fortifications in france and i have reason to hope they are still living, somewhere in europe. my first task is to try to locate them, as soon as i am strong enough to travel." the vision of this ravaged man wandering over europe in 220 seal alivj tutu obse soldi town than i i hal were nard1 chan� mode none tion clear s�iril to he ti ana er un an bo . p �olitical �ilh passio� �iili unco�· he exhiliil�� fustctarol led onto iurope in the future of war search of his scattered family, possibly finding his youngsters alive but debauched by their associates, revealed one face of future war that will be altogether intolerable. i had already observed that the bitterest of all experiences for european soldiers of world war ii was to return to desecrated home towns and to families brutalized by even worse experiences than their own. with thousands of other american soldiers, i had breathed a prayer of thankfulness that the homes we were returning to were not like these. it was a good fortune hardly to be repeated in the future. now, in retrospect, no change in the character of warfare seems as crucial as this modern blurring of all distinctions between combatants and noncombatants. what this means in terms of moral degrada­ tion experiences like this one just described showed me in clearest focus. with civilians and soldiers alike physically and spiritually displaced after future wars, who will be available to heal the sick, the dispirited, and the lost? though there is widespread fear that our century in its second half cannot afford or endure a resumption of the war­ fare that marred the first fifty years, there seems to be little assurance that any secure way has been found to avoid it. some still quote fatalistically the biblical lines about wars and rumors of wars, and repeat, as men have done from time immemorial, that because there have always been wars, wars will continue forever, that human nature never changes, that bellicosity is part of man's nature and we cannot therefore eradicate war. others maintain that another world war is unthinkable because war is no longer, as it was until recently, an instrument of foreign policy. "the rocket and hydrogen bombs are forcing us to grow up," concludes one current re­ port whose author optimistically asserts that "we are further 221 the warriors from world war than we have ever been before in my lifetime." then he adds lightly, but with a note of hysteria, often de­ tectable nowadays: "if i am proved wrong on this point no reader of these lines will be able to expose me, for both he and i will be dead." the difficulty of prophecy lies in our inability to discover what has really changed in the present situation and what only appears to be changed. at a superficial level, optimism and pessimism are equally inane. optimists who base their beliefs on the ground that modem weapons promise annihilation of whole peoples and so render any hope of victory for one side illusory forget, i think, that this situation is hardly permanent. under the conditions of whirlwind advance typical of our age, how can anyone know what possibilities for defense, for neutralization of great weapons, or what selective destruction of military and industrial potentialities another decade will bring forth? and if an ultimate armageddon does not lie in the future, who can be sure that a series of limited w.::rs fought with more conventional weapons will not destroy our civiliza.. tion, less dramatically but no less thoroughly? so long as there is no change in the will to warfare, it seems the sheerest folly to trust, as many now want to do, to the deterrent power of fear and armed might. in our present state of mind, these are probably necessary, but they should delude no one into believing there is any security in the present condition. if wars begin in the minds of men, it would be wise to search there for a basis of optimism. and there is, in fact, one change that appears to be novel and important-our growing unwillingness to glorify war and the military virtues. in the literature of battle, there is a decreasing tendency to justify war in terms of the heroic deeds it calls forth, to romanticize its grandeur and exalt its personal sacrifices. no longer do we 222 in � it is us a resp alter i am appel it the d none. jr., v haralj �ne area iliat expe i d unlve iso worl and obed unde unde lid a s� perl aee ev� sul the future oj war in the west thrill so much to the sentiments of horace that point no it is sweet and noble to die for country. nor do so many of th he and us adhere to the belief, once so widespread, that wars cor­ respond to the will of god. whether this change is due to the altered nature of war or to a change in the nature of warriors, i am not sure. but i do find a marked lessening of martial appetite among the writers of the twentieth century. it would be easy to cite pages of encomiums on warfare in the nineteenth century, using german authors, as is usually done. but here is one from our own oliver wendell holmes, jr., veteran of our civil war, extreme enough for all and hardly untypical. who of us today would adhere to the doc­ trine he wrote as a mature man of fifty-four: "war when you are at it is horrible and dull, it is only when time has passed that you see that its message was divine." who today would experience anything but disbelief when he continues: i do not know what is true. i do not know the meaning of the universe. but in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing i do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throwaway his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has no notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use. jus!i� ian!icize r do we there may well be those who still subscribe to such a faith; in fact, almost certainly some exist in every nation. but it is a safe guess that fewer exist in our decade than formerly, and perhaps a reasonable prophecy that their numbers will steadily decline, despite the fact that more men are under arms than ever before. in this change of mentality, if it be one, there is surely more promise than in any balance of terror. on the other hand, it must not blind us to the negative ele223 ��� / , � _-_-_� ____,_ ��� ____,,'""" _..._....__ / / .;;�«ll the warriors ments in the present situation or make us forget the things that have not changed. too many of us no longer glorify war, i fear, not because we have renounced the deeds of war but because we find our military past inexplicable and dissociated from the present. after a few years of peace we are unable to believe in war and work out excellent reasons to show why it cannot possibly recur. how difficult to realize that so many of the men we brush against every day on the street have killed and maimed other men. so innocent and harmless do we appear, we veterans. we do not glory in this past, to be sure, but that does not destroy its actuality. it requires only a moment's reflection to convince us of the titanic forces that lie beneath the surface of our quiet days. let us remember how quickly most of us adapted to the logic of combat. was it not a direct verification of the freudian theory of reversion to an earlier, primitive personality, which remains intact in the sub­ conscious, unmodified by our later, more sophisticated selves? a tragic fact of our day, which outweighs all others, in my judgment, is simply this: at a time when the most revolution­ ary demands are made upon us for conversion to a better form of existence, we are so little ready for any inner change. few serious students of our society would have the temerity to assert that western man is more at home in the world now than formerly, any less anxious, or more in charge of his institutions and the larger forces of history. indeed, most agree that contemporary civilization in america and europe is unfulfilling in so many ways. impersonality, monotony, standardization, the scramble to consume and to achieve rna.. terial comfort induce at times a measureless ennui and the longing for an escape no matter how dangerous and violent. 224 11 relel less i negle was t mind in col prove their r= tion, i cept 1 happj dicta� itlmost his p powel chan tot �had a �si am hea will, men whe ilia of! all on things fy war, ar but ociatea unable , in mr olution· better change, ferity to ria now of his , most urope the future of war if optimism and pessimism have become increasingly ir­ relevant in our terrible dilemma, there is great reason nonethe­ less to practice the ancient virtue of hope. though generally neglected in recent centuries, when optimism about progress was the rule, hope is that quality of character and virtue of mind which is directed toward the future in trust rather than in confidence. its trust is that human beings will ultimately prove capable, to the extent granted to mortals, of controlling their own destinies through reason and wisdom. poor as the present outlook for peace is, we can take hope in the realiza­ tion, coming more and more to be accepted, that nothing ex­ cept ourselves prevents us from consigning wars to the un­ happy past. they correspond neither to god's will nor to the dictates of necessity. it was one of the most discouraged thinkers who wrote the most hopeful of all paragraphs about a future warless world. his prophecy ought to be regarded as recognition of man's power to alter the course of events by undergoing an inner change. i refer, curiously enough, to friedrich nietzsche and to the following paragraph from the wanderer and his shadow: and perhaps the great day will come when a people, distin­ guished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifice for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, "we break the sword," and will smash its military establish­ ment down to its lowest foundations. rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best armed, out of a height of feeling­ that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. one trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. rather perish than hate and fear, and 225 ��-/ , �_-_�� � _ -_ ':;;;;,tfj., the warriors twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared-this must someday become the highest maxim for every single common­ wealth too. this is surely one of the most remarkable prophecies in western literature. nietzsche rightly sees that war-making must be overcome through strength and voluntary decision of a strong ..nation or group of nations; peace will never occur as a consequence of weakness, exhaustion, or fear. just as the destructive lusts within us require superior power for their containment, so does an institution as deeply rooted in our society as is war require strength for its eradication. a peace of the peoples is hardly something that will steal over us un­ awares. prepared for by a gradual change in the disposition of dominant groups, the final stroke will come in consequence of a daring, voluntary, and decisive act of breaking the sword. that can happen only when strength of mind and resolution of will no longer feel the need of external supports like prestige and protocol. it can happen even then only when a nation "out of a height of feeling" takes the decision to risk every­ thing for a supreme good. this is the second point of importance that nietzsche makes. in addition to moral strength, courage will be needed, and that of the rarest kind, if war is to be extirpated from our race. the strong are, unfortunately, not always the brave, particu­ larly not when they must expose themselves to the threat of the less strong. how exceedingly unlikely that any of the world's stronger nations today would have the courage to dis­ arm before their enemies! only a few pacifists have the te­ merity to suggest such a thing. who among our political lead­ ers is strong enough to take the responsibility for an act like this? many might say: "if i had myself alone to answer for, it would be worth the risk. but what right have i to jeopardize 226 lutu this! ruler repre can fl utopil respol thl ruler want i more might rule a throll! of w01 �erslll iliin iliese cultul on who act s� onvi ora supp that lers, nrel for ana 1 is must ommon· cies in -making ision of occur as t as the or their equence e swor�, esolution presti�e a nation k every· ie makes, lana that ur race, particu· eatof i of the r to ai�· tbe teo lleaa· ct like er for, �rdize the future 0/ war future generations of my people by so irrevocable an act as this? individuals can afford to take their lives in their hands; rulers must tread the cautious path of security. as the people's representative, my duty is to guarantee their safety as best i can for the short time they are under my care. dreamers and utopians are fit for writing books; they have no function in responsible political office." this is the wisdom of the world today, and woe betide the ruler who does not follow it. the vast majority of our people want our "armed peace" no less than their representatives, or, more correctly, they see no alternative to a peace of armed might. the other path is too beset with risks, and the implicit rule appears to be: better to perish through caution than through folly. nevertheless, there have been, in rare moments of world history, intellectual and political leaders who have persuaded their people to take risks nearly as momentous as this would be. they have been all too few, of course, and of these few most have failed. yet nearly all that is best in our cultural heritage is traceable to their courage and resolution. one day in the ripeness of time new leaders may appear who will induce their peoples to take the irrevocable step, an act so bold it will be greatly contagious and compel imitation. obviously such a deed will not be wholly the work of one man or a small group. the people as a whole must be ready to support the act. but even when large numbers have undergone that inner change of mind and heart described in earlier chap­ ters, it will still require the most courageous of leaders to break the sword in their name and thus assume responsibility for possible failure. a man will be needed of great simplicity and profound conviction. the most important point of all in nietzsche's prophecy is a necessary motivation for breaking the sword. if permanent 227 the warriors peace is ever to come over the world, it will be made possible only by motives that are hardly yet operative in political life. "rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared." if the rank and file of a great nation could accept a statement of this kind, our future might be assured. most of us do not enjoy hating and fearing politi­ cal enemies, but we prefer it infinitely to perishing. we prefer it even when we realize that, indulged in to an extreme de­ gree, hating and fearing destroy our humanity and make us little better than beasts. if so many of us did not prefer life on almost any terms, we should recognize how intolerable are the burdens of fear and hate which oppress us in our time. they induce us to spend the greater part of our national substance on arms and armor, thereby depriving our people of much-needed schools, hospi­ tals, libraries, and a thousand other benefits of organized po­ liticallife. hate and fear impel us to propagandize our youth, to twist and torment the truth into national and provincial molds instead of allowing it the universal frame it requires. hate and fear narrow our sympathies, choke back our generous impulses, make us caricatures of our possible selves. when one considers these things and many more that might be men­ tioned in any just indictment of hate and fear, there need be no surprise that any free spirit would prefer perishing to life under their dominion. however, the more important reason for breaking the sword, says nietzsche-and he is surely right-is that men ought to choose death twice in preference to being feared and hated. until this becomes the highest maxim for a common­ wealth, as it is now for exceptional individuals, we shall not have reached our goal. such an impractical motive may on first hearing astonish us, so contrary to our natural impulses 228 is it, so-ca solve any p tht like t, meas� made i in pre nann 1 must a nate al bein� impuls �urelr leara' passel ima�e corru� rears. �ow inuivi trustf if stro ola any iute are possible icallife. rish than f a great e might . g politi. we prefer treme oe. d make w y terms, w! of fear ana that men rred ana �ommon. rail no! fay on rpulses the future 0/ war is it, and may occasion a contemptuous smile on the faces of so-called realistic men of the world. why should a nation re­ solve to be no longer feared and hated and be willing to pay any price for such a resolution? the answer is terribly hard to give to worldly minds who like to calculate advantages and measure motives as they measure materials. they will hardly comprehend a decision made by socrates many hundred years ago to suffer injustice in preference to committing it because the former did less harm to the soul. the reason a nation that seeks to be just must abhor being hated and feared is not very different. to hate and fear are evil and damaging to our inner life, but being hated and feared are still more destructive of our higher impulses and potentialities. nothing corrupts our soul more surely and more subtly than the consciousness of others who fear and hate us. such is our human nature that we cannot possess power that others dread without becoming like the image of their fear and hate. to possess dread power does not corrupt us overnight; our features may remain benign for years. but inevitably the awareness that others tremble or grow enraged at sight of us poisons the mind and makes us, individuals or nations, in the end into aggressive pariahs, dis­ trustful, capricious, and empty. if nations ever reach the moral heights attained by excep­ tional individuals, they will shudder at the images of them­ selves their neighbors harbor. and they will do everything thinkable to change these images. the image of itself that a strong and gentle nation will one day find most intolerable is of a colossus, jealous of its prestige and alert to pounce upon any who challenge the established order. conscious of its own intentions and motives, such a nation will not rest until others are aware of those intentions too. this can be accomplished 229 the warriors only by deeds that cost something, not by words no matter how eloquent. whatever the cost, the strong and gentle nation will bend every effort to close the gap between what it is and what it seems to others to be, for the cleft between seeming and being is a fatal one for the nation that is intent on reforma­ tion. a strong and gentle nation can only realize its aims when others are fully aware that power and gentleness can coexist and become the greatest benison for an unhappy world. nietzsche's prophecy declares that war must be ended sud­ denly, by a stroke that leaves no one in doubt about the sig­ nificance of the deed. as the context of the paragraph quoted makes clear, nietzsche believes that no gradualism can suc­ ceed here. on the contrary, men will have to make someday an absolute break with their past, as dope addicts must with their habit, if war is to pass away. the problem of war is no ordinary one, to be combated and resolved like other social issues. it demands an emotional reorientation of such a kind that men will thenceforth date their liberation from that day. in biblical language, this transformation will be apocalyptic in kind, comparable to the ancient command of the lord: let there be light! afterward, men will be unable to comprehend how it was they could have lived in darkness. "let us break the sword," someone will declare, in effect, and out of a height­ ened feeling men will respond by destroying the engines of destruction and will resolve to learn the ways of war no longer. there is no doubt that practical men will scoff at such a prophecy, contrary as it is to acceptable procedure of our time and to the course of most previous history. moreover, the statesmen and internationalists who are laboring earnestly in the united nations and elsewhere to forge little by little the fragile chains of peace are likely to consider the notion of a 230 sud danl t sugg agen reliaj wha1 inten areas i�iaca ana � extenl can hi callr, ine e1mote ana n men insta gr form men terna reta matter e nation it � and seeming reformat ims when n coexist d. oded sua. can sue· somedsr must wiili prenena us oreal a neign!. �nes 01 o longer. t suen 8 fur time er, the r.stir in �ie the r of a the future oj war sudden end of war by an act of national will a foolish and dangerous dream. to be sure, it would be an irresponsible man who would suggest that we give up the hard work of our international agencies in order to wait for something so uncertain and un­ reliable as a popular response of the sort nietzsche suggests. what we need to do without fail is to redouble our efforts in international affairs, seeking the development of retarded areas, searching for legal justice in international disputes, and placating national resentments through resort to conferences and all the arts of compromise. if through these means we can extend one by one the years of our present uneasy peace, wars can be made to seem more outmoded sociologically, economi­ cally, and politically than they already do. even if much of the effort of our international agencies does not directly pro­ mote the cause of world peace, it is desirable in its own right and must be done. peace is, after all, not the only end that men legitimately pursue, and no one really knows in many instances what does contribute to peace in the long run. granting all this, i am nonetheless convinced that a trans­ formation of a deep-going inner sort will have to come over men before war can be vanquished. all the machinery of in­ ternational diplomacy and the highest standard of living for retarded peoples cannot bring about this change. it may be poetic exaggeration to assert that this conversion will happen suddenly; what is meant is that it will be a decisive change. in earlier chapters i have described it as an awakening, a coming to oneself, a discovery of friendship, a falling in love. human nature, the ultimate source of all hostility, must be converted from its present state of hatred and fear in order to liberate powers within us the existence of which is suspected only by the tiny minority. neither governments nor other in231 the warriors stitutions are able to combat at present the destructive forces killer. latent within most of us. the leaders we need are not likely to i kno1 spring from the earth; they, too, require for success a change hetwef in the populace of a fundamental kind. vices a the how must we change, if there is ever to be opportunity to break the sword once and for all? the question is as difficult as it is suggestive and seductive. the temptation to forsake the bounds of the probable is great, but all of us are weary of socialist utopias which describe men who have unlearned cus­ tomary pleasures, needs, and desires. realistically, we should not expect men to alter their outer manner of life at all dras­ tically, for changes can be thorough and revolutionary with comparatively little external reformation. the deepest changes of all are indeed likely to return us to the workaday world outwardly little affected, though our actions now proceed from a different motivation and eventually reshape the human en­ vironment. the ancient greek philosopher heracleitus once wrote that "men are estranged from what is most familiar and they must seek out what is in itself evident." the sentence illuminates, as few others have done, much of my own war experience. the atmosphere of violence draws a veil over our eyes, preventing us from seeing the plainest facts of our daily existence. to an awakened conscience, everything about human actions be­ comes then strange and nearly inexplicable. why men fight without anger and kill without compunction is understandable at all only to a certain point. a slight alteration in conscious­ ness would be sufficient to put their deeds in a true light and turn them forever from destruction. it would require only a coming to themselves to transform killers into friends and lovers, for, paradoxical as it may seem, the impulses that make 232 much r lessly 1\ neing t� a line � ihal wal "tne c� oloeing io�lcal � dolo ext mtnou� halmol tonemd hence trulns, ll�ous t success, ulers wi tnosewl munlca olners,' oldal nest an klna, ana pr duthe snoul killers are not so different in kind from those that make lovers. i know no other explanation for the notorious linkage in war between the noblest and the basest deeds, the most execrable vices and the sublimest virtues. the feeling of being at home in the world is likewise not much removed from the feeling of being exposed and hope­ lessly lost to all succor. and the sense of being thrown into being that existentialist thinkers describe is removed only by a line from the experience of man created in god's image that was painted by michelangelo in the wonderful fresco "the creation of man." the change in us from the one state of being to the other is, of course, profound, but the psycho­ logical distance to traverse is slight. most of us have known both extremes, often in an incredibly short span of time. it is as though a thin but impenetrable wall separated the two states. if at moments the wall seems easily torn away, usually it proves to be more durable than our lives. hence the search for that most familiar and evident of all truths, the belonging together of the human species, in re­ ligious terms, the brotherhood of man, is rarely attended with inates, success. in worid war ii, i found myself separating those solee. the diers who were awakened and aware of their situation from ventin� those who were lost in it. the former were those i could com. to an municate with and understand; the others were simply "the others," beyond my sympathy and concern. yet in moments of clarity nothing is more apparent than the fact that the best and the worst of men are different in degree only, not in kind. the soldier who is moved by sentiments of friendship and preservative love can reject the soldier-killer, for example, only a but he cannot in justice deny common humanity with him. nor � and should the soldier of conscience who acknowledges his guilt make at every level fail to recognize the potentiality of similar forces ely to change nity to difficult an en· the future 0/ war 233 the warriors awakening in the most reckless and ruthless of his comrades as well as in the enemy. there is too much evidence of such transformations for any of us to doubt. the case is hardly otherwise in our present uneasy state of peace. to overcome this alienation from the evident and the familiar we need, above all, a genuine closeness to each other in contrast to the separation and isolation that now prevails so widely. it is evident that the overcoming of physical space is not bringing this nearness. as our planet becomes more and more overcrowded and problems of living space and food grow more pressing, the chances for conflict indeed become greater. evidently there is little or no relationship between physical and psychical nearness, for it is possible to be alienated from one's own roommate and be near to someone a thousand miles removed in space. so long as we are far from ourselves, it is impossible to be near to others. well-meaning people often assume that what is required of us today is a wider set of relationships than is possible within the simple and natural unities of family, town, and province. the typical citizens of kansas, brittany, and formosa can hardly become close to each other in any sense demanding intimate acquaintance with one another. what all of us need to gain is a closer relationship to those immediately about us. he who knows what genuine friendship is or the fullest type of erotic love cannot be as estranged from self or others as they are who have never experienced these things. this nearness to each other, even if it be with one other human being, promotes greatly the development of reflection and self-awareness. persons who know intimacy are driven to put the important questions: who am i? why am i? what is to be my function in life? the kind of knowledge they seek is not of a subtle kind, commonly miscalled philosophical, which 234 an unt trary, j are fre cated. j lions, th i know 1 ilian by �ective, well, sin oilierhw knowing ne is ado anaitis � ln� to, a con� mo�tof � around u� fan the c lor prese mental f, ratner, a o�jects 0 in exlstel uirectly ilie odj icult �ives, i hay aresor ourselv to fuin ofma ades f such tate of nd the other ai�so pace is re ana d grow greater, hysical d from d miles etone t what than i� r, town, ,y, an� r sense �at a� idiatelr or the sell or �g�, i other 1�:: �atls �ek is �hicb the future 0/ ".ar an untutored man could not be expected to have. on the con­ trary, it is this knowledge that people of little formal learning are frequently pursuing more avidly than the falsely sophisti­ cated. because they are concerned with the important ques­ tions, they sometimes achieve the important gift of simplicity. i know of no better way to reach the familiar and the evident than by stripping away superfluities in our emotional, re­ flective, and social selves, and in our external environment as well. simplicity manifests itself in directness of approach to other human beings, in the absence of dissembling and guile. knowing himself, the simple man is conscious that the man he is addressing is, in essentials, not different from himself, and it is the human being in the other that he insists on speak­ ing to. a condition of this intimacy, all too rarely recognized by most of us, is a different attitude toward the objects of nature around us. a habit of intimacy with the things of nature can fan the creative sparks within us and strengthen the concern for preserving ourselves and others. it is not a misty senti­ mental feeling for nature writ large that we require; but, rather, a recognition of our dependence on the most humble objects of everyday use and of their importance and place in existence. until we learn to experience more simply and directly our gardens and trees, the skies above us, and all the objects amid which we move and work, we will find it difficult to achieve closeness to neighbors and even to our­ selves. i have become convinced that the familiar and the evident are so remote because we moderns have increasingly separated ourselves from nature by replacing a primary artistic response to things with a technological mentality. contrary to the will of many scientists, our science has become much too often an 235 the warriors instrument for the exploitation of things and people. we have become so preoccupied with power and control over nature that we have lost an important dimension of our being, the disposition of thankfulness, of commemoration, of perceiving and enjoying something for its own sake. instead of viewing these immediate objects of our environment in terms of their own being, we have come to regard them solely in terms of what they are for us. and to such an exploitative mentality, nature's voice becomes mute. approached as material merely, to be worked up and pressed into the service of a self-styled lord of creation, she contains no revelation and no blessing. to the man who is not interested in what a thing is in it­ self and for itself, no intimate relations are possible. nature can be infinitely abused by such a one, but by no means under­ stood. only the cherishing, object-centered eye of the artist latent in all of us can make and keep us aware that nature does not exist only for us, but in her own right as well. the artistic gaze alone can discern those qualities in nature that are able to heal our restlessness and overcome our boredom, by enhancing the value of the commonplace. art can recon­ cile us to our individual and collective fates as nothing else can, except perhaps religion. but art (i do not speak of the fine arts) has declined in our society as the narrow utilitarian ideal has grown, and the results are lamentable. the effect on our religious traditions of this appropriative, ego-centered disposition of mind has been hardly less disas­ trous. religion, like art, points to something greater and more worthy than the self and impels us to pay it homage. religion relates man to his origins, aiding him thus in the search for a reason for existence. modern man finds it hard indeed to discover anything in the universe worthy of worship. more often than not he conceives himself to be at the top of an un236 ordert what 1 strated endura mort �roper �omeodi universl indepen in mode on ilie n out poss and the) ofreligil tenaing nature al �omage this rransfe totalwa tions, l' tinction �rohibi each 0 world trampll uets of memo upon ann vlewin� of theu terms 01 entalilj, imerel1, u.srylea .e arti�1 i nalure ell. the urelnat oreaom, recon· lnge� of ide iili!arian eea 10 more the future of war ordered creation, able to survey the whole and to do with it what he will. but few are ready to worship him; he has demon­ strated often enough that he is lacking in divine serenity and endurance. moreover, he himself knows full well that he can be no proper god, for he is filled with a longing for something or someone to whom to belong. in the face of an overpowering universe, he realizes, consciously or not, that his freedom and independence are relative and puny. what is missing so often in modem men is a basic piety, the recognition of dependence on the natural realm. and they feel the need of this piety with­ out possessing it. there is no dearth of religions in our time, and they fulfill certain needs, but there is a general absence of religious passion for belonging to an order infinitely trans­ cending the human. separated from close association with nature and intimacy with her ways, we find it difficult to do homage to nature's god. this separation of man from nature as a consequence of our too-exclusive interest in power is in part responsible for the total wars of our century. more than we ever realize, we have transferred our exploitative attitudes from nature to man. in total war, men become so much material, and civilian popula­ tions, like soldiers, have to be ravaged and subdued. dis­ tinctions between innocent and guilty, the permissible and the prohibited, become extinguished. men and machines approach each other more nearly. the most painful impressions of world war ii for me, as i have said, were the ruthless trampling down of the works of nature and the innocent prod.. ucts of human art. try as i might, i cannot but recoil, even in memory, from the destructive fury of a modern army directed upon the things of nature and her creatures, all untainted by any partisanship. the butchering of each other was almost 237 the warriors easier to endure than the violation of animals, crops, farms, homes, bridges, and all the other things that bind man to his natural environment and help to provide him with a spiritual home. since that war, there has been no convincing evidence of change in this exploitative mentality. the fashioning of the atom bomb seems to me too dangerously typical of the modem mind, and the recent experiments with the hydrogen bomb an unrecognized blasphemy. hardly anyone considers it pos­ sible that the poisoning of fish in the ocean by these experi­ ments might be worthy of condemnation. man can sin only against man, it seems, or possibly against god, not against nature. that the ocean should be violated, a region hitherto relatively immune from destructive lusts, seems to most, ap­ parently, nothing else than a triumph of natural science. in the desperate state of human relations in our day, one can understand the argument for testing weapons in order to keep national defenses strong. but i am objecting to the spirit in which it is done, involving, as it does, indifference to all that is not of human origin or use. this lack of concern stands, i believe, as a great barrier to the elimination of war. before expecting man to spare his brother, we must persuade him to spare those things around him that contribute to his life as greatly as his brothers do. the growth of that preservative love and care which is in strongest opposition to destructive lusts involves an intimacy with things of which too many of us have as yet hardly an inkling. the gift of nearness to the familiar and evident is happi­ ness. whatever else is true, we in the west will not learn to break the sword until we have happier populations. if there are any laws of psychology in this area at all, one must be that a happy people is a peaceful people. the capacity for 238 happi tenad( itshrij our he robs us unfulfi1 many � intimae[ nearly i nature i nil the majoritj means fl wnether marriage tlon�, more �oltom t acclaen ah warca nat hom bat i' farms, to h� spiritual aence 01 g of ilie most) a� nee. oay, one oroerlo the spiril ce to � stanru, . before e him 10 lifes! � happi. ream 10 f there ust be y for the future 0/ war happiness which most of us possess receives too rarely the sus­ tenance it needs to become more than a capacity; more often it shrinks as we grow older. the longing for a paradise, which our hearts believe to be possible but which we cannot find, robs us of serenity; the large expectations of our youth remain unfulfilled. though the components of happiness are no doubt many and not the same for all, emotional and intellectual intimacy with others is surely the one component essential to nearly all of us. for the few, association with the things of nature can of itself produce a happiness that suffices to ful­ fill the more solitary members of our species. but, for the majority, nearness to the things of daily existence can be a means for entering into closeness with other human beings, whether it be the comradeship of labor, the partnership of marriage, the friendship of kindred minds, or other associa­ tions. more than anything else, happiness can provide a secure bottom to the world, sufficient to persuade us that we are no accidents on this planet. happiness alone can transform the dull and colorless daily scene into an order pregnant with meaning and delight. when a person finds a friend to whom he can open his heart, when a woman finds a man she can love and to whom she can bear children, when any of us find a community we can love and serve, our little lives take on a significance we had not dreamed of. far from being the restless ones who welcome war as a possible path to forbidden experi.. ence, we experience the threat of war as completely intoler­ able. those who have a stake in peace realize too well that war can occasion the loss of all. nations containing genuinely happy citizens would shrink from exposing their great fortunes to the cruel chances of com­ bat far more than wealthy nations now shun war from fear 239 the warriors of loss. more than this, a nation with happy citizens would encounter greater difficulty in maintaining a hostile disposi­ tion in themselves or others, since happiness always presses toward universality. the people who one day break with their military past and declare that they no longer can endure to he hated and feared will not only be a happy people; their deed will be largely a result of their happiness. having experienced closeness to each other, they will be eager to extend the ex­ perience to others. and for this they may be willing to take the greatest risks, more trustful and of larger faith than we. i have often meditated on my chance meeting with the old hermit in italy, and have tried to puzzle out why he impressed me so much. perhaps it was not only his ignorance of the war and my inability to explain why we were fighting, but also certain qualities i sensed in him which were in starkest con­ trast with my own state. what these qualities were it is still not easy for me to name exactly. born on a farm and brought up with country people, as i have been, i am wary of senti­ mentalizing the old man of the mountain. i have no doubt he possessed the ordinary human quota of meanness, dishonesty, and avarice. he and his hermit kind can obviously do little for the peace of the world now or in any conceivable future. but there was about him a rare peaceableness and sanity that i have slowly come to associate with a better, peaceful world. though he had probably never seen an american in his life, he welcomed me beside him on the grass, and i have never felt less like an intruder in my life. despite the handicap of language, we began to talk at once of important things as naturally as if we knew one another well. there was no strangeness about our meeting, our talk, or our parting, though 240 the e me. iii things ments if he h �fted patient �ess i nad chi ofwisd nappilj world, inough1 ana ini mlh a� !uange unaerst irul1ul ilie h i tmelio, pos� not to tion t� �tars � orin men i thlng! fort aha' reign f� wocld lsposi. rieneea the ex. to take we, steod' �still rougnt f senti· ruht ne ionestr, ittlefor re, but tnat i worh in ills f have rdicap rgs as is do lough the future 0/ war the experience as a whole was the strangest one of the war for me. i felt in him the strength of his close association with the things of nature. the serenity in his eyes, voice, and move­ ments was not the dullness of the lout or vacant-minded. even if he had lived through none of the storms more sensitive and gifted people experience, he seemed to possess a constancy, patience, and endurance not often known to them. i could not guess and did not ask what his history had been and why he had chosen this life, but it was clear that he had gained a kind of wisdom from solitude which enabled him to live simply and happily. in fact, he appeared to be singularly at home in the world, as though he had sprung from nature herself and thought of himself as her authentic child. harmless and wise and innocent, he dwelt here in the mountains, ready to chat with all who chanced by and to ask them anew about those strange and infernal noises in the valley which he would never understand. when a large number of people become, like him, truly unable to understand why nations war with one another, the human species will no longer be in mortal danger of ex­ tinction. possibly his gentleness and simplicity had taught him, too, not to exaggerate the significance of the human story in rela­ tion to the rest of nature's household. at least watching the stars at night, as soldiers often have to do on lonely guard duty or in their foxholes, can rob one of the arrogance that makes men believe their history is the beginning and end of the things that are. after my visit with the old man, i drew com­ fort from the words of plato: "think you . . . that the little affairs of men here below are of great interest to the god who reigns over all." far from making a man sad and defeatist, this perspective 241 the warriors can instil a kind of serenity. the larger purposes of the uni­ verse, though far transcending our weak powers of compre­ hension, may, after all, not be dependent on the history of man. if we are not the chief end of creation, as assuredly we are not, the whole in which we are included as a small sum may have meaning and purpose. though man's wars may be too small from a cosmic vista for any pattern to be descried, they may, nevertheless, be purposeful enough if one could see events with less myopic vision than we possess. in any case, it is time that we human beings abandoned the overweening faith that only through us can the objectives of creation be realized. that faith needs to be replaced by the confidence that, even if we vanish from the earth sooner or later as a consequence of our failures, that, too, will be within the com­ pass of a being incomparably greater and more enduring than the race of man. about this last there is for me an impenetrable mystery, as there is about the nature of man himself. war reveals dimen­ sions of human nature both above and below the acceptable standards for humanity. in the end, any study of war must strive to deal with gods and devils in the form of man. it is recorded in the holy scriptures that there was once war in heaven, and the nether regions are still supposed to be the scene of incessant strife. interpreted symbolically, this must mean that the final secrets of why men fight must be sought beyond the human, in the nature of being itself. 242 unit mpre. ry of iy we iii sum ay de �scriea, luid see iy case, eenin� ion de ilidence erasa e com· g tnan lery, as dimen· leptadle irmust p. it is war in be tne � must sougnt \lllllmmmmmllll�� 3 0000 141 488 951 the_face_of_war c) i the trouble i've seen a stricken field the heart of another liana the wine of astonishment the honeyed peace two by two other bood by martha gellhorn: dv martita (jellltorjl the face of war simon and schuster · new york all rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form copyright © 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941,1942,1943,1944, 1945,1959 by martha gellhorn published by simon and schuster, inc. rockefeller center, 630 fifth avenue new york 20, n. y. first printing the photographs used on the endpapers are reproduced through the courtesy of the imperial war museum, radio times, hulton picture library, and keystone press. i n library of congress catalog card number: 59-7262 manufactured in the united states of america by american book-strk ord press, inc. �, i _ �\ -", " �---�. .... _ucea aoio 44, to my son sandy rica introduction 1 the war in spain: 9 the besieged city 14 the third winter 26 the war in finland: 43 slow boat to war 45 bombs on helsinki 56 the karelian front 63 the war in china: 73 how to get to china 78 the canton front 91 contents the second world war: 107 the bomber boys 110 the price of fire 117 visit italy 125 d-plus-one: the prisoners 134 the first hospital ship 141 the carpathian lancers 156 the gothic line 166 paris revisited 176 a little dutch town 185 the battle of the bulge 193 the black widow 202 das deutsches volk 213 the russians 224 dachau 234 conclusion 243 the face of war 110 202 when i was young i believed in the perfectibility of man, and in progress, and thought of journalism as a guiding light. , if people were told the truth, if dishonor and injustice were clearly shown to them, they would at once demand the saving action, punishment of wrong-doers, and care for the innocent. how people were to accomplish these reforms, i did not know. that was their job. a journalist's job was to bring news, to be eyes for their con­ science. i think i must have imagined public opinion as a solid force, something like a tornado, always ready to blow on the side of the angels. during the years of my energetic hope, i blamed the leaders when history regularly went wrong, when cruelty and violence were tolerated or abetted, and the innocent never got anything except the dirty end of the stick. the leaders were a vague inter­ locking directorate of politicians, industrialists, newspaper owners, financiers: unseen, cold, ambitious men. "people" were good, by definition; if they failed to behave well, that was because of igno.. ranee or helplessness. 1 the face of war it took nine years, and a great depression, and two wars ending in defeat, and one surrender without war, to break my faith in the benign power of the press. gradually came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth. as if the taste of lies was homey, appetlzin : a habit. (there were also liars in my trade, and lea ave a ways used facts as relative and malleable. the supply of lies was unlimited.) good eeoplez those who oqqosed evil �er­ ever they saw it, never increased beyond a gallant minority. the manipulated millions could be ar sed or soothed b an lies. the guiding lig t a journalism was no stronger than a low-worm. . onge to a e er , my colleagues the foreign correspondents, whom i met at every disaster. they had been reporting the rise of fascism, its horrors and its sure menace, for years. if anyone listened to them, no one acted on their warn­ ings. the doom they had long prophesied arrived on time, bit by bit, as scheduled. in the end we became solitary stretcher-bearers, trying to pull individuals free from the wreckage. if a life could be saved from the first of the gestapo in prague, or another from be­ hind the barbed wire on the sands at argeles, that was a comfort but it was hardly journalism. drag, scheming, bullying and dollars occasionally preserved one human being at a time. for all the good our articles did, they might have been written in invisible ink, printed on leaves, and loosed to the wind. after the war in finland, i thought of journalism as a passport. you needed proper papers and a job to get a ringside seat at the spectacle of history in the making. in the second world war, all i did was praise the good, brave ana enerous eo ie i saw, know­ ing t is to be a perfectl useless erformance. when occasion pre­ sen e, revi e t e devils whose mission was to deny the ignity of man; also useless. i took an absurd professional pride in getting £here i intended to go and in sending my copy to new york on time; but i could not fool myself that my war correspondent� work mattered a hoot. war is a malignant disease, an idiocy; a � 2 • -. .:��j_-_, ------� . --fromk the face of war prison'5n�_the e�in _..it ocaus� e ond telling_���; but (iwar was our condition and our histo the lace we had to live in .. --i was a speclafcype of war profiteer; i was physica ly lucky, and was paid to spend my time with magnificent people. after the victory in world war ii, i hung on in the climate of war for another year, since peace was uneasy and unconvincing. at last in java i saw the postwar new-style little war, and knew i never wanted to see any more of it again anywhere. probably that pa­ thetic murderous mess in the east indies was inevitable. the tall white men had been conquered and debased by short yellow men; why should anyone accept the white man as master again? the dutchmen of the indies returned, like skeletons and ghosts, from japanese prisons and from building the japanese death railway through the jungle; their sick, starved women and children emerged from years in japanese concentration camps on java; and immedi­ ately they were set upon by the natives they had tried to rule with care and decency. both the indonesians and the dutch needed time to heal from the war and find a just plan for their lives. there was no time. nothing anybody wrote was going to shorten this torment, nor save one victim, white or brown. d ;� oit. ,4 • journalism at its best and most effective is education. apparently people would not learn for themselves, nor from others. if the agony of the second world war did not teach them, whatever would? surely the postwar world is a mockery of hope and an insult to all those who died so that we should survive. as civilization seemed determined to grope its way toward' sui­ cide, the sane occupation for a private citizen, while waiting, was to cultivate his own garden with a view to making it as clean and merry and pleasant as possible. i devised a life which seemed to me good because it was harmless, behind high garden wails. now i have different ideas. i must always, before, have expected results. there was an obtainable end, called victory or defeat. one 3 the face of war could hope for victory, despair over defeat. at this stage in my life, i think that i think this is nonsense. until the invention of the a-bomb, the h-bornb, the cobalt bomb, or whatever next, we could reasonably consider human history to be a giant interminable roller coaster, going up and down. the ceaseless but temporary riders on the roller coaster changed their clothes, carried new luggage, talked in varying jar­ golls, yet remained men, women and children, constant in their humanity. the unique possession anyone on the roller coaster had, as far as i could see, was his own behavior while making the mysterious journey . for his own behavior each one is responsible, but no behavior is final. it shapes human destiny-any behavior, all behavior-but it makes no last decision. 'yictory and defeat are both passing moments. there are . hare onl m ns. ourna ism is a means; and i now think that the act of keeping the record straight is valuable in itself. serious, careful, honest journalism is essential. not because it is a guiding light but because it is a for ...of..jlouot(jble behavior: involvin� the reporter and the ---reader._ i am no longer a journalist; like all oth.e.t._p.riyate citizens, the onl �cord i bave to keep straight is my own. despite official drivel about clean bombs and tactical nuclear weapons, anyone who can read a newspaper or listen to a radio knows that some of us mortals have the power to destroy the hu­ man race and man's home on earth. we need not even make war; only by preparing, by playing with our new weapons, we poison the air, the water, the soil of our planet, damage the health of the living, and weaken the chances of the unborn. how can anyone, anywhere, discount the irreversible folly of testing our nuclear bombs, or the promise of extinction if we use them in war? the world's leaders seem strangely engaged in private feuds. they hurtle in airplanes on their olympian business; they meet 4 he or �u lea to n� �lo rio ilii an lo� feel '. <, ilj_i _ ..... _/ ----:;:.. ..__-. --" the face of war each other, always each other; or they deliberate in the various palaces of government; and they talk and talk, incessantly, for publication. their talk sounds as if they believed nuclear war to be a thing that can be won or lost, and probable; any minute now, without warning, we may find ourselves in it. (be calm. we will slay the enemy with our superspace, supersonic, triple-intercon� jar· tinental, x-ray-guided, anti-offensive-defensive missiles. do not fear. thel! we will burn the foe with our best smallest deadliest fission­ unfission-defission-profission bombs. meanwhile, my comrades, my people, fellow citizens, loyal subjects, your service is civil defense; dig a little blastproof hole in your back yard and wait for the apocalypse. ) the world's leaders a ar to have lost tollch with life down..... � -----' .. �.-h�. n� t e £round,1. to hav�_!or otte� !..j:te h"!.��n ��i!1:g� .tl1�y l�ad. or perhaps the led-so numerous and so mute-have ceased to be quite real, not living people but calculated casualties. for w�re led and must follow whether we want to or not; there is no place to�e to. but we need not· follo� in silence; we·sti aveine �rig1ir an uty,a"s private �itizens, to keep our own recor s straig rt., -:as rr e rru ions 0 t ele, wi not e eraed any farther salong this imbecile road to nothingness without raising my voice inprotest. my no will be as effective as one cricket chirp. my no is . nuclear this book. a radio the hu· �e\va!; it is hard not to sound like a harangue, not to boom or squeak. �i)on and very hard (for me, certainly) to make one-two-three sense, of the logical paragraph piled on logical paragraph. i see mysteries and an�one, complications wherever i look, and i have never met a steadily nuclear logical person. still one can sometimes say what one means, with immense effort. feuo), no one need point out my contradictions; i know them and y meet feel them. i thought that 1939 was at least three years too late to 5 ---. __. �_____jl i / 1 �" ... ""' ... �.a.)j ..... i''''""",,_, ... �.._\�.��",,,u ... l·t"" •• i ; ...... ip\t � _ • .. -� .. p" ,. -.---,..._ / the face of war start fighting hitler and all his cohorts and everything they did and stood for. our victory spared us temporarily from unbearable �vil; it solved nothing. ar, w en it-h�i ��y.ptjrpose, is anopera­ tion which removes, at a specific time, a specific cauc.e the cancer reaere s in different sha s in different arts of the human race; we have learned no preventive medicine for the bod of the na­ � tions. we fall back, again and a_gain on nearl fatal sur er . but the human race has always.survived th operation.and.lived. i do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. i do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be re­ quired for universal peace; i only believe in the human race. i be­ lieve that the human race must continue. our leaders are not wise enough, nor brave enough, nor noble enough, for their jobs. we, the led, are largely either sheep or tigers; we are all guilty of stupidity, the ruling human sin. this being so, we can expect wars; we have never been free of them. i hate this fact and ac­ cept it. but nuclear war is unlike any other kind of war that has threat­ ened mankind, and cannot be thought of in the old known terms. nuclear war reaches a dimension unseen before in history. that dimension is towering, maniacal conceit. we hardly remember who fought the wars of the roses or why, yet those wars lasted for thirty years and must have been a deep dark night for the combatants and civilians trapped in them. still, we are here: the natural world remained healthy, nourishing and lovely; the race continued, uninfected in its bones, its blood, its minds. from the earliest wars of men to our last heart-breaking world-wide effort, all we could do was kill ourselves. now we are able to kill the future. and we are so arrogant that we dare to pre­ pare for this, insane pygmies menacing the very existence of nature. five hundred years from now our east-west quarrel will seem as meaningless as the wars of the roses. who are we that we presume to end anything? 6 i. � , �, __-:�..._.j� . _ _ __ did able pera· � ilireat· 'n tennl. �', that orwnr, n a aee� em, �till, hin� ano blooo, i� ·breakin� iv weare re to �re' � tence 01 arre!will we that the face of war at this point i hear loud and angry voices, as passionate as mine, saying: survival is not all. if men will not fight against tyrants and slavery, life is worthless and civilization should perish. et cetera. i cannot understand this argument, although i have tried. i do not see how the human spirit, housed in the human body, will be able to cherish freedom, revere the rights of others, and practice its highest talent, love, when the earth is sterile from man-made poisons, the air tainted, and the race sick and dying. i , do not see what human values can be defended when an humanity is lost, the good and the evil together. if we make or allow war, we deserve it; but we must limit our weapons and our locales, and keep our crime under control. we will have to satisfy the madness that is in human nature with small non-nuclear wars of a type we are getting more and more used to. it is in o�ancient tradition .!o �urd"�r_ e�£lt 9th�r;_but only we, 'in the resent, should a the j2rice for our abominable stupidity:nothing that ��ns ns, i.n-� sie moment *of his­ tory, gives ur� th� r�ghlto sto tim ii to blot ont.the future., to end -.ath� continuin �iracles and !2!ies and tragedies and wretchedness of the human race. ,------this book is a selection from the reporting i did on wars in prog­ ress and wars about to be, during eight years in twelve countries. the people in these articles are ordinary people, anyone; what happened to them happened to uncounted others. the pictures are small but there are many, and it seems to me that they merge finally into one crowded appalling picture. there is a single plot in war; action is based on hunger, home­ lessness, fear, pain and death. starving wounded children, in barcelona in 1938 and in nijmegen in 1944, were the same. refu­ gees, dragging themselves and whatever they could carry away from war to no safety, were one people all over the globe. the 7 the face of war shapeless bundle of a dead american soldier in the snow of luxem­ bourg was like any other soldier's corpse in any other country. war is a horrible repetition. i wrote very fast, as i had to; and i was always afraid that i would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures which were special to this moment and this place. i hope i learned to write a bit better as the years passed. the point of these articles is that they are true; they tell what i saw. perhaps they will remind others, as they remind me, of the face of war. we can hardly be reminded too much or too often. i believe that memory and imagination, not nuclear weapons, are the great deterrents. m.g. '. � -'z __ :�..__�__ . _ _ __ -�9 em· war that i were write i� that otherl, mineee 'on, not the war in spain ,g, in the summer of 1936, i was checking background material for a novel, in the weltkriegsbibliothek of stuttgart. the nazi newspapers began to speak of fighting in spain. they did not talk of war; the impression i got was of a bloodthirsty rabble, attacking the forces of decency and order. this spanish rabble, which was the duly elected republic at spain, was always referred to as "red swine-dogs." the nazi papers had one solid value: whatever they were against, you could be for. shortly before i was twenty-one i had gone to france to work and there became one of a group of young french pacifists. we had in common our poverty and our passion. our aim in life was to kick out the evil old, who were clearly leading us into another war. we believed that there could be no peace in europe without franco-german rapprochement. we had the right idea, but the nazis arrived. in 1934 we met the young nazis in berlin. at the frontier, ger­ man police had come through the train, paused in our third-class carriage, and confiscated our newspapers. although we represented -:-::::_�-. =: =:': :_.� ��' ',' .,. . '* �---jl __1._ / the face of war no one except ourselves, we read and disagreed on all opinions, ranging from monarchist to socialist to liberal-reformer (me). we united, for once, in thinking this newspaper seizure an out­ rage. when we got off the train, in our usual shabby argumenta­ tive huddle, we were greeted by the young nazis in clean blond khaki-clad formation. they proved to have one parrot brain among the lot and we did not care for them. we tried very hard to excuse them; we tried to agree that they were socialists, as they kept assur­ ing us, not nationai socialists. being sorry for the defeated ger­ mans was a condition of mind of many people, after both world wars; i had it then. also, i was a pacifist and it interfered with my principles to use my eyes. by 1936, no amount of clinging to principles helped me; i saw what these bullying nazi louts were like and were up to. but there i was, working with miserable determination on a novel about young pacifists in france. i stayed some months in germany discussing, with anyone who still dared to discuss, the freedom of the mind, the rights of the individual, and the red swine-dogs of spain. then i went back to america, finished my novel, shoved it forever into a desk drawer, and started to get my­ self to spain. i had stopped being a pacifist and become an anti­ fascist. by the winter of 1937, the western democracies had proclaimed the doctrine of non-intervention, which meant simply that neither people nor supplies could pass freely to the republican territory of spain. i went to the french authorities in paris to get whatever stamps or papers were required to leave the country. the french fonctionnaire, as all know who have dealt wi th him, is a certified brute. he sits, unlistening, behind a grille, scratching away with a sharp governmental pen and pal1id ink. i cannot have come out well with this type, as i only remember studying a map, taking a train, getting off at a station nearest to the andorran-spanish border, walking a short distance from one country to another, and ilons, (me). rr out· menta· i hlono amon� worm 'iln mr �in� 10 roclaim�d at neiln�r terriloryol t wnatev�r ne fr�n�n a certill�d "�r witn � come out p, labn� � rr-spanilfl other, and the war in spain taking a second train-ancient cold little carriages, full of the sol­ diers of the spanish republic who were returning to barcelona on leave. they hardly looked like soldiers, being dressed however they were able, and obviously this was an army in which you fed your­ self, since the government could not attend to that. i was in a wooden carriage with six boys who were eating garlic sausage and bread made of powdered stone. they altered me their food, they laughed, they sang. whenever the train stopped, another young man, perhaps their officer, stuck his head in the carriage and ex4 horted them. i gathered that he was exhorting them to behave beautifully. they did behave beautifully, but i do not know what they said, as i spoke no spanish. barcelona was bright with sun and gay with red banners, and the taxi driver refused money; apparently everything was free. ap4 parently everyone was everyone else's brother too. since few people have lived in such an atmosphere, even for a minute, i can report that it is the loveliest atmosphere going. i was handed around like a package, with jollity and kindness; i rode on trucks and in jammed cars. and finally, by way of valencia, we came at night to madrid, which was cold, enormous and pitch-black, and the streets were silent and perilous with shell holes. that was on march 30, 1937, a date i have found somewhere in notes. i had not felt as if i were at a war until now, but now i knew i was. it was a feeling i cannot describe; a whole city was a battlefield, waiting in the dark. there was certainly fear in that feeling, and courage. it made you walk carefully and listen hard and it lifted the heart. in new york a friendly and spirited man, then an editor of collier's, had given me a letter. the letter said, to whom it might concern, that the bearer, martha gellhorn, was a special corre­ spondent for collier's in spain. this letter was intended to llelp me with any authorities who wondered what i was doing in spain., or why i was trying to get there; otherwise it meant nothing. i had 11 a . -. \ � i --, �-�:=::-==� the face of war no connection with a newspaper or magazine, and i believed that ali one did about a war was go to it, as a gesture of solidarity, and get killed, or survive if lucky until the war was over. that was what happened in the trenches of france, as i had read; everyone was dead or wounded badly enough to be sent away. i had no idea you could be what i became, an unscathed tourist of wars. a knap­ sack and approximately fifty dollars were my equipment for spain; anything more seemed unnecessary. i tagged along behind the war correspondents, experienced men who had serious work to do. since the authorities gave them transport and military passes (transport was far harder to come by than permission to see everything; it was an open, intimate war) i went with them to the fronts in and around madrid. stiii i did nothing except learn a little spanish and a little about war, and visit the wounded, trying to amuse or distract them. it was a poor eliort and one day, weeks after i had come to madrid, a journalist friend observed that i ought to write; it was the only way i could serve the causa, as the spaniards solemnly and we lovingly caiied the war in the spanish republic. after all, i was a writer, was i not? but how could i write about war, what did i know, and for whom would i write? what made a story, to begin with? didn't something gigantic and conclusive have to happen before one could write an article? my journalist friend suggested that i write about madrid. why would that interest anyone? i asked. it was daily life. he pointed out that it was not everybody's daily life. i mailed my first madrid article to collier's, not expecting them to publish it; but i did have that letter, so i knew collier's address. collier's accepted the piece and after my next article put my name on the masthead. i learned this by accident. once on the masthead, i was evidently a war correspondent. it began like that. this is the place to express my gratitude to a vanished magazine and to charles colebaugh, the editor who then ran it. thanks to collier's, i had the chance to see the life of my time, which was 12 d that 'dailry, at wa� veryone no idea ,akna� or �r�n; ced men comedj mate war) �till i ala twar,ana \\d� a roor a journalilt .�' lcouln 'n�lr callen writer, w� d\i',anaior itn? dian't �ioreone lnat 1 \�lte ked, it wal 'ivlile, �tin�tnem 'er'� aaarell, ut my name e m;�tneaa, d ma�azine thanbto which wa! the war in spain war. they never cut or altered anything i wrote. they did, how­ ever, invent their own titles for most of my articles. i did not like their titles and am not using them here, but they were a trifling price to pay for the freedom collier's gave me; for eight years, i could go where i wanted, when i wanted, and write what i saw. what was new and prophetic about the war in spain was the life of the civilians, who stayed at home and had war brought to them. so i have selected only two reports on this twentieth­ century war in the city. the people of the republic of spain were the first to suffer the relentless totality of modern war. i have praised the causa of the republic of spain on the slight­ est provocation for twenty years, and i am tired of explaining that the spanisl1 republic was neither a collection of blood-slathering reds nor a eat's-paw of russia. long ago i also gave up repeating that the men who fought and those who died for the republic, whatever their nationality and whether they were communists, an­ archists, socialists, poets, plumbers, middle-class professional men, or the one abyssinian prince, were brave and disinterested, as there were no rewards in spain. they were fighting for us all, against the combined force of european fascism. they deserved our thanks and our respect and got neither. i felt then (and still do) that the western democracies had two commanding obligations: they must save their honor by assisting a young, attacked fellow democracy, and they must save their skin, by fighting hitler and mussolini, at once, in spain, instead of waiting unti1later, when the cost in human suffering would be un­ imaginably greater. arguments were useless during the spanish war and ever after; the carefully fostered prejudice against the republic of spain remains impervious to time and facts. all of us who believed in the causa of the republic will mourn the republic's defeat and the death of its defenders, forever, and will continue to love the land of spain and the beautiful people, who are among the noblest and unluckiest on earth. .. . � i v-�-::� ----.. ;'/1 i / -j-, •• -:--. ,il -.;_------=?� • __ • • .. 11' _ _ ,._., the besieged city november 1937 � at the end of the day the wind swooped down from the mountains into madrid and blew the broken glass from the win­ dows of the shelled houses. it rained steadily and the streets were mustard-colored with mud. it rained and people talked about the coming offensive, wondering when, when . . . someone said he knew that food and munitions were being moved; someone else said that carnpesino's outfit was in the south or in the north; vil­ lages (forty of them, in this direction, in that direction) had been evacuated; the transport unit was ready to go; have you heard? all front passes have been recalled, leaves are canceled. who told you, does he know? what, what did you say? so it went, and then the rain would start again. and everyone waited. waiting is a big part of war and it is hard to do. finally it was someone's birthday, or a national holiday (and still cold and nothing happening, only the rain and the rumors), so we decided to have a party. there were two of us who lived in this hotel in madrid and the third was a visiting friend, an american soldier from the abraham lincoln brigade. a machine-gun bullet had mberl�,i from tn� meone eh� e norili; �i· n) haa de�n u karol all �o tola �ou, no ilien tile � a bi� �art 3, (ana �bll ors), �o \v� in thi� hotel jean �oloier bullet haa the besieged city smashed his hip and he had come to the city on his first leave from the brigade hospital. we took the entire hoard of cans from the bottom bureau drawer-canned soup, canned sardines, canned spin­ ach, canned corned beef and two bottles of new red wine-and planned to eat ourselves warm and talk about something else, not the offensive. we would talk about movie stars and pretty places we had seen and have a proper party. it went perfectly until the coffee (one teaspoonful in a cup of hot water and stir). then the first shell plunged into the building next door, brought down a shower of glass on the inner hotel courtyard and rattled the type­ writer on the table. the boy with the splintered hip moved his heavy plaster-encased leg and said, "anybody seen my crutches?" he found his crutches and shifted to the place between the windows, and we opened the windows so that we could hear better and so that they wouldn't break, turned off the lights and waited. we knew this well: the whirling scream of the shells as they came, the huge round roar as they hit, guessing where they went, where they came from, timing them with a stop watch, counting, betting on the size of the shells. the boy was sad. he was used to war at the front where you could do something about it, not to this helpless war in the city; but he would never go to any front again, as his leg would always be too short, and you can't be an infantry­ man with a cane. there was smoke in the room and the hotel had been hit several times, so we took our wine glasses next door, on the agreeable and traditional theory that if a shell came in the front room it would not bother to come as far as the back room, passing through the bathroom on its way. we counted six hundred shells and got tired of it, and an hour later it was all over. we said to one another, "well, that was a nice little shelling." then we said, "maybe that means the offensive will start." on the strength of this, we ate up the last bar of chocolate and called it a night. " � \ . :. � _ -_ ��----:-. -' ,�------.j! j / .1 __ ._ ._ .• '.<_ ._�:_ �_ • , =-----,. _ the war in spain the next day it rained again, and madrid picked itself up as it had done before. streetcars clanked slowly through the streets, collecting the fallen bricks, the broken glass, the odd bits of wood and furni­ ture. people stopped on their way to work, looking at the new shell holes. the front of the hotel gaped a little more. the elevator man, who worked in bronze for his pleasure, hunted for unexploded shells in the rooms, to make lamps from them. his friend, the night con­ cierge, painted warlike scenes on parchment for the lamp shades, and they were both busy all the time. the maid said, "come and see the room you used to have," and we went merrily in to where nothing remained except the dressing table, with the mirror un­ cracked, and i found the nosecap of the shell in the broken wood of the bureau. on the fourth floor, lying against the staircase railing, was a long heavy shell that had not exploded. it had only ripped out half a wall and chopped up the furniture of room 409, pulled down the door, and come to rest there in the hall, where everyone ad­ mired it because it had a new shape. some friends telephoned and remarked, "ah, so you aren't dead." it was just like before. like the last time and the time before that and all the other times. everybody wondered why the fascists shelled last night and not some other night; does it mean anything? what do you think? in madrid there is not only first-aid service for wounded people, but there is also a first-aid service for wounded houses. the men who manage this are architects and engineers and bricklayers and elec­ tricians, and some workers are employed only to dig bodies from the collapsed houses. this staff is always active because when they are not propping up, repairing, plugging holes and cleaning off debris, they make plans for a beautiful new city, which they will build in place of what has been destroyed, when the war is over. so that morning in the rain, i went about with them to see what had happened during the night and what could be done. in the best residential section, at one street corner, police were telling the people not to crowd and to move on. a shell had burst 16 thr� bal top up, rap! news ing, the d iliere, matt we nalftl �uiet 0 \va� ie rurectl mlkin� wa� 0 tile n the besieged city r,ad through the top floor of a fine new apartment house, blown the iron im� balcony railing onto the roof of a house across the way, and now the ini· top floor stood without support, ready to fall into the street. farther �el1 up, a water main had been cracked by a shell and the street was an, rapidly flooding. one of the architects had with him, wrapped in a he1h newspaper, his day's ration of bread. he was very careful all morncan· ing, climbing through ruins, jumping flooded gutters, not to drop aq�, the bread; he had to take it home-there were two small children ana there, and come death and destruction and anything else, the bread here mattered. we climbed to the top floor, moving gently into a room where half the floor hung in space. we shook hands with all the friends and visitors who had come to see also. two women lived here, an au! old woman and her daughter. they had been in the back of the apartment when the front of it blew out. they were picking up what they could save: a cup that had no saucer left, a sofa pillow, two pictures with the glass broken. they were chatty and glad to be alive and they said everything was quite all right-look, the whole back of the apartment could still be lived in, three rooms, not as eo!ncr bright or as nice as the rooms that had been destroyed, but still they were not without a home. if only the front part didn't fall into the ��\�, street and hurt someone. enwuo a mud road, behind the bull ring on the other side of madrid, o e\�' led into a square where there was a trough for the women of that place to wash clothes. there were ten little houses, huddled to· gether, with cloth tacked over the windows and newspaper stuck in the walls to keep the wind out. women with quiet, pale faces and quiet children stood by the trough and looked at one house, or what was left of it. the men stood a little nearer. a shell had landed directly on one flimsy shack, where five people were keeping warm, talking with one another for comfort and for gaiety, and now there ce wer� was only a mound of clay and kindling wood, and they had dug out d dur�! the five dead bodies as soon as it was light. the people standing 17 -;-0,:-:_ " _ jj " '�-j.!__l _ / -=:"".""'"----------_� _;." .::.. ... ---the war in spain there knew the dead. a woman reached down suddenly for her child and took it in her arms, and held it close to her. disaster had swung like a compass needle, aimlessly, all over the city. near the station, the architect asked a concierge if everyone was all right in her house. four shells had come that way. yes, she said, do you want to see it? upstairs the family, including the hus­ band's sister and mother, and the wife's niece, and her baby, were standing in their living room, getting used to what had happened. the front wall was gone. the china was broken, and the chairs. the wife said to me, "what a shame for the sewing machine; it will never work again." the husband picked a thin, dead canary off the sideboard, showed it to me sadly, shrugged and said nothing. i asked where they would live now. (the wind coming in, looking down five flights into the street, the broken furniture and all of them crowded into one room and the kitchen. it is bad enough to be cold, never to eat enough, to wait for the sound of the shells, but at least one must have four walls, at least four solid walls, to keep the rain out.) the woman was surprised. "but we will live here," she said. "where else shall we go? this is our home, we have always lived here." the architect said to me, miserably, "no, i cannot patch up the walls; we must save the wood for essentials. the walls are not going to fall out; there is no danger from them." "but the cold," i said. "ah, the cold," he said. "what can we do?" he said to them, good luck, and they said to him, thank you, we are all right, and then we walked silently down the steep, unlighted stairs. it was night now. streetcars, with people sticking like ivy on the steps and bumpers, burned muffled blue lights. people hurried, with their heads down against the rain, through the dark streets to their homes, where they would cook whatever they had and try to keep 18 wa wal craw ad �ne t laia, look wnat mae, notu expla praoa �tana an wner, wool eacn, or �lyj tner o�en every an oloc wrne u� tn� ot �oin� the besieged city warm and wait for tomorrow and be surprised at nothing. a man walked along by himself, singing. two children sat on a doorstep having a long, serious conversation. a shop window showed a bar­ gain in silk stockings. we were tired, but there was a house near here that the architect had to see. a man brought a candle and we found our way up the stairs. it was hardly worth while going inside the apartment. there was nothing left at all, nothing to save; the walls were gored, and the ceiling and the floor. what had been a place to live was now a collection of old rags and paper, pieces of plaster and broken wood, twisted wires and slivers of glass. the man held the candle above his head so that we could see, and the shadows crawled over chaos. an old woman had been standing by the door. she came in now. she took my arm and pulled at me to come closer to hear her. she said, very softly, as if she were telling me a secret, "look at that, look at that, do you see, that is my home, that's where i live, there, what you see there." she looked at me as if i should deny it, with wide, puzzled, frightened eyes. i did not know what to say. "1 can­ not understand," she said slowly, hoping i would understand and explain; after all i was a foreigner, i was younger than she, i had probably been to school, surely i could explain. "i do not under­ stand," she said. "you see, it is my home." and all the time it was cold. madrid flowed with rain, rain every­ where; oh, the cold and, oh, the wet feet, and the thick smell of wet wool overcoats. and we waited for the offensive. the rumors grew each day; they rushed and swayed over the town. people looked wise or sly or happy or worried or anything, and you wondered, what do they know about the offensive? we knew it was to be an important offensive; everyone had confidence in its success whenever it came; everyone was waiting. but there was nothing to do. and so, to fill the days, we went visiting at the nearest fronts (ten blocks from the hotel, fifteen blocks, a good brisk walk in the rain, something to circulate your blood) . there were always funny people het : the ,one i, �be � bm· were nea, bain, cbln� boaro, ookin� allo! bto� , but�t ee� tile onilie 'eo, wito toilielr to kee� --.hi _" .". the war in spain in the trenches, new faces, always something to talk about. so we strolled to university city and usera, to the parque del oeste, to those trenches that are a part of the city and that we knew so well. no matter how often you do it, it is surprising just to walk to war, easily, from your own bedroom where you have been reading a detective story or a life of byron, or listening to the phonograph, or chatting with your friends. it was as usual cold, and that day we walked through all the trenches in that particular park. in these trenches, in this once fine madrid park, the mud was like chewing gum. we admired the dug­ outs smelling of fresh wood and of wood smoke from the little stoves, the bright blankets over the machine guns, the pictures of movie stars on the walls, the curious serenity-and, after all, there was no news in it. but on the other hand, it was different at night. every night, clearly, you could hear from the hotel the machine guns hammering, and the echoing thud of mortars, and what was normal in the daytime became a strange business at night. so the next evening, when the sky turned blue-purple, we pre­ sented ourselves at staff headquarters, in a bombed apartment house. it was a homelike spot: there were three women, the wives of officers, shrill as birds. a five-months-old baby slept on the plush sofa and his mother told us all about him breathlessly, with astonish­ ment, as women will. the major was tired but very courteous. the staff cook wandered in, laughing like ophelia and a little mad, and asked when they wanted dinner. the soldier who would be our guide was at a dance given by another battalion. they had been making war here for over a year; it was right in the city and the dance was within ten minutes' walk, and a man wants a change now and again. presently he came, a boy with fantastic eyelashes and an easy laugh, and we walked a block, went down some slippery steps and were in the trenches. the flashlight was fading, and the mud pulled at our shoes, and we had to walk bent over to avoid hitting the low beams that held 20 up aga had a areti, �i� waro �u "kit[ �uiae well ther "he lveo idu�i !neti at cree \�ili our oo!n quck� aido dati &ra ffiacnln� what wal the besieged city up the trench, and it was very cold. in the third line we leaned against the mud walls and looked at the thin, stripped trees of what had once been a city park, and listened. we had come to hear the loud-speakers. at night, one side or the other presents the soldiers in those trenches with a program of propaganda and music. the loud-speakers were hidden near the front line, and you could hear everything, as you can hear a telephone conversation. tonight the enemy was speaking. a careful, pompous radio voice began: "the chief of spain, the only chief, is willing to give his blood for you. . . . franco, franco . . ." another soldier had come up and he and our guide lighted cig­ arettes, and our guide, who was anxious for us to en joy ourselves, said, "this talking part is very tiresome, but it won't last long; after­ ward comes music." suddenly, blaring across that narrow no man's land, we heard "kitten on the keys," played seven times too fast. "ah," said our guide, "that is very pretty, that is american music." then the smooth, careful voice came back : "your leaders live well in the rear guard while you are given guns to go out and die." there was a burst of irritated machine-gun fire after this remark. "he is too stupid," the soldier guide said, with disgust. "usually we do not listen to him. why doesn't he stop talking and play the music? the music is very nice. we all enjoy the music. it helps pass the time." at this point the music started: valencia, deedle-deedle-deedle­ dee ... it went on for about an hour. we were moving forward with some difficulty because the flashlight had worn out, feeling our way through covered trenches with our hands out, touching both walls, bending beneath the beams of tunnels, slipping on the duckboards when there were any, or stumbling in mud. at one point a mortar exploded, flashing through the trees, and the machine guns clattered an answer. the radio voice said, "viva franco! arriba espana!"; and we could hear, from up ahead in the first line, the all tb� e, we �[(. entnorn�, �1v5 �l the �\ui� alton�� eoul,th1 emaa,an� ula ��� jhaa� 'cyanailit chan�en� hes anaa� 'ppery �t� sh�,ad� s that he\ij 21 -_ ._. _ .lli .,;_-____j.� / t ._ _... .. --,. � -�-;;;;;..-.....-... the war in spain jeers of the government troops. then we heard the voice but not the words of a soldier who was answering that remote radio orator. the guide explained, "the fight will now start. now it is mainly a joke, but that loud-speaker used to make us angry. we have heard it so much, and we know it is so silly, and sometimes it announces a great victory right here where we have been all day and seen nothing, and we do not pay attention to it. but it is the custom to answer back." very thin and high, through the trees, we could still hear the soldier's voice, shouting. "he says," the guide said, after listening, "that it is useless to talk to them in spanish because they are all moors over there." we waited but could not make out any other words. the guide went on: "one of our boys usually tells them they are liars and are destroying spain, and they tell him he is a murderous red, and later they will get angry and throw mortars at one another. their loud­ speaker is a waste of time, but the music is agreeable." "you seem very much at home here," i said, because suddenly it struck me that we were as casual as people at an outdoor concert in any peacetime city in the summer. (the stadium in new york with all the stars, that place in a park in st. louis, with the two great trees growing from the stage, the little brass bands in the little squares in europe. i thought, it takes something to be so calm about war.) "these trenches are good," the soldier said. "you can see that for yourself. and we have been here a long time." the machine guns down by the puente de los franceses echoed over the black land. "if necessary," the boy said quietly, "we can stay here forever." i asked where the government loud-speaker was. he said prob­ ably up the line somewhere, toward the clinical hospital; they didn't always work at the same place at the same time. "you should come and hear ours some night," the guide said. the wo mu said jour and, and "h "i het, fasd mite he for?" h "tha a arne (du� tnou� i muc� 22 nottne is mainl� ave nea!o announc�\ � ann se�n e custom tij �t\\\ bear ili� ere," rd�, the �i�t !e\la�anolr­ red,analate er. their l�ij�' ule �uaoenllil door ronctrti� �e\vyorhim h ilie hvo�� d� in toe lit� to be �o �[ can�eetom machine�� e black l!r:� e guide �i the besieged city "we have very pretty music, too, but only spanish songs. you would like it." we were by this time in a communicating trench, on our way tothe first line. a mortar shook the walls of the trench and scattered mud over us, and did not explode, to everyone's delight. the guidesaid to the other soldier, "it is scarcely worth while to kill foreign journalists for a little music." he told us he could not take us farther and, as we could see, both the music and the speaking were finished, and now there were only mortars. we argued it, bracing ourselves against the walls of the trench, but he said, "no, the major would be very angry with me and i will get in trouble." so we went back as we had come. "well," the major said, "how did you enjoy it?" "very much." "how was the music?" "a little too fast." "i have here something that will interest you," the major said. he took a rocket, like a fourth of july rocket, from the table. "the fascists send these over with propaganda in them, and sometimes i write an answer and we send them back. it is quite a discussion." he now showed us the propaganda. "it is too much," he said. "it makes you laugh. they think we know nothing. look at this." he thumbed through the little booklet quickly, dismissing state­ ments he had seen before and arguments he considered either too boring or too ridiculous. one page started: "what are you fighting for?" the major smiled and said, "that's something we all know." he then read us his reply, all very careful, very dull. and we said, "that is fine." a lieutenant offered me some acorns and the talk turned to america. the guide said he knew a great deal about america be­ cause he had read zane grey and also james oliver curwood, al­ though he realized that was about canada. aragon must be very much like arizona, no? yes, that's right. the war in spain the major said when the war was over he would like to visit america, but he was a poor man. "i am a worker," he said gently and yet proudly . "would i ever have enough money to go to america?" "certainly," we said. well, then, how much? ah, now, that was difficult, in the cities it was more, in the small towns less, travel by bus was not expensive. "well, it's hard to say how much it would cost, commandante." "how about two dollars? could you do it with two dollars a day?" "that depends," i said. "well, three dollars." "oh, surely, with three dollars." they were all quiet. the major looked at his adjutant. "hombre," he said, "thirty-six pesetas a day. something." and then to me, "ah, well, there is much work to do here and we are all needed. but america must be so beautiful. i would like all the same to see it." at the end of the cold wet waiting days, chicote's is the place to go in search of company and conversation and more rumors about the offensive. chicote's used to be a bar where the elegant young men of madrid came to drink a few cocktails before dinner. now it is like a dugout on the gran via, that wide rich street where you can hear the shells, even when there is silence. chicote's is not in a safe locality at all, and every day it is so crowded that you remember, comfortably, the subway at five o'clock, times square and the grand central station. a group of us were sitting in chicote's wondering whether to drink the sherry, which was tasteless, or the gin, which was frankly fatal. the english girl, who looked like a small, good-humored boy, drove an ambulance for a base hospital. one of the men, a german, wrote for a spanish newspaper and was now talking rapid th in' thl an, sta ou� �ul tne me law one time noul �oe ivha )'ou �oo visit e\ltl� go to at \val travel dante:' ollar� a omdi�," u to m�, 11 neeaeo, e �me t� ilie �ffit� ore ruffi�n tbe ele��nt ole alnn�l rich �tr�d ,cblooti! lowaea t�lt lock, tlm� wbetfier t� wa� !ran�l od·humol(� the men,! lkin� ��i� the besieged city french about politics. there were two american soldiers, the two wonderfully funny ones, so young, and so much braver and gayer than people usually are. the smoke from black tobacco was chok­ ing, the noise deafening; soldiers at other tables shouted their news; the indomitable girls with dyed hair and amazing high heels waved and smiled; people walked in through the sandbagged door and stared and saw no one they knew or nothing they liked and walked out again. in this crowded din, one could be entirely alone and quiet, and think one's own thoughts about spain and the war and the people. how is it going to be possible ever to explain what this is really like? all you can say is, "this happened; that happened; he did this; she said that." but this does not tell how the land looks on the way to the guadarrama, the smooth brown land, with olive trees and scrub oak growing beside the dry stream beds, and the handsome mountains curving against the sky. nor does this tell of sanchez and ausino, and the others with them, those calm young men who were once photographers or doctors or bank clerks or law students, and who now shape and train their troops so that one day they can be citizens instead of soldiers. and there is no time to write of the school where the children were making little houses of clay, and dolls from cardboard, and learning to recite poetry and missed school only when the shelling was too bad. and what about all the rest, and all the others? how can i explain that you feel safe at this war, knowing that the people around you are good people? --.til ' _ _�_ ... -----------_ --= the third winter november 1938 � in barcelona, it was perfect bombing weather. the cafes along the ramblas were crowded. there was nothing much to drink: a sweet fizzy poison called orangeade and a horrible liquid supposed to be sherry. there was, of course, nothing to eat. every­ one was out enjoying the cold afternoon sunlight. no bombers had come over for at least two hours. the flower stalls looked bright and pretty along the promenade. "the flowers are all sold, senora. for the funerals of those who were killed in the eleven o'clock bombing, poor souls." it had been clear and cold all day and all day yesterday and probably would be fair from now on. "what beautiful weather," a woman said, and she stood, holding her shawl around her, star­ ing at the sky. "and the nights are as fine as the days. a catas­ trophe," she said, and she walked with her husband toward a cafe. it was cold but really too lovely and everyone listened for the sirens all the time, and when we saw the bombers they were like tiny silver bullets moving forever up, across the sky. it gets dark suddenly and no street lights are allowed in barce26 10 51 ye m da, a f cig� up he co on it h enai1 ten­ aau� nef tne \you ana ola." bell�l� erdav �a , ii weatn�!, her, ��!, , acatal' rd a cali, ed lor ili� were ll�� in baree· the third winter lona, and at night the old town is rough going. it would be a silly end, i thought, to fall into a bomb hole, like the one i saw yesterday, that opens right down to the sewers. everything you do in war is odd, i thought; why should i be plowing around after dark, looking for a carpenter in order to call for a picture frame for a friend? i found hernandez' house in a back street and i held my cigarette lighter above my head to see my way down the hall and up the stairs and then i was knocking on a door and old mrs. hernandez opened the door and asked me to come in, to be wel­ come, her house was mine. "how are you?" i said. "as you see," old hernandez said, and he pushed his cap back on his forehead and smiled, "alive." it wasn't much of a home but they looked very handsome in it. a wick floating in a cup of oil lighted the place. there were four chairs and a big table and some shelves tacked on the wall. the ten-year-old grandson was reading close to the burning wick. the daughter-in-law, the wife of their youngest son, played quietly with her baby in a corner. old mrs. hernandez had been working over the stove, and the room was smoky. what they would have to eat would be greens, a mound of cabbage leaves the size of your fist, and some dry bread. the women start cooking greens long in ad­ vance because they want to get them soft at least. boiled flavorless greens go down better if they are soft. the picture frame was not ready, hernandez could not get the wood. wood is for dugouts and trenches, bridges, railroad ties, to prop up bombed houses, to make artificial arms and legs, for coffins. he used to collect the fragments from destroyed houses, he said, not to work with, but for firewood, but now that is an saved for the hospitals. it was hard to be a carpenter, there wasn't much wood or much work any more. "nat that it matters about me," hernandez said, "i am very old." the war in spain the little boy had been listening. his grandmother kept looking at him, ready to silence him if he interrupted while his elders spoke. "what do you do all day?" i said. "i stand in the food line." "miguel is a good boy," mrs. hernandez said. "he does what he can to help his old grandmother." out "do you like doing that?" i said. loo "when they fight," he said, laughing to himself, "it is fun." and his grandmother looked shocked. "he does not understand," she said. "he is only ten. the poor people-they are so hungry, sometimes they quarrel among themselves, not knowing what they do." and nolv (they put up a sign on the shop door, and word flies through rum the neighborhood that you can get food today. then the lines wita form. sometimes they are five blocks long. sometimes you wait all me that time but just before your turn comes the shop closes. there a�u is no more food. the women wait in line and talk or knit, the children invent games that they can play standing in one place. everyone is very thin. they know perfectly, by the sound of the first explosion, where the bombs are falling. if the first bomb sounds hollow and muffled, they do not move from their places, because they know there is no immediate danger. if they can hear the drone of the planes too clearly or the first explosion is jagged and harsh, they scatter for doorways or refuges. they do this pro­ fessionally, like soldiers. the pinched women file into the shop and hand their food cards over the high bare counter. the girls behind the counter look healthy because they are wearing rouge. then the food is doled out in little gray paper sacks. a sack the size of a cigarette package, full of rice: that will have to do two people for two weeks. a sack half that big, full of dried peas: for one person for two weeks. 28 the third winter wait, there's some codfish too. the girl behind the counter pulls out a slab of the gray-white flat fish and cuts off a little piece with a pair of scissors. she cuts it with scissors, not a knife, because scissors are more accurate. a piece as long as your finger and twice as thick is the ration for one person for two weeks. the woman with gray hair and a gray frozen face and exhausted eyes reaches out to get her piece of fish. she holds it a minute in her hand, looking at it. they all look at it, and say nothing. then she turns and pushes her way through the crowd and out the door. now she will wait every day to hear whether the store in her neighborhood is open again, whether you can trade anything, whether a farmer she knows is coming to town with a dozen eggs and four cabbages and some potatoes. whether somewhere, some­ how, she can get food for her family. sometimes when the shop runs out of food before everyone is served, the women are wild with grief, afraid to go home with nothing. then there's trouble. the little boys don't understand the trouble, all they know is that a quarrel brightens the long hours of waiting.) mg det� throu�n he lln� ��lt �ll , there knl� ili� ne �l��, no ot tn( fit dom� elf �l��, can n�! 'l)ja�ro o ili��� "you don't go to school?" i said. "not now." "he did very well at school," his grandmother said. "i want to be a mechanic," the child said, in a voice that was almost weeping. "i want to be a mechanic." "we do not let him to go to school," mrs. hernandez said, stroking the child's black head. "because of the bombs. we can­ not have him walking about alone." "the bombs," i said, and smiled at the boy. "what do you do about the bombs?" "i hide," he said, and he was shy about it, telling me a secret. "i hide so they won't kill me." "where do you hide?" [ooocaio) untef loo� ooleaou1 e �ch��, b, a i�t� a weeh the war in spain "under the bed," he said. the daughter-in-law, who is very young, laughed at this, but the old people treated the child seriously. they know that you must have safety in something; if the child believes he is safe under the bed it is better for him. "when will the war end?" the daughter-in-law asked suddenly. "now, now," said the old man. "it will end when we have won it. you know that, lola. have patience and do not be silly." "i have not seen my husband for five months," the girl ex­ plained, as if this were the very worst thing that could ever hap­ pen to anyone. old mrs. hernandez nodded her head, which was like a fine worn wood carving, and made a little sympathetic noise. "you understand, senora," mr. hernandez said to me, "i am so old that perhaps i shall not live to see the end of the war. things do not make any difference to me any longer. but it will be better for the children afterward. that is what i tell lola. spain will be better for her and federico afterward. besides," he said, "federico is learning a great deal in the army." (the internationals had left the lines and were waiting to go home, or were already gone. * there was a parade for them, down the diagonal, and women threw flowers and wept, and all the spanish people thanked them somehow, sometimes only by the way they watched the parade passing. the internationals looked very dirty and weary and young, and many of them had no country to go back to. the german and italian anti-fascists were already * in september 1938 the republican government of spain, no doubt hop­ ing to shame franco into a similar gesture, withdrew the international bri­ gades from the fronts. four of mussolini's italian divisions stayed and fought for franco until the end of the war. hitler's artillerymen and pilots also re­ mained. italian planes were bombing barcelona when this article was written. refu mas wha patr who pulp th who annr co�� every, chee iliira wrry, the u�t ilie denl�, 'ewon �rl ex, er ha� ich 'llal yailieti( 'n� to \� ern, qo�u 00 a� tnl nl\' dj tn1 nailloo�� nocoun� 'ere alr��: doubt�r ation� be' and tou��t ilotsalloi(' \\'35 written the thi"rd winter refugees; the hungarians had no home either. leaving spain, for most of the european volunteers, was to go into exile. i wonder what happened to the german who was the best man for night patrols in the i rth international brigade. he was a somber man, whose teeth were irregularly broken, whose fingertips were nailless pulp; the first graduate of gestapo torture i had known. the spanish republican army, which had been growing and shaping itself through two winters, now dug in for the third win­ ter of war. they were proud and self-confident soldiers. they had started out as militia companies, citizens carrying any sort of rifle, and had become an army and looked like an army and acted like one. they were always a pleasure to see and often a surprise. on a clear night, coming back very tired from the segre front, we stopped at divisional headquarters to look at maps and get some dinner too, if lucky. we were received by the lieutenant colonel, who commanded ten thousand men. he was twenty-six years old and had been an electrician at lerida. he was blond and looked american and he had grown up with the war. the chief of opera­ tions was twenty-three and a former medical student from galicia. the chief of staff was twenty-seven, a lawyer, a madrid aristocrat who spoke good french and english. modesto, commanding the army of the ebro and a great soldier, was thirty-five. all the new corps commanders were in their late twenties and early thirties. everybody you saw knew what he was doing and why; it was a cheerful army. the winter is the worst time of all in war and the third winter is long, cold and desperate; but you couldn't feel sorry for that army. ) "both my boys are soldiers," mrs. hernandez said. "miguel's father is the oldest, tomas, he is at tortosa; and federico is up toward lerida somewhere. tomas was here only last week." -• • _ .il ,;_ ii ,/ / _ _ .. � ... .. .. , ......l� .-�-:_:.:----_'!o __ -----_-_----------the war in spain "what did he say of the war?" 1 asked. "we do not speak of the war," she said. "he says to me, 'you are like all the other mothers in spain. you must be brave like all the others.' and sometimes he speaks of the dead." "yes?" "he said, 'i have seen many dead.' he says that so 1 will under­ stand, but we do not speak of the war. my sons are always close to the bombs," she said in her blurred old voice. "if my children are in danger, it is not well that i should be safe." the girl lola had started to sing to her child, to keep it quiet, and now she brought the baby over near the lighted wick, for me to see. she turned down a grayish blanket showing the child's head and sang, "pretty little child, my pretty little girl." the face seemed shrunken and faded, and bluish eyelids rested lightly shut on the eyes. the child was too weak to cry. it fretted softly, with closed eyes, and we all watched it, and suddenly lola pulled the cover back over the bundle in her arms and said, coldly and proudly, "she does not have the right food to eat and therefore she is not well. but she is a fine child." (the hospital was huge and ornate, the way all modern buildings are in catalonia. this one was built of orange bricks and was a real horror to look at. it was new and well equipped and had a garden. the buildings, called pavilions, were placed around this garden. the children's pavilion was off to the right and we followed a lanky, quiet boy who was showing us the way. i did not want to come, really. i knew the statistics, the statistics were enough for me. in catalonia alone, there were approximately 870,000 children up to school age. of these, the statistics announced, more than 100,000 suffered from bad nutrition, more than 200,000 suffered from undernourishment, more than 100,000 were in a state of pre­ famine. 1 thought the statistics were no doubt mild, and i did not wa chi] defo war brig the the figure pale i nand� no�pil orap� ali wa� fa cro��i witn killed pain � nada �rew � nim�e tried nedia i� well, 'you eall unuer· � dole iluren t qule� !orme chl\�1 re\\� thettro nlr�\l 10, colillj ilierdme bul\aln� ana w�l ana blal rouna ili� 'e10\low� otvran\\ij enou�b !m cbllal� more tnl� )u�er� te 01 �ie' i ala nijt the third winter want to think at all about madrid, about the swift dark laughing children in madrid. i did not want to imagine how hunger had deformed them. there were two great wards, the surgical ward and the medical ward, and it was almost suppertime and the surgical ward was brightly lit. small beds lined the walls. it was very cold, between the stone floors and the plaster walls; there is no heat anywhere. the children looked like toys until you came closer-tiny white figures propped up with pillows, swathed in bandages, the little pale faces showing, the great black eyes staring at you, the small hands playing over the sheets. there was not one child in the hospital for any peacetime reason, tonsils or adenoids or mastoid or appendicitis. these children were all wounded. a little boy named paco sat up in his bed with great dignity. he was four and beautiful and had a bad head wound. he had been crossing a square to meet a little girl on the other side-he played with her in the afternoons. then a bomb fell. many people were killed and he was wounded in the head. he had gone through his pain quietly, the nurse said. the wound was five months old. he had always been patient with it, and as the months wore on he grew solemner and more elderly every day. sometimes he cried to himself, but without making a sound, and if anyone noticed he tried to stop. we stood by his bed and he watched us gravely but he did not want to talk. i asked if they had anything to play with and the nurse said, well, little things, not much. no, not really, she said. just once in a while someone brings a present for one of them. a jolly little girl, with pigtails and only one leg, was having a nice time making paper bans out of an old newspaper. there were three little boys with shaved heads and various splints on them; one of them had his leg held up on a rope from the ceiling. they lived in a corner by themselves; they were not only wounded, but they had tuberculosis. the nurse said they had fever 33 � --,til ,,�� -_ 'io -----�:::.._--_-_----the war in spain and that made them gay, particularly at this hour. they would not live, she didn't think they would live even if there was food to give them, or a sanatorium to send them to. the sanatoriums were all full. anyhow, they were too far gone. it works very fast on them, the nurse said. the little boys had a sort of meccano toy, it was on the bed of the boy who had a broken arm. a bomb frag­ ment broke his arm, the nurse said; he did not suffer as much as some but he used to scream at night. the other two were now shouting instructions to their friend, how to play with the toy. they were building a bridge. when we stopped beside them, they grew shy and gave up their game. all the children were the color of their pillows except the little ones with t.b., who looked quite rosy. they were unbelievably thin. "no," the nurse said, almost impatiently, as if it hurt and angered her to talk about it. "of course we haven't enough food to give them. what do you think? if only they didn't bomb all the time," she said, "it would help. when the children hear the siren they go crazy, they try to get out of their beds and run. we are only four nurses in these two rooms and we have a hard time with them. at night it is worse. they all remember what happened to them and they go crazy." we went into the second room. a little boy was crying noisily and the other children were listening to him, frightened by his grief. the nurse explained that he had been wounded today, in one of the morning raids, and of course he was in pain but mainly he was homesick. he wanted his mother. he was also hungry. yve stood by his bed helplessly and promised to bring him some food tomorrow if only he would stop crying and we promised that his mother would come right away, only please stop crying. he twisted on the bed and sobbed for his mother. then she came. she was a dark witch of a woman, outdone by life. her hair straggled from a knot on top of her head, and her bedroom slippers were worn through and her coat was pinned together with two safety pins. 34 sh sto no woi of him no she with she aha scad ate it and � hes with theli the tole, toe ward. aia n a�ain four itni caula the third winter she looked gaunt and a little mad and her voice was as harsh as stone scraping on stone. she sat on the bed (we had been careful not to touch the bed, not to move or shake the small aching wounded child) and talked to him in her shrill voice, telling him of the family's catastrophes. their house had been destroyed by the bomb that wounded him, though he was the only one hurt. but now they had no home, no furniture, nothing to cook with, no blankets, no place to go. she told the round-eyed child the story of woe and he listened with interest and sympathy and wasn't homesick any more. then she took a pot from some pocket, it materialized like a rabbit from a hat, and gave it to the child, and said, "here, eat." he began to scoop up cold rice from the pot, just cold rice boiled in water. he ate it, his face close to the pot, spilling a little on the bedclothes and stopping only to collect the grayish rice grains with his fingers. he seemed happy then and at home. his mother was now talking with another woman, in her hard tormented voice, and presently the little boy went to sleep. "would you like to see the medical ward?" the tall lanky boy said. "well," i said. well, no, i thought. "i like the children." so we went. three blue lights were burning and the ward was in shadow. the children sat up in bed, silent and waiting. we stepped aside to let the dinner wagon pass. it made a metal clanking sound on the floor, and i watched their eyes follow the wagon down the ward. there was the seven-months-old baby with tuberculosis who did not notice and there was another child, like an old-faced doll against the pillows, who turned away her head. on the wagon were four lumps of something green and cooked, four shrunken lettuces, i think, and a great cauldron of soup. the nurse went over to the cauldron and lifted a ladleful and let it spill back into the pot. it 35 --.h< ' _ ,_'_ .. -----====-� --the war in spain was clear pale-beige water. that was supper. "the children cry for food most of the time," she said, looking at the thin soup with hate. "what is the matter with them?" i asked. she evidently thought i was not very sound in the head. "there are only two things the matter with them. tuberculosis and rickets." the old-faced doll reached out a tiny white hand. i walked over to her and her hand curled around my fingers and she smiled. she was, the nurse said, seventeen months old and her name was manuela. manuela let go my fingers and began to cry. had i done some­ thing bad? "only hungry," the nurse said. she picked the child up, lightly and gently, and tossed it in her arms. the child laughed aloud with pleasure at this lovely game. as the nurse held her you saw the rope-thin legs and the swollen stomach of rickets. "will she be all right?" i said. "certainly," the nurse said and she was lying, you could see that in her face. "certainly she'll get well. she has to. somehow.") "yes, she's a fine child," i said to lola hernandez, but i thought, maybe we can stop looking at the child, when we all know she's sick with hunger and probably will not live until sum­ mer. let's talk about something else, now, just for a change. "have you been to the opera?" i said to lola. "i went once," she said, "but i do not like to go. an the time i was there, i kept thinking, what if this minute my husband is wounded, or what if he is coming home on leave. i almost thought he had come home and then i would have missed an hour with him. so now i stay home." "we all stay home," the old man said, "i like the house. we have been here for twenty-five years." bm lau no mid whe will are real for� b ana �o too ldleetm menow,"i d� out i 'nen w� ill unti\iu� a chan�f, i thetimd huloano � e, i a\m�1 eaannoill ho�e, wt the third winter "do you go often?" lola asked. "i've been," i said. "it's wonderful." (the opera is not as funny as the movies, though the people of barcelona don't think the movies are funny. but you can't help laughing when you go to see jane eyre, and it is all about a life none of the audience ever knew or imagined, and then in the middle the film flickers off and you hear the bombs falling some­ where, while the audience groans with irritation, knowing it will take half an hour before the current comes on again, and they are dying to see what happens to jane and her handsome gentle­ man friend, and they are fascinated by the madwoman and the burning house. i particularly liked the westerns, and seeing the horse stopped in midleap for an air alarm, knowing that the dan­ gerous activities of the hero and his horse were much more thrill­ ing to the audience than a mere covey of bombers flying at a great safe height and sending down indiscriminate, expensive steel­ encased death and destruction. it costs about two pesetas for the best seats at any show, and nobody earns less than ten pesetas a day. the only thing you want to spend money on is food, and there is no food, so you might as well go to the opera or to the movies. it would be very stupid to save up to buy furniture, the way the city gets bombed. besides, it's warm inside the big overdecorated theaters, because there are so many people, and it's friendly, and sitting there with some­ thing to look at on the stage you forget for a while that you aren't really safe, you aren't really safe at all. and also you might even forget how hungry you are. but the opera was a wonder. some afternoons there was opera and some afternoons there was the symphony orchestra. the people of barcelona crowded to both. the opera house was far too near the port for comfort, and bombs had ruined much of 37 the war in spain the neighborhood. it was surprising that the singers had energy to sing, considering how little they eat. it was surprising to see such thin singers. the women were any age at all, wearing the pre­ war costumes, a little mussed now but still brilliant and romantic. all the men were old. the young men were at the war. the opera house was full every day and everyone enjoyed the music im­ mensely, and roared with laughter at the stale formal opera jokes, and sighed audibly at the amorous moments and shouted "ole!" at each curtain. we used to sit and scratch, because everyone had fleas this winter, there was no soap any more and everyone was very dirty and malodorous indeed. but we loved the music and loved not thinking about the war. ) the hernandez' only daughter now came home from her job, and there was much loud gay talk as if they had not seen each other for weeks, with everyone reporting on the day's air raids. she wore her dark hair in braids around her head and was glowing with rouge, and quite well dressed. she earned plenty of money because she worked in a munitions factory. (you never know exactly where the munitions factories are, and are not intended to know. we drove over many streets i had not seen before and stopped before a great grille gateway, some­ where at the edge of town. the factory looked like a series of cement barns, not connected particularly, and shining and clean and cheerful in the winter sun. we walked across the courtyard and into the first open door. the woman in charge of this room came forward; she had a nice smile and was timid and behaved as if i had come to tea unexpectedly. the women were working at long tables, heaped with shining black squares and oblongs, they looked like trays full of sequins. th for seq are� �na �killc t the et� see e pte· ank opera ie lid· joke�, (loi�!" ne baa d� very aloveo her jool en ea\� �ir rnim, �lo�1n� imone) ori� �r� tdn�ij ai' �ome· )eri�ol ana d�� cou��lij iliil room haven �l �hinin� f se�uin�, the third winter there were other trays full of shining little leads, like short fillers for an automatic pencil. the woman picked up a handful of the sequins and let them slip through her hands. "they're pretty, aren't they?" she said. "very pretty," i said, mystified. "what are they?" "powder," she said, "explosive. what makes the shells go off." at the other end of the room women worked at sewing machines, the old-fashioned kind that you pump with your feet. there was cloth for summer dresses, a lovely pink linen, a nice gray-and-white stripe that would have made handsome shirts, a thick white silk for a bridal gown. they were sewing little bags, and bigger bags, like sacks for sachet. a girl came around and col­ lected them and took them to the front of the room where they were filled with the explosive that looked like sequins. then the little pink sachet bag of sequins was dropped into a shell base. other women carefully and daintily glued together tiny cello­ phane horseshoes; in these horseshoes was black powder, and this skilled elegant work served to make a mortar the thing it is. two barns farther down were the great guns, home for repair. the place looked like a museum full of prehistoric animals, huge gray strangely shaped animals come to rest in this smoky room. men worked beside each gun, with a little fire to heat the tools and for keeping warm. the room twinkled with light from the char­ coal burners. the guns all wore their small name tags: vickers armstrong, schneider, skoda. we had seen them and watched them being fired day after day and month after month at the front. the grooved rifling inside the barrels had been worn smooth from the many thousand rounds they had fired, and the barrels were being rebored. there were few guns in republican spain now that had the same caliber they started with, and with each reboring the size of the shells had to be changed. "would you like to see the shells?" the foreman asked. he was obviously proud of them. 39 _-_o__ o_.t: '"_ li i / ..... ��1!0 0 0 o -_ __ __ ----._---,---the war in spain he led me out in the sun and around two buildings and then into a vast storeroom. used shell cases the color of old gold were stacked neatly against one wall; they would be hammered into shape and used again. in the center of the building and against the right wall the new shells were piled in squares and oblongs and pyramids; they were painted black and yellow. there were 75s looking neat and not really harmful at all. and there were the tall shells, the 155s, that frighten one more when they are coming in. we admired the shells and at this moment, like a dream or a nightmare or a joke, the siren whined out over barcelona. i think that one of the worst features of an air raid is the siren. the howl­ ing whining whistle rises and screams and wails over the city, and almost at once you hear, somewhere, the deep thud-boom of the bombs. i looked at my companion and he looked at me and we smiled (i thinking, foolishly, never forget your manners, walk do not run) and we sauntered out of doors. i could not see the planes but i heard them; on a clear day they fly high for safety, so you rarely see them. i thought, anyhow, in case a bomb falls around here we won't even know it. "what do the workers do?" i said. "nothing," he said. "they wait." the planes now showed themselves clear and silver just a little way down the sky, the sky dotted with a few small white smoke bubbles from anti-aircraft shells. the men came out of the fac­ tory and walked across the courtyard and leaned against a wall where they could get a better view, and smoked. some played an innocent game, pitching a coin. the women dragged out empty packing cases, in which bullets would be shipped later, and sat down in the sunshine and started knitting. they did not bother to look up. everyone knew that the electricity was turned off for half an hour, so there would be no more work for a time. they knitted and gossiped, and watching the sky i saw the silver planes wheel and circle and by back out to sea. go me 1 dell /i the third winter fueu they all like working in a munitions factory because they gettwo rolls of bread each day as a bonus.) jui\ a \\\�( hl\e iro�lt 01 the nt' 101\ a �1� e �\a)oo!� out em�� tet, ann �\ ot tx1iliel \� eo o� im ti!de,n� silver �ian� "i must leave," i said. "please forgive me for staying so long. goodbye, miguel, after the war you'll be a mechanic." "after we have won the war," old mrs. hernandez corrected me. "we will invite you to come here and eat a big supper with us." they were all delighted, delighted with winning the war and' delighted with eating a big supper. "you will see federico too," lola said. "yes," i said, "that will be a great pleasure. goodbye, goodbye,"i said, shaking hands all around, "and many thanks." we were standing up now, and looking at them i suddenlysaid, "the third winter is the hardest." then i felt ashamed. they were strong brave people and didn't need me to say cheering words for them. "we are all right, senora," mrs. hernandez said, making itclear at once, saying the last word in her home about her family."we are spaniards and we have faith in our republic." �.�----._ .·-.iii _ '.".' ,..., -��-_-/ and i be cnan, tom !klm. tion, one'� �eopl lo�e. the war in finland people may correctly remember the events of twenti years ago (a remarkable teat), but who remembers his tears, his dis­ gusts, his tone oi voice? it is like trying to bring back the weather at that time. when the second wodd war officially started, in september 1939, it must have seemed to me so expected, so on schedule, that i have no memory at the occasion. i think i stopped reading news­ papers or listening to the radio. the rapid patriotic tervor at the johnny-corne-lately anti-fascists was revolting. it was easy enough, and unbearable, to imagine what the real war was like in poland. beginning with hitler's occupation at the rhineland, repeated chances to prevent this war had been lost, and so had the chances to make a war in the name oi honor. this was the war to save our skins. it must absolutely be won; it was an overdue police opera­ tion, a war against, too late to be a war for. now one could only ally one's mind and heart to the innocents-the various unknown people who would be paying for war, with all they had to love and lose. 43 --_ .j.. ' _ _"_ .. ----� � the face of war emiy in november, charles colebaugh suggested finland; he thought something was about to happen there. i looked finland up on a map. further inquiry revealed that the finns were a highly literate nation who looked after each other's needs and rights, with justice: a good democracy. i was eager to go. no one makes fancy speeches in the midst of danger, and whatever happened finland would surely not be the aggressor. i did think, professionally, that it was unusual timing to arrive in a strange frozen country one dark afternoon and be waked the next morning at nine o'clock by the first bombs, the declaration of war. but before the bombs, there were the sea and the mines. look­ ing back, nearly twenty years, it seems to me that my thinking or feeling about war changed again on that curious ocean journey. in spain i had understood the meaning of the war; i saw clearly what the spanish war was for and what it was against. on the boat, going first to england, i was in on the beginning of a great � war of greed, started by a madman; and it felt different. it felt lima unreal, yet obviously nothing about high explosive is unreal. but nea� this war was a total madness: one criminal lunatic and his f01· forei lowers wanted what they could never get, domination over their nana� time, and they grabbed for it; other grabbers joined them; and !tooa the world slid into a six-year-long dream of hell. the sense of the mee. insanity and wickedness of this war grew in me until, for purposes week! of mental hygiene, i gave up trying to think or judge, and turned ma myself into a walking tape recorder with eyes. the way people stay �engel sane in war, i imagine, is to suspend a large part of their reasoning tne a minds, lose most of their sensitivity, laugh when they get the small­ est chance, and go a bit, but increasingly, crazy. 44 airivem the n�rt 01 � ��! enl.ltltl! unre�l. �ij! anonll!iji n over t�� inem; d�l sen�o!�; lor �uipl� anorur�i, i��kl�i , eu re210nilli ret tne!md� � slow boat to war november 1939 � friends and relatives of the departing belgians sang the "marseillaise" dolefully. an old austrian with pink cheeks and a neat, pointed white 'beard said goodbye to a young man in a stiff foreign suit. they put their arms around each other and then shook hands and wept in a decent, dignified way. a harsh-voiced woman stood near the gangplank and talked to a man with a tired, lined face. "be sure to send the money every week," she said. "every week! don't forget, money every week." many people with undistinguished faces, looking the way pas­ sengers always do in the first hours on shipboard, drifted about the decks, cold and restless. the ship was six hours late in start­ ing; bells rang and the ones who had come to say goodbye filed down the gangplank and lined the grimy hoboken pier and stood under dusty electric lights, bobbing their heads and wiping their eyes and waving and fluttering handkerchiefs. the water was dark and the lights of new york were as spectacular as always and the ship pulled out slowly and we were off to england at war. at eleven the next morning there was a lifeboat drill. no one 45 ,j. ' __ .'ja, � _ --;j. ---�� the war in finland paid much attention to this but, separately and with some self­ consciousness, everyone had found his way up to the boat deck to take a quick look. no lifeboat is reassuring if you think you are going to have to use it. people had also gone about making discreet inquiries concerning the cargo. "what are we carrying?" they would ask in a bright casual voice. the cargo was wheat con­ signed to the belgian government. as the boat was heavily loaded it would ride well, which was comforting news since it was a small boat; there were only forty-four passengers aboard and a crew of two hundred and forty. belgians who had been working at the world's fair in new york and were going home to join their army took over the lounge by squatters' rights. a puerto rican, who had already managed to lose hisluggage in new york, joined up with the austrian and they pre-empted a corner of the smoking room and talked spanish together in low voices or read or simply waited for time to pass. two well-dressed dutchmen played chess, always at the same table. some irishmen, an english couple, two scotsmen and a few americans wandered around the decks, chose good positions for their deck chairs, established hearty relations with the barman and wondered privately what they would find to talk about at table. there was no reason either to go to bed or to get up, so people began to keep queer hours, floating around at five in the morning and sleeping until three the next afternoon, or going to bed at seven and arising to walk the deck before it was light. food was always the same-nourishing, no doubt, but as inter­ esting as boiled cardboard-and by the sixth day drink seemed to make people liverish rather than gay. the english did not know what they were going to find when they got home or whether the men would be called up to fight this second war. the belgians remembered their invaded country of twenty-five years ago and knew what they could fear. the dutch realized that part of their land had been flooded and the army 46 of light from blac and jpok neld aste tne �nos, ona \� wasp)' mlend mines 'ou ale makin� ti)1n��1i eatmn, � loau� sasidj\\ tonnow� ton�nt� coun�� the dut� 'd ilie �� slow boat to war mobilized. they knew also how hard it was to remain neutral and salvage the economy of a nation through long years of war. americans were traveling rather unwillingly, to straighten up busi­ ness affairs, and they had a detached feeling that to lose money was one thing but to get dangerously involved in other people's messes was one thing more. the eighth day was clear and beautiful and we were in the mine fields. * every night two six-foot-high electric signs on both sides of the ship announced that we were from the netherlands and lights on the boat deck illuminated the colors of holland flyingfrom the mast and painted around funnels. but now two great black-and-white signs saying "holland" appeared on the top deck and lifeboats were checked and swung over the sides. everyone spoke of mines rather shrilly. i learned from the mate that mine fields are often fifty miles long, that there are frequently as many as ten thousand mines floating about in the mined area and that individual mines weigh from 400 to 600 pounds and maybe more. this information seemed too gloomy to dwell on, but what made it most depressing was the element of idiot chance. there is a sea full of mines which you mayor may not run into at any given moment. we plowed through this now ominous sea, and at ten we saw the first lights on the coast of england and the lightsof freighters bobbing between us and the shore. at one o'clock in the morning the sea suddenly burned with little lights like winking phosphorus. the boats seemed as small as children's toys floating on a pond. we called up to the bridge to ask what this was and were told * this was the period of the inauguration of the new german weapon, themagnetic mine. it had just appeared, a giant globe studded with spikes whichwas dropped from the air into the shipping lanes and was attracted to the metal hulls of all boats. to declare a ship's neutrality as a safety precautionwas plain foolishness, since mines can't read; but that gesture may have beenintended for morale-raising on board. no countermeasure against magneticmines had been invented as yet. 47 the war in finland it was a fishing fleet carrying on as usual. the englishwoman went to bed then, perfectly reassured, saying that if those little boats could come out and do their work normally she supposed she could go to sleep without more fuss. the point, of course, was that the draft of the fishing boats was so slight that they could float over a solid carpet of mines and not notice it. it seemed strange, after eight days of loneliness, to see the smoke of many freighters against the sky, and low, dark ships sinking down in wave troughs. an unmarked plane flew over toward eng­ land, and the radio announced that the simon bolivar, a dutch ship one day ahead of us, had struck a mine and gone down with 1 50 lives lost. the crew were shocked by the news of the bolivar. many of them had sailed on her and the stewards all had friends on board and, besides, it was a ship of their own nationality. the barman had been chief steward on the bolivar in happier times and he went progressively to pieces as the day continued. in the afternoon another unmarked plane flew, silver-gray, into the sunset, and we could see the white, chalky, stiff coast of eng­ land. our ship turned around and stopped. it was too dangerous to cross that water at night. by now the boredom of the pas­ sengers had changed into something else. i wheedled an officer into showing me the charts, those delicately traced maps so incompre­ hensible to a landlubber. on a chart marked in pencil were the mine fields. as far as i could make out, the english, the french, the dutch and the belgians all mined their coasts and ports for protection, leaving a passage resembling the eye of a needle free for neutral shipping; and what had not been mined by the allies or the neu­ trals was largely and loosely mined by the germans. i was sur­ prised then that any ships got through at all. we sailed at dawn and anchored in the downs off ramsgate in midafternoon. the downs is the flat cold-looking stretch of water wb an this insr wah cou i into 11 piece tries most �ste mea tneei ave weeks kcau �2ce lisn tl say t� 2aea at raia roir, i craft, sky, blow snips, mark dutd rena at aim fue\rn�h i�� ilubu; tcwalo eu� ai, a du\' e uo�] �;� slow boat to war where the english halt shipping. more than a hundred ships lay anchored here, so thoroughly anchored and so dead-seeming that this place became a sort of sargasso sea. boats must pull in for inspection because the only free passage is through the downs, the waters surrounding it being fatal with mines. if, however, a boat could slip through, it would be hailed and picked up and escorted into the downs by an english destroyer. this is what a blockade really means and it is a most effective piece of work. the english have blacklists of firms in neutral coun­ tries who do business in contraband with the enemy. but now al­ most everything is contraband, since anything from shoes to tooth paste is helpful in winning a war. cargo is inspected and unloaded in case there is any question about it. certain cargo destined for the enemy is confiscated. mail is also taken off and censored. it is a very slow process. boats have been delayed for three and four weeks and longer in the downs. neutrals must submit to this because there is nothing they can do about it, and while they are gracefully complying with the polite but firm orders of the eng­ lish they receive threatening complaints from the germans, who say that in accepting inspection they are aiding the british block­ ade and not behaving as neutrals. at noon that first day in the downs we were treated to an air raid which was, on the whole, a very pretty and unimportant af­ fair. one high-flying plane was shot at madly by coastal anti-air­ craft, the shells leaving round, decorative smoke rings in the blue sky. news came over the radio that two more ships had been blown up just ahead of us. we walked about looking at the other ships. near us lay a japanese liner with a fancy thing like a laundry mark painted on its side. there were norwegian and italian and dutch boats, boats of every make and nationality and size, rusty red and black and gray and one rather garishly camouflaged. at night our decks were curtained in canvas, and lights were dimmed or extinguished, and we joined england in a blackout, 49 --. ____j' --. _ ,�1 i / •••1ii .� -. '" , ... ----." ________ -----:---=_--..:......__ -----the war in finland which is the most gloom-making contraption yet devised by man. the english and american passengers wanted special permission from the british admiralty to go ashore here, as the north sea in the last few days had become the worst battle zone of the war. it was interesting to watch the passengers. they reacted as people must react to this oppressively silent war-with their nerves. if anything did actually happen it would be almost a relief and everyone would behave well. but there were no lights and the radio constantly announced disaster, and we had been on board forever and still nothing happened. the shaken and temperamental barman did a thriving business. two british officers came aboard in the morning and checked our passports. they were charming and apologetic. the old aus­ trian, an enemy alien by law, got through all right, to our intense relief. he had left a good job in guatemala to return to holland to be at least that near to his wife, who had gone to germany on a visit and now could not get out. they had been married for twenty-five years and he loved her the way people love in the old storybooks, and we could not have endured to see him stopped in his effort to be closer to her. he had only four dollars left and no one on board spoke ger­ man easily, and he had walked the decks all these days with the same smooth, unstopping stride, his face sad and calm. now you could almost feel him straining forward to be there sooner, to be where he could hear her voice speaking over a telephone across that unsurmountable frontier. the' english and the americans were refused permission to land and they talked together in furious, indignant and anxious voices about being condemned to death by red tape. the japanese boat which had been lying alongside us in the night was sunk by a mine two hours out of the downs that morning, the radio an­ nounced in a reasonable voice. a thic but shar off. in been in thl that \ ning a weh� evenin of our and st mornin in�the nea who sa louar, dustle man, at eleven o'clock we heard the hum of airplanes, muffled in thick gray clouds. the noise of the motors was directly above us but we could see nothing through the clouds. then we heard the e \var. sharp, hammering noise of machine guns, and the planes droned off. in the afternoon the radio announced that two more boats had been sunk with so and so many missing. that made eleven ships in three days and all just ahead of us. the general feeling was that we were only waiting for our turn, and the blackout begin­ ning at five in the afternoon was more than anybody could bear. we had been at this now for eleven days. there was a dance that \ evening, our first and only dance in the dimmed lounge, with three of our four women present, and we all got rather tight and jolly and staged a noisy bullfight on the lower deck at three in the morning and forgot the radio and that cultivated bbc voice say­ ing the last words over destroyed ships. near morning news came that the british and the americans who so desired would be taken ashore in a launch, and there was loud rejoicing and much whistling on deck and a great deal of bustle with packing. that left, as english-speaking travelers, a young american and myself. the english, kindly but we thought quite goofily, urged us to get off too, as "what is the use in going on into certain danger and, you know, it's silly to drown, i mean, and you can always get a plane or something from england." but we both had our business to do farther north and by then i would not have missed the remainder of the trip for anything. the ship felt empty and quiet after the anglo-american passenger de­ parture; and we were still in the downs. the american and i dropped in, uninvited, on the captain be­ fore lunch the next day for a drink. by now we were members of the family. a shy and pleasant british officer showed up in a vast raincoat and gave us our clearance papers. the british also returned several sacks of diplomatic mail which they had taken off lie! an� on 'ooal� rmi�iou � ana a11\1�l thela�u& �'anuu(� tile �aio� slow boat to war the war in finland by mistake. ha good thing too," said the american. "i'd like to see them interfering with our government business, damrnitl" "nothing like war," i said, "to bring out the patriot in every­ one." "you bet," he said. "let's have some more of that dutch gin and drink to the netherlands, our home away from home." we ate very well that day, for the first time, eating with the captain, who had sent special orders to the kitchen. "we may as well," said the captain cheerfully. "we don't know when we're going to eat again." at dinner, for no reason and rather frighten­ ingly, the dutch and belgian national anthems were played and we all rose and stood solemnly looking at the tablecloth. "this is the music they play when a ship goes down," the ameri­ can said. "they're just getting in their practice." the next day would be the last, one way or the other, as far as we were con­ cerned. the radio had announced three more ships sunk in the north sea. at seven o'clock in the smoky-blue cold morning darkness, the steward pounded on my door. he said, "will you kindly get up and dress as warmly as possible." what a way to be wakened, i thought. i put on flannel slacks over woolen underwear and sweat­ ers and a leather jacket and a fur coat and heavy shoes and wool socks and rummaged in my suitcase for fur-lined gloves. we were moving through a light fog, and the ship throbbed un­ naturally. the chief engineer said he had her up to fun speed and a half and i wondered whether we wouldn't just blow up of our own accord, we were rattling so hard. after breakfast the decks seemed unusually crowded with crew. they hung about wearing life belts and doing trifling jobs, washing bulkheads and arranging deck chairs. light-clad, thin and grimy men who never seem to emerge from the engine room were appearing on the lower deck in shifts, as apparently the chief officer had shortened their period of duty below decks. it was deadly cold. the belgians were won52 der, and on a cae safe sw a boat' dead, nobo yo across rrds �oati toll, alw ivnicn mine, it anrno onlr rou n 10 get tn room packa idis disc! wild amen fors time, e to see me\'ery· h�nan� vi1th ili� ne ma)� mhen w�re et hl�ntt1l pla)eolt: slow boat to war derfully bundled up and wearing flimsy, narrow-brimmed city hats, and they sat in the hallways with their uncomfortable life belts on and looked placid but ready. in the smoking room the old austrian sat by himself and read goethe. i went over to talk to him and he said we had already gone safely through an hour and a half, and then he said, serenely and sweetly, "god's will be done." at nine 0'clock we passed a dead body wearing a life belt and floating face down. gray, bulky, casual, and not even pitiful, only dead. "from the simon bolivar, probably," the steward said, and nobody said anything more about it. you could see by the wake of the boat that we were zigzagging across the north sea like pussy-wants-a-corner. then two hundred yards away, looking like very large black footballs, we saw two floating mines. the radio announced that, completing yesterday's toll, five more ships had been sunk by mines in the north sea. also a boat lying anchored in the downs, a 9,ooo-ton freighter which we had passed, had been blown up two hours ago when a mine, drifting down into that water, had struck its side. it was too cold on deck and there was nothing much to see anyhow. this was just a day to live through. a long day, and the only thing to do was wait. this is a foul kind of war, i thought, you never hear or see anything. you feel like an awful fool, waiting to get sunk. the belgians clung to the lounge from habit. in the smoking room everyone was prepared. i had put a flask of whiskey and two packages of cigarettes and my essential papers in a shoe bag, and this with my gloves lay on the table beside me. a dutch boy had his camera in a small oilcloth bag. the old austrian looked swollen with all the things he was carrying in his pockets. the young american said that everyone was awfully well dressed and got up for shipwreck except him, but he would know better the next time. he would certainly bring the right clothes. 53 the war in finland the old austrian told me comfortingly to be sure to rub my nose frequently when we got in the lifeboats because the nose froze first and when you didn't feel it any more it was too late. we listened politely and when he left we roared with laughter, thinking what a fate, to go through life with a frozen nose. the steward came in and announced that we had just passed more floating mines, but we did not get on deck in time to see them. at the noon news broadcast, we were told that the ship that had followed us out of the downs in the blue morning fog had sunk. we went on deck and looked moodily at our zigzagging wake. then we went down to lunch, feeling rather heroic and business-as-usual. the dining saloon was on c deck and definitely not the best place to loiter in. no one ate much and conversation lagged. i stood it for another hour in the smoking room and then i had had enough. the belgians returned to their checkers and cards, leaving their life belts strewn all around the lounge. the dutch­ men were playing chess. the old austrian seemed lost in faust. the crew were still evident on deck, looking frozen and ungainly in life belts. i decided to go down to my cabin and sleep. waiting to get sunk, on and off for fourteen days, was exhausting work. at five i was awakened by the american's knocking at my door. "come on up and see the lights of ostend," he said. "everything's under control now." i joined him on deck and we leaned on the rail enjoying the lights and the dark line of land. "some captain," he said. "a cuter little captain you couldn't meet anywhere." . suddenly the whole trip seemed long ago and only a thing to remember. "the next problem," i said, "is how to get to fin­ land." "listen," he said. "take it easy. why not wait till we actually land?" the moon came up large and clear and beautiful and the stars swu glean rive shom on de peace� in afel we not be6 iialli 54 �q rob m� e fue nose �4) too \ak iltn \d\l%bt�1 �n nose, �d just �i\� in time to� hat ilie i�ir a only � lli�[' w to'�et t�f: 't till we�� slow boat to war swung about the mast in the accepted way. our boat, lighted and gleaming, looked splendid as it moved slowly into the scheidt river. the river was wide and like the mississippi, and sandbanks shone white under the moon along the low, black shore. we stood on deck beneath the bridge and admired this loveliness and this peace, and the captain caiied down to us, saying, "we'll be there in a few hours." we told him warmly that he had done a fine job and it would not be exaggerating to say we appreciated it. "all in the day's work," he said. 55 '. ;; , �-�-�-� ----�--bombs on helsinki december 1939 � war started at nine o'clock promptly. the people of hel­ sinki stood in the streets and listened to the painful rising and fall­ ing and always louder wail of the siren. for the first time in history they heard the sound of bombs falling on their city. this is the modern way of declaring war. the people moved unhurriedly to bomb shelters or took cover in doorways and waited. that morning helsinki was a frozen city inhabited by sleep­ walkers. the war had come too fast and all the faces and all the eyes looked stunned and unbelieving. the sky had been slate-colored all day, with a low blanket of cloud folding over the city. the second air raid came at three 0'clock. no siren gave the alarm; there was only the swift breath­ taking roar of the bombs. the russian planes flew high and un­ seen and dived to within two hundred meters of the ground to dump their bombs in heavy loads. the raid lasted one minute. it was the longest minute anyone in helsinki had ever lived through. there were five great explosions and afterward the stillness it­ self was dreadful. then a rumor flew through the quiet, broken h h ld w ti ti wi wq t� a chi wa dre the nig nul st oh��: t"dme �t�; he i\\itt �!�� . hloh �n�� the' �oun�: one millut�: hrea th!��� ilie �ttllu��( �uie� d!�� bombs on helsinki streets: poison gas. anything was believable now. guided by the tremendous sound of the bombs, we could see in that direction a high, round, gray cloud of smoke blowing slowly between the buildings. we had no gas masks. they shut the doors of the hotel, but as the hall skylight had already been broken by concussion this seemed feeble protection.from a fifth-floor window i saw the light of fire, pink around the sky. "not gas yet," we said to one another, greatly cheered. "just incendiary bombs." we shuffled through broken glass in the streets. the gray after­ noon was darker with smoke. the bombed houses on this block were so shrouded in flames that you could not see through into the ruins. turning left, we ran toward the light of another fire. the technical school, a vast granite square of buildings, had been hit. the houses around it and on the next street were gutted clean, with flames leaping out of all the empty windows. firemen worked fast and silently but there was nothing much to do except try to put out the fire. later they could dig for the bodies. at a street corner, in the early oncoming night, a woman flagged a bus and put her child on it. she did not have time to kiss the child goodbye and no one said anything. the woman turned and walked back into the bombed street. the bus was collecting chil­ dren to take them away, anywhere, no one knew where but out of the city. a curious migration started that afternoon and went on all night. lost children, whose parents were gone in the burning buildings or separated in the confusion of that sudden attack, straggled out alone or in twos and threes, taking any road that led away from what they had seen. days later the state radio was still calling their names, trying to find their families for them. close to a big filling station a bus lay on its side, already burned out, and beside it in the street was the first dead man i saw in this war. on my first morning in madrid, three winters ago, i saw a man like this one. now as then there was no identification left 57 � , � � �.---� ----� ---the war in finland except the shoes, since the head and the arms had been destroyed. in spain the small, dark, deformed bundle wore the rope-soled shoes of the poor, and here the used leather soles were carefully patched. otherwise the two remnants of bodies were tragically the same. i thought it would be fine if the ones who order the bomb­ ing and the ones who do the bombing would walk on the ground some time and see what it is like. in finland it is black night at four o'clock in the winter after­ noon, but people stayed in the streets as if to take comfort from one another. women clustered in doorways and did not speak, and nowhere was anyone crying, nowhere was there the wild grief and panic that could be expected. that freezing night the roads out of helsinki were dark with silent people, carrying knapsacks or light suitcases or carrying nothing, walking to the forest for safety. next morning, the street-clearing department shoveled broken glass off the streets around the technical school with snow shovels. the great buildings were holed through from roof to cellar and burned black inside. a fireman took me into an apart­ ment house next door. we waded in water from the fire hoses and climbed two flights of stairs and went through a hanging door into a home that had once been comfortable and sweet. now the white-painted furniture of the bedroom was half splintered and the voile curtains hung in damp rags and the family photographs and all the small, useless, ornamental things people collect and cherish were blown about like rubbish on the floor. all night the firemen had been digging out bodies in this flat and the next one, and a week later they were still finding the buried dead. this fireman had worked in san francisco and trenton, years ago, and we talked about those cities and how lucky the people were who live there. we stood in the street and watched a fire that was still burning and looked at the ruins of the high school and the shattered homes, and the fireman said quietly, but not to joke, "nice felias, these roosians." �o b lq�eu, ·so\eu ieill\\) ca\\� tbe e bom� e�ounq \ed blo��n �lfu iuow om roo! to \0 an ��it ie boi��n� no doollnt� , ,now fut leoanufut o��ul�n� and cu�n\� ilie�l�ti \ on� an�l 1'h� �r�mln andweu\�w bo live \n�( )ti\\ dumlu\ tbe luatttln /iniet !�\\l\ bombs on helsinki there was a woman in one of the hospitals who had been pinnedunder the wreckage of her home and was now waiting to die, pushing the blankets from her body because any weight was in­tolerable. her child was dead but she did not know it, and her husband lay in another ward staring in front of him with fixed,mad eyes. the husband was a house painter. in the bed beside him a handsome dark boy with the bright face of fever held himself very still because with a hole like that in his back even breathing was torture. he had been a plumber. the russian planes came over again at one o'clock on the sec­ ond day of the war, and the machine guns, on the roofs of the office buildings and apartment houses that line the main street,hammered up at them into the thick gray sky. the planes turnedand dumped their bombs over the worker's quarters at the out­skirts of the city. the florists sent flowers to the hospitals andmade wreaths for the coffins, and little processions of unweepingpeople followed the pretty coffins to the cemetery. they went on evacuating children in hearses and cattle cars, in anything that would run on wheels or rails. people had been hiding in the freezing woods for three days and nights without shelter or food, and now they were beginning to find their wayinto the villages. then a truck would come to a village to move some of them to a country station, where they could catch a train going farther north. a driver put a ladder up against his truck and seven little old ladies, carrying small satchels, clambered up theladder twittering like birds. they spoke the neat, stilted english of governesses and laughed because they were so awkward and said yes, they were going to take a train now, and no, they didn't know where they were going but it would be all right, they would find some place to stay. it had been rather hard in the woods, they said,but now everything would be quite all right. a well-dressed young woman with two small children and a baby had walked from the city, the children's nurse pushing the baby carriage and she leading 59 --.. < , u i / �'-------.::t. __:_�_:=---�� --_ --__ the war in finland and carrying the other children. she had left everything behind, as had all the others. but the baby had a fur rug in his carriage to keep him warm, so she was not complaining. in a neighboring village a fine big woman with red cheeks was buying cough medi­ cine for her ten-year-old daughter. her child was ill from three nights in the open woods. the mother said they slept ten in a one­ room hut now, but that way, of course, they were warm. "we wait and we hope," she said. "why should we be afraid? we have done nothing wrong." rumors, the inevitable by-product of war, circulated through the countryside and in the city, saying that the russians were planning a giant air attack-they were going to flatten helsinki. nothing and no one would be left. in the midst of all this the russians bom­ barded the city with propaganda by leaflets and by radio. the finns reacted with bitter amusement. with the bombs came badly printed pamphlets saying, "you know we have bread, why do you starve?" since the finns eat as well as any people in the world, this was not convincing. they were told repeatedly by the moscow radio that the finns were brothers and this war was not the work of the real finnish people but only the devilish machination of a small band of finnish revolutionaries. these singular statements became the best joke in helsinki. there is less than one per cent illiteracy in finland and the people are well and constantly in­ formed. they believe the russian bombs but not the russian propaganda. as you neared the southern frontier and the battle zone, the tide of refugees thickened on the roads. the refugees traveled by sledge in this white, deadly-cold country, mostly old people huddled over their bags and bundles, with a horse or two tied on and fol­ lowing behind. the war was five days old and the first shock had worn off. there had been no panic at any time but only a stony determination to defend the country, and already it seemed as if 60 have qon� �on� ilie�& �1�b\'ll�t jrle �uool� � on and !�� �t )oock �l! onlr a ito�!, )ee01� a�j bombs on helsinki people knew exactly where they had to go, and as if each person had some special work that was essential to all. an italian journalist had remarked in helsinki that anyone who could survive the finnish climate could survive anything, and we decided with admiration that the finns were a tough and unrelenting race, seeing them take this war as if there were nothing very remarkable in three million people fighting against a nation of one hundred and eighty million. driving in finland is one of the worst features of the war. in towns and villages you are constantly muffled in darkness, and the roads through the countryside are narrow and iced like a skat­ ing rink. it is also horribly cold. late at night we stopped at a farmhouse to thaw out before continuing. the farm belonged to president szinhuszue, first regius of finland and third president, a greatly loved man whom all the finns call peter. we were welcomed into the house by the president, a tall old man wearing a lumberjack shirt and high boots. his wife, a bright-eyed, small dark woman almost as old as he, joined us in the living room. sixteen soldiers, whom they treated as their chil­ dren, were quartered in their house. the old president had spent two and a half years of his life in siberia because he refused to violate finnish law at the dictate of russia, and during those years his wife went three times to the prison camp to take care of him. their loyalty to each other and to finland is legendary, and now this faithful old couple seemed symbolic of their people. like all other finns they hate war. like all other finns they know what this war means. but they have been a long time building their country, and though nothing is perfect they know that finland is a place where men do not suffer from unemployment or hunger, where health and the disabilities of old age are state concerns, where schools are available to all, where co-operatives, and widespread state own­ ership of industry and transport, and cheap land guarantee a fair 61 , ��:.______ -� -----=----== -the war in finland division of wealth, where all men may believe what they like, talk as they see fit and read anything they desire. they are not going to give up easily, and though this war is disaster they accept it calmly because they have no choice. president szinhuszue offered us small apples from his orchard and told us how beautiful finland was in the summer, and his wife asked us to come back and see them when the war is won. "we will not have moved," she said. "this is our home." the army of possibly half a million, backed by a unified and unfrightened civil population of two and a half million, have de­ cided to fight a defensive war rather than lose their country, their republic and their hard-working, unaggressive, decent way of life. a nation of brave people is a good thing to see. a boy of nine stood outside his home in helsinki and watched the russian bombers. he was blond and plump and he stood with his hands on his hips and with his feet apart and looked at the sky with a stubborn, serious face. he held himself stiffly so as not to shrink from the noise. when the air was quiet again he said, "little by little, i am getting really angry." the karelian front fi, have �t, ufi�,\ntil wa� o!li!t, december 1939es\ooowilli a\tnel� � the road was just wide enough for the car and here it nar­ rowed at a bridge. the blued lamps of the car only dimly lightedthe frozen snow four feet ahead. "be careful," the soldier guidesaid to our driver. we had been driving in first gear and now we seemed barelyto move. suddenly our dimmed lights showed a red-painted poleto the left, marking the bridge. the bridge felt different from the road, smoother and even more slippery. when we were across, the soldier let out his breath. "that's dangerous," he explained,"those mined bridges-if you skid, i mean. one of our men hit such a mine and we couldn't even find him. there's another to cross now." the car had cleared the side of the bridge by lessthan a foot. our civilian driver turned on his full lights; he wasn't crossing any more of those bridges in the dark. the black, close-growing pine forest stood out against the snow, and the ice on the road flickered. we crossed the second bridge and the driver sighed and the soldier offered me a cigarette. ahead of us a staff car painted the war in finland dead-white-the camouflage color here-blinked its lights twice, turned a corner and suddenly sped along a narrow road past an open snow-covered field. we followed with full lights at a more sensible pace. the soldier muttered something, then the forest closed in again and the soldier spoke in a pleasant conversational voice to the driver. the driver answered quickly. i asked what they were talking about. finnish is not a language you can pick up in a short time. "he says," the driver translated, "that i should not have kept my lights on going past that field, or else i should have gone faster. the russians can see you from there, but he says they are poor marksmen and they have not managed to hit the road ·yet." our soldier guide, a lieutenant, wore a gray astrakhan cap and a romantic-looking but practical coat with astrakhan collar and trim­ ming, and high, over-the-knee leather boots with turned-up toes, and he was twenty-one and answered to the nickname of viskey. i had no idea where we were or where we were going because we had been driving for three hours, since leaving viipuri, on these un­ marked glassy roads. now viskey said stop, and we piled out and joined the four staff officers from the car ahead. we spoke in whispers. gun flashes from the finnish batteries burned like summer lightning against the sky, and the noise of the outgoing shells was very loud and blurred; and, like an echo, the explosions could be heard as they landed. for an hour i had been waiting to hear the rus­ sian batteries reply and still they were silent. ahead of us a line of soldiers loaded the small lightweight sledges the finns use for transport. sledges are the nearest you can come to mechanized efficiency in these forests and on these roads. the line of soldiers stretched far forward into the darkness. i thought it was probably a company of 150 men but couldn't be sure; most of them, wearing white overalls over their uniforms, seemed part of the snow, and the dark-dressed ones were lost twice, ��t an \ a male the tomt 'ersatlon�l \vnattn� lck up \n� snoulo n�t nou\amlt i ll�n���' tar�t!�ij� n ili�� rooru e aar�n�i,: ut coulon't � eir unl!�ma oes were � the karelian front against the dark trunks of the trees. they moved fast but in abso­ lute silence, and from time to time the gun flashes would light up a man bending to fix his boots or another slapping his hands for warmth. then a clear, crackling word was shouted down the line. it came from the leading officer commanding this action and was passed on by every twentieth man, and now it sang out over the road, and the sledges and the men began to move forward. "fol­ low!" called a voice from the darkness. "follow!" the other voices echoed. this was the first big night operation of the war. the russians were less than three quarters of a kilometer ahead, and all that day they had been maneuvered into a trap. the finnish colonel in command of this sector believed there was an entire russian divi­ sion caught in the pocket. two battalions of finnish soldiers, moving into the darkness, were to circle and pass the russian lines and attack from the rear while other mobile units attacked from the front. now we watched these go, and we heard behind us the rumble of trucks and stepped back into the ditches to leave the road clear as heavy ammunition trucks, burning cat's-eye lights, drove up and stopped. the road seemed to be blocked with incoming supplies. an officer i had known for three hours, and who was therefore an old friend, loomed up and said, in german, "get in your car. you must go back. this is the height of stupidity-and besides, your cars are in the way." he said something sharply to viskey, who laughed and took my arm. the officer who ordered us back had been an assistant professor of sociology at the university of helsinki. he had a puckered thoughtful face and wore glasses and took his responsibilities seri­ ously. we returned as we came, following the almost invisible white staff car. we drove on the slant toward the ditch, to let more trucks pass, and behind them came caravans of supply , -_ -�� ----_ -�---.___ the war in finland sledges, and three red cross sledges that would serve as am­ bulances. we brought viskey to what seemed nothing more than one pine tree out of many but was actually the point of entry into the clearing where his tent stood. later we drove slowly alongside a company of soldiers returning from the front. their light field guns were on horse-drawn caissons; their sledges were piled high with bicycles and skis, the cavalrymen slept on their horses, the wagon cookstove smoked faintly, and in two large trucks men slept rolled up together, dark and shapeless. half frozen and very tired, we reached the bombed city of viipuri at five-thirty in the morning. we had left helsinki at five­ thirty the morning before. that was the end of the day and night but all of it had been strange enough. at eight o'clock, in the beginning of the preceding night, we had arrived at ghq for the karelian front. ghq was in a large, rambling country estate with many barns, stables and outbuildings. we found staff headquarters and were ushered into a ballroom with pale-blue walls, lace curtains, cut-glass chandeliers and a grand piano. from this we were led into a small, equally elegant salon where scale maps were pinned on the wall and a long, businesslike table was the only furnishing. the commanding general, a gray, slender, shy man, came in presently from a trip to the front. the talk was friendly and formal and unrevealing, as it always is with high army officers, and at last i asked for permission to go to the front. the general said that it would be impossible-i would have to walk eight kilometers through these forests where every inch of ground seems taken up by either a tree or a granite boulder, and where between rocks and trees the snow drifts as high as your neck. i said, from french to finnish via the aide-de­ camp, that i was perfectly prepared to try to walk through any­ thing. i had argued with generals before and knew it was a losing game. nothing was decided, as far as i could make out, though a nl�ntl wt in a la!�tl utoutldln�), a oalhoom anda�n� i�nt �\�� oulln�1111!t neralla�:1 e hout 11110n t� �1 im�111dk,1 !ore5tl w�t;( o!a�lnitt now dn!�s a tn� ala��r ilirou�n an)' t wal a l�)in! ut, tnou�� i the karelian front rapid discussion went on in finnish. we shook hands with the general, and a sentry guided us across the grounds to a remodeled church where supper was being served. you helped yourself from a side table. piles of butter over a foot high stood on the table, and there was macaroni with cheese and meat in a creamy brown sauce, and every kind of bread and many pitchers of milk and lemonade. this is the sort of extraordinary food that is given to the army everywhere. the entire army-officers, men and even pilots­ functions on total prohibition, which is a comment on the army's discipline and the excellent state of its nerves. after dinner we were told to get in our cars. i still did not know where we were going. it took us two hours to drive twenty-five miles. we stopped at a farmhouse and picked up a guide. after a few minutes we stopped again and followed our guide into the forest and almost stumbled on a large round tent. the troops, who had been fighting a retreating guerrilla action for five days, giving the army time to get in its present position, were now encamped invisibly in these woods and catching up on their sleep. we crawled through the tent opening, and twelve soldiers woke in surprise. they were all very young-boys who were doing their regular military service and had got a war instead of aca­ demic practice. they came mostly from central finland and were farmers' sons. the tent was the warmest place i had been in that day. their officer, a young man with prince albert sideburns, spoke english and translated as they recounted how they had stopped tanks at twenty meters and how russian infantry at­ tacked. here, as everywhere else, i heard the same story about the rus­ sian infantry column. the russians attacked en masse in line, and the hidden and dispersed finns mowed them down with machine­ gun fire. and here, as everywhere else, i heard soldiers and officers express regret that other men should have to die stupidly and wastefully like slaughtered animals. _ -.. , _ ____jl i / . ._�-_�-----' the war in finland we connected with viskey here, and the next stop was field headquarters, another tent equally warm and comfortable and lost in the woods. the colonel showed us positions on his scale map and answered questions and joked, and all this time an attack was starting. it is not usual to find a field headquarters so calm and good-humored when real business is under way. only once division headquarters telephoned to ask how things were going, and the answer was "fine!" meanwhile the finnish batteries, scattered through these woods, were preparing the attack with a fairly heavy bombardment. the finnish batteries, eighteen guns here, were using threeand six-inch shells. the colonel said that the russians used ten-inch shells but that the firing was inaccurate, there were many duds, and the shells had a low explosive value. he also said that the rus­ sians used 150to 25o-kilo bombs on this front, and despite low flying they were inaccurate in their work. he showed me on a map how his men, divided into small, swift units, attacked in five dif­ ferent places over a fifty-kilometer radius in one day. they can and do fight like indians, in woods which they know as well as we know the orderly streets of our own neighborhoods. the weather now was not the best for them, as it was too snowy for bicycles and too early for skis, but the new snow had started and the whole army would soon change to skis, which gives them a tre­ mendous advantage of speed. every finn moves on skis as other people walk. from this place we could see the sky marked with fire from burning villages, and we had passed on the road numerous small fires reflected in a lake. these small fires were from burning hay; the finns systematically destroy anything that may be of use to the enemy, and the burning villages in front of the lines were fired either by occasional russian shells or by the retreating villagers themselves or by the finnish army. the russians come to a bare 68 -_ . .....�.--,� , the karelian front and unfriendly country where there is nothing to eat and little or no shelter. also in the dark, we had passed the mannerheim line; the finnish army was still in front of its own fortifications. the mannerheim line crosses the bottleneck of the karelian isthmus in a triplicate defense of granite tank traps, barbed wire and trenches. but nature itself has provided the finns with the best defense-the forest studded with rocks and broken by lakes, icy weather and a gray cloud-thick sky. i don't know what is going on in the north, where it is no more than 125 miles from the russian border to the finnish coast of the gulf of bothnia and the vital railway line that connects finland with sweden. nor does anyone know what the russian army has in store or what the russian aviators can produce. but, those days on the southern front, the russians were being outfought and liquidated. at eight-thirty in the morning, after three hours' sleep, we heard the siren wail over viipuri and we descended to the concrete-walled hotel garage. nothing happened. then the snow started to fall, soft and steady, and the day promised to be safe. we went to the viipuri prison to visit the captured russians. the chief warden of this prison was a spare gray man with pince­ nez and a stammer and the gentle manner of a professor. he was talking in russian with a soviet flier. the flier was thirty-two years old and had a sad, tired face and two days' growth of beard, and he stood as straight as his fatigue would let him and answered ques­ tions in a humble, soft voice. i asked whether he had any family .. he did not move and his voice did not change, but tears rolled down his face, and the warden and the jailers turned away because they did not want to look. the flier said in the same soft voice that he had two children, one so high and the other so high, and his beloved wife and another child on the way. he simply stated these facts, not asking for pity, but his loneliness was terrible to see. 'iili ore [wid merom �id�! bumin��\' � 01 ul� t� �\i'ere�rw tjo� vil1��tfl e to a o�!� _--.. ,_ u i / �-� �_:;__.::_----..... -------.__ the war in finland we walked down stone steps into the cellar and two russian soldiers were let out of barred cells. they also stood in this tight, rigid manner, and i thought probably every time they were called out of their cells they expected to be shot. one was a tall man of thirty-seven and the other a boy of twenty-three. they had had two and three months' military training respectively. they were very thin, their clothes were the crudest cotton pants and coats­ in this desperate climate-and the finns were shocked because they were so louse-infested. these prisoners answered questions shivering1y also, and they repeated what all the others had said: they were told finland was attacking them, and so they were fighting to save russia. the individual man, in trouble and alone and lost, is pitiful, and these were as pitiful as any i had ever seen. the warden allowed me to give them cigarettes, thus breaking a prison rule of seventeen years' standing and proving also that he was a kind, unhating old man. the roads are as ghastly by day as by night. cars spin like coins, skidding on ice and gently descending into ditches. we arrived in the dark at the town where we were to sleep, and the next morning we were treated to a fine imitation of the best london fog. the finns seemed very lucky in these matters. this town was a bomb­ ing objective for the enemy and an unhealthy place to be in clear weather. i was taken to the great airfield of this sector, where fighter planes are stationed. not much can be written about it. even when you were on the field you could see nothing. the planes were hidden in the woods and in their own dugouts. all the vastly complicated organization work was carried on in dugouts which looked from the ground like snowdrifts. most of the planes-fast single-seater pursuits-were imported from holland; some were copies made in finnish factories. we stepped over sweet-smelling pine boughs that camouflaged a dugout where the crack pursuit squadron of finland has its quar.. ---. _ r�-_--:--._.. � �'il � � , llssian i� tigbt, te calloo 1 mana! baa n�q n il�ecolm, 'earrivooiij extffiorni� on lo�, th1 ivai a doffi� o�inti1j: onere n�mt! , evenw�ffi rlanel w�t tne v��j �ou� \v�i� rlan� .. �t lome \1'�!t mou�a��� � as i� �u!l' the karelian front terse as always, one is astounded by the age of the pilots; they ought to be going to college dances, you feel, or cheering at foot­ ball games. their dugout was warm and cheerful and one of the pilots played a guitar. the squadron commander, a new hero of finland, answered questions for a time politely and then said, "do you want to hear a sad finnish love song?" i said i would be de­ lighted, and a pilot sang to the accompaniment of the guitar, and the squadron commander, when it was over, remarked with a delicious quick smile, "paris et i'arnour." this officer, a tall man of thirty with a beautifully chiseled face, had brought down two planes in one day. the second one, at a distance of thirty meters, splashed him with oil as it fell. all these men were modest and jolly, the way brave men are. they go up, alone or in twos, to fight off any number of oncoming bombers. the squadron commander, on his big day, had been fighting alone against thirteen russian bombers. he told me, in passing, that some years ago he tried to get a job flying transport between new york and boston but he failed because the american company didn't think he was good enough. he said of course it was much easier to fly pursuit planes in war. the colonel of this air regiment said he thought the russian bombers were good planes but slow. the finnish fighter planes have a greater speed at low altitudes and their speed increases with height. the russians' have been flying low, not above 16,000 feet, throughout this war, both over the cities and over military objectives. a russian squadron is nine planes, and bombers are flown with­ out any accompanying protective pursuit planes. the colonel believed the russians were flying now from their field at novgorod, which is several hundred kilometers inland from the russian coast, and their pursuits did not have enough fuel capacity to convoy the bombers, fight and return. the bomb load of these russian planes is approximately a thousand kilos and they carry their light --. . ;' i /��l!� __ -----__:.._-_.----t: .. �_��� ��r; the war in finland incendiary bombs in barrel containers. at this field all the cap­ tured russian pilots were interviewed and the finns were surprised that such inexperienced men had been sent against them. the russian pilots said that they had received only ten hours of com­ bat flying training, and one soviet flier stated that in russia the aviators were told the finns had neither anti-aircraft nor pursuit planes. the finns have both, in small quantity but splendidly manned. one cannot know what will happen in a war from one day to the next, and certainly guessing is even more hazardous in a war between such unequal forces, but it is safe to say that the finns have a trained army, helped by knowledge of the terrain; the soldiers are wen equipped and wonderfully fed and the pilots are apparently, from results already shown, superior. the army has the sound and comforting gaiety of good troops. it has confidence in its leaders. and it has the determination of those who fight on their own soil. the squadron commander spoke for them all when he said, "they will not get us as a present." --. � . �-�:-.. ;11 r -. the war in china nineteen forty must have been the most ominous year of the war, tor our side. far off, sate in the sun, i listened to the radio, a daily funeral bell. the defeat at finland; the nazi invasion oi denmark and norway; the tailure oi the british campaign in norway; the nazi invasion oi holland, belgium and luxembourg; the nazi terror raid on rotterdam; the surrender at the dutch and belgian armies; the dunkirk evacuation; the battle at france, im­ mediately tollowed by the parade oi the nazi army down the champs-elysees, italy's entry into the war; the french armistice with germany and italy; the battie oi britain and trom then on, through the blitz, through the winter, the awful mounting toil of the civilian dead; the pact between germany, italy and japan, called horribly "the new order"; the italian attack on greece; the start at the war in the western desert. there was no contusion of mind in hating and tearing the ,enemy. it that had been the only problem, it would have been a simple war, tor the enemy was entirely, profoundly evil. but there was also our side, and our record was not all shining and admirable, 73 . . �__j�' i / . =------------:: -�.-:::_ .. ---� the face of war and one could not give one's undivided loyalty to our leaders, not by a long shot. we were guilty of the dishonest abandonment of spain and the quick cheap betrayal of czechoslovakia. we nig­ gled and refused asylum to doomed jews; we inspected and re­ jected anti-fascists fleeing for their lives from hitler; we were full of shames and ugly expediencies. in the immortal words of e. m. forster, "two cheers for democracy." two cheers was all one could manage. i learned my last lesson in what is called political reality during a visit i made to paris at christmas time in 1939, on my way home from finland. it was an important lesson for me because i de­ cided i had learned the same thing over and over, for long enough: political reality and political morality have nothing to do with each other. politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get / a job. it is pointless to heap blame on leaders in a democracy, since we put them where they are in the first place and once there, they are subject to the law: power corrupts. but i see no need to hero­ worship any of them. in the early winter of 1939, paris was the sleeping beauty. blue dim-out lights shone on the snow in the empty place de la con­ corde. people moved quietly about the unscarred city, as it walk­ ing in a lovely white countryside. there were no crowds, few cars, 110 sense of haste or disaster. paris had never been more at peace. i felt that i was looking at this grace for the last time. in my ex­ perience cities were bombed; that was what they could count 011. the only work i had to do in paris was to try to rescue some friends who were imprisoned with the defeated spanish army be­ side the mediterranean, in holes dug on the beach at argeles. this project interested no one at all. as a successful politician said to me, while we both stuffed foie gras: my dear girl, a german 74 --r-�1----; -. .... � ii 11 � '", ' ) not ent 01 e ni�. an� t�· ere lu� le.h allont ury, m�: de i� ��! al il w�l ), kw�\ i at�i�,1 in ml�' count@ eicue !�m( n aifll)k at n�eh libcianl�1 a cennl� the war in china and a former communist, really, what do you expect? it was use­ less to point out that these men, forgotten behind barbed wire, had been fighting hitler long before anyone else thought of doing so, or had been forced to do so. i realized finally how unwise it was to be "prematurely anti-fascist." the people of france, who have so many rare talents, apparently have no talent for self-government, which is after all a question of choosing your leaders to suit your real needs and keeping a stern eye on their actions. i knew many of the frenchmen then in power, from the days of my youth; i knew all of their records. the ruling class did not seem to take this war very seriously; it was a brand-new witty type of war: you declared it and sat down in your fortifications and no doubt in time the whole disagreeable mess would clear up. i said goodbye, with love, to the three french people i knew who were so fine that they were sure to be killed; and i bolted from europe. i didn't think there would be a battle; i thought there would be a massacre, and i could not bear to witness another, to watch helplessly while the innocent were destroyed. worse than destroyed, i thought, and still made futile last-minute pleas for my imprisoned friends. war and death could be borne; what was be­ yond one's imagination, and the root of all fear, was the tortures of the gestapo. so in 1940 europe was lost and the gestapo hunted over the continent, searching for the best and bravest. no one then knew or cared much about the war in china, but japan had become an axis partner and what japan did held a new menace. i wanted to see the orient before i died; and the orient was across the world from what i loved and feared for. journalism now turned into an escape route. my assignment was to report on the defenses of hong kong, singapore and the dutch east indies, take a look at the burma road, and find out how the sino-japanese war was getting on. i am reprinting only two of the reports writ­ ten on this long journey. 75 the face of war my china articles were not entirely candid. they did not say all i thought, and nothing of what i felt. there was a severe censor­ ship in china, but i was more troubled by an interior censorship, which made it impossible for me to write properly. i had been in­ cluded, twice, in luncheon parties given by the chiangs. they struck me as the two most determined people i had met in my life. their will to power was a thing like stone; it was a solid separate object which you felt in the room. they were also immensely in­ telligent, gracious and i thought inhuman. but i had accepted their hospitality, and since they owned china, it would be as if i had visited them as a guest and thanked them by writing unpleasant revelations about their house. i have never again accepted hamper­ ing hospitality. the notion that china was a democracy under the generalis­ simo is the sort of joke politicians invent and journalists perpetuate. the local men-in-office, whenever the absence of democracy be­ came embarrassing, explained these conditions by saying that any country, in the midst of a long terrible war, must abandon some of its domestic liberties; and this is a sad fact, as we can all testify. but i do not believe that china ever was a democracy, nor will be, in our lifetime. how could it be? for democracy, or even the pretense of democracy, you need a fair percentage of literacy among the population, free communication-not only by speech and print but by road and rail, and enough time out, from struggling desper­ ately for survival, to vote. i thought a good six-point program for china during the next hundred years would be: clean drinking water-at least at stated places; sewage disposal everywhere; a government-issued birth­ control pill; and an agricultural scheme which would guarantee the bare minimum of rice required to prevent the death by starvation of any chinese. with these matters attended to, they could begin on a universal health service, attacking cholera, typhoid, typhus, leprosy, amoebic dysentery, malaria (malignant and benign), and --. . �--�-:-.. jill i'� , the war in china �1all all the other ills the flesh is heir to, but more heir to in china than emor· in any other country i know. after that, it would be time to build mni�, schools and fill them. and then, final1y, but how far in the future, ;enill· the moment might have come to say a word about democracy. , tiley i felt that it was pure doom to be chinese; no worse luck could nrlik befall a human being than to be born and live there, unless by some golden chance you happened to be born one of the .00000099 per cent who had power, money, privilege (and even then, even then). i pitied them all, i saw no tolerable future for them, and i longed to escape away from what i had escaped into: the age-old misery, filth, hopelessness and my own claustrophobia inside that enor­ mous country. 77 --. . � l� i / ------=-fr-:----_� _ ____ _ _--.-_ r _ how to get to china january 1941 � it was four-thirty in the morning and cold, and a heavy wind blew through the dark hangar and against the passengers as they crossed the hong kong airfield to the plane. lights went on at the edge of the field, and we saw the douglas dc-2, huge and silver-colored, with great black letters on the wings: cnac in english letters on the right wing, cnac in five-foot-high chinese characters on the left wing. we could not see the humped green mountains that rise 3,000 feet to border the field. the eight pas­ sengers found seats in the unlighted cabin and fastened their safety belts. the weather report said the ceiling was 500 feet, visibility two miles, and storms ahead. it was perfect flying weather for the china national aviation corporation. no u.s. transport line would allow its planes to leave that mountain­ girdled field in such weather. we took off, sliding and swaying into the wind. we were going to fly at night over the japanese lines, and over sharp unbroken mountain ranges with peaks 9,200 feet high and no plateaus for forced landings. it was 770 miles to chungking. -_ � �,-----: -. ... / � ;i� i '" how to get to china the plane circled up, higher and higher above the safe territory of hong kong. the hills around the harbor were beaded with light. there were bright lighted ships, and floating points of light on the sampans. the city lights and the lights on the water jumped and slanted as the dc-2 climbed. then the city was gone and white furry cloud wrapped the plane. the chinese passengers pulled up their blankets and looked very small and quiet in their chairs, and slept. you could feel the forward pull of the plane, and you could feel the wind. we climbed to 1 3,000 feet above hong kong. the red and green wing lights went off. now at this great height and flying blind, we were ready to head north across the japanese lines. the flash from the exhausts flick­ ered against the propellers and over the wings and lighted up the drifting cloud. then the shape of the cloud changed. it was no longer loose and soft; it had a texture like stone and it rose in a wall before the plane, and it was like flying against the side of a sandstone mountain. the wing letters blurred and finally we could see nothing. the plane moved, with sharp side drops and down plunges, in absolute darkness. at five, we entered a storm. the chinese passengers still slept. it was very cold. the american officer, who was making this trip for the first time too, looked at me and we both laughed because there was nothing else to do. we naturally did not believe any­ thing could happen to this plane. once you are in a plane, you are part of it, and you give it confidence, feeling that the pilot and the co-pilot and the radio operator and the passengers and the plane are all one thing: an indestructible whole. accidents have happened, but you never think it will be now, not to you, not to this plane, not to this solid unit of machine and men that is roaring through a hailstorm. so we fastened our safety belts again to keep from being battered against the seat in front or flung to the floor, and the dc-2 bucked the wind. hail beat against the wings and the fuselage with a noise like a threshing machine, and lightning 79 the war in china made a dull glow in the clouds. we steadied ourselves with both hands hard on the chair arms and braced ourselves with our feet. ice formed on the wings and the propellers and the plane climbed until it reached the top of the clouds. if it were not possible to reach the top of the clouds at or below 16,000 feet, the pilot would turn back. there is no de-icing equipment on the planes. after an hour we flew out of the storm, though the cloud was like thick cream all around us. the pilot came back into the cabin and remarked to the american officer that his air speed indicators had frozen during the storm. the american officer grinned and shook hands with him. the pilot said it was nothing; he opened his window an inch and gauged the speed of the plane by the velocity of the wind. he had practiced this often. the american officer told me, after the pilot left, that the stalling speed is sixty-three miles an hour-at that point the plane would fall out of control. "these boys can fly," he said. and then later, "these boys can certainly fly." the sun came up and the chinese passengers stirred and looked out the windows and pushed down under their blankets again. we were flying over a solid carpet of cloud, in still, greenish-blue air; it was like flying over the inside of a shell. we could have used some hot coffee. after a while everyone slept. then the plane started circling to descend, though the ground was hidden. the visibility at chungking was 800 feet. for blind landings, the cnac pilots use the telefunken, a german radio for direction finding. they can tune in on any broadcasting station or long-wave station and take a bearing. all that the passengers knew, however, was that suddenly, through rifts in cloud, we could see a patch of river, or a jagged slice of brown mountains. suddenly, from being lost in cloud, we were so low that we could see washing hanging in the courtyards, crumbled bombed walls, the always thousands of dark hurrying chinese climbing the hill paths or walking through the broken streets. chungking looks like 80 -_ -. �--�1----: -� illl: '"", how to get to china a loose cluster of farmhouses, spread in a circle over the hills, with the gray-green, brown yangtze cutting through the center. we flew just over the roofs of the houses and up the river, to turn and come in on the chungking airfield. the airfield, which is 1,900 feet long and 100 feet wide, is on a narrow island in the middle of the yangtze, with mountains 3,500 feet high all around it. it is under sixty feet of water for at least two months a year, and at the best of seasons it looks like a mud flat in the mississippi. in the afternoon we drank tea and waited in a thatched hut on the chungking airfield for weather reports. we were due to leave for kunming but the weather was too good. everybody was very irritated by the sun and the clean sky. with this fine weather, the japs might give kunming a late-afternoon bombing. still, we had to get to lashio on the burma border that night. the distance from chungking to lashio is slightly less than that from new york to chicago, and royal leonard, the pilot, decided to start and take it slowly, planning to reach our first stop at kunming after dark. the [aps did not bother to bomb there at night, since it was so easy to bomb in the daytime. the fields grew up and down the sides of the mountains. they were never the same shape twice, and below us they looked like the strange petals of a flower. rice paddies shone in the sun and the fields were purple and gray and green and yellow. there were farmhouses built around open courtyards, and footpaths like pencil lines over the hills, and on the yangtze great barges were being rowed by twelve standing men. we could just see the blue color of their jackets and the way their bodies moved together. now the hills were huge brown inverted pots, and scattered over them, like white washing spread on the ground, were white flower­ ing trees. we flew low and looked at everything. we might as well enjoy the scenery since the weather was so appallingly good. and flying low like this, we could not be seen over the rims of the mountains. "i go where i'm looking," roy said. he was in81 the war in china venting a new route, to fit the weather conditions and the fact that jap bombers were reported near kunming and had to be given time to start for home. in america, transport planes fly on a radio beam. on the clippers two officers do nothing but navigation, working at a table in a large cabin. roy did his navigation in the cockpit with his sextant, maps, navigating tables, plotter, and air almanac bal­ anced on his lap. finally it did not feel like traveling in a plane at all. we were wandering casually through the valleys, climbing to get over the mountains, dropping down again to look at a river or flying off our course to inspect a remote chinese graveyard on the side of a hill. the dc-2 began to seem as personal and obedi­ ent as a horse. it was like riding a horse over the countryside. then roy said, "you know, there practically isn't a place you can land on this whole trip." there was nothing but the terraced fields broken with stone walls, and the mountains, and the narrow deep gorges of river beds. behind us were mountains too. you could not see them when you passed over them in the dark, or through cloud, but they were there. to the north were stone mountains, rising up flat against the sky, with snow on their peaks. and southward were more mountains, purple and beautiful and going on forever. they were big mountains too, averaging 12,000 feet in height. it was not a country to have to come down m. we stopped at kunming for gasoline and passengers. it was dusk and the japanese had not been there today at all and would not come now. an american radio engineer who taught in the chinese aviation school at kunming said he thought the japs were student pilots, getting a little experience bombing an open town. he said they did pretty efficient bombing too, but of course there was no opposition. then the last gasoline tin was rolled away empty and we took off again. we were going to fly over the high­ est mountains on the trip, in the dark as usual, in average-to-bad 82 --. . �-�1----1;' -..., i'll i � , how to get to china dati weather. no one took the weather seriously until one startled to � chinese passenger bounced out of his seat into the aisle. we were flying at 14,000 feet and altitude jitters began to set n ili� in. you felt flushed and at the same time cold and you got cramps a��l� in your legs and stretched and shifted position and wondered what wltn �� was the matter with you. the dc-2 behaved as if it were a runaway n�� m roller coaster. the chinese, who had been very gay when we left �\ant!t kunming, quieted down. when you could see at all, you saw great dln�t� round rings of fire on the mountains, where the peasants were burnt a n\'� ing brush so that the rains could run down the cleared slopes to 'emooo irrigate their fields. it was weird and handsome: a vast blackness nao� suddenly breaking into lines and circles of red light. then the 'ilof, plane would drop and tip and we hung on to our chairs. i did not �\ale)� see the lashio field until we landed on it. e tem� shan men with long black dusty hair coiled and pinned up on enaitiji the tops of their heads, wearing skirtlike loincloths, took our lugtoo,ioc gage into the airline office. the office was a bamboo hut lighted by eol(: a kerosene lamp. a few sweating officials of mixed race and color 'erel!ij:: checked our passports. it was ten o'clock at night. we had been on ilic in the air for over twelve hours and had covered a distance greater o �uhl: than from los angeles to st. louis. only people do not travel by air from los angeles to st. louis under such conditions. a polite voice says to you over the telephone, "the flight has been canceled." under such conditions, people take a train or stay at home. we slept soundly on beds with boards instead of springs. in the morning we took hot baths in tin washtubs. we ate as well as could be expected. then we set out to see the sights. lashio is an oriental boom town; the railroad from rangoon ends here and the burma road into china begins. but the sights are limited: a lively dirty country fair, some barracks, a few wooden european­ style houses, native women washing themselves thoroughly but modestly at the public water taps, a collection of semiprecious /' i --. . . l / ',0 �.;'____"& -.--'�-::::= -:'. '.-the war in china stones in an indian jewelry store. (the hindu shopkeeper said he did not keep good stones because it was too dangerous. "we have as much crime in lashio as in chicago," he said proudly. "oh, terrible people." ) we went back to the airfield, which is half the size of a stand­ ard airfield in america. a neatly painted board set up outside the bamboo office stated that new york was 12,923 miles away, san francisco 10,240 miles away. i thought of la guardia field as i watched burmese men and women and oxen widening this field, leveling off the red clay to make room for the squadron of aus­ tralian pursuit planes which will soon be stationed here. if the second world war spreads this far, the railroad and the burma highway will have protection. we sat in the sun and waited for a weather report. the report came. the weather was fine and twenty-seven japanese planes were now bombing kunming. we dozed and chatted until the all­ clear signal came through. we expected to arrive in kunming just after the [aps left, and we would leave at dawn before they could come back. it takes one week in a passenger car, if all goes well, to drive over the burma road from lashio to kunming. but we could fly over those mountains, with a tail wind, in two hours and ten minutes. there was no hurry. the burmese shouted to their oxen, and the sun was very hot. we were over kunming, and from the plane all this destruction looked puny. (i remember the italian pilot who had flown a bomber over ethiopia, and his horror when he saw for the first time, in helsinki, what a bomb was like when it landed.) two columns of smoke rose from the center of the city. from the air you would not know how these smashed houses looked or sounded as they collapsed. from the air you would not hear anyone buried underneath them; you would not see the people who had lived in . �-�-:-.. �lll r � how to get to china d b� them and who now had nowhere to go. it is altogether unreal to bav� see the results of a bombing from above. lion) now the plane was down and we were going to the hotel. there were no lights in the bombed part of the city. we took rickshaws. �tan�· the coolies moaned steadily, saying, "huh-huh, huh-huh," using q�ili� their voices instead of taxi horns. we could smell the dust from the broken mud-brick houses, and the smoke from the houses that were still burning, and the crowd grew thicker. the rickshaw coolies moved slowly because paving stones had been loosened and flung over the street, and there were telephone and electric light wires coiling into the road. a crowd waited at the door of a big modern movie house. they were showing kentucky, in techni� color. the chinese stood in a dark, silent mass, waiting for the electricity to be repaired so that the movie machines would work. behind a handsome old city gate with a carved roof and carved painted figures under the eaves, stretched one of the longest streets in kunming, a street of small shops and homes, where people lived in mud-brick and timber houses, packed four and five to a room. every house on this street had been hit. if you tripped in any of the holes made by bomb fragments, or got pinned against any of the fallen timbers, there was danger of being crushed. the narrow street was packed solid with chinese: men wearing black or faded blue cotton clothes, a few women hobbling along on bound five-inch feet, peasant women in black pants and coats, with their hair in braids down their backs, children caught in the undertow. they all walked slowly, in silence. gas mains had been hit, and cesspools, and underfoot the street sloshed in water from broken pipes. the miserable houses, suddenly cracked open, let out all their long store of dirt and smell. there was no air to breathe, and any time now these houses, sagging sideways on unsteady beams, or balanced against one firm wall, might slip down into the crowded street like an avalanche. you could hear the moving people, and you could hear 'ii' i /-. . . --.:.-----!t_t-----...::l! _ �--;' the war in china hammers and the sound of shovels digging into hard mud or rock. all along the side of the street, by candlelight and the light of kerosene lanterns, the people were digging their way back into their bombed and ruined homes and hammering together torn boards to make some kind of roof and some kind of wall, some kind of shelter to live in. there was only the night to work. to­ morrow the japanese would come back. half a million people live in kunming. when the air-raid warn­ ing sounds, they rush from the town without even locking up behind them. there are no bomb shelters in the city and no pro­ tection of any kind in these flimsy buildings, and there are no anti­ aircraft guns. they take to the hills and watch the japanese bomb­ ers working over their empty city. only the people who are too old or ill or disgusted to make the long daily trek stay behind, and get killed. so now, in the dark, the people had just returned from the safety of the open country, to see what twenty-seven japanese bombers, dumping bombs weighing from 100 to 500 pounds, had done to their homes. we were staying at the hotel de l'europe, which had not yet been bombed. it was like a third-rate or perhaps fourthor fifth­ rate hotel on the riviera. it seemed splendid to us. the two proprietors were greeks who had learned their french in mar­ seille. the excitable, soiled one who never took his hat off ex­ plained the raids. "madame," he said, "the warnings are correct here. usually we have two or three hours' warning. then we go to the country. myself, i am tired of the country and of all the fra necessary exercise. however, it is also difficult to maintain a hotel under such conditions. these bandits [which is what most people can the japanese] habitually bomb the city between ten and eleven in the morning. today, however, the monsters chose to bomb at one o'clock and we had only forty minutes' warning. some people were unable to leave in that time. kunming was a very fine city, as 86 --. . �.�: ---" .. 1,111 i "" or rock. ligbt 01 back lnt� etber torn wall, �offi� o work. t� li-raia ivdffi' lockin� ij1 'ana no rl� are no dn�, an�e �om� o are too ol� benlna, dfll eturnea ito� yen jdrd�n �unol,b: naonot\i urtnoi�g m, the�: nen in �ij: 11 nat o�� are (o!lt; en we �ot ooldllw­ 'ntain d �oii molt rro�, nanoe1e1t. to ooffi�; �ome reo1ii , bne ri�'i� how to get to china healthy and agreeable a summer resort as you would find even in switzerland." i said, since he was greek, that he must be proud of his coun­ try. he rose and stood up straight and said formally, "we defend liberty, madame, as is our duty." we were drinking bottled water, which was a luxury and also a sensible thing to do, and i observed to roy that it had been quite a day, quite two days in fact. but of course it was nothing remarkable to him. he has been flying in china for six years. royal leonard is thirty-five. the seven other american pilotswho fly this line are all about the same age, a little younger or a little older. they come from texas and ohio, california, kansas, maryland, alabama and indiana, and you would know they were americans anywhere in the world. there was a ninth pilot, "foxy" kent from louisiana. he would have been thirty-seven the day after he was killed. kent was flying the regular passenger service between kunming and lashio when he got warning of a japanese raid over kun­ mingo he landed on an emergency field near kunming to wait for the [aps to leave that area. five japanese planes had been bombing this emergency field. there was no radio to warn kent, and the jap planes, having dumped their loads, were already above the clouds, re-forming to take off for their base. the entire forma­ tion winged over and dove down through the cloud onto the cnac plane just as it rolled to a stop. kent was killed at once, shot through the chest by a projectile from a zo-mm, japanese cannon. the chinese co-pilot and radio operator climbed past him into the cabin and tried to make the passengers leave the plane. the passengers were terrified and re­ fused to move, believing that the plane itself offered protection. the two members of the crew, the stewardess and one passenger jumped from the plane. the co-pilot and the radio operator rolled to cover at the side of the field and lay still. they saw the steward87 ----;�-� -._---_ ---the war in china ess running from the plane. her white nurse's uniform showed up clearly against the dusty brown of the field. a j ap plane saw her too and dove on her. she went down, halfway between the dc-2 and the fringe of bushes at the side of the field. she was shot through the legs. the [ap plane winged over and came back to give her two more bursts. they apparently did not want any sur­ vivors. the girl died eight hours later of her wounds, before they could get her to a hospital. all eleven passengers who stayed in the cabin were hit by machine-gun bullets and died before they could be moved from the plane. the japanese officially stated that they thought the cnac douglas was a military plane. how could they be expected to see the markings or notice the woman in their hurry? cnac gave up carrying stewardesses for four months. otherwise the service went on uninterrupted. cnac pilots accept the same risks as bomber pilots, only they are not protected by pursuit planes and they are not armed. you never know whether they will come back, until you see them. for two weeks now, a dc-2 and its pilot, co-pilot and radio opera­ tor have been missing. the pilot, joy thorn, a chinese-american from los angeles, was carrying a load of eleven million chinese dollars to chungking. he set out on a bad night, as usual, and nothing more was heard of him. rumors began to go around the hong kong bars, not nice talk, the kind that is easy to make if people are sitting in comfortable chairs with no greater risk than that of choking on a scotch-and-soda. the other cnac pilots did not argue, but they were disgusted with this talk. they knew thorn. he was the youngest of the senior pilots and a fine man. patrol planes could find nothing. the serial numbers of the banknotes had been listed, and a few days ago a peasant woman bought some food in kweilin with one of those notes. she was questioned and they traced her back to a village in the mountains. then the patrol planes went out again. they found scattered pieces of the plane, and three bodies. 88 in ili�l mon�, how to get to china joy thorn, off his course in the fog, had crashed into a mountain. it has happened before. six pilots have been lost in the last year; the mountains accounted for four of them. a chinese friend, explaining the cnac pilots, said, "those men are all in love with flying." that would have to be true. they love to fly and here they do a flying that is never the same; all de­ cisions are their own; they are free men in the air. they earn a thousand dollars a month, but many people might feel that a thousand dollars a trip was not enough to pay for such risks. they may also have grown into china. china is full of foreigners who were never able to leave, once a love of the country started working in them. and then this whole outfit has been tied together by com­ mon difficulties and hardships and danger. as long as the job goes on, they stick with it and with each other. it is as if they had signed up together for the duration of a war. we left kunming at six-thirty in the morning and flew through cloud that was like volcanic white soup. all the passengers who were not airsick slept. it was generally agreed that this was excel­ lent flying weather. in chungking we were to pick up a representa­ tive of president roosevelt and his staff, three high chinese govern­ ment officials, and a u.s. military attache. it was valuable cargo. we would wait at the chungking field until the weather was bad enough to fly on to hong kong; or we would time ourselves to cross the japanese lines after dark. in three days, this plane had flown twice the distance from chicago to san francisco. the trip had been a biweekly routine performance. since the start of the sino-japanese war, flying a total distance of 12,090 air miles every week, cnac has had only thirty-seven casualties. and it has lost passengers in only two accidents; the japanese made those ac­ cidents. to the people who work for it cnac is a company, organized ----�-� f'.s _._--_ the war in china according to chinese law, that flies mail and passengers and freight in and out of china. to everyone else it is the third of china's great lifelines. the burma road is 1,407 miles of narrow dirt sur­ face spiraling over high mountains from lashio to chungking. barring accidents, it takes trucks two weeks to bring in heavy freight. the other road, from urumchi on the russian border to chungking, is 2,7°0 miles long, and trucks must carry their own gasoline, as well as their load of airplane parts, arms and munitions. the trip from urumchi to chungking cannot take less than six weeks. cnac keeps the capital of free china within three hours' reach of the outside world. cnac is china's lifeline for brains, money and mail; no government can function without these. an average of ten million chinese dollars, printed in england or america, is flown every night to chungking. medical supplies for the red cross are flown in, and wolfram ore is flown out, to be shipped to america in part payment of the china loan. all diplo­ matic documents travel on these planes; the reports of foreign ambassadors, the instructions of the chinese government to its representatives abroad, the mass of written paper that is necessary to the supplying and financing of a country at war. when madame chiang kai-shek or any ministers of the government come to hong kong, cnac flies them. when officials of foreign govern­ ments are sent on missions to chungking, they go by cnac. the shortest road into china is kept open by eight american pilots and five american planes. without heroics, they do the most dangerous commercial flying in the world. the red-haired virginian who runs the show said, "the only way to make these planes absolutely safe is to keep them on the ground. the same applies to the raf." eight , , ma� it �u!· gbn�, heary rae! t� 1i own nitiom, han iii hou�' braill\1 the canton front en�\��ij lu��\iti march 1941 ut, t�� a\\ai�\� � we climbed up the riverbank, slipping in the mud. a platoon holti� of chinese soldiers stood in the rain alongside a bamboo shelter. eight men were lined up facing the platoon. they wore large coni­ cal straw hats which served as umbrellas, yellow oilcloth jackets, shorts and straw sandals. these were the stable coolies. seven of them held the bridles of seven horses slightly larger than shetland ponies. the eighth coolie held the bridle of a former hong kong race horse; it had been captured from the japanese. it was horse­ size. the soldiers, the coolies and the horses shivered with cold, and water dripped from them onto the mushy field. we took the salute of the waterlogged platoon and mounted our horses. my horse, kicking like a baby with a tantrum, knocked down our interpreter, who landed in the mud. whenever these miniature horses misbehave, the coolies hit them on the nose and scream at them and the horses squeal and try to bite the coolies. in the midst of this a bugle brassed out something unrecognizable. we set off in single file on a path seemingly made of a mixture of grease and glue. each coolie ran ahead of the horse he had been --.. <c, �� i / �-"'_"'_--_1!0 --..:..=�-�.::..--.� the war in china holding. the gait of the horses was like the bucking, jerking move­ ment of an electrical-horse machine in a gymnasium. the rain came down in sheets, soaking through our clothes. it swelled the mountain creeks, which looked as if they had been used to rinse out all the dirty laundry in that part of china. we followed the path around the side of a hill, leaning away from the wet bushes, ducking under low branches, and hauling up our legs so that they would not hang in the water when we forded streams. the proces­ sion jolted forward in sodden silence. we were starting for the canton front. five days earlier, in the dark, we had gone to the airfield at hong kong. we waited there for three hours, listening to the wind. they canceled the flight when the final weather report came in, saying that at namyung the ceiling was zero and the visibility nil. the next day we took off into a low cloud-covered sky, flew for an hour and a half over the mountains and the japanese lines, and landed blind on a mud field inside china. there we got into a very old small chevrolet, together with five chinese, and jolted over a yel­ low mud road until we reached shaokwan at dark. our hotel was called the light of shaokwan. we had a small sitting room, furnished with bamboo chairs and a table, two weak kerosene lamps and a spittoon. behind this were windowless cub­ byholes with two boards nailed together and raised about a foot from the floor; each of these narrow platforms was meant for a bed. a slit in the wall was the bathroom, holding one enamel washbowl but no pitcher, one spittoon and one mirror. we unpacked blan­ kets and mosquito nets (it was very cold but there were plenty of mosquitoes, that frail slow-moving kind with the curled-up hind legs, the malarial mosquito) and settled down in this palace. the next day, the general in command of this war zone invited us to lunch. he looked like a cheerful buddha. sitting around a table in a dim stone-walled room, we drank the inevitable tea, exchanged the usual compliments and made a few sad, polite -_ � �-�'----i:' -..... 11111 i "" the canton front jokes. this formality finished, we joined the general staff in a mar­ velous meal, composed of twelve different dishes ranging from shark's-fin soup to ancient black eggs. i t is an old chinese custom to drink guests under the table. the host has the right to stop a drinking contest by announcing re­ gretfully that he has run out of liquor. even in a prohibition army, there is always rice wine for visitors. so now the general and the officers proposed one gambai (bottoms up) toast after another. we drank to china and america, the generalissimo and the president, to health and happiness, the success of our trip; and finally a simple hon; nod would pass for a toast. the general began to sweat profusely ,tiiv, and two staff officers turned a beautiful mulberry color and the �\�1 interpreter stammered and swayed and found it hard to translate a il.tht toast about glorious armies and final victory. by the time the genannoill eral announced that he was plumb out of liquor, people were laughbnq� ing heartily at any remark whatever. the luncheon drew to a brilvtry�\1 liant close and still no business had been transacted. we wanted to visit the canton front, which is the back door to hong kong. potentially it is one of the most important fronts in china. if the japanese ever succeeded, having already made two big offensives, in driving north from canton, they could cut free china in two. if the chinese ever recaptured and held canton they could open up a direct practicable line of communication with the outside world. there would then be an adequate route into china for all the aid america has promised. but many seventh zone staff officers have never traveled down the north river from shaokwan to the front, and no foreigners of any description have been through this roadless portion of kwantung province. the general agreed to let us go, as soon as our transport could be ar­ ranged. it took an hour and a half by air to get from hong kong to namyung in free china, and it took four days' travel to go straight back from namyung to within seventy-five miles of hong kong. 93 -. . ,� 1; i / �-:-------------_::ls =-------.-�...::=.--=-=-� -� _ l\.' .. ::... _ -----. / the war in china army transport sent a truck to can for us at the light of shaok­ wan. in china two men are necessary to handle a car, the driver and the mechanic. the mechanic is the one who raises the hood to start the motor, who springs out to put a block of wood behind the rear wheels when you start to roll downhill backwards, and who argues with anyone blocking the road. there were four of us in the front seat of a not large truck and the battery was on the floor alongside the gear shift. the mechanic had t.b, and his dry cough mingled rhythmically with the catarrhal bark of the driver, who had only the worst possible cold. in the rear end of the truck they stowed the luggage and three officers who were accompanying us and our bodyguard of four slim silent soldiers in faded cotton uni­ forms. our bodyguard carried rifles, hand grenades and mauser pistols in wooden holsters. they all looked twelve years old and were probably nineteen. the road was bright-brown mud under the misty rain. we passed villages with square stone towers where the peasants had formerly taken refuge from bandits, but which would now be no shelter from bombs. we passed the gray mud water of the rice fields, where barelegged men plow behind the gray, almost hairless water buffaloes. there were beautiful trees and sharp mountains and a flowering bush that looked like honeysuckle. after two hours of average bumping we hit the section of the road that was, as they said, not so good. the driver clung to the wheel and was racked by his cough. we braced ourselves with one hand against the wind­ shield and one against the roof. the truck ground through mud or leaped in great shaking jumps from hole to hole. the driver and the mechanic hawked and spat and muttered together. we had by now rubbed raw places in the small of our backs and were a little winded. then we jolted down a hill and stopped at the edge of a village. we had come thirty-five miles in three hours and after this there was no road at all. we followed the baggage coolies down the mud bank to the 94 --. �------:';1----1� --... iii i "" ok· vel ooq the canton front river. sitting on boat hooks and coiled ropes, we made ourselves comfortable on the roof of the motorboat. this was a venerable twenty-four-foot chris-craft which had to be pumped out every two hours to keep it from sinking. the hull was so rotten that you could poke into it with your hand, and the cabin looked and smelled as could be expected. it was the only motorboat on the river and its important feature was that it ran. everything and everyone being stowed aboard, we chugged out into the river, towing behind us a sampan almost twice our size. on this sampan, separated from each other by bamboo partitions, were our bodyguard, our escort of three officers, and the sampan family-two men, two boys, two women, and a very new baby who cried steadily. the mother strapped the baby on her back when she cooked the meals. it cried even better in that position. the north river looks like the missouri, broad and mud-colored and with a heavy current. bamboo and pine and banyan grow along the high banks, and sand flats stretch out like fingers into the stream. behind and ahead the mountains rose smooth and dark blue in the fading afternoon light. now, standing like gate­ posts on either side of the river, straight stone palisades reared up. a buddhist shrine was cut into the side of the rock forty feet above the water. last year the japanese drove this far, trying to take shaokwan. sampans with square brown patched sails moved downstream, and others, fully loaded, were being pulled or poled upstream against the current. in china every other person is either bowed under great weights suspended from a pole across the shoulders or bent over, pulling or pushing other terrific weights. a line of men, women and children, like dark, straining statues, pulled the towrope of their sampan and slowly moved the heavy barge for­ ward. they chanted to time their effort, and the sound came as a rising and falling wail across the water. the north river is one of 95 --'. ii 1 / '" ------...¢----�--....:.....-=-=---=--::. -:::.... --� -----the war in china the three water highways to this roadless front, and the sampan is what the army uses instead of trucks. the pilot of the motorboat was a very old man with a sparse white beard, a few yellow teeth, a black knitted stocking cap and a bamboo pipe. he sat cross-legged on the high chair by the wheel and shoveled rice into his mouth with chopsticks, then sucked down a bowl of soup, belched to show that everything was good, and spat out the window. his grandson brought him his pipe. his grandson was a tiny mysterious boy, like a chinese version of jackie coogan in the kid, with the same cap and the same enchanting, wistful face. he slept on a shelf in the small, evil-smelling forward toilet and spent most of his time pumping out the boat. the old man's son did all the other work on board. now he was crouched alongside the charcoal cooking fire in the stern, eating his dinner with the loud smacking and sucking noises, belching and spitting, that are common to china. at this point the towrope to our sam­ pan, a rope suitable for tying up parcels, snapped. it was time for dinner anyhow, being four-thirty in the afternoon, so the sampan poled alongside, we climbed aboard, sat on the floor, rinsed our chopsticks in boiling water, and began the first meal of the day. by six it was dark and the bodyguard went to sleep and the offi­ cers, wearing their long underwear, tucked themselves in cosily on the floor of the sampan. we returned to the clean air of the motor­ boat roof. we ran without lights, and when the starless night really closed in, the chris-craft began going aground. the pilot's son stood in the bow, taking soundings with a boat hook. he called in the singsong chinese voice to the pilot, "two feet, two and a half, two feet," calling steadily until we scraped another sandbar. we ran aground five times and finally were all mixed up, with the sampan out ahead of us. our course had been a constant circle for the last hour. the pilot accepted defeat and took us inshore, where we anchored in the midst of a floating village of sampans. as we 96 --. -. � �1----1: -.. iii i � the canton front came up to them we received at once their noise, their smell and their mosquitoes. we ran for five more hours in the morning, and the downriver trip was over. we had left the light of shaokwan twenty-four hours ago, and there was still much rain and two days' riding be­ tween us and the front. there are no maginot or mannerheim lines in china-there are mountains. the canton front, which is typical, consists in moun­ tain strong points, lightly fortified and held by machine guns. in case of japanese attack, these forward posts are intended to delay the enemy advance as long as possible while reserves are brought from the rear to block in force the oncoming enemy troops. a blitz attack is impossible because mechanized units cannot travel over the narrow mountain trails. however, the japanese have planes here and the chinese have not. there have been thirty encounters on this front in fourteen months, and two major japanese offensives. the chinese line, that is to say its scattered mountain strong points, remains where it was after the fall of canton. actually in mountains when you see the front what you see is one mountain, large and green and silent against the sky. the japanese are there. across a narrow valley is another mountain. the chinese hold it. unless you are in an en­ gagement, a mountain front is a calm place. or unless you happen to be in a village when the japanese come over and bomb. the japanese are not being wasteful these days; bombs and gasoline cost them money too. generalissimo chiang kai-shek's armies are divided into nine war zones. the seventh war zone is about the size of belgium, with a population of thirty million people. two army groups, or about 150,000 men, hold this area. communication at the front between army, divisional and regimental commanders is main­ tained by military telephone. often more than a day's ride sepa­ rates their headquarters. there is no leave in the chinese' army, 97 --. . " l� i / �-------::llt =---------.c.__ _=_� -._ _ _ • -_ the war in china as it would be practically impossible to return soldiers to their homes in a country which has one remaining railroad, five hundred miles long, and where neither trucks, gasoline nor roads are plenti­ ful. so an army stays where it is, sometimes for as long as two years, and it builds up its own life. each regiment has its training ground, athletic field, classrooms, reading room and barracks. the chinese army does a surprising and thorough job of practical military education. after each en­ gagement, noncommissioned and junior officers are taken out of active service and sent for one month or three months to school at their divisional training camp. returning to their regiments, they teach the common soldiers. the army is constantly studying from experience and making profit out of mistakes. this sounds as if the countryside were dotted with white stone buildings where uni­ formed, spruce young men learn the art of war. actually all the headquarters and school buildings are made of bamboo or mud brick and plaster. they are spartan-simple and were built by the soldiers themselves. the buildings and grounds of the army are the cleanest and best cared for we have seen in china. what this army lacks in equipment, it tries to make up in training and or­ ganization. the discipline is prussian in its sternness and efficiency and the result is an army of five million men which has no shoes but has a sound knowledge of how to fight. the army is the least well paid of the government services; in fact it is the least well paid of anything in china. a colonel (who may have had fourteen years' active service, first against the war lords, then in the long civil war, and finally against the japanese), a graduate of whampoa military academy, chiang kai-shek's own school, earns 150 chinese dollars a month. in american money this is seven dollars and twenty-five cents, but there is an inflation in china so such comparisons do not mean much. however, a pair of leather shoes costs 200 national dollars in chungking. rice has gone up seven times its prewar price. a common soldier earns 4· 50 ----. -�----�'----i � --, .. i'll i � the canton front chinese dollars a month (or twenty-three u.s. cents) and he has a rice allowance. with his rice allowance of eighty u.s. cents a month, the soldier-who sees plenty of food all around him-can­ not buy enough to eat. a carrying coolie earns twice as much per month as an army colonel. this strange system of military under­ pay, and the tragic lack of provision for the wounded, are the two greatest misfortunes of the chinese army. always excepting war, which is a misfortune for everyone. when we dismounted at the first divisional headquarters, we were greeted by posters in english, their red letters streaked and running in the rain, tacked up on a bamboo guardhouse and bar­ racks and on the mud wall of the general's headquarters. the post­ ers said, "welcome to the representatives of righteousness and peace," "consolidate all democracy nations we will resist until final victory." there was one sign which baffled us, saying, "democracy only survives civilization." (these slogans had been invented and printed by workers in the political department. once a little man rushed in from a neighboring village to find out where we were going next, so that they could hurry and nail up the posters. ) we shook the rain from our faces and bowed and smiled our thanks for this reception, and the general, wearing white cot­ ton gloves in honor of the event, saluted back. the wind beat against the house and blew through the glassless windows. we sat around a pot of glowing charcoal, trying furtively to dry our shoes and our pants legs, and the general talked. what he said, boiled down, was that if america would send planes, arms and money, china could defeat japan alone. by a persistent campaign of frightfulness in captured villages and cities, the japanese have roused this almost too long-suffering, reasonable, pacific race to fierce hate. there is no talk of compromise or peace among the chinese fighting forces. a chinese soldier gets one thousand national dollars for any japanese prisoner captured alive. despite this huge sum of money, the soldiers shoot any japanese 99 ',i i / ---. �j� . -_ .. --=-�---=.::...=. -.::=_ --.... �--� the war in china troops they can lay hands on, as an immediate personal vengeance for the misery of people like themselves in villages like their own homes. the wind blew wildly all night, and it was too cold to sleep, but in the morning the sky was swept clean and we could see ahead the curving mountains, blurring in the distance. we were riding over a high ridge. mr. ma, our interpreter, rode just behind me. mr. ma is a little man with enormous horn-rimmed spectacles, an enormous appetite, a heart of gold, two american university de­ grees and no military experience whatever, and now he works in the political department of the seventh army zone at shaokwan and is a major, by politeness. "mr. ma," i said, "why have they burned off that mountain over there?"-pointing ahead to a charred hill. "they do that to get rid of the tigers," mr. ma said brightly. "you see, the tigers eat some kind of tender little roots and grasses, and when it is all burned off they get hungry and go away." there will always now be a special breed of cats, mr. ma's vegetarian tigers. after five hours in the saddle, we stopped to rest under a tree. its roots grew like heavy ropes over the grass and the leaves were small and fine as petals. "what kind of tree is this, mr. ma?" he considered it thoughtfully. "ordinary tree," he said. two men carrying a new wooden coffin passed on the trail, fol­ lowed by a man carrying a load of toothpicks in cardboard boxes. then an emaciated, filthy man wearing a rain cape made of dried grass, like a hula skirt, paused to look at us. in a country where no one looks well off, this man really looked as if things had gone hard with him. the colonel knew this man in the rain cape; they had seemed to nod to each other. he was one of their secret agents, who worked behind the japanese lines and in canton. seeing him, and seeing the country, you realized how easily the chinese can 100 the canton front filter in and out of japanese-occupied territory, and what a hopeless job it is for the japanese to try to block this constant stream of information. after nine hours' riding, and no food or water, i was fairly tired, but not so the chinese. they accept calmly anything that happens: hunger, fatigue, cold, thirst, pain or danger. they are the toughest people imaginable, as no doubt the japanese realize. we dis­ mounted in a village which was also a regimental headquarters. it was made of sunburned brick, it had been often bombed, its streets were mud paths sprinkled with garbage and mangy chickens, and its sewage system (as everywhere in china) was nonexistent. from the horse to the parade ground, without pause, we followed the general to inspect a battalion of nine hundred men. these soldiers were all peasants and coolies, people who had never han­ dled anything as complicated as a flashlight before joining the army. seen alone, or straggling in small bands on the trails, they look as sad as orphanage children and as tattered as beggars. but here in rigid formation, with their mortars and machine guns, au­ tomatic rifles and hand grenades, they looked a solid, self-confident body of experienced troops. now they drilled, to the screamed orders of a little fighting cock of a sergeant major. the village elders watched silently, but with evident pride, from the side of the field. the same peasants, when fighting starts, carry the wounded, joggling them on bamboo stretchers, over these bumpy endless trails to a hospital in the rear. there is no water to drink on the way, no dressing station, and if the peasants were unwilling to carry there would be no wounded, only the dead. "tonight we will go to a play," the general said. the japanese were just over the nearest hills. they lighted bonfires along the side of the parade ground and twelve hundred soldiers sat in the flaring dark on the cold hard­ packed clay, waiting for the play to begin. on the bamboo stage, behind the blue cotton curtains, they struggled for half an hour 101 ---. • <c. l� i / ----.....�?�t!o_ .--=-.::=---="::'�-..:::._ -._ ... -_ .... _-the war in china with an acetylene lamp. suddenly it blazed up, went dim, and then settled into a fixed glare. the curtains were pulled open by two shy soldiers. the play, called a group oi devils, was on. the play dealt with a loyal chinese woman and her husband in japanese-occupied canton. the husband masqueraded as her servant, while the woman lured japanese officers. it was not clear what she was luring them to or for, but they were constantly try­ ing to pull her through the bedroom door. the audience roared with laughter when the husband-servant spilled tea on the japa­ nese officers or burned their noses lighting their cigarettes. they shouted with joy when the japanese officers, using noisy italian gestures, quarreled over the woman. the japanese officers wore paper hats resembling the regulation japanese army headgear, and mustaches made of lampblack. you could tell they were villains by the mustaches. they acted like conceited fools and brutes and the audience loved it. finally, with a terrific noise off stage, the woman shot the two japanese officers, the curtain was pulled to­ gether and the twelve hundred soldiers applauded more than any audience at a successful first night in new york. each week the political department puts on a play for the troops. it is their only and adored fun, and actors never had a better public. in the morning mr. ma came into my section of the bamboo hut, where i was washing with two cups of water, and remarked, "some planes will be coming over. would you prefer to go out into the fields?" exactly as he might have said, "will you take tea or coffee with your breakfast?" "what would you like to do?" i asked. there were no shelters in the village, of course, and a thatched roof is not much use, but wading through the mud of the rice fields would not be too jolly either. as we discussed the problem from every angle, we heard the buzz, rounding into a roar, of the planes. we stood looking up into a blank gray sky, waiting during that moment of tight cold listening, waiting for the first bomb. 102 . . �-�� --" .. i'll i � , ben �vo the canton front the planes passed. the air-raid alarm in this village is a gong made from the nosecap and cylinder of an unexploded japanese bomb. "maybe they are going to bomb shaokwan," mr. ma said un­ happily. his wife and child live in shaokwan. they climbed us up to a fortified position. on the japanese side there was no sign of life, no sound. the front was the most restful place in china. the general could not very well wake these sleeping mountains and put on a battle for our benefit, but he wanted to show off his troops. so we withdrew one range beyond the japanese, and there they staged a maneuver duplicating this war in the mountains. from the hill of the heroes, we observed the enemy-artiiiery, machine-gun positions, infantry all represented by white flags­ opposite us on the hill of the unknowns. behind us, suddenly, a huge coughing-chug widened into a roar and became a whistling sword-sharp invisible drive through the air. seconds later, a mile and a quarter away on the hill of the unknowns, dirt spouted up, a black cloud rose slowly and the mountains echoed with the mor­ tar explosion. now the machine guns opened up, below us to the left and right. through field glasses, we could see the bullets slash­ ing into the marked enemy positions. the mountains doubled and trebled the roar of the mortars and the metal hammering of the machine guns and rocked the sound back and forth. down in the gully, small khaki figures camouflaged with leafy twigs raced across the dikes of the rice fields, flung themselves flat against the pro­ tecting hill, started to climb, dropped when the ground offered less cover, and we could scarcely see them wriggling forward, up­ ward, toward the enemy positions. they were not only demonstrat­ ing the minor tactics of war, they had got also the deadly feeling, 103 the war in china the tenseness, the effort, the curious silence that lies under the raw, pounding, shrieking noise of high explosives. these soldiers moved with the sureness and purpose of much experience and good training. the si-mm. brandt mortars, the hotchkiss and the czech machine guns fired with accuracy and provided excellent cover for the troops, who knew how to use it. as in war, every tiny figure crawling its way forward seemed ter­ ribly alone on that hill, yet all followed the orders and the plan, all understood the technique of killing men. for one hour, this lost and silent corner of china shook with sound. (i thought, perhaps the japanese advance posts will report to headquarters that there is mutiny in the chinese army.) a very pistol fired up a red slow-sinking rocket. the maneuver was over. "you see," general wong said. he looked like a walt disney drawing of a little chinese boy, with his round face and round bright eyes and tiny pursed-up pink mouth. he was pleased with his troops. "that is how we work. we can always hold them in the mountains." for two days we rode back toward the river. after you have seen three rice paddies you do not need to look any more. the comic horse plodded on, and i thought about this amazing army. here was a front that had one piece of mechanized transport, an antique twenty-four-foot motorboat. and ten days' travel to the north, near tibet at chengtu, they were building by hand an airfield where flying fortresses could land. the japanese can never conquer china by force. people who em move their capital three times, carry factory machinery and university equipment over the mountains to safety, supply a front by sampan and coolie carrier, burrow into rock and survive endless bombing, build a r.coo-acre airfield in a hundred days without machinery will endure to the end. and time does not matter in china. four years of war is a long --. �--�;-.. / iii i � llie the canton front time. but perhaps if your history goes back four thousand years it does not seem so long. the chinese are born patient, and they learn endurance when they start to breathe. no, time does not matter in china. it took thirty-six hours in the motorboat to get back upstream to the town where we had left our truck. the road was now impassable with rain, and trucks were stuck in the mud like flies in flypaper. we would have to make the rest of the journey to shaokwan by boat. only seven hours, mr. ma said optimistically. we chugged on for half an hour and the sampan towrope caught around the propeller of the chris-craft. the pilot reversed the engine, thus tying up the propeller for good. at night we piled into the sampan and slept on the floor, all of us snugly together. in the morning they hitched the sampan onto a river paddle-wheel steamer that carries prod­ uce, people and cattle to shaokwan. eighteen hours later we saw the long bridge that the japanese have not been able to destroy in a year's bombing. at the hotel we hoped to get a bath in a tin washtub. shaokwan seemed the center of civilization. we stood in the bow of the sampan and mr. ma said, "what do you think of our army? not so bad, eh?" "no, mr. ma, not bad at all. very, very good, mr. ma." he beamed with pleasure. "and what" he said, "do you think of china?" "well, mr. ma," i said, "in the long run, i'd hate to be japanese." �-�:.-_ ,..,/ i i the second world war we were drinking daiquiris in a mingy little bar on the mexican border and talking about cattle-raising in arizona. a tattered indian child came in, with some clutched newspapers, and said "con la guerra, la guerra" mildly . no one noticed him the first time round. then the word caught, we called to the boy, he sold us a mexican paper, damp with his own sweat. smeary type announced pearl harbor and america's declaration of war. it seemed a dreadtul way tor a great nation to get into a war-blown in, with its fleet down. between that time and november 1943, when i finally reached england (filled with joy to be there, to be home in the world again), i was paralyzed by conflicting emotions: private duty, public disgust and a longing to torget both and join those who were suffer­ ing the war. it is too hard to sit on the outside and watch what you can neither help nor change; it is far easier to close your eyes and your mind and jump into the general misery, where you have almost no choices lett, but a lot of splendid company. -. . : .�;______l / , --'--_."._.. .. the face of war 'v .. � ('" england was a new country, the home of a new people. the ) (..,�. \,; english are an amazing nation and i think it is true that nothing ;co._..w' 'becomes them like catastrophe. when they are really up against j it, their negative qualities turn positive, in a glorious somersault. slowness, understatement, complacency change into endurance, a refusal to panic, and pride, the begetter of self-discipline. what is "not done" is to be a crook or a coward; and they are able to laugh, no matter what. in an earlier and more innocent age, edmund wilson invented a phrase about russia: "the moral top of the world, where the light never quite goes out." england was that, during the war. from november 1943, with one unavoidable break in the spring at 1944, i followed the war wherever i could reach it. the u.s. army public relations officers, the bosses of the american press, were a doctrinaire bunch who objected to a woman being a cor­ respondent with combat troops. i felt like a veteran of the crimean war by then, and i had been sent to europe to do my job, which was not to report the rear areas or the woman's angle. the p.r.o.s in london became definitely hostile when i stowed away on a hospital ship in order to see something of the invasion of normandy. after that, i could only report the war on secondary fronts, in the company of admirable foreigners who were not fussy about official travel orders and accreditation. by stealth and chi­ canery i managed to sneak to hoiland and watch the superb u.s. sznd airborne division at work. but it was only during the battle of the bulge, and from then on, that i dared attach myself to american fighting units. the war may have softened the p.r.a.s, or they no longer cared what anyone did, with the end so near. these articles are in no way adequate descriptions of the in­ describable misery of war . war was always worse than i knew how to say-always. and probably from an instinct of self-preservation, one tried to write most often of what was brave and decent. per­ haps now my articles on germany and on the behavior at the ge108 _-_ . ��--, ... ,/ ii i � the second world war �ne stapo, the ss and other sections of the german army will seem lm� untimely paeans of hate. i reported what i saw, and hate was the 1m! only reaction such sights could produce. mit nazi doctrine extolled "frightfulness" as a weapon, as a means �,a to the end of victory. the human race is still sickened by the poi.. alb son of that doctrine, by crimes committed everywhere and an�n, swered with other crimes. we have before us the memory and the un� lesson: let us not imagine that anyone can use frightfulness in a !n� good cause. let us not imagine that nuclear weapons are anything ina!, but frightfulness. 109 --. , i i / � ------.,�-!:!i ' ---� the bomber boys november 1943 � they were very quiet. there was enough noise going on around them, but they had no part in it. a truck clanked past with a string of bomb trolleys behind it. the ground crew was still load­ ing the thousand-pound high-explosive bombs that look like huge rust-colored sausages. a waaf's clear high english voice, relaying orders, mixed with the metal noises. a light on the open bomb bay made the darkness around the plane even darker. the moon was skimmed over with cloud, and around the field the great black lancasters waited, and men finished the final job of getting them ready. but the crews who were going to fly seemed to have nothing to do with this action and haste. enormous and top-heavy in their mae wests or their electrically heated flying suits, these men seemed over-life-size statues. they stood together near their planes. the group captain had been driving fast around the perimeter track of the field in a beetle of a car, checking up. he appeared the way people seem to, suddenly out of the flat black emptiness of the airdrome, and said, "come and meet the boys." the pilot of this crew was twenty-one and tall and thin, with a face far too sen110 -. . � -�.,----� -� i / i ii i � the bomber boys sitive for this business. he said, "i was in texas for nine months. smashing place." this would mean that texas was wonderful. the others said how do you do. they were polite and kind and far away. talk was nonsense now. every man went tight and concen­ trated into himself, waiting and ready for the job ahead, and the seven of them who were going together made a solid unit, and anyone who had not done what they did and would never go where they were going could not understand and had no right to intrude. one could only stand in the cold darkness and feel how hard we were all waiting. we drove to the control station, which looks like a trailer painted in yellow and black checks, and though there was no wind the cold ate into you. the motors were warming up, humming and heavy. now the big black planes wheeled out and one by one rolled around the perimeter and got into position on the runway. a green light blinked and there was a roar of four motors that beat back in an echo from the sky. then the first plane was gone into the blackness, not seeming to move very fast, and we saw the tail-light lifting, and presently the thirteen planes that were taking off from this field floated against the sky as if the sky were water. then they changed into distant, slow-moving stars. that was that. the chaps were off. they would be gone all this night. they were going to fly over france, over known and loved cities, cities they would not see and that did not now concern them. they were going south to bomb marshaling yards, to destroy if possible and however briefly one of the two rail connections be­ tween france and italy. if they succeeded, the infantry in south­ ern italy would have an easier job for a little while. several hundreds of planes, thousands of bomber boys, were taking off into the wavering moon from different fields all over this part of england. they were out for the night with the de­ fended coast of france ahead, and the mountain ranges where the peaks go up to ten thousand feet and the winter weather is never 111 -. ::·i� j / , '" �_---__::to �_ the second world war a gift; and then of course there would be the target. this trip, however, came under the heading of "a piece of cake," which means in the wonderful raf language a pushover. if you were tak­ ing a pessimistic view of this raid you might have called it "a long stooge," which means simply a dreary, unsatisfactory bore. no one would have given the mission more importance than that. still they were very quiet and the airdrome felt bleak when they were gone and the waiting had simply changed its shape. first you wait for them to go and then you wait for them to get back . . perhaps this is a typical bomber station; i do not know. perhaps every station is different as every man is different. this was an raf station and the crews flying tonight were english and ca­ nadian, except for one south african and two australians and an american pilot from chicago. the youngest pilot was twenty-one and the oldest thirty-two and before the war they had been various things: a commercial artist, a schoolteacher, a detective, a civil ervant, a contractor. none of this tells you anything about them. hey look tired, and they look older than they are. they fly by ,night and sleep somewhat during the day and when they are not flying there is work to do and probably it is exhausting to wait to fly, knowing what the flying is. so they look tired and do not speak of this and if you mention it they say they get plenty of rest and everyone feels very well. the land where they live is as flat as kansas and cold now and dun-colored. the land seems unused and almost not lived in, but the air is always busy. at sunset you see a squadron of spitfires flying back to their station against a tan evening sky, looking like little rowboats and flying home, neat and close. in the thin morn­ ing, the day bombers roar over toward the channel. the air is loud and occupied and the airdrome is noisy too. but the home life of the men is quiet. they say that if you find all the chaps in the mess reading at teatime, you know there are operations scheduled for that night. 112 . . �----tl----i � -... ,? ii i � the bomber boys this afternoon they sat in the big living room of the country house that has become their mess, and they looked like good tidy chil­ dren doing their homework. if you read hard enough you can get away from yourself and everyone else and from thinking about the night ahead. that morning they would have made a night flying test, taking the planes up to see that everything was okay. between the test and the afternoon briefing is the rumor period, during which someone finds out how much gasoline is being loaded on the planes and everyone starts guessing about the target, basing guesses on miles per gallon. the briefing (the instructions about the trip and the target) would normally be finished by late afternoon and then there is an operational meal and then the few bad hours to kill before take-off time. it is a routine they all know and have learned to handle; they have taken on this orderly unshaken quiet­ ness as a way of living. of course there is relaxation in the nearest village on free nights -the village dance hall and the local girls to dance with, the pubs where you can drink weak war beer, and the movies where you can see the old films. at eleven o'clock all such gaieties stop and the village shuts firmly. no one could say this is a flashing roman­ tic existence; it is somewhere between a boarding school and a monastery. they have their job to do and they take this sort of life as it comes and do not think too much about it or about anything. there is ouly one clear universal thought and that is: finish it. win the war and get it over with. there's been enough; there's been too much. the thing to do is win no oo-;-as-rastasos­ sible . .__the old life that perhaps seemed flat when they had it becomes beautiful and rare when they remember it. no one who flies could make any detailed plans; there is no sense in counting your bridges as well and safely crossed when you know how many tough bridges are ahead. but vaguely each man thinks of that not-so-distant al­ most incredible past, when no one did anything much, nothing 113 --c-: .i� i / i � � -�:---_:lio _ ---� the second world war spectacular, nothing fatal, when a day was quite long and there was an amazing number of agreeable ways to spend it. they want that again, though they want a life that has grown lovelier in their memories. they want a future that is as good as they now imagine the past to have been. it is a long night when you are waiting for the planes from europe to come back, and it is cold, but it has to end. at four 0'clock or around then, the duty officers go to the control tower. the operations officers walk about a certain amount and smoke pipes and say casual things to each other and the waiting gets to be a thing you can touch. then the first plane calls in to the con­ trol tower switchboard. two waafs, who have been up all night and are still looking wide-awake, wonderfully pink-cheeked, per­ fectly collected and not frozen stiff, begin to direct the planes in. the girls' voices that sound so remarkable to us (it is hard to de­ cide why, perhaps because they seem so poised, so neat) begin: "hello george pancake over." in the glassed-in room you hear the pilots answer. then the girl again: "hello queen airdrome one thousand over." the night suddenly becomes weird, with the moon still up and the bright stars and the great searchlights like leaning trees over the runway and the wing lights of the plane far off and then nearer the noise of the motors circling the field, the ambulances rolling out, and the girls' voices going on and on, cool, efficient, unchanging. "hello uncle airdrome twelve fifty over." this means that a plane, u for uncle, is to circle the field at twelve hundred and fifty feet until told to "pancake" or land. the planes come in slowly at first and then there will be four of them circling and landing. the more planes that come in and are marked up on the blackboard, the worse the waiting gets. none of this shows. no voice changes, no one makes a movement that is in any way unusual, the routine proceeds as normally as if people were waiting in line to buy theater tickets. nothing shows and nothing is said and it is all there. �-��-... / i � i � the bomber boys finally all the planes were in except p for peter and j for jig. they were late. the job was a piece of cake. they should be in. they would of course be in. obviously. any minute now. no one mentioned the delay. we started to go down to the interrogation room and the group captain remarked without emphasis that he would stay up here for a bit until the chaps got in. the crews of the eleven planes that had returned were coming into the basement operations room for questioning. they all had mugs of tea, white china shaving mugs filled with a sweetish ghastly lukewarm drink that seems to mean something to them. they looked tireder around their eyelids and mouths, and slanting lines under their eyes were deeply marked. the interrogation again gives the curious impression of being in school. the crews sit on a wooden bench in front of a wooden table, and the intelligence officer, behind the table, asks questions. both questions and an­ swers are made in such low ordinary voices that the group seems to be discussing something dull and insignificant. no one liked this trip much. it was very long and the weather was terrible; the target was small; there was a lot of smoke; they couldn't see the results well. the group captain in command sat on a table and spoke to the crew members by name, saying, "have a good trip?" "fairly good, sir." "have a good trip?" "not bad, sir," "have a good trip?" "quite good, sir." that was all there was to that. then he said, "anyone get angry with you?" "no sir," they said, smiling, "didn't see a thing." this is the way they talk and behave and this is the way it is. when it was known that all the planes were back, and all undamaged and no one hurt, there was a visible added jovial­ ness. but everyone was tired, anxious to get through the question­ ing and back to the mess, back to the famous operational fried egg, the fried potatoes, the margarine and the marmalade and the bread that seems to be partially made of sand, and then to sleep. the bomber crews were standing at the mess bar, which is a --. • s-: l� 1 / , ___ _ _ _ '" ------t_ the second world war closet in the wall, drinking beer and waiting for breakfast. they were talking a little now, making private jokes and laughing easily at them. it was after seven in the morning, a dark cold unfriendly hour. some of the men had saved their raid rations, a can of ameri­ can orange juice and a chocolate bar, to eat now. they value them highly. the orange juice is fine, the chocolate bar is a treat. there are those who drink the orange juice and eat the chocolate early on, not wanting to be done out of them at least, no matter what happens. the lancasters looked like enormous deadly black birds going off into the night; somehow they looked different when they came back. the planes carried from this field 117,000 pounds of high explosive and the crews flew an night to drop the load as ordered. now the trains would not run between france and italy for a while, not on those bombed tracks anyhow. here are the men who did it, with mussed hair and weary faces, dirty sweaters under their flying suits, sleep-bright eyes, making humble comradely little jokes, and eating their saved-up chocolate bars. 116 the price of fire december 1943 � the ward is a long, wide, cold room with bright-green cur­ tains at the windows. there are yellow and mauve potted chrysan­ themums on tables down the center of the room, and a black iron coal stove at either end. wicker chairs and a table covered with magazines stand in front of the far stove and this is where the pa­ tients, wearing royal air force uniforms, gather. five or six men are lying in the white-painted beds. the ward has the casual, cheer­ ful, faintly bored feeling of any place where men are convalescing. but this ward is not like other wards, because no one here has a real face and many of them have hands that are not much good either. these men are the air crews who crashed in planes and were thrown or dragged clear of the burning wreckage, but they were not thrown or dragged clear quite soon enough. the men around the stove interrupted their conversation to talk to one of the patients in bed. the wagon that will carry him to the operating room is drawn up alongside the bed and a nurse is helping him onto it. "what's it to be today, bill?" the second world war "eyebrows." "won't he be pretty?" then there is a chorus of cheerios, and the operating-room trolley rolls away. there was no special feeling about this because eyebrows aren't bad, the boy had been through so many opera­ tions and was so close to having a face again that this little extra pain did not worry him, and besides men have been wheeled in and out of this ward all day long, and day after day, and each man alone has learned how to wait for and endure these trips. in a bed farther down another boy is waiting; his turn will come , after the eyebrows are made. he is going to get a nose. for weeks he has been growing the skin for this nose, in the form of a nar­ row sausage-shaped graft attached to the unharmed skin of his chest. his face is incredible and one hand is entirely gone. there is no expression in these burned and scarred faces; all the expres­ sion is in the eyes and in the voice. you cannot tell age either; fire takes that away too. the boy has light-brown tufty hair and good laughing eyes and a good voice, and a dreadful face that will soon at least have a nose. he is twenty-one, though you can know this only if you are told, and he was a chauffeur before the war, driving for the squire of his village. the welfare officer has arranged to get him an industrial job when he has enough of a face, but he does not want it. he wants to go back, with one hand and that face, and be a chauffeur again in his village. the village is home and what he loves, his people are there, the village is a recognizable world. and in fact they would all like to go back to what was be­ fore, before the war and the flames got them. around the stove there are now four young men gossiping to­ gether. one has just come from london and they are asking him about his trip. he is going to be operated on tomorrow and after that he will return to flying. he is an american from columbus, ohio, and he crashed in a hurricane, and his face, they say, was simply pushed two inches back inside his head. his nose is flatu8 tln�'loom l� be(4u� an� o�tl�' llttletxui wneelta i� a each ml� mwlllro e folw�� olido!lffi:' a �hn o! � )' �one, tht� all the ex�i� a�e eltnel;�. halrauu!ifi. thatwi\\�'. the price of fire tened and the skin around his eyes is odd, but by contrast to the others he looks fine. he feels fine too, because what he likes is to fly, and he will be doing that again. the others will not fly. they are talking easily and generously about his squadron and no one looks at the curled claws of hands of the nineteen-year-old cana­ dian, nor at the melted stump that the twenty-one-year-old english boy has, nor at the stiff reddish solidified fingers of a boy who al­ ways worked on a farm in canada, and would like to again, and maybe some day his hands will bend just enough to let him do it. the nineteen-year-old canadian with the claw hands wants to be a boat builder. he is a darling, with a lively brain, and one half of his face is hardened twisted reddish meat and one half is fairly normal, so you can see what a nice-looking kid he was. he thought he'd lost his left eye, after he was pulled out of the wrecked plane, because he couldn't see from that eye. he was a gunner and his pal the navigator pulled him out and he said to his pal, "where's my eye? i've lost my eye somewhere here." so his pal said, "well, we'll look for it, then." they crawled around on the grass, dazed and burned, looking for the eye. this st ry.,.. �rq)l m� not instantly guess, produces roars of laughter fr'om everyone because it just g��.to...shql.v boy; qop@y a chap can be. -there is a wonderful man on the staff of this hospital, a former schoolteacher, now a flight sergeant, who lives with these wounded boys and whose job it is to see that they make the hard and lonely adjustment to their disfigurement that they must make if they are to live. he is their friend and confidant and he knows as much about them as one man can know about another. he treats them with a matter-of-factness which is essential and, in the beginning, startling to an outsider. he said casually, "pete, show your hand. he's got a real bad hand." and there was the hand, or rather the non-hand, and there above it was the serious, hesitant face of the twenty-one-year-old eng---, -�-� --_---�---------. � the second world war lishman, and we looked at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, and we were interested only to see what fire could do to a hand. his face was fairly good, but the sides of his head had been burned flat, and a head is strange without ears. this boy had been a talented pilot. he completed his operational tour, which means thirty separate missions against the enemy, and then as a rest he was sent to be an instructor. this is normal routine. it happened that his student crashed the training plane, and the pilot-instructor got these burns trying to pull the student out of the wreckage. but this is just bad luck, you see, worse luck perhaps than if you got it returning from germany in a plane that had to crash-land. it's all bad luck and a part of the job of war and no one makes anything out of his bad luck. this can happen to anybody, they seem to say, nothing for me to complain about specially. the saline baths, which are the basis of burn treatment, were in rooms alongside the ward. a boy was sitting in the deep tub in the chilly white room, and attendants were keeping his face dampened. under the water, he was patiently flexing his purplish hands. he was being cheered on by a sergeant who is in charge of the baths and who loves the baths only less than he loves the boys he is saving. "come on," the sergeant said, "you can bend them more than that." then, not to be too hard on this child, who had been here only three days, he said, "you see yourself how good they are. your face is fine too. we'll have you out of here in no time." the boy answered but you could not understand what he said; his skin was burned so tight that he could scarcely move his mouth and the words came out in a shy mumble. the face was absolutely expressionless, so set that it looked dead, but the shape of it was still intact. two bright-blue eyes stared out of the scarred face and watched the stiff hands that bent ever so slightly under water. the rest of him was the fragile, tender body of a young boy, for after all nineteen is only a young boy. 120 �omeone uo to � bau been bad be� ieh mean! � a relt 11 t ha��n� t·imtrudrn e wrech!( than i! j�� o c!a)b·\�n: o onem� rbodr, t�� �, tmen� wf.: the dee�t;: pin� hll rnu � hll �u��: o 11 in t�\: he \ol�� emmore�' hadbeeuk �ooo ili0i: notime,1i what be��: ol'ebilid� w1laolomi' iha�o[it� he )cjrrt� !i:: lv under w!� i 'r roun� 00),' the price of fire "come on now," the sergeant said, "come on, bend them." the boy had been opening and shutting his fingers the distance of a quarter of an inch for three hours, and he would go on doing that for more days than one wanted to think about. but in the end he would move his hands, and his face would be fixed, and then he would fly again. they were having tea in the reception office. the party con­ sisted of two pretty girls in uniform and a few interns getting a quick cup of tea during a lull in the operating room. the girl in khaki is a chauffeur now and drives these burned boys to the vil­ lage pub or to a neighboring football field where the hospital team plays an army team, or to the train, or to the movies, or wherever they want to go. the other girl, the hospital secretary, wears a black st. john's uniform. two guests had joined the staff. a tiny pink­ cheeked girl, wearing a blue silk bandanna over her hair and a polo coat, looked absurdly young to be a married woman, but her hus­ band was sitting beside her and he was young too, and tall when he stood up, and he must have been a handsome boy. he was blind. beneath the bandage over his eyes, you could see the familiar drawn burned face. the girl had come to this hospital on the day her husband arrived, and she had not left him since. he was new to being blind, and awkward about it. she managed so that her husband should not feel his awkwardness and, though she did not talk, the blind soldier talked happily and easily, with the confidence his wife had given him. he was teasing the girl chauffeur about her football team that she lugged all over the countryside, and what sort of football team was she sponsoring anyhow, they'd been beaten everywhere since she started driving them. this hospital is one of four royal air force burn centers, and it was planned as a wartime hospital. there will be five to seven years' work here after the war, without counting the men now 121 11/' i --. . ._; 11 / -�--__"llt '. ---------� the second world war prisoners in germany who will need this sort of care. the average wound case requires six weeks in hospital, but these bad burn cases take two years to be repaired, at a minimum. not only raf cases are treated; there are bomb wounds, where the face has been hacked away, and sailors who have been burned and rescued from the sea, and men of all services who have been terribly damaged in accidents. but the largest group of men here are those in air force blue, aed the oldest among them is twenty-nine. the hospital is a marvel and this is the triumph of a great sur­ geon, archibald mcindoe, always referred to by his patients as mac. their faith in mac is boundless; they say that if mac told a chap he was just going to take off the chap's head and graft it temporarily to the chap's arm, the chap would certainly agree. their confidence is based on observation; they see with their own eyes the slow, patient miracles that mac performs. he works for them tirelessly, operating three or five days a week, sometimes from ten in the morning until ten at night; but he does more than surgery and that is why the hospital is a marvel. you would never see a more delicate and unpretentious job of life-saving than goes on here. ---mac (i use this abbreviation with the greatest respect, simply because he is never called anything else by the people in the hos­ pital, and they speak of him lovingly and often) believes that, with sufficient time, he can fix a man's face "so that it will not cause comment." this is what he tells them, promising nothing more and delivering nothing less. when these burned boys ar­ rive they see others like them, and the rubber in the human soul is so resilient that they always see someone who looks worse than they look. mirrors are handy; the men are not allowed to become afraid of facing their disfigurement. since they will be in and out of this hospital regularly for years, they do not wear hospital uni­ forms. as soon as they can walk, they are given their raf uniforms and shipped off to the village, to mingle with people and get used 122 he wor�i� � �offieuit.� o�morellii u woulq nt;� \in� tn�n!oo the hum�nij, b wor�e�; weoto�c i de in �n� �t r ho�imlij� rafunll�� ie ana �et �� the price of fire to living in the daily world. the local people are accustomed to them, they are not stared at, and this first adjustment is fairly easy. after this they are encouraged to go to london, mainly to be seen. they are apt to go in pairs and keep each other company, but the job of making them accept themselves without self-con­ sciousness is so well done that this initial contact with strangers appears to come off successfully every time. mac has abandoned the basket-weaving school of occupational therapy. he feels that it is silly and offensive; these men are vitally concerned in the war effort, and there is an industrial workshop at the hospital which makes small airplane parts. work is volun­ tary and they know that they are doing something useful. mac says that of course the worst disability is blindness, but after that comes the loss of hands. fortunately total loss of both hands is rare and it is amazing what these boys can learn to do with a hook for a hand, or by using the stumps of fingers. when they come back to the hospital, as they must year after year, they know and are fond of the staff, they find old friends in the wards, and due to mac there is no hospital gloom, none of that excessive starched hospital discipline, and the men are cheerful about their return visits. they have a club called the guinea pig club, which gives a bang-up dinner in the village once a year, and all the old patients come as if they were attending a school re­ union. it is a great enough achievement to repair these damaged faces, but to keep the minds behind the faces so sound and so self-reliant is a pure triumph. some things even mac cannot handle and they are not talked of especially. there is the heartbreak of parents when they first see their children come back like this; and there is the tragedy of the wives who cannot take it. the losses are cut, in silence, and life goes on. also unmentioned, perb�p� the worst and deepest dread, is the fear of these very young men that after the war they will never be able to compete with whole men and that they wjj] not � ·1. i ? • _______j_'_-_ -___::t, _.i • / the second world war �nd a job and will not be able to provide properly for themselves or their families. so they make a joke of disaster and form a beg­ gars' union naturally these young men are not thinking much about the peace, and how to prevent the germans from ever starting another war. �hey have � thejr sbn�j t};}e, "have paid for t� survival of our world. it is obviously up to us, with our real faces and our t�o hands:to make it a decent lasting world that they paid for in advance. �==----� �-=.-_-. .. /// -�--=--i' j visit italy february 1944 � the french soldier driving the jeep had large dark sad eyes. he was small, thin and dirty and he looked ill. the windshield and the top of the jeep were down and the snow had changed to hail. the road circling up the mountains was narrow and slippery. wind blew across the gray stone sides of the mountains and over the snow peaks and drove the hail into our faces. the little jeep driver was having a bad time, as was everyone else on the road. from time to time we would pass a completely un­ necessary sign: a skull-and-bones painted on a board, with under­ neath the phrase in french, "the enemy sees you." no one needed to be warned. there you were, on a roller-coaster road freezing to death, and if the enemy couldn't see you, he was blind; he was sitting right across there, on that other snow mountain. the jeep driver spoke with sudden bitter mockery. "visitez l'italiej" he said. there used to be tourist posters in france, in all the railroad stations, showing a sunstruck and enchanting glimpse of country ", ,i. i ;y , .: _�;_._'_ _9 __ 6 � the second world war with a dark-haired girl eating grapes or maybe just laughing, and the posters urged, "visit italy." now we were visiting italy. it was a small, peculiar and un­ healthy piece of italy-the french front. it was a bulge of moun­ tains; the french held these mountains, and opposite them, on higher mountains, were the germans. the mountains to the right were occupied by the poles, and to the left, around cassino, were the americans. the italian front is very curious anyhow. one day we figured there were twenty races and nationalities stretched across italy from the mediterranean to the adriatic, all fighting the germans. the french held the highest mountains of all: this front. it was colder here than anywhere else-though it was cold enough everywhere-and no one believed this wind would ever blow at less than gale force, and just when you began to hope that spring might come it would snow again. before he came to this naked road, the jeep driver had been a barman in casablanca. now he said, through stiff, cold lips: "have you ever had an alexander cocktail, mademoiselle?" we passed a burned american tank, rounded a curve and saw two trucks which had plunged down a ravine and were hanging almost perpendicularly against the side of the mountain. an alex­ ander is a horrible, sweet drink made with creme de cacao. "yes, indeed," i said, holding a tin hat in front of my face as a shield against the hail. hi do not mean to brag," the frenchman said, "but i made the best alexanders in casablanca." then we were silent because it was too hard to talk. perhaps he was thinking of his bar, or the small cafe he hoped to have in france after the war. i was thinking about that wonderful phrase, "visit italy." coming north from naples, you drive in a steady stream of khaki-colored traffic: trucks and jeeps, command cars and am­ bulances, wrecking cars and tanks and tank destroyers and muni126 visit italy tions carriers. there is no end to the traffic, and if you are unlucky you will find yourself behind a convoy which rumbles along like marching elephants, and, since the roads are narrow and the traf­ fic is thick both ways, you are forced to learn patience. along the sides of the road are endless tent camps pitched in the mud lakes that form under olive trees or in the deep gluey mud of open fields. one soldier is always shaving under the forbidding sky, with care and a comic solemnity and quite alone. naked to the waist in the cold, he wages the losing battle to keep clean. acres of cars are parked, with men working on broken motors in a misery of mud. there never was so much wheeled transport, you think; all italy seems to be moving. when you first pass through the villages they are incredible; it is not possible that once these places stood up foursquare and people lived in them. no cyclone could have done as thorough a job as high explosive has. after a while you do not even notice the sliced houses, the landslides of rubble, the torn roofs. the roads are bordered with telephone wires, looking like thick, twisted vines in the jungle; dozens of wires, draped and hung over what trees remain, or simply trailing on the ground. then there are the neatly placed tent hospitals, and suddenly out of a side road tanks appear, loud, blind and waiting for nothing. as you get nearer the front, italy becomes an even stranger country to visit. three italian children take turns swinging on a piece of old telephone wire hung from a tree in an ammunition dump. blown bridges rest like boxcars in the river beds. jeeps pass, with their names painted on them: calamity ii, death dodger, betty ann. in a hollow below the climbing road, italian women are washing clothes at an old stone trough, and six-wheeled trucks plow some­ how up the hill through mud that looks like churned brown cement. the echo of shell explosions bangs crazily against the mountains. you pass through a mud flat, where nothing grows ex.. , i /,.. ·1. ,____j'-_'�� --_ 4 __ �_ /i ". the second world war cept guns" and two french batteries of 155s open up against the germans, who are on a mountain you cannot see, and everyone on the road is briefly deafened. if you are right under the guns, you open your mouth and breathe hard. the road keeps climbing and now there are soldiers' camps on the upright sides of the mountain. they are french native troops wearing american uniforms. suddenly the road turns and before you there is a wilderness of mountains, crushed against one another, rolling higher and higher to the north, with the snow very clean on them. it is the most beautiful view of all-so beautiful that everyone notices it, though everyone dislikes it, for the ger­ mans are there. at the turning, a french colonial soldier wearing a long, striped robe and a turban is standing on the roof of a pillbox, inspecting the german mountain range. he stands like a statue, as if he had just found this nice place to rest when he had some free time to himself. from now on, you circle down to the rapido, and the war gets smaller and you see fewer people and less transport. you begin to hear and see with fierce concentration, holding your body tight together. visit italy, indeed! it is all this and so much more. it would take a rare kind of guidebook to tell you the sights of italy alone. and how about the new tourists, the soldiery? how will you ever know about the twenty races and nationalities who fight as allies in italy? how will you ever know all they have done and seen and felt and survived? some of them will write about this campaign after the war, and that will be the good writing. but perhaps it is im­ possible to understand anything unless it happened to you yourself. the jeep driver and i were going to san elia, which used to be a town and is now a mass of blown-up masonry. two french first­ aid posts operate here. they are stationed in dirty basements that have beautiful thick walls. otherwise there is no use for the town; 128 ----i '�... /, \1 " visit italy it is only a place that troops and transport pass through, a place to be shelled whenever the germans think it profitable. across the rapido from the town is the belvedere, a bleak gray stone mountain that the french took. what the french take they stay on, and it is quiet on the mountain now. a sizable unit went into the attack and hardly more than twenty per cent were able to walk off the mountain, but the french hold it, and that is what they want. because each mountain they take, at whatever cost, is a mountain nearer home. the french are earning their way home and they do not com­ plain. they know exactly what they are doing and they are doing it superbly. they are fighting for the honor of france, which is not just a phrase, as you might think, but the personal, undying pride of every one of them. and they are fighting to get home to a coun­ try cleansed of germans. home means a street, a house, a face that has not been seen for too many years. home means the lovely sky and the lovely land of france. the mountains of italy are horrible; to attack always against heights held by well-entrenched and well-trained enemy troops is surely the worst sort of war. nothing can help the infantry much in mountains: germans dug into the stone sides of these cliffs can survive the heaviest shelling. tanks cannot operate. so at last it is the courage and determination of a frenchman against the courage and determination of a german. the french have been taking their objectives. the jeep driver belonged to a compagnie de ramassage, which means literally a pick-up company. his outfit has to collect the wounded from the sides of these mountains, carry them down on stretchers and drive them back to base hospitals over roads which would be dangerous even if no one shelled them. in these moun­ tains it is not unusual for a wounded man to be carried for ten hours before he reaches a road and a waiting ambulance. the pres­ ent headquarters of his company was one of the basements in san 'n�1' i ·1i • ,� _�_. "b __ .i the second world war elia. we drove rapidly past the two known evil points at the entrj of the town-there are always the places you are certain to be shelled, and then there are the surprise places. an ambulance was parked inside the front door of the first-aid station. the stretcher-bearers slept on straw on the floor next to the ambulances. down a dark, stony passageway was the room where the doctor worked. a fine-faced, cocoa-colored soldier from martinique lay on the improvised operating table. he had very bright eyes and he was quite silent but there was this odd, birdlike curiosity in his eyes. across the room a white soldier sat on a chair, not moving, but looking at his friend. under the blanket you could see that the martiniquan had only one leg. they had just been brought in. these two were repairing a telephone line beside the rapido when a shell landed near them. a sliver of the shell pierced the left eye of the frenchman, another fragment almost severed the leg of the martiniquan. the blinded man made a tourniquet of telephone wire to stop his friend's hemorrhage, and then, because the torn leg was hanging by skin and tendons only, he cut the leg off with his clasp knife. after this he carried his comrade to the road and went for help. the martiniquan kept saying in his soft, old-fashioned french, ((i love my friend very much but he should not have cut off my leg." the soldier who had only one eye refused treatment until he was sure his comrade was well cared for, then he accepted a shot of morphine. nothing could be done for his eye; it would have to be taken out at the base hospital. there were no more wounded, so the doctor, the transport of­ ficer and i went down to their living quarters, a very cold room in another cellar. half the dirt floor had been covered with old doors to keep the damp from the mattresses they slept on. there was a table with a marble top, an iron stove that barely worked, two .-_ ... � / ii '\. visit italy kerosene lamps, four uncertain chairs, an upright piano with planks for legs, a radio, some mice, a pervading odor of damp and good thick walls. we sat down with a bottle of italian cognac, which tastes like perfume and gasoline, and waited for dinner. an american amg (allied military government) major was in town with his aide. they had evacuated the entire civil population and were leaving for another village in the morning, but tonight they were coming to dine. they would presumably arrive before the evening shelling started. we got switzerland on the radio in order to learn what was happening in cassino, seven kilometers away. we also tuned in on berlin to hear what they were giving out, and they announced that they would now play the music of a grenadier regiment fighting on the italian front. these were the german troops two kilometers away from our cellar. "it is not bad music," the transport officer said, "except for all that boom-boom they always have." the two americans arrived and were warmly greeted. the eve­ ning shelling started while we ate our c rations. the french doctor told the american major that there were three civilian corpses in the church, and the american said, "my god! are they still there? it's too awful the way the italians won't take the trouble to bury one another." the twenty-year-old soldier who was the major's aide said he was going to write a book entitled my life on a bulfs-eye. this reminded the french of a wonderful american book they had once read, called gentlemen prefer blondes, and they rocked with laughter as they retold each other all the jokes. then a soldier came in and said someone was wounded by a mine in a field near the rapido, so the transport officer went out to get the wounded man. the americans went home after a while. they lived in a house that always seemed to get shells in the garden but never in the building, and they were counting on this. in �i· rooid � �i� � � i / _. _... ,-____,.jf-----"'& __ .i • the second world war the doctor said it was terrible about the mine fields; they no longer allowed anyone to walk into a field to pull out wounded men, because one day seven men were killed trying to get one man out. the mines were perhaps the worst of all. now one just threw a rope to the wounded man and dragged him back to the swept, safe ground. "think of it," he said, "for years after this war, people will be killed all over europe in such fields; men will be killed sowing their wheat and children will be killed playing. it is horrible. everything about war is too horrible to consider." the transport officer came back after a while and said the man was dead. that night i lay in my cot and listened to the mice and the shells, and thought about the french in italy. it is impossible to describe the hardships of their life; it would take too long, and the words wouldn't mean anything. they eat the same food all the time, the universally loathed c and k rations; they are never warm; they are never sure to be dry; they have no possible relaxation. they watch their comrades die and know how entirely expendable they are, and that they have no replacements. i remember the dead girl ambulance driver, lying on a bed in a tent hospital, with her hands crossed on a sad bunch of flowers, and her hair very neat and blond, and her face simply asleep. she had been killed on the road below san elia, and her friends, the other french girls who drove ambulances, were coming to pay their last respects. they were tired and awkward in their bulky, muddy clothes. they passed slowly before the dead girl and looked with pity and great quietness at her face, and went back to their am­ bulances. i remember the troops on the roads, tough and hard, watching the italian refugees pass by with the usual bundles, the usual blank eyes and the usual slow, weary walk. there was no kindness in the french soldiers. one man said to himself but speaking for every----i -.... / ii1 '\.. visit italy one, "there were refugees on all the roads in france. each one in his tum." i remembered the snow-topped mountain called la mainarde, and the deep, beautifully placed german machine-gun posts, and i thought of the frenchmen who had taken this mountain. they are dying very fast, but they always go on to the higher and higher mountains. you hear a lot of rot, traveling around the world. you hear people say france is finished, the french are no good, look at their politics, iook at the collapse of france, they will never be a great people again. so i lay in my cot and thought that anyone who speaks or thinks like that is a fool, and if he wants to know how foolish he is, he'd better visit italy. 133 ., t i � ---.....::: �--'�--..,. --i d-plus-one: the prisoners june 1944 � the first of the master race arrived on the shores of england at night. in the dark at one side of the landing ramp a soldier was working with an acetylene torch, and suddenly the blue flare of the torch flowed over the open lst* and there the master race stood, lined four deep inside the cavern of the ship. the german prisoners stared blindly toward england. earlier in the day, and this was d-plus-one, a few german wounded had been brought over on light craft, but nobody here had yet seen so many germans collected harmlessly in one place. we watched the lst maneuver to land, we watched the great doors swing open and the great drawbridge lower, and the lst in the night was an ominous ship, a modern trojan horse made of steel. british military police, five to a side, lined the ramp and waited for the prisoners. one of them said seriously, but to him­ self, ''1'd like to blast them germans. they got my brother." be­ hind him stood a tall jolly awkward redheaded american soldier. * landing ship tanks. _-_ -,' ""... / ih """ el� d-plus-one: the prisoners he was pushing a little to get a better view. "come on," he said, "give me a chance. i come down here to see an aryan." quite unexpectedly prisoners began to move from the lighted hold of the lst to the shore, on the double, and their faces were invisible in the dark. they passed in a rush, like well-herded cattle. after the first wave had gone there was calm again, and the lst still seemed full of small shabby men in field gray. a german lieutenant stood at the head of the long column of prisoners who were waiting their turn to leave the lst. he was tall and blond, with a narrow face and blue eyes, and he was standing very the­ atrically, with his hands on his hips, registering scorn and indif­ ference. the redheaded american soldier could not take his eyes from the german officer. "look at him," he said. "he's fixed up for the movies." the officer was wearing pale-blue flared riding breeches, high black boots, a rather darker blue tunic and a pale­ blue forage cap, and he did look extraordinarily fancy for this time and place. the german wounded lay on stretchers on the right side of the lst, and now there was a conference between the german medi­ cal officer and the american officer in charge of the shore am­ bulance company. the whole scene froze as they talked, and it became an enormous historical painting, and no one seemed real. the blue acetylene glare flashed over the crowded ship for a moment and then faded, leaving only the light of bare bulbs hang­ ing from girders inside the ship. the british captain of the lst, who looked as tired as every­ one looked that night, and happy though tired, wandered over and remarked that the jerry doctor was something of a character. "he was telling me," said the britisher, "that they were delighted we had started this invasion because it was our last fling." during all these years we have thought so much about the ger­ man army that one scarcely expected them even to look like men and one certainly did not expect them to look like such unhealthy, 135 i i /,: ,j-t "& __ .> ---" / the second world war undersized men. we decided that these prisoners must be a labor battalion or something of the sort; there was no sense in imagining the entire wehrmacht would turn out to be five feet four and hangdog. we studied the line of prisoners, trying to understand, trying to see in those faces what had happened to the world. but it was no use; it was hopeless. in one row there was a boy of not more than seventeen; beside him stood a man we instantly named the gnome, who looked at least forty-five and seemed under five feet in height. the whole lot was so motley, so unimposing, so ab­ ject that finally we wanted only to get out so as not to have to look at them any more. american stretcher-bearers filed on board to carry off the wounded. all the ambulance companies here were colored troops and i had watched them that day doing an admirable, swift, gentle job. when they came on board, the german lieutenant looked at them with a curious expression for one instant, and then his face resumed the studied indifferent half-smile. "what do you know," the redheaded american soldier mur­ mured. "the aryans got to depend on a slave race. that's right, ain't it, that's what they said the colored people were?" the stretcher-bearers took off the wounded, competently, si­ lently, with no change in their manner. they seemed not to be noticing what they were handling. they did their job as they were trained to do. there was a strange atmosphere on the quay, where we stood waiting for the last prisoners to be marched to the prisoner-of­ war camp and for the wounded to be taken to hospital. we were almost whispering among ourselves and there was no kind of gloat­ ing or triumph. fatigue, as thick as dust, marked everyone's face and showed in the way everyone walked and stood. and an inde­ finable sadness hung about us. fe all felt jt· it was as if we looked at these poor specimeps of humanjty and thought· here !lt� lowest common denominator of destruction, the world has been dealaooi ima�iniijl : four �� mderltaij� worlq, ��i iyjrohm lirmm� unofr �\1 'n&d vetoloof d-plus-one: the prisoners an hurt f�r four an.i_'!_half .years by wretched p�ple "it doesn't seem true," a man next to me said. he was an american navy lieutenant who supervised this loading ramp. "when you look at them, it doesn't seem true." suddenly the inside of the ship came to life. incomprehensible orders were shouted in english and the line of prisoners started to move rapidly from the oblong steel cave of the ship out into the dark. their boots made a loud cheerful ring on the steel floor and the orders sounded nice and lively, and the british crew, who were hanging to the side of the ship like boys hanging on a fence to watch a baseball game, began to shout to each other and to the prisoners, we could not understand a word but there was laugh­ ter and whistling and all the sadness had gone. one of the crew called to a german soldier who passed at the end of the column and waved his hand. the german turned, smiled, hastily stepped out of line, and the british sailor and the german soldier shook hands. we were amazed by this and no one was pleased and we asked the sailor why he did it. the sailor was as surprised by our question as we had been by his handshaking. "we took care of him coming over," the sailor explained. "he's a pole. there were four poles and a russian in with that lot. one of the jerries tried to take food away from that pole, and the russian flattened the jerry against the side of the ship and afterward we sort of took care of the poles." they started loading the lst at once, and where prisoners had been they now rolled in tanks. the next day prisoners became a common occurrence; they seemed to be pouring in on every landing ramp. we were watching a column of prisoners march from the quay to the prisoners' camp. at an intersection of the road a line of american tanks waited for the prisoners to clear so that they could move onto an lst and cross to france. every prisoner in the long column turned to look 137 i i / .: j_-t-_�"!o __.. ---.1'-��:&i the second world war at those tanks. none of them spoke; they looked at those tanks with a kind of solemn respectful wonder. at the end of this contingent of prisoners there were four ger­ man soldiers carrying weekend suitcases. this baffled us; it seemed incredible to be all packed up and ready for capture and then to arrive in england with luggage. it was the first comic note in the day. the geneva convention forbids the press to question pris­ oners of war, in order to spare them the shame of publicity, so we could not ask what was in those suitcases. they remain a minor and laughable mystery. the german wounded who came with the walking prisoners were taken, by the sure-handed, quiet and beautifully efficient colored corpsmen and ambulance drivers, to american hospitals in the countryside beyond the port. one of these hospitals had been freshly painted and had bright royal-blue curtains for the blackout and it seemed, after the uproar of the landing ramps, an improbable haven of peace. here, in a ward which was momentar­ ily striped with sun, lay a double row of wounded germans, al­ ready washed and wearing regulation flannel hospital pajamas. the american medical officer in charge of the hospital was making the rounds, checking up on his new enemy patients. by a magnificent irony, the germans who had relied on the ability and gentleness of colored stretcher-bearers and colored )lmbulance drivers now relied on the wisdom and decency of a jewish doctor. i was moved and proud, and perhaps at this dis­ tance it will be hard to explain to you who are reading this just _ how moving it was. we had seen for two days the allied wounded coming back and we had seen terrible things. there are no people near to this war who have any patience in their hearts for the germans. so none of us felt as we would naturally feel toward any other human beings in pain. but, without that feeling, the jewish doctor carefully and sincerely prepared to give his best attention to the enemy. �nl��ffi r �ffiol1:! • n�lri�li �i�b l� lid d-plus-one: the prisoners the germans watched the doctor coming in. no one knows what they have been told by their propaganda chiefs; no one knows what they expect to have happen to them at our hands. they lay and waited and they were a scared bunch of men. they saw at once that they had nothing to fear. from silence they launched quickly into very involved complaints: they hurt in this place and in that place; there was a steady flow of german which i was attempting to understand and translate. as none of them was seriously wounded, the doctor listened impassively, asked questions, waited until he was sure that he had got the exact answer, and then prescribed the necessary treatment. we came presently to a bed where a german soldier was sitting up, staring around like, an inquisitive but frightened pekingese. in every group of men there is a clown, and this was the man. he was an involuntary clown, and though none of us was feeling warmhearted we stopped to grin at this man. his name was otto, which some­ how added to his comedy value, and his ears grew at right angles to a lined, apologetic, good-natured and stupid face. he wore glasses and he looked about forty-eight years old. he announced firmly that he was thirty-six. "he must have worried a lot," the doctor said musingly. otto had a slight bayonet wound in his shoulder and he was full of conversation. the other germans perked up listening to otto, who was evidently the joke man of the outfit. now they were laughing and talking between the beds and the doctor could not hear what otto was saying about his wound and there was too much noise. the doctor said to me, "tell them to be quiet." i could think only of a very polite way to say this, and i said it very politely and to otto alone. the man in the next bed barked out an order. "ruhig!" he commanded as if we were all back in germany, in that sort of voice. from gaiety and taking everything for granted, such silence descended on that ward that you could have heard a pin drop. the doctor and i looked at each other, 139 'i 1 / � it i / '�-----.o&-_-��__jo _ . � -_ _ _ _ � , ==� / the second world war and there was an expression of contempt and despair in his eyes. he shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. but i believe we were thinking the same thing: they take advantage or they take orders, there is nothing in between. the doctor went on, patient and careful, and all his knowledge and all the fine equipment of the hospital was given into the service of these germans. but when the doctor had finished with the ward, and we walked out into the corridor, you could see that he felt relief and that the nurses too were glad to leave that ward for a few moments, these germans were sim 1 not eo ie . as no common place w ere we could meet. it was more than a ian ua e barrier -our mm s were una i e. when e e next ward am stopped to ask an american boy how he felt, a boy who had been badly burned when his landing craft was hit on the beaches, we knew we were home again "nefer felt better," said the boy, through his bandages. "do we �et ice cream here, poe?;' i he doctor asked me what one of the germans had wanted when he called me over to his bed. this man had wanted to know what the value of a hundred french francs was in english pounds. it had seemed an odd question and a puzzling one and too hard to answer, as it would mean explaining to the german that you can't get away with everything forever, and you can't expect to trade false inflation money, imposed on a defeated nation, for good money that free men have earned. i had told the german that his money was without value here, as it came from a different bank. he did not like this idea and seemed to feel cheated. "can you beat it?" the doctor said. he was walking quickly as it was a big hospital and wounded were coming in all the time. "do you really suppose it takes all kinds to make a world?" the doctor asked, and smiled at me. -.--. �-�'" i his e��, elieve w� theymt on, �ti�ijl ui�mentijl all), the first hospital ship tune 1944 � there were four hundred and twenty-two bunks covered with ahijt� new blankets, and a bright, clean, well-equipped operating room, ��nt�t� never before used. great cans marked "whole blood" stood on the in en�lli! decks. plasma bottles and supplies of drugs and bales of bandages �oul were stored in handy places. everything was ready and any moment e genn�� the big empty hospital ship would be leaving for france. rou ��'i the ship itself was painfully white. the endless varied ships teananij�, clotted in this english invasion port were gray or camouflaged and eg�nn�� they seemed to have the right idea. we, on the other hand, were all aqi&rl�t fixed up like a sitting pigeon. our ship was snowy white with a green line running along the sides below the deck rail, and with �ui�lpl many bright new red crosses painted on the hull and painted flat ili� tim(, on the boat deck. we were to travel alone, and there was not so rw'i�1 much as a pistol on board in the way of armament, and neither the english crew and ship's officers nor the american medical person­ nel had any notion of what happened to large conspicuous white ships when they appeared at a war, though everyone knew the geneva agreement concerning such ships and everyone wistfully ii i /.._;__ �lrr--� � __-& __ _ . ___. ---� . ,i the second world war hoped that the germans would take the said agreement seriously.there were six nurses aboard. they came from texas and michi­ gan and california and wisconsin, and three weeks ago they werein the u.s.a. completing their training for this overseas assignment.they had been prepared to work on a hospital train, which would mean caring for wounded in sensible, steady railway carriages that move slowly through the green english countryside. instead ofwhich they found themselves on a ship, and they were about to move across the dark, cold green water of the channel. this sud­ den switch in plans was simply part of the day's work and each one,in her own way, got through the grim business of waiting for theunknown to start, as elegantly as she could. it was very elegant in­deed, especially if you remembered that no one aboard had ever been on a hospital ship before, so the helpful voice of experience was lacking. we had pulled out of the harbor in the night, but we crossed by daylight and the morning seemed longer than other mornings.the captain never left the bridge and, all alone and beautifullywhite, we made our way through a mine-swept lane in the channel. the only piece of news we had, so far, was that the two hospital ships which preceded us struck mines on their way over, fortu­ nately before they were loaded with wounded soldiers and without serious damage to the personnel aboard. everyone silently hopedthat three would be a lucky number; and we waited very hard; and there was nothing much to see except occasional ships passing at adistance. then we saw the coast of france and suddenly we were in the midst of the armada of the invasion. people will be writing about this sight for a hundred years and whoever saw it will never forget it. first it seemed incredible; there could not be so many shipsin the world. then it seemed incredible as a feat of planning; ifthere were so many ships, what genius it required to get them here, what amazing and unimaginable genius. after the first shock t �eriouli1' ann midi. the� wfft a��i�nmfijl. hieb wow� rria�� lij�: lll!!ea� �i re aooijl!� ]. thill��. q eacn oij� 'n� lor�t el�ntill. anaq�e �tij(t the first hospital ship of wonder and admiration, one began to look around and see separate details. there were destroyers and battleships and trans­ ports, a floating city of huge vessels anchored before the green cliffs of normandy. occasionally you would see a gun flash or perhaps only hear a distant roar, as naval guns fired far over those hills. small craft beetled around in a curiously jolly way. it looked like a lot of fun to race from shore to ships in snub-nosed boats beating up the spray. it was no fun at all, considering the mines and obstacles that remained in the water, the sunken tanks with only their radio antennae showing above water, the drowned bodies that still floated past. on an let near us washing was hung up on a line, and between the loud explosions of mines being detonated on the beach dance music could be heard coming from its radio. barrage balloons, always looking like comic toy elephants, bounced in the high wind above the massed ships, and invisible planes droned behind the gray ceiling of cloud. troops were unloading from big ships to heavy cement barges or to light craft, and on the shore, moving up four brown roads that scarred the hillside, our tanks clanked slowly and steadily forward. then we stopped noticing the invasion, the ships, the ominous beach, because the first wounded had arrived. an let drew alongside our ship, pitching in the waves; a soldier in a steel hel­ met shouted up to the crew at the aft rail, and a wooden box looking like a lidless coffin was lowered on a pulley, and with the greatest difficulty, bracing themselves against the movement of their boat, the men on the let laid a stretcher inside the box. the box was raised to our deck and out of it was lifted a man who was closer to being a boy than a man, dead white and seemingly dying. the first wounded man to be brought to that ship for safety and care was a german prisoner. everything happened at once. we had six water ambulances, light motor launches, which swung down from the ship's side and could be raised the same way when full of wounded. they carried ii i / �____j__l �� _ . ---. i the second world war six litter cases apiece or as many walking wounded as could be crowded into them. now they were being lowered, with shouted orders: "that beach over there where they've got two red stream­ ers up." "just this side of easy red." we lay at anchor halfway between those now famous and unhealthy beaches, easy red and dog red. "take her in slow." "those double round things that look like flat spools are mines." "you won't clear any submerged tanks, so look sharp." "ready?" "lower her!" the captain came down from the bridge to watch this. he was feeling cheerful, and he now remarked, "i got us in all right but god knows how we'll ever get out." he gestured toward the ships that were as thick around us as cars in a parking lot. "worry about that some other time." the stretcher-bearers, who were part of the american medical personnel, started on their long back-breaking job. by the end of that trip their hands were padded with blisters and they were practically hospital cases themselves. for the wounded had to be carried from the shore into our own water ambulances or into other craft, raised over the side, and then transported down the winding stairs of this converted pleasure ship to the wards. the ship's crew became volunteer stretcher-bearers instantly. wounded were pouring in now, hauled up in the lidless coffin or swung aboard in the motor ambulances; and finally an lst tied alongside and made itself into a sort of landing jetty, higher than the light craft that ran the wounded to us, but not as high as our deck. so the wounded were lifted by men standing on the lst, who raised the stretchers high above their heads and handed them up to men on our deck, who caught hold of the stretcher handles. it was a fast, terrifying bucket-brigade system, but it worked. belowstairs all partitions had been torn out and for three decks the inside of the ship was a vast ward with double tiers of bunks. the routine inside the ship ran marvelously, though four doctors, six nurses and about fourteen medical orderlies were very few coulq � h �hout� ect �tr�m, or ndl�\di rea �ij� nin�� tml !udmer�oo r into �i�� the lvin�i�; the l�il'j unoea \\,�f( un� aoodf� n�lioe ��� li�flt trill eck�lli( whornilro u� toidrn ,it\\'a)d ur qod�rl, i'eryle» the first hospital ship people to care for four hundred wounded men. from two o'clock one afternoon until the ship docked in england again the next evening at seven, none of the medical personnel stopped work. and besides plasma and blood transfusions, re-dressing of wounds, examinations, administering of sedatives or opiates or oxygen and all the rest, operations were performed all night long. �ne soldier died on that ship and he had come aboard as a hopeless case. will be hard to tell you of the wounded, there were so many of them. there was no time to talk; there was too much else to do. they had to be fed, as most of them had not eaten for two days; shoes and clothing had to be cut off; they wanted water; the nurses and orderlies, working like demons, had to be found and called quickly to a bunk where a man suddenly and desperately needed attention; plasma bottles must be watched; cigarettes had to be lighted and held for those who could not use their hands; it seemed to take hours to pour hot coffee, via the spout of a teapot, into a mouth that just showed through bandages. but the wounded talked among themselves and as time went on we got to know them, by their faces and their wounds, not their names. they were a magnificent enduring bunch of men. men smiled who were in such pain that all they really can have wanted to do was turn their heads away and cry, and men made jokes when they needed their strength just to survive. and all of them looked after each other, saying, "give that boy a drink of water," or "miss, see that ranger over there, he's in bad shape, could you go to him?" all through the ship men were asking after other men by name, anxiously, wondering if they were on board and how they were doing. on a deck in a bunk by the wall lay a very young lieutenant. he had a bad chest wound and his face was white and he lay too still. suddenly he raised himself on his elbow and looked straight ahead of him, as if he did not know where he was. his eyes were it i / ,,� _ ______..j'--_"!o __ . ----� the second world war full of horror and he did not speak. later he spoke. he had been wounded the first day, had lain out in a field and then crawled back to our lines, sniped at by the germans. he realized now that a german, badly wounded also in the chest, shoulder and legs, layin the bunk behind him. the gentle-faced boy said very softly,because it was hard to speak, "i'd kill him if i could move." after that he did not speak for a long time; he was given oxygen and later operated on, so that he could breathe. the man behind him was a nineteen-year-old austrian. he had fought for a year in russia and half a year in france; he had been home for six days during this time. i thought he would die when he first came on board, but he got better. in the early morninghours he asked whether wounded prisoners were exchanged, wouldhe ever get home again? i told him that i did not know about these arrangements but that he had nothing to fear, as he could see.s the a:u��!an sai " �" . d "so man wounded men,all wounded�ll a me. wh ver fou achother?" perha s b om a entler race his e es werefuh oftears. he was the only wounded german prisoner on boardwho showed any normal human reaction to this disaster. an amencan soldier on that same deck had a head wound so horrible that he was not moved. nothing could be done for him and anything, any touch, would have made him worse. the next morning he was drinking coffee. his eyes looked very dark and strange, as if he had been a long way away, so far away that healmost could not get back. his face was set in lines of weariness and pain, but when asked how he felt, he said he was okay. he was never known to say anything more; he asked for nothingand made no complaint, and perhaps he will live too. on the next deck there were many odd and wonderful men who were less badly wounded and talked more. it was all professionaltalk: where they had landed, at what time, what opposition theyhad met, how they had got out, when they were wounded, how 146 the first hospital ship haa �tt: that happened. they spoke of the snipers, and there was endless talk about the women snipers, none of the talk very clear but everyone believing it. there were no french officers with these men, who could have interpreted, and the americans never knew what the villagers were saying. two men who thought they were ve,"iw, being volubly invited into an old woman's house to eat dinner anq�:t were actually being warned of snipers in the attic; they somehow caught on to this fact in time. they were all baffled by the french ,htt and surprised by how much food there was in normandy, forgetnaq�: ting that normandy is one of the great food-producing areas of rufw�:: france. they thought the girls in the villages were amazingly mo� well dressed. everything was confused and astounding: first there were the deadly bleak beaches and then the villages where they were greeted with flowers and cookies and often snipers and booby traps. a french boy of seventeen lay in one of the bunks; he had been wounded in the back by a shell fragment. he lived and worked on his father's land, but he said the germans had burned their house as they left. two of the american boys in bunks alongside were worried about him. they were afraid he'd be scared, a civilian kid all alone and in pain and not knowing any english and going to a strange country. they ignored tlieir respective smashed knee and smashed shoulder and worried about the french kid. the french boy was very much a man and very tight-lipped, and he made no complaints and kept his anxiety inside himself though it showed in his eyes. his family was still there in the battle zone and he did not know what had happened to them or how he would ever get back. the american soldiers said, "you tell that kid he's a better soldier than that heinie in the bunk next to him." we did not ljke this heinie who was eighteen years old \ and the most demanding master race aboard finally there was a crisp little scene when he told the orderly to move him as he was uncomfortable and the orderly said no, he would bleed if moved, the second world war and when i explained the german said angrily, "how long, then, am i to lie here in pain in this miserable position?" i asked the orderly what to say and the orderly answered, "tell him there are a lot of fine boys on this ship lying in worse pain in worse posi­ tions." the american soldiers in the bunks around said, "what a heinie," wearily, and then they began wondering how they'd find their old units again and how soon they'd get mail. when night came, the water ambulances were still churning in to the beach looking for wounded. someone on an let had shouted out that there were maybe a hundred scattered along there somewhere. it was essential to try to get them aboard before the nightly air raid and before the dangerous dark cold could eat into their hurt bodies. going in to shore, unable to see, and not knowing this tricky strip of water, was slow work. two of the launch crew, armed with boat hooks, hung over the side of the boat and stared at the black water, looking for obstacles, sunken vehicles, mines, and kept the hooks ready to push us off the sand as we came closer in. for the tides were a nasty business too, and part of the time wounded had to be ferried out to the water am­ bulances on men's shoulders, and part of the time the water am­ bulances simply grounded and stuck on the beach together with other craft, stranded by the fast-moving sea. we finally got onto a cement troop barge near the beach called easy red. the water ambulance could not come inshore near enough to be of any use at this point, so it left us to look for a likelier anchorage farther down. we waded ashore in water to our waists, having agreed that we would assemble the wounded from this area on board a beached lst and wait until the tide allowed the water ambulance to come back and call for us. it was almost dark by now and there was a terrible feeling of work­ ing against time. everyone was violently busy on that crowded dangerous shore. 148 .---_rr�� the first hospital ship the pebbles were the size of melons and we stumbled up a road that a huge road shovel was scooping out. we walked with the utmost care between the narrowly placed white tape lines that marked the mine-cleared path, and headed for a tent marked with a red cross just behind the beach. ducks * and tanks and trucks were moving down this narrow rocky road and one stepped just a little out of their way, but not beyond the tapes. the dust that rose in the gray night light seemed like the fog of war itself. then we got off on the grass and it was perhaps the most surprising of all the day's surprises to smell the sweet smell of summer grass, a smell of cattle and peace and the sun that had warmed the earth some other time when summer was real. inside the red cross tent two tired unshaven dirty polite young men said that the trucks were coming in here with the wounded and where did we want to have them unloaded? we explained the problem of the tides and said the best thing was to run the trucks down to that lst there and carry the wounded aboard, under the canvas roof covering, and we would get them off as soon as any­ thing floated. at this point a truck jolted up and the driver shouted out a question and was told to back and turn. he did not need to be told to do this carefully and not get off the mine-cleared area. the red cross men said they didn't know whether wounded would be coming in all night or not-it was pretty tough to trans­ port them by road in the dark; anyway they'd send everything down to our agreed meeting place and everyone said, well good luck fella, and we left. no one wasted time talking around there. you had a feeling of fierce and driven activity, with the night only being harder to work in than the day. we returned to our small unattractive stretch of the beach and directed the unloading of this truck. the tide was coming in and there was a narrow strip of water between the landing ramp of the * amphibious jeeps. the second world war lst and the shore. the wounded were carried carefully and laid on the deck inside the great whale's-mouth cavern of the lst. after that there was a pause, with nothing to do. some american soldiers came up and began to talk. this had been an ugly pieceof beach from the beginning and they were still here, living infoxholes and supervising the unloading of supplies. they spoke ofsnipers in the hills a hundred yards or so behind the beach, and no one lighted a cigarette. they spoke of not having slept at all,but they seemed pleased by the discovery that you could go with­out sleep and food and still function all right. everyone agreedthat the beach was a stinker and it would be a great pleasure toget the hell out of here sometime. then there was the usual in­ evitable comic american conversation: "where're you from?"this always fascinates me; there is no moment when an american does not have time to look for someone who knows his home town. we talked about pittsburgh and rosemont pa. and chicago andcheyenne, not saying much except that they were sure swell places and a damn sight better than this beach. one of the sol­ diers remarked that they had a nice little foxhole about fifty yardsinland and we were very welcome there when the air raid started if we didn't mind eating sand, which was unavoidable in their nice little foxhole. a stretcher-bearer from the hospital ship thanked them for their kind invitation and said that on the other hand we had guestsaboard the lst and we would have to stay home this evening. iwish i had ever known his name because i would like to write it down here. he was one of the best and jolliest boys i've met any place, any time. he joked no matter what happened, and towardthe end of that night we really began to enjoy ourselves. there is a point where you feel yourself so small and helpless in such an enor­ mous insane nightmare of a world, that you cease to give a hootabout anything and you renounce care and start laughing.he went off to search for the water ambulances and returned the first hospital ship to say there wasn't a sign of them, which meant they couldn't get inshore yet and we'd just have to wait and hope they could find this spot when it was black night. if they never found this place the lst would float later, and the british captain said he would run our wounded out to the hospital ship, though it would not be for hours. suddenly our flak started going up at the far end of the beach and it was beautiful, twinkling as it burst in the sky, and the tracers were as lovely as they always are-and no one took pleasure from the beauty of the scene. "we've had it now," said the stretcher-bearer. "there isn't any place we can put those wounded." i asked one of the soldiers, just for interest's sake, what they did in case of air raids and he said, well, you could go to a foxhole if you had time, but on the other hand there wasn't really much to do. so we stood and watched and there was alto­ gether too much flak for comfort. we could not hear the planes nor hear any bomb explosions but as everyone knows flak is a bad thing to have fall on your head. the soldiers now drifted off on their own business and we boarded the lst to keep the wounded company. it seemed a spe­ cially grim note to be wounded in action and then have to lie helpless under a strip of canvas while any amount of steel frag­ ments, to say nothing of bombs, could drop on you and complete the job. the stretcher-bearer and i said to each other gloomily that as an air-raid shelter far better things than the hold of an lst had been devised, and we went inside, not liking any of it and feeling miserably worried about our wounded. the wounded looked pretty bad and lay very still; and in the light of one bare bulb, which hung from a girder, we could not see them well. then one of them began to moan and he said something. he was evidently conscious enough to notice this ghastly racket that was going on above us. the oerlikons of our lst now opened fire and the noise inside the steel hold was as if your own eardrums were being drilled with a rivet. the wounded lly aua i�i or the � eameri� n u�lr ri�; re, li�n�i: � ��t�� e deacn,�: � �ie�t �t t ula �o �i� ryone ��r�: t �ltj�m� i tile u�lldl i. joulwm' anamf� nometool ilita�o d�: �ure �'(: 01 toe �:. tdlcy�::' raia !�rr�: ilieir �icr i 1 /ii '0 -----=i:-_---1io _ . ---/ �� the second world war man called out again and i realized that he was speaking german. we checked up then and found that we had an lst full of wounded germans and the stretcher-bearer said, "well, that is just dandy, by golly, if that isn't the payoff." then he said, "if anything hits this ship, dammit, they deserve it." the ack-ack lifted a bit and the stretcher-bearer climbed to the upper deck, like sister anne on the tower, to see where in god's name those water ambulances were. i clambered like a very awk­ ward monkey up a ladder to the galley to get some coffee and so missed the spectacle of two german planes falling like fiery comets from the sky. they hit the beach to the right and left of us and burned in huge bonfires which lighted up the shore. the beach, in this light, looked empty of human life, cluttered with dark square shapes of tanks and trucks and jeeps and ammunition boxes and all the motley equipment of war. it looked like a vast uncanny black-and-red flaring salvage dump, whereas once upon a time people actually went swimming here for pleasure. our lst crew was delighted because they believed they had brought down one of the german planes and everyone felt cheer­ ful about the success of the ack-ack, a soldier shouted from shore that we had shot down four planes in all and it was nice work, by god. the wounded were silent and those few who had their eyes open had very frightened eyes. they seemed to be listening with their eyes, and fearing what they would hear. the night, like the morning, went on longer than other nights. our water ambulances found us, and there was a lot of good in­ comprehensible cockney talk among the boatmen while the wounded were loaded from the now floating lst to the small, buck­ ing launch. we set out, happy because we were off the beach and because the wounded would be taken where they belonged. the trip across that obstacle-studded piece of water was a chatty affair, due to the boat crew. "crikey, mate, wot yer trying ter do, ram a ggellllll st full, ell,ili1t: he �aiq i,'" ammunil,: d l�� 1 ii' once u��, ea ili�r ill: e felt r�it' from !�[: ice wor�� aa tn�ir�c )teoin� �i� tnerni�b of �roj[, wni11 �! �mall,�ijcr' edejrn�! on��a, n� na��1 rao,roml the first hospital ship destroyer?" and "by god, man, keep an eye in yer head for god's sake that's a tank radio pole." to which another answered, "expect me to see a bloody piece of grass in this dark?" so, full of conver­ sation, we zigzagged back to the hospital ship and were at last swung aboard. the raid had been hard on the wounded in the wards of the ship, because of the terrible helplessness of being unable to move. the ship seemed to lie directly under a cone of ack-ack fire, and perhaps it would have been easier if the wounded had heard the german planes, so that, at least through their ears, they would know what was happening. the american medical personnel, most of whom had never been in an air raid, tranquilly continued their work, asked no questions, showed no sign even of interest in this uproar, and handed out confidence as if it were a solid thing like bread. if anyone had come fresh to that ship in the night, someone unwounded, not attached to the ship, he would have been ap­ palled. it began to look entirely black-hole-of-ca1cutta, because it was airless and ill lit. piles of bloody clothing had been cut off and dumped out of the way in corners; coffee cups and cigarette stubs littered the decks; plasma bottles hung from cords, and all the fearful surgical apparatus for holding broken bones made shadows on the walls. there were wounded who groaned in their sleep or called out and there was the soft steady hum of conver­ sation among the wounded who could not sleep. that is the way it would have looked to anyone seeing it fresh-a ship carrying a load of pain, with everyone waiting for daylight, everyone hoping for the anchor to be raised, everyone longing for england. it was that but it was something else too; it was a safe ship no matter what happened to it. we were together and we counted on each other. we knew that from the british captain to the pink-cheeked little london mess boy everyone of the ship's company did his 153 'i i / i t i,�_�� :!t __ . ---the second world war job tirelessly and wen. the wounded knew that the doctors and nurses and orderlies belonged to them utterly and would not fail them. and an of us knew that our own wounded were good men and that with their amazing help, their selflessness and self-control, we would get through all right. the wounded looked much better in the morning. the human machine is the most delicate and rare of all, and it is obviously built to survive, if given half a chance. the ship moved steadily across the channel and we could feel england coming nearer. then the coast came into sight and the green of england looked quite different from the way it had looked only two days ago; it looked cooler and clearer and wonderfully safe. the beaches along this coast were only lovely yellow sand. the air of england flowed down through the wards and the wounded seemed to feel it. the sound of their voices brightened and sharpened, and they began making dates with each other for when they would be on con­ valescent leave in london. we saw again the great armada of the invasion, waiting or moving out toward france. this vast directed strength seemed more like an act of nature than a thing men alone could manage. the captain shouted down from the bridge, "look at it! by god, just look at it!" american ambulance companies were waiting on the pier, the same efficient swift colored troops i had seen working on the piers and landing ramps before we left. on the quay there were confer­ ences of important shore personages and our captain and the chief medical officer; and a few of us, old-timers by now, leaned over the rail and joked about being back in the paper-work de­ partment again. everyone felt happy and you could see it in all their faces. the head nurse, smiling though gray with weariness, said, "we'll do it better next time." as the first wounded were carried from the ship the chief medithe first hospital ship cal officer, watching them, said, "made it." that was the great thing. now they would restock their supplies, clean the ship, cover the beds with fresh blankets, sleep whatever hours they could, and then they would go back to france. but this first trip was rrt t done; this much was to the good; they had made it. ,1llellijidi i� bd\i�� oveq �t�� min� lltlr �iana 1001; aa� a��;: aln��i� �lanq ��� feel it hi tnej�; de on ((i , i / i � i,� -----=i�---..". _ • .,..._. ---e. july 1944 the carpathian lancers= i � this field grew huge dead cattle. they lay with their legs i poin ting up, and their open eyes were milky and enormous, and � \, i the air stank of their swollen bodies. we could not tell what had /� . killed them because we were driving too fast through a long tun-} nel of dust which was the road. aside from the hideous dead animals everything looked lovely, with the adriatic a flat turquoiseblue and the sky a flat china blue and the neat green hilly countryof the marche ahead. the major drove as usual like mad. there was plenty of dust in italy all the time, but when he drove a roar­ ing surf of dust beat out behind us. we were going up to have a look at the front before lunch. we came to a village where the armored cars of the third squadron were stationed. they stood in the narrow side streets and were covered with leafy branches, had a pair of german steel helmets over each set of headlights, and flew the small red-and-blue * this article was not published by collier's. at the time, it must haveseemed too critical of our popular allies, the russians. the carpathian lancers pennant of the carpathian lancers from their radio antennae. poppi, who commanded this squadron, leaned out the window of a house by the road and invited us in. the infantry was moving forward very slowly in trucks. all the infantry had dusty white faces, as if they had decided on some new sort of masquerade, using flour for make-up. they looked hot and unenthusiastic. poppi is more than six feet tall, exaggeratedly blond, about twenty-five years old, with bright-blue eyes and a funny husky voice. i wouldn't have thought that he was a pole but i have now given up thinking that people look like poles or don't look like poles. the poles cannot be classified, which is one of their chief charms. peppi was living in a bedroom on the second floor of this peas­ ant house. the furniture was shiny, brown and modern and seemed but recently imported from grand rapids. we sat on the large bed and tried hopelessly to beat off the torrent of flies that flows over you the moment you sit still. we looked at maps as usual. the major wanted to know where the germans were. that was the main job of this armored regiment at the moment; their armored cars and scout cars were engaged in keeping contact with the germans, who were withdrawing in their own time and style. the germans were beyond a ruined medieval tower which was our farthest advance position. they held somewhere on the hills and in whatever farmhouses they thought useful. the tower was being shelled. the germans had anti-tank guns placed in farm­ houses where they dominated the roads. the lancers' armored cars were intended for war in the western desert; they could not operate across country, so they had to stick to the roads. the germans waited and shot at them point-blank. it was like roulette; you either won or you got burned inside your car or maybe you crawled out in time. this went on during the daytime, and the infantry pushed ahead a little, and our artillery shelled the german positions, and at night usually the germans retired a few kilo .. i i / s-: i: i ,� _�__ • 't. _ . ---/",_ � ,..r--"'.. the second world war meters farther north. it was a tiny war at the moment, though people get killed in tiny wars also. the major said he thought he would go on and have a look at the tower. poppi said he couldn't drive there in his jeep-the dust attracted the germans and then they shelled the place and this made the infantry, which was dug in all around, cross. we could walk if we wanted to. there wasn't anything to see, though. it was too hot to walk, so we gave it up. for three weeks the car­ pathian lancers had been the spearhead of the polish corps in a spectacular advance of two hundred miles up the adriatic coast; and nobody was feeling violently energetic now, a few days after the capture of the port of ancona. it was too soon for another big polish drive, and the lancers and the germans were only prod­ ding each other, while the polish corps reorganized for the next push. we roared away in our private dust storm. the major was dis­ appointed in this tour. "nossing," he said. "ties ennuyeux pour vous. sie haben nichts gesehen." the use of three scrambled languages was our regular communication system. everyone un­ derstood everyone else perfectly. since the war had so delightfully stopped, and since it was beautiful weather, and since second squadron was in reserve near us and doing nothing in particular, we decided to go swimming. there was a slight snag because no one had had time to investigate the beach and the approaches to the beach for mines; but as the poles said, if you spent your life always considering mines it would be quite impossible. so we climbed over a german-destroyed rail­ way bridge, climbing as delicately as if we were balinese dancers, stepped softly on the torn-up wooden ties and jumped prudently down the embankment and then walked very very lightly along a dusty road to the shore. andrew, who is a second lieutenant and commands a platoon of armored cars, and i did this noble work of reconnaissance. we decided to walk side by side or closely ealoolt tnt �� ce ana� , wt�qi thou��, i. bilit�, co�lml riane ro-�; qa)l�1 anotntroo oalr �r� or tnt �[ ncei!ij! elemllfi lwlmmli�, inv�t�� out al [�r l itw�llii ojearnir e oan�11 rruat��� ira1@li enant id� dole w�11 or doltl) the carpathian lancers following each other, on the grounds that it would not be fair for just one of us to explode. there were no mines, at least we did not step on any, and there was the warm pale sea and a beach of smooth white pebbles. we swam about, observing with interest that our artillery was shelling the germans to the right, and that the british engineers were probably detonating mines in ancona to our left, since there were bangs and great black clouds of smoke rising from that port. then we began to plan what we would do in case the germans broke through and we were in swimming during this operation. we decided it would be wisest just to go on swimming. second squadron was camped in a hayfield a kilometer from the regimental hq village, and we had a party that night. we sat at a table between two haystacks; the tablecloth and the crockery were a loan from the nearby italian farmhouse and we ate fried duck which had been bought from the farm and tomatoes which had probably been pinched, and bully beef and pickles, and drank raw new wine. in the middle of our meal we heard a great deal of artillery fire and joe, one of the platoon commanders, hurried to the squadron communications car and came back with the news that poor old poppi was being shelled like anything. there was a thin new moon and the sky was crimson and pink and the air had turned cool. then we heard ack-ack fire and a light thumping of bombs, and presently our own artillery opened up, making a close and deafening racket. we went on eating and talking about russia. all the poles talk about russia all the time. the soldiers gather several times a day around the car which houses the radio and listen to the news; they listen to an the news in polish wherever it comes from. they follow the russian advance across poland with agonized interest. it seemed to me that up here, on the polish sector of the italian front, people knew either what was happening ten kilometers away or what was happening in poland, 159 i i / .: _ ___j._�__ j-& __ . ---the second world war and nothing else. we never found out what the eighth armywas doing in front of florence or how the french were getting onabove siena or whether the americans had raced ahead to takepisa. and normandy was another world. but what went on inpoland could be seen in every man's face, in every man's eyes.they had come a long way from poland. they call themselvesthe carpathian lancers because most of them escaped from po­land over the carpathian mountains. they had been gone fromtheir country for almost five years. for three and a half yearsthis cavalry regiment, which was formed in syria, fought in themiddle east and the western desert. they changed from horsesto armored cars in egypt and they fought wonderfully at tobrukand el alamein. they had sweltered in iraq, defending the petrolfields, for almost a year. last january they returned to their owncontinent of europe, via italy, and it was the polish corps, withthis armored regiment fighting in it as infantry, that finally tookcassino in may. in june they started their great drive up theadriatic, and the prize, ancona-which this regiment had entered first-lay behind us. it is a long road home to poland, to the great carpathian moun­tains, and every mile of the road has been bought most bravely.but now they do not know what they are going home to. theyfight an enemy in front of them and fight him superbly. andwith their whole hearts they fear an ally, who is already in theirhomeland. for they do not believe that russia will relinquishtheir country after the war; they fear that they are to be sacrificedin this peace, as czechoslovakia was in 1938. it must be remem­bered that almost every one of these men, irrespective of rank,class or economic condition, has spent time in either a german or a russian prison during this war. it must be remembered that for five years they have had no news from their families, many ofwhom are still prisoners in russia or germany. it must be re­ membered that these poles have only twenty-one years of national 160 the carpathian lancers '�htn am freedom behind them, and a long aching memory of foreign rule. e�ethn�� so we talked of russia and i tried to tell them that their fears �q to� must be wrong or there would be no peace in the world. that went o�! russia must be as great in peace as she has been in war, and that an'! eye, the world must honor the valor and suffering of the poles by givi tnem�)\( ing them freedom to rebuild and better their homeland. i tried q from ii to say i could not believe that this war which is fought to main�one� tain the rights of man will end by ignoring the rights of poles. alldllrt but i am not a pole; i belong to a large free country and i speak ll�nti;� with the optimism of those who are forever safe. and i rememfromn�n; bered the tall gentle twenty-two-year-old soldier who drove me in jdtt��� a jeep one day, and how quietly he explained that his father died �tne�t of hunger in a german prison camp, and his mother and sister o ilieir� had been silent for four years in a labor camp in russia, and his co¥,�;: brother was missing, and he had no profession because he had nndl)!t�l entered the army when he was seventeen so he had had no time 've �r� to learn anything. remembering this boy, and all the others i fldoenteri. knew, with their appalling stories of hardship and homelessness, it seemed to me that no american had the right to talk to the poles, since we had never even brushed such suffering ourselves. but as they were all young, and as a man cannot worry all the time even for his country and his family and his very hope of life, we stopped talking about russia and the future and went over to the repair truck, where two soldiers were playing a violin and an accordion. we made ourselves comfortable on bundles of hay around the truck and soldiers drifted together, and the sing­ ing started. it is most lovely music, mournful and gay at once, and always full of memories. the soldiers have invented songs to commemorate every place they have lived and fought these last years. there are the songs of alamein and tobruk, and the song ffidllr& of the regiment, and soldier songs that make marching easier. the it �rl' desert songs are sadder than the others. they played their own ndoon� tangos, and tzigane music and brahms and then a sweet, sad love 161 i ! / '0 ,}�-'__�.,, _ . ---.., '" the second world war song. someone translated the words: "the roses are fading,johnny, oh come back from the war, come back from the war andkiss me as you did so long ago. come back from the war, johnny,and i will give you the loveliest rose of all." the moon was clear and new and the music spread over us,interrupted only by the noise of our own artillery. suddenly war was the way you remember it, not the way it is while it is happen­ing. just for a moment the present had the strange quality of al­ready being the past, and one saw this night as it would look five years from now, and it was beautiful and perfect without needingfive years to gild the memory. nothing mattered except that these men should be always young, always brave and gay and fine tolook at, always alive. the violinist and the accordion player grewtired at last and we walked home through the deep white powderof road dust. all that night our artillery hammered against thesky so that it seemed the walls of our village would have to crack and give under this ceaseless pounding in the air. we moved the next day and every day after that. it was greatfun, like being gypsies or a small-town circus. we were a long convoy on the roads, with the sirens of the armored cars screamingat every turning and the dust like a tent to cover us. we campedin fields and the moment we had anchored, the scrounging parties got busy. the object was to rush off and buy the local geese, ducks or rabbits before other soldiers had copped them. wine too, of course. an italian peasant offered to sell us five geese if we would come and get them-only four kilometers away, he said. on closer questioning it proved that his village four kilometers away was in german hands, and the project was renounced. we had a lovelyand extravagant dinner that night, sitting on a haystack, to coun­ teract the usual dinners that were sent up in containers from sec­ tion b. but everyone was so distressed by the news from poland that the dinner was not a success. they were all thinking of their families, who had survived or not survived almost five years of 162 eaaovflt uaaen)jil it i� nar� �ua)iry �i; ula)ootfl noutn�� rt tnat�: i ana n��' n rbrfrr ivnite�i'/: 2�aimt : navetoffij it \vj) ��' wele a l�: �lcr�idr; iwe�idr­ n�n��� �eele, ��[ vine too, i if wew�li ia,onrl� aw2jmil naa a 1�1�,1 ck, to ro�:' il from�(i' om ro�� 'n� of t�li ve rej� m the carpathian lancers german tyranny, and were wondering desperately what they would have to endure from the russians. in the very early morning we went on reconnaissance. emile, who commanded the second squadron, led this outing of five scout cars. emile briefed us, standing in his car, and though i did not understand what he said i understood the enchanting laughing sound of his voice and the courteous bow with which he finished. vie sat on top of the scout cars to get the sun and the air and a view of the countryside. the object of this jaunt was to find a way for the armored cars to proceed across country without using the roads. we passed the courtyards of small farms where the peasants were ambling sleepily around in mussed silk pajamas and dressing gowns. it seemed odder than one could believe, and we stared at them as hard as they stared at us. we bought some ducks and some wine and when we returned we learned that poppi's squad­ ron and george's squadron were attacking. suddenly the fog of war descended. no one could find the major. the major, who is as inquisitive as he is brave, had preceded the attack-both the armored cars and the infantry-and driven his jeep into the outskirts of the town we were supposedly going to take. he was quite alone, but some accurate german mortar fire convinced him he had better abandon his solitary war. he returned to headquarters at about one 0'clock, full of information and good humor. after lunch we went back up to the front, to find everybody stalemated. the infantry was lying low, the german antitank guns were operating, the sun was disgustingly hot, and the battle had not advanced. there were a great number of newly dug-up mines, the antitank mines which look like badly made carpenters' tool chests and the antipersonnel mines which look like badly made small cigar boxes. men were moving around george's squadron with pointed alpenstocks, prodding the fields, to locate more mines, and george was sitting at the head of a long line of armored cars, 163 i' i /ii '��"'--_:& ---._ ---� "" ;ji\..,'t the second world war waiting. poppi's squadron was getting shelled. we had been lightlyshelled the night before, in our encampment, and all in all itlooked as if everyone would settle down for a while and let the artillery work. it had been a hectic day, though it did not prove anything.casualties were light and only a few cars were damaged by shell­fire. then the regiment was ordered to retire and hand over to the infantry. war in an armored regiment seemed to consist of one day of big goings-on, one day of sitting in a haystack, and thethird of getting yanked out of the line. as this was the first rest in over three weeks, everyone was pleased, and we returned to an earlier camping ground and the whole regiment tried to getclean in canvas washbowls, or by dousing itself under the italian irrigation pipes. they appeared the next morning in church, looking spotless. anarmored car becomes a sort of tourist trailer for five men after theyhave lived in it and near it long enough. it is a bar and an icebox, a trunk and a dressing table, as well as a swift steel-encased machine which sprouts machine guns. johnny, the chaplain, who is about thirty and loves being a soldier, celebrated the mass rather shyly,as if he were taking someone else's place. the villagers came too,old women and young women, with lace scarves on their heads and rosaries in their hands. the church had a charming paintingover the altar: the wise men seeing the star of bethlehem, and a dog, who was with them, raising his head and seeing the star aswell as they did. the clean brown lined faces of the poles were quiet and respect­ful and rather sad. there was the major, who had been reprievedfrom a german death sentence in order to act first as a servant to german ncos and then as a slave laborer on a german prisonfarm. he escaped from that farm, and a jewish underground or­ ganization smuggled him out of poland via czechoslovakia and hungary. he did not know where his wife was and had not heard 164 been u�ijr all in all e ana i�( � oye an}tij� a�eq 1r !�. nann o�cr: con!il(ol� �tack, an� 1 ! tn� nnt ii 'e retum�' t triea t�! aer tn� lrn� � !rotl�tl men aft�l�l: anaani�oc cal�mar�: wnoilaoo, lratherl!\:. rrnan ��w! er�oun��: sjofjha a�! d not n�11 the carpathian lancers for five years. there was mike, the second in command, very young and blond and alone now that his brother had been killed in italy this summer. he and his brother, posing as students with a mythical rich aunt in tokyo, escaped via russia and the trans­ siberian railroad to japan and managed to get back to egypt and to their regiment a week before tobruk. there was chrostek the boxer, square and as strong as a tree, whose job was to locate and disarm the mines, to clear the way for the advance of the armored cars. he had had two days' leave to marry a polish nurse, who had joined the polish corps after four years in a russian labor camp. his first fiancee was killed by the gestapo, after being tor­ tured to tell what she knew of the underground in poland. there they all stood, the officers and the men, friends and partners, each one with his long journey behind him and each one with the long uncertain journey ahead. at the end of the service, they sang their national prayer. the music is fine and slow and their voices carried out through the open door of the church into the sunny fly-ridden village. "thou god who through many centuries cared for our country and kept it splendid; thou who now defends our motherland with the shield of thy love from the mis­ fortunes which have befallen our home; we bring our prayers to thy altar and beg thee to bless our country and to make it free." the rich, sad voices were quiet now and there was silence in the church. the soldiers filed out into the hot sunshine to rest, to spend the sabbath in peace, in order that they could start fighting again, mile by mile on the long road home. ii : / , __�__i __�� _ 4 ---� .. :t� september 1944 the gothic line � the gothic line, from where we stood, was a smashed vil­ lage, an asphalt road and a pinkish-brown hill. on a dusty minedlane leading up to the village, the road and the hill, the canadian infantry was waiting to attack. they stood single file, spaced well apart, and did not speak and their faces said nothing either. thenoise of our artillery firing from the hills behind us never stopped.no one listened to it. everyone listened to sudden woodpeckerbeats of german machine-gun fire ahead, and everyone looked tothe sky on the left, where german airbursts made dark loose small clouds. in front of us a bulldozer was working as bulldozers do, accord­ ing to their own laws and in a world of their own. this machine was trying to fill in a portion of the deep antitank ditch which the germans had dug along the entire face of the gothic line. the bulldozer now scraped up two mines in its wide steel shovel; themines exploded, the bulldozer shook a little, and the driver re­ moved his tropical helmet and cursed the situation. an infantryofficer shouted something to him and he swerved his big machine, 166 �temd�j� a lm�noor: aomryrnire , tnewm& l� l���i: 'n� eitn�r, rr never !t��r.: en woo��t(' 'one loo�ffit rkloou� e� do,�rol': tiil ill�l� iten whid� ie lint.� 1 �no\'fl;�: iliearivtrf.' ,an inl�� big malfii!� the gothic line leaving two feet cleared between the side of his shovel and the mined side of the lane. through this gap the infantry now passed. each man seemed very alone, walking slowly and steadily toward the hills he could not see, and to whatever peril those hills would offer. the great gothic line, which the germans have used as a threat ever since the hitler line was broken, would under normal circumstances be a lovely range of the apennines. in this clear and dreaming weather that is the end of summer, the hills curve up into a water-blue sky; in the hot windless night you see the hills only as a soft rounded darkness under the moon. along the via emilia, the road that borders the base of these hills, the germans dynamited every village into shapeless brick rubble so that they could have a clear line of fire. in front of the flattened villages they dug their long canal to trap tanks. in front of the tank trap they cut all the trees. among the felled trees and in the gravel bed and low water of the foglia river, they laid down barbed wire and they sowed their never-ending mines: the crude little wooden boxes, the small rusty tin cans, the flat metal pancakes which are the simplest and deadliest weapons in italy. on the range of hills that is the actual gothic line the germans built concealed concrete machine-gun pillboxes which encircle the hills and dominate all approaches. they sank the turrets of tanks, with their long thin snout-ended 88-mm. guns, in camou­ flaged pits, so that nothing on wheels or tracks could pass their way. they mined some more. using as a basis the handiwork of nature, they turned the beautiful hills into a mountain trap four miles deep, where every foot of our advance could be met with concentrated fire. and it is awful to die at the end of summer when you are young and have fought a long time and when you remember with all your heart your home and whom you love, and when you know that the war is won anyhow. it is awful and one would have to be a liar 168 the second world war or a fool not to see this and not to feel it like a misery, so that thesedays every man dead is a greater sorrow because the end of all this tragic dying seems so near. the canadians broke the gothic line by finding a soft placeand going through. it makes me ashamed to write that sentencebecause there is no soft place where there are mines and no soft place where there are spandaus and no soft place where there are long 88-mm. guns, and if you have seen one tank bum with its crew shut inside it you will never believe that anything is softagain. but relatively speaking, this spot was soft or at any rate thecanadians made it soft, and they got across the mined river and past the ,dynamited villages and over the asphalt road and up intothe hills, and from then on they poured men and tanks into the gap and they gouged the german positions with artillery fire andthey called in the desert air force to bomb, and in two days theyhad come out on the other side of the gothic line at the coast ofthe adriatic. before that, many things had happened.first of all, the main body of the eighth army moved fromthe center of italy to the adriatic coast in three days' time, andthe germans did not know it. that sounds easy too, when writtenin one sentence. what it meant was that for three days and threenights the weaving lateral roads across the apennines, and the great highways that make a deep v, south from florence and back up to ancona, were crowded with such traffic as most of us have never seen before. trucks and armored cars and tanks and weapons carriers 'and guns and jeeps and motorcycles and am­bulances packed the roads, and it was not at all unusual to spendfour hours going twenty miles. the roads were ground to powderby this traffic and the dust lay in drifts a foot thick, and whenever you could get up a little speed the dust boiled like water under the wheels. everyone's face was greenish white with dust, and it rose in a blinding fog around the moving army and lay high overthe land in a brown solid haze. .�_ �n --_4-. .... / 1:111 \ � / ,so thai iti e end of dll� ,mg a �ott�, l�e t�t !�ijlt: m� dnqij�r e wnereili� �nk dum �i�' i anrhin� il: oratanrrntt: emin�nvll: t roao ana ij�t no tanh iijt�: artillery �llt in two aa)j � the gothic line the road signs were fantastic too because more than one hun­ dred thousand men, who could not speak italian, were moving through complicated unknown country trying to find places which would never have been simple to find, even with empty roads and complete control of the language. the routes themselves, renamed for this operation, were marked with the symbols of their names: a painted animal or a painted object. there were the code num­ bers of every outfit, road warnings (bridge blown, crater, mines, bad bends) indications of first-aid posts, gasoline dumps, repair stations, prisoner-of-war cages and a marvelous polish sign urging the troops to notice that this was a malarial area; this sign was a large green death's-head with a mosquito sitting on it. along the coast, road signs were in polish and english and at one crossroads a mine warning was printed in polish, english and hindu. and everywhere you saw the dirty white tapes that limit the safe ground from the treacherous ground where mines are still buried. on the main highways, there were signs saying "verges cleared," which means the sides of this road have been de-mined, or "verges checked," which means the sides of this road have been rapidly swept, and you can suit yourself if you want to take a chance. so this enormous army ground its way across italy and took up positions on a front thirteen miles long. the eighth army, which was now ready to attack the last german fortified line outside the siegfried line, had fought its way to these mountains from the egyptian border. in two years, since alamein, the eighth army had advanced across africa through sicily and up the peninsula of italy. all these men, of how many races and nationalities, felt that this was the last push and after this they would go home. they will one day go home to poland and canada and south africa and india and new zealand and england and scotland and ireland, for there are all these nationalities in this army and you would have to speak several indian dialects and french canadian and polish and whatever is spoken by the negroes of basutoland, 169 the second world war as well as every available accent in english, to be perfectly under­ stood in the eighth army. what is so comic and amazing and wonderful is how this huge hodgepodge of humanity gets on. the long trek they have done together and the sandstorms of the desert and the mud of the italian winter and the danger and the dying and the lonely years have made them very neighborly men. we watched the battle for the gothic line from a hill oppo­ site, sitting in a batch of thistles and staring through binoculars. our tanks looked like brown beetles; they scurried up a hill, streamed across the horizon and dipped out of sight. suddenly atank flamed four times in great flames, and other tanks rolled down from the skyline, seeking cover in the folds of the hill. the desert air force cab rank, the six planes which cavort around the skylike a school of minnows, was signaled to bomb a loaf-shaped hill, called monte lura. monte lura went up in towering waves of brownish smoke and dirt. our artillery dug into the gothic line, so that everywhere cotton balls of smoke flowered on the slopes. our own airbursts now rained steel fragments over the german positions on monte lura. the young british major who was directing this artillery through a radiophone said, "i must say, i do think our airbursts are doing very nicely." the battle, looking absolutely unreal, tiny, crystal-clear, spread out before us. but there were men in the tanks, and men under those trees where the shells landed, and men under those bombs. the noise was so exaggerated that nothing like it had been heard since the movies. all that day and the next the noise of our own guns was physi­ cally painful. the canadian brigadier commanding the' brigade which was attacking this sector of the line amused us by outlining a postwar garden party he hoped to give. supper would be served on a long wooden table covered with a soiled white cloth; the guests would sit on benches which had a tendency to tip over backward. in one corner of the garden a flat voice would start saying, "i am now giving you a short tuning call, roger over, vicw ta cr ill \vi til til th �ol -. • .. � � i , fectlr una�l' mazin� dij( �eton,n; [onus of � in�er ana� hoorlr illt; a hill ow h binowit u� a f . �udaffiit; rollea ��� . thed� the gothic line tory, victory, victory," and would go on saying this uninterruptedly for the rest of the evening. in another corner of the garden, trac­ tors would be organized to act like tanks and they would first race their motors, which is a sound like the end of the world, and then they would roll back and forth on screaming treads. in another corner of the garden, some sort of radio apparatus would imitate the sound effect of six-inch guns firing, and it is almost impossible to believe how appalling they sound. in another corner of the garden a dust machine, imported from hollywood, would spray dust imported from the roads of italy onto the guests. a waiter would then walk in and release a thousand flies at a time. the dinner would consist of a slab of cold bully beef as appetizer, followed by not very heated-up meat and beans, the staple canned ration of the british forces, and hardtack. for dessert there would be hardtack with jam. the tea would have been brewed that morning and would be coal-black and lukewarm, with drowned flies in it. if the guests behaved nicely and did not complain too much, they would be given, as a prize, a finger of issue rum, a drink guaranteed to burn out anyone's palate. this was a perfect picture of our own meal except that issue rum was lacking, and we laughed contentedly at the brigadier's mythical guests. later, but i don't remember when, because time became more and more confused, we crossed the foglia river and drove up the road our tanks had taken, and there we saw the remnants of a tank battle. an american sherman, once manned by an english crew, lay near a farmhouse; across the road a german tiger tank was burned and its entire rear end had been blown off. the sher­ man had received an 88 shell through its turret. inside the turret were plastered pieces of flesh and much blood. outside the tiger the body of a german lay, with straw covering everything except the two black c1awlike hands, the swollen blood-caked head and the twisted feet. he did not smell too much yet. some canadian soldiers, who were sightseeing, stood around the dead german. the second world war it is remarkable how quickly soldiers start sightseeing where they inhave fought, perhaps trying now to discover what really happened. a"not much fresh meat on that guy," one of them said. you cannot note everything that happens during a battle, youcannot even see what happens, and often you cannot understand it. suddenly you will see antlike figures of infantry outlined against the sky; probably they are going in to attack that cluster of farmhouses. then they disappear, and you do not know what be­ came of them. tanks roll serenely across the crest of a hill, thenthe formation breaks, you lose most of them from sight, and thenin what was a quiet valley you unexpectedly see other tanks firingfrom behind trees. on a road that was quite empty and therefore dangerous, because nothing is more suspect at the front than the silent places, you see a jeep racing in the direction of a town which �t mayor may not be in our hands. and when you imagine you have th,found a nice restful place to camp in for a few minutes, german th� mortar shells start landing. wn a battle is a jigsaw puzzle of fighting men, bewildered terrified lee civilians, noise, smells, jokes, pain, fear, unfinished conversations 100 and high explosives. a medical captain in a ruined first-aid farmto house speaks with regret of a canadian padre who volunteered as th a stretcher-bearer to carry wounded men out of the mine fields in the river bed. the padre lost both his legs, and though they rushed on him out, he died at the first hospital. bloody stretchers are stacked hoi all around, and now a jeep arrives with fresh wounded. "come thr back and see us any time," the medical captain says. "get some au more wire splints, joe." a group of english tankists, drinking tea ivoi outside a smashed house on monte lura, invite you into their �t mansion, which is mainly fallen beams and the rubble of masonry. �e\� the place stinks because of two dead oxen at the side of the road. and one of the soldiers, who had his tank shot from under him that thl morning, is waiting for another job. he hopes the war will be over heal wneretijr �' ha��ije in, a battl�;t unde�u:: � ou�i�;: hatdultcr: the gothic line in time for him to celebrate his twenty-first birthday in england. a canadian soldier lies dead on another roadside, with· a coat spread lovingly over him. there are two captured 88-mm. guns with a welter of german paper around them, for apparently the germans also are the slaves of paper. amongst this paper is a postcard with a baby's picture on it, addressed presumably to one of the gunners from his wife. and no one feels the slightest pity. a young italian woman, wrapped in a blanket, sits on the doorstep of a poor little hovel that one of our shells had hit dunng the -rright; this was in a town the germans held until a few hours ago. s�e wakes up and statts to laugh, charming! gay and absolu�y � twelve parachutist prisoners, the crack troops of the germans, stand in a courtyard guarded by the canadians who captured them. they are all young and they wear the campaign medals of the crimea, as well as the medal of italy. -these were the men who held cassino all winter. you talk to them without any special feeling, and suddenly like a shock it occurs to you that they really look evil; the sadism which their general kesselring ordered them to practice in italy as they retreat shows now in their mouths and their eyes. a fat old italian in cattolica, who had worked for twelve years on the pennsylvania railroad, was trundling his pitiful possessions home in a handcart. the germans had occupied cattolica for three months and had evacuated the citizens one month ago, and during this month they looted with horrid thoroughness, like woodworms eating down a house. what they did not wish to steal, they destroyed; the pathetic homes of the poor with smashed sewing machines and broken crockery and the coarse linen sheets and towels torn to shreds bear witness to their o� this old man was going home to a gutted house, but he was a healthy happy old man, and he was overjoyed to see us and he the second world war invited me to visit him and his wife the next day. the next day mhis wife was dead, as the germans came over that night and 10plastered the little town with antipersonnel bombs. the canadian troops which i had seen two days ago, going in alto attack the gothic line, were now swimming in the adriatic. the beaches were laced with barbed wire but holes had been cut through it and engineers appeared with the curious vacuum­ cleaner-like mine detectors, to sweep the beach. the infantry,sunburned the color of expensive leather, beautifully strong, beautifully alive, were bouncing around the flat warm sea and racing over the sand as if there were nothing terrible behind them and nothing terrible to come. meantime you could sit on the sand with a book and a drink of sweet italian rum and watch two british destroyers shelling rimini, just up the coast; see german shells landing o� the front three kilometers away; follow a pilotin a slowly sinking parachute, after his plane had been shot down;hear a few german shells whistle overhead to land two hundred yards farther down; and you were getting a fine sunburn and life seemed an excellent invention. historians will think about this campaign far better than we can who have seen it. historians will note that in the first year of the italian campaign, in 365 days of steady fighting, the allied armies advanced 315 miles. it is the first time in history that any armies have invaded italy from the south and fought up the endless mountain ranges toward the ai .. will be able� to explatn-with authorit what it meant to break three fortified lines, a c ing up mountains, an t e historians will also descrih how iwy became a giant mipe field aj+g that no weapon i£ uglier, foritwaits in silence, small and secret, and it can kill any day, not only on the day of battle. but 511 we know, we who are here, is that the gothic line is broken and that it is the last line. soon our armored divisions will -� '-�-. � . .. �n-r � ,i e next�, ni�nt 4� the gothic line move on to the lombardy plain and then at last the end of this long italian campaign will become a fact, not a dream. the weather is lovely and no one wants to think of those who mmt stil i a�iiose who must still be woun e iii t e fighting before �ace � i� i / �-���---_. paris revisited september 1944 � the french boys wore mixed uniforms, german boots and overcoats, american khaki trousers, some sort of homemade forage cap, and the ffi* tricolored arm bands. they were armed with new rifles and a tommy gun. we were going to look at the under­ ground passages at ivry, one of the old fortifications of paris. the french used this great dank network of tunnels to store ammu­ nition and explosives before the war. the germans, however, in­ vented the subhuman idea of using these tunnels as a prison. theylocked men and women there in the wet unending dark until theydied, or until it was time to torture or shoot them. the young soldiers of the ffi moved aside huge spindles ofbarbed wire which blocked the wooden door leading into the tunnels. they had barricaded these tunnels immediately after driving the germans out of ivry, and no one had gone down into the darkness since then. the entries to the tunnels were all * forces francaises de i'interieur (french forces of the interior), a branchof the underground resistance in france during the german occupation. w lu tri b� na wi we ani of fire we wn tha iii ��'-�-. . ,. �n--! � ,i 'mr, ii 'on,tii un�� paris revisited guarded. this system of underground galleries runs beneath cer­ tain sections of paris like a river with many tributaries. when paris was freed, germans fled into the tunnels, planning to emerge into the air and safety at another exit in another part of the city. the french ffi boys said that the americans had collected some german soldiers only two days ago, at denfort rochereau, which is miles away; the germans being forced by cold and hunger to climb into the daylight and surrender. it seemed most theatrical to be filing solemnly into a man-made cavern lighted by one kero­ sene lamp, preceded and followed by armed children. there were no germans. there was no human being. but there was the mark of the germans, and you who are safe and will never be locked underground to die must force yourselves to imagine this horror so that you can understand the bitterness of the people of europe who have lived for years with the knowledge of it. the central tunnel was about twenty feet wide, with a mud floor. in places this floor was under water and everywhere it was wet with the seepage from old stone walls. there was abso­ lutely no light. the ceiling was lost in darkness. from the cen­ tral tunnel many blind passages led away, to end in more walls. built off from these passages were walled-up rooms, with only narrow grilled windows opening into them. it was so cold that within ten minutes we were shivering; in half an hour one's clothes were damp and one was cold to the bone. men and women were shut in here, without blankets or light, and here they lived as long as their bodies could endure. in angles of the stone walls there remain now the ashes and embers of small fires. who gave these freezing people even these sticks of wood, we do not know. on the walls, written in charcoal, there are names, as if, dying, a man or a woman felt the fierce need to leave some word, or cry, in this black silence. it was hard to write with that material on dripping walls and the names are unclear and in time they will wash away. around a long, level, unexplained ih i / .._-----......-":.�---. the second world war mound of dirt, in the central passage, are a few unmatched shoes, a rotting woman's slipper, a black laced boot. this place has never been cleaned, yet there is no refuse which would show that the prisoners had food, no empty cans, no shapeless little heaps of garbage. there is nothing except the tiny burned-out fires which can have warmed no one, the shoes, the badly written names of people now dead. those tunnels were just a prison; nothing ex­ traordinary, not one of the germans' best efforts, just a prison todie in. in ivry there is also a cemetery. it is not an unusual cemeteryand there are many on the outskirts of paris, as there are around all great cities. in i vry, however, two alleys of graves are always covered with flowers and visited by silent people who are looking for their own. these are the graves of hostages and patriots shot by the germans. the germans brought the bodies here, in trucks. the caskets were badly made of common wood planking, and the guardian of the cemetery said that one could follow the trucks by the trail of blood which had leaked from the caskets; and fur­ thermore, as there were so many caskets in the trucks and the caskets were so badly made, the ones at the bottom were often crushed and therefore broken open. the germans forbade names to be marked on any grave, but families who had lost their sons or husbands or fathers came to the guardian and asked for their men, and sometimes-since the guardian had the lists the germans gave him-they found their men and so knew that a father, a son, a husband had been killed. when he could, the guardian showed the families which mound was theirs and they kept flowers on it, though the germans forbade any flowers to be put on these graves. the guardian said no graves in the cemetery were so covered with flowers as these nine hundred unmarked mounds. but even now one cannot be sure who is buried under each rough heap of soil, and there are five graves in a row with an identical wooden plaque which says, "here lies one of five students 178 � .-_ . .. ��'" ," paris revisited killed by the enemy on december 14, 1943." then there are five printed names, and after each name there is the age of the boy. the youngest was seventeen and the oldest was twenty. all day long women in black, leading quiet children, and bewildered couples of old people walk through these two alleys of graves. most of those buried here were people arrested by the germans for any reason or for no reason and kept as a reserve of human sacrifice, to be shot whenever the germans decided more deaths were necessary to terrorize the citizens of paris. a thin little book has been amateurishly published; it is a col­ lection of last letters of some of these people, hostages and mili­ tants, who were killed. here is the farewell letter of a boy hostage of twenty-one, who can have been anyone of the boys of twenty­ one buried in ivry. may fourteenth. at ten o'clock it will be finished. before the end i embrace you with all my heart. my dearest little mother, i thank you for all you have done for me, you did everything you could, i thank you very much. your son who loved you with all his heart. many kisses from your son, jean and another letter from a boy of eighteen, who could not believe that he was going to die like this. and you, mama, maurice told me you had been to the kommandantur. how tired you must be; above all take care of yourself and do not get sick. i do not want you to get sick because of me. really mama all is not yet lost. and a worker who writes to his wife, speaking of his children. the second world war i would so have wanted to see them grow up, and educate them to be honest citizens. when i think how i used to talk of taking my daughter to a dance, it hurts me. as for my doth­ ing, they will send you my valise with my raincoat and overcoat tied on to it. these things are in good condition and will be useful to you. these are the dead of ivry, and they are only a few hundred outof thousands and ivry is only one cemetery near paris, and thereis nothing remarkable about it either. at romainvilie, another of the fortifications of paris and used by the germans as a barracks, is a small brick structure which is nothing much to look at, a sort of shack with three windowless rooms in it, fenced by barbed wire. it is so jerry-built and sordidand inconspicuous that you would not notice it among the im­ personal buildings of the barracks. originally the germans used this building as a place to disinfect clothing and blankets. one of the rooms has parallel iron bars, on which clean blankets were probably hung to cool. in the other two rooms there are brick ovens like old-fashioned bakers' ovens, five feet high and ten feet wide. a great roaring fire could be built in them. on top of each oven, like a huge unwieldy pot, stood a plain wooden box, again about five feet high and four feet long, lined with metal. many hooks were driven in to the lids of these boxes; blankets and clothing were hung from these hooks, and the extreme heat inside the boxes destroyed the vermin which infested the woolen cloth. it was a simple, rather crude system but highly practical. thegermans then thought it would be a good idea to put human beings into these boxes and literauy burn them alive. it would take quite a while to die in those closed metal-lined boxes. first your feet burned, and when in agony you tried to raise yourself you reached for red hot hooks. as you could not stand, you wereforced to lean against the glowing side walls of the box. and after 180 r q �i m w a� til d fa w �t b wi cal � wil on dre a� ber -'-�-. . .. �1-i � , and eq�� i u�ea t� t !olmr� t ana ol�i' lankflir. ere �r� k ana if� f: tor �f � 'ooof� �:' "ilnm1; �lanktgl nealilli:: oolf� rl�i ctid t� rut n��� , it w��: ooxel,ll( 'ie )'��� i )'ou wt� anal�� paris revisited you had been burned enough you would be brought out, cared for, questioned, and, if recalcitrant, put back into the box. you will find it impossible to imagine that in a squalid little brick hut, and in cheap and carelessly made oversized coffins, human beings could scream with pain and find no other human being who would release them from such torment. yet there the boxes are, and on the sides of the metal inner walls are dirty brown swatches of blood. but since torture was german daily routine, and since there are more torture chambers in and around paris than you can conveniently visit in a week, this place too is probably not re­ markable. torture chambers existed anywhere, in an average house on any street or in the shabby back rooms of a ministry where formerly clerks worked over the endless papers that seem to be the necessary ballast of all ministries. the rooms themselves, so small, so shoddy, with inexpensive, rather soiled flowered or patterned wallpaper, are shocking because though pain and death were distributed in them, there can have been no dignity allowed to either pain or death in such rooms. there will be a cupboard of a room with four round steel eyelets cemented into the wall. a man or a woman was tied hand and foot to the wall, the body unbearably stretched. after that came the long, the repeated, the scientific beatings. on the walls of this room people have left messages written with stubs of pencil. the handwriting is not often edu­ cated and perhaps the hands that wrote were no longer very strong. they are terrible simple messages from people who know they will die but do not know how much longer it will take. i remember one particularly: "caston meaux, my time is up, * leaves five chil­ dren, may god have pity on them." there were messages of cour­ age, saying, "comrades, tell nothing, vive la france, vive la li­ bette." some messages had only a name and the number of times * "bon pour ie poteau" "u i / �-------.:4-� _ . the second world war the writer had been beaten. and one message said, "i shan die here, and it is because of my fiancee." he had printed the name of a girl and her address; evidently she had denounced this man. and after the name and address were these words, addressed to anyone and to everyone: "revenge me." there are rooms where people, tied in the same way, had a metal cap placed on their heads through which electricity was pumped into their bodies. the metal cap was plugged into the wall as if it were an electric razor or an electric iron, because there was nothing spectacular or complicated in these tortures; they were inexpensive to execute and homely and practical. the famous bathtubs, which look like bathtubs in a fifth-rate hotel, are chipped and dirty and a bit too small. in these, in water kept icy-cold, people were held head down until their pulse announced they were about to die; after which a german doctor worked on them so that they would live, in order to be almost drowned again. in between all tortures, there was the questioning. always the ques­ tioning, while the torturers sought other victims, using the agony of one to give them the names of another and another on whom they could inflict agony. it is necessary to know all this, and to try to imagine these places, because these are the wounds of paris. in paris, the prisons and torture chambers and cemeteries equal the bombed and gutted houses of london. there was no high explosive here, and we tend to forget that there are things which are worse than high explosive. for four years the germans used a secret creeping snakelike fear as their weapon against the french. this weapon also failed be­ cause there were always more people who were ready to face the prison and the torture chamber and the cemetery. the people who walked this lonely fatal road and those who every day risked the same journey are now the great aristocracy of france. paris never had a war as we know it, an open war, and it has no 182 wa can thi th do res rno ho te no wi flo to pa, roc ho of th ha ye bu fa' a:nounceae: wjrk�ontt� �tie� ��ill,� ��a�i ilifl� a)�o fall�:i dr to tartt, , the rrofl �'dajnlk ance, nd it nal� paris revisited war now. paris is intact and beautiful and puzzling. any day you can see men and women poking in garbage cans, looking for some­ thing to take home; by the way they do this sad work you realize that they have been doing it for a long time. you can then walk down the street and eat a splendid luncheon in a black-market restaurant for ten dollars. you can buy what will always be the most beautiful dresses in the world, at any of the great dressmaking houses, for a mere three hundred dollars or so, and you can walk ten blocks to a working-class district and see women who have had no new clothes at all for four years and have been cold for four winters in the same threadbare cheap coat. you can buy as many orchids as your heart desires, in the great flower market of the halies, but you could not buy a pound of coal to keep warm. in fact you could more easily take a bath in cham­ pagne than in hot water, and whether you live in a dismal peeling room in a slum or in the lovely high-ceilinged rooms of the fine houses on the avenue foch, you would be equally cold. the city of light has practically no electricity, and if you want to be amused you can go to a freezing theater and watch actors rehearsing a new play, with a few electric bulbs burning dimly in the footlights, and behind them and before them the cold darkness of the empty house, and they tell you they will open as soon as there is enough current. since dancing was forbidden during the occupation, the few night clubs now operating are human sardine cans. 111e boeuf sur le toit was always very chic and very expensive; now it is not very chic and twice as expensive and outside the door every night there is a thicket, a wilderness, of bicycles on which the clientele have arrived. the main emotion in paris is the relief of people who for four years have lived in silence, with fear and disgust in their hearts. but there must be and there will be emotions greater than relief. that aristocracy which resisted the germans inside france, those faithful ones who fought as free french outside their country, 183 it i . ,.�--�the second world war those millions who have suffered in german concentration and forced-labor camps, will have to guide in rebuilding their country and a paris which is materially unharmed. meanwhile people who have never been to paris before go on saying that paris is the same as it always was. iv t �mtion d�� their cilunrr, e��le�� i� � toe ��: a little dutch town october 1944 �.., this is a story about a little dutch town caned nijmegen and pronounced any way you choose. the moral to the story is: it would be a good thing if the germans did not make a war every twenty years or so and then there would be no story about little towns called nijrnegen. i have no idea what nijmegen used to look like; there was prob­ ably quite a sweet old part to the city, judging from some of the ruins, some remnants of roofs and a carved doorway here and there. also i imagine the curve of houses on the bluff by the waal river was charming, but as the houses are all burned out it is hard to tell. and through the center of the town, where the university stood, it was also very likely pleasant and clean and untroubled; but due to uninterrupted shelling for a month or more the place looks now as if it had been abandoned years ago, following an earthquake and a flood. today nijmegen is a town where people sleep in cellars and walk with care on the streets, listening hard for incoming shells. the dutch sweep up broken glass every morning, in a despairingly 185 'tt i /, ______'_'-�---. -. the second world war tidy way, but there is no transport to cart glass away, so under the dripping autumn trees and along the shell-marked streets there are neat mounds of rubble and glass. the center of the town can be ignored, since it is not livable, having no windows left and too many houses burned hollow; but on the fringes of the town, ugly unimaginative comfortable modern red-brick homes, which were cheap to rent or own, remain intact. nijmegen shows no signs of great wealth, but the poorest parts of the city, which are also the oldest and most attractive, are not as bad as slums in an equivalent­ size english or american town. the people who lived in nijmegen were obviously people accustomed to safety; they are a god-fearing folk, devoutly catholic, who led a quiet provincial life and worked hard and neither wasted nor wanted and could count on a measure of security in their old age. a great road bridge at nijmegen crosses the waal river, and this part of holland bears a strategic relationship to germany and the constructions of the siegfried line and the course of the rhine. for these reasons (to put it very simply) nijmegen found itself in the path of the opposing armies. so nijmegen, in modern times, becomes a besieged citadel, which means that the germans are a few kilometers away to the east, a few more kilometers away to the west, even more kilometers away to the north. the allies hold the town and a long narrow corridor which stretches back to belgium. any town within range of artillery is an unlucky town. there is no heat in nijmegen, and the small and dwindling supply of coal is used for electricity. at night, behind all the black­ out curtains, people can at least look at each other while they listen for the shells. the food ration tickets are the same as those issued by the germans, only now the tickets are honored and people can actually buy the basic foodstuffs allowed them. this is not to say that stores are open; it is impossible to have a system of shops, working on fixed hours, when half the shops are blown open by artillery and at given times, quite unpredictably, not even a cat 186 �-�--. .. / �� -! � i i o undert11 stree� tn�!: etown� left ana t� e town ijul,) � ) whicn wi; '� no !i�nll are all�� an e�lli\��:, in�ijm�� a coo,i�� eana wmk onam��; ucijt�� o o\i1nt, a� ilie ollj ueiliej�b iliolei!!ij(j' [to�letj; not to�! of �no� o�n�! rven a �i a little dutch town would want to slink through the shopping district. but some stores are open occasionally and the housewives tell each other of these, and here one can buy a very little food. what the careful dutch are really living on is the reserves each housewife somehow man­ aged to scrape together during these years. the communal kitch­ ens, which feed the great bulk of the people who have no homes left and therefore no reserves, offer a regulation day's diet of ersatz coffee or watery tea and two black-bread sandwiches in the morn­ ing, a plate of potatoes at lunch, and the same tea or coffee and sandwiches at night. life is not exactly dull in nijmegen, though i do not imagine life was ever really gay here. it is not a town that has a cafe or a bar or a dance hall, and i never saw a sign of a movie house. how­ ever, nowadays while riding one's bicycle (which is the usual civilian means of transport in europe at present) one can watch a dogfight over the city, between one messerschmitt and three spitfires. it is also easy enough to sightsee gun batteries and ma­ chine-gun emplacements and foxholes. and at night there are always the fires, huge roaring fires that eat out the center of a house. after dark the streets are empty and there is no sound except the artillery, our artillery and the german artillery. shells exploding in the confinement of four walls often set houses afire, and on one street there will be three sets of double houses burning wildly, and the small dark figures of the firemen spraying a weak thin stream of water onto a blaze that obviously nothing will stop. as most of the town buildings have been opened by high ex­ plosive, there are large signs all over nijmegen saying, "do not loot. penalty death." but i do not feel these signs are necessary. the british and american soldiers like the dutch and respect them, and because nijmegen is what it is, a small, not very rich town, the soldiers recognize it and find it understandable and like home, and they know what it means to these people to watch their city and their safety being destroyed. in the most literal 187 _ ,i' i /,--------!-��--_. --�the second world war sense, the people of nijmegen have no choice but to take freedom or death. they have been freed and freedom has not been cheap. the civilian side of this war is in many ways the most pitiful. the dutch folk of nijmegen, to whom this now routine appalling life of war comes as a grim surprise, do not complain. they are ignorant of all the techniques that soldiers learn; it takes a while to gauge shell bursts and to know what is dangerous and what is not. the old people and the children have been fairly stationary in cellars for the last month, either in the small cellars of their own beaten-up houses or in the communal cellars under the hos­ pitals or the town hall. no one likes to live in fear, and it is more bewilderment than cowardice which so numbs the people now. the members of the underground organizations, the police, the red cross, the doctors, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the ci­ vilian volunteers, have no time for cellars and no mind for safety. among other activities, the police and the underground have been busy rounding up collaborators and tracking down german agents in the town. they put the collaborators in a big schoolhouse, which is pockmarked with shell holes, and they feed them as they feed themselves, and they await the return of the dutch govern­ ment so that proper trials may be held. the schoolhouse-jail has the awful familiar smell of dirty bodies, and the rooms full of arrested people look like the sad rooms lance saw in prague where the refugees from the sudetenland gathered to live and wait for nothing. the dutch are not brutal to these people and the prisoners are lightly guarded. one is always surprised to see what kind of people are arrested, and most surprised by their apparent poverty. some rooms are filled with dreary-looking young women, ill, lying in bed with very small babies; these are the women who lived with german soldiers and are now the mothers of germans. other rooms are jails for old people who trafficked with germans, or worked for the dutch nazi government, or denounced or in some 188 a little dutch town way harmed the true dutch and the country. there is a nun in one room, by herself, looking frozen and unforgiving, and along­ side her two stupid homely girls who worked in the germans' kitchens and were soldiers' delights as a sideline. the only weii­ dressed collaborators i have seen were in the prison camp at draney near paris, where i actually saw a woman in a chinchilla coat, and a few men who had bought their clothes at expensive tailors. but at this stage of the war and the liberation it is to be noted that little people (or should one say little crooks?) have been caught; the real evil ones, the big enemies, are either safely away with the germans or well hidden. arresting collaborators is as much a part of cleaning up a town as is the maintenance of the sewage system and the street sweeping. due to the fact that most of hoiiand is still occupied, it is impossible to write now about the dutch underground. but it is possible to say that the dutch people, individually and in their underground organizations, tried to help jews, who in hoiiand as elsewhere were doomed. the penalty for sheltering jews was death, and nevertheless jews are reappearing in the light of day who have been forced to live like escaping criminals for four years. we gave a lift to a thin dark worried-looking woman who worked in the dutch red cross. she did not seem a particularly inspiring woman and she seemed unusually nervous (which, in perilous places, is always unpleasant, because the proper manner under such circum­ stances is a real or assumed calm). she was going to the civilian hospital to see her little girl. her child, aged twelve, was badly wounded by shell fragments; her husband had been shot; her possessions had long since been confiscated by the germans; and now her house had been destroyed by shellfire. she worked twelve hours a day in the red cross and during lunchtime-unless she got a chance lift-she walked four miles to the hospital to visit her child. she was a jewess. she had been back in the daylight for a month. tragedy in europe is now so general, so usual, so utcn ��\t. nol!le·j�il �l oom!�11 pra�ewk ana �it� rnlone��:: aol�l\. \'e�.�� ill, i�n� � jivea �i� ans. oo� 'i : / ii i,---------.!'�---_. ._-_--the second world war common, that one does not even specially notice a case like this, which in a normal world would fill one with fury and pity. there were twelve hundred jews kept in a concentration camp near nijmegen. the germans took them in freight cars to poland. one of the ss guards returning from this journey told a dutch­ man what had happened. these twelve hundred jews, old and young, men, women and children, were taken to a rather nice­ looking building and told they could have showers. as they had lived in misery and filth for months, they were very happy. they were ordered to undress and leave their clothes outside; notably they were to leave their shoes. from vents, which looked like air vents, the germans pumped what they call "blue gas" into the clean white-tiled bathroom. it appears that this gas works faster on slightly humid naked bodies. in some few minutes, twelve hundred people were dead, but not before the ss guard had heard them scream and had watched them die in what agony we cannot know. then the shoes were all carefully sorted and sent back to germany for use, and before the mass cremations all gold fillings and gold teeth were removed from the corpses. we know now of many places where jews have been gassed to death, we have written of it for a long time. people in europe could not believe this evil and now they do; and to have lived close to such evil and to have seen, heard, and understood it does some­ thing to people which will never be wiped out. for the dutch jews, the germans meant death in agony; for the rest of the dutch (apart from the underground, who risked the usual hazards of imprisonment, torture and death) the ger­ mans meant slow hunger and the destruction of their families. the germans deported half a million dutchmen between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five to work as forced labor in ger­ many, and for a year now none of these men has been seen or heard from. in a small country half a million men leave a great sad gap in the life of every community. the dutch did very well e like tfu\ piry, itoo�w� en seen a ve a �� d ve�lv� a little dutch town at saving their young men from deportation, but they could not save all. aside from these physical facts, hunger and loss, the dutch suffered as everyone has suffered under the germans, from the outrage and humiliation of the nazi regime. free people can­ not learn to live without disgust under that domination,. and these were terrible years in which each man alone found each day that this tyranny, this stupidity, this corruption were unendurable; and yet there would always be tomorrow and tomorrow, and the tyranny had to be accepted since there was nothing to do but wait. the germans are fiends for paper . you had to have a pass for every move, a paper for rations, identity cards, paper and paper to burst a wallet; and they liked to check their papers frequently. the dutch forged paper themselves, in quantity, and everyone who was doing underground work or simply escaping deportation had wads of false documents. finally the germans began to drown in their own paper; they could trust nothing. they admitted de­ feat, refused to recognize any documents, even their own, and solved the problem by simply arresting anyone they chose to, for any reason whatsoever. the germans were also very shrewd in holland in the taking of hostages, and they used this filthy weapon as a way to destroy the intellectual life and the leadership of the country. but that too they had done before; there has been little variety in the german technique of terror. a story with a moral should be short. even the moral should be short. what best points the moral of this story is short; it would take you only ten minutes to see and a paragraph to de­ scribe. in the basement of the civilian hospital (for nijmegen has many hospitals, but now they are full of wounded american sol­ diers) there are corridors where the heating and water pipes run. these corridors have become wards because they are safe from shellfire. in one long corridor the wounded children lie in small white iron beds. the children are often too young to speak, but in all cases they are amazingly silent. there is not much for the ii' , / li i '-:--�---� �, . --�--------the second world war children to eat, no special little things to please them and make their pain easier. the light is not good either, and sometimes the child is so small that you think the white crib is empty. one thin little girl of four had both her arms broken by shell fragments, and a shell fragment had been cut out of her side and another from her head. all you could see was a tiny soft face, with enormous dark eyes looking at you, and the arms like flower stalks strapped to splints and the bandage around her head which was almost as big as she was. she would never be able to understand what had happened or what sort of world it was that could so wound a little girl of four who had been playing in the garden of her house, as surely little girls ought to be able to play in all the gardens on earth. so the moral of this story is really short: it would be a good thing if the germans were never allowed to make war again. -. . .. �r-r�� i and mn metim�� ry. one� 1\ fra���. anoilier� �th eno�t s�\b!�w v!'al �imrul. tana ivn�1 � the battle of the bulge january 1945 � they all said it was wonderful kraut-killing country. what it looked like was scenery for a christmas card: smooth white snow hills and bands of dark forest and villages that actually nestled. the snow made everything serene, from a distance. at sunrise and sunset the snow was pink and the forests grew smoky and soft. during the day the sky was covered with ski tracks, the vapor trails of planes, and the roads were dangerous iced strips, crowded with all the usual vehicles of war, and the artillery made a great deal of noise, as did the bombs from the thunderbolts. the nestling villages, upon closer view, were mainly rubble and there were indeed plenty of dead krauts. this was during the german counteroffensive which drove through luxembourg and belgium and is now driven back. at this time the germans were being "contained," as the communique said. the situation was "fluid"-again the communique. for the sake of the record, here is a little of what containing a fluid situation in kraut-killing country looks like. the road to bastogne had been worked over by the ninth air i / ,--��---_. ---------the second world war force thunderbolts before the third army tanks finally clearedthe way. a narrow alley was free now, and two or three secondaryroads leading from bastogne back to our lines. "lines" is a most inaccurate word and one should really say "leading back throughwhere the germans weren't to where the americans were scat­ tered about the snowscape." the germans remained on both sides of this alley and from time to time attempted to push inward and again cut off bastogne. a colleague and i drove up to bastogne on a secondary roadthrough breath-taking scenery. the thunderbolts had created this scenery. you can say the words "death and destruction" and theydon't mean anything. but they are awful words when you arelooking at what they mean. there were some german staff cars along the side of the road; they had not merely been hit bymachine-gun bullets, they had been mashed into the ground. there were half-tracks and tanks literally wrenched apart, and a gun po­sition directly hit by bombs. all around these lacerated or flattened objects of steel there was the usual riffraff: papers, tin cans, car­ tridge belts, helmets, an odd shoe, clothing. there were also, ig­nored and completely inhuman, the hard-frozen corpses of ger­ mans. then there was a clump of houses, burned and gutted, with only a few walls standing, and around them the enormous bloated bodies of cattle. the road passed through a curtain of pine forest and came out on a flat, rolling snow field. in this field the sprawled or bunched bodies of germans lay thick, like some dark shapeless vegetable.we had watched the thunderbolts working for several days. they flew in small packs and streaked in to the attack in singlefile. they passed quickly through the sky and when they dived you held your breath and waited; it seemed impossible that the plane would be able to pull itself up to safety. they were diving to within sixty feet of the ground. the snub-nosed thunderbolt is more feared by the german troops than any other plane. ally cl�l( ee secon�£ g" is a mrl back ilim� ion') an��; wnm v�ij� , . , anlbh' )' deen �it: �ouno,th' ana a ���. tea or �j��; the battle of the bulge you have seen bastogne and a thousand other bastognes in the newsreels. these dead towns and villages spread over europe and one forgets the human misery and fear and despair that the cracked and caved-in buildings represent..bastogne was a...qerman job of death and destruction and it was beautifully thorough. the loist airborne division, which held basto ne, was still there! though the day e ore le wounded had been taken out as soon as the first road'wa; open. the survivors of the loist airborne division, after beini entirely�rrounded, uninterru tedl shelled and bombed, after having fought off four times their strength in germans, ook or some unknown reason-cheerful and livel . a oun lieutenarirremarked,;;'the tactical situation w;;u; alway& good" he was very surprised when we shouted with laughter. the front, north of bastogne, was just up the road and the peril was far from past. at warnach, on the other side of the main bastogne road, some soldiers who had taken, lost and retaken this miserable vil­ lage were now sightseeing the battlefield. they were also inspect­ ing the blown-out equipment of two german tanks and a german self-propelled gun which had been destroyed here. warnach smelled of the dead; in subzero weather the smell of death has an acrid burning odor. the soldiers poked through the german equip­ ment to see if there was anything useful or desirable. they un­ earthed a pair of good bedroom slippers alongside the tank, but as no one in the infantry has any chance to wear bedroom slippers these were left. there was a german bible but no one could read german. someone had found a german machine pistol in working order and rapidly salted it away; they hoped to find other equally valuable loot. the american dead had been moved inside the smashed houses and covered over; the dead horses and cows lay where they were, as did a few dead germans. an old civilian was hopelessly shovel­ ing grain from some burned and burst sacks into a wheelbarrow; and farther down the ruined street a woman was talking french ii : /---�---_. -. ". --------� the second world war in a high angry voice to the chaplain, who was trying to pacifyher. we moved down this way to watch the goings-on. her house was in fairly good shape; that is to say, it had no windows or door and there was a shell hole through the second-floor wall, but it was standing and the roof looked rainproof. outside her parlor window were some german mines, marked with a white tape. she stood in her front hall and said bitterly that it was a terrible thing,she had left her house for a few moments that morning, and upon returning she found her sheets had been stolen. "what's she saying?" asked an enormous soldier with red­ rimmed blue eyes and a stubble of red beard. everyone seems about the same age, as if weariness and strain and the unceasing cold leveled all life. i translated the woman's complaint. another soldier said, "what does a sheet look like?" the huge red-bearded man drawled out, "my goodness," a de­ licious expression coming from that face in that street. "if she'd of been here when the fighting was going on, she'd act different." farther down the street a command car dragged a trailer; the bodies of germans were piled on the trailer like so much ghastly firewood. we had come up this main road two days before. first there had been a quick tempestuous scene in a battalion headquarters when two planes strafed us, roaring in to attack three times and putting machine-gun bullets neatly through the second-story win­ dows of the house. the official attitude has always been that no germans were flying reclaimed thunderbolts, so that is that. no one was wounded or killed during this brief muck-up. one of the battalion machine-gunners, who had been firing at the thunder­ bolts, said, "for god's sake, which side are those guys fighting on?" we jumped into our jeep and drove up nearer the front, feeling that the front was probably safer. a solitary tank was parked close to a bombed house near the main road. the crew sat on top of the tank, watching a village 196 the battle of the bulge just over the hill which was being shelled, as well as bombed by the thunderbolts. the village was burning and the smoke made a close package of fog around it, but the flames shot up and reddened the snow in the foreground. the armed forces on this piece of front consisted, at the moment, of this tank, and out ahead a few more tanks, and somewhere invisibly to the left a squadron of tanks. we did not know where our infantry was. (this is what a fluid situation means.) the attacked village would soon be entered by the tanks, including the solitary watchdog now guarding this road. we inquired of the tank crew how everything went. "the war's over," said one of the soldiers, sitting on the turret. "don't you know that? i heard it on the radio, a week ago. the germans haven't any gasoline. they haven't any planes. their tanks are no good. they haven't any shells for their guns. hell, it's all over. i ask myself what i'm doing here," the tankist went on. "i say to myself, boy, you're crazy, sitting out here in the snow. those ain't germans, i say to myself, didn't they tell you on the radio the germans are finished?" as for the situation, someone else on the tank said that they would gratefully appreciate it if we could tell them what was going on. "that wood's full of dead krauts," said another, pointing across the road. "we come up here and sprayed it just in case there was any around and seems the place was full of them, so it's a good thing we sprayed it all right. but where they are right now, i wouldn't know." "how's your hen?" asked the captain, who had come from battalion hq to show us the way. "he's got a hen," the captain explained. "he's been sweating that hen out for three days, run­ ning around after it with his helmet." "my hen's worthless," said a soldier. "finished, no good, got no fight in her." g to �� ,her n�tt' ow� or ��: wall, dij! e her �11: ite��,l' terridle� ire, fibt� n ntaa�l: nree tim�r na·)to�'i: i deen tfl�! i �t � iliau �,one �f� t tne th��k �p�fl� rer �elror 'i� i / '�..._�---_'" --�'" . ----------the second world war "j ust like the germans," said the one who listened to the radio. now two days later the road was open much farther and there was even a rumor that it was open all the way to bastogne. that would mean avoiding the secondary roads, a quicker journey, but it seemed a good idea to inquire at a blasted german gun position.at this spot there were ten americans, two sergeants and eightenlisted men; also two smashed german bodies, two dead cows and a gutted house. "i wouldn't go up that road if i was you," one of the sergeantssaid. "it's cut with small-arms fire about a quarter of a mile farther on. we took about seventeen heinies out of there just a while back, but some others must of got in." that seemed to settle the road. "anyhow," the sergeant went on, "they're making a counterattack. they got about thirty tanks, we heard, coming in this way." the situation was getting very fluid again. "what are you going to do?" i said. "stay here," said one of the soldiers. "we got a gun," said another. war is lonely and individual work; it is hard to realize how small it can get. finally it can boil down to ten unshaven gaunt-looking young men, from anywhere in america, stationed on a vital road with german tanks coming in. "you better take that side road if you're going to bastogne," the second sergeant said. it seemed shameful to leave them. "good luck," i said, not knowing what to say. "sure, sure," they said soothingly. and later on they got a tank and the road was never cut and now if they are still alive they are somewhere in germany doing the same work, as undramatical1y and casually-just any ten young men from anywhere in america. about a mile from this place, and therefore about a mile and a half from the oncoming german tanks, the general in command 198 rr:: ..·_.-tr-�-. -. _ / ,it --! � i f the battle of the bulge of this tank outfit had his headquarters in a farmhouse. you could not easily enter his office through the front door, because a dead horse with spattered entrails blocked the way. a shell had landed in the farmyard a few minutes before and killed one cow and wounded a second, which was making sad sounds in a passageway between the house and the barn. the air-ground-support officer was here with his van, checking up on the thunderbolts who were attacking the oncoming german tanks. "argue leader," he said, calling on the radiophone to the flight leader. "beagle here. did you do any good on that one?" "can't say yet," answered the voice from the air. then over the loud-speaker a new voice came from the air, talk­ ing clearly and loudly and calmly. "three tigers down there with people around them." also from the air the voice of argue leader replied rather peev­ ishly, "go in and get them. don't stand there talking about it." they were both moving at an approximate speed of three hundred miles an hour. from the radio in another van came the voice of the colonel commanding the forward tank unit, which was stopping this counterattack on the ground. "we got ten and two more coming," said the colonel's voice. "just wanted to keep you posted on the german tanks burning up here. it's a beautiful sight, a beautiful sight, over." "what a lovely headquarters," said a soldier who was making himself a toasted cheese sandwich over a small fire that served everyone for warmth and cookstove. he had opened the cheese can in his k ration and was doing an excellent job, using a german bayonet as a kitchen utensil. "furthermore," said a lieutenant, "they're attacking on the other side. they got about thirty tanks coming in from the west too." "see if i care," remarked the soldier, turning his bread carefully so as to toast it both ways. a shell landed, but it was farther up the to tbeldw, rana�: �to�ne, th loume�,�: �n�li� nt� ana� 'ootdo(fh l�enowi �unt·loob on a litrum: ne:' �ot!� j alire tn��i undram��d'l in am�n�, a mile �n�: in comid�� o the second world war road. there had been a vaguely sketched general ducking, a quick reflex action, but no one of course remarked it. then argue leader's voice came exultantly from the air. "got those three. going home now. over." "good boys," said the ground officer. "best there is. my squad­ ron." "listen to him," said an artillery officer who had come over to report. "you'd think the thunderbolts did everything. well, i got to get back to work." the cow went on moaning softly in the passageway. our driver, who had made no previous comment during the day, said bitterly, "what i hate to see is a bunch of livestock all beat up this way. goddammit, what they got to do with it? it's not their fault." christmas had passed almost unnoticed. all those who could, and that would mean no farther forward than battalion headquar­ ters, had shaved and eaten turkey. the others did not shave and ate cold k rations. that was christmas. there was little celebra­ tion on new year's eve, because everyone was occupied, and there was nothing to drink. now on new year's day we were going up to visit the front, east of luxembourg city. the front was quiet in the early afternoon, except for artillery, and a beautiful fat­ baked snowstorm had started. we decided, like millions of other people, that we were most heartily sick of war; what we really wanted to do was borrow a sled and go coasting. we borrowed a homemade wooden sled from an obliging little boy and found a steep slick hill near an abandoned stone quarry. it was evidently a well-known hill, because a dozen luxembourg children were al­ ready there, with unsteerable sleds like ours. the sky had cleared and the ever present thunderbolts returned and were working over the front less than four kilometers away. they made a lot of noise, and the artillery was pounding away too. the children paid no at­ tention to this; they did not watch the thunderbolts, or listen to 200 illion! of��: ivnat w� r[ ve oorrowro, v ana fo���: t wal ffi�t;� ilaren wrrtl i11 flaorltm1: e worbn��\( a jot 01 n�� en plio no ��, 5, or jistfn � 201 wmeo\o: �, w�i\li �, �iaoilli t u� iliei: the battle of the bulge the artillery. screaming with joy, fear, and good spirits, they con­ tinued to slide down the hill. our soldier driver stood with me at the top of the hill and watched the children. "children aren't so dumb," he said. i said nothing. "children are pretty smart," he said. i said nothing again. "what i mean is, children got the right idea. what people ought to do is go coasting." when he dropped us that night he said, "i sure got to thank you folks. i haven't had so much fun since i left home." on the night of new year's day, i thought of a wonderful new year's resolution for the men who run the world: get to know the people who only live in it. there were many dead and many wounded, but the survivors contained the fluid situation and slowly turned it into a retreat, and finally, as the communique said, the bulge was ironed out. this was not done fast or easily; and it was not done by those anony­ mous things, armies, divisions, regiments. it was done by men, one by one-your men. i' i /,:!:-_-1--___1, _ � � the black widow january 1945 � in the daytime the thunderbolts, snarling bulldog planes, roared on and off this field, and the pilots poured into the briefing shack and announced their kills to the interrogating officer, or stood huddled around a big map getting last-minute instructions before the next mission. across the field, a fleet of c-47s was lined up and ambulances moved slowly and carefully over the deep frozen ruts, and orderlies lifted the blanketed wounded into the planes. when the cargo was completed, tier after tier of pain, the heavy freight planes moved down the runway en route to england. nothing broke the wind and it swept in waves over the iron mud of the field and swirled the snow in dusty clouds. the field was as ugly as all forward airfields are, with the claptrap buildings of the squadrons and a tent hospital outlining its edges. the air ham­ mered with the noise of planes and everyone looked small, eaten with cold, and intently busy. when darkness came, the field was silent and nothing moved and this place then seemed a wasteland in siberia, a plateau on the 202 m�.i' we mini .-_.. .. /�� the black widow moon, the very end of the world. when darkness came, the black widows took over. now the major in command of these black widow night-fight­ ers, a man of twenty-six but with the ageless hard tired look one is used to seeing on the faces of all the young, was making a speech. his squadron headquarters had been pieced together from the wood of a german barracks and it was very cold, with one iron stove to heat the room, and badly lighted by a few unshaded bulbs. "everybody shoots at us," he said. "friendly bombers and friendly flak and enemy flak and enemy fighters. just anybody at all; they all got a right to shoot at us. i wouldn't advise it." last night one of their planes had been shot down, and the squadron doctor, who drove over to the place where the plane crashed, returned to report that nothing remained of the pilot and radio operator except four feet and two hands. there is never any time for pity or sorrow, at least there is no time to show these feel­ ings; death only seems to make the survivors angrier and more aware of what is after all a constant danger. death reminds you that it can happen to you too, and everyone fears and resents this reminder. "well," said the major, "if you're going, you better come with me. i'm on the first mission." we ate supper at five, and it was already night. americans call any sizable building a chateau and they had their mess in a chateau, which was nothing but a large untidy dark icy house. the pilots and radio operators ate in a big room, wearing their hying clothes, and they passed heavy dishes of lukewarm unpalatable food around the long tables and laughed and shouted to each other, eating in haste. a captain beside me began to list again the horrors of night flying, until the major said, "she's coming with us now, so leave her alone. tell her something good." the captain said at once, "it will be beautiful anyhow. it's cer.. tainly beautiful up there, and it's going to be a fine night." 2°3 )5 � ... ..j_-t----j� / _. ---the second world war i handed a bowl of congealed mashed potatoes to the major and into 0 thought that the myth of the glamorous lives of pilots is the silliest oould myth of all. probably we got it from the movies about pilots in the ldeaul last war, who always seemed to live in authentic chateaux and eat moitlat fine tables loaded with cut glass and china and ornamented with filmeo occasional champagne buckets. pilots, according to myth, return �utr from their hazardous work and have a hot bath and step into per�io ilio fectly tailored uniforms and while away their spare time in a frolic tfi�twe of stouthearted laughter and singing. actually they live like hell thd at these forward fields. it is only one step better than the foxhole. r�or, 1 mostly they sleep in tents and there is no escaping the cold and inlorida there is nothing to do but fly, sleep, eat and wait in black discorn�was fort to fly again. they always speak with pity of the infantry, who iliilnan have a really "rugged" life. rum ili' after supper, during which everyone except myself ate heartily, we went back to squadron headquarters. i was zipped into flying pants, flying boots, and a flying jacket, feeling more and more like lout 2 breathless package. the major appeared with an oxygen mask and there was some difficulty in fitting the thing on. "they didn't 1111 a make these for ladies," he said. "can you breathe?" someone was stuffing gloves into my hand, and someone else was attempting to fasten a parachute on me. i found myself choking inside the mask and shook my head and the major said, "okay, that'll do." he put lalone, an escape kit in my pocket and led me to the map, which was lila fro enormous and incomprehensible, and picked up a piece of string on top that was attached to the map; where the string was attached was iduna i our base. he described a rough semicircle to the east with the nveentl string and said, "we'll be patrolling this area. if anything happens, 1i0h, walk southwest." innere, we now piled into a jeep, the major, the radio operator, the inad driver and 1. it was difficult to hoist one's body around and there tnou�h \vas a marked tendency to sit down when one meant to stand up, �ome u due to the weight of the parachute. it was so cold that one shrank o� my 2°4 the black widow into one's clothes and felt oneself shriveling in the wind. now we could see the sleek sharp outlines of the black plane ahead. it is a beautiful plane, with two upcurling tails and long narrow wings, and it looked, in the night, like a delicate deadly dragonfly. the name of these p-61s, the black widow, seemed all wrong for such beauty of line. no one spoke in the jeep. then the radio operator said thoughtfully, "this is the worst part of any mission." after that we were too busy to think about better or worse. the major climbed into the cockpit and began getting the plane ready. the radio operator was delegated to give me the necessary information. this was all so hopelessly mad that it could only be taken as a joke. he said in the dark, "if anything happens you turn this handle." what handle? where? "that will open the trap. then turn this other handle on the right-it's wired, but you won't have any trouble. that will drop the ladder out and then all you have to do is fall out backwards. you know where your rip cord is, don't you?" "yes," i said sadly. "if anything goes wrong with those two, you turn this handle on the cowling and that whole piece of glass will fall out and you can climb out through that. it's a little narrow with all those clothes on, but it will be an right, i guess. well, that's about all," said he. "have you got a cushion for her?" he asked the crew chief, and from nowhere a flat little sofa cushion appeared and was put on top of the wooden crate which was to be my seat. they had found it impractical to carry a gunner here in the glass bulb be­ tween the twin tails and there was no seat or safety belt. "oh, and your oxygen mask," said the radio operator, "it plugs in here, and this is your earphone plug-in." i had given up hope by now; it was all too complicated and i thought gloomily that everyone of these damned wires would come undone, i would fall out without meaning to or get hurled off my crate and mashed against the confused steel sides of my 205 lajor ��: \� 5£ it i '��----�----, " the second world war little glass cage, and i was already cold and so i decided to try 000 and hard to think of something else. meanwhile a brisk businesslike matter-o conversation was going on in the cockpit; voices came through the �daed. earphones so deafeningly that i could scarcely distinguish words, �f]and i but from the tone it sounded as calm and sensible as if you were gin), the talking about whether there was enough gas in the car to get to i�dflaa the country club. wmethin we hurtled into the night and soared for the stars. i have )�.llli) never been part of such a take-off; the actual feeling of flying 111t. we became so intense that one felt free of the plane, and as if one lret. one' were moving nakedly and with no hindrance through a sky that [an ena was bigger than any sky ever seen before. it was beautiful too, ��t�eld. with a glowing moon and the stars very close. i knew that the mqa� i beauty was not going to soothe my spirit or hold my attention. itrel )hel the beauty was a vast emptiness in which we roared alone, and the beauty was a good deal too scary for my taste. a conversation began on the radio; or rather it had been going on all along, only it seemed clearer now. somewhere on the dis­ tant dark snowcovered earth, men would be sitting in a hidden caravan crouched over instruments of black magic-the radar­ and a voice came from wherever they were, speaking a most tech­ nical code, and this plane obeyed that voice. at 265 miles an hour we fled blindly through the night, and our eyes were some place behind us in luxembourg on the ground. a night fighter pilot is directed by radar to his quarry, which he cannot see, and he ifiltrum must not fire until he has a visual target (that is, until he actually �rtlentl sees and identifies the other plane) and he can be as close as two !�ro, a hundred yards from the enemy plane before he is certain of it. thi� 1) until that time, the black widow swerves and swoops, climbs tel,du and falls alone like a strange mad bird, obeying the voice of the qoe�n't ground controller. waring the conversation between ground and sky was weird beyond lcoul believing. since it was all code, it cannot be repeated; but these a few 206 -.-_-. .�� .. / �i � 1 -, i the black widow odd and mystical sentences filtered through the air in rather loud matter-of-fact voices, and when the ground spoke the plane re­ sponded. we were over germany, and a blacker, less inviting piece of land i never saw. it was covered with snow, there were moun­ tains, there was no light and no sign of human life, but the land itself looked actively hostile. then the voice from the ground said something; the pilot said "roger," and the plane vaulted up the sky. this ranked easily as one of the nastiest sensations i have ever felt. we climbed, in a matter of seconds, from 11,000 to 22,000 feet. one's body turned to iron and was crushed down, feeling as if an enormous weight were pressing on something that would not yield. my oxygen mask was too large and had to be held on, and as i held it with my right hand, and held onto some kind of steel shelf with my left hand (so as not to fall backwards off my darling little crate) i thought that (a) my stomach was going to be flattened against my backbone and (b) that i was going to strangle. this loathsome set of feelings went on and meanwhile the radio conversation sharpened and went faster and louder, and i knew, though the words were muddled, that we were being led to our quarry. i had reached a stage of dull resignation and only prayed that we would stop doing whatever we were doing and do something else. the plane stopped climbing and now it was just hard to breathe. an added charm is that one's nose, a reasonably earthy instrument, flows steadily in this cold and of course is unwipable; presently, since the temperature inside the plane was thirty below zero, one finds oneself with a small frozen river on one's face. this is mentioned only in passing, because it is a very minor mat­ ter, but there it is. one is anyhow so cold that one more misery doesn't count. the plane, driven on by the loud ground voice, was roaring high and straight through the sky. then, for no reason i could discover, we turned over on a wing and dropped sideways a few miles toward the ground. that too was an undesirable seni� i /, ________.!"�---_. ---the second world war sation; one's insides seemed to drain away, leaving one empty and weak and not at all certain which side was upright. the pilot said something to me, in a nice cozy voice, but i did not understand. he repeated it. i gathered that we had just dropped through the sky that way in order to avoid flak at cologne. it appeared that we had been following a friendly plane which must have been a bornber and was copping the cologne flak. it seemed restful to be flying level at 11,000 feet again. the radio voices chatted to each other, apparently saying what a pity the whole thing had been, and better luck next time. everything was calm now, except for the fact that we were still over germany. then the pilot called to me on the intercom, and, looking where he told me, i saw the trail of a v-2. it came from somewhere deeper inside germany and was at this distance a red ball of fire, and it rose perpendicularly from the ground and passed out of sight over the top of the sky in a few seconds. then there were gun flashes to the west, where the front seemed to be waking up. one huge gun opened like a blast furnace, but i could not tell whether it was theirs or ours. on the ground i saw fixed flares, and again i did not know what they were; then there would be the sudden quaking soundless fire of the guns. there was also a frightening star, which i believed to be following us. i was con­ sidering how to call it to the pilot's attention when finally i de­ cided it was a star, once and for all, and could be classed as harmless. the ground was not saying anything much and the pilot seemed to have more time, for he started an amiable conversation over the intercom, practical1y none of which i understood, but his voice and manner of speaking filled me with admiration. it was as if he were making friendly talk with someone he had just met in a bar. the intercom worked only one way; i could not have answered even if i had known what he was saying. the ground voice spoke again, giving brisk orders, and the plane flicked neatly over on 208 ;wing a l@l, an 11 were 1 '.lnave g :� a wob ldlno enl i�nain� � �tkea an :(�l)hom i�1,"th �)n�, the pil m�n who �dli)� �ch m!too c ni�ner tll ldoroarec welan li�ntnin�, dno the �l�))ed �led by lor two � the black widow a wing and glided steeply downward. the pilot was asking ques­ tions, and more orders came from the ground. i could tell that we were hunting and getting close. by now this journey seemed to have gone on forever; one had sat since the beginning of time on a wobbly crate in the middle of heaven, and there obviously was no end to it. the plane slowed terrifyingly; it felt as if it were standing still in the air, and at the same time the pilot's voice cracked angrily on the radio. nothing happened. there was some reply from the ground and the pilot said very angrily, "for god's sake." the snow-covered land was nearer now and so were the gun flashes. the pilot spoke again on the intercom. we had been on the trail of an authentic enemy plane, but due to some miscalculation we were brought down on top of the enemy plane instead of under it. we were therefore briefly in the unfortunate position of getting shot at, rather than doing the shooting, but luckily the german did not wish to fight and had streaked off west and lost himself. the pilot was furious. now we were going home, as the time limit was nearly up. suddenly the pilot said, "see the flak?" i had seen it to the left; i thought it was low and far away and i was sad for the unlucky men who were getting it. this justifies completely the ignorance­ is-bliss school of thought. the flak was shooting at us, the distance was too close for comfort, and i imagined that the shells went no higher than the tracers. we did another quick aerial pirouette and roared for home. we landed as we had taken off, which is to say like a bolt of lightning. we had been out a little over two and a half hours, and the major was almost blue with cold. he had not been heavily dressed because he could not fly the plane if his body was ham­ pered by all that clothing. so for two and a half hours now and for two and a half hours later that night, and every other night, 'i ' /�-:__j�_t-_j� ___ ---\, " the second world war he would sit in a plane in a temperature of thirty below zero and simply take it. he did say, in passing, "gosh, it's cold." the major was depressed about the evening, it had been a borooaroa ing patrol, nothing happened, there was one good chance of a m�ck fight and it had been mucked up, and all in all he felt browned thundel off. so we climbed stiffly into the jeep and went back to the squad��ttalk ron shack. the other planes of this mission were coming in, landiutneb. ing at that soul-shaking speed, and a new mission would be leaving �rlorrnwithin a few minutes. the radio operator came back to headthe 1 quarters to report to the interrogating officer and left again im­ mediately, as he was flying with another pilot on the second mission. he had no time for a cup of coffee, or any chance to get il)t)ee warm; i do not think there was a cup of coffee available, for that tm leet rnatter. �dl." � but there was much excitement in the headquarters shack; a �iqtnat tall towheaded boy with a shining face was passing a box of cigars i�much around and getting heavily beaten on the back. his smile was wdffe enormous and he couldn't give out cigars fast enough. a cable !�l klll� had just come, announcing the birth of a baby daughter. "thank god," said the major, "i've been sweating out that baby for ten days." the towheaded pilot showed his cable and a picture of his wife german and offered his cigar box. w�) rath "how long is a baby?" he said. he held his hands about three rront of feet apart. "that long?" que to i "hell, no," said an elderly father of twenty-four. "about so �nqwic long." and he held his hands a foot apart. d�ck to there followed a heated argument about the length of babies. manrex no one spoke of the mission completed or of the missions to come; inth, it was after all just another night's work. but people didn't become �ackth fathers every night; becoming a father was really something. "wh the thunderbolt pilots had invited us to have a drink in their i(clo� club. they had fixed up a shack as a mess and built a fireplace out tempt.' 210 the black widow zew�: of armor plate from a german tank and rigged up a bar, and they had whisky and scrambled-egg sandwiches. we drove along the bad road beside the field and the major said, "let's not talk about an�g black widows down there, see? what i mean is, we think those tor®:: thunderbolt pilots do a lot tougher job than we do, so let's just ili��: not talk about our stuff." none of the thunderbolt boys will ride �mj' in the black widows for anything, on the grounds that the whole kl�� performance is unsound. t�k the thunderbolt pilots were all very young and were trying a��: to be gay tonight, because they had lost their squadron leader the oon�: day before, and they loved him, and one dare not mourn. he was crtijr, last seen headed straight down, with his machine guns still firing �im� ten feet above the ground. his last heard remark was "give 'em hell." so now everyone was drinking and talking shop. one boy lmtt said that he never got used to shooting people, because they rolled �i(� so much when they were hit. he just didn't like it, that was all. it ih was different for the airborne boys, and such as them, they were ,u real killers; but he just didn't like the way people rolled. the phrase that recurred most was "we sure clobbered the herman." �t�� this means we definitely shot up the germans. it can mean that they shot up trucks, tanks, command cars, or troops; anything �ilf: german is herman and "clobbered" means liquidated. the major was rather silent and was mainly occupied trying to get warm in front of the curious fireplace. i have never felt better in my life, due to my pleasure in being around at all, and i ate scrambled-egg sandwiches like a starving armenian. then the major had to get back to his headquarters, as he was flying again, so we left with ioob many expressions of mutual esteem and gratitude. l�ro� in the jeep, the major said thoughtfully, "those p-47s. i don't � hack their talk." "why?" i asked. i��a "clobber the herman," he said, with a very faint air of conreu� tempt. "what talk is that?" 211 _ '.j i '----------�---. ---, a the second world war "what do you say?" "we say 'hose the hun,' of course." we dropped him at the door and for a moment we stood there, shivering and shrunken with cold. "wen, so long," he said. "come and see us again. give you a ride anytime." in the light from the headquarters shack, he looked tired and cold. you were sure he would not think about being tired or cold or think in any way about himself. they all did their job, that was all. some men fly by day and others by night, some men work in tanks, others drop out of planes in parachutes, and there is always the infantry. all jobs and all appalling jobs. they do not think of them; they do them; there is nothing else to do. as we drove away, another sleek sharp plane tore up into the night sky, climbed and headed east toward germany. �n, lome �dout to tell ni�t� n well, marne, i ilid a tilillun �ot on time, nazi� tiler d i. no, a facto nave h the h �riven 212 -... � das deutsches volk apri11945 � no one is a nazi. no one ever was. there may have been some nazis in the next village, and as a matter of fact, that town about twenty kilometers away was a veritable hotbed of nazidom. to tell you the truth, confidentially, there were a lot of commu­ nists here. we were always known as very red. oh, the jews? well, there weren't really many jews in this neighborhood. two maybe, maybe six. they were taken away. 1 hid a jew for six weeks. 1 hid a jew for eight weeks. (i hid a jew, he hid a jew, all god's chillun hid jews.) we have nothing against the jews; we always got on well with them. we have waited for the americans a long time. you came and liberated us. you came to befriend us. the nazis are schweinhiinde. the wehrmacht wants to give up but they do not know how. no, 1 have no relatives in the army. nor i. no, 1 was never in the army. 1 worked on the land. 1 worked in a factory. that boy wasn't in the army either; he was sick. we have had enough of this government. ah, how we have suffered. the bombs. we lived in the cellars for weeks. we refused to be driven across the rhine when the ss came to evacuate us. why i' ' / ,�;__________l _•• ---s., _�.. ... �'f-j:£':'ii-""� .<il the second world war should we go? we welcome the americans. we do not fear them; com� we have no reason to fear . we have done nothing wrong; we are ann eo not nazis. )mall it should, we feel, be set to music. then the germans could and t sing this refrain and that would make it even better. they all talk in ilike this. one asks oneself how the detested nazi government, )er�eato which no one paid allegiance, managed to carryon this war wno cfor five and a half years. obviously not a man, woman or child in aescrib germany ever approved of the war for a minute, according to �me ithem. we stand around looking blank and contemptuous and andwlisten to this story without friendliness and certainly without redtatio spect. to see a whole nation passing the buck is not an enlightenreceive ing spectacle. it is clear that all you have to do in germany, in oome iorder to lead the" country, is be successfal, if you stop being sueandili, cessful, no one wi admit they ever ear 0 you. iva) ta at night the germans take pot shots at americans, or string river,iwires across roads, which is apt to be fatal to men driving jeeps, tnat or they bum the houses of germans who accept posts in our miliwou� tary covemment, or they booby-trap ammunition dumps or mothe torcycles or anything that is likely to be touched. but that is at )ilent night. in the daytime we are the answer to the german prayer, toan�oaccording to them. can ta at the moment we are sitting on the west bank of the rhine, ner";t facing the ruhr pocket. the germans here are peeved about the !oloier ruhr pocket and wish us to push it back ten miles so that they africa, will no longer be troubled by their own artillery, which fires into the their villages whenever it can spare some shells. the 504th regithemi ment of the sznd airborne division sent a company across the ruim rhine in landing craft one night and took and held a town for nothi thirty-six hours. these landing craft are built like enlarged shoe of theboxes and are propelled forward by dint of paddles, and the current at nigis swift, and the river is wide, and on the other side was the wehrtheremacht, which was not giving up by any manner of means. the ment, 214 fear tn�� das deutsches yolk company of paratroopers drew onto themselves a great deal of armed attention-two german divisions, it was estimated. this small airborne action relieved pressure at another part of the front, and the company lost many men. in the afternoon of the day they got back, two officers and four sergeants were decorated with the silver star by general gavin, who commands the division. this ceremony took place in a non­ descript street, amidst brick rubble and fallen telephone wires. some german civilians stuck their heads cautiously out of windows and watched with interest. it was very simple: one officer read the citations and general gavin pinned on the medals. the six who received the medals were not dressed for the occasion; they had come directly from their work. their faces were like gray stone and their eyes were not like eyes you will see every day and no one was talking about what had just been lived through across the river. if you had friends in the company who did not come back, that made it worse; if you knew no one personally it was bad enough. the german civilians looked with wonder at this row of dirty silent men standing in the street. it makes little or no difference to anyone around here whether the germans are nazis or not; they can talk their heads off; they can sing "the star-spangled ban­ ner"; they are still germans and they are not liked. none of these soldiers has forgotten yet that our dead stretch back all the way to africa, the villages along the rhine here are in pretty good shape. in the middle, of course, is cologne, and cologne is one of the great ruins of the world; but by and large these adjacent villages have nothing to complain of. the houses are well built and each one of them has a small cellar where large quantities of germans sleep at night. as the soldiers say, they are not hurting for anything. there is food and clothing, coal, bedding, all household equip­ ment, livestock. the germans are nice and fat too, and quite f i�e �rure a ���!� lo ilidll�r: h tr5 i�: )o�!n ��r dcro))� 'a 101\111(: argeo)oci the c�rrt�1 the w1ru' eans,1k 'ii : / it j '____j-_---� _.. ---the second world war clean and orderly and industrious. they carry on their normal lives within seven hundred yards of their army, which is now their enemy. the biirgermeister, whom we appoint, rule the people by de­ crees which we publish and slap up on the walls. the germans seem to love decrees, and they stand in line busily to read any­ thing new that appears. we went to call on one biirgermeister of a front-line village; he was, he said, a communist and a half-jew and he may be for all i know, but it is amazing how many commu­ nists and half-jews there are in germany. he was a working man before and he says that plenty of people in the village are furious about his being biirgermeister; he has got above himself, they think, because of the americans. if the americans fired him he would be killed, he said. he stated this in a matter-of-fact way, as if it were only to be expected. we said, "then that means the people here are nazis." "no, no," he said. "it is that they think i have too good a position." we then told him we thought his fellow villagers must be lovely people; it was not regulation, we felt, to murder a man just because he had a good job. he spoke with some despair about the future of germany and finished by saying that america must help germany to recover. we listened to this remark with surprise and asked him why; why did he imagine america was going to help germany do anything? he admitted that perhaps we had a reason to hate germany but they were relying on our well-known humanitarianism. "nuts," said the sergeant, who spoke german. "translate nuts," said the lieutenant. "where does he get these fancy ideas?" the biirgermeister went on to say that if the americans did not occupy germany for fifty years, there would be war again. some man with a bigger mouth than hitler, he said, will come along 216 , �r, �na rnrt looke nou� men we duto dore he toc -_. �� . das deutsches yolk and promise them everything and they will follow and there will be war again. "i believe him," said the lieutenant. after the tidy villages, cologne is a startling sight. we are not shocked by it, which only goes to prove that if you see enough of anything you stop noticing it. in germany, when you see absolute devastation you do not grieve. we have grieved for many places in many countries but this is not one of the countries. our soldiers say, "they asked for it." between two mountains of broken brick, and backed by a single jagged wall, a german had set up a push­ cart and was selling tulips, narcissuses and daffodils. the flowers looked a little mad in this decor, and considering there are no houses to put flowers in, the whole set-up seemed odd. two young men on bicycles rode up and one of them bought a bunch of tulips. we asked him what he wanted tulips for and he said he was dutch. so of course he needed the tulips. he had been a slave la­ borer in this city for three years; his friend had been here only five months. they came from rotterdam. anything that happened to cologne was all right with them. the flower vendor came over to talk. yes, this was his regular business; he walked eighteen kilometers a day to get the flowers. now i think of it, he was allowed to travel only six kilometers from his dwelling place, so i wonder how he did it. he made very little money, but before we came he sold his flowers to the hospi­ tals as wen as to some old customers. he was alone in the world and he would go on with the flowers as long as there were any flowers and then he would probably sell vegetables. his family was dead. his whole family, forty-two of them, including his grand­ parents and parents, his wife and children, his sisters and their children and husbands. they had all been buried in one cellar during one air raid. he brought pictures out of his wallet. hof this sister," he said, "we found only her torso. during the bomb­ ings, we prayed a great deal." the two soldiers and i sat in the ',ii j / '-��---_4 �.. _ the second world war jeep and wondered why he talked to us; if forty-two members of lelia our families had been killed by german bombs we would not talk ware pleasantly to germans. one a crowd gathered around us; since no one speaks to germans, ln� , except on official business, you can collect a crowd anywhere jumtisimply by saying "cuten tag." this desire to be chummy baffles look us as much as anything. the crowd was varied and everyone talked �ortuat once. i asked them when things had started to go bad in ger�nn many, because my editor wanted me to ask that. i had a private !ooabet with myself on the answer, and i won. things have been bad wno]in germany since 1933, they all said loudly. i said, no, i am �aa talking about since the war. since 1941 it has been bad. why? �ucllbecause of the bombs. "danke schon," i said. then i asked what a�or form of government they hoped for after the war. i had another r��t bet with myself, and i won. democracy, they cried. but one day ain another village it came out much better than that, and much mar more truthfully. the women said that if they had enough to eat noand could live quietly they did not care who ruled them. note: elln, who. the men said they had not talked politics for eleven years aooand no longer knew anything about government. however, de­ mocracy is a fine word and in frequent use in germany. then i asked them (for my editor) whether they had traveled during the war, had anyone made a side trip to paris? no one had traveled anywhere at all; they were assigned their work and they stayed todo it, good and bad, twelve hours a day. after that the talk degenerated into the usual condemnation of the nazis. tne we decided to go and see friends for a change, so we went down bun to the river front to call on some airborne pals. it is a stone jungle, through which the american soldiers roam on foot or bicycle.the company cp was in a candy factory and we were taken to see the vast stocks of sugar, chocolate, cocoa, butter, almonds and finished candies that remained. then we were led to a huge wine m� 218 .-_. wi �'" . das deutsches yolk cellar, only one of three they had located. next we visited a flour warehouse which had more flour in it than any of us had seen at one time. after this (and by now we were all in a temper, think­ ing how well off the germans had been) we went through a jumble of factory buildings used as a general food depot, and we looked with anger on rooms full of dutch and french cheese, portuguese sardines, norwegian canned fish, all kinds of jams and canned vegetables, barrels of syrup. we had seen the individual food supplies throughout germany, and this small portion of wholesale food stock only convinced us further that the germans had not given up butter for guns but had done very nicely pro­ ducing or stealing both. we fi ured t ans could afford to starve for the next�five years, just to catch up with the re§to .... tope., --a row of german women sat outside the white tape which marked off the military zone. they were watching their houses. no roof or window remains and often there is not a wall left either and almost everything in those houses has been blown about thoroughly by high explosives, but there they sat and kept mournful guard on their possessions. when asked why they did this, they started to weep. we have all seen such beastly and fantastic suffering accepted in silence that we do not react very well to weeping. and we certainly do not react well to people .wee in over furniture. i remember oradour in france, where the germans loc e every man, woman, and child of the village into the church and set the church afire, and after the people were burned, they burned the village. this is an extremely drastic way to destroy property, and it is only one of many such instances. the germans themselves have taught all the people of europe not to waste time weeping over anything easy like furniture. farther down the river, u.s. military government was register­ ing german civilians in the villages. the germans queued up in 'u j /,� -------------� ---_. -_ ... , l the second world war a line four deep and filed into a little house and made a thumb­ print on a piece of paper and got the great pleasure of owninganother bit of official printing matter, which said they lived in this village. "it goes okay," said the young paratroop lieutenant who was in command here. "if they start shoving i just say something in aloud voice and boy, they snap right back into line." during all the war this village had lost ten civilian dead; duringthe last week german shells had killed seven more civilians. we talked with some german women about the horrors of war. the bombs, they said, oh god the bombs. two thousand eight hun­dred bombs fell on this village alone, they said. do not be crazy, we told them, there would be no sign of a village if that were true. we are very near cologne, they said (it was about ten miles away). that is not the same thing, we said. ah, the bombs, theysaid, firmly convinced that their village was flat and they were all dead. the bombs continue, though not now in this vicinity, but every day the bombers go over and while there is still that steady smooth roaring in the sky the germans remember the war. however, it is only on this side of the river that the germans are happy in defeat, and just across the river the german ack-ack continues to operate. yesterday it operated effectively and a b-26 was shot down and a column of black smoke rose straight and mountain-high. it looked like a funeral pyre to all of us. tanks of the thirteenth armored division were moving up across the river, behind the burning plane, but the crew was there in a belt of germans, and no one could reach them. from a 505th regimental observation post, some paratroopers had seen four men get out of the plane. that was at about one o'clock on a soft clear day. at six o'clock began one of the strangest episodes anyone had yet seen in this war-and there were a few men present who had survived all four sznd airborne 220 com �et �hou the war hon "l ivan ��t "kr das deutsches yolk ilium� missions and the battle of the bulge and could be expected to have seen everything. across the rhine on the green bank someone started waving a white flag. this was ignored, because it does not necessarily mean anything. then a procession came down to a landing pier. they carried a red cross flag. through binoculars, we could see a medic, a priest, and two german soldiers carrying a stretcher. a landing craft put out from our bank, well covered by our machine guns in case this was all a sinister joke. presently on both banks �dr,nt of the rhine there was an audience; normally no one would move �nt�� in this area in daylight, and even at night you would be sensible. ��i now we stood in the sun and gaped. slowly three more stretchers �tw� were carried down to our boat. we could see civilians over there, children, german soldiers; everyone was out staring at everyone else. we could not quite believe it and were still prepared to dive for cover quickly. then the little boat was launched into the cur­ rent, but it drifted farther downstream and we followed it on our side, like people streaming along a racecourse to watch the horses come in. the boat landed and our medic, who had gone over to get these four wounded men, the survivors of the b-26 crew, shouted to clear the banks because the krauts said they'd give the ambulance time to load and then they would open up. the war had stopped for approximately an hour on a hundred-yard front. "i never saw the krauts act so nice," one soldier said, as we wandered back to the buildings where we would not make such tasty targets. "they know our tanks are coming up," another soldier said. "krauts don't act nice for nothing." the dps (displaced persons, if you have forgotten) ten us that krauts never act nice. there are tens of thousands of russian and polish and czech and french and yugoslav and belgian slave 221 \u i /, --------.�---� -the second world war laborers around here, and they pour in every day in truckloads to �ll the camps which the sznd airborne now run. there is apparently aih an inexhaustible supply of human beings who were seized from olt their families and who lived in misery for years, with no medical care and on starvation rations, while working twelve hours a day �w�for their german masters. they do not feel kindly toward the m�!, germans. the only time i have seen a russian cry was when a russian nurse, a girl of twenty-five, wept with rage telling of the way her people were treated. they had all seen their dead thrown into huge lime-filled pits, which were the communal graves. "everywhere the graves became as high as a mountain," she said. the anger of these people is so great that you feel it must work like fire in the earth. british prisoners of war are starting to come through now, still joking, still talking in understatement, but with bitterness behind the jokes and the quiet words. the ones we saw had walked for fifty-two days from the polish frontier to hanover, where their tank columns freed them, and on that fearful march those who fell out, from hunger and exhaustion, died. their red cross parcels kept them alive during five years but since last november no parcels had arrived. in one small group, nine men had died of starvation after the long march and their bodies lay for six days in the crowded barracks because, for some unknown reason, the germans did not feel like burying them or allowing them to be buried. "they're not human at all," a new zealander said. "i wish they'd let us take charge of the german prisoners," a boy from wales said. a man who was lying on the grass near him now spoke up thoughtfully. "you can't really learn to like those people," he said, "unless they're dead." meanwhile .-cex:mans, l.�ll�.tfqq:elid by regret because after 222 das deutsches yolk all they did nothing wrong, they only did what they were told to do-keep on saying with energy: we are not nazis. it is their idea of the password to forgiveness, probably followed by a sizable loan. we are not nazis; we are friends. hundreds of thousands of people in khaki around here, and equal numbers of foreigners in rags, cannot see it that way. 223 1'1' , /'l� i, --------��--_-... 'l' � ........... �--�-:::..,....,... �april 1945 t t� � om rusa:an guard stood at the pontoon bridge on our side rof the elbe. he was small and shaggy and bright-eyed. he waved to us to stop and came over to the jeep and spoke russian veryfast, smiling all the time. then he shook hands and said, "amerir kanski?" he shook hands again and we saluted each other. a en mlence followed, during which we all smiled. i tried german, french, spanish and english, in that order. we wanted to cross il �e elbe to the russian side and pay a visit to our allies. none of tal these languages worked. the russians speak russian. the gi driver then nude a few remarks in russian, which i found dazzling. "you got to talk a little bit of everything to get around these days," he said. the russian guard had listened and digested our request and he now answered. the operative word in his �i!answer was: niet. it is the only word in russian i know, but you wih r it a lot, and afterward there is no use arguing. an so we drove back to the cp of a russian officer, who perhaps to controlled that bridge. here we had another brilliant and enjoyable conversation, filled with handshakes, laughter and good will; the russians the russians the operative word again was niet. it was suggested that i go to a building in torgau, a little way farther back from the river, where i would find more of my compatriots who were waiting for one thing or another. this was a square gray german house, outside of which were parked various jeeps and staff cars belonging to various american and english officers who were waiting to cross the elbe on business. the situation seemed to be permanently snafu. the atmosphere was one of baffled but cordial resignation. officers stood in the street and speculated on russian time, which was either one or two hours earlier or later than ours. they asked themselves whether the russian general who was due today' (they thought), but who had actually arrived and departed yesterday, would possibly come tomorrow and if so at whose hour, ours or theirs. they said that it was pointless to try to telephone across the river because the telephone, which was located in the first russian office i had visited, was in a purely experimental stage and anyhow you never got an answer to anything by telephone, if in the first place the telephone worked and you happened to reach anyone at the other end. they said, this is the way it is, chum, and you may as well get used to waiting because wait is what you do. you could cross the elbe to the russian side only if accompanied by a russian officer who had come to get you to take you to a specific place for a specific purpose. there was no nonsense about walking across a few hundred yards of pontoon bridge and fraternizing with our allies. it was quite agreeable in the sun, and the street was interesting. two russian girl soldiers passed, and a russian nurse wearing a pistol competently on her hip. a russian soldier in a blue overall, with blue eyes to match, wandered up and said "amerikanski?" and shook everyone's hand and was treated to a flood of gi jokes, to all of which he responded with smiles and the word "russki." then he said, "na," with a little sigh, and shook hands all around again and went about his business. the morning wore on and hl� ; /, ------..j'� _ _ • _. ;.<,,-t,"mo�.-"-�� the second world war obviously nothing was going to. happen, so we drove through therussian part of torgau and across a bridge guarded by mps, andwent to the american battalion headquarters for lunch. there we found a very large jolly soiled russian colonel and his inter­ preter, doing their best to cope with a plate of k rations. theywere no more enthusiastic about k rations than we are, which proves them to be men of taste, but they did like the coffee. no one was looking very spick-and-span in battalion headquarters,since combat troops are too hurried and occupied to look spick­and-span and also there is usually no water in newly liberated towns. however, the russians all looked as if they hadn't had time for a bath since stalingrad. the colonel was delightful and had a handshake like the death squeeze of a grizzly bear, and through his interpreter he said he would take me across the elbe tonight, as he was going back tohis division headquarters, and he would call for me at five-thirty.after a certain amount of discussion we agreed on whose five­ thirty that would be, his or ours, and everyone was happy. at five­ thirty he had not come and runners went out to search for him. at six-thirty i went back to the russian part of torgau and tracked him down. �ii m lin ih he insisted that i come and eat with them; they were having a little snack. the little snack was a dream, consisting of hardtn boiled eggs and three kinds of sausage and pickles and butter and tn honey and various wines, and i decided that the russians had a \v more sensible approach to rationing than we have. it is old-fashwe ioned but effective and saves a lot of trouble; you live off the land wa and any land can beat k rations. we began to talk about crossing the elbe. it appeared that the colonel had not understood my request; no, it would be impossible to go unless the general gavehis permission. then could he telephone to the general? what, now? yes, now. "time is money," said the interpreter. 226 the russians hrou�n�� "you are in such a hurry," said the colonel. "we will talk this mrl,�� all over later." nell, the: "you do not understand," i said, "i am a wage slave. i work anil i�l(;. for a bunch of capitalist ogres in new york who drive me night 0001, thr, and day and give me no rest. i will be severely punished if i hang �r�, w�f around here eating with you citizens, when it is my duty to my ro��,�: country to cross the elbe and salute our gallant allies." eaa��n�� they thought this was fine, but still nothing happened. loo��cr, "go on and call the general," i said, trying the wheedle angle. 'ij li�l� "what difference will it make to the general if one insignificant 'tnd���: female correspondent pays him a visit?" "hokay," said the colonel, that being the one american word eili��: he knew. he went out to telephone the general, and more time ne �i�� passed. in� oocr� there was another colonel and the interpreter, and between t dl'e·i, mouthfuls of hard-boiled eggs we had a splendid talk. we diswhole !ii' cussed the germans and were in perfect agreement all along the �!jlk line. we discussed the american army and were in perfect agreen lor�im ment all along the line. i was told of the wonders of russia, which namtk i have never seen, and i was urged to visit the crimea in the summer, since it is of surpassing beauty. i said i would. i was asked what i thought about the russian army. i said i would give any­ thing to see it but in the meantime i thought it was wonderful, the whole world thought it was wonderful. we had a few toasts. we toasted "treemann" for quite a while before i realized we were toasting the president; the way they said it, i imagined it was some crisp russian term meaning bottoms up. 'then the colonel came back. the operative word again was niet. i do not think he had telephoned the general, but it was niet anyhow. the conversation had been purely gay and they are very gay, but all of a sudden it got serious. we were talking about their medals. they do not wear ribbons, they wear the entire medal, officers and men alike, and the medals are worn on both sides of ',a i / ����---�. ---the second world war the chest and look terrific. there are handsome enamel decora­ tions for killing germans-i believe each decoration equals fiftydead germans but i am not sure of this-and there are medals for individual heroism and for battles. out of the blue, the interpreter said, "i am a polish jew. myfather was shot by the germans. three months later my mother was put to death in a gas chamber. they carne for my wife andshe was still bandaged from an operation, she could not even stand up straight. they took her away to work and there was the child,four months old, left behind. they killed the child by striking it across the head with a pistol, but my wife did not know this. she got a little letter to me, that was more than four years ago, andsaid, 'do not wait for me, i will never come back, take the child and find him a mother and make a new life.' she did not know the child was dead." he brought from his pocket a russian news­ paper with pictures in it, such as you have all seen by now. these were taken at lemberg and showed the horribly familiar but never endurable piles of dead and the mass hangings and the mutilated bodies of those who had been tortured. "lemberg was my home,"said the interpreter. "when the germans come crying to me, asking for this or asking for that, i show them these pictures and i say to them, 'look first and then cry!' " "let us go out and walk," said the colonel, "we must not be sad. we hate war and we would like to go home, for it is many years since we have been home, but we will kill germans as long as they ask for it. meanwhile it is a nice night, so we will go walking." torgau in the evening was a picturesque place. from one building came the lovely sad sound of russian singing, low and slow and mourning; from another building, a young man leaned out of a window and played a very fast bright tune on a harmonica. rare-looking types wandered around the street; there is the great­ est possible variety in the faces and uniforms of the russian sol.228 -_.. �'" ' the russians cliery. there were blonds and mongols and fierce-looking charac.. ters with nineteenth-century mustaches and children of about sixteen, and it felt like a vast encampment of a nomad people, where everyone is eating around campfires, singing, playing cards and getting ready to roll into blankets and sleep. we heard a few stray shots and met a few stray drunks and no one paid the slight­ est attention. we passed a couple of burning houses which looked very pretty and a yard where a wealth of torgau bicycles had been collected and stacked-and tomorrow no doubt more of the russian army would be mobile. i said it was all charming, but how about getting across the elbe? in two weeks, the colonel said, i am sure it will be arranged. if there was anything i was sure of, it was that i wouldn't be waiting around torgau for two weeks. it is a political question, said the interpreter, you are capitalists and we are communists. i told them heatedly that i did not consider it any of my business whether they were mormons, cannibals or balletomanes, the point being that we were allies and naturally we were interested in each other and each other's armies. no one, said i crossly, minded where they went; their correspondents moved freely with our army and everyone was delighted to see them. if, on the other hand, they behaved in this suspicious and unfriendly manner, it would make everyone angry and it would be their own fault. we were eager to understand them and none of us in these parts was interested in politics. it would be nice if they acted more openhearted for a change. they agreed to this but said that in their army nothing was done without permission; the permission had not been granted rom �m as yet. all right, i said, but unless we can all circulate freely low l!i amongst each other there will be no trust and no confidence, and l�ro that will be terrible. "it will be arranged in time, you will see," said the colonel. "time is money," the interpreter remarked, knowingly. in the morning the pontoon bridge was the center of interest. � --�l_______1 / _o _ the second world war the day before, to the amazement of the gis, some russian soltli diers had appeared and washed the boats which supported the �nwooden treadway. today more russians appeared, with pots of n�h green paint, and painted the boats. small fir trees were stuck up toaalong the treadway and it was the prettiest bridge you could hope toeto see. now in the early sunlight, a procession of thin, quiet dis�ndplaced persons appeared; these were the russians who had been in taken into slavery by the germans, and they were crossing theelbe to go home. the elbe is not very wide and the banks are soft green grass, but as soon as anyone crossed that bridge and disap­peared up the opposite bank he might as well have gone to tibet,because it was forbidden, unimaginable territory. for a little while there was relative calm and we sat on a stone wall and watched the river and smoked and talked about nothing. toegradually the russian army began to cross the bridge to our side �rlof the river. the army came in like a tide; it had no special shape, rethere were no orders given. it came and flowed over the stone �a quay and up on the roads behind us like water rising, like ants,like locusts. it was not so much an army as a whole world on the � move. knowing nothing of the formation of the russian army nu�(and never being told by the russians) , one does not know whether this was a regiment or a division or six regiments or sixdivisions for that matter, but it came on and on and on, inchoate, formless, and astonishing, and it was very noisy and slightly madand it knew exactly what it was doing. first came men, hordes of them, wearing tunics, greatcoats, baggy khaki-ish clothing, and carrying a light sort of tommy gun, pistols, grenades and generally assorted munitions. they did not wal seem to march and they did not seem to be numerically divided �eeinto groups; they were simply a mass. they looked tired and �rather indifferent and definitely experienced. then some trucks ou bumped over the bridge-god knows what sort of trucks, or where �emanufactured. quantities of men rode on these, also women. tree 23° the russians these women were uniformed like the men, and equally armed, and were young, absolutely square in build, and tough as prize­ fighters. we were told that the women were wonderful snipers and that they served as mps. at this point a woman soldier arrived at the near end of the bridge, carrying two flags like semaphore flags, and took up her position. she was an mp, and with her flags and an air of authority she proceeded to handle this startling traffic. a pack train now rumbled across the bridge. it consisted of beat­ up carts and wagons and strong but shabby horses, and the drivers handled the horses with a competence that was inspiring and rather like the chariot races in ben hur. the pack train carried everything, bedding and clothing and pots and pans and ammu­ nition and also women, because russian women can go to war with their men, and it seems a reasonable idea. these were no glamour girls; they were peasants and they looked as if no hardship would be too much for them, no roads too long, no winter too cruel, no danger too great. after the pack train, something like the first locomotive ap­ peared. it was short and had a huge smokestack and it towed two huge wooden cars. the gis on the wall above the river broke into applause, saying, "here comes the motorized stuff." men on bi­ cycles pedaled across the bridge and more men on foot and then some trucks carrying pontoons. the noise was a splendid slavic roar mixed with the clang of iron wheels on cobbles and occasional shouts which may have been orders or curses. there was no visible plan to this exodus and you felt you were watching a marvelously realistic movie about the russian armies during the war against napoleon. it was entirely unlike anything we had ever seen before and it would be impossible to describe the feeling of power that came from this chaos of men and materiel. we sat on our wall and thought how bitterly the germans must have re­ gretted attacking the russians. we thought anyone would be ex­ tremely silly to bother these people; for in these great shapeless 231 \ i ',� -�._ � -the second world war numbers they were as overwhelming and terrible as a flow of lava. iili by miracle this welter of humanity vanished from torgau, no one �na � knows how, and proceeded to infiltrate inland to take up the rusiidau sian line along the mulde river, some fifty miles west. i have no �naa idea how this was done; it happened. it is to be noted that many �n of the men wore the medal of the battle of stalingrad, and the �r i whole lot had certainly fought their way west for some three thou"ti sand miles, and probably pretty largely on their own feet. li�� i it was lunchtime and the exodus stopped temporarily. "the more show's over," said a gi sitting next to me. then, summing up the fu�m whole matter, he said with awe, "my god." we walked back to the bridge which leads to the american side of torgau. two gis �\vt were guarding the bridge, and a russian soldier, aged about eight"ti een, stood across the street apparently guarding it also. three russian soldiers were leaning over the stone railing in the middle of ii�i the bridge and suddenly there was a loud explosion and a fountain itdzj of water coming up from the stream below. "that's nothing," one of the american guards said. "they're !nort just throwing hand grenades in the water. they're crazy about illf' that. i don't know what it does to them, but if you see one any"� where near a bridge he's pretty sure to throw a hand grenade in �illc the water." �na the russian guard now crossed the street and said in a voice of �ono wonder, "amerikanski?" to which the gis replied in a tone of equal wonder, "russki?" we all shook hands. "you can't turn around for russians shaking hands," the short gi said. "now this joe, for instance, he's been on this bridge an morning and this is the fourth time he comes over and says 'ameri­ kanski' and gives us the handshaking treatment." "it's to show we're allies," the tall gi explained. "sure," said the short one, "that's okay by me. i only ask my.. self how many more times today this joe is going through this rou.. tine." ----. .. � � i fiowo!i�\l the russians "look at the ambulance, will you?" said the tall one. we turned and saw something like a furniture van, painted green and with small red crosses on its side. it had stopped farther down the street and a band of wounded crawled, limped or hopped out. they had been packed in on a nest of quilts and mattresses and they disap­ peared into a house which may have been an aid station. "that's the first ambulance i seen," the tall one said. "seems like if you can walk you go right along in their army. you see more guys with bandages on their heads. don't seem to bother them none." "i used to think we were rugged," the other gi said, "until i saw these russkis. boy, they're really rugged, i mean." "they're crazy," the tall one said flatly. "what's the matter?" i asked. "don't you like them?" "sure, i like them. they seem like pretty good guys. they're crazy, that's all." "i guess they'll push us back to the rhine pretty soon," the short one said. "they certainly shoved a lot of men over this morn­ ing." "suits me," his colleague answered. "i hope they push us back quick. i hope they take all of germany. they'll know how to handle it, brother. they really know. suits me. what i want is to go home." said,i1\1'; e cru'fl�' )tun a ��m�l: may 1945 dachau � we came out of germany in a c·47 carrying american pris­ oners of war. the planes were lined up on the grass field at regens­ burg and the passengers waited, sitting in the shade under the wings. they would not leave the planes; this was a trip no one was going to miss. when the crew chief said all aboard, we got in as if we were escaping from a fire. no one looked out the windows as we flew over germany. no one ever wanted to see germany again. they turned away from it, with hatred and sickness. at first they did not talk, but when it became real that germany was behind forever they began talking of their prisons. we did not comment on the germans; they are past words, there is nothing to say. "no one will believe us," a soldier said. they agreed on that; no one would believe them. "where were you captured, miss?" a soldier asked. "i'm only bumming a ride; i've been down to see dachau." one of the men said suddenly, "we got to talk about it. we got to talk about it, if anyone believes us or not." onei: �nnl 11 �ia, nne,' 234 _-_... � \ ;' dachau behind the barbed wire and the electric fence, the skeletons sat in the sun and searched themselves for lice. they have no age and nc faces; they all look alike and like nothing you will ever see if you are lucky. we crossed the wide, crowded, dusty compound between the prison barracks and went to the hospital. in the hall sat more of the skeletons, and from them came the smell of disease and death. they watched us but did not move; no ex­ pression shows on a face that is only yellowish, stubbly skin, stretched across bone. what had been a man dragged himself into the doctor's office; he was a pole and he was about six feet tall and he weighed less than a hundred pounds and he wore a striped prison shirt, a pair of unlaced boots, and a blanket which he tried to hold around his legs. his eyes were large and strange and stood out from his face, and his jawbone seemed to be cutting through his skin. he had come to dachau from buchenwald on the last death transport. there were fifty boxcars of his dead traveling com­ panions still on the siding outside the camp, and for the last three days the american army had forced dachau civilians to bury these dead. when this transport had arrived, the german guards locked the men, women and children in the boxcars and there they slowly died of hunger and thirst and suffocation. they screamed and they tried to fight their way out; from time to time, the guards fired into the cars to stop the noise. this man had survived; he was found under a pile of dead. now he stood on the bones that were his legs and talked and suddenly he wept. "everyone is dead," he said, and the face that was not a face twisted with pain or sorrow or horror. "no one is left. every­ one is dead. i cannot help myself. here i am and i am finished and cannot help myself. everyone is dead." the polish doctor who had been a prisoner here for five years said, "in four weeks, you will be a young man again. you wiii be fine." 235 {l i / �---------�---_. --_. the second world war perhaps his body wil1live and take strength, but one cannot be­lieve that his eyes will ever be like other people's eyes.the doctor spoke with great detachment about the things hehad watched in this hospital. he had watched them and there was nothing he could do to stop them. the prisoners talked in the same way-quietly, with a strange little smile as if they apologizedfor talking of such loathsome things to someone who lived in areal world and could hardly be expected to understand dachau. mu "the germans made here some unusual experiments," the docbttor said. "they wished to see how long an aviator could go without rnte oxygen, how high in the sky he could go. so they had a closed car �rufrom which they pumped the oxygen. it is a quick death," he said. nu "it does not take more than fifteen minutes, but it is a hard death. ml they killed not so many people, only eight hundred in that extn periment. it was found that no one can live above thirty-six thoudsand feet altitude without oxygen." "whom did they choose for this experiment?" i asked. "any prisoner," he said, "so long as he was healthy. they pickedthe strongest. the mortality was one hundred per cent, of course." _ "it is very interesting, is it not?" said another polish doctor. l we did not look at each other. i do not know how to explain it, rnabut aside from the terrible anger you feel, you are ashamed. you are ron ashamed for mankind. "there was also the experiment of the water," said the first othi doctor. "this was to see how long pilots could survive when they � were shot down over water, like the channel, let us say. for that, rna the german doctors put the prisoners in great vats and they stood couin water up to their necks. it was found that the human body can cm resist for two and a half hours in water eight degrees below zero. reathey killed six hundred people in this experiment. sometimes a man had to suffer three times, for he fainted early in the experione ment, and then he was revived and a few days later the experiment �o]' was again undertaken." one ,�� / -. .. / _ ___jj_l____j � , cann�t �, e tnin�� q ili�l� i� �oo iij � d�l� li\'�� [; ddtn��, i," ilit�r., �o�i�w dllo�� n,"otii nal0 ��� in ili�! a, ,'·)l�� dachau "didn't they scream, didn't they cry out?" he smiled at that question. "there was no use in this place for a man to scream or cry out. it was no use for any man ever." a colleague of the polish doctor came in; he was the one who knew about the malaria experiments. the german doctor, who was chief of the army's tropical medicine research, used dachau as an experimental station. he was attempting to find a way to im­ munize german soldiers against malaria. to that end, he inocu­ lated eleven thousand prisoners with tertiary malaria. the death rate from the malaria was not too heavy; it simply meant that these prisoners, weakened by fever, died more quickly afterward from hunger. however, in one day three men died of overdoses of pyra­ midon, with which, for some unknown reason, the germans were then experimenting. no immunization for malaria was ever found. down the hall, in the surgery, the polish surgeon got out the record book to look up some data on operations performed by the ss doctors. these were castration and sterilization operations. 111e prisoner was forced to sign a paper beforehand, saying that he will­ ingly undertook this self-destruction. jews and gypsies were cas­ trated; any foreign slave laborer who had had relations with a ger­ man woman was sterilized. the german women were sent to other concentration camps. the polish surgeon had only his four front upper teeth left, the others on both sides having been knocked out by a guard one day, because the guard felt like breaking teeth. this act did not seem a matter of surprise to the doctor or to anyone else. no brutality could surprise them any more. they were used to a systematic cruelty that had gone on, in this concentration camp, for twelve years. the surgeon mentioned another experiment, really a very bad one, he said, and obviously quite useless. the guinea pigs were polish priests. (over two thousand priests passed through dachau; one thousand are alive.) the german doctors injected streptococci iii i /� -------a�� _• _ •• ;> r .... � ...�..,_�,.....,f the second world war germs in the upper leg of the prisoners, between the muscle and the bone. an extensive abscess formed, accompanied by fever and extreme pain. the polish doctor knew of more than a hundred cases treated this way; there may have been more. he had a record of thirty-one deaths, but it took usually from two to three months of ceaseless pain before the patient died, and all of them died after several operations performed during the last few days of theirlife. the operations were a further experiment, to see if a dying man could be saved; but the answer was that he could not. some prisoners recovered entirely, because they were treated with the already known and proved antidote, but there were others who were now moving around the camp, as best they could, crippled forlife. then, because i could listen to no more, my guide, a german socialist who had been a prisoner in dachau for ten and a half years, took me across the compound to the jail. in dachau, if you wan t to rest from one horror you go and see another. the jail was a long clean building with small white cells in it. here lived the people whom the prisoners called the n.n. n.n. stands for nacht und nebel, which means night and mist. translated into less romantic terms, this means that the prisoners in these cells never saw a human being, were never allowed to speak to anyone, were never taken out into the sun and the air. they lived in solitaryconfinement on water soup and a slice of bread, which was the camp diet. there was of course the danger of going mad. but one never knew what happened to them in the years of their silence. and on the friday before the sunday when the americans entered dachau, eight thousand men were removed by the ss on a final death transport. among these were all the prisoners from the soli­ tary cells. none of these men has been heard of since. now in the clean empty building a woman, alone in a cell, screamed for a long time on one terrible note, was silent for a moment, and screamed th en mu�c!� �iji br tevcr ��i n a �llijijl� naoarat llir�emijij f inem �t oa}10lt ifaij\� a not�� �mu oilirn w� cri��loofrl dachau again. she had gone mad in the last few days; we came too late for her. in dachau if a prisoner was found with a cigarette butt in his pocket he received twenty-five to fifty lashes with a bull whip. if he failed to stand at attention with his hat off, six feet away from any ss trooper who happened to pass, he had his hands tied behind his back and he was hung by his bound hands from a hook on the wall for an hour. if he did any other little thing which displeased the jailers he was put in the box. the box is the size of a telephone booth. it is so constructed that being in it alone a man cannot sit down, or kneel down, or of course lie down. it was usual to put four men in it together. here they stood for three days and nights without food or water or any form of sanitation. afterward they went back to the sixteen-hour day of labor and the diet of water soup and a slice of bread like soft gray cement. what had killed most of these people was hunger; starvation was simply routine. a man worked those incredible hours on that diet and lived in such overcrowding as cannot be imagined, the bodies packed into airless barracks, and woke each morning weaker, waiting for his death. it is not known how many people died in this camp in the twelve years of its existence, but at least forty-five thousand are known to have died in the last three years. last february and march, two thousand were killed in the gas chamber because, though they were too weak to work, they did not have the grace to die; so it was arranged for them. the gas chamber is part of the crematorium. the crematorium is a brick building outside the camp compound, standing in a grove of pine trees. a polish priest had attached himself to us and as we walked there he said, "i started to die twice of starvation but i was very lucky. i got a job as a mason when we were building this crematorium, so i received a little more food, and that way i did not die." then he said, "have you seen our chapel, madame?" i said i had not, and my guide said i could not; it was within the 239 �u i /.... -------.... .. ��-. _ .. _the second world war zone where the two thousand typhus cases were more or less iso­ lated. "it is a pity," the priest said. "we finally got a chapel and we had holy mass there almost every sunday. there are very beau­ tiful murals. the man who painted them died of hunger two months ago." now we were at the crematorium. "you will put a handkerchief over your nose," the guide said. there, suddenly, but never to be believed, were the bodies of the dead. they were everywhere. there were piles of them inside the oven room, but the ss had not had time to bum them. they were piled outside the door and along. side the building. they were all naked, and behind the crerna­ torium the ragged clothing of the dead was neatly stacked, shirts, jackets, trousers, shoes, awaiting sterilization and further use. the clothing was handled with order, but the bodies were dumped like garbage, rotting in the sun, yellow and nothing but bones, bones grown huge because there was no flesh to cover them, hideous, terrible, agonizing bones, and the unendurable smell of death. we have all seen a great deal now; we have seen too many wars and too much violent dying; we have seen hospitals, bloody and messy as butcher shops; we have seen the dead like bundles lying on all the roads of half the earth. but nowhere was there anything like this. nothing about war was ever as insanely wicked as these starved and outraged, naked, nameless dead. behind one ile of dead lay the clothed healthy bodies of the german soldi who (iv '\. �d been oun iii is camp. they were shot at onkt: when the �american army entered. and for the first time an here onecould look at a dead man with gladness. ust e iii the crematorium stood the fine big modern hot­ houses. here the prisoners grew the flowers that the ss officers loved. next to the hothouses were the vegetable gardens, and very rich ones too, where the starving prisoners cultivated the vitamin foods that kept the ss strong. but if a man, dying of hunger, fur­ tively pulled up and gorged himself on a head of lettuce, he would 240 or leii® cna�1 ��! ev��� nun�r �l dachau be beaten until he was unconscious. in front of the crematorium, separated from it by a stretch of garden, stood a long row of well­ built, commodious homes. the families of the ss officers lived here; their wives and children lived here quite happily, while the chimneys of the crematorium poured out unending smoke heavy with human ashes. the american soldier in the plane said, "we got to talk about it." you cannot talk about it very well because there is a kind of shock that sets in and makes it almost unbearable to remember what you have seen. i have not talked about the women who were moved to dachau three weeks ago from their own concentration camps. their crime was that they were jewish. there was a lovely girl from budapest, who somehow was still lovely, and the woman with mad eyes who had watched her sister walk into the gas cham­ ber at auschwitz and been held back and refused the right to die with her sister, and the austrian woman who pointed out calmly that they all had only the sleazy dresses they wore on their backs, they had never had anything more, and that they worked out­ doors sixteen hours a day too in the long winters, and that they too were "corrected," as the germans say, for any offense, real or imaginary. i have not talked about how it was the day the american army arrived, though the prisoners told me. in their joy to be free, and longing to see their friends who had come at last, many prisoners rushed to the fence and died electrocuted. there were those who died cheering, because that effort of happiness was more than their bodies could endure. there were those who died because now they had food, and they ate before they could be stopped, and it killed them. i do not know words to describe the men who have survived this horror for years, three years, five years, ten years, and whose minds are as clear and unafraid as the day they entered. i was in dachau when the german armies surrendered uncondi­ tionally to the allies. the same half-naked skeleton who had been 241 ==-.jii : /i i� �----. ---the second world war dug out of the death train shuffled back into the doctor's office. he said something in polish; his voice was no stronger than a whisper.the polish doctor clapped his hands gently and said, "bravo." i asked what they were talking about. "the war is over," the doctor said. "germany is defeated." we sat in that room, in that accursed cemetery prison, and no one had anything more to say. still, dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in europe to hear the news of victory. for surely this war was made to abolish dachau, and all the other places like dachau, and everything that dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever. /. -. _ / __ _ill -! � r the four wars here reported were really one war. it was the most monstrous war mankind has survived to date. twenty­ five million dead; how many millions of maimed, blinded, insane; how many million children orphaned and cheated for life; the erratic and mindless destruction of man's handiwork and heritage of beauty; all our terror and sorrow were needed to cut one cancer from the body of the nations. can anyone, remembering, dare to see this happen again? at least there was an end to it. peace treaties were signed; lights blazed over half a darkened world; people gave thanks in churches; if you didn't feel up to singing and kissing in the streets, you could weep alone for the dead and for the manner of the dying. no one human being knew the full horror of that war; there was too much horror, too widespread. but it was over, it was over, we could breathe and hope and start to build for the future. before any city was cleaned of its rubble and made whole, be­ fore the remnants of a tortured people found their home in israel, before the last already forgotten burned pilot had suffered the last q� i / '-�-----::r.. _ . ---the face of war stitching skin graft, the human race was busy hating and fearing again, and growing new cancers. old enemies became allies, old allies became enemies, novice tyrants replaced defunct tyrants, and we were spending the riches wanted for life on weapons of ruin. it we will not learn, is there any hope for us? the answer is that we cannot help hoping; we do not control it. we are given a supply which only runs out in death, perhaps because each one of us ows love, the source of hope. but this is our final chance to learn. the second world war was an evil that men could stop; the unknown nuclear war will have no end. no peace treaty will stop the interminable invisible poison dust. the war of the universe would be carried on by the wind. war is a crime against the living and always has been; no one can begin to imagine the size and the shape of the crime of nuclear war. we are told that speed is all-the mammoth surprise attack, the instant mammoth retaliation. in the absolute chaos after the rain of bombs, who is going to bury the estimated 800 million dead­ whole shattered, flaming cities of corpses; who will nurse tue un­ estimated miilions with the open sores on their burned bodies; who is going to watch over the lingering tormented deaths that will foilow? where will the survivors be, outside the limits of civiliza­ tion, not worth immediate killing-and what can they hope for, what can they create again to the honor of mankind, knowing that the earth and the air and the water are incurably tainted, and that they have nothing to hand on to their children and their children's children except disease, a withering end to the last of the race? to preserve freedom? what freedom? for whom? -_ • , \ i / yen d ru�ll: cn ont �i ij: author's note worlgwt led! w�wl ddle in\�i�1 ea on �: 1& hdl�ij;fr: �e tnm�:: edlidru these articles are reprinted as originally published except: where fter�tl1r the grammar was so snarled as to be meaningless, i tidied it a bit; where imon�111· hasty repetition of words became too irritating, i found some variations; imt �n where extraneous material or the long-windedness of those who write ea 'ooi� too fast was a real interference, i cut. as any reader will see, this was the lightest, quickest first-aid job. 0/(i11 in the dachau article, i inserted ten sentences. i remember every no�i�, detail of dachau and probably will as long as i live. at the time of writow�* ing the article, shock must have affected me like amnesia; the article is lan�� mainly full of omissions. but there are two memories i cannot leave out , cmwiu': again; i could hardly believe that i had left them out in the first place. �ern� one was the madwoman screaming alone in the empty prison; the other was the walking skeleton, lately dug from the last death transport, who brought the news of the allied victory in europe. , �-_;________l . ---______ date due �:� 1a�'r;. j. : lr rl� -i i r gayloi\o .. "intieoihu .•. a. -_ �, war_porn . savage and"war porn is dire, , . . g fever-dream . t slmmennbrillian , a and truei that's as pureof a nove war as . 'its vision of the longin d"anything i've rea . -ben fountain, author of h !ftime walkbilly lynn s long a us $26.00/can $32.00fiction "war porn," n. videos, images, and narratives featuring graphic violence, often brought back from combat zones, viewed voyeuristically or for emotional gratification. such media are often presented and circulated without context, though they may be used as evidence of war crimes. ar porn is also, in roy scranton's searing debut novel, a metaphor for the experience of war in the age of the war on terror, the fracturing and fragmentation of perspective, time, and self that afflicts soldiers and civilians alike, and the global networks and face-to-face moments that suture our fragmented lives together. in war porn three lives fit inside one another like nesting dolls: a restless young woman at an end-of-summer barbecue in utah; an american soldier in occupied baghdad; and qasim al-zabadi, an iraqi math professor who faces the us invasion of his country with fear, denial, and perseverance. as war porn cuts from america to iraq and back again, as home and hell merge, we come to see america through the eyes of the occu­ pied, even as we see qasim become a prisoner of the occupation. through the looking glass of war porn, scranton reveals the fragile humanity that connects americans and iraqis, torturers and the tortured, victors and their victims. / , z ---co ... ·o,n ot\) 0 ) j '1 (0 roy scranion p � it:> \ .�'ll1� w� 1 "o,� indiana university south bend schurz library s isohoi copyright © 2016 by roy scranton "notes toward a supreme fiction" from the collected poems of wallace stevens by wallace stevens, copyright © 1954 by wallace stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by holly stevens. used by permission of alfred a. knopf, an imprint of the knopf doubleday publishing group, a division of penguin random house llc. all rights reserved. "the dragon" by abd al-wahhab al-bayyati, translated by farouk abdel wahab, najar rahman, and carolina hotchandani, from iraqi poetry today © 2003 by modern poetry in translation. reprinted with permission. all rights reserved. "panegyric for abu l-fadl muhammed ibn al-amid" and "panegyric to kafur on joining his court" by abu at-tayyib ahmad ibn al-husayn al-mutanabbi al-kindi, translated by a.]. arberry, from poems of al-mutanabbi © 1967 by cambridge university press. reprinted with the permission of cambridge university press. all rights reserved. all rights reserved. this book is a work of fiction. references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used ficticiously. all other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. published by soho press, inc. 853 broadway new york, ny 10003 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data scranton, roy, 1976war porn / roy scranton. isbn 978-1-61695-715-5 eisbn 978-1-61695-716-2 1. iraq war, 2003-20 ii-psychological aspects-fiction. 2. combat-psychological aspects-fiction. i. title ps3619.c743 w37 2016 813'.6-dc23 2016011288 interior design by janine agro, soho press, inc. printed in the united states of america 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 dedicated to the interpreters soldier, there is a war between the mind and sky, between thought and day and night. -wallace stevens babylon �ooa aami� dom� draw the 1 tanee �lel even torture tv rage the rage forth, bold hero & man of war, you have no flood documenting her lament, no legal recourse in re: administrative decisions on the matter of rockets red not singly but in global consensus: vanquished by my spear, the highest levels of the department beginning a world with no tomorrow such is the word of man. we lurch to a halt. "humvees!" abu says-electroshocks about a half mile off, down the end of a wide, empty bombs bursting dawn country victorious unless draw your wound. defend the gun. the will to prevail. god's blessings upon you-the impor­ tance arabs place on honor cherished and protected above all else, sometimes circumventing even the need for survival. even the need. even constructive criticism can threaten or 4 roy scranton damage an arab's honor; it will be taken as a personal insult. the arab must, above all, protect himself and his honor from critical onslaught. therefore, when an american is con­ fronted with criticism, you require a yes or no, such as fight evil nave i peace merciful, most compassionate, the government c��n agreed: made of values to kill god in remote deserts tru�ti full story tho�e allah does not desire soldiers committed to patrol the day of oftnf calling out, sniper police under no savior for you from allah f�e1d devised a way to get them masters in washington for the least llr, d of those who arrested them in the first place: suicide bombcom� ings killed hundreds, gwot authors of the latest detainee tomo to be released for fear that any and all the world sees america themselves aoe� the heart of the tv and when sizable kurdish, assyrian, palestine. the kurds farm in the north and these groups' inability to reconcile their differ­ ences prevent them from forming a unified front against the arab population forced blood yet he believes in the possibility of goodness and the triumph of ideas, believes in the father of democ­ racy and the leader of nations, like he believes in the natural pairing of compassion and discipline, love and •' iji0' ofgooqn�1 , acher of demar· � . in �e natur� d war porn , images become electroshocks which will, with the muj behind us and trigger happy have come today therefore pointless to question the politi­ cal shrapnel not only nails and patients believing that assailants, victims of led attacks can exsanguinate not trusting the next level could even those have therefore learned during the first few months of the war, it took not knowing who or what is past in what feels like her lament, no recourse, how things are done: luck­ ily, the red cross jumped right to some real-time global consensus-"that was not the sound of a world with no tomorrow." does there not pass over man a space of time when his life is a blank? strange hells (columbus day, 2004) lifting the flowers, letting them drop. asters and chry­ santhemums, zinnias and goldenrod-extravagant for a barbecue maybe, but fuck it. a little reckless beauty my mark on rockface. remember you're the one who got your shit together and you're the one who changes tires. you're the one who rode out here with him and now you're the one who's waiting. i was all-state soccer once, mvp. i can read stress lines in bones dug from mass graves. we know what comes next: we fly home, i teach and go back to school, i have his baby. that's the plan. but here i am killing time and going a little crazy. why are we still here? dahlia fussed with the flowers, their separate stems, the whole bouquet. that friend wendy was bringing­ aaron-had just come back, she'd said. what would it feel like, do something like that? break a world in two and walk away? would it change you? had it? she looked at matt out through the window, sitting there in his lawn chair drinking beer, his face in the fading sun so kind, his wounded eyes, his belly. he doesn't see her, lost in thought like he is so often. and just who is this man of mine? who's this guy desiccating in the scrub grass, who 10 roy scranton pi let, ask brought me to the desert like a mormon wife, who's come this far for what, who's doing what, and what is he, this man, what kind of man? the questions a cool black stone. she washed her hands, took the parsley from the colander to the counter and daubed it dry, then picked up her wiisthof santoku and cut. ortl kerosene's sweet tang, barbecue shimmering, watching the sun sinking slow behind the edge of the redrock. matt checked his watch, wondering how long till he could jus­ tifiably open another beer, then heard the screen creak and turned, watching her cross the yard: summer skirt brush­ ing her legs, the lean muscles in her arms tense with the weight of the food, the firm curve of her breasts under her blue tank top. here was beauty-a form compact and efficient, round at the edges yet taut, small and smooth and sleek. then he looked in her face, her pale lips frown­ ing slightly, the tiny wrinkling at the corners of her eyes, her clenched jaw. the scherzo came to an end. toom, toom, the march began and dahlia squinted at the boombox: "what the heck you listening to?" "chopin," matt said. "oh lord," she said, putting the tray of steaks, salmon, and tofu on the picnic table, stepping to him and laying her palm on his chest. "you alright?" "yeah, i'm fine," he said. "just thinking." "well, knock it off. we're supposed to be having a party." he shambled up and jabbed at the machine, cutting the doll lo�t fron ilttl ana aon ur on tne dot oil can rd lea war porn 11 piano into silence. "here," he said, handing her the wal­ let, "pick something." as she flipped through the discs, he asked: "who called earlier?" "wendy," she said. "what about jolie holland?" "what'd she want?" "she wanted to know if she could bring a friend. catalpa or the new one?" "we don't have enough steaks." "he can have my steak. i'll have the salmon we just bought." matt grunted. "so what is he, another one of wendy's lost boys?" "a friend of hers from college. aaron. he just got home from iraq." "no way. was he in the shit?" she put in a new cd. "don't be all ... she said he's a little sensitive." "maybe he's got pictures," matt said, snapping his fingers and pointing them, thumbs up, across his hips. 'that's what i'm talking about. seriously. and if you're done moping, help me bring out food." he swallowed the last of his beer and the music started up with a jingle and rachel yelled "hey" from the gate all at once, causing dahlia to spin and wave and bang her ear on the bottom of matt's bottle with a plonk and "yowch!" the bottle whacked back into matt's teeth, sending him stum­ bling and gripping his mouth. dahlia turned as rachel came through crying "oh" and a bright-eyed black lab in a red kerchief bounded into the yard, followed by mel in her leather jacket with tupperware in both hands and johnnie 1) roy scranton walker dangling from her fingers. "you kids okay?" she asked, bumping the gate closed with her hip, taking in the scene: dahlia holding the side of her head, matt covering his mouth, rachel sweeping toward them blinking, hair in her eyes, with xena cavorting along, whirling and barking, thinking it's all some game. then dahlia laughed and they all started talking at once, matt petting xena, mel cramming the whiskey in the ice chest and pulling out two fat tires for her and rache, who was already complimenting them on their music, she just loved this album, it had such a real sound, you know, like her voice was just uncanny, wasn't it great and did they know it was all just four-tracks? matt said, "gotta check the grill," and mel followed, tell­ ing him all about their fridge crapping out. she explained to him the difference between the compressor, the com­ pressor relay, and the overload, and how she hoped it would just turn out to be a bad circuit, but if they had an airflow problem around the condenser it'd mean tearing the whole goddamned thing apart and replacing it. matt nodded and rubbed his sore lip. condenser? compressor? he asked about their plans for halloween. "we're gonna spend the weekend with some friends down in flag," mel said, "one of them big pagan-hippie things for samhain. like a naked dancing bonfire kind of deal. rache loves that shit." "you sacrifice a goat?" "naw, man, vegetarian. sacrifice a huge block of tofu." "gotcha. seitan worship." ''audible groan. you guys got plans?" ou ii�e fa tu em �uid� �i noi ju� � a�yr' she ak\ft� 1ft the . h.tt coverln� i hlng, h�r 10 . a and darhln� war porn n "you know, what if we just stayed home and handed out candy this year? somebody has to, right? i feel too old to dress up, anyway. they say twenty-seven's the new thirty-five. " "don't stop believin', bro. i think you'd make a great bush. hey rache," mel shouted over to the picnic table, "wouldn't matt make a great bush?" ''a what?" rachel peered back, confused. "bush. wouldn't he make a great bush?" "you mean like a vagina?" "no, like the president and shit." "he's very photogenic." mel shot her a thumbs-up and turned back to matt: "s � ph . " ee. otogemc. "so bush, huh? not kerry? you switch teams?" ''aw, man, fuck that shit. don't even get me started. fucking democans and republicrats. this is what democ­ racy looks like, huh? at least kerry feels bad about his war crimes. me and rache, we've been talking, man, and if bush wins again, we're moving to canada. i don't want to be hanging around when they start lining people up for the camps." "i'm already worried the school board wants to fire me," rachel said, coming over to the grill as dahlia went inside. "what?" matt asked. "it's the fucking mormons," mel said. "fucking homophobic, misogynist bigots." "there's concern about my lifestyle, but they can't fire me just for that. so i have to be careful." "i'm saying sue their mormon asses for discrimination." (llfe! dahlia switched on lights room to room, switched them t�hln off as she left, checking to make sure everything was at least superficially neat, no condoms in the bathroom wastebasket, ��g, no dirty clothes on the floor. she stepped into the bedroom and went to the dresser, opened the small cherrywood box on �aigl top, took the weed and pipe, slipped them into the pocket of her skirt. she turned back and looked across the smooth waves of the comforter over their bed, gray in the gray light, gown thinking ofwaking tangled with him this morning, or yestermet, day morning, or any morning, the comfort of his body in the ae�r� sun, his pleasant familiar funk, all the nights that had become �a�el mornings, could she really let that go? 't sure, he's good, and soft, and comfortable. we're all comfy where things are, another summer gone, the wars drag on, tomorrow columbus day and nothing changes. he still rroje thinks that project's-what? the future? and so listless lately, lib like he's thinking ... wendy? hardly. he could but he won't. lau� anyone could do anything, but he's too ... or ifhe did, she'd �tart ... imagine: him reaching, drunk-he'd have to be drunkm her snide laugh, his wounded pride, and would i be hurt? by each him doing it? or by her turning him down? etan 14 roy scranton "i just have to be careful. i can't say or do anything in class that could be construed as promoting, you know? so i can't even really talk about mel. there've been some remarks and the administration's nervous." ''i'm telling you, man, fucking canada," mel said. "or at least somewheres away from all these goddamned fundamentalists. " a' met ���, e goddarnn�� e war� ar� o�, i anue5, he l� o jisde5�latel!i v d but he wool. , or j{he did, sne'j i'e co be drunk­ uld i be hurt? br war porn is you're terrible. don't be terrible. he's a good guy. not strong, but a good guy. except for the fact you're drifting in a spin from today to tomorrow, and then what? she'd have to turn the lights on soon. something would happen. they'd be here soon and it was important to have a nice party. she put the flowers on a tray to take outside. "i felt my ears burning," dahlia said. "y'all must've been talking about me." "naw, shit. we're talking about moving to canada," mel said. "that's funny. we've been talking about moving too," said dahlia. "we've been thinking about it," matt said. 'there's no real work for me here." dahlia set the tray down and arranged the flowers and tabbouleh on the pic­ nic table, then took the vegetables over to matt. " master's degree in anthropology and i'm pouring coffee at redrock bagels, sometimes a week running the river." "i'll get you more days on the river, babe," mel said. "thanks, sugar, but it's not that. i had plans." "we talked about maybe moving when i finish my . " project. "by then we'll be collecting social security," dahlia said, laughing. "don't you think you should start grilling, matt? start a little something, anyway." matt frowned, nodding, as the three women turned to each other and he turned to the grill, focusing on the veg­ etables and blocks of tofu. had it really been two years out 16 roy scranton here? and four years them together? it was funny to think of, when magical 2000 had loomed so large for so long. and they didn't get any jupiter space acid, no starbaby, but hal had grown so vast and powerful we thought a time­ stamp glitch could destroy civilization. he and craig had laid in stores of bottled water, cans of beans, stacks and rows of toilet paper, then themed their new year's bash beyond the millennium! with decorations put together from visions of futures past: fins, chrome, glass tubes, and colored plas­ tic. that night was the third time he and dahlia had sex. the end of the world came and went. and what if every decision you made was a mistake? what if computers had been a mistake and college had been a mistake and cyclopiscope.com had been a mistake and now utah, too? the path had seemed so provisional, yet at the same time somehow fixed-when his parents got divorced and his mom got him a piano, his dad a commo­ dore 64, what would you expect but that he'd sink into his surrogate parental devices? he wasn't a recluse. you couldn't say he was a recluse. he just spent a lot of time on his own, developing an app whose main purpose was, jargon aside, to predict the apocalypse. yeah, totally fucking rational. he lashed more marinade on the tofu. had he started another beer? started and finished. the sun was down now for real. the steaks, juicy red, sat waiting. somebody watching: a lean man at the gate with black hair cut close, face taut and flat, lips compressed in a line like a trick of the fading light. the man stared with eyes so fierce, matt's heart hung dry a beat and he stepped back, fumbling his brush and dropping it. say something. t �cann �rad 1 mer au�k, nottc, ant­ now ma man, with i ru�, �new � a ffi��1 rovilion�i are witn dl�(� � ed in alinl wed with eyes!� e stepped back) eching. war porn 17 then xena barked and mel shouted "wendy!" matt scanned the ground, found his brush in the grass, bent to grab it, and when he rose again dahlia was moving across the yard to the gate where wendy stood with her man in the dusk, now smiling, composed of wholly other stuff. matt noticed his black t-shirt printed in red-enemy combat­ ant-and the way he held himself apart, like he wasn't sure how he'd be greeted. matt observed dahlia smiling, skirt swinging, greeting the man, wendy turning back and forth between them, wendy with her dirty-blonde hair cut short in a feathery mop and high, tanned cheeks and fine-boned wrists and shoulders. she wore matt's favorite dark green t-shirt that said: cubic* cube i think that square is top of cool shape in the world dahlia shook the man's hand and pointed over to matt, who grinned stupidly and waved his grass-covered brush, remembering this must be aaron, right, standing staring. the one who just came home. "how you two want your steaks?" he forced himself to shout. "medium rare," wendy said. "still mooing," the man said. "thanks." "coming right up!" matt said, his voice going high and brittle, hoping a fat smile would numb his unease. he cracked another beer and drank deep. he pulled the 11 roy scranton vegetables and tofu off the heat and wrapped them in foil, then laid on the salmon and wendy's steak. the man walked up and offered matt his hand. his grip i b "h "h id "i' a " was gent e ut strong. ey, e sal. m aron. "matt. nice shirt." "thanks. wendy got it for me on the internet." "she' d hirts."e s goo at t-s irts, "yeah. she thought it'd be funny. she said you work with computers." "yeah, i code. i'm sort of . . . well, what i do now is part-time tech support for the county, but really i'm work­ ing on a freelance project, data-processing. sort of global forecasting. " "like stock markets and stuff?" matt chuckled, hating the self-deprecating note he struck. "well, sort of. what i'm trying to do is use turbulence in complex systems to predict unforeseen events," he said, waving the barbecue tongs. "the problem with 'unknown unknowns' is that you don't know what you're looking for. take 9/11 for instance, or the fall of the soviet union. the patterns were there but we weren't looking for them, and there was no way to know in advance which data points were the important ones. what we needed was a tool for monitoring data systemically, for helping us watch events not as points or lines but as flows and breaks. the program i'm developing uses chaos theory to visualize predictive data as a field. then we can use those visualizations to shift our frame of reference so that something that would have been an outlier becomes something we're looking for: from an unknown unknown into a known unknown. it's about lerrin, i�otc ais st tnem i nere, � "go oack il matt's rae tea, 0 �lowe( i li�nt 0 "ru ��aq i matt ��se gown tnroal �eck tney er�ly, tney 2 life medi ,0, the pro�r� '. ,�jze preqi�'! �lutions to )ni� chac would na�t "i()king for: from own. its about war porn 19 letting chaos show its underlying order. i mean ... whoa, i gotta flip this shit." he turned over the salmon and wen­ dy's steak, then reached for the last two steaks and threw them on. "hey d," he shouted. "just a few more minutes here. you wanna get the stuff?" "got it," she said, handing the weed to rachel and going back inside. aaron nodded after her, his look lingering for matt's taste a second longer than was really necessary. rachel lit the pipe and passed it. they smoked. chat­ ted. dahlia came back out with a pitcher and glasses. time slowed. when did the porch light come on? who turned the light on? "fuck," matt said, turning back to the grill and sliding the salmon on a plate, forking the steaks and serving them up, while dahlia portioned out tofu for rachel and mel and divvied up veggies and spooned out the vegan potato salad mel had brought. everyone moved to the picnic table. matt lit the tiki torches and citronella candles and dahlia passed the tabbouleh. they tore into their food, washing it down with beer, ripping into animal and vegetable flesh, throats bulging. their steak knives flashed in the light, flecked with fat and blood. they discussed: the virtues of cats v. dogs, as pets and gen­ erally' how best to marinate tofu, the election, how sick they all were of the election, the curious nature of modern life where it feels like part of you is connected via mass media to this hyperlife that doesn't objectively exist but 20 roy scranton functions entirely as "news," but what's news if not events of p12 yet the news isn't the event and you don't really experience ri�lng the event but only the "news" of it, "yeah like 9/11," and �iick� how sometimes it feels strange when there isn't some disaster dooalt happening, like there's a gap in the matrix, and as wendy leatner parsed this phrase they talked about the matrix and then a doni other films commenting on contemporary life post-91 11 , doom and also music they'd been listening to like the new wilco, "�o, then rachel told a story about one of her second-grade girls "le! who'd memorized all the lyrics to "toxic" and had made up i�r a dance to go along. weira, they compared tattoos: wendy had a jaguar on her gran� ankle-this was her aztec horoscope, she said-and a fleurw�on de-lis on her lower back; mel, a flaming skull with born rouh to lose on her left shoulder, a barbed tribal band around off·bl each bicep, and a complex floral design going down from "!t'di her hip into the joint between her thigh and pelvis that she aeeu,j only showed the very top of, tugging at her jean shorts; and "ni aaron a crude circled a on his right shoulder, which he ''tn laughed off as his first tatt from back in ye olde punk days, an inverted cross on the inside of his left forearm, and then, pulling up his enemy combatant t-shirt, sweeping across crili a his muscled back a pair of intricate spiked wings, crested in ne'!w! gothic script reading long is the way and hard. neither tnin�� matt nor rachel had tattoos. dahlia had a dahlia, on her wnere hip, which she didn't show anyone. �rant �unk­ il, ana how it had gotten dark. how they made a circle with lawn w�re chairs, smoked another bowl, and drank some whiskey out "wi ide with law� me whiskey out war porn j1 of plastic cups, the coals dying behind them, the moon rising into the stars. their bodies hummed, satiated, lips slick with grease. dahlia got a little cold and went in for a hoodie. rachel got cold too, and mel wrapped her in her leather jacket. aaron lit an american spirit. xena chewed a bone. balinese gamelan banged and gonged from the boom box. "so, i have a story," said wendy. "let's hear it," said mel. ''alright. aaron already heard this one, but it's really weird, so i'll tell it again. thursday night i was driving to grand junction. i was going to a poetry reading there. it was one of those days where nothing seems to quite catch, you know, like mercury's in retrograde, like the universe is off-kilter." wendy paused, casting her gaze into the distance. "it's like i wrote once, 'the fissure between the thought and deed, against the universal, the palsy in the hand of god. '" "nice," said matt. "the reading was this guy david t. greene, who won the yale younger poets prize last year with his book embla­ zoned arcadia. he's at once very classically concerned with craft and meter, but also super experimental, right, and he's working with hypertext and interactive poetics, doing things with new media artists, and has a blog. so that's where i heard about the reading, the blog: he'd gotten a grant to drive across the country and write a sort of cyber­ punk-whitman long-poem meditation on america, blog it, and along the way he organized a series of readings. so he was reading at the black cat in grand junction, and ... " "why didn't he read here?" rachel asked. roy scranton "well that's interesting. i asked him the same question myself. i told him about eklectika and back of beyond and that there's actually quite a dynamic poetry scene here, but he said he had to leave early to make it to salt lake city in time for his reading there on friday and then it was up to washington and yadda yadda yadda. he seemed really edgy-his aura was totally broken up. he'd planned to have the readings be auxiliary to the experience of writing the trip, but instead he'd just been driving like crazy, barreling through to get from one reading to the next, and he hadn't even really had time to write the poem ... but first, before all that, i was driving across the desert and do you remem­ ber the lightning storm thursday?" "sure," dahlia said. "the sky was a 'charcoal smear livid with electric fire.' i watched it as i drove ... i was halfway watching the storm in the distance, the way the light changed against the mesas, and halfway watching the road. you know how you do, espe­ cially when the highway's empty. i had an old mix tape aaron made me years ago-i found it the other day and thought, wow, right before i get to see him in i don't know how long, here's this mix tape. and it was playing 'teclo, , right, the pj harvey song, and i was very much in the moment, the speed and the storm and the rain flicking on the windshield and pj harvey sort of moaning right, 'let me ride on his grace,' and i flick on the wipers and then there's a coyote in the road and bam!i feel the car hit him." "oh my god," rachel said. "i slam on the brakes. but it had just started raining, right, and you know how all the oil on the road floats to thesu ana i i thinki ao tn� hana� i ana thi in ilie i thinhln ju�t �at wron� wn�c� ltd ta�e," "ye� faain� mink­ anal r ana it)� unle�n tn�) an notnini meme i thou� !till no other s think) , unger � the ca� w�ki orsme i j. was ri4��1 \ • re0'mu(�id i e r�n fli(hl�1 oaning rignt, ii� \\1pers and ili�� 1 " e car hit nim,' '[diced [ainin� p road floats w war porn the surface after a dry spell, and the car skids, slips sideways: and i panic. my foot's jammed on the brake and all i can think is 'they say steer into the skid but who are they? what do they know?' my mind is just whirling, right, but my hands do it, steering into the skid and i pump the brakes and the car slows and i pull over and stop. i'm like, shaking. in the rearview i'm so white i'm like dead and i remember thinking maybe i am, and then i felt like throwing up but just sat there, waiting, on the shoulder by the median-the wrong shoulder, you know?-and this captain beefheart song comes on ... " '''clear spot, '" aaron said. "i put 'clear spot' on that " tape. "yeah. 'clear spot.' i was like, wow. and the squealing fading in my ears and the shaking calming down and i think-what about the coyote? so i get out and walk back and i remember the sun going down, right, and the storm, and it's sprinkling rain like any second now the sky's gonna unleash the deluge and i walk back to where i started brak­ ing, and then i go back a little further and look and there's nothing. no coyote, no blood, nothing, and i climb over the median and check out the other side because you know, i thought, maybe the force of the car threw him clear but still nothing. so i run across the highway and check the other shoulder and there's still nothing, so that's when i think, oh my god: he's under the car. he must be jammed under the frame somehow. maybe still alive. so i go back to the car, walking slow, trying to get hold of myself, and as i walk i watch the car and the road, looking for signs, drops or smears of blood, fur, anything. i get to the car and i so roy scranton mang}j me, i'n watcnin neaali�' warm ne jmt, ltart cry in�1 �till mink to 1 roll ao itm�� tne nea in tne w�eur in� out ilieme "you "% iitna! mucn, ij decau�e li��mov ner aelil ni� �aze nimfeel dantia ( ima�inl' aaron's �everal inaicat: much do not want to look underneath ... but i work up my courage and squat by the tire, sort of so i can hide behind it if he jumps out at me, and i look underneath and there's nothing. i can't believe it. i cannot believe it. fender, grill­ no sign at all i hit anything, no contact with anything, no remnants of flesh or blood, only the idea." she paused, sipped her beer. "wow," matt said. "so what happened to the coyote?" rachel asked. wendy held her hands open, palms up. "then what?" asked mel. "i threw up and felt a little better, then i got back on the road. i was a few minutes late to the reading, so i sat in the back-i mean, there were only like five people there-and it was a great reading but my mind was still on the coyote, on the absence of the coyote, and afterward, i went up to thank david and say hi, and we got to talking and then, later that night, when i got home ... " "you're leaving out the middle part," aaron said. "oh, we had a drink, you know, and talked-" "talked," aaron said. "anyway," she continued, "the important part is when i got home. it was a weird night, weird energy in the air, and there's that witchy feeling you get sometimes, that feeling like there's a door open somewhere, right, like 'fragrant por­ tals, dimly starred.' so i got home and drove up the lonely road to the driveway and came to my trailer and when i make the last turn, my headlights sweep across the mesa and i stop-because standing right there in the middle of my headlights, right in front of my trailer door, is a huge, \ workupmr an hlut behin� �th 1t\u ther�\ i· . hnuer) �rlll.. �1 an�hinp� war porn mangy coyote, his enormous yellow eyes staring right at me. i'm so scared i almost pee myself, so i just sit there watching him and he stands there watching me. i leave the headlights on, because i'm not going to get out till he leaves and i'm not going to turn the lights off so i can't see him, and he just stands there, and then-and this almost made me start crying-he sits back on his haunches and starts pant­ ing, still just staring. finally i sort of come out of it and think to honk the horn, but it does nothing. he ignores it. i roll down the window and shout and honk but none of it makes any difference, he just sits there, staring. i turn off the headlights. in the dark i can still see him there. i crawl in the backseat, check the locks, and go to sleep. when i wake up, he's gone. no prints in the dirt-nothing. noth­ ing but a faint smell, like an old dog, 'the scents of ghosts, the memory oflithic days.'" "you think it was a ghost?" rachel asked. "who knows?" "that's really incredible," matt said, wondering how much, if any, of the story was true and not really caring, because her telling had given him license to watch her lips move gleaming in the torchlight, her eyelashes flutter, her delicate fingers trace gestures in the air. wandering his gaze over the curves and hollows of her body made him feel better about the energy he felt flowing between dahlia and aaron that he kept telling himself he was just imagining. people look at people, he thought, and that aaron's knee had been resting against dahlia's for the last several minutes was no sign of anything, no red flag, no indication of anything other than his own weed-stoked j6 roy scranton paranoia. it's all in your head, he thought, then again: say something. say what? dahlia felt him next to her, the pressure of his knee, the coiled power his body held, like he was about to jump on something. they're fucking, right? they had to be, wendy and her war hero. didn't seem to matter much to matt, who looked at wendy same as always: like he was gonna throw up on her shoes. "shit, babe, that's a crazy story," mel said. "but what about this other wild animal you brought home? what's with mr. fox here?" she pointed her beer at aaron: "tell us something about yourself, mr. fox. what's your deal?" his energy shifted, tensing. he smiled uneasily. "not much to tell. i'm from arizona, grew up near tucson. i met wendy in college. i'm just sort of traveling around right now." "vision quest?" mel asked. "yeah, sure. taking some time off. i was staying with some friends in arizona, now i'm visiting wendy, then i'm going to colorado to stay with another friend, then maybe montana or washington. i'll probably head back to tucson in december, get back in school." "what do you study?" rachel asked. "i was doing history. now maybe poli sci. maybe some­ thing pre-law. not really sure." "didn't you just get out of the army?" matt asked. aaron's smile hardened. "still in, technically. but on my ah"way out, ye . "wb aon'tm "you arm,"m now to t "no r girl," "awhl "nasq r��ular a "oh," "y�ah, mell� aaron mel �l w� in '� mik�-� "thatl !r�ci�cy janow�hl �)�th guara, � one.zerl ii�to1" "like "was "matt "yeah "wo thank y war porn j7 "what did you do there?" matt asked. "i mean, if you don't mind my asking." "you don't have to ... " dahlia said, touching aaron's arm. "matt spends all his time on the computer and forgets how to talk to people sometimes." "no problem," aaron said. "i'm what you call a nasty girl." "a what?" "nasty girl. it's slang for national guard. i wasn't in the regular army." "oh," matt said. "like the reserves?" "yeah, like that." mel leaned in. "so what was your mos?" aaron sized her up. "thirty-one bravo. yours?" mel shook her head. "no, man, i wasn't ... my dad was in 'nam, that's how i know mos. he was a fifteen mike-a huey mechanic in the screaming eagles." "that's cool," aaron said. "my military occupational specialty was thirty-one bravo. corporal aaron sto­ janowski, 3rd platoon, 858th military police company, 850th military police battalion, arizona army national guard. military occupational specialty thirty-one bravo one-zero. they called me sto." "sto?" rachel asked. "like a nickname. sto." "was that when you were in iraq?" matt asked. "matt," dahlia said. "yeah," aaron said. "wow," matt said. "that must have been intense. well, thank you for your service." ji roy scranton "s " a id "n bl " ure, aron sal. 0 pro em. "was it dangerous?" matt asked. "matt, please," said dahlia. "what? he doesn't have to answer." aaron lit a new cigarette from the butt of his old one. "you mean besides people shooting at me and shit explod­ ing all the time?" "i just, you know, i mean, all we know is what they show us on tv, right? i mean, we don't even know. i can't even imagine. we're totally ignorant of this situation, and i'm just wondering, is it really like how they say? is it bad? is it getting worse? is it getting better?" "i don't know what to tell you, chief. it's bad enough." "but they can vote, right? they have democracy. that's better, isn't it?" "better than what?" "i don't know. better than saddam? it just seems like such a waste if nothing good comes out of it." "i don't know, man," aaron said. "i was just a dumb grunt, you know. i don't know what to tell you." "but, i mean, it's such a huge question now with the election and america's role in the world post-9f11, and we have this obligation, right, to try to make things bet­ ter, but maybe it's really all about oil and ... i mean, i don't even know what to think. should we stay? should we pull out? they say if we pull out, iraq collapses into civil war. but it seems like that's happening anyway. what do we do?" "listen, uh, matt? matt, right? that's your name? well, matt, it doesn't really fucking matter what we do." "but "thir lems in narren, matter, 1 "thatl "exactly, dean ur wnat1 i rt dilili� dewna� "look, reorle� tnin�, tn� �ecause � aaisaster aoesn'tm �urswno anametl oraonati �owwn "tnat'! "yeah, it's like, i "�ow mattm1" "beca "but "nat! i "oka] i mf4�1: , t,1 re )[a)'! ���w� q ojjap�e� i�w . ning an�l!, war porn j9 "but what about ... " "things matter," rachel said. "there are serious prob­ lems in the world, but people do things to make change happen. we can hold governments accountable. voices matter. the election matters." "that's exactly what i'm talking about," matt said. "exactly. should we stay? do we have a moral imperative to clean up our mess, bring democracy to the middle east, or what? i mean, we can't just leave, can we?" dahlia looked at matt, her lips compressed. how many beers had he had? "look," aaron said, "matt, rachel, you seem like nice people and this is a great barbecue. i'm gonna say this one thing, then ... maybe let's talk about something else, okay? because iraq's a fucking disaster. the whole thing. staying's a disaster. leaving's a disaster. it's a fucking shithole. and it doesn't matter what the fuck we think about it, because the guys who run shit don't give a rat's ass what people like you and me think. or do. or say. unless we're blowing shit up or donating money, they could give a flying fuck. so i don't know what to tell you." "that's a pretty negative world view," rachel said. "yeah, well, i'm all traumatized and shit. you know what it's like. you saw the movie." "so why'd you go, then, man," mel asked, "if none of it matters?" "because they told me to." "but why'd you join the army?" "national guard. i was national guard." "okay, man. why'd you join the national guard?" so roy scranton "tbi: "mar t�epar reople­ ter, like fucked t\ "mel, "yew, "h " er, etem41sj ni�·name ni�nt an "ruck r��, do� tnen rou ju!twron� "arero lilt'! li� ju!toeca "mei, "no, r� german man �eo� iliou�ht i fuc�n� j obr, it's "c�l matt i a little b' mels "college money, patriotism. service, challenge, honor. nine-eleven. same things as anybody else." "but now you think it's all bullshit," mel said. "i think we all gotta make hard choices," he said, "and how you feel about shit doesn't really matter. you gotta do what you gotta do." "and all you had to do was kill people." aaron laughed. "what?" rachel put her hand on mel's thigh and squeezed. mel brushed it off. "no, he made a choice. he wasn't drafted. all he had to do was kill people." "yeah, sure," aaron said. "not a bad deal, either. easier than working for it." "i just don't understand how you could do that, man." "m i "r h i id "h " e , ac e sal. eye "you don't understand how i could do what?" aaron asked. "how you could kill people for money." "okay, you got me. i joined the army so i could fucking kill people. big secret: it's a blast." "but doesn't it bother you at all?" mel asked. "aren't you ashamed?" "ashamed of what?" "i mean, you know the war's fucking bullshit, but you go do it anyway. you know it's illegal, but you do it anyway. people die and you don't even fucking care. you could've not gone. you could've been a conscientious objector. you could've gone to canada." "i signed a contract. we had a job to do." "that's all you got? you had a contract? a job to do?" war porn "this is real nice, wendy," aaron said. "i'm glad i came." "man," mel said, "i just can't understand how you can take part in an illegal war that kills thousands of innocent people-for college money--and then act like it doesn't mat­ ter. like you didn't choose. that's what seems completely fucked to me." "mel, honey," rachel said. "lay of£" "yeah, mel," said dahlia, "let it go." "hey," wendy shouted, "anyone else here see that movie eternal sunshine ofthe spotless mind? with that actor, whats­ his-name, ace ventura? i watched it on dvd the other night and it was so good." "fuck that," mel said. "this shit's fucked up. this shit's real. don't you see that? killing people for money? and then you wear that fucking t-shirt like it's all a joke. that's just wrong. i mean, if that's not evil, i don't what is." "are you fucking serious?" "it's like the nazis," mel said. "like some people do it just because other people tell them to." "mel, that's not fair," said dahlia. "no, really, man," mel said. "think about it. loads of german soldiers were just doing their jobs. loads of ger­ man people were just doing what they were told. they all thought it made sense, they all thought what they did was fucking justified, but it wasn't. they don't get to say it's okay. it's like that eichmann book, man. evil is evil." "call me a nazi one more time," aaron said. matt put his hands out: "whoa, now-let's all chill out a little bit." mel stared hard at aaron: "did you kill anybody?" :u roy scranton his eyes narrowed. "well did you?" his eyes closed slow, then he smiled and opened them. "no. i didn't. not that it's any of your goddamn business, but no, i didn't kill anybody. it wasn't my job." "but it was someone's," mel said. "i just held the camera." "hey, y'all," dahlia said, getting up, "how 'bout some dessert? mel, rachel, you wanna help me with the pie?" "bullshit," mel said. "i can't fucking believe i'm fuck­ ing sitting here with a fucking american nazi i don't know what, and everybody's like, 'play nice, mel. layoff, mel.' like it doesn't fucking matter. fucking sheeple. this is why. this is why." aaron stood up. ''i'm done here. let's go, wendy." mel stood to face him. "i know you. i know what you are. i can see it." aaron's voice went cold. "what the fuck do you want from me?" "admit what you did was evil." "it's called reality. you need to grow the fuck up, bitch." "bitch? you fucking nazi asshole!" she screamed, jabbing her finger in his chest. "listen up," he shouted, grabbing her wrist, "this shit"­ then xena-mel yanking her hand away and whacking aaron's arm, aaron shouting in mel's face and matt leaning up going whoa and xena-xena barked, leaping snapping at aaron who turned smooth and kicked the dog hard in the side, sending the animal rolling yelping and mel surged, hitting aaron in the neck and he caught her forearms in his fists and wendy, off cold, "motn nazifud "watd "&s)'l 'tmga "�ome oackana dililia a du�u n� wnole tim !tooa be "her, matt�ke "fucbn r�areo, "p "mel, �l (�air, "e i "i tuink wenoy !or� ado outlaian "mel,p "get t "e )lasy, "who rache e2ping snarrll1 rh� dog barn i� and mel sur�e�1 � orearms in nil war porn n fists and she kicked but then dahlia was between them and wendy and rachel too, pulling mel back, aaron walking off cold, mel held by rachel, still raging, still flailing. "motherfucker!" she screamed. "fucking motherfucker nazi fuck!" "watch yourself," aaron hissed. "easy now," rachel said. "easy." "i'm gonna fucking kill you, motherfucker!" "somebody shut that bitch up," aaron said, stalking back and forth along the fence line. dahlia went to xena, the kicked dog hiding behind a bush near the back door, keeping an eye on aaron the whole time. rachel and wendy whispered to mel. matt stood between them, near the barbecue again, feeling con­ fused, until wendy pointed at aaron. "hey, uh, aaron, you wanna go out front for a minute?" matt asked. "fucking asshole!" mel shouted after them as they disap­ peared. "fucking fascist puke!" "mel, sit down," rachel said, gently pushing mel into a chair. "calm down. we need to calm down." "i think xena's okay," said dahlia. wendy took a step toward the gate, came back. "i'm so sorry about that. i didn't know-he seemed a little tense but i didn't know ... that was completely insane." "mel, please, you need to calm down." "get the fuck off me!" mel shouted, swinging at rachel. "easy," rachel said, holding up her hands. "whose fucking side are you on?" rachel took mel's chin in her hand and pulled her face roy scranton up: "melanie. you will calm down right now. you need to breathe. breathe. you are not going to behave like this. you're a grown woman. now breathe." mel took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. rachel knelt and held her. wendy went over, then back to xena, then stood alone staring up into the night sky. after a few minutes, mel straightened up and wiped her bleary eyes. ''i'm alright," she said. ''i'm okay. i just ... i don't know what the fuck happened. with all the whiskey, i guess, i went a little sideways." "you went, like, diagonal," rachel said. "that was crazy, mel," said dahlia. "you just called wen­ dy's boyfriend a nazi." "he's not my boyfriend." "well, he's not a nazi either," dahlia said. "he's a soldier who just got back from a war zone. he's a person." "i kn i' " ow, man. m sorry. "honey, i love your political passion," said rachel, "but goodness gracious. you might as well have just called him a baby killer. we don't do that anymore. you know how messed up your dad is." "i' kn i . " m ow . .. just ... dahlia stood between the flickering tiki torches in the dark, feeling the adrenaline course through her arms and legs, thinking who decides things? who makes choices? you go do a thing, you commit to things, then some­ thing happens. sometimes you just do things. sometimes things just happen. ''i'm going inside for a minute," she said to no one in particular, then slid away into the house, through the kitchen, down the hall and into the bathroom where tt blankets, tne toilet mirror, 51 nara, try!l ni� �reen � tnewar hi !necamel wo!noulo wbya � m�in�, youna� �ut not nmtobe bent. pu� wnatwo doe�m lamhol rull rot to�etner, jou do, t ines. sometim� or a �mjnute," !�[ �r info the hou!(, i [he bathroom war porn where the lightless gray and black wrapped around her like blankets. she locked the door behind her, felt her way to the toilet, and sat. she didn't want to see his eyes in the mirror. she didn't want to feel him. she rubbed her arms hard, trying to scour away the electricity, the gold flecks in his green irises, the way he sat too close, his chipped incisor, the way his knee bumped hers. his body pressing on her as she came between him and mel, his arms, his muscled chest and shoulders. his smell that seemed to catch in her throat. why'd wendy even bring him? some jerk. he could do anything. you have to stop. but not if it happens to someone else. who says i always have to be the same when i'm always different? always dif­ ferent. pullyourselftogether. pull together what? who? and what would it feel like? does matt know? is he gonna take you home? i am home. you gotta get out. pull yourself together. you're the one who got her shit together. you make choices. you're the one who does what you do, this life, right now. ride it. js babylon omveenm wntlnued i u!�ofmesl twoc�hs mer when r�act dr l� amrln� t� tne "res" j m�an no, in the ami tne very i� incluae �� of goa, 0 (lose, peo we turn � olue aeeo the ea�e this �oin �i�ned . art of an between men and lions wolves and lambs continued strong techniques, life's blood tv detainees use of stress is essential two cshs with four sites out and operation iron ham­ mer when these fail an arab's honor can cause him to react by interpreting the facts to suit himself or flatly denying them. therefore a westerner should remember the "yes" you hear does not always mean yes and might mean no. that he answer "yes" whether it be true or not. in the american world, a flat "no" signals you want to end the very indirect approach toward corrective remarks and include praise of any good points. similar to this by grace of god, our friend the sheikh talat, those rounds were close. people demand we stay for lunch, continue past as we turn along a street, pointless to question the political blue decorating the edge of babylon this point aligned with the global lowest art of an edge, heart of the city, the streets 40 roy scranton blood tv politen heart of the city ing" or �so me therefore about a minute use auditory stimuli hoods six ae�ing operating tables, some between us till mild physical contact for an j and mobile hospitals operation planet x department matter of defense by the grace of god global consensus my spear cessha, rumsfeld fully functional in 24 to 48 hours his story from when � the bombs over operation longstreet and goes to work ilvesin for the us as a translator. as the insurgency mounts, he's neartof threatened by operation ripper sweep to give them accordlj intel and/or quit the americans. even as revelations have been made and behavior exposed, oil policy throughout all bowle( running a mathematician who doesn't know where action klngdoj might be warranted and 1 could we see distinctions that f�1 dad are not distinctions: tnefreq, hides faith somewhere in asia, perhaps mghanistan, among naving the symbols calling forth stages of military passage for ofinted example opportunities lost indeed he's brought specifically leasned "graduated levels" and it stands sheikh danger wmerej "humvees" �atlents tnose t will be his lie and if cia case officers local hard site initiation of the abuse once the importance of a method used at gtmo you (with) surely allah facilitates oper­ ation vigilant resolve majority of iraqis are delta until the government regardless, for example, appearances and hard �ite n -e of a meili� a jfimes oru: j j.[e delta un� ppearances an� war porn 41 politeness automatically require an answer of "still check­ ing" or something similar means "no," an indirect response also means "i am still your friend, i tried" therefore when dealing with operation bulldog mammoth polite way for an arab to say no is to say ''i'll see what i can do" no matter how impossible after the arab concerning his suc­ cess have fled to iran from baghdad works as a journalist. when the uprising begins in earnest operation warrior lives in the flood plain heart of the tv according to military intelligence knowledge or implicitly of what will be yours my spear the kingdom this day i could hear the water i threw up fall back on the frequency of interrogations and the middleman's hands: having failed punishment of allah to come victorious out of interlocking to circumvent public rage, buildings and the leashed hotel, pyramids naked, naked blood, heading off some report, the collective flattened and critically wounded patients sealed off from the responsibility made to spare those targets on the edge, the heart (0 your leader will control your fire (operation iraqi freedom, 2003) tnemaj followej defore i concrete bagh we� wauna 1 �lt�, bla we�top derea a rlfle� ai nor wes us, wa i am prepared to give my life in their defense i am an american, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life the major in the lead truck took a wrong turn and we all followed. we drove two miles down the wrong highway before looping back to the intersection with the chipped concrete barrier spray-painted msr cleveland to baghdad. we got lost again just the other side of the border and wound up driving down a dirt road behind a line of tank pits. blackened hulks jutted up from the sand. later we saw our first iraqis, a farm family thin as whip­ pets, standing outside their hut watching us go by. we stopped and dismounted. all along the line, men clam­ bered down and stood or knelt on the road or shoulder, rifles aimed at the empty desert. no radio traffic. we stood in the sun while the wind whipped sand at us. waves of silica slid and ebbed across the blacktop like 46 roy scranton the ghosts of snakes. engines hummed. we watched the capta horizon. nonk. aj the radio crackled and beeped twice. we looked to mean it. the truck in front and to the one behind. i wiped dust off i imal my glasses. i drank water, then dug for an mre. chicken numvee'l cavatelli. beef teriyaki. ��uirtin� a few minutes later, the call came to roll out. "you � cap tal ��ecialisl we crossed a bridge near a village, and on the far side, iraqi "rogel kids ran at us waving knives. when "watch those kids, wilson," captain yarrow said. �uicker,l "roger, sir," i said. on thug sergeant chandler in the back leveled his rifle out the from the window. ofco� "you buy!" they yelled. "ameriki! you buy! baynet!" no, l' "stay back!" woulan't men rose up behind the kids, grinning under mustaches of col and dragging coolers. "you buy, ameriki," they sang out. tnedoay "you buy pipsi." they held up cans of red, white, and blue, wet with condensation, dripping ice. i could taste the sand in my throat. the radio barked: "all elements, deep steel three. be advised of unknown contacts both sides. do not stop, do not say again do not buy anything. say again, " do not stop. "can i shoot one, sir?" sergeant chandler asked. "balalalalalalala!" lieutenant krauss shouted. the kids laughed and pointed. one of them jumped and danced, his knife shining in the air. war porn 47 captain yarrow turned to me: "if they get in front of us, honk. and if they don't get out of the way, run him over. i mean it. run him over." i imagined the iraqi boy's body dragged beneath the humvee's tires, three tons of steel rolling over his chest, squirting intestines onto the road. "you buy! ameriki! baynet! pipsi!" captain yarrow double-checked his pistol. "roger, specialist?" "r . " oger, sir. when it happened, i thought, i'd speed up to make it quicker. i wouldn't look in the rearview at the stain of blood on the road. i'd keep my eyes straight ahead and not even from the corner would i look at the boy i'd killed. of course i'd look. no. i'd watch the taillights of the truck in front. i wouldn't look. of course i'd look. i'd speed up-but would i even feel the body under the humvee's tons? nemmet wldiers until au �ong av ltorped, face the target, place the weapon to your shoulder, wordj move the selector lever from safe to semi wedj after eat! me line s of�ys s night fell. against the bruised and blackening sky, flames (nanging shot up from distant towers. armored ruins lined the road tneirfuel in squads, charred corpses scattered in among the blasted onegl metal. a dead iraqi grinned where fire had burned away we couk his face, leaving yellowed teeth in a black ring, eye sockets a �oy, wi smears of shadowed flesh. rock th the convoy slowed. anaorow coils of wire bloomed along the highway. roucaul, !weal·so, "ruck a sentry directed us in, her pale cheeks washed in humvee �heha light and smudged with dirt and soot. refinery fires shone �omeo gold and red in her empty eyes. she swung her arm again in unhefil front, again, directing traffic. they to our left burned a great fire into which three joes gown, ((� shoveled trash. beyond that some kind of rusting, latread! i ticed, industrial turret, erratically lit, rose in the dark. to tnerest, our right loomed the shadows of the big green, lines of laguerre / 'g green, line� f war porn .9 hemmets and trucks, machines rumbling low. guided by soldiers with chemlights, red lines floating in the black until our lights hit them and they flinched, we circled along avenues of wire, down mazes of green steel. we stopped. word passed: stand by. wtl�� we dumped our gear and dug out mres. after eating i slung my rifle, lit a smoke, and walked down the line searching for someone to talk to. i found a bunch of guys standing watching three national guard females changing their brown t-shirts. they'd climbed on top of their fuel truck for privacy but still we could see. one girl was black or hispanic, so timid she sat and all we could see was her forehead. another was skinny like a boy, with buzz-cut hair, no tits, and a face like cratered rock. the third, she was our favorite. she had a nice face and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail-even in deus you could tell she was a woman. when she pulled off her sweat-soaked brown t-shirt, we cheered. "fuck you assholes," she shouted. she had a gut, love handles, big tits. we adored her. someone shouted "hey take off your bra" and she gave us the finger. they pulled on their tops and the brown girl yelled down, "show's over, shitheads." reading took this as an invitation to go backstage, but the rest of us scattered. we walked down the line, me, vil­ laguerrero, healds, and bullwinkle. so roy scranton "i bend that white girl over the hood this humvee and fucking bam, right in the fucking ass." "i want the chicana." "she black." "no she ain't. she a hundred percent puerto rican. i can tell, i got spicvision." "wouldn't that be spicdar?" "beanervision, " "beaners are from mexico, motherfucker. i'm puerto rican." "beandar." "you don't eat beans in puerto rico?" "they fucking eat bananas." "an ld ' h " yway you cou n t even see ere "bananas and mangoes and shit." "i could see her face and that's all i need, cuz that's what's i'm gonna have wrapped around my cock. oh yeah, baby, oh you like it? fuckin' eat it, bitch." "shit, i'll take two and make a nasty girl sandwich. bread, bread, i'm the meat. make my own mayonnaise." "fuck that. tm gonna fuck the black girl. y'all can fuck the dog." "she a fucking dyke." "fuck, man, this point i put a mre box on her head and call it even. i gives a fuck." "hooah." i forced to my �p �reate�t reflecto ru�, �u� ll�nt un 4�narp e lcrackel tnell we'ooe we tur detwee farm�,l \s hunweeant r 0 rican,l� do not let your imagination and fear run wild i forced my eyes to the tires ahead, to the road, at the sky, to my speedometer, changing focus every few seconds. the greatest danger glowed in the yellow and red rear-bumper reflectors of the leading truck-watching them wobble and dip, sustaining their slow rhythms, blobs of dim, pulsing light undulating in the dark-only a matter of time and you wake up ditched, smashed, your humvee flipping, roll­ ing, whatever. i bit my cheek. i bit my tongue. i jammed my knee into a sharp edge of metal under the dash until my head cleared. i cracked hot mountain dew and chugged. the line wavered and swayed as drivers dozed and awoke. we'd been driving for eighteen hours. we turned off the highway down a dirt road running between a ditch and a wall, passing tall grass, palms, and farms. things felt close. sj roy scranton lights swam as i fought to keep my eyes open. my neck we: bent under the weight of its dumb head, like a cripple who isl1l can't hold his face up, like i needed a tube to talk with. we ca� followed the convoy past a checkpoint and turned to the "he east fading ashen to white. in the distance, some kind of "\v1 tower stabbed into the lightening sky. we turned again. "d� i saw great bands of painted indians boil up out of the "th dark on steaming war ponies, ululating, attacking with "t� tomahawks and winchesters. i'd make my humvee jump tnelinl like a frog: bounce over the burning wreck and over the ditch by the road, bounce across low scrub to the savages we'd land on and kill with a splat. bounce, bounce, fuck. "wake up, wilson." the truck in front pulled off. i put us in gear. too tired to care whether i'd fucked up or what, so i'd fallen asleep, so what. fuck shit fuck whatever, cockfuck shitfucker asscunt. "where the fuck are we?" i followed the five-ton onto an airfield. we stopped between two black hawks. "we must be close," i said. "i think so," said captain yarrow. i jerked awake, pulling my seven-hundred-pound head up off the steering wheel. captain yarrow lay slumped against his door, drooling on his armor. sergeant chandler snored in back. the convoy was gone. the sky a cool and milky white. j d.pound ne��, ay lumpeda� !'fl[ chandler smlt . a cool and m� war porn n we'd been left. abandoned. i slid into drive, honked the horn twice, then took off. captain yarrow heaved forward. "what?" "hooah, sir." "what? where's the convoy?" "dunno, sir." "thev' h t"eyre w at. "there." intersection. in the distance, off to the right, the line of red lights. we stu aamm wedou loaded with gear, we shuffled onto the plane and rode east, wwai, out ofthe sky, down the night. inlthr stewardesses brought our meal and choice of nonalcoholic tneaten beverage. i watched white oleander and slept through most !ork n ofa beautiful mind. the screens all along the dim aislesflicktnenlered on the faces ofsleeping soldiers. oneac! dreaming valkyrie wings: we'd be fngs at first but lick10imi ety-split start wasting hooches andfragging lts, di-di-mauing at( back to the lz, dropping bloopers into rice paddies, riding a� of hueys into the shit, hog on our hip. wea have hearts and tnetra minds sharpied on steelpot covers, tattoo our days down till ni�n 1 we're short, wear our shit allfucked up and say, "fuck the regs, man, this is indian country. " weti prepared our whole lives for this. bombed litiieute tle brown people, helicopters swooping low, the familiar powerl sight ofamerican machinery carving death from a third ?v[� world wasteland. we expected nothing less than shell shock and and trauma, we lusted for thousand-yard stares-lifelong itijth connoisseurs of hallucinatory violence, we already knew m�yo everything, felt everything. we saw it through a blood-spatii. j k tered lens, handheld tracking shot pitting figure against decaus ground. we were the camera, we were the audience, we were tnea the actors and film and screen: cowboys and killer angels, teants tne 10. moody jl. bomod � : • iou' tn( f�mil� !, fh 10m a r!i� �js than snfll!!�: rd stares-l��' u't already k�(i (jlign a b!ood,!!�: fli1g figure again dtldttnc� we w� r1!1d tiller angt� war porn the lost patrol, the cavalry charge, america's proud and bloody soldier boys. we stumbled blinking off the plane into the night's heat and crammed onto buses that drove us to a tent in the sand, where we downloaded bags into a box trailer. shuffled to another tent to wait. mustered into another where we swiped ids, shunt­ ing through the green machine's hive mind, finally officially in theater. we got briefed on snakes and general order one-no pork, no porn, no booze-then sent back to the tent to sleep. then rousted again, onto buses driven by arabs. we lumped in on each other in our gear, bitchy in the crowded stink. the sun rose over an empty desert. at camp connecticut, a swath oftents pitched in the mid­ dle of nowhere like a mirage, we downloaded our bags from the trailer. we slept in piles like dogs. not enough water. the high 114. lieutenant colonel braddock brought us to his tent for a powerpoint presentation and speech. "men, " he said, "tomorrow we embark on a most important and dangerous mission. we have trained months for this, and it is the epitome ofour job as soldiers. i am proud to be lead­ ing you into our unit's first combat mission since world "war ii i know you will acquit yourselves with honor and courage, because i know your leaders and they are the best leaders in the army, and i know your sergeants and they are the best ser­ geants in the army. together we'll accomplish our mission and " roy scranton follow up on our nation's great victory in iraq with successful ofyour. stability-and-support operations and a peaceful transition to men, w democratic governance. lafi for '1 know many ofyou are too young to remember world mtr tneocca, il but i think this is a good time to reflect on the tremendous work we did stabilizing and securing nazi germany after the war andforfifty years protecting itfrom the u7arsaw pact threat. this was no mean feat, and if it seems overshadowed today by campaigns like d-day and anzio, then i will tellyou this is a matter ofperspective. because winning the peace can be as hard, ifnot harder, than winning the war. � have our work cut outfor us. "in the coming weeks and months, we will be tested, chal­ lenged, and stressed, and there will come times when home will seem very far away. but let me remind you that we are deep steel, we are the tip of the spear, and home, men­ home is here, with your fellow soldiers. we are each other's family. we're a band of brothers. support each other, follow your leaders, listen to your ncos, and we will overcome, we will rise up and grab that brass ring. we will succeed and we will be victorious. "� are soldiers, the fighting men who man the ramparts protecting america from the insidious evils of terrorism and islamic fundamentalism that now threaten our way of life. �'re here because saddam hussein was a threat to amer­ ica, his nuclear weapons and biological programs poised to be handed over to terrorists who hate us because ofour freedom, who hate our way oflife, and who have no compunctions about murdering your wives, mothers, sons, and daughters in cold blood. because ofthe great bravery andprofessional dedication o man fn� r�mr . (vi i oftm�rnm' n ollr waj �fi ( r1 threat t� ai, �grr1mj po/feb • 11ft ofourftet& i (0mpunctions a�i d daughters in i� �j1ion/l1dedtcaw war porn ofyour fellow soldiers, saddam hussein is no longer a threat. men, we're here to make america safe, and to make the world safe for america. i have the utmost faith that you will rise to the occasion and make me proud" no mus refs, no an arab worldview is based upon six concepts: �rou�ht. atomism, faith, wish versus reality, the a justice and equality, paranoia, and the importance of family over self active in attack,o watch f\ feaayeen rickur, j runatead no running water. no electricity. no ac. no grass, no carpet, no windows, no fans. everyone in the world wears camouflage-the others talk gobbledygook and stare. giantca no running water means no showers, no sinks. no hoses, �rown no faucets, no drains. no cold water, no ice. no laundry, no ones bath, no toilet. !tomrea tte air, � ffi�nin� we had a toilet. we had a plywood outhouse with three 1n au stalls. you sit on a wood 0 and crap in a washtub. every day recluses, two soldiers pulled out the three tubs, poured in diesel and ants, an gasoline, and lit the shit on fire. �a·like d you stir the burning shit with a four-foot pole and drift �iqar i around the smoke. you pour more diesel on the fire. you like�oin stir the shit. you gag. you stir. you eyeball the grunts in wilu their hooch down the way, sleeping and playing cards, tiffiesa and mutter to yourself. the wind shifts and you circle, stir, pour. war porn 59 • • no music, no tv, no radio. no magazines, no newspa­ pers, no news. no internet. no books except the ones you brought. the only information came in daily briefs: fedayeen active in the area. today two soldiers were killed in an rpg attack. coalition forces are securing the city of baghdad. watch for a white and orange compact sedan, suspected fedayeen vehicle. be on the lookout for a blue or white pickup. saddam loyalists may be planning a series of coor­ dinated attacks. giant camel spiders roamed our camp, some bigger than a grown man's palm. one skittered across the sand at me on crazy legs and i stomped it. the thing reared back, inch-long fangs sawing the air, and lunged. i stomped it again, again and again, mashing it to yellow meat. in addition to the camel spiders, there were brown recluses, black scorpions, mosquitoes, flies, fleas, biting ants, and, we were told, the deadly asp. there were cica­ da-like bugs in the trees as well, which didn't bite but sang all day in maddening skreeks. when they stopped, it was like going deaf. wild dogs prowled the camp at night. the muezzin five times a day. reminder, you are a representative of the united states while in iraq america with lam they� in�thesa al�trust a; t�kea w �uaraing tneir flatl ola ainan tne repsi� it will be important to use good judgment, tact, and diplomacy in any dealings you may have with the people mail came, packages and letters from home. i inked a chesswe captu board onto the bottom of an upside-down apple crate and krauss an made pieces from scavenged russian commo gear: the king awaterdl and queen glass diodes, the rooks resistors, bishops capacitors. tne dottl we started catching camel spiders and scorpions instead over tne of just killing them. did they burn? drown? could you illeaarou poison them with laundry soap? healds used his snips to wnelspi cut the legs off one, leaving it hobbling on six, then five, wtnesco then three. down to two, it fell over wriggling. we thought lang! about letting it starve then decided to burn it. anasnou tne n! !wrplon operation iron bullet got underway. national guardsmen !nouts�o and iraqi workers came to load our bunkers' munitions tne � onto trucks for transport to aha taji. !lu��isno we were issued humanitarian daily rations to give the neaepre, iraqis. wrapped in tough yellow plastic, they were labeled hren�no a food gift from the people of the united states of meaic,n rations to �jv( [hey were jam. njted statel war porn 61 america. the iraqis brought their own lunches, flatbread with lamb and vegetables, and took the humrats home. they were a raggedy bunch, mustached and bony, wear­ ing the same dirty clothes every day. we watched them with distrust and curiosity. sergeant chandler was the exception. tasked with ferrying the work crews back and forth and guarding them during their shift, he got friendly. he ate their flatbread, gave them extra mres, and bought their old dinars and army badges. soon we did too. we bought the pepsis they kept on ice in little coolers. we captured a camel spider and a scorpion and lieutenant krauss announced a match. we fought them that night in a water bottle with the label peeled off we cut the top off the bottle and cut another top off another bottle so it fit over the first like a cap. several joes came to watch, hud­ dled around us, and we dumped in one then the other. the camel spider skittered down to one end. we tilted the bottle so the scorpion fell on him. zang!went the black stinger. zang!zangzang!we cheered and shouted as the spider curled in death. the next day, we fought this scorpion against another scorpion and he won again. the crowd multiplied and the shouts got louder. the following day, though, our champion seemed sluggish. we were concerned. did he need water? was he depressed? we fretted and urged him to keep up his strength. we asked healds but he snarled, "damrnit, i'm a medic, not an entomologist." 6j roy scranton that night we fought our hero against another camel spi­ der, this time in a new arena. we took the apple crate i'd made into a chessboard and turned it right side up, covering it with a sheet of acetate. it was delicate work: one person held the arena and another the acetate and a third the water bottles caging our gladiators, then we dumped them in one by one, sliding back the cover, shaking the warrior in, fixing the acetate quick. the second fighter was always trickiest. our champ beat the new spider handily and in honor of his string of victories we dubbed him saddam. the next day, however, his stupor worsened, even though we'd left him the spider's carcass to eat. we had another fight that night, between him and a new, very large camel spider, but he was too sick or listless to attack, and since the camel spider's jaws couldn't pierce his thick exoskeleton, the fight was a draw. we doused both in gas and lit them up. the scorpion burned slow, sadly inanimate, but our camel spi­ der ran, a skittering ball of fire, and crumpled outside the hooch. we cheered. we staged more matches, got good at it. the scorpions were viciously territorial and fought both each other and the camel spiders, but the spiders for all their fierce appear­ ance were comparatively irenic: they couldn't stand up to those black stingers and wouldn't fight against each other, no matter how much trash we talked. scorpions were both rarer and harder to catch, so after our first lucky string of fights the battles grew infrequent. when we got a scorpion we fought him against camel spider after camel spider until he died in captivity or was killed by another scorpion. the winner we named saddam. onaw�pe fly�numv ) tnrew (a�tain y (i�� rerry ") tnink ��t, uh, ii�ome � ilr�t t roao over ilhthat t ht� u ) iicanw inoun ii) mea iyouc iliatroute , cher scorpion" successful combat operations in urban areas require skills that are unique to this type of fighting the radio crackled: mps requesting assistance, moving in on a suspected cache, needed backup, wanted us, four or five humvees asap. the assault in two-zero mikes. i threw on my battle rattle and ran into the cp, where captain yarrow, lieutenant krauss, and sergeant first class perry stood pondering the sat-map. "i think you can go out gate 1 and down this road here, past, uh, what are those, houses?" "some kind of building." "past those houses, right, and you can turn down this road over the canal." "is that a bridge?" "it's uh, i can't tell." "c d�"an we go aroun . "around the canal?" "i mean, you know, a crossing." "you can go through biap but we'd uh, we'd need to get that route from somebody. i mean, we don't know. and it'd ��--------------�--.........�.•-.-64 roy scranton take forty-five minutes at least, just to get there, never mind the site." "so down these roads here?" "one of them must have a bridge." "sir, we should roll," sergeant first class perry said. "can we take the map with us?" yarrow asked. "it's mounted to the wood, sir," lieutenant krauss told him. "and it's too big." "maybe we can fold it up." "it's the only map we have, sir." "sir, we should go." "yeah, fine." he turned to me. "wilson, you see this?" he pointed at the map. "r . " oger, sir. "that's where we're going. we go out gate 1, we take the second left, then the second left after that. that should take us over the canal." the smudge of tangled gray resembled a crushed spider. "r . " oger, sir. we headed out, headlights blazing, five humvees fully loaded. "weapon status red," the bc called, chambering a round in his nine mil and grinning. "lock and load!" my rifle's bolt slid forward with an exhilarating clack. we rolled through the night past the first huts and trees and took the second left onto a dirt road bordered with thick vegetation. i strained to catch the twitch that would warn us of imminent attack. "turn down here," the bc said. "thats "thew} "yousai( "i what?' "you saia ii hold on ii crusader om turn or !nould de, i iicru�ad todetermi ii crusade do i turn d iiroge� w�crept d roi� a stan, tation and mrroundin narrowed, i !(ratcned a iikeep� u� mea �onkey tie ri�nt a oril aooutten k�r) tne ro tneool "can y( e,nevermrr "that's the first one, sir." "the what?" "you said the second turn." "i what?" "you said the second turn." "hold on. stop." he got on the radio. "crusader cp, this is crusader six. will you check the map here, we're at the first turn on the road but i think it's where the second turn should be. can you verify?" "crusader six this is crusader cpo it's, uh, difficult war porn " to determine exactly. "crusader cp, this is crusader six, yes or no. yes or no. do i turn down this road or not?" "roger, crusader six. go for it." we crept down the alley. out of the vegetation on the left rose a stone wall eight feet high. on the right more vege­ tation and a drainage ditch and, further back, more walls, surrounding houses with brightly lit windows. the road narrowed. the wall closed in and on the right branches scratched at the windshield. "keep going," said captain yarrow. up ahead a donkey cart stood against the wall with a donkey tied to it. the road widened slightly, and on the right a driveway ran over a culvert and back into the palms about ten yards to a large, well-lit house. just past the don­ key, the road swung left around an angle of wall. the donkey brayed: ahhhhhweeyhornk-yhornk. "can you get by?" 66 roy scranton ana started way, which, ''are we 0 "we're tu "i can jus! "you're til okay. i v nana si�nallltn� truck, a @c�. the 0 !tam�in� fu the be s rwtire start wimout sma !iia� into th fdlther, the iliou�htwe afoot in fro naa me sto ili�aa until �cdacked ��n, a�ain more times, aonker dra� i��edfo thebe �ack to ilie �aussand i "roger, sir." "keep going." i passed the cart, feeling the dirt at the edge of the ditch crumble under the truck's wheels, and slid along slowly, closer and closer to the donkey now backing against the wall, panic flashing black in his eyes. the truck's front bumper brushed his trembling flank. ahhweeyhornk! "we got people! i mean contacts!" sergeant chandler shouted. i looked back at two iraqis in robes standing in the drive­ way, smoking cigarettes and watching us. sergeant chandler trained his rifle on them. "watch the men, sergeant! wilson, watch that donkey!" ahhweeeeyhornk-a-yhornk-a-yhornk! i edged the truck forward, brushing against the don­ key's ribs. the truck behind followed close. i swung slowly around the corner of the wall. the road ended in a ditch. i stopped and looked at the humvee behind pressed against the braying donkey. ahhweeeeeeeyhornk! "fuck!" captain yarrow shouted. he got on the radio: "crusader attack elements, this is crusader six. head back up to the, uh, back to the last route change, over." captain yarrow and sergeant chandler got out. lieu­ tenant juarez came up. the donkey kept braying and sergeant chandler kept his rifle trained on the smoking iraqis. yarrow and juarez traded heated whispers while the humvees behind us backed slowly down the road. the bc slapped the rear of the truck to get my attention ow," ler got out l .. pt bra�n�. on the �m�� rhispers wn�( i e road, war porn 67 and started backing me toward the culvert and the drive­ way, which, it turned out, wasn't wide enough. "are we backing up?" i shouted. ""\vt' • d"we re turnmg aroun . "i can just back up, sir." "you're turning around, wilson." okay. i watched the mirror, the back tires, the bc's hand signals, the wall on my left, the front bumper of the truck, and the increasingly freaked-out donkey all at once. the beast hopped up and down, convulsing, hooves stamping furiously. the bumper dragged against his rump. the bc scowled and led me onto the driveway. the left rear tire started sinking. i couldn't swing the truck any tighter without smashing the donkey, and if i kept on like this i'd slide into the ditch. the bc swung me back, though, and farther, the left side sinking deeper and deeper. just when i thought we couldn't go back any farther, the donkey maybe a foot in front, braying crazy-eyed in my headlights, the bc had me stop and turn hard left and pull forward. i went ahead until the brush guard rubbed the donkey's ribs. the bc backed me up again, this time to the right, then forward again, again left. awheeeeeeyhornk-a-yhornk-yhornk! four more times, tight back and forth, the back end sinking, the donkey braying, and at last we got the truck turned around. i pulled forward, scraping the cart with a creak. the bc and sergeant chandler mounted up, and we rolled back to the rest of the convoy. yarrow called up lieutenant krauss and chewed him out for giving us bad directions. • 68 roy scranton we took the second left. the next road was wider and ended take a in the overgrown courtyard of an abandoned building. we ter,an stopped and the bc called lieutenant krauss on the radio how 0 "�tavand yelled at him. / h d "ro("this is the second turn," captain yarrow saute . "uh, roger, crusader six. you check behind the "ndi building?" "yes. this is it. it's fucking palm trees. look at the map again. are you looking at the map?" werll "roger, sir. the map's right here." n���,m "so you're looking at the fucking map?" ilocnel "roger, sir." malie "then you can see. it doesn't go anywhere. it just stops." m��lel "roger, sir." "tne "so why the fuck you send me down here if you can see ��tweel it just stops? what the fuck, lieutenant? can't you read a "we fucking map?" w�no "roger, sir." "do "holy christ. we're sitting out here like fucking ... sitmao!" ting ducks, and those mps need us, they could be dying grin right now, and you can't even read a fucking map!" !iui "sir." ��mt "what, lieutenant?" r��e,u "sir, i think if you go back to the main road, turn �arrow left and stay to the right, break, just keep to the (gulas right and you'll come to some buildings, and keep to "ke� the right of those, break, there's a road that goes le� between the buildings and, uh, break, it looks like a ri�nt!1 small canal, break. now you stay on that road until �eanr you get to another bunch of buildings, break, then "�lr. \'g , break, th� war porn 69 take a left and follow that for, uh, break, a kilome­ ter, and there should be a bridge over the big canal. how copy, over?" "stay to the right, go left, go over the bridge." "roger." ''alright, crusader cpo this better fucking work." we passed more houses, lights burning bright in the dark­ ness, more men standing in courtyards staring. children watched from balconies. at the next turn, we went right and lieutenant juarez's team went left and we rolled down the alley to what looked like a cul-de-sac. "there, there!" the bc shouted, pointing to a gap between a house and a small canal. "that's the road." "we can't get through there, sir," i told him. the path was no bigger than a walkway. "don'tfuckingcontradict me, specialist! drive down that road!" grinding teeth, i poked the truck into the alley. the right side dipped precipitously down the canal's bank. left tires against the wall, my right tires churning mud at the water's edge, undercarriage dragging, i inched forward as the path narrowed and the slope steepened. i stopped the truck so i could shift into low-drive. "keep going! what are you stopping for!" i eased the truck forward. the path narrowed and the right side sank deeper into ditch muck. soon there wouldn't be any path at all. "sir." 70 roy scranton /' the. route av, offlnto 1 lieute ilt� out unaole t:in� now �au�sw tne f( w� orov ��(k to i followea "fine, i see! fine!" i put the truck in reverse and backed out. thankfully the drivers behind us had waited, so it was a straight shot back to the cul-de-sac. mud flung up from the tires. the bc called up lieutenant juarez. his team hit a dead end, too. the bc radioed lieutenant krauss and told him to ask the mps for directions. we reformed the convoy and returned to the cp. lieutenant krauss radioed just as we were coming in gate 1 and told us the mps had started their assault, but they still needed us. he told us they had a route that went around biap. we were to go through checkpoint 7 and take the first right. "do you mean go in through checkpoint 7 or out?" the bc asked. w�re�oll tventl �wnan ur arou� witncon "uh, out." "alright, let's roll." we drove out gate 2 and headed for checkpoint 7. just before reaching the checkpoint the bc told me to turn off the road. we drove between two closed-up vendors' shacks into a rough field of hard furrows. the humvee bumped up and down. "i don't think this is a road, sir." "keep going, wilson." we came to a low berm separating the field from a flooded pasture. "fuck," captain yarrow said. '�right, turn around." we got back on the road and went through checkpoint , ��oint �,i· o [he fiela from , rum arouna." ough check�o' war porn 71 7. the bc had me hug the right side, searching for the route over the canal. we eventually hit a dirt road that led off into the dark. the bc told me take it. . lieutenant krauss radioed that the mps had secured the site but still needed help. they were undermanned and unable to handle security, processing prisoners, and chas­ ing down fleeing targets all at once. captain yarrow told krauss we were on our way. the road rose onto a wide berm running along a canal. we drove down one side until it stopped, then doubled back to a bridge we'd passed and crossed to the other. we followed the berms, a maze in bas-relief, not sure where we were going but definitely headed the right general direction. eventually we came to a dip where the road led off the berm and through a depression. we followed it down then up around a low hill onto another berm, lined on one side with concertina wire, running northeast by southwest along an even larger canal. this was the canal we had to cross. there was no way across. we stopped. 'that's the house right there," the bc said, pointing out a low, distant building surrounded by trucks. i looked with my nvgs: martians making the green scene, maybe six hundred meters away. we mounted up and drove until we came to a bradley parked across the berm. beyond the bradley rose a wire­ topped wall, biap's outer perimeter. captain yarrow scowled. he got out to talk with the bradley commander, who didn't think there was any way across the canal from this side. "you've gotta go around north," he said, "through gate 7." matrtx �irk ff. �nelwh alwayl ta wpragu /urolyou fran�fon prerecorded bugles pierced the dark. "crusader rock!" monwnoreno! days and wednesdays out the kaserne gate, running up past ja!aneje the edelsteinminen into the wooded hills or down through the wnole gi cobbled streets of idar-oberstein. muscle-failure tuesdays, witngra push-ups, sit-ups. thursdays training. fridays the "fun run," rum� the whole battery, straight down the hill to the bahnhof then rnmjw suffer back up. t�in�. se mondays were preventative maintenance checks and serbrie� vices, tuesdays and wednesdays army business, thursdays w�werel sergeants' time training, and fridays motor-pool closeout. rrainin� clockwork. i�ltem� tit man �arery ft omensforetold action, ifnot an invasion at least serious bombi�/iner j ing. global drama, weapons inspections, secret reports. iis�e� good. yes. we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushwnat room cloud. fuc� meanwhile, we grunted through the week, waiting for �uryeal freitag, aching for pilsner. wea' start a little on wednesday �i�ner, i night and sometimes thursday too, and by the weekend hit fa wear full swing: hefeweizen, frauleins, doner and schnitzel jager wuierj and techno, hazy days, hazier nights. there was cafe carre we)re down the hill our informal battalion pub, and there were the toing.l r.r.:nluf/: .4� tnr�t�� i i. :'u� rumi , 'hior jmnm . atnn�f� f ilk, wailinti , , t 011 wtdnd: . the weehnj � 1d fchnitze� )i!1 rt {ll(/j caft cam wdthere were r!! war porn matrix and the q and a dozen others, and oh, the herman girls. ifyou got sick of the barracks sluts at the matrix, the ones who knew more guys in the unit than you did, you could always take the train to kiiln or saarbrucken or a cheap flight to prague or berlin. there was the savoy, too, where for eighty euros you could relieve your tensions with a thai girl, and rot frankfurt, only an hour away, a red-lit sex bazaar ofsix-story whorehouses, titty bars, and erotik-shops, jam-packed with japanese businessmen. or, like my roommate villaguerrero, whose girlfriend was back home in queens, kill the weekend with grand theft auto. rumors said we're deploying, rumors said we're not. ultima­ tums were issued. bullwinkle said there's no fucking way we're going. sergeant first class perry shrugged. briefly, after settling into the routine but before we knew we were going, i came back to myself after the shocks ofbasic training and moving overseas, months ofpure action, i began to see myselfagain and wonder who was this strange and stron­ ger man in camouflage. the past clungfragile, like dying moss, barelyfelt. i kept in touch with myoid ex-girlfriend but didn't tell her about julia and sabine, didn't tell her much-what was there to say? what was i now, a soldier? fuck no. all a sham. i'd tricked them, and i'd ride these four years till i got out and made a new plan. i'd drink the pilsner, salute the butterbars, and hop to it, pretending i cared. i'd wear the stars and stripes on my shoulder and intone the soldier's creed. too easy. we're not going, bullwinkle sneered. of course we're not going. that's fucking retarded. 76 roy scranton • • • the president made a speech. captain yarrow told us be ready. that friday we had battalion formation. the colonel said we'd be in the second wave) relieving the units currently moving in) either to finish the war or more likelyfor saso. we had a ten­ tative ship date at the beginning ofmay. things'd be hopping and popping till then) but the colonel insisted we'd all get a week's leave. we spent that weekend drunk-calls home to tearful moth­ ers-tense discussions with wives and kids-and monday started the paperwork) packing) predeployment logistics clusterfuck. we got issued new gear. we got ceramic sapiplatesfor iwoketg the vests, but only two sets per battery. there weren't enough iltweenl desert boots. the dcus were all the wrong sizes. ilittur�u we watched the war on tv. we tracked fox news) nasiriyah �lldln�� and basra) the old breed, rock ofthe marne) the screaming mhatro eagles. a few days later, we were told we'd have the next week i went for block leave. i called my ex-girlfriend and asked her ifshe �vtrloohl wanted to come to paris. i said i'dpayfor everything. (��r�, a� ll�t�ln� �rl�nten tne g ntl�ndo rukea il mtre, to market s mtnt�, ��olatio mt un squeezing the trigger releases the hammer, which strikes the firing pin, causing it to impact the primer i woke to a dull sky, the air not yet warm. early sun shot between massive apartment blocks to the east, gleaming off the turquoise dome beyond the north wall of camp lancer, gilding palm leaves, turning the streets to light. i crammed my patrol bag in my stuff sack and folded my cot. i went out through the x-taped glass door to the balcony overlooking the courtyard. at the near end were two plastic chairs, and at the far end captain yarrow on his cot in a sleeping mask. i sat down, lit a smoke, and watched the sky brighten behind the mosque's minarets. the city slept. to the north, an orderly middle-class neighborhood, a grid of streets, houses and yards, cars parked in driveways, shaded sidewalks. kids played soccer there. to the east and west, thoroughfares lined by shops, market stalls, and cafes. farther east stood high-rise apart­ ments, but to the west the neighborhood thinned to a desolation of half-built homes and vacant lots bordering the un compound at the canal hotel. beyond that lay 71 roy scranton the borders of sadr city, a warren of low wires and bristling he�ds, ' aerials ruled by ali baba and shi' a militias. to the south, ilirough i beyond the defunct cigarette factory, the city stabbed up: ltoryrum minarets and smokestacks, the green zone's palace spires, wllapsed ba' athist icons, cyclopean dream-sculpture. in the distance �i�ted in a great blue egg hung against the sky like a fallen planet. full of sol this was the only time all day the city breathed softly, littered wj evoking in the pale, slanting light imagination's babylon, wiring uj letting me feel for a moment like the poet i'd once been. �yanead, later the temperature would top 115. later i'd chamber a mrough i round and prepare to kill. later the heat and stink of the day, flllle, � the yelling faces, rancor, noise, and fury broiling and thrumoowfi rubl ming in waves off the blacktop would make me both want ,noleiliil and fear needing a reason to pull my trigger, to feel my grip we cam buck in my hands, to tear jagged red holes in men's flesh. ili� dfa but for a moment, i had white-gold serenity glazing w� cleare still arcades. i prayed in the morning's ease for grace, that i macoffe might find it somewhere out there over the wall and down rld3ticcn shadowed alleys, under arabesques of purpled gold, beneath wiatscree the hovering sun now glaring like a blooded eye. glory, fm� ana �fn ilie . downstairs i showered in a makeshift stall between two ponchos. i put on the same sweat-stiff dcus i'd worn the day before. i checked my combat load, made sure i had the be's mp3 speakers. i did daily maintenance: oil, coolant, transmission fluid, belts. struts, cv joints, tires. i checked the undercarriage for leaks. • • trm�cenae ilio�ee�s f�itenews wnfre�eo �ow jone ilie do "x, (qm�l�n todlowm war porn 79 healds, porkchop, and i headed for breakfast, walking through the shattered central hall of the bombed-out six­ story ruin that stood between us and the dfac. wires and collapsed supports hung from the ceiling like vines. holes blasted in the floor dropped into stinking sub-basements full of soda cans and rot, pits yawned in dusty corridors littered with rock and paper, the scent of things long dead wafting up from below. stories of crushed stone loomed overhead, gashed rebar jutting and bristling rust-red through tunnels of light burrowing into the sky, broken granite, twisted metal. sometimes chips of stone clattered down rubble-choked stairs and we'd flinch, imagining the whole thing collapsing in on us. we came through the shade into a flash of light outside the dfac where three sergeants lounged smoking cigars. we cleared our rifles and went inside. we got our food and coffee, slathered our plates with texas pete, then sat in plastic chairs at plastic tables and watched fox news on a widescreen tv. glory. the salt and pepper shakers, the napkins and plastic forks and styrofoam plates, the bad food, the worse coffee, even the ketchup packets and juice boxes glowed sublime, transcendent, essential. i cherished it. i needed it. i relished those eggs and that coffee and the witless ballyhoo on the sat­ ellite news, dizzily feeling for a moment like a man in a world where people had opinions about events, a world ofaprs and dow jones numbers and mortgages and "thinking outside the box," a world where celebrities had breakdowns and we complained about cell-phone service and no one was trying to blow my fucking legs off. 10 roy scranton a humvee burned, caught in the tv's frame like a votive. honorable secretary donald rumsfeld came on and said we'd reached a turning point. he was followed by a man with mousse in his hair standing on the roof of the palestine hotel, then a commercial for viagra. hewj1 �nouted, i shrug dl�teafro the hagakure reads: "the way of the samurai is found in death. when it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. it is not particularly difficult. be deter­ mined and advance ... if by setting one's heart right every morning, one is able to live as though already dead, he gains freedom in the way." i checked my weapon, patted down my armor plates, reminded myself that i was a soldier and this was my fuck­ ingjob and i would damn well try to die with a little dignity. beyond the gate, the roads were already thick with cars, the skies hazy with smog. the chaos out there, the crazy arabic writing and abu-jabba jabber, the lawless traffic, the hidden danger and buzz and stray bullets and death looming from every overpass pressed down on my soul like a hot wind. on the streets, eyes scanning trash for loose wires, i sank into the standard daily manic paranoid torpor: trapped in a broiling box with big targets on the sides, damned to drive the same maze over and over till somebody killed me. we rolled down canal road, our escorts weaving in and out of traffic, our hemmets and iraqi semis chugging behind. "whatcha wanna listen to?" captain yarrow yelled over the engine. "whattaya got?" i shouted back. in a �wl , 0 drivernl£ , we rolloom o (of uaffi(l( war porn 81 he waved his mp3 player at me. ''all kinds of stuff," he shouted. i shrugged. he pushed a button. the pet shop boys blasted from the speakers, singing "west end girls." --more s1 )lwa wo "cease f arlvln�! k whenever possible, you should avoid kill zones such as streets, alleys, and parks our wlndo \idoke, pro wa traffic, wide up 0 a�aa �top, i ln� fenders driving the edge of sadr city through bumper-to-bumper american � afternoon jam, i heard lieutenant krauss behind me yell, �ara�,w ""\vt h 1ft" ii]eo),"weapon on tee . "what, where?" the bc shouted. iidldn't "pistol. pistol left side. blue shirt. pistol left. " iimayde captain yarrow grabbed the hand mike and i looked left, iicould � taking the scene in a glance. first it was a mass of bodies on ii] think a corner then i picked out two people arguing, a blue shirt, ahead 01 a pistol. captain yarrow said something into the mike and r�1 where lieutenant krauss shouted, "he's aiming! he's aiming!" mrwara,fj then two loud bangs behind my head. brass dinged off li]fitw� my kevlar and fell burning down the back of my shirt. an iraqi in my periphery, movement: iraqis scattered and dove to �a�,andi the ground. ofnl�wlnd "there he goes!" shouted krauss and fired two more rum off an times. i scrunched my head into my shoulders like a turtle, · ��wu� in closing the gap between my helmet and armor. his empty iigood i shells plinked off me. iyou wa '. 'oj i �ill1(': .'. � �t�, a�ij �i' mor, his em�i war porn more shooting, ours, into the crowd. across the street i saw a woman in black jerk up and swing to the ground. "cease fire, cease fire!" captain yarrow shouted. "keep driving! keep driving!" our windows wide, we sucked down exhaust, refinery smoke, propane, and the reek of sun-baked sewage. crowds and traffic, buildings looming, cars and stucco, and we come up out of the mess onto the expressway, flow at a dead stop. honking cars clogged the lanes, bumpers scrap­ ing fenders, brown faces glaring. up ahead we could see american soldiers blocking the road, gun trucks and air guards, some big army goatfuck. "led?" "didn't hear anything." "maybe it hasn't gone of£" "could be a checkpoint." "i think it's an led." ahead on the left, iraqis cut through a gap in the guard­ rail where a tank had rolled through. we moved slowly forward, filling the space opened by the fleeing cars. "if it was a checkpoint, we'd be moving." an iraqi car started backing toward us, angling for the gap, and i laid on the horn. the driver stuck his head out of his window and pointed where he wanted to go. i flipped him off and goosed forward, ramming his rear. his hands flew up in anger. "good job, wilson." "you want me to go for that gap, sir?" 14 roy scranton "no, we'll wait it out." twenty-five minutes later, broiling between the sun and the engine, i asked him again about the gap and he said yes. we edged over, nudging iraqi cars out of the way with the brush guard, then swung around and took off back the way we came. captain yarrow scanned the thick red and blue lines on his street map of baghdad. he gave me directions across the 3id bridge and into the green zone, but we got lost and wound up driving down a quiet, tree-lined boulevard along the tigris. we passed a building spray-painted iraqi communist workers' party and a looted bank. iraqis ambled along like it was unter den linden: couples holding hands, businessmen talking, heads bowed like mendicants. the smell of the trees cut the stink of exhaust, and in the dappled shade, it seemed we'd fallen through a rabbit hole into some alternate baghdad, an oasis of brotherhood and peace. then we came up on a bridge and into the burning sky. refinery fires licked the horizon. a couple days later was the fourth of july, and to celebrate they had a barbecue at the dfac, hamburgers and hot dogs, and a star wars marathon in the compound's decrepit movie theater. after dinner, as the sun went down, healds and i and some other guys went up on the roof of our building and smoked. the upper six floors were off-limits because of snip­ ers. the first few times, we went cautiously, for souvenirs. �omeone t �endar an ��o found ��ten mre� now we' l��f interchd million wu� other, hurryjlto oleea, sp ��!kets ana nin� detwee �ra!!, up 0\ 4llathe nig� flder-optic j [�ll phones �mt! uploa r�lin� as ° ina the '@ overneaa, !nriebng u� (neereo, tr neon, "j can't � �urnetts� ro!ter fl ni�nt1" ((naw," n the sun�; and he salq)t war porn someone found a framed photo of saddam. i got a hadji calendar and a picture of some guy getting an award. we also found what the marines had left, a pile of shit, half­ eaten mres, and graffiti, fuck iraq! and first to fight! now we went up to watch the city: sweeping clover­ leaf interchanges, satellite dishes, pileups and traffic, six million souls watching dvds and blogging, texting each other, hurrying through markets past sheep carcasses hung to bleed, spice sellers, bags of black, dried limes and reed baskets and old women haggling over okra, children run­ ning between stalls and down alleys, faces flickering in brass. up out of the ancient garden of sinbad's baghdad and the nightmare of saddam's ba' athist dystopia grew the fiber-optic slums of tomorrowland, where shepherds on cell phones herded flocks down expressways and insur­ gents uploaded video beheadings, everything rising and falling as one, hammurabi's code and xboxes, the wheel and the web, ur to persepolis to sykes-picot to cnn, a ruin outside of time, a twenty-first-century cyberpunk war-machine interzone. we watched cars zoom by below while kiowas whickered overhead. an rpg went off in the distance, yellow sparks shrieking up at the helicopters ceaselessly circling, and we cheered. tracers rose and fell across the sky like burning neon. "i can't believe how much this place looks like l.a.," burnett said. foster flicked a butt over the side. "you up here last night?" "naw." "wicked firefight." mat's fuck! the sun bled magenta across the horizon and the lights tou're real0 of the shops and cafes carved tiny scallops in the purple "negativ night. cars without headlights flew down the road, weavl�it. catch ing crazily. no traffic lights, no cops, no streetlamps. we "theblal waited for collisions, explosions, gunshots. "hell ye, "this stupid fucking place," burnett said. "i don't know �f.lheard i why we don't just nuke it." iliefuck'h� "what, burnett, you wanna miss this? this is your war, ru,led·up j man." wffiedackl "yeah. i wanted to meet interesting and stimulating peotherewa ple of an ancient culture and kill them." iiohshit "shut your fucking face, pyle, you sick piece of shit. you "looked ido not deserve to survive in my corps." an apac "you ever notice bullwinkle looks like pyle?" me �ash h "better watch out. he might shoot you in your underwear." ��ntfaged, "he better fucking kill me if he thinks he can take my m��wasp, underwear. " "c'mon burnett. i know you're a secret hadji lover. you blow your wad every night dreaming of some fat-assed hadji bitch riding your cock all belelelelelelelelah." "see that bitch today in the blue jeans? shit hot. just like a fucking american girl." ''ass cheeks like melons. honeydew melons." "that's what i'm talking about, some sweet hadji ass." "fuck that. hadjis stink." "shit, they wash up like normal people. besides, you stink too." "yeah, but i ain't gonna fuck me." "unless you get some hadji twat, you're the only thing i' roy scranton i i. be�ja�,! 'e we on1r � war porn 17 that's fucking you. just let yourself go for a few weeks till you're really filthy. then you won't even notice." "negative. they're probably fucking diseased or some shit. catch some freaky mohammed clap." "the black syphilis." "hell yeah. they got diseases here you ain't even heard of. i heard the pa say watch out for leeshamaneesis. what the fuck's that? we shoulda just fucking nuked this fucking fucked-up fuckhole from the fucking start. and then we come back and take the oil whenever we want." there was a flash in the distance. "oh shit you see that?" "looked like an led." an apache swung low over the gray cloud rising where the flash had gone off. we lit cigarettes as the last of the light faded, watching the apache dip and swing like a giant angry wasp. wa staff � �tooa smo1 two old( ili� village, ili�m, rush!1 we are heroes in error; "i�nta," i what was said before is not important tneyjab! iiu�kut," we aidn' �ur naaji w �im over an �ftnq the ( '&om.bl �mq�, the two the road bent away from the river and climbed a low berm. oil glimmered purple in the sun in puddles, leak­ ing through the berm's sandy skin. to our left stood hovels wreathed in wires and clotheslines and a flock of raggedy children, shoeless, hooting and pointing. far to the west lay the outskirts of baghdad, smudged with haze. we turned past a wrecked bmp slouched inert on the shoulder. "it's right up here somewhere." we passed some blown-out tanks half hidden in the palms to our right, then hit a road leading around the vil­ lage toward the city. the be pointed and i turned and we drove by the husk of a building, just two ruined walls stand­ ing in the shimmer like sundial hands. "it should be right here," the be said. i scanned the earth for telltale fins, black mounds, glints of aluminum casing. "pull off over there." the be and lieutenant krauss got out. e27 pulled aside ��aqeq an in� dam os "no, not )10oam do w�'re here t "oh yes, ��rturned f�ttn, ilfno do ij�domo, � "go oo� · c2 pujjea� war porn .9 and staff sergeant smith joined them. i dismounted and stood smoking, watching the perimeter. two older hadjis in man-dresses walked toward us from the village. the flock of children from before overtook them, rushing at us. "ishta," i shouted at the kids. they jabbered back. "mista, mista! mre!" "uskut," i yelled. they laughed and capered. we didn't have a proper translator, but the manager of our hadji work team spoke a little english. the bc called him over and tried to ask the two villagers if they could help us find the ammo cache. "boom-boom," captain yarrow said, gesturing with his hands. the two villagers spoke. the team manager listened and nodded and smiled. "is bombs no here," he told yarrow. "no bombs. people good, bush good. saddam bad." "no, not people's bombs," the bc said. "old bombs. saddam bombs. we're here to clean them up. tell them we're here to take the old bombs away." "oh yes, yes. okay good. no problem." the team man­ ager turned back to the two men and they chatted back and forth. "misra!" one ofthe kids shouted at me. "you give me dollar!" "fuck off," i said. "ishta." they laughed and pushed each other toward me. the team manager turned back to captain yarrow. "he say no bomb. bomb bad. no bomb. he say saddam bad, no bomb. he say al-ameriki come, go bomb." "go bomb?" 90 roy scranton "go bomb, bomb." the team manager mimed hauling something off. "take bomb?" "yes, take bomb! no problem!" "what about the tanks? is there anything over by the tanks?" "tank?" "the tanks." captain yarrow hunched his shoulders and rocked his body back and forth. "brrrrrrrrrum," he growled, swinging his head side to side. "ah, tank, yes. no. yes. no problem." the kids edged forward and i waved my rifle at them. they shrieked and scattered, then reformed in a mass. they laughed and pointed. "mista, you give me." "misra, mre." "ishta," i said. "ishta, ishta!" they shouted back. "he say yes, bomb and tank, yes. there, there. no problem." "great," said captain yarrow. 'tell him thank you, and to keep his people back while we're working. tell him it's d " very angerous. we drove back up the road, where we found a small cache of tank and mortar rounds in the palms, hidden behind a berm. it took about two hours to clear every­ thing. the kids kept running over and we had to keep chasing them off. driving de lnaking ow maio squav lfro·three ii�tatus g ca�tain � 111 the convl ii�ir1" ilrull the � leasea ofl ,t,aks,� "fire rige he�ds's rl iii can't see iikee� �ol i jwun� d �,tnesh l��t�n y f�eryone res] mtoilienan rem·two, wh noanswe (brernow, iicrusaae '%at'syou mr armo �eeaeq a cig ianycru �ar have e) "crusan}• • • "pull the fuck over, wilson!" i eased off the gas and slid to the shoulder. shots to the right, aks, close. m, "fire right side! right side!" healds's rifle went off pop-pop-pop. "i can't see," lieutenant krauss shouted. "keep going, keep going!" the bc yelled. i swung back onto the road and took the convoy up to fifty. the shooting kept on, mostly us, then petered out. captain yarrow got on the radio and called for a status report. everyone responded except two-zero-two. yarrow screamed into the hand mike: "crusader two-zero-two, crusader two­ zero-two, what's your status, over? respond! respond!" no answer. i exhaled, staring at the road. the world was clearer now, numinous, drenched in light. "crusader two-zero-two!" captain yarrow shouted. "what's your status, over? respond!" my armor plate lay on my chest like a lover's head. i needed a cigarette. "any crusader element, this is crusader six, does some­ body have eyes on two-zero-two?" "crusader six, this is crusader two-zero-five war porn 91 driving down the road something exploded behind us, shaking our truck, then something else exploded and the radio squawked: "grenade grenade crusader two­ zero-three what's your status?" "status green over." captain yarrow stuck his head out the window, trying to see the convoy behind us. he told me pull over. "sir?" 9j roy scranton november. we have eyes on two-zero-two, status green, break. they don't have a radio. over." "well make sure they get a goddamned radio," cap­ tain yarrow shouted into his mike. "somebody give me a sitrep." "six, this is one-six november. two grenades from the overpass, break. one fell wide and the other bounced off the back of two-zero-three." "all crusader elements, this is crusader six. keep a tight eye on your twelve. watch those overpasses and don't take any chances. let's get this load of ammo to wardog." "you see who was shooting at us, healds?" lieutenant krauss asked. "uh honestlv. si t". .. onest y, sir. "yes." "n all"ot re y. at the next overpass i saw two hadjis crossing above so i swung wide right to keep the convoy from passing beneath them. as we drove into the shadows under the arch, i heard the trucks behind open fire. �r�eant cha llrtain yarro iltli�tening tfj m�tne letter silnlnaler flip lieutenant w�tnat1" �er�eant c ine lt w ater ann wen meifl wantel [rean the: (ajllefrom, ur a �en an ��md, wasn m�ine�. "_. --.........� la-l'-�--.......i-" desiring democracy and modernization immediately is a good example of what a westerner might view as an arab's "wish vs. reality" sergeant chandler read maxim. lieutenant krauss and captain yarrow watched braveheart in the captain's room. i sat listening to this mix cd a girl had made me and reread­ ing the letter she'd sent. rifle fire popped off close. sergeant mp�\'i chandler flipped a page of his magazine. lieutenant krauss stomped in, weapon in hand. "what was that?" sergeant chandler shrugged. the lt went downstairs, then returned a few minutes later and went back to braveheart. healds came in and asked me if i wanted to smoke and i told him i'd just had one. i read the girl's letter again, amazed at how far away it came from, how ignorant she was of my world. i picked up a pen and paper to reply but found myself struck dumb, washed in a frustration humming like great engmes. • • • 94 roy scranton the next day we got a late start and by the time we hit the streets, the shooting was heavy. a shot every few seconds, every minute or so a long clatter of fire. some close, some farther away. sometimes we'd hear the ping of nearby rico­ chet, though it didn't seem like we were being targeted. we pulled off onto a frontage road, searching for the first cache. captain yarrow peered at the map, at his gps, then back at the map, sometimes giving directions. for myself, i watched the tree line, the buildings in the distance, the earth and sky, eyes wide for the spray of impact or a muz­ zle flash. i felt preternaturally alert and also numb. shots cracked out all around us. captain yarrow directed us into a wide, vacant lot, about a block off canal road. "fuck this," healds hissed. "you guys nervous?" lieutenant krauss asked. loud zing of ricochet. "fuck no, sir. this is bread and butter. i love it when the world goes batshit and everybody's shooting all over the goddamned place." "you worry too much," the lt said. there was an overpass to the west and a cluster of half-built three-story homes to the north. beyond that, northwest, lay sadr city. "stop here," captain yarrow said. he and krauss got out and healds and i stayed in the truck. "you see anything?" yarrow yelled as he and the lt stomped around searching for shells. "no, sir." "follow me," he said. we circled the field, shots popping ill afour �otner carta go/,as i�uaer u ma ric� �ce,i i�iela or tne d �i�c� j �riyin� �er�n manaj waterli, t�rea, ol 1�rlo�io �4q me �ilim � m�tal, orne clo��, !�: i � of neardr�[ fl' n� tar��t�, in�forilid: a hi) gr�,� war porn 9s all around us, then the two officers got back in the truck. another zing, another ricochet. captain yarrow had me drive northwest toward sadr city. as we neared the ghetto, the shooting got louder and louder until we swam in the noise of it. shots and echoes and ricochets wrapped us in a cacophony like industrial dance. i waited for the first rounds to puncture the wind­ shield or the canvas roof the next site was a larger lot, five blocks long and two blocks wide, full of stagnant pools and blackened muck. driving in circles through the filth we eventually found several hundred mortar and light artillery rounds scattered in and around a stinking puddle. fins stuck out of the oily water like dead metal sharks. most of the rounds were scat­ tered, black, and misshapen, the obvious remains of an explosion. captain yarrow marked the site on his map and had me drive the corners. the shooting let up for about half an hour then redoubled, manic, the sky raucous with metal. the bc had us drive to the un compound at the canal hotel. we parked our trucks around back and went in for lunch. weapons and armor were prohibited, so we left everything with foster, who volunteered to stand guard if we brought him a plate. on the way in, we passed fleets of bright blue, brand-new suvs marked in day-glo orange: unhioc, unhcr, un, unesco. we'd seen them driving the streets, clean and shining, stunning colors blaz­ ing against the city skelter. 96 roy scranton "remember," captain yarrow said, "we're representatives of the united states of america. be on your best behavior." the doors opened to beatitude: clean and quiet, chilled, orderly, bureaucratic assurance washed in light and ac hum. a woman wafted by in a skirt, trailing eddies of designer scent, and our heads turned together following her gold earrings, her swinging curves and lean calves, her high heels clipping along the stone. a man in a jacket and tie passed the other way, carrying thick files in soft pink hands. captain yarrow led us to the cafeteria, where again we stood dazed, this time by the heaps of food on the serv­ ing line, the gleaming elegance of the white tablecloths and smiling servers. they had roast chicken and fresh salad, rice and hummus, bread and fruit and sauces, all on porce­ lain plates with metal servingware, drinks in glass tumblers and-impossibly-ice cream. we piled our plates high and feasted like jackals. i wondered as i ate: maybe when i got out i could do this, be one of these people, get the thrill of war without all the army bullshit. i could be a war correspondent or maybe some kind of humanitarian. it'd be perfect: i'd get the adventure but i'd get to bathe, eat well, and drink cognac with beautiful, intelligent women. i'd have the internet, cynical-wise conversation, and the warm fulfillment of knowing i was doing something good. for the world. my mouth full of chicken, i flushed with obscure yearn­ ing, loneliness, and the sudden desire for these people to see me as one of their own, to see how enlightened i really was beneath my salt-stiff dcus, how different from the thugs i'd come in with. i wanted to talk with these business-casual representatil; best benayi�: dqulet,cmt i \i�ht anoll �\in� eaill�, i er fo�owi��� alvei, n�[� . a jack�t 4n�: . )qn�inknl[ .j� odlcurer� �ese peo�lew! rened i re�r� nr from the w� i e busjness·(4l� war porn 97 cosmopolitans about human rights and cultural program­ ming, michel foucault and zadie smith. i wanted to corner the woman in the skirt, take her hands in mine, and convince her: i used to read whitman. i used to read joyce. after finishing our ice cream, a few of us wandered down the hall to the cafe to smoke. there were more men and women there, more un types drinking tea and coffee. a talking head on the tv said that uday and qusay had been killed . ilirou�h utlfacts roller eel the primer ignites the propellant in the round wllower wllat thl gas from the burni ng propellant �wo�, tn pushes the projectile along the weapon l�noyee ��w' lola � ger�o rourtyall m�rara captain yarrow watched black hawk down. i stood in the �(a�em doorway behind him, eyeing the jumpcuts flashing holly��ffie' wood prettyboys acting tough. w�� aro "you don't get enough war during the day, sir?" !�out�a "what's that, wilson?" �orm,� "i said you don't get enough war during the day, sir?" �illi1yee, "i'm watching for pointers. this is tactical review." lmaa "sir?" ttttn, w "yeah. good lessons learned. like, bring water. see, if ma unr� they'd done that, they would've been in much better shape. uhi their ncos needed to be doing better precombat checks (lo��q and inspections. you can learn a lot from this, wilson. you'll be an nco yourself someday." "r . " oger, sir. "pull up a chair." "no thanks, sir." i went back to the common room. i looked around at the same tired, dirty faces i saw every day, then sat and flipped \�� �m�!i!�' � �i��� l�� wm;: • i iltooam[ •. alnin� ��: , uwam,&11' e �. demr!��� e omdat�� om rhi�, w,. cd arauna at� sat and flir� war porn 99 through the letters i'd saved up from girls back home­ artifacts from hyperspace. who were these women doing roller derby in wisconsin, meditating, hiking mountains? who were they to say they missed me and hoped i was safe? what the fuck did they know about it? where were their hands, their smells, their voices? what would they think if i shoved my rifle in their faces and screamed at them, "kif ogufl" i did fifty push-ups then went downstairs to smoke. geraldo had lit a plastics fire in a trash barrel, filling the courtyard with toxic fumes. i walked past him, out through the yard toward the wall, thinking i could go right over­ escape into the night and find some nice kurdish family to take me in who wouldn't cut my throat in my sleep. i could walk around in regular clothes, sit in a cafe and bullshit about politics. i could even turn hadji, learn to read the koran, grow a mustache, wear a man-dress, glare at ameriki humvee. i could learn to breathe again. i made my way back toward the barracks. i brushed my teeth, went upstairs, took my cot out onto the balcony, and unrolled my patrol bag. shots rang out. i listened to the white album for a while, then took off my glasses and closed my eyes. used to date a beauty queen, olee-olee-annah. now 1 date my m-l6, olee-olee-ann-ah. oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah, oh-lee-ohhhh, olee-olee-annah. used to drive a cadillac, olee-olee-annah. now 1 hump it on my back, olee-olee­ ann-ah. r�ree guy: i�ttne res, tnen t) ��,ryef dl i�nte at uj wetnry;'�moki lnfide � iwatcn t� lie) lcreal !tilm a �ifflr, il��ujuft� i�fhand we tumble offthe bus in the night, screamed at by a redheaded specialist who briefi us on what we'reforbidden andgives us two minutes each in curtained stalls to dump out all our chewing gum, candy, novels, magazines, cd players, nonprescription medication, booze, cigarettes, drugs, video games, and what­ ever else we thought we could sneak past the drill sergeants. we're warned this is our last chance. we're told someone will think they're the exception. they're wrong, the specialist says. they will be the example. on monday morning, just like in a movie, our first round brown breaks the dark shouting and banging a can. we mus­ ter, go to chow, and it starts: forms, shots, id cards, briefings, initial uniform issue. somebody tells the drill sergeant there's no hot water in the showers and he puts on a concerned face and says he'll check on it. thursday we take our initial pt test: thirteen push-ups, seventeen sit-ups, run a mile in eight thirty. ��r �ear �, tnry �iarran )�u nave fnvate( )�utninr �t�a/lin� �'re� roth fnvateyo �in� thi �vepril nry ilwnru, wirythin �wnan , it) our[lnl r�\ nu a can, wtm. v (a,�) onp�; '/i sergeanll!r � a (oncern�j�, tfi,initiam� ,k in eignt tni� war porn 101 three guysfail out and get recycled to fat boy. the next morn­ ing the rest ofus post with our bags in the yard. then the real drill sergeants arrive. heads shaved to bul­ lets, eyes dooming searchlights, boots gleaming liquidpain, they lunge at us in their smokey bears lucid, swift, and terrible. at once they're on the attack, herding us into cattle cars, and we stumble in on each other, dazed and sweating. inside the cattle car hot and close with the stench offear, i watch the fort roll by through a tiny window. we stop and they scream and we fall out and form up. there are legions of them and all they do is yell. you flinch, move, wobble, mutter, blink-wham-there's a fucker on your eyeball like you just raped his mom. we line up and get helmets and rucksacks and laundry bagsfull ofequipment. as we waddle with our gear into lines in the sun, the drill sergeants lash into us. they form us back up and issue precise instructions for the arrangement ofour equipment, this goes here, that there, you have thirty seconds and what the fuck are you thinking, private? you have completely jacked your entire day and do you think ... are you eyeballing me, private? are youfucking eyeballing me? �'re loaded back on the cattle cars panting. the trucks cross to the training side. we stop and they're on us again, faster private you wanna die, you gonna die you move that slow, you think this is summer camp, you think tm here to-you best move private-are you eyeballing me? they start simple: stack things this way, you have thirty seconds. you fail, get down and push. move over here, stack everything that way, you have thirty seconds. you fail. get down andpush. we get some kind ofspeech. get everything up 10) roy scranton to the barracks, pick a bunk and stow your gear and return to the drillpad you have two minutes. you fail get down and push. you have to learn the value of time, private, you must learn the value of time. a lot can happen in two minutes. �i�m ofth �irealized �iner than i�ur!e yout jrn�offinsl �(rytning, :w�l a orick!i�nt! irn . �rmj to shl ��eant!" rnerewi "we'llsei '�i,"n i�ij foce a �1�raj�a, �� ijoin� iw�a te 1!i�ne na �iemoer ®in�anyj mjome "�nut ir�f!jor?" "well, �lrign !norto "you oe rnorto! �n, the lunaticfascistfuck in thefunny hat who made us call him drill sergeant gathered us around him in a small circle, forty stinking boys, and had us one by one say our names, where we'refrom, and why wejoined the army. his name was drill sergeant krugman. he was our supreme fistfuck, a light infantry sniper, and i still think back fondly to our first day there, his big black boots shining in my face as he walked up and down the line, the pain in my arms and chest and hips, the puddle ofsweat on thefloor under my chin. down, he said, and we lowered ourselves to the level of his rippled boot soles. up, he said, and we pushed past the toe gleaming like a vulcan mirror, past the ankle where the boot narrowed, up the leather along the leg where it widened, the laces taut and strong, hide smooth, to the very top, where snugly bloused trousers slid into the leather like a hand into a glove. three-five, drill sergeant, we gasped, weak and broken. we did not deserve his love. down, he said and we went down. now his eyes scanned the circle ofshaved skulls. "how about you, pinhead? why'd you decide to pollute my ?" army. the googly-eyed private looked up. "uh, my name's jimmy wuckertt, drill sarnt, and tm from bahstan. l uh, joined ah, you know, ah, nine-eleven. drill sarnt. " the truth: a long r and return: karn tne �i time, awla madeuha�' s1m� arc�, j: n in mjarrm� rundermjii o ne �e/�f' . fa ;ajll�1 i u!nml�i',' t i, wijeni�: "ry namef}im! m, l un, j�ir� the trutka� war porn 10j night ofthe soul, in jailfor possession with intent to sell, when he realized that ifhe kept dealing and smoking, it was sooner rather than later he'd be doing way more than ninety days. of course you're not supposed to be able to get in the army with drug offenses like that on your record, but there's a waiver for everything. "andyou, carruthers, you fatfuck?" a brick-headed troglodyte: 'jason carruthers, drill ser­ geant! tm from indianapolis, indiana, hooah. i joined the army to shoot stuff! jump out ofplanes and kill people! drill sergeant!" there were a couple hooahs. "we'll see. and what about you, thorton?" "hi." thorton waved at us. he was a big guy with an ape's face and monstrous ears. 'i'm albert thorton. i'm from nebraska, but i was actually living in illinois. uh, well, actu­ ally ijoined the army for a couple of reasons, drill sergeant. i was a teaching assistant, working on my phd in history, on the one hand going further into debt and on the other, after september 11, it sort ofseemed ... i mean, itfelt like i wasn't doing anything with my life. i wanted to do something import­ ant. something meaningful. so, ifelt like i should. . . " "shut your cakehole, thorton. you're a fucking college professor? " "well, i was teaching but. . . " ':alright, professor, shut your goddamned mouth andpush. " thorton was confused. "you better dad-gummed start pushing right now, private. " thorton dropped to his hands and pushed himself up and down. 104 roy scranton "you. " drill sergeant krugman turned, pinning me with his cold blue eyes. i saw myself as he saw me, skinny-necked, bird-beaked, blinking anemically from behind clunky-framed army-issue basic combat glasses, and wanted nothing more than to erase myselffrom his vision, erase my poems, my hippie past, erase everything but the camouflage bdus i wore and my determi­ nation to make it through. "nine-eleven, " i shouted, "drill sergeant!" i�tlnone fim clas� (��m�, r�tmrized (n(ker, an (��m�we mtmren i fit me da� �rerinm �(k, li�te ��i(e�, tal iw�nted ��i(n i� �[� it w �m�cb, most iraqis see themselves as a persecuted people and hold the coalition forces, as the occupying power, responsible for resolving all personal and national problems i sat in one of the ratty chairs scrounged to furnish sergeant first class perry's "reading room" and opened my mre: charms, cappuccino packet, country captain chicken, pasteurized jalapeno cheese food spread, wheat snack cracker, and noodles with butter sauce. the noodles and charms went in the trash. the entree i deboxed and slid in the mre heater bag, into which i poured some water. then i fit the bag and entree back into the box and placed it all, as per instructions, "against a rock or something." i leaned back, listening to the heater's chemical hiss, my transistor radio's crackle, and the bbc announcer's accent, so civi­ lized, doing cricket scores. a boom sounded somewhere in the city and i jerked. voices, talking, nothing-i wanted to be on mission or i wanted quiet. sergeant first class perry was the same, which is why he'd commandeered this room, closed off as it was from the gymnasium that housed our new barracks. 106 roy scranton the gym was a vast bedlam, divided into rough thirds by battery, about two hundred joes all told. the main areas were subdivided into loose platoon aos, squads, and indi­ vidual cubicles carved out with plywood and poncho liners. a guy in bravo battery named pizza had started walking around naked. when he got up one afternoon and pissed allover the floor, he was put on suicide watch. he screamed in the night, eerie piercing howls of terror. villaguerrero punched some dude from alpha, got his rank taken away, and was tasked to divarty. bullwinkle crashed a hemmet into the compound's main gate, tearing open a fuel tank and spilling gas everywhere. lieutenant krauss had started talking to himself. the iraqi governing council was appointed. general abizaid said our enemy was waging "a classical guerril­ la-type campaign." rumsfeld said we'd turned a corner. the jordanian embassy got hit by a suicide bomber-foreign insurgents, they said, probably al-qaeda. we were told to be on the lookout for an orange and white sedan. i took out the entree bag and cut it lengthwise. the smell of cheap curry and preservatives made me gag. i set the entree aside to cool and squeezed pasteurized jalapeno cheese food spread on a wheat snack cracker. anxious music cut the cricket scores: "breaking news at the bbc. just minutes ago the un headquarters in baghdad came under attack. we go now live to baghdad ... adrianna?" "hello, david. we're live from baghdad. us forces have sealed off a sizable area around the un headquarters here i� r��pons l!ulcide c woraretoj itneboj w�ltna� be \ltlom rej :ly�wfar �f�u�tie lio/i iliou�� �naare� xrofamej"have a ,\fulanna?" "no,da �ltonwni matum .1� rf3�on, �r me att 'imul�n e l((�� roao i mou� :·1�t.1 ate aarian "well, � :mwnav ]��roaq� ma iliere'� i�mnere imirelr,m !i ),1 for �u to rou�nili in response to what initial reports seem to be saying was ,them�nt: a suicide car bomb attack just moments ago. there's no quaru)an�[ word yet on any casualties sustained inside the compound. d �oncnol� "the bomb was heard throughout the city, yet another in what has become a typical series of daily explosions. united nations representatives and american military personnel have so far refused to confirm speculation as to the number of casualties or how the attack may have penetrated secu­ rity, though it is worth mentioning that in recent days the un had reduced its security profile and decreased the num­ ber of american soldiers stationed there." "have any groups claimed responsibility for the attack, adrianna?" "no, david. representatives have so far refused to specu­ late on which group if any might have carried out the attack, and there have not as yet been any statements made claim­ ing responsibility. i can tell you that unidentified sources say the attack was committed with a truck bomb loaded with high explosives, and that the driver used an unguarded access road to enter the compound." i thought of the woman in heels trailing her complex scent. i ate my wheat snack cracker. "adrianna, can you describe the situation there?" "well, david, it's difficult to get close to the scene. us forces have sealed off the compound and are blocking the main roads with battle tanks. soldiers are patrolling the area and there's clearly an emergency plan in operation. it seems from here as if one corner of the un building has collapsed entirely. military personnel are currently searching the rub­ ble for survivors." war porn 107 101 roy scranion sergeant first class perry came in the door and glanced at the radio. "what's up, wilson?" "un got bombed, sergeant." "that so?" "suicide truck bomb." he grunted and sat on his cot. i ate my country captain chicken. �iaay! i urivta, � ilin� tne !�ula clie mrou�n h j�utao ,��m� � aline the front and rear sight with the target and squeeze the trigger our days at caha wardog began when the hadji semis arrived. we worked them in pairs. one soldier would sling the other's rifle and guard the driver. the other would climb into the cab and tear covers off seats, sweep through knickknacks on the dash, pull up floor mats, shout down, "what's this, huh? what's this for? what's in here? you fucking hiding shit, huh? you think you'll get over, do ya? hey, look at this guy. he thinks he's a fucking exception." after the cab, we'd search the truck's exterior, checking the wiring, the engine, and the underside of the trailer bed. we'd check their fuel tanks. finally we'd search the driver himself, patting him down along his man-dress, turning him around, making him take off his kaffiyeh. "do a complete search," shouted staff sergeant smith. "check their junk. they could be fucking hiding bombs in their taint." the hadjis stank of old sweat. we made fun of them, 110 roy scranton scowling, shouting, laughing. we pointed at a fat one, mimed his belly, and asked, "baby? you have baby?" his friends laughed and he blushed, frowning. jl(k. the [�u�e nlm "�!t tne j "deep �i iiro�er i "he�ay j �t�e," "fuchln� inon!1 "�hut yo "ro�er �i�he �ay "�ull�h!1 "non! "�ou fu� ;�mfuchl "ro�er iiro�er 1", ro�, "non! "rnl� l� �qamne �nt ha �(�ta hll j�·ltrlrre ��la!la, � l�rfuc at the end of the day, we searched the hadji workers as they left. "what the fuck is this, you little fuckwad?" i looked over. burnett, towering over one of the had­ jis, held an mre bag in his fist, shaking it. he shoved the hadji, who stumbled back and put his hands up. "no mista, no," he bleated. "this fucker's got nine-mil rounds in his mre bag. trying to fucking steal from us." "lock' em down," shouted staff sergeant smith. i threw my helmet on and grabbed my rifle. "mista," one of them said. he put his hands out in supplication. "shut the fuck up, bitch! uskut your ass!" "misra, mista," he said. "uskut, bitch!" i shouted, sticking my rifle in his face. to my left, one of the hadjis got up and burnett forced him back. there was a clack on my right as stoat cham­ bered a round, then a series of clacks as we all followed suit. the hadjis got panicky. "no, misra," one said, climbing to his knees. "sit the fuck down, bitch!" i shouted, bringing my rifle to the ready. he sat back down. one of the hadjis on my right whispered something to another and stoat jumped at him: "no talking!" lieutenant krauss called higher, waited for higher to call war porn 111 at a fat �r ve ba�rtf. worker!d a&n back. the shift foreman spoke some english, so they tried to use him to talk to the hadjis. we waited. "sit the fuck down!" "deep steel three november, this is caha wardog." "roger deep steel, caha wardog standing by." "he say no ali baba," the foreman said. "he say mistake, mistake." "fucking mistake is right. biggest mistake he ever made." "no ali baba, mister." "shut your fucking dirty mouth." "roger deep steel, caha wardog standing by." "he say for to melt. to make for, eh, car?" "bullshit, " "no ali baba, mister." "you fucking ali baba if i say you ali baba. now shut your fucking face." "roger deep steel, caha wardog still standing by ... roger deep steel, this is caha wardog. we've got a ... roger ... roger. roger. roger. standing by." "no ali baba, mister." "this is the last fucking time i'm telling you to shut your goddamned mouth." one hadji jumped up and ran for it. duernbacher tackled him. they twisted his arms behind his back and zip-stripped his thumbs together and left him face down in the sand. duernbacher slapped him in the back of the head. "silly fucking hadji. trix are for kids." eventually battalion sent instructions, and we picked five hadjis to take with us back to biap: the one who'd tried to steal the rounds; his brother, slightly younger; the rea som�thl�f i.: i" lung, for higher w; 11) roy scranton guy who'd made a run for it, a badass in a def leppard t-shirt; another, in a man-dress, who seemed to be trying to ignore us; and lastly the crew foreman. we lined them up, except the one we'd already tied, twisted their arms behind their backs, and zip-tied their thumbs together as tightly as possible. we blindfolded them with abdominal bandages and tape. we loaded the thief and his brother in the back of a humvee and the other three in the bed of a hemmet. we sent the other hadjis home and told them not to be late to work tomorrow. l� i cracl ��woull i�ookni� i to��e iijmr�d � w�illlal��trlr � liwt�1 �r·tied a m1ffito ilr3aid "wen tmantkn "lnat �11a rar "ohr, ,�1rafe "nri�n ��n� tne "�orry, "�utw "noe "wdl, "rlar �w(��in� �wn tfie "wew� like ���·y�u "�ut t at battalion we stood in the parking lot half-watching the hadjis, joking and fucking around while they were taken in one by one to be interrogated by s-2. we untied their blindfolds and cut their zip-ties. there were dark circles around their thumbs and blood where the plastic had cut into their skin. burnett and stoat took an order for burger king and got us all dinner. i sat on a jersey barrier with my gun in my lap, chowing on my whopper, watching the hadjis in our humvee. the light faded and the sky darkened to purple. the temperature dropped and biap's streetlights buzzed on. "misra," one of the hadjis said, "misra." he made a ges­ ture like he had to pee. i waved him out, he climbed down, and i walked him to the porta-john. "you try anything, i'll shoot you in your face," i said. he went in and came out a few minutes later. i walked him back to the truck. it was dark now and hard to see in the back of the humvee, a defk�� dtodet� e linea ili�ml. ( "] �i 'our race, ), ures larer.] w� jack ofthe d@ war porn in so i cracked a chemlight and tried to hand it to the hadji. he wouldn't take it. i shoved it at him. "take it," i said. he shook his head and waved his hands. i tossed the chemlight in his lap and he shouted and jumped back, brushing it away with the back of his hand. we all laughed. he crouched back and brought his palms gingerly up to the chemlight, as if it gave off heat. lieutenant krauss came out later. we blindfolded and zip-tied all the hadjis again and took off we tried to take them to camp cropper, biap's prison complex, but the mp said we didn't have authorization. "we have authorization from the mayor's cell," said lieu­ tenant krauss. "that doesn't matter, sir," the mp at the gate told him. "i need paperwork from division." "okay, stand by." krauss got on the radio to battalion. after a few minutes he came back to the mp. ''alright, i talked to our s-2 and he said we're supposed to bring these prisoners here to camp cropper." "sorry, sir. i need authorization from division." "but we're supposed to bring them here." "no can do, sir. i need paperwork." "well, what are we supposed to do with them?" "play duck-duck-goose for all i care, sir. there's a pow processing station down the road. why don't you take' em down there." "we were told to bring them here." "like i said, sir, i need authorization from division. high-value prisoners only." "but these aren't pows." 114 roy scranton "pows, enemy combatants, civilians, doesn't matter. just take' em down the road to the mp station and they'll help you out." "where's this station?" "it's just down the road on the right. before the airfield." we drove down the road and went past the airfield, then turned around came back the other way took the first left and wound up driving down this alley though a cluster of deserted buildings. then we came back out to the main road and turned right and drove past the airfield and down the road until we came to 123rd msb, which was the first right after the airfield but clearly not where we were going, so we turned around again and this time took the next left after the left we'd taken before, which led to a guarded com­ pound with a locked gate which the guard wouldn't even tell us what it was much less let us in, but he did give us directions to the mp station, so we drove back down the road and found the right turn and pulled into a brightly lit compound, the largest section of which was surrounded by nested chain-link fences topped with triple-strand razor wire. hadjis in orange jumpsuits and ankle cuffs shuffled chained in trios through the yard inside the fence. we parked and downloaded the prisoners and took off their blindfolds. lieutenant krauss went in to talk to the sergeant of the guard. our hadjis shivered in the chill. "probably fucking insurgents and shit." "even if they sold the rounds, they'd get used on us anyway." "fucking hadjis." burnett spit on the ground in front of the one in the get u�ea ��, the one int war porn 1u defleppard t-shirt. the hadji glared up at him. "you want some?" burnett barked. "eyes on the ground!" burnett pointed. "put your eyes on the ground!" the hadji glared up. "get your eyes down, shithead." burnett grabbed the man by the back of the neck and pushed his head toward the ground. "watch the dirt." lieutenant krauss came out and asked staff sergeant gooley and me to follow him inside to help with the paper­ work. he had a list of the hadjis' names along with the info that came up in interrogation, and we filled out two dou­ ble-sided forms for each one, going over address ofsuspect and identifying marks/tattoos. mostly we filled in unk and n/a. eventually we finished and handed the forms to the sog, who stacked them in the corner with a pile of other forms then turned to a lanky, dark-haired corporal. "hey, sto, go grab some guys and process these epws, would you?" we stood outside watching the first two get processed­ screamed at, kicked, manhandled, handcuffed, then led away to get their very own orange jumpsuits. burnett and some of the others clapped. "i wonder what's gonna happen to those guys," i said. "they'll be processed. there'll be an investigation," lieu­ tenant krauss said. "what the fuck do you care?" burnett glared at me. he was right. what the fuck did i care? w1took ( 'xwone mrurniti ma�ardal !��yel� an wars are not won by machines and weapons mal but by the soldiers who use them ill�eyef}1 j\1m:"w �it ler no �(ki rraj "mmllas the fall wore on, the weather got colder. gray clouds swept in, obscuring the sun. porkchop regaled us with tales of going home on leave, how much he drank, how hard he fucked his wife. most of all, he talked about his 'vette and its mods. he got nitro, new tires, fat rims. he got a new tattoo, too, on his calf, an eagle wrapped in the stars and stripes, clutching bloody rags in its talons. a single tear fell from the eagle's eye; behind the bird rose the smoking silhouettes of the twin towers. "you like that, huh?" "nice," i told him. "real classy." "the rags are like ragheads." "yeah, i get that. very multicultural." porkchop squinted at me and tucked his trouser leg back in his boot. "why you such a faggot, wilson?" '''cuz i hate freedom, porkchop." he told me to go fuck myself. • • : i �� d�� �!1; . �, i�r� w�� �i!r i ')(fouwl�:, lison?" war porn 117 we took our work team to the stables. caha wardog had been one of saddam's equestrian clubs before he'd decided to turn it into an ammo dump. there was hay and horseshit and garbage everywhere, which we had hadjis clean up with shovels and brooms. the hadjis worked slow, taking long breaks and half-ass­ ing everything, so i'd go through the stables and shout at them: "work harder! get back to work! shovel that shit! git 'er done!" they glared at me and my rifle and i glared back, praying for an excuse. "fucking get to work!" "man"sergeant chandler shook his head-"you gotta relax." "sornebody's gotta make sure they keep working," i said. "you're gonna give yourself a heart attack." "yeah," porkchop said. "why you such a slave driver?" "i told you, porkchop, i hate freedom." "f k " uc you. "no, fuck you, porkchop. really. anytime." i headed back through the stables. i found a hadji squat­ ting in one of the side rooms, resting against a wall. i shouted at him to get the fuck back to work and he glared at me like he'd cut my throat if he could. i shouted again and stared him down till he picked up his shovel and got back to the horseshit. "you give me cigarette," one said to bullwinkle one day while we stood around watching them work. "you give me blowjob?" bullwinkle said back. the hadji smiled. "blowjob?" bullwinkle said, making an 0 with this mouth and jerking his head back and forth over his rifle barrel. 118 roy scranton the hadji kept smiling. "no, mista. no mota. you give me cigarette?" "you ficky-ficky?" porkchop asked him. "no ficky-ficky," the hadji said, still smiling. "fuck off," i shouted, waving the hadji away. "get back to work." "no ficky, mista," he said, ducking and grinning. "you ficky good, huh?" porkchop asked him. "get the fuck back to work." the hadji glared at me and slunk off. i knew better. this wasn't who i was, who i was meant to be. i was sensitive. i'd been a poet. the solution seemed obvious: if i just shot a hadji, it'd all be okay. if i just killed one hadji, anyone, someone, then all the black bile, hatred, and fear would flow out of me like blood and water pouring from the wounds of christ. i'd be transformed, transfigured. please jesus, i prayed, let me fucking kill somebody. we came back each night and spent a couple hours relax­ ing, drinking vodka and gatorade and watching sex and the city. samantha fucked a fireman, charlotte got married, carrie dumped mr. big and went out with aidan, then got back with mr. big. we downloaded crates of water and crates of mres. we swept the barracks, swept the compound. we watched hadji bootlegs of the matrix revolutions and the new texas chainsaw massacre. some guys redeployed back, some other war porn 119 mota, yoij� new guys showed up. staff sergeant reynolds, cheese, and reading played halo. cheese begged us to quit calling him cheese, and burnett said he'd punch him in his fucking face if he didn't shut his goddamn cockholster. i was driving and staff sergeant gooley was saying to me how all of us who'd been out last night clearing the caha shouldn't have to be going out there again today because none of us had gotten enough sleep, then there was some shooting close behind the convoy, and the truck radio crackled: "fire fire. shooters on the buildings." "stop!" staff sergeant gooley shouted. we heard m16s and saws answering ak fire, then the low thump of our .50s. "crusader three-seven, we're taking fire." "turn the truck around!" i started to pull a three-point turn and as we swung the other way the trucks behind us started turning too, so we had to wait. there was more shooting from the highway. all the trucks turning around at once in the alley made a slow chaos of bumps and shouts. one of the trucks tried to drive out in reverse, its driver screaming, "just back up! back up!" staff sergeant gooley grabbed the hand mike. "this is crusader three-seven, gimme a sitrep!" "all crusader elements converge on the north­ east building," staff sergeant smith barked. "this is crusader three-seven, somebody tell me what's going on, over," staff sergeant gooley shouted into the radio. no roy scranton "all crusader elements return fire on your targets." more shooting, the tock-tock of our .50s. as we rolled slowly behind the other trucks back to the highway, we could see the rest of the convoy scattered between the alley's mouth and the nearest overpass. crusader 5 sped down the highway on the other side, through a gap in the guardrail onto the shoulder toward a three-story building, staff ser­ geant smith leaning out his window shooting wild with his mi6. figures ducked behind the wall up on the roof of the building and others ran along the overpass. one .50 traced a slow arc along the road, lobbing fat gobs of metal through the air, knocking chunks out of concrete. pork­ chop rode the second .50, firing at the top of the building, his body shaking at one with the gun: "yeah, get some! get some! fuck yeah! how you like it? get some!" "over there," gooley pointed, and i drove to the cluster of trucks by the building where staff sergeant smith stood shouting. "you three secure the rear of the structure, everyone else come with me." staff sergeant smith rammed his shoul­ der through the front door. men followed. staff sergeant gooley told me to stay with the radio, then ran in after. more shots came from the overpass and i swung open my door and slid sideways in my seat, pulling up my rifle and taking aim at the shadows ducking between the concrete sup­ ports. i hissed, exhaling, squeezing my trigger. i was surprised by the ease of it: just pull. my hadji ducked behind a support then dashed for the next, making his way toward the trees at the edge of the overpass. i fired again, aiming higher this time, n1tor of �tmi�in «cru�a )) !lrrep. mr rifl l1li, it: �ijwar, � rurj'rw i�m rill� �[ilidar ili�ni�j laff �i p��a ti ��1r tnre "(ru� war porn 1.21 the top of my iron sight to his right, above his head, leading but missing again and gritting my teeth and firing. breathing. "crusader three-six, this is crusader six. i need as as \yo: the hl�nw�)1 etween tn��: • sreaamlt lntne�t llilln���) m�wllamrn r on ili� too: " sitrep. my rifle bucked into my shoulder. the .50s punked away. it was like a carnival, a shoot-ern-up stand on the midway, but as i fired again i felt light-headed and distant, third-person somehow. the figures on the overpass ducked from pillar to pillar, dodging fire, and finally disappeared off the far side. porkchop shifted fire to the trees at the edge of the highway, dumping rounds into foliage. staff sergeant gooley ran out of the building and grabbed the hand mike. "cease fire, cease fire, this is cru­ sader three-seven say again cease fire." "crusader three-seven, this is crusader six. i need en ran lnilitl i��o��: � r fir ��! me con(re(�� er, lw�i�: � behina � lij�1 rowara ili�u� 19hi�er�� " a sitrep. "crusader six, this is crusader three-six." lieu­ tenant krauss broke through. "we're, uh, taking fire but, uh, it's under control now. standby for sitrep. break. all crusader elements, this is crusader three-six, return to the highway and give me a perimeter." 'three-six, this is three-seven, we need to clear these buildings," staff sergeant gooley said into the radio. "three-seven, this is three-six, give me a perimeter, now. out." so we drove back down the highway and set up a perim­ eter, blocking traffic both ways. staff sergeant smith walked up to lieutenant krauss. "we gotta clear all them buildings, sir. they're out there." "sergeant, we're not prepared to cordon off a whole. · ." 1)) roy scranton "sir, we need to clear them fucking buildings," staff ser­ geant smith shouted up at him. krauss backed down. "alright, sergeant. take some men and clear the buildings." we spent the next two hours waiting while the clearing teams went through the cluster of buildings along the high­ way, kicking in doors and screaming at hadjis. they didn't find any weapons. after a while, lieutenant krauss called off the search, and we reformed the convoy, drove to caha wardog, and ate lunch. that night and the next day it was all anybody talked about, who shot what who where. i didn't feel any better and my soul didn't bleed like the wounds of christ. what rf�ot a happened was the days got colder. i drew new rounds to i�tjod replace the ones i'd fired. we ran patrols. we set up tcps. we watched more sex and the city, cleaning our rifles and arguing about who'd give better head, charlotte or carrie, and who we'd like to fuck up the butt. ueiliecl� �on� ili��i jl�,neyrut t krallil�: drove to oj, remember, you are not alone an�oqr� feelanrk of cnrl!twl we got a speech from captain yarrow telling us what a new rounru great job we'd done. he told us we were transitioning to patrols now, covering neighborhoods southwest of biap, and training in close quarters combat. i was scheduled for environmental leave toward the end of december and started counting days till i left. we practiced kicking in doors. we learned to follow each other through a house, checking in closets and behind furniture, leading with our guns, shouting "clear," "door left," and "stairs." we learned to cover each other across open spaces, take out suicide bombers, turn and shoot without aiming. on thanksgiving president bush came. we were out on a patrol that night, driving village streets in the rain and planning on mres for dinner. we watched top gun, pumping iron, and the shawshank 114 roy scranton redemption. we wrestled, played pool and ping-pong, played touch football in the parking lot, argued and laughed and got in fights. reading kept playing "gimme the light" and that "birthday" song. one day i walked up to the cp and first sergeant bea­ man came out grinning. "they captured saddam," he said. "caught like a rat in a trap." "g "i'd ",\vt h . h t"reat, sal. we can go orne now, ng t. "it'll be a real turning point," he said. i nodded. "now all we gotta do is find those wmds." "hey, wilson," he said. "get down and push." "hooah, first sarnt." i dropped and pushed until he told me to stop. i decided to quit smoking. attack battery got hit with an rpg out on patrol, mostly minor injuries but one of the guys had to be evacked to germany. somebody in another unit was run over by a tank. i cleaned my rifle and waited for christmas. ,roll at j�to tn :��tomj 'h�rtla :ianve �momj !�k�arop "mwn, w mvnnee ir\ali r�intr � :ll·ek� nd pln�.��: t) ar�ue� t layin� i(gi� st �er�eantt, aqqam)nn1� 4 to 71 at 122nd 9:59. take the 10 to the 15, change down­ town to the 77 and get offat 21st. 10: 12. i talk to my ex-girlfriend and we decide to try again. the trouilio�e wm ' ble starts almost immediately, with my car's clutch grinding out rusfi." as i drive in over the coast range from newport. i make it to , nea untilnn my mom's in corvallis, but going to portland the next day the clutch drops with a thunk, and i have to get the car towed back ��othit�[ to town, where it sits in my mom's driveway growing a skin of es out one�f: brown needles. eooarin��t it's a sign, ofcourse-the sky full ofsigns thatfall. \'rifleanaw�: things don't improve in portland. i take the bus across town to a 7-eleven, fill out an application, take the bus back across town to a nursing home, fill out another application. rain falls, and i go to the library to search the internetfor jobs and wind up shuffling the stacks, reading the coming anarchy and the clash of civilizations. 4 to the 72 at 82nd 11:37. 12:19. we go to a dinner party with some friends of hers. we eat tempeh stir-fry and drink ipa and talk about jobs, the local theater scene, and good, cheap places to eat. after dinner we 1j6 roy scranton pass a joint and the conversation gets grim, somebody says they can't stop thinking about on tv those bodies foiling. did we think everything had changed? would they attack the mall of america? uie talk about blowback and globalization and how, yeah, on the one hand it seemed maybe we'd sort of caused it. maybe we wanted it to happen. uie talk about troop move­ ments in the hindu kush. 3:58. 14 to 9 to 60th. 4:09. 5:23. home. i make pasta. uie drink wine. the money dribbles away. i apply at goodwill burgerville, powell's, denny's. thanksgiving comes and goes and christmas too. against the rain and winter skies, the garish decorations and relentless commerce bring not cheer but constant reminder ofmy down­ ward spiral. no joy, no carols, not even santa can save me. one day, after spending two hours filling out a personality test at walmart, igo down the strip mall to an army recruiting office. the recruiter starts my packet. he asks me about drug use and criminal record he tells me about bonuses and college money. he asks me what i want to do and where i want to go. out troo� ��, babylon too, a��" m anjrl�� ofmjmi out a fm�� nannjri(r�: �s me ap�ullr, .. j/' onuses ana(�� 'here i wa�i�! wounds to the stomach, prosecuted-many have moved to the cities, particularly mosul, kirkuk, and sulaymaniyah operation resolute sword divided into the shi'a major­ ity in the south and the sunni who live mostly in the central part of the country around baghdad have not been assimi­ lated into the population are "marsh arabs" who inhabited the lower tigris and euphrates urban centers with baghdad being iraq my spear population of two already pleaded to be those targets on the edge of the gall­ bladder and transverse colon; only those acts which can be said to be half measures, the national kalashnikovs with a gunshot wound through the rectum; and two with possible war seen war that will be fourteen more casual­ ties arrived operation sidewinder cia secret prisons at the military's iraqi advanced trauma life support protocols for the administration of bush's decision was over the last six sometimes they arrested all adult males present the us citizen no roy scranton military must adhere wholly by the low-value treatment �ii���t: often including pushing saddam ;�[fr ar punching and kicking and striking with rifles heart of the cover :wr1on of darkness operation iron saber after 2130, the white j�ili�r house by remote control, we've ravaged disarmament in the early morning hours thursday they're apparently exploiting the arab fear of dogs and you, the city and two key avenues, detainee-14 and a totally widowed mother-he, astyanax, which meant the questions of the local coalition less than a meter across and devoid of any more but the daintiest and choicest of morsels surgical burned down tired and went to sleep, he would lie knowing neither want nor care, whereas the version here is not simply the general might salvage judged (myself) and i do not make filled with water, linking unstable my spear! surely i fear the prisoner's head and do good and the people, the attacks brought coming, there is no doubt therein, coalition forces in the early operation iron jus­ tice turning but no gunfire in the government and the challenge upon me, i will answer you and defend the world tv from open rebellion: in the north, mosul was a close call and over time the bradley fades. the us-trained iraqi police enter hell abased. allah is striking selected targets of wounded and many dead. he urges them to surrender operation ivy needle the west seems nervous, boys, most surely the opening stages war porn hi police stations other small attacks intense heat heanofili�� 21j�) ili�' center and the pentagon, he and his team allah, your lord, babylon where the rebellion is operation red dawn another road )� woulali� ilievmionk �ea (ffir!��t e ana 00 �ooo[ . there il no ��. eration iro�f vernment w�: oefena ilitw� i mo�ul w�d�: e u�·tr�ndrn nc selectea t�fb wem to lum�: tj15 nervou!) � the fall (baghdad, 2003) saddam smiled, white teeth shining. a common picture in a common frame, by law others like it hung all over. thought or feeling made no change-hating the picture was like hating the sun. even here, qasim thought, in our musty office: saddam saddam saddam. this one's old, brown and fading, creased along one edge, the frame's glass cracked at the corner. surely we should have it replaced. the picture, the desks, the floors, the walls. the office was windowless, unventilated, stale. three desks crammed against each other left a narrow perimeter for chairs. qasim sat alone, leaning, pencil in his mouth, staring at saddam, the americans' deadline barely a week away. home? or stay? for the forty-ninth time, qasim heard professor hureshi tell him, "go if you must, but i can't promise you anything. you know i have done everything i can to keep you on, but if you leave before defending, i would be very hard-pressed to justify holding your teaching position when there are others whose service recommends them. who have advocates. you have been given every opportunity, qasim-" "but professor, my wife ... " "you have been protected like a son." .,6 roy scranton "let me . . . let me talk to my uncle. please, professor. just a few more days." and your wheedling worked, again, and hureshi gave you till wednesday, the last day of classes before the deadline. and now? give up everything after working so hard or stay here, cut off from lateefah and mother, while . qasim twisted the end of his mustache, replaying the hours of teaching uninterested students, the longer hours grading, the years of study, tutoring, working odd jobs, doing accounting for his uncle, all the effort he'd put into the dissertation. and now when he phoned lateefah, drained to the point of hopelessness, she only made it worse. pun­ ishing him with her silence. blaming him. maybe going back would give us another chance. you don't have to be a mathematician. take some job in the ministry of water, teach high school geometry. it won't make up for ... but maybe lateefah-maybe she and i ... the door swung open and adham flew in, throwing down a pile of manila folders, slumping into his chair: "what, my cousin, can you tell me, is so bloody hard about turning in your homework?" adham raised one hand to heaven and covered his heart with the other. "i understand yes, the end is coming. i understand, yes, the zionist cru­ saders are going to bomb us to rubble. i understand-am i not understanding?-that there is a better than fair chance almighty god in his infinite compassion has willed that our beloved university will be destroyed, our city wiped from the face of the earth, our friends and relatives charred to ash so that even the vultures and rats will be left starving in a nd hure!�ir: \as�e� oefort t after wor��� efah ana m�� he, re�la�nr , the lon�er �i. vorbn� oaa ji. n he'a �utint�: l1teefili,idl ade it worle.�: other chancr,t 'e �ome jo� m: eometry.!\w: aybe �he anal flew in, mrmi: ing into hi! (�i bloodrh�a� r��ed one n�( mer, "i unae�[ es, me zioni!tr understana...� rer man f�r (�r has willen mitt ur ci� wi�ea�( trives charreaw,t )c left starvin�� war porn 157 waste so total it will make the mongols' sack of the libraries seem like eid al-fitr, but my cousin, my brother, my friend, as a fellow mathematician and as a fellow teacher, let me ask you: is that any reason to not turn in your homework?" "well ... " "do you know how many of my students turned in their work this week? two! barely half the class even bothered to show up! and mundhir hashir, the deputy minister of education's miserable bastard, you know what he says to me? professor, please, can i get an extension till next week? next week! because he has drill with the hizbis. oh sure, mundhir. whatever you like. just the way i passed you on the midterm. whatever you want, just don't sic your daddy " on me. ''adham ... " qasim twisted his mustache and squinted meaningfully at the third desk, where their colleague sal­ man worked and-if department rumors were true-kept files on nearly everyone. "pfah! have you even seen the birdwatcher today?" "no. no, not yet. cousin, i know what you mean. every class gets smaller and the ones that show up barely pay attention. but there is a war coming." ''and those who cannot dance complain the floor is crooked. they're students. they should attend class and turn in their homework. it's very simple. determination is the key to everything." "i can understand their trouble. i haven't touched my dissertation in weeks." adham jabbed a bony finger at qasim. "then the carpenter's door is loose." in roy scranton "but the americans ... " "but! but! there is always something! nowhere in the qur'an does it say life will be easy!" "well maybe the qur'an can help me decide whether or not i should return to baqubah." '''righteousness does not consist in whether you face east or west. the righteous man is he who believes in god and the last day, in the angels and the book and the prophets.'" "so?" "so listen for the voice of god and the prophets." "right. of course. and you? what have god and the prophets told you?" "oh, i'm going home. my father insists on it. he says things will be much safer in fallujah." "b h·"ut your teac mg ... "i talked with hureshi, and he told me to take all the time i need." qasim blinked slowly and gritted his teeth, think­ ing, goatfucker! you backward, camel-riding bumpkin with your book and your kaffiyeh! you who maybe, yes, you're in the party, but you don't even believe in a sec­ ular state! you? "your wife is in baqubah, isn't she?" qasim exhaled through his nose. "yes. my lateefah. and the rest of my family." "who's taking care of them?" "my uncle jibril, my cousin faruq, who lives in town, my little brother-i don't know. there are too many of us." adham spread his palms. "cousin, it's simple: go. in times like this, you must lead your family. 'consider those 'n ], " .([ who fled their homes in their thousands for fear of death. owhere i�: god said to them, you shallperish.'" "b ·f1 " ut 1 go ... ecidewne��1 "yes?" "nothing. just . . . my sister-in-law will be there too. ilierrouf4(�� with their children." leveslng��t "not your brother?" dthe�ro��r. "he's in the army. he drives a tank." "god grant him victory." "god!" qasim barked. "the same god that put him there on the front lines? the same god that brings the americans?" "don't be blasphemous, cousin." "no, adham, please. tell me what we've done to deserve this." adham leaned forward, crossing the desk so his gleam­ ing face hung before qasim's, his words harsh whispers. "let me tell you, cousin, about what i believe. the fate god weaves is a song of many voices, and things that seem to be disasters today may be openings through which god's hand will pass tomorrow. there are many of us who wait for the day when we will lead our people back to the virtues of our fathers, back to the book and the caliph­ ate, to the days before petrodollars and satellite dishes and nationalism. sometimes, cousin, a storm scatters our tents because it's time for us to move on. when the wind blows, me to t�e�: hi� twn, tk i·riain� dum,'1 wno ffi4fot,i oelieve i�h , mr lateef�,,: vho liy� i� (� re too manr �fi ir's simple: ��, !y. 'consiofll war porn 1s9 you ride it." "well, i think we're done for." "fine. that is what you think." adham turned to his stu­ dents' papers. "your pessimism is a tool of the deceiver." 140 roy scranton qasim snorted and stood, grabbing his satchel. tool of the deceiver! i cannot believe the things that come out of his mouth. i need to get out of here. i should see when luqman is leaving-god willing, soon, so i can call mother and make arrangements for going to baqubah. is that what you're doing now, qasim, going home? yes. no. yes. maybe. ;11 it the blind man stood in the courtyard feeling the sun on his face. he was very old and very frail, and where his eyes should have been were two pale and clotted scars. hair like white wire sprouted from his brows, from within his ears and nose, from his cheeks and lips and chin, thickening over his neck in a tangled wave. in one hand he held his stick and in the other, his book and pen. from his bony shoulders hung a threadbare dishdasha. "ali-ham," he croaked to himself and nodded, shuffling toward his bench along the wall. soon, yes, he could feel it, coming from the sky. his little birds knew. didn't they always? "ah-ham," he croaked, reminding them. near his feet, the one-legged half-wit echoed back "aham!" jffi the blind man smiled and nodded. when a wound is tired of crying, it will begin to sing, he thought, sitting on his bench and listening to the life of the yard around ',�ll him: the three men arguing, the others slapping down dominos, the idiots and cripples and crooks. he could �� satchel, ��i lin� tn� !mi d wh�rtni!� d �cm, hw� wiiliin n�� chin, thi(�(�l hand he n(i�: , from nil�: added, ln�� res, he coill�:: ew, dianjt� �en a wo��� thou�ntj lie th e rara ar�� � slarrin� m rooks, he (�. war porn 141 just make out the voices in the women's yard beyond the wall, and the sound of lunch being prepared in the prison kitchen. the old man laid his stick across his thighs and then his book atop it. it was a large book and its leather was worn by years of handling. he'd written through it many times, each cycle over the one before, until the pages held all he'd ever known or thought or felt-or nearly all. the end was com­ ing, but it wasn't there yet. there was another sura to write. he felt for the ribbon between the pages and opened to where he'd left off, his fingers skimming the lines, trac­ ing the scant indentations of yesterday's pen. in a day it'd be flat like the others and return to blankness, but for the moment it held the impression. he read yesterday's verses and then again, remembering, reciting, then took the cap from his pen and began on the left his verse for today. he wrote slowly and with great care words he would never see and only briefly know, the same words or different, the one song iii many verses. sometimes he'd pause and stick his pen in his mouth. he'd jab at the pen with the jerking stub that was all that remained of his tongue, remembering how many years ago, in a dark and stinking hole he could only barely now envi­ sion, a cold blade had been forced between his teeth and his mouth had filled with blood. qasim took the phone up onto his uncle mohammed's roof, where he sat in a plastic chair and turned east to face the prayer call from the loudspeakers of urn ai-tobool. 142 roy scranton the sun sank behind him, a red burn against darkening violet, the last light flaming on the mosque's dual mina­ rets, their paired domes, the delicate twinned crescents. what would come of it all? god's will, as the call closed with the fatiha: "guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom thou hast blessed, not of those who have incurred thy wrath, nor of those who have gone astray." silence opened across the city. a dog barked below. qasim dialed his uncle jibril. his cousin bahira answered, and qasim asked to speak with his mother. "n.. ;>" '-.{_aslm. "peace be upon you, mother." "upon you be peace, little fox." "h ;>"aware you. "allah carries us in his palms. the children are putting tape on the windows. izdihar is such a precious lamb, she drags a chair in from the kitchen to stand on. she can't reach all the way up, so she puts little designs in the corner. she wrote her name on the one in my room. little izdihar. written in tape. did i tell you afifah and the children are coming? your brother darud, his division is near basra, they say. jibril says we will crush the americans even more quickly than we did last time, god willing. are you praying, little fox?" "yes, mother." "are you coming home for ashura? jibril has put his foot down like every year, but rahimah and i are going to cele­ brate and it's for the children, anyway. it's important. you always tell the story of ali husayn so well, little fox. won't you be coming home for ashura?" ainst dar���t lie's du� ffi[ ned cresc�m! atilia: "gui�t hom tnou� hywratn,nm � darken �11(i bahiraanrwtll narerurun![ laffid, sneill� cantrea(n�t corner. �ne \� zdinar, wri�1[ ril nas rutnil� are �oin� (0[( )� imrort�d �) little fox,\11 war porn 141 "i don't know, mother." "you'll be home before the infidel comes, i'm sure." "mother, i need to talk to you about that." "what do you need to talk about? your father, god pre­ serve his soul, would want you home. if not for me, for lateefah." "how is she?" "her heart is like fire on you. what do you expect? what's she supposed to do while you waste your days in baghdad? she can't make a child. she can't make a home." "did she quit her job at the school?" "no, not yet. but it blackens her face to work like a girl with no husband." "mother, you know i'm working." "you left a fine job your father would have been proud of to live like a beggar." "father would want me to finish my degree." "your father knew what needed to be done and did it. he would not have run away from his family. he would never have left me alone as you have done with lateefah." father would have found a way. long ago, faruq had planned that after qasim completed his bachelor of science at baghdad university, he'd be sent abroad for a doctorate. money was put aside, crucial favors were done for certain well-placed officials. then came the war with kuwait. faruq got qasim a draft deferment and qasim finished near the top of his class; few of his peers were so lucky. the peace, though, turned out to be almost as bad as the war: continued bombing and crippling sanctions ruined the already weak economy. business stopped, trade u4 roy scranton stopped, the dinar plummeted against the dollar, inflation surged-it was as if faruq's savings were being eaten by rats. ::! at the worst of it, they spent their cash in stacks and wads; a month's salary might buy a chicken or a few dozen eggs. then, in the purges and paranoia following the shi' a uprising, faruq's delicately nurtured connections died on the vine. those few friends still hanging on to power wouldn't stick their necks out. nevertheless faruq found a way, somehow, scraping together enough hard cash and finessing enough shady deals to send qasim to heriot-watt university in edinburgh. with some help from the school, there was just enough money to get him started; faruq impressed upon his son the necessity of finding funding. qasim had been north only a few gloomy months­ cold, humiliating months full of unnerving lessons in the limits of his talent; dismal months of constipation, head­ aches, and a constantly running nose; lonesome months where the english he so struggled to master always seemed to bend back on his tongue into gibberish; nightmare months where he wandered the streets in a muddle, baffled and awed by the strange stone city around him and the cruel, doughy faces of the scots who lived there; despair­ ing months where each night, curled under his duvet with the door shut against his roommates, he struggled desper­ ately to keep from weeping, to keep them from hearing him weep, despondent for home and exhausted from working so hard and falling behind and the unending gray skies pissing rain-when at last the phone rang and his mother told him in a stern, quiet voice that his father was ill and the doctors did not expect him to survive the winter. do�ar, ln�1� ng eaten �ri( stacb ana�t few aolen� the �nl' 1 ��:. diea on ili�1i er wo�ant� a way, �omt .' fine��ln� tn� att unlytr�i�. 01, iliertw�;. pr�eau��� oomy ffion� ing l�wmlh mtipation,�� one�offie ffiijt: rer �wayl ��� eri�n; nl��m,i a muaillt,��. und nim 4fl�; 'ed tnere; a5� der ni� auv�t( stru�leaa�� fromnearin!l d &omworb�i grar �hl�rl� $moilierwij� ill and thea�: war porn us qasim flew back to baqubah, elated to be home until he saw his mother's haggard face, his father's withered body. over the next year, faruq slowly shrank, crum­ pling and shriveling in the grip of the cancer. there was no going back to edinburgh, even if qasim had wanted to, there was no money left for anything, yet on his deathbed faruq demanded his son's promise: finish your schooling. the machines beeped and hissed. faruq's dry, fleshless fingers burned in qasim's palm. i promise, father. i promise. "do you hear me, qasim?" his mother shouted. ''are you even listening? qasim, you must come home!" "mother, i'm staying in baghdad." "what? qasim, you can't. you must come home." "if! want to keep my place here teaching, i have to stay." his mother snorted. "ridiculous boy who thinks he can tell his mother about his great responsibilities. little boy who can't even take care of his wife, who isn't even a father, who leaves his family to be murdered by the infidel." "mother ... " "a fine man, a fine hero, devout, brave ... " "m hi"ot er, pease. "a real saladin." ''i'm not coming back to baqubah. that's my decision. that's the end of it." "fine. then i live with the shame of having given birth to a coward." "mother!" "at least your brothers are men." "put lateefah on the phone!" 146 roy scranton "remember, qasim, that a man who cannot tend his wheat will eat his barley." "mother, put lateefah on!" he heard the phone hit the table and his mother curse him as she walked away. a moment later, lateefah's voice: "q. t"asirn: his knees went weak. his voice went weak. "lateefah." "you're not coming," she said. "lateefah ... " she said nothing. he listened to her breath and thought he might die from it. breath after breath. sometime later­ qasim couldn't say how long-he heard her set the phone down. his uncle jibril picked up. "your mother says you're staying." qasim exhaled. "that's right, uncle." "well, listen, nephew, women don't always understand the choices we have to make. if it were up to them, we'd never leave home. i'm sure you have your reasons, and becoming a professor is a great service ... how is your dis­ sertation coming along, anyway?" "i'm working through some difficult spots right now. it's a bit of a maze, you know, but ... i'll find my way." "good. maintain discipline. that's a great source of h"strengt . "have you heard from darud?" "he's near basra, that's all i know. they can't say any more. he'll be one of the first to repel the invaders." "m b h' b " y rot er s very rave. "not all of us are warriors, nephew. the nation needs scholars, as well." ], war porn 147 not t���: ''and accountants." "and engineers, like your father." "he fought. so did you." "and so did aban and so did bishr. don't forget about them, and don't forget that heaven isn't so pretty for a man's widow and his fatherless children. god grant your sister-in­ law doesn't have to learn that lesson." "i pray for my brother's victory." "listen, qasim. i want you to know your mother and wife are safe here, and they will be as long as i can lift a rifle. ifyou have to stay in baghdad, i trust your reasons. but if there was any way you could come to baqubah, i know your wife and mother would be relieved. they worry about you." he paused. ''i'm sure you have your reasons. your family is my family. they are safe in my home, always." "thank you, uncle." "your father would be proud of you, qasim. god your pardon and protection." the sun had set and lights had flickered on across the city. the weekend had begun. qasim heard a grunt behind him and turned to see mohammed coming onto the roof with something in his hands. ''are you off the phone?" mohammed asked. "yes, uncle." "good. mother will have dinner ready soon. here. she finished mending your trousers." he handed qasim a folded pair of slacks. "she says you should take a dance class." qasim smiled. "she's very patient with me." "yes, she is. and what about you? have you decided?" is moili�ir; lateefilil!i�:: ometlmdlw, er set ili1 �i.:' ways un�1n[ r to tfl1ffi1i, ur red$oml[ howisroml ots ri�nt n�w,� " my war, �reat soura' er cant lilt invaaers," rhe nation �� 148 roy scranton "i told mother i'm staying here." mohammed looked out over the city. "it's a beautiful night," he said. "this is my favorite time of year. we leave the rains behind, but it's not hot yet. it's a pleasant time to be in baghdad." "it is," qasim said. "you know our family has always shown determination in the face of trouble." "i do." "i would hate to think that anyone could say our family couldn't take care of itself ... that anyone in our family would turn away from his obligations." qasim felt heat rising in his cheeks. mohammed scuffed his sandal on the roof. "it's difficult," mohammed said after much thought, "as a young man, to know how to balance your responsibilities. your wife, your family, your tradition ... the nation, islam, your work ... a man must see what follows from the rec­ itation of his soul." mohammed shook out a cigarette and lit it. "it's not always easy, especially in at time like this. a man must act with strength, but humbly. god does not love the proud." "yes, uncle." mohammed turned toward qasim, his gaze full and measuring. "go thank your auntie for sewing your trousers. tell her i'll be down soon. after dinner, i need you to come with me to the office to go over some accounts." qasim stood and nodded, watching his reflection-a tiny speck in the dark of his uncle's eye-dwindle and fade into nothing. it)s a d���tr, year, w�i� "thank you all for coming. i know things are difficult now, leasantuffi1: and that time spent here is time away from your family during these crucial last days." qasim considered his class, barely half full. with the deadline only two days away, qetermlnl� many classes had already been "temporarily" suspended, and all across town offices and stores were closing up, sending everyone home except the last few needed to board up sarourfr windows and lock doors. he had almost canceled class him­ self, but it was his favorite, and he wanted to see them all one last time. "i don't know when we'll reconvene, or even if we'll be able to finish this semester's work. the uh ... well, i hope al-sahhaf is right, and we destroy the americans quickly." he paused for a moment, thinking how best to phrase this, knowing at least one student in his class was a ba' athist. "professor al-zabadi." en tnou��tl'l re��oml�llit: e natlonlll[ � from t�1� t a cl�artttt� timellk�mi 00 aoe�n�tr '� �aze �� n�rouru�q� eea rouw� )) unt�, i� refle(tl��' owinaleanj� war porn 149 • • • "yes, amr." "professor ifwe don't ... i mean ifwe can't ... make it back to class i'm from an-nasiriyah, and i'm going back home ... if we can't come back to university this semester, will we be able to withdraw without a failing grade?" "yes. if we're not able to reconvene this class, i'm going to recommend everyone be given the grade you've earned to this point, for an hour and a half of credit. but, no, amr, i'm not going to fail anyone because-" he stopped, watch­ ing amr's face twitch, his shoulders shudder, and his chest explode, spewing bits of bone and gore allover his class­ mates. what? i'm not going to fail anyone because they're iso roy scranton crippled? because they're dead? he remembered the last war, the trucks and tanks full of smoking corpses. ''i'm not going to fail anyone because they can't make it back to class. the worst that will happen, the absolute worst case, is that you'll take a withdrawal." pray god, the absolute worst. "but what i plan ... " there was a knock at the door. professor hureshi poked his head in. "professor al-zabadi, a word." "class, you'll excuse me." qasim smoothed his mus­ tache and followed professor hureshi out, closing the door behind him. "i wanted to catch you before you left this afternoon. have you reached your decision, qasim?" "professor hureshi ... " "qasim, i need to know on whom i may depend. we must assume, god willing, that things-" "i'm staying," qasim said. "i'm staying. i'll be at my uncle mohammed's." hureshi blinked and flashed his teeth. "i am pleased to hear it." qasim thought of lateefah-alone in the hole he'd dug her. the pain he caused. his mother's shame. and when the war came? could he stand it? he hugged hureshi and kissed his cheek. "i'm glad to serve," he said. salman sat smoking. he'd taught his elementary statistics class that morning and was now going through his students' ffioerea ilid orps�, itm: e it oacktij(� orst cas�1 i�t aosolut� w�� ootnea ti� m. closin�tnd: may ae��nr �, rll d�lti i "iam�l� the hole nll��, �e,anawmi k. :mentary!t!� 'ough his!ru�c war porn 151 tests, but his mind kept wandering back over what he'd just seen. on the way down from hureshi's office, he'd noticed that weed al-zabadi in the hall talking quietly-even inti­ mately-with anoufhamadaya. perhaps the way they were standing so close and whispering so ardently meant noth­ ing. perhaps it was merely class-related. she was one of his students, after all. but salman had learned over the years to trust his suspicions: even if they weren't always right, they almost always suggested opportunities. salman kept an eye open for opportunities. unlike adham, who came from a wealthy family in fallujah, and qasim, whose middle-class family stood solidly on their construction business and their date farms in baqubah, sal­ man came from people little better than peasants. what was left of them, anyway, after the 1991 shi' a uprising. sal­ man's father, his two brothers, three of his uncles, and most of the rest of the men in his extended family had either died in the fighting or been butchered after karbala fell. salman himself, sixteen at the time, only barely escaped with his life. for nearly a week, while republican guard soldiers roamed the streets dragging men off to be executed and dumped in open graves, salman lay hidden in a shattered groundwater pipe, drinking fetid water, dizzy with hunger, his heart thundering every time a jeep or tank rolled over the road above. when at last he crawled out, nearly dead from dehydration, he was the last living man in his imme­ diate family. he hated the men who'd murdered his brothers and uncles and father, it was true, but it was an abstract hatred locked so deep within himself that it was no more than a 15) roy scranton cold violet idea, having little to do with his day-to-day life. he'd recognized early that the strong and forceful climb to the top, and since he was neither, his only hope lay in cun­ ning. justice was for the mighty; salman vowed to survive. so when his draft notice came up, he dutifully went away and served in the infantry, and when lieutenant azimaya approached him about serving the greater glory of iraq, the only question in his mind was how far it would take him. it got him all the way to saddam university, and after he finished his bsc with a dual major in business and maths, it got him into the economics department at al-mus­ tansiriya university to work on a master's. while taking economics classes he worked as a ta in the maths depart­ ment, but even what he got for teaching, added to what he got paid for informing, didn't quite make ends meet. not only was he supporting his mother and sisters back home, but he was trying to save up for a wife, so he drove a taxi three, sometimes four nights a week, and could be found for certain odd jobs if the price was right. he'd hoped when he finished his ma to get a cushy government position­ maybe join the party-then find himself a bride. the upcoming invasion made a mockery of all that. he knew he'd survive, no matter what, maybe even thrive in the chaos, but nobody wants war except soldiers and fools, and salman was neither. salman was shrewd. salman was observant. anouf, for example, he'd been watching for a long time, and not just because she had a face like an egyptian movie star and a figure to match. the other students gossiped about her because of her modern clothes and her blue jeans, but s dayotoo041: forcefulclim! ho�e lar;n�, owed to!ij� ifullywent11 utenant awi �lory oflrd�!: ouldt�d[ [sicy, anoiliti siness anornlt ment at n�: ['5, wnile� the matn!�o/ added tow�1:' e ends meet) isters da(u�: w nedrovej[ d could �e f�[ he'd nore�i� nment �o!i��: a oride, ery of �l t�jt: oe even iliriw soldiers an�foc rewa, ��m�! g for a lon�� e�tian� nts gossi�e�� er olue jeanl,: war porn us also because of the men who picked her up from school, whis­ pering that she supported herself as a prostitute for high-placed government officials and was an informer for the mukhabarat besides. salman had wondered himself, at first, but the truth, which he'd uncovered in time, was that her brother was of one of baghdad's biggest embargo cats-the loose gang of black marketeers and smugglers who made their money supplying people with everything prohibited by the un and saddam. the thuggish men who picked anouf up from campus every day were her brother's runners. salman doubted qasim's interest in anouf had anything to do with her brother. frankly, it was a miracle qasim managed to get out of bed every morning without cracking his head open. he certainly wasn't tough enough to hang with the likes of hamadaya. perhaps he needed something, though, some paperwork, a visa, or maybe with the war coming ... what? maybe it went the other way: he worked as an accountant for his uncle, so maybe anouf's brother was having trouble with his books? most likely, it was just school drama. qasim had a crush on anouf or vice versa. al-zabadi wasn't handsome, manly, or distinguished, he wore glasses, he had a crooked nose and a ratty mustache, he was unkempt and awkward, but for some baffling rea­ son, his female students were always having crushes on him. pity, salman suspected-the same gush of emotion they'd feel for a sick cat. so maybe they're flirting. maybe anouf has a crush. maybe qasim has finally grown tired of living apart from his wife. maybe he's more of a man than he seems. what­ ever it is, we'll see. we'll see what it's good for. 1s4 roy scranton • • qasim barely caught luqman as the rotund physics pro­ fessor blew out the door for home. his wife had called, said the hizbis were digging a trench right next to their house, and demanded he do something. she said they'd even threatened to lock her up. lock her up! luqrnan didn't know what he could possibly say, but he hoped when he got home, somebody would listen to reason. it was too bad the hizbis had picked his house to set up next to, but what could he do? they had guns! they were hizbis! "i will be glad, nephew, when the americans have freed us from this plague." luqman turned down the radio, which was playing a patriotic song from the war with iran. "you really think it'll work?" qasim asked, staring out the window at the city streaming by in a blurred mosaic of brown and gray. "nephew! look at mtv. look at cnn. we'll vote, we'll have a constitution, we'll elect our president. think ofit! no more hizbis! no more secret police! no more abu ghraib! it'll be like it was in the seventies, before the mother of all morons attacked iran. i'm telling you, everybody had a new car and nice clothes. not this shit i wear now, but good stuff from egypt." "you don't think they just want our oil?" "ofcourse they want our oil! but they don't want to steal it, they want us to sell it to them, just like the saudis. they just want to make sure we're loyal. okay, then. we'll be loyal. we'll be good, loyal friends, and with the us behind und �nr!iq: wife naq�!: �ht next w �� , �he !alq t�r her u�! lu�� y, but n� ��i: sten to r����, hou�e to �11\ �um!tntp: ericam navt�\ down m� tli thewarwiililfi asked, �tarln! i blurredffio�i ,we'llyot11� nt.thinkofit moreadll�ffi� the mom�r�: eryoodr naa!� ear now, �llt � w" don'twantw� ke we �allai�.r: kay, then, wi� �oith we u� �� war porn 1ss us, we can stand up to the zionists, we can stand up to the persians, we can stand up to those pricks in kuwait. and we'll all have satellite tv. freedom, qasim. free­ dom! and satellite tv! we won't have to hide anymore!" qasim loved how luqman was, outside of work, willing to say anything. one day he cursed humam abd al-khaliq abd al-ghafur, the minister of education-or, as luqman called him, "the rancid curd of a faggot sheep's syphi­ litic foreskin"-for twenty minutes nonstop. yet despite luqman's hopeful levity, qasim's mind kept returning to the coming bombs, his problems with lateefah, and his strange conversation with salman. why had salman asked him about anouf? and could it be true what he'd said, that her brother was a gangster? he'd noticed her the first day of class. as beautiful as she was, there was no way he couldn't have. he was shy, though, and considered himself a professional, so he tried to put her out of his mind. when she started making cow eyes at him and laughing at all his dumb jokes, he thought it was just because he was her teacher. he remained stony, unresponsive-for the first few assignments, at least, until she proved she could do the maths and wasn't baiting him for a grade. after that ... well ... she must know tm mar­ ried, he thought, so he never told her. he assumed she was single and available, so he never inquired. anouf would wait after class, hovering at his desk to ask him about some knotty algebraic conundrum, her skin rich and luminous, her eyes quick like oil in the sun, her face delicate and open. one time their hands had brushed, and a terrific shock lit through qasim's belly. it took everything 1s6 roy scranton he had to keep from grabbing her wrists and pulling her across his desk. yet he restrained himself. he had as yet dishonored nei­ ther himself nor miss hamadaya and had no intention of so doing. with the war coming, though, sometimes things just happened. maybe he and anouf would be caught in a bombing raid. she'd come to him for help . . . rescue . . . trapped in a dark basement, alone, while bombs fell above, her hands sliding down his shirt to his belt, her heav­ ing bosom crushed against his chest, her breath slow and warm on his neckbut salman said she was leaving. why, then, did she say that she's staying? and why would she tell me to call her and let her know i was safe? why would she smile so happily when i told her i was staying, too? was it all some trick? or was salman lying? one of them was, that's for sure. and what was that about munir muhanned, the gangster salman said her brother worked for? cheating on your wife, that's one thing; besmirching a gang­ ster's sister was something else entirely. salman must be lying-but why? qasim interrupted luqman's monologue. "you ever heard of munir muhanned?" "the gangster?" qasim's heart sank. "yeah." "oh, some. you know. they say he's like abu alich from wolves ofthe night. i heard one story about him, about some cop who wouldn't take his payoff and started locking up his men, putting the squeeze on him, so munir muhanned paid off the cop's boss, then just killed him." i�nonorffit( no inttnti�� ffietiffi�tru; q de (all��t, el� 0 00 r', 'nue doffi�i:: '�delt, n�tk reatn �l�w[ , tnen, ai�[ e tell m1t�� 'oula �n� !�. , to01w�il. tnernw��j mun�nn1�,[ d for1 cn1l� rcnin� d !�: alrnan mm!: abumi(ni� him,ad�ut� artd lo(��!' �unir m�� ii no war porn 1s7 "the boss?" "n h " 0, t e cop. "and they didn't do anything?" "there was a stink, but muhanned greased all the right palms and they left him alone. the best part is, they took the cop out into the desert and buried him up to his neck. left him for three days. when they came back, he was still alive. he'd almost dug himself out. so they tied him to the bumper of their truck and drove home to baghdad. by the time they hit firdos square, all that was left was the rope." in qasim's mind, he became the cop and anouf's brother was munir muhanned-qasim pictured a cross between saddam and ai pacino. "i ain't gonna kill you," he said, slapping a wrench in his open palm, "because that wouldn't hurt enough. but you're gonna pay for what you did to my . " sister. "i didn't do anything!" qasim hissed. "what?" "nothing." "i'm gonna drop you here because i gotta run," luqman said, pulling off across from the yarmouk gas station. traffic was sparse: the ba' athists had set up checkpoints allover, discouraging people from going out. "the wife is having fits about these hizbis. god keep you safe, nephew." qasim watched luqman pull away into the dusk and turned heavily toward home. he walked slowly across jor­ dan street, dodging a truck full of sheep, two taxis, and a passenger bus with no lights on, then went around the far side of the gas station to avoid the long line of cars wait­ ing to fill up. aside from the gas station, the neighborhood 151 roy scranton was quiet. lights were coming on in the upper stories of j� the houses, glowing warmly through latticework window 'wto screens and ugly taped xs, but nobody was out, nothing �rul seemed to be happening. it felt as if the city had curled in i:�( on itself, waiting, afraid. it wasn't far to his uncle's, only a th( few short blocks along some old railroad tracks and through � a vacant lot, but it seemed that night as if he were crossing ;100 a vast cavity, an eternallostness. ]1 what would happen to his city, his country? every fareth well stuck in his throat, each goodbye seeming, in some 11 way, the last, because in a week nothing would ever be the same again, even if, god willing, luqman and anouf and lateefah and his uncle mohammed and everybody import­ ant to him survived. it was as if the calendar went up to the deadline and stopped: everything after, blank. except it won't be blank. it'll be terror and death and fire from the sky. it'll be like before, with power outages and burst water mains and no food and police crackdowns. the un will come in with their humiliating aid and we'll stand and beg for a bag of rice. something snarled, so close he seemed to feel it more than hear it, and he spun hard, his pulse banging in his temples. maybe six meters away-two dogs fighting over a pile of trash. one was much smaller than the other, and sicklier too, but appeared that much more vicious. qasim watched as they growled, circling, then the little one pounced. the big one went low and came up under the other, tearing at its chest with his teeth. the little one bit at the bigger one's ear, his shoulder, then leapt back bloodied. the big one stepped forward and the little one war porn 1s9 ��er !t��� work �it outl n�� nad (utl� uncl�i!, ��\ banumw, erout�r ackaowm,: anmii ducked right and went for the neck. the big one met him jaw to jaw and the two merged in a tumble of fur and teeth, standing on their hind legs, snarling furiously and pawing like boxers. qasim's heart pounded in his hands. the dogs came apart again, the little one jumping back limping. both were bleeding, but the little one was clearly getting the worst of it. their tongues lolled between their shiny white teeth, their eyes flashing like stainless steel. the big one leapt, going for the kill. the little one dodged left, but the big one was faster, clamping down on his neck and shaking him by the throat. qasim picked up a rock and threw it, hitting the big dog on the flank. "hey," he yelled. he picked up another rock and threw, this time nailing the big dog in the head. the dog's jaw opened and his vic­ tim fell free. "h 'p. ill"eye iss 0 • he let fly another rock, which the big dog ducked, then another and another. the dog turned and loped a few meters away, then stopped and growled at qasim, who threw again, hitting the dog square in the side and sending him fleeing. the little one lay in the garbage, panting heavily, bleed­ ing from its side, throat, and muzzle, one eye slashed and oozing, paw twitching. qasim crept up, rock in hand, closer and closer to the wounded dog. it seemed oblivi­ ous, its good eye unfocused. qasim thought it must be dying. he crouched above the tiny beast, his nostrils full of blood and trash and dog scent. the dog's body heaved with breath, moist and red, its fur darkly matted. qasim reached e were (wit ry� tv1�� mm�lnt uldmf�: ana an�lli[ �doar�: wenturwi k aueatnwl: to feel itf dan�n�m: � fl�nti�!� meotn1f,t iciou�, i'tnenrn1[. , cameuriju: [thelinll then k�rt� ld tneliw1: 160 roy scranton out his left hand toward the gaping wound on the dog's neck, toward its head. the dog jerked up and snapped down. qasim flinched and screamed. the dog bit harder, and qasim stumbled back, lifting the bloody dog in the air. he shrieked and ,� shook his arm, but the dog hung on, legs wriggling. then qasim swung and smashed the dog to the earth, knocking it loose. it pushed unsteadily to its feet, snarling and wheezing at him. qasim stumbled back and kicked. the dog limped out of the way. holding his bleeding hand, backing up staring at the dog, qasim cursed wildly. the dog growled and barked. qasim watched it as he backed away, both of them now silent, and when he was far enough, turned and walked off, checking twice over his shoulder, down the street and around the corner to his uncle's. he pushed open the gate with his shoulder, holding his bloody hand to his chest, dizzy with the waves of pain now shuddering up his arm. as he went in through the front door, he heard gunfire and an explosion and thought for a split second it's started, before he realized it was the tv in the living room and arnold schwarzenegger saying "now daht's a vake-up kahll!" his aunt thurayya called from the kitchen: "is that you, father?" "n a ." q' id "i' " 0, untie, asirn sal. t s me. he stumbled through the parlor into the back room where his cousins were watching tv, then into the bath­ room. he put his hand in the sink and turned on the water. his dizziness swept in waves, now pain, now cold. his aun­ tie came up behind him. war porn 161 donili1�, ''are you alright, nephew? you sound upset." "i hurt myself," he said, turning away. "let me see." she grabbed at him. "it's fine," he said, wrapping his hand in a towel. "i just need a bandage." aunt thurayya was quick for a middle-aged woman, and tenacious, but qasim was tall enough and the bathroom cramped enough he could keep her out. "l n h " et me see, ep ev« "it's fine. i just caught it on some metal." "you need the tetanus." "i had the tetanus." "it's not a vaccine! you need it each time." "it's fine." "you'll do it wrong. let me see if you need the tetanus." "i don't need the tetanus!"cler, nolill�1: yes ofr��[ rou�n m1�g cl iliou��tfr tw�ilitn er �a�n� �\ "you need the tetanus!" qasim swung on her and shouted, "leave me alone, old woman!" thurayya backed up a step and stretched to her full height. "you will not speak to your uncle's wife in such a tone." "enough meddling! go!" "mind your tongue, boy!" "woman, leave me be!" thurayya glared at him, then turned and swept into the living room, storming in front of the television and yelling at maha, nazahah, and siraj. she shut off the movie and made them go do chores. qasim was shaking again and could barely hold himself up. he went to the kitchen and found a bandage. the �a(� � into m1k led on mt�'; wcolo.�b(. 16) roy scranton the bite was deep, jagged, inflamed. he couldn't find any antibiotic cream, so he just put some cotton pads in the wound and wrapped it up. it was unwieldy work, but he managed to cover the gashes. thurayya stood in the living room glowering. his cousins sulked at their chores, well aware who'd caused their misfortune. "i won't be having dinner," qasim said, taking a piece of flatbread in his good hand. "i need to work." upstairs, he sat at his desk and looked out the window. his mind had gone remarkably clear, and though his hand ached wretchedly, he felt crisp, even refreshed. he munched his flat­ bread, for a few minutes blessedly free of thought, enjoying the brilliant coruscations of the streetlights through the palms. when he'd finished eating, he put on his headphones and pulled out his dissertation. against a background of chirps and beeps, riding a delicate synthesized wave, david bowie moaned out, "nothing remains ... " qasim let the music ease him into the pure spaces, the gently shimmering uni­ verse of thought called mathematics. he flipped through his notes with his good hand, recovering lines and curves, weaving arcane connections, coming back after an exile too long to his comfort, his true home, his love. salman drove up over the al-jumariyah bridge, catching the outdoor fires from the masgouf restaurants along abu nuwas park flickering orange in the black waters of the dijlah, and descended into the subdued hustle ofyafa street, passing the parliament building and the assassins' gate. aziz liked sal­ man to meet him in a particular shisha cafe in mansour, to memn��\i,: m�m�( unc�oom� which he was now driving in an unusual mood, enjoying the easy feel of nighttime baghdad yet planning, calmly and just below conscious thought, his tactics for dealing with aziz. he was almost certain he was going to have do something unsavory and probably dangerous, but he just hoped it didn't involve his notional status as a reservist. salman couldn't remember the last time he went to drill, but even he knew the situation was bleak. maintenance didn't happen, training was a joke, and morale wretched. the sunni officers despised the almost wholly shi' a ranks, and vice versa, and everything was infiltrated by the mukhabarat. no camaraderie, no sense of unity: each man looking out for himself, which means you're always looking over your own shoulder. not that it would have mattered much even if they did all work together. the armored corps were still devastated from the last war, the air force nonexis­ tent, the artillery bombed to pieces-even after iran, things had been better. the troops were digging in as they'd been told, but no one had any illusions about what would hap­ pen when the shooting started. as he turned along zawra park and passed the baghdad zoo, noting soldiers setting up antiaircraft guns under the lights of the dream park's ferris wheel, salman realized he couldn't care less who won. someone would always be on top, and the guy on top has to step on everyone else in order to stay there, so what's the point in getting worked up over who it is? there has to be a sheikh. sheikh hussein or sheikh bush, it didn't matter. power flowed the same no matter who wielded it. and if you weren't on the side of power, you got out of the way. war porn 16j e coulq�lt: tton �4q!�: r wof�l�ij: ou in ili��1 elf c��r�li nlffiffi�ri�!l fllwq��· lines d1l�0j[\ afterd1l�' a�e,cat(�r on�mijk fmedijlw,; ueet, r��mr teo aza l��� fe in m�i�� 164 roy scranton he parked around the corner from the cafe and walked up. rubbing misbaha beads between his fingers, he wished he'd changed from shirt and slacks to a dishdasha. the robe would have been so much more comfortable. most import­ ant, he had to keep from being put in a fight iraq was bound to lose. salman definitely didn't want to ride around baghdad in the back of a toyota pointing a machine gun at curfew breakers. maybe if he told aziz he was investi­ gating somebody-something vague and hard to check up on. he could say he needed to collect evidence, do some surveillance. the cafe had a grand entrance that always pleased sal­ man's eye: high and wide, dark wood hung with scimitars, shelves and tables busy with archaic-seeming bronze lamps and ornate, multicolored shishas. peer too hard and you'd see how chintzy it all was, but in the dim light and thick, fruit-scented smoke you could pretend, imagining yourself in some abbasid harem-sticky dates and slippery olives, the lingering odor of spiced tobacco, veils and low-lit lamps half-concealing firm and youthful flesh. salman found aziz sitting alone in a corner in the back, drinking chai and smok­ ing-not a shisha, but a marlboro. the red and white pack lay ostentatiously on the table. the two men exchanged greetings, shaking hands softly and touching their hearts, and when the server came, salman ordered chai. "still they haven't voted on the resolution," said aziz, flicking ash. salman noticed, as he always did, that the two smallest fingers on aziz's left hand were missing. they'd been lost to shrapnel in the iran war, but even crippled, the man's hands were powerful, brutal hands that knew a mm �ol �� lioni� eandw� lot about killing, and salman watched them to keep from er�,ne\vilt getting caught in the operator's deep, hooded eyes. "there's asna,tn11�' talk of a veto, russia, china, france. the world may yet ,mo�tim��· stand with us against the zionist aggression." fi�nt lra�� "the americans won't be happy until they've got all toride��� islam under the lash. it's always been that way, they're just amacnin1[ using their own guns now. we'll have to fight them sooner new�illr�' or later." d tocnc(�1 "we've struggled a long time against the zionists." "god willing, we'll destroy their armies on the field of battle." "insha'allah," aziz said flatly. "how is your mother, salman?" "she's preparing to celebrate ashura. privately, of course." ''ashura.'' aziz took a drag from his marlboro. ''i'm wondering, salman, if you've thought much about what happens after the war." aziz was a hard man, a shadowed man, and although sal­ man didn't know exactly where he stood in the mukhabarat hierarchy or what he did, he suspected aziz would have no compunctions at all about cutting salman's balls off with a dull knife and stuffing them down his throat. he might even enjoy it, if the man ever felt joy. either way, salman was confident that in the clandestine webs sure to be spun in the postwar chaos, aziz would remain one of the nastier and more important spiders. "i am your servant," he said. ''and a soldier of the revolution. " "we expect the war to be a long one. we expect the zionists to make great gains, initially. but there are plans a�lnlfl�r�lli\ �ii��ery �[it nalow·litl�; men ex(n�1; meirneartl,[ , "1;amon, �i1l ia, thatilic� jssjn�, n�', even crirri1; 8s that �fw war porn 1" 166 roy scranton for what comes after. salman, you have always served us very well." "i'm honored to do so." "but not everyone is so loyal. we expect many shi'a to collude with the zionists." his father gunned down by helicopter, his brothers dragged off to be shot like dogs, the mass graves and burn­ ing bodies, his tunnel that was almost a tomb-salman imagined a boot stamping the images out. "you will need information," he said. "yes. the saddam fedayeen and mukhabarat are pre­ pared, in the event of the zionists' temporary success, to fade into the desert and carry on the fight. we are arabs, after all. we shall scatter like the bedu and strike at the zionists from the dunes, as we once fought the turk and the british. we'll raise a jihad against the americans and bleed them the way the afghans did the russians. we'll cut them four thou­ sand times for every time they cut us. it may take years, of course, but patience makes all things possible." salman saw where this was going. "the americans will need collaborators. translators." "your english is good, no?" "fair. mostly economics terms. but it's passable." "work on it. here," aziz said, putting a satellite phone on the table. "this is how you maintain contact. the phone has two preprogrammed numbers. the first is to call me. i mayor may not answer, and if i do, i may not have time to speak. use it only when it's most urgent for you to pass on information. the second is strictly for emer­ gencies. strictly. but if you need it, don't hesitate. you will f, ni� �w[: ave� an� �t omd-�� 'you w��: :�uc�,w� are ara�)ji� eat me lim: ana me ��[ oleeaili1ffi: ameriranl' as�aole," a �atelliterk n contact. i: ,me umi!: i do, i mara mo�t ur�enl; tricuyfore� esitate, yo�l� war porn be all but on your own. we will call when we need you. keep the phone close by. you understand?" that all sounded fine, so far as it went. a bit like plan­ ning your own funeral. "yes." "good. now we must come to a more urgent topic." salman raised his eyebrows. here it is, he thought, and struck first: "if! may, sir, i have something to tell you." aziz showed no response. salman went on. "i've heard munir muhanned may be selling information to the americans, via an agent in kuwait." "you have evidence?" "not yet. but ... i have a line. i think one of my col­ leagues is working with muhanned's men to encode the " messages. "what's his name?" "his name?" "yes." "his name." "yes, salman." "of course. qasim al-zabadi." "i see. well, we'll take care of it. for now, i need you to deliver a package." he slid a folded piece of paper across the table. "go here and ask for naguib. he'll have instructions f: " ror you. salman palmed the paper. "is that all, sir?" "yes, for now. you have university work, don't you, that exempts you from emergency mobilization?" "of course." "good. you'll be well placed, if you manage to make it through the next few weeks. don't do anything stupid." 167 161 roy scranton "yes, sir," salman said, and left as calmly as he could, elated :m(fo to have been exempted from reserve service. he'd needlessly ,�l, used up his "suspicions" about that weed al-zabadi, but wllo that was fine. there would always be another qasim. ;�(olo ;�wm ::�m� ashura had come and gone, unobserved, the lament of �r[�r husayn forbidden on state radio. qasim got up early all ��ri(� the same and prayed, irritated and guilty, thinking of his l!o�a mother and lateefah. of more interest to the rest of the ':lli�(� family-mostly sunni-was the impending un vote and �in�n the threat of veto, the worldwide protests, and the upcom����� ing deadline. indeed, the house buzzed like a newsroom. ':ijnt all day long, al jazeera and bbc ran on the tv in the living room and iraqi radio played in the kitchen, while the family talked constantly. the chatter eased and obscured ���ml the fear behind their preparations. jln� the generator had benzine and the lines were hooked r���l up. extra propane tanks had been bought for the kitchen ,)it��t gas, since no one knew when the filling stations would jnm reopen. the windows were taped. mohammed had drilled '�1llg a well, but the foot valve was leaking, so mohammed's sonig�q in-law ratib was out in the front garden trying to fix it. �1�w� ratib's eldest, siraj, worked in the garden with him, digging 'i�ffi( a hole for the benzine cans and propane tanks, and little 'mq abdul-majid, barely out of diapers, pretended to help, pokiw�i� ing at the dirt with a stick till siraj sent him running with a 'thatl, smack. the little one ran in the house wailing, snot-faced, i'�q� crying for his mother, warda, who was rifling through the 'inatl living-room closet collecting candles-citronella candles, l1�ur eco�al1lt elq n����� �·za�arui. rq�im, me lajmm. �ot urwl)1 minbn��f: he r�t�fl earonelm! runnin��i[ in�mot-f!(i: . ng throu�� c onelja can�1 war porn 169 scented candles, beeswax candles, all jumbled together in a box. warda knelt and wiped abdul-majid's face while he cried and told on his brother siraj. she kissed his head and gave him some candles to carry, picked up her box, and led him into the kitchen, where thurayya's widowed sister, khalida, was preparing the midday meal: chicken with red rice, salad and pickles, shineena, with golden vermicelli for dessert. it had been a year since khalida had come to stay with her sister. she'd once been an editor at a respected pub­ lishing house specializing in trade books, and her husband had been a policy coordinator for the national progressive front. about four years ago, he'd disappeared, but she kept working, living alone, waiting for him to come home, until one day her spirit just gave out. by the time thurayya and mohammed took her in, she was a scarecrow: withered to a stick, hair unbrushed, nails chewed to ragged nubs, darting eyes flashing out at a world full of hidden enemies. she was a bit better now, but the run-up to the war was wearing on her nerves. "hello, auntie," warda said. "god bless," said khalida, wiping her hands on a towel. "and what have you got there, little man?" "some candles," abdul-majid said, sniffling. "and what are you going to do with them?" "we'll light them with matches." "that's right," khalida said. "we'll light them with matches." "and they'll make light," he said. "that's right! they'll make light! so that your auntie can see your beautiful face!" 170 roy scranton thurayya turned from her shopping list, warmed by the joy in her sister's shy voice. she smiled at khalida, warda, and abdul-majid, her daughter nazahah sitting next to her slicing cabbage, her precious family, her beautiful home­ then scowled as she remembered the snake upstairs. "nazahah," she said, "pay attention to what you're doing." she still couldn't believe mohammed had refused to turn his back to the ingrate, brother's son or no. after all his shiftlessness, all his laziness, and finally this, this disre­ spect-thurayya had given up on him. she never thought her sister-in-law nashwa had been hard enough on the boy anyway, especially after faruq's death, and now ... stay­ ing in baghdad, leaving his wife in baqubah, during a war ... unimaginable. then, to talk to her as if she was a child! what did you expect from such a one? those who haven't learned from their parents will learn their lessons from the days and nights. and for her own husband to nurse this viper ... mohammed left her no choice but to snub him at every turn, to cast a pall of tension over the house so thick, they'd suffocate till she got her way. yet what good was hardening your heart when they'd soon be huddled together praying for mercy? what did you gain by adding trouble to trouble? it was almost enough to make her want to forgive him-but the thought of his smug smile enraged her allover again, and she reminded herself that to show weakness with men was to submit to endless trampling. "what are you doing?" she yelled at nazahah. "cut thin, thin! shred the cabbage, don't chop it!" "yes, mother," nazahah said. she knew mother wasn't :it�� mto , warm�q� kh�ln�, t ittin� n��tt� eauti� ��r: e u��t�r!, nat rou'rf��: nan r�&�: nenmrmij, nou�n o�wt· a now",[ �ili,auri�f if�ne\v�h: no�e wnoh" rlmofi!fm�' ana to flilllc �ur to !fl��; over tnf n��i war porn 171 really mad, not at her, anyway. thurayya doted on her daughters, and her corrections usually took the form of good-humored exasperation or gentle scolding. only in the most extreme circumstances did she lose her temper, and when that happened there was no mistaking. mother would volcano, throwing plates, screaming, turning the house topsy-turvy until the violator collapsed in a shamble of tears. the last time that happened was when maha got caught with a french magazine-heaven knows where she got it-full of shirtless male models. "that was so worth it," maha said after, her face still puffy and red. they had, nazahah couldn't deny, been exceptionally beautiful men. nazahah often enough found herself a target for her mother's irritation, but never her rage. she did what she was told, said please and thank you, and hardly argued with anyone. her eldest sister, warda, was well behaved, too, though stubborn as a mule, very much in her mother's mold. it was poor maha who was doomed to be the sower of strife: daring, cruel, walking through life with a feather on her head, always fighting the flies in front of her face. she terrorized nazahah, who cowered before her older sister like a beat dog. nazahah's comforts lay elsewhere. on turning thirteen, she'd fallen in love with god, and since then she'd floated through her days awestruck, contemplative, the world around her a tremulous vision. every thing, every moment quivered with weight and substance, perfection, symmetry, and beauty, since all was the will of god, the one and only: every thrush, every wren, every cloud, every fear, every slice of cabbage, every word her mother shouted, every shifting 17) roy scranton emotion vibrating though the house, even the coming war. all. her only problem was reconciling michael jackson, whom she understood to be somehow vaguely yet irrevocably not halal, possibly even haram. she would not let "� him go, however, and solved her conundrum by ignoring it. michael and fatimah sat side by side on her tiny shrine, :� holding the prophet between them in harmony. �i "wake up," her mother snapped, slapping the table. �r "you'll cut your fingers off" :ru nazahah smiled at her mother. �rl "when you finish the salad, go see if your brother-inu� law needs anything out front," thurayya said. "i'm going �i, upstairs to check on your sister." ]t. maha was thurayya's lamentation. she was too pretty by �d half, for starters, and she knew it. then her temper! and ��� the airs she put on! thurayya's plan was to get her married �)�' as quick as possible. they needed someone from the right jt kind of family, though, someone attractive, with good prosj� pects ... and young. maha was picky-haughty-frankly, impossible. there was no shortage of available men, but m�w the problem was that they needed a real prince charming, m� someone handsome and brave, sweet enough to treat her i(�1" well but strong enough to control her. god willing! 'l� thurayya went up to the girls' room, where maha lay .�lnj on her bed listening to a bootleg cd of brandy's never say never and flipping through an egyptian movie magazine. she watched her daughter daydream, wondering where she got her pride and her insolence, but loving her for it too. maha would be a queen someday, when she found her prince. thu­ rayya smiled, then said, "daughter." ilie corni�11 icnaeim elr r�t m: rffionj, a��in� ili� [ j'our dw�t:, a ��a, "rm�, wa.ltoo�rtul her tem�d!, o �et n�r mw ne frommti; t\\lm�ooof au�no/-�lli \'�ladle mt�,: prina c�rutll ou�n to tr�l: 00 willin�! wnerem�, branor)) nm, , ; oriemafidt" ing wnere )�t! r for it too,�t 8herprin(e,r; war porn 17j maha flipped the pages of her magazine. "maha! go downstairs and help your auntie with lunch." "but mom ... " "no buts! downstairs!" thurayya watched maha stomp down the stairs, then cir­ cled back to her bedroom, where mohammed was showing qasim how to work his ak-47. qasim held the weapon's barrel awkwardly in his crudely bandaged left hand and struggled to pull back the charging handle. the weapon kept slipping from his grip. "here," mohammed said, "put the barrel on your foot and let the weapon pull down-not on the ground! on your foot. if you get dirt in the barrel, it'll blow up in your face." qasim tugged on the charging handle, and this time it slid back and clacked home. mohammed found himself wishing, again, as he often did, that the boy had served his time in the military instead of getting the deferment faruq had wrangled for him. ''are you staying for lunch, my dearest husband, great and wise lord of the home?" thurayya asked. mohammed frowned. "no. is ratib still working on the well?" "i don't know anything about wells, my noble sheikh of infinite courage. i'm just a silly woman who isn't even given due respect in her own house." qasim turned in time to catch thurayya's cold glare as she left. "we need to talk," mohammed said to qasim. "but first we have to finish cleaning out the office. go start up the van." 114 roy scranton qasim rode the bolt forward on the kalashnikov and rjc handed the rifle to his uncle, then headed downstairs. so �1ill he'd snapped at her-so what? was he supposed to feel bad :1f now, or pretend women got to boss him around? what 1� could she do about his stupid hand? it was fine. okay, it :�i was oozing pus, developing a yellow crust around the hot, !i� raw wound, and it hurt more every day. it might even be infected, but he was sure it would heal soon. a little bite, jey nothing he couldn't handle. he certainly didn't need a gag� gle of women honking over him. � he started the van and slid his bandaged hand over the wheel, letting himself slide into the pain aching up his arm. m! he would master the pain. that would be manly. mohammed got in the passenger side. �'ey "you can drive with your hand like that?" he asked. "yes, uncle. it's nothing. the bandage is just to keep it clean." "let's go, then. first stop is zubair's, then we'll go get othman." qasim honked the horn and siraj ran over and opened j1�� the gate, then stood aside while the van backed into the :�r street. as they drove off, mohammed noticed a black merlill cedes pull out and follow them. ,/!� ]in q mohammed had two offices, one in the karrada, where he met with clients and handled paperwork, and one in a warehouse out in baghdad al-jidida, where he kept the trucks and machinery. earlier that week, they'd gone out to the warehouse and secured the outer wall with barbed kalasnnihf, ed down!t�f! pposedtoh 1m arouna�i was hn�, �tr me karraa�, i [work ana �� where n�k11t: " mey'a �o�(: w�l witn �j. war porn 17' wire and spikes, bricked up the windows, and locked up the equipment. mohammed's chief foreman, yaqub, lived near there; he promised mohammed he'd keep an eye on things. the karrada office, on the other hand, mohammed had decided to empty. he, othman, qasim, and two employees with a pickup spent the afternoon hauling out all moham­ med's files and personal effects and as much furniture as they could manage, then securing the building. qasim laid mortar, bricking a window, while moham­ med sat at his desk going over outstanding contracts. othman double-checked the file cabinets to make sure they were empty. "i think," othman said, "it's a great opportunity. i think they really mean democracy." "nonsense," said mohammed, not taking his attention from his papers. "it'll be like russia, i think." "russia, huh?" "iraq's a great nation, my friend, but we sow and weep under the lash of a tyrant. our wheat is salted with tears of oppression. after the war, we'll be free to farm how we like. our fields will sprout with joy." othman's fine, soft hands spread to mimic tears falling on the wheat, then sprang up to show the new harvest. qasim thought the poet a silly old man, but othman had been mohammed's best friend since they were boys. the two men were oil and water, harun al-rashid and jafar, don panza and sancho quixote. whereas mohammed was an engineer, a pragmatist, and a nationalist, oth­ man was a poet, romantic and cosmopolitan. whereas 176 roy scranton mohammed had never left iraq, othman had traveled ,;111 to cairo, paris, and moscow, and had spent two years :!�i in exile in beirut. mohammed built houses and offices; othman wrote poetry and had translated hart crane's :� the bridge and lautrearnont's les chants de maldoror. :i� mohammed was broad-shouldered, with a square, handlid some face that in a good light looked like omar sharif's; :tl� othman was dumpy and pear-shaped, with a long, sloping nose-he looked more like nour ei-sherif. he wore '�t thick glasses, through which he peeped out at the world with eyes that always seemed to be laughing. "you're a poetizing fool," mohammed said, slamming down his pen and sitting up. "iraq is a great nation because we have a strong leader. you'd rather have madness, revolu.� tion after revolution, like the sixties? you'd rather a plague of crusaders? because that's what they'll be, othman, these ;:1· americans, just like the british. a plague. they're going to :)� come in like pharaoh and put their foot on the neck of iraq." :)!1 'they'll take saddam's foot offthe neck of iraq, is what 1� they'll do," othman said, "and you'd see that if you weren't 3m so old and set in your ways." ill "set in my ways? listen, brother, i know you're an igno­ rant old skirt chaser who doesn't know from a handful of lentils, but you must have been taught a little of your nation's history." "i know 'his watchdogs have corrupted the land,'''­ othman recited, quoting his teacher al-bayati-'''stolen the people's food, raped the muses, raped the widows of the men who died under torture, raped the daughters and widows of his soldiers who lost the war, from which, like rabbits in �ow )'ou'r� mi� .ow from � �w( got � liru� �rr prea me lmf bayad-'''ltol��: e \�1aows of ili�� rers ana wiq�� ich, like rad�i� war porn 177 clover fields, they had run away, leaving behind corpses of k d '" wor ers an peasants . . . "then you know we're a nation of peasants," moham­ med interrupted, setting his contracts to one side. ''a nation of ignorant hill people in the north, dull-minded farmers in the south, and superstitious tribesmen in the west. we are, like most arab nations, a backward and troubled peo­ ple. and yet we've modernized more than any other. we beat the iranians, we beat back the americans, we've kept our nation together and hauled our peasants screaming and wailing into the twentieth century. and how, my brother, did this happen?" "the curse of oil?" "no. by having a strong leader. a strong leader who believes in unity, who believes in a powerful, secular state-a nation-that can stand up to the zionists and lead the arabs into the future. we're an islamic civilization, not merely a people or a religion, and it takes a strong leader to keep us moving together. without saddam, iraq will shat­ ter into a thousand pieces." "i read aflaq too, my educated friend." othman perched his wide rump on the edge of mohammed's desk, offered mohammed a cigarette from his pack of miamis, then lit one himself. "of course we must put sectarian squabbling behind us. on that, i walk with you today and tomorrow and the day after. but for our father leader and daring and aggressive knight, the hero of national liberation, unity was always only a word. four thousand times, he played the kurds against the sunnis and the fivers against the twelvers. he doesn't heal the rifts between muslims-he manipulates them. whereas in a democratic iraq, an iraq where every voice can be heard, with the americans here to help ... " "to take our oil, you mean. what does your al-bayati write? the hourglass restarts, counting the breaths of the new dictator ... '" "they want us to modernize. you see how they are with the persians. with the wahhabiyya." "speaking evil from the left side of their mouth while flattering out of the right. denouncing the mujahedeen with one hand and shoveling cash at them with the other. yes, i see. the zionists and the persians have always con­ spired together." "you're too cynical. you always have been. you've always been too willing to accommodate yourself to power." "you didn't seem to mind much when i used my 'accom­ modation' to get you out of jail." "for which i am forever grateful, my friend," said oth­ man. "you saved me." "and i would do it a thousand times. but to save you, i had to have power. brother othman, listen: power must be held. it must be used. listen: this has nothing to do with democracy. we're under attack from the zionist crusad­ ers because we stood up against them-because bin laden stood up against them. it's the same as it was with kuwait. someone dares to stand up to america, and they're going to punish whoever they can put their hands on. listen: saddam is the only thing that has kept our nation together for the last thirty years. when the kurds took up arms against us, who stood against them? when the ayatollahs �i 171 roy scranton �,] i �ffi started rioting and rebelling even here in baghdad, who stood against them? when the persians bombed our cities and cut us off from the shatt ai-arab, who stood against them? and when the kuwaitis started murdering innocent iraqis and then that snake george bush, who i spit on, invaded our lands and butchered our brothers, when the entire world lined up to see us broken-who stood against them?" "'carpenters and ironsmiths, hungry and burned under the autumn sky, all forcibly led to slaughter, killed by invad­ ers, alien and homegrown ... ' my friend, the same man who runs abu ghraib, who gassed the kurds, who disap­ peared your own brother-in-law. how can you stand by n, fo�\(i: this dictator as if he stood by you? he cares only about al-tikriti. he cares only about hussein. for all his strength, he has no more honor than a dog. and his sons! think of them. you know the stories." "rumors. your tribe sit around the writers union like scheherazade, making up gruesome fables to shock each cratk ira�j � eamerlcan!�t does rour n� me dr�4�1 our nation wf urds took �� r i i'hen tbe araw� war porn 179 other." "not fables. you see the disco boats. you know what happens to the women-the daughters they take. schehe­ razade's not far off." "listen, othman, sometimes the powerful must be cruel. ifwe have to torture people to save lives, so be it. if we have to spy on people, so be it. if my grandsons are to know a peaceful and democratic iraq, unified not by force but by law and honor, it will only be because we built strong foundations to secure that future. is hussein perfect? no. is the party perfect? no. there are excesses. there are lies and 180 roy scranton evils. but the choice, othman, is not between perfection and imperfection. we must choose, as always, between the lesser of two evils: a powerful leader or anarchy. and if you choose the americans, you choose anarchy." "maybe bush will be strong," qasim said from his bricked-up window. "what?" mohammed turned, incredulous. "maybe bush will be a strong leader. maybe he will keep i "raq strong. othman chuckled. "your nephew sees things differently, brother." mohammed stood up, spitting and stomping his foot. "fuck bush," he said. "but if bush can beat saddam, doesn't that mean he is stronger? and maybe he'll make iraq strong again. then we can build our democracy." "you see, mohammed," othman said. "the young have hope. they're not frightened of the future like you are." "bush-strong! you heard about the protests. against bush. in his own country. he can't even unify his own nation, and they have it easy. they're rich. fat. decadent. not only that, their women ... you see how it was with this hillary clinton and now that condoleezza rice ... their women practically run the country." "mohammed, surely you wouldn't oppose a woman's rule ... " othman said with a grin. "at home. at home. there is a very strict line." "i see. so because thurayya hasn't yet made an assault on your office, you consider it well defended," othman said. "true enough," mohammed said, wiping his hands and : i�i jt etween �tntt. ways, dttw11� narcny,anu ny," rj1at m�� o �,n,ik (rier jine," j i. maueanaljaw, d,"oiliman�: ing his nanilli war porn holding up his palms. "and she won't ever try, god willing. now, if you two are done vexing me with your daydreams, let's finish up and get out of here." qasim wiped his trowel on a brick and dropped it in his tool bucket. mohammed tied up the last pile of contracts and set them on a corner of the desk. othman closed up the last empty cabinets. mohammed sent othman to check on the other workers, then turned to qasim. "nephew, a word." qasim faced mohammed. his bad hand ached, and he felt feverish and dizzy. "uncle, i know i was short with aunt thurayya." "yes." "it's just that ... it's not just her. i can't take all this fem­ inine meddling. my mother, lateefah, aunt thurayya ... i have to make important decisions, and all their fussing is ... they don't understand. they have no right to question me. they're just women." mohammed rubbed his mustache. "it's true, nephew, that women are women. and it's true that you must be firm with them. you can't let them treat you like a boy. but a man's wife ... well, things aren't always so simple." "my wife is my fatimah, uncle. she's my servant." "no, nephew, you are hers. lateefah is the one who will bear your children. she's the one who carries your family in her hands. in her belly. you must protect and cherish her. you must stand by her." qasim winced. "now you are meddling!" he shouted. mohammed stepped across the room and slapped qasim hard, knocking him back against the bricks, sending his 181 1ij roy scranton glasses clattering to the floor. qasim cried out, tears leaping i� to his eyes. \1 mohammed exhaled through his nose with a snort. �l "i've nearly had my patience with you, boy," he said. "indeed, were it not for my obligation to your father, i'd have sent you from my house a long time ago. you :t� blacken your father's face. if you want to stay, if you want :a to curl your tail and hide in my home, then i will suffer !�' it because your father was my brother. but don't think you get to call yourself a man in my home. i know what you are, and i know a man who abandons his wife out of fear and pride is nothing but a dog. when we get back :!� home, you'll beg your aunt's forgiveness, or you'll leave. �� now clean yourself up and meet me outside." some hours later, qasim sat at his desk fuming, trying to l\� puzzle out a particularly knotty equation, unable to focus. he'd called baqubah earlier to talk to lateefah and it had gone disastrously. his mother wouldn't speak to him, and when his wife picked up the phone, she wouldn't answer. qasim was solicitous at first, gently asking questions, but each time lateefah refused, his anger redoubled. when he finally asked, "what's wrong with you? why are you silent?" she said, ''i'm grieving because my husband has abandoned me." qasim exploded, screaming into the phone, berating her faithlessness, and calling her names until she finally �ij! hung up on him. qasim told himself he'd called to entreat her, to comfort her, to promise her he'd send for her, and that it �l d out, tean i� o�e with 41' ·ou, �or, � �1 \ ion to rour f�� illn� tlffif 4��,' o �tar, if ro�' .e, tnen i wi��: " �ut aon't[ war porn 1ij was her unrelenting selfishness that had provoked him. sitting in his room, going through the same handful of variables over and over, his mind raced along the well­ worn track of his indignation, chronicling the story of how put-upon he was, how beleaguered by fate, how neglected and how beaten down. his pained hand, his headache, and the fever in his ears made it all that much worse. from the gulf war to his exile in edinburgh to his father's death, from his meddling aunt to his bully­ ing uncle to his thankless wife, his life appeared to him as a succession of struggles against a despotic fate that had unfairly singled him out among all the others, he, qasim, son of faruq, for tribulation. there was a knock at the door. "i'm working," qasim shouted. the door opened and qasim turned to glare at nazahah, who meekly watched at the floor. "cousin ... " "what? what do you want?" "there are men here to see you, cousin." "what men?" "they say they're from the university." "from the university?" "yes, cousin." qasim stood. 'til come down." "they said they'd see you here. they'd like to speak to you privately." "well, alright. send them up." nazahah bowed and left, closing the door behind her. qasim faced his chair into the center of the room. two? 184 roy scranton he supposed both could sit on the bed, or one at the desk. he smoothed his blanket and arranged his papers and pencils. there was a new knock at the door and as he turned, it opened. one man scanned the room and sat easily on the bed, the other closed the door behind him and stood in the corner. qasim knew at once they weren't from the university. "i . . ." qasim began, but was interrupted by the sit­ ting man, who waved his hand and clicked his tongue. he looked around the room again, taking in qasim's modest furnishings, his many books on his few shelves, his bureau, the picture of lateefah he kept near his bed, his handful of shirts and trousers hanging in the open closet. eventually the man turned and looked at qasim like he was measur­ ing the size of the hole he'd need to bury him in. qasirn realized he was trembling, his skin turning clammy, his mouth going dry. the man looked away, past qasim, through the window to the darkened city outside, the distant lights of the urn ai-tobool mosque. "nice view," he said. qasim jerked back over his shoulder, looking in surprise at the same view he looked at every day, then turned again to face the man. "you ... " :�tl the man waved, clicking his tongue. he turned to i� qasim's nightstand and picked up the photo of lateefah. :m "that's ... " "shut up," said the man by the door. "professor al-zabadi," the sitting man said, still holding the photo of lateefah. "speak when you're spoken to," said the other. ,m' oneatili�a�l pa�er� ana �11i: ana as n� � ana �at e�m ina him ana i;� er u�tea drw1, eo ni)ton�t: i. i qa)iffi'!m� 'j dye)) ni!�lli: i ea,ni)nm&; , iow,ty1�tl s�q) �till n�l& (he other, war porn 18' "uh . " ... yes, sir. "professor qasim al-zabadi." "yes, sir." qasim thought he might throw up. "please sit down," the man said, turning to qasim, who sat, looking from one man to the other. "this is your wife lateefah?" "yes, sir." "she's not here?" "no, sir." "she's in baqubah?" "yes, sir." "you know, professor al-zabadi, we're not from the . ." unrversity. "yes, sir." "do you know where we're from?" "i think so, sir." "what do you think?" "i think you're from the police." "why is that?" "b c i " ecause you seem rear ess. "is that it? or is it because of what you know?" qasim's ears began to ring. the air seemed to be leaking out of the room. "what i ... i don't know what i know." "professor," the man said, "you have not joined the party, is that correct?" "i n . " ... no. ot yet, sir. "why is that?" "i wanted ... i needed to finish my dissertation. i'm not ... i'm not one for politics, for all those political ... things. i'm just ... a mathematician. just maths. so, i thought, 116 roy scranton what do politics and rnaths have to do with each other? i'll join later, of course, but i didn't." "j h " ust mat s. "yes, sir." "i see. and who do you do maths for?" "i don't understand." "who do you do maths for?" was this about his uncle? was this about the accounts­ the bribery, black-market deals, shady negotiations with officials? it was all run-of-the-mill stuff, the only way to get things done. he couldn't believe they'd be here about that. had his uncle made enemies? was he going to have to ... ? qasim blinked. the room dimmed and blurred. "just ... just my uncle mohammed ... he's down ... stairs ... " "we spoke with him. he's a very honorable man. but there are so many questions." qasim choked back a belch of vomit. he sweated cold sweat, his good hand clenched in a fist and his bad hand throbbing. the man stared, watching and measuring. qasim said nothing. with a great internal wrenching, he decided to answer only direct questions and speak as little as possible. he couldn't lie, that was beyond his strength, but he could keep himself from giving away anything more than what they forced from him. "your uncle is very honorable," the man said. "he takes care of his family. he takes care of you." qasim coughed. "it would be a pity if something happened to him." qasim looked from the one man to the other. � ne�otiationn ii, meonlrwarl�: . �nereadomt ;o!n�tonayew, olurrea, j eo, jeh� penea to nim,' we other, war porn 117 "do you understand what i'm saying?" the one asked. "i ... think so." "what i'm saying is that we're interested in certain kinds of information. but we're very busy men, you know. we have only so much time. so if we're looking over here, maybe we don't have time to look over there. or vice versa. you see?" qasim looked at the man, confused. the man sighed and stood up. he stepped over to the desk, leaned over qasim, and flipped through his papers. qasim felt him at his shoulder, a menacing blur in his peripheral vision. "what is this?" "my dissertation, sir." "what's it about?" "harmonic analysis. it ... it has to do with permutations of fourier series. fourier transforms." "transforms?" "it's ... " qasim gritted his teeth. "it's very abstract. it has to do with series of numbers, with periodic functions. you would need several years of higher mathematics in order for my explanation to make any sense." "why don't you try?" "it has to do with-simply put, what i'm trying to do is develop a harmonic analysis of certain non-abelian groups to explore whether or not we can analyze them topolog­ ically. i think i've been able to establish these groups as locally compact in certain cases, but i'm still working on applications of the peter-weyl theorem. the problem is, they're not always locally compact-which means ... well. it's ... it's a bit ambitious." 111 roy scranton "i see. and these equations, they're good for making codes?" "what?" "somebody gives you a message and you turn it into a non-abelian theorem ... " "oh, no. no. not at all. that's a totally different branch of mathematics. no. cryptography, cryptanalysis, that's totally different. you might talk to professor farani, she's very good with that sort of thing. not really my field." "no?" the man smirked. "oh no. like i said, i'm working on harmonic analysis. i'd like, once i finish the dissertation, to see if i could push it further, topologically, you know, but that's a completely different ... that's ... wait." qasim's realization shot fear through his belly: "you think i write codes." the small man slapped qasim with the back of his hand. "don't pretend we're stupid, professor." qasim held his head in his hands. his temples ached and rang. "how about we just take this, all these non-abelian codes, and have somebody crack them?" "wh ;> n i n i' "at. 0, pease. o. t s not ... "no?" �i, :w "th' th' k"at s . . . at s my wor . "why don't you tell us what we want to know? or maybe you'd like to tell us in abu ghraib?" "i i"... my unc e ... "yes?" "i do accounting for my uncle. i'll tell you who he bribes, how much, i can tell you the black market ... " the man's eyes narrowed. "we're not here to talk about your uncle, shit-dribble. who else do you do accounting for?" "i don't ... i don't know what you mean." the man slapped him again. then again. then he picked qasim's glasses up off the floor and handed them back to him. he went to the door and spoke briefly with the other man, who came over to qasim. he reached out and took qasim's good hand and pressed it flat on the desk. he held down qasim's wrist and pulled a claw hammer from under his jacket. "we don't want you, shit-dribble," the one man said. "we want the men you work for." "i don't know what you mean," qasim said, his voice breaking. "i really don't." his mind scrambled for some­ thing, anything he could tell them. "last chance, shit-dribble." i lj "m i " [em�mm11: y unc e ... the one man waved his hand in exasperation. the other �on.adflim(u. lifted the hammer. you turn it� �'oiffmntk . �tan�j)i), � e��or far�,t �}'mrft1w �o\v!orrri r.·· war porn 189 "wait!" "yes?" "m i " y unc e ... the one shook his head and the other swung the hammer down on qasim's little finger, smashing the first knuckle with a bloody crunch. qasim blacked out. he came to a few moments later, dizzy and tingling, sweat pouring from his forehead. "let me help you remember," the one said. "we'd like information on the codes you write for munir muhanned." 190 roy scranton "munir ... " "oh. now you remember." "i don't ... " ''again.'' "no wait! wait! i'll tell you!" "yes?" "hamadaya," qasim said. the man looked at him quiz­ zically. qasim went on: ''anouf hamadaya, one of the students in my class. she asked me if i would write codes for her brother." ''and?'' "i didn't. i'm not i wouldn't ever get involved with guys like that. i'm i'm a coward ... you see ... her brother, anouf's brother, they say he works for munir muhanned. that's who the codes were for. but i was too scared to do it. that's all. that's all." the man went around the desk and picked up qasim's dissertation. "i told you, that's all i know. there's nothing ... " the other raised his hammer again and qasim went silent. his hands throbbed. his face throbbed. "we're going now," the one said. the other let go of qasim, who pulled his bleeding hand into his lap. "but if you hear anything, anything that might help, you talk to your uncle. he knows who to contact." the man turned and left, flinging the dissertation across the room as he went. his partner followed. qasim watched them go, desolate and sick with pain, then curled into a ball on his bed. he didn't respond when mohammed and nazahah came to check on him, dokee at fiimt aoa:a) ofl1 «' woule wril1(,:, war porn 191 or when nazahah splinted and bandaged his crushed finger. only when they started to pick up his disserta­ tion did he stir, waving them away. the white empress hovered in the corner, her robes heav­ ing in slow waves, her hands stretching across the space between them in the heat, head cocked, tears flowing down her cheeks and splashing her chest with tiny red blossoms. qasim sat up, tugging at the sweat-damp sheets, fum­ bling in the tangle. as he leaned toward her, she leapt at him, her face a dog's face. qasim fell back and she cried, "wh �"y. then she was gone. he sat alone, trembling. his bitten hand, aching, stank. his heart's pounding echoed against the walls and he thought, how long? has it begun? he imagined great whirlwinds of fire spiraling over the city. fragments of a dream came back, running through alleys, a great coal steed at his heels, fire in its eyes, fire in its mouth. its massive hooves pounded the air with sparks. the white empress watched from a high window, her mask impassive. turning and turning, the streets a cyclone, all the world one ancient, winding alley. again the dogs and something else, anouf, a shard, her hands on his manhood, her mouth on his neck, while the horse pounded behind him. from above, the white empress watched-beneath her mask, tears. he heard someone walk past his room. dawn shone in a red line. black palms rose like minarets and the mina­ rets rose like rockets: the sky floated black under a starry blue sea, and that's how they'd come at him, like sharks. 19.2 roy scranton had it begun yet? were the lights in the sky the sea, or the city? qasim sat up again. the call to prayer had begun. his hands, chanting dull mantras of pain, told him he was being punished for his pride. god had struck at him for his stub­ bornness and would kill him if he kept at it. he had no choice. he had to return to baqubah. if he stayed, he'd be destroyed. slowly, painfully, shakily he dressed, then opened his sui tease and threw in his clothes, his photo of lateefah, his discman, a few cds, his dissertation-now a clutch of disordered pages-and all the books he could fit. his other things he stacked in the corner, to send for later. he hauled his sui tease down the stairs in the three good fingers of his less-bad hand. in the living room, he saw oth­ man sitting on the couch in the dark watching cnn with the sound off othman turned to him. christiane aman­ pour spoke on the screen. qasim watched her smooth, pale face, her eyes bleeding tears, distant and accusing. "why?" she asked him. "why did you leave me?" "i' "h·dm sorry, e sal . "qasim," othman said. "please tell my uncle ... " othman stood and came around the couch. "please tell my uncle i took ... " "let me help you with your suitcase." "i ... i have to ... i have to." "yes, qasim. of course. let's have some breakfast first." "no. i have to get the car before the ... before the dogs, i mean. while it's still black." \!� �' �wr er han de�, him hew�� a hun forijili a it. heru: he 1tareol �t: war porn 19j "we'll go soon, but first come, sit. i'll get you breakfast." othman led him gently around to the sofa. "no, now!" he waved his hand, stinking in its scummy bandage. "yes, of course. we'll go soon. just sit. we'll eat first, then go. just sit. then we'll go." "i have to go," qasim said, sitting and dropping his suit­ case. pain washed over him in broken pink waves. othman left to put on the kettle and when he returned, qasim had passed out. tv light dappled his wasted face. mohammed came downstairs and found othman and qasim asleep on the couch. cnn was on, silently running a story about a hijacked cuban plane. something stank. mohammed kneeled to examine qasim's hand: the bandage was dirty and loose, a mess of gauze, crusted pus, and filth. he took it gently up and qasim jerked awake with a shout. "let me see your hand," mohammed said. "i ... it's ... i have to go to baqubah. i need the toyota." "you're not going anywhere with your hand like that." qasim pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. "you're not ... going to stop me," he said. "you always want to 'ouen, stop me." qasim tried to push past him, but as mohammed stood to hold his shoulders, he fell back on the couch. moham­ med knelt, taking qasim's bandaged hand on his knee and e breakf�d�1 unwrapping it. he gagged on the stench of the infected flesh. "beforeili�i:, "help me carry him out to the car," mohammed said to othman. 194 roy scranton on their way toward yarmouk teaching hospital, which should have been a ten-minute drive, mohammed and othman had to go through three different check­ points, each time arguing with the clean-faced recruits and fat reservists that they had a medical emergency and needed to be allowed to pass. other than the hizbis, the city seemed evacuated, estranged from itself. there was almost no traffic. trenches had been dug in parks, berms built up in front of schools. no buses ran and all the cig­ arette stands stood empty. the hospital was quiet too. the nurse told them it might take a while: "we're running a skeleton crew, to let our staff rest. the full shifts start at midnight." a few others waited in the lobby: a young boy, crying, his head resting in his mother's lap; a fat old man wheezing like faulty bellows; two or three bandaged and broken; others with less visible afflictions. guardians ofthe nation played on iraq tv in the corner. twice orderlies rolled stretch­ ers through to the er, one man bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest, another trembling and hyperventilat­ ing, his leg broken in a z. at last the nurse came for qasim. dr. ai-amman, quiet, short, sleek as an otter, said little to mohammed and othman as he dispassionately examined qasim's hands. he examined the splint set on his smashed little finger. he jabbed qasim's rotting hand with anesthetic and, with the help of a nurse, began to cut away dead flesh. qasim was awake but delirious, and mohammed and othman helped hold him down. the doctor cut away the gangrenous bits and dropped them in a bucket chin� h� while the nurse soaked up blood with a sponge. it did not rive, mon�� take long. finished, he slathered on topical antibiotic and aifferent(fi had the nurse wrap the hand. an·facea r�:, "he should be fine. there's no indication of rabies, but � emer����, we'll run blood tests. we'll call you-insha'allah-within an tnehil�il the next few days. it appears to be a localized infection, it)e1f nw: but it may have gone further up the arm, so i'm going to prescribe some very strong antibiotics-he's not allergic, is he? good. he needs to take the antibiotic with every meal, three times a day. he can't miss one single pill. don't cut the pills up, don't sell them to someone else, don't hoard them. unless he takes every single pill, the infection will spread and kill him. do you understand?" "doctor, i'm no thief," mohammed said. "very good. he may be delirious for a week or so while the antibiotic kills the infection. make sure he gets plenty of water and bed rest. the hand should be unwrapped every other day and washed. boil some salt water for five to seven minutes, then let it cool. when it's room temperature, use it to wash his hand, gently. a proper scab must form. i'll prescribe some topical antibiotic as well. put that on the wound, then wrap with a new bandage. with proper care and regular cleaning, he'll be okay. there is some deep tissue damage, so his hand will likely be permanently weakened, but functionality will return in time." driving home, othman pointed to the horizon. thick black douds of smoke ribboned up from the greenbelts around the city, where the army was burning oil in big pits. beyond them loomed a distant bruise, thickening across the sky. i ro cut dw�i�: ana mon�� , the aoa�l, (hem in d ��j war porn its • • • 196 roy scranton the sandstorm came later that afternoon, choking the city with oily grit, turning the world beyond the windows to a howling red void. it lasted until after well after nightfall. as soon as it had blown over, othman went up on the roof to replace the satellite dish, but now there was no signal. ratib thought the storm might have knocked out the local retransmitter, but othman was sure it was saddam and his flunkies, the stupid bastards, he muttered, blinding us in our moment of darkness. they attached the aerial to the tv and tuned in to the local station replaying the same programs from earlier in the day, the same state demonstrators cheering, ministers pontificating, saddam speechifying. "shut it off," oth­ man said. "nothing to do but wait," said ratib, slumping into an armchair. "i can't believe it's happening again." "i was in the south last time." "you could feel it. the air would hum and you could feel it in the back of your neck. you could feel them coming." "it was fast in the south. everything was fast. you'd be sitting there for hours, bored out of your mind, and all at once the earth would explode. there'd be a whistling, you wouldn't hear it until later, after the explosion you'd remember-/ heard whistling. but before, nothing. they hit us with jets and artillery. those rockets they shoot." "i helped dig people out of the rubble. after every raid, as soon as the explosions finished, we went down to the mosque-this was when i lived offasmai street, in adhami­ yah. when i worked for the iraqi film commission. "ii i@, �tt cnobn!�. anyway, after a raid, we'd meet down at the abu hanifa. iliewinq�w!: we had boys, some of the men's sons, and if we didn't know llafterni�: where the damage was, we sent them out as runners. then we'd go dig. it was awful." ew�n�lt "there wasn't any rubble in the south. just wrecked keaoutffi1: tracks and bodies. men's helmets burned onto their heads �aaqml�( because of the webbing inside and the coating, the lamiea, dlinrun!� nate on the inside of the helmet. it just melted onto their skin." othman sat on the couch. he watched the tv's blank ifrornw�i' screen while ratib got up and scanned the dvd rack. "i need a drink," othman said to himself. "mohammed!" mohammed shuffled in from the kitchen. "stop yelling, pig. if i'd known you had the habits of a jew, i'd never have lumrin�imi brought you into my home." "wh' b l�"ere s your ott e. "i don't know what you're talking about." "the good stuff, the johnnie walker, not the arak you anarouww( give your clients. it's time for a real drink. we could all be dead tomorrow." "i should see my god with liquor on my breath?" ''as if your god cared," said othman. "he cares," said ratib. othman waved him off. "go get your bottle." "you'll order me now, like i'm your little woman?" othman leaned back and gazed soulfully into moham­ med's eyes: "'your yearning shows, whether you restrain it or not, and likewise your weeping, whether or not your tears flow. how many times your composed smile deluded a companion, while between your hips-what was invisible. war porn 197 198 roy scranton the heart commanded its tongue and its eyelids and they �im concealed it, but your body is an informer.'" r�iyi �mmohammed laughed and rubbed othman's shoulders. " "sad bachelor. if you want to drink so bad, why don't you go down to the writers union?" "i want to drink with myoid friend mohammed and his son-in-law ratib." "i don't drink," ratib said. "there is a time for your god, and there is a time for your heart," othman said. "you'll have one drink." j�� id,'"alas, my friend," mohammed said, throwing up his m hands. "i already drank it all." jm� othman closed his eyes and covered them with the 11w� fingers of one hand. '''father of every perfume,'" he recited, »ru�1 '''not of musk only, and of every cloud-i do not single �;i(k, out the morning clouds-every man of glory boasts of only iltl) id,tone quality, whereas the all-merciful has joined in you all. m while other men are esteemed for their generosity, in your wit, generosity you bestow esteem.'" his eyes opened, peering �tl into mohammed's. "tt is not much that a man should l(1ntu visit you on foot, and return as king of the two iraqs. for �111 sometimes you give the army that has come raiding to the ��rf lonely petitioner who has come begging, and you despise l�ml this world as one who has proved it all and seen everything �mk in it-except yourself-perish.'" ilm� mohammed smiled, but not othman. there was a sad'r�u ness in his voice that slowly dissolved his friend's smile, �t�t and brought ratib back to the stretches of silence that j��!a followed the bombs in the south, after the wounded had ��i been trucked away and the dead buried, when they waited �i 01 eyelias ��: ,» man'� �n�q� 0, \vhf ���it: ory do���i! joineain i�ji eneroljry1illi­ . oreneal�: at a manm', me nvo in�i,: me r�illn�tl: , ana rouj6:' a )eenev1�t , therew�ll hi) frienaills ) of )ilen(� t the wouno1j: wheniliep'l war porn 199 for more death to come. the feeling of relief at having survived lent the dread a cutting edge, laced the bitterness with painful sweetness. "please, beloved and righteous mohammed, name of the prophet, by the grace of god and by the mercy of god and by the infinite compassion of god, go get your bottle. this may be our last night. the last night for iraq." "there will always be iraq." "like there will always be akkadians or abbasids or ottomans. a country is a day. come. let's drink like men." "ratib," mohammed said, "go upstairs to my office and in the filing cabinet, the tall gray one, open the bottom drawer. there, back behind some blueprints, you will find a bottle of oil to light our lamp tonight. the johnnie walker black." "i' . d h " t s not permltte t at. . . "ratib," mohammed snapped. "your piety is commend­ able. go get my bottle." ratib fetched it, and the two older men began to drink. eventually, after much cajoling, ratib did too. in the mean­ time, thurayya and warda had returned from putting the children to bed and, seeing the bottle on the coffee table, went into the kitchen. the night passed slowly, the men drank slowly, sometimes going into the kitchen for water or chai or to speak with the women, and sometimes warda or thurayya would come into the living room to speak with the men. it was a quiet night, a night of conversa­ tions and stories of other wars, quiet but quickened by an unheard buzz. the radio played a low babble behind their talk, old patriotic songs and bullshit state bulletins. just joo roy scranton after midnight, as the men were becoming drowsy, othman sat up with a start. then they heard it: the distant chug of antiaircraft fire. it went on for a while. othman sat back down. the shooting stopped. started. stopped. a distant machine turning off and on, throwing metal into the sky. t", thurayya and warda told the men good night and went uri upstairs to bed. shortly after that, mohammed told oth�!i man to wake him if anything happened, then went upstairs � himself. eventually ratib fell asleep in his chair. only othman was left, listening alone in the darkness. he had �,� another drink, then another. he woke, later, to the walls' dull shaking. the world i�� shuddered once, then again and again. antiaircraft guns ir� flacked in the distance. there were several more explosions, l� far but not that far, and more guns. mohammed came ml downstairs and looked at othman. the two men looked at i��� ratib, still asleep, and went swiftly upstairs to the roof to the northeast, baghdad was in flames. :�rl, a fireball lit the sky. then came the boom. �i�� "it's all in the karkh." ��ii "they must be going after the government buildings." i, tracers cut the sky in loping arcs of red. r�� "i didn't hear any planes." j "no, you wouldn't. they're too high. or stealth jets." mju another fireball; they counted-one, two, three, boom. i� red and yellow light flashed and shifted, the city danced ��ru with shadowed fire. they stayed and watched until the �� bombs then the aa guns stopped. in the east, the sky light�wi ened to a smoky blue. "m drow�f'o� e di�tant (�� oack oo¥m,: di�tant md� ne��, nl�ht m�, ammeo t�i�� men went�� n nl� (h�r, l oar�w,�t: morea�lrn" �10hamffidq \'0 men 1��lt; 01, or�t�ilij�.' nvo, iliree,� , ilieci�&; vatchea unro: ast, ilie��� war porn 201 they went back downstairs and turned on the bbc. george w bush's voice filled the room. "my fellow citizens, at this hour american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free its people, and to defend the worldfrom grave dan­ ger. on my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets ofmilitary importance to undermine saddam hussein's ability to wage war. these are the opening stages ofwhat will be a broad and concerted campaign ... "i want americans and all the world to know that coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm . . . helping iraqis achieve a united, stable, and free country will require our sustained commitment. we come to iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization, andfor the religious faiths they practice. we have no ambition in iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people ... « our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet ourpurpose is sure. the people ofthe united states and ourfriends and allies will not live at the mercy ofan outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons ofmass murder. we will meet that threat now . . . so that we do not have to meet it later with armies offirefighters andpolice and doctors on the streets ofour cities ... i assure you, this will not be a campaign ofhalfmeasures and we will accept no outcome but victory. "my fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. we willpass through this time ofperil and carryon the work ofpeace. we will defend our freedom. we will bringfreedom to others. and we willprevail. "may god bless our country and all who defend her." · ._. joj roy scranton he lay in bed thinking, why them again? the two men, "in standing over him, one slowly waving his hammer. "j'n "he's not going to do what he said," said one. �w "he thinks he knows," said the other. "n a dull boom outside startled the men and they turned 'ro to the window. in the street, a line of crusaders stood 'j' on guard, the blades of their swords flashing like needles, ,� reflecting the fiery angels crossing the sky whose wings ir� and hair burned gold, swooping and soaring. one broke �ti off and shot jets of flame from his hands-a burst of white sparks, crusaders tossed along the road like broken ��o bottles, a crater. one of the iron men screamed, pointing � his sword to the heavens, and leapt. an angel fell upon ow him, wrapping him in flames, but the leaping crusader ��un stabbed through the angel's heart and the two, pinned, :100 plummeted writhing to the ground with a crash. '�m staring down from atop a minaret, her face impassive ]�o white split with black, silver robes flowing in the maelstrom h1 wind, she watched. she turned slowly, her eyes passing over ilk the city, and he could feel her watching him huddled there in ]!, i his bed. he tried to push himself to his feet, but saw his hand ��m was crippled, broken blue, a twisted bird's claw. m�tn he heard the dogs a moment before he saw them, a i'ijy1 pack slavering down the alley at him. with his good :m!1 hand he pushed himself up and fled, feeling her eyes on ��u!, his neck. h1 he turned one corner, another, then another, through ��r twisting streets of the old city, the dogs close behind, their �mru, shadows shuddering on the walls, another corner and �t�1t another. he fell in through a bakery door. ]�m� � th� tw�( narnm�r, a on�, ana tnq� crulaawt nln� li�f ��( ��wnoio: arin�, o�d: anah �illf roaalikdl( reameo, r�m: an�d ff�t: learin� lr�\: [ne two, r�� acmn, er fa(f imrl r ey�rdsl�: nua&�amr: anomer, �; lo)e benin�,� ower c0rn11i war porn jos "in the cow's belly, we're all milk," the baker told him. ''i'm not milk, i'm water," qasim said back. "we must pour milk into you." "no, no. i need water." "you'll drink pig's blood before you're through." ''i'll drink dog's blood." "oh, the dogs will drink your blood." "i' th'"m not a man. ey won t eat me. "they won't spare you either. they'll kill you and leave you." ''i'll run forever." "your hand is running. that's a runhand." qasim clenched his blue birdhand in a fist. "we must pour milk into you," the baker said, hobbling around the counter and into the back. in the wall was a lit­ tle door and the baker opened it and, bending over, entered. "come, come," he said, going into the darkness. qasim followed. he crouched in an endless tunnel of tearing wind. machinery chugged somewhere, loud, behind the wail­ ing. down, down he went, until finally the tunnel opened in a series of small caves spiraling one around another. the spirals became sines, tubes, a line of inter­ woven waves, a spinning weave of light and shadow, until translucent gold in the darkness shone upon a door: the house. he opened the door with his good hand and went in. qusay hussein and lateefah sat on the couch, holding hands. a goat bleated in the corner. qusay had pulled up lateefah's dress and was violating her from behind. lateefah moaned with pleasure, sweat beading on her face, her hands roy scranton grasping at the couch, her naked thighs trembling as she r� pushed back into qusay. �� "what are you looking at?" qusay shouted. he pressed harder into lateefah, his hands holding tight to her hips, and �i she gasped. "you think you know, but you have a dog's hand." "stop," qasim said. "god is great!" qusay shouted, and shuddered. lateef­ ah's belly swelled with his seed, and she was standing beside qasim in his uncle's house in baqubah. ''i'm having it tomorrow," she said, her face split with a black line. "don't." "but sweetheart, it's our baby. look," she said, and showed him the swaddled newborn. its tiny black nose and furred snout poked out of the blankets. cute floppy ears, bright black eyes, little white teeth, a curling pink tongue. "i can't ... " ]w lateefah handed the baby over. he knew he had to love it, so he made cooing noises. lateefah smiled warmly at them, but when she turned away, he laid the baby on the table and smothered it with a pillow. the baby barked and yipped and qasim forced the pillow down. "what are you doing?" lateefah screamed. but he didn't stop. he felt the wriggling thing under his hands and pushed down, down. "have some chai!" lateefah screamed. he smoothed over the pillow. he didn't understand why he was in bed now. "it's not ours," he told her. "it's a devil." "please have some chai," lateefah said. she sat next to him, offering a cup. '11r� tremolin�� outea, h� �� t to h�rru� kveao�!� 't una�mw�i o ner, "itjli�� '0, )ne )�t �� war porn jos the room was light, there was light in the room. why was he lying in bed? "cousin, wake up. have some chai." he shook his head, covered in sweat, the pillow was a pillow-his heart pounded in fear-but no, there was only the bed. "have some chai, cousin," maha said. "yes," qasim said, taking the cup. "the bombing started last night." "yes," he said. maha sat with him, watching him take his chai, telling him about the first bombs in the night. she gave him his antibiotic pill and made sure he swallowed. "go back to sleep," she said, and left him. he turned on his side and watched the wind riffle the palms through the window's white x, his mind blank but for the image of qusay and his wife. ai jazeera said nine b-52s had left their airfield in britain and were six hours from baghdad. othman imagined the american pilots flying those enormous silver machines: they'd wear shiny helmets and black masks, like insec­ toid machine-men, but inside they'd be pale and blonde and say things like "roger" and "i need a vector on that approach." othman lit a miami and pictured their green flight suits with all those pockets, and how they'd call their wives and girlfriends before the mission. some of them must have english girlfriends, he supposed, and others would have american wives who would hate the j06 roy scranton english girls. they'd walk out to their planes and high-five each other, saying "got one fer saddam!" and "kiss my grits!" then they'd put on their helmets and masks and fly over the english channel and paris and the alps and bosnia and turkey and push buttons on their control panels � and hundreds of bombs would fall from their machines onto his city. the earth would shake, buildings crumble, men die engulfed in storms of white-hot metal, children and women screaming, blood bubbling on blistering lips, and the pilots would high-five, saying, "how you like them apples?" relaxing now, they'd turn their big silver planes and fly back over turkey and bosnia and the alps and paris and the english channel, all the way back to their wives and girlfriends, who'd kiss them on the runway and jll say, "bet you showed them what for!" then they'd drive to fancy restaurants in sports cars, wearing tuxedos, and eat �11 steak and drink johnny walker black. l�l most of the rest of the family had gone to sleep, a midday ,:w nap. everything seemed almost normal. �!� except for the constant terror, especially at night, espeill cially last night. the bombing had started in the afternoon, i�r! massive raids in waves that shook the city. sometimes they'd jl� hear the hum of jets, sometimes not, then the first booms. �1� if they were farther away, it was like thunder, but the closer i�� they got, the more it sounded like the earth itself was break1�1� ing apart. the house shuddered. everyone froze, then ran to the living room, which, having no windows, was the safest ��� place in the house. the adults sat on the couch and arm�m chairs, the children on the floor, as if they were all having �jti� tea, and waited while the booms multiplied and stirred to :nhj&lt) �ot mft�, (�: v on �li!lfri�. how,d: :r �i� !�yfrli ana mf ��i \\�r da(� t� � war porn )07 crescendo. usually the wave was simple, peaking then fad­ ing into fewer, quieter booms and finally silence. sometimes it was longer, complex, orchestral: a peak would be followed by a lull, a quieter stretch mistaken for denouement, only to rise again reborn with a surge of hideous thunder. it might happen twice, three times, once othman counted five. the raids went on all night. every time the all clear sounded, they sat astonished at the reprieve, then blinked and, like old men stirring from long sleep, came slowly awake. some returned to what they'd been doing, others tried the satellite. thurayya made more chai. othman usually went up on the roof to survey the damage, to see which part of the city lay smashed and burning. columns of smoke strung the sky. they'd chat or make phone calls, discussing this or that, what it would be like after, what it was like in the last war, what it was like during the war with iran, what it was like before the war with iran, what was good or bad about this cia guy chalabi they had on the news, or was america good or bad, or were the americans better or worse than the british. then the air-raid sirens would grind up or the aa would cough or something would explode and they'd all jump and run into the living room and it would all start all over. it went on and off like that, off and on, all night. they scrounged bits of sleep, on the couch, on the floor. nobody wanted to go upstairs. there was an argument about whether they should leave qasim in his room; they decided he'd be okay, but mohammed and ratib quickly boarded up his window. it was a long, awful night, restless and terrifying, spent at the edge of anxious joi roy scranton exhaustion. little nazahah prayed and prayed, knowing somehow it was all in god's plan. mohammed decided they should keep all their papers and money with them downstairs, in case they had to evacuate. "evacuate where?" thurayya asked. "we'll go to my brother's in baqubah." "how?" "we'll take the van and the toyota. if we need to, we can go to the warehouse and get a pickup." "we're not going anywhere," thurayya said. "j' " ust in case. "mohammed." "just in case. everybody needs to pack a bag, too, and a bag for the children, and we'll bring them all down here to the living room." : � the bombing let up at dawn. everything but the satellite tv still worked, so after breakfast and packing, they got busy calling friends and family across the city and farther away, collecting and spreading news. othman slept. after lunch they switched, most of the family dozing while oth­ man fiddled with the tv, which was how he discovered that the satellite was back on and ai jazeera had timed the bombers. six hours. great silver jets against the sky and the hundreds of j�� bombs they carried, each one death for someone. he �� remembered the last war, the ground leaping beneath �r� his feet, the dead. a child's arm poking from the rubble, �rll smooth, purple-gray skin sticky with half-dried blood. the �! prayed, �� ep ill ilitil� aseilitrru: • a da�, too1l �jaownk i jn� duttn�g[ j rac�n�1 rnr;: , e cicy 4n�t j riliman h�t,,; . olin�wnijlv ow n� ai!rni: eeranaa aml or �omfo�� leapin� ���� g from th� ru� f.ariea dloo�" war porn j09 man with the shrapnel in his belly, howling all night-how could he have so much life left in him to keep screaming so loud for so long? and the tanks-the tanks will come too. they'll rumble through baghdad like . . . he remembers a tank clanking down a city street, its malevolent cannon swinging side to side, pointing now at a bakery, now at a bookshop, so huge it takes up almost the whole road. its tracks chew black­ top and sidewalks. a gang of children tumble from around the corner and launch rocks at it. the rocks clatter off the tank's hull and it jerks to a halt. the gun swings around, its gaping death-eye searching for something to annihilate. then the tank lurches into reverse, crunching up the road at them. run, kids, othman thinks, and they do, dashing around the corner. was it in black and white, this memory, or color? was it even a memory, something he saw on ai jazeera or in saving private ryan, or was it something he just made up? six hours. and will it be worth it? it had to be. we have to get rid of saddam and his goatcunt sons. donald rumsfeld says it'll be short. just a few weeks of insanity, just a few weeks ofwar, then the americans will give us peace and democracy. we'll be a great nation again, like germany or japan. we have the oil, we have the drive, we have the brains and dedication, all we need is freedom and we'll be as great as baghdad ever was. we'll be greater than cairo, damascus, greater than beirut or tehran. we'll rival berlin, tokyo, new york, london ... the name baghdad will sing on the tongues of wealthy men and their fabulous j10 roy scranton women, the name iraq will jingle like gold coins. we'll fix all the damage from the last war, from the last ten years, and we can socialize the oil profits to do it. then we'll clean up the ghettos, fix the streets, finish the highways left half built. we'll raze saddam's palaces and monuments and hire iraqi architects to build real monuments to the iraqi peo­ ple, monuments to rival the eiffel tower and the empire state building. we'll build iraqi skyscrapers, better than in dubai, and we'll become the new economic center of the arab world. and our literature! it'll flourish like flowers after the rain. no longer will we have to mutter our lines into our hands, hunched in the dingy corners of the writers union. they used to say egypt writes, beirut publishes, and baghdad reads, but soon they'll say baghdad does it all! we'll shout our poetry in the streets. we'll have pub­ lishers and book fairs. i'll finally finish my epic. adonis will come, and darwish, and mahfouz, and munif, they'll l� all come and speak, and they'll stay because we'll have ]� what no other arabs have, not even the jordanians and not even the egyptians-we'll have freedom. freedom in a free arab state, self-determination, national solidarity. it'll be like the republic, only better. think of it! to write whatever you want, to shout "down with saddam!" and not have to worry about having your arms broken or your manhood burnt off. and all we have to do is go through a little war, a little trouble. five and a half hours. he had to put on a movie. he couldn't keep watching the news. he lit another miami and flipped through the i� ld coln�, w�': the last t��i' it. then w1j�'(, e hl�nwar! 1m war porn 211 dvds. five and a half hours would be two, maybe three movies. something the kids would like, maybe shrek? we could watch shrek again. or, what's this, air force one? han solo. very good. han solo and his big silver jet. mohammed came in, wiping his hands on his dishda­ sha. "i just finished changing his bandage," he said. "it's still bad." "it's only been two days," said othman. "he should be better." "or what? what can we do? take him to the hospital again?" "we should do something," said mohammed. "give it another day." "where are ratib and his boys?" "ratib's on the roof. the boys are sleeping upstairs." "good." "they said ... " othman started. he couldn't carry this knowledge alone. someone else had to help him. "they said we have a little more than five hours." "until what?" "nine b-52s left britain three-quarters of an hour ago. it takes them six hours to fly to baghdad." "i' h d"t s no more t an we expecte . "i just thought you should know." "god protects all." othman thrust air force one at mohammed. "is this any good?" "it's okay. you know. action movie ... are you well, my brother?" "no," othman said. "no, i'm not. i'm furious. all we do is j1) roy scranton sit and wait. wait for more bombs and tanks and ... whether it's good or bad, or both ... we should do something." mohammed smiled. "what can we do? shout into the wind? would you wrestle the leviathan? you know how it is. life's like a cucumber." othman grinned in spite of himself "that's right. one day in it's in your hand, the next day it's up your ass. as for today ... well. shitty days are only good for sleeping. maybe you should get some rest. i'm going to take a nap now myself, then let's go see if uglah llif� has opened his bakery." "yes. you're right. that's good. i'll, uh, i'll watch han ii solo here. come get me when you're going." f othman turned back to the tv. he eyed the blue � void of the screen while he fumbled with the dvd. he'd )[!w remembered where the image came from: the kids were pali�t estinian, and the tank was israeli. it had been on the news. �uli he thought of other pictures, pictures of israeli soldiers illlll� storming palestinian neighborhoods with m 16s, israe:� li-owned american attack helicopters launching rockets at l��o� palestinian cars, israeli-owned american fighter jets bombmo ing palestinian houses. �ril five hours, more or less. he pushed play. ij ill ill he was in a cave again, dark and cool. lights flickered mo dim in the distance, sometimes one way and sometimes ltt another, illuminating winding paths in half-seen flashes. ��,ii this time faruq was there, standing behind him, off to "n the side, in front. faruq was young, much younger than 10 ;, li�ntl fli(li av ana lom�� ��f.�een ��: enina nimj �[ ucn youn�trw war porn )15 qasim remembered, with full black hair and a thick mustache. "you've got to kick the ball, qasim. you can't be afraid." "i can't kick." "listen," faruq said, squatting beside qasim, now a child. "whatever you do in life." "but i did!" "no, listen. do you see the angels?" qasim looked to the sky, where indeed he saw the angels his father spoke of "yes." "they have come to burn all this away." "like the chemotherapy?" faruq lay on the ground. "like the wind. listen." qasim listened, but all he could hear was his father's respirator and the beep of the ekg. he seemed so old, so wasted, lying there in the hospital bed. it was as if some evil spirit had sucked all the meat from his body except the stringy cord of his soul. faruq watched him but couldn't speak because of the oxygen mask. his eyes were pale and bloodshot, stern and piercing. mohammed stood smoking next to the bed. "you see, boy," he said. "you see what life is? this is the recitation." "there's more," qasim said. "this is all there is." "there's more. there's more if! can find it." mohammed inhaled on his cigarette, covering faruq's face with the sheet. "that was his mistake," mohammed said. "he tricked you. now you've killed him for it." "there is more." "look," mohammed said, pointing down the hospital .,_ t·· ' j14 roy scranton corridor. a pack of dogs ran at them. "stand!" mohammed shouted. qasim turned and ran. yet it seemed no matter how lit(! hard he pumped his legs, he couldn't move, and the dogs, �� impossibly slowly, gained by inches, their jaws snapping ullt, at his calves. his heart pounded, and he felt their paws on l�tl his back, slamming him down, their breath on his neck, i�ill their teeth. ;� �l� , day and night, bombs crashed into baghdad. you watched it �lt( on tv, you heard it on the radio, you saw it from the roof and �m when you ventured out into the street: soldiers and civilians, il� arms and legs roasting, broken by falling stone, intestines �i�j spilling onto concrete; homes and barracks, walls ripped .m, open; baathists and islamists, communists and social deml�n� ocrats, grocers, tailors, construction workers, nurses, teachers mij all scurrying to hide in dim burrows, where they would wait j�lla to die, as many died, some slowly from disease and infection, l'r others quick in bursts of light, thickets of tumbling steel, "m�! halos of dust, crushed by the world's greatest army. ]�t as the bombing grew worse, the terror of it stained every �, living moment. sleep was a fractured nightmare of the day �[�� before, cut short by another raid. stillness and quiet didn't i�t� mean peace, only more hours of anxious waiting-or death. llin� even the comfort of family rubbed raw. l��1 maha sat in her room listening to britney spears and wd brandy, wishing she was anywhere else. this war was going �n to ruin her life, she knew it, it was going to ruin her chances �\�u�1for marriage, it was going to ruin everything. her skin was �ilii rimer �rtw' his warw��, o ruin ntltk ing, htrlid�! war porn ju breaking out, her hair frizzing, ends splitting. she stood at her window and gazed through the slit between the two pieces of plywood nailed over the glass and watched smoke drift over her city, and the smoke was her future fading to haze. she started hitting nazahah, hard. she hated how her sister kept praying, stupid praying to stupid god, like it would do anything. she hated her mother and father, her sick cousin qasim, whom she had to keep nursing, creepy old othman, her sisters. she hated her mother's patience and stillness. she hated warda's incessant singing and khalida's watchful eyes. they were all conspiring against her: none of them understood how terrible it was to have her life ruined at seventeen, before she was married, before she'd even fallen in love. she stood at her window and gazed through the slit between the two pieces of wood and watched flames burn along the skyline, half hoping she'd see it all devoured. more bombs fell on the city. day and night, smoke clouded the sky and the sun blazed like blood. sometimes air-raid sirens would break the heavens with wailing and all across the city people would drop what they were doing and hide. then the sirens would subside and no bombs would fall. then the all-clear would sound, or not, while aa guns hacked at the empty gray. what people grew to depend on was the mosque. after every bombing, out from the many minarets across the city the muezzin would sound: allahu akbar, la ilaha illallah. and more bombs fell on the city. warda kept herself busy. she could not bear to be still: as soon as she stopped moving, her mind bloomed with grim thoughts of her husband and her boys. she could not bear to think of her little siraj lifeless and torn, or abdul-majid, 216 roy scranton who cried and fussed so much, falling quiet forever-it was an emptiness the depths of which warda refused to peer into. to lose her beloved ratib, whose skin she adored, whose hips and back and shoulders she clung to, whose lips and cheeks and eyebrows she loved so dearly they made her ache, after all their struggles, would be losing the world. so she mended. she cleaned. she baked. she'd watch movies sometimes with the family, a little, but her mind wandered and after a few minutes she'd get up and find something else to do. she reorganized the kitchen and the closets. she dusted behind the tv. and she sang. quietly, songs from her childhood, in a soft and lilting voice that sounded through the house, soothing the family. they couldn't see the horror behind her gentle eyes, couldn't hear how her songs were only noise to hush an endless silence, so they were calmed by them, and this in turn helped calm warda. so she kept singing. and some­ times, as she sang, she could even imagine a future. she might go back to work for the ministry of trade, where she'd worked before abdul-majid had been born. she might vote. she might grow old with ratib, watch her sons become men, watch them go to college, have careers and wives of their own. she might live to see her grandchildren born. and more bombs fell on the city. bread prices doubled, tripled, quadrupled. there was no propane. there was no benzine. the satellite went in and out and eventually iraq tv shut down, but the radio still played patriotic songs and reports of the americans' defeat. when they could, they watched cnn or ai jazeera. they watched balls of fire iet forever...;r da refu�eq t�: s�n �ne a�( lun� to, wo�� early tner mj� o�ln� ilie w�rl: �e'q wat(omf ner mlndw� q find 3�m� ana ilie doji�" ·in�ln�, an��: agine a furore t " of tradf, �: deen domi id, wat(n�lr! e have carwh her�rana(� ad price� a���: ane, rnmw� d eventu�l; patriotic 30��1 they cow�,� tched d�l� �fi war porn )17 rise up in the night across the dijlah, red and gold flowers blooming in the black water. they saw their city in green from above, in videos made by the men who were killing them, bright neon stripes cutting the screen, pale green explosions below. they watched tv reporters in kuwait, qatar, and israel put on gas masks. they watched american tanks push across their desert. they watched iraqi soldiers sur­ render. they watched iraqi soldiers die. they watched their brothers and husbands and sons forced to their knees and thrown like trash into the backs of trucks, blindfolded and hog-tied. on ai jazeera, they saw children in rub­ ble, ruptured bodies leaking like cracked pomegranates. on cnn they saw generals pointing at big maps full of arrows. allahu akbar, cried the muezzin, la ilaha illallah. and more bombs fell. nazahah prayed. she bore the abuse of her sister, the dis­ comforts when there was no light, no electricity, or no water, she bore the tremor of fear, she bore it all, praying constantly to god and the prophet, to khadija, the prophet's wife, to fatimah, the prophet's daughter, and to michael jackson. god was testing them, just as he'd tested the prophet, and she would show him her heart's recitation. so devout in her prayer was she that her absent-mindedness grew worse than ever. she let the kettle boil over. she burned bread. she forgot to give qasim his antibiotic. she swept up the kitchen and left a small tidy pile of dirt in the middle of the floor. her mother chided her. khalida snapped at her. maha hit her. and nazahah prayed for forgiveness and mercy. she prayed to be less absent-minded. she prayed j18 roy scranton for god to make her eyebrows less bushy. she prayed for god to keep them all safe. it was hard with all the fear in the house to feel the near­ ness of god. more and more, she spent her time alone, writing out prayers on slips of paper, reading the qur' an and books on the sira and the hadith, and a book from the seventies about pan-islamism. she drew secret pictures of the prophet and michael jackson riding together on buraq, the white, winged, woman-faced horse that carried the prophet on the isra and miraj. she pictured the prophet and michael jackson walking together in the desert, holding hands, fatimah (looking suspiciously like nazahah herself) walking behind them. she imagined they spoke together of the jagged beauty of palm trees and the buzz of bees, the way honey dripped clear and gold on flatbread, her father's smell when he'd been smoking-and of how the purity of god's mercy would conquer all, how great god was to have given us such a world, with red tomatoes and green reeds and the great brown dijlah, the wonder of the muezzin's call and the glory of "thriller," the perfection of breakfast at breakfast time, tea at teatime, and bed at bed­ time. nazahah prayed in ecstasies of gratitude that she was alive and that god had made the world and that the world was so perfect and full. and more bombs fell. the lights went out. the electric­ ity went out. the water stopped running. it came back on. it shut off again. they began to leave candles everywhere, and matches. they went to bed just after sundown, even though they knew they wouldn't sleep through the night, and arose at dawn, lethargic and anxious from the night's on flaldrtlj,: .,-ana of ��w: 1 now �rtlt� . er sunaowfl, � rhrough tnt ni� from tnefli� war porn j19 thundering bombardments. there was nothing else to do, with the power off and on, but lie in their misery and fear. ailahu akbar, cried the muezzin, la ilaha illallah. day and night, bombs, rockets, and missiles crashed down into baghdad, erupting in plumes of smoke, strewing metal and the screaming wounded. and they watched cnn, ai jazeera, and the bbc. and they saw their city burning. they watched their husbands, sons, and brothers shot, captured, shamed, dishonored. they watched umm qasr fall. they watched basra fall. they watched an-nasiriyah fall. they watched karbala fall. they huddled around a map, listening to the rumors on the news, trying to see how far the americans had come. thurayya was calm and patient, the burden of her fam­ ily a gratifying weight. she was their center, their mother. she made sure the men went to get bread, the generator was full of benzine, and the house clean and orderly and quiet. she was confident and assured, as if all her life she'd worked toward this moment, to take the family in hand and guide them through these hours of danger while the world outside was consumed in flames. she had what she needed, she had what she loved, and she would sustain them. she baked flatbread and made dinner. she told maha to sweep and abdul-majid to wash his face. she leaned against her husband's broad back and felt his skin on her hands, and was happy knowing he was a brave, good man and that after the war passed, he would go out as he had the last time and rebuild their lives yet again . she had him here, now, and she lay with him at night in the darkness and was not afraid. ljo roy scranton it wasn't like last time, when her daughters were still chil­ dren and mohammed was away, called up in the reserves. when she couldn't sleep at night for fear that he would die and she wouldn't even know. when her nightmares had woken the children and her days were a torment of wait­ ing. she and her daughters had stayed with her mother, still alive then but deathly sick, in a tiny back room in her brother's house. she could still sometimes smell the stench of her mother's illness-it shamed her to think of, shamed her that she hadn't been strong enough for both her mother and her daughters at the same time. but all she could do back then was wait, pray, write her husband, and keep busy. sometimes she would shake so hard from fear her teeth chattered-not for herself, not even for her daughters, but for mohammed. every night she prayed for him to live. every day she prepared herself for his death. when he came back, she vowed never to let him leave her, and he hadn't. he never took a business trip that kept him away more than one night. one night they could be apart, but no more. she wouldn't allow it. she had him. she had her home. she was in her home, with her husband and her daughters and her sister, and all would be well. they could go through a hundred bombings and a thou­ sand tribulations, and she would stand strong and guide her household with a firm and loving hand. mohammed was there and she was strong. she was full of love and forbear­ ance for all, even her son-in-law ratib, even her no-good runt nephew qasim, who was, under her care, healing, fighting off the infection, growing stronger-he could eat solid foods now and even sit up and read. she was motherly a tormentor� with nef ffi�: . dac� rooffirn: �me� mfl[ 'u thlnko(�k war porn ju even with othman, toward whom she had always been polite but distant, for reasons she refused to think about too much but had to do with the sparkle in the old poet's eye. she gathered the household in her hands and set it to order. even maha, even khalida she took in hand and set to work. there was chaos outside, but her family, her girls and her men, would sustain. more bombs fell. there were rumors the americans were coming from the east. from the west. from the south. they'd taken the karbala gap. they hadn't taken the karbala gap. they were in baghdad. they weren't in baghdad. the city choked on smog and explosions, lies and ash. the power went out for good, phones and water too. they ran the tv on the generator. the satellite came and went. they passed rumors from their neighbors at nighttime and rumors from their dreams at dawn. they began to hear artillery fire, big guns and mortars, distant thumps and nearer crashes. one night, the hizbis all left. the trenches and guard points around the city emptied, leaving ghost uniforms and boots and helmets, as if the men had evaporated where they stood. there were rumors us marines had been seen in al-rusafa, on the east side of the dijlah. rumors the kadhimaya mosque had been bombed by stealth jets. rumors saddam had ordered the fedayeen underground. rumors saddam was dead. suddenly, tanks in the streets. humvees running down the avenues, heavy guns lobbing explosive rounds at houses and shadows. rifles, machine guns, now the chatter of small-arms fire peppered their days and nights. jjj roy scranton they quit going out. they locked the gate. they spoke to their neighbors through a crack in the second-story window. they didn't go onto the roof. more explosions, more shooting. one night they listened to a tank roll down their street. they heard it stop. they heard the whine of its turret and heard its gun fire, the sound of hell cracking open, then again, feeling it throb in their bellies, knees, and thumbs. they bowed their heads and prayed. allahu akbar, la ilaha illallah. they heard a machine gun go tock­ tock-tock, then the tank rolled away. it's target had been an empty house. two gaping holes like blank eye sockets watched the street. and more bombs fell. allahu akbar, cried the muezzin, la ilaha illallah . the blind man sat listening to the thunder, rubbing the stub of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. it was late. ''ah-ham,'' he muttered. trouble had come again, as it had before and before and before. he remembered the british biplanes of his youth, :�� when he'd first joined the army, the way you could hear jl� the click of the bomb releasing-poisonous gray eggs tum�l( bling into the kurdish lines. and then ... he remembered the tommies in their pointy helmets, marching the road to baghdad. before them, the turk-but he could only faintly (m summon the turk. until the revolt and the great war, the iii press of world events had seemed distant. �! there was so much to remember, so much to recall. so ,��r much to see and know and feel, so many dead to hold on � �ate,tn�r�� to. so many dead. even one life was too full. even one life the ,econ�. was so long and bloody, he could hardly bear it. more ex�hi: but that's what the poem was for. it was all there, his first oatankro�� love and his last, his long-dead father and long-lost sons, card tnew�� the fall of baghdad and the coup d'etat, the many revolundofnelln1[� tions. he remembered mohammed al-sadr's independence eir delli�!j�; guard and the revolt against the british, the bright hopeand �rareu: he was what, fourteen? the shining dream of nation ... he nine�n��; remembered fighting the kurds, his years in the army, his :har��t nl�i: wife, young, the late twenties, the days of hope as the peodlankere� ple grew slowly to become iraq-then independence: 1932. there were celebrations. riedmemij[ we might as well have been mourning, he thought, for all the good it did us. in the assyrian revolt, he killed assyrians. in the shi' a revolt, he killed shi' a. he helped protect the turkish petro­ leum company, then the iraqi petroleum company, as they pumped out the people's wealth and the people's oil. a coup, an assassination, another coup, the british returned and occupied basra, umm qasr ... the collapse, the far­ hud, iraqi jews blamed and murdered, banished. and then, in 1948, the catastrophe, the diabolical birth of the zionist state and the war in palestine. he led his men through the jezreel valley and up the tell el-mutesellim, which the jews call har megiddo, fighting the zionists, and many good men died. all for nothing. it was all written down, and all for nothing. and many years later, when he dared speak his mind, when he dared utter the truth, was he not punished? saddam had struck him down-but had not killed him, and that was his war porn ju ))4 roy scranton mistake. for do i not yet write? do i not mark the truth in �( my book? do i not chronicle my poem for the ages, to be sung by my children's children's children? they would blind me, but i see the truth. i see the truth and i write the truth, and our truth shall outlive theirs. he jabbed the stub of his tongue against his teeth and pressed his pen to the blackened page. another sura remained to be written. qasim gathered his strength. he was better now, though his hand was still weak. he'd decided: staying in baghdad was :m, cowardice. he went to mohammed and asked to use the :m toyota to go home to his wife in baqubah. ml� mohammed was proud but worried. there would �i� be many dangers, not just the americans. there were looters, fedayeen-who knew? and where would you lget benzine if you needed it? and what would you do �if something happened? qasim agreed that it might be �m difficult but argued that he should go sooner rather o�1 than later. no one knew when, or if, things would settle 'l� down. there might never be a better time than now. "i understand," mohammed said, "but you're still healing. :�� stay a few more days." ''i'm strong now, uncle. i've waited too long already." "qasim, you're still weak. you're not well enough yet. i can't let you go alone. it's too dangerous." i�lt "uncle, please," qasim said, going to one knee before �ijl, mohammed at the kitchen table. "i have to go." :11111 "no. you have to wait. i can't spare myself or ratib to marklnetru: or tne��lt tneywow� i writeili1� ��mt nb� �e, anoml!; war porn jjj take you, and we need the toyota here. this is more of your foolishness. wait until things calm down, and we'll figure something out." othman watched the discussion from the other end of the kitchen, fiddling with his lighter. then he tapped it loudly on the table. 'til go," he said. mohammed waved the idea away. "don't be an idiot." 'til go with him. i can shoot, i can drive. i know the roads. we both know some english." "a fool and a cripple. what a team." "mohammed, my friend, it's only seventy-five kilome­ ters. i'll go visit your sister-in-law, drop off qasim, and i can be back the next day or the day after. i have an old friend in baqubah i'd like to check up on. consider it a favor-to me. i want to see your nephew do the right thing. let me help him." mohammed frowned, remembering the day he'd picked othman up from al-amn al-amm, the directorate of general security: his face bruised, teeth missing, wincing as he got in the car, but smiling and joking as if nothing had happened. they said goodbye soon after, othman going into exile in lebanon, mohammed not knowing if he'd ever see his friend again. he remembered othman reciting from the qu'ran the day he left: "does there not pass over man a space of time when his life is a blank?" this time felt different, but how could you know? and what could he do? a man must follow the recitation of his soul. mohammed shook his head in resignation. "fine," he said. "fine." qasim thanked othman and mohammed, then ran jj6 roy scranton upstairs to pack. the two older men said nothing for a long time, smoking in silence until mohammed stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. "bring the car back safe," he said, "or thurayya will kill both of us." the poet's eyes gleamed. "insha'allah." nothin� for 11' ed �tuddeq �ij; ack ��e/i nq babylon · � ," .-';;';._���::>t<�lio nothing is over: this is the story of a long-haired half­ crazed vietnam vet, harassed by small-town lawmen, lost on his one-man mission of vengeance. back in the war, he was part of a ragtag team of misfit soldiers, hand-picked for a suicide mission to kill hitler. good and evil. he's a downed fighter pilot. he's red and white and blue. this is the story of the sword. gun. dawn patrols blacktop sit guided in a bad hundred feet drowned gulf military units added to the brass shell dogs devour battle so they too were made of vanity and 72 hours not from the stories of previous wars. violence inflicted on the larg­ est burden themselves, some of which depicted pyramids and the rest shocked of no-man's land. lee marvin leads a ragtag gang of misfits through the hell of war and loss of innocence as they fight for freedom and america from the deserts of north mrica to the forests of germany. he's an idealistic young officer leading his all-black regiment on a suicide attack on a coastal fortress. no-man. through me tell the story of one man's rage and the razing of an ancient .no roy scranton city. he's an idealistic young officer charged with coward­ ice for refusing to send his men to their death on a suicide attack new reports electricity widening the circle of direct blame for shooting it up my ass. on first setting eyes, alas, my son, harassed by small town artillery emplacements, a bridge no more. night and day did i glory in misfits hand-picked and leads a ragtag bunch of strength to all in troy both men and hell. from the glory. a young man discovers commando war noth­ ing, for no one pilot develops a tenuous ragtag bunch of all-american right hand like a lizard but that's not hell, a bunch of ragtag boots lying like getting my machine impression of his wife the flow i mean when i voted for hell, horses in administrative succession, running the achaeans divide the fate detainee-ots allegations jjil ;1 a tale of courage and honor, loyalty, grace under pressure and the will to win. he's a young, dedicated soldier sent up the river to kill a rogue agent. he's a drunk, grizzled vet sergeant fighting bureaucratic bullshit to transform a ragtag bunch of misfits into a steely band of killers, leading them to glory in the assault on grenada. the allegations of this man alone, unsupported, allegations of abuse, his statements available, peleus, for he is mightier than you. nevertheless, intel interests dogs and vultures, and a load ,� i�, of grief would be lifted from my damage iraq's eyewitness reports, life, both iraqis cried: the british academy has committed muslims. like people attacking a library. rag­ tag. a young glory. an army special forces operative goes up the river. a young man joins the marines and becomes a photographer and is sent to vietnam and learns that war is hell is hell. war story. a retired special forces operative returns to vietnam to rescue his pow buddies. this is the story of the center in washington d.c. where he prac­ ticed for conventions ofwar or rules had no way to confirm they were the war near equipment in civilian areas, mainenanqn�11j taining abu ghraib largely with iraqis of "no intelligence" a lot firmer, particularly his own military; a final atrocity ra�a���[ exploited for detainees were meant to be "exploited for" ut tnat'lnm: many shops know coalition forces prisoners scooped up in lfl�ffirffill this way soon flooded the keepers taken all the campaign wnenlm[(: on the harsh terrain of disadvantages nighttime sweeps gave saddam 48 hours on the harsh terrain of detainees at abu ghraib whomsoever allah overcrowding difficulties 10m of ad�(' miuhrier ili�'/:) rures, anq!.. war porn hi the iraqi academy of physical abuse while stuck here this is a story of we happy stuck here. this is the story of a ragtag bunch of misfits picked for a suicide mission to stuck here. a young man. from the ragtag clutches. a noble, professional special forces commando learns that war is young. a young hell and ragtag bunch of all-amer­ ican misfits fight japs in the south pacific and learn war is war. a bunch ragtag of young ragtag learn the true meaning of discipline and camaraderie and war and war. a young j:sj roy scranton maverick risks everything to save his father from the libyans. a ragtag bunch of australians go halfway across the world and learn war is is. this is the story ragtag young man. stuck here. stuck here. this is the story of valor, duty, and the cost of war. a young camaraderie. this is the story of a young man who learns war always has a cost. a young wacky. this is the story of a wacky bunch of ragtag misfits trying to escape from nazi prison. a wacky bunch of ragtag misfits running an army hospital in korea. a ragtag mav­ erick valor war. this is the story of a young man's war, the story of we happy few. a co)!, alt, . ofr��[l . � dun(o �fr� rea,ar�� your leader will control your fire (operation iraqi freedom, 2004) fear is not shameful if it is controlled the plane tilted on its side and through the window in the opposite bulkhead baghdad whirled below, taking my stomach with it. men and women in brown deus turned green as we spun plummeting in a banked spiral. the guy across the aisle puked in a bag and his buddy cheered. we rolled against the sky, then at the last minute flopped flat and came in straight. the engines growled down into the final approach, and we dropped the last few inches slamming to the deck. they downloaded our bags and we threw them in the back of a five-ton. the truck took us to a staging area. contacting battalion to arrange pickup, i was surprised by how eager i felt to see my fellow soldiers-i had to make sure they were okay, but as much as that i just wanted to see their faces. they understood. they knew this shit world we lived in, knew it all better than anyone i could talk to back in oregon. i realized as well that i jj6 roy scranton was itching to get back outside the wire. the berms, palm trees, and sand around me seemed not just familiar but com­ forting. normal. i wanted to scan rooftops. i wanted shots fired. i wanted ninja women in abayas, hadjis in man-dresses. i wanted to hear and talk salaam a-leykum, ishta, uskut, i wanted my rifle. it was hard to believe i'd just been back in the land of shopping malls and big hair, showing my ex-girlfriend photo after photo: this is my humvee, this is captain yar­ row, this is camp lancer, this is the un before, the un after. how was it possible that just a few weeks ago i'd come down into portland, rain drumming on the plane's win­ dows, feeling the war slip off like an old jacket? when i got off the plane, there was my ex-girlfriend and another girl, an old friend, and we hugged and kissed and grinned. in the parking garage by the car, they lifted their skirts and showed off their matching superman panties. my heart was full of love. all the long ride home while the girls talked to me and each other, i scanned overpasses for snipers and watched the shoulder for ieds. i kept reaching back for my rifle, startled that i'd lost it, and eyeballed cars passing on 205, feeling spooked, thinking i need a drink, i need a smoke, how the fuck long do i have to do this alone? now, after weeks of being apart, she'd be there waiting for me. geraldo showed up in c7. '''5 wh th' "up, eat ill. � mr fx·�t .: '111c4rtm j oeforelit: wee��or�i . mf �lm1'i: :a ket� war porn h7 "good to be home, cheeto." "you missed a dope barbecue." ''anybody get killed?" "naw, burnett some caught shrapnel from an led. like a thumbtack. purple heart's tomorrow. you have yourself some fun?" "i didn't know what to do with nobody shooting at me. i got laid, though. any word on redeployment?" "saying april." "a °1 h ht"pn, u . "wh h " at t ey say. "that's like ninety days." "ninety days be ninety days." on the way back to the cl; i watched the west side dfac go by and the road to gate 5. the route i had run in the mornings and the fenced-off mosque. we passed battal­ ion maintenance, the mini-px, and the hemmet lot, finally pulling into our compound. i didn't know whether to cry or scream or shit myself i got out and downloaded my gear. on my way to draw my weapon, i ran into nash and sergeant chandler. "what are you doing here, sergeant? i thought you were getting out." "yeah, so did i," he said. "wh d' t"at you mean. "three days before my orders, i get fucking stop-lossed." "s h t"ayw at. "stop-loss. no-movement orders come down for all units in support of ole nobody etses out of iraq anymore." jji roy scranton "what the fuck's that mean? you don't get out?" "not till we get back." "that is some fucked-up shit. but it's only ninety days, right?" "so they say. but enough about my troubles. how was leave?" "fucking-a, man. i ate everything. i drank everything. i got fucked. i saw the new lord of the rings movie, which was awesome. and this-you gotta check this out." i dug through my backpack. "you and me, sergeant, we're person of the year." i handed them the time magazine with the lad guys on the cover. "no shit." "yeah. there's a big article in there about how fucked up it's been for 4-27." "i guess we're too boring." "it's weird man, coming back. at the dallas airport, there was this line of flag wavers, and anytime anyone found out i was in iraq, they got all serious and shit, started thanking me and telling me what a great thing it was i was doing. i didn't know what to say. like, hell yeah, fuck hadji! i mean, what the fuck?" «b 1 f "et you got a ot 0 ass. "sure, well ... i was fooling around with my ex, but ... if i'd wanted, there was definitely opportunity. i mean, what chick doesn't wanna fuck a war hero?" i left them with the magazine and went to draw my rifle. as i crossed the motor pool, i seemed to be walking through a dream. i felt too relaxed. everyone else was depressed and hateful, just like i remembered, but the difference was me: i war porn jst get outt rou�l�, h�� was okay. i could see our frustrated rage, our barely checked aggression, our loneliness, our desperation, and for the first time ever, i could see it without belonging to it. if! can just hang on to this, i thought, i'll get through. everything'll be fine. later i talked to bullwinkle and he said yeah, that lasts about three days. : wasa�rreliro: fjfferencfwll: when defending, or when temporarily halted �� while making an attack, you must seek cover from fire ),�rili and concealment from observation �ir ��i'� mi l�lr � nrlo. wi we hauled our gear into the new barracks at fob raptor: :idld lines of squat, cinder-block rooms inside a dim, echoing, it!loi sheet-metal hangar. we were assigned four to. my rooml(�ltl mates were sergeant chandler, stoat, and reading. i�ffil� the best part was the latrine. instead of porta-johns, we :t�ou had an actual building. gleaming mirrors. linoleum floor. �� toilet paper. twenty stalls, separated by white plywood, :!1w with doors and flushing toilets. white porcelain sinks. ltr� fourteen showers with curtains, drains, and high-power ::kk nozzles. hot and cold running water. :�(�la we ranged the fob with a quickness, reporting back llf� to each other like kids scouting a theme park. there was jttrn� a small px, a hadji souvenir shop, a hadji coffee shop, ��t�� laundry service with three-day turnaround, a hadji barber, :1�tor internet cafe, hadji boodeg-dvd shop, hadji smoothie !11(�t stand, gym with elliptical trainers, weight machines, and ��(knl treadmills, and some outdoor volleyball and basketball w�d courts. :�i�o �m��rdri�1 ��f� (��!r if:' � imm ���'i: atfo�& o r to, hlrr � rearun�, of rom.j�m �, linolf�rn:� y wnitf �i)�: e rorcfi�n!' . ana ru�·�i l rerortin!� e rark n�r( naoj! co�ff! no. anaajik war porn )41 ninety days. too easy. our patrols weren't difficult. baghdad had calmed down over the winter. there was less shooting, fewer led attacks, fewer random ambushes. we rolled through the same gar­ bage-strewn, sewage-washed streets over and over. men stood before turquoise-tiled mosque doors, impec­ cably dressed, watching us go by. little kids in pink pants waved. old women in niqabs waved. shopkeepers waved. we had terps with us every day now. there was anu­ man, an older guy with a short beard, once an economist; big joe, who wore mirrored sunglasses and a black leather jacket, who loved american tv and thought american women were "the hottest bitches in the world"; qasim, a nervous, stick-thin math professor with a scottish accent; and ramana, who we called bertha, a great surly mound of a woman who used to do something with computers. there were others we only met once or twice: frick and frack the dental students, akbar the pimp, ms. al-radi the psychiatrist. life took on a dependable rhythm. we went to the internet cafe. we emailed friends and family. reading and cheese played warcraft iii. other guys posted photos on hot or not and bragged about their ratings. i googled places to go on vacation, broke up with my ex, and ordered thick nineteenth-century novels from amazon. we blew our tax-free combat pay on cds, digital cam­ eras, portable dvd players, creatine powder, protein shakes, j4j roy scranton maxim, and cases of red bull. on patrol we'd drive to the hadji market in the green zone, which had the best boot­ legs in baghdad. little kids ran up shouting "ficky-ficky dvd," their hands full of porn. a private in attack battery got killed by an led. at the ceremony, we stood in formation while the chaplain read from the bible and some soldiers got up and talked about what a great guy the dead kid was. lieutenant colonel braddock stood and told us how important it was that we were doing the job we were doing and how important it was to bring democracy to iraq, and most important, how we in were defending american freedom from the terrorists who '1r� hated our way of life. �mi the bomb had gone off under the kid's humvee. the ��:ffi charge had been buried in a pothole and covered with plas�in ter of paris, probably detonated by cell phone. one of the ;�rr guys in attack told me they left more of him stuck charred :(�v inside the truck than they put in the body bag. w�i "we're fighting them in the streets of baghdad," the col:m11 onel said, "so we won't have to fight them in the streets of r1�� jacksonville, florida, or the streets of galveston, texas, or ,�� the streets of pfc gabriel's hometown of culver city." �j�! taps played on a boombox. halfway through, the cd :m1' started skipping. then somebody bumped it with his foot �m! and it stopped. we)u urivt� au tne ��t: tin� "fi(q,;. do not move: la ta-ta-har-rak do not resist: la ta-qaowm we set up traffic control points, usually at night, where we pulled over random hadjis and searched their cars. the lt's favorite spot was checkpoint 15, an overpass spanning "o'l nuffi��,: the main expressway along our route. on the north side it omeawi�:, fed into a neighborhood, but on the south, the concrete none,on1�: dropped off twenty meters past the entrance ramp, making nimltu(�(k the overpass a one-way street and a low-traffic exit. }' d�, we set up on both sides to cover all the zones. two guys stood b�naaaj"m(l at the top of the ramp with rifles and a high-powered flashlight. em in tne m� we'd flash a car and, once they pulled over, have them get out �reltonj rat and open the doors, the hood, the trunk, everything. while the i culyer(j�.' hadjis stood in the dark by the side of the road, we dug through , ilirou�nj t�l: all their crap, searching for weapons, i guess, or maybe bombs in�ili�il: or some kind ofaxis-of-evil, al-qaeda spy shit. we pulled over a van full of young women in hijab, driven by a middle-aged guy with an enormous mustache. he got 244 roy scranton out, but when qasim explained that the women had to get out too, he shook his head. "la. la," he said. "naarn, motherfucker," i said. "they come the fuck :t' outta the van. everybody." ;m' the man said something to qasim and something to us. burnett hefted his rifle. reading said, "look at all them bitches!" .� qasim explained: "these are his daughters. he says they ii� cannot be seen standing by the side of road in the night like this. is very bad. okay?" :i11 "no, not okay," i said. "they all gotta come out." "it is very ... ashamed for them," qasim said. "is no d"goo . "i get the one in blue," reading said. "i don't fucking care," i said. "everybody comes outta the van." qasim said something to the man, who exploded in frus­ tration, screaming in arabic. i shouted back: "those girls come the fuck outta the car, or we zip you. got it?" qasim translated and the man glared at me, stomping his foot. ''tell him," burnett said gently, "they either come out on their own, or we drag 'em out." "tell him if they don't come out, we're gonna rape 'em," said reading. "shut up, reading." "tell him they come out on their own or we drag 'em out, alright?" qasim translated and the man stood indignant. he women�t wn or wejr� jdqignanr. war porn 14' "hey, reading," i said, "will you get some zip-strips?" "roger," he said, stepping off to the humvees. when the man saw the zip-strips, he relented. he herded the girls as far away from us as we'd allow, angry and alert as a riled dog. the women stared at the ground. reading hung back by the railing so he could ogle their asses. "come here and open the trunk," i said to the man. qasim translated. the man looked at the girls, at reading, at the van, at us. he didn't move. "fucking c'mere, bitch," i shouted, and qasim said something to him. the man came over reluctantly, watching the girls back over his shoulder, opened the rear door of the van, then scurried back. we took our time completing the search. we poked under the sunshades, we dug under the seats. burnett cut a hole in the rear bench with his knife. the glove box was closed so we yelled for the guy to come open it, which he did, then we had him come back again to open the engine cover. "you wanna fuck with him?" burnett asked me. "maybe. how?" "let's tell him we think there's an led in the van, so we zip-strip him and his daughters and leave 'em sit awhile. then we just stand around, right, let him fucking sweat." "seems more trouble than it's worth." "let him cool his heels awhile," burnett said. "that fucking guy needs to learn who's boss." '�right," staff sergeant smith shouted from the humvees. "there a problem or you gonna get that van outta here?" "we're trying to score with these bitches, sarnt," reading shouted back. )46 roy scranton "score with bitches on your own time, private. get that van outta here." i told qasim to tell the man he was free to go, but that )!1j the next time coalition forces told him what to do, he bet"� ter just fucking do it. qasim translated and the man barked back at us in arabic, spit on the ground, and stamped his foot. he loaded up his girls and drove off :ml mu later that night we stopped a car full of hadjis with a flat � of beer in the back seat. foster and burnett started giving �r them a hard time, so the men offered us some. burnett took "i the cans and passed them around, plus one for staff ser"i geant smith and one for the lt, then let the car go. we �idrank and watched the traffic go by under the bridge and :�� decided to start a shakedown. il� "you give me beer," burnett would say, leaning in the window. m "no beer," the hadji might say, and we'd let them go, or 1001 "beer, yes," and they'd hand us some cans. � after four or five successful contraband seizures, we broke ;(11) down the tcp and just drove around, our buzz brushing il� the night to a smooth gleam. i�� :ud ]iul walking back to the barracks one day from visiting vil��!l laguerrero at battalion, i saw qasim sitting outside the terp �mt) shack, smoking and drinking tea. l(!n "sabah al-khayr," i said. ��"sabah al-noor," he replied. "you speak very good arabic." ��rl \ private r., �\i r 'om yi)iti�( j 'n� ou�iaf wi' 're�gooam war porn 247 "not really, but thanks. you off today?" "yes. i was going to go see my uncle, but he says to me ... is very dangerous, qasim, and better you not come." "d h t"angerous ow. "my, how you say, the husband of my uncle's daughter?" "shit, i don't know. cousin-in-law?" "so, my cousin-law ... is very religious and ... he does not like the americans. he wants you to go home, because you are not muslim. so sometime he stays with my uncle, because . . . because. other times he goes to family. when he stays with my uncle, i do not go. because i work for you." "that must be hard." "is better than baqubah. after the invasion i go to baqu­ bah because my wife and mother . . . my wife . . . my mother, she is dead now." "i' h h"m sorry to ear tat. "many are dead now. hers was quiet. hers was at peace. she's with god now. but in baqubah, it is very difficult. too many religious, sunni, shia, same-same. they fight. baghdad is not so difficult. things are bad-but bad all over, so maybe baghdad is more good. better." "is it better now? i mean now that we got rid of saddam?" "some ways better. other ways more bad. instead of one saddam, now too many saddam. you see? you need to stay, you need to be . . . on the street. you need to be very strong. it is very difficult for iraq; we have no parlia­ ment, no magna carta. we have tribes, families. we have the sheikh, we have the ayatollah, we have the imam. you see? no saddam, no sheikh, then we fight, and is why we need you to stay. yes? you will be here a long time, i think." 148 roy scranton ((i don't know," i said. "probably." ''a long time, i think," he said. "many things are very bad now. water is very bad. you see . . . how do you say, sewer? yes? the sewer when we patrol? very bad. electricity very bad. economy bad. shops are open but there is much ... some things very expensive. small things. also security very bad, very dangerous, especially for woman. a woman cannot go out from the house. my uncle, his daughters make him crazy. for why? because they cannot go out. two men to go out of the house, and the woman have to wear very much hijab, and the man have a gun. very dangerous. very bad. in baqubah is worse. i work with the american there, like here, but baqubah very small. everybody ... how you say ... everybody all up in each other's shit. so i cannot work in baqubah, because they say they kill my wife and family. but in baghdad is okay. sometimes they try to shoot or kidnap. but they know my face only. they don't know who is my family, where i live, and when i go to my uncle, i am very careful. my ... cousin-law, he does not know, but if he did, is safe. not okay, but safe. because family is number one, yes?" "are you glad we came? are you glad we got rid of saddam?" "it is no good to be glad or sad of god's will. we live. we die. god's will. what do i say to you, specialist wilson? are you glad you came?" ''i'm glad we made it this far." "yes. this far." "yeah ... well, i should go hit the gym. it was nice to talk with you, qasim." war porn 149 y tnin� �( , now 00 /�� i bao,tl�\ out tnertil� in�,n�a�, "okay, yes. very nice to talk with you, specialist wil­ son. you see, we can all speak together, iraqi and american. friends, yes? but soon i must go from baghdad and return to baqubah. my wife is sick. i think you will not see me for many weeks. but someday we meet again, insha'allah." he gently shook my hand, then touched his heart. "stay safe, qasim. salaam a-ieykum." "leykum a-salaam, specialist wilson." , cannoq�: e wom4fl�i: nave a ���,1 'or�e, i warh ow v�ryl: oar all uri�: oili, �e(am(: ba�haaailv. , bu! tn�!l }' familr,�; verrwem,1 if he aia, il � �'m, itw�� .. ' ... ..�arabs, much more so than westerners, express emotion m! in a forceful, animated and exaggerated fashion j�n we woke up porkchop and geraldo. "get up, fuckers. h� you're relieved." ��m "where's sergeant gooley?" porkchop asked, blinking. ]1r� "sergeant reynolds is sog." iili reading took offhis kevlar and set it on the jersey barrier. ill� his buzz-cut hair glowed a sickly brass in the fluorescent ;ti�u light, a field of bruised pennies. )�wi "where sergeant reynolds at?" geraldo asked. i�� "he's right behind us," i said. "aight, we out." geraldo took his rifle and stepped off in down the road. porkchop followed and they met staff ser�tn. gean t reynolds at the clearing barrel, where he watched iii them clear their weapons. i]ll! when there was a pause in the radio traffic, i picked up i�� the walkie-talkie: "red steel main, this is red steel india. "an radio check, over." �ock "red steel india, this is red steel main, roger ��1d out." i�o o �ij t�a� w��i�� ���r��w' : m���raj�� ir war porn u1 staff sergeant reynolds came up, glowering at us with his bug-eyes. "reading, i want you to have your kevlar on at all times," he said. reading turned his face away as if he hadn't heard. "now listen up, men, you need to make sure you police this ao. there's cigarette butts in the dirt back there. this is a high-visibility area and the sergeant major's gonna come through. and get inside the guard shack, too." "hooah, sergeant," i said. "now what do you do when you open the gate?" "one of us goes up and the other one covers him." "right. now, if you're gonna open the gate, i want both of you up there, one to handle the door and one to watch outside. somebody could shoot an rpg right through there. that's what i'd do, if i was them. i'd come by in one of those pickups and send somebody to knock on the door, and when you opened the gate, i'd shoot an rpg right through. bam!then what? huh? you gotta think tactically. now, what do you do if somebody comes over the wall?" "shoot 'em!" reading barked. "right! then call it up." "nobody's coming over the wall, sergeant. it's like fifty feet high." "that's what you think. that kind of complacency is what gets soldiers killed." "r s " oger, ergeant. "and when the icdc come through, i want you to check each one. don't let the other hadjis do it. they could have bombs hidden anywhere." "no way," reading said. "hadjis fucking stink." uj roy scranton "roger, sergeant," i said. "we'll take care of it." "you know these icdc," he said. "they've taken an oath, but they could still be fedayeen or al-qaeda or who knows what. just because they're on our side doesn't mean you can trust 'em. one icdc with a hand grenade would jack up your whole day. what would happen if they got into the chow hall? check, and double check." "shit, i wish they'd blow up the chow hall," reading said. "roger, sergeant reynolds. we'll search each one ourselves." "okay. you guys already set for breakfast and everything?" "r s "oger, ergeant. "make sure you do your radio checks." "just did, sergeant." "okay. i'll be back in a couple hours, and i expect this ao to be straight." "r s "oger, ergeant. ''and reading, keep your kevlar on. carryon, men." we watched staff sergeant reynolds walk away. reading giggled. "in the case of an all-out assault, i'm gonna shit myself and throw it at 'em. take that, hadji! shit bomb!" m �io in it began with a knock at the gate, prom-prom-prom. the sliding rusted metal door, thirty feet wide and twenty feet tall, trembled from the pounding. "f'tal bob," i said. reading snickered. the two icdc stared at him. "f'tal bob, motherfucker!" i shouted, pointing at the gate, pointing at the younger of the two hadjis. the light was a clear yellow-gray, the sun a white smear still low in the sky. the younger hadji got up and picked up his ak and started walking out toward the gate. "see who it is," i said. "you," reading said back, not looking up from his game boy. ''i'm in the middle of a level." "fuck your level. go see who it is." "why you such a bitch, wilson?" "because i hate freedom, motherfucker. go see who it is." "whatever," reading said, pausing his game and setting it on his chair. "don't touch my game." ''i'm gonna kill your fucking metroid, is what i'm ji d " anu �xr1a: gonna o. reading flipped me off and walked around the barrier, putting his kevlar on as he went. �'on,m1�,' "hey, john wayne. forget something?" reading turned back at me, scowled, and shook his head. he came back for his rifle, picked it up, and went back toward the gate. the icdc had unlatched the gate and was throwing his weight against it, sliding it open with a rumble and a creak. reading held his weapon at the ready. a hadji in civilian clothes stood outside the gate with a gym bag. thin and scraggly, with messy black hair and a large mustache, he wore a checkered work shirt, track pants, and sandals. "id," reading said. he pulled out his iraqi civil defense corps badge and showed it. reading checked the badge against the man's face and nodded, directing him inside. e of it.}) neive t�1� �·qaeaaort ioe aoe�n't[: o �renao1w�, ��en if ili�': " eek" ' war porn us u4 roy scranton "come here," i shouted, waving him forward. i stood, picked up my rifle, and slung it at the ready. i nodded to the older icdc sitting smoking against the shack wall. "check his bag," i said. he lurched up and went around the jersey barrier and when the hadji came up he took his bag and poked through it. "pat him down," i told the older icdc. i pointed at the one in civilian clothes and spread my arms and legs. "search, search," i said. the one in civilian clothes mimicked me and the older one patted him down. "turn around," i said to him, swirling my finger. he stared at me. "turn around," i shouted, swirling my finger again. he turned to face the gate. the older icdc patted him down. i swatted at the iraqi's ass and said, "check here, yeah." i cupped my groin. "check his package." he shook his head and grimaced, but i repeated my order, so he stuck his hand between the other man's legs and batted it around. "mota dudeki," i said. the hadji in civilian clothes laughed. the guard stepped back, scowling, and tapped the man on the shoulder, who turned back around grinning. "go on," i said, pointing down the road at the icdc barracks. meanwhile, more hadjis had showed up for their shift, and reading checked their ids and lined them up. i gestured the next one forward. first one by one, then in e jer�tr �u da� an� : c. [ �oim� �. arml dn�� � , 1o��ra��, cdc�am[ war porn us twos and threes, then one big gaggle, and at last the last stragglers. the sun was up now, the morning chill burnt off soon two new icdc in ill-fitting fatigues and old boots came to relieve the two at the gate. the old shift handed over their aks and secondhand flak vests and the new shift took up positions in the cheap white plastic chairs. "well, that was exciting," reading said, returning to metroid. i took off my kevlar and dug through my backpack. i pulled out a maxim and an fhm and a harper's, and the icdc leaned toward me staring. i gave them the maxim and kept the other two for myself. it went like this: report for guard mount at 0750, then you're on duty in the sun till 1400. then you clear your weapon and walk back to the barracks and sleep until 0100. you get up in the dark, get ready, and make it to guard mount at 0150, pull duty until 0800. the sun's come up. then you go eat breakfast, jerk off, and sleep until 1300. guard mount 1350, on duty till 2000, clear your weapon, walk back to the barracks in the dark, think of some other life you lived once, sleep, get up at 0700, back to guard mount at 0750, and the cycle repeats. light, dark, dark, light, night day whatever. reading played metroid in the doorway. i sprawled on the cot inside the shack, drifting in and out of consciousness. h6 roy scranton the two icdc sat outside in the night, smoking and look­ ing at body-spray ads in fhm. "shit, man," reading said. i ignored him. "shit, i'm so bored, i'm bored of metroid." i lay still, pleading with god to make him silent. "i know you're awake. when you think we'll get off this shit?" "let me sleep, fucker." "all you fucking do is sleep." "that's because i don't drink all those fucking red bulls." "shit keeps me alert. i'm a killing machine!" "you're a fucking talking machine." "shit, man. shit! when you think we'll get off this?" "never." in "we gotta get off sometime." "nope. never. the unit's gonna redeploy to germany and they're gonna leave us here to guard the icdc gate. we're mission essential. we're the tip of the goddamn spear." "i wanna go out on patrols like the other guys." "so tell lieutenant krauss you wanna go out on patrol." "he's pissed at me because i shot up that house." "you shot the shit outta that house." "there was a dude with an ak up there, i swear." "yeah, he was up there fucking your mom." "shit. whatever. he was up there." "that's why you got taken off the saw?" "yeah." "dumbass." iihicl lo 10 war porn )s7 mohln�anal� "what'd you do to piss him om" "i don't fucking know, man. i read a book one time. i just fucking do what i'm told." "well, you musta done something." oid.n "maybe he wants me to watch your dumb ass, make sure nim�ilent, you don't shoot up the gate." i. wdl �et��: "whatever. " the radio popped: "red steel main, this is red steel fifteen. be advised we got a vehicle stopped across " the road. "roger that, red steel fifteen." "h hat' " ey, tats our tower. "red steel fifteen, this is red steel seven. moni­ tor the vehicle. if it stays longer than five minutes, " call us back. "roger, red steel seven. stand by." i sat up and grabbed my kevlar. reading paused his game. we looked at each other, reaching for our rifles. "red steel seven, this is red steel fifteen. the " vehicle has left. "roger red steel fifteen, red steel seven out." i dropped my kevlar and lay back down. reading dug through his backpack and pulled out a red bull. "hadjis coming," he said. "ali and ahmed." "ali dudeki?" "yeah." "fuck." the two hadjis came in. ali was tall for an iraqi, with a stubborn, mischievous face. he made a game out of grabbing guys' nuts, though ever since porkchop jsi roy scranton hog-tied him with zip-strips and left him like that for an afternoon, he was less inclined. ahmed was shorter, a hunchback, and some kind of nco-he was always 1 harassing the guards, berating them, checking their aks. i� with us he played the clown, shouting the handful of obscenities he knew in english over and over. ali seemed m� to be ahmed's sidekick; it was clear the hunchback ran wit things. llr' "sadiki! sabah an-noor!" ali shouted. 1''ali dudeki," reading croaked, not looking up from his game. "fuck shit, shut up!" ahmed barked, slapping ali on the back of his head. "yeeeeeah," he crooned, twisting his m ' head back over his hump. "ahmed, sadiki," i said, sitting up. "shaku maku?" ill� "very good, very good, yeeeeah! no problem!" "sadiki," ali said, lifting his eyebrows and pointing at my bag, "you bring ne ficky-ficky?" ·�r "no, ali. no ficky-ficky." "tomorrow and tomorrow, sadiki? any o'clock? you bring ne ficky-ficky?" �ifl "maybe if you're good." ali smiled at me, then tiptoed over to reading. reading, m absorbed in his game, seemed not to notice the big man as \!�tl he reached out slowly for reading's nuts. then, in a swift blur, reading dropped his game boy, grabbed ali's wrist, and lunged up, pulling his arm around his head and lift1ing him into the air, then bending him onto the concrete. ij reading fell on the big hadji, pinning him with his knees, ��i slapping his face. i�( 1 on(o ili� (���� jim \�1ili ni� ll� war porn jj9 "shit fuck, shit ass, shit!" shouted ahmed. "you mota mota good, huh?" reading asked ali, slap­ ping him, "you mota me, huh? mota mota? ali dudeki? ali menuch?" ali grinned and tried to cover his face and buck read­ ing off, but reading had him wrapped up. "you fucked with the wrong motherfucker, ali. now you're getting zip-zipped. " "no, no," ali begged. "no zip-zip. sadiki no zip-zip." "then knock it the fuck om" "no zip-zip. ali no zip-zip." "alright, fucker," reading said, standing and helping ali to his feet. "no zip-zip-this time!" ali stood up and smiled shyly at reading. "sadiki," he said, very seriously. "what, fucker?" "tomorrow and tomorrow, you bring ne ficky-ficky? any 0' clock?" "no, you fucking faggot." "tomorrow you, you, meshi meshi, ficky-ficky?" ali pointed at reading, then at himself, then at the gate. "what?" ali made moon eyes at reading. "you, you, meshi meshi? mota? mota?" "i think he wants you to go home with him," i said. "no fucking mota, dudeki!" "yeeeeeah!" ahmed crooned. "shit! fuck! shut up!" ahmed the hunchback went outside and started talking to the icdc. ali sat on the edge of my cot until i kicked him in the hip and he walked off, staring at 260 roy scranton reading, who resumed his game. after a minute, ahmed called ali away. "fucking fag," reading muttered. explosions in the night. we tumble out of bed and throw on our armor and wait for more mortars. silence. half an hour later someone comes and tells us stand down. the next day there's a pit gouged out of the earth behind the guard shack. two eod sergeants and a first sergeant from drvarty come down and do crater analysis, stepping in and out of the hole, divining esoteric data. the radio squawked: "meeeow." "what the fuck?" "meeeow." "it's the fuckers in the towers." "meeeow." "this is red steel seven. whoever's doing that, \ �i l'� " you better knock it off right now. "meeeow." "fucking retards." "limit your radio traffic to essential messages. i'm serious. red steel seven out." "or i'll fuck you in your eyeballs! fuck-adoodle-doo!" "this is red steel seven. knock that shit off. right now. i'm serious." "meeeow." ill war porn j61 • clouds hung low over the mucky earth, turning everything gray. shots had been fired at the guard tower in a drive-by, so everyone was on alert. staff sergeant reynolds warned us sergeant major might be coming through. reading worked his thumbs on the game boy. "what fucking day is it?" "'t" d t"10 ay. "no. yesterday, motherfucker." "yesterday was the day before." "what day today?" "fucking shit day." "'i: d t"lues ay. "whatever." two icdc guards sat smoking, flipping through my copy of the vanity fair issue with the big michael jack­ son expose. one of the icdc was younger, chubby, trying to grow a mustache and failing, the other was slightly older, his face pocked with acne scars. i watched them look at the fashion shots, the pictures of neverland ranch, the ads for j. lo perfume and patek philippe watches. "you like america?" i asked. ''al-ameriki?'' the younger one said. "yeah. america good?" "yes, al-ameriki good," he beamed. "michael jackson good?" "yes yes, michael jackson. ee-hee. very good." "you like bush? bush good?" ju roy scranton "boosh good yes." "how 'bout saddam? you like saddam?" "saddam no good. saddam ali baba," the older one said, stamping his foot and spitting. "you shi' a?" "sunni." rom "ayatollah sistani good?" he shrugged. "moqtada al-sadr good?" "al-sadr very good," the young one said. "shi' a?" i pointed at the young one. "naam, shi'a." he pointed at himself. "bush good, no saddam?" "saddam no good." "bush no good," i said, shaking my head. "bush ali baba." "no!" the older one said, aghast. "saddam, bush, same-same," i said. "ali baba, ali baba." "no, boosh good," the young one said. '�i baba," i said. the older one pointed at me. "you christ-ian?" "l n d"a. a go . he seemed cross: "yes god." i�o "la." he shook his head. "no good." there was a bang at the door. i pointed at the young one and pointed at the door, got up and grabbed my rifle, and followed him to it. "fral bob," i said, and he unlatched the gate and put his shoulder to and slid it open. a middle-aged hadji stood outside in a dishdasha. a cou­ ple more stood behind him. f't·ial ar iliejo��f dea mrrwt,� a ne u��(�: ir oren, �i)naasna,m war porn ju "salaam a-leykum," i said. "leykum-a-salaam," he said back, bowing slightly. "wh r' �"a sup. he started talking arabic, then "boom, boom, koom-bal­ lah. ali baba." he gestured back for one of his friends to come up. "we have information," the guy said. "bomb and bad yes." "okay, hold on." i turned back to reading. "fucker," i shouted. he looked up from his game. "what?" "get on the radio and see if you can get a translator." "for what?" "this guy says he has information." "about what?" "about your mom. fucking call somebody." reading picked up the walkie-talkie and called staff ser­ geant reynolds. they talked back and forth for a minute then reading shouted, "sergeant reynolds gonna go see if h " e can get one. "call up red steel main and see what they say." "what i tell' em?" "tell them we have an iraqi who says he has information on a bomb." "he got a bomb?" "he has information on a bomb." "information. " "yeah." "so what?" "so call red steel main." he picked up the other walkie-talkie and called red steel 264 roy scranton main. he talked to them for a few minutes, then shouted at ]rl me: "they say he gotta go to foxtrot gate." i�k� "that's the one on the south side, right?" :�k "fuck if i know." �it� staff sergeant reynolds called reading back so i waited, ��t and when they were done reading shouted, "he said he it can't find a translator, and i told him red steel main said "� send him to foxtrot gate and he said that's fine." ;�il� i turned back to the hadjis. h� "you go around, go to foxtrot gate," i gestured around, jtr pointing toward the southwest edge of the fob. a "we have in-formation," the one said again. ru�& "yeah, i know. you have to go around." ��o "go round?" iwrra "yeah, foxtrot gate. the other bob." �ut "you help? ali baba?" "i "no, go around. you gotta go to the other bob." ]�nl "we have in-formation. koom-ballah." :mt�r "yeah, i understand, but you gotta go around. salaam," ]u( i said, grabbing the gate and yanking on it. "sit'l bob," i �� shouted at the icdc. the hadjis started shouting in arabic, but we closed the gate and latched it and went back and sat down. boll :,!)iat :i�ou we got off shift. daytime, nighttime. i slept about five i�ldr hours. when i got up, i worked out, cleaned my rifle and :���o watched malcolm in the middle. reading slept. at we lost track of the other guys, the daily patrols, what "�o the fuck was happening. we started talking all the time ll� ,i er do�,n moun a, ��[ ic")jt'!oof' i �jert �oo�t � anea mr��t )jert. �jr ratro�'(' bn� �j m1� war porn us in pidgin english. the big news was that one patrol got attacked by a retarded kid throwing rocks. he threw a rock and hit bullwinkle in the face, knocking out one of his teeth. the patrol stopped and lieutenant krauss and nash covered the kid. the kid picked up another rock. "put the rock down," nash shouted, but the kid lifted it up like he was gonna throw, so nash shot him in the chest. healds was with them, so he patched the kid up, then they drove him to the hospital in the green zone. a week or so later they got me and reading up in the middle of the day, when we were trying to sleep, and made us go down to formation. they had a little ceremony and awarded nash a bronze star for valor. captain yarrow talked about what a great job he'd done defending the patrol. "the only thing nash did wrong was forget his train­ ing," the captain said. "we trained and trained, two rounds center mass! maybe next time you'll get it right!" yarrow chuckled. nash stared straight ahead. reading sat watching friends. i read chomsky's for reasons ofstate. headlights flashed at us from down the road and i shouted at reading to hide his dvd player. i put on my kevlar and stood and grabbed my rifle. a big black suv rolled up and a sergeant got out. "a " h id "v d h t"tease, e sal . l.ou on guar ere. "r " oger. "listen, there's a suspected vbied attack tonight. we've 266 roy scranton got jammers in here but you gotta shut down your radios while they work." "uh, alright. let me call up higher and let them know." i called up red steel and staff sergeant gooley and let them know we were gonna be out of radio contact. red steel verified the jammers had priority. i shut off the radios and the sergeant said thanks then climbed back in his truck. reading went back to friends. i went back to my book. they stayed there for about two hours, then the sergeant opened his window and told us we could turn our radios back on. after that they left. ali dudeki came by and asked for ficky-ficky magazine. i offered him the michael jackson vtmiry fair but he didn't want it. "you bring ne ficky-ficky tomorrow, any o'clock?" he asked. "tomorrow and tomorrow?" "no ficky," i told him. "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." ;11n\, :�till i ca n 't tell you if the use of force in iraq today will last five days, five weeks, or five months, but it won't last any longer than that rn oill�: seven days and a wake-up, then i'm on the first chalk out, with sergeant chandler, the newly promoted sergeant " an}' oj(loc�' nash, and bullwinkle. the rest of the battery would stage at biap, then drive to kuwait, where they'd fly out as chalks anaromormwi 2 and 3, leaving behind a small rear-detachment to port­ load the equipment. seven days, then freedom. we got up and went to the gym, then sergeant chan­ dler, sergeant nash, bullwinkle, and i went to breakfast, then to the internet cafe. we checked our email. i read the news. four american contractors had been killed in fallujah and lit on fire, their burned bodies strung up over a bridge. we went back to the tents we'd moved into and relaxed until lunch. at around three we went to the gym again and lifted. then dinner, then we came back and showered, then we went to the hadji coffee shop for cappuccinos and ice cream. then we came back to the tents and played volley­ ball till the sun set. )68 roy scranton that night there was a mortar attack, three rounds. we sat in the dark in our battle rattle, waiting. slept in and after a late start, sergant chandler, sergeant nash, bullwinkle, and i went to breakfast, then to the internet cafe. we checked our email. i read the news. there were protests and riots in sadr city. baghdad was in flames. i googled airline tickets from frankfurt to athens. since sunday was our rest day, me and sergeant chandler skipped the gym but sergeant nash went anyway, and around 1630 we met him at the chow hall for dinner. "you read about this fucking moqtada militia shit?" "th t"e protests. "fucking moqtada al-sadr and his goddamned mahdi army. shit's going crazy. najaf, karbala, basra. everywhere. even here in sadr city." "fallujah, too." "yeah, but that's fucking sunnis." "man, i can't wait to get back to germany," sergeant chandler said. "i got this girl there, we're emailing-she just emailed me some fucking naked pictures of herself. i don't even hardly know her." after dinner we went to the hadji coffee shop for cappuc­ cinos, then went back to the tents. staff sergeant gooley stood waiting. "where the fuck were you guys?" "same place we go every day, sergeant." "we got a platoon briefing in two mikes." so we went over and staff sergeant smith and lieutenant :ey :m. iliree rou��, � amn1�.\l oam, iv1�'�i war porn 269 krauss sat on mre boxes and told us we needed to sign out with our chief whenever we left the tents, and also we had to get all our ammo together to be collected. they told us the nearest shower trailer was off-limits because it was broken. they said second bct had been extended and deployed to najaf to assist putting down the mahdi uprising, but as of yet nothing had changed about our redeployment. we were also told a convoy was going to biap tomorrow and they asked for volunteers. sergeant chandler and i looked at each other, then away. sergeant nash raised his hand. four days. got up and did pt. read the news. moqtada al-sadr had called for a general uprising against the cpa. that night, as i was coming back from the showers, i could see the guys returning from the convoy. i ran into sergeant nash, strung out and sweaty, carrying a load of ammo into our tent. '''sup, sergeant. what happened?" "we got fucking ambushed is what the fuck happened." "shit. everyone okay?" "yeah, it's a fucking wonder." "get anybody?" "they ambushed us and fucking ran. two rpgs and then small arms. we had the fucking colonel with us and the stupid fucker stops the convoy in the middle of the kill zone and gets out and starts directing traffic. like we're a fucking i don't know what. i almost shot the fucker myself." )70 roy scranton lieutenant juarez gave the briefing that night. he told '.:rlc� d h h ahd '1.1,wus about a justments to t e roe. t e m i army could be identified by a green armband or a green flag. they were .:��.a considered combatants, and we were to engage them with ;�tco deadly force. 'tn� �q� )m�ili that night we woke to another mortar attack. one explo!i�i� sion, then one more. i looked at sergeant chandler in the ina bunk opposite. he looked sideways at all the other guys slowly getting up and putting on their gear, then rolled over jut i and went back to sleep. there was another explosion, then i went back to sleep, too. got up and went to the gym then to breakfast then the internet. each platoon designated a counter responsible for col­ lecting all our rounds and grenades. we each kept one thirty-round mag each, but everything else went in cans to :�tili� hand over to 1 st cav. !mvor at around three we went to the gym and lifted, then to �mey dinner, then to the coffee shop for cappuccinos. after that ::\(00 we came back and played volleyball and watched videos till �� it got dark. :mto about twenty minutes later, we were rousted for stand-to. "ro� "command's expecting an attack on the fob tonight," lieutenant krauss said, "so gear up and stand by." we got all gussied up then stood around bitching about irm having only thirty rounds apiece. when the lt came back, 'm�l ack on�it cnan��r[' �i toeom1r; i toenro��: �r ex�joli��i: war porn hi he picked five guys, including me, to ride in the back of c27. we were assigned to secure the northeast corner of the tents. another five were put in c26 and sent to the south­ west corner, and everyone else was qrf. "they're expecting some kind of concentrated attack, so eyes and ears open. maintain radio contact. if you see something, fucking radio it up first. the last thing we need is a friendly-fire incident." there was some shooting far away, a lot ofshooting closer, a couple more pops very close, then quiet. mter about ten minutes or so, we heard a barrage of machine-gun fire from the south wall. then the shooting died out and we waited another forty or fifty minutes before the call came to stand down. we got back to the tent and asked what happened but nobody knew, so we went to bed. thursday. our big day. chalk 1 got up and got our shit together and staged at 0545 for an sp time of 0630. our convoy of five-tons was ready, but our escorts hadn't shown, so they told us stand by. at about 0730, they told us to go get chow and report back by 0900. bullwinkle, sergeant chandler, sergeant nash, and i went to breakfast. we ate a big meal and grabbed extra fruit and rolls and boiled eggs for later. "i can't fucking wait till i touch down on german soil. i swear to god i'm gonna fallon my knees and kiss the ground." "i'm gonna kiss the first fucking german girl i see right on the lips. just grab her." j7.l roy scranton "shit, i'm gonna kiss the first fucking german i see no ltw matter what. klaus, dieter, heinrich, adolf. i give a fuck." ::tt�, "you know, we've been here so long, that ain't even gay." jltntl bulldog battery had already sent out their first chalk all :j(hln the way to the airfield at balad. we watched the last corn��a pany of 82nd airborne roll out. ��un we waited until 0850, then found staff sergeant gooley �[n� and asked what was up. "stand by," he said. "stand by until further notice." we waited. some guys smoked, some guys slept. at 1 0 15 they told us mount up. we cheered and loaded our gear in the back of the five-ton, clambered aboard, then waited, grinning like retards at lunchtime. "let's go!" sergeant nash shouted. "what the fuck's the holdup?" "can you drive a five-ton?" "i can, but i don't have a flight manifest." at ten minutes to eleven, staff sergeant gooley came out and told us to download our gear and take it back to the tents. "what the fuck, sergeant?" bullwinkle shouted. "your lt'1l brief you. download your gear." "negative, sergeant. negative on that." "what the fuck's going on, sergeant?" "you'll be briefed by your platoon. don't make me tell . " you agam. we dispersed, dragging our bags behind us. inside sec.. ond platoon's tent, lieutenant krauss stood down at one end talking. he was saying words but not words. i couldn't hear anymore. the air was like water, like i couldn't breathe, like if somebody bumped me wrong i'd slide floating across the sky. war porn h) it sounded like something ninety days or until com­ plete. something about karbala. something mission essential. something about not wanting to hear any fucking bitching, because we were soldiers and we were called on by our commander-in-chief, the president of the united states of america, and we would do our duty with pride.)er��t� , ·�tanq�!,. !lllert.h;, oaoeaollria oj men �t: gooley i: i da�wili1[ looutea, �ear,n a til, imi�1 aown�t��(( irru, i co�®i� lqn't dream�� acin�acro�idi: thefog rolled in offthe sea, clouding the trees, closing in on the mountain so that when i woke it was as iffrom sleep to waking dream, a mirage of insubstantial gray pierced by great black spires. i'd make myselfcoffee and inhale the chill air and roll a cigarette and think. i'd sit at theformica table in the trailer and, staring through the mesh behind the slatted windows into the fog, drink my coffee and scratch poems onto notebook paper, poems about the way memory shifts in and out offocus, the way we imagine things that never happened and remember other things wrong, the daily reconstruction work of being, who i am, what i'm doing, how can i be the same i was before and who am 1 tomorrow. sometimes i'd go out into the mist and listen to all the green held thick in the moist air, my palm on the trunk ofa treejust to feel the heft of it. sometimes a deer would come through, wild and wary, and i wouldfill with longingfor the wholeness ofanimal life. ;1�llii it took the sun a long while to come over the mountains and j��t/; until it did my vision was bound to the few gray yards around ,j�ff�1 the trailer. it was day but not day, dim but not night, a fugue mj war porn 27' ofhalf-thoughts and disconnected images, pulsing with power beyond easy meaning-a crowflapping, glowing black against the gray-a shadow like a man crouched with a knife-park­ ing lots aching with pink blur-so overwhelmed by thought i'd have to sit back, set down the pen, set down my coffee, and it goes on-glass towers gleaming out ofgray cityscapes, blinding silver-an old man with a red guitar-the boomingflame of rockets trailing smoke-a girl's face, her freckled cheek downy withfine hairs, fleshy lips spread in a smile over crooked teeth. i sink in reverie-and what, what does it mean?-then scrape a few more lines with my pen. nothing even approximate. anotherfailure. i'd moved that june into the mountains just outside newport because my uncle hadfinally bought a house and moved out of his trailer. he wasn't sure what to do with the land, so he said i could stay there over the summer ifi did a little work for him. there's no tv, he warned me, no cable, no internet, no phone, no mail but i could get letters delivered in town. i was at loose ends, which tm sure my mom had told him. i'd spent the winter in eugene, taking a couple classes at lane community college and working as a delivery driver for an organic juice company. i'd been dating this girl but it ended badly and i was itchy to move on, tired of the scene with all its dreadlocked anarchists, tired of weed and patchouli, the protests to save trees, stop globalization, and free mumia. i thought about trying again with the old ex-girlfriend up in portland, but thatjust made me feel worse. my uncle's offer seemed perfect. it'd give me a chance to get j76 roy scranton my head on straight, really figure shit out. i thought i could work part-time and write some poems, maybe finish that screenplay. a good word from my aunt got me work at the bookstore, which was more than enough to get by. i closed shop three nights a week and the rest ofthe time just chilled, read, smoked a little weed, and helped my uncle with his odd jobs. i wrote letters to the ex-girlfriend in portland. i wrote poetry. i hung out with this guy namedff who worked at ripley's believe it or not! i hung out with lisa from the bookstore and her husband, mike, a house painter. i met a girl named alice at nana's irish pub and we started hook­ ing up. she was a totalflake, which i guess is sort of what i wanted. !� j j the sun came over the rise around ten, burning off the fog, unveiling vivid green. i'd lose my sense of boundlessness then) my dreamscape ofwandering intellection, and come back to the blood-filled breath oflife, the hum ofbugs and the warmth of sunlight. i'd come back to the fact that i didn't know what i was doing, that i was killing time, that when i went into town later i'd be the same aimless transient i was yesterday, still no goal no point to my story. often i'd hike to the top ofthe mountain, about two miles from the trailer, to a clear-cut along the ridge where the view opened and beyond myfarthest gaze unrolled the wide pacifies endless sweep. i'd watch the blue waves and think, today you're coming up with a plan. you're gonna figure your shit out. you going back to school? you gonna get certified at something, get a real ii' 11(11 ·j tnou�nlh majoe finil!: qot me wor�� to get oj. it. �e timejullrt . unck wil��. n porl�njli" ].j. wno w�rll: itn lila j�1 �urnmt �!i;!' ; bounal�in(!;� aruicome��i;: anatnewurn. 'o�j joure� r init out. �i!" !ometnin� [ai' war porn 277 job, be a plumber or a nurse or tend bar? thirty wasn't quite around the corner but it wasn't so far away, either, and ifelt the need to do some thing, accomplish some thing, do something real. ob, sure, i knew it was all a con. i knew the system was out to get me. i knew we all wanted to be free and live our lives and make art and all that bullshit, but i couldn't remember the last time i'd been to the dentist. and what ifi broke a leg, or got sick, or hit by a car? how would i pay for anything? and why did my circle offriends seem to be shifting, turning seedier, more addiction-prone, less aware oftheir own lives as a series ofchoices they'd made and more inclined to ascribe to events wholly metaphysical causes-i just had a feeling, you know, it was like the universe gave me a sign, sometimes you do a reading and it's just like so spot on, it was like there was this voice telling me ... how much longer would it take till i was trapped in a world without responsibility, where thingsjust sort ofhappened and we alljust got along, stumbling in a fuzz of pot smoke, excuses, and superstition? yet there i went into town, working at the booksbop, drink­ ing with ii, fooling around with alice, getting high, ending the night in a hazy drive back up the mountain or crashed in alice's bed, waking to strange light through a strange window burning away the illusion ofease life wore by night and reveal­ ing beneath it the grim furrows ofbad habits too deeply rutted to pull out of fog, thick, hung in the trees. igot up early and shuffled through the trailer, started the coffee pot, rolled a cigarette. i opened the , -' '" '.< ,;,"""'"""':,.".......... ',' '104.;.', _ � hi roy scranton door and let in the mist, let out the smoke, hoping yet again for clarity. i left my notebook andpen untouched on the table. for some reason that morningpoetry seemed even morefutile than usual. i was always going over the same pluckedfield, picking at the same thoughts and sensations. what was the point ofthinking things? writing them down? nobody read, nobody cared-no one needed the navel-gazing mystifications ofyet another confused and sensitive young soul. i opened the fridge and saw i had a couple eggs, so iput on a pan and started it warming, melting butter. i cut two slices from a loafoforganic multigrain and laid them on a plate. for company i turned on npr. atfirst it wasn't anything, just a stream of meaningless sound, then as i stood over the stove with an egg in my hand the babble squirmed into sense. someone hadflown a plane into the world trade center. no, two planes. both towers. one was collapsing, smoke rising up, peoplejumping. it was an attack ofso me kind we were under attack. i turned up the radio and cracked the eggs, listening to voices cry out over the sizzle ofbutterfrying. :� n tne tao�, hi; orefoti�tna�1. leu, li(�i�l' .f lointofl�i'l nooojj(all� i am an american soldier i am a warrior and a member of a team i serve the people of the united states and live the army values trucks roll, gunners scanning the horizon. the sun an incandescent smear. i sweat and turn up the music. we drive south through the desert in a line, miles long, of big green machines. we stand in the heat by the road and the wind whips sand at us. waves of grit slide and ebb across the seething black. engines hum. in the distance two bradleys spin heaving clouds of dust as they circle a cluster of hooches and rumble over a hill. we hear the noise of their guns then their engines fade. smoke oozes up. an apache hovers overhead. blackened humvees jut up from the sand. pictures come out of hadjis getting fucked with at one of the prisons. hadjis getting punched, hadjis standing on jlo roy scranton boxes, hadjis with panties on their heads, naked hadjis get­ ting laughed at by skanky nasty girl bitches. i know what i'm looking at, but at the same time, fuck 'em. fuck 'em to their goddamned shitsucking hadji hell. they're shooting at us every day and i'm supposed to give a flying fuck about human rights? fuck that. once they quit chopping people's heads off and lighting dudes on fire, then maybe we'll talk. command comes down and says just what you'd expect, reprehensible unprofessional blah blah blah, but who the fuck cares? a few bad apples, they say, make sure you know the regulations, but we all know the score. the muezzin calls out five times a day. gunfire breaks the night. no running water. no electricity. no air condition­ ing. no grass, no carpet, no windows. no fans. little shade, bad food, no joy, little laughter, no decent sleep. everyone in the world wears camouflage-the others talk gobbledy­ gook and stare. geraldo reenlists for a 20k bonus. burger king, daisy-chain. cordon and search. stack team. there's a glazed shock in everyone's eyes, the simmer of hatred barely contained. we get in fistfights. we listen to "hey ya!" and count the dead. what had i done before? who had i been? was there a life befo re this? negative. i'd never been anyone. i'd never done anything naked hauji!! hes, what rou1u �� dim) out w�ij: ana �ear(n, � ie') ere�) tn� lim] l(7nt�, w� li)t�, war porn )11 but drive down this highway forever, the road eternity itself, punishment for an abandoned dream's half-imagined sins. this was all i'd ever done, all i'd ever do: drive in the heat through the sand and the pain and stink in the unceasing noise. jr·)t w tn� r i stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy �nlt the enemies of the united states of america ��ill in close combat �n w� �m "w ue ��lnl 0200 go. stoat flips the humvee lights, starts the engine, i�wn and with a roar and crash slams through the front gate. we �te jog across the night-hung street around the humvee and inl into the yard. we take our positions by the door and switch on "el the flashlights affixed to our rifles. burnett rams the door "� open and bullwinkle goes in, then me, our rifles stabbing �o beams of white into the black. the rest of our team follows; ��j! the snatch team comes behind and pounds up the stairs. we )\(lur take the first floor, living room, sofa, tv, clear the corners i�oo quick and into the kitchen, tomatoes and cucumbers in a wou� bowl on the counter, flatbread, water, towels, we kick open "h� a door and a hadji stands in the corner in his underpants, m shielding his face. :�rnl "on your knees, motherfucker!" i���t "inhanee!" i�r the hadji's slow to move, so bullwinkle slams the butt of �(ktl his rifle in his gut, jackknifing him at the waist. �ue1 "inhanee, motherfucker!" rui�re ____ ___._:bkr war porn jij he goes down. i keep my rifle at his head and bullwinkle zip-strips his arms behind him. once he's tied, we drag him to the other room. the lights on now, you can see the worn but cared-for furniture and brass knickknacks. a family portrait hangs on the wall. shouting upstairs. we dump the hadji on the floor and my rifle slams against a vase, knocking it to the ground where it smashes. "watch it," says staff sergeant gooley. lieutenant juarez and captain yarrow stride in, the terp behind them, just as the snatch team drags the first hadji down the stairs, a middle-aged man in boxers and a wife­ beater. a woman wails somewhere. i hear burnett shout, "shut that bitch up." "first floor clear," sergeant nash tells staff sergeant gooley. "search it," the lt barks. so we go back to the hadji's room and turn on the light. he's got a pile of letters, a little boombox, and a tiny framed picture of a woman on the table in the corner. he's got a bed, a bookcase, a rug on the floor, a trunk, a pair of shoes. i flip through his stack of cds while bullwinkle strips the sheets. "he's got every goddamn sting record there is." bullwinkle grunts. he goes over to the bookcase and flips through the books one by one, then sweeps the whole shelf to the floor. i grab the letters from the table and stuff them in my pocket. i pick up the picture and look at it-girlfriend? wife? i think of him lying out there with his thumbs zip­ stripped, blubbering face-first on the floor. ����i a���!: � �!�� ij! !i: m �lij�1�' roy scranton "help me with this chest," bullwinkle says, so i put the picture down and we overturn the trunk. clothes fallout, folded dishdashas, slacks, loose shirts, a wallet, a few small wooden boxes, a koran. "circle up!" somebody shouts from the other room. bullwinkle and i head back. our hadji's still weeping on the floor, begging for his life, and the middle-aged one sits cross-legged behind the couch, zip-stripped, muttering, his bottom lip swollen and bleeding. a woman in a scarf is howling after staff sergeant smith and burnett as they come down the stairs. two kids watch from the second floor. "wrong house," says staff sergeant gooley. "bad intel. m ' h"ount up, we re outta ere. "cut' em loose," shouts the lt, heading out with yarrow and the terp. we ride back to the fob as the horizon lightens in the east. the sky is empty, the road empty. i realize i still have the hadji's letters in my pocket, so i pull them out and look at them. the pages dance in the wind, the words so much meaningless ink. they tell a story, maybe, just not to me. i let them go, and in the humvee's slipstream they lift and scatter. babylon ay�) �o i rw: cloilielf�t, illet) a f�wl: omerroom, .� oui\�ilil� 1jultnotww l·eamidey�i when he played till he was tired and went to sleep, he would lie in bed and attack iraq. 235,000 troops at the borders. his staff managed to move most of the collection to safety, sending boots about fields on rutted roads. the apostle should capture dull rumblingi was aware iii my ears tingling command of allah not all were lost. allah, who destroys insurgents and some you eat. further lessen the abjec­ tion of war, unable in desperation to turn itself into grotesque infantile guard force subordinate world with no aberrant, outlandish center that sets conditions for pornographic action, he adds, is refuge in allah for the inter­ rogators of the heavens and the earth, the war on terror, no helping do not know and the blind and the inherent groping power do not know and the blind and purposeless officials charged with investi­ gating do not know for to him life is the army, and i had some idea what i was doing. the united states had invaded mghanistan and was making diplomatic preparations for the invasion of iraq. i had a good idea we were going and, despite u8 roy scranton my attempts to see things geopolitically and realistically, we follow the dust, heading off the main road through fields then grids of now flattened and overgrown former modular units by air, tractor-trailer, or ship can be fully functional in 24 to 48 hours. even at the csh level, the goal is not definitive repair. the maximal length of stay is policies and practices developed and approved for use on "the war against terrorism is a new kind ofwar," in fact, a "new paradigm [that] renders obsolete geneva's strict limitations." no sane man can be a world, and do not try to do too much with your own hands. better the arabs do it tolerably than question the use of national military power. most people shall say: yea, associate with policy most surely to help the most forgiving, no doubt concealing bombs, others on the day when the witnesses of this tv, nor in the hereafter, and pediatrics benefit the unjust for them curse the inmates of fire, so we made allah, surely allah sees moral will to act, a reminder to men of what they planned, meantime how is it that i call you to salvation and you call me to the fire? you calion me that i should disbelieve in allah and associ­ ate with him of which i have no knowledge, and i call you to china's foreign minister tuesday. baghdad residents have started fleeing the capital as the deadline nears for president hussein to leave or face war. no sane man can be happy, for saddam rejected the ultimatum, saying he has no heart of the full story reali�o� ,i o'h�i�� erm�'t 'on�illl�i' oefmiowrt for llle�� ", c i 1 tn [�crl� 'cr llmiu��: nas nontdfl�i: war porn anyone brought before the world, "even directed at intelli­ gence targets," as they go on to concede and glut themselves, goodly raiment made by hands ofty you can never again wear, and military police, which is not a matter of religious discussions will be frequent. with the bedu, islam is so all-pervading that there is little religiosity, little fervor, and no regard for externals. the current plan discussed is fundamentally unacceptable. accordingly, popular elec­ tions are necessary within the "babylonian" mathematics of general history, another thousand years on, several cen­ turies of sustained astronomical observation and consistent recording in the temples of uruk and humvee enabled the development of predictive mathematical astronomy: i will show you d etainee-07 alleging that civilian-17, mp interpreter, titan corp., hit detainee-07 once, cutting his ear to an extent that required stitches. meantime the hooded man pictured abuses-and shall be brought before the spear, a certain "even directed at intelligence targets" fact, as they go on to concede they glut themselves, goodly raiment by hands of violent/sex abuse which you can never again wear, a matter of men and women like dogs forced to crawl on his husband's sisters and the wives of his brothers, general sanchez fain to die in her distraction. when drawn from general miller's gtmo she sobbed and made lament among the trojans yelling: we see cars going by in a still-se­ cret city, cnn correspondents escape us no longer. stay here for al-qaeda lust battle you must find these inner reasons (they will be denied, 219 j90 roy scranton but are nonetheless in operation) before shaping your argu­ ments for one course or another. allusion is more effective than logical exposition: they dislike concise expression. there is nothing unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inscru­ table in the arab mind. �ln�rour� � moree[� l�e ex�r�!, lidle,or�� strange hells (columbus day, 2004) the joint's red ember glowed in the night as it passed from matt's hand back to aaron's. 'that was kind of intense, dude," matt said. "some bullshit is was it was." "mel gets worked up about politics sometimes." "so i get to be her fucking rag doll? i don't think so." "that's not what i meant. i'm sorry i brought it up. i was . " just ... "curious. yeah. everyone's curious fucking george." "well, i don't know about that, but i'm sorry. i should've let it go." "whatever, man. you want any more of this?" "n i'd"0, m goo. aaron stubbed out the roach and lit an american spirit. matt bummed one off him. "listen, mel's really sweet, you know, she just gets worked up. she's angry at the government and her dad and all kinds of shit, so it's touch­ and-go sometimes, but other than that, she's fine. it's just insecurity, you know?" "fuck that and fuck her little dog, too." "man, i forgot about xena. i hope he's okay." "fucking dog comes at me, i kick it." "i just meant, about mel, you know, she's fine, but she 294 roy scranton has, like, gender issues. masculinity issues. so if you just "ho apologize-i'm not saying she's right, she's not, she was way out of line, but if you apologize, she'll let it go. she won't �tal apologize first. i know it's irritating but, you know, it's like she's has something to prove." "if! was a fucking pussy." i�tfrl "5 �" !\it!norry. . ''i'd apologize ifi was a fuckingpussy." ir�(l� "okay, fine. just think about it." matt studied the sky. !�nv "so, uh ... how long you been back in the us?" m�a ''about three weeks." !�tm "were you over there long?" i��ul "later, matt. you want to know what it's like, i'll show mij(n, you some shit later. let's talk about something else right �w�� now. tell me about your global forecasting program." w(ly� "oh, yeah. sure. okay. it's called constellation. i'm inter"w1 ested in the way we take disparate, seemingly unrelated "�o points, and make visual patterns. like that's draco and �iqoi that's virgo. there's scorpio and the big dipper. they don't runhl really mean anything, not like an astrologer would tell you, �lfit but by constellating points we make a map of the sky. then ��n� we can use that map to navigate on earth. it's like a data �(ffi aggregator, but ... see, it's ... " he laughed. "it's supposed \�qtn to tell the future. i don't know. it's still ... i haven't quite :oow found the right interface." wtn�e "how long you been working on it?" �(ml ''about two years, i guess, since dahlia and i moved out lirun� here." �ru�1 "you seem like a cute couple, you and her." "ho:"huh? oh, yeah. thanks. we're really happy together." "go �o if r�ij � ot, )n�w�� �o, �no:: know,i1'1 tuai�am1[ c��" '� i��, !'�!t: iliin� �111� rro�ram," rion,!'m[; rrer.neyt: wow�11��, ofilieley.rt: . it'� liknru: q, it')l�r� , i nay�n'i�c " er. apr, to��ffi11.' war porn "h 'd "'i" ow you two meetr "college. university of washington, class on statis­ tical analysis. she was on crutches, she'd broken her hip playing soccer, and one day i helped her with her books. then i started helping her with her homework. we were just friends then, but i really liked her. i liked her accent, that she was from virginia. it seemed historical, you know? special. and she always seemed so ... i don't know, like she was searching for something and a little sad about it. i liked that she was a searcher. anyway, after graduation, i got involved in a web startup with some guys, and she went to guatemala to work on an organic farm. i guess we lost touch, like people do. but then a couple years later, we ran into each other in a bar on capitol hill and it just clicked. we've been together since." "why'd you move to moab?" "so the startup i helped found-cyclopsicope.com­ sold out to yahoo! in april 2000, which was pretty lucky, thinking back, because the boom was already over by that point. the correction was bad, since everybody was liqui­ dating and the job market was overstocked with guys just like me, coders with crazy ideas and a lot of slick talk. but i had the money from the sell-off and i knew some people, so i could get by freelancing. then after 9/11, we just decided we needed a change. get off the grid, you know? i was in the middle of this project with some friends and dahlia was getting her master's, but once we'd tied up our loose ends in seattle, we made the jump." "how's it working for you out here?" "good. good. we're a little restless, i guess, but that's 29' )96 roy scranton just how you get, right? that's just life, getting older, right? we go hiking a bit, she works the river some with mel. i guess we'll head back to civilization soon, but we can live cheap here, there's some nice people, and it's quiet. there's space to think. really think about things." "like constellations." "yeah ... " like orion and scorpio, cassiopeia and canis major. "so, uh, what about you and wendy, huh? you two got a thing?" "you like her, don't you." "i, uh ... i don't, uhm " matt coughed. "dahlia and i are really happy. but you " "we fuck." ''ai . h " m i h d "h ' h �"ng t. . . att aug e. ow stat. "it's trim. she's a liar and a cunt, but she fucks good." "dude ... " "it is what it is." "uhm ... i don't know what to say. wendy's a friend." "that all?" "i d 'kn h "on t ow w at you mean. "no, you don't. anyway, i'm just passing through." "that's probably best." matt laughed again. "i mean nice ... it must be nice." "s h"ure enoug . "you said you're going back to school in december?" "that's the story i tell people. the truth is, matt, i'm gonna burrow like a tick in the skin of the grimiest, nas­ tiest rust belt shithole i can find and shoot heroin till i die." "wow. you're kidding, right?" mrou��," aa�n, ii m� b dec�m��[!' fl ii, md�j e �rimi��[, � floor n�will� war porn 297 "we're devils, matthew. for real. you gotta see things for what they are ... and there it is. hello, beautiful." "y' all doing alright out here?" dahlia asked, appearing out of the shadows. matt twisted in his chair to see her and thought, did he just say that? "what did you say?" "you feel the spin, matt?" aaron asked. "wait, what? what?" "we're all good out back," dahlia said. "mel's a little riled yet, but xena calmed down. my darling mel said she'd apologize to you for being such a bitch, if you apologize to her for kicking her dog. then we can all make nice and get on with our par-tey." "listen," aaron said, looking deep into dahlia's eyes. "here's the deal. i'm not sorry for defending myself. the dog gets it, he understands i'm a bigger dog. this is a fact i can see mel struggles with. she's like one of those terriers that picks fights with german shepherds. nevertheless, i will apologize-to the dog and to mel. i'm the bigger dog, i'll be the bigger man. tell you the truth, dahlia, all i ever wanted was peace, love, and understanding." dahlia stared back. "i don't know if i like you, soldier b " oy. "you don't have to." aaron smiled wide, suddenly all charm. "run along now, sugar, and bring your tribe my offer of peace." dahlia left, scowling, and matt wondered, what do i do? how do i make him leave? "her name's not sugar," he said. "chill out, bro. it's all cool." matt groped for leverage, but with the planet spinning )9' roy scranton the stars were the only fixed points. "there's no devil," j�u�n he said. "no such thing as evil. we're human beings. we j�r�li reason. we make choices. it's like i was saying: it's all jltl) just space and stars, but there's an order we impose on w�n it. we make maps to navigate by. you have to admit that ;1�tnl at least." :twt "i know what i am, matt. you don't have to be good." �ilil "no, there's an order to things. there's a map we're j�ntx responsible to." )illllj "wendy, for example. she'll give it up. you just gotta :l(fron take it." matt wanted to say, you need to leave now. or: quit looking at her like that. or: i'm gonna kick your ass. instead, he regarded orion hanging overhead and tried to think of an answer. it wasn't just stars. it was more. dahlia went back out back, saying to herself what an asswm� hole. the house creaked or the door maybe or the sky on mtl� its hinges at the horizon and she was out under the black ��i world glittering like dark mica. the grass rustled live as irni� snakes. wendy, mel, and rachel huddled over something 'wtn in the yard, xena watching. ifuc� "what is it?" dahlia asked, thinking small and helpless. �w�n "mel's making fire," wendy said. '��ri� then it lit with a crackle, a small flame ringed with 'wm stones. where'd she get stones? where'd she get fire? ':�iwt "where'd you get that?" dahlia asked. �w�n "me pray goddess moon, call up spirits from stone, �,llkc make fire," mel said. "i can put it out if you want. i just t�d war porn ere') m�rl: an d�iij�,: �a,iij�: il'! we im��, [qa�ilt thought it'd be nice. there isn't a burn ban on or shit, is there? i don't wanna bring down the fuzz." "it's cool, i think," said dahlia. wendy leaned toward her. "did you see the way the stars are behind the trees and inside them at the same time? i mean the branches. like they're caught." dahlia laughed. "damn, y'all couldn't wait for me on the next bowl? buncha weed-bogartin' bitches. listen ... " dahlia sat on the ground by the fire. "i talked to the boys out front. soldier boy said he'd apologize. says he just wants peace." "we change like chameleons," wendy said. "inside, outside. skin on skin." "you do," dahlia said. "i don't." "no," wendy said. "we all do." "so who's dahlia then?" rachel said, "she's the one who fed us tasty tofu." wendy said, "she's the one who has what she wants." mel said, "she's the one who knows what's enough." dahlia lay on her side. "enough is enough." "this is fun," wendy said. "who's wendy?" "wendy's a bitch," said mel. "fuck you, mel." "wendy's a self-centered, self-quoting bitch," mel went on. "seriously, fuck you." "wendy's too smart and too pretty but she's crazy and fun, so that makes up for it," said dahlia. "wendy's a cat," rachel said. "one of those little jungle cats, like an ocelot." ''i'll be an ocelot." [q d��oc{ '� amlr� now, �r:(, �(k j�lli, eaa �om�, a5mort. e�wnu de or m��:: una�r ���i .� mu�ol�i oyer ioffi�[ e rin�ij ,: e �et hr�1 irit� from !i�; you wantl, 299 joo roy scranton "what's your animal, dahlia?" mel asked. "a fox?" "me? i'm a moth. i'm a swallow. a crane maybe, some kind of migratory bird." "i'm a coyote," said rachel. wendy laughed. "you're no coyote. you're a poodle that thinks it's a coyote." "you're mean." "i'm, uh, what's that dog from that old beer ad?" "spuds mackenzie? he's a bull terrier." ''i'm one of those," said mel. "i'm not a poodle," rachel said. "i'm a heron or an egret, like dahlia." "you're a cuckoo," wendy said. they lapsed into silence. dahlia lay on the earth, watching wendy, thinking of the way matt watched her. the sense of fear. the rush when the dog leaped. aaron. mel broke a stick and threw it in the crackling fire. rachel cleared her throat and began to sing in a low, nasal lilt, a voice like reeds and red thread and honey, tapping her knee with her palm: on, ana an� mr oh, the cuckoo, she's a pretty bird. how i wish that she was mine. but she never hollers cuckoo till the fourth day of july. she sucks all the sweet flowers to make her voice so clear. but she never sings cuckoo till summer draws near. war porn afo��! e m�r��j): she flies the hills over, she flies the world above, she flies back to the mountain, where she mourns her ain true love. oh, the cuckoo, she's a cruel bird, and she warbles as she flies, eer�q!" and ev'ry time she passes, my true love says goodbye. ronom�; rachel let the last note fade and the hush that followed broke like waves washing hard against clapping, sharp, at the door. they all looked up at aaron applauding, his eyes on h bright in the glow of the fire. r wdtm "that was just lovely," he said. le�real "what do you want?" wendy asked. l' t. �, "s�" m�rlfe,n; orry. alowjn��, "how long were you there?" e!jtdrri�1: ''i'm only passing through, chief," he said, coming toward the fire. "i left major tom in orbit, and if! don't get back we might lose him in the martian time-slip. but listen, it's totally aces, we're solving the mysteries of the universe. one thing i wanted to say: mel, i hope we're cool and i'm sorry for calling you names and overreacting to your-how you say-interrogation. we cool?" he knelt and offered mel his hand. xena watched nervously. mel observed him, turning her head this way and that, then nodded. "yeah, we cool," she said, giving his hand a firm shake. "sorry for calling you a nazi." "no problem," he said. "it's not the worst thing i've been j 01 so) roy scranton called." then he offered his hand to xena. "cool, doggy?" \llttlo xena hugged the ground and licked the back of aaron's ,�t.h hand. "great. so we all cool." "�ou "we're not all cool," dahlia said, sitting up. "��� "oh h?" "hoyea . "yeah. you and me ain't cool." "ml� "well, i am heartsick to hear that, sugar, and steadfastly "lao resolved to make things right. what could i possibly do to '�am rectify this situation?" mdt! "what are you two talking about?" asked wendy. "�tm dahlia felt her face twitch. "you bring violence into lill�n my home, you fuck up my party. you owe me." her eyes :�w,w reflected flame. "put your hand in the fire." \llttn� the other women watched, waiting. aaron smiled and "ioe took a drink of his beer, then gazed around the circle. "�no "what are y'all up to out here besides singing campfire songs? some witchy coven shit?" dahlia glared at him. jf�turn "we're just talking," wendy said. "��ili, "sweet. i'll work on getting major tom down from �ron orbit, and maybe then we can resume our explorations. ��f oj in the meantime . . ." he leaned forward and passed his ::�wm� hand through the fire, slowly side to side so the orange heat mdtt licked along his hand and singed the hair on his wrist, then \�ffieor pressed his palm to dahlia's cheek. they looked at each �wu other, faces close, then he pulled away and kissed wendy jwin�t on the top of her head. "i shall return," he said, giving a �11wind sloppy salute, and disappeared through the gate. 'ift, talk j1 air. � • :pner war porn coou�� matt looked over at aaron's face, washed blue in the moon's adof� light. he was pushing a bottle at him. "yc beer?"au got eer. �, "yeah. take one." "how long were you gone?" "all your life, sweetheart. you want a beer or not?" analt�qt "i don't know what you're here for." i�o)li�l�j: "same thing we all are: kill, fuck, and die." matt took the offered beer. wenor "strange trip to the backyard," aaron went on. "the violeij(1: ladies have gone native. we talked some. everybody groks me,n�1ii now. why don't we take a ride in your time machine, matthew?" onlmil�l 'the machine's broken." noh "show me." �1fl�(j;: "it's sludge. it's like a rollercoaster that won't come down." "so show me. invite me in. i got something to show you in return." "yeah, what?" aaron grinned, pulling from his pocket a silver thumb drive dangling on a gray cord. "some real war shit. you show me the future, i'll show you the past." matt thought for a moment, then nodded. "okay. come on."nnillwilt1t: ·lookea ![� a �lleaw�: oe i�oi �i\�i he stumbled up and ambled into the house, aaron fol­ lowing through the dark to matt's work zone. through the window, they could see the girls spread out around the fire, talking and laughing, their hands framing forms in the air. matt sat at his desk and jiggled his mouse, wak­ ing the machine. �te, us )04 roy scranton matt eyed the fire anxiously. "i think there's a burn ban on." "fuck all that. show me the future." the computer's fan whirred, its hard-drive light flicker­ ing red in the dark. matt clicked an icon of the big dipper. "it's fairly crude, so i can only feed so many different data streams off the web before it freezes. i linked it to different sites that update their data, you know, like dow jones or whatever. i got a couple easy ones like us weather, so the graphic gives us a pattern like this." he clicked on the menu and a visual popped up in the center, a slowly morphing fractal cone in greens and golds covered with bumps and indentions. it spun slow on three axes, displaying its lan­ guidly shifting planes, and as it revolved a swirl of orange and white sank into one side. "the trick is with the oper­ ator, right, because this is just a data pattern. it's no better really than raw data except in this: humans are primarily visual, so we interpret visual patterns much more quickly than we do numerical, syntactical, narrative, or even lin­ guistic ones. but the new operator doesn't see much in one pattern, like this one here, until they've seen dozens of them and compared them against each other. as well, the algo­ rithm doesn't measure data but rather the rate of change. so with this, i can tell you that the weather patterns for the us are generally changing slowly now, but that there's some serious turbulence here"-he pointed to the swirl of white and orange-"that represents a relatively intense but locally manifest change in weather conditions. not very helpful, i realize, for meteorology, but that's not the point. let's do stocks." he clicked a menu button and the first graphic :i�rrea 'i�fwld� j�� on i[jtrce � �ock exa it traa� ��, �tuff �lc�m �1trln� ]�ytr�e illr�l� �iikelj :mturouiu�ut i �lt can iwckex :1, wna i��e.l :�wmu )i�own �tma, i, �it can it�l, bl war porn disappeared, replaced by a new cone, green and gold, this one wider, shallower, and bumpier, red and strangely spar­ kling on the edges and growing darker and darker, toward a fierce purple, at the point. "this is all the world's major stock exchanges, along with some other transnational data like trade deficit numbers, wheat production, the price of oil, stufflike that. this seems about normal, actually, gener­ ally calm with local fluctuations. sometimes you get a wave sweeping across, either in concentric circles or as a shifting convergence. see, like this point here, this bulge-if it got any bigger, i'd say that's probably gonna start a wave that will likely spread and affect other markets. i'd say watch out for turbulence in the global economy." "but it doesn't tell you where." "it can." he hit control-m and markers came up: tokyo stock exchange, nasdaq, crude oil dpb. "but remem­ ber, what it's measuring isn't the change but the rate of change. i don't care what the level of the dow is, or even how much it went up or down, but how much it went up or down relative to, a, the overall size or value of the data set and, b, its previous movement. a steady increase, as long as it continues to change at the same rate, won't show up at all. but if the increase slows, right, even if the change is now zero, the change in the rate of change will be what we see. you got it?" "like it measures acceleration and deceleration, not d"spee . "exactly. i mean, it doesn't so much tell the future as show turbulence in complex systems, which i think might offer a key to understanding the systems themselves. part li�nt�i� e �i��i). qjffmm� ittoic dow j��, 'ealn�r,�: on lli1�l 'l� m��l �um�lt la}'in� i�� 'irlofm2 ltnlli1� , it'ln�k; aff �r�r. morf�ill� , or m�� mll(�m�: olenlol� we�, ili1�' te 01 (�u\; ( ilierf'll�� �wirlolw[; medlltl�i yerynelr�' oint.ut'lu firlt �r�rt: los of the problem is that so far the systems are user-defined. i mean, if i had enough computing power, i could feed thou­ sands and thousands of real-time data streams into the thing and you'd get a global picture. another problem is real-time data-most good data is private or secret. what you're seeing now is very narrow. it's like taking a poll offive hundred peo­ ple; it just doesn't tell you much. whereas if you polled five hundred thousand, you'd have some real numbers." "huh." "yeah. so there it is." "trippy." aaron pulled out his thumb drive. "my turn." "okay." matt closed down the program and plugged in aaron's drive. "iraq pix," aaron said. "camp crawford." "wed j06 roy scranton the fire crackled between them. "what was that with you and aaron?" wendy asked, turning to dahlia. "just messing with him," dahlia said. "dolly working her mojo," mel said. "i ain't got no mojo." "dirty dahlia," wendy laughed. ''i'd be jealous if! didn't know you were so stuck on matt." "sure," dahlia said. "like a tar baby." j�wor lamrc ua,not maintel �;un·y�u ;v r� were j1nortn i�itan iihdaji� "ird�i�, "doja "�rw h� aia :mwnhl ]�drow i�� the � the first picture was of a dusty, tan-colored building loom­ ing against a bruised sky. barbed wire coiled on the wall tops. --. . "we did a bunch of stuff in iraq," aaron said, "includ­ ing working at several different internment camps. this is camp crawford. we called it the pit. it was north of bagh­ dad, not far from taji, and it was specifically for insurgents [joujr1� and intel targets. it's not like cropper, on biap, which was nun�;: high-value, or abu g, which had a bunch of different shit. ou��oo� we were supposed to get hard cases from other assets in n,n the north and northwest, a lot of hadjis from fallujah and tikrit and baqubah, a lot of sunni triangle shit." "h dii �"a )is. e,umj� "iraqis. you get real racist over there." a�l,�, "do you?" "anyway, camp crawford. click forward." he did and the next pic was a bunch of soldiers, some in brown t-shirts and some in black, all wearing desert boots and brown camouflage pants, making gang symbols or flip­ ping the bird, men and women both. aaron was in there, wenar��: leaner, more muscular, squatting with a rifle. "these are the dudes i worked with. there's sergeant dickersen, and that's grimes and woolsley and peanut and garber. that's staff sergeant cortazar and lieutenant viers. the guys in black t-shirts-see, brown t-shirts, that's oud!' the army standard. the air force wear black t-shirts, but these guys aren't air force. they're oga. bill and pete and dick and gary." "oga?" "other governmental agencies. that dude there, the duilain�loc: hadji-iooking one, he's our terp, wathiq." eo on m1f. war porn j07 • • • j08 roy scranton "the thing with aaron," wendy said, "i think he had a hard time in iraq." "what do you mean a hard time?" "i don't know. he won't talk about it. he says he just wants to put it behind him. but he's really tense now, and i think ... i think something happened." "you think he has pt5d?" rachel asked. "i don't know how you know. he says he doesn't." "has he gone for counseling?" "i don't know. he just got back. he just showed up." "what's the deal with you two?" dahlia asked. "i don't really know," wendy said. "we started dating in tucson, like, almost two years ago. i was finishing my mfa then, and he was still working on his bachelor's, but he's only a year younger than me ... and we'd been dating for like six months but hadn't discussed it as anything serious when he got called up, and then we started having these really super intense discussions about the future. i just couldn't make the promises i think he wanted me to. i think he had this romantic idea i'd wait for him, pining away with a yellow ribbon, but i can't live my life like that. and i didn't even know if we were right for each other anyway. it'd just been a thing. so we basically made a tentative agreement that we'd keep writing and then check back when he got home. he thought the war would be over quick and he'd be sitting in the desert twiddling his thumbs the whole time like in that bookjarhead. so we wrote each other letters while he was in training, but then once he got to iraq, it stopped. a couple emails, then nothing ... until he called me from the airport in atlanta, a year later. i couldn't believe it. i thought i'd let :�o, i d itrnon uwnat ��ta, �hone� �l�few �1�\v11t :i�l clo� 'j�us," 'dim wsal jl��ren :mtucs hjqs 1t next ��ilr a �,tture's fr �tmras wl��row :ttnolaerl"inat's il!in for ]�isn, sfj rnene ',11oreast :nop o� war porn it go. i thought i'd moved on. when i heard his voice on the phone, though, i sort of fell apart." "what did you think when he quit writing?" rachel asked. "honestly? i thought he was dead. i mean, i read the lists for a few months and didn't see his name, but how could i know? it was the not knowing that made it so bad. finally i just closed off the part of myself that cared." "j " esus. "didn't you call his parents or somebody?" "he's always been a loner. he never really talked about his parents much. i know his dad used to live somewhere near tucson, and i'm not even sure where his mom's at. he had some friends in college, the guys in his band and his stoner buddies, but they didn't know any more than i did."rloulwk er�!�;: coclan1t' nd��: the next picture showed a young iraqi woman smiling uneasily at the camera, looking at something outside the picture's frame. she wore loose orange prisoner pants and a pantera shirt and her hair was streaked with blonde, dark roots growing out over platinum stripes. she couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty. "that's connie," aaron said. "we called her connie. she was in for theft, i think, but she was nice and spoke some english, so she got a lot of freedom. click forward." the next picture was of connie pulling her shirt up over her breasts, tugging the waist of her orange pants down to the top of her pubic hair. ( �o[ n�rn�" '0 dellm�i meiikel�: inuene��: rea, a (��: omilie�: mou�ntl��; j09 jlo roy scranton "two dolla. some dudes paid five for the whole nude, but i dig how this one's flirty, like she's not showing you everything yet. she did other stuff, too, on the d l, but i wouldn't touch that cooze with a ten-foot pole." "other stuff?" "yeah. command looked the other way as long as we kept it quiet." "what ... what did she do with the money?" "she hid it, saving it for when she got out. she had her own cell, for privacy. we took care of her, you know, treated her pretty good, gave her extra mres, cigarettes, shit from any soldier packages back home. connie was alright. some of the army bitches complained about the guys, you know, pimping her, but nothing ever really happened. it never went official." "that's awful." "oh, shit. you're totally right. i'll put it away, then." aaron reached for his thumb drive. "no, wait," matt said. "it's awful, but i think i should see it. so i know what it's like. i should know what it's like." "your call, chief. you wanna click forward?" "yeah," matt said, then regretted it. a young, mustached iraqi man lay naked on the floor of a cell, his face ruptured and bleeding, his hands secured behind his back with zip-ties. a soldier stood with one boot on the back of his neck, grinning at the camera. "that's woolsley. we ... he was stressing the prisoner, you know, in preparation for an information session, and the guy got a little crazy, so we ... we kept running him into the bars until he fell over. fucked him up pretty bad. �t lost: �on�the lilreth "[work iidia yc ilt��i� "wtrex "ltolal �l�rou log �outitwl "ufi.., aaron � wtaat tn j�(k, the i iillron l j\aron � "what'� "what! "inh!! "oh,w "awna "ache th�r're aij i[�reaks wn�, it !on'tlm �ijt. but "ho tve "what?" (ninkiln�wi "in his butt. what is that? "oh, we made him stick a chemlight in his ass." wnol� �ijll �nowin� j�t e dl, �ijli » e as lon� �il , �ne hd� �� �ow,[r�[[ tte�, lhit ��� �ri�nt.��� y�, ,ou���, nea, it n�'q )" on me �oo nana� lewrr! witnone� era, � lie rril�nlr, n �el�ion, �i ( runnin� �iid up pretcy�j� war porn ji1 he lost a bunch of teeth," aaron said, sliding his finger along the right side of his upper lip. "are these torture pictures?" "i worked in detention." "d·d 1 �"1 you ... torture ... peop e. "l llv?"ega y. "were you actually involved in doing this?" "i told you," aaron said. "i took pictures. nobody's mak­ ing you look. all you gotta do is pull out. listen. you think about it while i get another beer. you want one?" "uh ... sure." aaron got up and rummaged in the fridge while matt stared at the man standing with his boot on the naked man's neck, the naked man's split lip and gashed face, his blood shiny on the concrete floor. aaron brought back two beers and handed one to matt. "what's that?" he asked. ''a what?" ''a chemlight. it's a little plastic, you know, a glowstick. they're about as big around as your thumb. you bend it and it breaks this glass capsule inside so it glows. it's a chemical thing. it doesn't really hurt, it's just invasive, and the hadjis don't know how the chemicals work so they freak the fuck out. but like i said, they're not that big, so as long as you don't tense up, it's not painful." "how would you know?" "i've had bigger shits. i mean, you get your ju roy scranton prostate checked, right? it's not any bigger than that. it's just uncomfortable." "and humiliating." "yeah, but so's a fucking prostate exam." "i don't think they're the same." "it was standard operating procedure. not a big deal." "that's fucked up." "it gets better. click forward." «vvz.: i' s d i ;>"walt. just... 0 ... you torture peop e. "enhanced interrogation, technically. whatever you want to call it, i told you, i fucking held the camera. how many times i gotta say that? click forward." "i didn't know what to think. all i could do was imagine the worst." "oh, wendy," rachel said, rubbing her shoulder. "it's just all so intense. after he called, after everything, after i thought he was dead, he's alive again and we keep talking on the phone and i can't stop thinking about him and i can't sleep and i start thinking about moving back to tucson or him moving here and basically i'm in this crazy emotional spiral for like a week and that's part of why-i mean, i won't say i went to grand junction thursday explicitly planning to fuck david t. greene, but i needed something, some kind of counterweight, some blockage to put between aaron and me. something to keep me from falling." mel grunted. "but when he showed up, i knew. i knew. i knew instantly that we'd have a good time but that was it. because [just ca� inere's �4a'doy llflimits 1��kand j mffeelin� ruanlt use� "uke "tfiat r�f next � i�on fii� '�fnou mfr!tooa "i (lnlt �n�,zad �!ition, r�� nonlt )�anat� :'ilnu�1ij�iliatl t� "canlt) "�ure, i ��oto, "yeah,' "that': merab, �a��ene !nlt, be( the next picture showed a naked iraqi man wearing pant­ ies on his face, handcuffed to a metal grating on the wall, passed out and dangling by his hands. a tall hispanic solw�lffi�illi dier stood next to him. "i can't remember this puck's name. it was like z some�der, thing. zabar ... zartan ... zazar ... anyway, that's a stress r everytill�� position. you keep them handcuffed like that for hours. and wd�1 you don't give them water, because if you do, they have to doutrumwl piss and then you have to unhook them and everything and acktotu�� it's a huge hassle. you don't feed them, either, because if you emoo��� do that, then they have to shit. click forward." meanllw��'1 "can't you go to the media or something?" "sure. you see this guy?" he pointed to the soldier in the photo. "yeah." 'that's staff sergeant cortazar, he took us all aside after abu g broke and-this conversation never officially happened, realize-and told us that because of one stupid shit, because of that blue falcon joe darby who turned in atmr r�� amera, ��� war porn iu i just can't. i've done this kind of thing and i can't anymore. there's something self-destructive in him, you know, that bad-boy thing, and the chaos energy's thrilling, but there are limits." wendy looked into the fire. she picked up a stick and poked at the coals. "i don't know. sometimes i get the feeling he just doesn't care what happens anymore. he didn't used to be like that." "like with xena," mel said. "that wasn't his fault," rachel told her. .. -)14 roy scranton the photos, a whole bunch of good soldiers who did their inow shi jobs, who were doing what they were told, were now getting �mistak totally fucked by the system. it wasn't their commanders mcir ass £ getting punished, it wasn't dirty sanchez or rummy or li�abou dubya, it was the men and women doing their jobs. and ifl-which not only that, but this fuck joe darby was jeopardizing the ��nt1-the whole intel-collection apparatus in iraq, which put the lives ru(hln�aia of our fellow soldiers at risk. those pictures fucked up the w�narreni whole occupation. fucking joe darby got american solmin�el�e�e diers killed." @(�roum "but ... " �dtdack. "we didn't decide to do this shit. we didn't ask for the wn�tldiaw torture detail. staff sergeant cortazar told us to do this [�udlnoi shit because lieutenant viers told him to do this shit, and �utldidit. captain weems, the company commander, told him to do this shit and so on up the fucking chain of command. plus, our guidance with the oga fucks was full cooper�ialard ation. they say jump, we don't ask how high, we don't �urrbat ask shit. we jump. now these orders were put never in i(w��tne writing, realize. everything was verbal. the oga guys go oowl1mar straight back to langley or whatever cesspool they ooze «��ilii' out of, and we're their tools. we did what we were told "!aon't to, just like those kids in abu g. so sergeant cortazar is «girl,y, all like, here's the deal. think about this fact: if we decide ru�nt,we' to talk to somebody, show somebody pictures, we better w�tneld damn well think about who exactly is going to be getting wmtto� it in the ass. bush? rumsfeld? the general? the co? or let's your battle buddy?" "yew aaron took a drink of beer. "the fact of the matter is, "you fucked up as it may be, most of these fucking hadjis didn't iifu o aia �1r ow��� mm��t� rummrm 'r jooj,k� araizin�mt �ut ili��i� ckea ��� , iencan wi' t ojrforwt nou i� �nitl �� wla nim t� f coffim��, full (gortl' nl w� ao�t ut nmlm ga �llr!�� i iliq0011 'e wer� tol� t cortmril ifweac(ijt �, we �ett1l to de �em�! new�1 nematterlll naaji�aimt war porn su know shit. i'd say the majority of them were locked up by mistake, or at best they were grunts who didn't know their ass from al-qaeda. it's a little depressing when you think about it. but if i had a problem with what was going on-which i did, of course, i'm a red-blooded american, right?-then the time for me to address that was before i fucking did it, before it got done, or at the very least while it was happening. not afterwards. not later. not now. some­ thing else sergeant cortazar said that stuck with me is that once you make a decision, once you do something, you can't take it back. and he's right. you don't get to say 'oh, wait, what i did was wrong, so now i want to get someone else in trouble so i can feel better.' if it was wrong, it was wrong. but i did it. nothing can change that. click forward." dahlia lay back in the grass, staring into a sky so black it was purple, watching perseus and cassiopeia chase each other across the galaxy. "hey-you guys want to fire another bowl? maybe do some shots?" "yeah," wendy said. "let's party like it's 1999." "i don't know," rachel said. "girl, you got to live a little," dahlia said. "it's a gorgeous night, we've got plenty of stuff to keep us going, and when was the last time you partied till dawn? c'mon. sunrise. i want to feel like i did something epic for once." "let's do it, man," mel said. "v h" °d'vt d "c' " rean, sal wen y. mono "you think the boys'll want to?" rachel asked. "fuck the boys," said wendy. j16 roy scranton "i suspect they will," dahlia said, "but regardless, wen­ dy's right. fuck 'em. we can have us a girl's night while they, whatever, jerk each other off and talk about computers." "they're in there now," said rachel. "where?" "they're on the computer. they've been in there awhile." "i bet matt's showing him that dumb program." "it's not dumb," wendy said. "that's sweet, wendy, but it kinda is. it's just blobs of color you can't tell apart, and it doesn't even really work. plus, he can't seem to finish. i mean, i don't want to talk about him behind his back ... " "even though that's what you're doing." "yeah, well. maybe you're right. i'm just tired of hearing about it." "i'm guessing aaron will be too in about five minutes." "so let's get lit then before they come out and start talking about complex visual representations of turbulent systems. please." there was a line of men in prison garb kneeling, black bags over their heads, their hands zip-tied behind them. some­ one whose face was out of the shot was standing over them prodding one in the back with a baton. "so, you get a bunch of new guys in and you have to establish control. you can't fuck around. we'd line them all up and get them down and scream at them for about twenty minutes, poking them with batons and kicking them, then we'd leave them there for a few hours with a (duple irream at one p m�eling r i(moved a] m�m, am :��rriwn w�r� olue s ;l�di�e�t r�wwet� wlt(n,tnen �� (nl� case, mawnlcne ]lwckand ine�tan� hm�elij ult'� �l a mi� �ur in � llu�n� and i l'nack in tn jl1�re��lon, tne n� grlffies� h iithat's little blur rnat's a � couple dudes and if they moved, the two guards would scream at them and knock them down. click forward." one prisoner was standing in front of the line of kneeling prisoners. the kneeling ones' hoods had been removed and they all looked up at the man standing over ereawn�t: them. a male american soldier stood behind the stand­ ing prisoner, a female soldier next to him. the soldiers wore blue surgical gloves. the male soldier had a pair of scissors. "this is sort of a mass technique we developed with the ogas for when a bunch of fresh pucks came in. so after fucking with them for a while, we take one out of the line, the biggest fucker in the group, and stand him up in front. then we take off their hoods, right, but not his, so they can watch. then your point man here, with the scissors, grimes in this case, he cuts open the prisoner's outfit and strips him and whichever female we have, that's littleton, she points at his cock and laughs. click forward." the standing man was naked now except for the hood, and the female soldier was pointing at his genitals and laughing. "it's all a big show we put on. we-grimes-pokes this guy in the ribs, pokes him in the butt, while littleton laughs and points at his cock, then we give him one good whack in the belly and he goes down. bam. makes a huge impression. next." the naked and hooded man was on the ground and grimes's boot was slamming into his stomach. "that's a good one. action shots are hard. the boot's a little blurry but you can see the impact. i like that picture. that's a good one." �ant to [ill • i mllluttl. ent�lttllli. g, dlack�� hem. �offit· goverililffi you navtw '0 line tnlill m for a�o�1 ana �(hl�1 our� witnl war porn :s17 . -511 roy scranton "that's fucked up. this is fucked up." "yeah. you mentioned that. next." matt clicked forward to a close-up head-and-shoulders of a mangled, bloody face. a middle-aged man with a thick gray mustache. "that dude died. i mean, he was dead when i took the picture." "did you kill him?" "fuck no. we just stressed him to the point where his body failed. he was kinda old, anyway, and the older ones can't take much. i wished we'd had dogs. dogs would have made life so much easier. we complained about that all the time, but our battalion k-9 had been tasked out to some other bullshit. it's totally easy to stress dudes with dogs, and you don't even have to touch 'em. dogs scare the shit out of people. next." matt clicked forward. another dead man. he clicked forward. another man in a stress position, head hooded, passed out and dangling. he clicked forward. two ameri­ can soldiers punching a man in a hood. he clicked forward. naked men piled on top of each other. "that's like the photo," matt said. "yeah. that's basically 'cause we were bored. i mean, one of our oga dudes came from abu g, and he gave us guidance on a bunch of shit he said worked really well over there. naked dog-pile, electric wire box, fake menstrual wipe, shit like that. but a lot of shit we did' cause we were bored. i mean, plus all the normal shit-sleep deprivation, hostile environment, loud music, stress positions, beatings, immersion-you know, the basics." "immel "it's like ��ter long ��u �otta b i m�ilierfuck j�ia�ott il��n, �ne �taitto i ]w dack ar ��mloke arl w�in�tre�, "itnink tn "fuck reili "her, i was ]nuncorne "we can 10 "the click �m "we can �el ftdcro�� dl mellaugh� "i love the mel kept 1 "i think i �inmym; ��n� of the �t. none it happen, war porn :119 "immersion?" "it's like waterboarding. you put their head in a bucket of ·�no��tij water long enough to fuck with them, then you take it out. 'tn4ilii(t you gotta be careful though. it's surprisingly easy to drown a motherfucker." aaron waved his hand impatiently. "next." wnmrul olaf! ��5 'oulo�dfi tnat�mt he di(�t� a �o�odl "0 aomi· eqfonv��, q. i ffi�1 �e ��v� � ivwe�owl e'memtru� mewewtre aerriv�uo�1 ), oeaun�1 dahlia got the bowl out and tapped the old ash and packed it fresh. she handed the bowl and the lighter to mel, who passed it to rachel, who passed it to wendy, then dahlia, then back around again. everyone was silent, focused on the smoke drifting into the night, the streaking stars, the rustling trees, the skunky savor. "i think that's cashed," rachel said, tapping ash. "fuck yeah," mel said. "hey, i was thinking," dahlia said, "if we're gonna watch the sun come up, we should hike up on the cliffs." "we can look for the cuckoo," rachel said. "the cuckoo cock." mel burst into laughter and fell over. "we can see rosy-fingered dawn," wendy said, "traipsing light across distant horizons." mel laughed harder. "i love the dawn," rachel said. "it's so, like, nascent." mel kept laughing. rachel petted xena. "i think i finally got it," wendy said. "it's not that you're all in my mind, but it's like the yous in my mind are reflec­ tions of the yous in reality. all i can see are the shadows you cast. none of this is really happening except how i make it happen. that's not right. it's happening, but i make it no roy scranton happen in my mind at the same time. it's happening but . , " its me. "i gotta get up," dahlia said. "i gotta move around." "what are they doing in there?" rachel asked. "yeah, go get the boys." "go get the cuckoo cocks," mel giggled. dahlia stepped off toward the house. matt clicked forward. more pictures of connie, of aaron's fellow soldiers, of the gray concrete halls and brown outer walls of camp crawford, more pictures of hooded men, bleeding men, men in handcuffs. he clicked forward. a thin, mustached man stood handcuffed to a head-level cell­ door crossbar. "that's the professor. puck named qasim. he got picked up on a raid in baqubah. he tried to tell us the first couple days how he worked as a terp for the americans in baghdad and he was in baqubah because his wife was sick or some shit, and it was all a big mistake, he just got caught up in things, he didn't even know the guys they picked him up with. the oga fucks, on the other hand, said according to their information he'd been using his position as a transla­ tor to pass intel to al-qaeda. we fucked that puck up." "you keep saying puck. what's a puck?" "puc. person under control. click forward." the next picture showed qasim hanging against the cell door, naked now, blood across his chest and thighs, his face cut, bruised, swollen, and bleeding. "this was two days later, after some stressing and a couple �eat·down �icture, f1� ��n�, my h �iili oiab bl the next m�cell ado iiaaron, wh �m, one oj m�oilierma iii �ot �er� [lickforwara rn� next r' ��im'� neaa �!tina�rat, 'tnat'� ju �irili!' next. "wnatnap "tneruc "��ili,jj "well,eitn �lo!tlrtney j "ju�t trans li�eili,clil tnenext t �(ewas pre� �ninqhim m�the crm "justthi: lmean, it "1 thou enin� ��i una," fown �m� oeo m��, fonv�a,,\ �·levela�· �ot ri(�oo flmmurlt in ����� ck or !�m� u�nturill eo nimu, ccorilln�w as a trami!· ckur," 'mtilif(t� �hll hi!f!a war porn jji beat-downs. i remember when i came on duty, i took this picture, right, and the flash woke him up and he started bab­ bling, my friend this and that, mistake, mistake, mista mista, blah blah blah, my friend, my friend. click forward." the next picture showed the man still hanging against the cell door but now his eyes were open and he gazed up at aaron, who'd opened the door and was standing next to him. one blue-gloved hand rested on qasim's shoulder and the other made a peace sign. "i got sergeant dickersen to hold the camera for me. click forward." the next picture was the same, except aaron was pulling qasim's head back by his hair and holding his other hand flat in a karate chop against qasim's neck. "that's judo chop. it's a joke we had, 'judo chop. hiyah!' next." "what happened to all these people?" "the pucks?" "yeah." "well, either they died or got transferred or got let out. mostly they just got transferred." "just transferred? like, just sent to another prison?" "yeah. click forward." the next picture was of the same scene, only now qasim's face was pressed into the cell bars. aaron grinned, standing behind him forcing his skull into the metal, one hand pull­ ing the crossbar for leverage. "just this once, right, i let someone else take the pictures. i mean, it wasn't a real interrogation. just fucking around." "i h h " t oug t ... "it's a weird thrill, having that much physical control )tones a over somebody, knowing what you're doing. it's ... " mey rea the screen door leading out back squawked. both men �on�the looked up. matt minimized the photos just as dahlia it'iide came in. "dark in here-what are y' all doing, looking at porn?" =vvr. " a id «vvr. ;:>"war porn, aron sal. wanna see. "hell yeah!" "no," matt said, yanking out the thumb drive. "hey, i wanna see," dahlia said. matt rose to his feet and shoved past dahlia toward the back door. "let's get some fresh air." "show me the pictures." "dahlia, sugar," aaron said, ''i'll give you a private show jjj roy scranton later." "will you-can we just go outside?" matt said. "we cashed another bowl," said dahlia. "we're gonna go up on the cliffs and watch the sunrise. you punks up for it, or y' all gonna pussy out?" "it's late," matt said. "i have to work tomorrow." "oh for fuck's sake, matthew, give it a rest. you gonna party with us or not?" "fine. sure. whatever. let's just go outside." "yes, let's," said aaron, standing. "my thumb drive?" he held out his hand. matt looked at aaron, then at dahlia. aaron snapped his fingers. matt dropped the drive in his palm. "good work, citizen. now let's all take a hike." mmmur, t� ir ao�n �mtner (4j11� ur de "her, fie �mllaado "wfiatt illt'!terrlj"��ili, w ��rilie� "tnechl iii was u mack on t ��ln that "itmus iiit)s ju lhey)re 1 !hlt. th formed c� contml at �orn!" 'e, d arivd"ht )) e, war porn uj stones and stars. the journey undertaken, in ten minutes they reached the mouth of the narrow canyon leading along the dry creek to the heights, the plateau above town. it'll be twenty minutes or half an hour before they clear the ravine's brush and make it into the open. they warned each other to watch out for coyotes, snakes, cougars, then plunged in, up. the noise of drunken revelers pushing through brush dried all summer long. the clatter of rocks and shoes, the murmur, the occasional shout. why doesn't he do something? say something? but no, there they are, whispering together, sharing some secret. he came up behind them. "hey, hero," aaron said. "what's up? i was just telling dahlia about iraq." "what?" "it's terrible," dahlia said. "yeah, well." aaron frowned. "it's always the children that suffer the most. i mean, we did what we could, you know?" "the children?" matt said. "i was telling dahlia how one time we had this vbied attack on the ecp, and there was this bus full of kids com­ ing in that got caught in the blast. it was bad." "it must have been so hard," said dahlia. "it's just-these kids, their lives are basically fucked. they're never gonna get out of iraq. their schools are shit. their hospitals are shit. and they were coming in for medical stuff, right, like basic vaccines, and when the ))4 roy scranton truck blew ... it just ... we lost seven. i spent the whole day in the aid station, helping the medics with triage. the boots i wore that day-i had to get rid of' em. the blood wouldn't ever come out ... seven. we saved the rest, but we lost seven. and one of our own, private ballard. that was a tough day." "you have pictures of that, too?" matt asked. "jesus, matt, what wrong with you?" dahlia said. she turned back to aaron. "sorry about him. you must find it hard now being out of the army-i mean after iraq-the way people react sometimes." "it's been difficult, no doubt. but you deal with it. you drive on." "i can't even imagine. it must be so strange, such a strange and different world." "there or here?" she laughed. "either one." "honestly, it was weirder coming back than it was going over, because ... i mean, you go, and you're thinking one thing, you're thinking about the military and iraq and america, and what you learn when you get there . . . you learn that nothing's quite what you thought it was. it's a cliche, but you really learn what you're made of." "ha, i bet," matt said. aaron and dahlia looked back, then dahlia tripped on a stone and flung forward. before she hit the ground, aaron had her, one hand on her arm, the other sweeping under and picking her up, setting her on her feet. she could smell him, close, the tobacco and fresh sweat and something else, something warm and hungry. "thanks," she said, flushing. "hey, "you j i�a, "�ig he �i�nt 'caus �tnathow "i ju�t , , "irao "matthe wmar," "i ao wh "j�m�, m �m�wnere! "m,fi mjrou c " muwant. "iat l� i�j,"wiii mattma iwar, !aronl,(wok�a �rl'it�urned i 1��knew s l�out it. b oncew i�eln th� ilil�\owc lt�eeme( !newas "i . " just ... "why don't you go chill out somewhere?" "matthew," aaron said. "how 'bout you go check up on wendy." "i do what i want," matt snarled. "jesus, matt," dahlia said. "go! buzz offl go chill out somewhere!" cnamm!1 "yeah, fine! fine. i'll chill out. totally chill out. like ice. and you can talk with rambo fucking himmler here all " you want. "what is it with you people tonight and nazis?" dahlia itwaj�olll! said. "will you just go? we'll talk later." in�n�o�t matt made a face and waved his hands in the air, stalking d ira� mj away. aaron looked at dahlia and she at him. he grinned his it waj, it))� crooked grin at her, and she shook her head and smiled. f' it burned her arm and waist where he'd touched her, and she knew she was hurting matt and part of her felt terrible rrirreaon� about it. but only part. ouna)aaw� once when she was young, she and her family went to a epin!u�cr lake in the blue ridge mountains where you could dive off ]j ii this low cliff into the water. it was only twenty feet or so but cou u lmt� eiliin�el!1) it seemed stratospheric, and the water deep and cold, and 'd,flusidnl she was terrified the first time, shaking with fear and about tnewn�11 tri�e,i�1 tnedlo� e fe)t) �m lara,hlt a ��a, ��1 ult fln�it f ira�-ffil war porn ju "hey," he said, stepping back. "you should watch where you're going, honey," matt said. "big help you are, riding my heels. i nearly took a face plant'cause you're hovering. you want me on crutches again? is that how you like it?" j.j6 roy scranton to throw up, but she closed her eyes and jumped and didn't open them until she came back up through the water into the light, dizzy and gulping. which choice didn't matter so much as that there was one, something being done. who's choosing? didn't mat­ ter. she was the one doing. she touched her fingers to aaron's forearm. "thanks for catching me," she said. "i could have really hurt myself" soon the interminable exodus, the weed-induced sense of ceaseless toil, dissolved against the newly exposed night sky, the moon cool and blue down upon them like a curved blade, the stars cold and far, and they came up the last stretch of canyon and scree to the plateau, where they found a circle of flat rocks around a charred smear littered with cans faded white by the sun, cigarette butts, and footprints. they pulled beers out of their pockets and realized no one had thought to bring an opener, so aaron and mel used their lighters. they lit another bowl and talked about how they couldn't believe how long it seemed but how short it was, how the stars seemed so brilliant, how the sky seemed everything and the night, walking like forever, was just so yeah. after a while they realized matt had wandered off. aaron touched dahlia's wrist. "help me go find him?" she nodded. off they went, leaving mel and rachel and wendy. aaron glanced back at wendy as they walked away. wendyb !miled an rnqcnat� �im aoout mwrral p mqwere c m(iwt en ltltf line i ���f! !now atr�ctlon, @til a dioii f�!!illzea n f�una in n ilu�nin�1 � mfm�r�a ��until ne ���f!, ana;w�rk, �ne imi!take cl m !cnool al m�u�n," "you ana iione of aaron al �oin� witt �f frontifi in history iliings tb ater int� tnerew� on'tffiat· nanhfm r�df' �efile �f ni�nt!�, a curvd p the i�t qfounj erea \�lli foot�rin�, eo noon1 melmej adout now w!nortit �!eeffid wasj�t!o off,a�on war porn u7 wendy barely shrugged, her lip half-curled in a sneer. aaron smiled and turned to follow dahlia. they chatted their way back down the canyon. dahlia told him about the people who used to live in the region, the ancestral puebloans, and how recent evidence suggested they were cannibals. "the navajo name, anaasazf, means ancient enemy," she said. in fact, a dig just across the state line in colorado had found seven skeletons whose bones showed evidence of defleshing, chopping, marrow extraction, and burning. there'd been a lot of skepticism until a biologist from the university of colorado tested fossilized human feces at the site for myoglobin, a protein found in human muscle. "their shit didn't lie," she said, laughing. she talked about how much she missed reading the marks and fractures in old remains. she'd studied biol­ ogy until her soccer accident, then she got obsessed with bones, and an anthropology class turned her on to field­ work. she confessed she thought she might have made a mistake coming out to utah. she should have stayed in school and finished her phd. "i got an exit strategy, though." "you and matt gonna head back to seattle?" "one of us is, anyway," she said. aaron admitted he didn't have any idea what he was doing with his life, either. when he was a kid, he dreamed of fronting a punk-rock band. then he was getting a ba in history, not really sure why except he liked stories about things that happened in the past, and now he didn't know us roy scranton what the fuck. everything seemed changed. unfamiliar. disconnected. the scales on which he weighed possible futures were out of balance, and he didn't know how to set them right. "it's hard to see what really matters now," he said. "but i'll figure it out. maybe just ride my motorcycle back and forth across the country till i have a vision." "v i;:>"iou got a motorcyc e. "yeah," he said. "i'd always wanted one, and when i got back from iraq i just bought it. you have to know what you want, right, and when you figure it out, you have to grab it. what else is there?" she nodded at this, biting her lip, brushing his arm with hers. at a certain point, climbing down a pair of small boulders, he offered her his hand for assistance and when she came down she held on to it and deep in the canyon, stars overhead, they stood as if in another world and looked in each other's eyes. she felt a little dizzy and he leaned in close, closer, she could feel the warmth of his body and his breath on her lips, closer, she closed her eyes and he pressed his palm on her hip, she could feel him just back teasing her, holding, then, aloft, she rose up and kissed him. matt walked along the hardpack. from up here, the moon-colored blue plateau seemed nearly endless until in the distance buttes and spires erupted from the flats like exclamations breaking a sentence. his brain didn't seem to be working. nothing worked. who the fuck did he think. the fuck. them. the problem was rubbing a spot clean, dear am noise,oli aon, as t itin0ng �ometbi 1 �nould l�� aaron l��ut tne pi m�1tnen l' ��llna and wmarand hnatifi ili�aar kilo m�wwnat ty�rytnin w�w�ntto ] w�ntto n�e wnaole. ]u�t imowrou'r r�u want, w ��l� me be i h��tumb ir1ared befg �ir�o. that 1(1 not vir� �e�ly i wa �eilie guy !�ace, but de anythi fault. if s � nl� drm a �dlr �r �tan(� d�� ee� in (�1 (n�r \vorl� alzzj lfl� mtnohl1 ea n�rq� a f��1 11m ro�e urm� war porn u9 clear away the crosshatching, the problem was silence and noise. once things were silent he'd be able to see the solu­ tion, as they say, clearly, but there was too much noise. thinking thoughts like. impossible. something startled in a bush nearby. i should go back, he thought. i should go back and tell aaron he's no longer welcome. i can tell everyone about the pictures. tell him he has to leave. and if he hits me? then i'll hit him back. no i wouldn't. i'd lie on the ground and they'd laugh and he'd leave with dahlia and wendy and the other two, they'd go off and have an orgy. or what if i told everyone and they ignored me? do they already know? maybe they already know. how can you know what other people know? everything noise and fuzz. her you. remember that time we went to taos and slept in a teepee? or the hot springs we went to naked? maybe i should just go talk to her. be rea­ sonable. just sit and talk and work it out. explain. decode. i know you're upset. i know it's my fault. just tell me what you want, so i can fix it. i can't fix it if you don't tell me. help me be good to you. help me. he stumbled into a gully and sat against the side, his legs splayed before him, lying staring at the sky. now there's virgo. that wasn't virgo earlier. that was lyra? hydra? it's not virgo now, that's orion, and before it was pegasus. really i was supposed to be an astronaut. i was meant to be the guy who zoomed into the future, the one floating in space, but i never could be an astronaut. maybe i'll never be anything. maybe i'm cursed. maybe it really is all my fault. if so, what's the point of fighting it? what's the point no roy scranton of fighting anything? nothing. i've never done good things. i've never done bad things. what's worth hurting for? dahlia sank back onto the gray comforter and pulled him down on top. she bit his lip, dug nails in his back. he licked the salt off her neck. rough hands up under her dress, tanned hands on white thighs, fierce hands tugging her tank top, pressing her breasts. yes, she said yes, yes, she slid her hands down the muscles of his torso, his chest and ribs, she grabbed at his pants and fumbled with his zip­ per. she took him in her hand, the tense heat. he pulled off her tank top then undid her bra and was at her nip­ ples with his teeth. she said yes, yes. she felt herself burning with life, alive like the world, fire and blood. he slid his hands under her skirt and pulled her briefs off and threw them on the floor. he sucked her tongue. rubbing her crotch with his palm and thumb, he slid one then two knuckles deep and she said yes, oh god, yes. she pulled away and stretched, reaching for the nightstand, opening a drawer and pulling out a condom. she handed it to him. he stood up. "you ever been tied up?" he asked. she sat up and looked into his eyes, then smiled and took him in her mouth. she slid on him and sucked and licked, rubbed and pulled. then she let go and looked up. "tie me up," she whispered. "tie me up and fuck me." he reached over to the phone and pulled out its cord, then yanked the cord from the wall. he walked around the bed and told her to lie down across it. "make hesmi� �ne fell, m�m toget}j m�cord rbn "tnat's re , k )) "lt� 0 ay. "it'� ti�nr.)) "it'�fine," h w�cnorner, �� ili� �oor ' �n�aner ill' m� her wetn ��(k�a ner nl �1rhan�tlea "ruck me," "�eili,» ne� �� her hir. 't iii wantrou "�oulike to "i'mwwet "�ou\lke g "�e�, p\easl "yeah," he �1r over on 1 �atill the p m�edgeof t �ack at hill "put th( "yeah," 011 ii�a �im ack, �1 naff �11 tu�i�! , ff!, !�1 chwa�� ni!li� frwloo t hfr ni�. ifdur�! f !liq �i! ana mf1w ddin� n11 info (w� ne rllllt� ,orfnlil! ittonim, a ana too� ana lickf�1 ur' fuckffit," ut il� corj1 arounailit war porn ui "make me," she said. he smiled and shoved her back. she fell, looking up at him. he took her hands and tied them together over her head with the phone cord, looped the cord through the metal base-frame, tied it. "that's really tight," she said. "1' k " ts 0 aye "it's tight." "it's fine," he said, then kissed her, their faces upside down to each other, and went back around the other side. he knelt on the floor in front of her and pulled up her skirt and she opened her thighs around his face. he burrowed in, spread­ ing her wetness around, tasting deep. she moaned again, bucked her hips, wanted to reach and grab his hair but with her hands tied and beginning to tingle she couldn't. "fuck me," she said, "oh please, please fuck me." "yeah," he said, pulling away. he kissed the flower tattoo on her hip. "i'm gonna fuck you." "1 want you in me." "you like to be tied up, huh?" "i'm so wet, god, please fuck me now." "you like getting fucked all tied up, huh?" "yes, please, fuck me. c'mon and fuck me." "yeah," he said, then grabbed her by the thighs and flipped her over on her front. he pulled her toward him along the bed till the phone cord stretched taut and she was kneeling at the edge of the mattress, her knees on the ground. she looked back at him as he lifted her skirt up over her ass. "put the condom on and fuck me," she said. "yeah," he said, rubbing her hips, sliding a finger inside ju roy scranton her. the same finger he pressed against her asshole, rubbing it between her buttocks, and she jerked. "hey," she said. "shhh." "no, really, hey." "it's fine," he said, rubbing the wetness around her sphincter, then pushing his finger in. "no. no. i said no." "i'd"ts goo . "no wait a minute," she said, going cold inside. "untie me." "it's good," he said again. "tight." "no, seriously, untie me." his left hand slid along the line of her jaw, his finger brushing her lips. then he clutched her face and pressed hard in her cheek where her jaw met her skull, cracking her mouth open. he swept her briefs up off the floor and crammed them in her mouth and held them there with one hand while she bucked and tried to scream. he grabbed her top with his other hand and looped it around her mouth, cinching it tight like a bit and double-knotting it at the back of her skull. "shush now. you know this is just what you wanted." she felt him get up from behind her. she writhed, wailed muffled shouts, trying to get free. over her shoulder she could see him digging in her dresser and she kicked and bounced until she was on her back facing him. he had a bunch of her tights in his hands. she tried to shout and curse through the gag-her taste-choking on spit and cot­ ton. she tried to scream. "roll back over," he said, grinning, taking her by the lnhles a into tbe g, �a legs ur loa�he bo i�ytrage; be' �tr anhles to w me mattr (iim�ea on t� r�inforce the he�raddea ��lelnto me c w�reatne, co ;na "�nlililili, u'b' l�dw rou ana �ll!nnow," n ��t!out." �new� wd ii�r,rte�eno, lie, we�ening �fmeaaan �lleezea hard �ne went �melf, thlnj �llt offocus, t iliin�t thin! wnols this. 1 �o,whose , not mine. una �1r t' ! nu�m1, nl� fln�1r q �r�� ,cra(�! flooranj wiili�n1 aoo�a�1r her dr ili� war porn nj ankles and flipping her smoothly. she kicked, shrieked into the gag, but his hands held her like cuffs. he pulled her legs up in the air, forcing her weight onto her neck, and she howled in pain. she tried to kick back but had no leverage; he'd pinned her legs in his armpit. he secured her ankles together with a pair of tights, then dropped her to the mattress, her knees slamming to the floor, and climbed on top of her. he used another pair of tights to reinforce the gag. he grabbed her hard by the back of the neck, forcing her nose into the comforter. she inhaled the gray fabric, trying to breathe, could feel him on her, his flesh dense and burn­ ing. "shhhhh. it's okay now. it's okay. i saw you looking. i saw you and knew what you wanted. it's gonna be okay. hush now," he whispered, "or i'll knock your fucking day­ lights out." she was sobbing, trying to talk, trying to say no, don't, stop, please no. trying to get free but feeling her will evacu­ ate, weakening by the moment. he slapped her in the back of the head and told her to hush, then grabbed her neck and squeezed hard. she went slack. gray. feeling herself rattle loose from herself, thinking: who's this happening to-the room going out of focus, the gray fabric blurring. thinking: who decides things. thinking: where's matt, and what happened, and who is this. how? who? what's happening and who to, yes, no. whose body? no. who makes choices? no. it's not me. not mine. no. no. • • • ju roy scranton when he was done, he found a kitchen knife and cut the phone cord from the bed frame, got dressed, and walked through the house, dim and blue in the early morning, then out the back, past the fridge and blank-faced computer, past xena watching him from the floor, into the yard where the dying embers of last night's fire smoldered in whitened ash. a moment of indecision caught him there amid the party detritus, the empty beer bottles, the grease thick on the grill's black rack, the complicated flowers on the table, then he went back out the way he came, through the gate, got on his motorcycle, and rolled past all the quiet houses rus­ tling to wake now on columbus day, past the silver-black gleam of picture windows and past the yellow light shin­ ing from a kitchen or bathroom where some early-rising citizen prepared for the day. at the bottom of the lane, he turned west. bleeding over the redrock, dawn spilled across the land. monument valley was out there somewhere, where they'd shot all those old cowboy flicks, and in the south an isolate line of mountains massed white-capped and gray. to the north, the valley narrowed to a chasm, rust-colored cliffs closing in over the colorado, then the highway climbed out of the gorge, past the turnoff to dead horse point, and up onto the plateau, opening to flat land. silent where he'd left her, cut loose and curled in a wounded ball, dahlia opened her eyes. d okilitn �at�, �m olli�rill' v�r'dla(� '�nt loin· rlr·rllln! � laml�t babylon ili� lan�, �re tnti� an ilolat� ai' to ili� loren (11ffi �lmddout ilnt, ana ur urlea in i r�( fortn yo ��iain� me s ���r olack se i��(b ana s oomo� locuments ae rur�ana rass ,wilitrue, �� mink of ill�j(icyto � �l(ions fi�nt i��(i� officer �fwlmslgn more tnan ii mltmany h� meaafor iral me senior l wrote abou1 ��n the � and urine gull rum put forth your strength: bureaucratic construction now holding the soldier and man of no tomorrow over black seas under nay, we used not to call upon led attacks and suicide bombs young exulted in documents detailing takbir, gates of hell abide therein, tor­ ture and pass along main supply allah true. so think of the department of artillery, tank rounds and die, city to kill, employed to carry out the strike. the occu­ pations fight special officers definitely better than we gulf with significant success more than 12 hours. "but i think massive aerial strikes that many here said before pilots aboard the uss last week ahead for iraq's interim also went to baghdad university or the senior library at basra and command council issues wrote about the case of an iraqi man who ... " again the same, certain we send apostles by bench in water and urine dull rumbling tingling command of allah jji roy scranton lost. this statement has iraq's major museums and libraries l strate retribution and that time is despite detainees, in addition, �reast whl material assets oh yeah, she's bomb. "we're hit," the voice mawing d� and angle measurement with his eyes i left uptown, 29, of lomira, wisconsin. 'babylonian' mathematics jump the gun, groups of insurgents took over common the wooden ��miliism mountain of placus and should be allowed in. end of fuckma��ingjy ing where they killed seven, a child-ill-starred sire of an �ffi� as eas ill-starred care many push-ups you can do from the ambush r�rwffierock into the house when we need you to kill somebody, a sorinciae rowing widow in your house. the ancient culture is kill ��(�,�umnot them. yet as a mere infant �ntand ana now that you are, kill m�r�fr��uentl the first days after the war. even though he escaped the �n� action began at 5, his life henceforth one oflabor and killing ur, id two gis and wounding mellow, spaced out from waiting, says the sheikh the police shocked the motorist down the road. in-depth oral history of the war based on interviews with political leaders between the sexes in punic gulf any civic. these shall enter the garden resistance and us forces killed at least the light of his sky another in the fire, then the secret one read by jordan, a lot of pressure to produce and other interrogation centers how is it that here in babylon, i call you to occupy and said no title to be called to, abdul told ai jazeera tv under control 'ew�wiili anr cme c� hlll�� aan,alo( ntwnow a ��a no war porn "9 a strategy of weakness. by late summer pointed to the breast which had suckled him. officials expected to start drawing down hector, my son, but occupation forces of no more than 30,000 americans comfort from my own bosom, 130,000 troops, loosing the initiative to protect us from this man; stand not nowhere and after carrying out its increasingly managed disappearance, intelligence officers kill me as easily as though there is no parleying with him for some rock tv incidence of penetrating wounds. better fight at once, gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries or blast thus did he stand and ponder the heart, but achilles required far more frequently than in civilian taking up, i begin to feel of holes fort sill-berlin-new york, 2005-2015 r�i! oook has m� it in 1��), lir!taraninl0 llijournq to r �m circuitom m� �on� the w�o dr their d mawno dr the mr�reate�t �otm, hi� am mlwlo, ana hi �tln air ana c i mit thank �ronwen hr �ow�, gary atm�lary � ij�work1n� � �rovocat works of a� many blackstoc acknowledgments this book has been a long time coming. i began writ­ ing it in 2005, while still in the army, and finished the first draft in 2007, after having moved to new york city. its journey to publication-and into its present form-has been circuitous and difficult, with many obstacles and haz­ ards along the way, but also with many friends and allies who by their close reading helped make the work better, and who by their support helped keep it alive. my greatest thanks go to my editor at soho press, mark doten. his ambitious vision for \far porn was a refining volcano, and his insight, care, and boldness have been been fresh air and cool water to a parched and weary traveler. i can't thank him enough. i'm also immensely grateful to bronwen hruska, amara hoshijo, abby koski, rachel kowal, gary stimeling, and everybody at soho: a truly exemplary publishing team. i feel very lucky to have wound up working with people who care so deeply about books­ as provocations, as contributions to a conversation, and as works of art. thank you. many thanks to early readers helen benedict, peter blackstock, e. l. doctorow, jim fitzgerald, matt gallagher, 54) roy scranton travis just, phil klay, kseniya melnik, shakir mustafa, nawal nasrallah, hilary plum, joydeep roy-bhattacha­ rya, jacob siegel, j.w, and martin woessner. further, i am awed and amazed by the consistently superhuman levels of patience, acumen, and brilliance my partner, sara marcus, has been able to access reading and rereading this book. i owe whatever is beautiful or humane in it-or in myself­ to her wisdom, perspicacity, and love. in 2014, i had the chance to go back to baghdad for rolling stone. this visit was an important experience in its own right, but it also helped me rework the middle chapters of this book with a more informed eye. thanks to will dana for making the trip happen, to alison weinflash for arranging the logistics, and to phoebe st. john for her painstaking fact checking. special thanks go to everyone who helped me connect with people in iraq and to the iraqis and journalists there who took the time to talk with me: isra abdulhadi, samr abdul-satar, ghadah abdul-sattar, ali adhab, sarem dakhel ahmed, jane arraf, raad al-azzur, hassan blasim, matt bradley, hanaah edwar, borzou daragahi, haider falih, dexter filkins, alice fordham, haider hashim, naseer hassan, ahmed farouk lafta, quil lawrence, christopher mer­ rill, nadia fayidh mohammed, soheil najam, ayman oghanna, ned parker, methaq waleed, kael weston, the english students at mustansiriyah university, and all the others on mutannabi street, in the shorja market, and at the polls in al-saydiya. i am especially grateful to my inter­ preter on that trip, aziz alwan, may he rest in peace, and to my driver, ahmed qusay: brave, courteous, patient, and sere would h2 my fit �f� diffe �ftwork 0 i �fr�eant h, o�! mitcb filllffif �hoti wo!ade out �it! of ilii (�mn, city, �r(daca ��i tneory a r1�rinteaher mu�tafa, hattacna. rther, lam level� of ra marcu�, is nook i my�elfa�hqaa for erience in the mia&f yeo thanb ro �i�on phoeoe �to ci� thanb people in o took tnf dqul·�atar, elahmeo, art braalq, ih, dexter rket, ana at war porii us and streetwise, they guided me through the labyrinth. i would have been lost without them. my first visit to baghdad, from 2003 to 2004, was a very different kind of labyrinth, and relied on a different network of support. thanks to lieutenant chiarrez, staff sergeant hayes, homan, lieutenant juarez, sergeant first class mitchell, nick lehman (rip), "smokey" robinson, timmy shore, and javier velasco for helping me stay alive and sane out there. fta 4evah. bits of this book were published in different form in canon, city, fire and forget: short stories from the long w'llr (da capo 2013), the new york times, prairie schoo­ ner, theory and event, and "\,%rrior writers. these parts are reprinted here with grateful acknowledgment. 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 3 0000 157 010 632 i roy cranvon is the author of learning to die in the anthropocene: reflections on the end of a civilization, and co-editor of fire and forget: short stories from the long war. he grew up in oregon, dropped out of college, and spent several years wandering the american west. in 2002, he enlisted in the us army. he served from 2002 to 2006, including a fourteen-month deploy­ iraq. after leaving the army he earned a chung @ a-men project grafiabasica /getty images hy "roy scranton is merciless-and why should he be anything but? war's corruption soaks through every layer of life, and war porn drives home that truth with unflinching, and ultimately harrowing, honesty." -ben fountain, author of billy lynn's long halftime walk "in prose that rises to aphoristic, coruscating brilliance, iraq vet roy scranton has painted, in words, the equivalent of goya's war etchings. a rare and genuine masterpiece." -joydeep roy-bhattacharya, author ot i he watch a nd the storyteller of marrakesh "a harrowing novel of the iraq invasion and occupation, war porn exposes the dark heart of that war for all to see. a stunning accomplishment." -ma gallagher, author of youngblood isbn: 978-1-61695-715-5 111111111111111111111111111111 i lfilfli"llfii catholic peacebuilding and mining; peacebuilding, development, and ecology; 1 routledge studies in religion catholic peacebuilding and mining integral peace, development, and ecology edited by caesar a. montevecchio and gerard f. powers catholic peacebuilding and mining this book explores the role of catholic peacebuilding in addressing the global mining industry. mining is intimately linked to issues of conflict, human rights, sustainable development, governance, and environmental justice. as an institution of significant scope and scale with a large network of actors at all levels and substantial theoretical and ethical resources, the catholic church is well positioned to acknowledge the essential role of mining, while challenging unethical and harmful practices, and promoting integral peace, development, and ecology. drawing together theology, ethics, and praxis, the volume reflects the diversity of catholic action on mining and the importance of an integrated approach. it includes contributions by an international and inter disciplinary range of scholars and practitioners. they examine catholic action on mining in el salvador, peru, colombia, the democratic republic of the congo, and the philippines. they also address general issues of corporate social responsibility, human rights, development, ecology, and peacebuilding. the book will be of interest to scholars of theology, social ethics, and catholic studies as well as those specializing in development, ecology, human rights, and peace studies. caesar a. montevecchio is assistant director of the catholic peacebuilding network based in the kroc institute for international peace studies of the keough school of global affairs at the university of notre dame, usa. gerard f. powers is coordinator of the catholic peacebuilding network and director of catholic peacebuilding studies in the kroc institute for international peace studies of the keough school of global affairs at the university of notre dame, usa. routledge studies in religion former muslims in europe between secularity and belonging maria vliek religion and violence in western traditions selected studies edited by andré gagné, jennifer guyver, and gerbern s. oegema jewish approaches to hinduism a history of ideas from judah ha-levi to jacob sapir (12th–19th centuries) richard g. marks spiritual, religious, and faith-based practices in chronicity an exploration of mental wellness in global context edited by andrew r. hatala and kerstin roger an anthropology of the qur’an ahmed achrati contrasts in religion, community, and structure at three homeless shelters changing lives ines w. jindra, michael jindra and sarah degenero enhancement fit for humanity perspectives on emerging technologies michael baggot catholic peacebuilding and mining integral peace, development, and ecology edited by caesar a. montevecchio and gerard f. powers religion, discourse, and society towards a discursive sociology of religion marcus moberg for more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ religion/series/se0669 https://www.routledge.com/religion/series/se0669 https://www.routledge.com/religion/series/se0669 catholic peacebuilding and mining integral peace, development, and ecology edited by caesar a. montevecchio and gerard f. powers first published 2022 by routledge 2 park square, milton park, abingdon, oxon ox14 4rn and by routledge 605 third avenue, new york, ny 10158 routledge is an imprint of the taylor & francis group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, gerard f. powers and caesar a. montevecchio; individual chapters, the contributors the right of gerard f. powers and caesar a. montevecchio to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the copyright, designs and patents act 1988. the open access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a creative commons attribution-non commercial-no derivatives 4.0 license. trademark notice: product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. british library cataloguing-in-publication data a catalogue record for this book is available from the british library library of congress cataloging-in-publication data a catalog record has been requested for this book isbn: 978-0-367-54508-6 (hbk) isbn: 978-0-367-55604-4 (pbk) isbn: 978-1-003-09427-2 (ebk) doi: 10.4324/9781003094272 typeset in sabon by mps limited, dehradun https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272 to the memory of robert j. schreiter, c.pp.s. (1947–2021), an inspiring artisan of peace. http://taylorandfrancis.com http://taylorandfrancis.com contents acknowledgments x notes on contributors xi introduction 1 c a e s a r a . m o n t e v e c c h i o a n d g e r a r d f . p o w e r s 1 mining and peace: a scriptural reflection 10 c a r d i n a l p e t e r k . a . t u r k s o n section i catholic engagement on mining in conflict zones 17 2 religion and extractive industries: ethics, practice, and engagement 19 k a t h e r i n e m a r s h a l l 3 the church in colombia and extractives: pastoral accompaniment using an eco-theology of peace 33 s a n d r a p o l a n í a r e y e s a n d h é c t o r f a b i o h e n a o 4 the mining industry, conflict, and the church’s commitment in the democratic republic of the congo 45 r i g o b e r t m i n a n i , s j 5 mining in the philippines: a catholic peacebuilding approach 54 k a r l m . g a s p a r , c s s r 6 dynamics between the state, mining companies, and indigenous peoples in peru 67 j o s é b a y a r d o c h a t a p a c o r i c o n a 7 the mining struggle in el salvador and the role of the catholic church 80 a n d r é s m c k i n l e y section ii mining and peace in catholic theology and ethics 93 8 a just mining framework for the ethics of extraction of natural resources and integral peace 95 t o b i a s w i n r i g h t 9 integral ecology, just peace, and mining 117 a n n a f l o e r k e s c h e i d a n d d a n i e l p . s c h e i d 10 mining, catholic social teaching, and international human rights 133 d o u g l a s s c a s s e l 11 development as depth: towards a theology of integral human development 155 c l e m e n s s e d m a k 12 catholic development ethics, mining, and peace: attending to the market’s limitations 169 a l b i n o b a r r e r a , o p 13 good governance for mining and the promotion of peace in africa 190 e l i a s o . o p o n g o , s j 14 mining and the call for solidarity: the networks we have and the synodal network the church is called to be 202 v i n c e n t j . m i l l e r 15 the mining industry: the journey from impunity to consent 221 r a y m o n d o f f e n h e i s e r viii contents 16 hardrock mining, climate change, and conflict: reflections through the lens of catholic social thought 240 w i l l i a m n . h o l d e n a n d c a e s a r a . m o n t e v e c c h i o concluding reflections 257 l a u r i e j o h n s t o n index 269 contents ix acknowledgments this book is an initiative of the catholic peacebuilding network (cpn). it would not have been possible without the sustained and generous support of cpn’s secretariat by the university of notre dame’s kroc institute for international peace studies, part of the keough school of global affairs. we are grateful to the kroc institute for hosting the authors’ colloquium, and to caritas internationalis, catholic relief services, the catholic theological society of america, the catholic university of america’s institute for policy research, georgetown university’s berkley center for religion, peace and world affairs, the us conference of catholic bishops’ office of international justice and peace, and the university of notre dame’s pulte institute for global development of the keough school for hosting events that contributed to this endeavor. since the initiative was conceived in 2014, the cpn steering committee has provided invaluable support and guidance. we are especially grateful to the contributors for their patience and dedication to the project, especially given the limitations and stresses of the covid-19 pandemic. and we thank catherine r. osborne for providing copy editing services. contributors albino barrera, op, is a professor of theology and economics at providence college. he is a friar of the st. joseph province (new york) of the order of preachers. his most recent book is catholic missionaries and their work with the poor: mitigating market-government failure in emerging nations (2019). douglass cassel is professor emeritus in the law school at the university of notre dame and a notre dame presidential fellow. he is a scholar, practi tioner, and commentator on international human rights law, specializing in issues of business and human rights, regional human rights systems, and international criminal and humanitarian law. karl m. gaspar, cssr, is a professor of missiology at the st. alphonsus theological and mission institute (davao city), and a redemptorist brother. he serves as a consultant to the philippine bishops’ commission on indigenous peoples and has been engaged in multiple social initiatives promoting indigenous rights, human rights, peacebuilding, and inter faith dialogue. héctor fabio henao is a catholic priest of the archdiocese of bogotá in colombia. he is the director of cáritas colombiana and of the national social pastoral of the episcopal conference of colombia. he is a past president of colombia’s national council for peace, reconciliation, and coexistence, and currently is coordinator of its territorial peace commission. william n. holden is an associate professor in the department of geography and b.sc. in environmental science at the university of calgary. he is also a research associate with the canadian institute of resources law. his current work focuses on the philippines, climate change, the efficacy of mining as a development strategy, insurgency/ counterinsurgency warfare, state terrorism, and liberation theology and maoism as counter hegemonic discourses in the twenty-first century. laurie johnston is an associate professor of theology and religious studies at emmanuel college (boston). her specialty is christian social ethics, particularly questions of war and peacemaking. she is the co-editor of can war be just in the 21st century? ethicists engage the tradition (2015, with tobias winright) and public theology and the global common good: the contribution of david hollenbach (2016, with kevin ahern, meghan clark, and kristin heyer). katherine marshall is a senior fellow at georgetown university’s berkley center for religion, peace, and world affairs, where she leads the center's work on religion and global development. she is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in georgetown’s walsh school of foreign service. she helped create and now serves as the executive director of the world faiths development dialogue. she is the co-editor of women, religion, and peacebuilding: illuminating the unseen (2015, with susan hayward). andrés mckinley is a water and mining specialist at the josé simeón cañas central american university (san salvador). he has worked for 46 years with international organizations on sustainable development and social justice. his most recent book is la crisis hidrica en el salvador: hechos y retos (the water crisis in el salvador: facts and challenges) (2018). vincent j. miller is the gudorf chair of catholic theology and culture at the university of dayton. he has authored numerous articles and book chapters on ecology, theology and culture, and theology and public life. he edited the theological and ecological vision of laudato si’: everything is connected (2017) and wrote consuming religion: christian faith and practice in a consumer culture (2005). rigobert minani, sj, is a congolese jesuit. he is the head of research for the peace, human rights, democracy, and good governance department at the centre d'etude pour l'action sociale in the drc. he is also team leader of the ecclesial network of the congo basin forest and director of jesuit social ministry in drc and angola. he is the editor of unmet promises of extractive industries in africa (2017). caesar a. montevecchio is assistant director of the catholic peacebuilding network at the university of notre dame’s kroc institute for international peace studies, keough school of global affairs. he coordinates the catholic peacebuilding network’s research initiative on peacebuilding and mining. he is the co-author of catholic approaches to transitional justice and reconciliation: guidelines for reflection and planning (2018, with tom bamat and gerard f. powers). raymond offenheiser leads the university of notre dame’s pulte institute for global development, keough school of global affairs. he is also a distinguished professor of the practice at the keough school. prior to xii contributors joining notre dame, offenheiser was the president of oxfam america, where his work included extensive engagement on issues of mining, development, and justice. elias o. opongo, sj, is senior lecturer of peace studies at the hekima institute of peace studies and international relations, hekima university college (nairobi), and director of the centre for research, training, and publications at the same university. his research interests include transitional justice, post-conflict reconstruction, extractive industries and conflict, state building and democracy, and religious extremism and violence. his books include extractive industries in africa: addressing conflicts and integrating sustainable development (2018) and informal mining and family vulner ability in kenya, zambia, and zimbabwe (2016). josé bayardo chata pacoricona is a lawyer working with the human rights, indigenous rights, and environment section of derechos humanos y medio ambiente––puno (dhuma). dhuma began as the vicariate of solidarity within the catholic prelature of juli, peru. it is now an independent ngo that focuses on defending the legal rights of indigenous peoples and the environment in the puno region of peru. sandra polanía-reyes is an associate professor of economics at the university of navarra (pamplona). she is a development economist working at the intersection of experimental economics and prosocial behavior. her research focuses on the design and evaluation of effective behavioral policy interventions in developing countries. gerard f. powers is director of catholic peacebuilding studies and coordinator of the catholic peacebuilding network at the kroc institute for international peace studies, keough school of global affairs, university of notre dame. he specializes in the ethics of the use of force; religion, conflict, and peacebuilding; and ethics and u.s. foreign policy. he is the co-editor of peacebuilding: catholic theology, ethics and praxis (2010, with robert j. schreiter and r. scott appleby) and strategies of peace: transforming conflict in a violent world (2010, with daniel philpott). anna floerke scheid is an associate professor of theology at duquesne university (pittsburgh). her research focuses on the ethics of war and peacebuilding, restorative justice, political resistance, religion and violence, and racial justice. she is the author of just revolution: a christian ethic of political resistance and social transformation (2015). daniel p. scheid is an associate professor of theology at duquesne university (pittsburgh). his work focuses on interreligious ecological ethics, drawing on catholic social thought and comparative theology, with particular attention to catholic-hindu and catholic-buddhist dialogue. contributors xiii he is the author of the cosmic common good: religious grounds for ecological ethics (2016). clemens sedmak is a professor of social ethics in the keough school of global affairs at the university of notre dame. he also is a concurrent professor at notre dame’s center for social concerns and in its department of theology, and is interim director of the nanovic institute for european studies. his books include the capacity to be displaced: resilience, mission, and inner strength (2017) and a church of the poor: pope francis and the transformation of orthodoxy (2016). cardinal peter k.a. turkson is prefect of the vatican’s dicastery for promoting integral human development, a position he has held since the dicastery’s inception in 2017. previously he was president of the pontifical council for justice and peace (2009–2017) and archbishop of cape coast in ghana (1992–2009). he has been a chancellor of the catholic university college of ghana since 2003. tobias winright is an associate professor in both the department of theo logical studies and the albert gnaegi center for health care ethics at saint louis university. his research and teaching interests include just war theory, criminal justice ethics, ecological theology, catholic social thought, and bioethics. his publications include green discipleship: catholic theological ethics and the environment (2011) and can war be just in the 21st century? ethicists engage the tradition (2015, co-editor with laurie johnston). xiv contributors introduction caesar a. montevecchio and gerard f. powers mining is essential to life as we know it. power plants, solar arrays, cell phones, computers, buildings, cars, and an infinite number of other items depend on mining. yet mining is also a factor in many of the world’s most intractable conflicts, intimately linked to violence, human rights abuses, environmental degradation, unsustainable development practices, and poor governance. whether mining is a force for good or ill depends on many factors: the material mined, end uses and users, policies and practices of mining companies, the quality of governance, the role of affected communities, socio-economic-cultural contexts, and mining’s place in broader development plans. as many authors in this book point out, there is no one-size-fits-all ethical approach to mining. the relevance of mining to catholic peacebuilding has been evident as the catholic peacebuilding network (cpn),1 a network of two dozen church institutions, universities, development agencies, and peace organizations, has accompanied the church in the philippines, colombia, and the great lakes region of africa. as this book details, the taxonomy of catholic engagement on mining is varied. in the democratic republic of the congo (drc), where rigobert minani claims mining is “a structural cause of conflict,” the church has led efforts to promote transparency in the mining industry, including working with an international coalition in support of the dodd-frank legislation and playing an official role in reviewing dozens of government mining contracts. other examples include the philippines, where the church opposed president rodrigo duterte’s 2021 decision to lift a moratorium on mining contracts in key areas, and el salvador, where the church played a key role in that country becoming the first nation to ban metal mining in 2017. in colombia, church engagement primarily involves pastoral accompaniment and advocacy on behalf of local communities impacted by mines, and facilitating dialogue among communities, government, and corporations. and in peru, derechos humanos y medio ambiente—puno takes legal action to protect the human rights of rural and indigenous communities. reflecting this diversity of catholic action on mining, this book argues for an integrated approach to mining that has three dimensions. first, to be doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-101 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-101 conceptually adequate, it must marry a catholic theology and ethics of peace, justice, human rights, development, and ecology; all are connected, none alone is sufficient. second, it needs to connect ethics and theological reflection with church practice on mining, which would strengthen both. third, church engagement on mining should integrate local, national, and international dimensions (vertical integration), as well as diverse types of engagement by different sectors within the catholic community (horizontal integration). an integrated approach to catholic peacebuilding and mining the need for an integrated approach to mining is clear. from a global perspective, katherine marshall points out that mining is a factor in each of the seventeen un sustainable development goals, from ending poverty and ensuring clean water to promoting food security and peace. this interconnectedness is evident in colombia. the government, supported by key international actors, is counting on a dramatic expansion of mining— much of it in politically-unstable and environmentally-sensitive areas of the amazon formerly controlled by rebels from the revolutionary armed forces of colombia —to promote economic development and help deliver a peace dividend after the 2016 peace accord. sandra polonía-reyes and héctor fabio henao point out some of the difficulties in doing so. they conclude that, while there is “no linear relation between conflict and mining, … mining intersects and interacts with violent conflict in numerous regions” of the country. in some cases, armed groups rely on mining to fund violent activity; in others, government or private security forces use violence against those opposing a mine; in still others, a mine might generate conflict within a community among those who see the mine as essential for development and those who are concerned about its negative impacts on the environment or indigenous rights. despite the connection between mining and conflict, the fact that the 2016 accord, the world’s most comprehensive, did not address mining was “a missed opportunity to connect integral peace, ecology, and development.” this book addresses this first dimension of integration by answering pope francis’ (2019) call for the catholic community to examine mining through the lens of his teaching on integral ecology, integral human development, and integral peace in laudato si’. considerable scholarly work has been done on laudato si’, as well as catholic perspectives on integral human development (see cichos et al. 2021; carozza and sedmak 2020; ilo 2014), ecology (see dileo 2017; scheid 2016), corporate social responsibility and business ethics (see finn 2021; rebman 2020), and peacebuilding (see hawksley 2020; schreiter 2010), in general. but relatively little has been done to relate these topics to each other and to apply them, in an integrated way, to mining, in particular.2 2 caesar a. montevecchio & gerard f. powers several chapters of this book take up the theoretical challenges of integrating these different dimensions of catholic teaching. others address more practical challenges, such as the need to develop the business, technical, legal, and financial sophistication on mining necessary for the church to be credible and effective. three church responses to these challenges are common: mining is not a church issue, mining is good because it creates jobs, or the local community should decide. the first reflects a narrow ecclesiological response: the church is not competent to address mining because it lacks the secular expertise. the second focuses narrowly on just one aspect of integral development. the third prioritizes process over substance, and the local common good, often without adequate consideration of the national and global common good. each response is legitimate, but the claim of this book is that they are ultimately inadequate because they fail to take the integral approach called for by catholic social teaching. a second dimension of integration involves practical theology, connecting theology and ethics to church practices. practical theology, according to robert schreiter (2010, 366), “is an ongoing practice of reflection and action that keeps theory and informed practice in constant conversation with each other.” the catholic community is deeply engaged on mining in many places3 but, unfortunately, this aspect of lived catholicism has gone largely unexamined by and is not deeply grounded in catholic theology and ethics.4 theological and ethical reflection must catch up to catholic praxis, learn from it, and help develop new frameworks and ideas to strengthen and support it, consistent with laudato si’s integral approach. by putting scholars and church actors in conversation with each other, this book is a modest attempt to fill this gap. a third dimension of integration—horizontal and vertical—relates to why a book would focus specifically on catholic approaches to mining. mining is simultaneously radically local, in how intimately operations are connected to specific places, and massively global, in how the industry is part of complex transnational economic networks and is dominated by relatively few multi-national companies. the catholic church is one of the few institutions in the world with the scope, scale, and sophistication needed to match the scope, scale, and sophistication of mining industries. it has a rich tradition of reflection on peace, development, human rights, and ecology necessary to address the many dimensions of mining. it has an institutional capacity to address a range of problems from the local to the global levels, and across national divides.5 and its people power includes respected moral leaders at all levels as well as the capacity to catalyze a large network of grassroots actors. this book highlights the distinct contributions that the catholic church, as a transnational institution, can make, as well as the challenges the church faces in using its capacity for horizontal and vertical integration. while the church is doctrinally hierarchical, it operates in a highly decentralized way. introduction 3 it is not surprising, therefore, that much catholic action is similar to that in colombia: a mine-by-mine approach in which each case is addressed (or not) at the local level, often relying on some form of free, prior, and informed consent as a framework for pastoral engagement. in some countries, as is discussed in the chapters on the drc, the philippines, and el salvador, the church does not engage only at the local level but has developed national policies on mining. while regional and continental episcopal conferences have occasionally addressed mining issues, in the past decade, the church has recognized the need for more focused regional responses, developing new initiatives to facilitate coordination of church actors in two of the world’s most sensitive areas, the amazon and congo basin. at the global level, the holy see has convened consultations with church actors as well as with the top executives of the world’s largest mining companies. the work being done at these different levels and transnationally is impressive. but, as this book underscores, the challenge of translating the capacity for an integrated approach into actual collaboration among these diverse church actors at different levels is daunting. the structure of this book the book is divided into two primary sections, with one lead chapter. any reflection on ethics in catholic tradition is moored in sacred scripture. the first chapter by cardinal peter turkson, prefect of the vatican’s dicastery for promoting integral human development, provides a scriptural foundation for an ethics of mining and peace. cardinal turkson examines the way mining is present in texts about god’s covenant with israel, in the wisdom tradition as reflected in the book of job, and in the perfection of the covenant in christ. situating mining in these contexts offers a challenge to the mining industry to recognize the ethical values associated with the kingdom of god and provides a foundation for incorporating mining into areas of theological ethics, like ecology, human rights, and peace. the first section is about mining and lived religion. it begins with a framing essay by katherine marshall on the role of a diverse set of religious actors in advocacy and action on mining. as a corrective to the fact that religious actors do not have an accepted place in mining debates, she calls for “a well conceived, collaborative, multireligious engagement” on ethical challenges associated with mining. her chapter is followed by essays on catholic engagement on mining in specific countries. with support from cpn, caritas colombia developed a database to track diocesan-level mining engagement in the country. based on that data, sandra polanía-reyes and msgr. héctor fabio henao propose a pastoral framework for expanded and more coordinated engagement by the church at the local, national, and international levels, especially for the sake of supporting colombia’s 2016 peace agreement. rigobert minani, sj, then addresses the drc and some of the most systematic catholic efforts anywhere to address mining and conflict. 4 caesar a. montevecchio & gerard f. powers he focuses especially on the church’s efforts to promote transparency and good governance, and to use the church’s growing expertise on mining and catholic social teaching to help reveal the limits of the promises of the extractive industry. karl m. gaspar, cssr, traces the way mining gradually became a focal point of the peacebuilding work of catholic leaders in the philippines and explains how mining remains closely associated with violations against indigenous peoples and continuing violence, especially in the southern region of mindanao. in peru, the organization derechos humanos y medio ambiente—puno (dhuma) does extensive legal work to defend indigenous communities against mining. josé bayardo chata pacoricona outlines some of the major legislative and legal challenges dhuma has faced. finally, andrés mckinley, who worked closely with catholic leaders in el salvador on the world’s first national ban on metal mining, explains how the country’s water crisis motivated el salvador’s people and catholic leadership to mobilize for the ban. the second section considers these and other cases in light of broader themes in catholic theology and ethics. tobias winright, analogizing to the just war tradition, proposes an ethics of extraction that includes a just mining theory with three categories: jus ad extractionem, jus in extractionem, and jus post extractionem. anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid undertake a constructive project to craft a moral framework to support mining and peace. they do so by combining the idea of integral ecology with the principles and practices of just peace theory, yielding a model of “ecological just peace.” in the following chapters, douglass cassel, clemens sedmak, albino barrera, op, and elias o. opongo, sj, give insights on mining in light of dialogue between catholic and secular ideas on human rights, development, and governance. cassel suggests that international human rights and catholic social teaching on mining are complementary. international law provides the catholic ethical vision with a practical vehicle for change, while the catholic vision offers an ethical horizon that goes beyond legal norms and can drive more substantial change. sedmak examines how the theological underpinnings of integral human development contrast with typical models of development in the mining sector in that peace and human flourishing are more important goals than economic growth. this means that the animating goal of profit maximization that typically drives mining must be restrained. in a similar vein, barrera passes mining through the filter of development ethics and argues that the inherent limitations of the market prevent it from being sufficient to regulate the problems of injustice and conflict that can arise from mining. finally, opongo, citing the role of corruption and weak government regulation in mining-related conflicts in africa, proposes that the catholic community do more to leverage its strengths to promote good governance. the remaining chapters from vincent j. miller, raymond offenheiser, and william n. holden and caesar a. montevecchio consider the introduction 5 globalized context of mining and the fraught dynamics between the global north and global south. miller argues that the problems with mining are a network problem more than a failure of moral will. while catholics are united in christ, church networks of communion are no match for mining market networks. therefore, he recommends a “synodal ecclesial communications network” to deepen relationships among catholic consumers and catholics impacted by mining. offenheiser builds on his experience engaging mining industry leaders and urges catholic actors to take a nuanced approach that acknowledges progress the mining industry has made in addressing ethical issues in recent years. the catholic community needs to better understand the industry’s operations, priorities, and concerns in order to engage it successfully and bring about even more structural improvement for peace and the common good. hardrock mining for metals and minerals is often forgotten in analyses of climate change and mining, but holden and montevecchio present four ways in which the interfaces of climate change and hardrock mining impact justice and peace: by contributing to climate injustice; by entrenching an “extractivist” model of economic development; by engendering violence against environmental and human rights activists; and through increased demand for uranium for nuclear power which increases risks of nuclear proliferation. in the book’s conclusion, laurie johnston identifies some strengths in the catholic approach to mining and peace as well as some challenges and areas of needed growth: a focus on right relationships, but a need to improve the church’s institutional transparency; cooperation with robust partnership networks, but a need to better include women’s experiences and leadership; a focus on a big-picture common good, but a need to accept difficult tradeoffs; a capacity for prophetic criticism, but a need to balance it with practical cooperation; and consideration of the long term, but a need to re-think aspects of catholic social thought that reflect lingering anthropocentrism. aspirations of the book this book is part of a wider effort by cpn to address issues of mining and peace. prior to embarking on this book, cpn convened three colloquia for scholars and practitioners to explore the state of the question and the need for a project on mining. an additional colloquium was held for authors of this book. to complement these colloquia, cpn convened a three-year interest group on mining and peace under the auspices of the catholic theological society of america. as noted, cpn also collaborated with caritas colombia on an extensive database on catholic engagement on extractives. in addition to these efforts to improve understanding of the issue, cpn has served on the conflict resources and peacebuilding working group of caritas internationalis and has participated in several of the holy see’s meetings with mining executives and catholic actors mentioned above. 6 caesar a. montevecchio & gerard f. powers given that this book arises out of cpn’s wider efforts to connect scholars and church actors engaging mining, it has two main audiences: scholars and practitioners. theologians, especially social ethicists, are a primary audience but this book will also be of interest to social scientists focusing on religion, specialists in business ethics and human rights law, and scholars in development, environmental, and peace studies. scholars can find in this book grist for the research mill, grist harvested from insights and reflection on the lived experience of catholic peacebuilders who have been laboring in the field. practitioners should also find this book helpful. it offers lessons from catholics addressing mining and conflict around the world. it can also provide a theoretical edifice to support and strengthen ethical analysis, advocacy, and other forms of engagement on mining, and can indicate ways in which ecology, human rights, development, and peace can be woven together and better incorporated into the thinking and practice of the worldwide catholic community. r. scott appleby (2010, 19) has observed that “it is not enough … for catholics to expect secular experts to understand the theology of catholic peacebuilding. catholics must provide translation services.” we recognize that catholics engaging in peacebuilding, around mining and otherwise, are always doing so in concert with a range of religious and secular actors from varied backgrounds and value commitments. those coalitions are essential for effective engagement on mining. this book offers some of that needed bridging by which other religious actors, scholars, policymakers, corporate executives, and social activists can better understand and perhaps appreciate the value of a catholic peacebuilding approach to mining. that includes a deep well of ethical reflection and a vocabulary and framework for analyzing and critiquing injustice, malfeasance, and violence; dedication to an integral approach that tries to hold in balance all the various dimensions of the problems associated with mining; spiritual and pastoral resources that can offer distinctive forms of support for reconciliation, conflict transformation, social cohesion, and solidarity; rootedness in and commitment to impacted local communities; and a transnational institutional network that can dialogue and advocate in ways commensurate with the global dimensions of mining. at the same time, it reinforces the need for the catholic community to understand, appreciate, and collaborate with other religious and secular scholars and practitioners in developing approaches to mining that are more just, peaceful, and sustainable. notes 1 see http://cpn.nd.edu. 2 for example, peppard and vicini (2015) and opongo (2018) are two works that address extractive industries and natural resources from a catholic ethical perspective, but only minimally cover mining specifically. introduction 7 http://cpn.nd.edu 3 international catholic organizations working on mining include the justice, peace, and integrity of creation commission of the usg-uisg (https:// www.jpicroma.org/), cidse (https://www.cidse.org/), and the mining working group (https://miningwg.com/). regional and national examples include iglesias y minería in south america (http://iglesiasymineria.org/), rebac in africa (https://rebaccongobassin.org/), cepas in the drc (https://www.cepas.online/), and alyansa tigil mina in the philippines (https://www.alyansatigilmina.net/). 4 william p. george (2019) develops innovative theological ethics for mining and examines many different cases. but conflict and peace are not central concerns of his study, nor does he consider the roles and capacities of diverse church actors. rigobert minani (2017) examines injustices around mining but does not incorporate catholic social teaching. 5 though it is not exactly a non-governmental organization (ngo), evaluating the catholic church as a transnational institution contributes to a need for additional research on the role of ngos in mining since the church often functions like one and works closely with many catholic and secular ngos. according to deonandan and tatham (2016), there is a need for a better critical understanding of the contributions that ngos can make, and in the catholic context, the principle of subsidiarity could be a valuable tool for mitigating problems of cooptation that they note can often arise as ngos work with local communities on mining (280–81). references appleby, r. scott. 2010. “peacebuilding and catholicism.” in peacebuilding: catholic theology, ethics, and praxis, edited by robert j. schreiter, r. scott appleby, and gerard f. powers, 3–22. maryknoll, ny: orbis. carozza, paolo g., and clemens sedmak, eds. 2020. the practice of human development and dignity. notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. cichos, katarzyna, jarosław sobkowiak, radosław zenderowski, ryszard f. sadowski, beata zbarachewicz, and stanisław dzieoński, eds. 2021. sustainable development goals and the catholic church: catholic social teaching and the un’s agenda 2030. london: routledge. 10.4324/9781003053620. deonandan, kalowatie, and rebecca tatham. 2016. “the role of women and non-governmental organisations in the resistance to the new extraction in latin america: the unexplored dimensions.” in mining in latin america: critical approaches to extraction, edited by kalowatie deonandan and michael l. dougherty, 273–283. london: routledge. 10.4324/9781315686226. dileo, daniel, ed. 2017. all creation is connected: voices in response to pope francis’s encyclical on ecology. winona, mn: anselm academic. finn, daniel k., ed. 2021. business ethics and catholic social thought. washington, dc: georgetown university press. 10.2307/j.ctv1k03fz4. francis. 2019. “address to participants at the meeting promoted by the dicastery for promoting integral human development on the mining industry.” may 3, 2019. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2019/may/documents/papa francesco_20190503_incontro-industria-mineraria.html. george, william p. 2019. mining morality: prospecting for ethics in a wounded world. lanham, md: lexington books. hawksley, theodora. 2020. peacebuilding and catholic social teaching. notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. 8 caesar a. montevecchio & gerard f. powers https://www.jpicroma.org https://www.jpicroma.org https://www.cidse.org https://miningwg.com http://iglesiasymineria.org https://rebaccongobassin.org https://www.cepas.online https://www.alyansatigilmina.net http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003053620 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315686226 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1k03fz4 http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va ilo, stan chu. 2014. the church and development in africa: aid and development from the perspective of catholic social ethics. eugene, or: wipf and stock. minani, rigobert, ed. 2017. unmet promises of extractive industries in africa: corporate social responsibility: case study of kitwe (zambia) and katanga (drc). nairobi: paulines africa. opongo, elias, ed. 2018. extractive industries in africa: addressing conflicts and integrating sustainable development. nairobi: paulines africa. peppard, christiana z., and andrea vicini, eds. 2015. just sustainability: technology, ecology, and resource extraction. maryknoll, ny: orbis. rebman, robert. 2020. “corporate responsibility, catholic social teaching, and the common good: reporting, accountability, and stakeholder action.” journal of catholic social thought 17, no. 2: 99–117. 10.5840/jcathsoc20201718. scheid, daniel p. 2016. the cosmic common good: religious grounds for ecological ethics. new york: oxford university press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780199359431.001.0001. schreiter, robert j. 2010. “a practical theology of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” in peacebuilding: catholic theology, ethics, and praxis, edited by robert j. schreiter, r. scott appleby, and gerard f. powers, 366–397. maryknoll, ny: orbis. introduction 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/jcathsoc20201718 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359431.001.0001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199359431.001.0001 1 mining and peace: a scriptural reflection cardinal peter k. a. turkson this book, born out of a larger project on mining and integral peace, addresses a fundamental question that has marked humanity’s life and growth for decades, centuries, and millennia. indeed, in terms of the human being’s relationship with the earth, besides agriculture which provides nourishment for human existence, mining and mines dominate human activity on the land, providing material for tools, instruments, building, and decoration. so indicative were metals of human ingenuity and technological growth in the past that they gave their names to the different ages and periods of civilizations in human history. thus, there was a movement from a stone age through a copper age, a bronze age, and an iron age. classical literature also referred to a silver age and a golden age. each of the different ages of history was characterized by the prevalent object or metal in use, even if it must be recognized that this development and history of the discovery of metals did not happen homogeneously in all geographical areas. nevertheless, and with the necessary caveat, it is not wrong to assert that, from its beginning, human life has been associated to varying degrees with the discovery, production, and use of minerals and metals. and since not all places on earth are equally endowed with these deposits, mining gave rise to vigorous trade early in human history. trade in minerals and metals continues to our own day, since we cannot do without them, even if the industry is fraught with tensions and conflicts between communities and businesses over land-use, and is marked by an ambiguity of purpose in the dignity-deficit with which it tends to leave communities and the environment. in what follows, and by way of a prelude to the essays in this book, i shall modestly and briefly present the way this industry and the minerals which give rise to it are used to present phases of religious history in the bible and some of its fundamental teachings, such as the transcendental character of god’s covenant law, as wisdom, and the perfection of his presence, as pure gold, through redemption in christ. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-1 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-1 the wealth of creation and the goodness of the “land of promise” in the second account of creation (gen. 2:4bff.), god creates a garden, which was destined to be the home of adam, whom god created from the dust of the earth and made a living soul. the river that waters the garden breaks up into four rivers on leaving the garden. one of these tributaries, called pishon, is reported to be flowing through a land endowed with minerals: “the name of the first is the pishon; it winds through the entire land of havilah, where there is gold. the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stones are there” (gen. 2:11–12).1 since the mention of the other three rivers and where they flow are not followed by any indication of their properties, some commentators consider the mention of gold after havilah to be a later addition. the canonical form of the account, however, would have us recognize that the earth (god’s creation) did not only consist of vegetation, animals, birds, fishes, and the human person. god’s creation (the earth) also contained precious minerals: a notice that prepares for the metallurgical work of tubal-cain (gen. 4:22). thus, if the second account of creation may be related with the first account (gen. 1–2:4a) and considered “good,” then the creation of an earth endowed with minerals and different metals, including those, like uranium, which can be used in nuclear weapons but also for peaceful purposes, is part of god’s good purpose for the life of humanity on earth. but in the general scheme of things in the bible, the story of the creation of heaven and earth in the book of genesis, as the setting for human existence and of humanity’s relationship with god, leads to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in the book of revelation, as the goal and the fulfillment of history through redemption in jesus christ. thus creation, with all its endowments and in all its goodness, quickly came to languish and to live under a curse for the sins of its inhabitants (is. 24:3ff.). since then, creation “awaits in eager expectation for the revealing of the children of god; for the creation was subjected to futility…in hope that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of god” (rom. 8:19–21). the earth and its endowments now exist under the stewardship of humanity in bondage to sin; and, as pope francis (2015, §2) observes, it is “the violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin,” that is “reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.” living in bondage to sin, the human person’s relationship with the earth and its resources, and his/her treatment of them, reflect his/her bondage, which is essentially the lack of justice towards god, towards one another, and towards creation. set within this relationship, mining can reflect this bondage to sin; but it can also reflect the industry’s response to a call to share in the vocation of humanity to redemption and to freedom to live in holiness and justice. (cf. lk. 1:75). mining and peace: a scriptural reflection 11 subsequently, the stories of the patriarchs attest to the possession of precious minerals as a sign of wealth (gen. 13:2) and their use for commerce and transactions (abraham’s purchase of land [gen. 23:16]; jacob’s purchase of land [gen. 33:19]). the exodus story continues to attest to the use of precious minerals as a symbol of wealth. the israelites receive gold and silver from their neighbors on the eve of their departure from egypt (ex. 11:2), which will contribute to aaron’s making of the golden calf (ex. 32) and the decoration of the tabernacle (ex. 35:24ff.). but reference to the earth’s endowment with mineral wealth comes up again in god’s presentation of the “land of promise” to moses: a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills (dt. 8:9, cf. too, 8:13). the minerals, like the fertility of the land, represent the goodness of the promised land; and they are a covenant gift of god and a sign of god’s gratuitous love, which is meant to be received in grateful obedience and fidelity. the warning about prostituting god’s covenant gift is severe! (dt. 8:13–14). postponing for a later consideration the religious values of these minerals, we may note here that the warning about abusing the good things of the land of promise is linked to an invitation to reckon also with the purpose of the use of created goods. created goods are bestowed on the human family, especially in the context of the covenant, as an expression of god’s benevolent goodness, and they are meant to be received with gratitude and in faithfulness to god, and used with concern and care for the rest of creation. mining and the contrast between earthly treasure and divine wisdom (job 28) the notices above about the endowment of creation and the land of promise with precious minerals and metals are complemented in israel’s pre-exilic and post-exilic histories by a lot of data about the abundant use of precious minerals in financial transactions, in temple and palace decorations, in votive offerings, and in household utensils.2 the golden age of israel’s history, the reigns of david and solomon, came during the iron age in world history. it was a period of great opulence and accumulation of wealth. david stored gold and precious stones for solomon’s building of the temple of the lord (1 chr. 22). the queen of sheba testified to the opulence of the palace of solomon and the temple, and bestowed on him more wealth (1 kg. 10; 2 chr. 9). biblical archeologists identify eilat, the southern tip of the dead sea in the jordan valley, as an attested mining site in ancient israel—but it was for copper. accordingly, the gold, silver, and precious minerals in the palaces and in the temple in ancient israel (2 kg.23:33, 35; 24:13–14; 25:13–16; cf. dn.5:1–4) must have arrived there from tributes, gifts, and trade. 12 cardinal peter k. a. turkson but it is job 28 that provides a rare disclosure of the art and skills of mining in ancient israel and in the middle east. this passage affirms that wisdom is divine¸ and is inaccessible to humanity despite its great efforts and marvelous skills, such as those it displays in mining precious minerals. human success at mining precious minerals, as hidden and remote as they are, does not suffice to give the human person access to wisdom, because wisdom transcends human efforts and labor. to make this point, job 28 refers to the mining of silver, gold, iron, and copper: “surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold that they refine. iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from the ore” (job 28:1–2); and proceeds to describe the details of shaft mining: “man puts an end to darkness and searches out to the farthest limit the ore in gloom and deep darkness. they open shafts in a valley … they sway suspended … they put their hand to the flinty rock, overturn mountains by the root” (job 28:3–9). the challenges of this activity to the environment, to development, and to the dignity of the miners are as real in this passage as they are today. with reference to mining and development and the dignity of people, it is very striking how the conduct described in job 28 readily calls to mind the words of pope st. paul vi (1967, §25) in his encyclical letter on development, populorum progressio: “by dint of intelligent thought and hard work, man gradually uncovers the hidden laws of nature and learns to make better use of natural resources. as he takes control over his way of life, he is stimulated to undertake new investigations and fresh discoveries, to take prudent risks and launch new ventures, to act responsibly and give of himself unselfishly.” what paul vi says here about industrialization and technological growth applies also to the mining industry; and the challenges which he goes on to identify, as bedeviling industrialization with a human face, also bedevil the mining industry, causing tensions and conflicts with local communities. the challenges which the pontiff draws attention to are “profit as the chief spur to economic progress, free competition as the guiding norm of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right, having no limits nor concomitant social obligations” (§26). but job’s message is clear: despite the preciousness and great value of the minerals and the skills displayed in their mining and acquisition, they remain created gifts, created activities, and created skills, incomparable with and not to be substituted with wisdom (job 28:12. cfr. prov. 8:10–11) and the search for it. as a divine attribute, wisdom and the path to it (the fear of the lord) are inaccessible to humans (job 28:12ff.; cf. baruch 3:15ff.). it is bestowed only as gift! solomon prayed for it (1 kg. 3:9), and god bestows it gratuitously on his people (baruch 3:36–4:4). the gift of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to baby jesus the three men whom the gospel of matthew calls “magi” (mt. 2:1–12), came from the east on seeing the newborn king of the jews’ star in the east mining and peace: a scriptural reflection 13 or at its rising (mt. 2:2). helped on by the word of prophecy to get to bethlehem, they offer the baby jesus gifts which are consistently described as gold, frankincense, and myrrh. while the three gifts were valuable items traditionally offered to a deity in ancient times, their presentation to jesus symbolizes the magis’ beliefs about the christ-child’s identity and his mission. frankincense, used in worship, is offered to jesus in recognition of his divinity. myrrh makes us think of the “myrrh and aloe” which joseph of arimathea and nicodemus brought for jesus’ burial (jn. 19:38–39), and it is in recognition of jesus’ death, as messianic and redemptive. gold, which is rust-free and non-corrosive, is offered in recognition of the kingship of jesus, which, according to prophecy (mt. 2:6; lk. 1:33; is. 9:7), is lasting, enduring, and eternal. metals and stones in the new creation: the splendor of the new heaven and new earth (rev. 21) the account of creation in genesis, with which human history on earth begins, concludes with the preparation of a garden in eden to be the home of adam (joined later by eve) whom god has created. this garden home was endowed with mineral wealth (gen. 2:11–12), as we have seen. the end of human history is presented in the book of revelation as a new beginning of human history in a new heaven and a new earth, since the first heaven and the first earth have passed away (rev. 21). just as at the first creation (gen. 1–3) god prepared a garden home for adam, so does god prepare a new home, the holy city, the new jerusalem (rev. 21:2) for humanity redeemed: “those whose names are written in the lamb’s book of life” (rev. 21:27). what attracts our attention at this point is the presence or the place of precious stones and metal in the presentation of the two dwellings: the garden home of adam and the holy city of humanity redeemed. while in the first (gen. 2:10–13), the river pishon flows around the whole land of havilah, where there is gold, bdellium, and onyx, in the holy city of god’s redeemed, the city itself and its street are gold, and its wall is built of jasper, whose foundations are “adorned with every jewel…” (rev. 21:18–21). adam’s garden home is endowed with and possesses gold and precious stones; the holy city that comes down from heaven, by contrast, is wrought in gold and is gold itself. thus, while in eden gold has the sense of a mineral resource deposit and an endowment of a terrain that can be mined, in the holy city from heaven, which is gold and which is adorned with “the glory of god and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal” (rev. 21:11), gold cannot have the sense of a mineral endowment to be mined. the holy city, which is gold and whose wall is built of jasper…” (rev. 21:18–21), is also “a bride adorned for her husband” (rev. 21:2). the holy city is the “bride, the wife of the lamb” (rev. 21:9). thus, the gold of the holy city cannot have the physical sense 14 cardinal peter k. a. turkson of mineral deposit; it must have the sense of a symbolism, whose meaning we may now briefly explore. the golden adornment of the tabernacle and the temple prefigures the holy city at the behest of god (ex. 25), moses took donations of gold, silver, bronze, textiles, skins, and acacia wood from the people to build the ark of the covenant, the table of the bread of presence, and the lampstands in the tabernacle; and, as the dwelling place of god among his people (ex. 25:8), the content of the tabernacle was wrought in pure gold. when wood was used, it was overlain with gold. similarly, when solomon built the temple of the lord, in the fourth year of his reign, as god’s dwelling (1 kg. 6:13), he overlaid “the whole house… the cherubim, the floor of the house with gold (1 kg. 6:22, 28, 30). for, as the metal that neither rusts nor corrodes, as already observed, gold was not just a store of value; it signified lasting value. accordingly, when kings did accumulate gold, it gave expression to their splendor, their power and might. but, most importantly, they also sought to appropriate for their reigns the metal’s attribute of a lasting permanence. when, however, the precious metal is predicated of god and of his presence, the unchanging and lasting character of the metal, as well as its brilliance, finds its worthiest symbolism, expressing the eternity, enduring perfection, and the glory of god. thus, the “holy city: the bride of the lamb” of the book of revelation is pure gold, because it has been made perfect and eternal by christ’s passion.3 it is not of any man’s making. it is pure gold by reason of its sharing in the nature of the divinity that dwells there. secondly, and by contrast with its prefiguration in the old testament, as well as other instances of human accumulation of gold as wealth, we need to distinguish between being something and having something. on earth, gold is possessed (having); and it is used as such. in the new creation, the holy city is gold (being), namely, completely invaded and filled with divine presence. the latter is an expression of the nature and essence of the holy city, where the purity of the minerals expresses the fullness of god’s presence. the former instance of “having” entails an invitation, indeed, a vocation, to pass from “having” to becoming: to “being” the value and quality of what is possessed. conclusion the symbolic use of precious metal in the scriptures ascribe to the metal a character and a value that transcend its earthly value and usage, namely, as mere source and instrument of wealth. the scriptural usage of the metal and others in its family appeals to a character of the metals mining and peace: a scriptural reflection 15 which underlie their earthly usage, as valuable, precious, and lasting. but, ironically, these characteristics of the precious metals make them outlive the human person, who cherishes them and amasses them without, however, being able to share in their non-corrosive and incorruptible nature. gold and the precious metals attain their true destiny, as it were, in the book of revelation, when they express the truly eternal, non-corrosive, and incorruptible kingdom of god. in this sense, can the industry that seeks with such skills and dexterity to possess these precious metals be guided by some other objective and vision, besides that of possession or having wealth on earth? can the industry also be inspired and guided by the values of the kingdom of god, where these precious metals are truly at home, as it were, giving expression to the heavenly jerusalem, the holy city of god’s redeemed, as the scriptures suggest? can the industry adopt values of the kingdom of god as guiding principles: the “common good,” the “universal destination of the goods of the earth,” “peace and justice,” “concern for the poor,” and “care of creation, our common home”? notes 1 biblical references are from the new oxford annotated bible, edited by michael coogan (2001). 2 cf. gen 23:16; 33:19; ex 38:25; lev 27:25; jdg 8:26; 1 sam 9:8; ezek 45:12; 1 chr 21:25; 29:7; ezra 2:69; neh 5:15; 7:70; tob 5:15; job 42:11; mt 10:9.29; 17:24; 18:24; 20:13; 21:12; 22:19; 26:15; lk 10:35; 12:6; 19:13; acts 19:19 3 the idea of proving the worth of one’s faith and fidelity to god through testing and trials is well attested in scriptures (2 chr 32:31; jer 9:7; james 1:12; 1 pt 1:6–7; 1 pt 4:12–13; 1 pt 5:10; rev. 3.10). often, the purification, testing, and the assaying of precious metals, like gold and silver, provide analogies for the testing of faith. faith, tested and proven, is analogically presented as gold or silver tested and purified by fire (ps 66:10–12; prov 17:3; job 23:10; zech 13:9; 1 pt 1:6–7; rev 3:18). references coogan, michael, ed. 2001. the new oxford annotated bible, new revised standard version with the apocrypha. new york: oxford university press. francis. 2015. laudato si’. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. paul vi. 1967. populorum progressio. http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/ encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html. 16 cardinal peter k. a. turkson http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va section i catholic engagement on mining in conflict zones http://taylorandfrancis.com http://taylorandfrancis.com 2 religion and extractive industries: ethics, practice, and engagement katherine marshall1 religious engagement: framing patterns and legitimacy extractive industries present a classic challenge: they can be a mainstay and a powerful engine for good in an economy and society, but they can also be a source of distortions, tension, and conflict, to a point that the term “curse” is often applied to an abundance of such resources. policies towards extractive industries are thus keenly debated in development strategies. a particular concern is that extractives have significant bearing on many conflicts; they are often linked to political, intra-state, and inter-state conflicts that surround the control and distribution of resources, land, and the revenues these resources produce. in some instances, directly or indirectly, religious tensions and conflicts are also involved. the complexity of the diverse roles that extractive enterprises play is exemplified by how mining can be plotted to each of the un sustainable development goals (columbia center on sustainable development et al. 2016, 5). the many controversies around extractive industries include environmental challenges, physical scars to landscapes, inequitable distribution of benefits, propensities to large-scale corruption, and the impact on people directly and indirectly affected, including abuses of their human rights. as mining ventures extend deep into areas where indigenous communities live, their voices, rights, and ways of life are of central concern. deep-sea mining also involves issues around disruption of the environment, and law and international justice. each of these topics affect and involve religious communities. extractive industries rarely involve religious institutions directly. however, distinctive aspects of both extractive policy and operations have engaged religious actors in varying advocacy and negotiation efforts. effects of mining on communities and relationships between communities and mining companies in many regions have spurred religious activism ranging from social and spiritual support to participation in active protests against, notably, large mining operations and government support for them. ancient traditions of artisanal mining can also give rise to tensions and conflict. the significance for national and community welfare doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-2 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-2 of extractive policies and operations has led to active dialogue, analysis, and advocacy related to pertinent policy issues, such as taxation and environmental standards. individually and collectively, religious actors can be powerful witnesses about the impact of mining, sharing knowledge and experience and highlighting vital ethical aspects. religious peacebuilding, including direct mediation, is particularly significant in fragile and conflict-prone states, where many of the most controversial extractive investments are concentrated. their actual and potential roles draw on their presence in mining areas, the trust they enjoy, and their willingness to highlight abuses of human rights and the vulnerability of affected communities. this chapter explores evolving debates on extractive industry approaches and relevant policies, global and national, from the perspective of a range of religious actors who may speak from a specific tradition or community, or in an interfaith or intra-faith context. it situates various forms of involvement of religious actors, including the catholic church and interreligious and intra-faith bodies, within the broader, evolving policy debates about the roles of extractive industries in development strategies. its focus is primarily on global forums, referring to country experiences to illustrate religious actor engagement. driving questions include: how are concerns translated into action? where has the impact of religious advocacy and action been most effective? and what are likely and productive avenues for the future? systematic frameworks for religious engagement in these debates are not clearly defined. indeed, as with many development issues, efforts by religious actors to be part of global and national policy discussions can be met with skepticism as to their legitimacy in these settings. demonstrating relevance and legitimacy as a stakeholder is thus a common challenge. recent explicit focus by catholic church entities and the church of england are prominent examples of both interest and capacity to engage. debates and controversies extend from very local levels to transnational and global ones. each situation is distinct, and religious engagement at local and national levels shows wide variation. it may address new mining ventures, distribution of resources and revenues, or community impacts such as forced resettlement and contaminated water. efforts to address extractive industry policies at global and transnational levels also vary, both as to institutional engagement and positions on specific issues. cases of systematic and effective religious engagement on national policies are quite rare, however, and overall suggests rather fragmented approaches. there is ample room for more cooperation and informed engagement in policy debates. evolving policy landscapes debates about extractive industries and their roles in development have evolved significantly in recent decades. various broad trends in global 20 katherine marshall agendas have tended to sharpen the focus on both opportunities and conflicts where mining ventures are concerned. the debates have been shaped by broader shifts in approaches both to development strategies and to the roles that extractive industries play in country and transnational strategies. conflicts, especially with multinational mining companies, have contributed to shifts in approach and prompted engagement and reflection. these shifts have in turn affected the evolving engagements which have taken many forms between religious and development actors. these topics are summarized briefly here. corporate social responsibility and business practices the spotlight for international development has turned increasingly to the ethics and practices of private business, reflecting in part the rapidly expanding roles of private finance for poor country development. elaboration of approaches to corporate social responsibility (csr) has been one response, ranging from local charitable works to a full alignment of a business to social goals. raymond offenheiser’s chapter takes up the latter in its argument that church actors should focus on advocacy to make mining companies into genuine development partners that engage in a robust and substantive way with communities’ development goals. business and human rights (bhr) represents a parallel development, of which douglass cassel’s chapter is a good example. bhr reflects both internal and external pressures on companies to respond to concerns exemplified by extractive industry debates and tensions. a continuing issue is the voluntary nature of csr and bhr (see ramasastry 2015; carter 2017; gamu and dauvergne 2018). a significant framework is the un global compact, which was launched in 1999 and defines principles addressing corporate responsibility in a broader context. companies are to measure conduct against international law, though without binding or enforceable rules. in practice, while the frameworks are far better articulated than in the past, with admirable principles as the foundation, governance, and enforcement of laws remain the responsibility of the relevant state. corruption and governance the large resources involved in mining enterprises and often obscure financial flows have linked extractive industries to broader issues around transparency, corrupt practices, and capital flight. concerns include the realities of substantial corruption associated with mining ventures and awareness that imbalances of power and various interests at work mean that host governments and especially communities get a raw deal, benefitting little from lucrative agreements. global integrity movements aimed at bringing facts to light include the extractive industries transparency religion and extractive industries 21 initiative (eiti) (see milin 2016),2 publish what you pay (see van oranje and parham 2009),3 as well as broader initiatives by global integrity alliances, notably transparency international.4 eiti is of particular note, reflecting transnational efforts to make information more transparent, and set and enforce standards for good governance of oil, gas, and mineral resources. established in 2002, it requires disclosure of information along the extractive industry value chain: how licenses and contracts are allocated and registered; who the beneficial owners of those operations are; the fiscal and legal arrangements; how much is produced; how much is paid; where the revenue is allocated; and contributions to the economy, including employment. eiti now includes fifty-five countries, each expected to publish an annual report disclosing information on contracts and licenses, production, revenue collection, revenue allocation, and social and economic spending. a quality-assurance mechanism is scheduled for at least every three years to assess performance towards meeting the eiti standard and promote dialogue and learning at the country level. efforts to hold all eiti implementing countries to the same global standard is the key mechanism, and each implementing country has a national secretariat and multi-stakeholder group made up of representatives from the country’s government, extractive companies, and civil society. an international multi-stakeholder board oversees the standard from a base in oslo, norway. the weakest element is that eiti depends on voluntary disclosure. challenges include establishing consistency across national and international standards and meeting compliance costs. among issues that the eiti community has taken up is gender. this involves explicit assessment of the impact on women and girls of mining ventures and, more broadly, the benefits of diversity (or negative impact of a lack thereof). women and girls bear a disproportionate share of the negative social, economic, and environmental impacts of extractives, and the goal of enhancing women’s participation in decision-making around the management, development, and use of natural resources is now included in the recently revised eiti standard (thévoz 2019). principles of engagement with local communities and civil society organizations, including safeguarding policies applicable to multilateral financing organizations a marked shift in development approaches concerns the roles of non government actors (civil society) and approaches to engagement with communities. from an early tendency to rely on expertise, often external, with no formal mechanisms for engaging communities, practice shifted first to consultation, then to participation, and, today, to what is often termed empowerment, reflecting a conviction that local communities have both rights 22 katherine marshall and wisdom in determining actions for their development. such practices are expected and often required, for example in development strategies elaborated by development partners and in the poverty-reduction strategies that form part of debt-relief packages. the multilateral investment banks have been a focus of much discussion because, although their financing roles often represent a limited share of overall investments, their policies have tended to shape much of the dialogue around extractive policy approaches. for instance, the chapter by holden and montevecchio explains how world bank mining policy in africa influenced the philippine mining act of 1995. these processes have taken on special significance for communities that may not be fully integrated in national political systems, especially indigenous communities, where many tensions around extractive industries arise. this lies behind the effort to elaborate definitions and processes of “meaningful participation,” notably through the development of standards and practices for free, prior, and informed consent (fpic) (see goodland 2004; callies, curtin, and tappendorf 2003). these principles are enshrined in various international and national covenants, although there are continuing debates as to what each word represents and whether efforts to assure fpic are indeed applied in practice. indigenous peoples the rights of indigenous communities have particular significance for extractive industries debates, both because of egregious cases of abuse and because mining sites are increasingly being developed in areas occupied by indigenous communities. thus, various efforts have been made to protect and assure the rights of these communities, shown in the chapters from karl gaspar on the philippines and josé bayardo chata pacoricona on peru. one milestone is the 2007 united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people, which supports the principle that states should seek fpic from indigenous groups regarding any measures affecting them. environmental protection concerns about environmental damage and the impact of fossil fuels on climate change have mounted over the decades and can now be seen as a central strategic concern for development strategies and approaches. this concern has highlighted links between mining practices and environmental protection. the environmental focus has sharpened over the years, with attention to safeguarding policies that assure full assessment and review of environmental impact of mining ventures, as well as protection of rainforests and biodiversity. these concerns link also to the land rights of affected populations as well as, for example, the negative effects of mining ventures on water supplies. religion and extractive industries 23 fragility, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding many tensions and concerns about extractive industry practices and investments are centered in countries that are considered fragile, including those with violent conflicts. this reflects the association of poor governance and fragility, situations where abuses of power and neglect of sound policies and practices are accentuated. the concerns are heightened by the fact that tensions around natural resources can be a cause or accelerator of conflicts and can affect cost structures and risk assessments. such tensions and competition involving extractive resources have often proved destabilizing. over the past sixty years, an estimated forty percent of civil wars can be associated with natural resources; since 1990, at least eighteen violent conflicts have been fueled by the exploitation of natural resources. rebel groups can exploit natural resources to fund war and competition can sharpen polarization. war displaces populations and refugee movements can degrade resource bases. institutions designed to manage the environment are likely to be disrupted or shut down during a war or violent conflict (un interagency framework team 2012). this points to the importance of explicit attention to policies and practices towards extractive industries in the broader context of policies on fragility and its links to peacebuilding. religious engagement engagement on extractives between development institutions and religious actors, whether religious institutions, non-governmental organizations, or local communities, has been at best unsystematic and partial. in recent years this picture has changed, with a range of institutions and networks whose purpose is to build bridges. however, in many instances, religious actors do not have the assurance of a “seat at the policy table,” whether in discussing a national law on mining or on decisions on financing or negotiation of contracts and agreements (marshall 2021). there is thus no accepted “place” for religious engagement in many of the international debates that affect extractive industry policies or in efforts to address problems that arise. the role that the catholic church plays, at both local and global levels, has grown because of local church experiences with mining in different countries, the active diplomacy of vatican leaders, and recognition by transnational mining companies, the majors in particular, of the moral issues involved and the trust that many communities have in the church and its leaders. likewise, the extensive experience in the sector by the current archbishop of canterbury has contributed to his influence and credibility. religious insight, experience, and engagement are pertinent for each of the topics highlighted above. a question and challenge for the future is how a more systematic and interreligious involvement might emerge and how it might be facilitated and encouraged. pressures to go beyond rhetoric to operational programs and engagement in national 24 katherine marshall development strategies have increased, and tensions reflected in polarization of politics and shrinking civil society space suggest that a well conceived, collaborative, multireligious engagement might address some of the complex ethical, human rights, and practical challenges involved. extractive industry strategies and approaches in recent years, various stocktaking efforts, official and academic, have sought to address the increasingly sharp debates about policies and practices for extractive industries with an eye toward their impact on sustainability and development. these continue, with, in a contemporary setting, a particular focus on climate change implications in the leadup to the november 2021 glasgow cop 26 summit. but an important early example of both review and tensions was the extractive industries review (eir) initiated by the world bank in 2001–2003. it has been followed by numerous other stocktaking reviews, at transnational and national levels, but the essential tensions and difficult debates are illustrative of the polarization on the topic. the eir was established primarily in response to pressure from environmental non-governmental ogranizations (ngos), particularly friends of the earth, on the world bank to stop funding extractive projects. its framing was shaped by the earlier world commission on dams (wcd), which focused on large dam projects which had attracted active protests. but unlike the wcd, the eir focused on the world bank group’s (wbg) engagement with the extractive sector. it was led by emil salim, ex-indonesian minister for the environment and population during the 1980s and early 1990s. salim commissioned a series of fully independent indigenous case studies of the impact of world bank extractive sector activities on indigenous peoples in colombia, cameroon, papua new guinea, india, indonesia, the philippines, and russia. the report’s review and finalization encountered a rocky path. a draft of the report, released in 2003, omitted inputs from indigenous and non-governmental organizations; however, it concluded that world bank engagement with the sector was beneficial and should continue. civil society and indigenous organizations threatened to pull out of the process altogether unless the process changed, ensuring that the final report would be inclusive, independent, and guided by a multi-stakeholder advisory panel that would include at least one indigenous expert. the final report included recommendations for reforms in world bank policies on human rights and enforceable fpic standards. the world bank, however, did not accept many of the eir’s recommendations, notably on indigenous peoples and fpic, advising that the bank would only support extractive projects with free, prior, and informed consultation (not “consent”) that resulted in the broad community support of affected communities. similar debates continue to this day around how well the world bank and other multilateral banks have or have not implemented effective and religion and extractive industries 25 informed participation of key stakeholders in projects and standards, including approaches to assuring protection of the rights of indigenous peoples (see world bank 2021; environmental defense fund 2004). concerns expressed by indigenous peoples and civil society about problems with review processes and consultation procedures persist. weak follow-up and commitment to act on the findings of sector reviews generate frustration and disillusionment among indigenous organizations and leaders who engaged with these processes. there is a clear need for global mining companies, economists, and development strategists to be more deliberately engaged with communities. religious actors’ witness on the impact of mining can thus have great value. throughout these different phases and in different ways, religious actors have played growing roles and, in some places and from some perspectives, have had growing force. religious and interreligious approaches the most prominent instances of religious engagement on extractive industry issues involve the catholic church. since the catholic church is the primary focus of this volume, the following sections highlight initiatives of other religious communities and interreligious action, noting areas where religious involvement is weak or absent. with the notable exception of the interfaith center for corporate responsibility (iccr) and linked, more global efforts centered on the management of financial portfolios and engagement of shareholder power to influence policy and behavior, the wide variety of specific and primary actions by different religious groups are focused on specific projects and places. these include, for example, advocacy and protests by the international network of engaged buddhists focused especially on mining activities in myanmar and in the philippines, courageous support by arya samaj leader swami agnivesh for advasi communities protesting mining ventures in their areas of india, and interfaith efforts to address mining policies in zimbabwe and malawi. the church of england and the anglican communion more broadly have been especially active in policy and advocacy on extractive industries. the national investment bodies of the church of england—the church commissioners, the cbf, and the pensions board—recently published the extractive industries policy, in which they threatened to divest from extractive companies that fail to comply with its latest policy on ethical investment (church of england 2017). the policy was the culmination of two years of theological reflection and research on the industry. companies have a responsibility to uphold basic standards of human rights; avoid corruption and pay taxes; protect the environment and ecology; and monitor social and economic concerns, such as labor standards, community engagement, fair pay, and collective representation. the policy also bars investments in companies that extract on world heritage or protected sites, 26 katherine marshall and warns against the dilution of human rights and health-and-safety standards where joint ventures are undertaken (williams 2017). a variety of ecumenical initiatives have focused on extractive industries. these include, within the broader context of its faith and justice work, a diverse set of events and studies by the world council of churches (wcc) and its affiliates. for example, there was a session focused on mining at the 2015 world social forum (wcc 2015). the president of the all africa conference of churches opened an event with alternative mining indaba in 2011 by highlighting the negative impact of mining both for the environment and for human dignity: “the extractive industries sector has acquired notoriety for being non-transparent and unaccountable. most problems in the extractive industries are often in developing countries where minerals and oil are being extracted in communities and the proceeds do not benefit these communities” (mokiwa 2011). and at a 2011 wcc gathering, moving statements were made on the evils of mining, especially in tanzania: open pit mining in tanzania is destroying god’s creation. arsenic and heavy metals are contaminating water and soil. health of people near mining areas is deteriorating. skin diseases are increasing. farmland is contaminated. evictions from land have led to loss of human dignity. 400,000 small scale miners have been put out of work and many people have been displaced from their ancestral lands to make way for gold mines. tanzania as a whole is not benefiting from gold mining. (hughson 2011) in latin america, iglesias y minería, an ecumenical coalition of about seventy latin american christian organizations, was, from 2013, “united by the challenge of the impacts and violations of socio-environmental rights perpetrated by mining companies in the lands where we live and work.” believing in “the strength of popular organization in our lands, based on the intense work of our christian leadership and on the spirituality and commitment of our faith communities” the group came together to organize due to “the growing criminalization and persecution of our leadership,” whether on the part of the mining companies or national governments. a first meeting in lima, peru confirmed the importance of organization of the churches at the grassroots level, of exchange between christian communities, and of the debate about these issues at stake (iglesias y minería, n.d.). approaches to the ethical and religious approaches to mining ventures in islamic institutions and traditions merit a separate study, given extensive global and local experience and wide diversity among country situations. this experience is embedded in relationships between different states and religious bodies and evolving approaches towards, especially, care for the environment (see zakaria 2020; gade 2015, 2019). of particular note is religion and extractive industries 27 the rich experience in indonesia, where a succession of fatwas on environmental matters, including mining, have grounded advocacy on religious law (mangunjaya and praharawati 2019). a prominent interfaith effort, with a fifty-year history of activism, is the us-based interfaith center on corporate responsibility (iccr). initially established mostly by protestant christian leaders responding to apartheid in south africa, it has more recently pioneered the use of shareholder advocacy to press companies on environmental, social, and governance issues. catholic and jewish groups have joined and the coalition today includes over 300 global institutional investors from different religious traditions, holding more than $4 trillion in managed assets. iccr members include faith-based organizations, socially responsible asset management companies, unions, and foundations. iccr members engage company managements to identify and mitigate social and environmental risks resulting from corporate operations and policies. the fundamental proposition is that “responsible and sustainable business practices—and a strong corporate culture of ethics—are in the long-term interest of both companies and investors” (iccr, n.d.). iccr members conduct roughly 300 dialogues annually, with over 200 companies, working toward specific goals. iccr also hosts industry roundtables that convene multiple companies and investors, and other relevant stakeholders like ngos, community groups, and industry trade associations, to accelerate progress on specific issues. iccr has a mining caucus that focuses explicitly on extractive industry issues. the group focuses broadly on how the private sector, and, in some cases, in tandem or conversation with the public sector/government, can play a role in affecting the extractive industries and the forms of development that are taking place. a focus is the need (and the perceived current trend) to move towards more sustainable and ethical forms of development. by incorporating more voices, particularly those of indigenous people, the goal is to remain accountable and responsible to the impacts of the industry, past and present. since 2001, initially under the impulse of the uk-based alliance of religions for conservation (arc), models with some kinship to iccr have focused on mobilizing the financial resources and shareholder power of faith institutions. the international interfaith investment group (3ig) was established in 2005. while it accomplished some important foundational work, the institution failed. faithinvest, launched in 2019, seeks, like its predecessors, to establish faith-consistent investment principles so that their investments support environmental and sustainable development, including in the mining sector.5 religions for peace, the global interreligious body, has engaged on extractive industries through local interreligious councils but has yet to adopt a global approach or focus. during the leadup to the august 2019 global assembly in lindau, germany, regional consultations were held on major 28 katherine marshall focal areas that included just and sustainable societies (dennis 2020). however, neither in the regional nor the global consultations did extractive industry issues emerge as a central concern. aspects of extractive industry policies are relevant for the annual agendas of the g20, and thus the g20 interfaith forum has highlighted the work and roles of religious actors in shaping priority policy concerns, notably appropriate engagement with indigenous communities. a session at the 2019 g20 interfaith forum highlighted parameters of the debate, including the work of faith communities and leaders with local organizations and peoples to support resistance movements and challenge the mining industry in protecting the rights and livelihoods of the people most affected; philosophical/theological perspectives contesting greed and excessive reliance on technology; and an international investment and development perspective seeking to influence large companies and actors to shift approaches through increased corporate responsibility (finn 2019). addressing corruption in the industry has emerged as an area of focus (g20 interfaith forum 2020). extractive industries were alluded to during the 2020 g20 interfaith forum and will be on the agenda for the 2021 forum. concluding reflections natural resources have the potential to drive growth, development, and poverty reduction. the extractive industries sector plays a significant economic role in some sixty-three countries (international monetary fund 2012). however, many of these countries face challenges, such as resource dependency and weak governance, and many are fragile states. various multilateral organizations work to support these countries in managing oil, gas, and mining in ways that contribute to sustainable growth and development, protect communities, and reduce carbon emissions. major areas of focus are strengthening the transparency, governance, institutional capacity, and regulatory processes of countries’ extractive sectors. these efforts have particular importance during the covid-19 emergency, given the need for countries that rely on oil, gas, and mining to boost economic recovery and resilience and protect the poorest and most vulnerable, including those working in artisanal and small-scale mining. the challenges involved loom large. apart from longstanding and contemporary contestation around the optimal balance in extractive industry policies and specific challenges around human rights, many states and regions with underexploited mineral resources face intensifying conflicts accentuated by competitive pressures involving industry and local authorities. conflict has expanded an illegal and unregulated extractive economy. common cause and action among religious communities on social justice issues, including extractive industries, is an ideal. this should form an integral part of peacebuilding strategies and action. however, practical efforts to translate such aspirations into practice are partial and, in many religion and extractive industries 29 situations, limited, in part because of the diversity of local situations and different approaches to the complex issues involved. as is the case for the catholic church, most mobilization and advocacy is focused on specific cases in specific localities. given the profound ethical issues involved and the strategic challenges that extractive industries present, building on the examples of constructive religious engagement and cooperation among different parts of religious communities and different traditions offers significant potential to contribute to more sustainable and equitable development strategies at national and regional levels. notes 1 i offer appreciation to fr. séamus finn who provided valuable comments, and gabrielle mendelsohn for significant research support. 2 see https://eiti.org/. 3 see https://www.pwyp.org/. 4 see https://www.transparency.org/en. 5 see https://www.faithinvest.org/. references callies, david l., daniel r. curtin, and julie a. tappendorf. 2003. bargaining for development: a handbook on development agreements, annexation agreements, land development conditions, vested rights and the provision of public facilities. washington, dc: environmental law institute. carter, russell a. 2017. “csr earns a seat at the boardroom table.” engineering and mining journal 218, no. 12: 38–41, 72. https://www.e-mj.com/digital-editions. church of england. 2017. “extractive industries: the policy of the national investing bodies of the church of england and the ethical investment advisory group’s advisory and theological papers.” https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/ files/2018-03/extractive%20industries%20policy%20and%20advice.pdf. columbia center on sustainable development, un sustainable development solutions network, united nations development programme, and world economic forum. 2016. “mapping mining to the sustainable development goals: an atlas.” white paper. world economic forum. https://resources.unsdsn.org/ mapping-mining-to-the-sustainable-development-goals-an-atlas. dennis, chelsea. 2020. “organizing religious communities to work for a just peace.” nonprofit quarterly, march 9, 2020. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ organizing-religious-communities-to-work-for-a-just-peace. environmental defense fund. 2004. “environmental defense calls world bank response to extractive industries review all talk and little action.” august 3, 2004. https://www.edf.org/news/environmental-defense-calls-world-bank-response extractive-industries-review-all-talk-and-littl. finn, séamus. 2019. “extractive industries: the g20 interfaith forum outlines fundamental debates and dilemmas.” berkley forum, berkley center for religion, peace and world affairs, georgetown university. june 30, 2019. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/extractive-industries-the-g20 interfaith-forum-outlines-fundamental-debates-and-dilemmas. 30 katherine marshall https://eiti.org https://www.pwyp.org https://www.transparency.org https://www.faithinvest.org https://www.e-mj.com https://www.churchofengland.org https://www.churchofengland.org https://resources.unsdsn.org https://resources.unsdsn.org https://nonprofitquarterly.org https://nonprofitquarterly.org https://www.edf.org https://www.edf.org https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu g20 interfaith forum. 2020. “governance and accountability: fighting corruption in the covid-19 emergencies.” policy brief. october 13, 2020. https://www. g20interfaith.org/app/uploads/2020/09/2020_g20i_policy_brief_governance_and_ corruption.pdf. gade, anna m. 2015. “islamic law and the environment in indonesia: fatwa and daʿwa.” worldviews: global religions, culture, and ecology 19, no. 2: 161–183. 10.1163/15685357-01902006. gade, anna m. 2019. muslim environmentalisms: religious and social foundations. new york: columbia university press. 10.7312/gade19104. gamu, jonathan kishen, and peter dauvergne. 2018. “the slow violence of corporate social responsibility: the case of mining in peru.” third world quarterly 39, no. 5: 959–975. 10.1080/01436597.2018.1432349. goodland, robert. 2004. “free, prior and informed consent and the world bank group.” sustainable development law and policy 4, no. 2: 66–74. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/sdlp/vol4/iss2/13. hughson, greg. 2011. “report on the world council of churches international ecumenical peace convocation.” https://www.otago.ac.nz/chaplain/otago021114. pdf. iglesias y minería. n.d. “quiénes somos.” accessed may 24, 2021. https:// iglesiasymineria.org/quienes-somos. interfaith center on corporate responsibility. n.d. “about.” accessed may 24, 2021. https://www.iccr.org/about-iccr. international monetary fund. 2012. “macroeconomic policy frameworks for reseource-rich developing countries.” august 24, 2012. https://www.imf.org/ external/np/pp/eng/2012/082412.pdf. mangunjaya, fachruddin majeri, and gugah praharawati. 2019. “fatwas on boosting environmental conservation in indonesia.” religions 10, no. 10: 570. 10.3390/ rel10100570. marshall, katherine. 2021. “religion and international development.” in handbook on religion and international affairs, edited by jeffrey haynes. london: routledge (forthcoming). milin, zorka. 2016. “mapping recent developments in transparency of extractive industries.” business and human rights journal 1, no. 2: 321–326. 10.1017/ bhj.2016.8. mokiwa, valentine. 2011. address at the meeting of alternative mining indaba, cape town. quoted in norwegian church aid alliance, “african church leader challenges internatonal mining companies,” february 3, 2011. mines and communities. http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=10724 ramasastry, anita. 2015. “corporate social responsibility versus business and human rights: bridging the gap between responsibility and accountability.” journal of human rights 14, no. 2: 237–259. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2705675. thévoz, indra. 2019. “building a movement for gender equality in extractives.” eiti.org. august 28, 2019. https://eiti.org/blog/building-movement-for-gender equality-in-extractives. un general assembly. 2007. un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. a/res/61/295. september 13, 2007. https://undocs.org/a/res/61/295. un global compact. n.d. “ten principles of the un global compact.” accessed may 24, 2021. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles. religion and extractive industries 31 https://www.g20interfaith.org https://www.g20interfaith.org https://www.g20interfaith.org http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685357-01902006 http://dx.doi.org/10.7312/gade19104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2018.1432349 https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu https://www.otago.ac.nz https://www.otago.ac.nz https://iglesiasymineria.org https://iglesiasymineria.org https://www.iccr.org https://www.imf.org https://www.imf.org http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10100570. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10100570. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bhj.2016.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/bhj.2016.8 http://www.minesandcommunities.org https://ssrn.com https://eiti.org https://eiti.org https://undocs.org https://www.unglobalcompact.org un interagency framework team for preventive action. 2012. toolkit and guidance for preventing and managing land and natural resources conflict. extractive industries and conflict. https://www.un.org/en/land-natural-resources conflict/pdfs/gn_extractive.pdf. van oranje, mabel, and henry parham. 2009. publishing what we learned: an assessment of the publish what you pay coalition. london: publish what you pay. https://eiti.org/files/documents/publishing%20what%20we%20learned.pdf. williams, hattie. 2017. “church of england targets extractive industries.” church times, november 10, 2017. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/10 november/news/uk/new-church-of-england-policy-targets-extractive-industries. world bank. 2021. “extractive industries: overview.” updated april 26, 2021. https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/extractiveindustries/overview. world council of churches. 2015. “churches speak against negative impact of mining at world social forum.” march 31, 2015. https://www.oikoumene.org/ news/churches-speak-against-negative-impact-of-mining-at-world-social-forum. zakaria, faizah. 2020. “from fatwas to ecumenism: environmentalism in southeast asia.” berkley forum, berkley center for religion, peace and world affairs, georgetown university. november 10, 2020. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/ responses/from-fatwas-to-ecumenism-environmentalism-in-southeast-asia. 32 katherine marshall https://www.un.org https://www.un.org https://eiti.org https://www.churchtimes.co.uk https://www.churchtimes.co.uk https://www.worldbank.org https://www.oikoumene.org https://www.oikoumene.org https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu 3 the church in colombia and extractives: pastoral accompaniment using an eco-theology of peace1 sandra polanía-reyes and héctor fabio henao this chapter describes and analyzes the interaction between conflict, extractives, and institutions at the intersection of civic participation and pastoral accompaniment in colombia. for generations, mining has been part of life for many colombians. after the 2016 accord, many, including the government, counted on mining to deliver a peace dividend. in an effort to accompany local communities, the catholic church has responded in a variety of ways to challenges posed by mining. this study maps and analyzes that church response. the first section describes the current socio-political context of colombia. after an internal social and armed conflict of more than six decades, the country is going through a phase of peace implementation and restoration, and faces challenges and coordination failures involving the current government, economic actors, and civil society. the second section addresses colombia’s legacy of mining and the trade-off between conservation and extractive dependent development in a country with a large degree of biodiversity, a fraught history of violent conflict and social inequity, and large amounts of non-renewable resources. the third section presents a national survey of all ecclesiastical jurisdictions examining the dynamics and impacts of mining, and the responses of civil society and the catholic church. it provides valuable data on the extent of mining that is not readily available from the government and other sources. a baseline was conducted in 2013 and a follow-up in 2020. the timeline allows us to analyze changes related to the national peace agreement of 2016. we find a major increase in mining throughout colombia since 2013. moreover, the social, environmental, economic, and cultural impacts of mining on communities have worsened. the fourth section analyzes the church’s response to the challenges of mining and describes the resources and tools it has used when accompanying communities in reconciling mining, integral human development, and peace. we complement this section with reflections on how the church’s response could be improved. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-3 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-3 the socio-political context for pastoral accompaniment on mining colombia is framed by a great contrast between positive macroeconomic growth and an internal social and armed conflict of more than six decades. the presence of illegal armed actors, both of the extreme left and right wings, has generated a deep humanitarian crisis with more than nine million registered victims. in a country of 48 million inhabitants, this means that 18% of the total population of colombia has been victims of the internal armed conflict, with the social, economic, and cultural consequences that this entails. the humanitarian crisis has also been worsened by the venezuelan diaspora, which adds uncertainty and unrest (see colombian ministry of foreign affairs 2021). the catholic church’s pastoral accompaniment in colombia takes place amidst one of the most complex and lengthy conflicts in the world. two attempts in recent years to end the conflict have faced major difficulties. first, the negotiation process with the guerrillas of the national liberation army (eln) that began in march of 2016 failed due to a terrorist act committed in bogotá in january of 2019. though the covid-19 pandemic has renewed interest in a possible peace, formal peace talks have not resumed. second, the 2016 peace agreement with the revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc) ended a five-decade conflict. however, there has been growing disapproval of the peace process by the current government and implementation of the agreement has been difficult. at the end of the fourth year of implementation, only 28% of stipulations have been fully implemented, 18% of stipulations are at an intermediate level of progress, and 54% of commitments have either begun but made marginal progress, or have yet to be initiated (peace accords matrix barometer initiative 2021). the slow implementation has allowed illegal armed groups to re emerge in former farc territories. there are disputes over territory today between guerrillas, drug traffickers, paramilitaries, and other illegal armed actors who aim to defend their economic and political interests. these interests collide with the government’s and are generally tied to drug trafficking and the legalization of mega-economic projects, such as mining, extraction of natural resources, agro-industry, extensive livestock farming, monocultures, and generation of electric power, in which the land and the abundant natural resources become strategic targets for national and transnational actors. these disputes increase human rights and international humanitarian law violations, as well as forced displacement, in most rural territories. in particular, colombia is the most dangerous country in latin america for social leaders (un human rights council 2019, sec. 20). human rights watch reports that between 2016 and february 2021 four hundred human rights defenders were killed (cuartas 2021), although some sources report higher numbers.2 besides these assassinations, there have also been 34 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao numerous cases of threats, displacement and confinement, robberies, kidnappings, attempted killings, sexual violence, disappearances, and confrontations. most of the indigenous afro-colombian communities and campesinos who suffer the attacks are in areas where mining is prevalent. the legacy of mining in colombia mining in colombia must be understood in the context of immense biodiversity. the country occupies 0.7% of the world’s continental surface and has 10% of the world’s biodiversity. but today, half of colombia’s ecosystems are critically threatened, and a third of its plants and half of its animals are under threat from habitat loss due to oil, mineral, and metal extraction, deforestation, extensive cattle-ranching, generation of electric power, wildlife trafficking, and the impact of the coca trade, among others. mining is the means of subsistence for a large number of colombians. about six million people live in areas where mining occurs. the prominence of mining extends back far before the colonial era, and was a central aspect of the colonial program. mining, including the abuses it brought and the problems that it left behind, is an irrevocable part of the nation’s heritage, although the role it continues to play in the country’s economic development is tremendously complicated. violence and conflict, environmental degradation, and social injustice swirl around the industry. before the arrival of the spaniards, indigenous people engaged in agriculture and in artisanal mining, especially of gold. these activities were part of their culture and tradition. after the conquest, the extraction of gold and silver intensified and became a way for indigenous peoples to participate in commercial exchange. by the nineteenth century, the country had the most mining activity in latin america. but by the 1950s the low prices of precious minerals worldwide and the internal armed conflict caused mining activity to decrease to the point that by 1980 there were only two large national mining companies still in operation: cerrejón and cerro matoso. however, the oil and mining boom at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s reactivated colombia’s extractive industries. in the last two decades, extractive industries have had so much support that the uribe government (2002–2010) granted 8.53 million hectares, a territory the size of austria, for exploitation. during the santos government (2010–2018), mining became one of the five pillars of national development, which prompted a strong campaign to attract foreign investment through regulatory easing. however, this model is based on only the extraction of raw materials, without generating any added benefit to the communities or the environment. other sectors have raised the alarm that economic growth of extractives without technological innovation or the generation of new industries will jeopardize colombia’s economy in the long term. the church in colombia and extractives 35 today, there are three types of mining in the country: small-scale traditional or artisanal, medium-scale, and industrial or large-scale. small-scale traditional mining has been used by indigenous cultures since ancient times and is also used by miners settled in small towns, some of whom are displaced. although artisanal mining can frequently have serious negative consequences for the environment, a cooperative of ethnic communities in choco called oro verde promotes use of a technique traditionally called “mazamorreo” or “barequeo” to extract gold, silver, platinum, or other minerals by hand, and the cooperative became a global pioneer in the movement for ecologically friendly artisanal mining. oro verde was credited as an inspiration for the global alliance for responsible mining that promotes socially responsible and environmentally sustainable artisanal mining practices (alliance for responsible mining 2014). medium mining uses some heavy equipment, like dredgers and backhoes, which allows greater productivity but has a greater environmental impact. that impact is made worse in some cases because of irregularities in the procedures and extraction processes and lack of compliance with national regulations. this type is important to illegal armed actors, especially in the areas of the pacific and the amazon, where they create alliances with national or foreign miners (peruvians and brazilians) to extract gold and wood in a disorderly and illegal manner. several reports have documented that 80% of the mining in the country is illegal, and 60% of the illegal mining is in protected areas. this is due to the shortcomings of environmental licensing, the inefficient management of local governmental offices, and ineffective enforcement actions. large-scale mining, which is associated with megaprojects, is the type carried out by multinationals that benefit from favorable legislation and fiscal policies. these projects have a corporate social responsibility component, though that usually does not compensate for environmental damages or the serious negative social, cultural, and economic impacts on local communities. although current president ivan duque has called for “responsible development,” the national development plan 2018–2022 introduced an expansion of the mining sector that has made the country one of the top extractive economies in latin america. in order to achieve these goals, it was necessary to sell and/or concede significant territory to multinational companies, leading to an increased presence of large-scale mining operations. some exploitation contracts with multinational companies involve protected areas. mining projects are also planned in indigenous territories, such as a license to exploit 1,995 hectares by open-pit mining in the great indigenous reservoir of vaupés (agenda propia 2020). history shows that there is no linear relation between conflict and mining, as conflict dynamics depend on the previous presence of the state, infrastructure, the type of mineral and extraction method, and the geostrategic importance of the jurisdiction for armed and criminal groups 36 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao (rettberg et al. 2020). it is clear, however, that mining intersects and interacts with violent conflict in numerous regions. this includes medium mining operations and artisanal mining areas where armed actors vie for territorial control for illegal mining or coca cultivation, and large-scale mining where protest is criminalized and community leaders are victimized. surveying the church on extractives, governance, and peace in the midst of this national mining panorama, the social struggles for the protection of the territory, the life of the communities, and the biodiversity of the country have started to become more public. several ecclesiastical jurisdictions began to request support to analyze and accompany the communities affected by extractive activities. in 2013, the episcopal conference of colombia and caritas colombia conducted a semi structured baseline survey that examined the perceived effects of extractives in the jurisdictions. the study examined the existing relationships between the mining industry and the intensification of conflict, the exploitation and use of resources, the presence of illegal armed groups, and the displacement of communities. seventy-four catholic church representatives participated. for the first time, a map of perceived effects of extractives in colombia was available to the public.3 during the colombian peace process (2012–2016), some hoped for dialogue about the role of extractives and peace, but the topic was avoided in order to achieve an agreement. despite being one of the world’s most comprehensive peace accords, the failure to address mining reflects a missed opportunity to connect integral peace, ecology, and development. given the need for reliable microdata showing how extractives were affecting the territories after the peace agreement, in 2020 caritas colombia developed a survey of representatives of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions in order to determine the main social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental impacts of extractives. this follow-up study improved on the 2013 survey in three ways. first, it allowed information to be collected and analyzed in real time, reducing the duration of data collection by 60%. second, three modules were added: social capital, forms of pastoral accompaniment, and sources of doctrinal support from the catholic church. third, the results of the 2013 survey were adapted to a database that allowed comparisons with other databases and with the 2020 data (polanía-reyes 2021). the 2020 survey was conducted with 104 church representatives (archbishops, bishops, and social pastoral directors) and included each ecclesiastical jurisdiction. the survey confirmed that the extraction of natural, mineral, or hydrocarbon resources is an unstoppable reality. it occurs in 92% of the country’s jurisdictions. this is an increase of 11% since 2013. there is also an increase in the perceived exploitation of iron ore, aggregates, nickel, limestone, coltan, and emeralds. when disaggregated at the sector level, most of the church in colombia and extractives 37 the significant increase in extraction is for construction and industrial resources. large-scale and artisanal exploitation constitute 68% of total extraction. in addition, the number of projects in an exploitation phase increased from 52% to 89%. there is also a 78% increase in extraction in protected areas compared to 2013. as of 2020, there is no social engagement with the community in 49% of the extractives cases, and a high degree of engagement in only 8%. in many of the protected natural areas, areas of indigenous reserves, and/ or collective territories of afro-colombians, companies do not follow the procedure of prior or popular consultation, violating a fundamental right of those communities. despite the fact that the oil industry is a century old and oil generates the most income in the country, the industry has low levels of engagement with the communities and often breaches agreements. in total, companies have breached agreements in 58% of cases. the survey found that the majority of mining communities have high rates of poverty and deterioration of the quality of life and the social fabric. whether violence and conflict might explain this relationship is an open research question. positive economic effects included revitalization of the local economy (50%), an increase in employment (49%), and enhancing local government revenues through taxes (30%). negative effects included shocks to the local economy (62%), price increases (60%), and the limiting or prohibition of traditional mining (42%). perception of positive social effects deteriorated in 2020 compared to 2013. in 2020, 58% of reported projects did not present any positive social impact. the remaining projects present stronger presence of national institutions (20%) and defense manpower (15%), signaling less crime and violence. many negative social effects stand out: the arrival of foreigners (76%), the privatization of natural resources (74%), increase in false expectations generated by the companies to the communities (70%), and different forms of violence (67%). in 79% of reported projects there was some type of violence (i.e., threats, intimidation, and forced displacement) in the resistance processes. when asked about perceived environmental and cultural effects of extractives in colombia, 82% of the surveyed jurisdictions in 2020 affirmed that there are no positive environmental effects of mining, a significant increase of 77 percentage points compared to 2013. the main positive environmental effects are watershed conservation (24%), reforestation (12%), and recovery plans for damaged areas (20%). the main negative environmental effects are pollution and/or deterioration of water sources (78%), soil deterioration (75%), and deforestation (78%). prevalent cultural effects of extractives are being uprooted from territories (72%), a culture of waste (63%), and acculturation and loss of traditions (60%). few projects had introduced programs for recovery of traditions of affected communities (17%). 38 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao analyzing the catholic church’s action on mining, development, and peace: the emergence of an eco-theology of peace the colombian catholic church, in compliance with its mission, works for reconciliation and unity, as well as to promote human dignity and the common good. socially marginalized groups are the focus of the commitment to promote integral and sustainable development and work for justice and deeper reconciliation. the poor are the most affected by the conflicts caused by economic growth and social inequality, and the negative effects of mining on the environment. the church accompanies these communities, not only as a permanent presence in their midst but also to build on its history of struggling to build peace. below we describe the implications of our study for the church’s role in addressing mining issues in colombia. strategies within the church although half of the jurisdictions partially agree that mining is necessary for the community, the catholic church is one of the leading organizations resisting mining. leaders of community-based organizations and affected communities consider the catholic church a more trustworthy partner than academia or grassroots organizations. of the many mining-related activities, church representatives are least likely to participate in political processes, but, when they do, the intensity of their participation is the highest. the next most intense levels of participation are teaching skills to local inhabitants and mediating between the government and the community. clearly, the church in some jurisdictions is more active in accompaniment processes and could motivate other jurisdictions to do the same. our finding that mining operations have expanded in recent years to cover 90% of the territory challenges the catholic community to consider how it might address this issue in a coordinated way in a larger number of local communities, as well as on a national and international level. the role of multinational corporations, foreign governments, and international institutions suggests the importance of coordinating with catholic entities globally in addressing mining. at the local level, several strategies could be implemented, including (1) using the survey instrument as a pedagogical tool; (2) improving the space for interaction between government authorities and church leaders at the national level; and (3) providing training on extractive resources, mining impacts, accompaniment, and catholic social teaching. our study helps address the lack of information on mining. while it might not be the role of the institutional church to monitor such activities on an on-going basis, as is done in the democratic republic of the congo, our study shows the need for catholic and secular ngos to develop or strengthen such monitoring as an essential first step in strengthening their the church in colombia and extractives 39 capacity to engage effectively on mining issues. a communication portal on extractives at the jurisdiction level is necessary as it will provide local and national church leaders with vital information. this includes contact details of industry representatives and other mining actors, resources and data on extractives, a bank of documents on catholic teaching related to the subject, and guidance on resistance processes and consultation or community engagement processes. strategies alongside the most vulnerable the church’s accompaniment involves recognizing the unity of community identity, culture, and territory. mining-related conflicts rupture this unity. for example, the greatest victimizing event of the internal armed conflict in colombia has been forced displacement – 7.5 million people have had to leave their territory. mining modifies the lives of the local inhabitants, including their geographical environment and their customs. when those responsible for mining are unaware of or indifferent to such facts, new conflicts arise, existing conflicts are exacerbated, or latent conflicts intensify. although an effective response must address the social and political structures of the country, the church is doing its best to help the urgent needs of the most vulnerable, as it does on a wide range of issues. in order to reduce vulnerabilities and to prevent or reduce conflicts, the church must help communities take a constructive and proactive position towards their rights related to the environment and their territories. a multi-stakeholder dialogue requires training and accompaniment to build public spaces of dialogue and reciprocal listening. the main church activities in relation to extractives are (1) emotional, social, pastoral, and spiritual support; (2) presence at the base or directly serving the community affected by mining; and (3) advocating or working against the harmful effects of mining. in addition, the church trains community leaders and supports local peace initiatives that promote the collective construction of new relationships with the land and natural resources. the local church, caritas, and the community can also collaborate in raising awareness of the situation for local, national, and international audiences. in addition, some pastoral work is directed towards government authorities and the private sector so that they effectively recognize the rights of the people and their obligation to comply with environmental protection provisions. communities in remote places and without employment options must deal with the dilemma of choosing between a system that guarantees daily sustenance and work in the short and medium term and preserving water sources and an environment conducive to agriculture and food security in the long term. a model of resource extraction that includes the well-being of the community and environment is possible to design and implement. it is an illusion to assume that there must be a trade-off between caring for the environment and mining-related development. communities with mineral 40 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao resources often ask themselves about their moral responsibility in caring for their environment. the church could help answer these questions. in particular, when communities are not consulted and face the challenge of caring for creation amidst violence by those who would harm the environment, pastoral care requires a pedagogy that helps the communities understand the theological meaning of creation, its universal destiny, and how to exercise their duty to protect the environment. anthropological foundation of ecology we must not separate individual faith from collective care for creation, although for many people the former is not a prerequisite for the latter. an approach to ecology that stems from belief in god, the creator, conceives the human person as the imago dei. thus, a robust anthropology must be grounded in the value of human life. respect for human life is a necessary condition for a coherent ecology. in our study, we found that church representatives used similar principles of catholic social thought to address the issues of extraction. integral human development is used the most, followed by the common good and the promotion of peace. surprisingly, stewardship of or care for creation were not noted in our survey. we also found that in 12% of cases respondents reported that they do not use any principles of the church’s social doctrine. these results show the unfortunate separation between pastoral work and catholic social teaching. integration of creation and salvation the theology of salvation, a primary concern of the faithful, must be in dialogue with the theology of creation, which is neither well-known nor well-taught in many sectors of the church. a utilitarian approach to the goods of creation takes hold in the absence of a tangible sense of stewardship towards creation. such a mentality endures when a faith that integrates the mystery of creation and the destiny of salvation is not cultivated. integral and sustainable development and the principle of human dignity are in close relation to the call to care for creation (francis 2015). accompaniment for the colombian church needs to entail introducing these principles and responsible collaboration with the work of the creator. the national social pastoral aims to reconcile the focus on integral, solidaristic, and sustainable human development among church leaders with the principle of care for creation. the papal magisterium has advanced reflection on this throughout the last decades, especially recently with pope francis’s encyclicals, evangelii gaudium and laudato si’, and his post synodal apostolic exhortation, querida amazonia. the latin american episcopal council has devoted much reflection to this topic and made calls the church in colombia and extractives 41 for ecological awareness and care for creation (see celam 2018). in our study, the three most important resources of catholic social teaching that are used in the accompaniment of communities in the jurisdictions in relation to extraction are laudato si’, the compendium of the social doctrine of the church, and the bible. reconciliation and unity strengthening the relationship between peacebuilding and extractive activities allows a more constructive path for transforming conflict. many cases in colombia show the difficulties that people have in reestablishing neighborly relations and ensuring communal belonging after conflict subsides. it takes time to reconstruct an altered or destroyed social fabric. pastoral action must consider that mining affects people’s lives and puts them in very complex situations. mining creates stress in personal lives and changes in the family structure and in the organization of communities. to speak about how to reconstruct the social fabric from a theological and pastoral perspective leads us to a deep reflection on the path traveled by the apostles and the nascent community after the resurrection and ascension of the lord. the good was taken away and the better was coming with pentecost. those are the keys to accompany the community in the midst of bewilderment and numerous losses, including land, community relations, and its primary roots. there is a permanent goal in pastoral work: to maintain hope. hope is present in pastoral care as a deep, non-destructive relationship, one that is transformative and bears responsibility for the environment. in constructing peace in the context of environmental conflicts, which are often associated with mining, we have learned that we must not forget that hope is closely linked with harmony in the relationship between the inhabitants and the environment. this implies that working towards peace requires introducing a key ethical criterion: the care of creation. this element goes beyond the interaction between groups with conflicting or diverse interests, the intervention of the state, or the market. we cannot think of conflicts without recognizing that creation and its destiny are at stake. not acknowledging creation or treating it in a simply instrumental way only deepens conflict and makes it much more complex in its different dimensions. peace requires a truly communitarian attitude. the church continues to promote open and transparent dialogue between different actors in society who are involved in socio-environmental conflicts. experiences in colombia show that when communities act as a whole and in a coordinated way, placing the common good above particular interests, they create new alternatives and perspectives to undertake the challenges faced in their territory. pastoral experience shows that following this path helps to create links with government authorities and with other 42 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao organizations interested in mining. the result is an integrated response to the problem, a community open to dialogue, which incorporates new perspectives and ways of seeing reality. pope francis teaches that unity prevails over conflict, but that requires that we carefully consider the impact on communities of conflict and alterations of their territory. by strengthening the cohesion of the community, recovering the sense of community, and constructing agreements that enable dialogue and advocacy with those responsible for political and social decisions, the “culture of encounter” is regained and strengthened. notes 1 this paper is based on a study conducted by sandra polanía-reyes in collaboration with the colombian catholic bishops’ national social pastoral and caritas colombia, directed by msgr. héctor fabio henao. we thank the catholic peacebuilding network (cpn), based at the university of notre dame’s kroc institute for international peace studies in the keough school of global affairs, for financial support. the opinions expressed in this manuscript are the exclusive responsibility of the authors, and may not coincide with those of the national social pastoral, caritas colombia, or cpn. 2 for example, instituto de estudios para el desarollo y la paz (2019) reported that 566 killings occurred between january 2016 and january 2019 alone, and cuartas’s (2021) amicus brief for human rights watch acknowledges that colombia’s human rights ombudsperson’s office reports over 700 killings between 2016 and 2021. 3 see https://impactoindustriasextractivas.caritascolombiana.org/. references agenda propia. 2020. “defensores de los cerros sagrados.” january 2020. https:// www.agendapropia.co/defensores-de-los-cerros-sagrados/#inicio-lxms8kjhgg. alliance for responsible mining. 2014. “update from oro verde and amichoco.” may 14, 2014. https://www.responsiblemines.org/en/2014/05/update from-oro-verde-and-amichoco/. colombian ministry of foreign affairs. 2021. “distribución de venezolanos en colombia—corte 31 de enero de 2021.” march 3, 2021. https:// www.migracioncolombia.gov.co/infografias/distribucion-de-venezolanos-en colombia-corte-31-de-enero-de-2021. celam (consejo episcopal latinoamericano). 2018. discípulos misioneros: custodios de nuestro hogar común: discernimiento a la luz de la encíclica laudato si’. bogotá: consejo episcopal latinoamericano, celam. cuartas, josé fernando reyes. 2021. “amicus brief on killings of human rights defenders in colombia.” human rights watch. april 20, 2021. https:// www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/20/amicus-brief-killings-human-rights-defenders colombia#_ftn1. francis. 2015. laudato si’. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. the church in colombia and extractives 43 https://impactoindustriasextractivas.caritascolombiana.org https://www.agendapropia.co https://www.agendapropia.co https://www.responsiblemines.org https://www.responsiblemines.org https://www.migracioncolombia.gov.co https://www.migracioncolombia.gov.co https://www.migracioncolombia.gov.co https://www.hrw.org https://www.hrw.org https://www.hrw.org https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va instituto de estudios para el desarollo y la paz. 2019. “566 líderes sociales y defensores de derechos humanos han sido asesinados desde el 1 de enero de 2016—al 10 de enero de 2019.” january 11, 2019. http://www.indepaz.org.co/ 566-lideres-sociales-y-defensores-de-derechos-humanos-han-sido-asesinados desde-el-2016-al-10-de-enero-de-2019/. peace accords matrix barometer initiative/kroc institute for international peace studies. 2021. executive summary, the colombian final agreement in the era of covid-19: institutional and citizen ownership is key to implementation. notre dame, in and bogotá, colombia: peace accords matrix barometer initiative/kroc institute for international peace studies/keough school of global affairs. 10.7274/r0-cffp-qr07. polanía-reyes, sandra. 2021. “the catholic church and extractive activities in post-conflict colombia: a survey follow-up to the ecclesiastical jurisdictions.” technical report. catholic peacebuilding network and caritas colombia (forthcoming). rettberg, angelika, carlo nasi, ralf j. leiteritz, and juan diego prieto sanabria. 2020. different resources, different conflicts? the subnational political economy of armed conflict and crime in colombia. bogotá: universidad de los andes. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7440/j.ctv11vcd7n. un human rights council. 2019. “visit to colombia: report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.” a/hrc/43/51/add.1. december 26, 2019. https://undocs.org/en/a/hrc/43/51/add.1. 44 sandra polanía-reyes & héctor fabio henao http://www.indepaz.org.co http://www.indepaz.org.co http://www.indepaz.org.co http://dx.doi.org/10.7274/r0-cffp-qr07 https://www.jstor.org https://undocs.org 4 the mining industry, conflict, and the church’s commitment in the democratic republic of the congo rigobert minani, sj1 in 2019, the links between the extractive industry and the escalation of conflicts in the democratic republic of the congo (drc) were documented in a report to the un security council (30–38). for over two decades, experts on the great lakes region, including diplomats, researchers, ngos, and journalists, have identified the looting of mineral resources in the drc as a structural cause of conflict (un security council 2001; jacquemont 2009; cuvelier and raeymaekers 2002). since the outbreak of war in 1996, the plundering of natural and mineral resources in the drc has fueled, escalated, and prolonged violence. the church in the drc has made a significant commitment to promoting good governance of these resources in order to help halt conflict and consolidate peace and stability. origin of the problem the current problem did not start with the war of 1996. it goes back to the time of king leopold ii and the berlin division of colonial africa in the late nineteenth century, as well as the turmoil of the postcolonial era. after independence in 1960, the country experienced significant sociopolitical difficulties. by 1975, the economy was failing, due to the fall in the price of copper, the oil crisis, the closure of the export route through the port of lobito in angola, and the hazardous economic policies of the mobutu regime (minani 2007, 502). these economic issues coincided with the shaba war (march 1977–may 1978) and the massive departure of expatriate staff (trinquier, duchemin, and lebailly 1963; brassart 2018). the annual revenue of gécamines, the state mining company, dropped from us$10 billion in 1974 to us$3.8 billion in 1990 (national assembly of the democratic republic of the congo 2006, 3). on the eve of the drc’s series of wars starting in 1996, the country had been mired in a failed democratization process for at least seven years, its economy was at its lowest, and international cooperation had been suspended since may 1992. in short, the state was politically unstable and economically asphyxiated. these combined factors favored the outbreak of war, making possible the invasion of the country, the collapse of its security doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-4 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-4 apparatus, and a scramble to loot the drc’s mineral resources that involved more than nine african countries. privatization of the mining sector and escalation of the conflict a few months before the war started, the world bank and the international monetary fund came to the rescue of the congolese economy. the country was asked to align with the world bank’s structural adjustment policy. in 1995, under the aegis of these institutions, the country launched a major privatization of public enterprises, particularly the mining sector. according to a 2006 report from the drc national assembly, “the objective of this operation was twofold: pay down the country’s debt by having foreign companies pay fees directly to international financial institutions, and replenish the state’s coffers which had been drained by lax budget management” (5). this operation allowed the wolf into the sheepfold. this was not the best time for this economic change. internally, the mobutu regime was at its end. since 1992, opposition parties, churches, and civil society groups had asked mobutu to leave power and the winds of democratization were shaking the country. the mobutu regime did not, at this time, have sufficient credibility or legitimacy to execute a massive economic overhaul. with the end of the cold war, international markets favored the mobility of capital on a global scale. the international financial institutions’ economic reform measures were therefore very risky and poorly timed (minani 2007, 503). and the privatization of mining companies in the drc was fatal for its economy. the action amounted to a selloff of national wealth and it empowered illegal armed groups and other military actors. the period also coincided with the explosion of violence in the great lakes countries, with war in burundi and genocide in rwanda. the drc experienced not only internal violence, but also spillover fighting from other countries near its borders. mining companies raced to obtain mining titles sold at low prices because of war. and they also negotiated with the groups that had military control in the areas to be developed, giving the armed groups resources and power. from that moment on, control of mines became part of the war strategy. the outbreak of conflict and the policies of the international financial institutions led the faltering government in kinshasa to accelerate the slicing of its mining portfolio and the selloff of the nation’s mining heritage. the government needed, on the one hand, to have funds to face the war, and, on the other hand, to build new alliances. therefore, while the east of the country was occupied by rebels and foreign troops, the government accelerated the signing of agreements that sold off mining resources, sacrificing long-term sources of revenue and economic stability for needed cash-in-hand (minani 2007, 505). 46 rigobert minani, sj mineral resources as fuel for conflicts in the drc both the government in kinshasa and the rebel group of laurent désiré kabila engaged in haggling over mines with various actors, including criminals. soon after the war began the government could no longer be a reliable partner for companies because it quickly lost control of a large part of its territory. the mining companies began to deal with the rebel leader kabila in goma. the rebels took advantage of these solicitations to strengthen themselves financially and militarily, and some of the contracts they signed with companies were for sites that had already been negotiated by kinshasa, effectively redistributing revenue from the government to the rebels. this allowed kabila to pay short-term bills, pay day-to-day expenses of his army, and fund his politico-administrative apparatus (baracyetse 1999, 8). helped by this money from mining, the support of neighboring countries, and international complicity, kabila took power on may 17, 1997. hardly a year later, on august 2, 1998, a new war broke out. exacerbated by mining, this war became worse than the first one. during the second war, rebel political alliances were reconfigured. the country was divided into five regions, each controlled by one faction.2 each group retreated to the mines in the areas it controlled to finance the group’s war efforts. the rebel movements occupied mainly the eastern and northern drc, while the government controlled the western and southern areas. that gave the government control of copper and cobalt mines in katanga. for the rebel groups, the exploitation of gold in ituri province, diamonds in kisangani region, and gold and coltan in north and south kivu became important. the period also corresponded to a major spike in international demand for coltan, an important component in the personal electronics boom in the west. coltan was exploited by, among others, armed groups, and marketed by neighboring countries, mainly rwanda. it passed through refining plants in europe, america, and asia, and reached high-tech industries through a complex circuit (cuvelier and raeymaekers 2002, 9). this rush for mining tipped the drc into a criminalized economy. as i have written elsewhere, “the political weight of each rebel faction was proportional to the natural resources it controlled, according to its own rules of the game and its relationship with its allies” (minani 2007, 507). additionally, foreign countries involved in the conflicts, namely rwanda and uganda, were allowed to exploit the minerals in the drc in exchange for support for rebel factions. on april 1, 2003, the drc concluded a peace agreement and put in place a transition government. foreign troops were asked to withdraw, but neighboring countries, especially rwanda and uganda, strengthened their links with new armed groups in kivu, ituri, and elsewhere in eastern drc in order to maintain control over the territory and access to natural resources. according to un reports this was part of a long-planned strategy the democratic republic of the congo 47 (un security council 2003, sec. 43–47). it escalated conflicts that have remained impervious to multiple peace initiatives. the death toll and the humanitarian crisis caused by this war, financed by the minerals in the drc, mobilized a large number of international ngos. many catholic actors in the drc and around the world participated in several campaigns, with mixed results. none has succeeded in putting a final end to this scourge, but congolese catholics and their international partners have formed a powerful coalition to face these seemingly interminable problems. good governance of the mining sector and the church’s commitment the catholic church in the drc has always been at the forefront of social and political engagement, and the impact of extractive industries on conflicts has been a major concern since the early 2000s. as the congolese bishops noted in 2007, their action on mining arises from the fact that extractive industries are a source of great wealth for some while being a source of great harm for many: instead of contributing to the development of our country and benefiting our people, minerals, oil, and the forest have become causes of our misfortune. how do we take the fact that our fellow citizens, without consideration or compensation, are stripped of their land…? is it permissible for congolese workers to be treated without regard for their rights and human dignity? (§10) the jesuit center of study and social action (cepas)3 took the lead on this issue. in 2006, it initiated a forum of civil society organizations to reflect on good governance of natural resources. this forum led to a campaign, initiated in march 2007 by drc civil society groups and a coalition of international ngos, calling for a revision of mining contracts extremely unfavorable to the drc. a press release from the coalition stated: “the ngos are calling on the congolese government and its international partners to renegotiate, revoke, or cancel the contracts inherited from the war and the transition in order to ensure that the congolese people derive a fair share from the benefits of the exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth” (a fair share for congo/une part équitable pour le congo 2007). the campaign requested assurances of transparency, from the government and the world bank, for past mining contracts. specifically, it asked that the congolese government establish a working group of independent international and congolese experts to: review and revise all mining contracts signed during the war; establish an independent mechanism for monitoring the execution of contracts; and enshrine conditions for transparent and equitable management of mineral resources in the future (minani 2007, 515). 48 rigobert minani, sj to anticipate the results of such an exercise, cepas engaged mining evaluation experts, including former managers of gécamines, to study the clauses of twelve contracts signed between the government and mining companies (“republique democratique du congo revisitation des contrats miniers” 2007). they came to the conclusion that the review of the mining contracts was necessary so as to correct violations of the mining code, revive the economy, and improve the socioeconomic condition of congolese citizens. this initiative laid a foundation for the government to revisit sixty-one contracts signed during the war. the catholic bishops’ conference of the drc (cenco) and cepas were invited to observe the process. at the end, the ministry of mines of the democratic republic of the congo (2009) entrusted publication of the official government report to cepas. unfortunately, when the time came to actually renegotiate contracts, it was done exclusively between the government and mining companies with no outside experts or observers. and because of confidentiality language included in the contracts, no details were made public. around this time, ecclesial leaders began focusing more on issues of mining. in 2007, the assembly of bishops of the ecclesiastical province of lubumbashi, a group of pastors in katanga, the main mining province of the drc, wrote a pastoral letter that applied elements of the church’s social doctrine to governance of extractive industries. this letter strongly condemned the fact that “the more investors … invade katanga, the more poverty, unemployment, and social problems increase” (§31). it affirmed the fact that minerals were neither benefiting the population nor the state. workers were getting poorer, local economies were not strengthened, and artisanal miners were being arrested, tortured, and even killed. the more companies’ profits grew, the more local communities suffered. it is against this background that the bishops of katanga demanded that the congolese state put the mining sector in order: “congo is neither for sale nor on sale. … the riches of our province must benefit our people … [a]nd working conditions [must be] consistent with human dignity” (§34). the bishops also encouraged the government to diversify its economic development strategies by investing in agriculture, tourism, timber, and fishing in anticipation of the depletion of mineral resources. inspired by the work of cepas and the witness of the katanga bishops, cenco, in july 2007, decided to create an ad hoc episcopal commission in charge of natural resource governance: cenco is committed, through its structures, to follow with particular attention the process of ‘revision’ of mining and forests contracts so that it can be done in the greatest transparency for the benefit of the congolese people. it believes that the proper management of national resources will be a determining factor for the rebirth of the drc. cenco will create an ad hoc episcopal commission within its own the democratic republic of the congo 49 body responsible for monitoring the issue of the exploitation of natural resources and demanding respect for human rights by companies working in this sector. (§10) in 2013, the ad hoc group became a full commission of cenco, the episcopal commission for natural resources (cern). its mission is to study all issues related to the exploitation of natural resources and propose to the church means of intervention to promote good governance of these resources and prevent conflicts. cern has played several roles. it acts at the level of decision-makers through advocacy to influence laws and policies related to the exploitation and management of natural resources in the drc. it informs, trains, and raises awareness for citizens’ control and management of natural resources, and advocates for the adoption of responsible economic, social, cultural, and environmental lifestyles. it works with local, national, regional, and international civil society organizations with similar objectives, as well as with other politico-administrative and economic bodies. cern has established natural resource observatories in dioceses that document cases of human rights violations against communities and promote public awareness. cenco’s deep engagement on the 2010 dodd-frank wall street reform and protection act is a key example of the systematic, transnational approach the church has taken on mining. this us legislation included landmark provisions to ensure greater transparency in the supply chain of minerals. cenco was centrally involved in the campaign to get dodd frank passed. during the time when the legislation was taking shape, the president of cenco was bishop nicolas djomo lola. his leadership and lobbying of western governments were very influential in the law’s formation (carney 2014, 109). he testified before congress in 2010 to support the law’s passage, and again in 2012 during a hearing about the law’s effects. at that 2012 hearing, he argued that the law should not be softened to make the regulatory process easier on businesses: we urge the u.s. business community to account for the gruesome social costs of the illicit mining as they calculate their costs for compliance with section 1502. these calculations are not just cost estimates on a spreadsheet. there is a social balance sheet that places value on the lives that can be saved. we have full confidence in the goodwill of the congress, the sec [the us securities and exchange commission], and the business sector to resist watering down sec regulations through half measures that may save money, but cost lives. (us congress 2012, 21) since dodd-frank’s passage, and since the passage of similar regulations in australia, canada, and the eu, cenco and cern have continued to 50 rigobert minani, sj support transparency efforts. in 2017, when many believed that the united states might repeal the conflict mineral provisions in dodd-frank, cenco’s henry muhiya argued that the repeal would lead to new risks of conflict over minerals and would undermine local development programs begun as part of the drc’s efforts to comply with the law (bagnetto 2017). in 2019, with financial support from cordaid, cern published a study on the impact of artisanal mining on local development. they then organized a workshop in 2020 with government and civil society representatives to examine how artisanal mining can be integrated into transparency regulation (itie-rdc communication unit n.d.). these independent, small scale miners could be blocked from meaningful market participation if they are not enabled to navigate the regulatory frameworks made necessary by transparency laws. the recommendations emerging from the workshop included calling on the government to make sure technical assistance for transparency regulation is made available to these miners and that transparency frameworks are created that are specific to the artisanal sector. these kinds of initiatives led the extractives industry transparency initiative (eiti) (2019, 25) to highlight cern as one of the leading congolese organizations engaged in advancing eiti standards. conclusion the experience of the drc shows that a better understanding of mining’s influence on conflict could help improve interventions to prevent and reduce conflict, and build lasting peace. the social doctrine of the church can help reveal the limits of the promises of the extractive industry (minani 2017). pope francis (2015, §93) reminds us that “a type of development which did not respect and promote human rights—personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples—would not be really worthy of man.” he criticizes industries, such as mining, with short-sighted development models. such development is at odds with the teaching of the church in the sense that it proposes a massive exploitation of resources without worrying about future generations. it aims at a rapid enrichment of investors and leaves local communities in poverty. the extractive industry also has serious environmental consequences, including deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of air and water. the actors in the industry, including the government, armed groups, and multinational companies, also promote the expulsion of communities from their lands and contribute to massive violations of human rights. this situation in the drc has contributed to violent conflicts, including an explosion of militias in kivu today. the church’s action for conflict transformation and peacebuilding in the mining sector is complex. it is, as pope francis (2020, §14) says, a fight against an economic instrument of death. the church needs to help the mining industry to better understand and care the democratic republic of the congo 51 about the impact of its operations and the security and well-being of populations. the catholic church in the drc has been actively engaged in many ways to try to help bring about this change. notes 1 translated from french by florence silole. 2 west and southeast of drc: the kinshasa government; north kivu, south kivu, maniema and sankuru regions: rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie nationale-goma; equator region: mouvement de liberation du congo; ituri region: rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie nationale-kisangani; beni and lubero region: rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie nationale-k/ml. 3 see https://www.cepas.online. references assembly of bishops of the ecclesiastical province of lubumbashi. 2007. “que notre espoir ne soit jamais décu (cf ps, 70, 1).” march 3, 2007. https:// www.congoforum.be/fr/2007/03/11-03-07-que-notre-espoir-ne-soit-jamais-du message-de-lassemble-des-evques-du-katanga. bagnetto, laura angela. 2017. “future of dr congo mining could be on rocky ground if us dodd frank 1502 rolled back.” rfi, march 7, 2017. https:// www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20170307-future-drc-mining-could-be-rocky-ground-if-us dodd-frank-1502-rolled-back. baracyetse, pierre. 1999. “l’enjeu géopolitique des sociétés minières internationales en république démocratique du congo (ex-zaïre).” press release for sos rwanda-burundi buzet (belgium). brassart, pierre. 2018. kolwezi 1978: au cœur des opérations françaises et belge au zaïre. paris: mardaga. carney, j.j. 2014. “‘the bishop is governor here’: bishop nicolas djomo and catholic leadership in the democratic republic of the congo.” in leadership in postcolonial africa: trends transformed by independence, edited by baba g. jallow, 97–122. new york: palgrave macmillan. cepas. 2006. bonne gouvernance et ressources naturelles et minières en république démocratique du congo. kinshasa: éditions cepas. cuvelier, jeroen, and tim raeymaekers. 2002. “supporting the war economy in the drc: european companies and the coltan trade.” ipis report. january 16, 2002. https://ipisresearch.be/publication/supporting-the-war-economy-in-the-drc european-companies-and-the-coltan-trade. eiti international secretariat. 2019. validation of the democratic republic of congo: report on initial data collection and stakeholder consultation. april 15, 2019. https://eiti.org/files/documents/drc_2018_validation_initial_assessment_ final_april_2019.pdf. a fair share for congo/une part équitable pour le congo. 2007. “international appeal for a revision of the drc’s mining contracts.” press release. march 13, 2007. http://www.raid-uk.org/sites/default/files/pr-contracts-campaign.pdf. francis. 2015. laudato si’. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. 52 rigobert minani, sj https://www.cepas.online https://www.congoforum.be https://www.congoforum.be https://www.congoforum.be https://www.rfi.fr https://www.rfi.fr https://www.rfi.fr https://ipisresearch.be https://ipisresearch.be https://eiti.org https://eiti.org http://www.raid-uk.org https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va francis. 2020. querida amazonia. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20200202_ querida-amazonia.html. itie-rdc communication unit. n.d. “cern-cenco: plaidoyer pour l’intégration du secteur minier artisanal à l’itie et au financement du st par le gouvernement.” itie-rdc. accessed april 22, 2021. https://www.itierdc.net/2020/09/24/cern cenco-plaidoyer-pour-lintegration-du-secteur-minier-artisanal-a-litie-et-au-financement-du-st-par-le-gouvernement. jacquemont, pierre. 2009. “la sortie de crise dans l’est du congo et les perspectives de la coopération régionale.” mondes en developpement 37, no. 147: 93–108. minani, rigobert. 2007. “la problématique des ressources minières en rdc: etat de lieu et perspectives.” congo-afrique 417: 501–518. minani, rigobert, ed. 2017. unmet promises of extractive industries in africa. nairobi: paulines africa. ministry of mines of the democratic republic of the congo. 2009. commission de revisitation des contrats miniers: rapport des travaux. 2 vols. kinshasa: éditions cepas. national assembly of the democratic republic of the congo. 2006. commission spéciale chargée de l’examen de la validité des conventions à caractère économique et financier conclues pendant les guerres, 1996–1997 et de 1998. work report, part 1. national episcopal conference of the congo. 2007. “‘a vin nouveau, outres neuves’ (mc 2, 22): ne pas décevoir les attentes de la nation.” http://www.virunganews.com/ a-vin-nouveau-outres-neuves-mc-2–22-ne-pas-decevoir-les-attentes-de-la-nation. “republique democratique du congo revisitation des contrats miniers: rapport du groupe d’experts du forum de la société civile sur 12 contrats miniers.” 2007. http://pratclif.com/mines/kamoto/revisioncontrats_miniers_rapport_definitif.pdf. trinquier, colonel [roger], jacques duchemin, and jacques lebailly. 1963. notre guerre au katanga. paris: la pensée moderne. un security council. 2001. democratic republic of congo asserts right to seek help in defense of natural wealth against outside forces. press release sc/ 7241. december 14, 2001. https://www.un.org/press/en/2001/sc7241.doc.htm. un security council. 2003. letter dated 15 october 2003 from the chairman of the panel of experts on the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth of the democratic republic of the congo addressed to the secretary general. s/2003/1027. october, 23, 2003. https://undocs.org/s/2003/1027. un security council. 2019. final report from the group of experts on the democratic republic of the congo. s/2019/469. june 7, 2019. https://undocs.org/ s/2019/469. us congress. 2012. house. subcommittee on international monetary policy and trade of the committee on financial services. the costs and consequences of dodd-frank section 1052: impacts on america and the congo.112th congress, may 10, 2012. statement of the most reverend nicolas djomo lola, bishop of tshumbe, democratic republic of the congo and president of the national episcopal conference of the congo. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ chrg-112hhrg75730/html/chrg-112hhrg75730.htm. the democratic republic of the congo 53 http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va https://www.itierdc.net https://www.itierdc.net https://www.itierdc.net http://www.virunganews.com http://www.virunganews.com http://pratclif.com https://www.un.org https://undocs.org https://undocs.org https://undocs.org https://www.govinfo.gov https://www.govinfo.gov 5 mining in the philippines: a catholic peacebuilding approach karl m. gaspar, cssr in the philippines, as in other countries examined in this book, mining is intricately connected to issues of peace, human rights, development, and ecology. since vatican ii and especially since its role in the people power movement that brought down the marcos regime, the catholic church in the philippines has been an influential force for social justice and peace. this essay connects the church’s history of engagement on these broader issues over the past five decades to its more recent engagement on mining. conflicts in the philippines since the philippines gained independence in 1946, its situation has always been volatile, especially on the southernmost island of mindanao. in the 1950s and 1960s, government forces crushed armed bands of islamic moros (see constantino and constantino 1978; diokno 1987). a more determined armed resistance arose with the founding of the moro national liberation front (mnlf), a separatist movement which began to recruit rebels in 1969 (gaspar, lapad, and maravillas 2003, 29–30; see also vitug and gloria 2000). violent encounters between mnlf and government forces took place across parts of mindanao from 1972–75. in 1976, libyan leader muammar gaddafi brokered a short-lived cessation of hostilities between the government and the mnlf. the signing of this agreement brought about a serious rift in mnlf leadership, leading to the formation of a breakaway group that established the moro islamic liberation front (milf) in 1984. in january 1987, the mnlf accepted the philippine government’s offer of semi-autonomy for the regions in dispute, leading to the establishment of the autonomous region of muslim mindanao on november 6, 1990. the milf, however, refused to participate. as government administration changed from one president to another, peace talks were initiated but never succeeded. it was during the presidency of rodrigo duterte that the government and the milf finally agreed on the bangsamoro organic law, signed by president duterte on july 26, 2018, and approved by plebiscite in early 2019. consequently, the bangsamoro transitory doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-5 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-5 parliament was established and is currently laying down the groundwork for a governance system. however, it was not only the moro rebellions that the state has had to deal with since the early 1970s. whereas these only involved territories in the muslim areas in mindanao, the revolution that has been waged by the communist party of the philippines (cpp)—with its military arm, the new people’s army (npa)—operated across the country (see sison 2013; reid 2000). fighting a guerrilla war against the state, the cpp npa remains an underground operation aimed at overthrowing the philippine government, implementing a radical land-reform program, promoting a national economic policy, and ending us imperialist influence over its former colony. it has survived six presidents and remains a force to reckon with. in the wake of the people power uprising in 1986, which installed cory aquino as successor to ferdinand marcos, the first peace talks between the state and the cpp-npa were convened. they collapsed owing to the state military’s belligerence. the talks were resurrected by other administrations, but would always begin with high hopes and end with bitter frustration on both sides (see bolasco 2019). duterte has expressed his interest in resuming talks, but only time will tell if he can succeed in finally ending this insurgency that has lasted more than fifty years. as these rebellions have raged across the country, the civilian population has suffered considerable collateral damage. farmers, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples have been the most victimized by the consequences of military operations, which have often led to human rights violations (abs-cbn investigative and research group 2018). violent conflict, human rights violations, and mining holden and jacobson (2007) lay out how mining worsens and prolongs violent conflict in the philippines. first, mining companies and armed groups are frequently at odds simply because mining is most common in regions that have the preferred terrain for guerrilla warfare; this is especially true in mindanao (485, 487). but that tension is only a starting point. territorial rivalry makes mining companies clear targets for extortion. holden and jacobson cite one example of a company that was found to have paid over us$1.7 million to several different armed groups (487). this funding increases the capacity for guerrilla groups to wage war, while at the same time, robust fear and distrust of mining companies throughout the philippines, especially in rural areas that depend heavily on environmental resources damaged by mining operations, gives armed groups fertile ground for recruitment (489). further, mining companies are tangible symbols of the globalized economic system despised by the ideology of armed militants, making them appealing targets for attacks and furthering their usefulness as foils to enhance recruitment (489). mining in the philippines 55 given these risks, the typical response at mining sites has been increased militarization. national armed forces and private security have been quick to cast all opposition to mining as terrorism, or as in league with armed insurgents, leading armed security and military forces around mining operations to be draconian (490–92). with this sort of pattern, human rights abuses have been common. since the passage of the 1995 mining act, the media, indigenous persons organizations, and other civil society organizations (csos), many of which are faith-based, have reported violence and human rights violations, especially when mining projects face aggressive resistance. these have included reports on “beatings, maiming, intimidation, torture, extra-judicial killings or summary executions, abductions, and enforced disappearances in what is widely viewed as state-sponsored or state-protected terrorism” (goodland and wicks 2008, 44). human rights watch identified anti-mining activists as victimized along with other groups active in the resistance movement, including political and student activists, journalists, and church workers (shepherd and neumann 2007, 2, 28). indigenous communities in particular have had a sordid history with human rights violations related to mining. in 2001, a report detailed how mining operations were violating the rights of the subanens in the zamboanga area of mindanao (sanz 2001). the report was issued by researchers who conducted a human rights impact assessment of the tvi resource development’s canatuan mine. it looked into six core human rights: self-determination, security, adequate standard of living, adequate housing, work, and education. it indicated that the mine had a negative impact on the right to self-determination and on local self governance. the operation was also found to have forced evictions and increased militarization of the area around the mine, and to have “had a negative impact on the ability of the subanon [sic.] to enjoy the human right to security and the human right to housing. mining activity appears to have increased the levels of sediment and metals in some local waterways, threatening the human right to an adequate standard of living” (53). a final point that holden and jacobson (2007) make about mining and conflict in the philippines is that mining economically marginalizes large scores of the philippine population. mining has a poor record of job creation and high risk for environmental costs that inhibit people from engaging in other livelihoods, factors that leave poor people even poorer and disenfranchised people even more disenfranchised (494–96). this creates greater social instability that exacerbates existing conflict factors. combine this economic problem with rampant corruption in the mining sector (492–93) and the militarization described above that increases tensions, introduces human rights violations, and enriches militants while strengthening their recruitment platforms, and mining and conflict become locked in an escalating spiral. 56 karl m. gaspar, cssr the church’s response to conflict, human rights, and environmental concerns the engagement of the church in the philippines on mining is best understood in the context of its wider efforts to address issues of peace, justice, and ecology from the marcos era to the present. mainly through the catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines (cbcp) and the mindanao sulu pastoral conference (mspc), the church took a strong prophetic stance to denounce human rights violations during the marcos regime. between 1977 and 1979, a new challenge confronted the bishops. on one hand, seven years of marcos’s dictatorial rule further worsened as poverty increased, foreign debt accumulated, imelda marcos’s lifestyle became more scandalous, corruption in the bureaucracy now involved most of marcos’s cronies who monopolized control over government corporations, and human rights violations skyrocketed as more suspected “subversives” were arrested or assassinated. at the same time, the underground communist movement had become quite popular. reacting to this situation, the cbcp issued the 1979 pastoral letter “an exhortation against violence.” they critiqued violent reactions to the nation’s problems, and described this situation as follows: the daily newspapers are filled with accounts of military encounters, of ambushes and killings, not to mention the more ordinary crimes, the scandals of corruption and other forms of violence. revolutionary groups are increasing in number and escalating the spirit (and in some cases the praxis) of violence, especially among the urban and rural workers, intellectuals and students, and among a number of dedicated and concerned christians, including some clerics and religious. (n.p.) in clear terms they stated that, “in the world where violence all too frequently maims and destroys the personal and sacred lives of men, we must uphold the violence of love and the peace of christ over hate and destructive violence … the option of non-violence must be respected as one christian option, as a christian pattern of action” (n.p.). the statement ends with an exhortation towards justice and peace. it was no surprise that such phrases would appear in the bishops’ statement, as they were worried that some priests, religious, and seminarians were becoming more sympathetic to the communist movement. in february 1983, the cbcp (1983a) issued a new pastoral letter reacting to the military’s arrest of priests and religious and lay church workers, many of whom became political prisoners. they denounced such human rights violations and cited the reasons why they were supporting the struggles of the poor, deprived, and oppressed, pointing back to the 1971 synod on justice. six months later, on august 21, on his return to the philippines from exile in the united states, senator benigno “ninoy” mining in the philippines 57 aquino was assassinated on the manila airport tarmac. with his martyrdom, the protest movement grew by leaps and bounds. however, such a movement only provoked more repression, prompting the bishops to issue a statement on reconciliation. they acknowledged that “many events have pushed our country closer to the brink of chaos and anarchy,” and reiterated “the need for reconciliation as an alternative to the continuance of present injustice and violence which would put one against another in a bloodbath of revolution where the gospel ethic of love would undeniably be sacrificed.” once more, they highlighted the path of “the non-violence of christ … as the only acceptable answer,” as it is “a way of working constantly, strenuously for justice that refuses adamantly to destroy life for the cause of justice itself” (cbcp 1983b). another church body that was a major force for peacebuilding was the mspc, constituted in 1971 by the dioceses of mindanao-sulu and meeting every three years. in the first two conferences, the delegates became more vocal in their opposition to martial law, which was declared in 1972 (see gaspar 1977). at the mspc in 1984, they demanded that marcos lift martial law and return to the country’s democratic tradition. however, martial rule only worsened. instead of bringing about peace and order, there was more dislocation of communities given the twin evils of incursions into the countryside by corporations and the ensuing militarization that usually led to abuses committed by the armed and paramilitary forces providing security. while the bishops’ conference had not spoken about the moro rebellions and the impact of violence on the citizenry, the mspc conferences since the beginning expressed their concern for the plight of the moro and the escalation of armed encounters leading to mass evacuations and human rights violations. they also discussed the impact of martial rule on the lives of indigenous peoples, whose situation could only be reported because of the presence of missionaries in their isolated territories. the chair of the conference, bishop bienvenido tudtud, proposed beginning an interfaith dialogue with the muslims which led to a program known as duyog ramadhan, a community-based activity where muslims and christians came together for a dialogue of life and faith. it also led to the establishment of the bishops-ulama conference, a forum bringing together christian and muslim leaders which became instrumental in peacebuilding efforts. meanwhile, the missionary congregations engaged in advocacy work among indigenous communities and began to come up with collaborative efforts to help protect them from the abuses of the martial law regime as well as to empower them to stand firm on their rights. in the midst of these peacebuilding efforts, the mining and logging industries attracted attention from some church groups, as these were promoted as money-making ventures for marcos and his cronies. logging firms 58 karl m. gaspar, cssr were owned primarily by filipino oligarchs, a number of whom had run for political office so they could take advantage of their position in government to protect their interests. the few filipino mining companies—again, owned by oligarchs who also owned other businesses, especially in manufacturing and trading—partnered with western firms to mine gold, silver, and copper in various parts of the country. during the marcos regime, however, no one had yet heard of global warming and climate change and how deforestation and mining contribute to this ecological crisis. and as many other justice and peace issues were more urgent, there were not many actions to protest the expansion of mining and logging. the shift to ecological advocacy from the time of the american occupation to the contemporary period, there has been no let-up in deforestation (see forest management bureau 2009). but for a long while massive deforestation and the expansion of agribusiness plantations were not a major concern of the church in mindanao. the first stirrings that would lead to a nascent church movement engaged in ecological issues arose in the late 1980s in two areas: san fernando, bukidnon, and midsalip, zamboanga del sur. this pastoral engagement was provoked by peasants’ concerns about land-grabbing and the impact of logging in limiting water that could be tapped for their irrigated rice fields. the fact that the peasant communities were organized in vibrant base ecclesial communities and had the support of their missionaries made possible anti-logging mass actions that succeeded in terminating logging operations in the area. these grassroots-based ecological actions influenced the cbcp (1988) to issue the pastoral letter “what is happening to our beautiful land?” as the mining problem had not yet become urgent, the statement hardly referred to this issue. however, it exhorted the government “not to pursue short term economic gains at the expense of long-term ecological damage” (n.p.). in a context when 29 out of the 30 million hectares of the country’s primary forests had been destroyed, the bishops claimed that awareness of the relationship of people to the environment had continued to grow and that destroying the forests was sinful. they posited that “as people of the covenant we are called to protect endangered ecosystems like the forests, mangroves and coral reefs and to establish just human communities in our land” (n.p.). henceforth, the concern for ecological advocacy within the church began to slowly expand from diocese to diocese. in many cases, civil society organizations assisted them. one that was very active in the davao area was the kinaiyahan foundation, and later the interfacing development initiatives for sustainability (idis). various church groups supported idis’s unfortunately unsuccessful campaign to end aerial spraying in banana plantations. mining in the philippines 59 church action and advocacy around mining mining became a focus of the catholic community’s ecological concern in the mid-1990s. mining, especially open pit mining, became contentious following the congress’s approval of the philippine mining act in 1995, which “liberalized the legal framework for mining, making it far less restrictive,” as it allowed “greater foreign ownership, full repatriation of profits, tax breaks and tax holidays for five to ten years, and lower duties and tariffs” (goodland and wicks 2008, 23). consequently, there arose a strong interest on the part of mining firms to expand their present operations and/or explore new territories where significant deposits of mineral resources had been identified. as soon as the mining act was passed in 1995, there was a huge rush of applications. under the new law, two different licenses existed: mineral production sharing agreements (mpsas), which limited foreign ownership of a project to 40%, and financial and technical assistance agreements (ftaas), which allowed full foreign ownership. before the major push toward expanding the area of mining coverage, there were just a few existing mpsas, with only two existing ftaas that covered 447,308.26 hectares. after the passage of the mining act, 54 more ftaa applications targeting 2,350,643.34 hectares were approved (goodland and wicks 2008, 25). but the act did not go uncontested. a few quarters within the government bureaucracy and civil society, including the la bugal-blaan tribal association of mindanao, claimed the act violated the 1987 constitution’s provision that “all lands of the public domain, waters, minerals, coal, petroleum and other mineral oils, all sources of potential energy, fisheries, forests, timber, wildlife, flora and fauna and other natural resources are owned by the state.” citing the devastating effects of some of the mining operations, such as spillages of mine tailings, the cbcp (1998, n.p.) argued that “the adverse social impact on the affected communities, especially on our indigenous brothers and sisters, far outweighs the gains promised by large-scale mining corporations.” they then proposed that the government repeal the act and recall all approved ftaas and mineral agreements and disapprove the pending ones. owing to the pressure from csos and the church, in 2004, the supreme court ruled the mining act was unconstitutional. the state did not give up so easily and used all its power to pressure the supreme court to reverse their ruling. ten months later, the supreme court changed its mind. president macapagal-arroyo immediately issued an executive order known as the national policy agenda on revitalizing mining. this provoked more protests as this decision impacted various stakeholders, including municipal and provincial government authorities, the church, and other csos, who all continued to pressure the supreme court to revert to its original decision. 60 karl m. gaspar, cssr once more in 2006, the cbcp expressed its support for the many petitions against mining operations and re-affirmed its stand for the repeal of the mining act of 1995. the bishops stated that allowing the interests of big mining corporations to prevail over people’s right to preserve natural resources necessary for their livelihoods was tantamount to violating their right to life as well as threatening their health and environmental safety. all kinds of mining destroyed the environment while depriving the people of the land they should be cultivating for their subsistence. especially in relation to indigenous peoples, the bishops made it clear they were against any mining firm that would dislocate them from their ancestral domain. in 2008, leila de lima was appointed chairperson of the country’s commission on human rights. she was aggressive about pursuing cases of human rights violations, and csos and church personnel could seek her assistance in following-up reports of violence. one such case took place in the village of kasibu in the province of nueva viscaya on november 5–6, 2009. this location was where the mining operations of oceana gold philippines, inc. took place. the local parish supported de lima’s investigative campaign. it was a breakthrough case as an agency in government was seen as taking a strong position against human rights violations and giving peacebuilders and rights defenders an ally. in the next few years, the cbcp continued its advocacy against mining. a july 2010 letter from nerio odchimar, bishop of tandag, to president benigno aquino iii reiterated the bishops’ decade-old request that the government put a stop to large-scale mining “since this not only permanently damages the delicate balance of the natural environment, but it also makes our small farmers, fisher folks and ips [indigenous persons] suffer.” in 2010, the department of environment and natural resources (denr) issued administrative order no. 2010–21. this order formally amended the provisions of the 1995 mining act, upholding the principle that public domain lands, including those with natural resources like minerals, are owned by the state, and making space for the rights of indigenous persons in accordance with the 1997 indigenous peoples rights act. the 2010 denr order did not immediately resolve all disputes and tensions, as despite its safeguards, the liberalization of the industry continued to usher a massive expansion of mining exploration and operation; thus, the church’s advocacy against mining persisted. the association of major religious superiors in the philippines (2013) issued a joint statement on mining and greater solidarity with the poor. appealing to their roles as stewards of the environment and as shepherds to indigenous communities, the religious superiors continued to lobby for policies protecting our common home against environmentally destructive activities. the visit of pope francis to manila in january 2015 provided an opportunity for the cbcp’s secretariat for social action to issue a joint letter co-signed by alyansa tigil mina (2015), an advocacy network for mining in the philippines 61 mining justice. the letter referred to a message of pope francis during a day of reflection between the vatican and mining executives that reminded everyone that “the great challenge of business leaders is to create a harmony of interests, involving investors, managers, workers, their families, the future of their children, the preservation of the environment on both a regional and international scale, and a contribution to world peace” (n.p.). claiming the need to add to the gross national product while providing employment and increasing government revenues, administrations since president macapagal-arroyo have encouraged more investment in mining. at the start of his term in 2016, president duterte appointed a secretary to the denr who was staunchly anti-mining. but pressure from both the mining oligarchs and their supporters in congress prevented confirmation of her appointment, and that ended this initial attempt to limit mining. since then, duterte has fully backed the expansion of mining, providing the same rationale as previous administrations. it is in mindanao where most mining explorations are being pursued, including the new bangsamoro areas and areas where indigenous communities like the lumad and the subanen reside. in 2019, the bishops issued a statement supporting all those who continue to oppose mining. in the statement, they once more called the faithful’s attention to the threat of extractive mining operations and reiterated that: social justice is not served when only the few mining companies, many of which are also owned by political leaders, reap the benefits from mineral extraction. the rural poor remain poor as mining only contributes less than one percent to our gdp, employs less than 0.4% of our labor force, and directly threatens agriculture, forestry, watersheds and fisheries resources that are essential for the survival of the rural poor. (cbcp 2019, n.p.) one specific type of mining this statement addressed was coal. the state has aggressively promoted coal because of increased reliance on coal-fired power plants and a desire to reduce reliance on foreign coal to fuel them. across the country, these plants have sprouted in various places. the cbcp statement observed that by the end of 2020 there were expected to be over fifty operational coal plants and 186 coal-mining projects. many are located in areas that have rich ecosystems and are mostly inhabited by indigenous peoples. the statement affirmed scientific evidence of coal causing climate degradation, and stated that “coal projects also further exacerbate the vulnerability of impoverished host communities in the philippines already struggling to cope with the effects of the worsening climate” (n.p.). consequently, according to the bishops, coastal and agriculture-reliant communities have experienced losing their livelihoods because of land 62 karl m. gaspar, cssr conversion and have experienced adverse health impacts due to pollution as toxic substances and heavy metals are released into the air. local government officials and indigenous leaders in all these areas are being wooed by mining firms that desire to begin operations soon. where they have resisted, the people have been subjected to harassment and human rights violations. one area where this has been taking place is between the diocese of marbel and the archdiocese of cotabato, where coal deposits were recently discovered. the local social action centers opposed the opening of such operations and supported the indigenous communities who took a stand to oppose the coal mining. another major development that spurred strong church response occurred in 2021. president duterte’s eo 130 amended president aquino iii’s eo 79 from 2012 to lift a moratorium on mineral contracts in protected areas, prime agricultural lands, tourist areas, and other critical locations. caritas philippines and other church actors strongly opposed duterte’s decision, contending it would harm the environment while mainly benefiting business interests, not the poor. nine provinces in mindanao, including moro and lumad areas, would be impacted by lifting the moratorium (gomes 2021). the church’s ability to respond to duterte’s decision was enhanced by eco-convergence, a church-civil society partnership to promote laudato si’. eco-convergence hubs throughout the philippines that track data and develop local expertise in monitoring mining operations enabled church leaders to highlight the likely impact on their communities of the lifting of the moratorium. this recent affair points to one very important thing local churches will need if they are to sustain their advocacy against mining: data on how the mining industry is playing out in their specific territories. information is not difficult to obtain, as it is publicly available online and there are media institutions interested in filing reports on mining explorations. by knowing exactly what sort of mining is operating or is planned in their respective dioceses, the local churches would be able to provide the data to their constituencies that is needed to formulate effective advocacy. for example, one of the most vibrant forms of church action with regard to mining has been grassroots efforts to create opportunities for alternative economic activities in areas marked for mining development. in an interview with holden and jacobson (2007, 496), i discussed the widespread, parish-level efforts of base ecclesial communities in mindanao to foster bottom-up development with activities like organic farming, microfinance, and handicrafts. these sorts of localized development projects, supported by local churches and encouraged in seminary training, are small but powerful vehicles for resisting the dominant power of the globalized mining industry. and it is essential that leaders are able to access accurate and up-to-date data on what the government and mining companies are doing and planning to do in their areas, as well as what impacts can be expected. mining in the philippines 63 conclusion since the country gained independence, social unrest has characterized philippine society. over the decades, a robust matrix of civil society work for peace has evolved. this has included labor organizing, youth movements, advocacy groups, and the influential people power revolution of the 1980s. these efforts came to also include conscientization programs so that the poor and disadvantaged would be made aware of the root causes of their marginalization. the formation of leaders assured that the empowerment of the poor would be sustained as the struggles would take time, and the mobilization of resources was also assured. another decades-long problem has been armed insurgencies. unrest and violent conflict have been constants. as with other areas of social unrest, civil society organizations have also been deeply embedded in peacebuilding work in affected conflict zones and have made real progress. the various agencies operating under the catholic church, from episcopal commissions to diocesan pastoral centers to religious orders, have been influenced by and helped shape these efforts for justice and peace. the church in the philippines has been one of the most active and effective peacebuilding organizations in the country, and remains engaged on a range of issues, including ones related to ongoing strife with the government as well as with armed groups. some of the factors that have made catholic engagement effective in reducing violent conflicts and creating conditions for a just and sustainable peace include the following: strong social and symbolic capital; the wise use of a prophetic role that can influence a wide range of the population, including state officials as well as those holding corporate power; and vibrant base ecclesial communities. today, this peacebuilding capacity is being exercised in areas where there is conflict associated with mining explorations and operations. mining has become a focal point of the government’s economic development plans, and aggressive pushes to increase mining output, especially in the southern region of mindanao, have introduced waves of human rights violations, violence, and new and worsened vulnerabilities for communities already dealing with the effects of decades of conflict. indigenous peoples have been particularly impacted. these mining conflicts interweave environmental questions, human rights issues, social cohesion and conflict transformation challenges, poverty and economic marginalization, and indigenous rights. in this light, the church’s experience with varied peacebuilding activities across levels of society, with developed sensitivity to ecological concerns, offers important resources to respond to these problems. references abs-cbn investigative and research group. 2018. “by the numbers: human rights violations during marcos’ rule.” abs-cbn news, september 21, 2018. 64 karl m. gaspar, cssr https://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/09/21/18/by-the-numbers-human-rights-violations-during-marcos-rule. association of major religious superiors in the philippines. 2013. amrsp convention statement. amrsp joint biennial convention, davao city, july 1–5, 2013. http:// www.pddm.ph/index.php/news/news-and-updates/1647-amrsp-convention-statement. bolasco, maria karina africa. 2019. “the grp-ndfp peace talks: tactical discontinuities in a shared narrative.” kyoto review of southeast asia, trendsetters 26. https://kyotoreview.org/trendsetters/grp-ndfp-peace-talks. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 1979. “exhortation against violence.” https://cbcponline.net/exhortation-against-violence-a-joint pastoral-letter-of-the-philippine-hierarchy. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 1983a. “a dialogue for peace.” https://cbcponline.net/a-dialogue-for-peace-joint-pastoral-letter-catholic bishops-conference-of-the-philippines. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 1983b. “reconciliation today.” https://cbcponline.net/reconciliation-today. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 1988. “what is happening to our beautiful land?” https://cbcponline.net/what-is-happening-to-our-beautiful-land. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 1998. “a statement of concern on the mining act of 1995.” https://cbcponline.net/a-statement-of concern-on-the-mining-act-of-1995. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 2006. “mining issues and concerns.” https://cbcponline.net/a-statement-on-mining-issues-and-concerns do-not-defile-the-land-where-you-live-and-where-i-dwell-num-3534/. cbcp (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines). 2019. “an urgent call for ecological conversion, hope in the face of climate emergency.” https://cbcpnews.net/cbcpnews/an-urgent-call-for-ecological-conversion-hope-in the-face-of-climate-emergency. catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines national secretariat for social action/caritas philippines and alyansa tigil mina. 2015. “joint statement on the mining issue during the visit of pope francis in manila and tacloban in the philippines: 15–19 january 2015.” https://hronlineph.com/tag/catholic-bishops conference-of-the-philippines. constantino, renato, and letizia r. constantino. 1978. the philippines: the continuing past. quezon city: the foundation for nationalist studies. diokno, jose w. 1987. a nation for our children: human rights, nationalism, sovereignty: selected writings of jose w. diokno. quezon city: claretian publications. forest management bureau. 2009. “philippines forestry outlook study.” working paper no. apfsos ii/wp/2009/10, asia-pacific forestry sector outlook study ii. food and agriculture organization of the united nations regional office for asia and the pacific. http://www.fao.org/3/am255e/am 255e00.pdf. gaspar, karl. 1977. “the growth and development of mspc.” in what is mspc?, 14–17. davao city: mspc publications. gaspar, karl, elpidio a. lapad, and ailynne j. maravillas. 2003. mapagpakamalinawon: a reader for the mindanawon peace advocate. davao city: alternate forum for research in mindanao. mining in the philippines 65 https://news.abs-cbn.com https://news.abs-cbn.com http://www.pddm.ph http://www.pddm.ph https://kyotoreview.org https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcponline.net https://cbcpnews.net https://cbcpnews.net https://hronlineph.com https://hronlineph.com http://www.fao.org http://www.fao.org gomes, robin. 2021. “philippine church decries government lifting ban on mining.” vatican news, april 21, 2021. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/ news/2021-04/philippines-caritas-bishops-against-lifting-ban-mining.html. goodland, robert, and clive wicks. 2008. philippines: mining or food?: chapters 1 to 7. london: the working group on mining in the philippines. http:// www.piplinks.org/miningorfood.html. holden, william n., and r. daniel jacobson. 2007. “mining amid armed conflict: nonferrous metals mining in the philippines.” the canadian geographer 51, no. 4: 475–500. 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2007.00193.x. odchimar, nerio. 2010. nerio odchimar, bishop of tandag, to benigno simeon c. aquino, iii, president of the republic of philippines. july 12, 2010. reid, ben. 2000. philippine left: political crisis and social change. manila: journal of contemporary asia publishers. sanz, penelope (coordinator). 2001. “philippines: mining a sacred mountain: protecting the human rights of indigenous peoples.” human rights impact assessments for foreign investment projects. https://www.slideshare.net/ no2mininginpalawan/mining-a-sacred-mountainprotecting-the-human-rights-of indigenous-communities. shepherd, bede, and a. lin neumann. 2007. “scared silent: impunity for extrajudicial killings.” human rights watch 19, no. 9. https://www.hrw.org/ reports/2007/philippines0607. sison, jose maria. 2013. detention and defiance against dictatorship: selected writings, 1977–1986. utrecht, the netherlands: international network for philippine studies. vitug, marites danguilan, and glenda m. gloria. 2000. under the crescent moon: rebellion in mindanao. quezon city: ateneo center for social policy and public affairs. 66 karl m. gaspar, cssr https://www.vaticannews.va https://www.vaticannews.va http://www.piplinks.org http://www.piplinks.org http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2007.00193.x https://www.slideshare.net https://www.slideshare.net https://www.slideshare.net https://www.hrw.org https://www.hrw.org 6 dynamics between the state, mining companies, and indigenous peoples in peru josé bayardo chata pacoricona1 the business sector is adamant: mining is an essential activity for the future of peru. the impact of mining on sectors like metalworking, agriculture, livestock, fishing, information technology, and communications purportedly demonstrates the importance of this sector for the country’s growth (see benavides ganoza 2018). however, at the community level, these positive impacts are rarely felt, and frequently communities’ dissatisfaction about being shut out from the development of a mining project leads to social protests and other forms of resistance that are ripe for violence and conflict. a good example is tía maría, an open-pit copper mine in the cocachacra district of peru’s islay province that has led to a decade of conflict with the local community. the government has strongly supported this project despite strong opposition from farmers, whose access to groundwater is threatened by the preferential water access given to the mining company. in response to social conflict, the company eventually reversed course and decided to use seawater, but the water supply remains at risk of contamination. despite this, the government has persisted in its position that the project is vital to national economic growth. the main actors in all socio-environmental conflicts around mining, like tía maría, are the same. first, we find the people, whose rights are overlooked as they are forced into a damaging economic activity alien to the cultures and livelihoods to which they are accustomed. secondly, there is the private company, which “in compliance” with all the requirements imposed by national legislation for undertaking extractive activities, struggles to make effective its claim to extract minerals from the subsoil. and finally, there is the state, with its pro-extractive and pro private investment policies, regulations, and practices that do not align with its obligations to defend its citizens, guarantee human rights, and promote general well-being founded on justice (see political constitution of peru, art. 44). our organization, derechos humanos y medio ambiente—puno, peru (dhuma), pressures the government to meet its obligations by pushing back against deceptive narratives about positive impacts of mining and doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-6 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-6 helping communities resist mining development through legal processes that they are typically unaware of or not capable of utilizing. dhuma was founded in 1988 as the vicariate of solidarity within the catholic prelature of juli. the impetus was the increasing political violence faced by indigenous communities during the 1980s. several religious congregations, lay parish workers, and ecclesial leadership coordinated to found the vicariate, and in 2008 it became an independent civil society organization. dhuma has maintained its catholic identity and its mission remains rooted in the principles of the gospel and catholic social teaching. and its work has remained focused on helping the indigenous communities of the puno region. this chapter describes the fraught dynamics between communities, companies, and the state in the context of mining, and demonstrates how we attempt to defend those communities before these situations lead to violence, dispossession, ecological destruction, and human rights abuses. the state and the corporations the bonds between private companies and the state are extremely worrying. the dealings between private investment and the government are principally based on lobbying agendas, hidden negotiations, and corruption. for example, the lava jato corruption case is one of the largest known to date, involving private companies and governments in various countries across latin america where infrastructure megaprojects have been carried out on the back of billions of dollars in bribes. according to a report from oxfam: the analysis of these megaprojects allows us to understand the way in which laws are made, influencing what is called ‘tailored legislation,’ legislation tailored to certain interests in how it is created and applied, where governments and officials frequently ignore, especially in cases of public works, the spirit of the laws and their necessary ethical basis, attending instead to the mere fulfillment of formalities to give a legal varnish to projects that have numerous problems. (durand 2018, 17) this appearance of legality and claims that the state is fulfilling its duty to promote general well-being masks the real goal behind each project or private investment: the self-interest of politicians and public officials. ordinary citizens are bystanders to these million-dollar scandals and are left wondering if the whole state machinery moves only to the rhythm of monetary kickbacks and whether all the laws and policies of the state work like this. in the same way that there is empirical certainty about institutionalized corruption in the peruvian judicial system (idl reporteros 2018), illegal agreements made between private companies and the peruvian state are being revealed as they unravel over time. 68 josé bayardo chata pacoricona an emblematic case: the aymarazo on november 28, 2007, supreme decree 083–2007-em was issued, declaring private investment in mining a public necessity. it enabled the peruvian subsidiariy of canada’s bear creek mining corporation to acquire concessions and rights over mines and complementary resources for development of production activities inside a fifty-kilometer zone along the border with bolivia. this development, the santa ana mining project, is located in the puno region on indigenous aymara territory. this decree was the starting point for the socio-environmental conflict known as the aymarazo. to deliver the concessions that make up the santa ana project, an exception had to be used. constitutionally, foreigners cannot acquire land rights of any kind within fifty kilometers of the border (political constitution of peru, art. 71). upon signing the supreme decree, this article of the constitution was dismissed on the grounds of “public necessity.” in issuing this decree, the state sought to substantiate that granting mining rights to bear creek would, in fact, have a beneficial impact on the well-being of the general community. in addition, it was assumed that development of this border zone would bring improved living standards for the inhabitants in the area—something that, unfortunately, generally does not happen in these situations. “public necessity” should be about needed works that are truly public, that benefit the broader community and not just private business interests. the “public necessity” designation is, for example, for infrastructure works like the construction of roads, hospitals, or dams; the decontamination of lakes or rivers; or the extension of electricity, telecommunication, or drinking water networks (ruiz molleda 2011). as such, we question what this business activity has to do with the public interest. agreements between the national police of peru and mining companies in 2019, three institutions looked closely into the agreements that have been signed between the national police of peru and mining companies nationwide. the examination covered 138 agreements signed between 1995 and 2018. in the report, these institutions discovered that 109 of the agreements were signed before 2017, an average of nine per year. then the count accelerated to 29 between 2017 and 2018. on review, it seems that 29 agreements in force at the time were due to expire between 2019 and 2022. what is striking is that most of the existing agreements apply to projects located in regions where there has been social unrest and the projects have been questioned by local communities (earthrights international, instituto de defensa legal, and coordinadora nacional de derechos humanos international 2019). dynamics in peru 69 the content of these agreements deserves special study since they differ from each other in their commitments. there are agreements whose aims include the “detection and neutralization of risks,” without establishing any exact definition, leaving the determination open to interpretation by the contracted police officers and the corporate representatives. “risk” could be read as any action, such as a demonstration or protest, carried out by a person or group defending interests or opinions that differ from those of the corporations concerned. other agreements have clauses guaranteeing “normal development,” and controlling “acts of vandalism and sabotage or terrorism.” these ambiguous and indeterminate terms can be interpreted in a discretionary way by interested parties, favoring private interests to the detriment of the individual and collective rights of the local population (earthrights international, instituto de defensa legal, and coordinadora nacional de derechos humanos international 2019). as a result of these agreements between the national police of peru and extractive corporations, the police have been providing extra services biased toward corporate interests and discriminating against communities in exchange for economic compensation. in this way, police officers have become private guards for corporations, undermining their function as public servants who receive their salaries from taxpayers. in practice, we are faced with the privatization of domestic order and the public function of the police force (ruiz molleda and salvador n.d.). this situation makes clear an obvious conflict of interest for the national police. it is impossible for its forces to distinguish public from corporate interest. this scenario encourages criminalization of social protest and abusive use of police force. ultimately, the damage is borne by indigenous communities and peoples that live in the immediate vicinity of mining operations (leyva 2018, 39). the crisis worsens in situations of social conflict, where the partiality of the national police can result, and has resulted, in clear human rights violations. this is demonstrated by the case of the las bambas copper mine in apurímac, where, since 2015, criminalization of the rural population has resulted in four protestors’ deaths. this police “function” is obviously not protecting public order but rather the interests of corporations; it is not preserving peace, but is aggravating conflict (earthrights international, instituto de defensa legal, and coordinadora nacional de derechos humanos international 2019). the state and indigenous peoples the idea of development from two perspectives the aymarazo case is an example of a clash of perspectives on development. by declaring the mine a public necessity, and in granting mining concessions that skirted constitutional standards, the state asserted that the mining project would contribute to economic development and to the 70 josé bayardo chata pacoricona improvement of the quality of life of the rural communities involved. the conviction of the state remains that mining should be at the center of the national economy.2 as such, it places the entire state apparatus at the service of its mining portfolio, without considering the right of communities or ancestral owners to refuse mining in their lands and territories. whether or not the government is acting in good faith, the reality is that this vision of progress differs greatly from the ancestral perspective of development that communities hold. that view is rooted in a sacred understanding that cannot be adequately captured in economic or patrimonial reckonings alone, and that resonates with catholic senses of care for creation and integral ecology (francis 2015, ch. 4). the result of these opposing positions is socio-environmental conflict. this pattern is repeated in the majority of such conflicts in the country. despite the omnipresence of these dynamics, it appears there is no real solution proposed that could meaningfully prevent future conflicts. in june 2019, the ombudsman’s office of peru, office for the prevention of social conflicts and governance (2019) reported four new social conflicts in the prior month, raising the national total to 178: 130 active and 48 latent. of the 178, 117 were of a socio-environmental nature, 62.4% (73 cases) of which were related to mining activity and 16.2% (19 cases) linked to hydrocarbon activity. this data shows the level of resistance to mining and hydrocarbon activities as expressed through social protest. this final point has to do with the right of the people to self determination. with its pro-extractivist vision, the state arbitrarily wields the power to decide what is beneficial for indigenous peoples (ips), completely distorting this right. article 7 of convention 169 of the international labour organization indicates that ips have the right to decide their own priorities regarding economic development. in catholic social teaching, the right of self-determination is grounded particularly in freedom and the right of individuals and peoples to participate in shaping their futures. straightforwardly, pope francis (2020, §14) has written that business enterprises that violate the self-determination of ips are crimes. respect for self-determination is necessary for integral human development, defined not only in economic terms, but also in terms of protecting communal identity and enabling all peoples to contribute to the common good (powers 2019, 60). in 2019, peru’s ministry of energy and mines released “vision of mining in peru to 2030,” outlining a path for making mining a central pillar of the national economy.3 the dependence of our economy on mining is worrying, and is reinforced through norms and state policies that reaffirm the extractive-oriented interests and priorities of corporations and the government. the rapid change in national regulations and state policies is clearly at the expense of the people who already live in mining areas, and ips who are at risk of having their lands lost to mining. these changes seek to eliminate, in a way that is presented as beneficial, the guarantees of dynamics in peru 71 communities’ rights to land and territory, an adequate and balanced environment, and participation, prior consultation, and fundamental self determination about their development. all of this goes against the nation’s constitution, international human rights norms, and principles of catholic social thought and integral human development. policies and governance favoring mining companies over communities law 30230 places more than eight thousand rural and indigenous communities in a situation of vulnerability. this law allows the state, through “special procedures,” to hand over land to investment projects, in the location and amount that the investor requires, ignoring the property rights of legitimate owners. for mining, these owners are often ips. these special procedures affect all properties, be they private or state lands, whether they are backed by deeds or any other documentation. no exceptions of any kind apply. one of the legislative decrees most responsible for weakening communal property rights and the autonomy of rural communities has been d.leg. 1333, which is known as the “law of dispossession.” this law, which builds upon law 30230, was repealed in congress, but it is kept in force by executive action. the regulation allows the state more control over communal property and territory so as to facilitate granting mining concessions to private companies. this standard is complemented by d.leg. 1320, which extends the ownership of mining concessions to thirty years, even for concession holders who do not pay their annual right of validity fee to the state (red muqui n.d.). laws and policies prioritizing mining by weakening environmental regulation have also been harmful to ips. the loosening of environmental protection standards is based on modifications to the government’s environmental quality standards for air and soil, and the maximum permissible limits of toxic elements. these modifications give wide latitude for companies to pollute while offering virtual impunity and preventing compensation for those communities harmed by pollution. among these rules is supreme decree 003–2017. this decree weakens standards for sulfur dioxide and other toxic materials generated by extraction activities. chief resolution 056–2018-ana on the classification of continental water bodies is another example. it was meant to designate some bodies of water as more fragile and thus due stricter protection. but technical clarification on the classification was not given, allowing mining companies to more easily pollute. other regulations have been issued that favor the privatization of water (d.leg. 1280), facilitating its privileged use for mining activity and not for citizens’ collectives or consumption by the general population. legislative decree 1285, issued at the end of 2016, modifies article 79 of law no. 29338, the law of water resources. these norms establish 72 josé bayardo chata pacoricona provisions for a progressive permissiveness towards oil spills and mining tailings and make environmental management mechanisms more malleable, during and after extractive activity. in short, these provisions facilitate pollution with impunity (red muqui n.d.). another tactic the government has used to harm ips and other communities is declaring states of emergency. the state has used this tactic to restrict fundamental rights and allow police or military intervention without having to prove the existence of a serious breach of public order, as required by article 137 of the peruvian constitution. this is a blatant abuse of state power outside the constitutional framework. for example, a state of emergency was imposed in the districts tied to the las bambas mining project that included the entire apurimac-cusco-arequipa road corridor, which is 482 square kilometers in area and extends 500 meters on each side of the highway. in some places, states of emergency have been declared preventively, restricting such fundamental rights as individual freedom, freedom of assembly and movement, and inviolability of the home. in some cases, citizens have been prevented from having public gatherings, even ones that are not of a political nature (ruiz molleda et al. 2019). consultation, social protest, and peaceful remediation formal processes have always presented an obstacle for indigenous peoples. mining concessions are unilaterally granted by the mining and metallurgical geological institute (ingemmet) at the request of an interested corporation.4 consequently, indigenous communities based at mineral-rich sites live in constant fear, under the permanent threat that hangs over their land. according to law, the mining concession holder will not be able to use the land unless he or she has an official agreement with the land owner or has been granted a mining easement. however, if no agreement has been reached, the holder of the mining concession may request an easement from the general mining directorate of the ministry of energy and mines. in other words, even in the face of opposition from the community, the legal framework favors the concession holder. a concession holder can press ahead with mining exploration and exploitation by seeking an easement, regardless of whether the community opposes the project. convention 169 of the international labour organization (1989), which grants protections to ips, was ratified by peru in 1994. the struggle to uphold convention 169 is led by the same people it is meant to protect, with accompaniment from us at dhuma, but without support from the state. although progress is being made in short steps for the rights contained in this rule to be recognized in practice, the state continues by various means to undermine efforts to enforce it. for example, the peasant communities of chila chambilla and chila pucara were the first aymara indigenous communities to initiate a judicial process against the peruvian state for the omission of the right to prior consultation and the violation dynamics in peru 73 of the right to territory in the delivery of mining concessions to a private company. the magistrates in charge of the case stated that convention 169 does not protect them because they were unable to provide sufficient proof that they belong to an indigenous people, denying them their cultural identity. article 6.1.a of convention 169 makes clear that consultation with ips about use of their land needs to happen in the earliest stages of any possible project: “governments should … consult the peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, whenever legislative or administrative measures are expected to directly affect them.” this standard has been developed by article 4.a of the law on consultation (law 29785), and a similar concept, called the constitutional principle of prior implementation of the consultation process, has been proposed by peru’s constitutional court. this principle mandates that “consultation be carried out prior to any decision. an essential idea behind the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the discussion of the project of the administrative or legislative measure is that they have an opportunity to raise their cultural perspectives, so that they may be taken into account” (constitutional tribunal of peru 2010, legal basis 36). but the procedure for granting mining concessions in peru is absolutely incompatible with these legal norms (see international labour organization 1989, art. 13–15; political constitution of peru, art. 88). the aymarazo conflict arose when rural communities in puno learned that ingemmet had delivered mining concessions on about 60% of the territory of puno, behind the backs of communities and without their prior consultation. this follows a typical pattern where communities often become aware of concessions only after the deadline to file their opposition has passed. prior consultation can be used to channel misgivings and avoid social protests by communities, but it is frequently evaded or enacted in only superficial ways. the one requirement to be granted a mining concession is that the potential concession holder publish a single notice in two newspapers, one of national and the other of regional scope. five key barriers prevent rural communities from being able to access such notices: (1) notices are published in newspapers that only circulate in urban areas and not in rural areas where ips live; (2) they are published in spanish and not the native languages of ips; (3) the only way to access these notices is to buy the newspapers, which are expensive for the economically vulnerable ips; (4) andean cultures are mostly oral, which prevents indigenous communities from understanding the content of the ads; and (5) complete information relating to the mining concessions and their respective administrative files are logged in a database which can only be accessed through a computer with an internet connection, which many indigenous communities do not have.5 and in the event that a notice does reach the communities, it does not specify the name of the communities to be affected, or include maps of the concessions. this all means that ips are being systematically excluded 74 josé bayardo chata pacoricona from legal processes for determining the status of their lands. however, the general law of administrative procedures is very clear about what ought to happen: “if, during the filing of a procedure, the existence comes to light of non-appearing third parties whose legitimate rights or interests may be affected by the resolution to be issued, said procedure must be communicated to them by means of a summons delivered to their known address, without interrupting proceedings” (presidency of the council of ministers of peru 2001, art. 60.1). this legal provision has not been complied with in any mining administrative procedure. faced with this lack of meaningful prior consultation, and the frequent failure of the state to take into account the livelihoods and cultures of native peoples, archaeological remains,6 or areas destined for agriculture expansion7 when granting concessions for mining, communities choose to exercise their right to social protest. this leads to conflict and opens the way for violence, especially in light of the way social protest has been criminalized. the criminalization of protest is a multidimensional phenomenon that includes actions and speech aimed at repressing and delegitimizing political dissent. acts of repression may include assassinations, executions, disappearances, attacks, threats, harassment, spying, and persecution via criminal proceedings, and they may be against an individual or a collective. criminalizing discourse discredits protesters as lawbreakers, radicals, and, in the most extreme cases, terrorists. this is the ideological justification that favors the state against social protest (saldaña and portocarrero 2017). social protest is distorted by the state and treated as a criminal offense to be punished. a clear example of the use of law to prosecute protest leaders is article 200 of the peruvian criminal code, third paragraph: the one who, through violence or threat, occupies premises, hinders communication channels or prevents the free transit of citizens or disrupts the normal functioning of public services or the execution of legally authorized works in order to obtain any benefit or advantage from the authorities of an undue economic or other advantage of any other nature … the penalty shall be not less than fifteen or greater than twenty-five years [of imprisonment] and disqualification pursuant to numerals 4 and 6 of article 36, if the violence or threat is committed. (ministry of justice and human rights of peru 2016) following this logic, the main aymara spokespeople saw themselves criminally denounced for crimes such as riots, aggravated extortion, and obstruction of public services following the aymarazo protest. such criminal definitions place a chilling pall over any act of protest. in joint inter institutional cooperation, the institute of legal defense and the bar dynamics in peru 75 association of puno have sought a declaration of unconstitutionality of this article so that it ceases to have criminalizing effects. in light of these realities, our organization attempts to offer resources for communities to use legal mechanisms as a means of peacefully attaining justice and realizing their own visions of development. we see this alternative as urgent, recognizing that protest can result in injury, death, detention, and criminal charges. in that same vein, human rights organizations decided to present a set of lawsuits before the judiciary and the constitutional court against different state actors for their failure to comply with consultation requirements. such claims form part of what we call “strategic litigation.” on top of obtaining favorable sentences for individual cases, we seek to put discussions regarding the situation of rural communities in extractive contexts high on the legislative agenda. cases where consultation was omitted for mining activity in puno include the quechua communities of atuncolla, san josé de llungo, san josé principio, and arboleda, which was a pioneer in demanding consultation at the national level, and the aymara communities of jatucachi, chila chambilla, and chila pucara. conclusion when we examine the dynamics between the state, companies, and indigenous communities, it appears that ips have no alliances other than some select groups dedicated to advocating for them. through corruption, legal and procedural complexity and obfuscation, and criminalization of protest, ips cease to be protagonists in the stories of their own lands. they are beset by grave power imbalances and other disadvantages that prevent them from being able to use legal channels before mining projects move past critical points of development. and when they try to respond after the fact, they are frequently met by violence and repression. the social doctrine of the catholic church teaches us to take a political, social, and religious stance in favor of the people, especially the most vulnerable. this doctrine encompasses all aspects of human dignity, and its fulfillment is central to the christian vocation. at dhuma, we focus on the mandate in laudato si’ to hear the cry of the earth as well as the cry of the poor. from our time as part of the prelature of juli through our work today as an independent organization, we continue to dedicate ourselves to the defense of life and mother earth, and the accompaniment of the children of god. in puno, that mostly includes dealing with the violation of the rights of ips in relation to mining. the long history of suffering of native peoples was aggravated greatly during the political violence in peru from 1980 to 2000, and now that suffering includes violence against nature and lands which ips hold sacred and on which they depend for their well-being. because of this reality and our commitment to catholic social teaching, we help indigenous communities know their rights, understand mining 76 josé bayardo chata pacoricona development projects and processes, and navigate legal channels to redress problems. such activities are an important element of peacebuilding in peru and other countries in the global south facing similar challenges, whether they involve ips or other vulnerable and marginalized communities. dhuma, rooted in a catholic legacy, will continue to advance and deepen such work with the communities of puno, peru. notes 1 translated from spanish by thomas mcdonagh. 2 the directorate general for promotion of sustainable mining presented a 2020 update of the mine construction project portfolio consisting of 46 projects and investments amounting to us$56.158 million. these investments include projects for the construction of new mines, expansion of existing ones, and the reuse of tailings (ministry of energy and mines of peru 2020). 3 dhuma is a member of red muqui, a national platform of institutions that engages in advocacy to support rural communities and defend the environment in the context of mining. red muqui refused to endorse this statement, despite its attempts to present sustainable and inclusive models of mining development. 4 ingemmet is a decentralized technical public body that forms part of the ministry of energy and mines. ingemmet’s work is aimed at obtaining, administering, and efficiently disseminating geoscientific information and data related to basic geology, subsoil resources, and geological risks. it is also responsible for conducting the ordinary mining procedure, including receiving petitions, granting and revoking mining concessions, systematizing georeferenced information through the national mining cadastre, as well as the administration and distribution of permits and penalties. 5 despite this, curiously, ingemmet has been awarded prizes by the state. in 2012, it achieved first place in its category, transparency and access to information, based on the use of information systems called geocatmin (geological cadastral mining system) and sidemcat (mining rights and cadastre system) and on its role as a disseminator of the geological and cadastral information that the institution manages. also, at the 2015 conference “good practices in geo-information management” organized by the national office of electronic government and information technology, ingemmet won an award in the category of metadata management. 6 in 2011, ingemmet delivered mining concessions in grids that covered the pre-inca archaeological complex of sillustani, whose main attraction are its chullpas, funeral towers that formed part of the architectural expression of the kolla culture, located in the atuncolla district, puno province and region. 7 article 14 of the general mining law indicates that: “… no non-metallic concessions or extensions of non-metallic concessions may be established, on intangible agricultural areas, or on rustic lands for agricultural use, without considering between these and last to natural pastures” (ministry of energy and mines of peru 1992). however, the ministry of agriculture and irrigation does not have official data on all the territories designated for agriculture, and many communities have extended agricultural activity beyond known territories. and in the case of mining concessions of a metallic nature, no limit is established, whether it is for agricultural purposes or not. dynamics in peru 77 references benavides ganoza, roque. 2018. la minería responsable y sus aportes al desarrollo del perú. 3rd ed. compañía de minas 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https://www.svst.edu.ph http://www.pcm.gob.pe http://www.pcm.gob.pe https://muqui.org https://muqui.org https://muqui.org http://www.justiciaviva.org.pe http://www.justiciaviva.org.pe http://www.justiciaviva.org.pe https://idl.org.pe https://idl.org.pe http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe 7 the mining struggle in el salvador and the role of the catholic church andrés mckinley in the middle of the sixteenth century, when king ferdinand of spain was orienting his men on the priorities for the conquest of the new world, his instructions were clear and concise: “get the gold, humanely if possible; but, at any cost, get the gold” (perlez and johnson 2005, n.p.). five hundred years later, following in the footsteps of the conquistadores, transnational mining corporations from canada, the united states, australia, and as far away as russia, are coming to central america in search of gold, silver, iron, nickel, and other valuable metals in a mineral belt extending from panama to mexico. in an effort to win the hearts and minds of governments and local communities, these corporations promise new technologies which, they claim, protect the environment, utilizing terms like “modern mining” or “responsible mining.” they promise jobs and an economic boom for poor and desperate communities located near mineral deposits. they assure a significant increase in government income which can then be used to support health, education, and other national priorities, and promise respect for basic human rights. in spite of this enormously attractive offer, the people of el salvador said “no.” public opinion polls carried out by the jesuit-run central american university (uca) in 2007 and 2015 demonstrated a massive rejection of metallic mining by affected communities and broad sectors of salvadoran society. in 2015, 79.5% of those polled considered el salvador to be an inappropriate place for metallic mining. over 76% expressed opposition to potential mining projects in their municipality and 77% demanded that the government take immediate measures to prohibit metallic mining. through the work of uca and informed and steadfast support from the country’s episcopal leadership, the catholic church was one of the leading forces for translating that widespread concern about mining into national policy for the common good of the people. in what follows, i will describe the main reason why el salvador’s people rejected mining: water. i will then outline the country’s history of resistance to mining and analyze why it ultimately proved successful. finally, i will address the distinct and central role played by the catholic church in this struggle. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-7 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-7 why el salvador said “no” to metallic mining how can one understand the radical position against mining taken by the citizens and the catholic church of a small impoverished country in dire need of direct foreign investment, jobs, and better services in health and education? the answer to this question can be summarized in a single word: water. el salvador suffers from a severe crisis in terms of quantity, quality, and access to water. the crisis has its origins in decades of mismanagement, overexploitation, and contamination. recent studies indicate that if the country does not make profound changes in how it manages water resources, life in el salvador will be unviable within eighty years (agencia efe 2016). and the situation continues to worsen. in april of 2019, the ministry of environment and natural resources (marn) gave a dismal account of the prospects for freshwater availability over the first three months of the rainy season (may–july). this prediction was based on the findings of the recent central america climate forum in which rain patterns were analyzed and compared with previous years. in its report, marn revealed that the average water flows of several of the most strategic rivers in the country would show a deficit of between 45% and 60% between the months of may and july. the huiza, chilama, and amayo rivers, in the province of la libertad in central el salvador, would reduce their water flows by up to 50%. in the eastern part of the country, the goascorán river in the province of la unión, the torola river in the department of morazán, the rio grande in san miguel, and the molino and cacao rivers of usulután would be reduced by more than 60%. finally, in the western zone, the flow levels of the angue, san josé, and ostúa rivers of metapán in the province of santa ana would see reductions of 45%. according to marn, aquifers around the country are also being gradually depleted by climate change and overexploitation by large-scale agriculture and industry. the impact has been dramatic, with rural communities suffering from decreases in water availability in natural springs and wells, and with aquifers that supply potable water to important urban centers reaching worrisome levels. aquifers supplying water to the capital city of san salvador suffered a decrease of 4.23 meters between 2012 and 2019. the aquifers supplying water to the eastern city of san miguel suffered a similar decrease (4.14 meters) between 2014 and 2019, and the aquifer of san agustín-san francisco javier in the southern city of usulután recorded a decrease of 4.44 meters between 2013 and 2019 (calderón 2019). according to the government’s national administration of aqueducts and sewers, no less than 45 wells providing potable drinking water for 2.1 million people in greater san salvador were depleted between 2008 and 2016, and water levels in remaining wells are diminishing at a rate of between the mining struggle in el salvador 81 1 and 1.5 meters per year (machuca 2019). adding to the crisis, environmentalists have reported that over 90% of surface waters suffer from some degree of contamination (la prensa gráfica 2016). these developments have led highly respected international experts like the un economic commission for latin america and the caribbean, the latin american water tribunal, and the global water partnership to declare that el salvador is on the threshold of water stress, a situation in which freshwater resources available for human use decline to a level of 1,700 cubic meters per person per year, rendering it impossible to meet demand. marn, for its part, warns that by 2022, 80% of el salvador´s national territory will suffer from water stress (agencia efe 2019). metallic mining requires enormous quantities of freshwater. one can say that freshwater is the lifeblood of mining in the same way that it is the lifeblood of human existence. mining competes with local communities, and with humanity at large, for this vital liquid. the average gold mine in central america utilizes more than a million liters of water per day. some mines in the region utilize more than 6 million liters per day, and larger mines around the world utilize hundreds of millions (mckinley 2016, i, 21). metallic mining, especially for gold, also contaminates water. the separation of gold from ore requires sodium cyanide, a toxic chemical that can be lethal in quantities smaller than a grain of rice. cyanide solutions frequently seep into freshwater sources in and around mining sites, or escape from poorly constructed tailings dams where toxic waste from the mining process is stored (24–25). cyanide also evaporates at 36°c, contaminating the air in a radius of many miles around mining operations. apart from sodium cyanide, metallic mining utilizes explosives, fuel, antifreeze, and other materials that leave toxic residues that seep into freshwater systems. the most problematic source of water pollution from metallic mining, however, is a process called acid mine drainage, a phenomenon that occurs when rock with high sulfide content (commonly found in central america) is extracted from the earth, crushed, and exposed to oxygen from air and rainwater, which converts the sulfides into sulfates and, finally, into sulfuric acid. the sulfuric acid, as well as other harmful metals that it leaches from the walls of the mine and rocks in the surrounding area, flows into nearby streams, aquifers, and other freshwater sources. acid mine drainage is a difficult process to reverse and can be found today in gold mines in france and spain that date to the time of the roman empire (rodriguez, garcia, and castillo 2007, 33). given these factors, it is obvious that a country like el salvador—on the brink of water stress, with high levels of pollution, the highest population density in the western hemisphere, and already suffering from severe water shortages—is not an appropriate location for large-scale metallic mining. 82 andrés mckinley the national struggle against metallic mining the struggle against metallic mining in el salvador lasted for over seventeen years and evolved through four clear and distinct phases. phase 1 (2000–2004) was marked by the incursion of transnational mining companies and the growing resistance of local communities. this phenomenon was especially clear in the northern provinces of chalatenango and cabañas, regions highly impacted by the civil war of 1980–1992. in the case of chalatenango, the communities most threatened by mining were well-organized and committed to protecting their territories, considered sacred and drenched in the blood of family members assassinated by the army during the war. these communities were quick to respond to the presence of foreign mining companies prospecting for gold and silver, and they built strong local processes of resistance. the case of cabañas was more complex. the communities in this province had been polarized by the war, with ex-combatants from guerrilla organizations living side by side with former soldiers or collaborators with the army. they were engaged in a painful search to heal the wounds of twelve years of war and mend the social fabric of their communities. different opinions about mining exacerbated existing divisions and hindered local resistance. nevertheless, the province, like chalatenango, remained predominantly anti-mining. phase 2 (2005–2009) was characterized principally by the formation and consolidation of a national struggle against metallic mining based on the logic of public policy advocacy. this initiative began in 2005 with the organization of a broad coalition, the national roundtable on metallic mining in el salvador (mesa), consisting of community-based organizations, development ngos, environmentalists, church groups, legal aid organizations, and other actors. mesa, strongly supported by oxfam america and other international organizations, quickly became the backbone of the struggle. it employed a rights-based focus, promoted concrete policy proposals, and designed and applied well-planned advocacy campaigns to advance its policy agenda. phase 3 (2009–2016) was dominated principally by a prolonged legal struggle which began with a promise by president antonio saca in 2009 that no new permits for mineral exploration or licenses for exploitation would be approved by his government. this policy, also adopted by the two following administrations, amounted to a de facto moratorium on mining in the country. in response, a canadian mining corporation, pacific rim, and a us mining corporation, commerce group, brought lawsuits against el salvador in the world bank´s international center for settlement of investment disputes (icsid), accusing the salvadoran government of violating its own investment law and investor protection clauses of the central american free trade agreement. the mining struggle in el salvador 83 lawsuits have become increasingly common, according to a recent report by the institute for policy studies, mining watch canada, and the center for international environmental law (moore and rocha 2019). the report analyzes a growing trend of multimillion-dollar claims brought by the mining industry against latin american governments struggling to defend the environment and, in particular, freshwater resources. in 2009, however, this tactic was a new and powerful threat to the anti-mining movement of el salvador. the country eventually won both cases, though the pacific rim case lasted seven years. the cases cost the salvadoran state over eight million dollars in legal fees, monies that were urgently needed for healthcare, education, public security, and other priorities. with the finalization of the icsid ruling, pacific rim and its new owner, oceanagold, were ordered to reimburse this amount to the state. oceanagold finally complied under continuous pressure from anti-mining advocates. phase 4 (2016–2017) saw the final and definitive battles for prohibition. with the archdiocese of san salvador and uca taking the lead, the catholic church of el salvador assumed a central role. this phase culminated in a ban on metallic mining in the country. the particular role that catholic actors played in this process is detailed below. components of success the national struggle against metallic mining in el salvador was launched in highly unfavorable circumstances. el salvador was governed at the time by a right-wing pro-business political party that prioritized direct foreign investment in its strategies for economic growth. the communities most threatened by mining had little experience with this industry and knew little about the costs to the environment and traditional livelihoods. the salvadoran population in general had little awareness of the importance of natural resources, especially water, for the future viability of the country and was being aggressively bombarded by propaganda campaigns of transnational mining corporations highlighting the purported benefits of metallic mining. nevertheless, the struggle took root and grew, transforming itself into a national movement with the slogan “yes to life, no to mining.” small-scale organizational and educational initiatives in local communities grew into a broad-based national campaign for legislative reform which eventually accumulated sufficient influence to shift the balance of power in salvadoran society and force policymakers to prioritize national interests. the strategic vision that guided the struggle included several key components that distinguished the process from other anti mining battles in the region, and contributed in important ways to the final victory. 84 andrés mckinley nonviolence el salvador is a country with a long and tragic history of violence, beginning with the spanish conquest and followed by over three hundred years of brutal colonization, fifty years of repressive military dictatorship, and twelve years of bloody civil war. the country remains highly polarized in social, economic, and political terms, and highly susceptible to violence in the face of continuing social inequities and unresolved issues at the local and national levels. it was not surprising, therefore, when pro-mining interests in the country turned violent in 2009, resulting in the assassination of five anti mining activists from the provinces of cabañas, where the canadian mining company pacific rim was insisting, at all costs, on mining gold and silver. pacific rim also mobilized its workers and a group of local activists in aggressive street demonstrations against the archdiocese of san salvador, oxfam america, and the office of the human rights ombudsperson, all of which opposed metallic mining. within this highly volatile context, however, the organizers and key activists of the struggle in el salvador insisted that it be one of ideas, not brute force; they believed in the power of truth, of objective scientific data, to overcome the aggression and well-financed propaganda campaigns of the transnational mining corporations. linkage between local communities and national movements a second important feature was linking local community resistance to national advocacy campaigns, recognizing that the struggles of the poor at the local level are rarely sustainable if they are isolated from national processes. at the same time, it was understood that national campaigns are less viable and meaningful when they fail to incorporate the aspirations, motivations, and determined social force of broad-based community participation. the methodology of public policy advocacy a third key feature was the application of public policy advocacy methodologies. these non-violent processes were designed to influence policymakers via clear and precise proposals. this meant that the struggle could not be limited to street protests but had to include a clear policy agenda and well-planned advocacy campaigns designed to move that agenda forward. it was a disciplined effort by an organized citizenry to influence the formulation, approval, and implementation of public policies, programs, and practices through persuasion and social pressure. a logic of empowerment the struggle in el salvador also focused on empowerment. since public policy advocacy was considered to be an exercise of citizen power, the mining struggle in el salvador 85 advancing a policy agenda of prohibition required the empowering of key actors, especially communities most threatened by metallic mining. far from being an abstract concept, empowerment meant organizing and educating communities and civil society at large and building alliances to enhance their capacity to influence legislators. it meant building and preserving unity; preparing strong, democratic, and well-informed leadership; assuring gender equity; building technical skills to access, analyze, and utilize information; generating knowledge through research; and building capacity for formulating viable policy goals and for developing the planning and negotiating skills essential to attaining policy victories. a variety of strategies and tactics a fifth feature of the struggle was the application of a wide variety of strategies and tactics. among these were organizing and alliance-building, education and awareness-raising, research, lobbying, communications and media, and mobilization. in practice, this meant traveling to distant communities to provide workshops, inform leadership, and organize. it meant building alliances at the national and international levels to include communities and key actors from el salvador, other central american nations, and countries that were home to transnational mining companies, especially the united states, canada, and australia. it meant holding public forums to inform citizens from all sectors of society, developing and disseminating educational materials, conducting public opinion polls and disseminating the results, lobbying government (including the presidency) and policymakers, working with the media to educate and inform public opinion, promoting popular consultations in municipalities threatened by mining, accompanying legislators on visits to former mining sites where environmental destruction from metallic mining continues to destroy freshwater resources and traditional livelihoods, and, of course, taking to the streets in periodic demonstrations. the special role of the catholic church it should be no surprise that the catholic church of el salvador played a key role in the struggle. since the early 1970s, vatican documents have spoken of how unregulated human activity has caused a planetary ecological crisis. in his 1971 apostolic letter, octogesima adveniens, pope st. paul vi (1971, §21) referred briefly to the environmental challenges of the time, pointing out that: man is suddenly becoming aware that by an ill-considered exploitation of nature he risks destroying it and becoming in his turn the victim of this degradation … this is a wide-ranging social problem which 86 andrés mckinley concerns the entire human family. the christian must turn to these new perceptions in order to take on responsibility, together with the rest of men, for a destiny which from now on is shared by all. pope st. john paul ii touched on this theme in 1979 in redemptor hominis. he called attention to worsening environmental problems and the need for conversion to remedy these, which would require enormous changes in lifestyles, models of production, and consumption (§15–16). in 2007, pope benedict xvi called for an end to the structural causes of environmental decline, including predominant models for economic growth that have shown themselves to be a threat to the environment and to life itself. and in 2015, pope francis presented his powerful encyclical, laudato si’, the first encyclical in the history of the catholic church to focus exclusively on the environment. in this document, francis calls on the world’s population to care for our common home by defending the environment and curtailing the abuse of natural resources, especially water. like his predecessors, he criticizes systemic causes of environmental deterioration, pointing specifically to unbridled capitalism, a system that prioritizes capital over human life, generating inequity and imbalance between north and south and placing life itself at risk. finally, he calls for a new ecological culture, with a different perspective and with policies and educational programs that lead to a new spirituality and a different way of life. many catholics in el salvador—saint oscar romero, father rutilio grande, the 1989 uca martyrs, and many others—have been killed for actively living in solidarity with the poor and accompanying them in their struggles for social justice. because of this history, the catholic church has enormous credibility and influence within salvadoran society. it was a natural ally in the struggle against metallic mining because that struggle was grounded in the principles of catholic social teaching, including respect for human dignity, respect for human life, free association, citizen participation, a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, solidarity, and stewardship. as early as the year 2000, bishop eduardo alas alfaro of chalatenango opposed the incursion of transnational mining corporations in the communities of his diocese. in 2007, the episcopal conference of el salvador formally pronounced its opposition to metallic mining with a document entitled “cuidemos la casa de todos” (“take care of our common home”), arguing that: our small country is the space in which god the creator has called us to life. this is the portion of the world that he has entrusted to us to care for and to use according to his will … but this blessed land that we dearly love suffers from growing and unmerciful deterioration. we are all responsible for conserving and defending it because the environment is the home of us all: of this and of future generations. (n.p.) the mining struggle in el salvador 87 in february 2009, monsignor josé luis escobar alas was installed as archbishop of san salvador. in his inaugural message, with elections upcoming and the country’s president and the presidents of the legislature and judiciary all in attendance, the new archbishop said: “to the departing government as well as the incoming government, whatever party you are from, i call upon you to prohibit the mining of precious metals. i ask this due to the grave damage it would cause to the health of our people through the contamination of our water” (moreno 2009, n.p.). in the following years, archbishop escobar alas has spoken out continually against metallic mining in press conferences, which are traditionally held after the main sunday mass in the national cathedral, and in other forums. his auxiliary bishop, cardinal gregorio rosa chavez, has done the same. as the struggle grew in el salvador, the persistent messaging of pope francis in defense of the environment motivated and strengthened the resolve of the salvadoran catholic bishops, priests, nuns, and laity to take on this cause with increasing emphasis and determination. pope francis called upon his church to be in the street, dirtied and tattered by its accompaniment of traditionally marginalized peoples. this call had an enormous impact on the hierarchy of el salvador. the commitment and role of the salvadoran church took a strategic leap in 2016 with the formulation of a new proposal for prohibition developed by legal experts and environmental specialists at uca. it was not the first bill to be presented to the national assembly: mesa presented one in 2006 and another was presented in 2013, but right-wing parties representing the interests of big business and closely linked to transnational corporate interests refused to debate either bill. the uca proposal was shared with archbishop escobar alas, who immediately gave it his support, and on february 6, 2017, uca authorities presented it to the commission on environment and climate change of the legislative assembly, archbishop escobar alas, cardinal rosa chavez, and representation from the general office for justice, peace and integrity of creation of the franciscan order. by early march, 2017, the bill had barely advanced in the assembly commission, so archbishop escobar alas and other catholic leaders called for a massive demonstration on march 9 (velásquez 2017). over six thousand priests, nuns, and laypeople, together with other social movements, responded to the call and marched from a park in the center of the capital city to the legislative assembly. there, in the presence of national and international media, we were met by representatives of each of the political parties. during the meeting that ensued, the president of the legislative assembly promised that the new bill would be approved before easter sunday, which was still several weeks away. given the accumulated frustrations of seventeen years of organizing and struggle, few of the participants left the meeting convinced that the promise would be kept. in the days that followed, transnational mining corporations like oceanagold began to perceive that the balance of power was shifting. 88 andrés mckinley recognizing the growing threat to their interests, they returned to their earlier strategies of trying to win hearts and minds through aggressive media campaigns filled with promises of new technologies which would be more harmonious with the environment and would make “responsible mining,” as they called it, possible. when they chose as their model their gold and silver mine in the province of nueva vizcaya, philippines, little did they know how ready the experts of uca were to rebut that claim. fully aware of the environmental destruction and human rights violations associated with gold mining in the philippines, uca invited the governor of nueva vizcaya to visit el salvador and planned a week of public forums and meetings with communities, the president of el salvador and his cabinet, and, most importantly, the legislative assembly´s commission on environment and climate change, which was also being intensely lobbied by oceanagold. using visual evidence of the destruction caused by oceanagold in his province, the governor made convincing arguments against metallic mining. his 26 years as a political leader in his own country gave him great credibility with salvadoran legislators and, in particular, the members of the commission on environment and climate change. already highly knowledgeable about metallic mining as a result of receiving educational materials and direct testimony from uca and other social actors over the years, the commission members took the governor’s presentation as a closing argument on the issue and voted to approve the church/uca proposal for the prohibition of metallic mining. on the following day, march 29, the bill was sent to the plenary session of the legislative assembly, where it was approved without opposition. conclusion with the approval of this bill, el salvador became the first country in the world to ban this controversial industry. suffering from an abundance of negative superlatives (most violent nation, most densely populated, most deteriorated environment, most deforested, most water-stressed) this small nation became a precedent-setting example of citizen resolve, catholic social action, national pride, and environmental protection, giving hope to communities and countries around the world who are confronting the abuses and violations of transnational mining corporations. the long and difficult struggle to attain this once unthinkable goal was a gradual process consisting of several accumulating factors in which the catholic community played a role: • social force bred by constructing and consolidating a social movement and empowering key social actors to analyze the threat of metallic mining, identify policy solutions, design specific policy proposals, and advance their political agenda through public policy advocacy; the mining struggle in el salvador 89 • knowledge about the vulnerable situation of el salvador´s environment and the threat generated by metallic mining; • power to influence policymakers via lobbying, disseminating educational materials, and organizing and mobilizing increasingly broad sectors of society; • alliances at the local, national, and international levels that enlightened public opinion via effective communication and media strategies; • broad-based consensus among different sectors of society through dialogue with opponents and prioritizing national interests over individual and party interests; and • political will among decision makers to defend the environment. the victory against metallic mining in el salvador surprised and angered transnational companies and left them determined to dismantle this historic policy victory. the failure of the salvadoran government to fully comply with the law two years after its approval is another serious problem. according to the law, by march 2019, small-scale artisanal mining, given a two-year grace period while communities searched for alternative livelihoods, should have been curtailed. inactive mines around the country should have been adequately closed and environmental damage caused by mining activities in earlier decades should have begun to be remedied. none of this has occurred. nevertheless, public opinion and the will of lawmakers remain staunchly in favor of prohibition. more importantly, the struggle itself, with its emphasis on citizen empowerment and the application of methodologies of public policy advocacy instead of brute force, has offered a new way of doing politics in el salvador that will hopefully consolidate this victory, strengthen an incipient democracy, transform traditional power relationships within society, and contribute to more profound and sustainable social change in el salvador. references agencia efe. 2016. “la vida en el salvador será inviable en 80 años por la crisis de agua, dice un estudio.” may 12, 2016. https://www.efe.com/efe/america/ sociedad/la-vida-en-el-salvador-sera-inviable-80-anos-por-crisis-de-agua-dice-un estudio/20000013-2923438. agencia efe. 2019. “el 80% del territorio salvadoreño estará en ‘estrés hídrico’ en el año 2022.” march 22, 2019. https://www.efe.com/efe/america/sociedad/el-80 del-territorio-salvadoreno-estara-en-estreshidrico-ano-2022/20000013-3932816. benedict xvi. 2007. letter to the ecumenical patriarch of constantinople on the occasion of the seventh symposium of the religion, science and the environment movement. september 1, 2007. http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/ letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070901_symposium-environment.html. calderón, beatriz. 2019. “poco favorables perspectivas hidrológicas para el salvador: menos agua subterránea y disminución en caudales de ríos en próximos 90 andrés mckinley https://www.efe.com https://www.efe.com https://www.efe.com https://www.efe.com https://www.efe.com http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va tres meses.” la prensa grafica, may 2, 2019. http://www.laprensagrafica.com/ elsalvador/poco-favorables-perspectivas-hidrologicas-para-el-salvador-menos agua-subterranea-y-disminucion-en-caudales-de-rios-en-proximos-tres-meses 20190502-0295.html. john paul ii. 1979. redemptor hominis. http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_04031979_redemptor-hominis.html. la prensa gráfica. 2016. “90% de aguas superficiales del país están contaminadas.” march 21, 2016. https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/90--de-aguas superficiales-del-pais-estan-contaminadas-20160321-0079.html. machuca, evelyn. 2019. “45 pozos de la anda en el amss dejaron de producir agua entre 2008 y 2016.” la prensa grafica, march 22, 2019. https:// www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/45-pozos-de-la-andaen-el-amss-dejaron de-producir-agua-entre-2008-y-2016–20190321-0550.html. mckinley, andrés. 2016. la amenaza de la minería metálica en un mundo con sed. san salvador: uca editores. https://www.uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp content/uploads/la-amenaza-de-la-mineri%c3%aca-meta%c3%aclica-en-un mundo-con-sed.pdf. moore, jen, and manuel perez rocha. 2019. “extraction casino: mining companies gambling with latin american lives and sovereignty through supranational arbitration.” mining watch canada, institute for policy studies, and center for international environmental law. https://miningwatch.ca/sites/ default/files/isds_report_final_.pdf. moreno, nestor ivan. 2009. “una nueva luz, un nuevo arzobispo…y el pueblo de dios.” la voz de los sin voz. february 20, 2009. https://pueblodedios. wordpress.com/2009/02/. paul vi. 1971. octogesima adveniens. http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/ apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19710514_octogesima-adveniens.html. perlez, jane, and kirk johnson. 2005. “behind gold’s glitter: torn lands and pointed questions.” new york times, october 24, 2005. accessed from global policy forum, april 21, 2021. http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/2005/ 1024ring.htm. rodriguez, roberto, cristobal garcia, and efrain castillo. 2007. “el carácter intermitente y permanente del drenaje ácido de minas (amd) en zonas semiáridas.” ingenieria 2, no. 2: 33–36. university public opinion institute. 2015. “opinions and perceptions towards metals mining in el salvador.” university of central america – josé simeón cañas newsletter 29, no. 2. https://www.uca.edu.sv/iudop/wp-content/uploads/ press-release.pdf. velásquez, eugenia. 2017. “ley contra la minería con respaldo en la asamblea legislativa.” elsalvador.com. march 9, 2017. https://historico.elsalvador.com/ historico/317744/ley-contra-la-mineria-con-respaldo-en-la-asamblea-legislativa.html. the mining struggle in el salvador 91 http://www.laprensagrafica.com http://www.laprensagrafica.com http://www.laprensagrafica.com http://www.laprensagrafica.com http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va https://www.laprensagrafica.com https://www.laprensagrafica.com https://www.laprensagrafica.com https://www.laprensagrafica.com https://www.laprensagrafica.com https://www.uca.edu.sv https://www.uca.edu.sv https://www.uca.edu.sv https://miningwatch.ca https://miningwatch.ca https://pueblodedios.wordpress.com https://pueblodedios.wordpress.com http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.globalpolicy.org http://www.globalpolicy.org https://www.uca.edu.sv https://www.uca.edu.sv https://historico.elsalvador.com https://historico.elsalvador.com http://taylorandfrancis.com http://taylorandfrancis.com section ii mining and peace in catholic theology and ethics http://taylorandfrancis.com http://taylorandfrancis.com 8 a just mining framework for the ethics of extraction of natural resources and integral peace tobias winright introduction: from law enforcement and the use of force to mining although i am a catholic ethicist and theologian, i previously worked as a law enforcement officer, in corrections and policing, and much of my scholarly and popular writing addresses the ethics of the use of force (winright 2020). this book considers mining and conflict. a synonym for mining is extracting, which evokes memories of when i occasionally was part of an extraction team, tasked with extracting an obstinate, bellicose inmate from his cell in a maximum-security jail. if the team’s presence at the cell’s doorway and our verbal directions failed to persuade him to come out peacefully, then we had to enter the cell and escort him out. sometimes doing so required the use of force, depending on the inmate’s level of resistance: it might have sufficed to handcuff him and hold his arm as we accompanied him from the cell, or it might have entailed carrying him out while he was restrained in a wheelchair—and if the prisoner attempted to punch, kick, or bite us, then self-defense techniques would be employed, such as controlling holds involving pressure points. “extraction” is “the action of taking out something (especially using effort or force)” (vocabulary.com n.d.). the words “taking out something” reminds me, moreover, of when police refer to “taking out someone” (that is, subduing or shooting them) when, for instance, a suspect is on the verge of murdering an innocent hostage. other synonyms for “extracting” include: removing, seizing, dislodging, pulling, coercing, prying, compelling, uprooting, wresting, wringing, displacing, and mining. these all involve the use of force, which is often associated with conflict. not all conflict, of course, involves the use of armed force or even violence. after all, as john paul lederach (2003) observes, “conflict is normal in human relationships, and conflict is a motor of change” (5); it is, in other similarly positive words, “a natural phenomenon that creates potential for constructive growth” (15). still, conflict often holds a more negative connotation—that is, when it pertains to the use of force, doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-8 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-8 violence, war, destruction, and death. in such conflict, the use of force, whether in self-defense, policing, or war, bears a burden of proof before it can be regarded as morally just. in the words of the united states catholic bishops, in their 1983 pastoral letter the challenge of peace, our starting point is a “presumption against the use of force” (§120). in the catholic theological tradition, this moral stance or orientation concerning the use of force gave rise to the development of just war theory.1 as the primary framework for moral reasoning about the use of force, just war theory traditionally has included two categories of criteria or principles: jus ad bellum includes criteria that justify going to war; and jus in bello includes principles for the just conduct of war. in recent years, a third category has also gained traction: jus post bellum includes principles and practices for the promotion and protection of a just and lasting peace after a war ends (allman and winright 2010). writing about natural resource extraction, which “endangers both the environment and peace,” and the need for “sustainable mining” in south africa, peter knox (2015) admits that this entire enterprise is “a concept in search of a theory” (117). similarly, in an article on “the missing ethics of mining,” shefa siegel (2013) laments that “we are ready to discuss almost any other ethics before the ethics of mining,” and asserts that “we have more faith in our capacity to restrain or end violence and war than to address the ethics of mining” (n.p.). although siegel seems correct about the amount of attention given to the ethics of violence and war in comparison to the ethics of mining, i question whether such deliberation necessarily must be conducted in an either/or, uncoupled fashion. indeed, to examine extraction ethics, i suggest that we do not have to start from scratch: that the ethics of war may be applicable in an analogous way to the ethics of extraction, since both these activities involve the use of force. william p. george (2019), in his book mining morality: prospecting for ethics in a wounded world, similarly suggests—without pursuing and developing it himself—that “the ethics of mining and the ethics of war, especially nuclear war, might be joined” (18). this is the task that i pursue in this chapter. in what follows, i offer an exercise in what lederach (2005) calls “moral imagination,” a creative effort “to perceive things beyond and at a deeper level than what initially meets the eye” (26–27). beneath the surface, the ethics of extraction, i reckon, is related to the ethics of the use of force as exhibited in just war theory. in the words of lloyd steffen (2012), there is “a way of ethical thinking,” an “ethic that lies behind just war” that should be “widely applicable to all kinds of ethical issues,” including but going “beyond the particular question of war or the use of force” (15, italics original). although steffen does not consider it, i suggest that this is the case for the morality of mining. over the years, i have similarly addressed moral issues in law enforcement, inspired by edward a. malloy’s (1982) invitation to ethicists to undertake an imaginative “exercise of 96 tobias winright analogical interpretation” using the reasoning and principles of just war theory to address police use of force (24). accordingly, in this chapter i propose an ethics of extraction that includes a just mining theory with moral criteria encompassed under three categories: jus ad extractionem, jus in extractione, and jus post extractionem. this ethics of extraction, moreover, is meant to speak accessibly to government and corporate decision-makers, regardless of whether they share the catholic faith and theological beliefs of the contributors to this volume. in doing so, it exemplifies what james m. gustafson (1988, 1996), in his identification of four modes of moral discourse, refers to as ethical and policy discourse, rather than prophetic and narrative discourse. at the same time, i believe this proposal is coherent with a catholic “integral peace” approach to addressing mining and conflict. the chapter proceeds in four steps. in the first, the link between mining and conflict, between extraction and the use of force, is substantiated through attention to several cases. in the second, the ethic behind just war, which informs and suffuses just war thinking, is articulated as well as illustrated through its application to other moral issues. in the third, an ethics of extraction is constructed with a just mining theory comprised of three categories of criteria. in the fourth and concluding section, gustafson’s moral modes of ethical discourse are delineated to demonstrate how this chapter contributes to the development of a catholic integral peace approach to addressing mining and conflict. mining and conflict: the use of force in mining there are multiple ways mining and conflict are related. one under consideration within this present volume is the frequent correlation between mining and armed conflict. the so-called “resource wars,” which are a part of wider “environmental conflict,” occur between, or within, nations about scarce, finite natural resources (detraz 2015). mining sometimes is a driver of armed conflict, or perhaps more specifically, asymmetric natural resource wars. rigobert minani’s chapter in this book describes how mining of materials like coltan and gold in the drc is connected to violent conflict and profits for rebel groups (see also koch and kinsbergen 2018). indeed, rebel groups, upon acquiring access to these resources within a conflict zone, are more able to finance their efforts against government military and police forces (lujala 2010; lee 2018). similarly, karl gaspar’s chapter notes how armed groups in the philippines profit from mining indirectly by extorting mining companies. of course, on the other hand, military, police, and paramilitaries, as well as mining corporations’ own security forces, sometimes use force and employ violence not only against rebel groups but also indigenous communities. in honduras, bishop santos villeda (2018) describes how, through their funding of the government, foreign gold mining companies “subdue people by means of the armed forces, destroying a just mining framework 97 churches and entire villages, even removing the dead from cemeteries in order to obtain the gold found in those areas” (93). in south africa, labor disputes can lead to the loss of life, such as when police shot and killed thirty-four striking miners on august 16, 2012, at lonmin’s platinum mine in the town of marikana (knox 2015, 125). andrés mckinley describes “aggressive street demonstrations” led by the canadian mining company pacific rim against the archbishop of san salvador and others seeking to ban metallic mining in el salvador at about the same time that five anti mining activists were assassinated in cabañas, where pacific rim was insisting, “at all costs,” on mining gold and silver. and in this book, the chapters on peru by derechos humanos y medio ambiente—puno, and on colombia by héctor fabio henao and sandra polanía-reyes, note instances of human rights and environmental defenders being targeted for intimidation and assassination. in addition to actual armed conflict, the relationship between mining and conflict surfaces when we consider the negative, harmful consequences of mineral extraction itself on the environment and on people and communities. put differently, mining inflicts violence on nature as well as on humans who are involved with, or impacted by, mineral extraction activities. as one environmental scientist notes, life-cycle assessments of metals that are commonly used in jewelry and technology reveal that gold and the platinum-group metals yield the greatest environmental burdens among metals, “as measured by cumulative energy use, global warming potential, human health implications, and ecosystem damage” (klimas 2018, 211). in south africa, for example, mining operations have been implicated in acid water seepage, contaminating aquifers and rivers, as well as the release of airborne pollutants, such as asbestos dust, near population centers, causing lung cancer, asbestiosis, and mesothelioma (knox 2015, 123). similar harmful impacts to both the environment and people have been noted in the drc, which holds three-quarters of the world’s cobalt reserves and ranks first in industrial diamonds, second in iron, third in pyrochlore, fourth in copper, fifth in coltan, and eighth in cassiterite (muhigirwa 2015, 35). given the magnitude of mining activity there, minani’s chapter observes that environmental impacts in the drc have been significant and varied, including deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of air and water. likewise, in peru, the gold industry has subjected miners to mercury exposure and poisoning, polluted waterways, and poisoned local communities who consume contaminated fish (lemke 2016). in honduras, bishop santos villeda (2018) worries about the method of open-cut mining for gold, whereby foreign companies “use cyanide, which contaminates the ground, the air, and the water but gives them [these companies] great profits because it separates 97% of the gold particles” (92). similarly, uranium mining in the united states exposed the navajo people to radiation poisoning, including through contaminated drinking water that caused birth defects (arnold 2014). 98 tobias winright some of these examples of harms both to people, especially indigenous and tribal peoples, and to the environment may be intentional. indeed, some deleterious consequences appear to be direct and immediate. others, though, may be the sort of “slow violence” identified by rob nixon (2011). these “ecological ripple effects,” as michael schmitt (1997) calls them, do violence to and through ecosystemic relations. in this vein, cynthia moe-lobeda (2013) details the structural violence of human institutions and systems, such as the inequitable distribution of power and privilege, that degrades, dehumanizes, injures, and kills persons by limiting or preventing their access to life necessities (72–78). as the catholic bishops of appalachia (1975) observed, efforts to address environmental degradation in poor mining communities involve “a struggle against violence—against institutional violence—which sometimes subtly, sometimes brutally, attacks human dignity and life” (21). indeed, exploitation and corruption are frequently associated with mining companies, especially foreign ones, and governments. significantly, conflictual, martial language (e.g., “violence,” “attacks”) is frequently employed by activists and religious leaders to refer critically to the harms resulting from mining, which brings us back to how extracting minerals invariably involves forcibly removing them and imposing negative consequences on the environment and on people. after detailing the harmful effects of gold mining on mt. diwata in the southern philippines, including the mine tailings containing mercury that poison the agusan river, along with the fish in these waters and the people that eat them, randy j.c. odchigue (2018) writes, “taken together, these risks present a clear and present danger to the fragile ecosystem and the human community of the agusan marsh” (254, italics mine). in other words, mining there poses a grave and imminent threat both to the environment and to people. similarly, in brazil, peter hughes (2018) speaks of the need “to protect the rainforest” and the “urgent shared responsibility to protect life on the planet from increased global warming,” even as he confesses “that we are losing the battle” (98–99). in this volume, gaspar’s chapter cites a 2019 document from the philippine bishops that describes mining as a threat to the survival of the rural poor. such wording (e.g., “clear and present danger,” “to protect,” “losing the battle,” “threat to survival”) further indicates the link between mining and conflict. pope francis, as did his predecessors john paul ii (1990) and benedict xvi (2010), also often makes use of martial language to describe the current climate and related environmental crises. in his homily on the feast of saint francis on october 4, 2013, pope francis (2013b) emphasized that god created our world “to be a place where harmony and peace can flourish,” entailing a moral duty for us humans to “respect creation” and to “respect each human being” instead of being “instruments of destruction” of the environment and of human persons in “armed conflicts which cover the earth with blood” (n.p.). likewise, in his first apostolic exhortation, evangelii gaudium, pope francis (2013a) expressed concern for vulnerable a just mining framework 99 people whose lives are at risk and for “other weak and defenceless beings”—indeed, “creation as a whole”—threatened by destructive human activities motivated by “economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation” (§215). although it is not explicitly mentioned, pope francis’s lamentations about species extinction and desertification resulting from such harmful activities obviously echoes the above complaints about the baleful effects of natural resource extraction. moreover, in laudato si’, francis (2015) emphasizes the link between conflict, or violence, and the harmful consequences for both planet and people. “the violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin,” he writes, “is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life” (§2). also, since humans are not separate from, but are part of nature, the violence that we inflict upon nature is also an attack on ourselves, especially the poor and marginalized who are most vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation (§48, 139). in addition, the pope alludes to “resource wars” due to environmental degradation and natural resource shortages; “it is foreseeable,” he warns, “that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars” (§57, 48). not only do these actual conflicts harm both the environment and people, so too does ecological destruction impact the poor and “excluded” in ways that they are “treated merely as collateral damage” (§49, italics original). here we see another invocation of terminology usually found in reference to conflict and war. mining is explicitly mentioned a handful of times in laudato si’. as in some of the examples earlier in africa, latin america, and the philippines, the pope mentions that mercury pollution from gold mining and sulfur dioxide pollution from copper mining have “caused harm locally” (§51). he also notes how underground water sources are “threatened” by pollution that is produced, and rivers, lakes, and seas are contaminated by chemicals that are used, in “certain mining … activities,” especially in nations without sufficient governmental regulations (§29). francis also decries the displacement of indigenous peoples and their communities “to make room for… mining projects which are undertaken without regard for the degradation of nature and culture” (§146). in each of these instances, the pope expresses concern for the environment and people, both of which are harmed by the activity of mining. his references to the threats posed by mining and its effects, including the removal of native populations from their homelands, call to mind, furthermore, the inextricable link between extraction and force. indeed, francis makes precisely this point when he explicitly uses the word “extract” in his diagnosis of the conflictual relationship between humankind and nature. men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. it was a matter of receiving what 100 tobias winright nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. (§106, italics mine). the italicized words all could be used to describe uses of force. francis clearly acknowledges that since ancient times humans have “intervened in nature,” but he does not call for the absolute prohibition of such activities—as long as they are in harmony with, and respectful of, the environment. as the pope puts it, humans were receptive to what nature provided; they did not take or forcibly remove something from nature. his account, however, seems a bit out of sync with his initial use of the words “intervened in nature,” unless perhaps by that he means something like “worked with” or “channeled,” either of which would presumably be unconfrontational and nonforceful. is the pope suggesting a complete return to the “in tune with” nature approach of intervening that was characteristic of earlier cultures and of indigenous populations today? if so, would this entail that mining should be abolished altogether? to be sure, some activists and religious leaders seem to oppose mining absolutely, viewing it as inextricably harmful and violent, akin to how some also reject, if they are absolute pacifists, all other uses of force as immoral. for them, all mining, apparently, is deemed unjust. when pacifist leo tolstoy was asked about whether there is a difference between a terrorist’s use of armed force and that by a police officer, he replied that the difference is as much as between cat and dog feces—adding that he doesn’t like “the smell of either one or the other” (simmons 1946, 651). so too does hughes (2018) highlight “the withering verdict of felipe huamán poma de ayala, the first indigenous writer of the colonial period, who named mines and mining el estiércol del diablo: the devil’s excrement!” (103). this absolutist approach is best exemplified in the leading role that the catholic church played in el salvador’s decision to ban metallic mining. however, given francis’s endorsement in laudato si’ of some degree of intervention in nature, and his subsequent remarks at a meeting called “mining for the common good” (2019), an absolute condemnation and prohibition of mining in all cases is not what he is calling for. still, as knox (2015) posits, “it is difficult to think of any mining activity that actually enhances or even protects the integrity or biological diversity of natural systems” (124). although the extraction of mineral resources provides beneficial goods, such as those that are part of the composition of my laptop computer that i am using right now, the process of mining itself, along with the litany of harmful consequences noted above, not only confronts but forces damage upon the immediate environment and the persons working there, and its deleterious effects ripple throughout the adjacent a just mining framework 101 ecosystems and human communities. it also appears unlikely that mining can be conducted absent any harmful consequences at all. knox observes, “mining is an inherently dangerous activity” (125). it involves explosives, heavy machinery, and, as we have seen, industrial-strength chemicals. although it may fail to enhance or protect the integrity of nature, mining provides people with goods—not only luxuries such as diamonds but also “needs” such as the cobalt that is used in lithium batteries and aircraft engine parts—while concurrently it damages or, at best, poses a risk of harm to the environment and to people. plus, the goods that mining produces are inequitably distributed. to be sure, that our actions result in harms as well as benefits, evils as well as goods, is the case with many, if not all, human activities. as joseph a. selling (2016) observes, there is always present in any human action an “interplay of good and evil,” with the latter being not something neutral but “understood as anything that threatens, harms, or diminishes” human persons and, therefore, “should be avoided and minimized as much as possible” (191). because i strongly doubt that there is going to be a full stop to mining in the foreseeable future, its harms cannot be completely avoided, but should be minimized. in the words of william george (2019), i am “asking not whether mining should be taken off the table, but rather how best to proceed in a manner that is not only economically and technologically feasible but also ecologically responsible and sustainable” (170). thus, i propose an ethics of extraction that includes a just mining theory with justice as the thread running through moral criteria encompassed under three categories: jus ad extractionem, jus in extractione, and jus post extractionem. before doing so, however, i need to explain a bit more the reasons for my use of terminology echoing that of just war theory. an ethic behind and beyond just war standard approaches to ethics are usually classified as deontological, teleological (or utilitarian), or virtue theories. but there are also approaches to ethics that incorporate, or integrate, the strong points of these theories while recognizing their weaknesses. steffen’s (2012) work on a “hybrid ethic” that is “behind” and “beyond” just war thinking offers a helpful way of pursuing an ethics of extraction and a just mining theory. this ethic is grounded in the human capacity to reason and, therefore, is meaningful or persuasive not only to catholics but to people of good will. historically, it has been referred to as “natural law” (x).2 as such, it is useful for public deliberation on moral issues, including the various forms of the use of force. just war thinking is an expression and application of this hybrid ethic. importantly, this ethic is not meant to either rationalize or make easier the recourse to force, although that admittedly has often been the case 102 tobias winright through the misuse and abuse of just war theory by self-interested governments and nations; rather, it is intended to provide “a more vigorous public conversation where challenges are issued to—and through—the moral justification process itself” (steffen 2012, xii). steffen emphasizes that his effort to “extract the natural law-based and just war-related ethic” provides a framework for moral reflection and criteria for right action applicable to any issue, ranging from war to deception, from abortion to environmental protection (15, 17). accordingly, the ethic offers “a system of guidance for deliberating, analyzing, and prescribing action that is good, right, and fitting,” including “normative moral action guides” for gauging and measuring human activity (33, 37). the initial premise of this hybrid ethic behind and beyond just war is that human persons affirm a just peace, which is not merely the absence of conflict or violence, which is a negative form of peace, but the more positive flourishing of harmonious relationships with one another and nature. in the bible, the hebrew word shalom refers to this just peace. shalom is “a deep and all-embracing reality,” which is not “simply the absence of violence,” but a more positive and reconciling vision (wirzba 2012, 66). likewise, for andean and amazonian people in bolivia, the indigenous concept of vivir bien, or “living well,” means “a harmonic relationship between humans and nature” (martins 2020, 131). steffen (2012) presumes “as a given that reasonable persons of goodwill would prefer to resolve conflicts justly and without resorting to war or any use of force whatsoever if that is possible to do” (26). for steffen, this is the “moral presumption” against the use of force (44–45), about which lisa sowle cahill writes, “in my view, a presumption against violence … is necessary to christian social ethics” (cahill 2019, 31). upon this fundamental premise, steffen (2012) adds that “practical reasonableness necessarily imposes constraints on the use of force” which must be directed “to the rational and good end of peace” (43). while steffen (2012), like me, views just war thinking as applicable to issues beyond the use of force, he holds, as do i, that moral deliberations about “the prospective use of force inevitably involve the content of just war thinking” (21). on the relevance of just war reasoning to other moral issues, steffen devotes attention to physician-assisted suicide, the withholding or withdrawing of medical treatment for severely disabled newborn infants, the death penalty and the criminal justice system, and abortion. other ethicists have done so, too. in an essay on moral issues in biotechnology and genetics, cahill (2005) examines the ethics of stem cell research, noting that “as in the case of many social issues, ‘inaction’ is not an option.” indeed, similarly to what i am calling for with mining, cahill writes regarding embryonic stem cell research: “the task is therefore not to decide ‘prospectively’ whether it is a good idea, but to subject it to moral guidance and restraints, acknowledging its potential for beneficial outcomes while limiting the social damage and moral compromises it involves” (231). this looks quite similar, too, to a just mining framework 103 what steffen has been proposing. thus, unsurprisingly, cahill turns to just war thinking and to its criteria—which “can be used to discourage and restrain a practice without necessarily drawing an incontrovertible line against it”—to address the moral question of embryonic stem cell research (231, 232–35; see also lauritzen 2001, 20–23). steffen (2012) also considers moral questions surrounding nonviolent resistance (e.g., boycotts, demonstrations, sit-ins) and how just war reasoning and criteria are implicitly exhibited in the thought and actions of gandhi and martin luther king, jr. even their nonviolent resistance was a use of force, perhaps even coercive force, which required justification as well as measured application (51–72).3 although steffen does not mention it, similar just-war analyses of nonviolent force were provided by the influential ethicists james childress (1971) and paul ramsey (1961) over half a century ago. while not always seeing eye to eye on moral methods, childress and ramsey wrote extensively on questions both in just war theory and in bioethics (mccarty 2018). less noted is their attention to nonviolent resistance and protest, and their agreement that just war thinking should be applied to such actions. a similar claim has been made by maryann cusimano love (2010) about her “just peace principles,” which she regards as resembling just war principles and as implied in just war thinking (56–57). for his part, childress (1971) noted about civil disobedience: the “just war doctrine” offers a set of considerations for determining when war is justified, and analogous criteria must be employed in determining when civil disobedience is justified, although perhaps it is more accurate to suggest that civil disobedience is subject to the same general demands of morality as any other action rather than that it is illuminated by just war criteria. however that may be, certainly the appropriate criteria for evaluating civil disobedience coincide to a great extent with traditional just war criteria such as just cause, good motives and intentions, exhaustion of normal procedures for resolving disputes, reasonable prospect for success, due proportion between probable good and bad consequences, and right means. (204) i think this insight concerning nonviolent force is significant. cahill (2019), too, notes that both armed force and nonviolence involve moral dilemmas, ambiguities, and messiness. not only are there moral costs that result from the use of violent force, so too “the renunciation of violence is not without its own human and moral price” (323). decisions and actions—including when morally justifiable—“can still have morally evil dimensions, not just unfortunate and regrettable ones” (126, italics original). this is precisely the point made by selling about the “interplay between good and evil” in human actions and the moral requirement that any evil ought to be avoided, if possible, or at least minimized. 104 tobias winright steffen (2012) also alludes to the applicability of the just war ethic to policing, an issue about which i have written extensively (41; winright 2020). in most nations the police are authorized to use force, including lethal force, so an analogous application of the moral reasoning and criteria of just war theory to guide a police officer’s decision to use force and to moderate its performance makes sense. as irish moral theologian enda mcdonagh (1980) has written, “accepting, in common with the majority of christians past and present, the need for the violence of restraint in society, one is operating with criteria similar to those of the just war” (71).4 that the just war ethic is most applicable to the use of armed, and even unarmed, force is a point that has been made consistently by a range of catholic and protestant ethicists. hence, it makes sense to extend this ethic to the use of force in mining. it is to this exercise of moral imagination and analogical interpretation of just war thinking and criteria to the extraction of mineral resources that i shall now turn. a just mining framework with action guiding criteria steffen (2012) labels the criteria of just war thinking “action guides … not intended to rationalize war” but to “impose restraint, insisting that force be used only in a way that is proportionate to the end of addressing injustice and restoring peace” (40). these criteria, or principles, traditionally fall under two categories, jus ad bellum and jus in bello. in recent years, a third category, jus post bellum, has gained traction, although its criteria emerge from taking seriously the obligations of the criterion of right intent—that is, the establishment of a just peace—that serves as the unifying thread holding together all the categories and their criteria (bell, jr. 2009; capizzi 2015; allman and winright 2010; 2012). before constructing a set of analogous just mining criteria, these just war categories and principles need to be delineated. depending on the author, the number of criteria varies. steffen (2012) identifies nine, and so do the us catholic bishops (1983), although there are slight differences in their respective lists (22; §84–110). the catechism of the catholic church (1993) refers to “the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine,” but compared to steffen and the us bishops, it mentions half as many “strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force [which] require rigorous consideration” (no. 2309). i collate the criteria from these sources in what follows. the first main set of criteria in just war theory is known as jus ad bellum, which includes several criteria, all of which ought to be satisfied prior to embarking upon war. these principles are concerned with why and when going to war is justified. the first criterion is just cause, and it deals specifically with the why aspect of going to war and using armed force. a just war is undertaken in response to serious injustice, such as an act of aggression or an attack. both the catechism of the catholic church and the a just mining framework 105 compendium of the social doctrine of the church underscore the right and the duty of nations to use force of arms to protect, under the rubric of “legitimate defense,” their own citizens and innocent victims in other countries who are unable to defend themselves (pontifical council for justice and peace 2004, §500, 504). the second criterion is legitimate authority. only duly appointed political authorities who bear responsibility for protecting the common good may declare and wage war. in modern democracies with representative governments, the decision to go to war does not fall on the shoulders of only one person. the third criterion, right intent, “means pursuit of peace and reconciliation, including avoiding unnecessarily destructive acts or imposing unreasonable conditions” (national conference of catholic bishops 1983, §95). ultimately, the goal is to restore order, which means setting in motion necessary conditions for establishing a just peace for all who are involved and impacted. this is the telos of just war, which thereby “requires placing just war theory within the larger framework of peacemaking” (baer and capizzi 2006, 170). on the fourth criterion, as the catechism (1993) puts it, “there must be serious prospects of success.” there must be a reasonable hope of winning the war and achieving the aim of restoring a just peace. the fifth criterion is last resort. as the catechism stipulates, “all other means of putting an end to [conflict] must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective” (no. 2309). the sixth criterion, proportionality, weighs the evils associated with going to war; these evils must not be greater than the already-present evils that political authorities are seeking to prevent or stop. proportionality assesses whether going to war will result in more harm, damage, and costs than any good that might be achieved. the second major category of criteria for just war is jus in bello, which is concerned with how the war is conducted once hostilities have begun. these criteria gauge the means employed, including weapons, tactics, and targeting. these criteria restrain and limit the use of force. the first criterion within jus in bello is discrimination, or noncombatant immunity. militaries are supposed to discriminate, or distinguish, between combatants and non-combatants. moreover, certain places, such as hospitals, schools, and sacred buildings, should not be targeted. the other side of the coin, however, is that some unintentional injuries and deaths of civilians (and damage to non-military property) may be permitted and excused under the euphemism of “collateral damage.” at play in this distinction is the principle of double effect, which recognizes that there are multiple effects— good and evil—from an action (cavanaugh 2006). as long as the harmful consequences, although foreseen, are not intended, as long as these harmful consequences are not the means to the end that is sought, and as long as these harmful consequences do not outweigh the good results, then the use of force may be considered just. the second criterion within jus in bello is proportionality, which considers on a micro level the fittingness of the actual use of force during war rather than the more macro considerations 106 tobias winright associated with the war itself. militaries must use only the amount of force necessary, and not excessive force, to achieve their objective. one ought not to use a sledgehammer to swat a mosquito on her neighbor’s forehead. that would be excessive, disproportionate force. the third category of criteria is jus post bellum, which provides a litmus test for the right intention of establishing a just peace for all at war’s end (allman and winright 2010; stahn and kleffner 2008). because this is a developing area in just war theory, the principles and expectations vary from author to author. for a state or military force that was justified in going to war and was just in its conduct during that war, justice still entails responsibilities after the shooting stops. these include restorative justice, compensation, security and public safety, economic recovery, and environmental cleanup. such expectations are directed toward the establishment of a just peace, minimizing the likelihood of rekindled conflict. what might it look like were we to convert or translate these just war criteria into just mining criteria? again, what i have in mind is akin to the concrete “action guiding principles” of “protect, respect and remedy” that the united nations human rights office of the high commissioner (2014) has provided for governments and companies to facilitate the development of consonant policies, rules, and processes. like just war theory, just mining theory has criteria, or action guides, fitting under three categories: jus ad extractionem, jus in extractione, and jus post extractionem. for the category of jus ad extractionem, which refers to the justified commencement of mining, the first criterion, just cause, points to the need for the minerals to be mined and the necessity of mining to acquire them. because the beginning presumption is against the use of force, which includes the use of force in mining that harms the natural environment and human communities, the first criterion requires that the goods provided by the minerals must really be human needs that justify the use of force that harms the environment and risks the well-being of miners and nearby communities.5 the theological basis for this initial presumption is articulated by ferdinand muhigirwa (2015), who writes, “as a gift of god, all creation and the environment must be safeguarded and protected against harm and adverse environmental impacts that affect the [sic] nature, air, water, forests, wildlife, and the ecosystem” (36). if anything, given the “clear and present danger to the fragile ecosystem and the human community,” about which odchigue (2018) warns, for example, “in the agusan marsh” (254), there is more just cause to defend ecosystems and human communities against the harmful threats posed by mining. therefore, the bar is high for there to be just cause for mineral extraction. in addition, just cause entails that we ask the question about who really benefits from mining, because as knox (2015) warns, echoes of colonialism and privilege would not constitute just causes for mining (121). regarding the second criterion within jus ad extractionem, just authority, part of the problem with mining, as noted by muhigirwa (2015), is the a just mining framework 107 “weakness of the state’s regulatory powers” (36). odchigue (2018) similarly notes that in the philippines “there appears to be a failure of government agencies to implement regulatory policies for smalland large-scale mining” (255). knox (2015) adds that the state has a duty “to protect private ownership, which is a human right, but at the same time to ensure that the exercise of this right does not force some to remain in poverty” (122). and in this book, elias opongo analyzes the way poor regulation of mining in eastern africa can specifically impact conflict by failing to engender sustainable national development. all of these words of caution and recommendation imply more democratic and representative participation in the decision-making processes related to mining—including governments and local community members—so that mining corporations, with their governing boards and executives, are not making decisions alone that impact the lives of others. the third criterion, right intent, is supposed to be the establishment of a just peace for all. the us bishops (1983) extend this criterion to encompass nature, too: “[t]rue peace implie[s] the restoration of the right order not just among peoples, but within all of creation” (§32). as santos villeda (2018) notes, drawing from the compendium of the social doctrine of the church, there is a fundamental rule about “the intervention of the human being in nature [which] should be governed by respect for other persons and their rights as well as respect toward other living creatures” (94; pontifical council for justice and peace 2004, §463). such respect for all entails giving due attention to their safety over against the dangerous harms that may accompany and result from the force of mining. as santos villeda (2018) reminds us, security should not only be provided for the companies but also for the people (93). right intent will, moreover, spill over into the other categories and criteria of just mining. the fourth criterion, the probability of success, should take into consideration not only the likelihood of acquiring resources through mining, but also the prospects for doing so in a way that minimizes harm to the environment and people, as well as its odds of benefitting all involved, such as by creating integral human development and preserving cultural and environmental heritages. as such, this criterion is related to other criteria, such as proportionality, and serves as a reminder that for an action using force, such as mining, to be considered morally justified, all the criteria—not only one or some—must be satisfied. the jus ad extractionem criterion of last resort asks whether other reasonable and feasible means of obtaining mineral resources have been first attempted and exhausted. or, have other alternative sources of what a particular mineral provides been seriously explored? another way of getting at this criterion is to see it as connected to the ecological “precautionary principle,” which says to err on the side of precaution, to make sure we have explored other ways of moving forward that avoid or minimize the negative effects of the present course of action that is under consideration 108 tobias winright (brinkman 2013, 207). because the dangerous “risks [of mining] are all known,” knox (2015) advises that “reasonable precautions…[should] be in place” (125). one pertinent practice to consider here is recycling, which, as the chapter by holden and montevecchio notes, can greatly reduce the need for new mining even if it would mean lower corporate profits and higher consumer costs. for the jus ad extractionem criterion of proportionality, the ecological concept of sustainability seems apt. on sustainability, christiana zenner and andrea vicini (2015) begin with the 1987 report of the bruntdland commission, our common future, which linked the environmental and social impacts of economic development, and called for sustainable development to mean meeting people’s needs today while protecting sufficient natural resources for future generations (1).6 as they note, sustainability is related to “the norm of justice,” which entails “fairness to future generations as well as respect for ecosystems and the earth processes on which all forms of life (including but not limited to humans) depend” (3). with regard to mining, knox (2015) thinks the “concept of ‘sustainable mining’ presents an inherent paradox,” since these natural resources are “neither in infinite supply nor constantly being renewed” (117). weighing justice in these ways is reflective of using proportionality. in the second category, jus in extractione, with its two criteria of discrimination and proportionality, the focus turns to the actual means employed in the mining operations. discrimination would rule out direct, intentional attacks on that which is necessary for human life, such as water, food, and homes. as with surgery in medical ethics and with surgical strikes in just war ethics, extraction ethics expects that the intended damage from the use of force by mining be immediately directed to the area mined. that is, mining companies and workers must discriminate, or draw a distinction, between the plot of earth to be mined and the surrounding area. they should also use the most fitting, least harmful means of mining, thereby minimizing dangers and risks. the impacts on necessities such as water should also be taken into account in assessing proportionality. the fact that the national ban on mining in el salvador was based on protecting water is an example of how the norm of discrimination and proportionality might apply. moreover, any foreseeable harms to the wider ecological systems and human communities must be avoided or curtailed as much as possible. under these circumstances any collateral damage to the wider environment and population might perhaps be excusable, employing the principle of double effect, as long as the harmful consequences are not disproportionate to the benefits from the mining for the company, the consumer elsewhere, and the community there. these criteria for jus in extractione should also take into account the future considerations that arise with sustainability. there should also be just remuneration and compensation for workers (knox 2015, 125). the third category of just mining criteria, jus post extractionem, requires that mining companies take responsibility for what they have done to the a just mining framework 109 mining site and its environs, as well as the ongoing consequences of the mining conducted there. santos villeda (2018) urges that “it is necessary to evaluate the long-term environmental cost of extractive activities” (95). so too does knox (2015) anticipate the “costly cleanup” of environmental damage (120). not only should toxic waste be removed, perhaps trees and flora should be planted. for affected human communities, adequate health care and financial compensation should be provided and the land should be restored for new development activities or other uses. post-mining expectations such as these help ensure that the pre-mining right intent has been sincerely implemented throughout all phases. conclusion: extraction ethics and integral peace james m. gustafson (1996) identified four types of moral discourse: ethical, policy, prophetic, and narrative. this chapter intentionally exemplifies the first two types. the task of the ethical mode is to provide guidance for deciding “how one ought to act in particular circumstances” by referring to concepts such as rights and duties, as well as norms like justice (39). the task of the policy mode is to assess practices, institutions, and action guides for persons within social institutions such as governments and corporations. this mode takes seriously limitations and conflicts within concrete situations as well as the need for compromise and accommodation. by attempting to communicate persuasively to business and governmental audiences, by giving attention to the interplay of goods and inevitable evils accompanying mining as a use of force, and by attempting to limit these evils while stopping short of the prohibition of mineral extraction altogether, my just mining framework and criteria also are consonant with the ethical and policy discourses. perhaps more absolute stances against the use of force—whether in war or mining—fit within gustafson’s other two types of moral discourse. the prophetic mode attempts to widen the scope of vision and reorient worldviews. as such, it tends to be “more general than ethical discourse” (gustafson 1996, 41). it also employs narratives sometimes, especially from scripture, to indict injustice and to inspire hope for a just peace. the narrative type serves to shape the character of persons and the ethos of communities. it tends to be less universal, its audience more distinctively religious. it also tends not to provide concrete answers to complex moral problems. the hybrid ethic that i am suggesting can include all four of these types of moral discourse. because this essay’s primary audience is mining professionals and political authorities, i have mostly employed the ethical and policy discourses. that is not to say that this just mining framework cannot be useful for religious leaders and activists, including those who are more, if not absolutely, opposed to mining. for them, i would suggest that this just mining framework and its principles be viewed as what a number of 110 tobias winright mennonite ethicists have called “middle axioms,” which call “other people or institutions to live up to their own stated moral principles, highest ideals, or long-term enlightened self-interests without endorsing all of the assumptions behind others’ ethical systems” (schlabach 2019, 219). the concrete action guides i have suggested can be appealed to by anyone to hold those who do mining accountable to justice. daniel cowdin (2008) observes that catholic environmental ethics has “difficulties…at the level of specific principles and norms…mediating between its deeper theological foundations and the specificity of concrete situations” (166). in his view, it “lacks the kind of action-guiding moral traction that is typical of other areas in the catholic moral tradition,” such as just war thinking and bioethics (180-81). this chapter has attempted to suggest these sort of concrete action guides for mining. extraction ethics entails a just mining framework, consisting of criteria that serve as action guides prior to mining (jus ad extractionem), during mining (jus in extractione), and following mining (jus post extractionem). adherence to this just mining framework, it is hoped, should mitigate the devastating consequences of mining to the environment and people. in doing so, just mining should, moreover, diminish the likelihood of causing or exacerbating conflict. it should also contribute to “integral peace” (winright 2016; 2018). throughout laudato si’, pope francis (2015) uses the word integral, especially when calling for the promotion of an “integral ecology” that recovers “a serene harmony with creation” and “break[s] with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness” (§225, 230). francis also uses the term when referring to the need for contributions from an array of disciplines and sources, including science, economics, politics, ethics, and faith (§137). here he seems to have in mind not only making connections and interrelating insights from these various sources, but integration, or synthesis (butkus and kolmes 2011). integral peace, i suggest, is the end, or telos, of the hybrid ethic behind and beyond just war thinking, as exemplified in an extraction ethics consisting of a just mining framework. notes 1 sometimes called “just war tradition” and “just war thinking,” i regard “just war theory” as a part of the just war tradition, which includes multiple versions or theories, as well as developments over the years, and all of which are expressions of just war thinking. for more on the language of “presumption,” see winright (2009). 2 this just war mode of reasoning can be found in non-western and non-christian cultures as well (lo and twiss 2015; kelsay 1993; 2007). 3 as steffen acknowledges, this observation about the coerciveness and destructive consequences of nonviolent methods was made by prominent ethicist reinhold niebuhr (1932, 241). 4 this interpretation echoes that of ralph b. potter (1973, 49–50), edward a. malloy (1982, 10, 24), and paul ramsey (1968), who argued that the “moral economy” of the just war tradition is “morally if not legally binding upon the use a just mining framework 111 of force between nations,” and it also “regulates the use of force within political communities, where it is both morally and legally binding” (144). 5 this concern is affirmed in this book by douglass cassel, who argues that the end-use of minerals should be a consideration in the ethical analysis of the operation to be undertaken. 6 the brundtland commission stated that “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (united nations world commission on environment and development 1987, ch. 2, §1). references allman, mark j., and tobias l. winright. 2010. after the smoke clears: the just war tradition and post war justice. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. allman, mark j., and 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andrea vicini. 2015. “introduction: on just sustainability and its challenges.” in just sustainability: technology, ecology, and resource extraction, edited by christiana z. peppard and andrea vicini, 1–10. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. 10.1353/sce.2018.0018. 116 tobias winright http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sce.2018.0018 9 integral ecology, just peace, and mining anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid pope francis’ encyclical laudato si’ (2015) represents a vital expansion and development of catholic social teaching on ecology. in particular, “integral ecology” provides a valuable moral framework that can help articulate norms for building a just peace in light of the modern extractive industry. early catholic teaching on our moral duties to safeguard the “environment” or “natural environment” traditionally employed a simple, utilitarian approach to nonhuman goods: they should be shared amongst humankind and used to promote human well-being. this initial approach has blossomed into a much more sophisticated theology of creation, and an analysis of the multilayered causes of ecological degradation, encapsulated by francis as “integral ecology.” integral ecology proposes a broader holistic telos for human interaction with nonhuman plants, animals, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole (and indeed the entire universe). moreover, integral ecology intersects with catholic teaching on war and peace and provides the foundation for an ecological expansion of the idea of just peace, yielding an ecological just peace. this essay will proceed in three parts: first, an overview of the main principles of integral ecology; second, a description of the principles and practices that build a just peace; and third, a brief application of integral ecology and just peace to mining. integral ecology the two central themes of laudato si’ (francis 2015) are the gospel of creation and integral ecology. the gospel of creation outlines the scriptural and theological roots for affirming the goodness of creation and the importance of the non-human world for the human understanding of god and salvation history. the gospel of creation provides a key set of theological themes such as seeing creation as an “order of love,” affirming the earth not just as nature but as creation, and perceiving the indwelling of the resurrected christ in all creatures (§77, 75, 83). integral ecology is a synthetic term that formulates an ethical application of the theological claims of the gospel of creation and its inextricable connection to social justice and christian ethics. while all the principles of doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-9 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-9 catholic social teaching are important for addressing a catholic peacebuilding approach to mining, integral ecology speaks to the shift in moral vision required to address it adequately. one of the key drivers of the ecological crisis for pope francis, and by extension at the nexus of mining and violence, is the technocratic paradigm. humans have used technology to alter their immediate surroundings for millennia, just as humans have engaged in mining across civilizations for centuries. yet technology has now become so powerful and seamless in our globalized cultures that it has led to a new way of seeing the world. the “technocratic paradigm” is a one-dimensional approach to the world that encourages people to disregard and overcome natural limits. for all the wonderful gifts it affords, technology, francis reminds us, is not neutral. technology creates a physical and mental framework that conditions lifestyles and social relationships. the technocratic paradigm encourages people to see the world as formless, without any inherent guidelines as to how it is to be used. thus, this way of framing envisions the entire world as open to human mastery, control, and manipulation (§106–110). by contrast, the principle of integral ecology configures the world differently, emphasizing reality as holistic, interconnected, and fundamentally relational. integral ecology stems from the gospel of creation and from the theological conviction that the universe is created by a god who is trinity and essentially relationship (§240). yet like all principles of catholic social teaching, integral ecology also belongs to the natural law and is accessible to people of various backgrounds who do not share this same catholic and christian understanding of the creator. here we will emphasize three aspects of integral ecology. first, francis introduces integral ecology as a holistic moral framework. if the central tendency of the technocratic paradigm is to narrow our moral vision, then integral ecology insists on expanding it. we must return to a “broader vision of reality,” otherwise all our vast and various storehouses of information and insight can themselves become a “form of ignorance” (§139). integral ecology begins with and privileges the whole, rather than starting with any particular part, because it posits that the whole and the relationships that form within it are inextricable from understanding the meaning and purpose of each part. therefore, one cannot look at the world, or more specifically, the question of the value of mining, from the perspective of humanity alone (or worse, from one subset of humanity and its endless desires) without also looking at the whole that enables human beings to exist and to live peaceably and harmoniously with each other and the rest of creation. isolating the economic interests of one country over another, or of one segment of the economy, such as mining, vis-à-vis another, may be useful to a degree and for a limited period of time, but only if the overriding context of the whole is elevated throughout and returned to repeatedly. the whole must be considered before any one part is considered in isolation. in a way, 118 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid francis challenges modern tendencies to consider “nature” or “the environment” as something outside of human beings and human culture. the tendency to separate concerns about the environment from other human concerns, or from economic and political issues, is part of a reductive moral vision. there is only one integrated reality, and we must see humans and non-human creation alike as part of it. second, integral ecology posits this broader vision of reality as pervasively interconnected. we cannot entirely separate one part from another because the strands that connect us to each other are innumerable. again, we can consider the interests of a particular group separate from the health of other groups, but only for a time. because all creatures are interconnected, any decision or choice made in one area will affect others. we live in a hybrid world insofar as categories like “nature” and “society” are not strictly separate, but interpenetrate one another. therefore, we cannot, for example, divorce human wellbeing from the wellbeing of the planet as a whole, or social inequities and the violence that can result from them from ecological pressures. “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (§49). for francis, the suffering of the poor is connected to the suffering of the planet, and both must be addressed simultaneously. this is one of the central moral claims of laudato si’. integral ecology, which fuses social and ecological justice, introduces salient moral norms like the danger of a “throwaway culture” which reduces the poor and the earth itself to “rubbish” (§22). we have not adopted a circular approach to our economy in which waste products are reabsorbed into the production of necessary goods. a throwaway culture is the ethical counterpoint to integral ecology, and it signals the need to address the degradation of the earth and the hardships of the poor simultaneously. francis particularly highlights the cultural threats faced by indigenous peoples and calls them “the principal dialogue partners” for economic and political elites (§146). francis’s attention to indigenous communities is an intensification of the links between social and ecological injustice, and resultant violence. these links are especially important when assessing the ethical ramifications of mining, since indigenous peoples have long been marginalized from their lands to make room for economic development that does not benefit them. integral ecology underscores the interrelatedness, and even interdependence, of all earth’s creatures and systems. likewise, interconnectedness describes issues of poverty, violence, mining, and ecological degradation. we cannot neatly or simply separate economy from culture, social justice from ecological justice, or nation-states from multinational corporations. third, integral ecology is relational and is meant to incorporate ecology into the everyday rhythms of human life. for this reason, francis connects ecological concerns like climate change and biodiversity to the full range integral ecology, just peace, and mining 119 of human experience and makes them personal. along with threatened ecosystems and creatures, integral ecology recognizes the threats faced by various cultural heritages. francis frames integral ecology in this holistic and relational sense by pointing out that it inculcates a sense of belonging: “there is also a need to protect those common areas, visual landmarks and urban landscapes which increase our sense of belonging, of rootedness, of ‘feeling at home’ within a city which includes us and brings us together. it is important that the different parts of a city be well integrated and that those who live there have a sense of the whole, rather than being confined to one neighborhood and failing to see the larger city as space which they share with others” (§151). here we see all three aspects of integral ecology: we must begin with the sense of the whole and what brings us together; we must see different parts of the city as connected; and finally this brings to us a deeper sense of our relationships to each other and the world around us, with the goal of helping us feel rooted and “at home” in the world. the integral ecology of everyday life feeds into other principles of catholic social teaching, such as the common good and solidarity with future generations. integral ecology represents an expanded moral vision, the kind necessary to break through the restricting and stultifying lens of the technocratic paradigm. indeed, francis points to an ultimate dimension of integral ecology that stretches to the limit of time and space. creation, recall, is a larger category with a broader meaning than nature, “for it has to do with god’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance” (§76). francis links the creator’s love of every creature to eternity. the church’s tradition teaches that all of creation is ordered by god’s love, encouraging us to move from the love of the world around us toward the source of this world and the creator’s love. francis also stretches our sense of time by including the eschatological horizon, referring to the ultimate destiny of all creatures transformed by god (§243). integral ecology, then, impels us to consider the consequences of our actions presently and how they may unfold over the centuries. solidarity with future generations is a sensible virtue in light of the manifold connections we have across time and space. francis encourages us to see the common good not just of particular nation-states or of the human family but of the planet and the cosmos as well. for many, such a moral vision will prove daunting; bearing in mind our shared eschatological future or the full cosmic import of our choices will not fully or even perhaps partially determine concrete practical political solutions toward peacemaking and social justice. but integral ecology does point to a much wider moral vision, suggesting that real ethical norms and choices ought to be rooted in this broader cosmic worldview if they are to be aligned with the catholic understanding of a good creation stemming from a loving creator. rooted in the gospel of creation, the ethic of an integral ecology unites human and planetary well-being into a common vision. it provides the 120 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid context for other principles of catholic social teaching, such as the common good, solidarity, and integral human development, as they apply to issues of mining, violence, and peacemaking. by stressing the interrelatedness of humans and nonhumans, and of the suffering of the earth with the suffering of the poor, integral ecology provides a foundation for discussing ecological debt and the obligations that the global north has to the global south when evaluating the relationships at stake in the mining industry and in light of the historical role that mining operations have had in creating current economic and financial imbalances between the global north and south. integral ecology is consonant with what scientists tells us is a rapidly changing world, both ecologically and politically. integral ecology would encourage a comprehensive and scientifically sound plan for properly balancing mining’s benefits and harms in a warming world that is accelerating conflict. now we turn to an area of longstanding catholic teaching that converges well with francis’ depiction of integral ecology, namely the christian tradition of “just peace.” an ecological just peace the notion of “just peace” has been developed in judeo-christian tradition over the course of millennia. in the new testament, a just peace is the aim of jesus’ efforts to usher in the reign of god. in god’s reign “the poor [will] no longer be poor, the hungry [will] be satisfied, and the oppressed [will] no longer be miserable” (nolan 1976, 58). to live out the reign of god is to live a just peace, sharing our possessions, serving the “least” of god’s people, and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. this just peace envisioned by jesus as he preached the reign of god has roots in the biblical notion of shalom, the deep peace articulated in the hebrew bible, founded on right, or just, relationships between humankind and god, amongst humans themselves, and between human beings and the rest of god’s creation. this last component is mostly latent and undeveloped in the church’s tradition, but it bespeaks the potential for the tradition of just peace to dovetail with francis’s “integral ecology.” both integral ecology and just peace are rooted in foundational christian theological principles of the goodness of creation and the central message of the kingdom of god, and so they can combine to contribute to peacebuilding in the midst of violence resultant from unjust mining industry practices. pope st. paul vi and martin luther king, jr., contemporaries, were both important figures in bringing the biblical notion of just peace into the political arena in the mid-twentieth century. their legacy of understanding peace as constitutive of justice remains critical today. paul vi (1967, §76) famously insisted that “peace is not simply the absence of warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe willed by god, with a more perfect form of justice among men.” integral ecology, just peace, and mining 121 in a similar way, king (1963) responded to those who accused him of fomenting violence by distinguishing between positive and negative peace. the american civil rights movement, with its nonviolent methods of protest and civil disobedience, did not cause tension or violence, but merely surfaced those tensions already present, and absorbed oppressive people’s and systems’ violent outbursts. while a lack of outright bloodshed may, then, signify a negative peace, king argued that a positive peace is indicated by the presence of justice. more recently, christian scholars have refined the concept of just peace considerably (dennis 2018; cahill 2019; mccarthy 2020), further arguing that a just peace aims at (a) preventing violence from breaking out in the first place, and (b) defining and refining principles and (c) practices of just peace. the question of mining and peacebuilding suggests the need for a new consideration of the idea of just peace, one that explicitly includes ecological sustainability and restorative justice for the planet. an ecological just peace would insist on the ultimate goal of developing only renewable sources of energy, and on approaches to human dignity and community, work and economics, that begin and accord with the vision of an ecological just peace. the eschatological horizon of integral ecology expands the reasonable timeframe for considering economic decisions, so that while some mining is essential for renewable energy, the consequences for this activity, which stretch out into centuries, must be factored in. the burden of proof for justifying the ecological harms of mining must be made against this ethical backdrop, making short term financial gains increasingly difficult to warrant. accordingly, in the next section, we explore emerging ideas about just peace, and their salience for establishing an ecological just peace. prevention a just peace establishes mechanisms for preventing violence from breaking out in the first place, and interrupts cycles of violence. just peacemaking theory (jpt) consists of ten practices meant to stave off war or violence (stassen 2008). one resonates deeply with integral ecology: foster just and sustainable economic development. this practice aims to prevent violence and maintain a just peace through locally controlled economic development. “commitment to the sustained well-being of human beings everywhere, and of their local, regional, national, and global communities is vital to justice and peace and to care of the earth…in sum, justice and peace are closely bound together with sustainable development” (bronkema, lumsdaine, and payne 2008, 134–35). jpt authors suggest that the most successful sustainable development efforts happen at the microlevel with the help of non-governmental organizations. this presents an obvious challenge to any mining industry model that privileges large corporations as potential partners with national governments in sustainable development to the exclusion of smaller and more locally sourced enterprises. 122 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid the prevalence of arrangements in which national governments contract with multinationals to extract resources in discrete regions with little input from local leaders leads scholar philippe le billon (2008, 346) to argue that “studies of resource-related conflicts need to broaden their analysis beyond spaces of resource exploitation to include the interrelationship between spaces of production, consumption, representation, and governance.” in other words, fostering an ecological just peace requires attention not only to land, but to the nexus of land, culture, politics, and government. le billon’s remark echoes the inter-relationality so critical to francis’s notion of integral ecology described above. similarly, peter knox (2015) points to the challenges of conducting mining justly by highlighting the lingering effects of colonialism and apartheid in south africa. the south african regime heavily subsidized white people, for example by granting mineral rights to landowners, but only allowed thirteen percent of land to be owned by black south africans (121). randy odchigue (2015) notes a similar problem in the philippines, where mining not only threatens biodiversity hotspots but also disenfranchises indigenous peoples, who are among the poorest, of their identity and culture. “the mining industry of the philippines has yet to show an example of a community that justly and sustainably thrives after its resources are extracted and exported to other countries in the world. this example reveals how degradation of the environment is directly proportional with the exploitation of the poor” (171–72). in this book, elias o. opongo’s chapter on mining governance and the challenges of equitable distribution of mining profits argues for including local populations in policy-setting processes in order to achieve development that truly improves communities’ standards of living. at the same time, it is important to be mindful that this jpt practice of fostering just and sustainable economic development was articulated prior to francis’s discussion of integral ecology. along with other pleas for “sustainable development,” it has been critiqued as possibly damaging to the environment. for example, the co-author of this essay has drawn on the work of leonardo boff to argue that peacebuilding requires not so much new development as virtuous practices of “dignified subsistence” (d. scheid 2012). furthermore, the language of “development,” especially when it arises from western contexts, may simply be too embedded with violent colonial and neocolonial assumptions to be helpful for fostering local leadership in indigenous contexts. this just peacemaking principle, then, remains important for preventing violence, but it ought to be expanded further through dialogue with integral ecology, decolonial theory, and indigenous local leadership in discrete contexts. in light of this discussion of sustainable development and just peace, then, several difficult questions must be considered if we want to promote an ecological just peace. considering intensifying climate change, tailings dam collapses, acid mine drainage, and other forms of environmental harms, to what degree must any understanding of the concept of “just integral ecology, just peace, and mining 123 peace” require ecological sustainability? more specifically, can the mining industry develop in any way that is truly both just and sustainable? modern mining processes seem to match francis’s critique of the technocratic paradigm in terms of the control and domination of the land, and concomitant efforts to dominate the poor. in this way, there is often an inherent violence on ecological systems and indigenous people within some mining systems that themselves help constitute part of the ecological crisis. given the telos of integral ecology which seeks healthy long-term relationships amongst human beings, the natural world, and planetary systems, how might the mining industry modify its practices in order to contribute to the transition to a truly just and sustainable economic system? there are, for example, efforts at long-term containment of waste following mine closures and at the restoration of sites by modern mining companies (see, for example, icmm n.d.). an ecological just peace supports these efforts but also critically evaluates them by setting the goal of fully sustainable and renewable practices, with an ethical horizon of millennia rather than decades. mining must move beyond mere legal compliance or responding to immediate social concerns and set for itself this broader and more substantive standard for action. principles catholic scholars have begun to name principles that undergird a just peace. maryann cusimano love (2010, 56–57) enumerates several principles which she calls “norms of just peace” that function in ways akin to and inspired by the criteria of the christian just war tradition. love suggests that all catholic peacebuilding ought to include: just cause, that is defending human dignity and the common good; right intention toward a positive peace; participatory processes, or making room for all stakeholders to contribute to peacebuilding efforts; restoration of social relationships; reconciliation, understood as addressing and acknowledging the harms of violence; restoration of infrastructure; and sustainability, developing structures that can help peace endure over time. combining love’s principles and francis’s integral ecology, we suggest two foundational principles for an ecological just peace: respect and restoration. respect drawing on love’s principles of just cause, participatory process, and sustainability, and francis’s (2015, §22) critique of the technocratic paradigm and a throwaway culture which dismisses the dignity of others on behalf of convenience, we argue that just peace is built on a foundation of respect. its ground is the innate dignity that accrues to every creature by dint of its relationship to the creator, while there also remains a particular elevated dignity for human beings (francis 2015, §65, 69). this respect 124 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid must be built up through both horizontal and vertical dimensions of social life, reaching not only large governmental and multinational organizations, but also impacting communities and personal daily decisions. ideally integral ecology and an ecological just peace become a kind of culture, and thus an expectation, that is participatory and intergenerational. an ecological just peace rooted in respect rejects piecemeal responses to discrete environmental crises, and to communities’ concerns about such crises. “ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources” (§111). in the same way, an ecological just peace cannot simply react to discrete outbreaks of violence that result from discrete extractive practices. rather, an ecological just peace must imbue entire cultures: “there needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm” (§111). a peace that is built with justice and is truly ecological is committed to building a society that respects the common good, or the well-being of the community itself; the dignity of each human being; and the well-being of the planet, its resources, creatures, and ecosystems, or the “splendid universal communion” of all creatures (§220). this final element returns to francis’s holistic and cosmic vision, which spreads far wider than the technocratic paradigm and its emphasis on piecemeal reactions as extractive-related violence and other crises explode. restoration second, drawing on love’s (2010) principles of right intention, reconciliation, restoration, and, again, sustainability, and francis’s advocacy for ecological education, we note that a just peace is ordered toward restoration. this restoration depends upon the foundational principle of respect. moreover, restoration is comprehensive of shalom, meaning that it applies to relationships among human beings; between individual human beings and god, as well as human communities and god; and finally, between human beings and creation. francis (2015, §210) calls for an ecological education that honors and restores harmony among the various relationships among human beings and the planet: “[an ecological education] seeks also to restore the various levels of ecological equilibrium, establishing harmony within ourselves, with others, with nature and other living creatures, and with god.” harms to individual persons, to human communities, to human infrastructure, and to ecosystems must all be acknowledged and repaired as best as possible for a sustainable and ecological just peace to take root and flourish. many communities have cleaned rivers, restored forests, beautified landscapes, and enhanced urban settings with creative buildings; “these achievements do not solve global problems, but they do show that men and women are still capable of intervening integral ecology, just peace, and mining 125 positively. for all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity, and care cannot but well up within us, since we were made for love” (§58). restoration also includes holding accountable corporations that share responsibility for violence related to mining. some human rights lawyers suggest “a hierarchy of three forms of corporate complicity in order to distinguish the different ways … companies might be held accountable for violations from which they ultimately derive an advantage” (hilary 2017, 81). these are silent complicity—when a corporation “fails to speak out” about violence affecting the areas in which they operate; beneficial complicity—when a corporation “is the beneficiary of” violence done by state or militia forces; and finally direct complicity—when a corporation “provides assistance” to other people or groups knowing they are likely to commit violence. understanding various forms of complicity in violence is critical to grasping how corporations are involved in harm to people and communities, developing mechanisms for holding them accountable, and envisioning how they can work to make amends. practices it is helpful to identify practices that promote the principles of respect and restoration, and thus an ecological just peace. our discussion here is far from comprehensive, but it provides a trellis up which the vines of ecological justice may grow and flower. we discuss nonviolent direct action, trust-building, imaginative thinking, and indigenous peacebuilding. we close this section with a recent example of a community struggling to enact an ecological just peace. nonviolent direct action peace studies scholars from multiple disciplines have been reminding us of the relative effectiveness of nonviolent direct action (chenoweth and stephan 2011; nepstad 2011). nonviolent direct action is actually an umbrella term for a number of resistance practices that address injustice without resort to violence, including marches, rallies, protests, boycotts, and civil disobedience. nonviolent direct action as a means of surfacing and confronting serious injustices is more promising than armed action because it leads to comparatively fewer harms (particularly in the form of death, serious injury, torture, etc.). as king (1963) explained, these actions do not create discord and violence but expose the injustice and implicit violence that was present throughout and that those who benefit from or are not subject to structural violence often prefer to ignore (see ethicists without borders 2019). nonviolent direct action is already a major feature of resistance to ecological injustice and mining-related violence around the globe. arce and moran (2020) detail the program of nonviolent direct action motivated by 126 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid fears of ecological damage at the tía maría copper mines in peru. there, nonviolent direct action helped push both the government and mining project developers to include the local community more robustly in negotiation processes (i.e., respect), ultimately leading the government to delay the mine’s opening to 2024. efforts to ensure a participatory democratic process around the copper mine continue (81–85), and the chapter in this book by josé bayardo chata pacoricona details how derechos humanos y medio ambiente–puno focuses on legal action in other cases in peru as a form of nonviolent direct action to avoid having protest situations reach a point where violence can occur. trust-building an ecological just peace depends on building trust among stakeholders. lisa sowle cahill (2019) argues that trust-building involves holding those responsible for harm accountable (i.e., restoration), as well as shared “activities together around shared goals.” such shared activities and shared goals are critical for the “practical validation of social trust” amongst people and communities in conflict (340). similarly, francis (2015, §213) calls for everyone to be involved in ecological education, from individuals and families, to churches, schools, businesses, and governments. each has a role to play in creating a “a culture of shared life.” laws, however valuable and important, can only be effective in the long term if there are a sufficient number of people who are prepared to accept them (§211). actions of beautifying, protecting, and restoring public places that belong to everyone (i.e., respect and restoration) are important because through them “relationships develop or are recovered and a new social fabric emerges. thus, a community can break out of the indifference induced by consumerism. these actions cultivate a shared identity, with a story which can be remembered and handed on” (§232). practices that build trust can contribute to a culture of shared life and to people who become ready to adopt new laws and regulations. imaginative thinking many scholars point to the importance of nourishing individual and collective human imagination in order to promote just peace. preeminent peace studies scholar john paul lederach (2005, 172) urges: [i]f we are to survive as a global community, we must understand the imperative nature of giving birth and space to the moral imagination…. we must face the fact that much of our current system for responding to deadly local and international conflict is incapable of overcoming cycles of violent patterns precisely because our imagination has been corralled and shackled by the very parameters and sources that create and perpetrate violence. integral ecology, just peace, and mining 127 both respect and restoration depend on the capacity to think imaginatively in order to break out of entrenched cycles of violence and vengeance. in a similar vein, robert schreiter (2010, 221) notes that “the capacity to imagine peace, that is, to think differently about the conflict situation in order to come to new possibilities that might end the conflict, is now being recognized as one of the most important qualities of a peacebuilder.” this emphasis on imaginative thinking suggests that practices for building an ecological just peace will include, in cahill’s (2019, 332) words, “song, story, art, and ritual” that contribute to the “transformation of imaginations and worldviews so that a different reality is grasped as truly possible.” how might artists, poets, musicians, and playwrights help restore and enrich our understanding, for example, not only of the efficiency and sustainability of renewable energy, but also the sheer beauty of it? solar panels turn sunshine into our softly glowing baby monitor, so that the light that brings life to the planet also illuminates the doubts and fears of new parents and helps them feel secure. turbines harness the wind rolling across the ocean to power an electric respirator, so that the invisible force of air itself breathes life into a critically ill patient. adjacent to these artistic ideas is the social imaginary of catholicism itself. schreiter (2010, 221) defines the social imaginary as “framed by certain assumptions about the world and certain rules of connection and communication…filled with certain values, images, and practices.” how might catholic imaginative thinking shape our capacity to envision and then build an ecological just peace? here the gospel of creation is helpful. it posits catholic imagination as fundamentally ecological, and provides ways of conceiving the nonhuman nature in all its variety as integral to human self-understanding and our relationship to the divine. francis (2015, §96–98) imagines jesus’s relationship to the natural world, attentive to the beauty of the earth and the loveliness of even the smallest creatures, living in harmony with all of nature. for francis, jesus embodies integral ecology, fusing a concern for justice and peace with a love for creation and the creator from whom all things come. indigenous peacebuilding finally, an ecological just peace must include robust efforts to draw on values, beliefs, and peacebuilding practices indigenous to the locales in which the efforts occur. for issues related to mining violence, this will mean building and recognizing leadership amongst grassroots peacemakers who understand well the indigenous culture and its conflict transformation practices. such practices often include reverence for or relationship with elements of the natural world (i.e., respect) and explicitly promote restoration. in liberia, the palaver “is a ritualized practice of dialogue and communication, which enables the community to come to consensus around ethical norms and the resolution of conflicts” (a. scheid 2012, 35). 128 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid this peacebuilding ritual often takes place under the community’s “palaver tree,” sacred ground for people to gather, discuss their differences, and restore justice. liberians turned to the palaver in their struggle to embrace a just peace in the aftermath of a war that decimated communities through the use of child soldiers (cahill 2019, 333). similarly, rwandans have been using traditional gacaca courts to hold accountable those who participated in the 1994 genocide. the word “gacaca” simply means “a soft green bed of grass,” and it is in such natural locations that the community gathers to ritually discuss and resolve conflicts. gacaca courts emphasize restorative justice and interpersonal and social reconciliation. over two million rwandans have been tried in gacaca courts since the genocide. likewise, south africa wrote the principle of ubuntu into its first democratic constitution in 1994, and promoted it through the truth and reconciliation commission in the aftermath of apartheid. ubuntu is a southern african humanistic philosophy that emphasizes the social nature of the person, and the interdependence of the human community based on respect for our shared humanity. it translates roughly as “a person is a person through other persons,” and it continues to be a vital force in south africa for cultivating a culture that will value justice and peace as part of ongoing healing from apartheid. el salvador: a recent example of ecological just peacemaking a recent example of a community struggling to enact an ecological just peace that honors the moral vision of integral ecology is the effort to ban metallic mining in el salvador that is detailed in the chapter of this book by andrés mckinley. in 2017, legislation passed that banned metallic mining following years of community efforts at organizing and raising awareness. like many central american countries, el salvador has experienced centuries of mining and extractive operations conducted by foreign powers. despite being among the poorest and most densely populated countries in the western hemisphere, and after suffering decades of violence and political repression, the people of el salvador organized to ban metallic mining for a variety of concerns but primarily because of the effects on the quantity, quality, and access to safe water. mckinley describes how el salvador is in the midst of a water crisis, and how climate change will only intensify the causes in the coming decades. metallic mining requires huge stores of freshwater, and mining contaminates water in a variety of ways, most problematically acid mine drainage. as mckinley observes, opposition to metallic mining in el salvador evolved over seventeen years, and the many stages of this effort incorporated various elements of an ecological just peace. it began in 2000 with the growing presence of transnational mining companies. local communities were already poised to respond because of their social bonds forged through years of resistance to companies prospecting for gold and integral ecology, just peace, and mining 129 silver and through their shared heartbreak during the brutal civil war. from the beginning, the catholic church was involved in galvanizing local communities to employ nonviolent means to resist foreign mining interests. the jesuit-led university of central america (uca) conducted research that provided an extensive foundation of information on the long-term effects of the mining operations. once a legal bill, developed in partnership with environmental experts at uca, was proposed, the catholic church helped lead a massive street march in 2017 to persuade legislative leaders to pass it. when it passed, el salvador became the first country to ban this form of mining. el salvador’s resistance demonstrates key features of an ecological just peace: forging diverse coalitions through relationship building over a period of many years; using religiously inspired values and an expansive moral imagination to generate a public consensus; disseminating information and countering propaganda campaigns by foreign companies; and protesting nonviolently in the streets to garner the attention of elected leaders. the seventeen-year-long struggle provides a powerful example of how nonviolent direct action, coalition building, and the catholic imagination motivated by a moral vision analogous to integral ecology, can promote and further an ecological just peace. ecological just peace and mining the mining industry is diverse and multifaceted, and each mining enterprise has its own particular set of concerns, such as the target material of the extraction and the method used to extract it, the land it operates on, the historical and political context of the people who live there, the ecosystems of the region, the expectations of the particular extractive companies, etc. this essay has provided a general ethical framework that can situate particular extractive operations in a comprehensive catholic moral vision, yet we can still draw some brief conclusions from this expansive perspective. any process of mining that is not rooted in a broad framework— like integral ecology—with a deep moral horizon will likely thwart efforts toward an ecological just peace. as francis contends, modernity is pervaded by a technocratic paradigm, and this includes our appetite for extractives. absent resistance, extractives will contribute to an intensification of a throwaway culture with its attendant waste, violence, and needless death. while the paradigm of integral ecology stresses a holistic, interconnected, and fundamentally relational framework of human-earth relationship, the absence of an ecological just peace will lead to greater violence against ecosystems, the poor, and future generations. without the model of integral ecology, land, ecosystems, and often even people are treated as parts that can be utilized and profited from, consumed or used to varying degrees, and then disposed of. indigenous populations that stand in the way of development can be 130 anna floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid easily bypassed unless their voice is intentionally privileged and welcomed. in turn, environmental degradation and resource scarcity will become further causes of injustice, setting up cycles of ecological degradation, social conflict, and violence. an ecological just peace draws on the principles of respect and restoration that undergird peacebuilding practices of nonviolent direct action, trust-building, imaginative thinking, and indigenous practices of reconciliation and restoration. this ethic involves appreciating the relationship of all creatures and ecosystems to their creator, before measuring the economic utility of extraction; assessing and cataloguing the interrelatedness of an ecosystem and its people and predicting possible implications; valuing the long-term economic, psychological, emotional, and social benefits that come from a healthy and sustainable ecosystem; and welcoming input from local peoples and making them partners in decision making. the moral vision of integral ecology yields a framework for an ecological just peace that can help mitigate violent conflict and other forms of injustice in contexts of mining. references arce, 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mitigating harms and enhancing benefits have much in common and are generally compatible. both focus on the impacts of mining on human dignity, the environment, and peace. however, they also diverge in fundamental ways. as epitomized in laudato si’, catholic social teaching recognizes fundamental human rights and the need for international human rights laws and institutions (francis 2015, §53, 93, 157, 173, 175). but the concept of human rights in catholic social teaching is much broader than in secular law. the church insists on an integral, holistic, communitarian, spiritually grounded vision of human development and peace. concern for our planet unites with compassion for our sisters and brothers, especially the poor, in an inseparable whole. these lofty goals call for nothing less than a cultural “revolution” (§114). laudato si’ teaches that our societies, ecology, and personal well-being are all maimed by market-driven materialism, consumerism, overblown individualism, self-centered pursuit of immediate gratification, anthropocentrism, and a false faith that endless technological progress will forever yield unlimited economic growth. it sounds an urgent call that our earthly home is fast reaching the limits of its capacity to tolerate our cultural and material excesses. secular international human rights norms share important values with the catholic faith, notably respect for human dignity and security. they take broader stands in support of liberty and against discrimination. but they do not aim as high as the church. widely agreed international norms are necessarily the product of consensus diplomacy among nations, whose diverse political and value systems are immersed in a market-driven global culture of technological progress and material growth. norms adopted by international organizations reflect both what is common and what is diverse among their member states. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-10 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-10 the united nations encompasses democratic as well as repressive states, and religious as well as secular cultures. the result is that international norms, far from upsetting political and economic apple-carts, tend toward the lowest common denominator. rather than reach for the heavens, they erect a floor. you need not love your neighbor, but you must not torture her. unlike catholic social teaching, international human rights norms emphasize rights over responsibilities. lacking an agreed, unifying theory, international human rights reduce to a menu of separate rights, instead of a cohesive, integral whole (see glendon 1998). while necessary to avert suffering, they do not aspire to maximize the common good. they do not challenge the sins of their authors: materialism, consumerism, self-centeredness, and the myth of endless growth. they accept cultures, however misguided, and development models, however short-sighted. the price of gaining widespread acceptance by governments is settling for minimum, albeit critically important, rules of civility. mining is not exempt from these profound differences between catholic social teaching and international human rights norms. if laudato si’ is revolutionary, secular international norms for mining are merely regulatory. coal mining is an example. laudato si’ asserts the “use of highly polluting fossil fuels—especially coal…needs to be progressively replaced without delay” (francis 2015, §165). by contrast, international norms seek to curb the coal industry’s pollution, require it to respect local communities, avoid repressive violence, not fuel armed conflict, and move gradually to reduce carbon emissions. still, at present, they seek only to rein in, not challenge the very existence of, the industry. this difference between catholic social teaching and international human rights norms is illustrated more broadly by their contrasting attitudes toward the end uses and profits of mining. the church considers the intrinsic value of the end use of what is mined, based on its contribution to integral human development. by contrast, international human rights norms on mining pay no attention to the intrinsic value of the end use. international norms adopted by governments, not by theologians, accept market valuations of mining based on monetary worth in consumerist societies. consider gold mines. even when operated by the cleanest modern techniques, they pollute. some level of environmental cost could be justified if the gold is to be used for, say, life-saving medical technology. in fact, the vast majority of gold mined nowadays (other than for bullion) is destined for jewelry (sepanek 2012). the church would ask, is self-adornment worth the environmental costs? international human rights norms do consider the environmental impacts of gold mining. but they pay no attention to the intrinsic value of the end use. their environmental regulations are the same regardless of whether the gold will be used to save lives or to adorn people. much less do they condition the right to mine gold for a profit on the end use. catholic social teaching and international human rights norms also differ on the pope’s injunction to mining executives to balance profits against a need 134 douglass cassel to “reduce, reuse, recycle” (francis 2019). there may be no present need to mine more gold for jewelry. there may be so much of the mineral already in jewelry stores and pawn shops that we do not need to dig for more. gold-mining executives might choke on this conclusion, and to suspend gold mining for jewelry would also affect the gainful employment of miners, cutters, and merchants. still, on a holistic view, catholic social teaching arguably calls on us, before we mine more, to sell what already gleams through countless shop windows around the globe. international human rights norms do not go so far. so long as reasonable environmental and human rights safeguards are followed, these secular norms do not object to a mining company digging for gold we do not need in order to sell it for a profit. if a company can make money by mining, that’s fine. and if a country’s government, aiming to expand its economy, markets itself as the gold mining capital of a world already up to its neck in baubles, that’s fine, too. catholic social teaching, then, is vastly more ambitious than international human rights norms. even so, its lofty aspirations may have much to learn from the specificity and practicality of evolving international human rights norms for business, in general, and mining, in particular. the united nations guiding principles on business and human rights reiterate the legal duties of states to protect human rights, including from business; confirm the social responsibility of business to respect human rights; and make clear the duty of states and responsibility of business to facilitate remedies when business activities adversely impact human rights (un office of the high commissioner for human rights 2011). the guiding principles are now increasingly supplemented and implemented by other global and regional norms, national laws, and, as ray offenheiser outlines in his chapter in this volume, by industry codes and company policies and procedures. soon after their adoption, the church wisely endorsed the guiding principles (tomasi 2014). much remains to be done, but the trend lines of secular norms are moving toward moderating the worst social and environmental excesses of the mining industry. yet it is unrealistic to expect secular norms, however helpful, ever to embrace the revolution in values, culture, worldview, and models of development advocated by laudato si’. the following sections address, first, the diversity of mining industries; second, the impacts of mining on human rights, the environment, and peace; third, teaching from laudato si’ pertinent to mining issues; fourth, international human rights norms; fifth, international norms on peace; and finally, how catholic teaching and international norms might be combined to better serve peace and the common good. mining diversity not all mining is the same; neither catholic social teaching nor international norms can adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. analysis of costs and mining and international human rights 135 benefits must be disaggregated, and should consider the mining technologies used for different substances and varied end uses, ranging from frivolous to useful to critically important. there is geographical diversity and endless variation in what is mined and end uses. china is by far the globe’s champion miner. not only is it the world’s largest producer of coal and gold, china also has “great prospecting potential” for 22 other “major minerals,” including iron ore, manganese, chromite, copper, lead, zinc, bauxite, tungsten, tin, molybdenum, antimony, nickel, silver, lithium, pyrites, sulphurite, phosphate rock, potash, magnesite, fluorite, boron and barite (wu and li 2018). in addition, china is the world’s leading producer of “rare earth minerals” which are unknown to most of us, but are strategically or commercially important. leading examples include lanthanum (used in hybrid vehicles and smart phones), cerium (used in catalytic converters and led lighting), and terbium (used for solid state electronics, fuel cells, and naval sonar). latin american mining portfolios are likewise large and varied. mexico, the world’s largest miner of silver, is also an important producer of copper, coal, gold, zinc, and uranium, and a major producer of twelve minerals, three of which are important for u.s. demand: fluorspar (used in aluminum, gasoline, insulating foams, refrigerants, steel, and uranium fuel), graphite (for lubricants, electrodes, batteries, and solar panels), and strontium (for fireworks, flares, and glow-in-the-dark paints, among others) (uita 2019b). mining mixes differ elsewhere in latin america. chile leads the world in mining copper and is second in lithium (uita 2021). peru is latin america’s largest miner of gold and second largest of copper and silver (uita 2020). colombia leads the region in coal mining and has “great opportunities” for gold, copper, and nickel (griffin and acosta 2020). important mining sectors in bolivia include zinc, lead, tin, gold, silver, copper, and tungsten (uita 2019a). the foregoing merely gives a flavor of the diversity in what is mined, where, and for what end uses. the goal is not to present an exhaustive global portrait, but to illustrate differences that can affect how both catholic social teaching and international norms assess mining industries. mining’s global and local impacts the social and environmental impacts of mining are both global (especially in end uses and through global warming) and local (the impacts on human rights, the environment, and peace in the community, country, and region where the mining takes place). the most extensive global impacts at present arguably come from burning coal to fuel electric power plants and heat homes—a major source of carbon emissions and a major contributor to climate change. with substitute fuels increasingly available and competitive, thermal coal use globally appears to have peaked in 2013. since then, use has fallen steeply 136 douglass cassel in europe and north america, and is projected to decline even further by 2025. however, in china, which already produces and consumes nearly half of all thermal coal worldwide, demand in 2025 is projected to be about the same as in 2019. meanwhile, thermal coal use in india, and also in southeast asia, each of whose coal usage is already more than the united states and europe combined, is projected to keep growing (international energy agency 2020). other top revenue generators from mining—coking coal, iron ore, and copper—likewise contribute significantly to climate change (greenpeace australia pacific 2017; pooler 2019; brown 2016). nuclear power is touted by some as a clean substitute for electricity generation by fossil fuels. but wholly aside from the significant risks of radioactive pollution from uranium mining, and the safety and environmental risks of operating nuclear power plants, global challenges of uranium mining include disposing of nuclear waste and ensuring that nuclear materials are used only for peaceful purposes, rather than for nuclear arms proliferation or for terrorism.1 in the communities and countries (and sometimes the regions) where mining takes place, the potential adverse impacts of mining on human rights, environment, and peace are many and varied. they may include discharge of toxic substances into air, water, and soil, harming not only human health, but the continued ability of local residents to farm, fish, earn a livelihood, and sustain their families. vibrations and noise disturb tranquility and may crack walls and roofs of housing. indigenous lands, sometimes including sacred places, are often encroached upon without free, prior, and informed consent. there may be little or no community consultation about mining projects. importation of mineworkers may lead to prostitution and other social problems. where land is taken for mining, forced or mass displacement may result. traditional collective ownership of land may be disrespected for lack of formal titles, and legal (or corrupt) titles given or sold to mining companies. when mines close, ravaged hills and streams may not be restored, or communities may be left to pay the costs, or restoration may be impossible for decades because of acid drainage. the economic impact on communities can also be significant. as albino barrera points out in his chapter, mining operations in the global south rarely help the industry generate sustainable wealth in the host country, but instead allow for the formation of extractive-export enclaves. this pattern helps to keep the global north enriched and the global south impoverished, while the latter remains on the front lines in coping with climate change. in many instances, these problems lead to resistance and protests by community members and their defenders. in countries where the rule of law is weak (as in much of the global south), they may be arrested, jailed, prosecuted on false or trumped-up charges, threatened, harassed, tortured, or killed (see dejusticia and business and human rights resource centre 2015). and in nations beset by war, mining may become a major source of mining and international human rights 137 funds to fuel armed conflict, such as “blood diamonds” in sierra leone (king n.d.) or coltan and “3tg” (tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold) in the congo (heath 2014). examples of human rights cases against mining companies colombia. the range of human rights issues that can arise at a single mine is illustrated by a recent complaint filed against three of the world’s mining giants—bhp, anglo american, and glencore. supported by several other human rights groups, the global legal action network (glan) filed a complaint against the three companies with the national contact points (ncps) in australia, switzerland, and the uk (their home countries) in connection with their joint venture ownership of the el cerrejón mine in colombia. the complaint alleges “non-compliance with the oecd guidelines for multinational enterprises” (glan 2021). el cerrejón is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. glan alleges that the mine has caused air and noise pollution and related health impacts, contamination of a river and nearby waterways, interference with the local hydrological system, food insecurity, and an adverse impact on climate change. glan further alleges that the three companies have inadequately responded to threats against activists and have displaced indigenous communities, damaged their cultural heritage, and undertaken other activities without their consent. the complaint adds that the un special rapporteur on human rights and the environment declared el cerrejón “one of the most disturbing situations” he had learned about (glan 2021, 2n3). at this writing, the ncps have not yet reached conclusions concerning these allegations. meanwhile, the jointly-owned company announced an agreement in february 2021 with the wayúu community, by which it would resolve a colombian court case, reportedly by building a community health center; carrying out an environmental rehabilitation program to include the planting of 250,000 trees; cleaning community facilities and nearby areas over the next five years; and providing technical support for measuring air quality (reuters 2021). nonetheless, glencore has recently brought an international arbitration claim against colombia over el cerrejon, and the ncp complaints illustrate the issues of human rights, environment, and conflict that often arise at mines (bnamericas 2021). guatemala. in 2013 a superior court of ontario, canada, denied a motion to dismiss three lawsuits brought by indigenous mayans in guatemala against canada’s hudbay minerals. community members had protested a proposed open-pit nickel mine. the mayan claimants alleged that security personnel working for hudbay’s former wholly-owned subsidiaries, allegedly under the control and supervision of hudbay, violated human rights. among other alleged violations were the killing of a community leader, a shooting, and gang rapes in the vicinity of the 138 douglass cassel proposed mine (choc v. hudbay minerals inc. 2013). while the rapes were committed in 2007, before hudbay acquired the project from another canadian company in 2008, the killing and shooting allegedly occurred in 2009. civil litigation remains pending. meanwhile, in 2021, the mine’s former security chief (also formerly a lieutenant general in guatemala’s army) pled guilty in a criminal case to murdering the community leader and shooting another man who was left paralyzed (waddell phillips professional corporation 2021). zambia. in 2019, the united kingdom supreme court permitted a civil suit brought by more than 2,500 zambians to proceed in london against a british company and its zambian subsidiary for leaks of acidic material. it also alleged that the company knowingly discharged toxic metals above legal limits into river waters near a copper mine in zambia (vedanta resources plc v. lungowe et al. 2019). according to the summary by the court of appeals, the claimants alleged that they relied on the waterways “as ‘their primary source of clean water for drinking, bathing, cooking, cleaning and other domestic and recreational purposes.’ it is said that the waterways irrigate crops and sustain livestock [and] are a source of fresh fish and that, in consequence, the waterways are ‘of critical importance to [the claimants’] livelihoods and their physical, economic and social wellbeing’” (lungowe et al. v. vedanta resources plc and konkola copper mines plc2017). in 2021 the case was settled for an undisclosed sum (leigh day 2021). mining and laudato si’ what is the stance of catholic social teaching toward such alleged abuses? this section considers how the children of god should treat our common home—the earth—as set forth in pope francis’s 2015 encyclical laudato si’. aspects of its teaching relate to the impacts of mining on human rights, the environment, and peace, and it calls for a deeper change of the culture and values that underpin problems associated with mining. laudato si’ teaches that abuse of our planetary home is not an accident but has “ethical and spiritual roots” (§9). it reflects anthropocentrism, individual and societal selfishness, and the myths of markets and technology as saviors. we indulge “the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless” (§6). we demand rights without corresponding responsibilities. such a culture is prone to promote lucrative mining without the corresponding human rights and environmental safeguards, genuine community consultation, or respect for communally owned indigenous land. if buyers demand minerals regardless of the real end use value, the market rules. if environmental protection is needed, mining companies either downplay the problem or look to technological solutions, even if they merely mitigate the damage or postpone the day of reckoning. laudato si’ diagnoses the cultural maladies more specifically. mining and international human rights 139 self-centeredness. modern culture is beset by “rampant individualism,” a “self-centered culture of instant gratification,” and a short-term mindset (§161, 181). closely related is an egoistic attitude that we can plunder sister earth at will. in contrast, the creation accounts of the bible leave “no place for a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures” (§68). francis observes, “once we lose our humility and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment” (§224). technology. this misconception is what allows for the “technocratic paradigm” that operates by prioritizing control over external objects (§106). it lures us into accepting the idea that technology and ingenuity can accomplish unlimited growth, but it is “based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.” the mining industry is not specifically named here, but falls clearly within the purview of francis’s concerns. technology works wonders in medicine and science. in the market, however, the technocratic paradigm leads to a “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life,” and its products are “not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups” (§107). the tendency is for the economy to accept “every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings” (§109). markets. economic interests such as mining enterprises can trump the common good (§54). while it is supposed to efficiently allocate resources, the market often assigns a value to products that might not reflect their real worth and that can lead to overproduction, which negatively impacts the environment and regional economies. francis rejects “a magical conception of the market” (§190). the point is not to stifle progress, but to define it in ways other than profit and economic growth. economic development which does not “respect and promote human rights—personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples—would not be really worthy of man” (§93). therefore, decreased growth might be justified in some parts of the world if it means better protection of the environment, traditional cultures, human rights, and peace (§193). this is not saying that mining companies or other growth-focused multinational businesses are inherently evil. “business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world” (§129). mining creates jobs and gives the world materials. despite those real benefits, accepting decreased growth in the mining sector in some cases could be an antidote to the technocratic paradigm and a market that makes growth and profit goals unto themselves at the expense of other, more important, values. environment. the well-being of the environment is one of those values (§23–26). at least three specific environmental problems addressed in laudato si’ relate directly to mining: waste and our “throwaway culture,” 140 douglass cassel climate change, and water poverty. the victims of these problems are disproportionately in the global south. that imbalance is connected to the “disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries [in the global north] over long periods of time” (§51). a “throwaway culture” leads to wasteful over-consumption, which worsens climate change and yields more demand for mined resources from the global south, threatening water sources with pollution and creating greater climate vulnerability in areas where the mining occurs (§20–22). a true ecological approach, pope francis teaches, “always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (§49). this social approach is evident in the church’s insistence that, while a right to private property is important, there is always a “social mortgage on all private property” (§93). and the natural environment affected by mining is not private property, but a “collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone” (§95). the same cultural and ethical problems that underlie climate change underlie poverty. similarly, mining not only harms the environment but sometimes exhausts resources on which communities depend, undermines social structures which shape communal identity, and destroys sacred spaces (§146). we are not faced, then, with “two separate crises, one environmental and one social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental,” and which demands “an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature” (§139). certain questions should be asked of any proposed venture (including a mine) to discern whether it will contribute to “genuine integral development. what will it accomplish? why? where? when? how? for whom? what are the risks? what are the costs? who will pay these costs and how?” (§185). francis also specifically insists that environmental impact assessments should come, not after business plans are already made, but as part of the decision-making process from the beginning. consensus should be sought among the different stakeholders, “who can offer a variety of approaches, solutions and alternatives,” and the local population should have a “special place at the table” (§ 183). assessments should be transparent enough and honest enough to allow those populations to make truly informed decisions (§184). the need to act is urgent. “the pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes” (§161). sustainable development is a basic question of justice and “intergenerational solidarity” (§159). uncertainty cannot be permitted to paralyze action. laudato si’ invokes the precautionary principle, enunciated by the 1992 rio declaration of the un conference on environment and development: “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, mining and international human rights 141 lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a pretext for postponing cost-effective measures” to protect the environment (unga 1992). peace. a spiritual resource for ushering in the kind of cultural reform francis describes is the cultivation of peace. st. francis understood, as his namesake observes, “just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace” (francis 2015, §10). laudato si’ explains that inner peace is essential to the conversion that is needed for real cultural change along the lines of integral ecology (§225). inner peace recognizes that “less is more” (§222). however, mining places exterior or communal peace at risk. as illustrated by the above case of alleged abuses in guatemala, mining may not only disturb individual and social tranquility, but also often ignites violence or even fuels armed conflict. and indeed, francis clearly includes concern for peace in the matrix of integral goods that are threatened by ecological indifference and preoccupation with profit over justice and human dignity (§82, 92). a way forward. the cultural values and norms highlighted above suggest that “bold cultural revolution” is needed (§114). while appreciating material progress, we must recover values “swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.” we must not seek to shape the earth solely to our own ends, but instead engage in “responsible stewardship” (§116). we cannot renew our relationship with nature “without a renewal of humanity itself. there can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” (§118). the challenge is to “to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development,” one sensitive to the suffering imposed by environmental degradation, economic inequities, and violence on the poor (§13). nor can cultural change do it alone. for changes in culture to succeed, they must be accompanied by changes in laws (§53). but the reverse is also true. if the laws are to bring about “significant, long-lasting effects, the majority of the members of society must be adequately motivated to accept them, and personally transformed to respond” (§211). moreover, even well-framed laws governing the mining industry are often ineffective because much of the world’s mining takes place in nations with weak institutions, little respect for the rule of law, and citizens who lack political power (§142). but national laws and political power are not enough. individual countries often face a power imbalance in confronting huge, multinational mining companies. for example, the anglo-swiss mining giant glencore had revenues in 2019 of $215 billion (mining technology 2020)—more than the entire gdps of mining nations such as bolivia ($41 billion), guatemala ($77 billion), or zambia ($23 billion) (world bank n.d.). it follows that “[e]nforceable international agreements are urgently needed… to impose obligations and prevent unacceptable actions, for example, when powerful companies or countries … offshore polluting industries in other countries” (francis 2015, §173). 142 douglass cassel international human rights norms international human rights norms do not presuppose a belief in the divine. they proclaim freedom, not only of religion, but also of conscience—which includes the right not to believe in any divine power (unga 1966a, art. 18.1). they do not presume to denounce the materialistic values of contemporary culture, or to challenge the prevalent paradigm of unending technological progress and economic growth. they are the product, not of a unified epistemology, but of negotiated—or feigned—agreement on fundamental rights among disparate cultures and political systems. while they do not join catholic social teaching, or indeed any religion, in reaching for the heavenly, international human rights norms are consistent, as far as they go, with catholic social teaching. they are centered on human dignity (unga 1948, art. 1). they ask states to respect not only civil and political rights (unga 1966a), but also economic, social, and cultural rights (unga 1966b). they consecrate workers’ rights to decent wages and hours, working conditions, and to organize and bargain collectively (unga 1948, art. 23; international labour organization 2010). they recognize that the right to private property can be subordinated to public purpose (organization of american states 2011, art. 21.1), albeit with due monetary compensation (art. 21.2). they include the human right to a decent environment (unga 2018, §1; african union 1981, art. 24; organization of american states 1999, art. 11.1; european union 2012, art. 37; association of southeast asian nations 2013, art. 28.f; community of latin american and caribbean states 2018). some of their instruments embrace the precautionary principle (organisation for economic co-operation and development 2011, art. vi.4). they call for meaningful consultation with affected communities (un office of the high commissioner for human rights 2011, principle 18.a) and, for indigenous peoples, “free, prior and informed consent” before initiating major development projects (unga 2007, art. 10, 11.2, 19, 29.2, 32.2). international norms include a right to development, albeit vaguely defined and largely unenforceable (unga 1986). for mining—and indeed for business generally—the central instrument is the un guiding principles on business and human rights (ungps), adopted by consensus of the un human rights council in 2011, and now widely incorporated or endorsed by other international and regional instruments, as well as by industry and company policies, and the church (un office of the high commissioner for human rights 2011). the ungps rest on three pillars. pillar i is addressed to states. it reaffirms that they have a “duty to protect” human rights from infringement by third parties, including business (principle 1). this largely restates and particularizes legal duties of states under existing international human rights law. mining and international human rights 143 pillar ii addresses business. it recognizes that business has a “responsibility to respect” human rights (principle 11), which is less demanding than the state’s “duty to protect.” the responsibility is both negative and positive. negatively, companies should not violate human rights. positively, they should adopt formal human rights policies (principle 15, 16); exercise due diligence to anticipate and avoid adverse human rights impacts which they cause or contribute to through their own activities (principle 13, 17); use their leverage to seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts arising from their business relationships (principle 13); engage in meaningful consultation with potentially affected groups and other stakeholders (principle 18); monitor and report on the human rights impacts of their activities on a regular basis (principle 20, 21); and address such impacts when they occur (principle 15, 19). even if the responsibility of business to respect human rights is not (yet) a legal duty, neither is it purely voluntary. it reflects societal expectations of business, which are now articulated, not only in the ungps, but in the many governmental and business documents which adopt it (unga 2008, §54). pillar iii is addressed to both states and business. it recognizes the right of victims to remedies for business-related human rights abuses. states have a duty to provide both judicial and non-judicial remedies (un office of the high commissioner for human rights 2011, principle 25–28). where business identifies that it has caused or contributed to an adverse impact, it has a responsibility to provide or cooperate in remediation through legitimate processes (principle 22). business also has a responsibility to provide non-judicial remedies through genuine, rights-compatible grievance procedures (principle 29–31). the ungps do not call on companies to love their neighbors or renounce materialism. they nonetheless add a welcome degree of practical effectiveness and specificity to catholic social teaching on human rights and ecology as applied to mining. the principles themselves are relatively precise. for example, principle 16 provides not only that a company should have a “policy commitment” to respect human rights, but more specifically that the policy should: be approved at the most senior level; be informed by expertise; state the company’s human rights expectations of personnel, business partners and other parties directly linked to its activities; be publicly available and communicated internally and externally; and be reflected in operational policies and procedures necessary to embed it throughout the company. the ungps lend themselves to implementation by business generally and the mining industry in particular. in 2018 the international council of metals and mining (icmm), representing 27 of the world’s largest mining companies, announced that it had become the first mining industry body to commit its members to implement the ungps. the principles are thus to be put in practice by icmm member companies, which together cover over a quarter of all mined commodities by value. 144 douglass cassel the ungps also signal the business responsibility to respect an array of other international human rights instruments, most of which were originally directed largely or only to states. principle 12 calls on business to respect the international covenant on civil and political rights; the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights; the universal declaration of human rights; and the international labour organization’s declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work. together these instruments cover a broad spectrum of human rights. even so, for particular contexts such as mining, principle 12 goes further, recognizing that “[a]dditional standards may be applicable in particular situations, such as the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples.” among other provisions, the un declaration requires that free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples be sought before mining on their lands or using their waters or other resources (unga 2007, e.g., art. 32.2). formally, the declaration is not legally binding. nonetheless, it can be used to assess whether business meets its responsibility to respect human rights. it also informs interpretation of treaties which are legally binding on states. for example, international labour organization convention 169 requires “free and informed consent” before indigenous peoples are relocated (international labour organization 1989, art. 16.2). although joined by only 23 states, they include such important mining countries as bolivia, brazil, chile, mexico, and peru.2 regional human rights treaties have also been interpreted to require free, prior, and informed consent. in the americas, nearly all latin american countries are parties to the american convention on human rights. the convention has been interpreted by the inter-american court of human rights (2012, §177–211) to mandate free, prior and informed consultation with indigenous peoples. moreover, in cases involving major impact projects within indigenous territory, “the state has a duty, not only to consult with [them]…, but also to obtain their free, prior, and informed consent, according to their customs and traditions” (inter-american court of human rights 2007, §134). in africa, the african court of human and peoples’ rights (2017, §131) has held that states have at least a duty of “prior consultation” (and perhaps consent) before expelling an indigenous people from its land. these injunctions to consult versus obtain consent reflect varying legal interpretations of the force such regulations hold. the above sources refer those regulations to states, but the ungps make companies, including mining companies, responsible to use the leverage they may have to try to ensure that genuine consultation takes place and that, at minimum, free, prior, and informed consent is sought. the foregoing discussion of norms from the ungps that are applicable to mining is not exhaustive. still, it provides starting points for practitioners of catholic peacebuilding who wish to bring widely supported secular norms to bear in the defense of human dignity, planetary survival, the common good, and peace. mining and international human rights 145 international norms on peace with relatively few but nonetheless important exceptions,3 international law does not generally address the kind of interior peace of which st. francis wrote, which is likely to be damaged by the kinds of human rights and environmental abuses associated with mining. international law mainly addresses the right to external peace—the absence of armed conflict. the un general assembly’s declaration on the right to peace provides, “everyone has the right to enjoy peace such that all human rights are promoted and protected and development is fully realized” (unga 2016, art. 1). the human rights provisions of the declaration address not only international wars and internal armed conflicts, but arguably also civil disturbances, such as those arising from mining disputes (art. 2). by themselves, this and earlier un declarations on peace are not legally binding. however, they can be politically and diplomatically influential. they may also be used judicially to interpret treaties (such as the un charter). the ungps are also not legally binding but provide guidance to business, including mining companies, operating in conflict zones: ‘[c]onflict-affected areas’ may increase the risks of enterprises being complicit in gross human rights abuses committed by other actors (security forces, for example). business enterprises should treat this risk as a legal compliance issue, given the expanding web of potential corporate legal liability arising from extraterritorial civil claims, and from the incorporation of the provisions of the rome statute of the international criminal court in jurisdictions that provide for corporate criminal responsibility. in addition, corporate directors, officers and employees may be subject to individual liability for acts that amount to gross human rights abuses. in complex contexts such as these, business enterprises should ensure that they do not exacerbate the situation. (un office of the high commissioner for human rights 2011, principle 23 commentary) aside from these human rights instruments, most international norms on peace in the un charter, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law do not usually apply to mining disputes, for two main reasons. first, most international law on resort to war is restricted to wars between nations, which are rarely triggered by mining disputes.4 second, international laws mandating humane conduct of internal armed conflicts between governments and insurgents would apply to conflicts tied to mining only if they involve a high threshold of military organization, discipline, and violence, as with rebel groups in the democratic republic of the congo, though not the riots or sporadic violence typically involved in mining disputes (international criminal court 2011, art. 8.2.d). 146 douglass cassel however, international law does not ignore communities victimized by violence in mining disputes. international human rights law applies. it protects, for example, the rights to life and bodily integrity, as well as freedoms of speech, association, and peaceful assembly (unga 1966a, art. 6, 7, 10, 18, 19, 22). in cases before international human rights bodies, advocates may use the un declaration on the right to peace “within and between societies,” and the ungps on risks in conflict zones, to help interpret human rights norms in the context of violent mining disputes. combining for peace and the common good while catholic social teaching is more ambitious and aspirational, international human rights norms are more concrete and immediately practical (even if narrower). in addressing mining, catholics need not choose between the two. the church will not and should not retreat from its commitments inspired by the gospel. at the same time, as laudato si’ teaches, the task before us is so immense that catholics need to reach out to all people of good will to curb the calamities to which mining often contributes. that means reaching out, beyond even other religious communities, to secular activists, victims of abuses, ngos, human rights and environmental lawyers, courts, governments, the media—and mining companies, with whom the church has dialogued in recent years (francis 2019). outreach is best communicated through language readily understood by others, and by invoking norms they embrace, so long as those norms are consistent with catholic social teaching. in addressing mining, the catholic community would be well-advised not to limit itself to catholic doctrine. the church should endeavor to ensure that its recommendations on mining to governments, business, and society are consistent with, and capture the essentials of, relevant international human rights norms, including but not limited to the widely endorsed ungps. among other things, this means becoming acquainted with the content of the ungps. in general, the state’s “duty to protect” and the business’s “responsibility to respect” human rights (including environmental rights and the right to peace) are eminently consistent with catholic social teaching. if in any instance the church believes that it must depart from an aspect of the ungps, the need for such a departure should be carefully reasoned and publicly articulated. outreach has practical value. even if it may not meet all the broad spiritual objectives of the church, it adds social and political heft by uniting the persuasive powers of both religious and secular norms and actors against the power of multinational mining companies. it thereby concretely advances catholic social principles on human rights, the environment, and peace. the church can and should unite its voice with victims and with those who advocate putting secular norms into practice, as opposed to merely articulating them in empty promises. mining and international human rights 147 in reaching out, the church can bring to bear its broader perspective. for example, cost-benefit analyses of mining projects should not be limited to impacts in the local community, but should be expanded to take into account the social utility, or lack thereof, of the end for which the mining is undertaken. it is one thing to expose local residents to some degree of risk in order to mine precious metals essential for computer networks in hospitals. it is quite another to ask them to sacrifice in order to mine gold or silver for luxury trinkets. if communities near a mine are to be asked to face some degree of risk, it should at the very least be for morally justifiable ends. this point, not addressed by secular international human rights norms, is a spiritual truth taught by laudato si’ and its critique of mining in light of larger cultural maladies of consumerism, materialism, and waste. however, assessing end use may be difficult in practice. if a mineral is mined for sale on the world market, there may be no way in advance to know or to value its eventual end use. it may eventually be sold as jewelry or used for heart monitors. or a mining company may know the end uses but refuse to disclose them. or there is the conundrum of how to assess mining which damages the environment when the minerals are to be used for renewable energy technology to mitigate climate change, as discussed by holden and montevecchio later in this book. to overcome such practical obstacles, the church could learn both positive and negative lessons from secular norms and procedures on mining due diligence (european parliament and the council of the european union 2017), transparency (extractive industries transparency initiative n.d.), disclosure (us congress 2010, sec. 1502.b), reporting (uk parliament 2015, sec. 52), and certifications (kimberley process n.d.). the church does not need to reinvent wheels. secular experience may either point the way to solutions, signal where they are elusive, or clarify when certain approaches are unworkable. on the other hand, without advocacy by the church and others of broader vision, international and national laws might continue to permit mines to be licensed without regard to end uses. just as catholic social teaching can learn from international human rights law, so too international law can learn from catholic principles. laudato si’ further teaches that necessary cultural change cannot fully succeed without legal change. this means that the church should learn about existing national mining laws and advocate reforms. in guatemala in the early 2000s, for example, the church played a key role in developing a draft reform of the mining law (holden and jacobson 2009). although the draft was not adopted by the country’s lawmakers, the church stood—and was seen to stand—with the people and on the right side of history. elsewhere church campaigns on mining may meet with greater success, as seen in two cases from this book. as outlined by andrés mckinley, in el salvador church support was important to a ban on mining, which the government later successfully defended in an international arbitration brought by mining companies (palumbo and malkin 2017; malkin 2016). the ban on mining “marked the culmination of a multi-year campaign in 148 douglass cassel which the archbishop of san salvador and the jesuit-run central american university played a major role” (palumbo 2017). and in the chapter on peru, josé bayardo chata pacoricona describes several court successes arguing against mining development and active pursuit of varied legal actions on behalf of indigenous and other marginalized communities. as the contrasting outcomes in the neighboring countries of el salvador and guatemala suggest, national laws alone may not always prevail over the wealth and power of large mining companies. since the operations of multinational mining enterprises extend beyond the reach of any one nation it is important, as recognized by laudato si’, to develop global regulatory norms and institutions with the power to impose sanctions. for example, without endorsing any particular text, the holy see has repeatedly endorsed the concept of a legally binding treaty on business and human rights to regulate transnational business, including mining companies. citing laudato si’, the holy see in 2017 told the un intergovernmental group working on a proposed treaty that: [i]t is important to recognize that there are good reasons why international law might devote specific attention to transnational corporations and in particular their accountability for human rights abuses. an international legal instrument has the potential to make corporations criminally, civilly, and administratively liable, while guaranteeing the protection of human rights, providing access to judicial remedy, and adding an important tool for accountability. (jurkovič 2017, n.p.) these are examples of how the church can work on mining issues with other faith and secular communities: through outreach, in campaigns to improve national laws, and in shaping and invoking international laws and institutions. the church must of course continue its indispensable spiritual and social teaching. however, if the church is to overcome injustice in mining, a bridge to persons of goodwill can be built by learning the language and using the norms of international human rights. neither catholic social teaching nor international norms suffice by themselves to shield human rights, the environment, and peace, from the adverse impacts of mining. what the church needs is an approach grounded in the gospel but also informed by international human rights law. notes 1 compare, for example, green america (n.d.) with totty (2008). 2 information on ratifications of the indigenous and tribal peoples’ convention can be found at https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=normlexpub:11300::: no:11300:p11300_instrument_id:312314:no. 3 for example, mental pain and suffering may be included as an element of monetary reparations for gross violations of human rights (see inter-american court of human rights 2003, §260–66; international criminal court 2011, art 7.1.k). mining and international human rights 149 https://www.ilo.org https://www.ilo.org 4 one exception is armed conflict between insurgent groups supported by rwanda in the democratic republic of the congo (see schneider 2012). references african court on human and people’s rights. 2017. african commission on human and peoples’ rights v. kenya. judgment of may 26, 2017. https:// www.escr-net.org/caselaw/2017/african-commission-human-and-peoples-rights v-republic-kenya-acthpr-application-no. african union. 1981. african charter on human and peoples’ rights. oau doc. cab/leg/67/3. june, 1981. https://www.achpr.org/legalinstruments/detail?id=49. association of 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find the colorful description of a thought provoking scene: the young shepherd, david, is willing to fight goliath; king saul gives david his armor and helmet, but david “tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them” (1 sam. 17:38–39a). david is too small for the armor, probably the most precious and heaviest of the time. the image is quite powerful if we translate it into the present situation: we have built huge armors of technological possibilities and agency, but have not grown to match it; we are like moral and spiritual dwarfs in the armor of giants. we still study aristotle’s nicomachean ethics. his contributions to science have lost much of their relevance and plausibility, while we have not made enough progress on the grounds of morality to render his moral observations obsolete. there is a disconnect between technological and moral progress, between economic and spiritual growth. in light of the challenges we face with the practices of mining, we have to ask ourselves some deep moral questions. we cannot do without the fruits of mining in our present lives, but we might have to rethink some of the parameters guiding the industry. this concerns especially decision making processes and the interaction between mining activities and local contexts. technological progress may help, but it is not the main issue. to quote a line from holden and montevecchio’s chapter for this book: “the idea of removing less from the earth and, instead, getting more out of what has already been extracted or else changing consumption patterns altogether are never considered.” these challenges touch upon moral and spiritual questions—and the deliberation of ends. we have, as pope francis’s (2015, §105) encyclical laudato si’ states, “not been trained to use power well.” “we have too many means and only a few substantial ends” (§203). a theology of integral human development (ihd) is committed to bridging this gap between means and ends, between external progress and inner growth; it is committed to integrating our technological possibilities into our moral and spiritual identity. this article will develop a theology of ihd with a special emphasis on the mining industry. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-11 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-11 integral human development a simple understanding of ihd is a short formula: the development of the whole person and the development of each person. this deceptively simple characterization dates back to 1967, when paul vi, in populorum progressio, wrote about “authentic human development.” development “cannot be restricted to economic growth alone. to be authentic, it must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each person and of the whole person” (§14). this concept can be translated into two imperatives: do not leave anyone behind! make sure that each dimension of the person counts! these two imperatives of ihd correspond to the notion of the common good and the notion of human dignity. the common good refers to the flourishing of a community as a community on the basis of the flourishing of each of its members. it is an aspirational concept that can never be fully met. but it expresses the challenge like a thorn in the flesh of social reality: to leave no one behind. seen in this light, the common good is distinguished from a utilitarian approach that seeks the greatest good of the greatest number. the common good comes with special attention to the most disadvantaged members of a community and sometimes follows the dynamics of the parable of the lost sheep: to “leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray” (mt. 18:12). a commitment to ihd implies a commitment to special consideration for the least privileged and least powerful members of a community; in the case of the mining industry, these may be the local population. especially in a situation of “big business,” the reminder that each person’s dignity counts may be called for. the central notion of ihd is human dignity; it refers to an understanding of a dignified life, a life that corresponds to the dignity of the human person. this idea reflects a particular anthropology. it comes with an image of the human person as a multi-layered being that cannot be reduced to a “one-dimensional” existence, just as herbert marcuse (2002 [1964]) had described a one-sided and reductionist approach to development. the human person cannot live without bread, but does not live by bread alone. there is an important aspect of “being beyond having” that requires dignity-sensitive development to be human centered. human-centered development, in the words of denis goulet (1995, 6–7), refers to a primacy of being over having: “societies are more human, or more developed, not when men and women ‘have more’ but when they are enabled to ‘be more.’ the main criterion of development is not increased production or material wellbeing but qualitative human enrichment.” even though we cannot make unrealistic claims, we can ask the mining industry for a systematic “moral cost” analysis of their economic activities. we can ask for the identification of entry points for moral burdens. 156 clemens sedmak an exercise of mapping the crucial moral challenges is a necessary step in building a morally sensitive, more humane economy. this concern has been at the basis of an understanding of development as integral. the idea that ihd is the development of each person and the whole person was inspired by joseph lebret, a french dominican and economist, who worked with sea fisheries in france. there, he observed the negative effects of certain economic developments on local workers, notably exploitation by a foreign industry (bosi 2012, 253). lebret coined the term “human economy,” i.e., an economy that would be “favourable to human development,” to “a fully human life,” as he wrote in his 1954 essay “économie et humanisme” (quoted in keleher 2019, 29). a “fully human life” is more than a provision of basic goods but is rooted in a sense of compassion. compassion is “an existential fellowship with every man [person] who strives to unite the world under a common destiny and to collectively create the structures that the realization of this aspiration calls for. to love is to identify oneself with one’s neighbour, with all men [persons], and to create with them the conditions for their self-fulfilment” (cosmao 1970, 68). this lofty language can be translated into corporate social responsibility of mining corporations and their sincere engagement with local communities. raymond offenheiser’s chapter has pointed to some encouraging developments with regard to indigenous rights or the establishment of consent-oriented processes. there have been clearly intentional efforts to pursue a more inclusive approach that takes non-material aspects such as rights into consideration. the idea of a human-centered development committed to an idea of a full human life and the principles of the common good and human dignity can also be translated into an approach in development ethics (see keleher 2017; 2019). ihd ethics is an important contribution to a way of thinking about development that takes the dignity and the social nature of the human person seriously. the task we face is not ethics but theology. what is specific about a “theology of ihd”? a theological perspective the following reflections offer a “niche product,” a general framework for a theology of ihd that can be applied to mining. since the normative discourse on mining has been spearheaded by ethics rather than theology, i would like to show how theology can add a distinctive voice. ultimately, the theological perspective is an appeal to reflecting on the ultimate ends. it will not be enough to offer a moral justification for particular means; the fundamental question about the first and last goals have to be raised. the “selling point” of theology is the finiteness of life and resources. in other words, there are natural limits to what can be extracted and all those involved in the industry will die one day. this is the entry point for theological considerations. development as depth 157 some people believe in an afterlife, others do not. this difference seems to be comparable to matters of taste, but the implications reach far deeper. the responses to sensitive questions like beginning and end of life issues, the state of suffering, the meaning of terms like “success,” “justice,” “happiness,” or “flourishing” are profoundly affected by this distinction; so are key aspects of the mining industry such as “profit,” “maximization,” and “shareholder values.” this difference is fundamental for the genuine place of theology in intellectual and academic discourses. this difference decides whether “the world” will have the “first word” and “last word,” or whether theological values from “beyond the world” will. wittgenstein famously stated in his tractatus logico-philosophicus (1922, 6.41) that “in the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen.” similarly, we could say that mining operations happen as they happen, following built-in mechanisms of technologically supported maximization of profit. normative questions enter from a point of view that does not take the factual as the ultimate norm. theology specifically asks questions from “outside of the world.” theology anchors our reflective processes. if we compare our intellectual efforts to a performance on a stage, theology provokes the question of which play we are in. to whom are we talking? from where are we talking? what is the drama in which we are participating? let us call these three questions the audience question, the position question, and the script question. the audience question: who is listening, who is watching? candidates for an answer would include contemporaries, future generations, but also ancestors and god. who will be judging us? the position question: from where are we speaking? are we speaking from the position of a creature? are we inhabiting the space of a mortal or an immortal being? the script question: what is the point of the drama we are in? who has the power to shape the drama, especially the beginning and the end? what is our role on the stage of life? the project of developing a “theology of ihd” is different from an “ethics of ihd.” there is an explicit recognition of audience, position, and script in theology, the recognition of a particular anchoring of our reflection. this anchoring is, of course, always contextual. theology is not a homogenous country, but many different provinces and regions. there are many “theologies of mining,” acknowledging local realities, and local challenges. conflicts are always entry points for normative considerations, and conflicts always have a particular profile and a local history. all theologies have this commitment to a specific way of anchoring our thoughts, a commitment to a sphere “beyond the world” that guides and frames our intellectual engagement. this anchoring points to the question of first and last values. if people are tempted to dismiss theology as irrelevant, i would point to three things: (a) the question of first and last values is an essential one that cannot be ignored on an existential level; (b) there is the possibility that the story told by religions and reflected on by theologies 158 clemens sedmak is true; and (c) the vast majority of people on this planet have some kind of religious affiliation with an either implicit or explicit theology to accompany their religious beliefs and practices. this is very much in line with william james’s (1985 [1902]) approach in the varieties of religious experience. what can theology offer to the discourse on ihd? an integral analysis and the foundational text of laudato si’ laudato si’ (francis 2015) is an important and influential document that lays the ground for a theology of ihd. it has been dealt with in this book in the chapter written by anne floerke scheid and daniel p. scheid. in their contribution the authors have shown how laudato si’, with its message on integral ecology, is relevant for an understanding of an ecological just peace applicable to mining. laudato si’ has contributed to a deepening of the concept of ihd with an ecological perspective (§141) and with a long-term perspective that explicitly considers future generations (§159). if we take an integral view to mean a holistic approach that brings separate aspects into a shared whole, we can understand the integral and integrating character of laudato si’ in many ways. the whole document develops the thesis that everything is connected (§16, 42, 70, 92, 117, 138, 240). as a consequence, the world’s problems cannot be analyzed or explained in isolation (§61; cf. §110, 131). this integral view comes with the obligation to think in terms of interdependence, “one world with a common plan” (§164). the integral view, we could say, is an expression of and leads to an ethics of thinking. let me offer a reference point for a more integral approach. an integral analysis of the mining industry would take a closer look at the dynamics of “extracting.” extracting is an action that removes something from something else. as tobias winright observed in his chapter, it also has the semantic nuance of “force” (if not “violence”): “x extracted information from y.” here, “extracting” is close to “pulling out forcibly.” etymologically speaking, “extracting” is based on “ex” (“out,” “out of”) and “trahere” (“draw”). this gives us a first sketch of the key concepts at stake: (a) extracting is an action (and not an event) that follows agent causality and intentionality; (b) extracting requires “force;” (c) extracting changes a situation by creating a new ontological state: b is separated from a, changing the state of a as well as the state of b. a basic analysis of “extract,” then, could look like this: x extracts b from a in c through m because of r. x is the agent (the subject), b is the extracted material, a is the source of the extracted material, c is the context of the operation, m is the mode of extraction (method, means), r is the reason or set of reasons (“why”). development as depth 159 the different elements of this analysis are interconnected. if we apply this simple analysis to mining we might see that the agent is normally a combination of persons and institutions/organizations, that candidates for “b” have multiplied over the years, that the context is recognized to be ecologically and ethically problematic, that the mode has become more and more refined and technologically complicated, and that r cannot be separated from categories like “profit” or “demand and lifestyle,” what douglass cassel refers to in his chapter as end uses. this would then immediately bring us into the realm of ethical considerations with issues like: division of moral labor between individuals and institutions; questions of responsibility, sustainability, and accountability; analysis of stake holders with their power structures; or moral deliberations of lifestyle and virtues like temperance and justice. this perspective is an integral part of the analysis, not an optional addition. this analysis would also allow for an analysis of conflicts if we expand it: x extracts b from a in c through m because of r, affecting y. y would be stakeholders in the process; we can invite an explicit consideration of violated interests through this version: x extracts b from a in c through m because of r, against the interests of y. we can also make the potential for conflicts explicit in this version: x extracts b from a in c through m because of r, thereby causing damage to y. in this form, the analysis would ask for an explicit reflection on those whose lives, interests, properties, or communities have been damaged by mining. this is not an unrealistic appeal to end mining, but a plea for the proper consideration of the full and integral reality of the act. a commitment to ihd would specifically ask to consider in “y” the most disadvantaged and least privileged stakeholders. a theological perspective would add specific connections to this analysis, especially in the justifiability of the mode “m,” reflection on the reasons “r,” and “weighing” of the stakeholders “y” in the spirit of a “preferential option for the poor.” particular modes “m” of extraction can be severely problematic in and of themselves, such as the use of cyanide to leach gold from ore. the reasons “r” can be economic (generation of profit, state revenue) as well as existential (preservation and expansion of capabilities and a form of life). in any case, the question “who benefits” has to be considered a key aspect in this kind of analysis. that is why the explicit and differentiated consideration of stakeholders “y” will be indispensable. 160 clemens sedmak stakeholders of the essakane mine in burkina faso, to name a prominent example, are local communities, regional and national governments, global investors, other mining sites, and global consumers, among others. an integral analysis of the connections between different aspects and different players in the mining industry will lead to contextual ethical reasoning that takes into account the local contexts and dynamics. strengthening the theological voice a theological analysis can add important aspects to an integral analysis of mining. i want to mention three specific connections that can be distilled from laudato si’. first is the connection between the inner world and the outer world: “the emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume” (francis 2015, §204). this is made even more explicit in a quotation from pope benedict (quoted in francis 2015, §217): “the external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” second is the connection between the ecological and the social: “the human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together” (§48), so the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor have to be heard at the same time (§49). finally, there is the connection between knowledge and pain: we must cultivate a “wound of knowledge,” daring “to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering” (§19). laudato si’ addresses a number of obstacles to ihd, specifically the phenomenon of “rapidification” (§18), the “technocratic paradigm” (§109), “excessive anthropocentrism” (§116; cf. §122), “rampant individualism” (§162), the idea of “maximizing profits” (§109, 195), and the attitude of “self-interested pragmatism” (§215). these reference points provide candidates for further questions for our analysis of the dynamics of “extracting.” most of these aspects seem to be ethical and not theological in nature. a statement characterizing authentic development could be understood in this way: “authentic development includes efforts to bring about an integral improvement in the quality of human life” (§147). categories like “improvement” and “quality of life” seem ethical in nature, and there are undeniably building blocks of an ethics of ihd in the encyclical. but a close reading clearly shows that ihd is a theological and not an ethical concept. we find the strong statement: “a spirituality which forgets god as all-powerful and creator is not acceptable” (§75). this could be related to the warning that the absence of a sense of mystery is destructive: “when nature is viewed solely as a source of profit and gain, this has serious consequences for society” (§82). the reference to “mystery” is not simply a reference to a category; it is a reference to a spirituality, to an attitude towards life as a whole. we could read the encyclical as an invitation to a two-fold transformation: (a) the ecological crisis cannot be approached with the means of development as depth 161 technological progress; and (b) technological challenges must be transformed into moral concerns. but we cannot stop there. the encyclical invites a further step: moral concerns are translated into spiritual questions (cf. §202). in consistently offering religious language and religious categories, laudato si’ prepares the ground for a particular anchoring of our ecological challenges, for a particular way of framing the stage of the ecological drama. dietrich bonhoeffer pursued a project of translating religious terms into non-religious language in the 1930s and 1940s. the encyclical seems to do the opposite. we see the project of translating non-religious terms in religious language: “nature” becomes “creation” (§76), “land” becomes “a gift from god” (§146), “animals” become “creatures reflecting something of god” (§221), human life becomes a journey “towards the sabbath of eternity” (§243). this religious hermeneutics of the world is part of a sacramental view where “there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face” (§233). the roots of the environmental crisis are recognized as “ethical and spiritual” (§9). the theological perspective of laudato si’ is made explicit in the engagement with patriarch bartholomew’s language of “sin” as it mentions human-made changes to the climate by contaminating the earth’s waters, its land, its air, its life (§8). the patriarch is also quoted with a characterization of the world “as a sacrament of communion” (§9), thus inviting a sacramental view of the universe that connects the visible with the invisible, that sees the world as an expression of divine will and love, as “a magnificent book in which god speaks to us” (§12; cf. §85). a theological perspective accepts the commitment to not leaving the first word and the last word to this world. in fact, the encyclical points out, creation is harmed, according to an address by pope benedict xvi, “when we ourselves have the final world” (francis 2015, §6). and here, one of the fundamental theological statements comes in: “we are not god” (§67). what is the connection, we could ask, between this theological depth of laudato si’, mining, and peacebuilding? the answer would be a matter of the level of responses. conflicts point to deeper issues than a clash of material interests; there are issues like identity, tradition, and honor involved. conflict resolution cannot be reduced to a technique, but has to be built on trust and reconciliation. the response to the environmental crisis is an ecological conversion, a particular asceticism (§9). a faith perspective can provide motivation to care for nature and the most vulnerable persons (§64), motivations “which make it possible for us to live in harmony, to make sacrifices and to treat others well” (§200). the category of “sacrifice” refers to a fundamental re-ordering of priorities. these are the deep questions that theology can evoke. 162 clemens sedmak development as depth the theological (rather than ethical) nature of laudato si’ leads to an understanding of development that cannot be grasped in key terms of moral philosophy like “freedom” or “fairness.” these terms are important, but a theological reading of the world and of the relationships within the world touches a dimension that allows and asks for categories such as “mystery,” “gift,” “meaning,” and “service.” ultimately, the encyclical presents us with a vision of “development as depth.” development, as presented in laudato si’, is not primarily about progress and living standards; it is not even about maximizing freedoms and quality of life. in one particular passage, pope francis introduces the term “depth in life” (§113), which criticizes the superficiality created by the accumulation of constant novelties. this thought presents an alternative to a certain understanding of progress. in fact, the encyclical calls for a change of direction. ihd requires deep change (§60). this change can be linked to a particular understanding of moral and personal growth (§127), growth anchored in deep commitments that may even motivate sacrifices. this is a vision of ihd that is explicit about the cost of “integrating,” of accepting vulnerable beings, “however troublesome or inconvenient” (§120). here, we move in an area that transcends the language of “quality of life.” let me illustrate the difference between “quality of life” and “depth of life” with an example. walter jens was one of the most prominent public intellectuals in germany. around 2003, when he was eighty years old, he was diagnosed with dementia. his wife, inge, accepted caregiving responsibilities and talked about her experience in both the final chapter of her autobiography and in a moving book (jens 2009; 2016). jens’s words are imbued with melancholy about the loss of a conversation partner, of a “thou,” of the person she loved for decades. clearly, the quality of life of inge jens diminished significantly during those years. but she could not not live with her husband, care for him, look after him. this is an expression of a deep commitment that could better be captured by the term, “depth of life.” “depth of life” points to the identity issues at stake in most conflicts. when rural or indigenous communities face losses from a mining project that is supposedly good for economic development, they may officially gain access to higher “living standards,” but they lose identity-conferring aspects of their lives. andrés mckinley discusses in his chapter how the anti-mining movement, of which the church in el salvador was a major leader, used the slogan “yes to life, no to mining.” this “yes to life” is spoken on a level that is deeper than the material dimension of human existence. it can be framed in spiritual terms. coming back to conflict resolution we can see that mckinley’s emphasis on the commitment of the movement to nonviolent action and legislative transformation is based on a spirituality of development as depth 163 encountering people and of encountering problems, a spirituality based in a sense of “what really matters” in a local context. respecting notions of what really matters locally is an indispensable aspect of any peacebuilding effort. peacebuilding intends to lead to “peace of mind,” a spiritual category connected to the idea of what makes life deep and rooted. peacebuilding cannot ignore the deep roots of people and communities. simone weil, the french philosopher with a deep sense of the spiritual, was asked in 1943 by the free french resistance to write a text about rebuilding france (and europe) after the war. she was asked to reflect on peacebuilding and peaceful rebuilding. in response, weil (1949) chose to consider not so much structures and institutions, but the needs of the soul. the text, posthumously published under the title l’enracinement (the need for roots), talks about the need to address the moral and spiritual malaise of the time, the need to respond to the dissolution of community by recognizing duties towards humanity. this is the level on which to address the roots of conflicts—on the level of existential roots. depth of life is the existential situation of a person who deeply cares about someone or something. this robust concern structures life and gives it weight and profoundness. a theology of ihd will also ask for the integration of suffering, woundedness, vulnerability, limits, and loss. there is a sense of immeasurability and non-functionality. the dignity of the human person is not defined by “functioning well” or by “visible achievements.” as laudato si’ expresses, “we forget that the inalienable worth of a human being transcends his or her degree of development” (francis 2015, §136). the theological vision of development articulated in laudato si’ is a vision of the kind of depth that accepts the cross as a motif of human development. this understanding of depth is built on the foundation of commitments that are love-filled and love-shaped relationships. when we read that “social love is the key to authentic development” (§231), we can see the movement from individual freedoms to social commitments, from personal development to inner growth, from quality of life to depth of life. this is not to say that individual freedoms, personal development, and quality of life are not important. the claim is only that there is a genuine contribution by theology that ethics is not able to offer. even though there can be an ethical understanding of “social love,” the theological meaning cannot be separated from a sense of god’s love for creation and god’s creatures. obviously, this religious sense cannot be presupposed or imposed. but framing mining in terms of “extracting resources from creation” rather than “extracting resources from nature” can provide a helpful perspective for understanding the position of local communities that are, more often than not, rooted in faith traditions. furthermore, the category “depth of life” is a reminder of a dimension of human existence that cannot be measured, let alone expressed in a language of “risk management,” “convenience,” or “profit.” a theological understanding of development 164 clemens sedmak is always at the same time external change and internal transformation. what is being extracted in a mining operation is, then, not only material, but also identity resources. this dynamic has to be taken seriously in the attempt to understand the deeper dimensions of conflicts. an integral theology of mining and peacebuilding on may 3, 2019, pope francis addressed participants at a meeting on the mining industry. he criticized a particular economic model, “voracious… profit-oriented, shortsighted, and based on the misconception of unlimited economic growth” (n.p.). “mining for the common good” means mining that it is at the service of the entire human community in the light of the universal destination of goods with a special place of local communities at the table (cf. francis 2015, §183). especially vulnerable communities like indigenous communities have to be protected and specifically invited. mining for the common good also means that it serves the human person with special consideration of human rights. pope francis also called attention to a “throwaway culture” and the moral necessity to organize mining operations around a model of a circular economy. these papal exhortations are framed in theological language, not merely in ethical terms. francis (2019, n.p.) explicitly refers to a fundamental spiritual attitude: “religious traditions have always presented temperance as a key component of a responsible and ethical lifestyle. moderation is also vital to save our common home. ‘blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’ (mt. 5:5).” we leave the context of arguments here and move into the realm of faith narratives which play an important role in the lives of communities. and we reach a context where a spirituality of peacebuilding becomes tangible. the transformation that laudato si’ calls for and the theological perspective expressed in the encyclical are relevant for the mining industry. again, there is legitimate space for ethics, as there are many moral challenges with regard to mining: issues with inequality, environmental damage, health risks (anaf et al. 2019), conflict, and gender issues. the latter include loss of livelihoods through mining, exploitation of women in artisanal mining, sexual exploitation in mining areas, gender effects of mining induced community changes, and gendered micropolitics of resistance (adamson 2017; jenkins 2015; 2017; macdonald 2018). there is an undeniable need for an “ethics of mining,” given the lack of laws and frameworks. there is a need for a global ethics that recognizes “resource interdependence” and the need to consider “international relations of natural resources” (siegel 2013, 9). there is also a need for the development of legally binding regulations and a role for legislation in creating structures of accountability. raymond offenheiser, in his chapter for this book, discusses the need for “ethics” in the industry; he also points to the necessity of an inclusive development as depth 165 dialogue by underlining the need for religious actors to understand the mining industry mindset. this is one side of the matter. the other would be a dialogue that moves beyond ethics and helps agents from the mining industry to understand the concerns and categories of faith-based persons and communities. understanding the difference between ethics and theology is a first step. even non-religious persons hold comprehensive ideological commitments and do not stand on neutral ground with regard to the first and last questions asked by theology. the situation we find ourselves in, confronted with the finite nature of our resources, calls for fundamental questions. and this is where i see the place of theology. ethics can recommend proper consideration of ecological systems in their sustainability and of communities in their integrity (cf. carvalho 2017). it can recommend a proper consideration of the human and moral costs of conflicts in mining contexts; it can call for a proper analysis of the losses of vulnerable local communities. ethics can reflect on the economic macro conditions and the normative implications of a paradigm of economic adjustment. as part of a “geoethics,” an ethics of mining can develop the concept of “responsible mining” (bice 2016), calling for a proper consideration of stakeholders, a dialogue-centered and community-based approach to the development of sites, appropriate efforts towards environmental protection and ecological sustainability with integrated waste management and energy saving systems, and the provision of a safe and healthy work environment with appropriate remuneration. these elements could ensure that any operation of the extractive industries is embedded in an integral approach that respects the dignity of the person. there is a lot that an ihd ethics approach to mining can do. but there is also space for a theological approach to mining: laudato si’ mentions mining activities in the context of the pollution of underground water sources (francis 2015, §29). what would be added to the discourse if the stakeholders of the mining industry were willing to work with categories like “creation,” “creature,” “sin,” and “soul”? would it make a difference to think about the mining industry in terms of “penultimate life” and the world as having the second and the penultimate word, but not the first and the final? would it make a difference to turn to the spiritual? laudato si’ states: “there needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm” (§111). francis makes an explicit call to “an ecological spirituality” (§216); this spirituality includes tenderness and compassion (§91), an awe filled contemplation of creation (§125), a sense of receptivity and gratuity (§237), and a deep sense of beauty (cf. §97, 112). would it make a difference to introduce the idea of a “spirituality of mining” into the discourse on the extractive industries? the most concrete imperative that follows from an integral human theology on mining that is committed to an understanding of respect for 166 clemens sedmak creation is the rejection of the principle of the maximization of profits (cf. francis 2015, §195). the idea of maximization points to a human tendency to strive for more. there is no saturation point. there can always be more goods and more profit. with the absence of a saturation point there are two possibilities: external limits (legal restrictions, depletion of resources) or internal limits (a sense of “enough”). the latter requires an attitude towards life as such and towards the world as a whole—in other words, it requires a spirituality. i would like to suggest that a fundamental implication of a theology of ihd approach to mining is the rejection of the idea of a maximization of profits and the acceptance of self-imposed limits. as the congregation for the doctrine of the faith and the dicastery for promoting integral human development (2018, §10) point out, “no profit is in fact legitimate when it falls short of the objective of the integral promotion of the human person, the universal destination of goods, and the preferential option for the poor.” it seems plausible to make this a standard for justifying mining profits given the industry’s massive impact on the planet. the burden of proof moves to those who make profits. and a legalistic answer (“it is not against the law”) will not do given the idea of a universal destination of goods and the interests of future generations. this, again, is a spiritual dimension, as it touches upon a fundamental existential 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2017.1387102 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2017.1387102 http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/s0718-92732017000200019 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315626796 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315626796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198817369.003.0021 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203995211 https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org 12 catholic development ethics, mining, and peace: attending to the market’s limitations albino barrera, op introduction: a straightforward link the link between mining, development ethics, and peace is straightforward. processes and outcomes in mining are invariably and inevitably shaped by markets, even when occurring in nationalized or socialist, centralized economies. after all, both the input and output of mining are ultimately allocated via markets. both upstream and downstream requirements of mining pass through markets. mining markets, like all markets, have significant limitations. they do not arise nor operate smoothly on their own, but are dependent on institutional preconditions, such as the rule of law and a mechanism for property ownership and enforcement. furthermore, left on their own, markets privilege allocative efficiency over all other possible social goals. this singular focus on allocative efficiency accounts for the much-touted strength of markets in effectively allocating scarce resources to their most valued uses. there is, to date, no other social institution or arrangement that comes close to what markets are able to orchestrate—coordinating the economic decisions of billions of economic actors and firms widely dispersed across the entire world on what to produce, in what quantities and quality, for whom, when, where, with what kind of inputs, in what manner, and at what price to sell. unfortunately, such accomplishment often comes at the expense of neglecting or even working against other worthwhile socioeconomic goals, such as equity, social harmony, and sustainability. herein lies the role of development ethics and the connection to peace. development ethics poses a number of critically important questions. to what end is socioeconomic life pursued? who should benefit and who should bear costs? to what degree are market participants accountable for the consequences of their economic activity? what are their obligations to their fellow market participants? these are but some of the questions raised in this field. development ethics clearly has a hand in shaping the public economic ethos that sets the formal and informal rules governing socioeconomic life, including market exchange (see gasper 2012; goulet 2006). such public morality determines what market processes and outcomes are doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-12 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-12 acceptable or unacceptable in the community, and what remedial measures are necessary.1 these standards change over time and vary across different communities, depending on their respective populations’ evolving ethical thinking. development ethics, in turn, is animated by the philosophical and theological commitments held by the community. it is through development ethics that catholic social thought and praxis offer their contribution to socioeconomic life, including in the mining sector. a word of caution: it would be a mistake to juxtapose market economics and development ethics as competing poles with opposed goals. far from being rivals, market economics and development ethics complement each other. in particular, socioeconomic life would not be sustainable in the long term if it were to operate on the basis of allocative efficiency alone. history and empirical evidence attest to the importance of equity and social harmony in reaching the economic goals of allocative efficiency, growth, and stability. note that among the most stable and successful communities are those with a sizable middle class (the consequence of equity as a social goal). the six socioeconomic goals—allocative efficiency, growth, stability, equity, social harmony, and sustainability—need each other in order to be complete and enduring in their respective accomplishments. stated in another way, the economics of market operations call for and require development ethics. markets need development ethics because while they are adept and incomparable when it comes to effecting allocative efficiency, growth, and stability, they are often deficient when it comes to equity, social harmony, and sustainability.2 and peace is a necessary condition for those goals. the market’s limitations manifest in different ways across different types of economic activities, including mining. mining often aggravates the market’s limitations, thereby making it that much more important to be attentive to what development ethics has to offer. this essay examines six of the more significant market limitations prevalent in the mining sector and considers what extra-market remedies are needed (development ethics) and what catholic social thought and praxis have to offer. it is a contribution to what can be called mining development ethics, that is, the extra-market interventions and oversight that are needed to put mining sector processes and outcomes in the service of peace and the common good. issue #1: mining’s damage to the environment and technical externalities as a market limitation a clear example of market limitation is the problem of technical externalities, the most famous example of which is pollution. in the absence of government or community regulations, firms can simply dump their waste in the commons (air, water, and land), leaving the rest of the community to suffer the consequences and bear the cost of cleanup. such a situation is inequitable, threatens peace, and is unsustainable. even neoclassical 170 albino barrera, op economic theory finds it problematic because such technical externalities impede allocative efficiency. the private cost of producing such goods or services is not equal to their social cost. without constraints, polluting firms can, in effect, free-ride on the rest of the community. neoclassical economic policy rectifies such deficiencies via taxes, outright regulation, or a combination (see pigou 1920 [2013]). this is one issue in which development ethics and neoclassical economic theory converge in their conclusion on the need for extra-market intervention to rectify technical externalities. among the most common complaints against mining industries is their damage to the environment. without regulatory oversight, mining companies tend to leave contaminated air and water, toxic dumps, tailings, and badly scarred landscapes in the wake of their operations.3 both neoclassical economic theory and development ethics are in agreement that such conduct is unacceptable and has to be rectified. reaching a broad societal consensus on the need to hold mining companies accountable for ecological damage should be relatively easy because there are strong economic and ethical reasons behind such clamor. mining firms and their shareholders should not be able to reap the benefits while leaving the associated costs to unwitting third parties (see okonta and douglas, 2001; martinez-alier 2001; mcbeth 2018). allowing them to leave such ecological damage unaddressed has clear adverse impacts on the common good, and conflict and instability are exacerbated when there is inequity in the distribution of costs and benefits. ecological protection is a position of mining development ethics that enjoys wide agreement. catholic social thought and praxis offer their principle of stewardship, that is, the moral obligation to care for and use the gifts of god, the earth and its goods, wisely and well. in laudato si’, pope francis (2015) considered stewardship of the earth through the concept of integral ecology, which calls for integrating environmental concerns with other aspects of social and economic justice, such as justice for the poor, who often suffer disproportionately from the environmental harm caused by mining and the way mining’s environmental degradation can drive conflict. issue #2: mining and the amoral nature of markets markets facilitate economic exchange but are not designed to evaluate, much less judge, the rightness or wrongness of such transactions. markets only require that one party has purchasing power and another has possession of a good or service in order to consummate an exchange. unfortunately, this sidesteps the fundamental question of how the community ought to allocate the scarce goods of the earth. by effort, allocative efficiency, merit, need, contribution, parity, or another standard? there are as many criteria as there are philosophical commitments and views on what the good life entails. development ethics, mining, and peace 171 markets are not designed to make such choices for the larger community because they are merely contractual social devices that we use to orchestrate a whole series of difficult decisions on what to produce, for whom, how much, in what manner, and who gets priority. they do not distinguish between genuine needs and whimsical wants because markets consider only purchasing and bargaining power in consummating exchanges. this gives preeminence to consumer sovereignty. allocative efficiency, in effect, trumps all the other possible and perhaps even more important goals of socio-economic life. this is an unworkable market dynamic whether viewed from a practical angle or from the viewpoint of ethics. in actual practice, markets can only function within the framework of a minimum number of extra-market interventions and institutions (such as rule of law, private property ownership and enforcement, etc.). thus, government and civil society have significant roles in the marketplace. in their own turn, government and civil society are shaped by the philosophical and religious commitments of their membership and leadership. this gives rise to the manifold and varied extra market interventions of different types of political economies (e.g., western market capitalism, china’s state capitalism, cuba and venezuela’s socialist economies). development ethics and catholic social thought have much to contribute in this societal process of reining in market processes and supplementing their underlying singular pursuit of allocative efficiency. for example, consider some of the problematic outcomes in the mining sector in the wake of an exclusive reliance on purchasing and bargaining power in allocating societal resources: unsafe working conditions, one-sided revenue sharing between a multinational corporation (mnc) and a host country, inequitable revenue sharing within the host country, and inadvertent material cooperation in wrongdoing. we examine each of these briefly. unsafe and poor working conditions because markets are allocative rather than normative in their function, they do not and cannot deal with coercive contracts or unequal bargaining power and resulting economic compulsion. the mining industry provides the earliest example of this market limitation in the modern economy. much has been written on working conditions in british mines early in the industrial revolution, and we need not rehearse them here. it is sufficient to note that such abuses precipitated the earliest examples of widespread social unrest that ultimately compelled extra-market intervention, when parliament passed legislation that mandated workplace safeguards (mills 2010). today, we see the same dynamic at work. the poor and the unemployed accept unsafe and physically taxing and unhealthy working conditions in mines because they are desperate for income. social legislation, potential lawsuits, scrutiny from non-governmental organizations, or the risk of bad 172 albino barrera, op publicity level the playing field and compensate for workers’ inability to negotiate better conditions for themselves. the need for such extra-market interventions arises because markets consummate economic exchanges solely on the basis of purchasing and bargaining power, not the quality— much less the equity—of such transactions. catholic social thought and praxis have long championed protection for workers given their vulnerability to abuse. the seminal social encyclical rerum novarum was a response to the abuses of the newly inaugurated industrial age of the nineteenth century (leo xiii 1891). this was followed ninety years later by a commemorative encyclical, laborem exercens, that affirmed once again the importance of providing living wages and humane working conditions (john paul ii 1981). its principle of the primacy of labor reminds business decision-makers that workers cannot be viewed merely as factors of production no different from capital or raw materials. rather, they must be regarded for what they are—human beings—and must be treated accordingly, along with their dependents. catholic social teaching has much to offer regarding widespread concern over poor or unsafe working conditions and pay in the mining sector. this is a central point of what could be called catholic mining development ethics. one-sided revenue sharing between companies and host countries a second problem that arises in the mining sector is the lopsided nature of revenue sharing with the host country, stemming from the market’s sole reliance on purchasing and bargaining power in consummating exchanges. countries in the global south are often compelled to enter into disadvantageous contracts with mining mncs. empirical evidence from economic history tells us that most countries’ economic center of gravity moves from agriculture to industry to services as they develop (herrendorf, rogerson, and valentinyi 2013). countries in the initial stages of their economic development rely heavily on their agricultural sector and mineral resources. pre-industrial revolution united kingdom output and pre-nineteenth century united states gdp were comprised predominantly of agriculture and mining. it is the same pattern that we see today. contemporary global south countries are heavily reliant on these sectors. such countries need to earn enormous sums of foreign exchange in order to pay for their imports of vital technology, raw materials, and capital goods. mineral resources are a ready source of such foreign exchange, given the global demand for such commodities. unfortunately, countries in the global south often do not have the necessary capacity to extract, process, and sell these mineral resources themselves in global markets. they also do not have the funds to invest in what is often an extremely expensive and capital-intensive effort. they are thus heavily reliant on mncs. this can lead to lopsided revenue-sharing contracts development ethics, mining, and peace 173 between mncs and host nations. extra-market safeguards are needed to head off such uneven contracts. these include ngo advocacy, technical advice from multilateral agencies such as the world bank and the united nations, and international pressure against exploitative practices (see mann 2015). nevertheless, despite these extra-market interventions, we still have many disputes and allegations over exploitative revenue sharing arrangements between mncs and host countries (see burianski, nyer, and kuhnle 2019; kimani 2009). this is yet another illustration of a place where development ethics and catholic social thought and praxis can offer needed extra-market norms in the mining sector. for example, mncs should not view and treat host countries and local communities in a purely transactional manner, giving to the latter only that which is specified by their contracts or what is permissible under market operations. the principles of solidarity, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, and integral human development call on these mncs to treat their host countries and local communities as their equals. one-sided contracts are unacceptable because they are in effect taking advantage of the plight, ignorance, or weakness of one’s trading partner. this is exploitation. the universal destination of goods is an affirmation that the earth is meant to benefit all, regardless of how titles of ownership are assigned. integral human development should remind mncs that authentic development is a joint effort that can only be completed together. the principle of subsidiarity should make them sensitive to their obligations to use their advantages in technical know-how, knowledge of markets, and vast experience in mining to good effect in helping poor nations and local communities develop and benefit from their natural resources. they are unable to do so on their own for want of the technical skills, capital, and market networks—the very strengths of the mncs. indeed, catholic social thought can go a long way in making mncs see that the mining industry is an ideal venue not only to maximize returns for their shareholders, but more importantly, to make a difference in the lives of people. unlike international arbitrators and multilateral agencies, catholic social thought cannot legally compel mncs, but they can do something even better—appeal to their better selves via reason. mining and the sharing of revenues within the host country markets work toward allocative efficiency, not equity. markets merely facilitate economic exchanges and are not concerned with their distributional consequences. markets do not second-guess the equity of these economic transactions because they do not limit inequality. in fact, the logic of survival of the fittest can turn it into a form of buccaneer capitalism—a winner-take-all economy. thus, it is entirely possible for the gains and benefits produced by markets to be concentrated in the hands of a few within the country (piketty 2017). 174 albino barrera, op nigeria is an example of the failure of oil wealth to lift the general population out of poverty (slav 2018). in contrast, note the example of norway and its disposition of its share of north sea oil proceeds (norges bank n.d.). these differing examples underscore the importance of extra market oversight and intervention (e.g., norwegian public policy) in guiding market processes and in shaping market outcomes. the principles of solidarity and relative equality from catholic social thought and praxis are useful tools for development ethics in attending to these limitations in the extractive sector. the principle of solidarity calls for a genuine and active concern for the well-being of others because we see in them ourselves and a fellow child of god. the neighbor is viewed and treated as an equal. it is unacceptable to have pockets of great wealth and power amidst a vast sea of poverty because it reflects indifference to the plight of the poor and creates conditions that contribute to violent conflict. moreover, relative equality is a necessary condition to achieving harmony in any community. beyond a certain threshold, inequalities in wealth, power, and lifestyles not only breed dangerous social unrest, but they also mean that substantial segments of the population do not have the necessary resources to participate meaningfully in the common socioeconomic life. thus, inequalities can only be permitted to go so far in any functional community. inadvertent material cooperation in wrongdoing as mentioned earlier, markets are merely social institutions that allocate burdens and benefits across the community based on purchasing and bargaining power. on their own, they are not designed to make normative judgements on the resulting market outcomes. thus, it is fairly common for market participants to unwittingly enable wrongdoing somewhere in the community. after all, market decisions have extensive ripple effects, both beneficial (positive externalities) and adverse (disexternalities). market participants’ resulting material cooperation in wrongdoing down the line can either be blameworthy or blameless, depending on whether or not they could have taken preemptive or remedial action to prevent or mitigate the subsequent wrongdoing. for example, the enormous wealth that the mining sector produces creates numerous problems, such as engendering corruption and providing revenues for the waging of war or violence. hence, we have the campaign against “blood diamonds” and the push to identify the source of coltan in the manufacture of cell phones (campbell 2012; nest 2011). the chapter by rigobert minani in this book explains how coltan funded war in the democratic republic of the congo. besides fueling such conflicts, mining can also unwittingly enable corrupt or failing governments, as was also the case in the democratic republic of the congo, with corruption funneling mining revenues into the pockets of officials in the kabila regime. sierra development ethics, mining, and peace 175 leone’s vast diamond resources have been both a blessing and a bane, engendering frenzied theft and corruption, not to mention the thousands of lives lost from the wars that such diamonds funded and sustained. the helplessness of markets in the face of these harmful ripple effects shows the need for development ethics in preventing or at least minimizing these unintended consequences from mining’s huge revenue streams. there are many historical instances of extra-market interventions to prevent markets from enabling wrongdoing, such as the kimberly process to certify diamonds being conflict-free, or the united states’ dodd-frank act that required us companies to not source minerals connected to violent conflict. to summarize the elements of this issue, markets allocate according to purchasing and bargaining power, with allocative efficiency as the primary goal that trumps all other possible goals of the economy. concerns in mining development ethics over poor working conditions, economic compulsion, one-sided revenue sharing contracts, and great inequality are not unique to catholic thought and praxis. there is widespread agreement on the need to address these market deficiencies, but catholic moral theology and catholic social teaching lend useful resources and concepts for analyzing these situations. this includes the idea of material cooperation with evil, which can result either from wrongdoing or from failure to prevent wrongdoing when the capacity to do so is present. issue #3: mining and markets’ lack of social consciousness markets do not go beyond contractual obligations because they are not designed for other types of obligations, such as moral obligations. one ethical problem that arises is the lack of social consciousness. scholars and policymakers have flagged the problem of extractive export enclaves with little forward or backward linkage to the rest of the country (see phelps, atienza, and arias 2015). backward linkage pertains to the supply chain supporting the extractive operations, such as the stream of engineers, technicians, capital equipment, fuel, raw materials, and sundry tools vital for the industry’s operations. extractive-export enclaves often import these from overseas and can avoid sourcing their requirements domestically. as a result, the local economy and the local community do not share in the economic value created by mining. forward linkages pertain to the further processing of extracted resources into their various intermediate or final products. examples of such forward linkage includes the processing of extracted ores within the host country to produce raw metals that are in turn processed even further into end products such as steel sheets, wires, etc. forward linkages are highly sought because of the jobs and industries they create within the host country. clearly, it is in the interest of the host country to have vibrant backward and forward linkages with their mining sector, especially if these host countries are just starting on their development path with little else but their 176 albino barrera, op mineral wealth. not only do the local citizens earn a livelihood, but just as importantly, they gain skills. unfortunately, extractive-export enclaves arise with little backward or forward linkages with the rest of the host economy. consequently, we see pockets of great wealth and advanced development in the immediate region where extractive operations are located while the rest of the country languishes in poverty. left on their own, markets will not correct such imbalance. in fact, economic theory itself may further support and strengthen such enclaves if it can be empirically shown that the host country has a comparative advantage in the extraction and export of such mineral resources and not in the further processing of such minerals due to the lack, for example, of capital and cheap energy sources. left on their own, markets are concerned only with fulfilling contractual obligations. mining firms satisfy their obligations once they fulfill their contractual obligations to the host country or local community. the economics of markets is such that economic agents are under no obligation to further anything else beyond their own interests. markets are not geared for enforcing or living up to moral obligations. corporate social responsibility is an extra-market intervention or mechanism that pushes market participants to go beyond their own interests and think of the welfare of the larger community of which they are a part. in recent years, as discussed in the chapter by douglass cassel, there has been a push to develop stronger and more legally binding standards for business and human rights that are not as easily manipulated by corporations who can sometimes simply throw money at a community building project and think they have satisfied their obligations. but “corporate social responsibility” can often be practiced without real social consciousness, rather than with the more robust understanding that development ethicists or business and human rights advocates might put forward. development ethics raises the issue of the moral obligations of mining firms to help their host communities and countries along the path of development by giving them opportunities to move up the value chain or increase their value-added contribution to the local processing of the extracted minerals. related to this, of course, is the danger of the opposite extreme of paternalism, of being overly directive in telling host nations how they ought to traverse their path to development. of course, it is possible for local populations to choose not to move up the value chain and to be content with enjoying their share of the revenues from extractive-export enclaves. thus, we have literature on “the natural-resource curse,” in which entire populations become complacent, develop few skills or a work ethic, and end up worse off than their resource-poor neighbors (see humphreys, sachs, and stiglitz 2007; frankel 2010). from a purely economic-contractual point of view, there are no economic, much less moral, obligations beyond what is stipulated in contracts. not so for development ethics, and not so especially for catholic social development ethics, mining, and peace 177 thought and praxis, for the following reasons. first, integral human development is about (1) the development of the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—and (2) the development of every person. this second requirement of integral human development means that it is a journey that can only be completed together with our neighbor. we cannot claim to have reached our own integral human development if our neighbor, whom we could readily help, wallows in unattended need. clemens sedmak’s chapter explains how these tenets of integral human development connect to peacebuilding. they amount to a model of development that prioritizes conditions in which conflicts can be handled in ways that preserve co-being rather than having some actors, like mining corporations with huge political, economic, and legal advantages, trying to gain maximum benefits. second, we have two parts of the principle of subsidiarity. the first part of this principle notes that higher bodies should not arrogate for themselves functions that lower bodies or individuals are able to perform on their own. private initiative is to be fostered. the second part of this principle balances the first part by observing that it is the obligation of higher bodies or individuals to step in and provide assistance once lower bodies or individuals are in trouble and no longer able to function on behalf of the common good (barrera 2001, 263–65). by the second part of the principle of subsidiarity, mining companies are bound by moral obligations to assist in the promotion of the welfare of their host communities, and to assist with problems that require higher levels of coordination and resources, such as security or integrating local operations with national initiatives like peace processes. note that these responsibilities apply not only to governments but to any entity that has the capacity and resources to address the community’s unmet needs. the unsatisfactory nature of extractive-export enclaves is an issue where both economics and catholic social tradition converge in their respective positions. it is also an illustration of where extra-market intervention is needed because allocative efficiency itself may dictate that the country remain a commodity exporter, while higher-value processing is reserved for other countries that have the comparative advantage. both the principles of subsidiarity and integral human development are also relevant for the earlier issue of one-sided or coercive contracts (issue no. 2 above). to take advantage of people in their need or in their ignorance is exploitation. such predatory conduct, however, is not limited to coercive or one-sided contracts alone. we can be just as predatory with a failure by omission when we fail to prevent harm when we could easily do so. mining firms that can do more to further the well-being of their host communities ought to do so. the preferential option for the poor makes this obligation even more compelling in the case of impoverished host communities. economic exchange has to be of mutual benefit to all parties. what constitutes mutual benefit is where development ethics and catholic social tradition can make a difference. for catholic social tradition, it is 178 albino barrera, op nothing less than integral human development. moreover, for development ethics and catholic social tradition, outreach to the local community beyond what market contracts stipulate is not supererogatory but is a moral obligation. the poorer and less secure the host communities, the stronger and the more extensive are the moral obligations. issue #4: mining and market limitations due to ownership externalities the problem of ownership externalities has long been known in the economic literature (see bator 1958, 351-79). markets often fail to assign an accurate exchange price for goods and services because they are unable to properly account for all inputs. economic agents are unable to see or are not liable for the full accounting of costs and benefits. hence, they do not sufficiently value the benefits they are enjoying from “the economic commons.” market participants do not see that they have a “social mortgage” in being able to so readily and easily participate in market exchange. this is so because there are many costs and inputs to maintaining markets that are not accurately priced, if they are even included at all. for example, take the price of rare earth metals that are essential for electronics. it does not include previous decades’ investments in developing the basic science and technical know-how that enables users to harness the unique properties of these minerals. or, consider the global banking infrastructure and international arrangements that facilitate international trade. these institutions and formal and informal rules took centuries to build, often at great expense. these underlying, unseen costs and inputs are often taken for granted and are not priced into market exchange. such accounting problems are called ownership externalities. ownership externalities are another reason that mining firms cannot limit themselves only to their contractual obligations to their host communities. these mining firms are drawing benefits from their host communities—benefits that would most likely not have been accurately priced into the revenue-sharing contract. for example, many of these host nations have had a long history of strife and nation-building. costs were incurred over time in building up the social, human, and physical infrastructure of the host communities. these costs are often not fully reflected in the price of participating in the marketplace. market participants are thus able to draw benefits from the marketplace without having to share in the cost of many vital inputs that make it possible for such local markets to exist. thus, it is very likely that mining firms avail themselves of many benefits from their host communities that have not been properly priced by the marketplace. this is especially likely in the global south where markets and government fiscal structures are still rudimentary. development ethics, mining, and peace 179 this is yet another area where the contributions of catholic social thought and praxis stand out. ownership externalities prevent us from establishing accurately what is due to others in the marketplace. this is a significant deficiency, because justice is about giving others their due. catholic social tradition offers a solution to this dilemma because it sees social life as operating not merely on the basis of justice. in fact, justice by itself is insufficient. justice must find its perfection in charity (see aquinas 1911–1925, ii-ii, q. 23, art. 6, 8). thus, in situations where what is due to others cannot be ascertained, it is incumbent on market participants to act on the basis of charity itself. charity, by its nature, is unmeasured and entails self-giving. in practical terms, this means that in the event of uncertainty or difficulty in establishing what is due to others, it is better to be self-sacrificial and to give more according to one’s means. for example, it is difficult to establish accurately our personal contribution to global warming because of our consumption or travel habits. moreover, we are not obligated by law to compensate for such damage. nevertheless, some people take it upon themselves to pay for voluntary carbon offsets or to curtail their own consumption as a matter of civic duty, principle, or conscience. in the sensibility of catholic social tradition, they are motivated by charity. in the case of mining companies, they ought to do more for their host communities beyond what their contracts stipulate, not to promote their public image at home and abroad, but out of a genuine concern for the well-being of their host communities. charity, in this sense, is to give without thought of return, thinking only of the good of the recipient. in sum, the phenomenon of ownership externalities and subsequent mispricing in the marketplace are further arguments for why mining firms, or any other firms for that matter, have obligations over and above those stipulated by their contracts. accounting difficulties in keeping track of inputs and the true social and private cost of goods and services they draw from the community impose these non-contractual obligations. issue #5: mining and the market’s inability to establish intrinsic or non-economic value the preceding issue on ownership externalities arises because of the technical limitations of accounting. market prices are inaccurate because they do not include many unmeasured or incommensurable costs and benefits. but even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that we are able to arrive at accurate market prices, there is an even deeper problem: our inability to arrive at the true value of certain goods or services. there is a difference between price and value. price pertains to the quantity of currency to which buyers and sellers agree in order to consummate trade. price is essential in order to effect economic exchange. price is determined only by consumer sovereignty, that is, what people are willing to pay for such goods or services. in contrast, value pertains to the intrinsic worth of goods and services. 180 albino barrera, op this difference between price and value can be easily understood by recalling the water-diamond paradox of introductory economics classes. water is clearly of much greater value compared to diamonds because it is essential for life. if so, why is the market price of diamonds manyfold that of water? the response is, of course, that market price is determined by scarcity. given its greater abundance relative to diamonds, the market price of water is based on what consumers are willing to pay for the last use for which water can be employed, such as watering the lawn, flushing the toilet, or washing the car. another example is the compensation of teachers and nurses. these professionals provide services that are vital for life and the well-being of the community. but their salaries, or market price, are far lower than their true value, that is, their intrinsic contribution to the quality of life. a good scriptural illustration of the difference between exchange price, on the one hand, and intrinsic value, on the other hand, is the jubilee law (lev. 25). the market price of land, when it changes hands, is the sum of the market price of the harvests that can be reaped from that land before it is returned in the next jubilee year. in contrast, the intrinsic value of land is incalculable, or one could say, non-existent, because land belongs to god (lev. 25:23), and humans are merely tenants. thus, land cannot be sold in perpetuity, and only according to the market price of its harvests. the market’s limitation in determining the intrinsic value of goods and services is particularly worrisome in the case of mining, which involves the depletion of non-renewable resources. economists have long been dissatisfied with the way natural resources are priced in the marketplace (see nordhaus and tobin 1973, 509–64). take the case of the calculation of gdp, the sum total of all the goods and services produced within the borders of the nation. the natural resources that are extracted in a particular time period are incorporated into the calculation of gdp at the market price at which they were sold. such pricing, however, is inaccurate, especially in determining the wealth of the nation, because the extraction, export, and use of such minerals means that there is less left for future generations of citizens. there is no intrinsic value ascribed to natural resources in the ground. they are priced only according to what they will command in the marketplace. similarly, the cost of the ecological damage that mining industries inflict is not properly priced or valued in the marketplace, as in the case of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels or the flaring of waste gas. or, take the case of the enormous amounts of fresh water that are used in mining. the market price of metals and minerals does not incorporate the value of depleted or polluted water, but only what consumers are willing for pay for the mined products. the fresh water supplies used or damaged are not valued for their intrinsic worth, especially for future generations. development ethics has much work to do vis-à-vis this market deficiency. there is a need to change contemporary behavior and attitudes development ethics, mining, and peace 181 regarding the goods of the earth. market participants should think in terms not only of the exchange price of these goods, but also of their intrinsic value. the calculation of a nation’s gdp or of global wealth or income has to factor in the depletion of non-renewable resources. incorporating intrinsic value into exchange value is relevant for two important issues: (1) revenue sharing with the host country/community and (2) intertemporal equity. host communities are clearly at a disadvantage if they are paid for their natural resources based only on exchange price, without taking into account the intrinsic value of these resources. thus, host nations/communities are underpaid. such misvaluation means that economic growth from mining is overstated, because the damage to the environment and the depletion of nonrenewable resources are insufficiently considered. this also means that it becomes even more difficult to attain or approximate contemporary allocative efficiency given the mispricing of factor inputs. mis pricing, in this case, is due to the mis-valuation of underlying goods and services themselves, instead of accounting limitations that give rise to the ownership externalities in the preceding issue. mis-valuation is central to the issue of intertemporal equity. non renewable resources are undervalued, and as a result, they are misused or over-used. consequently, there is a much faster rate of exhaustion of these supplies of non-renewable resources than is warranted. there will be that much less for the next generations as part of their patrimony from contemporary generations. mis-valuation is relevant not only for intergenerational equity but also for intertemporal allocative efficiency. one justification for the use of non renewable resources by earlier generations was that they are able to expand technological know-how and improve the stock of capital for the benefit of succeeding generations. in other words, in exchange for a smaller supply of non-renewable resources, future generations will be able to enjoy a much more advanced technological base and be equipped with more capital. there is a trade-off between conserving non-renewable resources for the sake of future generations and the amount of know-how and capital that the current generation is able to bequeath them. there is need to find a balance between pushing the envelope of contemporary technologies, on the one hand, and keeping natural resources undeveloped and untapped, on the other hand, in order to conserve them. solving for intertemporal allocative efficiency is a much more complex process than that of finding out what contemporary allocative efficiency requires. we compound this difficulty by using the wrong valuation of these non-renewable resources because we are using only their exchange price and have not incorporated their intrinsic value. the major difficulty, of course, is in establishing the intrinsic value of various resources. this is an area of possible collaboration between the fields of development ethics, public policy, and economics. 182 albino barrera, op imputing intrinsic value is a technical field. nevertheless, catholic social thought still has an important contribution to make: a rationale for imputing intrinsic value to the goods of the earth over and above their exchange value. the goods of the earth are a gift from god meant to benefit all, both in the present and in the future. this principle of the universal destination of goods is vividly affirmed in the creation accounts in genesis. humanity is entrusted with the mandate to exercise stewardship over god’s creation, even as we draw from the earth whatever it is we need for daily living. a final word of caution: imputing value to mineral resources based on their intrinsic worth will increase current prices of these commodities. such price increases will in effect be a de facto redistribution of income and wealth. for example, people with a large portion of their budgets devoted to the purchase and use of mineral resources will find their real incomes shrink. in other words, mining development ethics and catholic social thought would require sacrifice on the part of current market participants. of course, this is not the first time that people have been invited to willingly sacrifice their current consumption, as in the case of carbon taxes and voluntary carbon offsets. the principle of solidarity is important in this regard—solidarity with brothers and sisters yet unborn. issue #6: mining and the question of ownership and usufruct of the goods of the earth i have reserved for last the most intractable problem, but the most fundamental one that must be addressed. markets merely accept, and do not second guess, the ownership-usufruct framework set by the extra-market legal institutions prevailing in the communities in which they operate. in contrast, nations, political economies, development ethics, and indeed the community of nations must address or constantly revisit fundamental questions, such as: who owns the goods of the earth, who should have usufruct rights over them, and how should the costs and benefits from these resources be distributed across the community? these bedrock issues determine how extractive activities are conducted and how their costs and benefits are distributed. in the case of mining, there is a longstanding de facto global rule that nations exercise ownership and usufruct rights over natural resources within their borders. the 1982 un convention on the law of the sea sets a two-hundred-mile exclusion zone offshore for purposes of delineating the boundaries of nations’ economic claims (art. 57; see also hollick 1977). governments have pursued different paths to making use of these natural resources. some have nationalized extractive industries in key natural resources, such as oil. others rely on a more market-based approach of letting private firms extract and sell these natural resources in exchange for taxes, lease payments, and revenue sharing, among many other methods. development ethics, mining, and peace 183 these different approaches have significant ramifications for who bears the cost and who reaps the benefits. for example, nationalized extractive industries better benefit the general population (at least in theory), while a more market-oriented approach allows entrepreneurs who undertake the risks of development and investment to reap most of the benefits, as in the case of the united states and other global north nations. of concern for us is the question of which method is appropriate. the criteria for making this assessment vary depending on the philosophical commitments of evaluators. neoclassical economics would most likely privilege allocative efficiency as the measure to use, while development ethics and catholic social tradition would most likely use a combination of all six socioeconomic goals in varying degrees, again depending on the priorities of the evaluators. despite this difficulty and the lack of consensus on an ideal or common standard for evaluation, the question of which method is appropriate for mining has to be addressed head on because it directly impinges on the distribution of the burdens and benefits of the metals and minerals, for contemporary generations but also, of equal import, for future ones. the question of which approach is appropriate points us to even more fundamental questions that we must constantly revisit: (1) where do we draw the line of ownership and usufructuary rights: at the local, provincial, national, regional, or global level, or a combination of these, and (2) on what bases do we do so? who exercises rightful ownership and usufructuary claims over these resources? for example, who ought to have ownership-usufructuary rights to the shale basin in the north american continent? the local communities, the state, or the federal government? the main contribution of catholic social thought in this regard is its principle of the universal destination of goods. should catholic social tradition advocate for the global patrimony of all key natural resources in light of its universal access principle (pontifical council for justice and peace 2004, §171–184) and its fundamental premise that the goods of the earth are a gift for all from god, meant to benefit all? where does one draw the line? these fundamental questions have ramifications for all the other issues and questions downstream. for example, do national governments have the right to assign property or usufructuary rights over natural resources to private groups? do nations have the right to nationalize and benefit exclusively from their resource wealth, or should there be a global fund that distributes these resources worldwide in view of the central importance of metals and minerals in the modern industrial economy and given the universal access principle? can nations use extractives as instruments of foreign policy, as in the case of the two oil embargoes of the 1970s? given their vital role in the digital age, should rare earth minerals be considered a global patrimony rather than be controlled by the nations in which they are found?4 184 albino barrera, op even if we were to make the heroic assumption of a global acceptance of the universal access principle, we nevertheless have to balance this with the pragmatic reality of having to avoid the tragedy of the commons and the very real problem of free-ridership. there will still be a need to provide incentives for risk-taking. work effort and initiative will have to be properly compensated. nevertheless, satisfying these requirements simultaneously requires much deliberation. we have to find a balance between the lockean claim to property ownership5 and the lockean proviso.6 in sum, the questions of who owns and who has usufructuary rights over the goods of the earth and on what bases must be addressed because they determine the distribution of burdens and benefits from the mining sector. they are relevant in arriving at the appropriate arrangements in extracting natural resources, such as whether or not such activities should be nationalized or privatized. markets simply operate within the formal and informal norms set by the community. development ethics has a hand in shaping these formal and informal rules. in the absence of extra-market norms, market praxis becomes the norm by default based on purchasing power and existing ownership claims, no matter how unsatisfactory or damaging they might be. the absence of such norms can invite conflict over ownership and prevent mining operations from being harmonized with other objectives, like brokering or implementing peace agreements or ensuring environmental protection. conclusion development ethics is not an optional add-on to development economics or market operations. rather, it is necessary given the significant limitations of market processes and outcomes. extra-market oversight and intervention are needed because markets, on their own, will not attend to the community’s well-being, only to the allocative efficiency of its scarce resources. in fact, the whole field of development ethics is about the need for extra market intervention because left on their own, unfettered market operations are unable to reach larger societal goals, like implementing peace or advancing integral human development. extra-market institutions are a necessary condition for markets to operate smoothly and sustainably. they are needed if markets are to exist at all, and we see this phenomenon in the mining sector. some issues in mining development ethics are fairly straightforward and uncontroversial for most reasonable people, such as the need to rectify pollution and damage to the environment, the need to improve safety and working conditions, the inappropriate use of enormous revenues from natural resources for war and civil strife, the skewed revenue-sharing from one sided contracts, the inequality in the distribution of revenues within the host nations and local communities, and the danger of fostering corruption in the host communities. other issues are gray areas, such as intergenerational development ethics, mining, and peace 185 equity, the problem of distant harms and where the limits of responsibility are, and the obligation of mining sectors not to be isolated export enclaves but to help their host nations to move up the value chain of economic activity. there are also the questions of the proper valuation of the goods of the earth and of who should exercise ownership-usufructuary rights over the goods of the earth. what is distinctive with catholic social thought and praxis vis-à-vis these issues and extractive development ethics? first, it has a holistic understanding and practice of development. another name for peace is development (paul vi 1967, §76–77). development is a necessary condition for peace. however, it is not a sufficient condition. there is need to strike a balance between two extremes. on the one hand, there is the danger of an otherworldly dismissive attitude that views socioeconomic life as mundane, secondary, or unimportant. there is a necessary economic dimension to human flourishing. getting our economics right is important as part of human nature since we are corporeal and social. for example, even as we acknowledge the need to impute an intrinsic value to mineral resources beyond their exchange value, we must be realistic as well in recognizing that arriving at such a value is extremely difficult. even more difficult is implementing it in practice, especially in light of the much higher prices that will lead contemporary generations to curtail their consumption. on the other hand, there is also need to avoid the other extreme of economism, that is, of privileging economic factors above all else. from this viewpoint, development is primarily an economic phenomenon and is measured by economic growth. in contrast, catholic social tradition is adamant that economics is not an end in itself but is merely instrumental. it is at the service of integral human development. as we have seen above, there is a two-fold nature to integral human development: (1) the development of the whole person (which explains why development is not merely nor primarily economic) and (2) the development of every person (which explains the importance of distribution and mutual benefits in economic exchange). catholic social tradition proposes a much broader definition of development and imbues it with much larger goals. our neighbor’s development is our development too, and vice versa. we are necessary conditions to each other’s development. this has enormous ramifications for mining firms’ obligations to all their stakeholders. it means that their relationship with their stakeholders is not merely contractual, as the markets would have it, but is familial in nature, especially for their workers and their host communities. they are invited to act accordingly. another risk of economism is assuming that economic growth is a direct line to peace. violent conflict often involves many factors that are not merely economic, such as historically rooted animosities, political power, or competing claims about the value of land being mostly about its resources versus being about ancestral claims for indigenous heritage. assuming economic growth can in and of itself solve challenges of peace ignores other 186 albino barrera, op needed elements and processes. and at times, development ethics might call for allocative efficiency and market growth in the mining sector to stand aside to allow other priorities to supersede them. a second distinctive catholic social tradition contribution is that, as new creatures in christ, humans ought to act according to who they have become. thus, for christians working in the mining sector, good works should flow from their faith. mining development ethics should become integral in their conduct—and not merely for post-hoc damage control, but intrinsic right from the very start. mining ethics is not deontological, with a list of dos and don’ts, but is teleological, because it pushes people to better self-understanding and considers the vocation of all christians to strive for peace and the common good. third, the catholic social tradition holds that creation is a gift from god meant to benefit all. such a conviction creates two claims for mining development ethics. first, all are accountable to the creator. the proper attitude to take, vis-à-vis the goods of the earth for all mining firms, their shareholders, and national governments, is not a proprietary posture, but one of stewardship. there are limits to what we can do with the goods of the earth. second, there is the moral obligation to ensure that all are able to benefit from the goods of the earth regardless of how titles of ownership are assigned. notes 1 for example, most communities use social safety nets to define a “moral floor” beneath which people 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https://oilprice.com https://oilprice.com https://treaties.un.org https://treaties.un.org https://treaties.un.org 13 good governance for mining and the promotion of peace in africa elias o. opongo, sj the increasing frequency and intensity of conflicts in africa in the last two decades are largely attributed to poor governance amid the rising discovery and exploitation of mining resources (afful-koomson 2015, 1). such conflicts are driven by issues such as access to minerals, revenue distribution, environmental impacts, and corruption, among others. according to the world bank (2021), extractive industries play a dominant role in the social, political, and economic life of 81 countries with a total population of 3.5 billion people. if the industries are well managed, the populations in these countries should all live above the poverty line, but that is not the case. to a great extent, revenues generated from mining have not been used to support sustainable national development or meet the needs of populations in an inclusive way, especially in the global south. consequently, many resource-rich countries in africa have high poverty levels and unemployment rates, and generally poor economic conditions despite large revenues from the exploitation of minerals. this mismanagement has impacted conflict in africa. as philippe le billon (2001, 561) observes, extractive resources “shape strategies of power based on the commercialisation of armed conflict and the territorialisation of sovereignty around valuable resource areas and trading networks.” the poor and marginalized, especially women and children, are often the most affected. in 2019, pope francis raised concern over systematic injustices that people continue to suffer due to mismanagement in the mining industry, such as land loss, high poverty levels in mining communities, threats and violence, high rates of corruption, and forced prostitution and rape (gomes 2019). the pope further asserted that, “we need to ensure that mining activities lead to the integral human development of each and every person and of the entire community.” given these problems, there is an urgent need to promote good governance of mining on the african continent. governance refers to political and institutional processes that “shape how scientific and technological processes are directed, how environmental and health issues are defined and addressed, and how social consequences are distributed” (leach et al. 2007). it is crucial to include citizens in the processes of governance in the doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-13 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-13 mining industry because they tend to be the ones most affected, negatively or positively, as well as directly and indirectly. this chapter explores the issue of good governance in mining and the promotion of peace, with examples largely from the great lakes and eastern africa region, but also other parts of the continent. it examines how the governance of mining can be improved through a catholic peacebuilding approach, founded on catholic social teaching. the aim is to ensure that natural resources are protected as necessary for the common good; exploited within a framework of care for the environment, protection of human dignity, and sensitivity to the impact on conflict dynamics; and used for revenues that are distributed equitably to the majority of the population. contextualizing mining industry governance in africa africa has a wide range of mineral deposits used in producing jewelry, automobiles, electronics, renewable batteries, and other goods. as a result, mining generates significant income, but africa’s enormous wealth of natural resources has yet to translate into significant improvement in people’s living standards. the mining sector is marred by high levels of corruption and criminality, perpetrated by armed groups who use proceeds from the sale of minerals like gold, tantalum, and tin to finance violent activities (lebert 2016). resource-based conflicts have occurred in kenya, the democratic republic of the congo (drc), burundi, the central african republic, liberia, south sudan, and elsewhere. also, companies and individuals that engage in mining activities frequently do not take the necessary steps to ensure transparency in the supply chain. furthermore, many people across the region engage in artisanal mining to earn a living despite the dangers of exposure to human rights abuses, corruption, or violence (white and beck 2017). artisanal and other types of mining also tend to destroy the environment and expose communities to further ecological vulnerabilities, such as polluted water sources, open pits that could be harmful to the community, and soil erosion. the social-economic contradictions in many parts of africa translate into a paradox of suffering in the midst of plenty. rich mineral resources largely benefit foreign multinational companies (mncs), elites within national governments, and insurgent groups, while leaving the rest of the population poor and desperate. this tends to contradict the economic theory that holds that foreign direct investments “create growth multiplier effects through vertical and horizontal spillover effects: including the transfer of technology and know-how to domestic firms, the formation of human capital, etc” (colen, maertens, and swinnen 2013, 23). poor governance, while not the only culprit, is a central reason why these economic benefits do not come to fruition. it allows the mncs that play a major role in mineral supply chains to engage in exploitative activities that promote crime, corruption, and inequitable sharing of mineral wealth, which fuels violent conflicts. good governance for mining in africa 191 kenya has experienced numerous resource-induced conflicts, largely due to competition for land and water for both human livelihood and livestock grazing, but also for control over mines. for example, the residents of kwale county in the coastal region of kenya have been opposed to titanium mining while citing concerns over displacement of the local populations, and pollution of water resources that the government and the canadian mining company failed to address (greyl 2019). in addition, some of the communities that were forced to cede land for mining have not been compensated. the government’s discriminatory approach—compensating some but not all communities—has led to regional conflict. there have also been cases where competition for land used for small-scale mining of sand and special stones has led to community conflicts. the drc has immense natural resource wealth, but with poor governance structures for overseeing them, the country has become “a textbook forum for natural resource-induced conflicts at both local and national levels” (burnley 2011, 7). the country is among those that have experienced the bloodiest conflicts since the second world war, conflicts that often have been over control of mineral resources, as rigobert minani describes in this book (see also snow 2013). as elsewhere in africa, the drc’s enormous wealth of natural resources has yet to translate into significant improvement in people’s living standards. for instance, the poverty level is one of the highest on the continent. with its 2019 human development index rating of 0.48, which is below the average of 0.513 for countries within the low development group, the drc was ranked 175 out of 189 countries (united nations development program 2020, 2). while the drc has fifty percent of the forests and water resources in africa, the country’s environment is negatively affected by “deforestation, species depletion, heavy metal pollution and land degradation from mining, as well as an acute drinking water crisis which has left an estimated 51 million congolese without access to potable water” (united nations environment programme 2017, n.p.). ninety percent of mining is artisanal (samndong and nhantumbo 2015, 6). landscapes in the mining regions have generally been destroyed, while many people in these regions live in deplorable conditions due to extreme poverty and poor delivery of crucial government services (eu-un partnership on land, natural resources and conflict prevention 2015). as minani describes, a major push from catholic groups and others led to a revision of the country’s mining contracts, but a lack of transparency and oversight when the contracts were finally renegotiated left the country in the dark about how governance would actually be improved to address these challenges. other countries have experienced similar problems tied to mining and other extractives. sierra leone is a well-known example, where diamond mining was used to fund militia groups. these groups fought over control of this resource, while using revenues to purchase arms. south sudan has large oil deposits but is one of the world’s poorest countries. the country has been mired in conflict since 2013, leading to civilian displacement and 192 elias o. opongo, sj death. the conflict has disrupted oil production, the main source of government revenue. there has been destruction of forests for firewood and charcoal, and artisanal miners have degraded the environment searching for diamonds and gold. the malawi ministry of energy, natural resources and environment (2010, iii) has cited challenges in the country’s extractive industry similar to those in drc: “deforestation; decreasing soil fertility and increasing erosion; water depletion; loss of biodiversity; and increasing pollution.” likewise, tanzania has been battling an increasing problem of coastal erosion attributed to sand mining (gavriletea 2017). these cases demonstrate how resource-based conflicts, to a great extent, are attributable to poor management in the mining industry. luca ventura (2020, n.p.) argues that all “extremely fragile and underdeveloped economies have either recently been through a civil war or are suffering from ongoing sectarian or ethnic conflicts.” mineral-rich countries in africa fit this pattern. hence, good and efficient extractive management policies and structures are critical for sustainable economic development that can overcome those adverse conditions and lead to peace and stabi lity. as noted above, in africa, conflicts have largely been facilitated by unfair distribution of natural resources and marginalization of large parts of the population in the course of exploitation of these resources. according to clementine burnley (2011), countries that have quality institutions dedicated to the management of natural resources have a low likelihood of plunging into violent conflicts. institutional structures and norms like constitutional order, equal justice under law, democratic principles, independent judicial and legislative systems, and executive accountability—when enshrined in law and practice—diminish chances of social conflicts and injustices related to mining. for example, in south sudan large quantities of gold are smuggled out of the country on a regular basis, largely to benefit the political elite, business people, and foreign investors (mach 2017). the proceeds from the smuggled minerals tend to encourage the formation of militant groups that can destabilize a nation. this explains why the mineral-rich area of eastern drc has the largest number of militia groups and the worst forms of human rights abuses in the region. poor governance allows patterns like this to exist, and improved governance is the key to curtailing them. distinctive aspects of a catholic peacebuilding approach a catholic peacebuilding approach comprises a “broad spectrum of activities, a wide variety of actors, and diverse elements of catholic beliefs and teachings that must come together for the catholic community to fulfill its mission as a peacebuilding church” (powers 2017, 1). a catholic peacebuilding approach is anchored in the catholic social teaching principles of common good and human dignity. these two principles ground the catholic commitment to safeguard the environment, secure livelihoods for good governance for mining in africa 193 current and future generations, and responsibly manage the benefits accrued from the earth’s resources so that the entire population of a country is not only a stakeholder, but also a beneficiary. such an approach ensures peace and stability in the country. incarnations of catholic peacebuilding vary across africa. for instance, in 2018 in the drc, the church oversaw mediation processes and the implementation of political pacts, and played a vital role in voter education and advocating for free and fair elections. in south sudan, the south sudan council of churches and other church actors have been instrumental in peacebuilding efforts: pressing for peace negotiations, sponsoring civil society peace processes, and focusing on advocacy and dialogue through impartial forums that have fostered reconciliation. this culminated in pope francis’ invitation to the key protagonists in the conflict to come to the vatican for a reconciliation retreat in april 2019. the pope kissed the feet of the political leaders and begged them to end the conflict and embrace peace. subsequently, in addition to other diverse and complementary efforts for peace, the sant’egidio community, a lay catholic group based in rome, has facilitated peace negotiations involving president salva kiir, his opponent and former deputy riek machar, and other actors. these negotiations have led to agreements that have allowed for the formation of a government of national unity, bringing an end to intermittent conflicts that have plagued the youngest nation in the world since 2013. the pope’s intervention showed the church’s commitment to peace and conflict resolution. additionally, pope francis’s visit to the central african republic in 2017, at the peak of civil violence, to appeal for peaceful resolution to the conflict was a heroic gesture that demonstrated the church’s solidarity with the suffering population. in nigeria, burkina faso, eritrea, zimbabwe, kenya, and south africa, among many other countries, the church has strongly spoken against exploitation of the poor, corruption, poor governance, and extreme forms of violence by militia and terrorist groups. the church, in its prophetic mission to defend human dignity and safeguard the common good, has largely been influenced by the catholic peacebuilding approach. a catholic peacebuilding approach is distinctive in two main ways that relate directly to issues of mining and governance. first is the emphasis that the church puts on “the biblical conception of peace, the centrality of peace in the church’s sacraments and mission, and a distinctively christian theological and ethical approach to war and peace” (powers 2017, 4). the theological approach to peace begins in scripture, and cardinal peter turkson provides a reflection in this book on how the bible colors a catholic understanding of mining. he describes how metals and minerals mined from the earth are, like all creation, intended by god to contribute to the building up of the heavenly kingdom. the goods of the earth are meant to be for more than just profit or utility, but a peaceful, rightly ordered human society builds upon economic development. hence, good governance of mining and promotion of peace, rooted in equitable sharing of 194 elias o. opongo, sj common resources and a deliberate option for the poor, are grounded in a normative theological foundation. mining that creates marginalization, environmental destruction, and threats to livelihoods, and that in turn feed violent conflict, ought to be challenged and critiqued in light of that normative ethic. for catholic actors and organizations working in the mining sector, this theological foundation should help inform and motivate them. and for catholic ecclesial leaders it should animate their pastoral leadership and drive them to engage the faithful, as well as their broader national and regional communities, with an understanding that mining issues are crucial to the just peace that marks the kingdom of god. a second distinctive aspect of a catholic peacebuilding approach is the church’s use of the tradition of natural law, which is based on the presumption that “the demands of justice and peace are knowable and binding on all persons, regardless of their faith commitments or lack thereof” (powers 2017, 4). this approach embraces all humanity, regardless of faith or socio-cultural affiliation. at the center of the natural law interpretation is the safeguarding of human dignity and the common good. hence, the inhuman circumstances under which some mining activities operate are against the natural law of respect of human dignity. peacebuilding in the mining industry through advocacy for fair distribution of the benefits of mining, sustainable environmental practices, safe working conditions, and concern for future generations is an outgrowth of natural law. such an approach can help catholic peacebuilders reach outside their own tradition and engage other faith traditions, secular groups, and governments and corporations on common issues of concern related to ethics and good governance in the mining industry. catholic peacebuilding “calls on christians to cooperate with all people in securing a peace based on justice and love” (curran 1984, 61). catholic social teaching and governance of extractive industries catholic social teaching (cst) can provide guidance for governance of mining industries in africa. when applied to mining, these principles include the following assumptions: natural resources are common goods; political authorities have a right and duty to manage these resources in transparent and equitable ways that respect human rights and do, in fact, contribute to the common good; the environment must be protected in the course of exploitation of natural resources; natural resources should be managed in ways that mitigate conflict and promote peace; and the principles of justice and solidarity require that the imbalance of power between host african countries and mncs should be rectified. cst emphasizes management of natural resources as common goods that ought to be enjoyed by all. this emphasis has two main dimensions: preservation of common resources for current and future generations, as well good governance for mining in africa 195 as fair distribution of benefits. the two imperatives are co-existent and complementary. on preservation of common resources, pope francis (2015, §93) states that “the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. for believers, this becomes a question of fidelity to the creator, since god created the world for everyone.” inclusion of future generations in the planning and exploitation of natural resources is a crucial part of this obligation to preserve common resources. since natural resources are a common inheritance, the costs and benefits of their extraction ought to be shared fairly among the population. their exploitation should not be for the financial gain of the few at the expense of the many. communities living around mines ought to be protected from possible negative effects on their well-being. transparency in the management of the financial wealth and profits accruing from mining should be maintained as a vital principle in extractive governance. the common good cannot be protected or strengthened if corruption cannot be identified and if bad financial deals prevent the people from receiving just benefits from the country’s mineral resources. transparency also makes space for communities near mining sites to be more engaged, making for more possibility of consensus building among all stakeholders. such consensus is important for promotion of human dignity, peace, and stability. pope francis (2015, §183) affirms that “the local population should have a special place at the table; they are concerned about their own future and that of their children, and can consider goals transcending immediate economic interest.” while exploitation of natural resources for the benefit of all citizens in a country is acceptable, care should be taken to ensure that the environment is preserved and quality of human life safeguarded. good mining management practices require minimizing negative effects on the environment, whether on or off-site, and undertaking mitigation and rehabilitation procedures for ecological damage. of major concern in many african countries is the lack of institutionalized policies that are operationalizable within the framework of mining, especially for ensuring benefit to the majority of the population and protecting the environment. in most mining settings, as pressure mounts on the environment and the chances of conflicts increase, the poor are especially vulnerable. in this book, holden and montevecchio examine the issue of climate justice—that is, the way demand for minerals in the global north causes environmental harm that disproportionately affects poor and marginalized peoples in the global south. it also explains how mining is one of the leading correlates with instances of violent conflict related to such increased environmental vulnerability. this reality is what led pope francis (2015, §48) to observe that “both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest.” bad management of the environmental consequences of mining increases levels of poverty, worsening living standards, and rendering communities vulnerable to conflicts. 196 elias o. opongo, sj if mining is properly regulated and managed, it can contribute to alleviating poverty and underdevelopment while protecting the environment. but, as pope benedict xvi (2011, §79) noted, unjust and exploitative economic activities by the elites should not be disguised as actions that seek to eradicate poverty. pope francis (2015, §51) diagnosed how multinational companies exploit the economic disadvantage of countries in the global south with damaging practices that they would not carry out in their home countries. such patterns both feed off and reinforce global power inequalities. they inhibit sustainable development, damage the environment, and threaten peace and stability. according to francis, the spirit of solidarity, which serves as a critique of this kind of exploitation, must be institutionalized in strong and effective governance structures, laws, and policies (§142). harnessing the peacebuilding capacity of the catholic church in mining industries the church can increase its potential for peacebuilding as a strategy for addressing issues around governance of mining if it strengthens three ecclesiastical characteristics: being technically informed; being communally present; and being engaged and committed to social change. this will require ecclesiastical and pastoral strategies that strengthen the church’s capacity to effect social-political change for the benefit of the people in an area that requires significant specialized knowledge, prolonged dedication, and a varied coalition. a “technically-informed church” refers to the need for educating church leaders and laity about the technical aspects of mining industries. the complexities of exploration, environmental assessments, means of exploitation, community development agreements, systems for distribution of benefits from extractives, environmental impact mitigation, and exit strategies are a clear indication that any involvement in this industry presupposes a high level of knowledge on key technical issues. raymond offenheiser, in his chapter, argues that in order to be taken seriously by industry leaders and be effective change agents, catholic peacebuilders need to ally with people that have technical expertise and work to expand their own technical knowledge in these areas. thus the church and lay organizations need funding, dedicated staff, and leaders who are committed to working on the issue for a long period of time. technical expertise will also require liaising with local and international experts in the field of mining within catholic and non-catholic networks, education institutions, and civil society networks. organizations like the people’s dialogue1 and the thematic social forum on mining and the extractivist economy,2 haki madini (‘justice for minerals’ in kiswahili) in tanzania,3 women in mining national network structure (renafem in french) in the drc, extractive sector forum (esf) in kenya, and others are crucial good governance for mining in africa 197 players in mining industry advocacy and have developed robust networks of technical knowledge. technical knowledge is also important in contract negotiations between mncs and host african countries. the process of drafting and signing these contracts is often questionable. most african governments do not have the technical know-how on fair negotiation, monitoring of the exploration and exploitation of resources, and the technology and practices required to ensure that the populations remain safe from any possible negative effects in the short, medium, and long term. pope francis (2015, §175) emphasizes that “the twenty-first century, while maintaining systems of governance inherited from the past, is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation-states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tends to prevail over the political.” he adds that we must create international mechanisms for management of natural resources that cushion poorer countries from negative impacts of extractive industries while promoting transparency and accountability. but such improvements require increased knowledge and capacity, and the church needs to lead the way by supporting the education of its communities and using that knowledge for effective policy advocacy for governance that can better withstand the huge power imbalances that exist between mncs and host countries. the catholic organizations that carried out the study of drc mining contracts described by minani serve as a good model for how other catholic actors can take on this very technical, but very important, aspect of mining governance. the second ecclesiological characteristic is that the church ought to be present to its people. in most cases, mining activities are carried out in isolated and marginalized locations, or in situations of protracted conflict. this can exhaust the church leaders to the extent of abandoning the people. maintaining stamina to stay in solidarity with the people and walk the journey of justice with them is fundamental. this challenge makes the church’s ability to connect advocacy around mining to core elements of its spiritual and pastoral practice vitally important. in this book, the chapter by polanía-reyes and henao on colombia offers a strong positive example. the colombian church has identified mining and ecology as key dimensions of the implementation of its national peace process, and is encouraging a stronger presence of ecological theology in its pastoral mission so as to make ecclesial leaders and systems more firmly invested in how mining and ecological damage present challenges to peace and development. the third characteristic is direct engagement on social justice issues. this presupposes the two previous characteristics: that there is a high level of knowledge on technical issues in the mining sector, and that the church is effectively present in mining communities so that it understands their challenges and needs. this third characteristic is focused on channeling the other two into specific actions for improving governance of natural 198 elias o. opongo, sj resources. it is important that church actors use technical knowledge and understanding gleaned from accompanying local communities to conduct contextual analyses that identify major issues of concern and strategize on how to address them. not every instance of mining presents the same challenges. for example, different companies conduct their business in different ways, different minerals demand different techniques and have different impacts, different countries have different cultures and histories that prioritize different values, and different countries and regions have to deal with their own unique conflict factors. there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, and so the church needs enough savvy and expertise to develop specific policy priorities and advocacy agendas. therefore, church groups need to establish advocacy networks with diverse organizations—ngos, civil society groups, different faiths, and inter-government institutions. these networks can bring positive change by promoting the common good, protecting human dignity and safeguarding human livelihoods and the environment. these social justice activities bring out the servant leadership aspects of the church. while justice priorities will vary as described, the management of natural resources in situations of conflict is an important cross-cutting factor given the fact that many countries in africa have experienced resource based conflicts. hence, there should be clear links between conflict resolution strategies and advocacy on justice and environmental issues related to the exploitation of natural resources. pope francis (2015, §92) reiterates that “peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes, which cannot be separated and treated individually without once again falling into reductionism.” different mechanisms of managing and preventing both existing and potential conflicts in extractive industries are crucial for sustainability of the sector. these include integration of conflict resolution measures into development agreements between communities, mncs, and governments, as well as into broader governance structures of mining. equally important is that environmental impact assessments ought to anticipate the potential impact of natural resource exploitation on conflicts. conflict prevention also requires fair distribution of the benefits of mining, especially to the communities most affected. conclusion africa is home to close to thirty percent of the world’s minerals and has great potential to achieve peace and prosperity. however, poor governance of extractive resources has rendered the continent vulnerable to external exploitation by mncs, as well as the corruption and greed of political and social elites who have continued to deny the majority of the population the benefits of mining. in addition, mining has contributed to environmental degradation and inter-communal conflicts. the church has a major role in good governance for mining in africa 199 advocating for institutional reforms within government and the mining industry in order to achieve good governance and accountability, and it is well-equipped to do so. it must continue to insist that natural resources are a heritage that ought to be safeguarded as common goods to be enjoyed by all, while taking into account the needs of future generations and peace in affected communities and nations. notes 1 see https://www.peoplesdialogue.org/. 2 see https://www.thematicsocialforum.org/. 3 see http://hakimadini.org/. references afful-koomson, timothy. 2015. “collaborative governance and its relevance for extractive industries in africa.” in collaborative governance in extractive industries in africa, edited by timothy afful-koomson and kwabena owusu asubonteng, 1–26. accra: united nations university institute for natural resources. 10.2307/j.ctvh9vtth. benedict xvi. 2011. africae munus. http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/ apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20111119_africae-munus.html. burnley, clementine. 2011. “natural resources conflict in the democratic republic of the congo: a question of governance?” sustainable development law & policy 12, no. 1: 7–11, 52–53. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/ sdlp/vol12/iss1/5/. colen, liesbeth, miet maertens, and johan swinnen. 2013. “foreign direct investment as an engine for economic growth and human development: a review of the arguments and empirical evidence.” in foreign direct investment and human development: the law and economics of international investment agreements, edited by olivier de schutter, johan swinnen, and jan wouters, 70–115. london: routledge. 10.4324/9780203076880. curran, charles e. 1984. “roman catholic teaching on peace and war within a broader theological context.” the journal of religious ethics 12, no. 1: 61–81. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40014969. eu-un partnership on land, natural resources and conflict prevention. 2015. “the great lakes region: a pilot project.” https://www.un.org/en/land-natural resources-conflict/pdfs/eu-un-great-lakes-project.pdf. francis. 2015. laudato si’. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. gavriletea, marius dan. 2017. “environmental impacts of sand exploitation: analysis of sand market.” sustainability 9, no. 7: 1118. 10.3390/su9071118. gomes, robin. 2019. “pope: mining activities should ensure integral sustainable human development.” vatican news, may 3, 2019. https:// www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-05/pope-francis-mining-indigenous rights-development-common-home.html. 200 elias o. opongo, sj https://www.peoplesdialogue.org https://www.thematicsocialforum.org http://hakimadini.org http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh9vtth http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203076880 https://www.jstor.org https://www.un.org https://www.un.org http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su9071118 https://www.vaticannews.va https://www.vaticannews.va https://www.vaticannews.va greyl, lucie. 2019. “titanium mining in the kwale district, kenya.” environmental justice atlas. updated august 18, 2019. https://ejatlas.org/conflict/titanium mining-in-the-kwale-district-kenya. le billon, philippe. 2001. “the political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts.” political geography 20, no. 5: 561–584. 10.1016/s0962 6298(01)00015-4. leach, melissa, gerald bloom, adrian ely, paul nightingale, ian scoones, esha shah, and adrian smith. 2007. “understanding governance: pathways to sustainability.” steps working paper 2. steps centre, may 20, 2007. https://steps-centre.org/ publication/understanding-governance-pathways-to-sustainability/. lebert, joanne. 2016. “conflict-prone minerals in the great lakes region of africa.” partnership africa canada, january 1, 2016. https://www.africaportal.org/ publications/conflict-prone-minerals-in-the-great-lakes-region-of-africa-2/. mach, parach. 2017. “war-torn south sudan gold goes to dubai: official.” anadolu agency, march 3, 2017. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/war-torn south-sudan-gold-goes-to-dubai-official/763633. malawi ministry of energy, natural resources and environment. 2010. malawi state of environment and outlook report. lilongwe, malawi: malawi environmental affairs department. https://www.ead.gov.mw/storage/app/media/ resources/reports/malawi%20state%20of%20the%20environemnt%20and %20outlook%20report_2010.pdf. powers, gerard. 2017. “toward an integral catholic peacebuilding.” the journal of social encounters 1, no. 1: 1–13. http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/social_ encounters/vol1/iss1/2/. samndong, raymond achu, and isilda nhantumbo. 2015. natural resources governance in the democratic republic of congo: breaking sector walls for sustainable land use investments. iied country report february 2015. london: iied. 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www.worldbank.org 14 mining and the call for solidarity: the networks we have and the synodal network the church is called to be vincent j. miller the details are painfully familiar: extractive zones scarred by ecological destruction, local populations suffering from poisoned water and air as well as social and cultural disruption, while local and national governments are corrupted by the cash the extracted commodities generate. thousands of miles away, consumers enjoy the benefits of products made by these resources, rarely giving thought to the costs borne by others because they are largely unaware of them. that lack of connection is not simply a moral blind spot, but a result of the powerful global market network that constructs and constrains relationships in which we are all viscerally enmeshed. analyzing this as a network problem as opposed to a failure of moral will provides a more complex understanding of the problem and better guidance for contesting it. the church can also be considered a network with its own vision for how relationships should be structured. the relationships fostered by the church are currently weaker than global market relations. from a theological perspective, we are united to one another in christ; but practically, christians relate to fellow church members in distant lands primarily through the webs of the market. the mystical body of christ is too often bound together by the sinews of global capitalism. the church not only can, but, to remain true to its mission, must provide an alternate to the constrained relationships constructed by the global economy. this essay will seek to chart ways in which the church can engage the mining practices that undergird industrial society. first, it will consider the power and history of the network of the global market in raw materials; then, it will review the standard means for influencing these markets and the mining projects that feed them; and it will conclude by proposing additional means for challenging the injustice of these projects that emerge when the church’s capacity as a global network is taken seriously. as the synod on the pan-amazonian region demonstrated, the church can do more than exhort its members to exercise solidarity. it can function as a global network to facilitate deeper relationships of solidarity that challenge the shallow and often exploitative relationships fostered by contemporary capitalism. doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-14 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-14 the network we have contemporary globalized capitalism comprises a network that reaches from the most developed cities to the least developed locations on earth. this is the most powerful and robust network that has ever existed, able to move valued resources from mines far from transportation hubs, energy sources, or skilled labor into global commodity chains that feed production in industrial centers. it is astoundingly resilient when compared to other essential networks such as education, health, or rule of law. regardless of battles over territory, legality or illegality, sustainability or unsustainability, peace or war, strong, weak or failed state, minerals flow to manufacturers and products get made. this economic network is heir to centuries of colonial extraction. theologian daniel castillo (2019) offers a concise synthesis of critiques of the colonial legacies hidden within contemporary extractive economies. he describes a “500 year project” in which the systems of colonial plunder became the basis for the capital accumulation that funded industrial society and western modernity (142). uruguyan eduardo galeano (1997; cited in castillo 2019, 150), whom pope francis cites in querida amazonia, provides a contemporary witness to this expropriation: “everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into european—or later united states—capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power.” castillo 2019 the catholic church confessed its complicity in this process during the synod of bishops special assembly for the pan amazonian region (2019, §15) in “the amazon: new paths for the church and for an integral ecology” : “the proclamation of christ often took place in collusion with the powers that exploited the resources and oppressed the local populations.” de las casas’ (1986, 2:57; cited and translated in castillo 2019, 150–51) historia de los indios provides a colonial-era witness to this extractive regime: mountains are turned over from the bottom to top and top to bottom a thousand times; [the workers] dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry the earth on their backs to wash it in the rivers, and those who wash the gold stay in the water all the time with their waists bent so constantly it breaks their bodies.castillo 2019 add coltan, cassiterite, and a handful of other minerals; update the risks to include mercury and cyanide exposure; and de las casas’s description applies to countless extractive sites around the world today. castillo’s analysis goes beyond tracing how the global economy continues the human injustices of colonialism. he argues that the legacies of colonialism lie within the very logic of extraction. the “technocratic paradigm” (the view that the world is a passive object open to human mining and the call for solidarity 203 manipulation and exploitation) that francis (2015b, §106) decries in laudato si’ has its roots in the colonial plunder which turned societies and cultures, forests and landscapes into sites of extraction and expropriation (castillo 2019, 27–28, 146–61). the problems we face with contemporary extractive practices thus involve questions of injustice and violence both for those whose lands and livelihoods they impact, and for the ecosystems which they despoil, disrupt, and displace. but these colonial legacies do not describe all the effects of the global mining market. contemporary mining is often undertaken voluntarily, by a variety of actors, from artisanal miners and medium-scale lightly mechanized enterprises, to the mega-scale projects of major mining corporations. the balance of positives and negatives in these arrangements vary greatly. artisanal mining has long been a part of the livelihoods of peoples located near easily accessible mineral sources. medium-scale enterprises using cheap yet powerful earth-moving, washing, and refining processes can provide substantial wages for impoverished workers, but have very significant environmental impacts and are often tied to illegal actors. major mining projects are often welcomed by national governments. some producers have taken great pains to develop non-polluting processes and to negotiate with affected communities. other large projects exploit weak regulatory regimes to extract maximum profit with little concern for costs borne by local residents and ecosystems.1 economist and theologian daniel finn (2017) argues that justice-oriented activists should distinguish the operations of good actors from destructive ones and avoid blanket prophetic denunciation of the entire mining industry.2 there are responsible and destructive actors on all scales. both of these perspectives on the nature of mining are important. but here we are concerned with a different problem: how the contemporary structure of the global commodities market provides an outlet for raw materials regardless of the morality of their production. it is on this level that many systemic problems appear (see arboleda 2020). the existence of legitimate global commodity markets has destabilizing effects because it also provides an outlet for illegal and unregulated extraction, undercutting efforts of good actors. this market is enormously adaptive, able to work through catastrophes and conflict. villages get burned, populations are terrorized, activists are murdered, miners forced from territory, middlemen killed in turf wars, corporations gain and lose concessions, and still raw material supply flows unabated. as rigobert minani documents in his chapter on the democratic republic of the congo, if there is a valuable mineral or resource that can be had, it will find its way into the global commodity market. it is helpful to consider how this network’s material structure provides the basis for certain ways of knowing, acting, and relating that construct and constrain our moral agency in ways we seldom realize. here we will consider three interrelated aspects: market externalities, commodity distancing, and the price signal as a shallow form of relationship. 204 vincent j. miller one of the fundamental aspects of this global network is the problem of “externalities,” costs associated with production that do not appear in the exchange price. these include pollution; destruction of watersheds, agricultural land, and local ecologies; exploitative and destructive labor practices; and physical and cultural violence against local populations. externalities arise from the immorality of market actors who seek to maximize their profit by shifting costs to others and because any extractive undertaking has many consequences that go unremarked and might only manifest years after a project ends. the latter are inherently difficult to include in the price of exchange. doing so requires stable and robust state and international regimes with the power to enact and enforce environmental and other regulations requiring producers to minimize pollution and exploitation—what barrera calls “extra-market interventions” in his chapter in this book. given the profound adaptability of markets, it is enormously difficult to enact such regulations on a global scale. thomas princen (2002) has coined the term “commodity distancing” to describe how globally dispersed supply chains transform markets. as geographical distance increases, our knowledge about the context and consequences of products we consume decreases. at each point of exchange, only information relevant for the purchase—usually only quality and price—are passed along. this is exacerbated by cultural distance. end consumers have little or no knowledge of the predicaments of farmers, laborers, and communities at the other ends of supply chains, whether this is their political, cultural, economic, and legal situation or the ecological impact of production on the rest of their lives. princen’s comment about consuming chilean grapes applies to any global commodity: “i have no way of knowing if my consumption is supporting or undermining that farmer, economically or ecologically. with no feedback, or uncertain feedback, i can only assume and, as with most of us, prefer to assume, that my purchases are supportive. i can only assume that all parties have entered the bargain voluntarily and that coercion or extreme dependency have not been the conditions of my enjoyment” (118). princen’s analysis reveals how this global network moves commodities and capital, but not all relevant information about them. this massive filtering of information facilitates the externalization of costs. finally, we must consider how economic structures have broader cultural impacts. this moves us out of the realm of economics and into consideration of cultural effects of market structures and how they elicit certain ways of being and relating. market relations in which the primary form of communication is the price signal are extremely narrow forms of relationship. this is the source of the profound “efficiencies” that market structures enable. focusing on one aspect of a relationship between parties—the price—enables the massively complex systems of production that characterize modern economies. each party has a concrete measure by which to evaluate their interaction with others that can be managed through financial accounting. mining and the call for solidarity 205 we need to consider how this powerful economic practice constructs and constrains our relationships. to stay in business, market actors must focus on the price signal. they may prefer one provider’s business, labor, and ecological practices, or may prefer to purchase from a local firm, but if the cost is significantly higher, they will not be able to do so, lest their own products’ prices become uncompetitive. the price signal disciplines and subordinates other value considerations. thus, the global economy functions as a massive network of shallow relationships. it facilitates myriad relationships, but constructs them in an extremely narrow manner. sometimes these are explicitly negotiated relationships between parties, but for the most part, these are implicit but real relationships within supply chains that contribute to the myriad products we consume. means of influencing these networks these interrelated aspects of the global market system are not incidental side effects, but consequences of its central strengths. thus, our attempts to counter these negative impacts require engaging the dynamics of the global economy itself. there are many methods of influencing these networks to limit their destructiveness and bring external costs into the market price. these include national legislation and international and sector agreements to minimize the actions of immoral actors and support moral ones. two important policy foci involve transparency and the consent of those affected by extractive projects. transparency policies address problems caused by commodity distancing: the tendency of global commodity markets to obscure the origins of industrial materials. these seek to make supply chain accounting public by requiring firms to disclose their negotiations and payments regarding mining projects. one example is the extractive industry transparency initiative (eiti), a set of voluntary guidelines through which extractive companies and governments disclose all payments for audit and agree to work in partnership with civil society groups (see lujala 2018; bamat, chassy, and warne 2011, 15). transparency can also be applied to manufacturers’ supply chains. the most well-known manufacturing transparency regimes concern “conflict minerals” (tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold) derived from mining in the democratic republic of the congo. these include section 1502 of the 2010 dodd-frank wall street reform and consumer protection act, which required publicly traded companies in the us to certify that their supply chains do not source minerals from conflict zones, 3 and the oecd due diligence guidance for responsible supply chains of minerals from conflict-affected and high-risk areas, which provides similar regulations for european firms. the 2008 united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (2007) articulated the notion of “free prior informed consent” (fpic) in all matters in which the rights, culture, and lands of indigenous 206 vincent j. miller people are affected by governments and businesses. article 32.2 applied this to “any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water, or other resources.” this principle has been generalized to apply to any local community significantly impacted by mining, oil, gas, or any other major project that transforms land or has a significant lasting impact (bamat, chassy, and warne 2011, 10). communities near mining projects are often rural, poor, and politically and culturally marginalized. fpic provides a standard to guide political and economic actors to address affected communities’ concerns, seeking their consent rather than exploiting their marginality. fpic has come under criticism as a framework easily manipulated by powerful mining firms against poor and marginalized communities and for being biased toward approval of extractive projects. in response, indigenous, religious, and ngo groups are advocating for “the right to say no”—to allow local communities to simply refuse such operations in their territories.4 this is important and often quite effective work. but it is essential to note how fragile these interventions are in contrast to the network itself. this is not simply because of the profound power of wealthy industry actors whose resources dwarf those of ngo and state actors who seek to regulate extractive industries. it has to do with a more fundamental asymmetry in the network itself. to mix a metaphor, market actors know the loopholes they need to operate, whereas those seeking to regulate a market must mind the entire dike of the global supply chain. again, this problem is a direct consequence of the nature of market exchange. market actors need only know the immediate local context of exchange: whether something can be sold at profit. while this can involve the strategic advantages of massive transnational corporations, often enough, it is equally a matter of very small-scale informal and black-market actors. given the breadth of global demand and the complexities and opacities of the many levels of manufacturing, local actors will almost always find a black-market outlet for destructively mined minerals. think of the countless uses of gold—from electronics to jewelry. big, publicly traded, transnational firms will work hard to certify that their supply chains are free of conflict minerals. but there are thousands of sites around the world where small-scale miners are destroying watersheds and ecologies with power washing, mercury, and cyanide, including sites where illicit armed actors are running the operations. even if major producers have source monitoring regimes that exclude using them, there are countless smaller producers that will save material costs by sourcing from uncertified supplies, thus maintaining the revenue flow that sustains destructive mining and violence. mining and the call for solidarity 207 the church’s current efforts the catholic church works in these processes in a number of ways. it accompanies affected communities, sharing in and documenting their suffering. this intimate knowledge forms the basis for policy advocacy. advocacy on this level requires expert technical knowledge. thus, ecclesial agency here tends to focus on elite participation: episcopal conferences and leaders and experts from their affiliated ngos. bishops call attention to destructive and exploitative practices and give voice to the plights of their victims. episcopal conferences also provide a network which can monitor whether corporate and government action live up to promises made, as the bishops of cameroon and chad did during construction of a pipeline in their region (us congress 2007). catholic relief services has worked to build capacity among local ecclesial and civil society groups so they can more effectively influence major extractive projects (bamat, chassy, and warne 2011, 21). in el salvador, the bishops worked with other catholic and secular organizations in a successful campaign to pass national legislation to ban metal mining. colombia is a more typical case. multiple church actors are quite active in addressing mining issues at the local level. but these activities are not well coordinated and the bishops’ conference has not developed a clear and consistent advocacy agenda at the national level. the chapter by sandra polanía-reyes and héctor fabio henao demonstrates how the colombian church is attempting to establish better coordination. because of their technical nature, such interventions are always susceptible to questions of religious legitimation. do these appear to be part of the church’s mission to people in the pews? they certainly are. but the abstract theological justifications for catholic social doctrine often have little traction in the lived sacramental, liturgical, and communal experience of the christian faithful. the technical nature of the regulation of extractive industries exacerbate this problem. for that reason, these sorts of actions often fail to gain strong support from much of the church and significant portions of the laity do not perform their expected role in this process of providing public pressure on governments to enforce environmental regulations, counter corruption, or ensure respect for the rights of threatened communities. this problem is why, as described by polanía-reyes and henao, the bishops in colombia have been trying to focus on better teaching and preaching of “eco-theology” that amplifies an understanding of the theology of creation in addition to a theology of salvation. there is another problem inherent in the church’s response, in addition to legitimation. it concerns the way the laity are addressed in such interventions, often as consumers. greed and excessive consumption should, of course, be challenged. but invocations of greed can legitimate a false analysis that portrays market structures as morally neutral instruments that simply respond to the desires expressed in consumer demand. 208 vincent j. miller not only does this prevent us from critiquing the way our networks are structured, it also tends to refocus the ecclesial response to working on the demand side. many important theological critiques (e.g., cultivation of concern for creation or solidarity with the oppressed) are offered in ways that implicitly address the laity as consumers and are thus construed as a means of moderating individual desire, which can distract attention from systemic causes woven into the fabric of industrial civilization and the global commodity market. pope francis has articulated two important concepts that address structural dimensions of these problems. they are, however, often incorrectly interpreted in a way that reduces them to an individual level: “the throwaway culture” and “the globalization of indifference.” the notion of a “throwaway culture” is an insightful critique of contemporary consumer centered economies. too often, however, this concept is reduced to an indictment of individual greed and consumer lifestyles. consumer excess is a profound problem, but the crisis we face is not driven by the desires of the wealthy for shiny new gadgets. yes, the tantalum and cobalt mined in conflict zones are used in the latest smartphones. but they are also in every electronic device—from hospital respirators to emissions-saving electric cars (riofrancos 2019). as daniel finn (2017, 12) notes, extraction undergirds the whole of industrial society: “everything we touch throughout the day is either grown or extracted from the earth.” while francis (2015b) does mention the need for a new “lifestyle,” his extended discussion of the throwaway culture in laudato si’ focuses on systemic issues of industrial production. he contrasts this with the circular flows of natural ecosystems, in which wastes from one part of the system feed and fertilize others. “our industrial system … has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. we have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations. …” (§16). francis’s critique of the throwaway culture involves much more than consumer excess. it cuts to the heart of industrial civilization. francis discusses the “throwaway culture” in the context of the “globalization of indifference” in laudato si’. francis first spoke about this at lampedusa in 2013. “in this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. we have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!” (francis 2013b). he developed this notion more fully in evangelii gaudium, where he placed indifference in a more systemic context. francis (2013a, §53) called for expanding the fifth commandment—“thou shalt not kill”—to the violence of economic systems: “we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. such an economy kills.” he describes the globalization of indifference as a consequence of a view of the economy which assumes economic growth is adequate to bring about justice, trusting in the “sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system” (§54). mining and the call for solidarity 209 in francis’s fuller analysis, indifference is clearly characterized, not as an individual defect of will, but as a systemic disorder emerging from our economic context. my description of the three weaknesses of global market systems—externalities, distancing, and the attenuated form of relationships facilitated by the market’s price mechanism—can be understood as an attempt to sketch the “architecture of indifference” in which the globalization of indifference emerges. it is not that “we should care, but don’t.” rather, because of market externalities and commodity distancing “we don’t know and can’t know” the consequences connected to our consumption. thus, it is impossible to care in any specific way (miller 2014). we have considered one of the structural factors that facilitates the destructiveness of mining: the way global capitalism connects the entire world in a network of shallow relationships, where the price signal is the primary form of communication that systematically obscures the broader conditions of production and destructive externalities. laws, regulations, and industry standards that seek to counter these problems are always in danger of being outmaneuvered by market actors. we have seen that the church’s involvement in these efforts suffers from two weaknesses. first, since it takes place on the level of experts and elites, it tends to be disconnected from the liturgical and sacramental life of the church. second, in emphasizing the moral aspects of consumption, the church runs the risk of portraying these as demand-side problems arising from disordered desire, unwittingly obscuring the structural dimensions of the problem. in the final section we will explore how thinking in terms of networks will help re-envision the church’s role in extractive markets and suggest new approaches for engagement. a fuller ecclesial response the church is materially, viscerally present on every level of this network. it is present in the communities who labor in mines and forests, who drink poisoned water, and who sometimes participate in the destruction of the land their children will inherit. it is present in the urban professionals supported by the proceeds of extractive industries and the wealthy parishes they attend. it is present in the consumers, rich and poor, who are fed, clothed, and housed by the products this system produces. the church is implicated at every level of these global chains, but those levels have little ecclesial relationship with one another. they are connected to one another, not by the church, but by the global commodity network. while theologically, we are united to one another in christ, practically, we relate through global markets. the mystical body of christ is too often bound together by the sinews of global capitalism. the problem is thus not simply a matter of theology and morals, or of the formation of consciences. the problem is properly ecclesial, having to do with the nature and practice of the church. the church has something to say about the nature of human relationships. it must also consider the relationships in which it is entangled. 210 vincent j. miller henri de lubac’s classic text catholicism aimed to show, in the words of its french subtitle, the “social aspects of doctrine.” de lubac (1988 [1938], 15) argued that catholicism is social “in the deepest sense of the word.” it is social “in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma” to such an extent that the phrase “social catholicism” should sound redundant. as the means and fruit of god’s work of salvation, the church is not only essentially social, but the ultimate form of human sociality which all humankind are destined to share in christ. de lubac did not view secular forms of community dialectically. he accepted their goodness, noting the ancient christian use of the city as an analogy for the church. but he held that the church was always called to a deeper intimacy than any earthly community could provide. “among those who are received within this heavenly city there is a more intimate relationship than subsists among the members of a human society, for among them there is not only outward harmony, but true unity” (113–15, quote at 115). de lubac’s theology found expression in the second vatican council’s understanding of the church and its mission. lumen gentium defined the church as a “sacrament or … sign and instrument” of “a very closely knit union with god and of the unity of the whole human race.” thus, the church’s very reason for existing, its religious mission, is to bring humankind into union. the council went on to note that this mission is intertwined with the secular dynamics that were bringing about human interconnection. in its words, this sacramental working of the church brings a world “joined more closely today by various social, technical and cultural ties” to a fuller unity in christ (second vatican council 1964, §1). the final document of the council, gaudium et spes, applied this understanding to the church’s mission in the contemporary world. gaudium et spes spoke of the “socialization” being brought about by the growth of communications, and economic and political activity multiplying the “ties” among diverse men and women. this “growing interdependence” finds its fulfillment only on the “deeper level of interpersonal relationships.” such “communion between persons” fulfills the “laws of social life which the creator has written into” human nature. gaudium et spes saw in the growth of global human interdependence the rise of a truly universal common good involving “rights and duties with respect to the whole human race” (second vatican council 1965, §6, 23, 26). one of the key terms for this social unity is “solidarity.” gaudium et spes explicitly connected solidarity with the social nature of salvation beginning in the jewish covenant: “from the beginning of salvation history he has chosen men [and women] not just as individuals but as members of a certain community.” this continues in the “the work of jesus christ” who taught his disciples to “treat one another as brothers” and sisters. the church, “his body,” is a community where “everyone, as members one of the other, would render mutual service according to the different gifts bestowed on each.” this ecclesial communion is solidarity, which “must be mining and the call for solidarity 211 constantly increased until that day on which it will be brought to perfection. then, saved by grace, men will offer flawless glory to god as a family beloved of god and of christ their brother” (§32). the council understood that this communion has its ultimate realization as unity in christ. my point here is not to stress that without christ there can be no unity, but to note the very high stakes the church places on social communion. thus, the shallow market relationships in which we are currently entangled are not secondary questions. they impinge upon the church’s ability to pursue its mission to enact communion. in laudato si’, pope francis developed the church’s social teaching by expanding solidarity to all creation. francis (2015b, §240) roots both solidarity among humans and the rest of creation in an ontology that reflects the triune, relational character of god. the divine persons are subsistent relations, and the world, created according to the divine model, is a web of relationships. creatures tend towards god, and in turn it is proper to every living being to tend towards other things, so that throughout the universe we can find any number of constant and secretly interwoven relationships. this leads us not only to marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures, but also to discover a key to our own fulfilment. the human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with god, with others and with all creatures. in this way, they make their own that trinitarian dynamism which god imprinted in them when they were created. everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the trinity. francis (2020, §22) developed these themes further in querida amazonia: christ redeemed the whole person, and he wishes to restore in each of us the capacity to enter into relationship with others. the gospel proposes the divine charity welling up in the heart of christ and generating a pursuit of justice that is at once a hymn of fraternity and of solidarity, an impetus to the culture of encounter. the wisdom of the way of life of the original peoples—for all its limitations—encourages us to deepen this desire. in view of this, the bishops of ecuador have appealed for “a new social and cultural system which privileges fraternal relations within a framework of acknowledgment and esteem for the different cultures and ecosystems, one capable of opposing every form of discrimination and oppression between human beings. with these theological principles, we can judge the monstrous inadequacy of market relationships ruled by the price signal. but these insights do not 212 vincent j. miller simply judge an external reality. as we saw, the church is implicated in the structure of the global market. its members relate to each other primarily through the market rather than through ecclesial connections. thus, these theological principles are demands placed on the church itself to make such deep forms of relationship present in its own life. now that we appreciate the challenge that this global network poses to the church, we can begin to consider how it might respond. if the church is implicated in the destructiveness of global commodity flows and the shallowness of the human relations they construct, it can attempt to connect communities in a manner more consistent with its sacramental mission to unite humankind. if some members of the church are victims of conflicts fueled by mining, or fall ill from mining pollution, while others profit or consume products made from that mining, then the church can and should work to unite these members into deeper relationships of responsibility and reciprocity. theologically, the church should aspire to be a network that encompasses and connects all its members, rather than merely be present in a network constituted by shallower logics. this task will always remain incomplete this side of the eschaton. but it is a work that, nevertheless, must be attempted. there have been examples of success. sharon erickson nepstad’s account of the central american solidarity movement in the 1980s provides a hopeful and illuminative example. in a context riven by national boundaries and cold war geopolitics, us and central american christians found ways to work together in solidarity to address the needs of those caught in the violent civil wars of that era. nepstad recounts how north american missionaries and parish relationships served as an ecclesial connection across state borders. returning missionaries served as bridge figures in their home communities, testifying convincingly to the innocence of victims of political violence at a time when the us government portrayed them as dangerous radicals (nepstad 2004, 67–75). in these contexts, the oppressed appeared not as foreigners, but as brothers and sisters in christ. responding to their needs seemed, therefore, more than a matter of cosmopolitan ethics, but a question of christian discipleship. it was a significant struggle for north american christians to question their government and organize to change us foreign policy. the communications network provided by missionaries, intra-church partnerships, and church media provided knowledge and relationships that motivated and sustained advocacy by north american laity on behalf of their brothers and sisters in central america. the key lesson of this example is that the church provided alternative communication networks to government and secular media that enabled more direct communication between its members. solidarity arose from this communication. it is important to note how this communication occurred in an ecclesial setting where it was easily connected to the liturgical and sacramental beliefs and practices of the church. mining and the call for solidarity 213 how might something like this be enacted in the context of global commodity chains? it would involve cultivating properly ecclesial relationships to deepen the hidden, shallow relationships that currently connect us through commodity mining markets. the catholic church is one of the few organizations that has as broad a reach as the globalized commodity network. the church currently has several communication networks that are relevant. none, however, are used for this task. the most central network of the catholic church is its episcopal hierarchy, which is in both theological communion and bureaucratic connection with the vatican. while these networks are the most often invoked in discussions of catholicity, they tend to function primarily in spoke-like fashion, connecting each local church to the church in rome. they are less effective in connecting the local churches to one another. national and regional episcopal conferences allow for regional communication. new structures are needed to allow point-to-point global communication among local churches on a global scale. the planned continent-level discussions in the 2021–2023 synod on synodality have potential to address this problem. the church also has the extensive networks of its caritas affiliate organizations that connect the churches in the global north with those in the global south. these are impressive networks that can provide relief, development aid, and conflict resolution resources to communities in need (regardless of religious affiliation). although they are not designed to establish communication between different parts of the church, some do fulfill this role. catholic relief services, for example, facilitates global advocacy with its catholics confront global poverty partnership with other entities of the united states conference of catholic bishops, and it organizes speaker programs to bring representatives from the field into the united states. this, however, takes place as a secondary supplement to its massive overseas operations which handles its disaster, development, and peacebuilding work. these are networks that provide resources and expertise to struggling communities. what if they were developed to allow for two-way communication that could allow needy communities to not only receive assistance, but to speak their experience and insights to the rest of the church? pope francis (2015a) has sought to renew the synod of bishops in order to facilitate a “church which listens.” the 2019 synod for the pan amazonian region provided a noteworthy advance in the church’s work of advancing global solidarity focused on developing communication from the peripheries of the church and the global market. the preparation for the synod involved hundreds of listening events in which more than 87,000 people participated (brockhaus 2019). the working document for the synod called for a “a dialogue in favour of life…at the service of the ‘future of our planet,’ of transforming narrow mentalities, of converting hardened hearts, and of sharing truths with all humanity” (synod of bishops special assembly for the pan-amazonian region 2019, §40). 214 vincent j. miller in his response to the synod, francis spoke of this listening in terms evocative of the catholicity of the church. we listen not simply to hear other’s struggles, but to learn what each culture has learned of god’s wisdom in its landscape and ecology. human groupings, their lifestyles and their worldviews, are as varied as the land itself, since they have had to adapt themselves to geography and its possibilities.… in each land and its features, god manifests himself and reflects something of his inexhaustible beauty. each distinct group, then, in a vital synthesis with its surroundings, develops its own form of wisdom. (francis 2020, §32)5 the synod on the pan-amazonian region provides a glimpse of how ecclesial networks can provide a deeper connection between peoples than the global market system (miller 2020). people around the world consume goods originating in the amazon—from gold and iron to palm oil and soy—yet there are few opportunities to hear from those affected by their production in any depth. for three weeks in october of 2019, the church sought to “listen to the voice of the amazon, stirred by the powerful breath of holy spirit in the cry of the wounded land and its inhabitants” (synod of bishops special assembly for the pan-amazonian region 2019, §3). evaluating mining projects requires an enormous depth of knowledge: the nature of the mining and refining processes being used, the ecology of the site, the economic, social, and cultural situation of those impacted by the project, the politics of the local concessions process, and the seriousness of negotiations with affected parties. while it is true, as daniel finn notes, that one can easily find blanket condemnations of all extractive projects that ignore the significant efforts some extractive corporations make to work in a just and sustainable manner, it is also true that for just about any project, even notoriously destructive ones, one can find legitimate-sounding documentary evidence of consultation processes, negotiations, and compensation. only if one has access to detailed local knowledge can this evidence be judged adequately. the catholic church has profound resources that could be mobilized on these issues. it is often present in the communities affected by mining projects and can help them voice their concerns. it can provide expert technical support and connect them with national, regional, and international networks. rigobert minani’s discussion in this volume provides the compelling example of the work of the episcopal commission for natural resources in the democratic republic of the congo. it has established diocesan “natural resource observatories” that monitor extractive projects for human rights violations. it works on the national level to advocate for just laws and policies for affected communities, and recently ran a program to help enfranchise artisanal miners so they can better navigate the legal mining and the call for solidarity 215 systems for transparency monitoring and better participate in the marketplace. working with civil society groups, it connects local concerns to advocacy on national, regional, and international levels. andrés mckinley’s analysis in his chapter of the church’s role in el salvador’s successful campaign to end metallic mining displays similar dynamics. the church, as mckinley describes, addressed the vulnerability and isolation of poor communities by providing the means to connect their resistance with advocacy campaigns on the national level. church actors also facilitated a connection between global communities affected by the same mining firm by sponsoring the visit of a governor from a community in the philippines to share their experience of the mining company’s actions. in both cases, the church served as a network to connect communities that would otherwise be isolated so that they could better respond to the challenge posed by powerful mining interests. this connection between el salvador and the philippines was made through an international ngo that works on mining issues. there is nothing wrong with that. note, however, the unrealized potential of the church’s own network which could have been used to connect these communities in a more ecclesially powerful manner. guided by the principle of synodality, the church should further develop networks that enable people in extractive zones to speak with their brothers and sisters around the world; to share both their understanding and predicaments. if the contextual facts of every mining project are narratively dense, the church could provide connections that allow the richness of the stories to be shared: the impacts—for good and ill—on local populations; the landscapes and ecologies that are affected; and equally importantly, the local culture’s understanding of the meaning of the landscapes they inhabit and the ecologies in which they participate. this could facilitate, in leah riofrancos’s (2019, n.p.) words, “broadening our solidarities to encompass people we may never meet and places we may never visit but whose futures are bound up with our own.” if such communication were fostered by the church, it would make the religious relevance of these issues much more apparent. rather than reading reports from experts (in our age of skepticism), believers could listen to the experience of fellow parishioners from across the globe. this would deepen their sense of connection and obligation. equally important, by encountering the people at the other end of the supply chain, it would reveal to them how much is ordinarily hidden by our global supply chains. knowing those affected by mining could foster a deeper inquisitiveness and distrust of products which do not disclose their supply chains (see miller 2004, 184–86). such synodal listening to those at the extractive ends of global commodity chains could radically deepen the practice of fpic, which currently functions largely as a contractual formality, inviting affected communities into a due diligence-like review of a proposed project. in its most sincere forms, it allows 216 vincent j. miller local communities to refuse a project. but it primarily imagines negotiations to minimize harms and find meaningful compensation. francis’s association of synodality with catholicity opens up the possibility for a deeper dialogue. local communities could be given more than a “take it or leave it” offer for extractive development. a synodal communication network would allow them to dialogue with industrialized cultures about the nature of civilization. in the amazon, there are indigenous civilizations that have lived in sustainable harmony with their ecologies for more than ten thousand years. we in industrialized societies, who have in a few short centuries mined our minerals, felled our forests, and now face ecological collapse on multiple fronts, have much to learn from such cultures. rather than limiting communication to seeking their consent to our mining projects, the church could foster a deeper communion that would allow a two-way dialogue between parties already tied together via commodity flows. listening would first confront us with the question, “is our way of life worth the destruction of theirs?” such a dialogue would also call industrialized society’s way of life into question, helping to transform a civilization that is currently transgressing planetary boundaries on so many fronts. this synodal ecclesial communications network does not currently exist. from a historical perspective, this is nothing new. the networks of catholic communion are constantly changing and developing: from the tridentine adoption of the printing press to foster liturgical and theological uniformity to the development of episcopal conferences to better organize church responses to the modern nation-state. the technology exists to enable the church to deepen its communications to match this theological need. if social media can sustain debate and friendship across space, they can certainly connect believers among distant local churches. if tens of millions daily watch livestreams of videogames and e-sports, these same technologies can certainly facilitate conversations between the peripheries and centers that can deepen relationships beyond those fostered by global capitalism. conclusion this chapter has argued that many of the destructive impacts of mining are facilitated by the defects and cultural impacts of global commodities markets. the catholic church is itself a network, one that aims for a profound communion among all people. the fact that its members are currently more strongly formed by market relations than by its own logic of communion is a profound challenge. this challenge provides the possibility of new response, supplementing its current work of technical advocacy. by seeking to build ecclesial connections among its members, the church could form synodal relationships that deepen current market relationships into fuller responsibility and allow those affected to become full partners in a dialogue about our shared future in our common home. mining and the call for solidarity 217 notes 1 the chapter in this volume by sandra polanía-reyes and héctor fabio henao describes these different scales in the context of colombia. 2 also see finn’s more extended account of the morality of participating in global markets in his 2019 book consumer ethics in a global society: how buying here causes injustice there. 3 there is significant debate about the effectiveness of the dodd-frank provisions concerning conflict minerals. see koch and kinsbergen (2018) and diemel and hilhorst (2019). 4 for a discussion of the inadequacy of fpic see thea riofrancos (2020). on the “right to say no,” see justice, peace, and integrity of creation commission of the union of international superiors general-union of superiors general (2019), which proposed fostering the right of communities to say “no” to mining as a focal point of these religious orders’ future work on the issue. 5 see also francis’s (2018) address at a meeting with indigenous people at puerto maldonado, peru. references arboleda, martin. 2020. planetary mine: territories of extraction under late capitalism. london: verso. bamat, tom, aaron chassy, and rees warne, eds. 2011. extractives and equity: an introductory overview and case studies from peru, angola and nigeria. baltimore, md: catholic relief services. https://www.crs.org/our-work-overseas/ research-publications/extractives-and-equity. brockhaus, hannah. 2019. “the amazon synod, by the numbers.” catholic news 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press, 2019. 10.2307/ j.ctvswx7rz. francis. 2013a. evangelii gaudium. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/ apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. francis. 2013b. homily in “arena” sports camp, salina quarter, lampedusa. july 8, 2013. http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/documents/ papa-francesco_20130708_omelia-lampedusa.html. 218 vincent j. miller https://www.crs.org https://www.crs.org https://www.catholicnewsagency.com https://www.catholicnewsagency.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12372 https://www.commonwealmagazine.org https://www.commonwealmagazine.org http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvswx7rz http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvswx7rz http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va francis. 2015a. “address commemorating the 50th anniversary of the institution of the synod of bishops.” october, 17 2015. http://w2.vatican.va/content/ 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jpic & mining seminar.” september 27, 2019. https://www.jpicroma.org/ single-post/2019/08/27/jpic-mining-workshop-september-25–27. koch, dirk-jan, and sara kinsbergen. 2018. “exaggerating unintended effects? competing narratives on the impact of conflict minerals regulation.” resources policy 57: 255–263. 10.1016/j.resourpol.2018.03.011. lujala, päivi. 2018. “an analysis of the extractive industry transparency initiative implementation process.” world development 107: 358–381. 10.1016/j.worlddev. 2018.02.030. miller, vincent j. 2004. consuming religion: christian faith and practice in a consumer culture. new york: continuum. miller, vincent j. 2014. “slavery and commodity chains: fighting the globalization of indifference.” america magazine, january 3, 2014. https://www.americamagazine. org/issue/slavery-and-commodity-chains-fighting-globalization-indifference. miller, vincent j. 2020. “we’re all tied to the amazon through globalization. can the synod help us listen to its cry?” america magazine, february 19, 2020. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/02/19/were-all-tied-amazon through-globalization-can-synod-help-us-listen-its-cry. nepstad, sharon erickson. 2004. convictions of the soul: religion, culture and agency in the central american solidarity movement. oxford: oxford university press. 10.1093/0195169239.001.0001. princen, thomas. 2002. “distancing: consumption and the severing of feedback.” in confronting consumption, edited bythomas princen, michael maniates, and ken conca, 103–132. cambridge, ma: mit press. 10.7551/mitpress/2097.001.0001. riofrancos, thea. 2019. “what green costs.” logic 9. https://logicmag.io/nature/ what-green-costs. riofrancos, thea. 2020. resource radicals: from petro-nationalism to post extractivism in ecuador. durham, nc: duke university press. 10.2307/j. ctv14t48kg. second vatican council. 1964. lumen gentium. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ 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https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va https://undocs.org https://www.govinfo.gov https://www.govinfo.gov 15 the mining industry: the journey from impunity to consent raymond offenheiser for millennia, humans have valued metals and precious stones, committed heinous crimes to obtain them, traveled great distances to trade them, and created and sustained empires based on their real or imputed value. spanish conquistadors took an incan emperor hostage so he would reveal gold sources. many lives over centuries have been sacrificed at mines, often brutally and without accountability. until the late twentieth century, mining required large numbers of laborers working at great risk for paltry wages to extract precious metals and ores. happily, this is not the world we live in today. as one mining executive remarked to me casually: “there is no backyard on earth today where we can dig a hole without the world knowing about it in 24 hours.” this is not to say there are no longer any bad actors, horrific working conditions, or human rights violations. it’s still hard to find any place on earth where there is not some conflict over mining. moreover, we live in a globalized world with exploding demand for minerals. it’s estimated that some ninety metal and mineral commodities are required to power the global economy (us geological survey n.d.). those interested in engaging mining companies in dialogue and driving significant change need to recognize that a lot of normative progress has been made in a relatively short period of time. today there are dozens of voluntary normative frameworks focused on ethical issues, human rights, specific commodities, industry operational practices (tailings dams), transparency and taxation, and certification standards (world economic forum and global agenda council on the future of metals and mining 2015). these new frameworks influence the industry and create tools for catholic organizations and others to scrutinize and propose changes to industry policies and practices, and to advance bold regulatory reform. while progress in realizing rights and justice on some fronts has been made, the normative frameworks for extraction need to be refined and taken from c-suites to mine sites, through supply chains for full implementation, and, finally, to legislatures. catholic and other civil society actors should build upon these norms and incorporate them into their doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-15 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-15 strategies as they push the industry toward greater sustainability, peace, and integral human development. ethics and mining mining presents a vast array of ethical questions at multiple levels, but the idea that there should be an ethics for mining is relatively new. while norms for agriculture, forestry, and fisheries have been included in international environmental and development summits and natural resource policy documents since the early 1970s, mining was somehow overlooked. not until the late 1990s was consideration given to the environmental, and later, the social, and economic impacts of mining. mining is foundational to modern life and, as george orwell described it, part of the “metabolism” of civilization. yet there has been little scrutiny until recently of the complex issues of conflict, poverty, and injustice that surround it, to say nothing of its growing strategic importance and long-term sustainability. in laudato si’, pope francis examines the moral challenges posed by mining on a planet with limited natural resources and under pressure from a global climate crisis. he offers considerations for how unfettered growth and a global consumer culture affect the calculus of costs and benefits in industries like mining. he questions how much the prevailing consumerist culture that depends on mining is itself in need of drastic change. in his development of the idea of integral ecology, he delivers a mandate for catholic leaders and activists to tie their work to the machinations of the globalized economy, the consumerism that drives it, and its immense consequences for “our common home.” mining is squarely within that purview. despite these ethical concerns, can we live without mining metals and minerals or are they essential for the survival and advancement of civilization? can we live without steel girders that support our modern buildings, bridges, and infrastructure, or lithium for batteries that electrify our homes, or copper that supports our electrical grids? there are 62 unique and irreplaceable metals in every cellphone. each one must be mined somewhere at some cost to environment and society. is securing those metals a cost we can and must bear? while the mining industry is exploring the development of synthetic minerals and mining the moon, it is unlikely these efforts will be sufficient to address the exploding demand for critical minerals needed for information technology, mass communication, and energy any time soon. there is certainly a case to be made for challenging extractive industries and their wholesale and retail customers to embrace responsible stewardship of the planet and envision a world in which extraction is limited to the essential, but how do we define essential? do we devalue precious stones and jewelry? do we impose regulatory limitations mining low grade mineral deposits for certain precious stones and metals? do we 222 raymond offenheiser increase investment in the search for synthetic minerals that would reduce environmentally destructive extraction? such efforts would require major changes in public taste and values but are goals that should be under consideration. these kinds of questions point toward the complexities that lie before us in trying to limit and regulate the scale and impact of the mining industry. we need it, yet it will continue to be a dirty business riddled with ethical dilemmas. but to tackle these ethical questions and be effective in addressing them, catholic peace, human rights, and development activists will need to become more knowledgeable about the inner workings of this industry: its business ecosystem, its profitability, its strategic priorities, its internal incentives and policies, its technical complexities, and its financial and operational vulnerabilities. they will need to also reckon with the unique contributions the mining industry makes to society as they respond to the pope’s critique of consumerist culture and an economy that prioritizes growth over other values. understanding the mining mindset in seeking to transform the mining industry, it is critical to understand its worldview, values, and culture. while mining technology has improved over the centuries, it is still fundamentally about digging large holes in the earth to extract value from a very small quantity of minerals. today, ore grades have declined globally, so companies must move ever-increasing amounts of earth to extract very little real value. one gold wedding band may require the removal and processing of thirty tons of earth. the industry is largely led by mining engineers and geologists who are trained to determine the smartest way to extract the maximum amount of mineral value from a discrete piece of ground. they are single-minded about this task. what matters to them is what is in the ground inside the fence where they operate. they are linear thinkers and they have little regard for how what they are doing inside the fence might affect those living outside the fence. these geologists and engineers define the culture of the mining industry. today, however, this culture is under increasing pressure to change in fundamental ways. for many centuries, mining was able to exploit surplus land and labor with little regard for safety, human rights, wages, or ecological or community impacts. but companies can no longer treat environmental damage, injury, or death as incidental costs of doing business. having suffered major legal and financial setbacks over the last fifty years, companies are highly sensitive and proactive about safe working conditions. serious environmental catastrophes like the samarco tailings dam collapse in brazil in 2015 have demonstrated to executives the scale of liability possible from lax management of critical risks. in perhaps an equally dramatic example, as detailed by andres mckinley in this book, the perceived downstream the journey from impunity to consent 223 risks of water shortages to agriculturalists led el salvador’s congress to ban all large mining projects in the country, the first nation in the world to take such drastic legal action. events like these and increasing investor scrutiny of environmental, social, and governance policies and practices have forced particularly the largest companies to rethink their business models and incorporate new ethical and performance policies. these new standards represent a real shift by companies to incorporate ethics guidelines for what they will commit to do “outside the fence.” the industry’s first efforts were to embrace broad principles of corporate social responsibility while treating challenges as a public relations matter. they later reluctantly embraced the concept of social license as a recognition that public relations would not suffice and that they had to engage communities in new ways. the initial ways in which companies tried to acquire social license were perceived by communities and civil society as short-term transactional approaches that did not address long-term development interests and justice concerns. but in the late 1990s, leading companies, or majors,1 began to engage a broad spectrum of non-industry stakeholders. in the early 2000s, the majors created the international council on mining and metals (icmm) as a joint initiative to address a wide array of shared concerns, such as sustainability, indigenous rights, waste management, and mine closure. to join, companies had to pledge to implement the icmm ten principles, which give industry guidance across ten areas of ethical consideration: ethical corporate governance; sustainability-driven decision-making; human rights; stakeholder-sensitive risk management; worker health and safety; environmental performance; conservation of biodiversity; support for responsible metal and mineral disposal, reuse, and recycling; social performance; and stakeholder engagement (international council of mining and metals n.d.a). as time has gone on, expectations have been raised and additional dimensions like gender and equitable distribution of costs and benefits have been included. mining companies have to modernize, not only technologically but in terms of values and approach. they need to hire outside their traditional circles of geologists and engineers and incorporate personnel who bring ethical, environmental, economic, social, and political perspectives aligned with sustainability and human rights. at the same time, the promise of the reforms achieved thus far will not be fully realized without significant and continuing pressure from key investors, consumers, peacebuilders, and human rights activists. the moral authority and influence of the catholic church give it a prominent role in this regard. a critical perspective on normative progress it is important to recognize that most of what has been achieved is in the form of ethical frameworks and voluntary principles, or soft law. very little has been achieved in terms of transforming soft law into hard 224 raymond offenheiser law—i.e., legislation and regulation. the consequence of this is uneven performance from the industry, and likely the need over time to transition some voluntary standards to hard law. industry leaders understand this and are the first movers in adoption and implementation. they would prefer to move quickly on controversial issues and stay ahead of aggressive regulatory campaigns where they feel voluntary principles would both suffice and afford them greater flexibility in their responses. second tier companies, or juniors, have been less responsive than the majors, who are all icmm members. while not always the ideal outcome for mining reform advocates, this proliferation of normative frameworks is generating policy debate within corporate board rooms and trade associations, which represents enormous progress over where things were even twenty years ago. it is useful to critically review progress across different areas that have been sources of conflict. environmental impact environmental impacts are one of the oldest and most common sources of conflict between companies and communities. hence, it is no surprise that environmental impact has been the area on which companies have moved most readily. there are several reasons for this. while environmentalism began earlier in industrialized countries, by the early 1990s environmental movements were growing in countries across the world. the rio climate summit brought together these national movements and enabled them to forge common bonds. governments were soon establishing environmental ministries and requiring environmental impact assessments, and investor groups were taking note and incorporating environmental principles into their assessment criteria. another reason for the readiness of companies to respond to environmental concerns is to avoid expensive legal fights and reputational damage. the famous case of the texaco oil spill in the ecuadorian amazon that dragged on over two decades in us and ecuadorian courts is well-known within the industry. there have been other cases as well, perhaps less publicized, but no less costly. companies have gotten very sophisticated about their environmental management capabilities and have incorporated environmental engineers into their teams to monitor a variety of potential impacts, including chemical pollutants, dust, tailings spills, drainage, water quality, and carbon footprint. in the most sophisticated cases, they are even monitoring regional biodiversity and conservation far beyond their mine sites. given the scientific base for environmental monitoring, it has been relatively easy to fit environmental scientists into their existing staff configurations. the larger challenge has been to get company culture to recognize that there may be situations when environmental conditions are not favorable to extraction due, for example, to regional watersheds or sub-surface water systems. the journey from impunity to consent 225 at the country level, environmental impact assessments are done by the interested company and not by independent bodies. depending on the national context, companies may understate risks knowing that governments will not conduct secondary reviews. in other cases, governments wanting the revenue will simply overlook any perceived risk and then not enforce or penalize companies when there are significant impacts on communities and public health. environmental impacts are often felt from the earliest days of a project and for generations beyond its closure. while progress has been made in the upfront assessment of environmental risk, there is still a great deal to be done by both governments and companies in determining who will pay for downstream impacts over the duration of a project and beyond. the most sophisticated companies are doing lifecycle cost assessments and assuming in perpetuity liability for certain kinds of projects. but many governments and community groups lack the sophistication to do this kind of lifecycle assessment, build appropriate costs and conditions into project approvals and long-term contracts, or pressure companies not acting with good will to do so. companies and governments have made significant progress on environmental concerns, but performance across the industry is still uneven and requires independent monitoring. the industry will improve its performance only in response to citizen action and more effective government regulation and enforcement. advocates interested in integral human development and peacebuilding would be wise to engage with communities, governments, and environmentalists in the early stages of project development in order to address the knowledge asymmetry and bring the best science and negotiating skills to contract negotiations with companies on behalf of affected communities. indigenous rights and other human rights human rights is an area fraught with the potential for violent conflict and requires ongoing oversight and vigilance. unlike with environmental issues, mining companies lack competency in this field and yet recognize it is an area of considerable risk and vulnerability. as illustrated in the chapter on peru by josé bayardo chata pacoricona, indigenous rights violations continue to be one of the principal areas of contention and conflict between companies and communities. many mining projects are located on lands titled under legacy treaty arrangements to indigenous populations. they may be aboriginal peoples in australia, low caste tribal groups in india, or native populations in the depths of the amazon. quite often, these lands have powerful cultural importance. in many cases, governments have ceded indigenous communities the right to surface lands while retaining the rights to the sub-soil. conflicts ensue when the state grants exploitation rights to extractive industries that then must open vast tracts of surface land to access their claims and begin extraction. 226 raymond offenheiser very often, these deals are consummated without any consultation with the indigenous population. once the first access road is opened up, colonists quickly follow, staking claims to indigenous territory. governments simply look the other way and ignore any claims by indigenous communities to protect their territorial rights. in the past, governments would simply force access for the companies with police action. today, this kind of frontal assault on the rights of indigenous people would be actively resisted, leading to violence and likely the killing of indigenous peoples. companies are now taking entirely different approaches. in canada, where the government has strengthened the rights of first nations over their traditional lands, tribes are negotiating equity partnerships over mining properties. in australia, companies are negotiating collaborative agreements with aboriginal owners over access, water management, and, even in some cases, restoration and management of traditional lands. bhp, the largest mining company in the world, recently announced its support for proposals to amend the australian constitution to recognize the territorial rights of traditional owners (australian associated press 2019). while these are welcome steps toward wider recognition of indigenous rights, there are many other places where indigenous rights are still widely abused. governments often find it challenging to balance the collective ownership rights and cultural practices of native peoples with their desire to promote the economic ambitions of a major corporation. in peru, a recent administration sought to pass legislation undermining the concept of collective title. in african nations, collective lands are often under the control of tribal chiefs who will bow to government pressure and make deals with private companies with no consultation with their tribal constituency. a government’s lack of respect for collective ownership either undermines the entire historic titling of lands to native peoples or forces a tribe to parcel out lands to their members so that the individuals might more easily be forced to forfeit ownership or sell to interested commercial entities. while this would all be technically legal, we are likely to continue to see human rights challenges where indigenous collective rights of ownership are at odds with the capitalist impulse to commodify land in service to economic interests. apart from conflicts over indigenous rights, it is not uncommon for local communities to experience violent confrontations with security services contracted by companies to patrol and defend the company’s property boundaries. and it is also not uncommon for those security forces to act with impunity due to the backing of government powers. a representative case comes from a nickel mine outside el estor, izabal, guatemala. the mine was operated by the canadian firm hudbay minerals. the mine’s security forces perpetrated years of violence against the surrounding community, including assassination, rape, forced displacement, and criminalization of protest. in 2009, community leader adolfo ich was killed, setting off a series of court cases in guatemala and the journey from impunity to consent 227 canada (russell 2019). the chief of security who killed ich was finally convicted in january of 2021. when confronted with violations of human rights or financial malfeasance, companies prefer a soft-law solution in the form of voluntary principles, such as the widely-accepted voluntary principles on security and human rights (voluntary principles initiative n.d.). such a solution shields companies from real liability and leaves room for them to manipulate how their performance is gauged. this is not to say that voluntary frameworks like these are of little value. their mere existence forces companies to raise human rights to a top-level priority with their operational managers, challenging them to carefully screen and train all security personnel to ensure compliance with human rights principles. some companies now routinely hire independent human rights lawyers to evaluate their human rights risks and recommend policy and practice reforms. in one notable case, newmont mining walked away from its conga project in cajamarca, peru, a multi-billion-dollar gold and copper mine, after various violent incidents and protracted conflicts with local citizen groups and the regional government. companies like newmont recognize that absent community consent, they risk committing serious human rights violations and then facing lengthy prosecution and costly court rulings. companies have come to realize that they must find new and constructive ways to engage. free, prior, and informed consent and social license have accordingly become mainstreamed parts of most mining companies’ basic operations, and they are perhaps the most powerful normative tools available to defend indigenous land claims and the rights of local communities. free, prior, and informed consent and social license to operate free, prior, and informed consent (fpic) is a response to companies securing mining rights from governments with little or no consultation with local communities. the goal of fpic is to give a community the opportunity to conduct a public referendum on whether it endorses proposed mining in its region. the first public use of this concept was in tambogrande, peru, a small town in a river valley on the peruvian north coast whose economy is entirely dependent on irrigated agriculture. the community was concerned that mining operations would consume too much water upstream and undermine their agriculture downstream. the town organized a referendum to test public sentiment and the vote was 96% against the mine. the peruvian government accepted the community’s decision and manhattan minerals had to abandon the project. this decision had a profound effect on the mining industry. prior to that case, industry presumed that a license to explore was implicitly a license to exploit. after the peru decision, social license was no longer an abstract concept, but something requiring formal 228 raymond offenheiser approval by host communities. this was an unexpected and revolutionary turn of events. there have been few other referenda like the one in tambogrande, but companies are wary and on notice. their response has been varied. some companies, largely majors, have in principle incorporated the idea of fpic in their policies and public statements. others have not gone that far. even in cases when the community right to fpic is acknowledged, the company preference is to interpret the process as free, prior, and informed consultation rather than consent, in keeping with the accepted language of the icmm (n.d.b). that word change can prevent fpic from having real force, keeping communities from having the right to say “no” to a project and making the consultation frequently amount to nothing more than showy formality. the notion that communities can undermine substantial corporate investment through a community-led referendum is still an idea most companies are not ready to fully endorse. companies would prefer to avoid a referendum and do their own assessment of community support before ever putting a shovel in the ground. especially when backed by governments, fpic has clearly given communities a powerful normative tool that companies feel obligated to observe. and while fpic is still often undermined or watered down, it has done enough to make the industry shift to a more robust focus on acquiring genuine social license to operate in local communities. securing social license to operate is one of the most important issues for company executives today. when a company invests large tranches of capital into a particular project, it needs to exploit that mine for as much as thirty years before it can realize a significant profit. companies used to operate with little concern for the impact on the wider community. however, the minahasa raya mine experience in indonesia, in which newmont mining had multiple executives jailed on charges of dumping tailings into a nearby bay, and the cajamarca case of mercury poisoning in a rural peruvian village taught companies that such incidents seriously undermine public trust and can lead to complex problems that stall production for months. in its earliest use, social license posed the simple question to company personnel: what is it going to cost to buy off community dissent so that we can proceed with operations? over time, companies realized that their approach to community consultation was flawed in several respects. the personnel charged with managing community relations were simply not trained or equipped to take on this role. they did not understand complex community dynamics; were impatient and looking for a quick fix; and were poor tacticians and negotiators. they generally favored a very narrow and advantaged segment of the community and excluded other, more critical voices. they tried to offer small contributions for the construction or improvement of a school or clinic that was disproportionate to the scale of need, expectations of communities, and profit realized by the journey from impunity to consent 229 the company. many company leaders recognized that they needed to recruit and develop new personnel with the skills and competencies to work successfully outside the fence. the pursuit of social license, with all the flaws described, remains the strategy of many companies. however, others have gone further and embraced the idea of “shared social value” (porter and kramer 2001). shared social value assumes that the values of the company and society should align. with every new project, a company should appreciate the broad societal value it might bring to the communities directly or indirectly impacted by its operations. discussions on social license should take place throughout the entire lifecycle of a mine. on its face, shared social value is potentially a dramatic leap forward from the highly transactional, myopic, one-and-done, and self-serving notion of social license and the preferred soft consultative version of fpic. in theory, it signals a company’s embrace of a larger regional development vision in its own planning and investments. in practice, this could mean engaging in elaborate multi-stakeholder planning for how mining operations contribute to regional development priorities. it could mean mine lifecycle planning with local and regional communities to reach some consensus on a post-extraction vision for the region and its resources. it could mean sizeable investments in regional infrastructure and services outside the confines of the mine. it could mean joining with local public officials to advocate with the national government for greater transparency about mining revenues and more strategic investment of these revenues in the region. it could mean becoming a true development partner with a region and setting a model for what sustainable mining might look like. shared social value is a new business narrative that takes us beyond fpic and social license to a higher level of awareness within corporate culture of the responsibilities that should come with operating an ethical enterprise. at a time when public trust in institutions, and particularly multinational corporations, is at an all-time low, smart ceos see shared social value as perhaps the only way companies may secure and sustain trust and be part of building a more humane and just form of capitalism. by embracing the shared value narrative, the company still seeks to play a major role in determining how value is defined. while conceding the legitimacy of the ethical question, the company retains control of the value narrative. but this is a pressure point where peacebuilders and activists can push for more substantial change. fiscal justice: transparency and taxation for much of their history, extractive industries have enjoyed the advantage of relative obscurity. they operate in remote locations the public seldom sees. their brands are unknown and their products sold business-to business. it is only within the last twenty-five years that economists have 230 raymond offenheiser blamed extractive industries for the “resource curse,” environmentalists for egregious dumping of waste products, and human rights activists for gross human rights violations. as citizens are demanding much greater transparency and accountability from their leaders and institutions, mining, given its sizable economic footprint, has become a major target of scrutiny. after a 2003 world bank report called for an end to investments in coal and other major extractive projects, uk prime minister tony blair spearheaded the extractive industry transparency initiative (eiti). this initiative required governments and companies to subscribe publicly to its ten principles that included transparent corporate governance, human rights, sustainability, sound risk management, zero harm on worksites, and continuous environmental improvement in order to receive certification and become an eiti member.2 reviews of this initiative are at best mixed, with many countries embedding the principles in policy but failing to monitor implementation. nonetheless, this initiative has offered advocates a forum in which to pressure both governments and companies on failed performance. building on the momentum of the eiti process, one of the most significant accomplishments of the last twenty years was the united states’ passage of section 1504 of the wall street reform act in 2010 (hr 4173, 111th cong. (2010)). this tiny amendment was added to a massive financial reform law, despite strong opposition, especially from oil companies. it requires that all oil, gas, and mining companies publicly traded on the us stock exchange publicly report their financial transactions with any government in the world down to the project level. since 95% of extractive industries globally are traded on the ny stock exchange, it has almost global coverage. soon after, similar pieces of legislation were passed in the uk, the eu, norway, and canada. companies soon realized that it was no longer possible to avoid these reporting requirements and quickly adjusted their public reporting to reflect the full scale of their financial dealings with countries around the world. overnight, billions of dollars of royalties, profit, and miscellaneous financial transactions were made public. it was now possible for citizen groups across the world to actually see the level of revenue being received in both taxes and royalties from large international mining companies and to ask probing questions of their governments about how those funds were being allocated to national budgets, opening up more opportunity to recognize corruption. for companies that paid taxes to their host governments, the disclosures shifted attention to the governments’ misappropriation of funds. bolivia is a case in point. it renegotiated its contracts with many extractive firms and now enjoys massive government surpluses that it can dedicate to its own development. a corollary to transparency is taxation. while transparency legislation in the united states and europe is a considerable advance, it does not necessarily put an end to tax evasion and tax avoidance. companies that the journey from impunity to consent 231 engage in these practices generally under-value and under-report their levels of production and export value in order to decrease tax exposure in the exporting country. then they take the profit from the sales of these commodities and move it through various offshore tax havens until it ends up in the one with the most favorable tax rates, thereby minimizing their tax exposure both in their country of origin and in the country where the company is headquartered. these practices bilk governments and citizens of billions of dollars that could be used for social programs, infrastructure, and productive investments in their home countries. the release of the panama papers in 2016 provided a glimpse of the scale of these practices, but document only one firm in one tax haven (international consortium of investigative journalists n.d.). it was the tip of the iceberg on tax evasion and avoidance. while governments have decried these practices and the oecd has sponsored a major initiative to address them, little has been done to shut down these tax havens. important work is needed at the global level to confront this issue, change the way taxation is included in contract negotiations, reclaim the value of diverted funds, and reinvest them in development initiatives in their countries of origin. fiscal justice offers significant opportunities for building more accountable governance and promoting peace. most peace accords involve the assurance of a more promising future for all parties. that requires financial investment. funds lost to corruption, badly negotiated mining contracts, or tax evasion or avoidance represent an enormous missed opportunity. in many countries, the value of funds lost in this fashion dwarfs what is provided by donor governments in foreign aid or returned by companies in corporate social responsibility projects. capturing this lost value and rechanneling it to development finance in poor communities where it originated could go a long way toward ensuring a more peaceful future. peacebuilding and extractive industries: time for new strategies and tactics the triggers for mining-related conflict are complex, varied, and context specific, yet for the most part they have roots in individuals’ and communities’ sense that they have lost dignity and their ability to thrive economically and socially given the scale of disruption mining can unleash. exercising their voice, they may first resist nonviolently, blocking a road or picketing a company office. if ignored, they may incite violence and wider conflict. companies have historically looked to the state to intervene and neutralize the threat and defend their “right” to exploit, but increasingly today the use of coercive state power is seen within the industry as undermining the long term viability of a project. they are now accountable to both shareholders and a new class of stakeholders who have invested in learning their business, imposing new norms, and demanding higher standards. in response, companies are seeking new ways to engage, gain legitimacy, and build trust. 232 raymond offenheiser one of the places that road has led is the vatican. over the last several years, the vatican has convened some five meetings on mining issues with ceos of some of the world’s largest corporations. the church, through its global reach, has also heard and convened scholars, activists, peacebuilders, and other representatives from communities affected negatively by mining and enabled them to present criticisms, grievances, and general recommendations for improvements. companies have enormous financial, political, and social power because of their sheer size. they have used this power historically to secure rights and legislation that allow them to advance their interests, often at odds with the interests of local communities. levelling the playing field between companies and local communities is a tall order. the church is one of the few institutions in the world that has the power to challenge extractive industries on an equal footing, pose thorny moral and ethical questions, and propose bold reforms in policy, practice, and institutional culture. it has exercised this moral authority on behalf of aggrieved mining communities at local and national levels, often with positive outcomes. while it has begun to engage extractive industries at the global level, it is still finding its voice and role and has not yet proven to be as effective as it could be. in today’s world, with the ever-growing demand for metals, minerals, and energy, it is probably unrealistic to assume that governments are going to forego mining revenue as they build their national economies. outright denial of mining rights is rare. in most countries, a strong case must be made and backed by considerable public pressure to cancel a major project. if we must, therefore, live with some forms of extraction, how might peacebuilders maximize the catholic community’s potential to tame it? traditional grassroots peacebuilding and human rights strategies alone will not be enough. new strategies, tactics, and alliances will be required that build upon the gains in norms and policy achieved over the last three decades. the following are some recommendations. find allies with expertise one of the reasons the church has fallen short of being effective has to do with its lack of sophistication about many of the business, technical, legal, and financial issues specific to mining. many recommendations are in areas in which the industry has already moved ahead and made significant investments in improvement. church representatives are often unaware of many of these advances and may risk appearing uninformed about the strategic debates currently underway within the sector. another reason is that the church has concentrated more on confronting the industry at the mine site level rather than at the corporate or policy level. in reality, many of the problems facing communities can be far more effectively addressed through policy, regulation, and proper government oversight. the goal of the church’s important grassroots work should be to link grievances and the journey from impunity to consent 233 injustices at the community level to patterns of abuse at the national and global level and then turn the observation of these patterns into very specific policy recommendations to the industry at appropriate fora. oxfam’s no dirty gold campaign has highlighted the importance of church leadership in peru and el salvador, and publish what you pay has pointed to the catholic church as a major partner in its efforts to increase transparency (van oranje and parham 2009, 36-37, 91-92). these examples show how dialogue and cooperation between civil society and the church can amplify the work of both for justice and peace in the mining sector. integrate peacebuilding into international development phil vernon’s (2015) report for international alert provides a compelling analysis of how peacebuilding and economic development might benefit from a more integral relationship. peacebuilders are generally seen by the development community as bystanders waiting for a conflict, rather than as partners on a common journey. vernon’s report claims that most conflict originates in some kind of economic challenge to the status quo that spins out of control. therefore, effective development and peacebuilding require a sophisticated appreciation of local political economies, stakeholders, and their interests. vernon argues that peace is best achieved when all parties to a conflict can find common ground and achieve an agreed-upon peace dividend. peacebuilding that occurs in parallel or at odds with development actors is likely to fail or be perceived as marginal. the challenge for all advocates is to be clear about their complementarities in terms of knowledge, experience, competencies, and agendas. in the end, their shared interest is peace. collaboration toward shared goals only empowers them both. embrace sustainability as a peace principle many mining companies have embraced sustainability as a principle driving future performance. they are attuned to the global focus on the sustainable development goals; however, achieving real sustainability is an expensive challenge for mining companies. mining requires major capital investments and access to abundant supplies of water and energy. companies today recognize that in a world concerned with climate change and resource depletion, they must rethink their business models, invest in improved technology for environmental protection and cleanup, and assume greater responsibility for their impact on people and the land. environmental science within the industry has advanced dramatically over the last three decades. peacebuilders would benefit from joining with environmentalists whose knowledge of these advances, and their shortcomings, could give them greater leverage with companies by providing the 234 raymond offenheiser information needed to challenge company practices and governments’ failures to hold companies accountable. such protections for the environment could go a long way toward mitigating or preventing conflict between communities and companies as well as between communities who might otherwise experience rising tensions from resource scarcity. mining will probably never achieve a perfect level of sustainability, but pressuring companies to adopt a shared-value approach and engage communities, governments, and stakeholders more transparently and proactively will push them to innovate and move in new directions. the development partner initiative is an effort launched within the industry to foster precisely this kind of thinking, and peacebuilders should try to embrace and advance such efforts so that they become part of mainstream thinking.3 the logic of sustainability is central to pope francis’s call to action in laudato si’ which challenges individuals, governments, and businesses to work toward the creation of an economic order concerned with stewardship of the earth and dignity and integral human development for all humankind. catholic actors can apply those ideas more effectively if they build off the present but imperfect industry-centered efforts toward sustainability. doing so would also allow them to voice ideas like those from laudato si’ that critique the technocratic paradigm that drives the mining industry and encourage changes and solutions that go beyond just technological innovation, such as supporting communities’ right to say no to mining. broaden the free, prior, and informed consent framework fpic and transparency are perhaps the most powerful tools available to raise ethical questions and drive social change in the mining sector. the fact that icmm has incorporated a free, prior, and informed consultation principle into their policy guidelines is progress, but insufficient progress. in much of the world, fpic is still not a right recognized by governments or taken seriously by industry. communities must be afforded the right to determine if the benefits of a mining project are worth sacrificing the investments their families have made in a region over generations. peacebuilding groups should continue to press governments, investors, and civil society groups to not only support fpic but enhance it. they should support and join efforts to legislate it at the national level and broaden the basis on which communities may assess risk by including not only environmental but other economic, livelihood, and human rights considerations. communities should be given access to a due process review of any proposed project in an appropriate venue. fpic is a normative framework that can rebalance relations in ways that may serve communities and avert unneeded division and conflict, but only if it is more deeply entrenched and more robustly developed and only if consultation becomes consent. the grassroots breadth of church actors combined with the journey from impunity to consent 235 the church’s vertical reach to higher levels of authority, as well as its legitimacy and moral authority, give catholic peacebuilders particularly strong capacity for effecting these sorts of changes if they can marshal it effectively. push for improved transparency the situation is similar with transparency. a source of conflict in many mining regions is under-investment by both the state and private sector in the broader development of the region, creating the perception that the promised benefits of mining are never realized. the transparency reforms that have forced companies to report profits, royalties, and all other payments at the project level are enabling tax authorities to audit accounts more carefully and generate more revenue. they have also enabled citizens to influence legislatures to redirect some portion of previously generated tax revenue back to their region of origin. the peruvian government had for years been holding millions of dollars of such funds in regionally designated accounts in its central bank because they felt regional governments lacked the capacity to manage these large sums. now, as part of a national decentralization process, it has begun releasing those funds to the regions to underwrite a variety of public services and infrastructure projects. and burkina faso has now legislated that one percent of annual revenue from gold mining be reinvested in mining communities. that may seem low, but this is a major source of tax revenue for a poor country, and it’s a start. the precedent matters and allows regional governments to press for disbursements and challenge for increases in the future. this is a space where investments need to be made by governments and companies in building local governing capacity to support local management of such large sums. making the flow of this capital visible enables civil society actors to press for fiscal justice for communities through a proportionate share of revenue in equitable and sustainable development for their regions. but in many cases this information is not put to effective use. if contracts are not made more equitable, and taxes paid and allotted fairly, then any sins revealed by transparency initiatives pass without accountability. leveraging that information to encourage investment planning in the early phase of project development may have the important indirect effect of minimizing future tension and conflict aggravated by economic hardships. while such fiscal policy work may seem tangential to traditional peacebuilding and human rights work, it is necessary to give tools like fpic and transparency real weight. demand hard law when soft law fails while some countries have binding laws on transparency and fpic, for the most part companies are only governed by voluntary compliance frameworks. 236 raymond offenheiser hence, company response has been uneven. for these mechanisms to be as effective as they can be for building peace and justice, they need to be written into legislation and actually enforced. as noted above with regard to fpic, the vertical reach of the catholic community gives it particular capacity for policy advocacy that connects community-level experiences and needs with regulatory and legislative bodies. this is not a domain in which many in the peacebuilding or broader activist community have been active. yet it could be fruitful for such groups to focus some of their energies here in the future. conclusion the mining sector is large and complex, as are the issues that surround it. the sector is changing, albeit under pressure. leading companies are looking for advice and allies to help it change in the right ways. engaging this momentum for change in a productive way is a unique opportunity for catholic peacebuilders. what must be done to use it successfully? to begin, peacebuilders and human rights advocates must begin to think outside their comfort zone and become educated about the sector, its history, culture, operations, financing, politics, and risks. success in driving change will depend in large measure on the ability to be a challenging advocate with a strong moral narrative, an evidence-based critique, and technically and financially sophisticated propositions for reform. it will also require finding allies within the industry to begin and sustain dialogue, even as strong, credible, yet constructive critics. the moral authority of the church represents a very significant brand and reputational risk to mining firms. through its global presence, the catholic church is very often on the frontlines in mining conflicts. industry leaders recognize the influence of the church on political leaders across the world, which explains why they have attended five meetings at the vatican. going forward, the church has to present a much more unified and effective front to industry. it must find ways to transform the multiple grievances it hears from its grassroots constituents into a coherent agenda of proposals to present to industry leaders. it must invest in building an internal structure that allows it to operate coherently on the local, national, and global levels. it must assemble a community of diverse advisors with deep understanding of the financial, technical, and operational aspects of the industry to assist in formulating its proposals and representing its views in formal sessions. it must develop an agenda of issues that are priorities for reform at the local, national, and industry levels and make common cause with the leading international ngos and civil society organizations that have a long track record of commitment and achievement in this sector. it must give serious consideration to how it might use its powerful moral and ethical voice in support of the cutting-edge reform agendas currently on the table that hold the most promise of success. its secular partners the journey from impunity to consent 237 can provide excellent counsel on the opportunities, complexities, and politics surrounding each of these issues. the good news is that the mining industry knows that it has to do better. its past history of exploitation and abuse is a legacy liability in the twenty-first century. it must reinvent itself in order to survive operationally and financially. it is beginning to invest in research and development of new technologies. the more enlightened firms have embraced principles of sustainability, shared value, stakeholder consultation, and human rights and are trying to figure out how to include these ideas in their multi-year strategic and operational plans. others are embracing a mindset shift toward becoming fully engaged development partners—moving from thinking narrowly inside the fence to thinking broadly outside the fence. these are trends that, if harnessed, bode well for change that can benefit millions of people in countries in which mining is the dominant industry. the church and its field-based peacebuilders hold the potential to bring a moral framework to these industry reflections that could enrich the lives of millions, reduce corruption and conflict, and advance sustainability across the globe. notes 1 majors include such companies as anglo american, anglogold ashanti, glencore, newont, rio tinto, valle, bhp, et al. 2 see https://eiti.org. 3 see http://www.dpimining.org. references australian associated press. 2019. “bhp and rio tinto join push for indigenous voice to parliament.” the guardian, january 30, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-news/2019/jan/31/bhp-and-rio-tinto-to-join-push-for-indigenous-voice-to parliament. international consortium of investigative journalists. n.d. “the panama papers: exposing the rogue offshore finance industry.” accessed march 22, 2021. https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers. international council of mining and metals. n.d.a. “indigenous people and mining.” accessed march 22, 2021. http://www.icmm.com/en-gb/members/ member-requirements/position-statements/indigenous-peoples. international council of mining and metals. n.d.b. “mining principles.” accessed march 22, 2021. https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/members/member-requirements/ mining-principles. porter, michael, and mark r. kramer. 2001. “creating shared value.” harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value. russell, grahame. 2019. “es posible alcanzar la justicia en canadá o en guatemala por la represión vinculada a la minería de hudbay minerals/cgn?” rights action. july 23, 2019. https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/es-posible-alcanzar-la justicia-en-canad-o-en-guatemala-por-la-represin-vinculada-a-la-minera-de hudbay-mineralscgn. 238 raymond offenheiser https://eiti.org http://www.dpimining.org https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com https://www.icij.org http://www.icmm.com http://www.icmm.com https://www.icmm.com https://www.icmm.com https://hbr.org https://mailchi.mp https://mailchi.mp https://mailchi.mp us geological survey. n.d. national minerals information center. minerals yearbook: volume i —metals and minerals. accessed march 22, 2021. https:// www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/minerals-yearbook-metals-and-minerals. van oranje, mabel, and henry parham. 2009. publishing what we learned: an assessment of the publish what you pay coalition. london: publish what you pay. https://eiti.org/files/documents/publishing%20what%20we%20learned.pdf. vernon, phil. 2015. peace through prosperity: integrating peacebuiding into economic development. london: international alert. https://www.international alert.org/publications/peace-through-prosperity. world bank. 2003. striking a better balance: volume 1. the world bank group and extractive industries. washington, dc: world bank. https://openknowledge. worldbank.org/handle/10986/17705. world economic forum and global agenda council on the future of mining and metals. 2015. “voluntary responsible mining initiatives: a review.” white paper. world economic forum and resolve solutions network. http://www3. weforum.org/docs/voluntary_responsible_mining_initiatives_2016.pdf. the journey from impunity to consent 239 https://www.usgs.gov https://www.usgs.gov https://eiti.org https://www.international-alert.org https://www.international-alert.org https://openknowledge.worldbank.org https://openknowledge.worldbank.org http://www3.weforum.org http://www3.weforum.org 16 hardrock mining, climate change, and conflict: reflections through the lens of catholic social thought william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio hardrock mining and climate change metals such as copper, gold, lead, nickel, silver, and zinc are products of “hardrock mining,” which is often overlooked in discussions of climate change. as benjamin auciello (2019, 6) points out, analyses and policies that address extractive industries and climate change tend to focus on fossil fuels, rarely foregrounding metal and mineral mining. while hardrock mining may not extract products that emit greenhouse gases, it has important interfaces with climate change, in how it relates to climate vulnerability, and in how it is central to low-carbon growth. this chapter considers the relevance of these interfaces for conflict and peace and analyzes them through the lens of catholic social thought and praxis. this includes climate injustice and disparate climate impacts between the global north and global south; “extractivism” and harmful senses of development; violence against human rights and environmental defenders; and unique questions of uranium mining and the specter of nuclear arms. metals mining and climate vulnerability mining is an activity with substantial environmental consequences, such as siltation, contamination, and depletion of water, air pollution, and deforestation (see holden and jacobson 2012, 59–76). most are exacerbated by climate change. one of the most serious is acid mine drainage. rocks containing desirable minerals are often found in sulfide ore deposits; when these are exposed to water and oxygen, they release sulfuric acid. as this continues, heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, and mercury can be mobilized. the principal method of managing acid mine drainage is to place mining wastes (or “tailings”) under water behind a tailings dam in an anaerobic environment. for this to be effective water must always be over the material; should a tailings dam fail, contaminants would be released. since the geochemical processes of acid mine drainage operate on a geologic time doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-16 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-16 scale, these dams require perpetual attention. and over time, climate change will present more and more problems, such as by bringing more heat waves, droughts, and wildfires.1 there will also be stronger tropical cyclones and heavier rainfall increasing the risk of dam failures (national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine, 2016). mining companies will be increasingly frustrated in searching for technological solutions to these and other environmental risks from climate change. in planning mines and waste storage, mining engineers will find it more and more difficult to rely upon stationarity, the idea that precipitation levels can be measured within upper and lower limits determined by climatic history. with climate change, stationarity has become unreliable as a principle of water management (milly et al. 2008). mine waste storage facilities must now be constructed to accommodate worst-case scenarios, not what the climatic records indicate as the highest rainfall levels likely to occur; given the uncertainty surrounding the rapidity of climate change, this determination will be difficult (holden 2015, 11). metals mining and low carbon growth the prevention of catastrophic climate change requires a transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. but dozens of mined metals are employed in renewable technologies (dominish, florin, and teske 2019, 16). for example, aluminum and copper are required for wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and rechargeable car batteries; silver, selenium, and tellurium for photovoltaic panels; and cobalt, lithium, and nickel for rechargeable car batteries. auciello (2019, 13) points out: “mining companies stand to benefit by positioning themselves as key actors in the transition. they are taking advantage of the projected increase in critical metals to greenwash and justify new operations, regardless of whether their output will be used in renewable energy technologies or not.” another mineral which might see increased demand as the world makes a transition away from fossil fuels is uranium, a fuel for nuclear power plants. the advantage of nuclear energy lies in the tremendous amount of energy generated by a relatively small quantity of uranium. uranium has a high energy density per unit of fuel and one gram can produce as much energy as three tons of coal (percebois 2003, 102). ecologist james lovelock has declared nuclear energy the only immediately available energy source not causing global warming (marshall 2005, 1169). a 676-megawatt canadian deuterium uranium reactor will reduce carbon dioxide (co2) emissions by about 1.2 million tons per year if it displaces a coal powered plant (morrison 2001, 46). since france produces approximately 80% of its electricity from nuclear power, it has the lowest co2 per unit of gross domestic product of any country in the world. if the world’s co2 emissions were as low as france’s, they would be reduced by half (richter 2006, 15). indeed, the mining, climate change, and conflict 241 construction of 3,000 to 3,200 new nuclear power plants worldwide by 2050 could stabilize co2 concentrations at twice pre-industrial levels, notwithstanding a 50% increase in world population and a 50% increase in per capita energy consumption (macfarlane 2003). when germany retired all its nuclear power plants after the 2011 accident at fukushima, it saw a significant and rapid spike in co2 emissions. by displacing fossil fuels, nuclear power has potential to slow down, or possibly even avert, catastrophic climate change. there are risks in nuclear power, as demonstrated by the accidents at fukushima and at chernobyl in 1986. at chernobyl, the official death toll was 47, although some estimates go as high as 4,000 when considering radiation effects. at fukushima not one person died and, in the words of david wallace-wells (2019, 183), “had none of the 100,000 living in the evacuation zone ever left, perhaps a few hundred might have ultimately died of cancers related to the radiation.” but for comparison’s sake, it is estimated that 10,000 people die every day from the particulate matter emitted by burning carbon (183). at the very least, this comparison calls into question whether the risk of such events is a worthwhile tradeoff for lowered carbon emission. unfortunately, one of the largest disadvantages of nuclear energy is the environmental impact of uranium mining. this is where nuclear energy can have some of its most serious environmental effects. uranium mining causes the same environmental problems as other types of hardrock mining, but also involves radioactivity. uranium mining can release radionuclides into the atmosphere through the crushing and grinding of ore, from fugitive dust emissions, and from the release of radon gases (thomas and gates 1999, 527). moreover, uranium radioactivity and acid mine drainage are not problems that exist simultaneously but independently of each other; rather, they have a perverse synergy in that acid mine drainage leads to the further dissolution of radionuclides, enhancing the radioactivity given off by the uranium (fernandes et al. 1998; ripley et al. 1996, 201). according to saleem ali (2003, 109), “in terms of both short-term and long-term environmental impact, uranium mining is by far the most environmentally problematic of any mining activity—owing to the simple fact that radioactivity of the ore presents an intangible that cannot be chemically mitigated.” hardrock mining, climate change, and challenges to peace mining is a leading cause of socio-environmental conflict (auciello 2019, 17). as of august 21, 2019, the environmental justice atlas documented 2,865 cases of socio-environmental conflict, with 587 related to mining; of these, 260 are related to the extraction or processing of metals. that is a lower number than combined fossil fuel-related conflicts (oil, 279; coal, 212; gas, 153), but metals-mining conflicts could well overtake fossil fuel-related 242 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio conflicts if the extractive frontier expands towards the metals necessary for renewable energy (environmental justice atlas n.d.). and though it does not register as socio-environmental conflict, the risk of nuclear arms that is presented by uranium mining is another important challenge for peace. the following considers some of the specific factors involved in these situations and responds to them with insights from catholic social thought and praxis. pope francis is the first pope from the global south, and his affection for the environment became apparent when laudato si’ was released. its predominant theme is “integral ecology” and how this responds to the dangers and injustices created by environmental degradation, including the seriousness of climate change. francis (2015, §26) affirms the pursuit of renewable energy: “there is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.” although francis does not address using nuclear energy as a method of providing low-carbon electricity, he does intimate that the use of less harmful alternatives or other short-term solutions, which could include nuclear energy, may be necessary (§165). but throughout, francis’s teaching on the environment demonstrates constant awareness of the possible injustice created as those in the global south bear the brunt of the impact of worsening climate change and of the shortcomings of the technocratic solution models attached to mining and energy. north-south climate injustice and the need for subsidiarity and solidarity relying on hardrock minerals to alleviate climate change’s effects is highly problematic as it perpetuates an economic and cultural paradigm inseparable from injustice, conflict, and environmental degradation. it is also a paradigm that maintains colonial disparities between the global north and the global south, as much of the mining of those minerals occurs in the latter while the consumption of them will occur in the former. this can be approached through the perspective of climate injustice, how some people enjoy the benefits of energy use and other emissions-generating activities, while others disproportionately suffer the burdens of climate change (bell 2013, 190). specifically, this means that locations in the global south where the minerals necessary for a transition to a low-carbon future are found bear an unjust and unequal amount of their cost (auciello 2019, 7). the democratic republic of the congo (drc) exemplifies these dynamics. as outlined in the chapter by rigobert minani, privatization of the mining industry in the drc amplified economic and political insecurity and significantly exacerbated conflict. these problems were particularly concentrated in the eastern part of the country, where most of the country’s mining, climate change, and conflict 243 cobalt reserves are located and where mining companies engaged with and enriched rebel groups that had gained more influence in the region than the national government for a period beginning in the late 1990s. cobalt is essential for renewable energy, and as demand for it has rapidly increased, tremendous human and environmental costs have been imposed on the people of the drc (noriyoshi 2020). this mining supports solutions for climate change in the global north, but does so while passing a great burden to the global south, disempowering already vulnerable populations and worsening violent conflict. pope francis’s teaching has shown great concern for this kind of disparity. querida amazonia, francis’s apostolic exhortation following the 2019 synod on the amazon, applies laudato si’s ecological framework to the environmental justice challenges of the region. the document predominantly focuses on indigenous peoples—both their suffering and victimization, and the inherent value of their heritage, which can be a source of wisdom for those in the throes of globalized capitalism and neoliberal ideas of development. and it does so while placing that plight under the rubric of colonialism, as well as connecting it to global environmental problems (francis 2020, §14, 48). francis observes that the “techno-economic” power structures rooted in the global north are the primary drivers of extractive and other projects endangering the amazon and are a threat to “overwhelm not only our politics, but also freedom and justice” (§52). part of his solution, rooted in the principle of subsidiarity, is to empower national leaders to protect ecologically sensitive areas against “huge global economic interests” that would otherwise “internationalize” the amazon (§50). he supports free, prior, and informed consent, the right of communities to say no to projects and propose development alternatives, and the need for legal frameworks to protect and enforce such rights (§51–52). but more deeply, he appeals to the wisdom of indigenous cultural heritage and local systems of knowledge as sources for helping to make better decisions about how land is developed and used. such sources can help awaken a sense of ecological spirituality, engendering greater ecological care (§42). in his chapter, vincent miller outlined a way for the catholic church to use its ecclesial networks to help develop solidarity between the global north and supply chain origin points in the global south. if querida amazonia’s “ecclesial dream” of a church that learns from indigenous peoples in the amazon can be actualized (§28–40), then the networks of solidarity described by miller could also serve as channels for developing greater care for ecologically vital but threatened areas like the rainforests of the amazon and the congo basin. forming greater solidarity in this way will not solve climate justice, but it can be one humble step along the way. it could create a greater sense of responsibility among those in the global north for environmental damage impacting everyone, but impacting the global south faster and more acutely. 244 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio extractivism and integral human development as a method of forestalling climate change, focusing on the extraction of hardrock minerals in contradistinction to continued extraction of fossil fuels exemplifies the dominance of a paradigm referred to as extractivism. naomi klein (2014, 169) describes it as: …a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth, one purely of taking. it is the opposite of stewardship, which involves taking but also taking care that regeneration and future life continue. extractivism is the mentality of the mountaintop remover and the old growth clear-cutter. it is the reduction of life into objects for the use of others, giving them no integrity or value of their own—turning living complex ecosystems into ‘natural resources.’ extractivism is based on continuously removing more, and more, and more from the earth. as climate change poses an existential threat to humanity, we make the transition from extracting fossil fuels to extracting hardrock minerals to advance renewable energy technologies, but we never stop extracting. the places where the minerals are found become what auciello (2019, 7) calls “new zones of sacrifice” while “the extractivist model expands, now masked behind the veil of meeting the material needs of the transition.” a substantial impetus to extractivism has been the ascendency of neoliberalism, an aggressive, no-holds-barred, version of capitalism described by gerardo rénique (2006, 37), writing in a latin american context, as capitalismo salvaje (savage capitalism). it has been instrumental in empowering the multinational corporations running major mining operations and in enabling the system allowing mined goods to flow through the global supply chain and acquire separation from the harms done at local mining sites (see princen 2002). the world bank has encouraged the adoption of neoliberal policies and it has also been an impetus to the promotion of mining in the global south (holden and jacobson 2012, 41). two influential world bank publications in the early 1990s made this pattern apparent. the strategy for african mining (1992) argued against public ownership of mining companies in developing countries and emphasized mining projects aimed primarily at production for export. two years later, the principal mining officer of the world bank published “strategies to attract new investment for african mining,” strongman 1994, which made it clear that the world bank’s emphasis was on opening up the mining sector in africa to foreign direct investment by multinational mining companies (strongman 1994). although these reports were focused on africa, they had an impact on mining codes across the entire global south. for example, the philippine mining act of 1995 contained incentives to encourage mining such as a four-year income tax holiday, tax and duty-free capital equipment imports, mining, climate change, and conflict 245 value-added tax exemptions, income tax deductions for losses, and accelerated depreciation (holden and jacobson 2012, 41). it also guaranteed the right of repatriation of the entire profits of the investment and guaranteed no mining project would ever be expropriated. mining codes like this justify these incentives based on the premise that economic activity generated will, somehow, trickle down to the poor. this is a highly problematic strategy. their tax incentives produce minimal revenue for their host country (188), modern capital-intensive methods of mining produce minimal employment (187), and the environmental effects of mining degrade natural resources relied upon by the rural poor and thrust them from subsistence into destitution (205). what the extractivist paradigm never contemplates is a cessation of extraction. the idea of removing less from the earth and getting more out of what has already been extracted—or changing consumption patterns—is never considered. it is in this context that recycling becomes crucial. “the billions of tons of material already mined and circulating in cities and factories or lying in landfills,” wrote payal sampat (2003, 111), “can serve the same functions as underground ore, with far fewer ecological costs.” many of the metals required for renewable energy are highly recyclable (dominish, florin, and teske 2019, 16). instead of mining virgin ore deposits, with all the environmental effects involved, these metals could be acquired through recycling, which is also more labor-intensive than mining and thus creates more jobs (auciello 2019, 22). uranium can also be recycled. when spent nuclear fuel is removed from a nuclear reactor it still has some fissionable material left and can be subjected to a process separating out reusable uranium and plutonium from non-recoverable waste products. fuel recycling reduces the volume of final waste by a factor of five, but the cost of a kilogram of reprocessed fuel is approximately nineteen times more than the cost of a kilogram of natural uranium (percebois 2003, 102). other types of recycling are similarly expensive. none of these outcomes aligns with neoliberal extractivism or the consumption habits of those in the global north. the argument about whether to use fossil fuels or mining-dependent renewable energy technologies may be missing a bigger point: on a planet with finite natural resources, is adherence to an economic paradigm requiring continuous growth acceptable? the question is especially urgent given how the extractivist model driving the production of these resources also drives continued poverty, environmental vulnerability, and violent conflict in the global south. to pope francis (2015, §109), the neoliberal model is problematic because “by itself, the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.” modern neoliberal capitalism is “the mindset of those who say: let us allow the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy and consider their impact on society and nature as collateral damage” (§123). this is unacceptable because “the environment is one of 246 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio those goods that cannot be adequately safeguarded or promoted by market forces” (§190). francis’s ideas echo those found in a letter from the latin american provincials of the society of jesus (1997, 48) articulating their opposition to this economic paradigm: “neoliberalism is a radical conception of capitalism that tends to absolutize the market and transform it into the means, the method, and the end of all intelligent and rational behavior.” a hallmark of contemporary catholic social teaching is that technocratic and market approaches cannot meet requirements for human flourishing. these approaches do not adequately factor in either the value of the environment as a good in itself or the conflicts associated with some economic practices. given that conflict is related to mining in the global south, and how conflict is compounded by effects of climate change, integral human development in the mining sector is closely related to peacebuilding. a pastoral letter from the latin american episcopal council celam (consejo episcopal latinoamericano) 2018 ties these points together well. the letter criticizes the extractivist model driving mining development for its “utilitarian mindset... in service to the idolatry of capital,” and outlines this model’s impacts on the environment, continued poverty, and socio-environmental conflicts (celam 2018, §28–46). as a remedy, the letter advocates for a “radical change in the understanding and practice of the economy” and a shift to new models of development in line with integral human development (§103–8). clemens sedmak’s essay in this book offers further analysis of mining and integral human development through the lens of laudato si’. according to sedmak, the most important contribution that the ethics of integral human development could make in terms of the mining industry is a rejection of maximization of profits as an ultimate goal. he builds this claim from laudato si’s observation that profit is illegitimate when it does not advance the integral development of the human person or observe the preferential option for the poor, and that care for creation is inseparable from both of those goals. integral human development, according to sedmak, introduces a mandate for restraint that is absent from the neoliberal model of unlimited growth and which demands that the human flourishing of the communities impacted by mining be given priority over profit maximization. this would include ecological protection ensuring communities’ lands are not unjustly despoiled. this would also curb global climate change and help prevent further environmental degradation. picking up the theme of catholic social teaching demanding multifaceted, integral approaches to problems, such as with the model of integral human development, gerard powers (2017, 8) suggests the need to form a model of integral peacebuilding. climate change drives mining; mining impacts conflict vulnerability, damages fragile ecologies on which communities depend, and introduces potentially harmful economic development strategies; and these instabilities make those communities more vulnerable to climate change effects, which in turn exacerbates conflict and creates mining, climate change, and conflict 247 potentially new sources for it. this chain indeed demands that peacebuilders practice integral approaches challenging the extractivist paradigm, and that are sensitive to climate change and married to development efforts in line with integral human development. violence against environmental defenders in 2007, this chapter’s first author was preparing to interview bishop gabriel penate, bishop of the apostolic vicariate of izabal, in puerto barrios, guatemala, about the local activities of a canadian mining company. as the interview was starting, the canadian ambassador to guatemala telephoned bishop penate and informed him there were canadian anti-mining activists in guatemala and that he should not talk to them (holden and jacobson 2012, 50). this incident exemplifies how those with interests in mining operations are willing to employ intimidation and pressure against anyone resisting their agenda. such intimidation frequently transitions to direct violence. one of the most disturbing aspects of the socio-environmental conflicts associated with hardrock mining are assassinations and other forms of violence against human rights and environmental activists. in 2019, according to global witness (2020, 6), 50 of 212 murdered land and environmental defenders were opposing mining, the deadliest sector. examples of this sort of violence include a 2018 incident in malawi where thirteen people were killed by the police while protesting air and water pollution from a copper smelting plant (global witness 2019, 34). and in colombia between 2015 and 2019, 44% of attacks against activists and land defenders were connected to five extractive companies (business and human rights resource center 2020, 1). according to victoria tauli-corpus, the united nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, killings of environmental activists worsen the problem of climate change: this violence is a human rights crisis, but it is also a threat to everyone who depends on a stable climate. land and environmental defenders are among the best stewards of the world’s great forests and biodiversity, and when their rights are trampled, it is often to make way for environmentally destructive logging, mining, or plantations. protecting indigenous land rights defenders is therefore not only a human rights imperative—but also urgent to mitigating the climate crisis. (quoted in global witness 2019, 26) querida amazonia (francis 2020, §14) is direct on this issue, listing criminalization of protest and killings of people who oppose projects among the crimes committed by businesses in the amazon. and it is more common to see the issue taken up by local catholic bodies and 248 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio on-the-ground actors. josé bayardo chata pacoricona’s chapter describes how a significant part of derechos humanos y medio ambiente–puno’s legal defense work involves laws effectively criminalizing human rights and environmental protesters, and justifying violence against them. the catholic church in colombia has lobbied the government to better defend social leaders and environmental protestors facing violence, threats, and displacement from mining operations (fraser 2020). the pan-amazonian ecclesial network (2019) issued a statement urging national leaders and the international community to protect and defend peasants, indigenous peoples, and others facing violence and threats while trying to defend the earth and their communities. and in may 2020, cinep/ppp, a jesuit-run organization in bogotá, held a virtual event to call attention to the way the covid-19 pandemic was increasing the vulnerability of social leaders and bringing about an increase in violence against them.2 these examples show how regional, national, and local catholic groups actively denounce and act against violence against those trying to defend their communities and ecologies against damaging activities like mining. they do so as an act of peacebuilding, and their praxis and witness provide vital contributions to the corpus of catholic social tradition and join the global work of resisting climate change in real and substantive ways. uranium mining, nuclear arms, and global insecurity as noted above, uranium mining may have the highest environmental cost of any form of mining because radioactivity cannot be mitigated as can some other mining byproducts. though radioactivity is only one factor among many, the slow violence done to indigenous peoples in the american west by uranium mining testifies to this (see fegadel 2020). but another issue is the specter of nuclear arms. william perry, former u.s. secretary of defense, contends that the threat of nuclear war is now the greatest it has been since the cold war (haberman 2018). while most uranium is used for peaceful purposes, and despite major producers like australia and canada having strict measures to control uranium they sell, the risk of materials being channeled to weapons development is ever-present. security of nuclear power facilities is a key concern. reliance on nuclear energy to forestall climate change could increase the number of nuclear plants in countries without strong regulatory or security infrastructures to control weapons-grade materials at those plants. vulnerability to cyberattacks, sabotage, or theft also remains significant in several nations already having nuclear capability (nti 2020, n.p.). unlike many materials needed for clean energy technology, uranium is not predominantly mined in the global south. still, some of these countries, like gabon or niger, have been caught in the fray of the nuclear arms race. for example, after years under colonial rule and feeding into the nuclear ambitions of colonial powers, especially france, independent niger asserted mining, climate change, and conflict 249 its independence by dealing with business partners such as muammar gaddafi, who became a broker to others (george 2019, 198). furthermore, low market prices for uranium have prevented niger from realizing significant economic benefits, leaving the country with a legacy of instability, fueling ongoing internal conflict, such as revolts by tuareg people in northern niger (199–201). the catholic record on nuclear weapons is well-established. since pacem in terris (john xxiii 1963) the catholic church has been a leading voice on the morality of nuclear arms. the specifics of the church’s teaching have evolved over the decades, but disarmament has always remained the ultimate goal (see powers 2015). pope francis (2019) took the unprecedented step of calling even the possession of nuclear weapons immoral. while the church’s teaching on disarmament is clear, uranium mining as an alternative to fossil fuels is more complicated. and catholic voices have not always been strong about connecting local concerns with uranium mining, like effects of radioactivity on miners, with broader peace and security concerns like nuclear proliferation. one recent analysis by a group of catholic ethicists does demonstrate an integrated perspective about climate change, nuclear energy, uranium mining, and weapons proliferation. it concluded that nuclear power is unsuitable as a primary strategy for limiting climate change because of the time it would take to expand nuclear energy capacity and the diversion of resources from developing renewable energy (biviano et al. 2016, 21–22). the same analysis also raised cautions about the byproducts of nuclear energy, specifically health effects from radioactivity, safety concerns about reactor malfunctions, and potential arms proliferation (19–20). this position helps establish a baseline of skepticism in catholic thinking about nuclear energy. and that skepticism can be seen in practice, if not necessarily with the full range of integrated perspective. for example, as noted above, the navajo people of the southwestern united states have suffered a decades-long legacy of environmental, cultural, and social violence in connection to uranium mining. the us catholic community in new mexico, the center of many of these issues, has been active in resisting ongoing uranium mining and seeking justice for past harms. over twenty years ago, the state’s catholic bishops issued a pastoral statement on global climate change, energy, and the unique related challenges for their state (roman catholic bishops of new mexico 1998). they argued that the climate crisis should not be compounded by mining projects worsening local ecological vulnerabilities or disproportionately affecting marginalized peoples. in 2015, the office of peace, justice, and creation stewardship of the diocese of gallup offered testimony at a public hearing about a permit to resume uranium mining at mount taylor. the testimony was offered on behalf of “concerned people of faith in catholic communities in cibola county... who continue to suffer adverse health and environmental impacts from past 250 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio decades of uranium mining, yet to be satisfactorily remediated to bring an end to continuing contamination of life-sustaining water, land and air in the mount taylor region” (cecchini 2015). in both cases there is a clear focus on local impacts, and from the bishops, concern about the broader issue of climate change; however, neither statement took the step of also connecting those concerns to ethical questions about nuclear proliferation. catholic leaders also intervened on uranium mining in malawi beginning in 2007. paladin energy, an australian company, was in the process of opening the kayelekera uranium mine for production, when the catholic commission for justice and peace of the episcopal conference of malawi (ccjp) joined a group of ngos filing an injunction alleging paladin’s environmental impact assessment failed to account for some of the unique hazards of uranium mining (cathnews.com 2007). the mine opened in 2009 and went into a care and maintenance phase in 2014.3 in the year before it closed, norwegian church aid and catholic commission for justice and peace malawi (2013, 10, 28–30, 31–32) published a joint report focused particularly on economic issues with the kayelekera project, and at several points it brought up the problem of displaced persons, repeatedly highlighting inadequate resettlement processes, losses of livelihoods, and community disruption as some of the chief problems of the country’s mining sector. in a separate report, catholic commission for justice and peace malawi (2014) compared mining displacement in malawi with other countries in southern africa. like the 2013 report, this report developed legislation and policy recommendations, but did so specifically with regard to internal displacement caused by mining and expanded to consider environmental as well as social and economic issues. in recent years, such factors have substantially increased the potential for violent conflict in malawi (human rights watch 2016; kishindo and mvula 2017). yet as in new mexico, while catholic leaders in malawi dealt with important local and national issues, they did not bridge those issues with the problem of nuclear arms uniquely connected to uranium mining. these two cases demonstrate how uranium mining, like nearly all hardrock mining, has had great difficulty meeting the standards of sustainability and justice required by catholic social teaching. but they also show inconsistency in catholic voices about connecting those critiques to the extra worry of nuclear weapons that gives questions about uranium mining distinct urgency. nevertheless, even if it has not been consistently expressed, the framework of catholic social tradition does offer a structure for integrating peace, sustainability, and justice in the analysis of uranium mining. conclusion the hydrometeorological hazards posed by climate change pose a substantial threat to hardrock mines, and concerns about climate change may mining, climate change, and conflict 251 lead to an increase in metals mining because it is critical for clean energy. these realties have important implications for climate change, justice, and peace: disparate impacts on the global south compared to the global north; the maintenance of a neoliberal extractivist paradigm perpetuating injustices and yielding inadequate models of development; rises in violence against activists defending human rights and the environment; and questions about uranium mining, which introduces unique environmental hazards and risks contributing to nuclear proliferation. catholic social thought and the theory and praxis of peacebuilding offer responses to these issues. they speak loudly and clearly to the need for climate justice and greater solidarity with vulnerable peoples suffering violent conflict exacerbated by mining. catholic social thought and peacebuilding also stringently interrogate the extractivist model and offer an alternate vision of integral human development. catholic leaders and organizations actively engage the problem of violence against human rights and environmental defenders and take action to alleviate it. and lastly, the catholic church is a strong advocate for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. it is also a source of vigorous action at local and regional levels defending communities from the effects of uranium mining, though catholic actors could do more to connect that advocacy and action to issues of nuclear weapons. hardrock mining is very much at the center of climate change and conflict discussions, and catholic teaching and peacebuilding can make important contributions to the conversation. notes 1 a recent example is the carr wildfire in california in july 2018, which nearly destroyed a water treatment facility built to mitigate acid drainage from the iron mountain mine (closed in 1963). 2 https://www.cinep.org.co/home2/component/k2/789-lideres-sociales-blanco-de violencia-en-cuarentena.html. 3 when the mine was closed in 2014, the retrenchment of workers occurred with repressive force from armed security and left the mine without capacity to begin rehabilitation, monitor and mitigate radiation, or deal with a near-overflowing tailings dam (see nyirenda, 2014). references ali, saleem h. 2003. mining, the environment, and indigenous development conflicts. tucson, az: 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for african mining. world bank technical paper number 181, africa technical department series. washington, dc: world bank. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/722101468204567891/pdf/ multi-page.pdf. 256 william n. holden & caesar a. montevecchio http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.99107527 https://documents1.worldbank.org https://documents1.worldbank.org concluding reflections laurie johnston god could be considered the first miner. in genesis, god draws dirt out of the earth, shapes it, and transforms it into human persons. created in the image of god, we are invited to share in that creative work, and so we too turn the earth for the raw materials it requires. it is impossible to conceive of the human vocation on earth without mining, for “everything that comes from man throughout the whole process of economic production … presupposes these riches and resources of the visible world, riches and resources that man finds and does not create” (john paul ii 1981, §12). the precious minerals that we find in the earth are part of god’s generosity and the goodness of creation, as cardinal turkson points out in the first chapter of this volume. yet, like all of creation, they are in “bondage to decay” as a result of sin (rom. 8:20–21). as the chapters throughout this volume reveal, mining projects have often revealed the extent of human sin, violence, and injustice. mining presents a serious challenge to christians’ witness to god’s redemption of all creation and our vocation to become artisans of an ecological just peace. examining the roots of a complex problem the connection between violent conflict and mining has complex causes, contours, and possible solutions. as the case studies from section 1 reveal, there are many sites of extraction where the “cry of the poor” and the “cry of the earth” ring out in unison. querida amazonia summarizes: the businesses, national or international, which harm the amazon and fail to respect the right of the original peoples to the land and its boundaries, and to self-determination and prior consent, should be called for what they are: injustice and crime. when certain businesses out for quick profit appropriate lands and end up privatizing even potable water, or when local authorities give free access to the timber companies, mining or oil projects, and other businesses that raze the forests and pollute the environment, economic relationships are unduly altered and become an instrument of death. they frequently resort to doi: 10.4324/9781003094272-102 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003094272-102 utterly unethical means such as penalizing protests and even taking the lives of indigenous peoples who oppose projects, intentionally setting forest fires, and suborning politicians and the indigenous people themselves. all this accompanied by grave violations of human rights and new forms of slavery affecting women in particular… (francis 2020, §14) while this refers specifically to the amazon, mining and conflict are often “locked in an escalating spiral,” as karl gaspar puts it. similar attitudes, theologies, and value systems seem to underly both violence against the earth and violence against people, shaping the social sin of “extractivism”: extractivism is a short-sighted model of development seen around the world that exploits natural resources on a massive scale, creating significant economic profits for the powerful few in the short term, but too often resulting in minimal benefits for the communities where these resources are found. (inter-religious working group on extractivism 2019) when the profit motive is supreme, it is easy to overlook the fact that resources are limited and will eventually be exhausted. holden and montevecchio write, “what the extractivist paradigm never contemplates is a cessation of extraction; the ideas of removing less from the earth … or else changing consumption patterns altogether are never considered.” extractivism is a corollary to what pope francis has called “throwaway culture.” the term powerfully expresses the interconnected evils evident in the world today, reflected in human attitudes and behavior but also in economic and political structures. like throwaway culture, extractivism is rooted in a disavowal of connectedness. it seeks only how to use resources, and often other people, whether through slavery, colonial domination, or other forms of dehumanization. for centuries, extraction has been a central motivation for colonial and imperial expansion and has been associated with many forms of violence, particularly against the bodies of women and indigenous peoples. thus, the problems that are described in this volume are neither new nor particularly surprising. mining plays an enormous role in human flourishing today, too. as william george (2019, x) has said, “everything begins with mining.” virtually anything we touch comes from extraction. moreover, the transition to renewable energy requires minerals to manufacture solar panels, batteries, and other green technologies; the fate of the planet depends upon the continuation of mining. yet its fate (and the fates of many humans) are also threatened by what is fundamentally an unsustainable enterprise— minerals do not renew themselves. this is why some of the authors in this volume question whether mining can ever be done ethically. raymond offenheiser describes some of the significant improvement major mining 258 laurie johnston companies have made, but there is no doubt that extraction always comes with moral perils and environmental risks. in some places, those risks are simply too great; andrés mckinley explains how salvadorans came to conclude that their country was one of those places. still, mining will continue, which is why we must, as tobias winright says, try to limit the evils associated with it. this requires a holistic response—a truly integral approach to peacebuilding. challenges and opportunities when it comes to engaging this nexus of mining, violence, and ecological destruction, what do catholic peacebuilders have to bring to the table? there are a number of important resources and opportunities that emerge from the catholic tradition, and some significant challenges. peace as the fruit of right relationships catholic social teaching frequently reminds us that peace is the fruit of right relationships. this volume has illustrated breakdowns in many types of relationship, and peacebuilding in the context of mining requires attention to each of them. authors in this volume have addressed the complex triad of mining companies, national governments, and local communities where mining takes place. on the one hand, it is clear that communities need practical and pastoral assistance in holding their governments accountable. when governments receive significant portions of their income from mining, they are more likely to look away while local communities are displaced, face ecological damage, or experience human rights violations at the hands of private security forces (or even national police). on the other hand, even when governments do seek to protect the interests of their citizens, they are at a significant disadvantage; large mining companies have technical, informational, financial, and legal resources that outmatch most governments in the global south. many countries have faced lawsuits from deep-pocketed mining companies seeking to preserve their exploitation rights. finally, even mining companies seeking to do the right thing may encounter obstacles from government officials or local militias who seek to extort them, or competition from other mining companies who are less scrupulous. in this context, peacebuilders who seek to promote just relationships must find ways to empower local communities to hold governments accountable, promote good governance for the common good, and continue to push both large and smaller mining companies to conduct themselves in more and more ethical and sustainable ways. another important triad is the relationship between governments, citizens, and mining companies in the countries where these mining companies are based. as vincent miller points out, citizens of wealthy countries are largely in the dark about the sourcing of consumer products; they enjoy concluding reflections 259 many of the benefits of extractive industries while bearing few of the costs. governments of wealthy countries are often captive to mining interests, too; william holden’s account of the canadian ambassador in guatemala intervening on behalf of canadian mining interests is a telling one. a key task, then, is finding ways to make citizens of wealthy countries more aware of the human and ecological consequences of their consumer behavior—not only to incentivize changes in this behavior, but so that they will push their governments to establish laws and policies that will bring about shifts in the global economic system, such as dodd-frank and some european countries’ emerging laws about responsible multi-national corporations. these wealthy countries also play an outsize role at the wto, at the un, and in governing the world bank, all of which play important, but distinct, roles in shaping the global economic system and the mining industry. the catholic church has a powerful ability to bear witness to what is happening in many different places around the world. several times in the past decade, major mining executives have attended meetings at the vatican—in part because they realize that the church is present in nearly all the countries in which they operate. this broad reach is important precisely because mining takes place in remote areas where oversight is difficult and government authorities may be quite limited. human rights violations can take place with relative impunity. the coronavirus pandemic has made oversight and monitoring even more difficult. and while major mining companies have made progress towards more ethical practices, small and mid-range mining operations frequently remain opaque. thus, the catholic church’s ability to monitor mining projects and advocate for local communities will continue to be important. earlier chapters in this volume testify to the variety of ways the church has played this role, from assessing contracts in the democratic republic of the congo (drc), to conducting pastoral surveys in colombia, to issuing pastoral letters like the philippine bishops’ “what is happening to our beautiful land?” oversight and monitoring are greatly aided by transparency. as the extractive industries transparency initiative makes more information about mining operations and contracts accessible, it is important for there to be an informed public that can consume this information and compare it with realities on the ground. the church’s ability to bear witness is thus an important adjunct to the ongoing push for greater transparency. however, this also poses a challenge to catholic leaders: much like mining companies, the catholic church does not have a strong tradition of institutional transparency. furthermore, the church can itself be vulnerable to the potentially corrupting influence of donations from those with vested interests in extractive industries. catholic university of america has been criticized for accepting millions of dollars from the koch foundation, given that the koch brothers are oil magnates who have sought to protect extractive industries by funding climate skeptics and lobbying against policies that aim to reduce global warming (mcelwee 2013). 260 laurie johnston in the philippines, father benvenido miguel has criticized catholic leaders for soliciting donations from mining companies, and even accepting cars and hotel vouchers: “asking favors or accepting gifts from companies ‘creates a perception that they can buy and silence the church’ on issues of environmental protection” (saludes 2020, n.p.). such potentially corrupting forces exist in many catholic contexts; the best protection against them is ensuring a strong commitment to internal and external transparency as a key component of the church’s witness. right relationships among all in society, not merely cozy relationships between elites, are the key to sustainable peace. becoming truly “catholic” in addition to bearing witness to what is happening in local communities around the world, a second important role for the church is creating connections among catholics and between catholics and other groups. according to mckinley, catholic leaders facilitated a visit from a philippine governor that was instrumental in convincing communities and politicians in el salvador to be skeptical of the role mining might play in their country. the testimony of a congolese bishop before the us congress, supported by the us catholic bishops, helped garner support for dodd-frank. ecclesial networks can help connect those who bear the impact of mining in different countries in order to, as offenheiser puts it, “link grievances at the community level to patterns of abuse at the national and global level and then turn the observation of these patterns into very specific policy recommendations to the industry.” miller calls especially for linking those impacted by mining with consumers and political leaders in wealthy countries that benefit from mining, to create “deeper relationships of solidarity.” this book is itself an attempt to contribute to that effort. mining also offers many opportunities for collaboration with groups outside the church. in fact, the catholic church is somewhat late to the party; oxfam and other organizations have played major roles in pushing for ethics and sustainability in the extractive industries, and the church can benefit from their expertise. partnerships with other religious communities are also vital, particularly in places like the philippines and mozambique where there are overlaps between religious conflicts and mining-related conflicts. elias opongo has argued that these sorts of broad coalitions are key for church action to be effective, especially at the level of governance and policy. as katherine marshall points out, there is often no “accepted ‘place’ for religious engagement in many of the international debates that affect extractive industry policies or in efforts to address problems that arise.” yet by forming alliances, religious actors can have a better chance of gaining a place at the table. building these intra-ecclesial and extra-ecclesial connections raises ecclesiological questions, however. first, several of the authors in this volume concluding reflections 261 call for a greater role for the laity, given that technical expertise is vital in engaging with mining. at the same time, it is clear that clergy, especially bishops, have a high level of visibility and moral authority in countries like the drc, and therefore have a very important role to play. in other contexts, catholic laypeople, religious orders, universities, and civil society organizations have taken the lead. of course, there may also be significant overlap between the efforts of laity, religious, and clergy; dhuma, as described by josé bayardo chata pacoricona, offers an interesting example of an organization that began from a collaboration between bishops, religious congregations, and lay parish workers, and now operates as an independent civil society organization while maintaining its catholic identity. perhaps the greatest challenge for catholic engagement in mining is finding ways to truly incorporate women’s voices and leadership. the leadership of the mining industry and the leadership of the institutional church are both male-dominated. yet the greatest negative impacts of mining accrue to women. mining is nearly always accompanied by sexual exploitation of various kinds, and the conflicts that surround mining involve gender-based violence on a massive scale. the environmental effects of mining also burden women in particular: in many contexts, it is they who are primarily responsible for farming and for supplying water to their families. yet their concerns are frequently overlooked; even when community consent processes do take place, they often neglect women’s participation and fail to account for social structures and mores that inhibit that participation. at the same time, women are frequent activists for justice in and beyond mining communities; their approaches have much to teach others who are seeking to promote an ecological just peace. for instance, indigenous women in guatemala have called attention to the importance of thinking about the long-term. one activist explained, “women take the time to think: what will happen tomorrow? or what will i do tomorrow? men do not think this way” (deonandan, tatham, and field 2017, 409). other women have found creative ways to push back against the exploitation of their bodies that frequently accompanies extractive industries. in south africa, women seeking employment in the mines were angered by incidents of men demanding sex in exchange for a job. to push back, women in mpumalanga adopted the slogan, “my body is not my cv” (womin african alliance 2020). there are many other cases; a major weakness of this present volume is that it does not give sufficient attention to these voices and examples. while catholic engagement—including recent vatican meetings—has frequently included women religious, real gender justice requires much more. environmental activists have coined the term “greenwashing” to refer to shallow or disingenuous attempts to appear environmentally responsible. the term “pinkwashing” can refer to analogous attempts to include women’s voices while still excluding them from power structures and from determining the overall agenda. both the church 262 laurie johnston and mining companies must pay particular attention, then, to the critiques coming from organizations like womin in africa. seeking the common good the violent conflicts that often emerge around mining illustrate what happens when certain goods or resources are pursued without attention to a larger common good. authors in this volume have discussed the common good, the ecological common good, and even the cosmic common good. however, when there are conflicting interests in society, determining how best to promote the common good is difficult. when mining executives arrived at the vatican for a day of reflection in 2013, vatican secretary of state tarcisio bertone said: “the great challenge of business leaders is to create a harmony of interests, involving investors, managers, workers, their families, the future of their children, the preservation of the environment on both a regional and international scale, and a contribution to world peace” (vatican radio 2013, n.p.). however, it is a real question whether such a “harmony of interests” is actually possible. kenneth himes has noted that a “failure to acknowledge the deeply conflictual nature of human reality has permitted catholic social teaching to remain underdeveloped in strategies of conflict resolution” (himes 2010, 282–3). human sinfulness and the conflictual nature of reality mean that tensions around mineral resources are to be expected. there are situations where there is no “win-win” outcome, and catholic social teaching has not always accounted for these well. if a community rejects a mining project, investors lose money and resources for potentially good ends are lost; it is not surprising that mining companies remain reluctant to fully embrace the idea that they must respect community consent as a binding principle, as it might mean abandoning promising projects on which millions of dollars have already been spent. still, there are areas of common interest between extractive industries and local communities, and the catholic church can play a role in finding these, for the sake of the common good. many of the largest mining companies have come to understand that upfront investment in good relationships with local communities is in their best interests, particularly because this may prevent conflict, fines, and even premature mine closures. some mining companies have been in favor of greater financial transparency; they want to disarm opposition by proving that they are paying their fair share and ensuring that their payments are not lost to corruption. another possible area of common interest is infrastructure development. mining endeavors frequently require companies to develop electric, water, and transportation infrastructure; it is often possible to do this in a way that will offer lasting benefits to local communities. albino barrera describes the problem of “export enclaves,” and partnering with local communities to develop this infrastructure could be a good way to break away from that enclave model. to capitalize upon this, there is a need for community leaders who can concluding reflections 263 liaise with mining companies and government officials in order to find these areas of common interest, and local church leaders and women religious can and do play that role. prophecy vs. collaboration one challenge that catholic leaders face is this: when should they take a stance of collaboration, and when should they focus on holding companies accountable or opposing their work outright? given the devastating effects of mining on people and the environment, a prophetic critique seems like the appropriate response in many circumstances. daniel finn (2017, n.p.) agrees, but also calls for a nuanced understanding of the church’s prophetic role: [t]he way to get abusive mining companies to shift to the new paradigm is to make it less arduous for the responsible firms than for the irresponsible ones. the world needs a prophecy that remains open to the possibility of authentic transformation. and where transformation does indeed occur, prophets need to shift their methods toward civil engagement for a more just and sustainable world. finn 2017 it is difficult to find a mode of public engagement that holds corporations and governments accountable while resisting the temptation to demonize the people within these institutions. catholics seeking to engage mining companies must strike a difficult balance: how do we recognize moral progress but maintain a healthy skepticism about an industry where the human risks, environmental risks, and moral hazards are enormous? questions around incremental moral improvement are a challenge in many areas of ethical reflection. roger burggraeve (1994) has sought to address them through an “ethics of growth.” this approach is rooted in the idea that even when individuals are in clear violation of moral norms, that does not mean the task of providing moral guidance ends. rather, the church should examine how to help all persons continue to grow in the moral life. such an approach can provide a way for catholic activists who oppose most mining in principle to nevertheless seek ways to make sure it is conducted less harmfully. similarly, an “ethics of growth” can be a way to describe how catholic peacebuilders engage violent actors in moving towards peace, while not overlooking the real evils for which these actors may be responsible. such an approach testifies to faith in the redeeming power of god that may emerge in any situation, bringing the common good to fruition despite obstacles. the longue durée of war and mining a key strength of catholic peacebuilding has been its focus on a broad time horizon. scott appleby (2010, 3) has defined peacebuilding as “conflict 264 laurie johnston transformation that strives to comprehend the longue durée of a conflict.” political attempts at peacemaking fail because of their short time horizon; a catholic vision of what peace requires is far more holistic and requires us to take a long view and strive for something more sustainable. creating a just peace requires attention to root causes that may be long in the past, as well as a commitment to persevere in practices of peacebuilding that may take generations to bear fruit. recently, theorists of jus post bellum have called for greater attention to the long-term consequences of war. what is wrong about war is not just the destruction that happens during war, but the aftereffects for both people and the earth: landmines, depleted uranium, unexploded ordnance, napalm-poisoned soil. traumatized communities may take generations to be reconciled. the ethics of mining also has a challenge with time—and we have seen already that this is an area of particular critique from women activists. while some mining companies have embraced the idea of planning for a mine’s ultimate closure from the very beginning, others have been slow to embrace the idea of responsibility for the entire lifecycle of a mine. for instance, when a large mining company has exhausted the high-quality ores in a mine, they may sell it off to a smaller mining company that may choose to mine lower-quality ores (which is likely to be less efficient and more disruptive) and then hurriedly close the mine without doing the appropriate cleanup or without ensuring the stability of tailings dams. even when a mining project begins responsibly and obtains community consent, mining personnel may change over time, and important policies and practices may slide into oblivion. as holden and montevecchio point out in their chapter, the geologic timescale of these undertakings is vast—particularly when it comes to radioactive ores—and so perpetual attention is required. how, then, can we cultivate forms of social virtue that endure for the long term? law can help to serve this purpose, of course—and so it is important, as offenheiser and douglass cassel urge, to continue the push for hard law that protects the earth and empowers communities (not just voluntary principles, as many mining companies would prefer). but this is also a task for churches, as spaces of formation, education, and memory. pope francis’ call for intergenerational solidarity in laudato si’ is an important way to nurture our attention to a longer time frame. churches can do more to link liturgical practices to advocacy, perhaps by calling attention to the ways that mining often threatens the water that we use for baptism and the farmland on which wheat is grown for the eucharist. also, sandra polanía-reyes and héctor fabio henao describe how the church in colombia has focused intently on pastoral work to help communities become more attuned to a theology of creation. the doctrine of creation is vitally important as a justification for care for the earth. however, catholics also must understand environmental activism from the broader perspective of eschatological time. as the scheids point out, the christian mandate to respect the earth is also rooted in a concluding reflections 265 vision of its destiny. in laudato si’, pope francis (2015, §243) calls us to care for our earthly home “which has been entrusted to us, knowing that all the good which exists here will be taken up into the heavenly feast.” what we do to nature matters, because the earth will share with us in the final salvation that is coming. in his epistle to the romans, paul tells us that “all of creation is groaning in anticipation …” of redemption, and that includes the rocks and ores in the ground. of course, the scheids point out that “bearing in mind our shared eschatological future or the full cosmic import of our choices will not fully or even perhaps partially determine concrete practical political solutions toward peacemaking and social justice.” still, it is possible that we need to abandon a key idea that moral theologians have used for centuries—“the universal destination of created goods.” the idea that god destined creation to be used by all of humanity is a powerful way to limit excessive wealth or the hoarding of mineral resources by just a few. pope francis uses this phrase in laudato si’, and it would be excellent if humans could even come close to the sharing to which that phrase calls us. but in the anthropocene, we must no longer speak about the earth as “destined” for human consumption. yes, we can and should use the goods of the earth, in a way that is proportional, as winright suggests. but the earth has its own destiny and dignity, even, perhaps, its own rights. better, then, to think of friendship with the earth as we move together towards our shared redemption. by merging the idea of integral ecology with pope francis’ (2020) call for social friendship in fratelli tutti, we can cultivate a new practice of ecological friendship. when there are broken relationships, however, moving towards friendship with the earth requires reconciliation. reconciliation is a major theme of catholic peacebuilding; lasting peace is impossible without it, as many conflicts around the world have shown. but how do we reconcile with the earth that we have damaged? truth-telling and acknowledgment of environmental damage for which we are responsible are certainly important, as are reparations that seek to restore ecosystems. memorialization is also vital, partly for the sake of future generations who might forget just how much damage can be done to both humans and the earth by unbridled extractivism. in particular, it is important to acknowledge the damage that is done when people are displaced from their land—a particular kind of broken relationship that is common in the context of mining. as clemens sedmak writes, “when rural or indigenous communities face losses from a mining project that is supposedly good for economic development, they may officially gain access to higher ‘living standards,’ but they lose identity-conferring aspects of their lives.” loss of identity is a key driver and consequence of many violent conflicts around the world. finding ways to acknowledge this kind of deep loss in the liturgical life of the church is key for building peace and bringing healing in human communities and with the earth as well—even if the true peace we long for will arrive only at the eschaton. 266 laurie johnston a peacebuilding lens as a new way of seeing pope francis reminds us that there is no single solution to the interconnected challenges we face today. in fact, technological specialization often makes it “difficult to see the larger picture” (francis 2015, §110). instead, he says, “there needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm” (§111). the chapters in this volume are an invitation to look at mining-related conflicts in a more holistic way. the task also invites us to see our own tradition and scriptures in new ways. perhaps isaiah’s vision of peace can also be a reminder about the careful repurposing of the earth’s minerals: “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks” (is. 2:4). an ecological just peace requires us to see the intrinsic dignity of one another and of the earth itself, in light of our shared destiny. such a transformed way of looking at the world ultimately requires conversion from all of us. references appleby, r. scott. 2010. “peacebuilding and catholicism: affinities, convergences, possibilities.” in peacebuilding: catholic theology, ethics, and praxis, edited by robert j. schreiter, r. scott 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(2020). fratelli tutti. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/ documents/papa‐francesco_20201003_enciclica‐fratelli‐tutti.html. george, william p. 2019. mining morality: prospecting for ethics in a wounded world. lanham, md: lexington books. inter-religious working group on extractivism. 2019. “a just response to extractivism.” https://justresponse.faith/node/3. john paul ii. 1981. laborem exercens. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html. mcelwee, joshua j. 2013. “republican donors’ gift to catholic university comes under fire.” national catholic reporter, december 16, 2013. https://www.ncronline. org/news/politics/republican-donors-gift-catholic-university-comes-under-fire. concluding reflections 267 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1379779 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2017.1379779 https://www.commonwealmagazine.org https://www.commonwealmagazine.org http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va https://justresponse.faith https://www.vatican.va https://www.vatican.va https://www.ncronline.org https://www.ncronline.org saludes, mark. 2020. “some philippine catholic church institutions accept ‘dirty donations.’” licas news, september 29, 2020. https://www.licas.news/2020/ 09/29/some-philippine-catholic-church-institutions-accept-dirty-donations/. himes, kenneth. 2010. “peacebuilding and catholic social teaching.” in peacebuilding: catholic theology, ethics, and praxis, edited by robert j. schreiter, r. scott appleby, and gerard f. powers, 265–299. maryknoll, ny: orbis. vatican radio. 2013. “pope hopes day of reflection on mining ethics will benefit industry, workers.” http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2013/09/09/pope_ hopes_day_of_reflection_on_mining_ethics_will_benefit_industry,/en1-726839. womin african alliance. 2020. “women stand their ground against big coal.” https://womin.africa/download/women-stand-their-ground-against-big-coal-final/. 268 laurie johnston https://www.licas.news https://www.licas.news http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va https://womin.africa index a acid drainage, 137, 252n1 activism and protests, 19, 25–26, 57–60, 70–71, 73–76, 85, 137–138, 248–249 adam, 11, 14 africa. see also specific african countries catholic church and, 193–195, 199–200 common good and, 193–195 context for mining industry in, 191–192 contracts and, 198 corruption and, 191 cst and, 193–197 fpic and, 145 good governance and, 5, 190–192, 197, 199–200 harnessing peacebuilding in, 197–199 human dignity and, 193–195, 199 ihd and, 190 indigenous peoples and, 145, 227 mining industry and, 227 mncs and, 191, 198 ngos and, 197–199 overview of, 190–191, 199–200 philippines and, 23 resource curse in, 191 social justice and, 198–199 solidarity and, 195, 198 technical knowledge and, 197–199 violence and, 190–193 water and, 191–193 world bank and, 23, 245 agnivesh, swami, 26 alas alfaro, eduardo, 87 ali, saleem, 242 all africa conference of churches, 27 alliance for responsible mining, 36 alliance of religions for conservation (arc), 28 alternative mining indaba, 27 alyansa tigil mina (advocacy network), 61–62 american civil rights movement, 122 appleby, r. scott, 7, 264–265 aquino, benigno “ninoy,” 57–58 aquino, cory, 55 aquino iii, benigno, 61, 63 arce, moisés, 126–127 artisanal mining ecologically-friendly version of, 36 economic development and, 51 environmental concerns and, 36, 191 indigenous peoples and, 35–36, 204 traditions of, 19–20 transparency and, 191 violence and, 19–20, 37 women and, 165 assembly of bishops of the ecclesiastical province of lubumbashi, 49 association of major religious superiors (philippines), 61 auciello, benjamin, 240–241, 245 australia, indigenous peoples in, 226–227 b bangsamoro organic law (2018) (philippines), 54 barrera, albino, 5, 137, 169, 205, 263 bartholomew (patriarch), 162 bear creek mining corporation, 69 benedict xvi (pope) environmental concerns and, 87, 161–162 exploitation and, 197 humility and, 162 inner world and, 161 martial language of, 99 poverty and, 197 bertone, tarcisio, 263 bhp (mining company), 138, 227 bhr (business and human rights), 2, 21, 149, 177 bishops-ulama conference (philippines), 58 blair, tony, 231 blood diamonds, 138, 175, 206 boff, leonardo, 123 bolivia, mining activity in, 69, 103, 136, 142, 145, 231 bonhoeffer, dietrich, 162 burggraeve, roger, 264 burkina faso, mining activity in, 161, 194, 236 burnley, clementine, 193 business and human rights (bhr), 2, 21, 149, 177 c cahill, lisa sowle, 103–104, 127–128 care for creation, 11–12, 16, 41–42, 71, 247, 265–266 caritas colombia, 4, 6, 37, 40 caritas internationalis, 6 caritas organizations, 4, 6, 37, 40, 63, 214 caritas philippines, 63 cassel, douglass, 5, 21, 112n5, 133, 160, 177, 265 castillo, daniel, 203 catechism of the catholic church, 105–106 catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines (cbcp), 57–62 catholic bishops of appalachia, 99 catholic church. see also catholic social teaching; specific countries, organizations, and events africa and, 193–195, 199–200 catholicity and, 214–217, 261–263 colombia and, 4, 33–34, 37, 39–43, 198, 208, 249, 260, 265 colonial past of, 203 dodd-frank and, 50, 261 drc and, 4, 39, 45, 48–52, 194, 260, 262 el salvador and, 4, 81, 86–90, 101, 130, 208 fpic and, 4 good governance and, 48–51 just mining theory and, 105–106 laity in, role of, 88, 197, 208–209, 262 mining industry and, 232–237 network of global markets and, 203, 208–217 ngos and, 8n5, 28, 208 nuclear weapons and, 250, 252 peru and, 76 philippines and, 4, 57–64, 260 religious actors in advocacy and, 20, 24–25, 26, 30 social catholicism, 211 synodality and, 216–217 transparency and, 6, 234, 260–261 uranium mining and, 250–251 women and, 262 catholic commission for justice and peace (ccjp) (malawi), 251 catholic peacebuilding. see also specific countries, organizations, and persons becoming truly “catholic” and, 261–263 challenges and opportunities in, 259–266 collaboration in, 264 covid-19 and, 260 cst and, 118, 191 definition of, 1–4, 264–265 distinctive aspects of, 193–195, 264 ecclesial networks and, 261 ethics of growth and, 264 integrated approach to, 1–4, 10, 37, 97, 110–111, 146–147, 247 laity and, 262 need for, 1–7, 257–259 peace as fruit of right relationships and, 259–261, 266–267 prophetic critique and, 264 reconciliation as major theme in, 266 270 index requirements of, 124 secular engagement by, 145 time as challenge in, 265 catholic peacebuilding network (cpn), 1, 4, 6–7 catholic relief services, 208, 214 catholics confront global poverty, 214 catholic social teaching (cst). see also catholic church africa and, 193–197 anthropological foundation of ecology and, 41 assumptions of, 195 catholic peacebuilding and, 118, 191 charity and, 180 climate change and, 252 colombia and, 41–42 common good and, 3, 16, 106, 193–195 contracts and, 174–175 creation and, 187 development ethics and, 171, 174–175, 186–187 economic development and, 186 economism and, 186 externalities and, 180 fair distribution of benefits and, 196–197 god and, 211–212 human dignity and, 76, 87, 143, 193–195 human rights and, 5, 133–135, 139–144, 147–149 indigenous peoples and, 71, 76–77 integral ecology and, 120–121 justice and, 180 markets and, 171–176, 180, 183–184, 186–187, 247 mncs and, 174–175, 195 network of global markets and, 208 peace as fruit of right relationships and, 259 peru and, 71, 76–77 preservation of common resources and, 196–197 relative equality and, 174–175 solidarity and, 174–175, 183 sources of, 41 stewardship, 183 transparency and, 148, 196 universal destination of goods and, 184 uranium mining and, 251 catholic theological society of america, 6 catholic university of america, 260 cenco (national episcopal conference of the congo), 49–51 central america climate forum, 81 central american solidarity movement, 213 central american university (uca), 80, 84, 87–89, 130, 149 the challenge of peace (us catholic bishops), 96 charity, 21, 180, 212 chavez, gregorio rosa, 88 chernobyl nuclear accident (1986), 242 childress, james, 104 chile, mining activity in, 136–137, 145, 205 christ. see jesus christ church of england, 20, 26–27 cinep/ppp (organization), 249 climate change. see also environmental concerns activists and, 248–251 climate injustice, 6, 240, 243–244 cst and, 252 drc and, 243–244 economic development and, 6 el salvador and, 81, 129 extractivism and, 6, 245–248 fpic and, 244 global insecurity and, 249–251 global south and, 243, 252 hardrock mining overlooked and, 240–241 human rights and, 6, 136–138, 141, 240, 248–249 ihd and, 245–248 low carbon growth and, 241–242 mncs and, 245 ngos and, 251 nuclear power and, 241–242 nuclear weapons and, 6, 249–251 overview of, 240–242, 251–252 philippines and, 59 renewable energy and, 241, 246, 252 solidarity and, 243–244 subsidiarity and, 243–244 un and, 248 uranium mining and, 249–251 violence and, 6, 242–243, 248–249 index 271 water and, 240–241, 248, 251 coal mining, 62–63, 134, 136 colombia biodiversity in, 35 catholic church and, 4, 33–34, 37, 39–43, 198, 208, 249, 260, 265 common good and, 39, 41–42 covid-19 and, 34 crime and corruption in, 34–35 cst and, 41–42 displaced people in, 40 ecologically-friendly mining in, 36 economic impact of mining and, 38 eco-theology in, 39, 208 environmental concerns and, 35, 38 human dignity and, 39 human rights and, 34, 138 indigenous peoples and, 25, 35–36, 38 local communities in, 40–41 mining’s legacy in, 2, 35–37, 136 mncs and, 36 network of global markets and, 208 ngos and, 39 overview of, 1–2, 4–5, 33 peace accord of 2016 in, 2, 4, 33–34, 37 peace process in, 2, 37, 198 rebel groups and, 2, 34 reconciliation and unity in, 42–43 socio-political context of, 34–35 solidarity and, 198 strategies within church in, 39–40 surveying of churches in, 37–38, 41–42, 43n1 transparency and, 39–40 types of mining in, 36–37 venezuelan diaspora in, 34 violence and, 2, 34–37, 43n2 water and, 40 colombian peace agreement (2016), 2, 4, 34 colonialism, 35, 107, 123, 203, 243–244, 258 common good advocacy networks and, 199 africa and, 193–195 colombia and, 39, 41–42 competing interests and, 263–264 cosmic common good, 263 cst and, 3, 16, 106, 193–195 development ethics and, 170–171, 178, 187 ecological common good, 263 el salvador and, 80 human rights and, 134, 147–149 ihd and, 3, 156 indigenous peoples and, 71 integral ecology and, 120, 125 markets and, 140 mining for, 101, 165 mncs and, 263 ngos and, 147, 199 seeking of, 263–264 self-determination and, 71 transparency and, 196 communist party of the philippines (cpp), 55 compendium of the social doctrine of the church, 42, 106, 108 conflict minerals, 51, 138, 175, 206–207 conflict resolution, 162–164, 194, 199, 214, 263 congregation for the doctrine of the faith, 167 consent. see free, prior, and informed consent contracts africa and, 198 coercive contracts, 48–49, 172, 174, 178 cst and, 174–175 development ethics and, 174–175 drc and, 48–49, 198 ihd and, 178–179 markets and, 172, 173–174, 177–179 mncs and, 173–174 negotiations over, 198 ngos and, 48 one-sided revenue sharing and, 173–174 philippines and, 60, 63 regulation of, 1 revision of, 48–49 safeguards for, 174 technical knowledge and, 198 transparency and, 1, 22, 48, 236 corporate social responsibility (csr), 2, 21, 36, 155, 157, 177, 224, 232 corruption, 5, 21–22, 29, 34–35, 68–69, 99, 175–176, 190–191, 231–232 covid-19 (coronavirus), 29, 34, 249, 260 cowdin, daniel, 111 272 index creation, care for, 11–12, 16, 41–42, 71, 247, 265–266 creation, gospel of, 117–118, 120, 128 csr (corporate social responsibility), 2, 21, 36, 155, 157, 177, 224, 232 cst. see catholic social teaching d de las casas, bartolomé, 203 de lubac, henri, 211 democratic republic of the congo (drc) catholic church and, 4, 39, 45, 48–52, 194, 260, 262 cenco in, 49–51 climate change and, 243–244 conflict escalation in, 1, 46, 191–192 contracts and, 48–49, 198 criminal economy in, 47 environmental concerns and, 98 good governance and, 5, 48–51, 192–193 human dignity and, 48–49 human rights and, 193 markets and, 175 mining sector privatized in, 46 network of global markets and, 204, 206 ngos and, 45, 48 origins of conflicts in, 45–46 overview of, 51–52 poverty in, 192 rebel groups and, 47, 193 security forces and, 46 surveys in, 198 transparency and, 5, 39, 48, 50, 206 un and, 45 violence and, 45, 47, 192–193, 243–244 world bank and, 46 deonandan, kalowatie, 8n5 derechos humanos y medio ambiente puno (dhuma) (peru) collaboration efforts of, 262 establishment of, 68, 262 goals of, 1, 5, 67–68, 76–77, 77n3 indigenous peoples and, 68 legal work of, 1, 5, 67–68, 127, 249 nonviolent strategy of, 127 overview of, 1, 5, 67–68 protests and, 249 violence and, 249 development ethics common good and, 170–171, 178, 187 contracts and, 174–175 critical questions of, 169 cst and, 171, 174–175, 186–187 economism and, 186 environmental concerns and, 170–171 ihd and, 157–158 importance of, 169–170, 185 markets and, 170–176, 181–182, 185–186 mining development ethics, 170–171, 173, 176, 183, 185, 187 mncs and, 174–175 natural-resource curse and, 177 property ownership and, 187nn5–6 solidarity and, 174–175, 183 subsidiarity principle in, 177 technical externalities and, 170–171 violence and, 186–187 water and, 162, 166, 170–171, 181 dhuma. see derechos humanos y medio ambiente-puno dicastery for promoting integral human development (vatican), 167 dignity. see human dignity dodd-frank wall street reform and protection act (2010) catholic church and, 50, 261 cenco and, 50 conflict minerals and, 176, 206 effectiveness of, 218n3 inspiration for other laws of, 50–51 mineral provisions of, 50–51, 231 transparency and, 1, 50, 260 drc. see democratic republic of the congo duque, ivan, 36 duterte, rodrigo, 1, 54–55, 62–63 duyog ramadhan (philippines), 58 e eco-convergence (philippines), 63 ecological just peace catholic peacebuilding and, 124 definition of, 122 economic development and, 123–124 el salvador and, 129–130 god and, 121 index 273 human dignity and, 122, 124–125, 267 imaginative thinking and, 127–128 indigenous peoples and, 128–131 integral ecology and, 117, 121–130 jesus and, 128 mncs and, 123 nonviolent direct action and, 126–127 overview of, 5, 130–131 philippines and, 123 practices for, 126–129 prevention and, 122–124 principles for, 124–126 respect and, 124–125, 131 restoration and, 125–126, 131 social imaginary and, 128 trust-building and, 127 women and, 262 economic development. see also development ethics artisanal mining and, 51 climate change and, 6 cst and, 186 ecological just peace and, 123–124 el salvador and, 82 extractivism and, 6, 252, 258 human economy and, 157 ihd and, 5, 156–157 integral ecology and, 122 jesus and, 202 mining industry and, 234 mncs and, 245–247 natural-resource curse and, 19, 177, 231 neoliberal policies and, 244–247, 252 peru and, 70–72 philippines and, 56 sustainable development and, 123 violence and, 186–187 eco-theology, 39–43, 208 eiti (extractive industry transparency initiative), 21–22, 51, 206, 231, 260 el cerrejón (mine), 35, 138 el salvador catholic church and, 4, 81, 86–90, 101, 130, 208 climate change and, 81, 129 common good and, 80 components of success in, 84–86 ecological just peace and, 129–130 economic development and, 82 empowerment in, 85–86 environmental concerns and, 5, 81–82 human rights and, 148–149 ihd and, 163–164 international law and, 83–84 just mining theory and, 109 legal initiatives in, 88 local communities in, 85 metal mining banned in, 1, 5, 81–82, 89–90, 101, 129, 148–149, 208, 224 methodology of advocacy in, 85 mining industry and, 224 national movements in, 85 national struggle against metallic mining in, 4, 83–86, 129–130 network of global markets and, 208, 216 ngos and, 83 overview of, 80, 89–90 philippines and, 216, 261 public opinion on mining in, 80 security forces and, 85 solidarity and, 87 strategies of advocacy in, 86 un and, 82 violence and, 85 water and, 5, 80–84, 86–89, 129, 224 environmental concerns. see also climate change. see also water artisanal mining and, 36, 191 colombia and, 35, 38 development ethics and, 170–171 drc and, 98 ecological advocacy and, 59 el salvador and, 5, 81–82 human rights and, 134, 137–138 just mining theory and, 98–99, 101–102, 109 markets and, 170–171, 181–182, 205, 246–247 martial language on, 99 mining industry and, 223, 225–226 network of global markets and, 205 peru and, 98 philippines and, 64 religious actors and, 23 social justice and, 141 sustainability and, 109 uranium mining and, 249 violence and, 99 274 index environmental justice atlas, 242–243 episcopal commission for natural resources (cern) (drc), 50–51, 215 episcopal conference of colombia, 37 episcopal conference of el salvador, 87 episcopal council of latin america (celam), 41–42, 247 escobar alas, josé luis, 88 ethics of extraction, 5, 96–97, 102 ethics of mining, 4, 96, 165–166, 265 evangelii gaudium (francis), 41, 99–100, 209 export enclaves, 137, 176–178, 186, 263 externalities, 170–171, 175–176, 179–180, 182, 204–205, 210 extractive industries review (eir), 25 extractive industry transparency initiative (eiti), 21–22, 51, 206, 231, 260 extractivism climate change and, 241 definition of, 6, 258 economic development and, 6, 252, 258 harms of, 6, 241, 258 ihd and, 245–248 indigenous peoples and, 71 profit-motive and, 258 throwaway culture and, 258 f faithinvest, 28 farc (revolutionary armed forces of colombia), 2, 34–35 finn, daniel, 204, 209, 215, 264 first nations (canada), 227 fpic. see free, prior, and informed consent francis (pope). see also specific works by africa and, 190, 194 climate change and, 119, 244 common good and, 120 depth in life and, 163 ecological education and, 125–127 economic development and, 165, 196, 246 environmental concerns and, 11, 87–88, 99–101, 141, 246–247 fpic and, 244 globalization of indifference and, 209–210 global power inequalities and, 197 human rights and, 51 ihd and, 2, 51 indigenous peoples and, 100, 119 inner peace and, 142, 146 integral ecology and, 2, 117–120, 142, 215 jesus and, 128 just mining theory and, 101 lack of single solution to challenges and, 267 markets and, 140, 246 martial language of, 99–101 mncs and, 197 network of global markets and, 209 new way of seeing required and, 267 nuclear weapons and, 250 self-centeredness and, 140 solidarity and, 197, 212 suffering of poor and, 196–197 technocratic paradigm and, 118, 124–125, 130, 203–204 throwaway culture and, 165, 209, 258 transparency and, 196 unity prevailing over conflict and, 43 violence and, 11 fratelli tutti (francis), 266 free, prior, and informed consent (fpic) africa and, 145 broadening framework of, 235–236 catholic church and, 4 climate change and, 244 consultation contrasted with, 229–230 criticism of, 207 first public use of, 228 goal of, 228 guidelines provided by, 207 human rights and, 145 indigenous peoples and, 23 mining industry and, 228–230, 235–237 network of global markets and, 206–207, 216–217 peru and, 228–229 religious actors in advocacy and, 23 right to say no and, 207 shared social value and, 229–230 index 275 un and, 206–207 water and, 228–229 world bank and, 25–26 friends of the earth, 25 g gacaca courts (rwanda), 129 gaddafi, muammar, 54, 250 galeano, eduardo, 203 gandhi, 104 gaspar, karl m., 5, 23, 54, 97, 99, 258 gaudium et spes (second vatican council), 211 genesis, book of, 11, 14, 183, 257 george, william p., 8n4, 96, 102, 258 glasgow cop 26 summit (2021), 25 glencore, 138, 142 globalization. see network of global markets global legal action network (glan), 138 global warming. see climate change global witness, 248 god anthropological foundation of ecology and, 41 covenant with humanity and, 10, 257 creation and, 11–14, 27, 87, 99, 107, 117–118, 171, 183–184, 257, 266 cst and, 211–212 ecological just peace and, 121 human rights and, 162 ihd and, 161 integral ecology and, 117–118, 120 kingdom of, 15–16, 194–196 as miner, 257 reconciliation with, 125 solidarity and, 175, 212 good governance africa and, 5, 190–192, 197, 199–200 catholic church and, 48–51 corruption and, 5 definition of, 190–191 drc and, 5, 48–51, 192–193 fragility and, 24 importance of, 5 international standards for, 22 religious actors and, 21–22, 24 violence and, 190 weak regulation and, 5 goodness. see common good gospel of creation, 117–118, 120, 128 goulet, denis, 156 guatemala, mining activity in, 138–139, 142, 148–149, 227–228, 248, 260, 262 guiding principles on business and human rights (un), 135, 143 gustafson, james m., 97, 110 h henao, héctor fabio, 2, 4, 33, 98, 198, 208, 265 himes, kenneth, 263 holden, william n., 5–6, 23, 55–56, 63, 109, 148, 155, 196, 240, 260, 265 holy see/vatican, 4, 6, 149, 214, 233, 237, 260, 263 honduras, mining activity in, 97–98 hudbay minerals, 138–139, 227 hughes, peter, 99, 101 human dignity africa and, 193–195, 199 care for creation and, 41–42 colombia and, 39 cst and, 76, 87, 143, 193–195 drc and, 48–49 ecological just peace and, 122, 124–125, 267 human rights and, 143 ihd and, 41, 156–157, 164, 166 mining industry and, 232 negative impacts on, 27 peru and, 76 profit-making and, 142 human rights bhr and, 2, 21, 149, 177 catholic peacebuilding and, 145 climate change and, 6, 136–138, 141, 240, 248–249 colombia and, 34, 138 common good and, 134, 147–149 court cases on, 138–139 cst and, 5, 133–135, 139–144, 147–149 drc and, 193 el salvador and, 148–149 environmental concerns and, 134, 137–138 fpic and, 145 global and local impacts of mining on, 136–138 276 index god and, 162 human dignity and, 143 ihd and, 134, 141 indigenous peoples and, 138, 143, 145 integral peace and, 146–147 international norms of, 133–135, 143–149 intrinsic value of ends and, 134 just mining theory and, 98 mining industry and, 226–228 mncs and, 138–139, 142 ngos and, 147 overview of, 133–135 peru and, 149 philippines and, 55–58, 61 profit-seeking and, 135 protests and, 137–138 regional treaties on, 145 responsibilities and, 134, 144–145 secular outreach and, 147 social justice and, 141 transparency and, 148 un and, 134, 138, 143–147 violence and, 6, 34–35, 137–139, 146–147 water and, 138–139, 141 world bank and, 25 human rights watch, 34, 56 i ich, adolfo, 227–228 iglesias y minería, 27 ihd. see integral human development imf (international monetary fund), 46 impact assessments, 56, 141, 199, 225–226, 251 india, mining activity in, 25–26, 137, 226 indigenous peoples africa and, 145, 227 artisanal mining and, 35–36, 204 collective ownership and, 227 colombia and, 25, 35–36, 38 common good and, 71 cst and, 71, 76–77 ecological just peace and, 128–131 extractivism and, 71 fpic and, 23 human rights and, 138, 143, 145 ihd and, 71 integral ecology and, 119 just mining theory and, 103 mining industry and, 226–228 network of global markets and, 205–207 peru and, 1, 5, 69–77, 227 philippines and, 5, 56, 58, 60–64 religious actors and, 23, 25–26 security forces and, 227–228 un and, 23, 206–207 uranium mining and, 250–251 world bank and, 25–26 indigenous peoples rights act (philippines), 61 indonesia, mining activity in, 28, 229 integral ecology aspects of, 118–120 catholic teaching and, 117–118 common good and, 120, 125 cst and, 120–121 definition of, 117 ecological just peace and, 117, 121–130 economic development and, 122 eschatological horizon of, 120 god and, 117–118, 120 gospel of creation and, 120–121 holistic nature of, 118–120 importance of, 117–118 indigenous peoples and, 119 overview of, 117–121 relational nature of, 119–120 social justice and, 119 solidarity and, 120–121, 126 technocratic paradigm and, 118, 124 throwaway culture contrasted with, 119, 130 violence and, 122 integral human development (ihd) africa and, 190 analysis of action in, 159–161 care for creation and, 41–42 climate change and, 245–248 common good and, 3, 156 contracts and, 178–179 corporate social responsibility and, 157 definition of, 156 depth of life and, 163–165 development ethics and, 157–158 economic development and, 5, 156–157 el salvador and, 163–164 extractivism and, 245–248 index 277 god and, 161 holistic nature of, 156, 178 human dignity and, 41, 156–157, 164, 166 human rights and, 134, 141 importance of, 155–156 indigenous peoples and, 71 markets and, 247 mining industry and, 234 moral costs and, 156–157 obstacles to, 161 overview of, 156–157 profit-seeking and, 5, 167, 247 self-determination and, 71 theology of, 5, 157–162, 164–167 integral peacebuilding, 1–4, 10, 37, 97, 110–111, 146–147, 247 interfacing development initiatives for sustainability (idis), 59 interfaith center for corporate responsibility (iccr), 26, 28 intergenerational equity, 125, 141, 182, 185–186, 265 international center for settlement of investment disputes (icsid), 83–84 international council of metals and mining (icmm), 144, 224–225, 229, 235 international interfaith investment group (3ig), 28 international labour organization, 71, 73–74, 145 international monetary fund (imf), 46 international network of engaged buddhists, 26 j jacobson, r. daniel, 55–56, 63 james, william, 159 jens, walter, 163 jesuit center of study and social action (cepas) (drc), 48–49 jesus christ creation and, 11 ecological just peace and, 128 economic development and, 202 network of global markets and, 210–213 scripture and, 4, 11, 13–15 solidarity and, 211–213 unity in, 211–212 job, book of, 4, 12–13 john paul ii, st. (pope), 87, 99 johnston, laurie, 6, 257 joseph of arimathea, 14 justice, climate, 196, 244, 252 justice, social, 29, 54, 62, 87, 117, 119–120, 180, 198–199 just mining theory action guiding criteria in, 105–110, 111 catholic church and, 105–106 el salvador and, 109 environmental concerns and, 98–99, 101–102, 109 force use and, 97–102, 104–105, 107 human rights and, 98 indigenous peoples and, 103 inherent danger in mining and, 102 integral peace and, 97, 110–111 jus ad extractionem, 5, 107–109, 111 jus in extractione, 5, 107, 109, 111 jus post extractionem, 5, 107, 109–111 just war theory as analog for, 5, 96, 102–105 moral dilemmas and, 104 overview of, 95–97, 110–111 philippines and, 108 security forces and, 97, 105, 107 sustainability and, 109 violence and, 97–98, 103 water and, 98–100, 107, 109 just peace, 5, 103, 107, 121–123, 265. see also ecological just peace just war theory, 5, 96–97, 102–107, 111n1, 265 k kabila, laurent désiré, 47 kenya, mining activity in, 191–192, 194, 197 kiir, salva, 194 kimberly process, 176 kinaiyahan foundation (philippines), 59 king, martin luther, jr, 104, 121–122 klein, naomi, 245 knox, peter, 96, 101–102, 107–110, 123 koch foundation, 260 l laborem exercens (john paul ii), 173 278 index la bugal-blaan tribal association, 60 latin american provincials of the society of jesus, 247 laudato si’ (francis) application of, 244 central themes of, 117, 139, 159, 243 depth of life in, 163–165 directives of, 76, 266 environmental concerns in, 76, 140–141, 161–162, 171 goals of, 2–3, 41, 111, 133–134, 142, 161–162, 165, 222 gospel of creation in, 117–118 human dignity in, 164 human rights in, 133, 139–142, 147–148 ihd in, 159–165 importance of, 87, 117, 159 inner peace in, 142, 161 integral ecology in, 117–118, 142, 171 intervention into nature in, 100–101 markets in, 140 mncs in, 142 network of global markets in, 209 profit-seeking in, 161, 247 renewable energy in, 243 resource wars in, 100 secular norms contrasted with, 133–135 self-centeredness in, 140 social justice in, 119, 141 solidarity in, 212, 265 sustainability in, 235 technocratic paradigm in, 118, 140, 161–162, 203–204 throwaway culture in, 209 translation of non-religious terms in, 162, 166 water in, 162, 166 lava jato corruption case (peru), 68 le billon, philippe, 123, 190 lebret, joseph, 157 lederach, john paul, 95–96, 127 leopold ii (king), 45 liberia, mining activity in, 128–129, 191 lima, leila de, 61 lola, nicolas djomo, 50 lovelock, james, 241 love, maryann cusimano, 104, 124–125 lumen gentium (second vatican council), 211 m macapagal-arroyo, gloria, 61–62 machar, riek, 194 malawi, mining activity in, 26, 193, 248, 251 malloy, edward a., 96–97, 112n4 marcos, ferdinand, 54–55, 57, 59 marcos, imelda, 57 marcuse, herbert, 156 markets. see also network of global markets allocative efficiency and, 169, 171, 172, 178, 182, 184–185, 187 amoral nature of, 171–179 black markets, 207 charity and, 180 commodity markets, 204, 206 common good and, 140 contracts and, 172, 173–174, 177–179 cooperation in wrongdoing and, 175–176 corporate social responsibility and, 177 cst and, 171–176, 180, 183–184, 186–187, 247 development ethics and, 170–176, 181–182, 185–186 drc and, 175 environmental concerns and, 170–171, 181–182, 205, 246–247 externalities and, 170–171, 175–176, 179–180, 182, 204–205, 210 extra-market interventions and, 170–174, 177–178, 183, 185, 205 free-ridership and, 185 ihd and, 247 institutional preconditions for, 169, 172 intrinsic value and, 180–183 limitations of, 5, 169–171, 174 mncs and, 173–174 neoliberalism and, 246–247 one-sided revenue sharing and, 173–174 overview of, 169–170, 185–187 index 279 property ownership and, 185, 187nn5–6 revenue sharing within host countries and, 174–175 scarcity and, 181 scripture and, 181 social consciousness lacking in, 176–179 social mortgages and, 179, 187n1 tragedy of the commons and, 185 un and, 183–184 unsafe and poor working conditions and, 172–173 marshall, katherine, 2, 4, 19, 261 matthew, gospel of, 13–14 mcdonagh, enda, 105 mckinley, andrés, 5, 80, 98, 129, 148, 163–164, 216, 223, 259, 261 mexico, mining activity in, 136, 145 miguel, benvenido, 261 military police. see security forces miller, vincent j., 5–6, 202, 244, 259–261 minahasa raya mine (indonesia), 229, 243 minani, rigobert, 1, 4, 8n4, 45, 97–98, 175, 192, 198, 204, 215, 243 mindanao-sulu pastoral conference (mspc), 57–58 mining and metallurgical geological institute (ingemmet) (peru), 73–74, 77nn4–6 mining, artisanal. see artisanal mining mining contracts. see contracts mining industry overview. see also specific companies and types of mining africa and, 227 allies with expertise and, 233–234 catholic church and, 232–237 ceo meetings with vatican and, 233 critical perspective on normative progress of, 224–232 economic development and, 234 el salvador and, 224 environmental concerns and, 223, 225–226 ethical guidelines for, 222–224 fiscal justice in, 230–232 fpic and, 228–230, 235–237 hard law required for, 236–237 historical overview of, 221–223, 237–238 human dignity and, 232 human rights and, 226–228 ihd and, 234 indigenous peoples and, 226–228 juniors in, 224–225 liability in, 228 majors in, 224–225, 229 mining mindset in, 223–224 modernization of, 224–225 peru and, 227, 236 security forces and, 227–228 shared social value and, 230 social license and, 229–230 strategies for engagement with, 232–237 sustainability and, 234–235 taxation and, 230–232 transparency and, 230–232, 234, 236 violence and, 227 mining theory, just. see just mining theory ministry of environment and natural resources (marn) (el salvador), 81 mncs. see multinational corporations modern mining, 80, 124 moe-lobeda, cynthia, 99 montevecchio, caesar a., 1, 5–6, 23, 109, 148, 155, 196, 240, 258, 265 moran, riley, 126–127 moro islamic liberation front (milf), 54 moro national liberation front (mnlf), 54 muhigirwa, ferdinand, 107–108 muhiya, henry, 51 multinational corporations (mncs) africa and, 191, 198 climate change and, 245 colombia and, 36 common good and, 263 contracts and, 173–174 cst and, 174–175, 195 development ethics and, 174–175 ecological just peace and, 123 economic development and, 245–247 human rights and, 138–139, 142 markets and, 173–174 network of global markets and, 203 280 index peru and, 68–70 religious actors and, 25–26 security forces and, 2, 98, 146, 259 solidarity and, 174, 195 myanmar mining activities, 26 n national contact points (ncps), 138 national episcopal conference of the congo (cenco), 49–51 national liberation army (eln) (colombia), 34 national roundtable on metallic mining in el salvador (mesa), 83, 88 national social pastoral (episcopal conference of colombia), 41, 43n1 natural-resource curse, 19, 177, 231 navajo peoples, 98, 250 neoliberalism, 245–247, 252 nepstad, sharon erickson, 213 network of global markets. see also markets bad actors and, 204 black markets and, 207 catholic church and, 203, 208–217 colombia and, 208 colonialism and, 203–204 commodity distancing and, 204–206, 210 communications networks and, 213–217 cst and, 208 cultural context for, 205–206 destabilizing effects of, 204 drc and, 204, 206 ecclesial response to, 210–217 el salvador and, 208, 216 environmental concerns and, 205 exploitation and, 202–203 externalities and, 204–205, 210 fpic and, 206–207, 216–217 globalization of indifference and, 209–210 history of, 203 indigenous peoples and, 205–207 influencing of, 206–207 jesus and, 210–213 laity and, 208–209 legitimation of advocacy efforts and, 208 mncs and, 203 ngos and, 214, 216 overview of, 202–206, 217 problems of, 202 regulation of, 206–207 role of church in, 213–214 shallow relationships in, 206, 210, 212–213 solidarity and, 202, 211–213 synodality and, 216–217 technical knowledge and, 208 technocratic paradigm and, 203–204 throwaway culture and, 209 transparency and, 206 violence and, 205 newmont mining, 228–229 ngos. see non-governmental organizations nicodemus, 14 nigeria, mining activity in, 175, 194 niger, mining activity in, 249–250 nixon, rob, 99 no dirty gold campaign (oxfam), 234 non-governmental organizations (ngos) africa and, 197–199 catholic church and, 8n5, 28, 208 climate change and, 251 colombia and, 39 common good and, 147, 199 contracts and, 48 drc and, 45, 48 el salvador and, 83 human rights and, 147 network of global markets and, 214, 216 philippines and, 26, 56, 59 religious actors and, 25, 28 non-state military actors, 2, 34, 47, 54–55, 64, 97, 193 nonviolent approaches, 85, 104 norwegian church aid, 251 nuclear power, 6, 137, 241–242, 249–250 nuclear weapons, 6, 11, 249–252 o oceanagold, 61, 84, 88–89 octogesima adveniens (paul vi), 86–87 odchigue, randy, 99, 107–108, 123 odchimar, nerio, 61 index 281 offenheiser, raymond, 5–6, 21, 135, 157, 165–166, 197, 221, 258–259, 261, 265 opongo, elias o., 5, 7n2, 108, 123, 190, 261 oro verde (ecologically-friendly mining), 36 orwell, george, 222 our common future (un), 109 oxfam, 68, 83, 85, 234, 261 p pacem in terris (john xxiii), 250 pacific rim, 83–85, 98 pacoricona, josé bayardo chata, 5, 23, 67, 127, 149, 226, 249, 262 paladin energy, 251 panama papers (2016), 232 pan-amazonian ecclesial network, 249 paul (saint), 266 paul vi, st. (pope), 13, 86–87, 99, 121, 156 peace agreements, 4, 33, 37, 47, 185 peacebuilding. see catholic peacebuilding penate, gabriel, 248 people power revolution, 64 perry, william, 249 peru aymarazo case in, 69–71, 74–76 catholic church and, 76 consultation and, 73–76 corruption in, 68–69 criminalization of protest in, 75–76 cst and, 71, 76–77 dhuma in, 1, 5, 67–68, 76–77, 77n3, 127, 249, 262 economic development and, 70–72 environmental concerns and, 98 fpic and, 228–229 human dignity and, 76 human rights and, 149 indigenous peoples and, 1, 5, 69–77, 227 international law and, 73–74 justice and, 67 mining industry and, 227, 236 mining’s importance in, 67, 71–72, 77n2, 136 mncs and, 68–70 national police and company agreements in, 69–70 overview of, 67–68, 76–77 peaceful remediation in, 73–76 policies and governance favoring companies in, 72–73, 77n7 protests and, 70–71, 73–76 public interest invoked in, 69–71 security forces and, 69–70 self-determination in, 71–72 social conflict data in, 71 transparency and, 236 violence and, 70–71, 75 water and, 67, 69, 98 philippine mining act (1995), 23, 60–61, 245–246 the philippines africa and, 23 catholic church and, 4, 57–64, 260 climate change and, 59 contracts and, 60, 63 data required for advocacy in, 63 ecological concerns and, 59 ecological just peace and, 123 economic development and, 56 el salvador and, 216, 261 environmental concerns and, 64 human rights and, 55–58, 61 indigenous peoples and, 5, 56, 58, 60–64 interfaith dialogues in, 58 islamic moros in, 54 just mining theory and, 108 just peace in, 64 martial law in, 57–58 ngos and, 26, 56, 59 overview of, 54, 64 protests and, 26, 57–58, 60 rebel groups and, 54–55, 64 security forces and, 55–56, 58 solidarity and, 61 violence and, 5, 56–57 water and, 59 polanía-reyes, sandra, 2, 4, 33, 98, 198, 208, 265 policing. see security forces pollution. see environmental concerns populorum progressio (paul vi), 13, 156 poverty, 23, 38, 108, 141, 175, 190, 192, 196–197, 246–247 powers, gerard f., 1, 247 princen, thomas, 205 private security. see security forces 282 index profit-seeking, 5, 135, 142, 161, 167, 247, 258 protests and activism, 19, 25–26, 57–60, 70–71, 73–76, 85, 137–138, 248–249 publish what you pay, 22, 234 q querida amazonia (francis), 41, 203, 212, 244, 248–249, 257–258 r ramsey, paul, 104, 112n4 rebel groups, 2, 34, 47, 54–55, 64, 97, 193 redemptor hominis (john paul ii), 87 religions for peace, 28–29 religious actors in advocacy bhr and, 21 catholic church and, 20, 24–25, 26, 30 church of england and, 20 civil society and, 22–23 civil war and, 24 conflict prevention and, 24 corporate social responsibility and, 21 corruption and, 21–22 covid-19 and, 29 environmental concerns and, 23 evolving policy landscapes and, 20–25 fpic and, 23 fragility and, 24 framing patterns and, 19–20 good governance and, 21–22, 24 indigenous peoples and, 23, 25–26 lack of accepted place for, 4, 19–20, 24–25 local communities and, 22–23 mncs and, 25–26 ngos and, 25, 28 overview of, 19–20, 29–30 religious and interreligious approaches for, 24–29 transparency and, 21–22 water and, 20, 23 renewable energy, 122, 128, 148, 241, 243–246, 250 rénique, gerardo, 245 rerum novarum (leo xiii), 173 resource wars, 97, 100 responsible mining, 80, 89, 166 revelation, book of, 11, 14–16 revolutionary armed forces of colombia (farc), 2, 35 rights. see human rights rio declaration (1992), 141–142 riofrancos, leah, 216 royalties and taxes, 26, 171, 183, 231, 236 rwanda, peacebuilding efforts in, 46, 129 s saca, antonio, 83 salim, emil, 25 samarco tailings dam collapse (2015) (brazil), 223 sampat, payal, 246 sant’egidio community, 194 santos villeda, luis alfonso, 97–98, 108, 110 scheid, anna floerke, 5, 117, 159, 265–266 scheid, daniel p., 5, 117, 159, 265–266 schmitt, michael, 99 schreiter, robert, 3, 128 scripture divine wisdom and, 12–13 earthly treasure and, 12–13 genesis, book of, 11, 14, 183, 257 gifts to jesus and, 13–14 golden adornment of tabernacle and, 15 jesus and, 4, 13–15 job, book of, 4, 12–13 kingdom of god and, 15–16 land of promise and, 11–12 markets and, 181 mining history and, 4, 10 new creation and, 14–15 overview of, 10–11, 15–16 pure gold, 15 revelation, book of, 11, 14–16 sin and, 11 testing of faith and, 16n3 wealth of creation and, 11–12 scripture references 1 kg. 3:9, 13 6:13, 15 6:22, 15 6:28, 15 index 283 6:30, 15 10, 12 1 sam. 17:38-39, 155 2 chr. 9, 12 2 kg. 23:33, 12 23:35, 12 24:13-14, 12 25:13-16, 12 baruch 3:15, 13 3:36-4:4, 13 dn. 5:1-4, 12 dt. 8:9, 12 8:13-14, 12 ex. 11:2, 12 25, 15 25:8, 15 32, 12 35:24, 12 gen. 1-2:4a, 11 2:4, 11 2:10-13, 14 2:11-12, 11, 14 4:22, 11 13:2, 12 23:16, 12 33:19, 12 is. 2:4, 267 9:7, 14 24:3, 11 jn. 19:38-39, 14 job 28, 12–13 lev. 25, 181 lk. 1:33, 14 1:75, 11 mt. 2:1-12, 13–14 2:2, 14 2:6, 14 5:5, 165 prov. 8:10-11, 13 rev. 21:2, 14 21:9, 14 21:11, 14 21:18-21, 14 21:27, 14 rom. 8:19-21, 11 20-21, 257 second vatican council, 211 security forces drc and, 46 el salvador and, 85 impunity of, 227 indigenous peoples and, 227–228 just mining theory and, 97, 105, 107 military police, 2, 46, 55, 97 mining industry and, 227–228 mncs and, 2, 98, 146, 259 national police, 69–70 paramilitary forces and, 58 peru and, 69–70 philippines and, 55–56, 58 private security, 2, 98, 146, 259 violence and, 2, 97, 227–228 sedmak, clemens, 5, 155, 178, 247, 266 selling, joseph a., 102, 104 siegel, shefa, 96 sierra leone, mining activity in, 138, 175–176, 192 social justice, 29, 54, 62, 87, 117, 119–120, 141, 180, 198–199 social protest, 67, 70–71, 73–76 social teaching. see catholic social teaching solidarity africa and, 195, 198 climate change and, 243–244 colombia and, 198 creation and, 212 cst and, 174–175, 183 development ethics and, 174–175, 183 el salvador and, 87 god and, 175, 212 integral ecology and, 120–121, 126 intergenerational solidarity, 141, 265 jesus and, 211–213 284 index mncs and, 174, 195 network of global markets and, 202, 211–213 philippines and, 61 as social unity, 211 water and, 205, 207 south africa, peacebuilding efforts in, 28, 96, 98, 123, 129, 194, 262 south sudan, resource conflicts in, 191–194 steffen, lloyd, 96, 102–105, 111n3 stewardship of creation, 11, 41, 87, 142, 171, 183, 187, 223, 235, 245 the strategy for african mining (world bank), 245 subsidiarity principle, 8n5, 174, 243–244 sustainability, 109, 122–124, 166, 170, 222, 224, 234–235, 251, 261 synodal ecclesial communications network, 6, 217 synodality, 216–217 synod for the pan-amazonian region (2019), 202–203, 214–215, 244 synod on justice (1971), 57 synod on synodality (2021-2023), 214 t tailings, 60, 73, 77n2, 82, 88, 99, 123, 171, 223, 240–241 tanzania, mining activity in, 27, 193, 197 tatham, rebecca, 8n5 tauli-corpus, victoria, 248 taxes and royalties, 26, 171, 183, 231, 236 technical knowledge in mining, 197–199, 208 technocratic paradigm, 118, 120, 124–125, 130, 140, 161–162, 203–204, 235, 267 texaco oil spill, 225 throwaway culture, 119, 124, 130, 140–141, 165, 209, 258 tía maría mine (peru), 67, 127 tolstoy, leo, 101 transparency accountability and, 236 artisanal mining and, 191 catholic church and, 6, 234, 260–261 colombia and, 39–40 common good and, 196 conflict minerals and, 51, 138, 175, 206–207 contracts and, 1, 22, 48, 236 cst and, 148, 196 dodd-frank and, 1, 50, 260 drc and, 5, 39, 48, 50, 206 human rights and, 148 mining industry and, 230–232, 234, 236 network of global markets and, 206 peru and, 236 religious actors and, 21–22 taxation and, 231–232 transparency international, 22 truth and reconciliation commission (south africa), 129 tudtud, bienvenido, 58 turkson, peter, 4, 10, 194, 257 tvi resource development, 56 u uca (central american university), 80, 84, 87–89, 130, 149 united nations (un) business and human rights and, 135, 143 climate change and, 248 convention on the law of the sea, 183–184 csr and, 21 declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, 23, 206–207 declaration on the right to peace, 146–147 drc and, 45 el salvador and, 82 fpic and, 206–207 global compact, 21 guiding principles on business and human rights, 135, 143–147 human rights and, 134, 138, 143–147 human rights council, 143–144 human rights office of, 107 indigenous peoples and, 23, 206–207 markets and, 183–184 rio declaration, 141–142 sustainable development goals, 2, 19, 234 united states conference of catholic bishops, 105, 108, 214, 261 index 285 universal destination of goods, 16, 165, 167, 174, 183–184, 266 uranium mining, 98, 137, 240, 242–243, 246, 249–252 v vatican/holy see, 4, 6, 149, 214, 233, 237, 260, 263 ventura, luca, 193 vernon, phil, 234 vicini, andrea, 109 violence africa and, 190–193 artisanal mining and, 19–20, 37 climate change and, 6, 242–243, 248–249 colombia and, 2, 34–37, 43n2 development ethics and, 186–187 drc and, 45, 47, 192–193, 243–244 economic development and, 186–187 el salvador and, 85 environmental concerns and, 99 good governance and, 190 human rights and, 6, 34–35, 137–139, 146–147 integral ecology and, 122 just mining theory and, 97–98, 103 mining industry and, 227 network of global markets and, 205 peru and, 70–71, 75 philippines and, 5, 56–57 rebel groups and, 97 resource wars and, 97, 100 security forces and, 2, 97, 227–228 voluntary principles on security and human rights, 228 w wallace-wells, david, 242 war. see violence water. see also environmental concerns africa and, 191–193 climate change and, 240–241, 248, 251 colombia and, 40 development ethics and, 162, 166, 170–171, 181 el salvador and, 5, 80–84, 86–89, 129, 224 fpic and, 228–229 human rights and, 138–139, 141 just mining theory and, 98–100, 107, 109 peru and, 67, 69, 98 philippines and, 59 religious actors and, 20, 23 solidarity and, 205, 207 women and, 262 weil, simone, 164 winright, tobias, 5, 95, 159, 259, 266 wittgenstein, ludwig, 158 women, 6, 22, 165, 190, 258, 262–265 womin (south africa), 262–263 world bank, 23, 25–26, 46, 48, 174, 190, 231, 245 world commission on dams (wcd), 25 world council of churches (wcc), 27 world social forum (2015), 27 z zambia, human rights in, 139, 142 zenner, christiana, 109 zimbabwe, mining activity in, 26, 194 286 index cover half title series page title page copyright page dedication contents acknowledgments contributors introduction an integrated approach to catholic peacebuilding and mining the structure of this book aspirations of the book notes references 1. mining and peace: a scriptural reflection the wealth of creation and the goodness of the "land of promise" mining and the contrast between earthly treasure and divine wisdom (job 28) the gift of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to baby jesus metals and stones in the new creation: the splendor of the new heaven and new earth (rev. 21) the golden adornment of the tabernacle and the temple prefigures the holy city conclusion notes references section i: catholic engagement on mining in conflict zones 2. religion and extractive industries: ethics, practice, and engagement religious engagement: framing patterns and legitimacy evolving policy landscapes corporate social responsibility and business practices corruption and governance principles of engagement with local communities and civil society organizations, including safeguarding policies applicable to multilateral financing organizations indigenous peoples environmental protection fragility, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding religious engagement extractive industry strategies and approaches religious and interreligious approaches concluding reflections notes references 3. the church in colombia and extractives: pastoral accompaniment using an eco-theology of peace the socio-political context for pastoral accompaniment on mining the legacy of mining in colombia surveying the church on extractives, governance, and peace analyzing the catholic church's action on mining, development, and peace: the emergence of an eco-theology of peace strategies within the church strategies alongside the most vulnerable anthropological foundation of ecology integration of creation and salvation reconciliation and unity notes references 4. the mining industry, conflict, and the church's commitment in the democratic republic of the congo origin of the problem privatization of the mining sector and escalation of the conflict mineral resources as fuel for conflicts in the drc good governance of the mining sector and the church's commitment conclusion notes references 5. mining in the philippines: a catholic peacebuilding approach conflicts in the philippines violent conflict, human rights violations, and mining the church's response to conflict, human rights, and environmental concerns the shift to ecological advocacy church action and advocacy around mining conclusion references 6. dynamics between the state, mining companies, and indigenous peoples in peru the state and the corporations an emblematic case: the aymarazo agreements between the national police of peru and mining companies the state and indigenous peoples the idea of development from two perspectives policies and governance favoring mining companies over communities consultation, social protest, and peaceful remediation conclusion notes references 7. the mining struggle in el salvador and the role of the catholic church why el salvador said "no" to metallic mining the national struggle against metallic mining components of success nonviolence linkage between local communities and national movements the methodology of public policy advocacy a logic of empowerment a variety of strategies and tactics the special role of the catholic church conclusion references section ii: mining and peace in catholic theology and ethics 8. a just mining framework for the ethics of extraction of natural resources and integral peace introduction: from law enforcement and the use of force to mining mining and conflict: the use of force in mining an ethic behind and beyond just war a just mining framework with action guiding criteria conclusion: extraction ethics and integral peace notes references 9. integral ecology, just peace, and mining integral ecology an ecological just peace prevention principles respect restoration practices nonviolent direct action trust-building imaginative thinking indigenous peacebuilding el salvador: a recent example of ecological just peacemaking ecological just peace and mining references 10. mining, catholic social teaching, and international human rights mining diversity mining's global and local impacts examples of human rights cases against mining companies mining and laudato si' international human rights norms international norms on peace combining for peace and the common good notes references 11. development as depth: towards a theology of integral human development integral human development a theological perspective an integral analysis and the foundational text of laudato si' strengthening the theological voice development as depth an integral theology of mining and peacebuilding references 12. catholic development ethics, mining, and peace: attending to the market's limitations introduction: a straightforward link issue #1: mining's damage to the environment and technical externalities as a market limitation issue #2: mining and the amoral nature of markets unsafe and poor working conditions one-sided revenue sharing between companies and host countries mining and the sharing of revenues within the host country inadvertent material cooperation in wrongdoing issue #3: mining and markets' lack of social consciousness issue #4: mining and market limitations due to ownership externalities issue #5: mining and the market's inability to establish intrinsic or non-economic value issue #6: mining and the question of ownership and usufruct of the goods of the earth conclusion notes references 13. good governance for mining and the promotion of peace in africa contextualizing mining industry governance in africa distinctive aspects of a catholic peacebuilding approach catholic social teaching and governance of extractive industries harnessing the peacebuilding capacity of the catholic church in mining industries conclusion notes references 14. mining and the call for solidarity: the networks we have and the synodal network the church is called to be the network we have means of influencing these networks the church's current efforts a fuller ecclesial response conclusion notes references 15. the mining industry: the journey from impunity to consent ethics and mining understanding the mining mindset a critical perspective on normative progress environmental impact indigenous rights and other human rights free, prior, and informed consent and social license to operate fiscal justice: transparency and taxation peacebuilding and extractive industries: time for new strategies and tactics find allies with expertise integrate peacebuilding into international development embrace sustainability as a peace principle broaden the free, prior, and informed consent framework push for improved transparency demand hard law when soft law fails conclusion notes references 16. hardrock mining, climate change, and conflict: reflections through the lens of catholic social thought hardrock mining and climate change metals mining and climate vulnerability metals mining and low carbon growth hardrock mining, climate change, and challenges to peace north-south climate injustice and the need for subsidiarity and solidarity extractivism and integral human development violence against environmental defenders uranium mining, nuclear arms, and global insecurity conclusion notes references concluding reflections examining the roots of a complex problem challenges and opportunities peace as the fruit of right relationships becoming truly "catholic" seeking the common good prophecy vs. collaboration the longue durée of war and mining a peacebuilding lens as a new way of seeing references index b_tooltip_logo_alttext: looking_for_the_good_war '''''''''''''''''''''1''"''"'''''''"111''''''''''11' ��:��::;1 ��:::aub. libr author elizabeth 0 samet title looking for the good war: american amnesia and the violent pursuit of happiness 1 due date 10/26/2022 borrower ino lender iso note to patron please return to: interlibrary loan 150 hesburgh library university of notre dame notre dame, in us 46556-5629 borrowing library please return to: interlibrary loan st. joseph county public po box 1440 south bend, in us 46601 american amnesia and the violent pursuit of happiness author of soldier's heart u.) a. 28.00 ca $ 38.00 in looking for the good war, elizabeth d. samet examines the literature, art, and culture that em­ erged after world war ii, bringing her expertise as a professor of english at west point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. she exposes the confusion about american identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence to­ ward war, violence, and veterans-a history that was suppressed in subsequent decades by a dangerously sentimental attitude toward the united states' sup­ posedly exceptional history and destiny. samet discovers the complex legacy of the war in some of its most heavily mythologized figures: the war correspondent epitomized by ernie pyle, the character of the erstwhile g.i. turned either cop or criminal in the pulp fiction and feature films of the late 1940s, the disaffected civil war vet­ eran who looms so large on the screen in the cold war-era western, and the resurgent military hero of the post-vietnam period. taken together, these figures reveal key elements of postwar attitudes to­ ward violence, liberty, and nation-attitudes that have shaped domestic and foreign policy and that respond in various ways to ideas about national identity and purpose established or affirmed by world war ii. as the united states reassesses its roles in af­ ghanistan and the middle east, the time has come to rethink our national mythology: the way that world war ii shaped our sense of national destiny, our beliefs about the use of american mli ar« r;� rce throughout the world, and our inability tl i 3. :i.ept the realities of the twenty-first centur'/' c e ·;ldes of devastating conflict. � � also by elizabeth d. samet no man's land: preparing for war and peace in post-9/11 america soldier's heart: reading literature through peace and war at west point willing obedience: citizens, soldiers, and the progress of consent in america, 1776-1898 world war ii memoirs: the pacific theater edited by elizabeth d. samet the annotated memoirs of ulysses s. grant leadership: essential writings by our greatest thinkers looking for the good war �- farrar, straus and giroux 120 broadway, new york 10271 copyright © 2021 by elizabeth d. samet all rights reserved printed in the united states of america first edition, 2021 grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from "the good war)): an oral history of world war two, copyright © 1984 by studs terkel. reprinted by permission of the new press. www.thenewpress.com. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data names: samet, elizabeth d., author. title: looking for the good war: american amnesia and the violent pursuit of happiness / elizabeth d. samet. other titles: american amnesia and the violent pursuit of happiness description: first edition. i new york: farrar, straus and giroux, 2021. identifiers: lccn 2021028289 i isbn 9780374219925 (hardcover) subjects: lcsh: world war, 1939-1945-united states-influence. world war, 1939-1945-social aspects-united states. i collective memory-united states. i memory-social aspects-united states. war and society-united states. classification: lcc d744.7.u6 s26 2021 i ddc 940.53/73-dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028289 our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. please contact your local bookseller or the macmillan corporate and premium sales department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email atmacmillanspecialmarkets@macmillan.com. www.fsgbooks.com www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 (1924-2020) in memory of my father, theodore s. samet staff sergeant 126th army airways communications system squadron pacific theater world war ii , . --- war would only be a remedy for a people always seeking glory. -alexis de tocqueville, democracy in america, part 2 (1840) some insisting on the plumbing, and some on saving the world: these being the two great american specialties. -d. h. lawrence, foreword to studies in classic american literature (1923) yes-what the american public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending. -william dean howells on the failed dramatization of edith wharton's tragic novel the house of mirth; quoted in wharton, a backward glance: an autobiography (1934) sentimentality is a failure of feeling. -wallace stevens, from the adagia (1957) so you're unhappy. relax. there's no law says you got to be happy. look at me. i'm not happy. but i get my kicks. gee, how could anybody stand it if they didn't get their kicks? -pat (mary astor), act of violence (1948), dir. fred zinnemann . --------- contents prologue: is this trip really necessary? 3 introduction: one war at a time 7 1. age of gold 25 2. dead-shot american cowboys 93 3. thieves like us l45 4. war, what is it good for? 205 5. giddy minds and foreign quarrels 279 epilogue: age of iron 333 recommended books and films 345 acknowledgments 353 looking for the good war � " � �� � quotation marks have been added, not as a matter of caprice or editorial comment, but simply because the adjective "good" mated to the noun "war" is so incongruous. prologue: is this trip really necessary? -studs terkel, note to "the good war": an oral history of world war two (1984) during world war ii, american automobile owners were required to affix gas-rationing stickers to their windshields. drivers were classified by occupation (a, b, c, etc.), each authorized a certain number of gallons per week. the backs of many of these stickers posed a pointed question to the man or woman at the wheel: "is this trip really necessary?" designed to train civilian attention on an unseen war being fought far away, the sticker became at once a badge of sacri­ fice and a practical necessity. it would soon become a valuable black-market commodity. in may 1942, to save fuel and tires, a number of states also introduced a thirty-five-mile-per­ hour speed limit: victory speed. as the literary critic and combat veteran paul fussell proposed in his angry, provoc­ ative 1989 book wartime: understanding and behavior in the second world war, the resulting "inconvenience" served to remind americans that there was "a war on." that the public should need reminding; that there was in fact a robust black looking for the good war market (chiefly in beef and gasoline), operated, as john stein­ beck noted in a 1943 newspaper article, not by "little crooks, but the best people"; that the government felt the need to launch an unprecedented propaganda campaign to motivate civilians and soldiers alike-all these facts suggest the degree to which the goodness, idealism, and unanimity we today reflexively associate with world war ii were not as readily apparent to americans at the time. john h. abbott was a conscientious objector assigned by the authorities to a series of stateside public works details un­ til he refused even this duty. convicted in 1943 for failing to remain in a public-service camp, he served two years in a federal prison. years after the war, in an interview with studs terkel, abbott recalled a prank he and some of his fellow cos used to play: "these gasoline stickers for rationing that you had on your windshield had a little note on it: is this trip really necessary? we'd scratch out 'trip' and write 'war': is this war really necessary?" one can disagree with abbott-in other words, one can, as i do, believe that the united states' involvement in the war was necessary-yet still question the way that participation has been remembered in the wake of wars considerably less galvanizing and unifying. has the pre­ vailing memory of the "good war," shaped as it has been by nostalgia, sentimentality, and jingoism, done more harm than good to americans' sense of themselves and their country's place in the world? has the meaning of american force been perverted by a strident, self-congratulatory insistence that a war extraordinary in certain aspects was, in fact, unique in all? has the desire to divorce that war from history-to inter­ pret victory as proof of america's exceptionalism-blinded us to our own tragic contingency? finally, has the repeated insistence by so many on the country's absolute unity behind the war effort effectively exacerbated ongoing social and po­ litical divisions? d. as john stein1 wry-winter· 1allsm-olinaea ha the repeatea , re unity oehina deia1 and po· prologue: is this trip really necessary? these are some of the questions motivating this book. more than seventy-five years on, world war ii remembrance continues to distort the country's past and thus to obstruct the realization of a more expansive future. but that belief hasn't prevented me from asking myself while writing this book, "is this trip really necessary?" such is the sacral force of war's mythology, especially that of world war ii-the good war that served as prologue to three-quarters of a cen­ tury of misbegotten ones-that i embarked on this project with some trepidation, even as i perceived the need to explore the ways in which retrospective interpretations of the second world war, the last american military action about which there is anything like a positive consensus, have shaped our thinking about american identity and, in particular, about american violence abroad and at home. myths grant life and take it away, give birth to nations and tear them apart. all the countries that fought world war ii developed particular narratives about this cataclysmic event. several-france and germany most conspicuously, perhaps-have already undergone serial, substantive revi­ sions to their initial versions. there has always been a double edge to the american mythology surrounding world war ii: for a long time now, it has simultaneously fortified and di­ minished the united states. in this book i set out to explore the ways in which the meaning and memory of world war ii have evolved and periodically intersected with those of the other wars that have punctuated american history: korea, vietnam, and the gulf war; our more recent wars; and, ret­ rospectively, the civil war. these conflicts, about which americans tend to feel far more ambivalence, lie as close as world war ii does to the heart of national identity, even if we prefer to think otherwise. such trips into the past really are necessary if we are to see our way toward a viable future. -w. c. heinz, war correspondent, "the retreat at mons," true (1950) introduction: one war at a time we crossed the belgian border and went for mons at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on september 2, 1944 ... when the first tank crossed the border it stopped. the general was riding behind it . . . and he got out and the first thing he did was urinate. that is the kind of a com­ mander he was, and that is what he thought of world warii ... "if we'd got here nine days sooner," i said, "it would have been the thirtieth anniversary of the british re­ treat from mons." "who cares?" one of the guys said. "nobody cares," i said, "but you don't have to get sore about it." "nobody's sore about it," he said. "just let's fight one war at a time." "i don't want to fight any of them," i said. "i'll give you both of them." world war ii transformed the way americans understood the country and its role in the world. the united states, so isolated only a few years before, would take a leading role in reconfiguring the world order, most conspicuously at first by looking for the good war means of its economic and physical-security assistance to eu­ rope. a new set of assumptions found official political as well as unofficial cultural expression. in 1945, the united states was a power as dominant, its vanquished enemies as inhu­ mane, as any the world had seen. the depravity against which americans had fought, most clearly evidenced by the nazi death camps, ultimately came to gild the unprecedentedly intense and indiscriminate violence that achieved victory. miraculously, the deadliest conflict in human history became something inherently virtuous. to interpret the war in this way required a selective memory. "if the character of hit­ ler and his paladins gave to the allied side a moral justifica­ tion unusual in warfare," argues the philosopher and veteran j. glenn gray, "the western nations have no reason to forget their share of responsibility for hitler's coming to power or their dubious common cause with the russian dictator." but forgetting was the order of the postwar day, and every amer­ ican exercise of military force since world war ii, at least in the eyes of its architects, has inherited that war's moral justification and been understood as its offspring: motivated by its memory, prosecuted in its shadow, inevitably measured against it. as the latest expeditions in iraq and afghanistan reveal, the united states continues to struggle beneath the burden of its last good war. we continue to search in vain for a heroic plot comparable to the one woven out of our experience in world war ii, a war into which the american gi was pulled belatedly, yet out of which he marched a heroic liberator armed by destiny. force, when exercised by the united states, seemed to have acquired an innate, exceptional goodness. in the summer of 1941, on the eve of our entrance into the war, the archetype of the reluctant american warrior was given an old-fashioned showcase in sergeant york, the top-grossing film of the year, which recruited a hero from world war i for overtly propa1m of the year, r irertiy propa· introduction: one war at a time gandist aims. the film documents alvin york's gradual con­ version from christian pacifist and conscientious objector to calmly efficient infantryman and eventual recipient of the medal of honor. the gi of the european-but generally not the pacific­ theater would become a legend largely through identification with several iconic acts preserved in photographs and news­ reels: giving chocolate bars to hungry european children, being kissed by grateful frenchwomen (and sometimes, to his consternation, by men), having his hair adorned with a flower by his liberated italian host. william 1. hitchcock's the bitter road to freedom: the human cost of allied victory in world war ii europe offers a sobering chronicle of european per­ spectives on their "liberation." the travel writer norman lewis, who served as a british intelligence officer attached to the u. s. fifth army during the invasion of italy, recorded a scene in his diary, later published as naples '44, of shock and despair as he made his way through a series of towns on the way to naples: "we made slow progress through shattered streets, past landslides of rubble from bombed buildings. people stood in their doorways, faces the colour of pumice, to wave mechanically to the victors, the apathetic fascist salute of last week having been converted into the apathetic v-sign of today, but on the whole the civilian mood seemed one of stunned indifference." (similar scenes can be found in many eyewitness accounts.) but a recognition that the totality of the war's devastation made pure gratitude an impossibility­ that ambivalence could signify something other than ingrat­ itude-is inconsistent with the myth of our deliverance of europe. world war ii left behind the dangerous and seemingly indestructible fantasy that our military intervention will naturally produce (an often underappreciated) good. each succeeding conflict has led to the reprise and reinvention of � --10 looking for the good war the good war's mythology in order to justify or otherwise ex­ plain uses of american power. the idea of war's nobility, and the attendant rhetoric of religiosity and chivalry, was in truth far more characteristic of alvin york's war than of world war ii. but the origins of the high-flown language later associated with the second world war can be found in general dwight d. eisenhower's d-day radio address to the troops. "you are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. the eyes of the world are upon you," eisenhower exhorted his audience. "the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. in company with our brave allies and brothers-in­ arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the german war machine, the elimination of nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of europe, and security for our­ selves in a free world." eisenhower's speech, harmonizing with those of churchill and roosevelt, supplied a sense of one grand unifying cause that seems to us in retrospect al­ ways to have been there but was in truth far more elusive. the title of eisenhower's 1948 memoir, crusade in europe, harked back to this speech. world war ii was in crucial ways an exceptional war: a struggle against the unremitting brutality of totalitarianism, albeit one that america joined late, and only in response to direct attack. the roosevelt administration's own inclina­ tions and sympathies notwithstanding, the proximate cause for the country's entrance into the conflict was not proactive, but reactive: the attack on pearl harbor, not a quest to liberate the world's oppressed peoples. as the journalist martha gellhorn wrote in collier's in 1945 after visiting the nazi concentration camp at dachau, "we are not entirely guiltless, we the allies, because it took us twelve years to open the gates of dachau. we were blind and unbelieving and slow, and that we can never be again." as much as we would later make of 'orotherll'ileel. . r's nobilit),) ��� . !ry, i\'a� in truili .an of\�'orlo w�r .. later alloci�!e� general dwi�nl roopl. ily�� ,loll'arownirfl y� of tile worl� introduction: one war at a time 11 our role in liberating the camps, their liberation, even after our entrance into the war, was never a priority. the roos­ evelt administration first learned of hitler's final solution as early as the summer of 1942, but as late as january 1944, secretary of the treasury henry morgenthau jr. presented to the president his department's "report to the secretary on the acquiescence of this government in the murder of the jews." it was only then that roosevelt created the war refugee board, which was entrusted with developing a plan "for (a) the rescue, transportation, maintenance, and relief of the victims of enemy oppression, and (b) the establish­ ment of havens of temporary refuge for such victims." frank capra's why we fight (1942-45), the widely circulated pro­ paganda films created, as capra recalled in interviews with george stevens jr. at the american film institute in the 1970s, in response to army chief of staff general george c. marshall's desire for "a series of films that will tell these boys why they are fighting," made no mention of the nazi program for exterminating the jews. fussell was blunt on the subject of ideology: "the war seemed so devoid of ideological content that little could be said about its positive purposes that made political or intellec­ tual sense, especially after the soviet union joined the great crusade against what until then had been stigmatized as to­ talitarianism." fussell's position may be extreme, but it sheds some light on the perspective of the soldier on the ground, where the mandate of near-term survival left as little room for the long view in this war as it has done in virtually every other. even a soldier as committed to big ideas as j. glenn gray-he received his doctorate in philosophy and his army induction notice on the same day-found it impossible to tell a hermit he met on an italian hilltop "what world war ii was all about" even as he marked the "bitter, hateful ... heritage the nazis" left in their wake. such reflections make plain the �� � �-. �.. u 12 looking for the good war fundamental ambiguities and contradictions the mythmakers smoothed over when they transformed the consequences of victorious force-the liberation of europe from fascism and asia from the imperial abuses of japan chief among them­ into an animating sense of purpose. the year 1945 began a new chapter in the ongoing nar­ rative of american exceptionalism. charting the evolution of the term in the new american exceptionalism, the lit­ erary critic donald e. pease calls attention to the remark­ able elasticity of this national "fantasy" and to the violence in which our national "victory culture" has been rooted from the start. as pease notes, the cold war energized the con­ cept of exceptionalism, but the idea, if not the term, had been in place since colonial days. ever since john winthrop, on his way to the massachusetts bay colony in 1630, alluded to his future home "as a city upon a hill" toward which "the eyes of all people" would be directed, the notion of excep­ tionalism has inspired yet also distorted american cultural and political thought. in language similar to winthrop's, eisenhower's speech called attention to this sense of national mission. because it unfolded on a global stage, world war ii galvanized a faith that america was different, special, unique in the history of nations. american force had likewise come to be understood as exceptional force, an assumption help­ ing to guide foreign policy in the decades that followed and contributing not a little to the overheated rhetoric surround­ ing our twenty-first-century wars, which have been so deeply indebted to the visceral, volatile motive of vengeance. amer­ ican violence, as distinguished from that enacted by other na­ tions, took on a special luster that combined righteous might and comic-book exuberance with native decency and a sense of fair play. geography has long been at the heart of the myth of the united states. winthrop devised his rhetoric en route ('[the mytno[ i toric en rout( introduction: one war at a time 13 to a haven long distant from europe. the continent's vast expanse-and the social and economic opportunities it made possible-was central to benjamin franklin's thoughts on the colonial experiment and later to the shrewd french ob­ server alexis de tocqueville's understanding of the nature of american exceptionalism, which was for him primarily geographical. the fact that the continental united states had not experienced war's destruction since 1865 confirmed twentieth-century mystical ideas about national destiny and influenced american attitudes about the use of force else­ where. victory in world war ii seemed somehow the ultimate revelation of all these formative mysteries. lewis h. lapham alluded to this phenomenon in 1979, in an often-quoted harper's article: "the continental united states had escaped the plague of war, and so it was easy enough for the heirs to believe that they had been anointed by god." postwar foreign policy, lapham proposed, became "a game of transcenden­ tal poker, in which the ruthless self-interest of a commercial democracy ... got mixed up with dreams, sermons, and the transmigration of souls." a faith that violence had been unleashed in the name of american liberty and decency disguised the fact that the bare essence of war itself has remained largely unchanged since its mythic western origins at troy. indeed, its violence has grown only more indiscriminate and encompassing. "the true hero, the true subject, the center of the iliad is force," the french philosopher simone weil argued soon after the fall of france in 1940. this is the opening claim of her trea­ tise lllliade au le poeme de la force, which was published in the marseilles literary magazine cahiers du sud in 1940-41, and in an english translation by mary mccarthy in politics in november 1945, in the immediate aftermath of the war. weil defined force as "that x that turns anybody who is sub­ jected to it into a thing. exercised to the limit, it turns man 14 looking for the good war into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him." no cause, however noble, could alter the nature of that force-even if technology amplified it to a heretofore incon­ ceivable scale-and weil discerned a fundamental continu­ ity between the seemingly alien world of homer and that of 1940s europe: force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. in this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. for those dreamers who considered that force, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, the iliad could appear as an historical document; for others, whose powers of recog­ nition are more acute and who perceive force, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the iliad is the purest and the loveliest of mirrors. allied victory would shatter that crystalline mirror for all but the most stubborn witnesses of force. the always inglorious work of war gradually became sanctified by virtue of its hav­ ing been waged against regimes of unequivocal maleficence. in the process, war, the inherently violent thing itself-rather than the causes force might serve-became the subject of nostalgic remembrance and heroic celebration. in this book i explore many attitudes toward the war as they evolved over the decades: individual and corporate, some expressed directly but others obliquely, full-throated patriotic fairy tales and remorseless satire. in addition to the eyewit­ ness reportage of gellhorn, ernie pyle, a. j. liebling, john hersey, and others, i examine the work of later journalists, historians, and commentators, including reinhold niebuhr, retofore inc�ij. mentalcontinij. imer anqtn!t�i mirrorfor!ll�m orpor�te,l�m1 hroateo �atri��( idn to me e�e\l'it· ] lieblin�, j��� later journ�lilll, 'inhold nieoum. introduction: one war at a time 15 studs terkel, james baldwin, joan didion, stephen am­ brose, and tom brokaw. i explore the postwar fiction of ross macdonald, dorothy b. hughes, david goodis, and others, together with hollywood films, the latter as collaborative expressions-involving not only screenwriters, directors, and actors, but also studio executives concerned chiefly with the marketability of their products-of a very different way of telling the world war ii story. i am especially concerned with those observers who express doubt or confusion, ask ques­ tions, or otherwise complicate our picture of the war, for they illuminate at once the power and perils of mythmaking. their work suggests that there are many other ways to understand and to tell the national story. immune to the american horror of ambiguity as some kind of old world con, these thinkers largely lack the "national vanity" tocqueville attributed to us: all free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. the americans, in their intercourse with strangers, appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of praise. the most slender eulogy is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties, they fall to praising themselves. it would seem as if, doubt­ ing their own merit, they wished to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. their vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant nothing, while it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to quarrel at the same time. it is tocqueville to whom the champions of american excep­ tionalism like to trace their doctrine. but those champions tend to read him selectively; they forget not only that the chief source of exceptionalism as he saw it was national geography 16 looking for the good war (largely protected by oceans and rich in resources) but also that the generally admiring tocqueville was attuned to poten­ tial fault lines in the great experiment he was witnessing. it is his fascinated ambivalence they have conveniently forgotten. the most potent and highly polished version of the world war ii myth, which crystallized in the celebration of the greatest generation in the late 1990s, arose during and in the aftermath of the war's fiftieth-anniversary commemorations. its emphasis on a set of superior national virtues-generosity, decency, love of freedom-concealed a fundamental chau­ vinism. its chief evangelists were the historian stephen am­ brose, the journalist tom brokaw, and in certain respects the filmmaker steven spielberg. today, in a young century de­ fined by renewed confusion about why we go to war and how we get out of it, world war ii endures for many as testament to the redemptive capacity of american violence. long axi­ omatic, world war ii's goodness-and the greatness of the generation that fought it-has survived subsequent questions about the atomic bomb's necessity and condemnations of the firebombing of german and japanese cities. it withstood, and gathered strength from, a gradual erosion of american confidence in the latter half of the twentieth century, when a series of misguided military adventures failed to achieve any­ thing like victory. in the 2015 preface to his incisive book the best war ever: america and world war ii, originally published in 1994, the historian michael c. c. adams proposed that the "widely accepted version" of the "good war" was "fading or being put aside . . . as seemingly less relevant to the situation fac­ ing us in the second decade of the twenty-first century." i don't think that's the case. in fact, the hold exerted by the good war remains strong, one of the few national stories still available to both major political parties in a deeply partisan �ie )ituation[!(' r.rir)tcentuf)',"1 ,'!d exerteo b�ilil , [lonal �torie!lt�1 deeply partil!� introduction: one war at a time 17 nation. it was especially attractive to the retrograde preoccu­ pation with greatness that characterized the donald trump presidency and its commitment to the doctrine of america first. the appropriation of this term, originally the name of the committee of isolationists and fascist sympathizers who opposed our entry into world war ii, is a symptom of amer­ ican amnesia. not even the trump administration, for which nothing seemed sacred and everything appeared a target for disruption, dared to dismantle the myth of the greatest gen­ eration. indeed, in june 2019, trump engaged in what has become a presidential ritual-the d-day anniversary speech in normandy-with unaccustomed piety and restraint. after the allied victory in 1945, a manichaean world­ view, masterfully articulated in the rhetoric of churchill and roosevelt, outlived its propagandist purpose and the exis­ tential desperation that produced it to shape the cold war. it required a paradoxical about-face: the ussr, mistrusted before the war, our ally during the conflict, became the new enemy, recognized as a totalitarian regime that outpaced even nazi evil. it was a reversal so complete that in 1985, president ronald reagan claimed to be speaking. for "most americans" when he declared that the american volunteers (some of them communists) who fought against franco's fascists in the spanish civil war were in fact "fighting on the wrong side." in a prime example of tortured cold warrior logic that same year, reagan joined the german chancellor helmut kohl in a wreath-laying ceremony at a german war cemetery at bitburg, home to the graves of ss as well as wehr­ macht troops. on this occasion, reagan proclaimed that the buried soldiers were "victims of nazism just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps." reagan's tendency to miss the "key point," was, as joan didion suggests in a 1989 essay on the reagan white house, 18 looking for the good war "in the realm of the fisher king," one of his defining char­ acteristics. he was a man who engaged the "big picture," not the crucial detail. it was the way he understood the cold war: "the soviet union appeared to ronald reagan as an abstraction, a place where people were helpless to resist 'com­ munism,' the inanimate evil which, as he ... put it ... had 'tried to invade our industry' and been 'fought' and eventually 'licked.' this was a construct," didion continues, "in which the actual citizens of the soviet union could be seen to have been," like hollywood during the red scare, "'invaded'-in need only of liberation. the liberating force might be the ap­ pearance of a shane-like character, someone to 'lick' the evil, or it might be just the sweet light of reason. 'a people free to choose will always choose peace,' as president reagan told students at moscow state university in may of 1988." after 1989, once the specter of communism officially stopped haunting us, the war myth would be invoked with renewed energy. george h. w. bush's service as a navy pilot in world war ii invested him with a certain authority during the gulf war, a credibility that perhaps predisposed the na­ tion to support it and, as the former cia analyst patrick ed­ dington suggests, subsequently blinded the public to not only the abandonment of the shiites and kurds who had risen up against saddam hussein at america's urging but also bush's indifference to the gulf war syndrome suffered by many veterans and the longer-term consequences of our military intervention in the middle east. before the war began, bush himself framed the problem by explicitly comparing saddam hussein's regime to hitler's: iraqi forces "have committed outrageous acts of barbarism," he claimed, a degree of "bru­ tality that i don't believe adolf hitler ever participated in." that this war would redeem vietnam for bush also be­ came clear: "prior to ordering our forces into battle," he told the nation in his announcement of operation desert storm, 1i definin� c��r, .. i ig pictur�/inffi toad the c�i� \ ri, ea�an �i au to relilt ic�m, degree of"�ro' articipateain," 'l1[ bulh all� k to battle,"hewl� n de ert�torm, introduction: one war at a time 19 i instructed our military commanders to take every nec­ essary step to prevail as quickly as possible, and with the greatest degree of protection possible for american and allied service men and women. i've told the american people before that this will not be another vietnam, and i repeat this here tonight. our troops will have the best possible support in the entire world, and they will not be asked to fight with one hand tied behind their back. i'm hopeful that this fighting will not go on for long and that casualties will be held to an absolute minimum. it is impossible to fight one war at a time. after the war, bush proved far more interested in the metaphorical "vietnam syn­ drome" than he was in the actual syndrome affecting gulf war veterans: "by god," he proclaimed in the wake of des­ ert storm, "we've kicked the vietnam syndrome once and for all." vietnam constituted the most serious threat to the world war ii mythology; victory in iraq allowed us to hear once again the positive, life-affirming signals still pulsing from bush's own first war. this was the culmination of rea­ gan's revisionist work. in the wake of the attacks of september 11, 2001, the case for war was once again made through analogy with hitlerian evil. george w. bush, secretary of defense donald rums­ feld, and others used a vocabulary inherited from world war ii to shape the post-9/ll dispensation. the coinage islamo­ fascism yoked an amorphous new enemy with an old one that was easy to picture. bush hailed american soldiers as liber­ ators and described the enemy as an "axis of evil," a phrase that evoked the axis powers. analogies to pearl harbor ap­ peared everywhere, stoking a desire for vengeance that, at least initially, generated support for the war and a great deal of show-patriotism. in cultures of war, the historian john dower, whose work has immeasurably complicated and >j" _'"��""_. -�---�-� 20 looking for the good war enriched our understanding of the war in the pacific, illumi­ nates the ways in which, after 9/11, pearl harbor became a "code" for righteous american vengeance and "everlasting remembrance." as public opinion turned against the iraq war, rumsfeld revived the specter of hitler to justify its con­ tinuance. typical of rumsfeld's rhetoric was a 2006 speech to the american legion in which, in an argument about ap­ peasement, he likened the world situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century to that of the 1930s: it was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies, when those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism were ridiculed or ignored. in­ deed, in the decades before world war ii, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else's problem. some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. it was, as winston churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hop­ ing it would eat you last. rumsfeld went on to suggest that the world was facing "sim­ ilar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism." as early as 1946, george orwell pointed out that the word fascism had lost its specificity and had be­ come a term that could be indiscriminately applied to any enemy. at the beginning of the twenty-first century, history offered no more useful word for an administration facing in­ creasing opposition to its seemingly unending military cam­ paigns. trump, whose foreign policy seemed to be guided by anachronistic isolationism combined with good measures of caprice, greed, and contempt, also returned to world war ii, albeit in unconventional fashion, to justify his october 2019 e padfic,illumi. arbor becaffi1i and lieverla!h�� e a aimttnelr1\ c justify it!\��. as a l��o !�11(� 1ingmilitarl'(!ffi' ej �o ne �uiae��! �d mea!ure)�! q�rv worlawarll, his octoner lml introduction: one war at a time 21 abandonment of the kurds to their turkish enemies. the kurds, he explained, "didn't help us in the second world war. they didn't help us with normandy, as an example." pundits who called attention to the fact that kurds did fight on the allied side missed the larger point: world war ii, eighty years in the past, could still be invoked as a kind of loyalty test. this book explores various incarnations of-and alter­ natives to-a versatile, durable myth that still serves as a dangerous lodestone in american culture. the first chapter anatomizes its most influential version, that of the good war and the greatest generation. there are many competing narratives of the war and always have been, and the second chapter looks back at the deeply ambivalent attitudes ex­ pressed toward world war ii while it was being fought. my third and fourth chapters explore postwar reinterpretations, some crafted in response to successive conflicts, while the final chapter explores the powerful and particular connection between the country's most significant foreign war and its monumental domestic conflict, the civil war. there have been several significant anatomies of the world war ii mythos over the years. the historian john bodnar offers an overview of strands of the myth in the "good war" in american memory, in which, he explains, "the sweet sounds of valor ultimately eclipsed the painful cries of loss." bodnar's book illuminates various costs of american sentimentalizing of the war and suppression of alternative perspectives. he does not trace the consequences for foreign policy. richard drinnon's facing west: the metaphysics of indian-hating and empire-building and the literary critic richard slotkin's gun­ fighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century america have addressed world war ii within a broader na­ tional history and specifically in connection with the idea of the frontier, while further complicating our understanding 22 looking for the good war of war, violence, and memory, but both books were written be­ fore the turn of the century. in his recent book total mobi­ lization: world war ii and american literature roy scranton interprets our postwar attitudes toward projections of amer­ ican power as the product of a reverence for the figure of the "trauma hero" and an undue deference to the veteran's spe­ cial, exclusive knowledge of war. that reverence, he argues, has been instrumental in concealing some of the war's funda­ mental "contradictions," and it led to a corresponding neglect of those literary responses that exposed them. recent alternative military histories have also illumi­ nated aspects of wartime life that had been largely eclipsed by sentimental remembrance. these books include mary louise roberts's what soldiers do: sex and the american oj in world war ii france, which explores the destructive be­ havior of american soldiers in france, and aaron hiltner's taking leave) taking liberties: american troops on the world war ii home front, which documents the war's unleashing of violence at home in the form of "uncontrolled and aggressive troops," most conspicuously on the streets of "liberty ports" and army-post towns. "nationwide," hiltner explains, "the papers filled with lurid stories of criminal activity perpetrated by soldiers and sailors." such work helps to remind us of the dangers of preferring myth at a moment when nostalgia for a good war, a greatest generation, and a simpler time remains as seductive as ever. the ambiguities of korea (the "forgotten" war that, tech­ nically, has yet to end), the mendacity and failure of vietnam, the transitory triumph of the first gulf war, the ultimate confusion of a seemingly unending war against what has come to be called global extremism, and, in the last few years, the prospective dissolution of the postwar liberal world or­ der under the trumpian mandate of america first: all these events have invoked, reflected, and renewed the mythical sta\\'erewritt�nd1' ok tota/moli. ire roy �cranto� ectiomofam11' the figur� of ilif the vet�ran'! !�1. 'encel he ar�utl: f the war'! fun��. 'nding nt�lw n" warili�t,ttt�· 21lureofvittniffi, "ar. the ultimil� aim! \l'nit�i\ i ;elill few 111' · liberal \vorl� m· i a fir�t: all t�(i( themythicalllj' introduction: one war at a time 23 tus of world war ii. each generation has found a new use for the good war. nostalgia for the war years remains a bulwark against doubt and disillusion" a great golden age to which we can always retreat to remember who we were and might be again" seeking safety through violent conflict because once we thought we found it there" retaining a faith in the american capacity for exceptional violence. victory in the twentieth century's second global conflict transformed the world and at the same time condemned the united states to a futile quest for another just as good" just as definitive" just as transforma­ tional. wars never can do the work of redemption" even when their causes meet generally agreed-upon criteria for justice. 1 age of gold i think this is the greatest generation any society has ever produced. -tom brokaw, interviewed on meet the press during the fiftieth-anniversary d-day commemoration giants of decency the most enduring and tenacious iteration of america's world war ii myth was burnished to perfection during and soon af­ ter the war's fiftieth anniversary. its celebrants sounded several keynotes, which i enumerate here in the style of the six rules for writing that appear toward the end of "politics and the en­ glish language," george orwell's essay on the connection be­ tween "the decay of language" and the "political chaos" of the mid-twentieth century, which appeared in horizon in 1946: 1. the united states went to war to liberate the world from fascism and tyranny. 2. all americans were absolutely united in their commitment to the war effort. 3. everyone on the home front made tremendous sacrifices. 4. americans are liberators who fight decently, re­ luctantly, only when they must. � ,/�'---� � . � ---��26 looking for the good war 5. world war ii was a foreign tragedy with a happy american ending. 6. everyone has always agreed on points 1-5. we reflexively invoke this dogma even when we know, at some level, beneath the righteous passion, that it cannot be entirely true. this is the tale that continues to dominate the popular imagination and the politician's rhetoric. it appeals to our national vanity, confirms the new world's superiority to the old, and validates modernity and the machine. to do all these things, however, the myth must bend history to its purposes. its first tenet, conflating the consequences of our interven­ tion with the causes americans believed they were fighting for, ignores the timing and proximate catalyst of our entry into the war (the attack on pearl harbor). the second-often used in recent years to underscore (and shame) our indiffer­ ence to wars fought by a small cadre of volunteer professionals while the home front preserves a sense of normalcy-ignores both the reluctance that survived even pearl harbor in some quarters as well as the diversity of motives, including cynical opportunism, at work among supporters of the war. the third exaggerates the economic sacrifices of a country that the war actually brought back to work for the first time after years of economic depression. the fourth makes american violence a special case, its brutality almost miraculously mitigated by national temperament. the fifth insists that war, at least when we prosecute it, is not a tragedy but a comedy, in the rich lit­ erary sense of comedy as a plot that ultimately restores order to chaos, sorts out the winners and the losers, enlarges the cir­ cle of justice, and thereby declares victory. it is a symptom of what reinhold niebuhr recognized in the 1950s as an ameri­ can tendency to regard tragedy, like feudalism and fascism, as european. this tenet also passes over one of the most crucial ,9),1 a�anaffi1n· mandfa)cilffi,!1 ji hemoltcrurii: age of gold 27 senses in which world war ii was sui generis: its scale and mode of destruction. in the firebombing of german and jap­ anese cities and, finally, in the explosion of atom bombs over hiroshima and nagasaki, war became not simply exceptional destruction but prospective global annihilation. john hersey documented this transformation with precision in hiroshima. hersey, as nicholas lemann noted in the new yorker in 2019, found his calling "during the second world war, which he was early in coming to understand primarily as a great ca­ tastrophe rather than an inspiring american triumph. he went to the scene, he tirelessly looked where most journalists didn't, and he found ways of writing about what he saw that gave his journalism an enduring power." hersey's vision has not won out, however; those who have seen fit to question the myth have never succeeded in dislodging its longest tendrils. the sixth and final tenet involves a special kind of am­ nesia, akin to what martha gellhorn called, in describing the revisionist history of the vietnam war crafted by the reagan administration, a "collective forgetting of nations." against this collective amnesia, the dissenter often announces himor herself as the first to awaken to the truth. witness paul fussell's declaration in the preface to wartime, pub­ lished in 1989: "for the past fifty years the allied war has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty." fussell sought "to balance the scales." thirty years on, the scales still need balancing, but that balancing act entails dispelling the notion that everyone has somehow been in agreement all along. in truth, there have been con­ trarian voices from the start, but we have been reluctant to reckon with the stakes of their critiques. i'm talking here not about the cranks and the conspiracists, nor about those who imagine we would have been somehow better off remaining neutral, but rather about those thinkers, writers, and artists �_.-.-�. . / -----�� 28 looking for the good war who seem able to resist the twin seductions of sentimentality and certitude, who find in coolness and ambivalence a way of understanding their country that shows its true worth to bet­ ter effect than the "garrulous patriotism" tocqueville long ago attributed to americans. as the epigraph to this chapter intimates, the very mention of world war ii encourages emotional, hyperbolic, unprov­ able claims. this is but one manifestation of the phenomenon tocqueville observed: "if i say to an american that the coun­ try he lives in is a fine one, 'ay,' he replies, 'there is not its equal in the world.'" john bodnar calls tom brokaw's coin­ age "the quintessential expression of the american myth of world war ii." as brokaw himself acknowledges, much of the groundwork for his celebration was laid by the historian stephen ambrose, who marked the war's fiftieth anniver­ sary with band of brothers (1992) and d-day: june 6) 1944 (1994), his breakthrough bestseller. he subsequently added to his body of work on the war with citizen soldiers (1997), the victors: eisenhower and his boys (1998), and the wild blue: the men and boys who flew the b-24s over germany 1944-45 (2001). as richard goldstein noted in a new york times obituary for ambrose in 2002, these books "fueled a national fascina­ tion with the generation that fought world war ii." ambrose himself explained that they "flowed" from his "association with eisenhower," about whom he had earlier written a mul­ tivolume biography, and from his own emotions about the gis. "i was ten years old when the war ended," he said. "i thought the returning veterans were giants who had saved the world from barbarism. i still think so. i remain a hero worshiper." throughout his books, that youthful adoration tends to overwhelm the historian's mandate to report com­ plex realities. on a number of occasions ambrose declared, "i want to tell all the things that are right about america." ,;mlon� aoouttt1 �ded\" ne laic, "i [ who nag la\,1� i remain a �1r� \' ,uthful agorau�� ate to report (om' �mbro�e aedar��� t about amen(a, age of gold 29 this mission, which is as uninstructive as telling only the things that are wrong, was in large measure a reaction to the wide­ spread disillusionment and disaffection following the vietnam war. as benjamin schwarz notes in his review of ambrose's the good fight: how world war ii was won, a children's book, "ambrose's version of events retroactively imposes an elevated meaning on the american side of the war." it is, schwarz concludes, "a pious interpretation." ambrose carefully sculpted his stories, all of which share a worshipful tone and largely ignore contradictions or com­ plexities that prove disruptive to a sentimental account of american decency and goodness. he promulgated a fantasy that american soldiers somehow preserved a boyish inno­ cence amid the slaughter required to save "the world from barbarism." in band of brothers-eventually turned into an hbo miniseries, executive-produced by steven spielberg and tom hanks-ambrose shrewdly zeroed in on the story of a single company: e (or easy) company, 506th parachute infantry regiment, 101st airborne division. this narrow fo­ cus distilled an unwieldy epic of global disaster into an inti­ mate tale of individual "giants," in this case members of "an elite unit" of paratroopers, who, ambrose claims, were "spe­ cial in their values . . . idealists, eager to merge themselves into a group fighting for a cause, actively seeking an outfit with which they could identify, join, be a part of, relate to as a family." bodnar notes the degree to which this triumphant narrative ignores any mourning for the dead. it also elides the brutalizing effects of violence. a very different picture of volunteerism emerges from alvin kernan's description of a group of early-1941 naval re­ cruits in his memoir crossing the line: a bluejacket's odyssey in world war ii. kernan, who later became a professor of en­ glish, joined the navy after confronting bleak economic pros­ pects at home in rural wyoming. he enlisted with about a 30 looking for the good war hundred others in cheyenne: "we were ... kids who couldn't get jobs. here and there were men in their twenties, jobless workers at the end of their rope, or incorrigible 'fuck-ups' who had gotten into some kind of trouble at home once too often and had been given the ancient choice by the judge of going to jailor joining one of the services." kernan continues, "most of us were from small towns, often from broken families, notable for bad teeth and worse complexions, the marginal american products of more than ten years of the hardest of times." as he reflects on the experience of basic training, kernan sees a group of children learning a deadly trade: we were children still-astonishingly stoical, self­ reliant, tough children, but children still-and, like all children, fascinated with killing. the guns drew us like magnets ... stands of boarding cutlasses still stood as ornaments next to the cases of rifles, but so innocent were we that we thought boarding enemy vessels­ just like errol flynn in the movies set on the span­ ish main-was still a part of naval warfare and were disappointed ... with only a murderous sixteen-inch bayonet. such men, kernan goes on to recount, fought no less val­ iantly than the men of easy company, but their motivations were hardly lofty, their experience less than ennobling. ambrose's paratroopers appear to be motivated by a heady combination of patriotism and fraternity. as the extensive social science literature on combat motivation suggests, idealism and cohesion are both important to a citizen army, but the first quality largely recedes into the background during actual combat. even cohesion-fighting and sacrificing for one's "buddy"-might often more accu­ rately be described as something else: peer pressure, per:h important wi .:r receoe� into (�i i ·ohe ion-n�n(if:i ii oilen morea((�' p r pre))ure, �'l' age of gold 31 haps; honor, sometimes; but often cruelty, shame, guilt, or a lack of other options. as charles glass notes in his book the deserters: a hidden history of world war ii_, there were far fewer deserters in the pacific theater than in europe, largely because there was nowhere to run. because the un­ impeachable patriotism of the gi is crucial to ambrose's vision, he takes issue with the argument made by the civil war historian james mcpherson in his 1997 book for cause and comrades that world war ii gis were in fact less in­ vested in an ideological cause than were their civil war predecessors. according to a 2003 analysis of soldier moti­ vation conducted by the u.s. army's strategic studies in­ stitute, soldiers fighting as part of the all-volunteer force in the post-9/11 wars in iraq and afghanistan were also more likely than the gis of world war ii to be motivated by ideo­ logical commitments. volunteerism is a tricky subject in the era of a draft, when the threat of conscription hangs over the decision to enlist. the federal government first passed a conscription act in 1863_, in the midst of the civil war. a man could serve, pay $300_, or hire a substitute to take his place. inhabitants of new york city responded with a draft riot in which a white mob killed almost a hundred people and burned down the colored orphan asylum. in an unpublished letter on the constitutionality of the draft, abraham lincoln mused that men enter military service through a "voluntary weighing of motives," among them "patriotism, political bias, ambition, personal courage, love of adventure, want of employment, and convenience, or the opposites of some of these." any­ one who wanted to avoid "the horrors of the draft," he wryly noted, could quite easily do so by volunteering . franklin d. roosevelt signed the selective training and service act into law on september 16_, 1940. it was the first peacetime draft in u. s. history. approximately sixty percent 32 looking for the good war of world war ii servicemen were draftees. of those, roughly ten percent were engaged in combat; as glass documents, most of the almost fifty thousand deserters came from that ten percent. those who voluntarily enlisted were at least able to exert some choice over their branch of service. this calculation doesn't negate their potential patriotism, but it does make them practical human beings with real hopes and fears, rather than superhuman giants. "those who showed the greatest sympathy to deserters," notes glass, "were other frontline soldiers. they had, at one time or another, felt the temptation to opt out of the war through desertion, shooting themselves in the foot or lagging behind when ordered for­ ward. it was a rare infantryman who attempted to prevent his comrades from leaving the line." arriving on saipan in 1944, when it was periodically raided by japanese planes, the air­ man and poet john ciardi caught sight of a shell-shocked sol­ dier sitting alone next to a shelter with all his equipment and a supply of k rations. the figure never moved, and ciardi re­ corded the episode with generosity in his diary, published as saipan in 1988: "it's a pitiable case of pure panic he just sits. it may of course be a stunt ... but i doubt it someone that is in immediate charge of him has sense enough to leave him alone, but what he really needs is some competent psy­ chiatry ... he's certainly no good here-a weird, unwashed bundle of panic hugging the sandbags, and who knows what churns inside of him." ambrose's vision of idealistic liberators is more easily sus­ tained by a group of self-selecting paratroopers than it would have been by a study of resigned or reluctant conscripts, or of prudently patriotic enlistees. to make his case in citizen soldiers, ambrose is forced to interpret the very laconism of gis as confirmation of a purity of motive. when he can't find evidence for the kind of idealism that mcpherson, for exam­ ple, unearths in the letters of civil war soldiers, ambrose · of tho�e, rou��11 glass docum1n�\ /i arne fromili�t 1 d were all1�lt , of sen·lce. trul age of gold 33 rationalizes that gis were simply "embarrassed by patriotic bombast," unlike their less self-conscious nineteenth-century predecessors: "they knew they were fighting for decency and democracy and they were proud of it and motivated by it. they just didn't talk or write about it." john hersey's into the valley: marines at guadalcanal of­ fers a more nuanced, less stable interpretation of american attitudes. in his preface to a new edition in 1989_, published just three years before ambrose's band of brothers, hersey reflected on the inherent falseness of his own wartime think­ ing. he had written in the first edition: "courage is largely the desire to show other men that you have it." decades later, hersey revised his analysis: what we think of as "courage" can range ... from pure self-sacrifice for the sake of others to the release of a deep and gross bloodlust; it could embrace the cool steadfastness of david facing goliath, ... the costly sulking anger of achilles, the implicit love of others of horatio at the bridge, the idiotic fervor of ... the light brigade-s-and, alas, the telegenic viciousness, so pop­ ular in recent years with violence-besotted american viewers, of a rambo. the rambo franchise, which began with first blood in 1982_, marked a significant turning point in pop-culture represen­ tations of vietnam and, more generally, of american violence abroad. this proved to be a cause for alarm to careful ob­ servers of war cultures, hersey and martha gellhorn among them. writing in the late 1980s_, hersey enriched his perspective on the "complex" and mysterious nature of the "bravery" displayed by the u.s. marines on guadalcanal. in 1942_, as a naive novice reporter, he had asked a group of marines, � ._---�\ �--...-34 looking for the good war "today, here in this valley, what are you fighting for?" the marines respond with an embarrassed silence; they won't even look at hersey. finally, one breaks the silence: "jesus, what i'd give for a piece of blueberry pie." of course hersey knows that's not quite what he means: "when they say they are fighting for these things," he explains, "they mean that they are fighting . . . 'to get the goddam thing over and get home.'" hersey admits that the reason "sounds less dynamic than the axis slogans. but home seems to most marines a pretty good thing to be fighting for ... where the good things are-the generosity, the good pay, the comforts, the democ­ racy, the pie." hersey's marines lack ideological zeal. had an officer told them they could go into the valley or go home, "they would have said the hell with the valley." he praises such "rational and mature" motivations as far healthier than the zeal of the fanatic. it's homely, human, and rooted mostly in the tangible and material; it is the furthest thing from the lofty, almost saintly devotion of ambrose's soldiers. hersey proposes that the choice of pie over self-sacrifice embodies the "lifesaving skepticism and irony embedded in the con­ fused courage of men bred to free choice." that skepticism and irony, hersey suggests, more than any faith, is what helped gain an allied victory. empirical evidence for the absence of ideological moti­ vation among world war ii gis comes from the american soldier, a pathbreaking, multivolume study conducted by the sociologist samuel a. stouffer and others in the 1940s. it was sponsored by the army and based on survey research. stouffer found evidence for "a minimum of idealism or heroics." and the predominant element in these episodes turned out to be "the close solidarity of the combat group." as the study's au­ thors explain, the only consensus among americans "both in and out of the army ... lies simply in the undebatable fighting foti"ttl lienee; the� w�ij'l the ilenee,ll) ", 11� ." of eout�e h�r' " nen ther ��) ik , . hey me�n �� age of gold 35 assumptions that the japanese attack on pearl harbor meant war, and that once in the war the united states had to win ... beyond this basic unanimity . . . beyond acceptance of the war as a necessity forced upon the united states by an ag­ gressor, there was little support of attempts to give the war meaning in terms of principles and causes involved, and little apparent desire for such formulations." the military sociologist charles c. moskos would later sum up stouffer's most important discovery about the world war ii gi as follows: "the findings revealed a profoundly nonideological soldier." the gi fought, but not because he necessarily understood or "believed in the stated purposes of the war." moskos's own study of the vietnam era army led him to conclude that even though the comparative "ideolog­ ical conformity of world war ii" led to an underemphasis of "ideological factors in the combat studies" of the time, those factors had only an indirect influence. moskos's research led him to conclude that "latent ideology is an important though indirect variable on combat motivation." as the antiwar movement gathered steam in the late 1960s, soldiers' atti­ tudes began to change; nevertheless, it was not the "moral­ political" but practical antiwar arguments that actually did the work of shifting public opinion. in other words, moskos concludes, soldiers did not "become less patriotic" after 1969; they "reflected a basic change in the national perspec­ tive toward the vietnam war." building on the pioneering work of stouffer and his col­ leagues in understanding the american soldier in combat, moskos demystified the phenomenon of cohesive combat units that inspires ambrose's band of brothers: "rather than viewing soldiers' primary groups as some kind of semi­ mystical bond of comradeship, they can be better under­ stood as pragmatic and situational responses. this is not to 36 looking for the good war deny the existence of strong interpersonal ties within combat squads," moskos writes in soldiers and sociology, "but only to reinterpret them as derivative from the very private war each individual is fighting for his own survival." in the "hobbes­ ian" world of war, basic survival becomes the order of the day. while american soldiers in vietnam "had a general aversion to overt ideological symbols and patriotic appeals," moskos suggests that at least in the early years of the conflict, these ties of expediency were complemented by "underlying value commitments" and by "a belief ... in the worthwhileness of american society." there is little room for such subtleties in ambrose's myth. the ideal of eager volunteerism, rather than the reality of conscription, also bolsters the narrative of d-day, which closes with eisenhower's observation, made on omaha beach in 1964: "it just shows what free men will do rather than be slaves." while necessarily more sweeping in scope than the portrait of easy company in band of brothers, ambrose's d-day, published two years later, likewise hinges on defining the gi as a warrior for democracy. the complex amalgama­ tion of political, sociological, environmental, and personal factors that determine the outcome of war is submerged in misty legend. attempting to dramatize the citizen-soldier's individual fighting spirit in d-day, the story drifts into ba­ thos, nowhere more dramatically than in the prologue, which introduces readers to the first british and american officers killed during the landings. after telling the story of these two "citizen-soldiers" who acquitted themselves bravely on the beaches, ambrose declares, "if hitler had seen den brother­ idge and bob mathias in action at the beginning of d-day, he might have had second thoughts." this is less historical analysis than comic-book thought bubble. it is also a partic­ ularly american way of thinking and talking about war. one es within com�dl 100\ "boj) utonl)'� . pnvate lvar1�(� in the iiho��1l' orderofili1��( age of gold 37 might compare theodore roosevelt's rhetoric, which makes war seem like an especially bloody football game. it survives in ronald reagan's 1984 d-day speech, written by peggy noonan, who came up with the line "these are the boys of pointe du hoc," which noonan admitted in her memoir to stealing from roger kahn's sentimental remembrance of baseball's brooklyn dodgers, the boys of summer. "these are the boys of pointe du hoc," reagan had proclaimed on the beach at normandy, where the rangers sat together in front of him: "these are the men who took the cliffs. these are the champions who helped free a continent. these are the heroes who helped end a war." political scientists tend to attribute the fact that democra­ cies generally win wars-stephen biddle and stephen long call it "democracy's apparent effectiveness bonus"-to var­ ious factors encouraged within democratic society, among them a reluctance to go to war in the first place and a corre­ sponding need for consent. as dan reiter and allan c. stam argue in their classic study democracies at war, once at war, a democracy's emphasis on individuality seems to enhance performance on the battlefield. the advantage, they propose, is not to be found in superior economies or in some sense of supranational obligation to other democracies-the high­ flown rhetoric of politicians notwithstanding-but rather in the people's political will and the democratic citizen's "quali­ ties of better initiative and leadership." despite the allies' ultimate success and the celebration of the "citizen-soldier," the aptitude of citizen armies for combat remains a subject of debate. one of the first and most in­ fluential books on the combat performance of amateurs (as opposed to career professionals) in world war ii, s.l.a. marshall's men against fire has itself been under fire almost since its publication in 1947. marshall concluded that fewer 38 looking for the good war than one in four u. s. infantry soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy. marshall's dubious research methods and boundless capacity for self-promotion have prompted many to discredit his findings, but others at the time voiced similar concerns about the apparent reluctance among citizen-soldiers to use deadly force. the army itself recognized a problem at the time and traced it, in part, to the fact that the lowest­ scoring recruits on the army general classification test tended to be assigned to the infantry. in a 2013 study, the combat soldier: infantry tactics and cohesion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the british sociologist anthony king finds certain conclusions about "the underperformance of the citizen soldier" during the second world war "broadly sustainable." he suggests that objective assessments are espe­ cially difficult given the power of "national mythologies and contemporary nostalgia." armies tend to solve the problem of inertia in citizen­ soldiers on the battlefield, king explains, by appealing to social ties and commonalities. among the chief motivations­ not readily disentangled-are masculinity, honor (or per­ sonal reputation), and a frequently racialized patriotism or nationalism. king goes on to explain that a professional army largely replaces these volatile motives with a cohesion based on technical proficiency and the particular sense of honor that accompanies membership in a professional organization. although king may underestimate the persistence of more traditional white masculine concepts of honor in the armed services today, especially in combat units, he persuasively contends that while "citizen soldiers need political motiva­ tion ... to fight effectively," such motivation did not replace small-unit cohesion in the twentieth century but rather "de­ fined, justified, and augmented the mutual obligations be­ tween the members of the platoon." age of gold 39 an episode from john ciardi's diary gives personal ex­ pression to the sociologists' observations about combat moti­ vation. in december 1944 ciardi saw the film a guy named joe: "all about how to die in an airplane, but too noble." there's "no music" in the air, he adds, just a series of lifesav­ ing equipment checks. one flies, he explains, "for one reason only-that wherever one race sets out to take over the rest for private exploitation somebody has to live crazily enough to stop it." having such a reason won't make the insane sane, and it gilds nothing: "i resent the hollywood touch," ciardi notes before going on to describe a dismembered japanese pilot "smoking like a charred roast. there aren't enough speeches or parades in the world to make it pretty. there's not enough of anything in the world to justify it, except ne­ cessity." no cause, for ciardi, can turn the violence into something inherently beautiful or noble. living "crazily" is not the same thing as living nobly. ambrose tries to circumvent all of this in band of brothers by focusing on an elite unit that underwent extensive pre­ combat training. he routinely emphasizes the paratroopers' status as amateurs: they are citizen-soldiers with a sense of patriotic mission who "had not soured ... on their country" despite the hard times of the depression. but because it is so difficult to prove the presence of idealism in these laconic gis, cause must ultimately recede before the dynamic of so­ cial cohesion. the title of ambrose's book-and the epigraph that provides its shakespearean source-signals the primacy of fraternal honor as a motivator: "from this day to the end­ ing of the world, / ... we in it shall be remembered / ... we band of brothers." this radically abbreviated excerpt comes from shakespeare's history play henry v, specifically from the titular king's rousing speech before the battle of agincourt, where his outnumbered and demoralized army 40 looking for the good war is about to join battle with a french force defending home ground. henry has just overheard a loyal noble wishing for a few more soldiers with which to fight the french: if we are marked to die, we are enow to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honour. god's will! i pray thee, wish not one man more. rather proclaim it, westmoreland, through my host, that he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart; his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse: we would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us. this day is called the feast of crispian: he that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of crispian. he that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say "to-morrow is saint crispian": then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say "these wounds i had on crispin's day." old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember with advantages what feats he did that day ... and crispin crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered; we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, age of gold 41 this day shall gentle his condition: and gentlemen in england now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon saint crispin's day. the definition of honor articulated here has its roots in a renaissance medievalism that idealizes the past rather than reflects some precise historical sense of honor in warfare. like ambrose (albeit for different reasons), shakespeare is conjuring a mythic past. honor belongs to the nobleman, but any soldier who sheds his blood will acquire a kind of nobility that makes him an honorary "brother" to the king himself. it is an honor rooted entirely in the performance of battlefield courage, the glorification of which, as the historian eugen weber noted years ago in his essay "the ups and downs of honor," too often conceals "ugly motives and ugly deeds." the cause for which these men fight is murky at best and largely mysterious to the bulk of the army. ambrose pays scant attention to any of this. his title and epigraph initiate a collision-not for the last time in his tapestry-between dreams of medieval chivalry and the real­ ities of a twentieth-century democracy at war. only a super­ ficial reading of shakespeare can sustain the analogy between the very different worlds of henry v and the american gi. in the resulting incoherence, violence achieves a positive value. as samuel johnson suggested in the eighteenth cen­ tury, a military life "has the dignity of danger. mankind rev­ erence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness." because the dignity of danger licenses conquest and oppression as often as it does justice and liberation, its celebration can never be allowed to eclipse the end if we are to see violence for what it is. alert to the ways in which danger seems to confer dignity, j. glenn gray resisted the 42 looking for the good war temptation to turn the "confraternity of danger and expo­ sure" into something grand and noble in his 1959 book the warriors: reflections on men in battle, rooted in his own first­ hand observations, where he suggested that each soldier is "of interest" to his fellow "only as a center of force, a wielder of weapons, a means of security and survival." the "links" between soldiers, "passionate" though they may be, are in­ escapably "utilitarian and narrow." shakespeare is alert to the weak ties of cause in henry v the king's agincourt speech follows a heated argument with one of his subjects over the justice of his cause and the king's own self-pitying soliloquy on the burdens of his of­ fice. seeking to gauge the morale of his men by circulating among them in disguise on the eve of battle, henry encoun­ ters three unhappy soldiers who would much rather be back in england, just as hersey's marines would have preferred home to guadalcanal. the first man does not participate in the debate, while the second seems resigned to following the king unquestioningly. if the "cause be wrong," he explains, "our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us." but the third soldier, williams, refuses to grant the justice of the king's cause so easily, even though his misery does not impel him to disobedience. informing the disguised monarch that if his cause is not just, the king will have "a heavy reck­ oning to make" because of the many who will suffer for it, he tallies up a grisly butcher's bill: "all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, 'we died at such a place'-some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. i am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument?" small wonder, then, that henry appeals to his soldiers' masculinity-"gentlemen i danger ana 1h�� hls 19)9 doo� n d in hi� own ij�:, i ea h 10lai11 i� i,:, 0" force) a l\'i1)�t 'ira!." the"lin� age of gold 43 iii england" will "hold their manhoods cheap," he tells them-and to their desire for a kind of glory and fame usu­ ally reserved for aristocrats and kings. he proclaims, "for he to-day that sheds his blood with me / shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile." real-life world war ii generals like george patton and britain's bernard montgomery were quick to recognize the practical value of henry v's rhetoric; both incorporated parts of it into their own speeches to soldiers. signally, they were not drawn to the sentimental "band of brothers" motif, nor did they appeal to some lofty sense of honor. they knew that henry's power, like their own, lay to a large degree in shaming men. montgomery, newly arrived in north africa in 1942 after a series of british losses to erwin rommel's afrika korps, echoed henry's defiant offer to transfer any­ one who didn't want to be there: "i will tolerate no bellyach­ ing. if anyone objects to doing what he is told, then he can get out of it: and at once. i want that made very clear right down through the eighth army." patton, speaking to the third army in 1944, echoed henry v's appeal to his sol­ diers' concern for their reputations: "you may be thankful that twenty years from now, when you are sitting by the fire­ place with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great world war ii, you won't have to shift him to the other knee, cough, and say, 'well, your grand­ daddy shoveled shit in louisiana.' no, sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'son, your granddaddy rode with the great third army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named georgie patton!'" the agincourt speech's special connection to world war ii also owes to laurence olivier's 1944 film version, made in wartime england at the behest of the british min­ istry of information-its battle scenes filmed in ireland­ and released not long after d-day. olivier's henry was less 44 looking for the good war ambiguous than the one invoked by the generals. the film historian david thomson, who saw olivier's henry v as a young boy in britain, recalled: no matter that the wretched french had to stand in for the germans, henry v was a self-bestowed flag of honor in approaching victory in late 1944 ... i can only remember the complete assurance with which victory came to the british, and the breathtaking idea that "history" might be as immediate as the rush of arrows in the air . . . so the olivier henry v is not just a matter of taking pride in one's country, but of discovering the medium. olivier's masterful henry v massaged its source to suit the propagandistic moment. the voices of dissent that popu­ late the play and the sharp memory of the civil insurrec­ tion enacted in the first three installments of shakespeare's english history cycle-richard ii and the first and second parts of henry iv-largely disappear on the screen. in the preceding play (2 henry iv), henry's father, henry iv, ad­ vises his son to "busy giddy minds / with foreign quarrels." picking a fight with france accomplished just that, sup­ planting division with unity, promoting cooperation where there once was deadly internecine strife. the play redirects the violent impulses that tore open the country in a civil war outward onto france, but it has moments of subver­ sive discontent and a certain ambient unease ignored by many readers-as the king himself so ardently hopes they will be by his subjects-searching for a message of patriotic unity. as a result, the speech has long been a favorite of high school football teams and military units alike, yet most of the young men and women who memorize or recite it for age of gold 45 inspirational purposes have little or no sense of its literary or historical context. neither, it seems, did ambrose, who, as a writer of history, not a football coach or dramatist, theoretically had a different threshold of responsibility. as he makes clear in the intro­ duction to the victors, ambrose's first memories of world war ii were those of a child: he went to the movies with his brothers to see newsreels and played war "constantly: '[aps' vs. marines, gis vs. 'krauts.'" this enthusiasm, leading him to see war as a game rather than a global bloodbath, finds in shakespeare's "band of brothers" a conceit perfectly suited to his childhood memories as well as to his agenda as a mature storyteller. here is his initial description of easy company in band of brothers: each of the 140 men and seven officers who formed the original company followed a different route to its birthplace, camp toccoa, georgia, but they had some things in common. they were young, born since the great war. they were white, because the u.s. army in world war ii was segregated. with three exceptions, they were unmarried. most had been hunters and ath­ letes in high school. the whiteness of the band is mentioned only in passing, just one item in a catalogue. institutional segregation is a sim­ ple fact of their lives, together with youth, high school, and hunting, the latter pursuit recalling the old american ideal of the frontiersman-as-soldier, rural american self-sufficiency translating naturally into battlefield aptitude, as it did for hollywood's sergeant york, who shoots men in battle just the way he shot turkeys at home. anthony king, the sociol­ ogist, notes the degree to which racial exclusivity implicitly 46 looking for the good war strengthened the bond among white soldiers: "us soldiers may not have understood the conflict as part of an ethno­ national mission as their german opponents often did, but their front-line solidarity was based on ethnic presumptions." cultural presumptions and prejudices, some bolstered by law and regulation, reinforcing the masculine bonds of white units, included widely held convictions about the inferior courage and intelligence of african americans, the disloy­ alty of japanese americans, and the rightful subordination of women of all races to the needs of men. in chapter 4, i will explore the ways in which racial and other divides fractured the sense of unity we project onto the period. by means of emphasis and convenient omission, ambrose preserves his focus on unity, not division; right, not wrong; liberation, not subjugation. paradoxically, given that he makes so much of american idealism, he often subordinates a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself. the creation of that army, rather than the victory it made possible, becomes "the great achievement of the american people and system," just as the nation's "greatest nineteenth-century achievement" had been, according to ambrose, "the creation of the army of the potomac" rather than the end it eventually secured-the abolition of chattel slavery. the conclusion of citizen soldiers signals the triumph of sentimentality in ambrose's narrative and a peculiar amnesia about origins and causes (a char­ acteristic shared with so much writing about the american civil war, a phenomenon i explore in chapter 5). this in­ clination is especially apparent in a 1998 afterword in which ambrose-chronicling an unlikely postwar friendship be­ tween two erstwhile enemies: murray shapiro, an american, and hans herbst, a german-attempts to show that the gis "liberated the germans" from nazism. like many other sol­ diers, ambrose writes, shapiro and herbst have "learned to ... erll'oro in \\'ru(� !war irienolni��' . ,� an am�rir!�,pirvi [0 :how thattn�uli '. man\'otn�[lr:',). e , 'r hare "learn��r age of gold 47 forgive." that capacity for forgiveness and the reconciliation of former enemies becomes the ultimate testament to ameri­ can greatness. "the american soldier can take a great deal of credit for making that conversation possible. he fought hard to win the war. but every step of the way, he strove to cre­ ate peace." ernie pyle, who covered the european theater in 1943-44, suggested another possibility in the conclusion to brave men, a collection of his columns: "submersion in war does not necessarily qualify a man to be the master of the peace." who's the greatest? donald trump's juvenile refrain about national greatness­ expressed most clearly in his two presidential campaign slogans, "make america great again" and "keep amer­ ica great"-seems like a fun-house echo of a national pre­ occupation with exceptionalism dating back centuries. the first slogan is a retread: ronald reagan had used the phrase "let's make america great again" in his 1980 campaign. in the republic's early days, the prevailing conceit was one of greatness in prospect. in 1839 the journalist john l. o'sullivan, a proponent of westward expansion and the pop­ ularizer of the term manifest destiny, celebrated america as "the great nation of futurity." racialist and other alarming assumptions are bound up in manifest destiny, inextricable from its conceptual force, but perhaps the idea's most en­ during and potentially radical significance is its orientation toward the future. ironically, by the late twentieth century, even as america became a seemingly unchallenged global power, greatness was becoming the subject of a backward rather than a forward glance: a precious, endangered com­ modity irrevocably linked to the past. 48 looking for the good war brokaw's fascination with world war ii began with a 1984 visit to normandy undertaken as part of a documentary on the fortieth anniversary of the d-day landings. by 1994, when he returned for the fiftieth anniversary, he had developed "a kind of missionary zeal for the men and women of world war ii, spreading the word of their remarkable lives." the zeal manifested by brokaw and others in the years since has been accompanied by an increasing sense of urgency. the media never tire of the morbid veteran deathwatch: stories tally the number of world war ii veterans who die each day. brokaw calls theirs a generation "birthmarked for greatness," possess­ ing a distinct set of virtues, among them personal responsi­ bility, a predisposition for good samaritanisrn, honesty, hard work, a capacity for sacrifice, and a sense of honor: "this is the greatest generation any society has produced," he in­ sists. "i have the facts on my side." the thesis is impossible to prove, the narrative driven less by facts than by emotion. describing a country of unparalleled unity and commit­ ment to the war effort, brokaw comes to the overdetermined conclusion that by 1940 it was apparent "to all but a few de­ lusional isolationists that war would define this generation's coming of age." to the extent that anyone phenomenon can shape a generation, the great depression arguably did more than anything to define this one. brokaw also dramatically undersells the fervor and reach of the nation's fascist sympa­ thizers, who, as bradley w. hart documents in hitler's amer­ ican friends: the third reich's supporters in the united states, were more extensive and organized than has generally been assumed. while groups like the silver legion and the ger­ man american bund collapsed after the country's entrance into the war, as the historian stephen h. norwood and oth­ ers have demonstrated, the christian front pursued a vio­ lently anti-semitic campaign that persisted throughout (and outlasted) the war. another vocal group, the america first �rl)nr pur�uea � \�, . d rhrougnout(�: h americ� f�("re age of gold 49 committee, was led by a national hero, the aviator charles a. lindbergh, who delivered a notoriously anti-semitic speech on september 11, 1941, and was still championing isolation­ ism at a rally at madison square garden on october 30, 1941. the journalist eric sevareid recalled returning from europe after the war began to a decidedly neutral united states, with which he felt himself at odds. the country, he reflected, "was just entering . . . the tortures of trying to make up her mind." when he, like others who had recently returned from abroad, vainly tried to inspire americans to the cause of fighting fascism, he confronted "a fundamen­ tal suspicion in the american character . . . an outgrowth of the democratic habit, part of its bulwark in normal times, but now a downright menace as precious time rushed by. it was an american trait," sevareid explains in not so wild a dream, "not so much to avoid action, but to avoid the humili­ ation of being 'taken in.' america was terribly afraid of losing its fancied status as the 'wise guy,' of being a 'sucker.'" there was no official government unity either: senator burton k. wheeler headlined a "keep america out of war" rally in chicago in july 1940. the north dakota senator gerald p. nye found himself on the stage at an america first rally in pittsburgh on december 7, 1941. when the reporter robert hagy brought him word of the attack on pearl har­ bor, nye responded, "it sounds terribly fishy to me." even after hagy relayed that japan had declared war on the united states, nye proceeded to deliver his talk, telling his audience, "i can't somehow believe this." given a third piece of news, that roosevelt had convened a meeting of his cabinet and con­ gressionalleaders, nye, albeit flustered, carried on with an­ other speech that evening and told reporters, "we have been maneuvered into this by the president." robinson jeffers's poem "pearl harbor" opens with the same claim: the attack is portrayed as the work of those who sought to "embroil" the �. / ----�-� -. 50 looking for the good war country in europe's "wreck" through lend-lease and other policies. to sevareid, by contrast, roosevelt's course was ev­ idence of a superior understanding: "he knew that he must act and that only in the test of action would the people rally and this democracy become more than a debating society in a world of violent action." the japanese attack on pearl harbor did not entirely silence the dissenting voices, but it did provoke a reaction: vengeance became the goad used to generate public enthusi­ asm. contemporary observers nevertheless perceived a gen­ eral american indifference to the fact that the world was on fire. returning from a fallen france on a norwegian freighter in december 1941, the new yorker correspondent a. j. lieb­ ling learned the news of pearl harbor from an officer, who shook his hand and declared, "we both allies now!" liebling observes, "it felt more natural to be a belligerent on a bel­ ligerent ship than that anomalous creature, a neutral among belligerent friends." on docking in new orleans, liebling was surprised by the fact that even now america looked no different and bore no scars of war: "there were plenty of lights visible on the shore, more than i had seen at a compara­ ble hour since leaving new york in the summer. somehow i had expected our lights to go out when we entered the war. it seemed strange coming in our blacked-out ship to a country that was neither neutral nor dark." more provocatively, on december 13, 1941, noel coward confided to his diary, published as the noel coward diaries in 1982, "cannot help being delighted about america being so dumbfounded at the japanese attack. this feeling is not mal­ ice but a genuine relief that (a) they have at last been forced to realize that this war is theirs as well as ours, and," he con­ tinued, no doubt thinking of american triumphalism in the wake of world war i, "(b) that whatever the future brings they will never be able to say that they came in to pull our nd-lease ana olm \,elfscourse\\'al(', knew thatnem;' '0 id the peopleri: a debating socie�'",< . ourl, ana/' ne(�:'• iriumphalisffi in � . r the future onni' arne in torull� age of gold 51 chestnuts out of the fire, as they were quite obviously caught with their trousers down." yet americans have liked to claim precisely that ever since. the pacific war, begun in revenge and complicated by bitter racism, has long been eclipsed in national memory by a narrative of liberation focused largely on the european theater. ernie pyle spent 1940, brokaw's year of perfect harmony, writing his column in england, trying to impress upon his american readers that the world was in grave danger: "there is a lot of sudden dying in lon­ don every night." but pyle did not lean heavily on ideology or throw around words like liberty and democracy: "i simply wanted england to win," he would write of his feelings once he returned to the states, "because it seemed to me safer and sounder for england to be running the world than for ger­ many to run it." when pyle returned to resume his prewar travels across america, he was still nonplussed about the state of affairs at home and about the united states' relationship to the rest of the world. in the foreword to ernie pyle in england, written in july 1941, he mused, "but maybe we're only fooling our­ selves. maybe we're just pretending that we've picked up the world where we left it last fall. for there is probably some­ thing to the theory that our lives, in common with all others, can never again be just as they were before 1940." this is an openly uncertain, searching voice. pyle sounds very much like someone trying to convince his country (and himself) that the united states was not, and no longer could be, alone in the world. pyle's columns offered americans inspiring portraits of british resilience in the face of emergency. "it is true," he wrote in january 1941, "that all eyes in england look toward america." among his several accounts of tours to underground shelters is an especially weird and haunting description of two dozen londoners gathered in a base­ ment around a piano, singing "marching through georgia," 52 looking for the good war the song written about sherman's army-sherman hated it-during the civil war. toward the end of the book, pyle writes of the british response to the passage of the lend­ lease act: "now that the lend-lease bill is law, the british talk more frankly to americans. 'why shouldn't you give us the stuff?' my barber asks. 'you don't ask a man to repay you a shilling when you're both running for your lives.'" pyle reports that americans are "rolling in" to london "to study this, and study that," but that even among those americans there was no clear consensus about joining the war effort: "it is the belief of most americans i know over here that america is headed rapidly toward war. their feeling seems about fifty­ fifty for and against the idea." liebling, in a later reflection on his encounter with the chairman and national director of the america first com­ mittee in chicago in the spring of 1941, also reveals a lack of national unity. he notes that the organization's mission to keep "the united states from aiding great britain in her war effort" was also the communist party line in the wake of the nazi-soviet pact, but, he quips, "there was no reason to suspect america first of leninism." the leaders of the committee were the chairman of the board of sears, roe­ buck and a vice president of quaker oats, hardly the lunatic fringe brokaw imagines but bastions of the middle ameri­ can establishment. ironically, the midwest is the epicenter of american values for brokaw. general robert e. wood, the committee chairman, informed liebling that "a german vic­ tory could not possibly endanger the united states, then as naked of armament as a garden worm." the foundation for wood's belief-and for his desire to stay out of the war-was his service in world war 1. what proved most unsettling to liebling, who had just returned from europe, was the confi­ dent insularity of the committee leadership: age of gold 53 all things, national and international, were manifest to the manufacturers of overalls and breakfast cereals, and the america first letterhead showed that the gen­ eral and the oatlet had behind them the man who made spam and a man who made steel and a man who had in­ vestments in salt, teletype machines, and wristwatches. as intellectual reference, they offered robert maynard hutchins, the president of the university of chicago ... i could not understand why what was so plain, in the spring of 1941, in new york and washington and lisbon and london should be so bitterly denied by so large a segment of the dominant group in this particular city and region. liebling attributes this dissidence to a regional chauvinism and disappointment: "as much as any unreconstructed con­ federates, the mail-order giants and puffed-fluff kings have found themselves the leaders of a lost cause. their personal fortunes may be great, but the world has not gone as they willed it. chicago's bid for grandeur has failed." liebling had entered what sevareid referred to as the country's "isolation­ ist heart." others noted the region's worrisome lack of interest in the world beyond. as late as august 1942, in order "to wake up the middle west to the grimness of our national situation," thomas hart benton felt the need to paint a series of pro­ paganda pieces, including the starkly titled and controversial embarkation-prelude to death, which depicted soldiers at the brooklyn navy yard boarding ships en route to north africa. the chicago committee's opposition to the east coast establishment is echoed in the current antagonism between the coasts and the so-called flyover states. in 1941, it took the form, as it has in recent years, of a preoccupation with the ethos of america first. it is no accident that trump invoked 54 looking for the good war that particular phrase to such success. nor indeed was this sentiment limited to the middle of the country in the 1940s. even in new york city, a sizable population voiced pro­ german sentiment in movie houses and other public ven­ ues, as thomas doherty has documented in hollywood and hitler) 1933-1939. far from admitting the inevitability of war, american industries, including hollywood, had spent a de­ cade tempering their politics and championing neutrality in order to retain the profitable german market. in february 1939 a german american bund rally at madison square garden attracted as many as twenty thou­ sand people. as marshall curry's 2017 documentary a night at the garden reveals, the bund strutted in fascist uniforms in front of a huge banner of george washington, their co­ opted patron saint, and asserted a direct line between fascism and the founders. the bund also gathered in the summers throughout the 1930s at camp siegfried, in yaphank, long island, where they sang the "horst wessel song," read pro­ paganda directly supplied by germany, and strolled along paths named for hitler and goring. "the japanese attack on pearl harbor brought war but not unity to the american people," the historian richard w. steele observed in an article that appeared in the journal of american history in 1978. opinion polls in 1942 revealed a "peace bloc" comprising fully twenty percent of the adult population; these post-pearl harbor "divisionists," steele notes, "were strikingly similar in numbers and attitudes to the isolationists of 1941." by february 1942, the roosevelt administration was concerned about "the shallowness of pub­ lic commitment to the war ... the consensus was that after the initial shock of pearl harbor had worn off, the public had lapsed into complacency." a large portion of the population was still confused about war aims and insufficiently commit­ ted to the war effort. six months into the country's involve. 'or indeed wa![ ountry in tn� i�r . ulation \'oi�e� :�" �ther puolirrt d in hol����� � age of gold 55 ment, fifty-three percent of americans polled "admitted they did not have a clear idea of what the war was about." roose­ velt believed that proponents of a negotiated peace included leaders of the republican party, some of whom had been contacted by german agents. steele observes, "apparently only a lack of organization significantly differentiated senti­ ment for a negotiated peace from the isolationism of 1941." calling attention to the deep cynicism with which many americans responded to the war, eric sevareid remembered the spendthrifts, bootleggers, and profiteers he encoun­ tered in new york and washington, where they danced in nightclubs to a "saccharine" tune sevareid mockingly calls "remember-r-r pearl harbor-r-r," complained about sugar rationing, or derided "the four freedoms, and the great vi­ sion of the century of the common man ... as 'globaloney.'" seeing the advertisements proclaiming "lucky strikes had gone to war" or advising the country "that its war production would be increased if everyone masticated a few extra sticks of wrigley's per day," sevareid confronted the general mood of a nation that "was encouraged to believe that it could produce its way to victory, or buy its victory by the simple measure of writing a check. life was easy and getting more prosperous every week, and nobody believed in death," a fan­ tasy further encouraged by the war department's censorship of photographs depicting dead service members. but for the myth to work its magic, unity must always prevail, as it does in the celebratory narratives of ambrose and brokaw. public opinion must turn overnight after pearl harbor, while the various regional, racial, and political divi­ sions that roiled the country must be immediately put aside as americans rally toward a shared cause. the temporary nature of the gains made by certain segments of society­ the short-lived burst of self-sufficiency enjoyed by women, for example, which gave way to the reactionary conservatism 56 looking for the good war of the postwar world and the deep resentment of men at women's newfound independence-must be submerged in the explicitly messianic agenda of the greatest generation. the faith expressed by one war industry worker in the book en­ capsulates the whole: world war ii, she concludes, was "the last time 'in the history of our country when a full-blown spirit of true patriotism was in every heart.'" my point is not that some americans didn't feel that way-at least in retrospect-but that platitudes and generalizations ignore the welter of contradictions to be found in period writing. leave no man behind steven spielberg's saving private ryan, made in the wake of the war's fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, offers a provoca­ tive visual expression of the school of remembrance i have been outlining. the highest-grossing film of 1998 in the united states, ryan also heads the domestic lifetime gross list of all world war ii films, followed by pearl harbor (2001), dunkirk (2017), captain america: the first avenger (2011), and inglourious basterds (2009). ryan was spielberg's second world war ii epic in five years, the first being schindler's list (1993). while the latter film, much celebrated in certain quarters, was criticized by jason epstein and others for its sentimental reading of the holocaust as the triumph of one righteous man, saving private ryan was largely forgiven analogous indulgences because of the graphic depiction of the d-day landing on omaha beach, which overwhelmed the saccharine quality of the prologue and epilogue, in which the older ryan and his family appear at the american ceme­ tery in normandy. at the end of the film, before the grave of one of the men who died to save him, ryan asks his wife to tell him that he is "a good man" who has "led a good life." tntment of m1� i submer�eom� 'i gelleralwn,il • rintheoook oncluae!, w�� i",� y when a full'ol�r = apnic oe�icti��: , .. orerwnelme�w. epilogue, in \i�\: '.e:\merican(e[i' ,beiore tne�ra\,i:: ran 81kl nil wife:: :'ied agooolife," age of gold 57 at the time of the film's release, the associated press re­ ported that the department of veterans affairs had "set up a national hotline for veterans or their family members trau­ matized by the combat scenes in the movie." a va therapist in portland, oregon, explained, "i think it's going to hit a lot of people hard." she added, by way of context, "john wayne made a lot of movies examining that world war ii experience but not as graphically as i understand this one will be. it's a much different perspective on the pain, the suffering and the actual killings." for paul fussell, the film's value lay in its willingness to show a gruesome truth other films had not: "in war films you don't often see arterial blood pumping out." other veterans agreed: the film "couldn't be more real," said one on pbs's newshour with jim lehrer; it was "a very real experience," offered another. spielberg declared his intention to give the film the great­ est possible sensory realism and thus to "approximate" actual combat. he and his cinematographer, janusz kaminski, worked to achieve their goal by electing not to storyboard the scene and by using a handheld camera. the film stock itself was run through a de saturation process that would repro­ duce the bleached-out look of color footage of the actual in­ vasion filmed by the director george stevens sr. in this way, the film ends up evoking less the actual experience than the way it would have looked at the movies. claims about ryan's unprecedented realism, even when voiced by veterans them­ selves, might thus give us pause. a combination of a tech­ nological process and our impressionable eye makes saving private ryan seem an authentic reproduction rather than what it is: an effective illusion that satisfies a viewer's (and a moviegoer's) nostalgia. stevens, frank capra, john huston, john ford, william wyler, and other hollywood profession­ als filmed real or simulated battles for the armed services, an experience mark harris chronicles at length in five came 58 looking for the good war back: a story of hollywood and the second world war. some of that footage was later incorporated into feature films such as allan dwan's sands of fwo jima (1949), one of the john wayne films to which the va therapist alluded. apparent verisimilitude isn't the only sleight of hand in saving private ryan. the plot itself, in which soldiers are sent by no less an authority than army chief of staff george marshall to rescue james ryan, the last remaining son of a family of soldiers killed in action, is wholly unrepresentative of world war ii-era attitudes toward individual soldiers. in 1942 the armed forces instituted a "sole-survivor policy," later called directive 1315.15 special separation policies for survivorship, in response to the fact that several sets of brothers, the most celebrated of which were the five sulli­ vans, all assigned to the uss juneau, were killed in action. they were the subject of hollywood's the fighting sullivans (1944). saving private ryan's plot is based on the story of frederick niland, a soldier fighting in normandy. on receiv­ ing word that his brothers had been killed, niland informed a chaplain of the distressing news; the chaplain thereupon sent up a request that niland be transferred out of harm's way. there was no search required, let alone one ordered by the army chief of staff. as the title of another john wayne vehicle, they were ex­ pendable (1945), suggests, many casualties were necessarily left behind in this war. there were simply too many lost or missing bodies to allow a preoccupation with the individual. by training a spotlight on the fate of a lone survivor, however, spielberg's film effectively transforms the conflict from one characterized by mass mobilization and modern industrial warfare to something more old-fashioned, recalling the her­ oism of the ancient epics, in which battles between individ­ uals come to seem more important than the big picture, and age of gold 59 in which personal causes-avenging the death of a comrade, securing an adversary's magnificent armor or other spoils, maintaining or reclaiming one's honor-assume an outsize role. in saving private ryan, the tension between the com­ munal and the individual is palpable, but the latter eventually wins out. the film's reason for being is the fulfillment of an anachronistic obligation to leave no man behind that more properly belongs to earlier (and later) wars. the creed of leaving no one behind did not become an american social and political obsession until the latter part of the twentieth century, when casualties, while still high, again become low enough to count. in the years following vietnam, when the reasons for that war became murkier and less pop­ ular than ever, the black-and-white pow/mia flag, with its message-you are not forgotten-directed to prisoners of war (pow) and soldiers missing in action (mia), became the emblem of a national backward glance. larry greer, an official at the defense prisoner of war/missing personnel office (dpmo), explained the origins of the commitment to caroline alexander in a 2004 new yorker article: "vietnam was significant because it saw the beginning of grassroots and particularly family pressure on our government . . . frankly, what you're seeing today is a result of this." the mission of the defense pow/mia accounting agency (dpaa), formerly the joint pow/mia accounting com­ mand (jpac), which deploys recovery teams to southeast asia and elsewhere, is to "provide the fullest possible ac­ counting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation." according to dpaa, there are approximately 72,000 american bodies missing in action from world war ii and more than 8,000 from all conflicts since. many-those lost at sea, for example-are deemed unrecoverable. in 2004, when the total of bodies that could theoretically be recovered stood � � -�, -. 60 looking for the good war at 43,000, alexander calculated that it would have taken "the united states government four hundred and nine years to make good its pledge." such pledges have an ancient history. thucydides's ac­ count of the annual athenian military funeral rites during the peloponnesian war suggests the long-standing political importance of identifying and repatriating all bodies even as it reveals the practical impossibility of full accounting: bones were sorted by tribe, warriors' remains solemnly interred in a public burying ground outside the city walls. also part of the procession was an "empty bier ... for the missing, whose bodies could not be recovered." pericles's funeral speech, recorded by thucydides and later reimagined by abraham lincoln at gettysburg, reveals the political capital to be made of such funerary ceremonies and their role in unify­ ing a community by reinforcing shared values. one can thus read the renewed focus on the repatriation of u. s. soldiers' remains as a direct consequence of the ambiguities and divi­ siveness of vietnam. a determination to go back for the wounded and the dead-to leave no one behind, no matter the immediate danger or the prospects for successful rescue or retrieval­ has also become an increasingly visible aspect of military operations. in 1993, when americans operated in somalia with a knowledge of the enemy practice of mutilating bod­ ies, the compulsion to leave no one behind at one point took precedence over even the care of the wounded and the mis­ sion itself. when major general william f. garrison ordered an entire rescue convoy, and with it the evacuation of the wounded, to halt for hours in the streets of mogadishu while a downed black hawk was disassembled in order to extricate the remains of chief warrant officer cliff wolcott, the man­ date not to leave the fallen behind seemed to acquire a para­ lyzing grip. "placing three hundred men at jeopardy in order age of gold 61 to retrieve the body of one man," mark bowden observes in black hawk down: a story of modern war, ventriloquizing captain mike steele, who waited in the column, "was a noble gesture, but hardly a sensible one." the film black hawk down (2001), with its tagline, leave no man behind, helped to popularize the gesture for a wider civilian audience. instead of elevating a cause, the film removes combat action from its political context and fix­ ates on the sacrifice of the living for the dead. in an era of unconventional, asymmetrical warfare-one in which mis­ sions are more difficult to explain and victories more diffi­ cult to recognize, battles are witnessed by commanders in real-time video, and risk aversion is paradoxically magnified by the fact that casualties are low enough to be individually reported-an ancient warrior ethos exalting a particular kind of sacrifice exerts an almost irresistible appeal. in the absence of more tangible, near-term goals, the gesture of risking one's own life to rescue the wounded and recover the dead has emerged as a recognizably heroic ideal for american service members and for the nation they serve. six servicemen were killed in afghanistan in early march 2002 as they attempted first to rescue-and then to recover the body of-petty officer first class neil roberts, a navy seal who had fallen from a chinook helicopter into enemy hands. responding to the incident, u.s. air force brigadier general john w. rosa jr., then deputy director for operations for the joint chiefs of staff, told reporters simply, "we don't leave americans behind." offered as explanation, justifica­ tion, or praise, such responses have become de rigueur for military commanders. for a long time the mandate of small, unconventional forces such as the u. s. army rangers, the u.s. marine corps, and the french foreign legion, leav­ ing no man behind became part of the u. s. army's soldier's creed in 2003. embraced by the media and popularized by � .-.r . _/ -�----� 62 looking for the good war films like black hawk down and saving private ryan, the creed uses a vocabulary historically associated with elite bands of warriors in distinctive, closed cultures. this could not be further from the prevailing ethos of world war ii, but one would not know that from watching saving private ryan, in which captain miller (tom hanks) is ordered to find mrs. ryan's last surviving son. as a com­ pany commander, miller has routinely been forced to make the choice of mission over men. it is only when his mission sud­ denly becomes a man, as sergeant horvath (tom sizemore) reminds him, that he begins to reflect on his moral calculus. resting for the night in a church, miller and horvath remi­ nisce about soldiers who have died. there have been so many that miller momentarily forgets one of their names. this lapse prompts him to explain his decision-making process: captain miller: you see, when ... when you end up killing one of your men, you see, you tell your­ self it happened so you could save the lives of two, or three, or ten others, maybe a hundred others. do you know how many men i've lost under my command? sergeant horvath: how many? miller: ninety-four. but that means i've saved the lives of ten times that many, doesn't it? maybe even twenty, right? twenty times as many. and that's how simple it is. that's how you-that's how you ratio­ nalize making the choice between the mission and the men. horvath: except this time the mission is a man. miller: this ryan better be worth it. he'd better go home, cure some disease or invent a longer-lasting light bulb or something, 'cause the truth is i wouldn't trade ten ryans for one vecchio or one caparzo. · linen roll 1n� ,you tellj'ollr· age of gold 63 private ryan (matt damon) is still very much alive when miller finally finds him, but he initially refuses to be rescued. ryan's own calculations suggest to him that he counts for the same thing as his fellow soldiers and must therefore face the same risks. the accident of his brothers' deaths does not in any way change his status as a combatant, only as a son. and how could private ryan be worth it-worth, that is, the lives of several other privates-unless one were to apply some undemocratic measure? this is the argument one of miller's men makes while on the march. private ryan's identity as mrs. ryan's last surviving son has increased his relative value for only the high command. first miller suggests that ryan might redeem himself by making a great contribution (cur­ ing a disease), but this resolution is immediately undercut by the cynical reference to the longer-lasting light bulb, as the captain realizes the injustice of using potential to measure the value of any given soldier. in the end he further devalues the man he must save by claiming that he would not trade one of his men for ten private ryans. the ambiguities probed in this scene, and the rich com­ plexities of the film's middle part, are abruptly erased by its high-octane conclusion. we are never given a rational answer to the question miller's own soldiers ask repeatedly: why does mrs. ryan deserve more consideration than their own mothers? instead, we are swept up by the sentimentality of the end of the film, which returns to the frame story of pri­ vate ryan as an old man paying his respects to the captain who saved his life. the repeated shot of an american flag snapping in the breeze, a tearful ryan, his affectionate wife, children, and grandchildren-all these images, accompanied by swelling music, are offered as visual argument that saving private ryan was worth the exorbitant cost. we are meant either to forget that mrs. miller and mrs. horvath also lost �" ..�.-�-""'// ---�64 looking for the good war their sons, or to believe that they should have been consoled by the noble gesture of self-sacrifice. that captain miller fulfills his mission at the cost of his own life and those of his men demonstrates his strong sense of duty. however, he is forced by the nature of the en­ terprise, imposed by no less a figure than general marshall, to forsake the command principle by means of which he had heretofore accorded dignity to his men even as he led them into harm's way. miller cannot imagine ryan to be worth more than another man. instead of sacrificing one to save many, miller must now sacrifice many to save one. the movie's final battle scene culminates, to borrow rachel bes­ paloff's description of hector's death in homer's iliad, in an "ecstasy of self-sacrifice," as miller dies telling ryan, "earn this." it partakes of the rapturous self-destruction of the an­ cient warrior, which, according to bespaloff, is produced by a "force ... detestable insofar as it contains a fatality that transforms it into inertia, a blind drive that is always pushing it on to the very end of its course, on to its own abolition and the obliteration of the very values it engendered." the ending of saving private ryan succeeds in obliterating the values it means to exalt: namely, the worth and dignity of the indi­ vidual. the monomaniacal drive to save one man effectively negates the value of all those individuals sent to rescue him. humanity is supplanted by a humanitarian fiction. whether one admires the esprit de corps that drives sol­ diers to return for comrades left behind, or one criticizes it for interfering with missions and contributing to the deaths of more soldiers, it must be acknowledged that the roots of this ethos are ancient and literary. film may be the most powerful modern medium for the war story, but it is to ho­ meric epic that the idea can be traced. in the iliad, the stated reason that the greeks have come to troy-the return of the kidnapped helen to her husband, menelaus-recedes before age of gold 65 a tight focus on individual contests between warriors trying to win battlefield honor, the highest kind they know. a recog­ nition of this genealogy is essential to a full understanding of the concept's significance for today's military and the ways in which it has been read back onto world war ii, when the sheer numbers of dead made such attention impossible. the late­ twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century emphasis on retrieving the fallen-not only the wounded but, more provoc­ atively, the dead-reveals the enduring appeal of aristocratic sentiment to a democratic force and the society it serves. in homer's time, as m. 1. finley notes in the world of odysseus, armor had come to serve the "honorific purpose" satisfied in more primitive cultures by enemy heads. failure to obtain, or retain, such treasure brought a corresponding shame. many of the battle scenes in the poem are therefore nothing other than contests over the armor-clad bodies of the slain. ancient codes of loyalty and honor manifest themselves nowhere more clearly than in a steadfast determination to protect a body from the enemy even at the loss of one's own life. indeed, the corpse acquires a value independent of its ar­ mor; it becomes a tactical objective on homer's battlefield­ the vehicle through which one reclaims honor. the imperative to retrieve a fallen comrade's body from the field regardless of tactical cost also suggests the preemi­ nence of the dead over the living. the death of the soldier is "a spectacle," observes simone weil, "the iliad never wearies of showing us." finley put it in slightly different terms: "the poet and his audience lingered lovingly over every act of slaughter." at a fundamental anthropological level, such scenes express the fact that, as phyllis pagli and henry abramovitch write in "death: a cross-cultural perspective," "death awareness is a natural sequel to the development of self-awareness-an in­ trinsic attribute of humankind." yet these demonstrations also reveal more culturally specific attitudes; the representation of 66 looking for the good war death in the epic signals the centrality of the physical body to homeric conceptions of honor and integrity. this frenzy over bodies was, in truth, almost exclusively literary in clas­ sical greece. as the classicist pamela vaughn explains, only rarely, when the "fighting was uncharacteristically indecisive," did victory depend on "the return of corpses." the decision by the athenian general nicias to forfeit a battlefield in 425 bee in order to retrieve bodies was a notable instance. but in homer, the compulsion to recover bodies reshapes battle plans and distracts participants from their original objectives. this is the rich poetic history behind the rescue of mrs. ryan's remaining son. saving private ryan effectively reduces world war ii to a contest of individuals. its anachronism can be illuminated through a comparison with an earlier film's treatment of a similar theme. in twelve o'clock high (1949)_, gregory peck plays brigadier general frank savage, who takes over from a friend the command of a bomb group that has come to regard itself as a "hard-luck" outfit. although he will learn to care as deeply about his men as his less stoical predecessor, savage attempts to instill discipline by retraining personal loyalties into unit and institutional ones. in the briefing that follows the group's first mission under his command, the general asks a pilot why he broke formation. the aviator replies that he saw another pilot, who happened to be his roommate, in trouble and tried to help him home. the damaged plane is shot down anyway. a coldly furious savage replies with a clinical analysis of his subordinate's decision: so for the sake of your roommate, you violated group integrity. every gun on a b-17 is designed to give the group maximum defensive firepower. that's what i mean by group integrity. when you pull a b-17 out of formation, you reduce the defensive power of the age of gold 67 group by ten guns. a crippled airplane has to be ex­ pendable. the one thing which is never expendable is your obligation to this group . . . that has to be your loyalty-your only reason for being. like captain miller's war, savage's consists of a series of un­ romantic calculations. "consider yourselves already dead," he tells his men on first meeting them. this attitude is inter­ preted by the man he has replaced, colonel davenport, as callousness. soldiers, davenport remonstrates, "can't be just a set of numbers" to their commander. nevertheless, in contrast to saving private ryan, this film provides further endorsement of the general's methods. only once, on what turns out to be his last mission, does savage deviate from his principles. after the group has released its bombs, he decides-against the advice of his now well­ trained executive officer, major cobb-to turn over a heavy flak area in order to protect some stragglers from approach­ ing german fighters. as a result of this decision, cobb and his entire crew are lost; their plane explodes before they can bailout. this crisis, his effective killing of cobb, precipitates savage's own breakdown. seventy years ago, hollywood could portray savage's philosophy as military virtue; it could portray without criticism a sense of duty that seemed to have no room for individual attachments at the expense of the col­ lective, even as it registered the toll such an approach took on decision-makers. today, however, when on-screen soldiers face similar dilemmas, they are more likely to eschew sav­ age's corporate sensibility in favor of the noble gesture and a celebration of the individual. for the ancient warrior, the political theorist michael wal­ zer proposes in just and unjust wars, war was not yet "ugly," because not coerced, as it would be on such a large scale in the democratic armies of the modern era. "for a man of the 68 looking for the good war people to die in war is terrible," an aristocratic french officer tells his similarly patrician german captor in jean renoir's world war i film la grande illusion (1937), "for you and me it is a good solution." renoir's film marks the passing of the old order and the rise of a new one with delicacy and without nostalgia. all u. s. soldiers are "of the people," and it is there­ fore "terrible" for them to die in war. returning for the dead satisfies many impulses-loyalty, fear, vengeance, honor­ and it also simplifies the confusions of modern war and helps to disguise their ugliness. wars kill civilization, concludes one of the characters of john horne burns's bitter world war ii novel the gallery: "the gentle die in battle. your crude extrovert comes out of his ordeal more brutal and crass and cocky than when he went in. that's the way civilizations die, gradually. a premium is put on physical courage in war­ time which kills off the gentle, because they're too noble to admit of cowardice ... death to them is terrible." the war before the good war "now, fifty years later, there has been so much talk about 'the good war,' the justified war, the necessary war, and the like," paul fussell wrote in 1989, "that the young and the innocent could get the impression that it was really not such a bad thing after all." fussell's paramount goal, in wartime and elsewhere in his work, was to disabuse anyone of the notion that war itself could ever be "good," regardless of the ends to which it had been the means. one of the most remarkable aspects of the triumph of the good war mythol­ ogy is how thoroughly it has obscured the altogether more open, ambivalent, reflective mode of remembrance that has persisted all along, in parallel to the mythmaking. in 1984, studs terkel produced another in his series of masterful oral age of gold 69 histories, "the good war": an oral history of world war two. terkel conceived the project as an antidote not to mis­ remembrance but to "disrernembrance," a goal central to all of his oral history projects, which derive their strength from contradiction and ambiguity. the books recover as wide a col­ lection of often-conflicting memories as possible. "the good war" revels in its many voices, which range from the deeply nostalgic to the bitterly disaffected. terkel talked to every­ one: from admirals to merchant marines, gis to govern­ ment officials, defense workers to usa entertainers, nurses to the so-called premature anti-fascists who had fought in the spanish civil war. and he made no attempt to reduce the cacophony to a single refrain, to reconcile differences of opinion, or to shape contradictory accounts into a coher­ ent narrative. as his prefatory note suggests, incongruity is a terkel specialty: the book's title appears in quotation marks, he explains, "because the adjective 'good' mated to the noun 'war' is so incongruous." the strength of com­ munal memory as terkel assembles it lies in its multiplicity and disunity. the sentimental and the disillusioned, the jin­ goistic and the thoughtfully patriotic, the nostalgic and the dismissive-all these perspectives share the stage in "the good war.)) and this fundamental disagreement over what to make of the war becomes by far the strongest evidence of authentic democracy. the polyvocal nature of the text fights against the reductive force of myth. perhaps the most important work terkel does is to knit the war into a larger pattern of national history rather than considering it as a self-contained event: "1939 was the end and the beginning," he writes in his introduction. "hard times, as though by some twentieth-century alchemy, were transmuted into good times. war was our paracelsus." ter­ kel's reference to paracelsus, the sixteenth-century alchemist, is instructive, for it captures the illusory, almost accidental 70 looking for the good war nature of the transformation that has been read as national destiny. terkel revealed the extent to which many americans understood the war not as sacrifice or even vengeance, but, more simply and practically, as deliverance from the mis­ ery of the depression: "we were ready for a war," opined the conscientious objector john h. abbott. "we'd had a long depression ... get off those bread lines. build another bomber for peace . . . that was the most popular war we ever have had. people sang, danced, drank-whoopee, the war." other interviewees by no means as cynical as abbott likewise emphasized the difficulty of disentangling patriotic and economic motives. lee oremont, a supermarket comp­ troller, noted that the war could seem very far away to those without relatives in harm's way. oremont enjoyed unaccus­ tomed prosperity: "we really didn't suffer." john kenneth galbraith, the deputy head of the office of price administra­ tion and later one of the members of the strategic bombing survey, reflected, "never in the history of human conflict has there been so much talk of sacrifice and so little sacrifice." women, who contributed so much materially to the war effort, also brought to it a range of responses, hard-edged realism notable among them. peggy terry, a kentucky na­ tive who worked in defense plants during the war, described herself as ignorant of the larger picture. her perspective was rooted in the poverty and desperation of the depression rather than in the consequences of her work: war work was a job like any other for terry, and she traveled wherever she had to in order to find it. other defense workers, such as sarah killingsworth, who moved to los angeles from tennessee to find employment, shared terry's unconcern with such la­ bor as anything but a source of pay. killingsworth, who got a job as a washroom attendant in a defense plant, described for terkel the attitudes of her coworkers: "they weren't inage of gold 71 terested in the war. most of them were only interested in the money. most of us was young and we really didn't know." among those americans initially seized by war fever was a retired music teacher named dellie hahne. at first every­ one thought the war "the greatest thing since the crusades," she recalled, but soon "enthusiasm waned and we became cynical and very tired and sick of the bloodshed and killing." hahne remembered all those who "didn't want to fight" as well as those who did, including her brother, who was killed in a training exercise. she offered terkel a portrait of war­ time america as complex and contradictory as its peacetime version. the very phrase good war infuriated her: world war two being called a good war is a horrible thing ... if they had said to me, look ... we'll all get our arms and legs blown off but it has to be done, i'd understand. if they didn't hand me all this shit with the uniforms and the girls in their pompadours dancing at the usa and all those songs-"there'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of dover"-bullshit! ... maybe you have to get people to fight a war, maybe you have to lie to them. hahne's complaint alerts us to the danger of imagining any war as simply good. this was the source of fussell's rage as well. there could be nothing inherently "good" about an enterprise motivated by vengeance and won with "insensate savagery." fussell divides the war into two phases in wartime. the first was infused by the delusion that "civilized restraint and new world decency could overcome brutality and evil," which early reversals in africa and the pacific would dispel. the second was driven by "the cynicism, efficiency, brutality, and bloody-mindedness ... required to win." 72 looking for the good war one of the most powerful accounts in terkel's collection of the gulf between the home front and the theater of war comes from betty basye hutchinson, a nurse in pasadena who recalled the shock of the city's finest citizens at the pres­ ence in their midst of wounded soldiers billeted in a down­ town hotel after the closure of a nearby hospital. she would walk through town with the convalescents, one of whom had a grievous wound to the face: "half his face completely gone, right? ... nicely dressed women, absolutely staring, just standing there staring ... it's like the war hadn't come to pasadena until we came there." residents wrote letters to the editor of the local newspaper demanding that the patients be kept on the grounds of the hotel and out of sight of the popu­ lation: "it's only the glamour of war that appeals to people," hutchinson concluded. "they don't know real war." the many veterans terkel interviewed likewise revealed a diverse range of opinions and emotions: love (of country and comrades), fear, anger, regret, and numbness-sometimes all at once. he found men who wanted to be in combat but ended up as orderlies; teenagers who cared less for country than for proving their manhood and soldiers whose patriotism reached incalculable depths; men who performed extraordi­ nary acts of courage as well as indiscriminate killing that had "the flavor of murder." for many, it was the most momentous passage in their lives, but its significance had little to do with why they were there and owed almost everything to their proximity to danger. robert rasmus, an infantryman who later became a chicago business executive, told terkel that the war provided "the most tremendous experiences of all of life: of fear, of jubilance, of misery, of hope, of comradeship, and of the endless excitement, the theatrics of it." eddie costello, a journalist and navy veteran who began the war as a naive teenage patriot, shared far less romantic memories. he summed up the experience as "four years of nervous diarrhea." nevertheless, costello revealed that rem­ iniscing gave him the opportunity to improve upon his war: "enlarge it, embroider it, and come out ... smelling a little better than i do." fish stories, tall tales, exaggerations-war has always had an uneasy relationship with the truth. an­ other of terkel's interviewees, roger tuttrup, sixteen at the time of pearl harbor, worried that he would miss out. once he joined the marines, the training simultaneously humiliated and validated him: "you're part of something. when you're there and you need somebody, you got somebody. it was the high point of my life." tuttrup, late to the action, worked as a stevedore in the pacific, but like costello, he tended to em­ broider his record: "everybody embellishes the truth a little bit. i don't lie, but i don't always tell it a hundred percent. so i says i was in on the invasion of okinawa. that's true. the outfit i was in made a diversionary trip to the southern end of okinawa. then we went back to saipan." ometime)�� lies are one of the compensations of war for those who fight it, but there's also a relationship between lying and war at the level of decision-making. that relationship has inten­ sified for many americans since vietnam. the pentagon paerke]'� co]lec��� e theaterof\\il rein pa�a�1�i zen� attnerr�, eted in a 001l!, ita], �ne i\'oijl� ote]ettento� t the patientl� ht oftnero�ij, nrrymanwno id terkeltnat enwofallol' comraaelmr) t," n wdo be�an le�s romantir four year� 01 age of gold 73 pers find an echo in the afghanistan document trove. it is no accident that the vietnam veteran tim o'brien's meditation on lies, "how to tell a true war story," is so often invoked in discussions of recent american wars: "if at the end of a war story you feel uplifted," o'brien writes, "or you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." but even legitimate causes are often served by illegitimate propaganda. motivating people to risk death in­ volves a certain degree of deception. what the world war i poet wilfred owen called the "old lie" always hovers around wars-even just and necessary ones that end tyrannies and liberate peoples-at home and in the combat theater itself, 74 looking for the good war where dreams of martial glory give way before the stark truth of destruction. perhaps few understood this dynamic better than robert lekachman, an economics professor interviewed by terkel. lekachman was drafted after pearl harbor, and the army gave him regular employment for the first time. so inept during training that he wasn't sent to ocs, lekachman was grateful that he didn't become one of those second lieuten­ ants who were "slaughtered in heaps." instead, he was sent to headquarters staff, an assignment that increased the odds of his survival considerably and taught him many life skills. there, as a self-described ghostwriter, he crafted the letters of condolence that company commanders are supposed to write to next of kin. he called this work "creative fiction." he also wrote citations for medals, a task he described as "really creative fiction. there was an awful lot of hustling for awards. each one was worth five points. people were shipped back home in the order of points accumulated. but there were so many genuine acts of bravery, too." lekachman's remembrance of world war ii, like that of so many of terkel's interviewees, was shaped in no small measure by the war in vietnam, in contrast to which his war seemed "idealistic . . . the last time that most ameri­ cans thought they were innocent and good." joseph l. rauh jr., a public-interest lawyer in washington, d.c., put it more pithily: "there may be no such thing as a good war," but, in contrast to vietnam, "at least world war two had a pur­ pose." terkel's engagement with world war ii's cold war legacy proves just as revealing as his attention to its prehistory in the depression. the veteran johnny degrazio reflected in his interview, "world war two is naturally different ... vietnam was treacherous fightin' ... world war two, ev­ erybody was behind it. five hundred percent." the divisions of vietnam surely made the world war ii-era united states r, and tn1 !rm! t time, �o in1� lekacnm!nwai �econd liem�, ead, ne iva!!1m crea�ed ilie o��! manrlif1)blll, raftedtnel1u1ti are �uppo!1� iv atire nction,'!�1 'nbeda! "re!li! tlingfora\m�l, re �nippea ojrl uttnerew1!fw ttownicnnll at mo!tamrn' jo�epn l. raun ,c.,putitmorl ood \\'ar," oul, \\'0 nad a �ur' mcolullar to it� preni!tod' razio re�ecte� \' different", war two,er' 'thedivi!ioni [nited�wlel age of gold 75 seem unified by comparison. as john bodnar suggests, "the more troubling legacy of vietnam" primed americans to "entertain highly laudable stories of national honor and bravery." but if the two wars seemed radically different to many americans, a few perceived a profound resemblance. for gene la rocque, a retired rear admiral, the first war made the second possible by distorting our perspective: "we see things in terms of that war, which in a sense was a good war. but the twisted memory of it encourages the men of my generation to be willing, almost eager, to use military force anywhere in the world." the journalist neil sheehan referred to this mindset as "the disease of victory" in his revelatory 1988 book a bright shining lie: john paul vann and amer­ ica in vietnam. "by the second decade after world war ii," sheehan writes, the dominant characteristics of the senior leadership of the american armed forces had become professional arrogance, lack of imagination, and moral and intel­ lectual insensitivity ... the attributes were the symp­ toms of an institutional illness that ... arose out of the victorious response to the challenge of nazi germany and imperial japan. the condition ... had also touched the civilian bureaucracies . . . that joined the armed services in managing american overseas interests for the president. the attitudes had spread as well to the greater part of the political, academic, and business leadership of the united states. world war ii had been such a triumph of american resources, technology, and industrial and military genius, and the prosperity that the war and the postwar dominance abroad had brought had been so satisfying after the long hunger of the depression, that american society had become a victim of its own achievement. 76 looking for the good war if "the disease of victory" in world war ii contributed to the colossal failure of vietnam, it would be left to yet another war, superintended by world war ii veteran george h. w. bush, to cure what bush himself liked to call "the vietnam syndrome." epic shock and awe the golden-anniversary celebrations of world war ii worked to seal off the past as the lost, inviolable age of great men. in literary terms, they turned the event into the stuff of epic. in his essay "epic and novel," first delivered as a lecture in 1941, the russian literary scholar mikhail bakhtin articu­ lated what would become an influential theory about these two literary genres. the epic was the genre of the past, the novel that of the future. "the epic world is an utterly finished thing," argued bakhtin, "not only as an authentic event of the distant past but also on its own terms and by its own stan­ dards; it is impossible to change, to re-think, to reevaluate anything in it ... one can only accept the epic world with reverence; it is impossible to really touch it, for it is beyond the realm of human activity, the realm in which everything humans touch is altered and re-thought." epic brooks no argument. the novel, by contrast, is, like the modern world itself, fluid, many voiced, and open-ended. it is a work in progress rather than a finished thing. the lost world conjured by the epic has particular fea­ tures, chief among them the assumption that glory and honor are the highest goods, and the battlefield the best place to win them. war becomes not a means, but an end in and of itself. writing during the spanish-american war, thorstein veblen described this as the ethos of the "primitive barbarii contrioutl�' left to }'et �n��� an georgeh[ all lithe vil�t rldwarliwmlr: eofgreatmln.lt the !tuff of l�i: red a! a lecrurl[ il bakijtin �rtiru, eory aoout�� e of the �a!tj� an utrerl� nni��r� uthenticmntl! 0)' it! own�ti�' nk) toremlij!!1 epic li'orlawiffi . for it i! oe)'�oo e modernwml� e be�t place w n end in anq�f war, rnor)tei� imitiveoaroar' age of gold 77 ian," which survived in contemporary culture as a preference for "heraldic devices" that employed "the more rapacious beasts and birds of prey." these were the vestiges of a world in which honor equated to "superior force . . . under this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or honour," veblen argued, "the taking of life ... is honourable in the highest degree. and this high office of slaughter, as an ex­ pression of the slayer's prepotence, casts a glamour of worth over every act of slaughter and over all the tools and accesso­ ries of the act. arms are honourable, and the use of them ... becomes a honorific employment." forty years later, in world war ii, this was not necessarily a widespread attitude toward the american exercise of force. ernie pyle ends brave men, his chronicle of the allied ad­ vance through italy and france in 1943-44, with a decidedly disquieting acknowledgment: "the strength we have spread around the world is appalling even to those who make up the individual cells of that strength. i am sure that in the past two years i have heard soldiers say a thousand times, 'if only we could have created all this energy for something good.' but we rise above our normal powers only in times of de­ struction." the primary lesson for the reporter in the thick of the fight is not america's aptitude for peace, but its capacity for destruction. pyle repeatedly asserts that there is little ro­ mance in war, even if there is undeniable physiological exhil­ aration. in here is your war: story of g.!. joe, the 1943 book of reportage about operations in north africa that made him famous for telling the ordinary soldier's story with respect and affection, he explains that there is an air of "intoxication about battle, and ordinary men can sometimes soar clear out of themselves on the wine of danger-emotion. and yet it is false." the inherent falseness of danger's seductive thrill re­ sounds through pyle's wartime dispatches. 78 looking for the good war in his war journalism pyle remains largely uninterested in what he calls in here is your war the "big picture," and he elects to focus instead on the "worm's-eye view." although pyle is frequently remembered as the correspondent who turned the ordinary "joe" into a hero, he repeatedly resists depicting gis-whom he clearly loves-as champions of anything other than their own survival. their political in­ vestment is limited to a desire to have things repaired in such a way as to prevent another war. pyle acknowledges that by hunting around, he could unearth "plenty" of politically en­ gaged or "internationally minded men" of various ranks in the army, yet he insists that most of the soldiers he encounters in africa evince little interest "in foreign affairs ... outside of battle affairs." by september 1944_, when it seemed that the war in eu­ rope had been won, pyle was cautioning against a reading of victory as the fulfillment of some exceptional predesti­ nation: "we have won this war because our men are brave, and because of many other things . . . russia, and england, and the passage of time, and the gift of nature's materials," he writes in brave men. "we did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples." pyle's worm's-eye view taught him that war "coarsens" soldiers rather than en­ nobling them. this is especially the case for frontline combat troops, who differ from the rest in their proximity to death. with the war in europe won but the struggle for the pacific still in progress, pyle predicts a period characterized by "the new spiritual freedom of half peace and the old grinding blur of half war. it will be a confusing period for us." owing in no small measure to the overwhelming force of which the united states has been capable ever since, as well as to the military-industrial complex's obsession with violent technol­ ogies throughout the cold war and beyond, this confusion persists. the golden-anniversary propagandists, comfortable gely unim�r�)it: g picture/' �n�ri "lew," altn�ij� }rre�pona�nt 1\': repeatealrmii) as cham�i�m i heir politic�lm, reparr�din)q�, n\\'led��! tn�t . , ')[ politk�ii)'1�' , rarlou! r�nhi: imheenc�unl1n [falr� , , ,�ulli�; at the \\'ar in t�, a aimt a r���rnl r ui," olvin�ill ce of whknmt as wella!wml riolenttechn�l' , thi� confu�i�� 5ts, comforti�lf age of gold 79 stipulating the nobility of the cause, spent the bulk of their energies glorifying not simply the act of liberation but also the american power that secured it. at the end of the cold war, another war helped to cement the myth. the persian gulf war worked to restore the confidence so badly shaken by vietnam. operation desert storm was my first television war. i watched this overwhelming demonstration of american mil­ itary might in college, where i also happened to be reading richard ii, shakespeare's play about the violent deposition of an inept king whose murder unleashes a prolonged civil war. the play depicts a battle between the language of power and the violent thing itself. violence wins. a king armed only with the poetic symbols of authority is murdered while a usurper, backed by a flesh-and-blood army of thousands, is crowned. king richard, who is fond of swearing by his scep­ ter, is defeated by his cousin bolingbroke, who knows how to swing a sword. the gulf war presented, among other things, the spectacle of raw force: stunning, swift, (technologically) "smart"-all of it telecast live. the efficiency of this hundred­ hour ground war ("the largest logistical move in history," according to the general who directed the effort) seemed to catch out even its protesters, who initially rallied under the slogan "no blood for oil," but dispersed rather quickly. once the war was over, a sense of military invincibility eclipsed a reckoning with the inevitable, enduring costs of unleashing force: continued war in the air over a no-fly zone, ongoing in­ ternal violence in iraq, crippling sanctions, and the lingering illnesses of many u.s. veterans. these details were obscured by the afterglow of american might and largely ignored in narratives of the war as a discrete, efficient success. the american military power demonstrated by the gulf war, a prelude to the shock and awe that would rain down on iraq in 2003, also helped obscure in national memory 80 looking for the good war the politically unavailing devastation of the vietnam war. in 1975, the ignominious fall of saigon left americans with a graphic symbol of what happens when violence becomes unhinged from strategic outcomes. the event offered the united states a potent symbol of futility, a disillusioning end to what, until 2010, was the longest war in u.s. his­ tory. perhaps it also made americans nostalgic for a world in which sacrifice led to victory and in which victory looked sufficiently different from defeat. although the process of rehabilitating our adventure in vietnam began during the reagan administration, the gulf war, less than two de­ cades after our failure in southeast asia, restored an appar­ ent and a longed-for clarity. with a world war ii combat veteran at the helm-ubiquitous allusions to president george h. w. bush's military service as a navy pilot in world war ii seemed meant to offer additional legitimacy and reassurance-the war had the imprimatur of being run by restrained professionals, even as it exploded on viewers' screens and launched the era of frenzied twenty-four-hour news coverage. during our twenty-first-century wars, i have repeatedly returned to richard ii, often in the company of my students, cadets at west point, where the preparation of future army officers carries on while the embers of recent wars slowly smolder out. that work continues regardless of national po­ litical drama-drama that for several years was characterized by a trump administration at once isolationist and dictatorial in inclination. (how else could we read the simultaneous de­ sires for military parades at home and a complete withdrawal of troops abroad?) cadets not infrequently describe them­ selves as members of "the post-9/11 generation," a label that signals their solidarity in uniform even as it distinguishes them from their civilian peers and even as the nature of their future occupation grows increasingly uncertain, albeit no the vietnam �'�: ftamerl'ca "n� wit violence of(�m� event offerf� ui y, a ai!iiiu�i�nw: t war in c�, �:i, talgic fof a \i'm;: i h victofrloo!t: "h the pfo(fll�: began aufin�� ie � than two �(, wa� cnaract�ri11� iltanooictatorial �imultaneoui�f' pletell'itnamru \' oescrioe t01m' (ion," alaodw!t it oi5tin�ui�n11 age of gold 81 less vital, absent almost-inevitable deployments to iraq or afghanistan. one day in class, a first-year cadet paused at a moment in richard ii when a conspirator who fears he has gone too far in open criticism of richard-"most degenerate king!"­ suddenly begins to speak in code, couching further observa­ tions about the kingdom's criminal mismanagement-and the prospect of armed insurrection-in the extended met­ aphor of a ship sailing into a "fearful tempest." a second conspirator, picking up the hint, likewise laments the im­ pending shipwreck, until a third assures his cryptic friends that they can speak freely about the army massing across the english channel under bolingbroke's command. "what's he talking about?" my curious student asked on encounter­ ing the bit about the storm-tossed ship. it wasn't a passage i had planned to spend much time analyzing, but it turned out to be the perfect illustration of a point absolutely es­ sential to the enterprise of understanding shakespeare and, more generally, the significance of the ways we choose to talk about violence in real life. shakespeare's images and metaphors, difficult and oblique though they might seem to a twenty-first-century audience, are inseparable from his meaning. the language most often used today to talk about war is suffused with a sentimentality that seems to belong more properly to some lost romantic age. it certainly isn't shakespearean metaphor, but it is a code of distortion, mis­ direction, and concealment. even after the revolutions in modern consciousness supposedly occasioned by conflict in the twentieth century, a pernicious american senti­ mentality about nation and war has triumphed, typified by demonstrative expressions of, and appeals to, an emotion that short-circuits reason. in this respect, the conspirators' exchange in richard ii has broader resonance: whenever 82 looking for the good war people describe violence with abstraction or indirection, in shakespeare's time or our own, there's bound to be a reason. the conspirators' motives are particular, but their language offers a fine example of the stratagems people employ when they are trying to talk around ugly and dan­ gerous things. n ow embarked on the third decade of the century, having seen the resurrection of the ugly rhetoric of the 1930s_, we evaluate the exit from the costly, inconclusive wars in which the united states has been embroiled for so many years. iraq and afghanistan came to seem interminable and inconve­ nient, embarrassing to all save perhaps their most fervent original designers. debates about force and the language through which it is described-issues of violent means and elusive ends-are as pressing now as they have ever been. yet we seem unable to talk about these issues frankly or to rec­ ognize, as my perceptive student did, when and why people resort to linguistic subterfuge. this, too, is a legacy of world war ii_, specifically of a misapprehension about the mean­ ing of american violence in the world. it leads us repeatedly to imagine that the use of force can accomplish miraculous political ends even when we have the examples of vietnam, iraq, and afghanistan to tell us otherwise. a language of the heart helps to insulate us from the de­ cisions we have made and paradoxically distances us from those whose military service we seek to recognize. we see it in the empty profusion of yellow ribbons and lapel-pin flags. we hear it in the organized celebrations of american heroes and patriotic values: celebrity public-service an­ nouncements, beer commercials about military homecom­ ings, the more jingoistic variants of country music, and the national football league's "salute to service" campaign. all these observances noisily claim to honor and celebrate, in the words of the nfl, "the service and sacrifice of our nahe cemu!)" t!ri�[ of toe i�j�l! i; 'ire wan inw�i(; man)'!m�,lm able ana inronw, riolent lle!m !�� are em oem tt: iran�)'ortom' n ana \i'd! reo�li a legacj'orwor� about toe me��, plild miraculolli pie i ofvietn�m, j1mofamerim ublic·wrice ��' l]jrarr homecoill' \' mulic,anqt�( \'ice" camr�i��, and celeor�te,i� [ifice of our �!. age of gold 83 tion's troops." we have become exhibitionists of sentiment: the more public and histrionic our displays, the better we seem to feel. yet sentimentality does more than shape the way we com­ memorate wars. it informs all those cultural and sociolog­ ical attitudes in the shadow of which wartime and postwar policies are crafted, and it prevents a more productive and enduring sympathy that, in cooperation with reason, might guide our actions and help us become more careful readers of war's many ambiguities and false seductions. our predic­ ament calls to mind the eighteenth-century debate over the danger of confusing the exercise of pity with sympathetic ac­ tion. the philosopher jean-jacques rousseau, for example, differentiated true compassion from the emotion we might feel at the theater: "a sterile pity which feeds on a few tears" and never produces "the slightest act of humanity." the brit­ ish writer and philanthropist hannah more warned against "mistaking sentiment," which she defined as "the virtue of ideas," for principle, which she called "the virtue of action." the scottish novelist henry mackenzie, meanwhile, ob­ served that "refined sentimentalists ... are contented with talking of virtues which they never practice" and "pay in words what they owe in actions." american sentimentality about war suffuses political rhetoric, irrespective of party; republicans and democrats are equally adept at its tunings. world war ii's transcen­ dence is signaled by the fact that it is equally useful to pres­ idents as different as donald trump and barack obama. the latter's 2014 state of the union address contains a rep­ resentative example. the address concluded with an appeal to american ideals "and the burdens we bear to advance them." "no one," the president insisted, "knows this better than those who serve in uniform." and then obama called attention to sergeant first class cory remsburg, a u.s. 84 looking for the good war army ranger grievously wounded in kandahar, afghani­ stan, who was seated in the gallery next to the first lady. the speech included the crucial detail that the president first met remsburg on omaha beach during the sixty-fifth­ anniversary celebration of d-day. this allusion set the stage for the speech's emotional peroration, in which remsburg became a symbol of something almost entirely disconnected from his own costly service and in which one war seemed to melt into another: my fellow americans, men and women like cory re­ mind us that america has never come easy. our free­ dom, our democracy, has never been easy. sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged. but for more than 200 years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoul­ der to the wheel of progress-to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice, and fairness, and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen. everyone rose in unison. some members of congress wept as obama extolled the sergeant's sacrifice. in this, antagonistic leaders could evince a solidarity they had not shown since they united in sending remsburg to war in the first place. submerged in the celebration of a "new generation of heroes" were all those nagging questions about the use of force that ought to have provoked debate in the first place. lawmakers seemed to be seeking absolution for their earlier uncritical en­ thusiasm by joining together in a tearful expression of feeling. that's the slipperiness of sentimentality, which is the natural andahar) af�n!�, to the fiml!il that the �rf�i�i;: lng the �ixtj'��' llu�ion �et tn� �lal( which rfm!��t tlrelyai!conn1tll; \ne war �efm1�1( n like cor,11' asy. sometim11 frustrateaol and duila ana re maae real for i congre�� \\'e�u! i hi�. antagorul" . not �hown �ioci n me or!t riatl, erationofnewli" e use of force iliat plaee.lawmatw rlier uneriticail�' msionoffeeii�1 hleh i� menatur� age of gold 85 ally of jingoism. so long as we indulge it, we remain incapa­ ble of debating the merits of war without being charged with diminishing those who fought it. celebration of the human­ ity of the individual-calling attention to what is true about remsburg's suffering, endurance, and commitment-is a vital national act. but once soldiers become symbols, ab­ stractions available for political ends, we deny them the very humanity we claim to celebrate. just a few weeks prior to obama's address, the fall of fallujah had prompted comparisons to vietnam. the bat­ tle for the iraqi city in 2004 held great significance for the u. s. marines who won it, and the raising of a black insurgent flag-like the hoisting of a pirate's skull and crossbones on a ship, or of enemy colors above a desert fort in a 1930s holly­ wood movie-seemed another emblem of futility. some of the marines who watched it unfurl began to wonder whether the lives of their comrades, as one veteran put it in the new york times, "were sacrificed for nothing." "it was irrespon­ sible," another said, "to send us over there with no plan, and now to just give it all away." this is not what americans expect to find at the end of their war stories. indeed, if sentimentality tends to elicit the emotions without binding the will, an equally dangerous consequence of an overreliance on the heart is the compul­ sion to transform even the most ambiguous tragedies into inspirational "good-news" stories. without a strong head to resist the temptations of sentimentality, a writer might find herself facing the predicament of ivy spang, the hapless pro­ tagonist of edith wharton's 1919 "writing a war story." when war breaks out, spang forgets her ambitions to be a poet and goes to paris to work in an anglo-american hos­ pital. there she is asked "to contribute a rattling war story" to a morale-boosting monthly being prepared for circulation 86 looking for the good war among the wounded. "a good rousing story, miss spang," exhorts her editor. "a dash of sentiment, of course, but noth­ ing to depress or discourage . . . a tragedy with a happy ending-that's about the idea." the editor is here para­ phrasing william dean howells's explanation for the failure of the broadway adaptation (by clyde fitch) of wharton's novel the house of m£rth, which the new york t£mes drama critic proclaimed "doleful" and almost entirely lacking in "comedy lines." after several false starts, spang serendipi­ tously discovers a true war story, originally transcribed from a soldier's unvarnished account by her former governess, who had also worked for a time in a military hospital. the published story's first impartial reader, a soldier and novelist who happens to be among the war-wounded patients at the paris hospital where spang works, admonishes its author: "you've got hold of an awfully good subject ... but you've rather mauled it, haven't you?" in adding "a dash of senti­ ment," spang has ruined the material. she acquiesced to an editor's demand to shape the story of war into a sentimental absurdity by giving it a happy ending. there was a time when we manifested at least some self­ awareness about our irresistible desire for happy endings. mgm's cry 'havoc' (1943), based on a play of the same name, with a screenplay by paul osborn and jane murfin, tells the story of two army nurses stationed in the philippines in 1942, on the eve of japan's victory in the battle of bataan and subsequent takeover of the country. the nurses, cap­ tain alice marsh (fay bainter) and lieutenant mary smith (margaret sullavan), train a group of volunteer civilians, women from a variety of backgrounds and without experi­ ence or training, to do first aid and other hospital work. as general macarthur departs for australia, leaving general jonathan wainwright in command, and the prospect of being tory \.1'• \ l� l�� �r�r.1 of cour�e, out ��;, gedy wito a nan" d fi, ltor i� om nr4r� arion fortoerai�:i fi h) ofwnaf(�r' " }orr timejm4.l� • ntirell'lackin![ , pan� !eren�i�:, 1') !ramcrioe�rrl: the nur!e!, �i�' icnant .\iary �mim \'illunteer ci\'ilii�� d without exrw, ho�pital work ,ii , leavin� genlr� pro�pect oftli�� age of gold 87 captured becomes a certainty, marsh orders smith to offer the civilians a last chance to be evacuated. the volunteers refuse, as smith subsequently reports: captain alice marsh: well? lieutenant mary smith: they're staying. marsh: all of them? smith: uh-huh. marsh: what did they say? smith: i don't know, but they're staying. marsh: you told them, didn't you? smith: yeah, i told them. they didn't hear it. or maybe they just didn't believe it. they're americans, cap, they believe in the happy ending. marsh: i'm an american, smitty, i don't. smith: yeah, but it's different for us. we're part of the army. this is our business. the film ends with the off-screen voice of a japanese soldier ordering all the women to surrender. there is little doubt about their fate, and at the time of the film's release, in feb­ ruary 1944, the happy ending had not yet been secured. those prisoners of war who survived would not be liberated for more than year. wainwright himself was freed by the russians in august 1945. yet the kind of war story we crave today is the one that ivy spang would write. we search for a redemptive ending to every tragedy. after two decades of engagement, grasp­ ing wherever and however we can at a cleansing goodness that might close the book on two wars that launched so many more questions than they answered, we find no solace in the inconclusive, and we remain uneasy when asked to contem­ plate our own capacity for a violence that has not served a 88 looking for the good war noble end. witness the media coverage surrounding the 2013 opening of the film lone survivor, based on the book by former navy seal marcus luttrell. in a january inter­ view, cnn's jake tapper suggested that there was an air of "hopelessness" about the film-that the deaths of luttrell's comrades in afghanistan during an operation gone wrong "seemed senseless." luttrell responded angrily, wonder­ ing what film tapper had seen: "we spend our whole lives training to defend this country, and then we were sent over there by this country, so you're telling me that because we were over there doing what we were told by our country that it was senseless and my guys, what, they died for nothing?" the internet exploded with vitriol against tapper for his failure to appreciate a true american hero. only a few col­ umnists subsequently weighed in about the need for a debate over whether americans have in fact died for some enduring change in iraq and afghanistan. calling a death heroic gives shape to a life, salvaging it from the oblivion of destruction and shifting focus away from the merits of a cause. calling a death on a mission gone wrong "senseless," as tapper proposed, condemns that life to the re­ lentless circularity of betrayal and doubt. suggesting that a death in battle was in vain-"lives were wasted" in fallu­ jah, a former marine told the times, "and now everyone back home sees that"-also starkly exposes wilfred owen's "old lie" about the unadulterated sweetness of dying for one's country. the imposition of happy endings on war's tragedies may momentarily assuage the heart. who could fail to under­ stand the intensity of luttrell's desire to seek a balm for grief, guilt, and the constellation of emotions besieging the lone survivor of a battle? yet the perpetuation of the "old lie" also insults the head. in a climate in which the pressures to sentimentalize are so strong and victory and defeat are so difficult to measure, it urrounain� t ased on tn�� in a]anuar)'inil, • here li'a) an�ll" , d aths of luttrt:' age of gold 89 seems a moral imperative to discover another way to read and write about a war. futility might be found at tactical, opera­ tional, or strategic levels. during wars, especially long ones, replete with confusion and fluidity, with losses and fleeting but costly gains, archetypal moments such as the raising of a flag-over iwo jima or fallujah-offer discrete tableaux amid an otherwise indecipherable jumble. it isn't easy to determine whether a war is futile. perhaps it never has been. are all lost wars a waste? are all victories worth their price? how many are pyrrhic? wait long enough, of course, and many of his­ tory's victories will be reversed. it is much easier to tell a sentimental war story with a happy ending, in which valor eclipses causes and reconcilia­ tion triumphs over everything-a comedy, in other words­ than it is to tell another, unsentimental kind of story. it is much harder to speak of war in a pellucid, forthright mode. even our own wised-up age retains a misguided faith in the cleansing, redemptive power of violence. it is the faith ex­ pressed in president george w. bush's remarks on the deck of the uss abraham lincoln in 2003, when he described the iraq war as embodying "the highest calling of history" and the assembled sailors as bearing the message of the prophet isaiah "wherever" they went: "to the captives, 'come out'­ and to those in darkness, 'be free.'" "i'm confused," one of the plebes in my class confessed when we reached the third act of shakespeare's richard ii and he discovered his sympathies shifting from the appar­ ently victimized bolingbroke to the irresponsible, duplici­ tous, and initially self-deceiving king richard. it is richard who knows before everyone, including bolingbroke himself, that his cousin cannot stop-the momentum of war will not let him-until he has secured the crown for himself. "up, cousin, up," king richard tells bolingbroke, who has knelt before him: "your heart is up, i know, / thus high at least 90 looking for the good war [pointing to his crown], although your knee be low." to my student's surprise, it is richard, the king of dreamy poetry, who now displays by far the keenest, most unsentimental un­ derstanding of the actual dynamics of force. as simone weil noted, force blinds those, like bolingbroke, who imagine they can control it. in the collision between symbolic and practical might, the latter wins, and king richard intuits that all will suffer for it. england's civil wars gave shakespeare fodder for eight plays. when next he shows us bolingbroke-now the ti­ tle character of 1 henry iv-the energetic usurper is changed utterly: exhausted, he rules a kingdom full of trenches, a land soaked with the blood of "civil butchery." king henry is cut by the double "edge of war" that he first unleashed. when fallujah fell in january 2014, some heard echoes of khe sanh in vietnam, won at great human cost and then evacuated in 1968. five years later, in 1973, frederick weyand, commanding general of military assistance com­ mand, vietnam, announced the deactivation of macv: "our mission has been accomplished. i depart with a strong feeling of pride in what we have achieved and in what our achievement represents." weyand's rearguard rhetorical ac­ tion, reported in american newspapers, sounds cynical given what we now know to be the outcome of the vietnam war­ until, that is, you have had the opportunity to listen to enough officers, whose earnestness you do not doubt, who have come home from iraq or afghanistan. they are heavy with the deaths of fellow soldiers and at the same time fighting a sense of futility with an insistence about the meaningful progress they saw. how many courageous and honorable friends, ei­ ther on their way to war or relieved at their good fortune in coming home, have told me with a gallows-humor grin that no one wants to be the last american to die there? we live in a historical moment during which it is necessary to reflect on our recent wars in the light of wars past. the way be 10\\"'7', l� � of dreaml'n " • f�1m un entiment!i�, ai�imon1�'i, .\\'hoimagin1�' olicand�r!\tt intuit) tnat!iilll age of gold 91 we think and talk about force will influence not only the use of american military might abroad but also our response to the violence that has increasingly been used as a tool of insur­ rection at home. to the degree that we allow the undeniable suffering and sacrifice of war somehow to redeem all causes­ that we allow our guilt to obscure the realities of devastating, indecisive wars-we increase the likelihood of finding our­ selves in a similar predicament once again. in focusing on a moment of linguistic indirection in richard ii, my student found the key to unlocking an entire play. reading closely in this way isn't a skill we tend to take very seriously-until we find that we cannot live without it. 2 dead-shot american cowboys "did you ever hear of karl may?" asked marlene die­ trich, suddenly ... "he died long ago, a year or so before the other world war of 1914," said marlene. "it was just as well," nodded pasternak. "he didn't live to see his german boys picked off in the war by the dead-shot american cowboys and indians they had read about in his books." -ilreite ihn, cowboy!" the new york times, december 3, 1939 box-office poison in the spring of 1938, the independent theater owners as­ sociation (itoa) took out a full-page advertisement in the hollywood trade publications declaring marlene dietrich, along with eleven other movie stars, box-office "poison." faced with shrinking attendance numbers and forced by the major studios' block-booking system to exhibit-along with surefire crowd-pleasers-many films with little appeal for their patrons, the theater owners helped to redefine, and in some cases to derail, the careers of a group of stars whose personas were thoroughly identified with the 1930s. tem­ pered or outlawed outright would be the european exoticism of dietrich and greta garbo, the homegrown bawdiness of 94 looking for the good war mae west, the cosmopolitan sophistication of fred astaire, and the eccentric androgyny of katharine hepburn. (dolores del rio, luise rainer, norma shearer, edward arnold, john barrymore, kay francis, and joan crawford rounded out the list of newly toxic icons.) from gangster gore to art deco chic, the eclectic fantasies served up to movie audiences in the early and mid-1930s-the worst years of the depression­ would be largely replaced by less politically radical and more provincial wholesome fare, especially during the war years. the prewar period was also marked, as thomas doherty has argued in hollywood and hitler, by a general reluctance among the major studios to address the dangers of fascism and the coming crisis in europe. instead, with the conspicuous exception of warner bros.-which groucho marx reportedly toasted as "the only studio with any guts"-the majors tried not to antagonize germany, for years their most lucrative overseas market. when the german emigre director fritz lang was asked in an interview at the american film insti­ tute in 1973 why the budget of his 1941 film man hunt had been so small, he replied, "darryl [20th century fox studio head darryl f. zanuck] said, 'don't show too many swasti­ kas. we don't like that.' for me, it was the first time that i could really show what the swastika meant, you know, and i showed it as often as i could. zanuck never said anything, but maybe, because of this, he didn't want to spend." when confronted by what doherty calls "incendiary" political material, joseph breen, the head of the production code administration, would invoke the following clause in the code: "the history, institutions, prominent people, and citizenry of all nations shall be represented fairly." the first film to deal earnestly and openly with fascism came in 1939, with warner's confessions of a nazi spy, a hard­ hitting, documentary-style drama deemed so sensitive that its production was robed in secrecy. breen approved the script, on of fred a�ldtri hepburn. (dol�:i dwardarnoloj"lorl 'ord roundeooijl� ;: r toartdeco(� : auaiencel intr( o the depfellion, ily radical and m�:; dead-shot american cowboys 95 which was based on an fbi agent's account of the 1938 in­ filtration of a nazi spy ring in new york. the federal trial of several of the conspirators had revealed that the dangers of nazism were both quite real and uncomfortably close to home. in addition to this groundbreaking film, the year 1939, often cited as hollywood's annus mirabilis, saw the produc­ tion of a group of memorable films that arrived at a trans­ formative moment in world history: the women, mr. smith goes to washington, young mr. lincoln, stagecoach, the ad­ ventures of huckleberry finn, wuthering heights, love affair, dodge city, gunga din, ninotchka, destry rides again, the hunchback of notre dame, beau geste, only angels have wings, drums along the mohawk, the roaring twenties, gone with the wind, the wizard of oz, union pacific, jesse james, idiot's delight, of mice and men, and the indefatigable bette davis's four pictures: dark victory, juarez, the old maid, and the private lives of elizabeth and essex. this is a re­ markable set of films, noteworthy for their initial impact as well as for their staying power. a number of them, includ­ ing mr. smith goes to washington, young mr. lincoln, and gone with the wind, have (for good and ill) come to occupy a place in our national mythology. several turn inward to ex­ plore grand american themes-the civil war or the western frontier-at a moment when the commitment to isolation­ ism that followed world war i and dominated much of the 1930s was at long last being challenged by european reali­ ties. films ostensibly unconnected with the present-day situ­ ation nevertheless inserted significant messages about liberty (juarez, drums along the mohawk) or slavery (the adven­ tures of huckleberry finn). and one of the films of 1939, a tragicomic western called destry rides again, brought mar­ lene dietrich back to hollywood in what amounted to a new configuration of old and new worlds. the film might also 96 looking for the good war be read as a fable of america's relationship to global events in the late 1930s. the first chapter in dietrich's hollywood career had be­ gun, on the heels of her international success in the german production der blaue engel (1930), with the shimmering artifice and precode decadence painstakingly cultivated by the director josef von sternberg in a series of films for paramount. in these films dietrich played nightclub singers, women of adventure, a spy, and a russian empress. after her collaboration with sternberg dissolved, less successful part­ nerships with other directors helped earn her itoa's "box­ office poison" label. one of them, angel (1937), directed by another german emigre, ernst lubitsch, suggests at least one of the reasons for her newfound notoriety. unimpressed by its plot of marital infidelity and reconciliation, the holly­ wood reporter deemed it "an extremely well bred continental comedy of manners." continental comedies of manners, es­ pecially those involving lax sexual mores, were a staple of the 1930s, but they had become suspect. as dietrich's biogra­ pher steven bach notes, the world's highest-paid woman had now become "virtually unemployable." fired by paramount, her projects at other studios canceled, dietrich decamped to europe, briefly returning to the united states only to final­ ize her american citizenship, thereby cutting ties with her native germany, whose politics she deplored. the doomed summer of 1939 found her in the south of france, where fel­ low european expatriate joe pasternak offered her the role of "frenchy," a singer from new orleans-all foreign accents were interchangeable in hollywood-performing in a sa­ loon in the lawless western town of bottleneck in destry rides again. although she initially thought the proposition ridicu­ lous, dietrich needed the money, as bach has documented, and knew that europe was on the precipice, so she accepted and sailed for new york in august. dead-shot american cowboys 97 hip to glooal e\'1ij� typical of so many of the films of hollywood's golden age, destry was a thoroughly international confection, its cast and crew an amalgamation of american-born personalities and immigrants from a variety of countries. the russian­ born mischa auer plays a russian who wants nothing more in life than to be a cowboy; the film's producer, joe paster­ nak, had emigrated from hungary; the music was by one of the leading composers of the weimar cabaret scene, fried­ rich hollaender, who had escaped nazi germany in the early 1930s. frank s. nugent of the new york times alluded to the film's international dynamic in his review: "with a sweep of his hungarian fist," pasternak "has taken marlene dietrich off her high horse and placed her in a horse opera and has converted james stewart, last seen as washington's timid mr. smith, into the hard-hitting son of an old sagebrush sheriff." hollywood alchemy worked in such a way that a hungarian could transform the most highfalutin european into a woman equipped for the frontier, and turn an american boy into a real man. the new world had triumphed over the old, the virile over the effete, the masculine over the feminine. such priorities had long been essential to the genre, but destry is not an entirely conventional western. stewart's portentously named thomas jefferson destry jr., the newly appointed sheriff's deputy of bottleneck, is an initially reluctant gun­ fighter. he must be provoked into violence; the resonances with the united states in 1939 are clear. young tom, who saw his father, a celebrated lawman, shot in the back, refuses to carry a gun, much to the consternation of the townsfolk and to the amusement of bottleneck's actual boss, a crooked gambler named kent (brian donlevy). it is only when kent's henchmen murder the good-natured old sheriff (charles winninger), who hired destry to clean up the town, that the outraged deputy straps on his gun belt and fulfills the expec­ tations of the genre by gunning down his man. after this 98 looking for the good war explosion of violence, in which frenchy is shot saving tom's life and then dies with a kiss in his arms, the final scene returns us to an unarmed destry presiding over a now-tranquil town. there is an elemental playfulness to destry: mischa auer's character is continually losing his pants, winninger is an amiable drunkard, dietrich sings several memorable numbers and gets in a raucous saloon fight in all her feathered finery,and stewart's destry is constantly telling folksy stories that make him sound lincolnesque. in addition to not taking itself too seriously, the film also refuses to turn the final showdown between destry and kent into the archetypal duel on a dusty street. instead, the shoot-out takes place inside the saloon,which is crowded with a mob of brawling men and women;the latter have organized in order to stop the violence, but theyend up taking part in a nonlethal variety by knocking men unconscious with bottles and stowing them behind the bar. in the invention of the western film, a history of the genre'sfirst fifty years, scott simmon proposes that prewar westerns attempt "to test whether the idea of law and order is possi­ble without violence." simmon argues that similar tests and debates over "political questions of disarmament and isola­ tionism," which were often found before the war, had largely disappeared from westerns by the 1950s, when "sheriff­ deans-up-town" stories seemed to encode "cold-war argu­ ments interpreted by everyone from president eisenhower on down." destry has a deeply ambivalent attitude toward vio­ lence as an inherently tragic remedy to the very real problemsof lawlessness. it also has a far more sanguine perspective on the relationship between the lawman and the community he protects. the townsfolk are with destry, not, as they will be in high noon (1952) and many other postwar westerns, in­ different or fearful, willing to leave their fate to a coterie of weary professionals. on december 3, 1939, the new york times published 1 .hot saving'!' ,10m, final sceneretijt ol\-tranquiltoll; d 510':!\1iscn�aije . w'inninger i�t moraolenum� i h featnereanij1f , :: 'olk�)' storie!w!, dead-shot american cowboys 99 a story called "reite ihn, cowboy!" about a reporter's visit to the set of destry during which dietrich and pasternak reminisce about growing up on the westerns of karl may. the americans, stewart and winninger, have never heard of may. stewart assumes they are talking about a baseball player, while winninger simply asks what the joke is. may is still largely unknown in america, but as rivka galchen suggests in "wild west germany," a 2012 article in the new yorker, his "stories of the american west are to this day bet­ ter known to germans than the works of thomas mann . . . though may never visited the american west, he told every­ one that he had, and he wore a necklace of bear teeth, as if in proof." most of his stories involve an apache named win­ netou and his "blood brother," a german immigrant called old shatterhand, often thought of as may's alter ego. to this day there is an annual karl may festival in the german town of bad segeberg, northeast of hamburg. the european fascination with the american west was not limited to germany. it also animates the french direc­ tor jean renoir's 1936 film the crime of monsieur lange, in which the title character, a lowly employee of a french pulp publishing house, becomes a sensation among the young boys of france with his tales of "arizona jim." lange is a dreamer: he gazes longingly at a map of the united states affixed to the wall above his bed and stays up all night concocting ad­ ventures that delight his french readers, who find arizona as exotic as americans have tended to find paris. made during the time of leon blum's popular front government, the film also expresses a working-class solidarity that can be found in some depictions of western townsfolk. on the set of destry, dietrich fishes from her knitting bag a copy of may's the revenge of the farmer, which she had purchased for her daughter, maria, on her last visit to salz­ burg. pasternak, who grew up in austria-hungary, begins to 100 looking for the good war translate a passage from the pulp novelist, to whom he and generations of german-speaking children had been devoted,and declares: "i was worse than the kids now with 'hi-yo,silver.'" when the film's director, george marshall, asks how may likes it in germany now, pasternak reveals that he died before world war i. "it was just as well," the producer adds. "he didn't live to see his german boys picked off in the war bythe dead-shot american cowboys and indians they had read about in his books." as the cowboys of german pulp melt into the doughboys of the american expeditionary force, the reporter veers away from melancholy back to the weird­ ness of the cinematic west, which is compared favorably with the ersatz west imagined by may, who had never been to the united states and whose idea of the frontier was inadequate.the admiring old world, in the form of pasternak, dietrich, and auer, must go as far west as it can-to hollywood-to become thoroughly schooled in the ways of the new. this vignette, published a few days into the film's run at new york's rivoli, is suggestive of the global instability­ and permeability-of 1939. the united states' eventual entry into the war in 1941 confirmed a realignment of old and new worlds by unsettling the myth of geographic ex­ ceptionalism that had held sway, in one form or another, in the united states essentially since its founding, but that had further crystallized in the historian frederick jackson turner's frontier thesis, which held that american democ­ racy was a unique phenomenon linked to westward move­ ment across the continent. greg grandin, who demonstrates the suppleness of the frontier myth throughout american history in the end of the myth: from the frontier to the border wall in the mind of america, argues that the more progres­ sive members of the franklin d. roosevelt administration recast turner's frontier thesis during this period: "new dealers ... read the frontier less as mythology and more as 1.) to whomlil� � had been a�\'�11: no\\, witn 'hi.t, ,.\1ar�hall) a!k!�'; . ie\'eal� tnat n� ��, . ilie produc�r��' d offin tn�\\'�r: '1an� tn�!, n�q iti' • germanpul�rr[: x dilionarr f�it( .' a k 10 tn� \\'1lil' afaroraolrwir dead-shot american cowboys 101 pathology, a social disorder manifested in an insistence on national uniqueness. such a reading made space for a new kind of tolerance and openness." but the "one world" idea championed by roosevelt, wendell willkie, and other glob­ ally minded politicians gave way soon after the war's end . and, as american "confidence" returned after the doldrums of the depression, grandin notes, the frontier resumed its psychic power as the quintessential expression of an excep­ tionalist myth. as one of the most spectacular representations of the frontier, the western film offers an ideal testing ground for mythological reworkings, which continued throughout the cold war. as jane tompkins proposes in her book west of everything, the imaginary west was empty and blank: the desert offers itself as the white sheet on which to trace a figure. it is a tabula rasa on which man can write, as if for the first time, the story he wants to live. that is why the first moment of western movies is so full of promise. it is the new world, represented here, not for the first time, as a void, the vacuum domicilium the puritans had imagined, waiting to be peopled. the apparent emptiness makes the land desirable not only as a space to be filled but also as a stage on which to perform and as a territory to master. as tompkins notes, the initial sense of promise contained in that emptiness was confounded by the aura of apocalypse. beginning in the 1940s, it would become the landscape of los alamos, area 51, and atomic bomb tests, of missile silos and strategic air command. the west was also the home of the loner at odds with community. the distinctively american figure of the rugged individualist-celebrated in literature, film, and culture more 102 looking for the good war generally-militated against the ideals of unity and commu­ nity that we project back onto the period. as thomas doherty notes in projections of war: hollywood) american culture) and world war ii, "the necessity of personal sacrifice and the value of communitarian purpose were not exactly main cur­ rents in american thought." doherty continues: "the native self-made man made an unlikely candidate for selfless devo­ tion. the cheeky newspaperman, the lonesome cowboy, the private detective, the single-minded inventor, even the will to power of the urban gangster strike chords unsounded by the rewards of group solidarity and communal work." but if the empty land nurtured solitary heroes, it was also the per­ fect setting for the reinvention-and americanization-of europeans. dietrich's career was resurrected by destry, but the war also put it on hold. now an american-officially as well as cinematically-she committed herself to the war effort. at first this meant working long nights in the kitchen of the hol­ lywood canteen and volunteering to be sawn in half by orson welles in the magic show he staged in a tent for the benefit of gis. eventually, however, it meant donning a (bespoke) gi uniform and deploying to north africa and europe, where she tirelessly entertained troops. many hollywood person­ alities did similar work, but only bob hope came to be so completely identified as dietrich with world war ii. at the end of 1943, as bach records, dietrich auctioned most of her belongings and left for the front to do, as she would later in­ sist, "the only important thing i've ever done." one of dietrich's complaints, often echoed by journalists like a. j. liebling and ernie pyle when they returned from abroad, was that in america "one was hardly aware of the war." after returning from north africa and italy, dietrich gave an interview to leo lerman for the august 15, 1944, issue of vogue. war, like the western before it, seems somenit)' and comm�, a thomas don1� m n'cqn cullurl! �� al acrifice ano i,' 0, xactlymainrij:, dead·shot american cowboys 103 how to have liberated dietrich from hollywood's obscuring fantasy: "dietrich is funny," lerman revealed, "with that baggy pants comedian funniness, that belly-laugh vigour which her friends adore, but which hollywood hid behind six-inch eyelashes and a million-dollar languor." throughout the interview dietrich expresses her frustration with home­ front attitudes. she is outraged, for example, that blood do­ nations require "propaganda . . . that you've had to beg for it ... that's amazing." having seen the demand for various resources at the front, she expresses similar frustrations at complaints regarding gas rationing and other domestic re­ strictions. dietrich's experience also gave her an appreciation for a cooperative spirit and for an "extraordinary confidence in everybody who's around" that seemed unique to military life. her sympathies are entirely with the gi. she even tells the story of being introduced to something called the "4-f brushoff club": soldiers pinned up pictures-inscribed with phrases like "forever yours" or "i'll be waiting for you always"-of "girls who promised to wait and forgot about their promises." unlike these women, dietrich signed up for the duration: "i won't sign any contracts here that would tie me down. i will not sit here working my little job and let the war pass me by. over there, no one says, 'let the other fellow do it.' they do it themselves." right before "welcome, marlene" in the same issue of vogue, a feature called "woman's work" appears. as late as the summer of 1944, the magazine was exhorting its female readers to do something for the war effort: "there are in this country," it begins, "nearly five million women, between twenty and forty-nine, with no responsibilities, and not doing a lick of real war work." the article goes on to enumerate sev­ eral of the objections offered up by these women, including: "but isn't the war nearly over?" "college trained, i am an individualist, and i hate regimentation." "my par104 looking for the good war ents won't let me." in cataloguing and responding to these objections, the magazine portrays a readership apparently characterized by selfishness over an inclination for sacrifice, individualism over community spirit, personal ambition over patriotism. the answers themselves tellingly appeal as much to self-interest as to public-spiritedness. to readers who fear losing their appeal to men, vogue helpfully replies: listen, baby, a girl who attracts men attracts men. want some more answers to this vital question? there is hardly a marriageable man left in the u.s.a. outside of an army camp. so, joining the army, you go to the source of desirable material. he-the guy you're waiting for ... [will come back] older, wiser, battle­ worn, and look beyond the mascara deep into your eyes, and find a vacuum. his mind will wander to the girl in uniform who worked beside him, who knows what he's been through. there's a bond between them you can't overcome. here the author explores sexual and social anxieties; else­ where he or she predicts the harsh economic realities of the postwar world. to the concern expressed by some respon­ dents about employment in a world full of returning service­ men, vogue tells its female readers to face the fact that they will have no chance for "a foothold" in the job market against "twelve million men returning from the dust and agony of battle ... no matter what little foothold you have, they are go­ ing to see that they get theirs first." the significant reduction of women in the postwar workforce bore out this warning. the period also marked a change for dietrich's work. al­ though she continued to make films, she would reinvent her­ self yet again as a cabaret performer. she toured the world dead-shot american cowboys 105 tirelessly in sequined gowns and tuxedos as she once had toured it in her army uniform. her contributions to the war effort were recognized the world over: she received both the presidential medal of freedom in the united states and the french ordre national de la legion d'honneur for her work in the european theater. at least one fan dated her contribu­ tions all the way back to destry rides again. reporting from england in january 1941, ernie pyle devoted a column to lord beaverbrook, the canadian newspaper magnate turned efficient british minister of aircraft production. pyle attri­ butes beaverbrook's effectiveness and his ability to speed up production to a certain "american sense for ignoring tradi­ tion," and he numbers him among the "little knot of half a dozen or perhaps a dozen men" who "will emerge at the end of this war as the great leaders who pulled england through." nicknamed "the beaver," and sharing that animal's reputa­ tion for industriousness, lord beaverbrook apparently found his only relaxation in the movies. "he's crazy," pyle reports, "about marlene dietrich. as one of his fellow workers said, lord beaverbrook probably thinks the greatest contribution america could make to great britain would be to send over more dietrich films. they say he has seen 'destry rides again' nine times." the films would have to do for england until the united states could send dietrich herself, together with the eighth air force. premature anti-fascists when marlene dietrich returned to the united states in the summer of 1939 to begin filming destry, it was only natu­ ral that she should sail aboard the ss normandie, a magnifi­ cent but star-crossed french liner built for speed that could 106 looking for the good war make the transatlantic crossing from le havre to new york (by way of southampton) in just under four days. movie stars, potentates, and titans of industry all sailed on this, the world's largest and fastest ship. on its maiden voyage in the spring of 1935, the three-deck liner was greeted at pier 88 on manhattan's west side by one hundred thousand people who, f. raymond daniell reported in the new york times, had "gathered to marvel at the great ship's size and grace of line." the normandie happened to be docked in new york at the outbreak of war in 1939. it was detained and, after pearl harbor, seized by the united states government as the prop­ erty of vichy france, an enemy nation. the navy began to refit it as a troop carrier renamed the us s lafayette. these plans were interrupted when a fire broke out on board during retrofitting operations in february 1942, and the ship cap­sized at the pier as a result of the volume of water pumped into the hull. the salvage operation cost millions, and when the badly damaged ship was finally righted months later, it was judged too expensive to repair and ultimately scrapped in 1946, a relic of the prewar world. before this inglorious end, however, the normandie set new standards for luxury as well as speed. its first-class ac­ commodations were sumptuous. there is a photo of die­ trich on her november 1939 voyage in one of four grand luxe suites, the rouen, in front of its piano. pieces of the ship survive in private collections, occasionally showing up at auctions. new york's metropolitan museum of art and pittsburgh's carnegie museum own several of the murals that adorned the dining rooms and other public spaces. the whistle now resides at the pratt institute but used to blow the shift changes at bethlehem steel; the wheel is on display at the south street seaport museum; and the magnificent doors of the grand dining room now adorn our lady of leb­ anon cathedral in brooklyn, new york. dead-shot american cowboys 107 the normandie catered to the elite, but it also carried tourists and other unknown (if no less extraordinary) travel­ ers in secondand third-class accommodations. one of them was esther silverstein, a nurse who left her job at the ma­ rine hospital in san francisco to aid the republican side in the spanish civil war. silverstein sailed on the normandie in may 1937, served with the 35th international division sanitary corps for more than a year, and subsequently joined the army nurse corps during world war ii. she joined almost three thousand american volunteers in the spanish republic's fight against franco, whose military coup was from the outset supported by men and materiel from italy and germany. as the historian peter n. carroll has docu­ mented, the first contingent of eighty-six volunteers sailed on the normandie in 1936. the indifference with which europe's democracies met the upheaval in spain, and italy's takeover of ethiopia before it, was not lost on the europeans and americans who joined the international brigades to fight fascist aggression. two journalists who covered the war, vir­ ginia cowles and vincent sheean, spoke for many observ­ ers when they traced the origins of world war ii directly to the spanish civil war. watching the battle of britain in the summer of 1940 from a cliff in dover, the two reporters had the following exchange, which cowles later recorded in look­ ing for trouble: vincent turned to me and said, "it's funny to think all this business started down there." he nodded toward the mists. "down there?" "in spain." undoubtedly future historians will puzzle over the lessons that were never learned from the first world war; they will shake their heads that the three great 108 looking for the good war democracies refused to join hands and accept their responsibilities as the guardians of world peace. they will trace the causes of the present conflagration to the breakdown of the league of nations, pointing to manchuria in 1931 and abyssinia in 1935. but they will have to turn to spain in 1936 for the first rum­ ble of gunfire to break the stillness of the european continent ... i saw the villages of spain burning and followed the flames across the map of europe. franklin roosevelt's october 5, 1937, speech at a bridge ded­ ication in chicago, known as the "quarantine" speech, gave hope to the interventionists with its characterization of the world's "political situation" as "a reign of terror and inter­ national lawlessness" and its warning that the united states could not "have complete protection in a world of disorder." but the united states continued to adhere to the series of neutrality acts passed earlier in the decade while the great democratic powers of europe refused to respond to the overt fascist interventions in ethiopia and spain. italy, and to an even greater extent germany, used the latter conflict as a dress rehearsal for battles to come, especially for the luft­ waffe. the only power to intervene on the republican side was the soviet union, which joined with avowed commu­ nists, socialists, anarchists, republicans, and others in their fight on behalf of the republic. hollywood offered somewhat belated representations of those who were early to the fight against fascism. in casa­ blanca, which had its new york city premiere on november 26, 1942, we learn that humphrey bogart's rick blaine, who claims to stick his neck out for no one, "ran guns to ethiopia" in 1935 and "fought in spain on the loyalist side" in 1936. as m. todd bennett notes in one world) big screen: hollydead-shot american cowboys 109 wood, the allies, and world war ii, the script was supervised by the office of war information, which saw its utility as propaganda to galvanize audiences still uncertain about u. s. involvement in the war. in the fallen sparrow (1943), based on the eponymous dorothy b. hughes novel published in 1942, john garfield's john mckittrick fights in the spanish civil war, survives imprisonment by the nazis, and returns to new york to solve a murder committed by german agents. this cinematic return to spain also signified that the us sr, the old enemy (albeit briefly the friend) of our new enemy, had become our new friend. it is estimated that about seventy percent of the ameri­ cans who fought in spain with the abraham lincoln brigade were communists; others were fellow travelers or simply un­ derstood the fight as anti-fascist. during the confusing inter­ val between their experience in spain and the attack on pearl harbor-and after the 1939 german-soviet nonaggres­ sion pact-some communists broke with the party. others, disgusted by the abandonment of spain by the democratic powers, found themselves temporarily aligned with ameri­ can isolationists. as the classicist bernard knox, who fought with a british contingent in spain and with the u.s. army in world war ii, noted, "the american volunteers of the abra­ ham lincoln brigade were known to the fbi as 'premature anti-fascists'; it was an accusation but it is a designation that all those who fought for the republic can accept with pride. we were ahead of everybody else in something that had to be done." even in the light of later revelations about the ex­ tent of soviet "interference and manipulation," knox refused to repudiate the republican cause: "war is an ugly business at best; as thucydides said long ago, it is a teacher of vio­ lence and reduces most men's tempers to the level of their cir­ cumstances." under the auspices of the u.s. army's morale services division, the psychologist john dollard conducted 110 looking for the good war a study of behavior in combat based on interviews with vet­ erans of the lincoln brigade. his findings, published as fear and courage under battle conditions, revealed that at least for these volunteers, ideology was a crucial motivator in the face of fear. whether or not they had been communist party mem­ bers, the veterans of the lincoln brigade were put under government surveillance ostensibly because of their earlier violation of the u. s. neutrality acts. when they volunteered to fight fascism once again after pearl harbor, they learned that they had been blacklisted as "premature anti-fascists." despite the fact that they were among the few americans with recent combat experience-including valuable experi­ ence against modern german weaponry such as the stuka and the 88-mm artillery gun-they were initially prevented from obtaining commissions and often shunted off to camps for troublemakers and politically suspect conscripts. the poet john ciardi, for example, was denied a commission in the air corps after successfully completing navigation training. ciardi did not even fight in spain; as a graduate student, impressed with those who had volunteered, he had signed various petitions. after milton wolff's commanding offi­ cer learned that he had served in spain as a member of the lincoln brigade, wolff found himself assigned to a unit of misfits and malcontents, the majority of whom were nazis and fascist sympathizers. most of the rest were foreign na­ tionals, while a few were, like wolff, premature anti-fascists who had joined the battle against mussolini and hitler too soon. the irony of being lumped in with fascists was not lost on veterans of the lincoln brigade, who were generally more politically engaged than many of their fellow soldiers and who had in any case been thinking about the global struggle in one way or another since the mid-1930s. until the press picked up the cause, many were restricted to support jobs and dead-shot american cowboys 111 kept out of combat. the hounding of the veterans of the lin­ coln brigade, even those who went on to serve honorably in world war ii, resumed in 1947, when the red scare began in earnest. several premature anti-fascists ended up in the office of strategic services (oss), headed by william "wild bill" donovan, who cared less about men's politics than about their willingness to fight. one of these men was bernard knox, a naturalized u. s. citizen who had fought in the international brigades in spain while still a british subject. knox would later become a celebrated classicist for whom the relationship between ancient and modern wars was deeply intertwined. as a world war ii commando who did dangerous work be­ hind the lines with the french maquis and later with italian partisans, knox, who had taken an undergraduate classics degree at cambridge, made a promise to himself: "if i ever get out of this, i'm going back to the classics and study them seriously." only after he had survived the war and applied for graduate school did knox learn of his official designation as a premature anti-fascist. in 1946 his yale interviewer, the chair of the classics department, nonchalantly used the term on discovering that he had served in the spanish civil war. knox was completely nonplussed: "how, i wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-fascist? could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? ... if you were not premature, what sort of anti-fascist were you supposed to be? a punctual anti-fascist? a timely one?" if you were not early, knox added, you were like those frenchmen who joined the resistance in 1944, and whom the real french ma­ quisards with whom knox worked derided as "resistants de la derniere heure" [last-minute anti-fascists]. "it is a perfect description," knox adds, "of neville chamberlain and lord halifax. but in 1939, last-minute was too late." as early as 1938, roosevelt had authorized the depart/ �,. ... 112 looking for the good war ment of justice to investigate nazis, fascists, and commu­ nists. long before the end of the war, communists became the government's chief preoccupation, a phenomenon that manifested itself in all sorts of unexpected ways. according to the historian peter carroll, the fbi opened files on more than two hundred veterans of the abraham lincoln brigade. the term premature anti-fascist, abbreviated paf, became a code word for communist. congressman martin dies's com­ mittee to investigate un-american activities ferreted out pafs in hollywood, too, among the members of the anti­ nazi league and other organizations, some of them commu­ nist fronts, that showed sympathy with the spanish republic or early on expressed alarm about the regimes of italy and germany. various commentators have noted that world war ii was marked by a lack of the kind of ideological rheto­ ric that had accompanied our participation in the first world war, but the crusade against communists had a decidedly hysterical fervor, and the supposed communist enemy within would become as terrifying as the communists abroad. ignoring what knox calls the "surreal" complexity of the time, the united states adopted the manichaean worldview that sustains us to this day: "islamofascists" have replaced the fascists of world war ii, the axis of evil the axis powers, global extremists the communists of the cold war. it was easier to think of all those veterans of spain as premature anti-fascists than it was to accept that one had been too late. their precocity proved something of an embarrassment, and it would serve as sufficient proof in the 1950s of a dalli­ ance with communism that would outweigh any subsequent displays of loyalty. knox's own commitment to ancient literature, like that of fellow veteran robert fitzgerald, was galvanized by his wartime experience. and in the complex, nuanced atti­ tude toward war in the work of these two classicists can be dead-shot american cowboys 113 found another antidote to the sentimentality that suffuses so much war remembrance. knox's reading often provided him an analogue to his experience of modern war. grievously wounded-his comrades "sure that i was dying," he would recall-in spain, he did not respond with tranquility or satis­ faction. this would be no nineteenth-century "good death," but an occasion for "furious, violent rage." when he returned to ancient epic, he discovered that his "reaction was not ab­ normal." he explains: "in homer's iliad, still the greatest of all war books, this is how young men die ... and virgil's turnus [in the aeneid] goes the same road." knox fought in two wars for the same anti-fascist cause, but he was too astute a reader to confuse the necessity of violence with glory. in an introduction to robert fagles's translation of virgil's aeneid, knox recalled a venerable practice called the virgilian lot­ tery, in which people consulted the poem to learn the future: "you took a passage at random and it foretold your future. often it was consulted in temples, as it was regarded as an oracle; hadrian and other men who became roman emper­ ors first learned of their future eminence from this source," knox explains. during the english civil war, king charles i consulted the lottery "and put his finger by chance on dido's curse on aeneas," in which the forsaken carthaginian queen expresses the desire that her former lover be plagued by war, meet an untimely death, and be left unburied on a lonely beach. knox played the lottery himself in a wrecked villa in modena, italy, while fighting the germans alongside a group of italian partisans. his war, carried out on foot, largely without the benefits of mechanized transport and modern technology, put him in mind of "the legions of octavian and mark antony," which had marched across the same region. occupying the villa in the middle of a skirmish against a ger­ man machine-gun crew, knox found a copy of virgil printed 114 looking for the good war "by order of benito mussolini." closing his eyes, he played the lottery and opened by chance to a page from virgil's first georgie, which offered a vision of italy as appropriate for 1945 as it was for any other historical moment: ... a world in ruins ... for right and wrong change places; everywhere so many wars, so many shapes of crime confront us; no due honor attends the plow. the fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt ... . . . throughout the world impious war is raging. knox's affinity for virgil and homer had to do largely with their refusal "to gloss over the harsh realities of the work of killing." these poets made "no attempt, either, to sentimen­ talize the pain and degradation of violent death." knox cat­ alogues, in an essay on the iliad, the many ways in which men die in that poem: "in agony; they drop, screaming, to their knees, reaching out to beloved companions, gasping their life out, clawing the ground with their hands; they die roaring ... raging ... bellowing ... moaning." death, more­ over, "is the end." there is no consolation and no afterlife; even the heroic code the poem seems to celebrate is some­ thing "war imposes on its votaries." there is a recognition of the brutal exhilaration, the "intoxicating excitements," and the "deadly fascination" it exerts. it is a poison, never a tonic. responding to the insights of simone weil, knox concludes, "three thousand years have not changed the human condi­ tion in this respect; we are still lovers and victims of the will to violence, and so long as we are, homer will be read as its truest interpreter." and in subscribing to that code, the war­ rior commits himself to "a solitary line," a tragic rejection dead-shot american cowboys 115 of "community" in the embrace of violent death. the war­ rior's solitude becomes the chief subject of the odyssey, which traces the circuitous homeward path of odysseus cast adrift in a postwar world of isolation, occasional imprisonment, and periodic returns to violent action, culminating in the mass slaughter of trespassing guests in his own home. knox wasn't the only one thinking about ancient wars as he fought a modern one. robert fitzgerald, a naval officer stationed on guam in the western pacific, spent three sea­ sons of 1945 making his way through the aeneid, of which he would later render a magisterial translation. it was the first time fitzgerald had read the entirety of virgil's epic in the original latin, and the project became an antidote to the boredom endemic to off-duty life as a staff officer on a well­ manicured island just far enough away from the fighting to preserve its aura of tranquility: "the scene," he writes, "could not have been more imperial or more civilized." meanwhile, a vicious war-and the vicious war talk that accompanied it-persisted all around him: i read virgil by the light of a good lamp. i heard young submarine skippers, the finest annapolis products, give their lighthearted accounts of shelling poor junks to smithereens in the china sea. meanwhile, offshore of the big japanese island to the north, picket ships were having their prows or upperworks and the men who manned them smashed into flaming junk by japanese fighters aflame; ashore, men with flamethrowers were doing what i had heard a briefing officer in san fran­ cisco, with an insane giggle, refer to as "popping japs"; and a good many young and brave of both sides were tasting the agony and abomination that the whole show came down to, in fact existed for. the next landings 116 looking for the good war would be on honshu, and i would be there. more than literary interest, i think, kept me reading virgil's descriptions of desperate battle, funeral pyres, failed hopes of truce or peace. fitzgerald highlights the ease with which violence as a means turns into violence as an end in and of itself. he intimates the particular brutality of the war in the pacific theater, where the violence was admixed with and intensified by racial ani­ mosity, which expressed itself in mutilation and the taking of trophies and reached its apogee in the firebombing of scores ofjapanese cities and the dropping of atomic bombs on hi­ roshima and nagasaki. the japanese surrender obviated the need for the prospective landings on kyushu and honshu, which were a part of the invasion plan "downfall." like knox, fitzgerald discovered in ancient literature numerous examples of war's coarsening effect. the context of the aeneid's composition was, he reminds us, a rome in which civil war was still a green memory. war, that "roman specialty," had "gone fratricidal and got out of hand." for aeneas, the poem's hero, as for the emperor augustus, under whose rule virgil wrote-as for the world in 1945, fitzgerald implies-the most difficult task "was waging war to end war, to work out settlements so magnanimous as to challenge no more strife but to promote concordia and the arts of peace." not for nothing did the postwar period come to be called the pax americana, even if, like the pax romana, during which the gates of war were open more than they were closed, it amounted to a fantasy of peace, under cover of which wars cold and hot simmered continuously. in the aeneid one discerns, as scholars have noted, a shift in sensibility from the individually heroic to the unroman­ tically corporate. in this sense, it resonates to a far greater degree than does the iliad with the historical dynamic of \'1 lienee a� �m 0q 1a� • , " heintim�111�: . theater,wije: n "ed hj' r�ciilic. • d theli�nf . bin� oflcm! • j bomol on ��, dead-shot american cowboys 117 world war ii service. in the aeneid, for example, the dead are routinely left behind. "uniform and anonymous, un­ differentiated in essentials," fussell writes of the effects of mass mobilization in wartime, "boys turned by training into quasi-mechanical interchangeable parts." they were, as the name "gi" communicates, "faceless young automatons." in his 1942 poem "to a military rifle," yvor winters suggests that in war individuals do not count "at all." during world war ii, virgil's poem illuminated a world at war for soldiers and civilians alike. in 1945 william hardy alexander and george e. duckworth published articles about the poem as a "military manual" in the classical journal. they began what scholars subsequently called the "pessimistic" reading of the poem, in which the explosive violence with which it ends con­ stitutes a commentary on the cost of founding nations. it has been argued that this reading responded to the fascists' use of roman symbols; it gathered momentum during the cold war, especially during vietnam. the "pessimistic" reading of virgil's epic refused to find something redemptive and meaningful in violence. "among my souvenirs" william wyler's the best years of our lives (1946) chronicles the uneasy return of three servicemen to boone city, a ficti­ tious midwestern stand-in for cincinnati. restless and con­ fused on his first night home, one of them, a banker turned infantry sergeant named al stephenson (fredric march), in­ sists on a night on the town with his wife, milly (myrna loy), and daughter, peggy (teresa wright). after doing the rounds of the city's nightspots, they end up at homely butch's bar, where the proprietor himself (hoagy carmichael) provides the entertainment on an old upright piano unworthy of his talents. the drunken al requests "among my souvenirs," an old tune from the late 1920s, and asks milly to dance. twirling rather dizzily around the floor, al is thrown back, in his confused intoxication, into another evening sometime during the war, when he danced with another woman. "you remind me of my wife," he informs an amused millly, who patiently plays along. written by edgar leslie and horatio nicholls, "among my souvenirs" is a prewar tune-paul whiteman's version for victor records became a chart topper in 1928-and it sounds decidedly quaint on carmichael's piano. although it would be recorded well into the 1950s, notably by connie francis in 1959, "among my souvenirs" is meant to evoke a bygone era in a film that is postwar in mood. milly's reaction reveals that it is the couple's song. however, as sarah koz­ loff notes in her companion to the film, it is not a love song, but a melancholy remembrance of things past and impossible to retrieve. the song begins with the revelation that noth­ ing is left, and its ensuing itemization of souvenirs concludes with the revelation of "a broken heart." in a sense it is ideal for describing ai's confusion and anxiety as well as the new i a awkwardness between him and milly. even though they find each other again, it is clear that things will never be quite the same as they were before the war. the song serves to emphasize that ai, like his fellow veter­ ans, is out of sorts. his trousers don't fit; he drinks too much; he is uncomfortable, even a little irritable, around his children; and he clashes with the bank president over whether exi i gis are good credit risks and should get the loans sponsored by the gi bill. but the song is fitting for another reason. al has brought home souvenirs for his high -school-age son, rob (michael hall): a cap, a samurai sword, and a flag he "found" on "a dead jap soldier." rob seems far less interested in these spoils of war than in the aftereffects of radiation on 118 looking for the good war dead·shot american cowboys 119 the inhabitants of hiroshima, a phenomenon about which al knows nothing: rob: you were at hiroshima, weren't you? al: mm-hm. rob: did you notice any of the effects of radioactivity on the people who survived? al: no, i didn't. should i have? rob: we've been having lectures in atomic energy at school ... oh, you're just kidding me, dad. you've been to all these places and you've seen everything. al: i've seen nothing. i should have stayed home and found out what was really going on. the bond between father and son is tenuous at best-rob disappears entirely from the film after one more fleeting appearance-and the awkward presentation of the souvenirs amounts to a failed ritual of reacquaintance. rob has to be prompted by milly to thank his father for these gifts, which he does in perfunctory fashion, and it is quite clear that they are more likely to end up in the back of the closet than to be displayed on the wall of his room. a version of this scene presumably played out in house­ holds throughout the country. contemporary accounts sug­ gest that souvenir hunting was something of a mania among gis, as it reportedly had been in world war 1. j. glenn gray hypothesizes in the warriors that the "passion for souvenirs ... may have stemmed not so much from a primi­ tive desire to loot" or to prove that a soldier had "been there," as from a need for "some assurance of his future beyond the destructive environment of the present." in the midst of his dramatic account of navy lieutenant john f. kennedy and the sinking ofpt109, published in the new yorker in 1944, john hersey took care to point out that when the young officer 120 looking for the good war was eventually rescued from a canoe by another pt boat, he brought along some spoils of war: "in the american tra­ dition, kennedy held under his arm a couple of souvenirs: one of the improvised paddles and a japanese gas mask." writing from the mediterranean theater in the fall of 1943, john steinbeck devoted an entire dispatch to the subject: "it is said, and with some truth, that while the germans fight for world domination and the english for the defense of en­ gland, the americans fight for souvenirs." steinbeck reck­ oned that the ancient temples of salerno "have suffered more from chipping by american soldiers in two weeks than they did during the preceding three thousand years." he reports seeing entire pup tents crammed with worthless "memen­ tos" and notes that a post office in africa prevented a soldier from mailing a jar filled with brandy-soaked fingers. stein­ beck watched the italians cashing in on the american craze for souvenir hunting by manufacturing all sorts of fake relics for the invaders. in one column, he tells the picaresque tale of a ppc called "bugs," who discovers a six-by-four-foot, seventy-five-pound mirror that had miraculously survived the battle for gela, sicily, and decides to cart it on his back more than a hundred miles across the island all the way to palermo, where he finally hangs it on the wall of the house in which he is billeted. the nail shortly comes loose, and the mirror shatters into countless shards. the stoical bugs sim­ ply shrugs and declares that it probably wouldn't have looked very good in his house anyway. the acquisitive american gis are the strange descen­ dants of the gilded age robber barons who scoured europe for more valuable artistic treasures. the souvenir hunter was a frequent subject of journalists, including pyle, who reported from tunisia in 1943 that americans started col­ lecting souvenirs on the very day of the german surrender on the bizerte-tunis front. he hastens to reassure his readdead-shot american cowboys 121 ers that these items were, for the most part, willingly handed over, not looted from supply depots: "the germans gave away helmets, goggles and map cases, which they will not be needing any more. the spoils of war which the average doughboy took were legitimate, and little enough recompense for his fighting." pyle writes that almost every truck has a helmet affixed to the radiator. motorcycles were fitted for "a carnival, with french flags and the colorful little black-and­ yellow death's-head pennants the germans use for marking their own mine fields." pyle himself had a volkswagen, "a topless two-seater with a rear motor, camouflaged a dirty brown," presented to him by the first armored division in thanks for his "sweating it out with" them during the win­ ter. innumerable lugers appeared in gi holsters. death's­ heads would become the signatures of veteran motorcycle gangs such as the hells angels after the war, while souvenir pistols often turn up as murder weapons on the silver screen, where they place veterans under suspicion. a common device of film noir-the german luger in somewhere in the night (1946), for instance, or the japanese nambu pistol in under­ tow (1949)-the souvenir also appears in more lighthearted fare such as the 1947 comedy-mystery song of the thin man, in which a nambu is used in a homicide to throw suspicion onto a veteran. the fear of veterans with firearms was not exclusive to the movies. according to the new york times, in may 1946 the kings county district attorney convened the leaders of thirteen veterans organizations in his office to ask for their help in getting their members to surrender all "sou­ venir weapons ... as a crime prevention measure." in the pacific, in april 1945, not long before pyle was killed by a japanese machine gunner, he once again noted the alacrity with which marines collected souvenirs at okinawa, where the caves concealed a trove: "they were a rich field for souvenir hunters, and all marines are souvenir hunters. 122 looking for the good war so immediately two of our boys, instead of resting, started up through the brush, looking for caves." when the marines pyle is accompanying stumble on some japanese soldiers and capture them, a corporal named jack ossege seizes a special prize: that rifle was the envy of everybody; later, when we were sitting around, discussing the capture, the other boys tried to buy or trade him out of it. pop taylor offered him $100 for it, and the answer was no. then taylor offered four quarts of whiskey. the answer still was no. then he offered eight quarts. ossege weakened a little. he said, "where would you get eight quarts of whiskey?" pop said he had no idea. so ossege kept the rifle. the promise of trophies of one sort or another have always been one of the attractions of war. today, u.s. and interna­ tionallaws make distinctions between "spoils of war," which the u. s. code defines as "enemy movable property lawfully captured, seized, confiscated, or found which has become united states property in accordance with the laws of war," and illegal pillage or plunder. rule 49 of the red cross's in­ ternational humanitarian law concerns something called "war booty," which includes equipment and personal prop­ erty found on the battlefield. it cites as precedent the lieber code, the u.s. civil war document that was the first modern codification of the laws of war. according to the lieber code, such booty belongs to the "party," or state, as opposed to the "individual" who seizes it. the u.s. law of land warfare directs that items "found on the dead," including an "iden­ tity disc, last wills or other documents of importance to the next of kin, money and in general all articles of an intrinsic or sentimental value," be returned to the enemy government. dead-shot american cowboys 123 in addition to prohibiting "looting or pillaging," article 108a of the 2019 uniform code of military justice holds in violation anyone who "buys, sells, trades, or in any way deals in or disposes of captured or abandoned property, whereby he receives or expects any profit, benefit, or advantage to himself or another directly or indirectly connected with himself." in 2003, after several incidents in afghanistan and iraq, general john abizaid, the centcom commander, saw fit to reinforce the message. a dod news article head­ lined "no war trophies allowed from iraq, afghanistan" explained that the acquisition of weapons, antiquities, drugs, as well as "plants, animals or other organic material" were all prohibited. several soldiers were court-martialed for at­ tempting to bring home weapons, and customs agents seized sheep skulls, which marines had attached to their guidons. in language that reflexively echoes world war ii rhetoric, a centcom spokesperson proclaimed, "we didn't go into iraq or afghanistan to conquer them, but to liberate them. taking articles from those countries sends the wrong message." legally obtained "souvenirs" are, however, au­ thorized. i have a few of these myself: rugs and scarves pur­ chased from afghan vendors by soldiers of my acquaintance, as well as commemorative shot glasses painted with desert scenes and other paraphernalia, obtained from in-theater post exchanges that cater to the enduring american mania for mementos. the wartime expression of american acquisitiveness, ad­ mixed with a certain entrepreneurial spirit, has spawned a rogues' gallery of literary figures. from the enthusiastic sou­ venir hunter to the expert "scrounger" typified by james gar­ ner's character in the film the great escape (1963), countless gis parade through popular culture "liberating" property from its owners. the resourceful scrounger is a figure of ro­ mance, but at the worst, he turns into a black-market opera124 looking for the good war tive or war profiteer. in his satirical novel catch-22, published in 1961, joseph heller offers an extreme example of greed in the figure of milo minderbinder, a supply officer who runs a syndicate from which he profits enormously. minderbinder maintains a veil of secrecy, but everyone knows about his schemes, including the commanders, who allow them to con­ tinue because they receive a share of the take. the protago­ nist, yossarian, learns that milo has been made the mayor of palermo and several other towns "because he had brought scotch to sicily." yossarian was amazed. "the people here like to drink scotch that much?" "they don't drink any of the scotch," milo ex­ plained. "scotch is very expensive, and these people here are very poor." "then why do you import it to sicily if nobody drinks any?" "to build up a price. i move the scotch here from malta to make more room for profit when i sell it back to me for somebody else. i created a whole new indus­ try here. today sicily is the third-largest exporter of scotch in the world, and that's why they elected me mayor." minderbinder is, in short, a criminal, but the point is that his efforts are sustained by the impulses of his comrades-from the opportunism of the colonels to the collusion, greed, and sheer boredom of his peers-and by an ambient rapacious­ ness that seems to flourish during war. heller's profiteer is outlandish and extreme, but the av­ arice he highlights is also the central subject of a grim novel published soon after the war in 1947, john horne burns's the gallery, which became a bestseller before being forgotten in dead-shot american cowboys 125 the ensuing decades. by contrast, readers would be slow to warm up to heller's novel in 1961, but it has since become a cult classic. the literature scholar george hutchinson re­ minds us of the initial critical as well as popular enthusiasm for the gallery in his book facing the abyss: american liter­ ature and culture in the 1940s, where he emphasizes the de­ gree to which the novel's portrayal of soldiers differed from those found in journalism and on the movie screen. set for the most part in casablanca and naples, the action of the gallery largely transpires, as its name suggests, in the galle­ ria umberto, an arcade where soldiers and neapolitans con­ gregate to engage in all manner of illicit transactions-the incessant trading, buying, and selling of goods and human beings. the tone is set early in the novel, when the narrator embarks on a liberty ship making the crossing from camp patrick henry, virginia, to casablanca. burns's narrator is a participant-observer. most of the book's characters have a kind of outsider status, reinforced in several cases by the fact that they are gay. the novel was pioneering in its sympathetic treatment of homosexuality. the pacifism of earlier decades hadn't yet killed the nar­ rator's adventurousness, but what he sees belowdecks, where gis live "off one another like lice," so disgusts him that he feels he has "died as an american." parasitic relationships continue to dominate the novel: americans exploit neapol­ itans; starving neapolitans take any advantage they can of the allies, as they once tried to do with the germans. it is a world of desperate survivalists and con artists in which even the combat soldiers who populate the galleria seem to be working some kind of angle, all the while attempting to look like the scruffy infantrymen willie and joe in bill mauldin's cartoons. the film critic pauline kael observed that service­ men at home also imitated the wise guys and hustlers they saw at the movies. in an interview with studs terkel, she re126 looking for the good war called that a gi would try to pick a woman up and if she "weren't interested, he would say, that's what we're fighting for, that's what we're giving our lives for. they tried to make you feel guilty for not wanting to go to bed with them." kael notes that popular culture nevertheless depicted these gis as "boys ... twelve-year-olds at heart." burns reveals that the mercenary impulse dominates the home front as well. hal, a lieutenant headquartered in washington, d.c., finds that america has "grown sharp and young" after the depression. "for the first time in a decade they were united, proud, and rather gay. washington was a garden party." hal later grows demoralized while deployed to a base section in oran, in charge of american military po­ lice who look to him like nazis in formation and who spend their time engaged in chickenshit arrests of soldiers for hav­ ing loose buttons. overhearing the tenor of conversations in the bars of oran, he concludes that everyone is unwittingly part of a "vast and deadly scheme." a sense of corruption pervades the novel. the allies are living it up, but hal thinks of the american support soldiers "rolling in the materialism" behind the lines as "bloodsuckers" surviving on frontline troops. what the unnamed central narrator of burns's novel wit­ nesses in naples breaks his heart and transforms his vision of the united states. indicting its commercial, material cul­ ture, he concludes that the u. s. "had most of the riches of the modern world, but very little of its soul. we ... couldn't resist the temptation to turn a dollar or two ... we didn't take the trouble to think out the fact that the war was supposed to be against fascism-not against every man, woman, and child in italy." the novel catalogues systemic and individual crimes perpetrated against the beleaguered italians, much of it motivated by american greed. in addition to the big-time criminals who steal goods from the ships in the harbor, there dead-shot american cowboys 127 are petty profiteers selling px rations or gi clothing. even the comparatively harmless quest for souvenirs turns com­ pulsive and ultimately damaging as heedless servicemen buy all the junk they can for the thrill of it, thereby causing infla­ tion and making the local currency worthless. one character concludes, "an honest american in august, 1944, was al­ most as hard to find as a neapolitan who owned up to having been a fascist." ernie pyle describes a similar sensibility at the end of here is your war. recollections of pyle tend to omit his most critical and provocative passages. "our men," he warns ci­ vilians on the home front, "have less regard for property than you raised them to have." money, he suggests, doesn't mean much to them-and that is saying something for men raised during the depression-and their elemental generos­ ity prompts them to "give or throwaway their own money." pyle did as much as anyone to circulate the popular image of the generous american; his portrait of soldiers giving away all their rations in north africa provides a fine example in here is your war. he also situates this portrait within a larger system in which the disdain for property becomes less an indication of generous impulses than a by-product of the overarching wastefulness of war. the practice of giving and throwing things away is sustained by an almost pathologi­ cal amassing of supplies in a combat theater, "where things are scarce and red tape still rears its delaying head, a man learns to get what he needs simply by 'requisitioning.' it isn't stealing," pyle reassures his home-front readers, but "the only way to acquire certain things. the stress of war puts old virtues in a changed light ... but what's wrong with a small case of 'requisitioning' when murder is the classic goal?" whereas pyle attributes such behavior to the war, burns concludes that war simply exacerbates inherent american 128 looking for the good war moral deficiencies, chiefly a vicious materialism that victim­ ized the italians: "we could prate of the evils of fascism, yet be just as ruthless as fascists." the novel concludes with the story of a lieutenant named moe, wounded in battle and waiting out the end of the war in naples. moe complains in a letter to a friend that he has grown weary of authorizing packages full of the souvenirs the american "liberators" have seized-"anything they can lay their hands on"-from the italians. he explains that americans refer to their looting as "liberating material." at the end of his novel, burns thus leaves his reader with a debased image of americans as liber­ ators not of the oppressed, but of "loot." an even more damning portrait of the american souve­ nir hunter can be found in e. b. sledge's with the old breed, which documents the general fragility of humanity under fire and reveals how close the author came to losing his own. sledge recounts a scene in which a mortarman on peleliu is "casually" throwing coral pebbles into a japanese soldier's skull, the crown of which had been blown off in the fight­ ing: "the war had so brutalized us that it was beyond be­ lief." sledge is similarly uncompromising in the revelation of his own complicity in commonplace acts of barbarity. in another episode he describes "one facet of stripping enemy dead that i hadn't practiced so far," the extraction-sledge calls it "harvesting"-of gold teeth from enemy corpses with a ka-bar, the marine corps fighting knife. as he be­ gins an extraction, a medic, doc caswell, with an expres­ sion "of sadness and reproach," puts a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. after failing to convince sledge to leave the tooth alone on the grounds of propriety, caswell tells him he might get an infection, a possibility that stops sledge, who settles instead for removing the soldier's collar insignia as a keepsake. only in hindsight did sledge understand the medic's real motives: "i realized that doc caswell didn't redead-shot american cowboys 129 ally have germs in mind. he was a good friend and a fine, genuine person whose sensitivity hadn't been crushed out by the war. he was merely trying to help me retain some of mine." sledge did retain his sensitivity. after he had retired from a career as a professor of biology at alabama col­ lege, he finally published his memoir in 1981. it is suffused with sensitivity and understanding yet unclouded by sen­ timentality and romantic views of war. sledge's refusal to shape his story into a palatable narrative, let alone one with a happy ending, is apparent throughout the book. its final section cements this commitment: "if this were a novel about war ... " it begins, "i would find a romantic way to end this account while looking at that fine sunset off the cliffs at the southern end of okinawa." instead, he goes on, relentlessly, to chronicle company k's one last "nasty job." years of doing nasty jobs left indelible marks. in the ep­ ilogue to a second memoir about his postwar military as­ signment in china, he recalled that science and the works of mozart were the antidotes that helped him "conquer the curse of combat nightmares." sledge was a naturalist, but it took him a long time before he could see the outdoors from anything other than "an analytical perspective of its features as military terrain ... possible avenues of enemy at­ tack or ambush." his first postwar hunting trip ended with sledge in tears contemplating a dead bird, in his "mind's eye still clearly seeing those beautiful brown eyes bordered by those fleshy pale blue eyelids." sledge understood that he was part of the savagery of the "giant killing machine." and he never fully let go of that wartime self: "to 'mellow' is to forget," he explained, and he remained "proud" of the enemy he killed while regretting those he missed. from the collector of ersatz souvenirs manufactured by cagey neapolitans to the harvester of gold teeth, the amer130 looking for the good war ican gi might become skilled in the ways of the operator, trafficker, thief, and profiteer. the gi was transformed by a wartime world of extremes: shortage and abundance, riotous generosity and stunning rapacity. as chapter 3 will show, it turned out to be similar in crucial ways to the world to which he would return. the postwar united states, rescued at last from the deprivations of the depression, seemed as crazed bymaterialism as the gis the country exported. a pocket guide to hamlet's ghost the ubiquitous characterization of the american souvenir hunter reveals many things, among them the gi's peculiar status as a tourist. in at least certain respects, that's the waythe government thought of him, too, as evidenced by the series of pocket guides and instructional pamphlets the war department produced for postings throughout the world. these booklets were regularly updated during the cold war; the latest revisions date from the 1980s. in recent years, this kind of informational material has been produced more or less on demand for iraq, afghanistan, and other relevant theaters of war. present-day publications are largely busi­ nesslike in tone and utilitarian in scope, but the early guides were wildly idiosyncratic, often witty, and-owing to the volatile nature of the landscape they described-sometimes unintentionally bizarre. as rick atkinson explains in his introduction to a recent reissue of a pocket guide to france, originally published by the army information branch of the u.s. army service forces in 1944, booklets for vari­ ous european countries were prepared by civilian experts and members of the office of strategic services. they were given "secret" classification until issued so as not to com­ promise invasion plans. guides for australia and britain dead-shot american cowboys 131 had been distributed as early as 1942; john steinbeck alludes to the latter in once there was a war, where he describes gis getting a laugh out of the book's attempt to explain lin­ guistic differences. he overheard soldiers "talking a curious gibberish which they imagine is a british accent." pyle took delight in highlighting the several inaccuracies of the north africa guide. indeed, the only volume for which pyle had any use was the navy's guide to the western pacific, which he calls "wonderfully informative." it is easy to understand why the books came in for rid­ icule. "back in the good old days, as we like to refer to peacetime, most americans visited cherbourg through the water entrance, often coming in on the normandie from new york," proclaims the pocket guide to paris and cities ofnorth­ ern france (1944) in a typically breezy tone. "you, of course, will more than likely pay your visit via one of the highways or railroads that converge on the town from the base of the peninsula." the authors went on to acknowledge that jeeps and tank landing ships (as opposed to, one presumes, daim­ lers, delahayes, or isotta fraschinis) would be the troops' likeliest modes of transport. nevertheless, after reading a large sampling of guides, one begins to discern an animat­ ing philosophy. the authors took seriously the question of what it might mean for an american who had quite possibly never been away from home to find himself among strangers about whose language, history, allegiances, values, and prin­ ciples he knew next to nothing. although there were women in uniform, the guides are unambiguously designed for male service personnel. the early cold war guides, geared for a potentially long-term occupation, are aimed at the "ugly american"­ loud, impatient, largely ignorant of the various customs and hardships of the host country-but the wartime guides, obviously inspired by the authors' deep affection for their 132 looking for the good war attention destinations, try to convey all the thrill of discovering new places even in the midst of war's destruction. although thereis certainly a recognition that the consumers of these guidesmight not know precisely how to behave when confronted with the alien charms of the old world, the authors evince optimism about both the survival of europe and the aver­ age american's potential for appreciating the continent's rich history and culture. consistent with the prevailing di­dactic spirit, there is even a space for taking notes at the end of some of the volumes. the guides vary in format and, to a lesser extent, style, but in their desire to disabuse visitors of common assumptions, they share a spirit with the wpa guidebooks produced for domestic travel in the 1930s. the several guides broken down by cities-e.g., cities of denmark,cities of southern france-could often be mistaken for civil­ ian publications such as baedeker. after the war, the largenumbers of gis abroad in turn inspired arthur frommer's first guidebook, published in 1955: the g.i.'s guide to travel­ ling in europe, on the cover of which the author is referred to by his rank as "pfc. arthur frommer." the city-by-city guides all begin with the following disclaimer, which establishes the confused state of affairs surrounding their production: about the only thing in this booklet that can be guar­ anteed is the terrain. the rest of it is up to the fortunes or misfortunes of war. many of the towns and cities de­ scribed here have been bombed and shelled by us as we approached, and shelled by the enemy as he retreated. and many of them will still show the marks of the destruction visited upon them when these lands were being conquered and occupied by the germans. dead-shot american cowboys 133 the short historical notes and city plans concern­ ing most of the towns are correct as of the outbreak of the war. but the changes of war were still happening in many places when this pocket guide went to press. you may find that art treasures described and lo­ cated in these pages have been looted or destroyed, and it may be years before those that can be restored are sights to see again. on the other hand, some of them, by a stroke of good fortune, may be left intact and you will be able to enjoy them. the authors knew they might well be conducting readers through a world that no longer existed. emphasizing the fra­ gility of european civilization, several enumerate the long years of war's wreckage, as in the discussion of the serial in­ vasions of luxembourg in 1914, 1918, 1940, and 1944. in the face of this history of german destruction, the authors use a mocking tone to express a spirit of allied resilience. "with the influx of germans in 1940 deauville's beach lost its glamour," declares the pocket guide to paris and the cities of northern france, while the pocket guide to the cit­ ies of denmark (1944) announces, "even the germans could not obliterate the charm" of copenhagen. naples, the locus of so much corruption and confusion, and the target of so much destruction by allies and axis alike, also proves, ac­ cording to the pocket guide to italian cities (1944), "beyond the power of the germans to destroy." rivaling istanbul in picturesqueness, the book declares, naples is the most natu­ rally "beautiful" location in europe, "and gutted and sacked though the city may be, the site retains its beauty and holds hope for the new naples that will rise." the authors' enthusiasm is somewhat muted by the rec­ ognition of a certain fragility and at times a melancholy res­ ignation that in saving the soul of european civilization, it 134 looking for the good war might be necessary to destroy some of its most iconic sym­ bols. the tone is frequently elegiac, verb tenses shift back and forth between past and present, and the text is sometimes overwhelmed by nostalgia, as in the account of monaco, which contains a wistful series of might-have-beens-a cat­ alogue of sights the war has made impossible to experience. the guides are also frank about the damage done "by us" in contrast to that wrought by the germans: for example, by al­ lied bombers "on the prowl after germans" at calais, where gis are also enjoined to "prowl about" to see the attractions of the historic city while they can. in a landscape with such a long history, certain ruins become an occasion for humor. "you've seen a lot of ruins in italy," explains that country's guide. "the colosseum, however, wasn't wrecked by long toms [american iss-mm field guns]. it got that way through the passage of time." similarly, a discussion of the vichy re­ gime situates the german occupation in a longer timeline, as if to say that this sordid and unpleasant episode will fade away like so many ephemeral conquests of the past: "long before vichy became the grim capital of occupied france in 1940 the old romans were flocking there to bathe in and drink the water." written by people who knew and deeply loved prewar europe, the guides are sometimes dubious about the typical gi's enthusiasm for the old world. as a result, they have recourse to all sorts of practical as well as high-minded argu­ ments in order to convince readers to expand their cultural horizons. some of the city-by-city guides have a longer pref­ ace that concludes: and another thing: if some of these towns should be declared off limits, you'll bypass them, of course. per­ haps later, they may be open to you. food and drink are discussed here so that as times dead-shot american cowboys 135 gradually return to normal, you may be guided in the tastes and customs of the country. but be sure that you are not encouraging a black market or bringing hard­ ship to the native civilian population if you take ad­ vantage of what the town or region has to offer. you will receive direction from the proper authority in this matter. anyhow, so far as your military duties permit, see as much as you can. you've got a great chance to do now, major expenses paid, what would cost you a lot of your own money after the war. take advantage of it. after this exhortation, simultaneously practical and aspi­ rational, the guides introduce service members to national histories (induding comparisons to, or past relationships with, the united states whenever possible); art, architecture, and other cultural attractions; and local customs and tradi­ tions, induding recreation. by turns chatty and earnestly instructive, the guides urge the novice travelers at whom they are directed to open themselves to new experiences. nostalgia, further complicated by a lack of up-to-date information, lends an air of unreality to the whole enterprise. for example, hungry gis-fussell notes that, despite the frequent reminders that they were the best-fed army in the world, gis were perpetually hungry-could learn the fol­ lowing about amsterdam from the pocket guide to the cities of the netherlands: "by 1940 it had sold something like four and a half million steaks, but there is probably a shortage now." the pocket guide to the cities of southern france, meanwhile, offered the following suggestion: "if you can arrange to drop in at hyeres in early summer, you'll be able to bite into some of the finest strawberries in the world." everything is normal, except that almost nothing is. the description of rotterdam begins with the news that fully 136 looking for the good war a third of the city was destroyed by the luftwaffe in may1940 but ends with a reference to the abundance of tennis courts. arriving in leiden in the right season would providethe spectacle of blooming tulips, among other attractions: "the tulip garden, or the picturesque windmill you may visit in the outlying suburbs of leiden are places of as much in­ terest as the university, according to your mood. wherever you wander you will meet people of leiden who will wel­ come your interest in their liberated city." at times the war recedes almost entirely from view: eat well in belgium, go to the movies in milan, see the fish at trieste's aquarium, go for a swim on the venetian lido, play billiards or golf in lyon, "cherchez la femme" in paris, and "by all means" go to the theater before you depart. the exceptional wines and cheeses of specific regions are noted, as are the excellent service in cherbourg and, in a moment of cruel irony, the picturesque­ ness of normandy's hedgerows, which would help make the allied advance so deadly in the period after d-day. while discussions of food and recreation are prominent, if incongruous, features of the guides-the frequent allusions to wine and beer accurately targeted their notoriously thirsty gi audience-in the main they aim higher. the authors rarely miss an opportunity to introduce readers to natural and architectural wonders as well as to the birthplaces of cel­ ebrated artists, musicians, and authors, including montaigne, charles dickens, adam smith, and hans christian ander­ sen. artistic merit is sometimes measured in a way calculated to appeal to an american pragmatism: andersen's sales, they note, are surpassed only by those of the bible. the guides assume a passing acquaintance with shakespeare: the names of padua and verona should ring bells as the settings for the taming of the shrew and the two gentlemen of verona, respec­ tively. the guide to denmark contains the most extended discussion of shakespeare. the city of helsingor, noteworthy dead-shot american cowboys 137 because of its significance in the history of the baltic trade, is also home to the castle on the terrace of which "hamlet is supposed to have seen his father's ghost." the many hamlet­ related tourist attractions-ophelia's brook, a bronze statue of the prince, a column said to mark his grave-are all rec­ ommended even if, as the guide informs the more literal­ minded gi, "the hamlet legend" isn't altogether true. giving service personnel an appreciation for european culture is critical to the guides' overarching tendency to try to shape american behavior. in particular, the authors seek to impress on gis the courage and integrity of the people who suffered under german tyranny. in the tough maritime city of skagen, the pocket guide to the cities of denmark re­ minds readers, "you can be sure that people such as these did not take kindly to their german 'protectors' and did all they could to make life miserable and unpleasant for them. you will be hailed as liberators and, as such, will be welcome wherever you go. don't abuse the privilege. boasting and bad manners will not go over very big with people, for whom the risking of one's life is merely part of a daily routine." frequent comparisons to american features, traits, or regions work to assert a fundamental kinship and under­ standing among allies. of all the allied nations, england and australia make the easiest cases. the instructional pam­ phlets to these countries stress shared language, government, and values. the similarities between australians and amer­ icans are emphasized, while the differences are treated with humor: the australians have a pioneer spirit akin to that of lewis and clark; like americans (and, by implication, unlike europeans), they live in the present and future and "have lit­ tle use for the past." they are, in other words, a young people who like new things. the same arguments can't be made about the english, of course, but the instructions for american servicemen in britain 138 looking for the good war (1942) celebrates the long tradition of english liberty to which the united states owes its own form of government. it instructs gis not to worry about "old wars" and redcoats. the authors also suggest how important it is to make a good impression because the english have gotten their ideas about americans from the movies: "you have a great chance to overcome the picture many of them have . . . of an america made up of wild indians and gangsters." the volume's illu­ mination of key social and cultural differences in this and other guides betrays an underlying fear that servicemen will be hampered across the globe by their provincialism, chau­ vinism, and racism. this particular manual zeroes in on gi assumptions about masculinity and gender: british men aren't "panty-waists," the authors insist. implicitly acknowl­ edging that the american women serving in the wacs and waves are a subject of sport to their countrymen, the man­ ual explains that the many heroic british women in uniform are taken quite seriously by their compatriots and should re­ ceive a corresponding respect from gis. other guides antic­ ipate the reactions of white gis to other races. warnings to military personnel to leave their color prejudice behind fea­ ture in those guides designed not only for service in africa or the middle east but also for stations closer to home, in hawaii. these admonitions contribute to what was evidently an overarching agenda. one of the running themes of the series is humility: "crossing the ocean doesn't automatically make you a hero." it is never a good idea, the authors remind their readers, to tell the english that you won world war 1. but it is the french who proved the most challenging ally to explain. gis tended to regard the french with greater sus­ picion than they did the germans. various observers noted the natural affinity many gis had for the germans and a corresponding distaste for the french. the guides therefore emphasize france's contribution to american independence dead-shot american cowboys 139 and assert the kinship between the american and french rev­ olutions: "french ideas" and "french guns" "helped us to become a nation." by 1945, the initial euphoria of liberation had already dissipated to such an extent that the information & education division of the u.s. occupation forces, paris, issued a new book called 112 gripes about the french. it was meant to defuse the tension caused by french resentment of their new occupiers' misbehavior, which has been amply doc­ umented in books such as what soldiers do: sex and the amer­ ican gi in world war ii france, by mary louise roberts. gripes alludes to the feeling prevalent among gis that their hosts were particularly ungrateful toward their liberators. it also calls attention to something that would be forgotten rather quickly in american remembrances of the war. the united states did not "come to europe to save the french, either in 1917 or in 1944. we didn't come to europe to do anyone any favors. we came to europe because we in america were threatened by a hostile, aggressive and very dangerous power." in short, the guide concludes, "it was better to fight our en­ emy in europe than in america." this view of things would soon become eclipsed by a loftier one, but in 1945 it expressed a clear-eyed understanding of not only american war aims but also the challenges presented by disgruntled gis stuck in europe at the end of the war. in addition to refuting various stereotypes about the french, gripes, like its forerunner, the 1944 pocket guide to france, insists on understanding what military occupation does to a people's pride and self-esteem. the 1944 booklet reminds skeptical gis, "you are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating army now on earth. you are going in among the people of a former ally of your country. they are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language." even french communists are described as really just new dealers. admonitions about the germans are as energetic as are 140 looking for the good war defenses of the french. the 1944 edition of the guide to ger­ many warns vehemently against fraternization and insists that the surface friendliness of the average german, who maylook a lot like an american, conceals a ruthless and duplic­itous enemy brainwashed in the "master race" theory. but there is also some attempt to lay the groundwork for a future relationship. like the english, the germans are said to have formed their impressions of americans from the movies (and possibly from karl may, although the guide doesn't mention him): "many germans grew up with the idea that america was mostly full of cowboys and indians and rich uncles." the authors explain that during the interwar period, before the nazis, the germans had come to develop an appreciation, perhaps an envy, for the united states as "a country of sky­ scrapers and millions of automobiles, of mass-production and unlimited resources." the 1945 guide, expressly designed for postwar occu­ pation forces, adds some prefatory material. it begins with eisenhower's proclamation no.1, addressed to the people of germany, which announces, "we come as conquerors, but not as oppressors." this is followed by truman's may 8, 1945, speech, in which he refers to "our armies of lib­ eration" and denounces the "evil from which half the world has been freed" and of which the other half had still to be "cleansed." truman's emphasis on evil is consistent with the book's strenuous attempt to persuade service members of the depravity of nazi ideology. clearly, it could not be taken for granted that all gis would instinctively recoil from that ide­ ology. taken together, these two proclamations also began to build the official memory of the war. the subtleties of timing and motive, frankly alluded to in 112 gripes about the french, have disappeared, while the more nuanced discussions about occupation and the damage done to countries and peoples by tyranny and war are replaced with platitudes about american dead-shot american cowboys 141 decency: "the point is, we don't like to kick people when they are down." or "this warning against fraternization doesn't mean that you are to act like a sourpuss or military automa­ ton." democracy is oversimplified as meritocracy and a sense of decency in contrast to the "tragic nonsense" of "the mas­ ter race theory" and the nazis' "gangster racket." the book repeatedly identifies the nazi regime with gangsterism. the treachery of nazis, who will attempt to melt back into the population, is accounted for by the fact that german boys do not have "the spirit of sportsmanship, decency, and fair play instilled" in american boys. such rhetoric accompanied what turned out to be a fairly short-lived denazification pol­ icy, which lost momentum to the desire to reestablish law and order quickly. as this guide reveals, by 1944 the story of the war was already being streamlined and simplified in some of the educational and instructional material provided to service members. one of the book's longer sections, "why you are fighting germany," differs markedly from the explanation of self-defense offered in gripes. instead of being late to the fight-having been wedded to isolationist fantasies and hav­ ing ignored events in ethiopia and spain-the united states is here portrayed as having been invested in world events as early as 1931: the fascist peoples of italy, germany and japan first destroyed their own liberties; and then began to use force to destroy the liberty of their neighboring coun­ tries. we hoped it was just a series of neighborhood quarrels, that were none of our business. but suddenly we began to see that we were part of the world neigh­ borhood: aviation and radio brought the nations of the world into close touch. suddenly we saw things hap­ pen that were very rotten indeed. japan attacked china 142 looking for the good war in 1931. fascist italy attacked ethiopia in 1935, and in 1936, interfered in spain's civil war ... then began the bloody and crazy march of de­ struction: the remainder of czechoslovakia in 1939, the invasion of poland in the same year, the invasion of denmark and norway, followed by the conquest of france in 1940 and, in 1941, invasion of the balkans and the attack on russia. german aggression threat­ ened the entire world. no self-respecting man, or nation, could live in a neighborhood in which gangsters were having their way without trying to stop them. it was not only a matter of principle; it was a matter of actual personal and na­ tional safety. the fascists all over the world made their alliance against the believers in freedom, and burst out of bounds whenever it looked favorable for a successful seizure of a peaceful country. the free world couldn't go on taking that forever. american engagement with the world's fight for freedom is effectively backdated while the crimes of the enemy remain rather vague. the guide alludes to concentration camps and "brutal acts of terror" but doesn't dwell on the identity of the victims. american hostility for nazis-despite the death camps and the ample evidence of the regime's horrors­ lacked the intensity of what sledge calls a "burning hatred" for the japanese because, as the instructional guide notes, germans tended to look just like americans. hatred for the japanese, by contrast, was sparked by vengeance, rooted in racism, and stoked by crude propaganda. even pyle, so cir­ cumspect in many ways, writes in last chapter: "japanese were looked upon as something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches or mice. shortly afdead-shot american cowboys 143 ter i arrived i saw a group of japanese prisoners in a wire­ fenced courtyard, and they were wrestling and laughing and talking just like normal human beings. and yet they gave me the creeps, and i wanted a mental bath after looking at them." it was rather easy for americans to regard the japanese as subhuman, but european fascists were more often de­ scribed as gangsters. this vocabulary appeared in the artful speeches of churchill and roosevelt as well as in the cables of various diplomats. in a 1938 letter to roosevelt, ambassa­ dor joseph kennedy alluded to the "'gangster' technique" of german annexation; in 1941 myron c. taylor, the american representative to the evian conference, translated a french diplomat's description of italy and germany as "two gang­ ster regimes." that same year, in a speech on the soviet­ german war, churchill referred to "nazi gangsters" and to hitler as "a bloodthirsty guttersnipe." roosevelt began his 1944 state of the union address by describing "a world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule." and to com­ plete the picture, british command in malaya characterized the japanese forces operating there "as a highly trained army of gangsters equipped with a high proportion of tommy guns and mortars and employing all kinds of ruses in an attempt to lower the morale of our troops." charles de gaulle added a new twist when, during an acrimonious meeting in london, he declared churchill himself a gangster; signally, he also called the british prime minister "a great artist." the allies discovered in the grammar of 1930s holly­ wood an ideal way to distill geopolitical complexities. having suggested that the english and germans supposedly formed their impressions of americans from the movies, the authors of the guides used a cinematic vocabulary to layout the world situation for gis. a pocket guide to france takes this to an extreme degree. after they liberate france from "the nazi mob," the gi will still have to beware of getting too friendly 144 looking for the good war "with a special sort of hard-boiled dame" (a prostitute), and he should remain on his guard against "tarts" in nightclubs. more important, he should stick by his "chum" so as not to end up a sucker at some parisian "clip joint." thus the pocket guide translates the war into a gangster film with an international cast. it is a universe in which the american hero triumphs because decency always wins in the end: "mostly, the french think americans always act square, always give the little fellow a helping hand and are good-natured, big-hearted and kind." gangster films of the early 1930s atoned for their excesses and indulgences by offering a for­ mal recantation and punishing the criminal in the final reel. justice seemed somehow to reassert itself in the end. post­ war american cinema, like the literature on which much of it was based, told a different story. in the decade after the war, among the various messages communicated in film noir­ that odd, rebellious child of the 1930s gangster picture-and the fiction on which much of it was based were that decency doesn't always win out and that heroes and villains can prove difficult to tell apart because their methods are very much the same. . in ni�nl(:ij: i . hu "m �o al� . joint." tnult .. r.� let filml\'i�i' amerltan�' ena:ii,\h: 3 thieves like us to england will i steal, and there i'll steal; and patches will i get unto these cudgeled scars, and swear i got them in the gallia wars. -ancient pistol after the battle of agincourt, shakespeare, henry v first fascist on february 20, 1939, the german american bund held a rally in madison square garden to celebrate the birthday of the man they hailed as "the first fascist": george wash­ ington. the bund leader fritz kuhn expressed his patriotic "veneration . . . for the fathers of the republic," especially "the immortal washington." the figure of washington was essential to the bund's meretricious selling of its message of aryan supremacy as "pro-american." at an event the year before, life reported, a new jersey bundsman celebrated washington as a "realist" who "knew democracy could not work." pictures of the first president were prominently dis­ played at bund assemblies, just as they would continue to be at america first committee events; a photograph of charles lindbergh addressing a large crowd in fort wayne, indiana, in 1941 discloses a portrait of washington on an easel behind him on the stage. at the madison square garden rally, an 146 looking for the good war enormous banner was unfurled behind the rostrum. docu­ mentary footage shows a full-length washington, dressed in military uniform and wearing a look of great severity, stand­ ing at a position of attention, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword. american flags and swastikas flank him on either side. the bund was ostensibly arguing for american neutral­ ity in european affairs, but kuhn's oratory was unmistakably belligerent, while his venomous attacks on jews, the press, and the roosevelt administration were nothing short of incendi­ ary. he called the new deal the "jew deal" and roosevelt, "rosenfeld." the bund's co-opting of george washington perverted the legacy of a man in fact so committed to republi­ canism that during the attempted revolt of some monarchical military officers in 1782, an event known as the newburgh conspiracy, he refused a dictatorship when he might have had one. in two frontiers of freedom, a 1940 reflection on american history in the light of contemporary crises, the journalist and critic john corbin described the officers at newburgh as "proposing a fascist coup." washington was likewise a staunch defender of religious pluralism. finally, he was sufficiently perplexed by the circumstance of owning human beings that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he manumitted his slaves at his death. bundsmen, meanwhile, weren't the only ones looking to washington for inspiration in the late 1930s; they were merely tapping into a broader national trend. the 1939 world's fair commemorated the 150th anniversary of washington's pres­ idential inauguration by erecting a giant plaster likeness, dra­ matically backlit by the perisphere. that same year, the iowa painter grant wood turned to the subject of washington in the wonderfully strange parson weems' fable, which de­ picts the apocryphal incident of a young george washington chopping down his father's cherry tree. as the art historian \\': thieves like us 147 barbara haskell notes, wood was inspired by howard mum­ ford jones's 1938 atlantic monthly article, "patriotism-but how?" jones was prominent among a group of writers and artists watching with dismay as american fascists success­ fully ransacked national history for potent symbols. fascists abroad, jones warned, had put the glamour back into patri­ otism, while at home, it had been left to the extremists by "higher liberal circles," who regarded it as, to borrow samuel johnson's phrase, "the last refuge of a scoundrel." in view of what he called "the coming struggle," jones insisted on the need to "revive patriotism without chauvinism, economic self-interest, or racial snobbery." without a revival of "the history of liberty as a living faith," he challenged readers, how could the united states "combat an alien mythology of race, militarism, and an uncomfortable version of the heroic in history?" with parson weems' fable, grant wood answered jones's call to, in haskell's words, "mobilize nationalism while avoiding the chauvinism" linked with fascism and, ironi­ cally, with the school of american regionalism with which wood himself was identified. the political and aesthetic challenges presented by nationalistic or patriotic art in the 1930s were obvious, especially to those on the left who were taking note of international affairs. once america entered the war, haskell explains, nationalism would be effectively replaced by the ideal of internationalism. but in 1939 wood elected to paint one of the most celebrated american myths. critics would fault him for choosing a child's fairy tale rather than a more sophisticated story, but wood was tapping into a deeply familiar fable. the episode he chose to paint was first popularized by mason l. weems, known as parson weems, whose the life of washington went through multiple editions after its initial publication in 1800. the cherry tree incident made its first appearance in a subsequent edition, where 148 looking for the good war weems proclaims it "too valuable to be lost ... too true to be doubted." at the age of six, according to weems, young george re­ ceived a hatchet, of which he was "inordinately fond," and the boy proceeded to amuse himself by exploring his father's garden "chopping every thing that came in his way." this destructive spree eventually extends to the elder washing­ ton's favorite cherry tree, and he demands to know the cul­ prit's identity. george collects himself and eventually replies to augustine: "i can't tell a lie, pa; you know i can't tell a lie. i did cut it with my hatchet." to weems, this illustrates george's virtue, but it also establishes a specific setting for its exercise. augustine washington's garden is edenic: abun­ dant, lush, innocent, "a wide wilderness of fruit" with a for­ bidden tree at its heart. instead of spending his wrath on the boy and banishing him from the garden, however, the father forgives the transgression because of his son's manifest hon­ esty and urges him always to be similarly forthright. george's moment of youthful excess proves to be an aberration in a career subsequently marked by discipline, rectitude, and re­ straint. his confession signals the promise of future virtue. wood's painting comments on the fable in several ways. first, the figure of the smiling parson weems himself occu­ pies the foreground, where he is engaged in the act of pulling back a red curtain on the scene and pointing to the drama thereby revealed. within this theatrical frame, augustine, the stricken cherry tree grasped in his right hand, stretches out his left palm to george, demanding an explanation. george­ not a child but a miniature adult washington, complete with the head of gilbert stuart's well-known athenaeum portrait-points guilelessly to his offending hatchet, which he holds away from his father with his left hand. the art histo­ rian cecile whiting proposes that this manual circuit (from weems to augustine to george and back outward again) infal �o ml • young geor�1 r;. inately fono,ii�: 'p oring oi) f�ili� i. hill\'�)'.!' th . elder w�i�!, , to kno\\' t�11' thieves like us 149 volves the viewer in the drama. in the middle distance, be­ fore a solid brick house, an enslaved man and woman are in the midst of picking cherries from an unharmed tree, while the background is dominated by a manicured carpet of grass and meticulous rows of trees in the far distance. the scene is pristine and precise-almost sterile. wood used his own iowa farmhouse as a stand-in for the washington manse in a gesture that, whiting argues, collapses time and space: past and present, east and midwest. at first glance, the painting seems to create unity by evoking the plantation myth of idyllic southern life: the en­ slaved persons, occupied with their agricultural pursuit and apparently oblivious to the great father-son drama unfolding nearby, melt into the landscape. yet closer inspection reveals certain oddities. for instance, the male slave, dressed exactly like george in white shirt and blue breeches, doubling the national father, links master and slave and locates the latter at the center of the story. moreover, well-lit though it may be, the entire scene is infused with an elemental starkness and coldness attributable chiefly to a dark and ominous sky. the trees themselves are shaped like globes, little worlds in danger of being jolted from their orbits by violence-by the violence of small hatchets, most immediately, but also by the adult violence of revolution, slavocracy, and civil war. although brighter in tone, parson weems) fable harbors the same sense of foreboding that dominates the artist's earlier meditation on american history in the midnight ride of paul revere (1931), as well as death on the ridge road (1935), which depicts an impending traffic accident. parson weems) fable also looks back to wood's 1932 daughters ofrevolution, a portrait of three smug daughters of the american revolution in front of a painting of washington crossing the delaware. stylistically, parson weems) fable echoes wood's earlier pasto­ ral works, in which, as haskell observes, "the combination of rigid geometries, shellac-like surfaces, and sharp, unnatural light produced landscapes that appear airless and still ... a dollhouse world of estrangement and solitude." the modernist painter stuart davis, the art historian itlh. w. janson, and other influential critics dismissed as sentimental the various representations of the national past protn�duced by wood and his fellow midwestern regionalists. davis attacked regional art as "antimodern, regressive, and even fascist in style and subject matter." yet parson weems fable is more complicated than this condemnation would admit, and it offers a window onto ways in which american artists and writers understood the relationship between history and their turbulent present in the 1930s and 1940s. the role of the artist within the state had been considerably altered at home by the new deal initiative of the wpa-which supported a vast array of cultural projects, from art and archi150 looking rut"( ihe good war tecture to music and dramatic performance-and abroad by the nazis' sinister classification of certain artists as "degen­ erate." american artists wrestled with the question, posed in howard mumford jones's article and elsewhere, of whether culture could productively serve anti-fascist ends without becoming a propagandist tool of the kind employed by the fascists themselves. the answers were various, and the debate persisted af­ ter the war. the poet robert creeley described one of the conflict's effects on the artistic imagination: "coming of age in the forties, in the chaos of the second world war, one felt the kinds of coherence that might have been fact of other time and place were no longer possible. there seemed no logic . . . that could bring together all the violent disparities of that experience. the arts especially were shaken and the picture of the world that might previously have served them had to be reformed." the playwright tennessee williams ac­ knowledged the role of technology in destroying the old logic ar ni� do na \n� thieves like us 151 when he described the late 1940s as "the beginning of an age of demented mechanics." the impassioned art criticism of the postwar period wrestled with these and related anxiet­ ies and, the critic jed perl suggests, instituted "a dramatic realignment in the relationship between the old world and the new." jackson pollock's comparison of himself to navajo sand painters, barnett newman's renewed poetic spirit­ a response to the domination of man by science-and mark rothko's belief that "the familiar identity of things has to be pulverized" were all expressions of a postwar sensibility. the challenge was nothing less than to devise a new picture of the world. arts of war part of the difficulty in representing the new world amid the disintegration of the old could be attributed to the type of war being fought. world war i, in particular the whole­ sale slaughter of trench warfare, had already presented sig­ nificant challenges to twentieth-century artistic strategies of comprehension. that war's chroniclers, as fussell and others have amply demonstrated, had to reckon with a new dispen­ sation. nevertheless, the scale and mode of mechanized war­ fare ushered in by the second world war again demanded new modes of representation, of which pablo picasso's guer­ nica, depicting the effects of the german luftwaffe's aerial bombardment of a spanish town on april 26, 1937, was a harbinger. in his war reporting, john steinbeck insisted on the impossibility of bearing witness to modern battles, in contrast to the comparatively organized affairs of the past: you can't see much of a battle. those paintings re­ produced in history books which show long lines of 152 looking for the good war advancing troops are either idealized or else times and battles have changed. the account in the morning pa­ pers of the battle of yesterday was not seen by the corre­ spondent, but was put together from reports. what the correspondent really saw was dust and the nasty burst of shells, low bushes and slit trenches. he lay on his stom­ ach, if he had any sense, and watched ants crawling. steinbeck's fellow war correspondent w. c. heinz suggested two emblematic subjects for any aspiring painter of the war: "if you were a painter and could paint only one picture of this war it would probably be of a battlefield with a dead gi. but if you could paint two pictures, that second one would be of the infantry moving up into the line." in fact there were a number of visual artists working in the theaters of war, many at the behest of the war department itself. they included prominent hollywood film directors, deployed overseas as part of photo units attached to the army or navy. as i noted in chapter 1, the footage they shot during the war would later make its way into feature films and documentaries alike, mingling the fictional and real in new ways. various painters also found themselves at war. jacob lawrence, who served in the u.s. coast guard, executed a group of works called war series (1946-47), completed with the help of a guggenheim fellowship, an installment in lawrence's ongoing representation of american history and the centrality of african americans within it. four paintings, docking-cigarette joe?, on leave, untitled [sail­ ors at a bar), and naples-1944, offer a visual realization of john horne burns's account of the desperation of liber­ ated naples in the gallery, the novel i discussed in chapter 2. lawrence's entire series-from shipping out, which re­ veals the indignities of the crowded hold of a transport ship, to victory, which depicts a gi with bowed head resting on thieves like us 153 his rifle-offers a similarly somber and disillusioned view of wartime experience. as william 1. hitchcock notes in the bitter road to freedom, the allies arrived in naples to find "the city . . . a total shambles and the people in a state of extreme filth and dejection." moreover, they made matters even worse by initially shutting down the black market, which had been "a fairly regular source of food supplies in italy's large cities." another wartime artist, the gi cartoonist bill mauldin, popularized a similarly unromantic perspective on life in war. pyle describes mauldin's work as "funny" yet also "grim and real." his scruffy infantrymen willie and joe proved immensely popular with the gi readers of the military newspaper stars and stripes. in brave men, pyle introduces his readers to another art­ ist' lieutenant rudolph charles von ripper, a man "so fab­ ulous," pyle explains, that he appeared to be a fraud at first glance. a wealthy austrian by birth, von ripper ran away from home at fifteen, traveled the world, and served in the french foreign legion for two years. at twenty-one he re­ turned to europe to study art, and pyle thinks of him primar­ ily as an artist. von ripper was also a committed anti-fascist who had been arrested by the nazis and imprisoned for seven months in a concentration camp until the chancellor of austria managed to free him. he then went to spain, where he would further hone his art and serve as an aerial gunner on the loyalist side of the spanish civil war. in 1938 he left spain for the united states, became a citizen, and joined the u. s. army. he served as a laboratory technician and as a member of something pyle calls the army arts corps before joining an infantry regiment, in which, after several engagements, he received a battlefield commission and was once again transferred, this time to the engineers. eventu­ ally, pyle reports, von ripper began executing watercolors and sketches for the war department in naples. pyle, clearly 154 looking for the good war intrigued by von ripper's strange amalgamation of qualities, describes him as fluctuating between "salon intellectualism" and a "hard, brutal reality" derived from long service. pyle didn't normally "think of an artist as ... tough or worldly," but he takes care to emphasize von ripper's extensive combat service, even the number of times he has been shot. although technically a kind of mercenary, von ripper was motivated by political commitment in both his soldiering and his art. pyle has difficulty reconciling von ripper's two careers, but he also surmises that his skills as a soldier might have made him a better artist. ultimately, like almost everyone pyle encounters in the war zone, von ripper, committed anti-fascist though he was, "had finally become more inter­ ested in the personal, human side of war than in the abstract ideals for which wars are fought." as an artist, he avoided the all-too-familiar romance: "it's hard to be close enough to war to paint it," pyle explains, "and still consider it he­ roic." pyle describes the paintings as eventually verging on the "distorted" and "grotesque." von ripper gave pyle one of his drawings, self-portrait in italy, which shows the artist and a comrade, both wounded, along with starving children be­ ing led away by a laughing skeleton: "you get to seeing things like that when you've been a soldier for a long time," pyle explains. von ripper followed a tradition of german and german-american soldier-artists such as the world war i veteran otto dix and the civil war soldier adolph metzner, whose sketches share the element of the grotesque. after the war, von ripper went on to practice his art. like jacob law­ rence, he won a guggenheim, and he continued to paint until his death, in 1960. the archetype of the soldier-artist has a strange odyssey in postwar culture. sometimes sustained by the wpa before the war, but usually condemned to drifting through an in­ hospitable american landscape after it, artists join the many thieves like us 155 other war veterans popping up in pulp fiction, as well as in the highly stylized universe of film noir, the latter painted on the screen with chiaroscuro lights and shadows through­ out the second half of the 1940s and into the 1950s. this world was in several senses the obverse of the official culture of postwar america, which was distinguished by conformity or an insistent normalcy and often represented visually in dreamlike, brightly colored advertising. beneath this fantasy swirled another world altogether. nelson algren, whose 1949 novel the man with the golden arm traced the postwar life of a veteran turned drug addict, called attention to an "enormous reservoir of sick, vindictive life that moves like an under­ ground river beneath all our boulevards." this underground river runs through american culture, surfacing at particular moments: during the depression, for example, and again af­ ter the war in the noir vision evoked by various novelists and filmmakers whose reflections on wartime experience expose a narrative of individual and collective disillusionment. numerous film historians have chronicled the rise and fall of film noir from the war through the middle of the 1950s and have analyzed its enduring stylistic, linguistic, and cultural in­ fluence. it was the french, starved of american film through­ out the war, who later gave the style its name. in 1955, the critics raymonde borde and etienne chaumeton used film noir to describe a certain kind of american film that began to be shown in french cinemas in 1946. these films, some of which had been made during the war, include the maltese falcon (1941); laura (1944); murder, my sweet (1944); double indemnity (1944); and the woman in the window (1944). borde and chaumeton proclaimed, "film noir has renovated the theme of violence." always an integral part of american film, violence, they argued, had previously been bounded by certain rules, as in the "fair fight" of the "adventure film." in place of the swashbuckling heroes of old, there now emerged 156 looking for the good war "an unknown breed of men" who were ambiguous, various,and volatile: cool professional killers, unthinking brutes, or maniacal sadists, all of them equally at home in a world of chaotic violence. these films were often b pictures, the bot­ tom halves of double bills that ran in typical movie theaters all over the country, as opposed to the grand movie palacesof new york, los angeles, and other major cities (although some noir ran in these grander surroundings, too). they ex­ erted an influence on a generation of young moviegoers who might spend much of a day at the movies. most noirs, as james n aremore documents, had modest budgets. studios found a "stable marketplace for low-budget thrillers," and the films were "reasonably popular and widely distributed" upon release. in subsequent decades they con­ tinued to make an impression on new generations of audi­ ences at revival houses. to the critic manny farber, these were among the "underground films," best seen, as he wrote in 1957, in the "outcast theaters" of times square. their "tight, melodramatic plots" were populated by a wild as­ sortment of "stock musclemen," among whom farber num­ bered the following: "a stool pigeon gurgling with scissors in his back; a fat, nasal-voiced gang leader; escaped convicts; power-mad ranch owners with vengeful siblings; a mean gun with an oedipus complex and migraine headaches; a crooked gambler trading guns to the redskins; exhausted gi's." un­ like the crime films of the 1930s, which, as the film historian foster hirsch notes, "reflected their times in a direct way," 1940s noir was "less a matter of portraying specific social issues than of reflecting, generally and metaphorically, the mood of the country during and after the war." arguably, as hirsch contends, the most direct reflection was the portrayal of women, whose newfound independence during wartime came to seem a kind of threat once the war was over. as for the veteran, hirsch concludes, "when he surfaces in noir, thieves like us 157 the returning soldier has the disconnectedness of the ex-con; he seems both amnesiac and somnambulist." sometimes the veteran's problem is that he remembers all too well. the pulps on which many of these films were based not infrequently center on the disaffected veteran. in part, of course, this owes to the simple fact that there were many mil­ lions of newly returned gis. charlotte armstrong describes a hardened spirit among the young men who have returned from war in her 1950 novel mischief, which tells the story of an attempted kidnapping at a manhattan hotel. an elevator operator, eddie munro, notes that one of his passengers, jed towers, is an example of a new type of man: out of the corners of their eyes, they typed each other, quickly. eddie saw the easy grace of a tall body, the ar­ rogant carriage of the high head, the crew cut that was somehow arrogant, too. the sharp cut of the good­ looking face, the long nose with the faint flare at the nostrils, the cool gray eyes, long lashed, and almost beautiful in that hard-boned young face, but very cool and asking for nothing. a type. one of those young men who had come out of the late war with that drive, that cutting quality, as if they had shucked off human uncer­ tainties and were aimed and hurtling toward something in the future about which they seemed very sure. these are the men who populate "the boiling city," harbor­ ing little but mistrust for "a lousy world." disillusioned by school, "the war, and the final bitter tutoring of the peace," towers determines to use the doctrine of self-interest he has witnessed all around him to his own advantage-to achieve a kind of success wholly unconnected with any idealism. resolutely cynical, he describes himself as "a young man out to 'make his fortune' as they used to say in the old stories 158 looking for the good war when he was nine. out to make his fortune without a dream in his eye." at the close of armstrong's novel, another character offers a tentative, hardly reassuring philosophy for living in this chaotic, unfeeling world: "we oughta be scared, all right. ignorant optimism won't do it," he insists. "but we've got not to be scared, just the same." everything depends on "trust between strangers," he continues: "everything else is a house of cards." this diluted version offdr's counsel to fear noth­ ing but fear itself fails to convince anyone in this bleak novel. few captured the new hardness armstrong describes more effectively than ross macdonald (the pen name of kenneth millar), whose lew archer prowled california in eighteen novels from the 1940s to the 1970s. macdonald published his first novel while he was still serving in the navy, and by the end of the run of archer novels, he had earned widespread popularity and critical acclaim. even in archer's final appearance in the blue hammer (1976), the war con­ tinues to serve as a touchstone for the detective, as well as for the people with whom he interacts over the course of his investigations. archer, whose military service is mentioned periodically throughout the novels, returns to find himself operating in a world altered by war. on occasion, however, he happens on "a preserve of prewar time": a neighborhood that "didn't know there had been a war" in the galton case (1959) or a woman with "a nice warm prewar ... voice" in the way some people die (1951). even the miserable relics (human and otherwise) of the depression have for archer a solidity and coherence absent from the postwar world, which he describes as dominated by "hardware in the sky, and dissension on earth." an at­ torney in the moving target (1949) delineates for archer a "type" very much like the one armstrong describes: "offi­ cers and gentlemen with high pay, an even higher opinion of themselves ... war was their element, and when the war was without a dream" i. anothercnarac: ophy for llvln!: cared, all no�!' 1 . "but \\'ewf :: pendl on i.��, . _ elle ii an�:: thieves like us 159 finished, they were finished. they had to go back to boys' jobs and take orders from middle-aged civilians." those who couldn't adjust, he concludes, tried to "snatch" success back: "they wanted to be free and happy and successful without laying any foundation for freedom or happiness or success. and there's the hangover." almost all the archer novels al­ lude in one way or another to the war's cataclysm, and to the way it left americans greedy and hard, their naked grasp­ ing after material wealth no longer softened by association with the democratic dream of a success unconnected with so­ cial class. in the barbarous coast (1956)_, archer muses that "atomic fallout" has turned everyone mean. in the doomsters (1958)_, he encounters rich men who made their money during the war by cheating interned japanese farmers and buying up their land "at a few cents on the dollar." (bill mauldin illustrates this phenomenon in his second book, back home, which was published in 1947.) in the chill (1963)_, archer meets up with those who made out during the war but have never had it as good since. postwar film noir is dominated by a similar cynicism that naremore attributes to the fact that "the war and its after­ math created a vision of ontological evil and a growing ap­ petite for sadism." the film historian sheri chinen biesen calls attention to the material, rather than simply thematic, connection between war and noir in blackout: world war ii and the origins of film noir, in which she documents the de­ gree to which wartime dimout and blackout restrictions, re­ laxed censorship, and the rationing of raw materials needed for filmmaking all contributed to the rise of noir. yet the way these films addressed disaffection was also new, as paul schrader argues in the important essay "notes on film noir" (1972)_, where he defines noir as a style rather than a genre. in a departure from american tradition, noir resolves "socio­ logical problems" artistically rather than morally, schrader 160 looking for the good war writes. "film noir attacked and interpreted its sociological conditions, and, by the close of the noir period, created a new artistic world which went beyond a simple sociological re­ flection, a nightmarish world of american mannerism which was by far more a creation than a reflection." within a world dominated by aesthetics, the artist assumes a special signif­ icance. john bodnar, richard lingeman, mark osteen, and others have all pointed to the special place of veterans within the film noir tradition, but the figure of the veteran-artist has a special role. as someone who makes a living by observing, reproducing, and reordering the world, the veteran-artist is an ideal tour guide through postwar noir. the artists, writers, and actors who appear as charac­ ters in the novels and films of the period exhibit confusion, discontent, and disaffection. take, for example, the veteran naval architect peter lapham (henry fonda), who struggles to resume his prewar life in daisy kenyon (1947); the psy­ chopathic lester blaine (jack palance), an unsuccessful actor whose theatrical ambition was born while playing in a camp show during the war, who cons and ultimately attempts to murder his wealthy wife in sudden fear (1952); the confused and melancholy corporal arthur mitchell (george cooper), a wpa muralist before the war who ends up painting signs during the war and returns to the states only to become a suspect in a murder he didn't commit in crossfire (1947); or harry jordan, the protagonist of charles willeford's 1955 novel pickup, a failed painter and alcoholic skating on the edges of society-and sanity. before the war, jordan studied at the art institute of chicago. afterward, he used the gi bill to resume his studies, but by the time we encounter him, he has given up: "i never could finish anything i started," he tells helen, "the pick-up" of the book's title. when helen's reaction implies that he should persist, he offers the following disillusioned meditation on american society: "the great thieves like us 161 american tradition: you can do anything you think you can do! all americans believe in it. what a joke that is! can a jockey last ten rounds with rocky marciano? can marciano ride in the kentucky derby? can a poet make his living by writing poetry? the entire premise was so false it was stu­ pid to contemplate." harry's refusal to endorse the american dream is typical of the genre, which makes obsessive study of the varieties of failure. the revelation on the book's final page that jordan is an african american further complicates his relationship with the american dream. harry and helen drink their way through their pooled resources and go through a series of schemes. helen thinks he can get in on the postwar boom because, as a veteran, he can easily get a loan, but these schemes come to nothing, and after a failed suicide pact, they commit themselves to drying out in a psych ward. there harry encounters another veteran who has tried to kill his wife and confesses that he has "been in and out of these places ever since the war." the hospi­ tal psychiatrist assumes that the war is the source of harry's self-destruction, but harry insists that the army was not the definitive experience in his life. the only great change his service seems to facilitate is harry's desertion of his family, to whom he gives no further thought. "i don't think it affected me at all. 1 was painting before 1 was drafted and that's all 1 did after 1 got in." at fort benning, home of the infan­ try, harry painted murals in mess halls and was happy. he gave his superiors exactly what they wanted: "i painted army scenes. stuff like paratroopers dropping out of the sky, a thick line of infantrymen in the field, guns, tank columns and so on." he was dissatisfied artistically, but he also knew that painting these dull murals was saving his life: "i was painting while other soldiers were . . . getting shot at . . . as a special duty man 1 was excused from everything except painting." harry resists what he judges the doctor's erratic methods and contrasts them with his own "native intelligence" in putting cl! together a jigsaw puzzle. "i wasn't a hero." he knows that he got "a damned good deal" while other soldiers with more talent "were never given the same breaks." and he will not blame the war for whatever prevents him from resuming his life afterward. in other words, he refuses to be pathologized by the doctor as a damaged veteran. one of the earliest collisions of war and art in film nair 00 occurs in the 1946 rko film crackup. it stars pat o'brien as george steele, a former army captain who, in his capacity as a member of the allied reparations commission, exposed forgeries the nazis had substituted for stolen masterpieces and then unloaded on the global black market. steele gives public lectures at a new york art museum; his desire to de­ mocratize art appreciation ruffles the feathers of the museum's patrician board members, one of whom calls his approach "revolutionary," while a disgusted steele demands that the board decide whether they are running "a public institution or an exclusive tea party." steele's politics may be radical, but his preference for traditional art and his ridicule of abstraction signal a cultural conservatism. steele is framed for murder when his plan to x-ray a paint­ ing in preparation for his next lecture threatens to expose a board member's complicity in an international forgery ring. as is typical of the way former service members are portrayed in these movies, steele's war record is at once the foundation of his credibility, as acknowledged by his employer, as well as a liability, because it makes him somehow unpredictable and ultimately unknowable, even to his girlfriend terry (claire trevor), who longs for some kind of postwar normalcy: "for the first time in three years i began to sense what life could be like again," she tells him after a romantic dinner that has been interrupted. their recovered normalcy is now threatened by steele's increasingly erratic, volatile behavior as he tries to 162 looking for the good war t� 111 thieves like us 163 clear himself. steele himself feels that he has "time to make up"-as he tells a friend who urges him to relax-because the war has stolen three valuable years from him. in a subsequent discussion with terry, he confesses his deep anxiety about cracking up: "i've seen a lot of good guys crack up in this war," he confides in her, "cool, composed cookies ... snap like a tight violin string." cracking up is the "one fear every­ body had," he tells her: "i kept thinking it might happen to me." but steele cannot rest; he almost destroys himself and terry in his quest for the truth. "odd, isn't it, that truth should be a by-product of war?" muses crackup's villain, the doctor who has pretended all along to be helping steele. toward the end of the film, he pre­ pares to inject steele with truth serum, a process the doctor calls "narcosynthesis," which, he explains, was discovered during the war and which theoretically enables a man "to communicate with his true self." as is commonplace in noir, the most portentous statements about truth come from the mouths of criminals who appear to be the most respectable members of society. steele's courageous postwar quest for truth dovetails with his wartime occupation of exposing forg­ eries. perversely, by tracing the global black market to new york, he has discovered a connection between the american elite and the very enemy he had labored to defeat, as well as a corresponding divide between this elite and the people with whom he is trying to share his enthusiasm for art. the strongest kinship exists between the domestic villain (a re­ spected physician, distinguished citizen, and board member of a civic institution) and the nazis steele has just returned from fighting. noir frequently asserts the uncanny resemblance between enemy governments abroad and home-front profiteers. while gis have been away fighting, everyone at home seems to have gotten rich. nobody lives forever (1946) opens with the con 164 looking for the good war man nick blake (john garfield) leaving a veterans hospital on governors island to reclaim the $50,000 he had entrusted to his duplicitous girlfriend. al doyle (george tobias), the pal who meets him at the gates, happily reports that postwar business is booming, with broadway full of "suckers" and demobilized "square johns" ripe for the taking: "it's getting just like the old prohibition days. loose dough. everybody making it and throwing it away with both hands." blake, meanwhile, as a result of his time away, seems to have lost his "nerve" for the con. in ride the pink horse (1947), the veteran gagin (robert montgomery) gets off the bus in a small new mexican town with his service revolver and a plan to take revenge on his friend's killer, a man named hugo (fred clark). there he encounters a government agent named retz (art smith), who warns him away: "you're like the rest of the boys-all cussed up because you fought a war for three years and got nothing but a dangle of ribbons." when retz tells gagin to let his "uncle samuel" take care of hugo, gagin responds, "doesn't the government work for hugo? it did all during the war." similarly, the protagonist of the phenix city story (1955)-a documentary-style noir based on the true story of a sensa­ tionally corrupt alabama town just across the river from fort benning-returns from one war only to find another wait­ ing for him at home. john patterson (richard kiley) is an attorney who has just left the army and brought his family home from germany to phenix city. soldiers from benning provide an endless supply of suckers for the city's bars and gambling joints. disgusted by the lawlessness and violence of his hometown, patterson commits himself to fighting it, at no small risk to his family. when his wife, terrified by the murder of a child and a threat to her own children, tells him thieves like us 165 they should have stayed in germany, where it was "safer," the analogy between the gangsters who terrorize phenix city and those who tried to destroy europe becomes clear. like harry jordan of willeford's pick-up, jim vanning, the protagonist of david goodis's 1947 novel nightfall, is a visual artist and veteran. having trained as an engineer be­ fore the war, vanning first took up painting to relax. upon discovering that he had talent, he determined to approach it as a vocation. at art school in chicago he grows to realize that while he isn't good enough for "fine art," he can make a living as a commercial artist. during the war, as a damage control officer on a battleship, he saw action in the pacific, but "luck stayed" with him, and he "wasn't even scratched." in contrast to many of the veterans in the pulps of the period, vanning has a job waiting for him when he returns. art is incidental to his story: it provides him with a career and stability, but it doesn't necessarily offer him particular insights or help him to make sense of all that happens to him. it is a means, like many other occupations, to achieving economic success-to making it. in a flashback, he remembers how it felt after he got his discharge papers and started for home, full of hope, in a convertible coupe he bought in los angeles: the top was down and the sky was very clear and . . . the war was over and that agency in chicago was the kind that kept its promises ... and ... they had told him to come on back and go to work . . . he was thinking, before the war they had paid him five thousand a year. that was the kind of outfit it was. he felt good about going back. he felt good about everything. chicago was an all-right place, and someday in the not too far distant future he ought to be meeting a nice girl and getting married and starting a home. it was a fine thing 166 looking for the good war to be thirty-two and alive and healthy. it was a marvel­ ous thing to be starting fresh. as this is a novel by david goodis, not horatio alger, the dream can't last. soon vanning finds himself the victim of the "wrong man" plot so common to the genre. stopping bythe side of the road to assist motorists at the scene of an accident, an act that derails his life, vanning ends up with a revolver in his face. the accident victims turn out to be bank robbers, and the good samaritan becomes a wanted man. when we first meet him, he is on the run, keeping a low profile in greenwich village and making his living as a commercial artist, but this safety is impermanent. it is only the latest stop in a solitarylife on the run, to which vanning long ago reconciled himself: "this one tiny, moving, breathing thing called vanning, and what it meant to him was fear and fleeing. and hiding." when a determined detective named fraser enters the scene, the novel addresses head-on the problem of return­ ing veterans. fraser develops sympathy for vanning as he surveils him and studies his habits. having begun to ques­ tion vanning's guilt, the detective shares his doubts with his wife. he can't figure out how this man without a criminal record and with a stable employment history could end up a bank robber and a murderer. his wife replies, "a lot of men came back from the war and had the wrong outlook and got themselves in trouble." fraser admits that everyone else at headquarters thinks the same thing. scores of books and films also express this anxiety-that men have come back from the war changed for the worse. yet fraser remains un­ convinced, and when he manages to find at least one other detective who feels the same way, he gets the information he needs to solve the case and clear vanning. "silver star. ex­ cellent record," fraser's sympathetic colleague admits: "it's an upside-down case." thieves like us 167 upside-down cases among the most disturbing "upside-down" cases of postwar noir is dixon steele, the serial-killer protagonist of dorothy b. hughes's novel in a lonely place, published in 1947 and adapted, with considerable alterations, into a 1950 movie star­ ring humphrey bogart as a hollywood screenwriter and glo­ ria grahame as his lover, who can't quite rid herself of the suspicion that he's a murderer. in the film, steele is wrongly suspected of killing a cloakroom attendant who works at the restaurant he frequents, but he is under suspicion because of his manifest propensity for violence. we discover that he was a good officer in the air corps, but his agent explains that he "hasn't had a hit since the war" because of an inability to con­ centrate on his work. when the police review his arrest record, they uncover a history of violence dating from 1946. the film thus implies that while dix's volatility may have predated the war-his agent describes it as elemental to his personality­ his service has somehow intensified it and prevented him from resuming the heights of his prewar career. (critics have also argued that the film is an allegory of the hollywood blacklist.) in hughes's novel, by contrast, steele's guilt is unequiv­ ocal, and hughes takes us deep into the mind of a serial killer whose first murder took place in england during the war. unlike that of the celebrated, if troubled, screenwriter of the film, in the novel steele's career as a writer is itself a fiction, which he invents to conceal his true vocation as a prolific serial killer: "like ninety-three and one-half per cent of the ex-armed forces, i'm writing a book," he tells the wife of his war buddy, brub, a detective who happens to be assigned to the case of the serial killer. unlike the other aspiring veteran-writers, steele announces that he is writing not a war memoir but a novel. steele's life has been soured by resentment and laziness. he lives on the fringes of success168 looking for the good war ful society, with a stingy rich uncle who allows him just enough money to go to princeton. once there, he sponges off his well-to-do classmates. after the war, with no interest in getting a job, he figures out a way to survive by killing a college friend and taking over his apartment, his clothes, his liquor, and his car. (there are parallels here to patricia highsmith's later and better-known ripley novels.) the war intensifies steele's preexisting pathologies and unleashes his violence, but his rage originates-and has al­ ways been intimately bound up with-issues of wealth and social class. as the novel's title intimates, dix steele is a crea­ ture of the night, a solitary stalker in "a lonely place" who hates and preys on women in the dangerous urban landscape. killing them gives him the only satisfaction he can get from postwar life. the novel opens with the restless steele roam­ ing the streets of los angeles, searching for the same thrill he once got from flying night missions: "he'd missed it after the war had crashed to a finish and dribbled to an end." there had been a "wildness" about dangerous missions that he is able to recapture only by killing women. the army brought dix "the first happy years he'd ever known," not only be­ cause of the visceral excitement of flying but also because of the new socioeconomic status it conferred. for the first time, steele was well paid and didn't have to defer to the rich; he reveled in the particular prestige of pilots, his newly acquired "class," and the attentions of women. he rose to the rank of colonel and ended the war with a "cushy job" as adjutant to a general in england. so transformative was his status within military hierarchy that dix was persuaded of its enduring reality even after the war ended. only when he finds himself trapped in his uncle's house once again after his discharge does he realize that he has confused "interlude for life span." but the wholesale det� thieves like us 169 struction of war-especially the air war of the pilot-teaches steele how easy it is to kill and to get away with killing. he discovers that no one much cares about a single life amid so much death. the electric arousal of killing in war has no an­ alogue in civilian life. although he momentarily envies the normalcy and "happiness" he perceives in the homelife of brub and his wife, sylvia, he almost immediately rejects the mere "quicksilver" of such postwar contentment in favor of the "excitement and power and the hot stir of lust" he derives from stalking and murdering women. at what amounts to a reunion dinner at the detective's house, the two men explore their motivations for joining up. brub jokes that he fought the war to get home to sylvia. when she in turn asks steele why he fought, he decides to impress her with the following reply: "i've wondered about it frequently, sylvia. why did i or anyone else fight the war? because we had to isn't good enough. i didn't have to when i enlisted. i think it was because it was the thing to do. and the air corps was the thing to do. all of us in college were nuts about flying. i was a sophomore at princeton when things were starting. i didn't want to be left out of any ex­ citement." brub counters with some retrospective bombast of his own: "it was the thing to do or that was the ratio­ nalization. we're a casual generation, dix, we don't want anyone to know we bleed if we're pricked. but self-defense is one of the few prime instincts left. despite the cover-up, it was self-defense. and we knew it." brub's explanation com­ bines primal instincts and stoic masculinity, with perhaps a hint of duty or patriotism, but it is steele's explanation that makes war seem less a cause than a fashion. the glamorous air corps becomes the social outsider's american dream come true. the tragedy for steele is not the war, but the fact that it had to end. 170 looking for the good war "i steal" steele may be one of the most extreme incarnations of the alienated veteran in postwar fiction-his name itself an evocation of treachery and force-but his irascibility, emo­ tional isolation, and inability to reacclimate to peacetime is consistent with the portraits of veterans found throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, not only in the cultural "underground," to borrow manny farber's term, but also in the mainstream. scores of films throughout the period address-in ways di­ rect or oblique, in the main or in passing-the challenges of veteran readjustment and examine the fate of veterans at the margins of american society. they include dramas that ex­ plore the physical and psychological wounds of war: pride of the marines (1945), the best years of our lives (1946), till the end of time (1946), homecoming (1948), the man in the gray flannel suit (1956). they also include comedies that address readjustment in a different register: hail the conquer­ ing hero (1944), the hucksters (1947), good sam (1948). in the last of these, the title character's listless brother-in-law is one of the more than eight million veterans who took a year's "readjustment allowance" from the government. the allow­ ance was made available to veterans who were unemployed or earned under a certain threshold. as the historian joseph c. goulden notes in the best years: 1945-1950, those who took it were regarded as loafers by civilians and fellow veter­ ans alike. finally, there were films that used the war and its veterans as an occasion to direct attention to various social injustices: bright victory (1951) and bad day at black rock (1955) dramatize racism against black and japanese ameri­ can gis respectively, while gentleman's agreement (1947) and crossfire both treat the issue of anti-semitism. the latter film substituted this issue for the anti-gay violence depicted in the original novel, richard brooks's the brick foxhole (1945). re� tra ex! ter en ita tie co thieves like us 171 noir, in other words, offers only the most stylized, surreal reflection of the experience of war and its constantly recru­ descing memories, memories that erupted across genres and registers, from highbrow to low: from norman mailer's the naked and the dead to the pulps, from the largely neglected tradition of american war poetry to the movies. in a review , rou�n�ijtt of poets of world war ii, an anthology edited by the veteran jtr�roij:: and poet harvey shapiro, the critic helen vendler describes this body of work as ranging from "lyric sweetness" to "self­ exempting satire." if, as vendler suggests, the tradition regis­ ters "a relative absence of guilt," it also evinces a lack of naive enthusiasm or ideological commitment. this poetry tends to simmer with an anger more often directed at american insti­ tutions than at the enemy. its speakers are often cast, vendler notes, as the victims of the state that conscripted them rather than as the perpetrators of shocking violence. it is the home-front crime story, however, that most ur­ gently takes up the issue of an american violence come home to roost. through the vehicle of the crime story-blackmail, heist, even murder-these works highlight the deep ambiva­ lence, forgotten over time, that once characterized attitudes to the war itself and those who fought it. a rise in crime-fueled by veteran and nonveteran perpetrators, of course-followed the civil war, world war i, and world war ii. the rate of incarceration among vietnam veterans is especially high. in 1978, at a time when nineteen percent of americans had mil­ itary service, twenty-four percent of inmates in state facili­ ties were veterans. that percentage began to drop in 1998, and veterans are today no more likely than the nonveteran population to find themselves in jailor prison. a 2011-12 department of justice study revealed that of the country's incarcerated, eight percent, or 181,500, were veterans. historically, there has been a tendency to mistake a correlation between military service and incarceration for 172 looking for the good war causation; crime among veterans is linked directly to military service while other aspects of a criminal's history are ne­ glected. after world war ii, a study of eleven prisons in the upper mississippi valley concluded that from 1947 to 1949 a little more than a third of those incarcerated were veterans of world war i or ii. after extensive research, including inter­ views with prisoners and wardens, the study's author, wal­ ter a. lunden, who published his findings in the journal of criminal law and criminology in 1952, concluded, "it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that military experience causes service men to commit crimes after they return to civilian life." in perhaps ten percent of cases, he continued, "military experience may have had some connection with later civilian crimes." nevertheless, as richard lingeman notes in the noir for­ ties, the "violent crime film" was also "the most commercially successful kind of veterans' stories." audiences were primed to accept a connection between military service and crime. war service also tends to feature in the lives of the police and detectives as well as the criminals in these stories. in addition to macdonald's lew archer, chester himes's harlem police detectives "grave digger" jones and "coffin ed" johnson (and, a much later incarnation beginning in the 1990s, wal­ ter mosley's easy rawlins) have military experience that has shaped their worldviews and armed them with particular in­ sights into violence and human nature. whether private de­ tectives who have been kicked off the police force or renegades working uneasily within departments for bosses who do not appreciate their idiosyncratic methods, the outlaw status of these detectives mirrors that of the criminals they pursue. bowing to government organs of censorship such as the office of war information and, after 1945, to other con­ siderations such as the still-enforced hollywood produc­ tion code, many films offer a contrived resolution to the ma� ([i rau toe '"ev nom mn in� �llth ul[� (de mar tl!ln ol�a ana itrea lelf· thieves like us 173 problems they explore: operations are successful, wounds are healed, veterans regain their equilibrium, prejudice magically falls before a demonstration of moral rectitude, criminals pay their due, platitudes abound. the film critic pauline kael told studs terkel that the "whole spirit of the country" during the war had a sanitized appearance: "everybody was patriotic and shiny-faced. wiped clean of any personality. even after the war, when william wyler made the best years of our lives, a sensitive movie, by no means cheerful-even that had the look of a life magazine cover." the habitual optimism of hollywood was expressed largely in the promise of economic success coated with the patina of moral restraint. for example, mgm's the hucksters, a vehicle for clark gable, who had himself recently come home from wartime service as a pilot, tells the story of a vet­ eran' vic norman, who has returned to the radio advertis­ ing business only to be disgusted by the hucksterism he had blithely participated in before the war. everything "looks different" to him afterward, he declares to kay dorrance (deborah kerr), the very respectable war widow he wants to marry, yet the film ends not with his rejection of the adver­ tising business, but with a new determination, articulated by kay, to sell only things in which he "believes ... with dignity and taste." having signed on to this newly purified postwar capitalist dream, vic gives away his last dollar, a symbolic gesture, before driving off into a future that looks bright, happy, and sufficiently remunerative. it is chiefly in film noir that the relentless optimism of hollywood recedes entirely before a far grimmer picture. in contrast to the establishment, the conformists, and the organization men, noir's sordid world of drifters, grifters, and con artists sounds a steady counterpoint to the main­ stream cold war narrative of american righteousness and self-satisfaction. a few movies, probing discontent before 174 looking for the good war dismissing it, occupy a kind of middle ground. till the end of time is one of a trio of films-the others are pride of the marines (1945) and the best years of our lives-attempting to show the unvarnished truth about the struggles of the wounded. like the others, it ends on a note of measured hope, but before it does so, its main character, cliff harper (guy madison), sounds what might be thought of as the keynote of veteran dissatisfaction. a marine who knows he is "nor­ mal" and "lucky" compared with one friend who has a steel plate in his head and another who has lost his legs, harper nevertheless can't help feeling "edgy" and "out of things ... because i've been scrounged. i'm robbed out of three and a half years. somebody stole my time." when pat (dorothy mcguire), the war widow he wants to marry, warns him, "you can't twist up the rest of your life worrying about lost time," he remains unconvinced. having been estranged in one way or another-even from themselves-veterans come home in these films to operate at least for a time on the psychological and socioeconomic mar­ gins of civil society: most often in the harsh city, but some­ times in the seemingly idyllic small town (and, as i explore in chapter 5, on the lawless frontier of the resurgent western). there is no clearer expression of the message of this category of film than the text superimposed over the nighttime urban street scene at the beginning of kiss the blood off my hands (1948), an american studio film about a canadian veteran's misadventures in london: the aftermath of war is rubble-the rubble of cit­ ies and of men-they are the casualties of a pitiless destruction. the cities can be rebuilt, but the wounds of men, whether of the mind or of the body, heal slowly. notaij nom� (drat mtm liife, ofmj noll nom !oou own thieves like us 175 this is the story of one such man; and of the girl whose path he crossed ... this title addresses not only the often-invisible wounds of veterans but also, in the allusion to "the girl whose path he crossed," the fact that the sometimes cruel chance that dom­ inates war now seems to govern peace as well. like the credo of leaving no one behind, the motif of the veteran's voluntary or enforced marginality in the face of society's resentment and suspicion has ancient roots, most notably in circuitous tales of postwar wanderings, deferred homecomings, and intimate betrayals. one of the most cel­ ebrated of these stories is that of the greek chieftain aga­ memnon, who returns home to be murdered in his bath by his wife, clytemnestra. both have been adulterers, and this fable of mutual betrayal forms the subject of aeschylus's agamem­ non and threads through homer's odyssey, where it serves as a repeated warning to odysseus-gifted warrior, enforced nomad, ingenious criminal outlaw of the ancient world­ about the dangers of homecoming and the need for the armor of disguise. in american film, the archetype of the return­ ing veteran carries many of the attributes of the wander­ ing odysseus: an intimacy with violence, deep ambivalence about organized society, and an urge, or a practical need, to conceal certain aspects of the past in order to survive in an altered postwar landscape. the odyssey features a series of trials, one of the most dev­ astating of which occurs on the island of thrinacia, home of the magnificent cattle of the sun god helios, when odysseus loses his last remaining crew members. in the epic's opening lines we learn what will happen: odysseus's courage will not be enough to save his crew from being destroyed by "their own recklessness" in slaughtering and eating a herd of cattle 176 looking for the good war that belongs to helios. odysseus is admonished twice over the course of the poem-once in the underworld by the seer tiresias and again above ground by the sorceress circe­ not to touch the sun god's cattle, lest he be the lone survivor, adrift and alienated, his "house filled with trouble: insolent men / eating your livestock as they court your lady." when, halfway through the poem, the survivors finally reach the isle of helios, the reader well knows the doom that awaits. socked in by a contrary wind, running rapidly through their sup­ plies, gazing daily on the cattle, sheep, and oxen that graze about the island, the ithacans resist the temptation of cattle rustling until they begin to starve. taking advantage of odys­ seus's visit inland to pray to the gods for guidance, the desper­ ate crew are spurred on to slaughter the cattle by the brazen eurylochus, who declares, "better / open your lungs to a big sea once for all / than waste to skin and bones on a lonely is­ land!" eurylochus gets his wish. only odysseus, who refuses to partake, manages to survive this ordeal; his entire crew dies soon after in a coastal shipwreck. this single episode, foreshadowed no fewer than three times by homer, its climactic significance underscored by ap­ propriately horrific supernatural detail-"cowhides began to crawl, and beef, both raw / and roasted, lowed like kine upon the spits"-assembles essential elements of an enduring myth about a soldier's homecoming. homer's veterans steal and thereby transgress established norms: the rightful owner of the property (helios) demands redress, and the judge (zeus, in this case) punishes the guilty veterans with death. the vet­ erans, comrades in suffering, have been reduced to theft by desperation. they steal, yet they are simultaneously the vic­ tims of a less fungible swindle: war and the trials associated with homecoming have stolen years from their lives. although odysseus's restraint ensures his survival, he becomes an un­ willing accomplice, helplessly enmeshed in the criminal acts ofot lelftl after uoub own i mas thieves like us 177 of others. finally, odysseus himself comes home to find him­ self the victim of a monumental theft. as tiresias promises, after twenty years away, he encounters "a house filled with trouble: insolent men" consuming his "livestock," just as his own men once did the cattle of the sun god, and aggressively courting his loyal wife, penelope. he will ultimately avenge this theft with a terrifying explosion of violence. in odysseus in america, jonathan shay explores psycho­ logical aspects of the parallel between the warriors in homer's odyssey and american veterans coming home from vietnam, but these correspondences reach further back in american culture. the specific story of veterans reduced to theft can be found in the early days of cinema, and it appears with in­ creased frequency in the years following world war ii. in 1944 the columbia university sociologist willard waller had warned america of the dangers of the returning veteran in his study the veteran comes back. veterans, he wrote there, always had been, and would continue to be, "america's grav­ est social problem." forgotten men in addition to these long cultural roots, the character of the world war ii veteran-as-thief also has a more immediate cin­ ematic antecedent, found in the gangster and social realism films of the 1930s. in these films, the veteran is often an alien, the object of the same suspicions and resentments directed at immigrants and outsiders. the message repeatedly sounded in these films-that america must remember its veterans af­ ter the next war-seemingly would be forgotten. through­ out the interwar period, the world war i veteran served as a representative for millions of depression-era dispossessed in films such as mervyn leroy's i am a fugitive from a chain 178 looking for the good war gang (1932), in which james allen (paul muni) is a veteran wrongfully convicted of a crime. the film historian david thomson suggests that this film reveals the degree to which the united states is "a country where awkwardness is shut away and forgotten, or executed," a nation "still terrified of its own outcast energy." based on the book i am a fugitive from a georgia chain gang!, by robert elliott burns, the film makes certain alterations to the original story, alterations that link the protagonist's fate to the war more directly. in real life, burns was a drifter even before the war; in the film, it is the war that changes the course of his life. when his family insists that he return to his prewar job at a factory, he protests that he can no longer bear routine. "the army changes a man," he tells his mother. he simply cannot "take up where [he] left off" but wants to get moving and accomplish something. having had experience as an engineer during the war, he wants to do "a man's work" by building and creating things. wandering the country from job to job, allen is unwit­ tingly made an accomplice to a lunch counter stickup. forced at gunpoint by another drifter to empty the cash register of its $5.81, he is sentenced to ten years on a southern chain gang. as the repeated indices of calendar pages dropping away emphasize, the state has effectively stolen his life. find­ ing this fate unendurable, allen escapes to chicago, where he works as a laborer on a bridge-building project by day and studies civil engineering by night until he rises to become a successful, well-respected engineer. he is eventually exposed and forced to return to serve what he is promised will be a ninety-day sentence, in exchange for a full pardon. but the state reneges on the deal, and realizing that he will be imprisoned indefinitely, allen escapes again from the prison farm and disappears. a headline asks "what has be­ come of james allen? has he become one of the 'forgotten men'?" we see him one last time, when he returns to chicago alk�, inaunt anll' � [reea �erpe anoln frolll time� itolen re �ak(\ [arm) m�en middl talk jodi) tney a rio� nin thieves like us 179 cago to visit the woman he loves. "how do you live?" she asks. "i steal," he replies in one of american cinema's most haunting final lines, as he slips into the darkness, presum­ ably forgotten forever. the veteran who wanted only to be free and unfettered ends up being forced to "keep moving" perpetually. in its representation of the veteran's discontent and inability simply to resume his prewar life, iam a fugitive from a chain gang is representative: wrongly accused, some­ times partly complicit, the veteran steals and also has his life stolen from him in the films of the 1930s. released the following year, william wellman's heroes for sale (1933) also entangles a veteran in a criminal plot. its pro­ tagonist, tom holmes (richard barthelmess), is a wounded world war i veteran treated more humanely in a german prison hospital than he is at home. the protagonist's victim­ ization begins in the war itself: a hometown friend, thinking holmes dead, takes the credit for his battlefield heroism and the medals and accolades that are rightfully his. back home, holmes, working in a bank, contemplates stealing money to feed his morphine habit. in desperation, he goes to the town's doctor begging for help, but the doctor insists that he will have to report him to the state, despite the fact that the shame might kill tom's mother. "it's not my fault," tom cries. "it's not my fault if i steal. it's not my fault if i kill somebody. i'm going crazy." cured of his morphine addiction at the state narcotic farm, holmes leaves town and ends up in chicago, where his ingenuity allows him to rise from driving a laundry truck to middle management. eventually, when an invention he helps to license ends up costing some of his fellow workers their jobs, holmes becomes the target of their luddite wrath as they decide to "smash the machines." arrested for inciting a riot he was in fact attempting to put down, he also loses his wife, who is brutally clubbed in the chaos. sent to jail, labeled a troublemaker by the police department's "red lwture squad" when he returns, tom signs over the royalties he has tothe� been earning all the while to his landlady, who runs a soup mlzed kitchen, leaves his young son in her devoted care, and joins (wtuq the legion of "forgotten men" tramping from one town to the m�dltal next. "who you calling reds and hobos?" he asks a lawman ;\the herding a group of drifters onto a train headed out of town: tn�t " "we're ex-servicemen." when tom's young son asks the landlady about his father, she makes clear what the film has implied throughout: "he lives for everyone but himself. he's given everything and taken nothing." in 1932, the year of fugitive's release, the government had mmoc violently quashed the "outcast energy" embodied by a "botr�n�foj nus expeditionary force" of almost twenty thousand impov(�u�etl erished world war i veterans who marched on washington �u�\lty demanding early payment of their promised pensions. dougtontex las macarthur commanded the troops that advanced down m�l�ten pennsylvania avenue from the white house to disperse the �m��t veterans. later that night, macarthur ordered his troops llnln�\l to advance on the veterans' encampment on the anacos10�,1i tia flats and burn it. (the full story is told by paul dickson ilamer' and thomas b. allen in the bonus army: an american epic.) !node seven years later, in 1939, hollywood was still telling the story amerl of the disenfranchised veteran reduced to a life of crime. th q�ne c i! wha� 180 looking for rhe good war acts of violence raoul walsh's the roaring twenties (1939) begins with a narrator's suggestion that the present unrest in europe has eclipsed that earlier war, when so many americans-like the film's unemployed protagonist eddie bartlett (james cagney)-returned from the western front to join "a new kind of ... criminal army" of bootleggers, america's new "ad(orne," means thieves like us 181 venturesome heroes." this film was a belated contribution to the warner bros. gangster cycle, a genre eloquently anato­ mized by robert warshow, an ingenious mid-twentieth­ century critic of american popular culture, in a 1948 meditation on the significance of the gangster archetype. "the gangster as tragic hero" begins with the premise that "america, as a social and political organization, is committed to a cheerful view of life." a "sense of tragedy," warshow contends, "is a luxury of aristocratic societies" not committed to the social and political significance of an indi­ vidual's fate, whereas the modern state-by which he means democratic as well as communist authoritarian societies­ transforms happiness into a paramount political issue be­ cause the state exists for the sole purpose of augmenting "the quality and the possibilities of human life." only in certain contexts can the tragic strain-the obverse of democracy's insistence on optimism-insinuate itself into art, and in the gangster film warshow discovers "a consistent and aston­ ishingly complete presentation of the modern sense of trag­ edy." the gangster, he asserts, in rejecting optimism, rejects "americanism" itself. his urban dystopia, with its dangers and deceptions, stands as the antithesis to a bucolic idyll of america as old as thomas jefferson. the gangster of the movies, in contrast to the mun­ dane criminal of the real world, is the imaginary hero: "he is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may be­ come." in a looking-glass inversion of the horatio alger story, the gangster-poor, lacking both social and institutional advantages-makes his way with a set of "ambiguous skills." because it simultaneously involves both legitimate enterprise and sadistic violence, the gangster's career, warshow argues, exposes the predatory nature at the root of all economic suc­ cess: "in the deeper layers of the modern consciousness, all means are unlawful, every attempt to succeed is an act of ag182 looking for the good war gression, leaving one alone and guilty and defenseless among enemies: one is punished for success. this is our intolerable dilemma: that failure is a kind of death and success is evil and dangerous, is-ultimately-impossible." according to war­ show, the figure of the gangster, precisely because he is killed for his success, makes us feel safe: "for the moment, we can acquiesce in our failure, we can choose to fail." a signal difference between the interwar gangster films and the later crime dramas often grouped under the category of film noir is that the latter rarely offer even the promise of .success, legitimate or otherwise. the gangster film charts its protagonist's rise and fall; the noir begins, at best, at the central character's tenuous and usually modest height of happiness and success, and the only direction from there is down. more often, noir begins in the depths, flashing back to a wrong turn that can't be righted. its plot is fueled by retri­ bution for the errors of the past, its protagonist harried down lonely highways, through desolate diners, late-night bus ter­ minals, and shabby hotel rooms decorated with the buckshot pattern of cigarette burns. noir is a world ruled by bad de­ cisions but also by bad timing. chance, which plays such a pivotal role in war, bleeds into this world, too, to derail lives. those veterans who have achieved a modest version of the postwar american dream are bored and frustrated by the routine. they don't want to be suckers, square johns, or "or­ ganization men," to use the phrase the sociologist william h. whyte coined in 1956 to describe the legion of men who abandoned the american cult of the individual in favor of belonging to corporate america. tom rath, the protagonist of sloan wilson's the man in the gray flannel suit (1955), became one of american fiction's most celebrated organiza­ tion men, his postwar disillusionment dissipating before the descent into tragedy typical of noir. the veteran rath and his wife, betsy, live in the connecticut suburbs. tom, donning �il �r meet� tom'� at the ilthe dare), would naif d� mewa in� tn nal be to�ic 0 �iace, in�anl iltole liorld, imon; the ill� rroof hewa lont! aream lu�re liefth likem lin�in [ull), tnete real n lithe itsim thieves like us 183 his gray flannel suit for the daily commute to new york city, meets up with an old army acquaintance, who reveals that tom's wartime affair in italy resulted in a child. established at the outset of the novel, the disrepair of the raths' house is the unsubtle symbol of a general dissatisfaction. betsy de­ clares, "all i know is that i lived on the belief that everything would be marvelous after the war, and that we've both been half dead ever since you got home." tom discovers that even the war itself, and his distinguished record in it, far from be­ ing the subject of congratulation or nostalgic reminiscence, has become unfashionable, eclipsed by another. when the topic of his service does come up during an interview, he feels the need to explain, "not korea. the one before that." in fact, tom has tried hard to forget about the war: "it is as necessary to forget it now as it was to learn it in the first place. they ought to begin wars with a course in basic train­ ing and end them with a course in basic forgetting. the trick is to learn to believe that it's a disconnected world, a lunatic world, where what is true now was not true then." one of the lessons of the novel is that the war is not disconnected at all: the illegitimate child, whose existence he reveals to betsy, is proof of the fact that it is impossible to draw the "clear line" he wanted to insert between war and peace. the other les­ son tom learns is that he no longer believes in the prewar dream he shared with betsy. it is an unselfconsciously white­ supremacist hollywood fantasy: "optimism, the implicit be­ lief that before long they would move into a house something like mount vernon, with nice old darky servants nodding and singing all the time, a place where they would grow old grace­ fully, not getting fat, but becoming only a little gray around the temples, a mansion where they would of course be happy, real happy for the rest of their lives." he no longer credits "the dream," and he can't "even find it interesting or sad in its improbability. like an old man, he had been preoccupied 184 looking for the good war with the past, not the future. he had changed, and she had not." wilson's novel ends with betsy and tom united in their desire to provide for tom's child; betsy's initial shock and flight precede acceptance, apology, and the prospect of some more mature version of domestic honesty and happiness. happy endings are much harder to come by in noir. pitfall (1948) offers a sinister west coast version of this story. john forbes (dick powell) is an executive at the olympic mutual insurance company who lives a life of routine. the film opens with john confessing his discontent to his wife, sue (jane wyatt). she was voted prettiest in the class, he most likely to succeed, he reminds her; they had once dreamed of build­ ing a boat and sailing it around the world. "what happened to those people?" he demands. when he complains of feel­ ing "like a wheel within a wheel within a wheel," sue replies, "you and fifty million others ... you're john forbes, aver­ age american, backbone of the country." the couple's fa­ miliar, largely good-natured banter makes it clear that this mood periodically descends on john. his malaise owes not to any war trauma. in fact, even his war experience was un­ dramatic. asked by his son, tommy (jimmy hunt), what he did, he replies, "anything i was told." when the boy-who tells him that his friend's father earned a silver star-asks where he was, he and sue explain that he spent most of it in denver, colorado, and ended up with a good conduct ribbon. this time, however, john's malaise coincides with his meeting a woman named mona stevens (lizabeth scott), whom he happens to be investigating in connection with an embezzlement case for which the insurance company is lia­ ble. when he goes to her apartment to collect the goods her boyfriend has purchased for her with the stolen funds, she calls him "a little man with a briefcase. you go to work ev­ ery morning, and you do as you're told." forbes's frustration boils over at this point, and he embarks on a very brief affair ion a willev weathe lonna nnalli1 ac oj ano he�ln �nq p tnefill lin janet �eleq ii[els enley locatl daigle thieves like us 185 that leads to a series of lies and a killing that is ruled a justi­ fiable homicide. sue, increasingly concerned by her husband's erratic be­ havior, tries to get him to tell her what's the matter: "after all, nothing's too tough for us. we won the war together. you brought tommy through pneumonia." but only after the killing does john confess the whole sordid story. the film ends not with a clear resolution, but with sue's decision not to divorce him, after having asked herself how long a man who has been a good husband-except for one twenty-four-hour period-has to "pay" for his mistake. but the film refuses to end as most contemporaneous melodramas end, and the suc­ cess of their reunion is by no means clear. sue suggests that he ask for a transfer to a new town so as to avoid raising their son amid scandal. she makes no promises: "i'm not sure it will ever be the same. not for a long time, anyway. but we've weathered other things. maybe we can handle this." when john assures her that he wants to try, sue replies, in the film's final line, "all right. that's what we'll do. we'll try." act of violence (1948) tells an even more disturbing story of another apparently successful veteran, frank enley (van heflin), a former bomber pilot whose postwar respectability and prosperity is built on a lie. david thomson describes the film's subject as "the slow stain of war." enley lives in the small town of santa lisa, california, with his wife, edith (janet leigh), and baby. his contracting business has pros­ pered during the postwar housing boom. the fragility of this life is quickly exposed when a newspaper clipping touting enley's wartime heroism and peacetime success reveals his location to joe parkson (robert ryan), his erstwhile bom­ bardier and friend. the film opens on the rainy nighttime streets of new york city, the chrysler building looming in the sky. we hear parkson's footsteps as he drags his wounded leg across the street and up the stairs of a dingy building so 186 looking for the good war he can pack his service revolver in his army grip. he then boards a bus for los angeles on a vengeful quest to murder enley, who betrayed the men under his command while they were pows in germany. parkson arrives in santa lisa on memorial day. the sun is so bright it seems to blind him, a figure only just emerged from nocturnal shadows, still wrapped in his trench coat. he suffers a further indignity when he is forced to wait for the parade to pass before limping across the street, while a radio announces, "a light breeze is whipping the flags of state and nation while a warm and bright sunshine streams down on the war veterans." enley is the focal point of the town's celebration of the completion of a new housing de­ velopment. the former captain is publicly lauded as a war hero and a pillar of the community whose determination and leadership kept everyone's morale up and helped them stick together throughout difficult moments during the construc­ tion process. parkson's vendetta precipitates the unraveling of this life. enley's hysterical response to his old friend's ar­ rival prompts the innocent edith-who has made it a pol­ icy never to ask her husband about his war experiences and occasionally inexplicable behavior-to confront frank. she guesses that it was because of parkson that frank suddenly decided to move from new york to california without even bothering to collect his terminal pay from the army. the sunny california of the film's beginning disappears into a stark nighttime world. in a chilling scene set in the vertiginous back stairwell of a los angeles hotel, site of a builders and contractors convention, frank confesses. as the drunken conventioneers celebrate outside to the strains of "happy days are here again," frank tells edith everything: how, as the senior officer, he was responsible for the men; how, nearly insane with hunger, joe and the others dug an escape tunnel; how, knowing they had no chance, he informed the �� colo tncyfo letatr mem, they jl he�lm runl�n frank lw di ev at� m�l in an which that he ac m� an way, 0 almosl the sa tells hi 0011 tenal respe ws u c\ima thieves like us 187 ss colonel in charge where the tunnel was in order to get leni­ ency for his men; how the colonel broke his promise. "they'd set a trap for them. they bayoneted them. they set dogs on them. and when it was over, they didn't even shoot them. they just left them there." edith tries to reassure him that he simply did what he deemed best and that he should not be punished for the rest of his life for one dreadful mistake. but frank refuses her consolation: i was an informer. it doesn't make any difference why i did it. i betrayed my men. they were dead. the nazis even paid me a price. they gave me food and i ate it. i ate it. i hadn't done it just to save their lives. i'd talked myself into believing it, that he'd keep his word. but in my guts from the start, i think i knew he wouldn't. and maybe i didn't even care. they were dead, and i was eating. and maybe that's all i did it for. to save one man. me. there were six widows. there were ten men dead, and i couldn't even stop eating. enley has tried to forget his past, to bury it in a new life in which he exerts the moral leadership within his community that he lacked in the pow camp. act of violence dramatizes the contest between remember­ ing and forgetting the war and one's deeds in it. along the way, both men are drawn into criminal acts. enley becomes almost accidently involved in a plot to kill parkson: "you're the same man you were in germany," one of his accomplices tells him, forcing him to own his past. "you did it once. you'll do it again. what do you care about one more man? you sent ten along already. sure, you're sorry they're dead. that's the respectable way to feel. get rid of this guy and be sorry later. it's up to you. he dies or you die. it's him or you." in the climactic scene that follows this exchange, enley runs des188 looking for the good war perately through an empty tunnel in los angeles, trying to outpace all the voices in his head that reproduce that fateful night at the prisoner-of-war camp. parks on, meanwhile, by religiously preserving the past, kept "sane" during a long hospital stay while his leg healed: "i kept remembering. i kept thinking back to that prison camp." determined to murder enley, parkson is prevented from committing the crime only by chance. both men are deformed by their pasts; remembering proves as treacherous as forgetting. ultimately, frank expiates his crime by dying to save joe's life, but visually the movie ends almost where it began, with joe limping off into the damp night, this time on his way to tell edith that she is a widow. in its exposure of the dank anxieties beneath the sunny exteriors of cali­ fornia, act of violence offers a vision of the state joan did­ ion once described as a "place in which a boom mentality and a sense of chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradica­ ble suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent." that edge-of-the-continent desperation also textures ida lupino's 1949 film not wanted. set in a harsh, sunbaked los angeles, the film dramatizes the story of an unmarried mother and a wounded veteran, both rejected by society, who rescue each other from abandonment by finding what solidarity they can in their outcast status. in contrast to john forbes and frank enley, many of the veterans in noir are out of work, out of luck, or on relief. world war ii veterans numbered in the millions, so the odds are that men of a certain age depicted in postwar films will have served, but these veterans often seem especially vulner­ able to life's vicissitudes, and their service adds irony, and sometimes pathos, to their postwar predicaments. in desper­ ate (1947), steve randall (steve brodie) tries to make a go ure llen �ocl� �era �eco )ou �)t �na �om qe�� laen ftie �� a rle� thieves like us 189 of a trucking company and is unwittingly drawn into a heist because the criminals know that he is struggling to feed his family and will eagerly take any job offered. in try and get me (1950), the veteran howard tyler (frank lovejoy), hav­ ing moved his family to california in an unsuccessful search for work, falls in with a stickup artist named jerry slocum (lloyd bridges), who spent his military service working the black market in paris, where he heard "the rumor" that the war was tough. the pair botch a kidnapping and end up be­ ing lynched by a mob inflamed by the newspapers' sensa­ tionalized crime reporting. in side street (1950), the veteran joe norson (farley granger), a married letter carrier-still living with his parents and frustrated that his pregnant wife must seek treatment at a city clinic because he can't afford a private doctor-dreams of getting "something steady," until he happens upon some money that he impulsively steals. this one fateful act ensnares him in a ring of criminals. the literary critic jonathan vincent has identified a fig­ ure in postwar culture he calls the "citizen-as-fugitive" in the health of the state: modern us war narrative and the american political imagination) 1890-1964. this fugitive cit­ izen has been permanently militarized, vincent argues, by social alienation. framed, trapped, driven to crime by des­ peration or uncontrollable rage, many of the veterans of noir become such fugitive citizens. the feeling that the veteran's youth, innocence, and prospects have been stolen from him by the war animates these films with currents of resentment and anxiety. the noir veteran is almost always on the move, sometimes simply restless but just as often committed to a desperate hunt for the truth: the amnesiac's search for his lost identity, the wrongly accused's quest to clear his name, the friend's attempt to track down a lost war buddy. his status as a wanderer, an odysseus-like stranger turning up in a se­ ries of different towns, often asking uncomfortable questions about the past that the residents would rather forget, makes (ao him inherently suspicious. war records-even good onesla�e provoke suspicion in film noir because the violence they doc(a�t ument has become theoretically unacceptable in peacetime. r1�h routinely investigated by law-enforcement officials and othlerv\ ers, these records are invoked as evidence of good character, len competence, or trustworthiness, even as they raise concerns (ao that the erstwhile serviceman has developed a dependence ine� on violence to solve problems. by proving a veteran's ability (ivil to kill, a service record makes him a likely suspect in violent �ut crimes at home. \'elel the lack of a service record also poses a recurring problem in fiction and films of the period. in david goodis's rice novel dark passage, vincent parry is wrongly convicted for (l�� the murder of his wife. the prosecutor takes advantage of the ana fact that parry isn't in the service: "that was about all," the lnel narrator sums up the trial, "except the character stuff. a lot mm of people wanted to know why parry wasn't in uniform. the ,ii t1 prosecution played that up big. parry was a 4-f" because of a \\'ou sinus problem, a bad kidney, and, the implication is clear, i jul a lack of moral fiber. this detail is eliminated from the 194 7 (l� warner bros. film starring humphrey bogart and lauren �ro� bacall because it would have been bad for the box officeio� and practically unpatriotic, after the heroics of casablanca t)�' (1942) and sahara (1943)-to impugn bogart's masculinity. \va men who were 4-f, dishonorable discharges, and those permu ceived somehow to have evaded the draft or secured them­ selves a "cushy" job in uniform become objects of derision and contempt and, in extreme cases such as crossfire, of deadly violence. but the more impressive the war record, the more dec­ orations for valor, the greater the potential danger posed by the veteran. one of the central questions in the crooked way 190 looking for the good war (1949), for example, is whether a commendable war record nev thieves like us 191 can erase an unsavory past. noting the silver star on the lapel of a suspect he has just finished interviewing, a police captain muses, "you really do something to get one." "yeah," replies his lieutenant, who is in the process of verifying rice's service record, "buy it at a pawnshop for two bits." the lieu­ tenant's cynicism illuminates the ease with which imposters can maneuver among civilians who admire and envy, even as they fear, veterans. war records provoke discomfort among civilians in these films not only because they might be fake but also because they show up the less heroic or imply that veterans are bringing war's violence back home. nefarious characters also manufacture tales of war ser­ vice to deceive others or to gain sympathy. in the naked city (1948), a person of interest in a murder investigation lies to a homicide detective when he recounts his combat service in the south pacific as a captain in the 77th infantry division. it turns out, of course, that he had never even been in the army: "i tried to enlist," he explains once he's found out. "they wouldn't take me. i had a trick knee from college football. i just couldn't get in." a similar episode occurs in impact (1949), a typical late-1940s noir: a low-budget, independent production nevertheless full of talent, including its cinema­ tographer ernest laszlo, a master of the lights and shadows typical of the genre. a successful san francisco businessman, walter williams (brian donlevy) is the intended victim of a murder plot by his wife and her lover, jim torrence (tony barrett). when williams plans to drive east to inspect a new plant his company is thinking of buying, torrence, posing as his wife's cousin, arranges to ride along. williams grows sus­ picious on the way. the cousin's stories don't seem to add up. in one exchange, he claims that he was with patton's third army and that his war was "rough except for the time in italy. i kind of liked it there." williams replies, "patton's outfit never got to italy." unsettled, torrence quickly thinks up an 192 looking for the good war excuse for his lie: "course, but most civilians never know or care, and i ... i ... figured you didn't either." in cynically manufacturing a war record-perhaps he served, but prob­ ably not with patton-torrence makes the presumably safe bet that most civilians wouldn't know the difference between a plausible and an implausible war story. in boomerang! (1947), a newspaper owner who wishes to help defend john waldron (arthur kennedy), a veteran accused of murder, advises the defense attorney, "they'll never hang an ex-serviceman ... dig into that war record." despite the claim that no one will execute a veteran, when things start going waldron's way in court, the police have to defuse a would-be lynch mob. based on a 1945 reader's di­ gest story, boomerang! takes place in a small connecticut city, but the voice-over narration at the beginning takes pains to indicate that it might have happened anywhere in the country. a beloved minister is murdered brutally on the main street. witnesses claim to have seen a man in a light fedora and dark coat. this flimsy evidence, along with some more damning details, is enough to pin the crime on waldron. nor does he help his own case. he acts suspiciously and lies. deprived of sleep, mercilessly interrogated, and hounded by a psychiatrist who keeps telling him how bitter and resentful he must be at the success of the civilians around him and his own malad­ justment, waldron eventually signs a false confession. when the sympathetic state's attorney (dana andrews), who ulti­ mately finds the exculpatory evidence, interviews him later, waldron, who served five years in the army, endorses the psychiatrist's assumptions about his deep frustration even as he denies that it provided a motive for killing the minister: "that puts me five years behind the parade. i wanted to get moving. you can't wait. i'm not a kid anymore. i missed the boat. i had an idea once." the desire to make something of himself echoes james allen's apologia in i am a fugitive from � cha k�� e y�t th [�ct t in ion ( l\'�r�t me� oefen nlm, walt, �na tfie ana �na fiur fue tfie! volv �car the thieves like us 193 a chain gang. for waldron, the idea has died. only the tire­ less efforts of the state's attorney secure his eventual release. yet the film's closing voice-over narration emphasizes the fact that some in the town remain convinced of his guilt. in the strange love of martha ivers (1946), sam master­ son (van heflin), on his way west, has a car accident near iverstown, the hometown he ran away from almost twenty years earlier. there he finds that his childhood friends have married: martha ivers o'neil (barbara stanwyck) runs a large factory inherited from her grandmother, and walter o'neil (kirk douglas) is now the district attorney. fearing that sam has returned to blackmail them over an old murder, which they mistakenly believe he witnessed, o'neil asks a detective to do a background check on his old friend in the hopes of getting him out of town quickly: "he's a big shot gambler," the detective reports. "broke many times, but al­ ways turns up with a new bankroll. the police in every state have tried to find the source of his money, but no dice. many arrests, no convictions. beat a murder rap in frisco. self­ defense. has a war record few can equal." near the end of the film, martha, the actual murderer, asks sam to help her kill walter: "you've killed. it says so in your record," she reasons. "i've never murdered," sam corrects her. vulnerability-physical, psychological, socioeconomic, and sometimes a combination of all three-is a recurring theme in these films. lieutenant dixon in the guilty (1947) and buzz in the blue dahlia (1946), both subject to spells and blackouts, are convinced (or nearly so) that they have murdered someone. in both instances, the real culprits, in the former case a trusted fellow veteran, take advantage of the protagonists' suggestibility. sometimes the frame-up in­ volves a piece of evidence: in railroaded! (1947) it is a navy scarf that lands an innocent former sailor in jail even though the detective admits that such an article can be picked up in 194 looking for the good war any surplus store. the veteran's vulnerability is also political. resentment can be exacerbated by the attitudes of civilians, which are often far from welcoming. the blue dahlia offers a party in which a veteran is derided as an "ex-hero" who is used to solving problems through violence, while in where the sidewalk ends (1950), a friend tries to dissuade a woman from going back to her war-hero husband, who has become a violent alcoholic: "so he won the war and freed the slaves, does that give him the right to drink barrelsful of whiskey and punch girls on the nose?" as richard lingeman writes, a 1947 survey revealed that more than fifty percent of ex-servicemen reported that the war "had left them worse off than before." often naive and in need, ex-service members were sometimes preyed upon by veteran organizations, some of which had racial­ ist or other sinister agendas. these groups were the sub­ ject of several of bill mauldin's most controversial cartoons in back home; they also found their way into the movies. in till the end of time, a group of white supremacists tries unsuccessfully to recruit three marines in a bar, while the machinations of another dangerous veteran group form the central plot of violence (1947), in which a racketeer, disguis­ ing his shakedown scheme as a patriotic organization called united defenders, recruits veterans to serve as muscle by telling them he will lobby washington for better housing, the jobs they've left behind, a general improvement of living conditions, and "the right to live as free men who deserve the gratitude of the free men you fought for." the agita­ tor tells a group of potential recruits, "what do you think you're gonna get by being nice? if you tried that on the front lines, you'd all be dead ducks right now. you had to be tough and hard." in a telling scene, he sends these men in to break up a legitimate protest staged by another group of out-of­ work, homeless veterans. [ed� glel ii � �uql ell' tna mea c�n w oan thieves like us 195 the racketeer in violence counts on his ability to stoke the rage and hate already simmering within these men and encourages them to look for a new enemy. the same phenomenon is addressed in crossfire. the veteran joseph samuels (sam levene) notices a troubled soldier, arthur mitchell (george cooper), drinking alone at a hotel bar and falls into conversation with him: "we don't know what we're supposed to do, what's supposed to happen ... we're too used to fighting, but we just don't know what to fight." samuels tells mitchell that his difficulty isn't merely personal but societal: "i think maybe it's suddenly not having a lot of ene­ mies to hate anymore ... you can feel the tension in the air. a whole lot of fight and hate that doesn't know where to go. guy like you maybe starts hating himself." samuels's words make sense to mitchell, who can't articulate the vertigo he feels, but when samuels is murdered by an anti-semitic sol­ dier named montgomery (robert ryan), it is mitchell who is suspected of the crime. the film takes care to assure the audience that samuels, far from being the shirker montgom­ ery imagines, served valiantly and was wounded at okinawa. that fact, recited by the detective in charge of the case, is meant to heighten our outrage at his murder. at one point in the film, mitchell asks another sympa­ thetic soldier, keeley (robert mitchum), "has everything suddenly gone crazy? ... or is it just me?" keeley reassures him: "no, it's not just you. the snakes are loose. anybody can get them. i get them myself, but they're friends of mine." when mitchell's wife arrives to help her despondent hus­ band, he tries to define the "snakes" that beset him: i couldn't write to you because i was depressed and jittery. samuels, the man who i was supposed to have killed tonight, he understood it ... he said a guy like me now, with the war over, could start hating himself. 196 looking for the good war maybe that's what happened. maybe i started hating myself because i was afraid of getting going again. of trying to draw again. of looking for a job. of having you waiting all the time, after having waited four years already. it began to be hard for me to think about you. mitchell's anxieties are rooted in part in his depression-era socioeconomic experience. the wpa supported him before the war, when things were a struggle, then the army paid him to paint signs, but there is no guarantee, despite the inter­ lude of war, that he will be able to make a living as an artist afterward. again, the artist who is unable to make his post­ war world cohere proves a particularly attractive figure for working out postwar anxieties. he is a stand-in for all those noir veterans who, if successful during the war, are derailed by chance in wrong-man plots, the discovery of secrets in their past, or a residual instinct for self-sabotage, and who find themselves involved, willingly or not, in crimes inevita­ bly gone awry. the idea that the war has reshaped the home front in sin­ ister ways becomes even clearer in the street with no name (1948). in this film, the gangster alec stiles (richard wid­ mark) runs a criminal army modeled on the actual one: "i screen people, like the army, only i choose my own recruits." discussing his methods with a new man, an undercover fbi agent (mark stevens), he asks, "what's the use of having a war if you don't learn from it?" the film's prologue features an fbi teletype warning of the rise of organized gangsterism across the country. and it is no accident that stiles's signa­ ture weapon is a luger. the ubiquity of ex-gis and mili­ tary weapons becomes a source of great anxiety in the sniper (1952), set in a san francisco terrorized by a series of killings with an m1 carbine. the police in that film find it extremely difficult to narrow their pool of suspects because, the detecthieves like us 197 tive in charge complains, every veteran "pinched" an m1 on leaving the service and there are millions more men still in uniform. with the draft still in effect-the film was released in the midst of the korean war-this large standing army with its easy access to weapons intensifies the ambient fear of violence hanging over the city. an even more obvious association of war and crime can be found in brute force (1947), jules dassin's exposure of prison barbarity. cellmates plot an escape, the key to which comes from a veteran known simply as soldier (howard duff). the prisoners' leader, joe collins (burt lancaster), gets a tip from a dying inmate to ask soldier about hill 633. at night in their cell, soldier tells his war story with the aid of some chess pieces: soldier: well, it's a hill in italy, not far from rome. why? collins: tell me about it. soldier: there's not much to tell. the krauts had the hill, and we were ordered to take it. collins: how? what'd you do, charge 'em? soldier: did you ever try it uphill with a few kraut 88s puttin' the blast on ya? spencer: let me have those chessmen, will ya? soldier: give me some light. here was the hill. here was us. mountains here, the ocean here. stalemate. collins: but you took it. soldier: yeah. we took it, all right. give me some more light. we sent some men out in a boat. they landed up here. we covered 'em with a heavy bom­ bardment. at "h" hour, we attacked uphill. the krauts turned all their guns to stop us. that was ex­ actly when the other gang attacked from behind. collins: and it worked. 198 looking for the good war soldier: yeah. we got through, all right. most of us anyway. the rest are still there. collins: they couldn't cover both sides, huh? thanks, soldier. in the ultimate parody of a sand table exercise, in which sol­ diers rehearse operations, the inmates thus plot their escape. they have been assigned to work in a tunnel just outside the prison gate by the sadistic captain munsey (hume cronyn), who-like the nazi aesthetes depicted in a range of films­ abuses prisoners to the strains of classical music. collins knows that the single machine gun in the tower can cover only one side of the wall at once. unlike the taking of hill 633, the attempted breakout ends in utter disaster. almost everyone ends up buried there. the veteran killer makes a sadistic cinematic last stand in the person of john baron (frank sinatra) in suddenly (1954). this late noir pits a manifestly honorable veteran, in the form of sterling hayden's tod shaw, a sheriff full of duty, rectitude, and domestic inclinations, against sinatra's chilling contract killer, who takes over a local house in order to set up for an assassination of the president of the united states. "i won a silver star," baron boasts monomaniac ally throughout the film. the army gave him an illusion of self­ worth: "first time i got one [a rifle] in my hands and killed a man, i got some self-respect. i was somebody." we get hints of a miserable childhood and an aimless prewar life: "i drifted and drifted and ran, always lost in a big crowd. i hated that crowd ... i'm no traitor, sheriff. i won a silver star. and learned how to kill. yeah, maybe i did. maybe that changed everything. maybe people began to know who i was." but the universalizing socioeconomic explanations that so often supply the real anxiety in the films of the immediate postwar period through the late 1940s are really beside the point in go iniat 0\' tn na thieves like us 199 suddenly. baron is a psychopath: the war provided an envi­ ronment in which his particular talents could flourish. the sheriff guesses, although the film never confirms it, that baron was such a prodigious killer that he eventually committed a war crime: "you look yardbird to me." baron had found something he was good at. "you're a born killer," shaw tells him, and baron understands it as a compliment. "yeah. when you get real good at something, you're a murderer. yeah, over there you can knock over a whole platoon, or a guy invents a bomb and kills a hundred thousand people just like that and maybe gets more medals. here you put a slug in a double-crossing squirt that isn't even worth burying and you have to take the gas. i got no feeling against the president; i'm just earning a living." "by treason," another character ob­ jects, and baron continues, "don't give me that politics jazz, it's not my racket. i don't even know who's paying me and i don't want to know." in baron, the combat soldier is distilled into a pure killing machine, without morals, without cause other than "earning a living." none of the arguments made by shaw and the other upstanding characters held hostage in the house makes any impression on baron: there is nothing inside to which to appeal. all comes right in the end, and the town of suddenly carries on in its sleepy way, even if a vague sense of menace lingers in the name. four years later, all that menace had dissipated. another sinatra film revealed the degree to which the veteran's story had lost its rawness. in ocean's 11 (1960) sinatra plays danny ocean, a former paratrooper in the 82nd airborne who gathers his old buddies together to pull off the ultimate caper. military service has been reduced to a simple plot gimmick: it explains how they all know one another and why they have the suite of arcane skills required to pull off the simultaneous heist of five las vegas casinos. directed by lewis milestone, whose early career had been notable for the antiwar drama 200 looking for the good war all quiet on the western front (1930), the film has the comic-suspense formula that made it such easy pickings for the recent ocean franchise. it has none of the doom or fatalism of its predecessors. the integrated star power and glamour of the rat pack casting (sammy davis jr.'s josh howard would not have served in a unit with the rest of this white gang in what was a segregated army); the gags and glamour; the ab­ sence of any real bitterness about the war; and the lack of any motivation beyond that of a score all combine to make harm­ less entertainment of what would once have been the stuff of noir nightmare. even when the money accidentally goes up in flames, the thieves stroll down the vegas strip past a marquee that features the names frank sinatra, dean martin, sammy davis jr., peter lawford, and joey bishop, and the whole arti­ fice collapses into a rat pack romp. oubliette the veteran who has forgotten-either temporarily, through intoxication or traumatic repression, or permanently, through neurological injury-is a staple of postwar noir. john bel­ ton thinks that the "identity crises" of these amnesiacs "mirror those of the nation as a whole" in the postwar pe­ riod, while mark osteen argues that "amnesia noirs probe the american ideals of self-reinvention and the pursuit of happiness." the world into which they, like all noir veter­ ans, are thrown is itself unstable and ambiguous. it may be "haunted" by the past, osteen explains, or it may simply be "shadowed" by new fears such as "atomic destruction." am­ nesiacs appear in other genres, too, where the recovery of traumatic memory proves therapeutic. in the war film home of the brave (1949), for example, remembering leads to res­ olution. knowing the past permits the amnesia victim-in thieves like us 201 this case an african american soldier whose best friend has been killed-finally to access a future full of integrated promise: he and a white serviceman plan to go into business together. but in noir, being cured is often as terrifying for the amnesiac as awakening to the fact of his condition in a hospital ward. in almost every instance, these films present a scenario in which the veteran who remembers might also be forced to confront the fact that he might be someone he does not wish to be: a collaborator, as in the clay pigeon (1949), or a murderer, as in the blue dahlia, deadline at dawn (1946), and high wall (1947). those films dramatize temporary amnesia. the crooked way presents us with a permanent case. told by a doctor that the shrapnel lodged in his brain has given him incurable, "or­ ganic" amnesia, eddie rice (john payne) declares, "doesn't leave me much of a future, does it?" eddie, a criminal be­ fore the war, has gone straight, the army having facilitated his reinvention, but the compulsion to know who he is plunges him back into the old world, which he must navigate without the armor of identity or a legible personal history. somewhere in the night has a similar plot involving a former criminal, george taylor (john hodiak), who, like rice, has tried to escape his past by enlisting in the army under a false name. military service has theoretically wiped the slate clean for him, as it had for eddie rice, but because he cannot remem­ ber the past he intended to erase by joining up, he is doomed to recover it. the film opens on a hospital ward in a voice­ over spoken by the lost amnesia victim, whose wallet, and the pictures and letter he finds inside it, are the only clues to his former self: "these are my last words to you. that's why i write them. so that i can always be sure that these were my last. but i despise you now, and the memory of you. but 202 looking for the good war i'm ashamed for having loved you. and i shall pray as long as i live for someone or something to hurt and de­ stroy you, make you want to die, as you have me." who writes letters like this? who do they write them to? men they despise, whose memories they despise. the memory i haven't got. won't be long, and i'll have to talk. think fast. now they only know my name. if i tell 'em i don't remember, they'll backtrack. they'll dig up that memory and throw it in my face. i've forgotten that man. somebody's praying for him to be hurt and want to die. i won't let them know i can't remember. i won't let them dig him up! taylor doesn't want to know who he was, yet he can't help trying to find out how anyone could have been so bad as to deserve this letter. he spends the rest of the film trying to solve a robbery and a murder for which he has been framed: "i'm george taylor. new self ... meet old. i don't need a memory to figure this one out," he announces after convinc­ ing himself that he is a murderer. but the woman george has met since his return-the best friend of the woman who had written him the damning letter-cannot believe him capable of murder and gives him sufficient faith in his new self to press on. after identifying the real murderer, george finds redemption and promises the police that he won't return to his old ways. as dark as the film has been to this point, the ending has been read as redemptive. osteen suggests that, "contrived" as it is, the resolution "ultimately affirms the ideology of self-recreation, proposing that, rather than re­ covering their prewar selves, americans are better off toss­ ing them aside like suits of outdated clothing." somewhere in the night and the crooked way, he argues, "endorse the american dream in which alienation gradually yields to selftu thieves like us 203 affirmation and in which a life's second act may redeem an original sin." but i don't think these films are quite that glib. they may seem to satisfy us with happy endings, but in each case, the weight of the entire film insists on the flimsiness of prom­ ised happiness. reconstructing the past is different from remembering it: the artificial nature of the recovery is its distinguishing attribute. in the profoundest sense, these men still do not know who they are. they are, after all, perma­ nent amnesiacs. they are forced to forget by the trauma of the war, which ostensibly purges them of the past yet fails to release them from its revenant. ironically, amnesiacs force everyone around them to remember, often against their own inclinations to leave an unpleasant past behind. wars are usually begun with calls to remember (and to avenge) an in­ justice: remember the maine! remember pearl harbor! remem­ ber 9/11! nevertheless, such war cries are inseparable from an imperative to forget the way things used to be. in going to war, we commit to making the world over. and once the war is over, we work to forget it, too. noting that amnesia films are hardly unique to the 1940s but commonplace throughout hollywood history, david bordwell insists in reinventing hollywood: how 1940s filmmakers changed movie storytelling on a "cold-blooded" reading of the phenomenon "not as a symptom of audi­ ence anxieties but as a reliable narrative device. news of battle injuries ... offered forties filmmakers a realistic al­ ibi for stories of memory loss." amnesia in the movies, he proposes, "is only one step above the 'magic forgetting' we find in folktales," and we can find amnesia plots through­ out literary history. nevertheless, within an american cul­ tural context, this admittedly ubiquitous motif illuminates a very particular function of memory. the forgetting men 204 looking for the good war in veteran noir pathologize the amnesia already built into the american experiment, which has always insisted on at least a voluntary erasure of lives begun elsewhere in order to succeed in american terms, to fulfill american dreams. by short-circuiting that process, the veteran forced by cir­ cumstance to forget compels the rest of us to remember the degree to which the past is but a tissue of fragile fictions, the future just as unstable. --. . already builtin' t 'ays in�i�t�a �ij� ewhere inm(, • erianarli� 4 n forceao),c, war, what is it good for? this celebration also marks the beginning of an­ other year of your national life; and reminds you that the republic of america is now 76 years old. i am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young ... according to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still linger­ ing in the period of childhood . . . there is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. the eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that america is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. may he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. there is consolation in the thought that america is young. -frederick douglass, "what to the slave is the fourth of july?" address to the rochester, new york, ladies' anti-slavery society (july 5, 1852) 206 looking for the good war wild boys in 1852, hard at work in service of the cause of abolition, frederick douglass could draw consolation from the coun­ try's youth, for in youth there was malleability, the capacity for growth, the energy to change. the conceit of youth, of the new and unfettered, has animated the american imagination since the founding. yet after world war ii, it grew increas­ ingly difficult to sustain this illusion, hypocritical to think or to speak of the country as young when it had inherited the unlooked-for responsibilities of maturity. if the political and cultural superiority of the new world had been vindicated by the outcome of the war, it was at the paradoxical price of na­ tional adolescence. how to sustain the illusion of youth while displaying the wisdom of age? one characteristic of america's newfound maturity seemed to be a renewed preoccupation with juvenile delinquency. this worry had surfaced during the depression and intensified during the war, only to explode in the 1950s. sociologists had begun to study the roots of de­ linquency and crime in earnest amid the social and economic turmoil of the 1930s, when popular culture also gave voice to anxieties about lawless adolescents as well as a concern for the inhumanity of reform schools and other institutions. these issues fueled several pre-code films, including the mayor of hell and wild boys of the road, both released in 1933. that same year, the university of chicago sociolo­ gists herbert blumer and philip m. hauser published mov­ ies) delinquency) and crime, a book devoted to the question of whether movies themselves were contributing to the ep­ idemic. blumer and hauser concluded that movies, while not a primary cause of delinquency, might indirectly "pro­ mote criminal tendencies or behavior. we have declared that by arousing desires for 'easy money,' by inducing a spirit of bravado, toughness, and adventurousness, by fostering the (!l ita in! it� on ii � me int (ne ovel (ee (tr' �en intr rro aur me ton roll mill a� � earl (ore oer • ilie �u11��t .; [lng to tdl1r' a: mo\'ie�\ wmi . r indirectj)lllrr� r. re declarea ili�: wart what is it good for? 207 daydreaming of criminal roles, by displaying techniques of crime, and by contributing to truancy, motion pictures may lead or dispose to crime." this book was only one installment in a series of volumes sponsored by the payne fund stud­ ies and devoted to studying the influence of motion pictures on the young. various sociologists examined motion pictures as something at once alien to adult understanding and im­ mensely appealing to children. these concerns find an echo in today's anxieties about social media. during the war, as numerous commentators have noted, the government already harbored deep concerns over the increasingly unsupervised life of adolescents-so many fa­ thers and mothers were contributing to the war effort-and over what was perceived to be the general moral laxity of teens. the increased prosperity of the postwar years gave young people more money, independence, and leisure time than their prewar predecessors had enjoyed. don carpen­ ter's 1966 novel hard rain falling sheds some light on a generation too young to fight in world war ii, adrift, and introduced early in life to a world of cruelty, violence, and institutional indifference. part of the novel takes place in 1947, in portland, oregon, where carpenter's orphaned protagonist jack levitt joins a gang. the gang had formed during the war and survived it by continuing to attract "hard kids" who felt left out in high school or craved "the ex­ citement" of the city. drifting in and out of the gang, the members all share certain qualities: "toughness, a lack of conventional morals, a dislike of adults, and a hatred of the police." some of the boys periodically disappeared into the military, but jack emphatically rejects that option as soon as he ages out of the orphanage in which he has spent his early years: "they said the army would take care of you; three squares and a flop, and all you had to do was obey or­ ders; there wasn't a war on, so no danger of getting your ass 208 looking for the good war shot off; just a nice, easy life, uniforms, barracks, chow, and marching around with a rifle." nevertheless, sickened by the idea of a life given over to institutional obedience, jack pursues a criminal career that eventually lands him in another institution, san quentin, with billy lancing, a black pool hustler he meets in portland who likewise fears the army as a last resort but for rather different reasons. jack's distaste for the army is personal, but billy's rep­ resents a larger communal fear. the night school he attended had been full of frightened black high school dropouts like him, he tells jack: "they ... face that tough world ... an [sic] when they get home they got no money and up jumps the army ... and it just scares the shit out of em." jack and billy, who briefly become lovers in prison, look up to the slightly older men in their midst. the war generation is repre­ sented in the novel by the sinister figures of kol mano and bobby case, gamblers who roam portland's pool halls in "leather air corps flight jackets," fancy clothes, and "highly polished cordovan shoes." mano, who was wounded in france, is distinguished by a hole in his throat, through which he smokes cigarettes: "keeps the enemy off balance," he tells jack. for a long time, carpenter writes, mano had been "deeply enmeshed in black-market rackets, selling watches and other px material, and even some hospital supplies." his service record reveals a potent mix of bravery, violence, and criminal­ ity: "he was given the silver star, released from the hospi­ tal, arrested by the mps, and given a general court all in the same ten-day period ... he had the dreamy eyes of a lush and the delicate fingers of a cardshark, and he was both. everyone considered him a little crazy." far from being crazy, mano is "the coolest head jack had ever met." when mano isn't at the veterans hospital receiving continued treatments for his throat, he spends his time "making money and living his own life," something jack never quite learns how to do. ion !oou mt�r \lito ili�n routi into, m� � qnon (u tn� i qno qkill love war, what is it good for? 209 youth gangs like jack's began to maraud across the screen in the late 1940s, and they continued their mayhem, in doc­ umentary and feature films, throughout the 1950s. some depicted police and social workers, often at philosophical odds, in a determined quest to end the national scourge of juvenile violence. the following sampling of titles, ranging from major studio productions to low-budget fodder, sug­ gests their increasingly sensational nature: city across the river (1949); the young and the damned, so young) so bad, gun crazy (1950); the wild one, girls in the night (1953); cell 2455, death row, blackboard jungle, rebel without a cause, running wild, teen-age crime wave, mad at the world, one way ticket to hell (1955); crime in the streets, the unguarded moment, teenage wolfpack, hot-rod girl (1956). the contradiction dramatized by many of these films, and by carpenter's novel, is that the protagonists are seduced by easy money and violent excitement while often longing for nothing more than domestic stability-steady work, mar­ riage, and family. the film gun crazy typifies this confusion in the per­ son of bart tare (john dall). obsessed with guns yet uneasy about killing, he is sent to reform school for stealing a pistol. after years away, bart returns to his hometown and reunites with his boyhood friends. "four years in reform school, and then the army," he tells them. "not getting married on that routine." when one of his friends wonders why he didn't stay in the army, bart explains, "it gets dull. nothing but teach­ ing guys how to shoot." bart, a crack shot, joins a carnival and meets the equally proficient annie laurie starr (peggy cummins), who shares none of his scruples about killing. the pair goes on a crime spree that ends in several deaths and ultimately their own. bart continues to insist that he isn't a killer by nature long after he has become one in fact. his love for laurie, who craves danger and excitement, keeps 210 looking for the good war them on the run in search of the one "big" job that will make them rich. his dream, expressed more than once in the film, is not to rob banks but "to settle down." toward the end of the film, just before their plan to escape across the border is foiled, he tells laurie, "you know what we're gonna do when we get to mexico? buy ourselves a nice ranch and settle down. maybe even raise those kids we talked about once." but laurie has no interest in that sort of life. almost two de­ cades later, in 1967, bonnie and clyde will reverse these gen­ der roles: it is bonnie (faye dunaway) who longs ultimately for domesticity while clyde (warren beatty) simply wants to refine his modus operandi by not pulling jobs in the same state in which they live. ross macdonald, in his 1951 novel the way some peo­ ple die, describes the sensibility of bart, laurie, and dozens like them who populate the era's films about violent youths: "there were thousands," the detective lew archer muses, "in my ten-thousand-square-mile beat: boys who had lost their futures, their parents and themselves in the shallow jerry-built streets of the coastal cities; boys with hot-rod bowels, comic-book imaginations, daring that grew up too late for one war, too early for another." macdonald's phrase "comic-book imaginations" is no throwaway descriptor, but one with deep period resonance. the senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency, established in 1953, turned its at­ tention to comic books the following year. after the war, as david hajdu documents in the tencent plague: the great comic-book scare and how it changed america, the comics had "shifted in tone and content. fed by the same streams as pulp fiction and film noir, many of the titles most prom­ inent in the late forties and early fifties told lurid stories of crime, vice, lust, and horror, rather than noble tales of cos­ tumed heroes and heroines ... whose exploits had initially established the comics genre in the late thirties and early forti wed l�j� limit. (ooe d n�hti l�\i'!, (feat) c·bo rr�m i�o\\' d �topp klan iden this mvel 1�eopl chao ci ate t� rerpo tone war, what is it good for? 211 forties." moreover, unlike hollywood, which labored under the built-in censorship of the production code, drafted in 1930 and enforced in 1934, the comic-book industry had no limits but the imaginations of its creators until it formed a code of its own in 1954. during the war, the comics were heavily engaged in fighting the axis. "comic books, an outlet for many young jews," hajdu explains, "were particularly zealous in their creative assault on fascism." superheroes, pictured battling u-boats as early as 1940, were some of the most prominent premature anti-fascists. a celebrated march 1941 cover showed captain america punching hitler on the nose. "af­ ter pearl harbor," hajdu notes, "almost every superhero stopped fighting traditional crime, abandoning murderers, kidnappers, and bank robbers to focus on saboteurs, spies, scientists working for the axis, and other domestic threats." this is the story told in michael chabon's the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay. this novel, published in 2000, looks back at the robust comic-book industry of the late 1930s and early 1940s, an industry catalyzed by the ap­ pearance of superman in june 1938, in the late-depression era "marketplace of ten-cent dreams: to express the lust for power and the gaudy sartorial taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves." comic books, chabon writes, "were kid stuff, pure and true, and they arrived at precisely the moment when the kids of america began, after ten years of terrible hardship, to find their pock­ ets burdened with the occasional superfluous dime." world war ii, however, gave comic-book heroes specific, grown-up monsters against which to fight. chabon's protagonists, jewish cousins joe and sam, cre­ ate the escapist, a comic-book hero whose eponymous su­ perpower reflects their own circumstances. joe has escaped to new york city from nazi-occupied europe through the 212 looking for the good war miraculous conveyance of a golem's coffin, while sam, whom polio has left with a limp and a small stature, yearns to escape his claustrophobic life and prospects and must conceal his homosexuality in a society that condemns it. the escapist is no exception to all those comic-book heroes who began, in the years leading up to america's entrance into the war, to unleash their righteous wrath on the axis powers. once the war ended, in the absence of a foreign enemy against whom to deploy their violence, comic books moved in the direction of brutality and horror. a brief scene in pit­ fall, a film discussed in chapter 3, shows the forbeses' young son tommy awakening from a nightmare his father thinks is caused by a comic book the boy had been reading before bed. estes kefauver's senatorial subcommittee investigation into the causes of "youth crime" turned its attention to com­ ics in earnest in 1954. the comics' archnemesis was fredric wertham, whose 1954 book seduction of the innocent helped inflame hysteria about the dangers of these publications. wertham, having begun his campaign in 1947, revved it up in the early 1950s and found in the committee an ideal au­ dience before which to air his concerns about young read­ ers who had no protection against "the corrupting influence of comic books which glamorize and advertise dangerous knives and the guns that can be converted into deadly weap­ ons." wertham warned not only of the domestic consump­ tion of comics but also of their proliferation, as an american export, throughout the impressionable world. robert war­ show, in a 1947 essay about his young son paul's fascination with the comics, suggested that wertham's proposed ban was impractical, his fixation on the medium "simple-minded." several factors, ranging from comics to "the unceasing clamor of television and the juke boxes," had combined to create what warshow regarded as a "juvenile underground" in which "numbers of children" existed, "out of touch with lne den r�hnem (rimina it i� \t!riou� i r1!ture� (ukated wnitem; r/jisec wnoll� � �1iief�, in�lvom �r toe s w�rkin� !((orain ilie �tabi wooft lee� the returni �ecame ��hter, movie �t wiumn, paul [mear; mrvive (omma )hi��1 �� americ ilm, go a� the the sta� iloooks york t . . war, what is it good for? 213 the demands of social responsibility, culture, and personal refinement" even if most of them didn't go "over the line into criminality." it is easy to ridicule wertham's attack on the comics on various grounds, but his critique illuminated some troubling features beyond simple violence. he believed the comics in­ culcated a kind of race prejudice: their heroes were always white men, their villains dark skinned. as jill lepore notes in the secret history of wonder woman, comics, far from being wholly subversive, actually underwrote certain establishment beliefs, induding the ambient societal disapproval regard­ ing women's presence in the postwar workforce. "by the end of the second world war, the number of american women working outside the home had grown by 60 percent," but, according to lepore, in peacetime "their labor ... threatened the stability of the nation, by undermining men . . . at the end of the war, three-quarters of working women hoped to keep their jobs," but most were dismissed to make way for returning servicemen. by the 1950s, wonder woman herself became "scarcely recognizable." once a formidable crime­ fighter, now "she became a babysitter, a fashion model, and a movie star ... the author of a lonely-hearts newspaper advice column." paul fussell points out that comic books were the pre­ ferred reading of many gis during the war, and the habit survived hostilities. in 1952 life reported, "the pacific fleet command has banned the sale of most war comic books in ships' stores on the grounds that they are too gory for the american sailor." naval censorship signaled a new puritan­ ism. government censorship didn't stop with comic books. as the cold war began and the red scare warmed up, the state department purged various magazines as well as "books by known communists or fellow-travelers," the new york times reported in 1953. books were removed from li214 looking for the good war braries in europe, north africa, south america, and mexico. among the casualties were the detective novels of dashiell hammett, including the maltese falcon, the dain curse, and the glass key. clearly, the political sympathies of the author mattered more than the content of a particular book. this was symptomatic of the worldview that had overtaken amer­ ican society (its youthful naivety challenged by war's baf­ fling ambiguities), which now seemed to be regressing into a childlike-one might say a comic-book-simplicity. in hammett's case, the purge involved powerful contra­ dictions. his involvement in left-wing political causes had begun with the spanish civil war and continued up until the time he was imprisoned in 1951-a five-month stretch that destroyed his health-for refusing to tell a federal judge where the civil rights congress bail fund got its money. hammett had enlisted during world war i and served state­ side with the motor ambulance corps until he contracted tuberculosis. when world war ii broke out, he was in his for­ ties. nevertheless, hoping to make up for his first war, which he finished out in tacoma, washington, drinking whiskey when he wasn't coughing blood, he tried to enlist again de­ spite bad teeth and the scars on his lungs. as diane johnson chronicles in dashiell hammett: a life (1983), he even agreed to have all his teeth pulled, and he ended up as a sergeant on adak island in the aleutians, editing the post newspa­ per, smoking chesterfields in a quonset hut, and reading karl marx, bram stoker, and the letters his partner, the play­ wright lillian hellman, sent from new york. when it was over, fed up, he dumped his gear in puget sound. the state department's removal of the maltese falcon and other of hammett's novels, all of which predated his left­ ist commitments, made no sense politically or aesthetically. it was hammett, after all, who had contributed as much as any­ one, through his creation of the detective sam spade, to the amen �avantl l��t) ( thl at! �1a cia� thai ma wit! astl tihe woi mo� the coro sign keepin! lonnel! i�r�er a tneimi thi qe�i�nel �erman tne oj (oafb tempte� travel ternatig militar 1�48) remo\'� war, what is it good for? 215 american ideal of hard-boiled heroism that was used to such advantage throughout the war. writing in the new yorker in 2002, claudia roth pierpont proposed, the noble renunciation of love for wartime principle at the end of "casablanca," made a year after "the maltese falcon," is unthinkable without spade's renun­ ciation of brigid for far less noble motives; the plane that takes ingrid bergman up, the elevator that takes mary astor down-both leave bogie conveniently alone with a buddy and his personal peace restored. there is a strange sort of justice in the fact that the truculent an­ tihero brought into existence by the traumas of the first world war should have provided the materials for the most swooningly romantic (if no less truculent) hero of the second, and hammett, in playing his part in this complex creation, performed a national service more significant than anything he did in the army. keeping hammett's novels from overseas diplomatic per­ sonnel and protecting sailors from the comics was part of a larger attempt to ferret out dangerous influences, wherever they might be. this campaign extended to the instructional material designed for personnel serving in new permanent or semi­ permanent outposts in europe, korea, japan, and elsewhere. the office of armed forces information and education (oafie), which produced the cold war-era guides, at­ tempted, as scott laderman writes in tours of vietnam: war_, travel guides, and memory, "to conjoin the pleasures of in­ ternational travel with the often painful realities of overseas military service." but laderman reports that as early as 1948, two congressional subcommittees were convening to remove evidence of pro-union sentiments and progressive stances on race from a publication called armed forces talk. ln� the the united states should not be referred to as a democracy, l�ran p one committee member insisted, but exclusively as a repub�n�bod lie. according to laderman, beginning in 1953, senator mell1an. joseph mccarthy, the crusading anticommunist who served (0 lead a as the chair of the committee on government operations tverjon of the senate and of its permanent subcommittee on invesn�rrenl tigations, was demanding the identity of the authors respon�major sible for various publications designed for overseas personnel. in)uuctl those in charge refused to name names; nevertheless, a new tion�,e� restraint prevailed within oafie. gone was the sophistic a1ndoftl tion and nuance of many of the wartime guides; by 1954, idoutte the booklets had become rather lifeless. they were written, ��emenl moreover, at an eighth-grade reading level. koreag tnelatte1 �erfunc1 the lml� sl 216 looking for the good war innocents abroad the cold war guides reveal the effects of these national growing pains in different ways while retaining some of their original spirit. a pocket guide to alaska (1951), the authors of which knew that the last frontier would seem a foreign country to many of the soldiers stationed there, reflects a new way of understanding the world bequeathed by the war so re­ cently ended: "the defense of alaska is a vital job. we don't want alaska's dutch harbor to become another 'pearl har­ bor'!" soldiers in europe were apparently no clearer on the significance of their assignments, and the guides to countries ranging from greece to korea emphasize the struggle raging between democracy and the forces of communism. these guides all express anxiety lest their readers "spoil" amer­ ica's good reputation among their various allies. like the wartime guides before them, there are repeated injunctions against hubris. "remember," reads a typical warning, "crossitatlone( in� bas� tolllmtj ll,ffiore recent ij l�r�ely � �ersons �ulde al l�nore� dooklet a sage � norst, hesse, france the u,� leans � war, what is it good for? 217 ing the water doesn't make you a hero." or, as the guide to japan puts it, "a conquering-hero complex isn't going to help anybody." the 1950 guide to korea gives the mission new messianic overtones: "the free nations of the world look to us to lead and guide them through these tense and trying days." everyone is "waiting," the authors insist, to see what will happen in the world, but "fortunately" the united states has a major role in shaping the future. the ambitious cultural instruction of the wartime guides disappears from later edi­ tions, even if a general spirit of discovery survives until the end of the guides' life cycle in the late 1980s, when warnings about terrorism become far more prominent than encour­ agements to tourism. a comparison of the 1950 and 1987 korea guides, for example, offers evidence of this trend, with the latter shrinking the extensive "sights to see" section to a perfunctory checklist. the political education provided in these guides is hope­ lessly simplistic, the history dangerously selective. soldiers stationed in germany are told in the 1951 guide that play­ ing baseball with german kids might well be the best way to illustrate the value of the "american way of life." there is, moreover, a dearth of information regarding germany's recent history. the millions who died at nazi hands go largely unremarked; even a paragraph on the many displaced persons the gi is likely to encounter in germany-and, the guide acknowledges, to find rather dirty and distasteful­ ignores what displaced them in the first place. indeed, the booklet provides more information on the fabulous auerhahn, a sage hen beloved of german hunters, than on the adler­ horst, or eagle's nest, hitler's military bunker complex in hesse. victor brombert, who had escaped from occupied france with his family and later returned as a member of the u. s. army, described the disdain with which the amer­ icans generally regarded displaced persons: "surviving jews 218 looking for the good war who had been freed from the concentration camps ... were treated like scum. nobody wanted them," brombert explains in his memoir trains of thought: from paris to omaha beach) memories of a wartime youth. "our own attitudes in the u.s. army were at best ambiguous. we claimed to be horrified by what the nazis had done, and to have come as rescuers. in reality, the notion that jews were cowards who managed to get soft jobs, or to stay out of the army altogether, and had pushed america into the war was not uncommon among the soldiers." the harrison report, compiled in august 1945 by the delegate sent by president truman to inspect the dis­ placed person camps, asserted: "we appear to be treating the jews as the nazis treated them, except that we do not exter­ minate them." the service member who found himself in japan, the rapid democratization of which was being superintended by macarthur, was informed that he was not simply an ambassa­ dor for but also "the salesman of democracy." this idea was satirized much earlier in harry brown's 1944 novel a walk in the sun in an exchange between two infantrymen marching through italy, which was retained in the eponymous film re­ leased the following year. rivera, who is tired of walking, tells friedman that it's a good thing traveling salesmen can take the train. "you're a traveling salesman," friedman tells him. "what do you mean, i'm a traveling salesman? i'm a mur­ derer," replies rivera. "you're a traveling salesman," fried­ man insists: "you're selling democracy to the natives." when rivera asks his buddy where he got "that crap," friedman tells him he read it in a book. the guide assures its readers that the emperor hirohito has been rehabilitated, a process detailed by the biographer herbert bix, and has learned how to behave "democratically." despite the general air of condescension toward the japanese, there is a recognition that the issue of the atom bomb requires )�ecia \�)o � of the coalto otherr in war overth waril revi)ed onl �o\'erru wanyl tnepoi countrl ameri� �i\lan joe for notion tnat th a�ia­ reople\ comm aivmij look at lorane a��res our al\ tnere rmisv longer bill an popul the at to alo --. . war, what is it good for? 219 special handling. the rather coy allusion to hiroshima in the 1950 version is less flippant in editions produced in the wake of the 1951 peace treaty: "a smaller city on the southern coast of honshu," teases the earlier guide, "is famous for an­ other reason-as the target of the first atomic bomb ever used in war. its name: hiroshima." also softened, or qualified, over the years is the injunction, carried over from the world war ii guides, to "be an american!" by 1952, this has been revised to "be a good american" (my emphasis). one of the more bizarre informational pamphlets the government published during this period is a pocket guide to anywhere (1953; reprinted 1956), at once a celebration of the postwar u. s. economic and security partnerships with countries throughout the world and a cautionary tale about american hubris. it features two fictional american soldiers, bill and joe, and an elaborate thought experiment crafted by joe for the benefit of bill, the most benighted of gis. the notion that one handbook can suit every destination suggests that the rest of the world-europe, south america, africa, asia-is pretty much the same. but that's precisely the point: peoples everywhere are alike in their commitment to fighting communism. it is a fight, the authors suggest, that transcends diversity of language, customs, religion, color: "any way you look at it this job of holding back red aggression is just too big for one nation." communism is now described as a "threat of aggression even worse than the one we got rid of when we and our allies licked the nazis and the japanese warlords." yet there are also contradictions. as the guide makes clear, the persistent presence of american defenders of freedom is no longer perceived as a boon throughout the rest of the world. bill and joe, once "welcomed warmly as allies by the native populace," have become uninvited guests: "as time went on the attitude of many of the people changed from friendliness to aloofness, sullen resentment or downright dislike." 220 looking for the good war it is bill's typically american complaint about ingratitudereade "you'd think they'd show some appreciation of what we're !1!,a doing for them"-that prompts joe to dispense some official ae!tro wisdom on behalf of his government. it takes the form of a lnalvl� parable about the mythical nation of "atlantis." first, he asks inwhl bill, "how would you like it if a lot of foreign soldiers were re!ent camped all over the united states?" but this is too great a leap for the rather dense bill, who is simply incapable of imagining the united states as anything but "the richest and most powerful country in the world." to stand in for the marshall plan, joe invents "atlantic aid." in his hypothetical scenario, the united states is forced to accept, along with various other humiliations and indignities, having troops stationed near bill's hometown, enduring their unintentionally obnoxious behavior, putting up with their inability to speak english, en­ vying them for being the "sharpest and best paid," and hav­ ing a huge stockpile of supplies available to them at the post exchange. worst of all, joe tells bill, "the first thing they'd do would be to make a play for our girls." when bill finally catches on, joe cautions him against all those offenses to which an occupying force is suscepti­ ble: exhibiting bad manners; criticizing the politics of their allies and asking why they put more money into social wel­ fare than into defense; telling their hosts who won the war and reminding them who continues to pay the bills; failing to understand other cultures, especially those of poor na­ tions that "have a high degree of civilization" and value other things over material prosperity. "remember," the reader is admonished, "that the shabby little man who shines shoes for a living may know the scores of half a dozen operas from overture to the final curtain." americans' bad behavior, joe explains, plays right into the hands of the communists. rich with comic illustrations, the guide to anywhere for the most part applies a light touch. but it also tries to impress upon its americ �) the war il inko, ameri intne tned a�ains] acorn! ana en archet\ tempt aavers olinde] with �ta�e, ni ar� rei i! inc' thei!] deco !tren� !tren� is tra placej war, what is it good for? 221 readers that they are on the front lines of an existential cri­ sis. a devious enemy is at work, the booklet warns, trying to destroy all those who believe in "the inborn dignity of every individual." it also displays a recognition of the various ways in which even well-intentioned protectors blunder and inspire resentment. american ironies by the spring of 1950, only five years after the end of world war ii, the united states was at war again. the fighting in korea would last for three years. in the midst of it, the american theologian and liberal activist reinhold niebuhr, in the irony ofamerican history, attempted to make sense of the united states' newfound role in the international struggle against communist aggression. robert warshow had drawn a comparison between the desperate optimism of democratic and communist societies in his 1948 essay on the gangster archetype. the sternly anticommunist niebuhr likewise at­ tempted to illuminate certain crucial similarities between adversaries-commonalities to which americans were blinded by their own history as well as by the suddenness with which the country had been catapulted onto the world stage. niebuhr's definition of irony sets the stage for a caution­ ary reading of the cold war standoff. a comic circumstance is incongruous, he explains, but the comic turns ironic if the incongruity reveals a deeper transformation-"if virtue becomes vice through some hidden defect in the virtue; if strength becomes weakness because of the vanity to which strength may prompt the mighty man or nation; if security is transmuted into insecurity because too much reliance is placed upon it; if wisdom becomes folly because it does not 222 looking for the good war know its own limits." when incongruities are recognized but not remedied, niebuhr goes on to argue, irony turns to malevolence. he believed that such a transformation had already occurred in the evolution of communism, which of­ fered a mirror to the united states and which worked to con­ ceal the disjunction between the ideal and the real by trying "to prove its tyranny to be 'democracy' and its imperialism to be the achievement of universal peace." it was not yet too late for the united states. the cruelty of the soviet regime, he argued, was rooted in the communist presumption of being able to determine history, when only hubris could lead anyone to imagine that history's long and broad drama was subject to human management. niebuhr, the theologian, was thinking of god; other worldviews might well have substituted chance, histor­ ical forces, or the laws of physics. niebuhr feared that the united states was vulnerable to the same mistake the soviets had made, and to the "moral complacency" that justifies doubtful "means" by ostensibly virtuous "ends." the united states, for its part, was thus involved in a "double irony": in the soviet union it faced dangers that seemed wholly alien but were in fact "distilled from illusions, not generically dif­ ferent from our own." in failing to discern a cautionary tale in its adversary, the united states remained blind to its own precarity. in niebuhr's eyes, several factors complicated the united states' assumption of global preeminence, among them american culture's ambivalent attitude toward power. no country, he argued, had been more hesitant to own its pre­ eminent position in the world than the united states-there was no "strong lust of power"-but a faith in our own inno­ cence had left us "ill prepared to deal with the temptations of power." moreover, once acquired, a global responsibility founded on a combination of virtue and self-interest proved iocie iol) arne trace a� o. oe�i ana � jeffel �ew �rop1 expl� illu�l\ inter nieb an e waf] �efill mof lowi that ackn ai�a facts and dev situl the war, what is it good for? 223 no guarantor of "ease, comfort, or prosperity," but instead produced endless "vexations." this discomfort infuses a pocket guide to anywhere, which combines idealism about american power with a frustration about how the rest of the world understands it. american innocence-a faith in the essential virtue of our society that makes any critique evidence of ill will-is argu­ ably one of the most important ideas explored in the irony of american history. as niebuhr outlines, the concept can be traced back to jefferson's view of an edenic american origin, as opposed to john adams's recognition that no political beginning can entirely shed the innate corruptions of power and ambition. taking advantage of geographic isolation, the jeffersonian outlook exaggerated the break between old and new worlds in a way that subsequent mythographers and proponents of american exceptionalism would continue to exploit. when the first world war momentarily ended the illusion of isolation, woodrow wilson cannily framed u.s. intervention as making "the world safe for democracy." niebuhr insists that this was not merely sanctimonious, but an expression of a "moral paradox": nations decline "to go to war unless it can be proved that the national interest is im­ periled," but persist "only by proving that something much more ... is at stake." niebuhr attributes the isolationism fol­ lowing the first world war to some glimmering recognition that there can be no guiltless exercise of power. yet he also acknowledges that the isolationists failed to see the truth that disavowing responsibility does not save one from guilt. world war ii confronted the united states with the facts that true security was impossible in a dangerous world and that the kind of life that would be purchased by nuclear devastation could never be worth the price. the postwar situation challenged the united states to see itself the way the rest of the world did and to respond to global resentments with something more than tocqueville's "garrulous �eol patriotism." crucially, global engagement called into queskne tion the fundamentally optimistic, comic american vision of \nl� life and history, as well as our faith "in happiness as the end relel of life, and in prosperity" as the foundation for that "happiness." those "tragic vicissitudes of history," so familiar to europeans, were heretofore alien to americans, whose idealism made them not only "certain that there is a straight path toward the goal of human happiness" but also "blind to the curious compounds of good and evil in which the actions of the best men and nations abound." stubborn idealism always comes at a price: namely, an intolerance of complexity, compromise, and ambiguity. thus it was left to another national incongruity-a furtive pragmatism that tempered our idealistic quest for neat and happy endings-that might, in niebuhr's view, save us in a nuclear world from "bringing our destiny to a tragic conclusion by seeking to bring it to a neat and logical one." 224 looking for the good war the forgotten war one of the most important casualties of the cold war was, in niebuhr's view, the liberal faith in the individual: not only had hundreds of thousands of americans been killed in world war ii, but many more found themselves in ko­ rea, despite being "promised the 'pursuit of happiness' as an inalienable right." that's essentially the complaint of navy lieutenant harry brubaker in james a. michener's 1953 novel the bridges at toko-ri. when an admiral asks brubaker why he doesn't stay in the navy, where he might have a "great fu­ ture," brubaker responds with bitterness: "you know what i think of the navy, sir . . . sometimes i'm so bitter i could bitch up the works on purpose ... it would be easier to take if inl oak \va lar� l� n lt�e ita "f war, what is it good for? 225 people back home were helping. but in denver nobody even knew there was a war on except my wife. nobody supports this war." the film, starring william holden as brubaker and released the following year, was expansive in its bitterness: brubaker: the organized reserves were drawing pay but weren't called up. i was inactive and yet i was. i had to give up my home, my law practice, ev­ erything. i'm still bitter ... admiral: ... the progress this world has made has always been because of the efforts and sacrifices of a few. brubaker: i was one of the few at new guinea, leyte, okinawa. why me again? admiral: nobody knows why he gets the dirty job. and this is a dirty job. militarily, this war is a tragedy. brubaker: we ought to pull out. admiral: now that's rubbish, son, and you know it. if we did, they'd take japan, indochina, the philippines. where'd you have us make our stand, the mississippi? all through history men have had to fight the "wrong war" in the "wrong place," but that's the one they're stuck with. in response to the platitudes about duty and sacrifice, bru­ baker reminds the admiral of his previous sacrifices in world war ii, and his anger also owes to the fact that the war is largely ignored by those at home. the admiral's perspective is more complicated and contradictory. he regards the war itself as somehow compromised and tragic even as he deems it a necessary response to aggression. it has become a commonplace to call korea america's "forgotten war." in a book devoted at least in part to the 226 looking for the good war consequences of collective amnesia, it is worthwhile exam­ ining more precisely the nature of this forgetfulness. the body of literature that emerged from it, including michener's toko-ri and james salter's the hunters, was small and un­ heralded in comparison with the world war ii-era novels of norman mailer, james jones, joseph heller, and kurt von­ negut. world war ii continued to generate fiction and mem­ oir over the decades. to write about the korean war was, in a sense, to ignore the earthquake in favor of the aftershock. one of the characters in salter's novel captures this inherent belatedness: "abbott had been a hero once, in europe in an­ other war, but the years had worked an irreversible chemistry. he was heavier now, older, and somewhere along the way he had run out of compulsion. everyone in the wing knew it." perhaps no author more effectively captured the idea of korea as belated and unremembered than william styron, whose fiction about the conflict is always set at stateside bases rather than in korea itself. styron joined the marines in world war ii and was slated to join the invasion of japan when the dropping of the atomic bombs ended the war. he was called up again when the korean war broke out, trained at camp lejeune, and finally discharged for medical reasons without going to war. the fiction and nonfiction (the latter largely in the form of book reviews) styron devoted to military life relies heavily on autobiography and is uniformly infused with at once a respect for the profession of arms-"i have never regarded the military profession as a villainous calling"-and a recognition of the ways in which military life can deform the individual. in a profile of styron in the guardian, the journalist james campbell contrasts styron's war writing with that of mailer and jones, "who, while exposing the bru­ tality of battle, did so in such a way as to aggrandise it." styron resists any celebration of the mysteries only the soldier knows and the seductive powers of brutality that �� i ith �u\ eu) ivl hi� th war, what is it good for? 227 so many authors manage at once to deplore and to glorify. there is nothing grand about war or a soldier's preparation for it in the long march, a 1952 novella that chronicles the fate of a group of out-of-shape reservists embarked on a field problem in the north carolina woods. the scenario might have been the occasion for comedy-even of the coruscating kind that characterizes in the clap shack, styron's play about a marine hospital vd ward-but the novella opens with the accidental killing of eight marines by a short artillery round, ammunition left over from the last war. lieutenant culver, through whose eyes events unfold, has survived okinawa but is wholly unprepared for witnessing such carnage at a field exercise. like abbott, the pilot in salter's the hunters, cul­ ver is superannuated, and he is frightened. a kind of rip van winkle, he feels "as if he had fallen asleep in some barracks in 1945 and had awakened . . . to find that the intervening freedom, growth, and serenity had been only a glorious if somewhat prolonged dream." like michener's brubaker, he is resentful because he had repressed the war-pushed it from "his mind entirely"-before he was recalled to duty. but war refuses to be consigned neatly to oblivion, and thus culver finds himself in the woods. in the wake of the fatal accident, the regular officer in charge of the battalion, colonel templeton, opts to carryon with the field exercise as planned. culver is disgusted, as is his friend captain mannix, another reservist who, like cul­ ver, bears the scars of his service in world war ii and has had to give up his civilian occupation and leave his wife and children behind. mannix's bitter humor expresses the sense of "futility and isolation" culver shares. at the conclusion of the field exercise, templeton orders a thirty-six-mile march back to base. the march is entirely punitive. "'reluctantly,' the colonel went on slowly, 'reluctantly, i came to this con­ clusion: the battalion's been doping off.'" in truth, the battal228 looking for the good war ion, especially the headquarters company of which mannix is in charge, is entirely unprepared. "even without packs a� thirty-six miles is a long way for anybody," mannix tells the colonel, "much less for guys who've gone soft." to mannix's reminder that his men are mostly in the reserves, the colonel ui gives a reply that reveals his philosophy in a nutshell: "but they aren't reserves. they're marines. comprend?" �( this exchange transforms mannix's bitterness into a seethtn ing, self-destructive rage. with a vengeful tyranny that feels as tn if it could have come out of an ambrose bierce story, mannix 0, marches most of the way with a nail in his foot from a defective boot, yet he refuses to let any of the men of headquarters company fall out. the long night march becomes a test of wills, especially after mannix learns that the colonel has gone to check on the back of the column in a jeep. in mannix, culver now sees a "great bear cornered, bloody and torn by a foe whose tactics were no braver than his own, but simply more cunning." mannix, whose foot becomes so raw and swollen that he can put almost no weight on it, carries on regardless. ej more than once he refuses the colonel's suggestion that he tn get into one of the trucks. eventually, in his insistence that he is going to march the rest of the way, he grows so insubordinate that templeton actually reaches for his sidearm: "the colonel had made a curious, quick gesture-stage-gesture, fantastic and subtle, and it was like watching an old cowboy film to see the colonel's hand go swiftly back to the handle of his pistol and rest there, his eyes cool and passionate and forbidding. it was a gesture of force which balked even the captain." the colonel then informs mannix that after the march he will have him court-martialed and sent to korea. the long march unspools a series of betrayals-of the body and the spirit but also of a deeper, more pervasive kind. culver thinks of their service as a kind of bondage in which they are periodically victimized by the heartless technolowar, what is it good for? 229 gies of warfare. the catastrophic, deeply ironic betrayal that dooms mannix, however, derives from the fact that he is as much a marine, as deeply indoctrinated, as the colonel he despises. neither has retained sufficient "free will" to give up, or give in. culver understands this about himself as well and brings himself almost to tears by contemplating their permanent condition-"marines forever." then his horrified thoughts turn to his friend: "mannix was so much a marine that it could make him casually demented. the corruption begun years ago in his drill-field feet had climbed up, over­ taken him, and had begun to rot his brain." styron's own connection to the military began in his youth. his family's tradition of military service helped to instill in him what he called a "suicidal bravado" that prompted him to enlist in the marine corps, in which he served proudly, for a time. his ardor quickly cooled as he progressed through combat training, but he remained glad for the "experience ... if only because of the way it tested my endurance and my capacity for sheer misery, physical and of the spirit. if the ordeal caused me to loathe war utterly," he writes in the introduction to a collection of some of his non­ fiction on military subjects, "it also has allowed me to take quick offense at any easily expressed contempt for men who dedicate themselves to fighting our battles." the cost of such dedication is the great theme of styron's war writing. nowhere is this clearer than in his posthumously published short story collection the suicide run. combat is the crucible that redeems countless ambivalent protagonists of autobiographical and fictional war stories-from ulysses s. grant to henry fleming in the red badge of courage, from aeneas to the vietnam veteran tim o'brien. readers of the literature of war are conditioned to wait for the moment when the soldier's anticipation becomes the lived experience in which even the most emphatic antiwar voices tend to 10cate their authority. the suicide run is different: these stories ten are all anticipation. written over a span of decades, these five no tales about the marine corps during world war ii and korea er, derive their force from the absence of battle. styron prefers lor narrators who have missed the test of combat. like stingo lei! in styron's celebrated novel sophie's choice, paul whitehurst, al( the narrator of "my father's house," the collection's longest ten story, arrives in the pacific too late to see action in world fa war ii. like styron, the narrator of "marriott, the marine" tri1 and the title story is recalled to active duty in 1951, but never rei makes it to korea. when stingo is confronted early in sophie's choice with the story of eddie farrell's death on oki230 looking for the good war nawa, he confesses, "i could never get over the feeling that i had been deprived of something terrible and magnificent." in "my father's house," paul is plagued by "survivor's guilt" and intoxicated by his "unheroic though spellbinding escape from death." he has no similar appreciation for war's terrible beauty. in darkness visible, a memoir for which he would become unwillingly celebrated for his frank treatment of psychological pain, styron called depressives "the walk­ ing wounded." the term seems applicable to paul's com­ pulsive revisiting of something described elsewhere in the collection as "the persistent ache of my dread." the suicide run relentlessly unravels a skein of "intricately intertwined fears" explored in the collection's only previously unpub­ lished piece, "elobey, annob6n, and corisco." "i found myself in a conft.ict i had never anticipated," the narrator confesses: "afraid of going into battle, yet even more afraid of betraying my fear, which would be an ugly prelude to the most harrowing fear of all-that when forced to the test in combat i would demonstrate my absolute terror, fall apart, and fail my fellow marines." styron's narrators know that "real fear" is something that can never be shared but must be endured alone, even within the marines' closed and "rnys001 ael 1)'1 n le� noi of ffil 101 lie fr tn na th war, what is it good for? 231 terious community of men." in "my father's house," back home in virginia, paul whitehurst eases "the racking mis­ ery" remembered from his time on saipan-where he waited for the unconsummated invasion of]apan-by drinking him­ self into what tidewater virginians call a "high lonesome." alcohol, sexual release, and physical exhaustion provide only temporary relief for a marine's "pitiless anxiety." both "my father's house" and the title story's account of a reckless car trip dramatize the suicidal desire styron acknowledged as "a persistent theme" in his work. the perspective of the loner-the participant-observer in a culture he finds at once fascinating and repulsive­ dominates this collection and produces some especially fine descriptions of the military's "athletic ballet": the "almost synchronous motion" of men firing mortars, for example. this stance also yields complex characterizations of career marines, members of a "small elite fellowship." in some ways its most authentic member is happy halloran, paul's char­ ismatic battalion commander, a pure warrior. "the single feature that made tolerable my vision of d-day," paul an­ nounces, "was having happy halloran lead me into the jaws of death." halloran displays a plausible combination of phys­ ical toughness, insouciance, intuitive authority, and hammy sentimentality, but he appeals to paul primarily because he is "always playfully challenging the system." nevertheless, most of styron's marines are irrevocably coarsened, de­ formed, or brutalized by that system. even the eponymous lieutenant colonel of "marriott, the marine," with his fluent french and love of flaubert, finally reveals himself bound, as thoroughly as mannix, to "the old corps" by sacred ties the narrator cannot share. even when edged with disappointment or pity, however, these portraits are scrupulously drawn. in the eyes of the marooned colonel wilhoite-who, having missed out on 232 looking for the good war the war, commands the east river island prison that is the 1944 setting for "blankenship"-can be discerned "spec­ ters of battles unseen and medals unwon and the slow final ooze of unlaureled retirement." the story's title character, charles blankenship, is a warrant officer in charge of the blockhouse where the most recalcitrant inmates are held. he may be the book's most illuminating character. saddled with an ineffectual superior, blankenship has a finely cali­ brated sense of his own abilities. a hero at guadalcanal who shuns "swagger or parade," he is governed by "a calm and unshakable sense of order." blankenship anticipates the pe­ riodic crises that violate this sense with the dutiful devotion and "tranquil, fierce patience of a communicant awaiting the moment of passion." yet even this disciplined "sober profes­ sional," provoked by an intransigent prisoner named mcfee, reveals his ultimate contamination by the "humiliating bag­ gage" of the military "caste system" when his discipline and restraint give way in a moment reminiscent of the saintly billy's almost involuntary striking of claggart in melville's billy budd. blankenship, briefly "unhinged," clubs the prisoner, who, even as he slumps to the floor, tells blankenship he, not mcfee, is the real "yardbird." "blankenship" literalizes the relationship between military service and imprisonment ar­ ticulated in "marriott, the marine," in which the narrator likens his emotions on returning to duty during the korean conflict to "those of an ex-convict who has savored the sweet taste of liberty only to find himself once more a transgressor at the prison gates." like the long march, the suicide run confines itself largely to the damage done to men beyond the battlefield proper-to those who must dwell perpetually in anticipation of the horrors to come. styron's understanding of the cruel insularity and sheer drudgery of long passages of military life prevents him from according to soldiers the kind of hero ii� in 01 a, � war, what is it good for? 233 worship at the root of america's response to war. in a review of general douglas macarthur's reminiscences, styron bril­ liantly captures macarthur's attitude and its roots in a desire "to transform the drab reality of american military life into something as rich and as mythic as medieval knighthood." in macarthur's career, and in his shamelessly nostalgic rhetoric about the days of battle, styron perceives not patriotism, but a very different allegiance. most military professionals, he argues, far from corresponding to the liberal cliche of the su­ perpatriot, are in fact totally lacking in patriotism. they are not unpatriotic; they simply do not understand or care what patriotism is. most of them ... are spiritu­ ally bound to a service, not a country, and the homage they pay to old glory they could pay to anyone's flag. a true military man is a mercenary ... and it is within the world of soldiering that he finds his only home. this is why macarthur . . . was able to become the very archetype of an expatriate, hostile to america and understanding almost nothing of it. this is also one of the reasons why ... he found it so easy to defy civil­ ian authority; what did these secretaries of the army and fussy presidents ... know about the service, which transcends all? in few instances, perhaps, does the soldier's spiritual bond to the service take the monastic and extreme form it did in macarthur's case, and few have the opportunity to display it at such senior levels of command. but styron's portrait of macarthur as "a hopeless romantic" distills the kind of devotion to military service felt by many. it works to abstract military enterprise from its political context. a similar dynamic can be seen in sanford friedman's 234 looking for the good war totempole. corporal stephen wolfe, the novel's protagonist, arrives in korea fresh from college to be greeted by his com­ mander, colonel clayborn, who explains the situation to him as follows: i see from your records that you're a college man. fine, fine. that makes what i'm about to say a whole lot easier for both of us. i think by now it should be obvious­ even to a child-that this entire confiagration-i'm speakin' of korea now-has nothin' whatsoever to do with war-at least as far as i understand the meanin' of the word ... what's happenin' at panmunjom, what's happenin' right here-just outside the window there ... is somethin' i call politics. and politics, whatever you may think, will never be as honorable as war. even though the violence is just as deadly as that of "war," clayborn believes that events in korea are something else, and by insisting that they are "politics," he imagines that it is somehow possible to fight an ideal form of war, beyond poli­ tics, and that there the highest kind of honor might be found. signally, one of the emblematic stories of korea turns out to be that of the lost platoon, which dramatizes the divorce of action from context through an exclusive focus on a small group of men who are fearful, isolated, apparently forgotten by the larger war. jeanine basinger offers a comprehensive history of the subgenre of war films about lost patrols in the world war ii combat film: anatomy of a genre. she also calls attention to "a harsh new cynicism" emergent in some films of the korean war, which otherwise share many attributes of their world war ii predecessors. two of them, the steel helmet (1951) and men in war (1957), present stories of lost patrols with a similar cynicism. they depict depleted pla­ toons that have been separated from larger commands. the 110\ \\'a1 in� ori \\'hl ��j da� the aiel tol lit� thr are fil kil ru war, what is it good for? 235 isolation is absolute in men in war, which it is possible to watch without knowing precisely where or why the war is be­ ing fought. the film opens on a shattered landscape: smoke drifts across the screen, periodically obscuring the view. the whole world is reduced to a small valley, in which soldiers, several of them looking despondent, even shocked, watch and wait. the men in the platoon, commanded by lieutenant benson (robert ryan), have, as david thomson writes, "no backstory, and little chance of a future. they are figures" in the director's "beautiful landscape photography." the sol­ diers exist only in this moment in this valley, under orders to take hill 465 yet unable to communicate their desperate situation to battalion. when they finally reach the hill after a harrowing march through open country and a treacherously beautiful wood seeded with mines, benson decides to attempt the hill with his undermanned platoon. when riordan (phillip pine), his radio operator, tells him he's going to try to raise bat­ talion on the radio, the lieutenant replies, "well, battalion doesn't exist. regiment doesn't exist. command headquar­ ters doesn't exist. the usa doesn't exist. they don't exist, riordan, we'll never see 'em again." only three men survive the battle: benson, riordan, and sergeant montana (aldo ray), whose uncompromising way of making war has been juxtaposed throughout the march with benson's courageous and humane approach. along the way, montana shoots a prisoner who turns out to have a pistol concealed in his cap; once they arrive at hill 465, he opens fire on some uniden­ tified soldiers who are shouting in english. disregarding the rules of war, montana follows only his instincts, which are to mistrust everyone. this behavior repeatedly brings him into conflict with benson, who confronts him after he kills the unidentified soldiers, who turn out to be the enemy, running downhill toward them: 236 looking for the good war benson: you're right montana. you're always right. how did you know? montana: i knew. benson: you couldn't see their faces. montana: i can smell 'em. benson: but you couldn't see their faces. the sun was behind their back. i couldn't see their faces. montana: so what! i was right! wasn't i? benson: they might have been three americans. montana: you're not sure, shoot first or die first! �an col ru! re� n�u j�r i lot iit\ at 1 lot in the end, montana, the atavistic survivalist, assisted by jou benson, takes the hill by immolating the enemy's remaining uen machine-gun nest with a flamethrower. the survivors then too fall asleep from exhaustion and awaken in the morning to the �0!1 sounds of an approaching american column. 10�! the only significant allusion to causes in the steel helmet wltl is made by a captured enemy officer, identified simply as "the �[ru red" (harold fong), who attempts to persuade each member (an of an american platoon of the injustices perpetrated by their ultl! own government. one target is the japanese american solare dier assigned to guard him. typical of hollywood casting, oo� in which all asians were interchangeable, sergeant tanaka vlcij is played by richard loo, an american of chinese descent mc born in hawaii. when the red chastises him for being a fool to fight for a country that interned his family during world war ii, tanaka dismisses his adversary as a "sloppy ... con artist." the red carries on regardless, telling tanaka, "they call you dirty jap rats, and yet you fight for them. why?" re­ vealing himself to have been a proud member of the 442nd combat team in world war ii, tanaka replies, "over three thousand of us idiots got the purple heart ... i'm not a dirty jap rat. i'm an american. and if we get pushed around back les th� md nan afq home, well, that's our business." the' war, what is it good for? 237 tanaka is actually the second target of the red's propa­ ganda campaign. the first is an african american medic, corporal thompson (james edwards), who is bandaging his enemy's wounds. "you can't eat with" white men, the red needles him, "unless there's a war. even then, it's dif­ ficult. isn't that so?" thompson agrees that it is. the ma­ jor continues: "you pay for a ticket, but you even have to sit in the back of a public bus." thompson responds calmly, "that's right. a hundred years ago i couldn't even ride a bus. at least now i can sit in the back. maybe in fifty years sit in the middle, someday even up front. there's some things you just can't rush, buster." expressing an inexhaustible pa­ tience that flatters white audiences, thompson also refuses to buy what the red is selling. the movie attempts to ex­ pose certain fundamental racial injustices within american society-injustices, for the most part, faithfully mirrored within military culture-yet puts the criticism in the mouth of an enemy officer trying to sow division among his ameri­ can captors. samuel fuller's film thus stops short, its critique ultimately muted by the fact that the victims of the injustice are depicted as long-suffering but staunchly loyal. acquiring nobility through their endurance, tanaka and thompson are victims of discrimination who will not discomfit movie audi­ ences unduly. les enfants perdus the story of race-in particular of racial injustice against african americans-is inextricably intertwined with the narrative of war throughout the history of the united states. african american soldiers were promised political equality in the revolution, when the british offered enslaved men their freedom if they would fight as loyalists, and again in 238 looking for the good war the civil war, in which both sides, equally steeped in the western tradition's linking of military service with citizen­ ship, saw african american participation as a guarantor of civil rights. the confederacy did not want slaves to serve as soldiers precisely because they recognized that such service would constitute an argument for their humanity and citizen­ ship. almost every history of the african american military experience begins by quoting frederick douglass's 1863 en­ dorsement of the campaign for black enlistment in the fed­ eral army. "once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters us, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket," douglass proclaimed, "and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizen­ ship in the united states." after the civil war, however, the promise of full political equality was betrayed, as it would be again after world war 1. in the wake of the first world war, paul laurence dunbar reflected in his poem "the colored soldiers" on the still-withheld recompense for african amer­ ican sacrifice: "they were comrades then and brothers, / are they more or less to-day?" the issue of race-and racial tension-is broached at the very beginning of the steel helmet. in addition to the casual racism of american soldiers toward koreans and chinese, the relationship between the black corporal thompson and a crude and crusty white sergeant named zack (gene evans) is characterized by a complex mixture of solidarity and sus­ picion. both having been separated from their units for one reason or another, thompson and zack meet up in the middle of the woods. fed up with amateurs, they recognize in each other an old hand: zack: so you were in the last one too, huh? ... red ball express? ino nln tf) tn inti litel lull io� tne vo� iof mo ora wei ho mil ai . . war, what is it good for? 239 thompson: yeah. till they asked for volunteers for a rift.e outfit. zack: yeah, that was to prove you guys could shoot besides drive trucks. i remember ... did you stay in after the last one? thompson: no. went back to school. gi bill. zack: oh, yeah? go to paris? paint any of them pictures? thompson: nah. took up surgery. zack: yeah? where? in a butcher shop? thompson: you must have been hit in the mouth. zack: yeah. d-day. normandy. by an 88. half my back i'm wearing on my face. zack's ridicule of the veteran studying art on the gi bill is incidental, but the idea was in the air. vincente minnelli's mu­ sical an american in paris, released the same year as fuller's film, stars gene kelly as jerry mulligan, an ex-gi who is trying to build a career as a painter in the french capital. the real import of the exchange is racial. zack chooses to interpret thompson's crack about being "hit in the mouth" literally, but thompson is of course responding to zack's in­ sult about taking up surgery. yet zack does have a grudg­ ing respect for thompson's combat service. as a member of the red ball express during world war ii, thompson con­ voyed supplies along a treacherous seven-hundred-mile route for patton's third army in its swift advance across europe. most african american soldiers were assigned to support branches such as the transportation corps because they were not trusted to serve in combat roles. in the double v how wars) protest) and harry truman desegregated america's military rawn james jr. calculates that in 1942, when the army badly needed infantrymen, "75 percent of the army's african american soldiers were assigned to labor battalions." 240 looking for the good war seventy-five percent of those who drove the red ball express were african american. zack's comment thus strikes at the heart of the army's policy toward black soldiers. during world war i, faced with the prospect of menial labor, highly trained african american units who wanted to fight were eventually assigned to the french army, which willingly employed them as combat troops. the french re­ ferred to these soldiers as les enfants perdus, or the lost chil­ dren. during world war ii, black soldiers continued to be disproportionately assigned to labor battalions, segregated from the rest of the force, given inferior facilities, commanded by white men, and subjected to judicial and extrajudicial vi­ olence abroad and at home, especially in the south. even in the 1940s, the service's philosophy on race was largely con­ sistent with a 1925 study prepared by the army war college for the chief of staff on the "employment of negro man power in war," an unambiguously racist document that baldly as­ serted the inferiority of african american intellect and char­ acter. "in the process of evolution," its authors declared, "the american negro has not progressed as far as the other sub­ species of the human family." the navy employed black sailors exclusively as cooks and stewards. in his memoir crossing the line, alvin kernan, who joined the navy just before the outbreak of war in 1940, de­ scribes naval culture as "covertly anti-semitic and openly racist ... it was a lily-white navy that never gave its racism a thought." meanwhile, the marine corps refused to admit black americans at all-the commandant insisting that afri­ can americans had no "right" to be marines-until ordered to do so in 1942. the largest service, the army, was referred to at the time, and for years after the war, as the "jim crow army" because of its policies and procedures. a 1944 war department pamphlet, command of negro troops, marked an advance over the 1925 study in its attribution of certain ol� ana oom lor 0 offi io� �ele\ tne, 01 t� aoa1 ooivi torll oelerl row! lan�\ ulln� o)tn "dou encol neou� inju! marc) exec oa�i� ai�cn lrle� origil lion! --. . / � war, what is it good for? 241 disparities between white and black soldiers in test scores and other performance measures to educational, socioeco­ nomic, and other external factors. nevertheless, this guide for commanding black soldiers, a job still left largely to white officers, delegated decisions regarding discipline and train­ ing to local commanders, even as it acknowledged that the selective service act prohibited "racial discrimination in the selection and training of men for military duty." most of the largest army installations were located in the south, and appeals to military necessity, from george marshall on down, could always be used to justify existing discrimina­ tory policies. the military is not, more than one official has defensively proclaimed over the years, a sociological experi­ ment. although no prudent commander would employ such language regarding race today, many have had no difficulty in using it to express their resistance to full equality for female, gay, and transgender soldiers. military culture quite naturally reflected the racist atti­ tudes and policies of the rest of the country. it was the defense industry's refusal to hire african americans that inspired the "double v" campaign, launched on february 7, 1942, by the pittsburgh courier, an african american newspaper. "double v" stood for victory abroad and at home. the paper encouraged black participation in the war effort while simulta­ neously demanding full civil rights and an end to segregation. in june 1941, the labor leader a. philip randolph's threatened march on washington impelled president roosevelt to issue executive order 8802, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity in the workplace: "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense indus­ tries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." the order did not prevent segregation, however. chester himes, perhaps best known for his detective fic­ tion set in harlem, documented the rampant racism of a long 242 looking for the good war beach_, california, shipyard in his 1945 novel if he hollers let him go. the novel depicts life among african american defense workers, segregated on the ships they are refitting, denied promotion and supervisory roles despite their skill and technical expertise, deeply ambivalent, as a result of their mistreatment, about the war effort itself. himes's wartime home front is riven by hatred and mistrust. bob jones is a skilled black ship worker who runs afoul of the system. the novel opens with jones's recognition of the "crazy, wild-eyed, unleashed hatred that the first j ap bomb on pearl harbour let loose." he feels in this climate as if he must look "yellow," too, and his sense of himself as the enemy infuses the entire novel. ultimately, bob is forced to take refuge in the city's little tokyo, emptied by the authorities and since taken over by the city's other disenfranchised minorities. everything, to bob, is racialized, even his commute to the shipyards. the racial tensions in los angeles involved latinos as well, and the novel alludes to the zoot suit riots, sparked when white servicemen attacked latino civilians. gis_, bob notes, "were always hostile towards a jodie," the term for a man not in uniform, "especially a black jodie in his fine jodie clothes." there was an uptick in racial violence throughout the country during the war. in 1942 alone, as james notes in the double v, there were more than 240 ri­ ots and racial incidents across the country, from harlem to los angeles, mobile to detroit. in "notes of a native son," published in 1955_, james baldwin describes the particular tension in harlem during the war: "it would have demanded an unquestionable patriotism, happily as uncommon in this country as it is undesirable, for these people not to have been disturbed by the bitter letters they received, by the newspaper stories they read, not to have been enraged by the posters, then to be found all over new york, which described the jap­ anese as 'yellow-bellied japs.'" �al un (fie ad thr jec m the thel abl cow wit� l'nij line mel \\,ar\ rare nom reo u�eo war, what is it good for? 243 bob jones and his fellow ship workers in if he hollers re­ gard the war exclusively as "the white man's war." when bob first gets in trouble at the shipyard, it is by no means clear that the union will defend him. without his protected status as a defense worker-something the management is not above threatening to remove to ensure compliance-he will be sub­ ject to the draft. during one of their shifts his coworkers dis­ cuss what it might mean to join the army. if a black man "refuses to go," states a man named ben, "they send him to the pen. but if he does go and take what they put on him, and then fight so he can keep on taking it, he's a cowardly son of a bitch." a fellow worker named smitty challenges ben: "you can't call coloured soldiers cowards, man. they can't keep the army from being like what it is, but hell, they ain't no cowards." but ben remains unconvinced: "any time a negro says he believes in democracy but won't die to enforce it­ i say he's a coward ... if bob lets them put him in the army he's a coward ... as long as the army is jim crowed a negro who fights in it is fighting against himself." the men's political discussions have something in common with the contemporaneous communist pamphlet jimcrow in uniform, by claudia jones. the american communist party line was antiwar until hitler violated his pact with stalin, but the resistance to war and military service in the african amer­ ican community went far beyond the party. the historical roots are anatomized in "a negro looks at this war," an article in the american mercury, in which the educator j. saunders redding's 1942 meditates on african american attitudes to­ ward military heroism. wars belonged to "white folks," his parents told him. they were engaged in a different kind of struggle: "a fierce, bitter, soul-searing war of spiritual and eco­ nomic attrition." redding traced their cynicism about white people's wars back to his grandmother, a former slave who used to tell her grandchildren a civil war story about her mas244 looking fuk ihe good war ter's son: "an' he done som'pin big an' brave away down dere to chickymorgy [chickamauga] an' dey made a iron image of him 'cause he got his head blowed off an' his stomick blowed out fightin' to keep his slaves." this "iron image" of one man who died "to keep his slaves" stands in for the thousands of statues and plaques throughout the country that perpetuate a carefully engineered lie, one both north and south were complicit in propounding: namely, that the civil war, now safely in o( the past, amounted to a battle between honorable white brotho� ers now reconciled. many of bob jones's ambitions are conventionally amer­ ican: he dreams of owning a house with a victory garden, of becoming a lawyer and taking his place in society. but when he is wrongly accused of attacking a white woman, he must qj go on the run, and his belief that "the whole structure of of american thought" is against him is confirmed. the novel �� is punctuated by jones's serial nightmares, which eventually ml turn real as he is hunted by the police. in his final dream, m he is tracked by a psychotic marine sergeant with a chestful ilrl of decorations who boasts that he has committed all sorts of (hi crimes, except, as he says with regret, "i ain't killed a nigger u� yet." eventually, the woman who has falsely accused him of assault withdraws her complaint. the judge, meanwhile, invites the head of the shipyard to lecture bob about having betrayed the trust the company had placed in him by making him a supervisor: "you were selected because you were considered the highest type of negro." but bob is still wanted on a concealed-weapons charge, so the judge makes a deal with him-"suppose i give you a break, boy"-and jones is allowed to choose his branch of service. the novel ends with the following line: "two hours later i was in the army." more than two decades later, in the 1969 novel blind man with a pistol, himes was still writing about the war and its impact on his most celebrated characters, the detectives "grave �t -. . war, what is it good for? 245 digger" jones and "coffin ed" johnson. confronting a new era of civil unrest in harlem, jones explains the generational divide he perceives: "these youngsters were born just after we'd got through fighting a war to wipe out racism and make the world safe for the four freedoms ... but the difference is that by the time we'd fought in a jim-crow army to whip the nazis and had come home to our native racism, we didn't believe any of that shit . . . maybe our parents were just like our children and believed their lies ... but what saves colored folks our age is we ain't never believed it. but this new gener­ ation believes it. and that's how we get riots." the segregated miseries that awaited the more than one million black men-more than 2.5 million registered for the draft-who served during world war ii, approximately half of them overseas, have been amply documented by partici­ pants and historians. such were the conditions created by many world war ii-era post commanders that, as baldwin suggests in his description of wartime harlem, it came as a "relief" to many african american service members when they were sent overseas. "perhaps the best way to sum all this up," baldwin writes in "notes of a native son," is to say that the people i knew felt, mainly, a peculiar kind of relief when they knew that their boys were be­ ing shipped out of the south, to do battle overseas. it was, perhaps, like feeling that the most dangerous part of a dangerous journey had been passed and that now, even if death should come, it would come with honor and without the complicity of their countrymen. such a death would be, in short, a fact with which one could hope to live. charles gates, a veteran of the 761st tank battalion, told studs terkel in the 1980s, "i had experienced so much preju246 looking for the good war dice in louisiana that when i got to europe, it was a joke." at the front, however, gates found no bigotry. he recalled, "you don't have time for prejudice in a foxhole ... at the close of hostilities-that's when strange things started happening. they started checking the areas where negro troops were lo­ cated, and they tried to poison the minds of the people." in particular, gates alludes to unfounded accusations of rape. as the historian mary louise roberts has documented ex­ tensively in what soldiers do, black soldiers in the european theater were disproportionately convicted of sex crimes and executed. abuses at home ranged from harassment to violence. ar­ guments about military efficiency notwithstanding, segrega­ tion, which was time-consuming and expensive, was enforced in pennsylvania and massachusetts, not just south of the mason-dixon line. dempsey travis told terkel, "i think of two armies, one black, one white. i saw german prison­ ers free to move around the camp, unlike black soldiers, who were restricted." this dynamic forms the subject of witter bynner's poem "defeat," in which the sight of german pris­ oners eating with white soldiers on a train while black soldiers were segregated leads the speaker to conclude that the "dead south has won." dempsey was assigned to camp shenango, pennsylvania. arriving on a segregated troop train, he found a likewise segregated post on which black servicemen lived in a kind of ghetto, without access to the post exchange (px), servicemen's club, or any of the five movie theaters. one night, after a black soldier's eye was "kicked out for go­ ing into the px to get a beer," white mps in battle gear de­ scended on the area in which black soldiers were housed and starting firing into the crowd, killing several and wounding more, including travis. nor was this an isolated incident, as numerous historians have recorded. linda hervieux notes in forgotten: the untold story of d-day's black heroes, at home an f��l feci �on lim oa tn am afa, \\'a mal ana tala tau afi �lie ofi alk the war, what is it good for? 247 and at war that the southern governors conference of 1942 registered a unanimous objection to the "thousands of black recruits pour[ing] into army bases built to take advantage of year-round training in temperate weather." northern black soldiers, unfamiliar with the grosser indignities and physical dangers of life in the south, found themselves in a precarious position. taking the bus proved a particularly perilous experience. sometimes drivers wouldn't let black soldiers aboard; at other times, black soldiers from the north refused to move to the back, and the driver had local law enforcement drag them off. this was the case in one of the war's most well-known inci­ dents of racial violence, the blinding of sergeant isaac wood­ ard. woodard boarded a greyhound bus in georgia on his way home in 1946, after serving in the pacific as a longshore­ man. he and a group of white soldiers were socializing freely and passing around a whiskey bottle, which woodard, a tee­ totaler, did not share. at one point he got up to ask the driver to use the men's room at the next stop. calling him "boy," the driver told him to sit back down and be quiet. woodard re­ plied, "i'm a man just like you," a retort that scandalized the driver. assuming that woodard must be drunk, the driver asked him to get off the bus and talk to the police at the next stop. when woodard did so, two policemen beat him so vi­ olently that they blinded him in both eyes. woody guthrie commemorated the incident in his song "the blinding of isaac woodard," which he sang at a benefit held at lewisohn stadium in harlem, while orson welles made the incident the subject of several radio broadcasts. woodard's blinding also contributed to president harry truman's decision to sign executive order 9981, which, in 1948, began the slow work of desegregating the armed forces. it took many more years before all the services would fully comply; the army was especially recalcitrant. isaac wood248 looking for the good war ard's treatment is only the most notorious example of the many indignities inflicted upon black americans in uniform by other service members and civilians. hervieux records a scathing comment by grant reynolds-who, along with a. philip randolph, formed the committee against jim crow in military service and training-on his wartime experience at camp lee, virginia: "the south was more vigorously en­ gaged in fighting the civil war than in training soldiers to resist hitler." one of the chief ironies inherent in the project of bringing democracy to the rest of the world remained the signal failure to practice it at home. the correspondence of a group of african american ser­ vicemen from brooklyn, new york, housed in the archives of the new york public library's schomburg center, pow­ erfully exposes the fear of homegrown enemies that stalked them in the service. this circle consisted of relatives and friends of edgar thomas (ned) and elnora (nora) wil­ liams. the williams's son, e. t., surmises that the network had its origins in brooklyn's concord baptist church. the letters are addressed to nora, who evidently circulated news to a wide network of friends throughout the war. her letters do not survive. writing to nora from various stateside posts and later from overseas assignments, the men complain of inadequate facilities. one correspondent, mark jackson, writes from an airfield near fresno, california, that there is no usa for black service members. "the people in town (fresno) treat us as if we were j aps, but i don't blame them as some of these fellows have asked for it," he adds, alluding to heavy drink­ ing among his peers. although the racism is not as overt in california as it had been in tuskegee, alabama, where j ack­ son had previously been stationed, he explains, "they have other ways here." william j. hammond, attending radio re­ pair school in kansas city in 1943, tells nora, "down here in ka aoi! rtp out (ou on 1\1 iii lat tht na ha� her the �l� of �la he1 oe tha aro hl� co war, what is it good for? 249 kansas city, it is 'beat.' you know missouri is in the south, so therefore you can imagine just what i mean." being sent to camp stewart, georgia, is the realization of a nightmare: "well i am down here in georgia at last," wrote hammond. "i really do hate it here." part of the problem stemmed from black soldiers' in­ ability to leave post. nora's brother-in-law john c. williams reported that fort bragg, north carolina, was a "hell-hole," but that he and his comrades were "sort of restricted" and unable to go into town. in may 1943 nora's brother herman bing, a medic, reported from camp pickett, virginia, that he had gotten into a fight on a bus after a local man told a black gi to move to the back. he and his friend had been able to escape punishment by melting into the crowd so that no one could identify them. other correspondents allude to incidents on buses, a run-in with a sheriff, and multiple encounters with bigots in uniform and out. upon arrival at camp shelby, mississippi, the previous fall, herman had rendered a more succinct verdict on southern living: "the south aint s-t." later, when he is transferred to camp gordon johnston, in the florida panhandle, his mood turns desperate. he nick­ names the post "west hell," the "brother" to bataan-he had seen the movie bataan, released that year. "the crackers here call you nigger in a minute & we have no service club, theater or nothing to go to. the barracks are no where the place is made up of burnt lumber & and the floors are made of sand. so far we all wish we were dead & in hell cause this place will drive the average man crazy." later in the letter, herman confesses to his sister, "for the first time since i've been in the army i feel that i won't see any of you again & that's a hellva feeling to have ... all the boys down here walk around like zombies." another brother, thomas, registers his concern for herman in the deep south. indeed the entire correspondence is shot through with the overwhelming fear 250 looking for the good war of being sent south-in a twentieth-century reprise of the enslaved person's fear of being sold down the river-and with ni�l anxiety for those men who have been assigned there. tna one of the most positive letters from nora williams's wal correspondents came from william p. scruggs, who had an� been assigned to officer candidate school (ocs) at fort tie benning, georgia. "we get treated just like officers," scruggs tnel notes. ocs was one of the military's few experiments in intentt gration, and the successful performance of black candidates loa in an integrated environment invalidated many rationales for !ef\ continued segregation. clifton nanton attended ocs "in a tax� mixed group" at the navy's service schools command in ililiui linois, where he was pleased to be able to "show some of these am people that they don't have any priority on intelligence." deci ned's brother john also went to ocs. he deployed to enwan gland in 1944 as a second lieutenant. a letter from this period �rolreveals how the army carried its bigotry overseas: qi!\ rtc( all in all tho i'll certainly be glad when it's all over if for no other reason than so that i can get out of this uniform and stop having to swallow some of the insults that i've swallowed ... i think that since i've been over here i've stood for more than i ever have or expect to stand for in life. not from the british but from our own white countrymen. the british resent the american white man's attitude and don't bite their tongues about saying so. ami la�( ital) tea tnel poo �er or! mr elsewhere, john told nora he was "staying out of trouble ... quite a job when you are colored and in this man's army." the u.s. armed forces exported segregation to britain, france, germany, new guinea, japan, and elsewhere. discrimina­ tion ruled the day overseas, especially in germany, well into the 1960s. a!!\ tot �og no� like pro war, what is it good for? 251 the authors of the government's pocket guides were highly attuned to racial issues, and they were acutely aware that the ambient racism of the armed forces might hamper the war effort. a short guide to iraq (1943) exhorts gis, "avoid any expression of race prejudice. the people draw very lit­ tle color line." the guide to alaska emphasizes the differ­ ences between "white" and other alaskans, but it also sees fit to remind readers that indigenous peoples are not free­ loaders: "they have the obligations of citizenship, including service in the armed forces and payment of federal income taxes." in the guide to hawaii, hawaiians are described as "just as american as you. and just as proud of it." japanese americans in particular-who were not interned in hawaii, because it proved impractical and they were needed for the war effort-are praised for their loyalty. discussions of race prove extremely awkward in the guides. the authors work to dispel prejudice but can't always navigate the terrain without recourse to inappropriate humor or clumsy analogies. for ex. ample, although the guide to hawaii praises the bravery of japanese american soldiers (who fought in north africa and italy as members of the 442nd infantry regimental combat team), it stumbles badly in suggesting that what really makes them american is their enthusiasm for bob hope. the subject of race becomes most complicated in the pocket guide to west africa, produced by the army's special service division in 1943 for distribution to soldiers and sail­ ors deployed to the region to guard supply lines. this was in many ways a typical guide: it offered practical advice, re­ assured personnel of the significance of their contribution to the war effort, and emphasized the need for humility and goodwill toward their hosts. the guide also advises readers not to expect hollywood's west africa. "there are no men like tarzan there and no tarzan mates in leopard skins. you probably won't see any steaming jungles, or herds of wild 252 looking for the good war animals either; and certainly no naked cannibals." unlike the guides produced for european countries, however, this one has few tourist recommendations and more details about the physical attributes of the inhabitants: "the population is almost completely african," the authors explain, "and varies in color from jet black to golden brown . . . the point is," they continue, "that though darker than most peoples you know, and differing considerably in the way they eat, dress, and live, the west africans are pretty much like people all over the world." africans are, the guide cheerfully reassures its american readers, "no lazier than other people in tropical climates." it becomes increasingly clear that the authors are writing not simply for a white audience but for one that harbors a virulent color prejudice. to dispel it, they link racial hostility toward black people to the nazis. the guide reminds readers that "educated west africans are fully aware of ... the nazi scorn for the black people. they know of the false nazi the­ ory of 'master' and 'slave' races." in the book's assurance that the educated african knows all about the atlantic charter and the four freedoms and "that the united states considers men as equal," there is a remarkable cognitive dissonance at work. at great pains to preempt racial incidents, the guide emphasizes the difference between west africans and black americans and warns, "the educated african of the town is even more sensitive about racial issues than the american negro, and admires dignity and reserve." the book's mandate to suppress race prejudice is no­ where more apparent, however, than in the following in­ junction: "race prejudice against the african or against american negro troops in africa would be a good way to turn the african against us. everyone is entitled to his own prejudices but it would be only sensible for those who have them to keep them under cover when such high stakes as the w�r i hitli toe 0 free wito it! !� ui!pll till of a! ofth toe \'e�ll! �ehal aido lome ���l� atf( tralnt �or q them the' �ltal iidla� the meet tlma1 �efo four �lml\ field of th �llot\ ilper war, what is it good for? 253 war and men's lives are on the table. none of us wants to aid hitler." this purely practical argument sits side by side with the clear acknowledgment that africans not only understand freedom, dignity, and equality but also identify these values with the united states, the same country that has to warn its soldiers repeatedly to conceal the prejudices they openly display at home-the same country in which, as stouffer's the american soldier documents, a 1943 government survey of american enlisted men revealed that only thirteen percent of those surveyed could name three of the four freedoms. the guide never resolves this jumble of contradictions. re­ vealingly, it cautions white gis not to be flattered by servile behavior of black africans: "keep it in mind that when an african calls you 'massa' (master) he usually hopes to get something from you." throughout the war, there were protests large and small against the racist practices and policies dominating army life. at fort devens, massachusetts, black wacs who had been trained as medical technicians were restricted to menial la­ bor and ordered to wear a special blue smock, which made them look like maids rather than the authorized uniform. the wacs struck in 1945, demanding to meet with the hos­ pital commander-a colonel from maine-who insisted that "black girls" were "fit only to do the dirtiest type of work." the four technicians who refused to return to work after the meeting were court-martialed, but their convictions were ul­ timately overturned after a public outcry. the full story can be found in sandra m. bolzenius's glory in their spirit: how four black women took on the army during world war ii. similar incidents occurred elsewhere. at indiana's freeman field, the commander used bureaucracy to deny officers of the 477th bombardment group, a unit of black bomber pilots-in-training, access to the post club by restricting it to "permanent officers" and simultaneously designating the 477th "temporary officers." when officers of the 477th atitr tempted to enter the white club on several occasions, they of were arrested. a series of peaceful protests, which came to oc be called the freeman field mutiny, helped to call national tne attention to the army's systemic problems. on james gould cozzens used this incident in his 1948 novel alt� guard of honor, but he moved it to the south. the novel doc\val uments the ongoing struggle at a florida base. one mornof) ing lieutenant edsell offers a satirical account of a violent tim incident that occurred a few nights before: "you may have �a heard that a special group of colored officers was brought in tha this week on a new project," he tells another lieutenant: "the tar unreconstructed confederates and other poor white trash, int{ some of it from west point, got all hot and bothered. next tn thing, people might start treating a negro like a human beone ing! can't have that! so, a lot of them decided to strike a blow �atl for white supremacy ... and when a colored medium bomb qui crew came in and landed, they jumped them ... it got hushed the up of course." when the other officer expresses disbelief, "t1 edsell scoffs: "that's the reason a lot of sadistic sub-morons nitl down in dear old dixie can do whatever they want to any we negro, any time. when you're told about it, you don't believe ha it. those charmin', romantic southern boys couldn't be that nov unkind, could they, sugar?" call this history is often elided from the myth of the war. ste�atl phen ambrose's failure to incorporate a meaningful discus254 looking for the good war sion of this pervasive racism into his narrative is most obvious in his account of the ardennes offensive in citizen soldiers. there ambrose devotes enthusiastic attention to the exploits of major otto skorzeny, "the most daring commando in the german army, world-famous for his exploits," who was at­ tached to lieutenant colonel jochen peiper's panzer brigade during the offensive. ambrose's admiration for their audacity distracts him from his argument about the natural superiorlca ast( lnt of ar san an ch� war, what is it good for? 255 ity of democratic armies, leading to a simpler consideration of battlefield prowess. and indeed, we know that the undem­ ocratic german army was much more effective, at least in the first years of the war, than our own. lavishing attention on skorzeny and peiper, ambrose ignores another story altogether, a story about african americans that goes a long way toward revealing the contradictions endemic to the army of the liberators. the ardennes offensive marked the first time black and white american troop units were at least partially integrated. so urgent was the need for replacements that the army set aside its stated policy of segregation. mili­ tary necessity, the justification always used to argue against integration, was, in an emergency, suddenly being used for it. this was a watershed moment in american military history, one that would be forgotten once the war ended and segre­ gation resumed. serving in the area of the hurtgen forest during the battle of the bulge, victor brombert remembered the emergency appeal for african american infantrymen: "the call for volunteers was presented as a singular opportu­ nity to fight side-by-side with the white brothers-in-arms ... we had no contact with black soldiers ... to be honest, we had not given this much thought-that's the way it was. but now suddenly we were shocked by the spuriousness of this call for black volunteers, simply because they were needed in battle." ambrose largely confines his discussion of african amer­ ican soldiers in the european theater to a later chapter called, astonishingly, "jerks, sad sacks, profiteers, and jim crow." into these pages ambrose lumps all the undesirable elements of what he regards as an otherwise magnificent army: "the army was so big ... and put together so quickly, that thou­ sands of sharp operators and sad sacks, criminals and misfits, and some cowards made it through." jerks sit atop this hierar­ chy of outcasts. by way of illustrative comparison, ambrose 256 looking for the good war offers the following assessment of the enemy: "next to hit­ ler himself, the biggest jerks in germany" were goring and himmler. having also catalogued the chickenshits, shirkers, profiteers, sadists, and drunks, ambrose concludes, "at the bottom of the list were the cowards, and jim crow." this is apparently an attempt to ventriloquize the attitudes of the day, but precisely because they were the attitudes of the day, they complicate the book's oversimplified paean to decency and democracy. ambrose alludes to the army's policy of segregation and eisenhower's endorsement of it in the eu­ ropean theater of operations, but he mutes its severity by illustrating it with a "little incident" involving discrimination at a stateside lunch counter. the chapter concludes on a char­ acteristically optimistic note: "after the experience of world war ii, by the end of 1945 the ground had been prepared for jim crow's grave." but jim crow survived the war, and racism in the army was still thriving as late as the vietnam war. the double v was postponed, just as it had been af­ ter the civil war and world war i, when african americans who imagined their military service would lead to full citizen­ ship were betrayed as soon as the national emergency ended. the suppression of these details is part and parcel of the most popular myth of the war. a slightly different problem is to be found in brokaw's the greatest generation, in a chapter titled "shame." brokaw in­ troduces it by acknowledging, "any celebration of america's strengths and qualities during those years of courage and sac­ rifice, however, will be tempered by the stains of racism that were pervasive in practice and policy. as it was an era of great glory for america and its people, it was also, indisputably, a time of shame." brokaw insists that shame and glory don't "cancel" each other out, but instead of the ambiguity seem­ ingly promised, the profiles that follow, including one woman and representatives of different racial and ethnic minorities, all can ml1 ead tne men �m jon abuj ana batt �ut awe nd� a!iv aa)' tne totl con ofu mar mal \vol �au eve la wa naa tltu of co ii "�extt�h � re gorin�:. . �hitl: inli� " ael:i',1:" .. l' crow," i:' war, what is it good for? 257 conform, as john bodnar observes, to a particular plot deter­ mined by hope, endurance, and socioeconomic achievement. each sketch is prefaced with an uplifting epigraph highlighting the resilient attitude of these veterans regardless of the treat­ ment they received. it is their capacity for patient suffering that earns them membership in the greatest generation. for example, the story of the african american soldier johnnie holmes, "a ready volunteer," chronicles many of the abuses suffered by black service members during the war and acknowledges that holmes had to fight a "two-front battle ... germans in front of him, racial bigots at his back." but the sign of holmes's greatness is that he prefers not to dwell on such unpleasantness: "he's much more inclined to help out at his church or take his lincoln town car on long driving trips than to sit around and remember the bad old days." community participation and economic achievement­ the town car-produce a kind of amnesia that conforms to the book's agenda. the chapter concludes with holmes's confirmation: "it is my country, right or wrong ... none of us can ever contribute enough." it is this story of a black man possessed of an undoubtedly heroic positive attitude-a man who marched with martin luther king jr., yet "decided he wouldn't personally bow to the inherent frustrations of discrimination"-that holds the book's golden age together. underreported in the book, however, are the stories of black world war ii veterans whose lives did not conform to the pattern: men like the civil rights leaders charles and medgar evers, for example. medgar was assassinated by byron de la beckwith of the white citizens' council in 1963. in the wake of his brother's murder, charles, a complex figure who had made his postwar living as a racketeer involved in pros­ titution, numbers, and bootlegging, devoted himself to a life of outspoken political activism while never quite leaving his controversial reputation behind. the tuskegee program, in which black americans were movj trained as pilots, is often described as one of the great suealtio cesses of the war, cited by anyone wishing to find an upliftman ing story about race during the period. in a-train: memoirs rrim of a tuskegee airman, charles w. dryden suggests that this min� "historical drama" reveals not only the heroism of african courl americans but several other dramas as well: the ongoing rejoriqsistance to the program, the pervasive influence of jim crow, mm and the villainy of "various 'ugly americans.'" when the piman lots stopped at bases in the south on training flights and were ana refused service at flight line snack bars, they often preferred toe! to fly home hungry "rather than submit to jim crow" by eat�ove ing elsewhere on the base. in 1944, dryden's frustrations exmen! ploded. he was court-martialed and ultimately acquitted for flying low-"buzzing"-a tower in south carolina. dryden reraldescribes the welter of emotions, the "simultaneous pride toe i and bitterness" that motivated his decision. he was proud of �erv his abilities and resentful of the army's lack of faith, and he rarewanted to show everyone that the tuskegee men were "damn tne i good pilots." it had been an expression of "folly and unbri!ize,dled anger," and "a half century later," he wrote in his memone oirs, "the tears of hurt and rage still flow!" tnat in a 1944 article in the new republic, lucille b. milner tion reported evidence of increasingly poor morale among black tnerl servicemen. they were "patriotic," milner wrote, and "earlaq ger to get into the fighting areas," but they were "excluded com from the mainstream of military service" and thus prevented 258 looking for the good war from expressing "their patriotism, their democracy, and their militancy freely. they have fought bravely in every war ... but still they are not treated like americans." the article relied heavily on the flood of correspondence from service members to the naacp and other organizations. military service in world war ii contributed to a political awakening among african americans and helped spur the civil rights freel gen eign ilia ii lean me war, what is it good for? 259 movement. it gave northern blacks a clearer sense of con­ ditions in the south; it gave southerners the courage to de­ mand their rights as citizens. in 1946, in order to vote in the primary election, more than a hundred veterans from bir­ mingham, alabama, presented their discharge papers at the county courthouse as proof of their literacy. "the vast ma­ jority was rejected," jack h. pollack reported in the american mercury. "among those turned down were negro officers, many with high school and college training, property owners and operators of successful businesses." a few months later the alabama legislature, fearing, in the words of the outgoing governor, "a flood of negro registration," passed an amend­ ment that made the existing literacy test even more stringent. change in the military was also slow. when the army des­ perately needed troops for korea, a. philip randolph, one of the leaders of the committee against jim crow in military service and training, informed truman that he was pre­ pared to tell african americans to boycott the draft unless the force was integrated. in 1950, once the army doubled in size, segregation became increasingly unfeasible, and at least one commander at a training center independently declared that he didn't have time to sort recruits by color. segrega­ tion also proved impractical in the korean theater, where there was a manpower shortage, but it took macarthur's re­ placement, matthew ridgway, formally to desegregate the command. as maria hahn and martin klimke argue in a breath of freedom: the civil rights struggle) african american gls, and germany, by reproducing structural discrimination at for­ eign bases, "the postwar occupation of germany-even more than the struggle against nazi germany during world war ii-nationalized america's race problem, making it an amer­ ican rather than merely a southern issue, at last impelling mo­ mentum for change." that change did not come until the late 260 looking for the good war 1960s, after race relations in the army exploded during the vietnam war. white gis burned crosses in germany, hahn and klimke report; black gis joined various black power groups and began to give black power salutes instead of con­ ventional military ones; and there were numerous disturbances at off-base bars and clubs designated whites only. racial ten­ sions also simmered throughout the vietnam theater. white supremacist symbols became commonplace after the assassi­ nation of martin luther king jr. in april 1968, when white service members prominently and provocatively displayed a confederate flag at cam ranh naval base and burned crosses elsewhere. jim crow had become one of the american libera­ tors' most visible and incongruous postwar legacies. slouching towards twenty-five the year 1968: assassinations, riots, burning crosses, con­ federate flags, tet, my lai, and khe sanh; the twenty-fifth anniversaries of guadalcanal, the warsaw ghetto upris­ ing, and the allied invasion of sicily, all of which took place in 1943. nowhere, perhaps, was it easier to see the ways in which the wars bled into each other than in hawaii, and no one chronicled that phenomenon more perceptively than joan didion. in 1968 she published slouching towards bethlehem, a collection of essays concerned with the decade's various dislocations. in these essays, as in all of didion's work, the interpretation of current events is rooted in the deeper history of the united states. several provide anatomies of american exceptionalism, in addition to more topical insights. "letter from paradise, 21° 19'n., 157° 52'w.," originally published two years earlier in the saturday evening post as "hawaii: taps over pearl harbor," surveys the island landscape to dis­ cover the traces of three wars. �iace ino oases intro( i the� thes rrop( eiusl unoel �arall inot� iplal eooe to 00 the 0 \��) irret soml �ern form theil pass theq terpn oft tne � belle mem si�ni beca tocl abo war, what is it good for? 261 as a child, didion had first associated hawaii with a place in an atlas "that meant war and my father going away and makeshift christmases in rented rooms near air corps bases and nothing the same ever again." that childhood also introduced her to john wayne, whose movies she watched in a theater in a quonset hut at colorado's peterson field during the summer of 1943. the essay "john wayne: a love song" proposes that wayne's image on the screen offered ameri­ cans a glimpse of some primal national myth. "in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality and doubt and paralyzing ambiguities," didion writes, wayne "suggested another world, one which mayor may not have existed . . . a place where a man could move free, could make his own code and live by it; a world in which, if a man did what he had to do, he could one day take the girl and go riding through the draw and find himself home free." if the myth's hold in 1943 was already loosening, by the 1960s, it was in the wind, irretrievable. the american dreams that form the subject of so many of the essays in slouching towards bethlehem no lon­ ger resemble those conjured by john wayne, into whose ideal form the directors john ford and raoul walsh had "poured the inarticulate longings of a nation wondering at just what pass the trail had been lost." the dreams had become instead the crooked nightmares of film noir: "a belief in the literal in­ terpretation of genesis," didion writes in "some dreamers of the golden dream," an essay about a domestic murder in the san bernardino valley, "has slipped imperceptibly into a belief in the literal interpretation of double indemnity." in hawaii, didion visits the utah and arizona, submerged memorials in pearl harbor, in order to discover what the site signifies twenty-five years on. she doesn't find out, however, because she is overwhelmed by her own response, �hich is to cry. when a near contemporary expresses mystification about her reaction, telling her that the kennedy "assassina262 looking for the good war tion, not pearl harbor, was the single most indelible event of ... 'our generation,'" she tells him, "we belonged to dif­ ferent generations." she goes on to tell the reader about her subsequent visit to the national memorial cemetery of the pacific, where, high above honolulu, nineteen thousand graves occupy a volcano crater named punchbowl, where the dead all seem to be twenty years old, and where they have rested for longer than they were alive. four years later, didion returns and meets punchbowl's superintendent, martin t. corley, an experience she writes about in an essay called "in the islands," which appears in the white album. corley processes the bodies and administers the burials of those killed in vietnam: 1,078 in the first three months of 1970. didion describes a cemetery where the dead of three wars-world war ii, korea, and vietnam-now mingle. in this setting, vietnam "seemed considerably less chimerical than it had seemed on the mainland for some months, less last year's war, less successfully consigned to that limbo of benign neglect in which any mention of continuing casualties was made to seem a little counterproductive." among the graves, the chimerical becomes real; the "nonex­ istent" war, palpable; statistics, individual human lives. the graveyard collapses the nominal distinctions between wars, reducing them all to a harvest of the dead. when, toward the end of the essay, didion visits schofield barracks, it seems to her that nothing has changed across the years since the time of james jones's from here to eternity: "a foursome on the post golf course seemed to have been playing since 1940, and to be doomed to continue." watching the perennial rhythms of schofield, didion reveals the solipsism of military life, mi­ raculously unbroken across the decades. an elision of the intervals between wars, an expression of the continuity of military life, also characterizes tim o'brien's description of what it meant to end up in vietnam. t)lan rer �i with �t)ro each �nd tl umen philil � ten weal and away in thl cou� ipea\ viewl a urbl� capu bee a m�) lndu i\'oul tlon abou clfic him! cap' war, what is it good for? 263 "i grew out of one war and into another," o'brien writes in his memoir if i die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home, reflecting on the ways in which the world war ii service of his parents shaped his relationship to his country and, more precisely, to his own military service. "i was the offspring," he explains, "of the great campaign against the tyrants of the 1940s." vietnam destroyed the romance of war per se, but it intensified the particular romance associated with world war ii, the romance on which o'brien grew up. styron notes the ways in which vietnam somehow "degraded each person ... touched by it." as world war ii "recedes, and the pacific battlefields become merely palm-shaded mon­ uments in the remote ocean," styron writes in a review of philip caputo's vietnam memoir, a rumor of war, "there is a tendency to romanticize or to distort and forget. bloody as we all know that conflict was, it becomes in memory cleaner and tidier-a john wayne movie with most of the gore hosed away for the benefit of a pg-rated audience. the marines in that war seem a little like boy scouts, impossibly decent. could it be," styron muses, "that the propinquity of the un­ speakable horrors of vietnam forces us to this more tasteful view?" a rumor of war also links the two wars. born into the sub­ urbia that was a by-product of the postwar housing shortage, caputo dreamed of a "savage, heroic time ... before america became a land of salesmen and shopping centers." this long­ ing, coupled with the patriotic fervor of the kennedy years, induced him to join the marines in 1960, a decision that would ultimately rob him of all "of the optimism and ambi­ tion a young american is supposed to have." caputo's ideas about war and heroism were shaped by world war ii, spe­ cifically by the movies. like thousands of boys, he imagined himself performing heroic feats in the style of john wayne. caputo had no need of the recruiter's "sales pitch." seduced 264 looking for the good war by what styron refers to as the marine corps's "fatal glam­ our," caputo submitted himself wholly to the mob psychol­ ogy of basic training. likening the mood to a "bund rally,"he explains that an indoctrinated recruit eventually "begins to believe that he really does love the marine corps, that it is invincible, and that there is nothing improper in praying for war, the event in which the corps periodically has justified its existence and achieved its apotheosis." the service is all, while the country it theoretically exists to serve disappears from view. veteran marines regale caputo with tales of their first commands in world war ii or korea. a first command, he explains, was "supposed to be like first love," yet his own experience has already faded into a vague memory. he can't even remember the members of his platoon clearly. caputo's first command comprised the kinds of young men who have always wielded violence in the ostensible defense of our dreams-"to a man thoroughly american, in their virtues as well as flaws: idealistic, insolent, generous, direct, violent, and provincial in the sense that they believed the ground they stood on was now forever a part of the united states simply because they stood on it." yet the majority of ca­ puto's marines "came from the ragged fringes of the great american dream." they hadn't finished high school, they were often fatherless, and they were the victims of urban or rural poverty. "they were volunteers, but i wondered for how many enlisting had been truly voluntary." these marines prepare for vietnam by undergoing two weeks of intensive counterinsurgency training in okinawa, where caputo's instructors attempt to inculcate a set of "antisocial attributes" necessary for survival. the jungle fighter "has to be stealthy, aggressive, and ruthless, a combination burglar, bank robber, and mafia assassin." this description calls to mind the british handbook of modern irregular warfare (1�4 oe3 1 no � ii\n t iwhj iklli tnel tne� ffion eral effiol !av3! ana cap from not i gouc � worl �o�e viet! �oml view ar�u dee but oftr nle of dec i fiiet ron war, what is it good for? 265 (1942), quoted by fussell in wartime: "every soldier must be a potential gangster." there is no ennobling cause demanding this violence, no grand strategy it serves, no goal it can possibly achieve: "in the patriotic fervor of the kennedy years, we had asked, 'what can we do for our country?' and our country answered, 'kill vc.'" the longer caputo and his men are in vietnam­ the more fruitless searches they conduct, the more villages they destroy, the more death they witness and impose-the more like gangsters they become. they pass through sev­ eral stages of degradation, arriving at a state "of moral and emotional numbness" before moving past "callousness into savagery." eventually, one of the soldiers kills two prisoners on a "pretext," an action that results in a court-martial. in caputo's eyes, the act of killing the prisoners was inseparable from the character of the war. yet the defense counsel will not make this argument; to do so would have been to cast doubt on the whole american military action. styron suggests that what ultimately saved the marines in world war ii was the fact that they had been sent "to kill pur­ posefully and with a reasonably precise goal in view-not as in vietnam to produce mere bodies for general westmoreland's computer ... thus," he concludes, "the pacific war may be viewed in retrospect as a discussible moral enterprise. it was an awful war, one of the worst ... tarawa, peleliu, iwo jima­ arguably the most satanic engagements in which men have been pitted against one another since the birth of warfare. but those who fought in the pacific war, whatever the nature of their wounds or their diminishment, could emerge unde­ filed." lyndon johnson may have dusted off the old rhetoric of world war ii to burnish the war in vietnam-"we have declared war on tyranny and aggression" -but the latter con­ flict succeeded only in drowning its participants in what sty­ ron calls "a moral swamp." lieutenant william calley, who 266 looking for the good war presided over the massacre at my lai in 1968, became for styron, as for so many others, the war's most important ob­ ject lesson. "few of us may be enamored of the military," he writes in his review of calley's autobiography, but "war is still steadfastly a part of the human condition, and . . . our verysurvival as human beings continues to depend on accommo­ dating ourselves to ancient rules of conduct." the trouble with appealing to ancient rules and codes, however, is that they are, at bottom, a fiction. looking at honor "afresh," observes eugen weber in "the ups and downs of honor," "we will discover that the iliad ... presents two gang-leading thugs, achilles and agamemnon, facingeach other down, trading threats and insults over loot and women, and that the whole poem turns on plunder and pride and the sport of killing." weber charts the destructive glam­ our of this kind of honor in literature as in history: "so honor is renown, glory, riches, power; but these have to be won and preserved by valiance-valor, bravery." small wonder, weber points out, "that when george armstrong custer . . . led a cavalry charge near the little bighorn river from which not one man came out alive, the new york herald extolled the charge as 'mad' and praised the catastrophic custer's 'strong impulses, greathearted friendship and bitter enmities, ner­ vous temperament, undaunted courage, will and determina­ tion.'" military culture is steeped in a tradition that defends honor and reputation by achieving dominance through de­ struction. even when a war's cause is just and its actors in­ fused with ideals of decency, its means are always violent. vietnam, styron concludes, "disgraced the name of bravery." the search for a kind of honor amid the ruins, a need for redemption, burns through much of the literature of vietnam, as it does through that of our more recent wars in iraq and afghanistan. it infuses robert mcnamara's as­ tonishing 1995 book in retrospect: the tragedy and lessons of vi�t me rifyi� and i inwrl matel [a�clr in�tl tirely war �uml \'ey,\ and ( der l� our failu! tne h tainel in�, j �treal one of a tnatl tni� � cou\ij n trage aren title i endil rea� trate thq acol war, what is it good for? 267 vietnam, and it is what makes errol morris's documentary on mcnamara the fog of war (2003), such a strange and ter­ rifying film. mcnamara's story reveals not only the insidious and irresistible nature of war's momentum but also the ways in which a commitment to data-driven decision-making ulti­ mately yielded a strategy of conspicuous illogic. mcnamara's fascination with statistics-especially statistics substantiat­ ing the destructive capacity of strategic bombing-seems en­ tirely to eclipse the truth. it had been no secret since world war ii that "strategic bombing" had little "strategic" value. summarizing the u. s. government's strategic bombing sur­ vey, commissioned to assess the role of targeting japanese and german cities in shortening the war, committee mem­ ber john kenneth galbraith recalled in his memoir a life in our times, "our patiently gathered data on the disastrous failures of strategic bombing were extensively ignored." as the historian gian gentile notes, even the final report con­ tained the "disturbing conclusion ... that strategic bomb­ ing, during 1943 and into early 1944, might have helped streamline, rather than injure, the german war economy." one of the most well-known poems of the war, "the fury of aerial bombardment," by richard eberhart, concludes that the devastation (strategically effective or not) wrought by this strategy was a human enormity not even "history" itself could understand. near the end of the fog of war, mcnamara sums up the tragedy of vietnam as follows: "we all make mistakes ... we are rational, but reason has its limits." in retrospect, as its sub­ title suggests, is a "tragedy," but it is a tragedy with a happy ending in which the "lessons" of vietnam give mcnamara reason "to view the future with new hope." his story illus­ trates many things: the slipperiness of beginnings and ends, the refusal of war to stand still long enough to be shaped into a coherent story, the ambient fog that obscures causes and 268 looking for the good war consequences as well as ends and means. it also testifies to the dubious efficacy of the quest for resolution or absolution. refusing such absolution is central to tobias wolff's vietnam memoir, in pharaoh's army: memories of the lost war, published at about the same time as mcnamara's book. wolff is always learning "lessons," but they are seldom what they seem, often conceived in ignorance and resentment, and rarely teach what they are designed to impart. one of the most important of wolff's parables occurs toward the end of the book in a chapter called "souvenir," an account of one of his final acts in vietnam while working as an artillery liai­ son with a vietnamese battalion headquartered in a village.an officer new to the country, captain kale, has just arrived to take over temporarily for the departing wolff until an ar­ tillery officer can be located. in his spare time, kale orders cheap "reproductions of bavarian artifacts" made in sin­ gapore, with which he plans one day to decorate his house: "there was no way you could tell they weren't german," he tells wolff. when he isn't ordering ersatz souvenirs, kale, an infantry officer unhappy in his assignment, lectures wolff on his slackness and manages to insult the vietnamese battalion commander and alienate the rest of the soldiers. the story hinges on kale's decision to stage a helicop­ ter sling-load operation too close to the small huts of the nearby village. wolff knows better, but because kale refuses to listen to his suggestions, he behaves with a form of resent­ ment common to military life: a rebuffed subordinate deter­ mines to obey even to the point of rejecting an opportunity to change his commander's mind and thereby avert disaster. (the american civil war writer ambrose bierce tells such a story in "one kind of officer," where resentment has lethal consequences.) when the helicopter pilot informs wolff that he thinks the space might be too tight to perform the opera­ tion, wolff has the opportunity to change course. he doesn't take! tneh ruin. olose lion.] tnevil wl\\ t� bavar all th� taink oflw kino. from lomet woulo in me nomei �ertai drlngl b� remol etl� a �tate� totw( renal main nrsti next) decal aetall aruta his d) nnds ater war, what is it good for? 269 take it. "that's what he wants," he tells the pilot. in the end, the helicopter's rotor wash tears up the huts, which are left in ruin. as the two officers survey the wreckage, they find an old sepia photograph of a woman, clearly a precious posses­ sion. kale tries to give it back to one woman after another as the villagers return to collect what's left of their lives. no one will take it from him. wolff predicts that it will "end up in his bavarian trophy case, with his chicom rifle and vc flag and all the medals he was going to write himself up for, but cap­ tain kale didn't know that yet." in trying to teach kale a kind of lesson, wolff ends up with a souvenir of a very different kind. "this was my work, this desolation had blown straight from my own heart," he recalls. "this was, i understood, something to be remembered, though i had no idea what that would mean. i couldn't guess how the memory would live on in me, shadowing my sense of entitlement to an inviolable home; touching me, years hence, in my own home, with the certainty that some terrible wing is even now descending, bringing justice." but the story, crucially, does not end here with confession, remorse, or recognition, or with the neat coincidence of po­ etic and existential justice. not long after returning to the states, wolff finds himself telling the story of captain kale to two other veterans and a date with whom he has just seen renoir's grande illusion, even though he knows he should re­ main silent. searching for the right way to tell the story, wolff first tries "somber and regretful," but that sounds "phony." next, he goes for "clinical ... exposition," which is worse because it is dull and untrue. finally, because a particular detail elicits laughter from one of the veterans, he settles on brutal comedy, an approach that so thoroughly disappoints his date that she doesn't even reproach him. as a result, he finds himself full of anger and shame. "how do you tell such a terrible story?" he demands. although he knows the story 270 looking for the good war ought to remain untold, for reasons of memory, tone, and ethics, he also knows "it will be told." he is reluctant to judge the man he was, even as he knows he must, because he was lucky enough to escape, and that man's "fears and desires" have been almost forgotten. in the end, it isn't judgment but the very act of confessing that causes wolff the greatest eth­ ical problem. "but isn't there, in the very act of confession, an obscene self-congratulation for the virtue required to see your mistake and own up to it? and isn't it just like an amer­ ican boy, to want you to admire his sorrow at tearing other people's houses apart?" watching robert mcnamara in tears at the end of the fog of war, one senses that same obscene need for admiration. in ch of� (onf� lolole murk i�tl�fj gloj �uet� �rofoj (ontil of the tne hi other event� mo�� return ofthe comic-book heroes �iafl in a 2019 new york times editorial, the film director martin n)·�ter scorsese offered a critique of the superhero franchises that lynn'l have come to dominate mainstream cinema throughout the \'eter� world. today, he argues, there are two distinct branches of inve�t moviemaking: global "entertainment," which encompasses loeal. marvel movies and their ilk, and "cinema," populated by ffillita practitioners who believe that film is art with a rich history wead and a capacity to realize "the complexity of people and their the ai' contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures." cinema �an pi is about the surprising, the ambiguous, and the confounding, they � scorsese contends, whereas superhero movies, the evident war � talents of their makers notwithstanding, are akin to "theme in parks." they don't take the risks required to explore the that � human condition. the fact that mainstream cinema today ihrinl presents us with a seemingly endless series of superheroes leen!1 suggests something important about contemporary arnerithat· can concepts of heroes and heroism. aamil war, what is it good for? 271 national mythologies hinge on their heroes. as i explored in chapter 1, there is no more important part of the myth of world war ii-no element that generates more passion, confusion, and distortion-than the figure of the american soldier as an agent for good in the world. today, in an era of murky wars and elusive peace, we keep searching for a hero as satisfying and uncomplicated as those favorite images of the gi distributing hershey bars to children or receiving bou­ quets of flowers from grateful women. despite the public's profound lack of interest in the actual wars the country has continued quietly to wage in recent years, america's worship of the soldier seems as devoted today as it has ever been. with the heroic status zealously accorded to the police (among other first responders) after 9/11 shaken in recent years by events in ferguson, new york city, baltimore, and elsewhere across the country, the soldier remains securely enshrined as a national icon. the novelist ben fountain captures the hysterical quality of today's civil-military encounters in billy lynn's long halftime walk, his account of a group of iraq veterans feted at an nfl game. today's cult of the soldier invests heavily in a white, masculine, and heteronormative ideal. despite surface-level changes over the years, american military culture remains deeply inhospitable to other values, wedded to an outmoded honor culture, still confused about the diversity it claims to celebrate. in 2020 the u.s. army be­ gan phasing in new service uniforms that looked rather old: they are modeled on the "pinks and greens" of the world war ii era. even the cropped "ike" jacket has been revived. in a 2014 article in the atlantic, james fallows suggested that one by-product of the all-volunteer military and the shrinking number of citizens who serve in uniform can be seen in the profound "difference between the earlier america that knew its military and the modern america that gazes admiringly at its heroes." but when america did know its 272 looking for the good war military, it liked it much less; this is especially true of the regular army, which has been regarded with suspicion and disdain since the founding. "americans have in many ways been a bloodthirsty people," styron observed, "but except in odd spasms they have never been militaristic." in the pres­ ent century, by contrast, america's admiring gaze has per­ sisted largely undiminished throughout institutional military failures such as abu ghraib and the sexual violence against women in uniform at fort hood and elsewhere. that gaze­ only in part the result of a national desire to atone for the treatment of service members during vietnam-also works to keep soldiers at arm's length and preserve their armor-clad anonymity. the soldier as archetypal american hero is ap­ parently here to stay. with president trump's 2019 pardon­ ing of military personnel accused of war crimes, adulation turned grotesque. how did we get here? heroes, anthropologists tell us, re­ veal something fundamental about a culture. yet soldiers were precisely the prospective heroes against whom founders such as thomas jefferson and john adams warned their fellow cit­ izens just a few centuries ago. both men noted the ease with which the people tended to fall under george washington's spell: "instead of adoring a washington," adams wrote in 1785, "mankind should applaud the nation which educated him." the success of the political system would depend, ac­ cording to adams, on the people's ability to "consider them­ selves as the fountain of power." the people "must be taught to reverence themselves, instead of adoring their servants, their generals, admirals, bishops, and statesmen." in the eyes of many political commentators of the age, military excel­ lence grew naturally into tyrannical vice. "there is no trust­ ing of liberty," insisted the eighteenth -century british whig pamphleteers john trenchard and thomas gordon, "in the hands of men, who are obeyed by great armies." napoleon's iu�� �olll ho�i i inri he � dan �cn� deril li�nt nit� ora thaq hell anel men) aom1 orm hero ma men empl mot mol only �rea war, what is it good for? 273 rise to power at the beginning of the nineteenth century only confirmed for many observers the enduring danger posed by military saviors to the young american republic. the central problem for the founders was the commanding general-the man on horseback-not the common soldier. yet a fear per­ sisted that any sort of hero worship, irrespective of its object, suggested something fundamentally at odds with the kind of political and social self-reliance in which adams placed his hopes. / in the 1850s ralph waldo emerson sounded the danger in representative men. "it is natural to believe in great men," he granted, but there is a "limit" to their uses and "a new danger" in their excessive "influence." in "the american scholar" emerson suggested the danger involved in surren­ dering to a hero: admirers "sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. they cast the dig­ nity of man from their downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and conquer. he lives for us, and we live in him." emerson was writing in an era in which heroes and hero worship were all the rage, especially in victorian england, where it was fashionable to celebrate history's heroic exemplars: its generals and states­ men, its captains of industry. "no nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man," thomas carlyle declared in his first lecture "on heroes" in 1840. heroes are "the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain." they are, in short, the emphatically masculine motors of history and society-the motors propelling civilization into the modern future. em­ erson's critique extends far beyond military heroes, who are only the most visible and readily understood instance of the great man. his concern is that our thirst for heroes prevents 274 looking for the good war us from achieving the independence of thought and action required to reach our full potential. to put it another way, heroes should be understood as inherently undemocratic. if americans were to defy the patterns of the old world, they would have to reconceive both heroes and their relationship to them. from the first, america's heroes were of a rather differ­ ent cast. like the nation that produced them, they seemed an antidote to european models: defiant rebels, frontiersmen who in hard intrepidity made up for what they lacked in soft manners, underdogs who placed their hopes in a declaration of independence from the old world's chains. our original great men-abraham lincoln called them the "iron men" of revolutionary days-were castaways first of all, washed up on the wild shores of liberty. it should come as no surprise that the descendants of these original antiheroes should populate american culture: from ethan allen to davy crockett; from casablanca's rick blaine to unforgiven's william munny; from the early bluesman robert johnson, who was said to have sold his soul to the devil for the gift of making music, and the balladeer woody guthrie, whose guitar bore the message this machine kills fascists, to twentieth-century folk poets like bob dylan and tupac shakur. sometimes our love of rebels ensnares us in uncomfortable allegiances: witness the cult status of robert e. lee, which still endures in certain quarters. world war ii gave birth to the transcendent heroism of the american soldier, yet the legend did not immediately obliterate his humanity. the journalism of pyle and others delivered the dogface, the common soldier, the gi to home­ front audiences. for a time, however, as the literature and film of the late 1940s and 1950s reveal, america wrestled with rather than fully embraced him. if wartime america needed straightforward comic-book heroes, the postwar nation �rad oe�il la1° �het iooiv aoml emp� yene theal mol �it� [�r tl �nce clo�e n�htl holl� tenc( ne�� i l� tr�hl �i 0)( itadi �ook more ta�tic iln n �re�i and] 1�41 war, what is it good for? 275 tion struggled to absorb millions of complicated ex-gis. only gradually did the worship of the veterans of world war ii begin to reflect the antidemocratic impulse emerson insisted lay behind hero worship, by allowing us to celebrate an ar­ chetype of stoic humility rather than a readily identifiable individual. the practice of making soldiers larger than life dominates our culture today and effectively prevents true empathy. world war ii veterans gradually became objects of veneration who no longer needed the reality, the complexity, the ambivalence-in short, the humanity-that pyle and oth­ ers bestowed on them during the war. this is the real erasure of the fiftieth-anniversary mythology, which cannot account for the kind of revelation the poet john ciardi experienced once he got to the pacific: "i thought war was raucous and close mouthed and rigidly exact and that all men close to the fighting and dying were obscene as marine sgts. and hard as hollywood desperadoes. i believed that in my fearful inno­ cence. i never dreamed that there was gentleness and tender­ ness and confessed fear everywhere in it." is it any wonder that the fear and confusion of the post-9/ll era have prompted the resurrection of the comic-book heroes of old? our theatrical celebrations of veterans in arenas and stadiums are complemented by our obsession with comic­ book movies: according to some estimates, there have been more than fifty of them in the last several years. those fan­ tastic agents of american power appeal to an enduringly boy­ ish national sensibility that has over the centuries produced presidents as otherwise dissimilar as theodore roosevelt and george w. bush. in 2009, captain america, who in 1941 was pictured on his first cover punching adolf hitler, was reawakened to fight new villains. captain america has a catholic appeal: "all liberals want captain america to be standing on a soapbox outside the white house bashing president bush," ed brubaker, who in recent years helped 276 looking rv� iht l1uuu wak revive the comic originated by joe simon and jack kirby, de­ clared in an interview on npr. "all right-wingers want cap­ tain america to be ... over in afghanistan punching osama in the face." the recent films have given steve rogers the requisite ambivalence and darkness to satisfy an america too knowing to worship heroes in quite the old way yet too senti­ mental to give them up. rogers is the fictional apotheosis of the reigning heroic archetype, the american soldier, whom we persist in mythologizing while his or her real analogue continues to commit to service in a murky world in which postwar exhaustion competes with the slow boil of global ter­ rorism. these are the heroes we have claimed. the question is whether we have done them any favors and whether, in our mindless worship, we have disrupted the calculus that deter­ mines when and how to risk their lives. tocqueville is the writer so many americans invoke when they wish to make the claim for national exceptionalism, but while tocqueville thought the geographic and historical "sit­ uation of the americans ... entirely exceptional" and judged it unlikely that any "democratic people will ever be put in the same situation," he did not invest it with a mystical aura, particular destiny, or moral superiority. a careful reading also suggests that creating heroes may be a satisfyingly ro­ mantic occupation, but it is no way to sustain a democracy. "if your object be not to stimulate the virtues of heroism," tocqueville writes, but to create habits of peace; if you had rather witness vices than crimes and are content to meet with fewer noble deeds; ... if, instead of living in the midst of a brilliant state of society, you are contented to have pros­ perity around you; if, in short, you are of the opinion that the principal object of a government is not to con­ fer the greatest possible share of power and glory upon 1[0 one like toel o[ �i [u�ll war, what is it good for? 277 the body of the nation, but to ensure the greatest degree of enjoyment and the least degree of misery to each of the individuals who compose it-if such be your de­ sires, you can have no surer means of satisfying them than by equalizing the conditions of men, and estab­ lishing democratic institutions. if one were to reverse engineer tocqueville's formulation, one might end up with a maxim like this one: if you would like your democratic institutions to flourish and your citizens to enjoy a maximum of equality, you can have no surer means of securing your desires than in knowing your heroes but re­ fusing to worship them. giddy minds and foreign quarrels ... therefore, my harry, be it thy course to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days. -henry iv's advice to his son prince hal, shakespeare, 2 henry iv the confederate air force and other southern myths pipi was the world's only airworthy b-29 superfortress for almost fifty years, until the restoration of a second plane, doc, in 2016. a sleek world war ii relic still flying today in air shows across the united states and canada, pipi was saved by the commemorative air force (caf), a texas 501(c)(3) devoted to preserving and restoring world war ii combat air­ craft. the caf originated in 1961, coincident with the civil war centennial, under a different name: the confederate air force. by 1968 its founders had taken up headquarters in texas on a part of the old harlingen air force base that they renamed rebel field. dan jenkins's august 12, 1963, sports illustrated feature, "the confederate air force flies at last," presents a cheerful profile of this group of former world war ii pilots, all of them "commissioned colonels" in the caf, dressed in gray, suffused with nostalgia, and relying "heavily 280 looking for the good war on the confederate whimsy as an excuse for social rallies. the rebel air militia has become one of the most elite clubs in the valley." apparently, there were no difficulties about all this "confederate whimsy" until 2001, when members voted to rename the organization. the group's website does not discuss the change beyond noting the date it went into effect. it does offer as its motto a quotation from the science-fiction writer robert heinlein: "a generation which ignores its his­ tory has no past and no future." our national problem has not been ignoring the civil war, but turning it into a kind of theme park in which nos­ talgia and mendacity have eclipsed the raw and unpleasant truth that one army fought, and lost, a battle for the liberty to enslave other human beings, while the other, full of imperfect men fighting for a variety of motives, secured the emancipa­ tion of those human beings and thereby preserved a polit­ ical experiment underwritten by the idea of equality. that experiment, as this book has attempted to show, entered a new phase with the second world war, a conflict in which the united states, despite domestic divisions and an initial reluctance to enter the war, sided with the forces of liberation and became a symbol of enduring freedom for the rest of the world. it would become a triumphalist narrative perhaps ulti­ mately most persuasive to americans themselves. the coun­ tries the united states helped to liberate and subsequently occupied inevitably tired of it before we did. in this case, our "garrulous patriotism" expressed itself, as the pocket guides warned, as a belief that the world should be grateful for american military might, which was exceptional because it was always applied in the name of freedom. remembrance of the civil war tends, in contrast to that of world war ii, to submerge causes in a celebration of honor on the battlefield and fraternal reconciliation. yet there is a special relationship between the nation's two watershed conflicts. it te� ticl ve� �ri ivn of giddy minds and foreign quarrels 281 textures various world war ii narratives, official and unof­ ficial. on may 29, 1945, after nearly two months of fighting on okinawa, marines broke through the main line of japanese defenses in what marked a turning point in the battle for the island. atop shuri ridge sat the ruins of shuri castle, a relic of the ryukyu kingdom, conquered by japanese troops during the late-eighteenth-century meiji restoration and destroyed by american artillery in the battle. the castle's capture had both strategic and symbolic importance, as e. b. sledge re­ veals in with the old breed: earlier in the morning company a, 1st battalion, 5th marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of shuri castle and had raised the confederate flag. when we learned that the flag of the confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of japanese resis­ tance, all of us southerners cheered loudly. the yan­ kees among us grumbled, and the westerners didn't know what to do. this uncharacteristically lighthearted passage follows sledge's graphically detailed depiction of the marines' battle on a slope below the ridge, where the brutalizing work of killing and dy­ ing was exacerbated by the pains of surviving amid mud, filth, and rotting corpses-"things ... too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans" to discuss. sledge admits that what he witnessed there brought even "the toughest i knew almost to the point of screaming." sledge's description of a company's planting of the confederate flag atop the rubble­ "over the very heart and soul of japanese resistance"-comes to seem like a culmination of all their labor, the closest this grim book gets to a triumphant moment, almost the only whiff of romance in an otherwise notably cold-eyed narrative of war. that sledge, with some amusement at the consterna282 looking for the good war tion of the northerners and bemusement of the westerners, yet with no irony, should link victory first with the planting of the confederate flag, and only later with the stars and stripes that was raised afterward, calls attention to a fault line in american history-a line linking the mythology of world war ii, the country's defining foreign conflict, to that of its cataclysmic civil war. that link is even more pronounced in charles w. caw­ thon's memoir other clay: a remembrance of the world war ii infantry. as a member of the 2nd battalion, 116th infantry regiment (known as the stonewall brigade), 29th infantry division, cawthon drew an explicit connection to the earlier war. the nickname of this virginia national guard regiment comes from the storied brigade led by thomas "stonewall" jackson and known for its participation in first bull run, spot­ sylvania, and other civil war engagements. in 1948 congress authorized guard units to fly streamers commemorating these battles, and together with other symbols of confederate lin­ eage they continued to be displayed even in afghanistan and iraq. for cawthon, whose book was inspired by the memoirs of two members of the original brigade, the wars resonated. the nostalgia that infused his introduction to war can be heard in this passage, which describes the ritual commemorations of the battle of stones river in murfreesboro, tennessee: the battle was still a presence in the town when i was a boy, its memory revived annually at reunions of the county's confederate veterans. my father, born and reared in murfreesboro during the reconstruction, was active in organizing these gatherings of shrunken and palsied old men who huddled in their gray uniforms un­ der the great oaks at the fairgrounds each spring to hear themselves lauded once again for long-lost battles ... this, and a pastime of wandering over the half-centuryii �i oh lou nat( ani tim aerl ene! wal ta� roo �m tne kin aoo �etl ie)') tne ant �pe ca� tha giddy minds and foreign quarrels 283 old battlefield, hunting the conical lead slugs . . . with which the north and south had argued their differ­ ences, constituted my military background in 1940. if stories of old battles informed cawthon's understanding of war, however, there is also an important sense in which he regarded world war ii as different not only from the civil war but also from the more recent spanish-american war and world war i: "there was no lack of patriotism, or of that young men's spirit of adventure in which war-fever germi­ nates so readily, but these emotions were not hyperstimulated as in 1861, 1898, and 1917." indeed, he suggests that by the time of the second world war, "the whole business engen­ dered more distaste than fervor" in all save a passionate few. the work of uniting north and south against a foreign enemy had begun in earnest during the spanish-american war, one of the country's most explicitly imperialist under­ takings. stephen kinzer explains in the true flag: theodore roosevelt) mark twain) and the birth of american empire: "expansionists ... succeeded in promoting their cause as a genuinely national project that would, once and for all, end the regional division that had culminated in the civil war." kinzer notes that newspapers published countless stories about former union and confederate officers now serving to­ gether against a common enemy. president william mckin­ ley, a veteran of the horrors of antietam, made the most of the new foreign war as a means of defusing the sectional antagonisms that had plagued the preceding century. in a speech at cedar falls, iowa, on october 16, 1899, mckinley cast the war in progress as a fight for national ideals rather than the nakedly imperialist gambit it was: on ship and on shore the men of the south and the men of the north have been fighting for the same flag 284 looking for the good war and shedding their blood together for the honor of the country and the integrity of its institutions. lawton and wheeler in the philippines are fighting side by side to-day. [applause.] this is the union we have now, and the north and the south are vying with each other in loyalty, and are marching side by side in the pathway of our destiny and the mission of liberty and humanity. fen \val among those men of the south who volunteered for the spanish-american war and once again donned federal blue were the west point graduates and former confeder­ ate generals joseph wheeler, whom mckinley mentions, and fitzhugh lee. the pair coauthored a book about the war, cuba's struggle against spain, which begins with a di­ atribe against spanish colonialism and its abuses of liberty and property rights that sounds a lot like antebellum south­ ern complaints about federal tyranny. portraits of lee and wheeler joined the other paintings of whiskered men in fedex� eral blue that adorn the walls of west point's memorial hall. [rorl built with the bequest of the staunchly unionist george w. aeal cullum, who had served on the staff of henry w. halleck, om union army chief of staff during the civil war, cullum �o�i hall was intended to memorialize those who had died fightert� ing for their country. by fighting in a foreign war, lee and a�� wheeler could be rehabilitated, their treasonous pasts effecaoe tively erased. they are the only former confederates so honcolt ored in the building. alle in the legacy of the civil war, written on the eve of the war's centennial in 1961, the poet and novelist robert penn warren reflected on the ways in which the nation's nineteenth-century insurrection continued to shape its twentieth-century history. toward the end of the book, warme! \va� ch� em giddy minds and foreign quarrels 285 ren illuminates an intimate connection between the civil war and world war ii: no, simply piety and blood connection do not account for the appeal, and certainly not for the fact that the popular interest has been steadily rising, and rising for nearly twenty years before the natural stir about the approaching centennial. we can remember that during world war ii, the civil war, not the revolution, was characteristically used in our propaganda, and that it was the image of lincoln, not that of washington or jefferson, that flashed ritualistically on the silver screen after the double feature; and in classrooms for young air force specialists (and perhaps elsewhere), it was sometimes pointed out that the founding fathers were not really "democratic," that democracy stemmed from the civil war. examples of this appeal to the civil war include a quotation from the gettysburg address ("we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain"), which appeared on the office of war information's 1942 "remember dec. 7th!" poster, and the use of lincoln's image and words to sell lib­ erty bonds. the connection was drawn in unofficial contexts as well. robert sherwood's 1938 pulitzer prize-winning play abe lincoln in illinois, for instance, turned the story of lin­ coln's own internal struggle over the issue of slavery into an allegory of anti-isolationism. john ford's young mr. lincoln, made in 1939, that mo­ mentous year, likewise offers a portrait of lincoln before the war and a potent american myth for a world on the brink of chaos. david thomson speculates that ford's turn to lincoln emerged from society's increasing anxiety about the coming 286 looking for the good war of war and ambivalence about the possibility of roosevelt's running for a third term. the film is centered on lincoln's de­ fense of two brothers accused of murder, a case he wins with a combination of common sense, cleverness, and charisma. played by henry fonda with a preoccupied air and a casual loose-limbed gait suggestive of a wandering poet, this lincoln is a folksy trickster who is nevertheless the soul of rectitude. he ends disputes and disperses a lynching party with rhetorical appeals, but also by means of his towering presence and by the promise of physical violence flickering beneath his ostensible gentleness. he is a figure right out of myth-part rail-splitter, part confidence man, part saintly peacemaker-and the film, in thomson's words, is "a sublime dream" in which ford can indulge "every treasured feeling for a past he would have loved to inhabit." thomson provocatively anatomizes the problem created by this mythologizing of lincoln: "to the degree that lincoln is a legend and film a dream, this is nearly perfect. but because lincoln was real, actual, and made out of diffi­ cult thought, this film is a travesty and deeply antidemocratic. for it wants to believe that democracy does not rely on the steady application of human effort and compromise." ford foreshadowed his hero's destiny in the film's final shot by showing lincoln walking alone up a hill under a storm-brewing sky to the strains of the "battle cry of free­ dom." but if the idea of lincoln proved useful to the war effort in the early 1940s, it was the ideal of the south's lost cause that continued to exert enormous popular appeal and to texture the ways in which many americans understood wars past and prospective. this narrative had been nur­ tured during the first world war, which overlapped with the civil war's fiftieth anniversary. it was endorsed by president woodrow wilson, whose multivolume a history of the amer­ ican people offers as unreconstructed a vision of u.s. race relations as one can find. in 1913 wilson presided over the mtle �entl inth medl �iou o[tn conl itio!1 trte mon in ii tori tappl lee. a�le uniti mof( aoly erte o[ o� a� a i [rom (an! �(!it thosl cr01 aovi milll nam itaq tott hsh� giddy minds and foreign quarrels 287 fiftieth-anniversary reunion of veterans at gettysburg, when sentimental remembrance of the civil war reached its zenith in the photographs of white-bearded, rheumy-eyed old men, medals dangling from their chests, shaking hands on the very ground over which once they tried to kill each other. the cult of the lost cause, stoked by the united daughters of the confederacy and other powerful interest groups, remained strong throughout the 1930s. in 1936 franklin d. roosevelt unveiled a statue of rob­ ert e. lee in dallas, texas. like many contemporaneous me­ morials, this one has recently become a subject of contention. in 1936, there was little controversy. the south was crucial to roosevelt's reelection bid. cynical or heartfelt, his speech tapped into the popular interpretation of the civil war and of lee. "all over the united states of america we regard him as a great leader of men and a great general, but also all over the united states i believe we recognize him as something even more important than that," roosevelt proclaimed, consider­ ably raising the stakes of the celebration: "we recognize rob­ ert e. lee as one of the greatest american christians and one of our greatest american gentlemen." to make a case for lee as a great military leader and general is at least plausible, if far from airtight, but to make a claim for him as a saintly ameri­ can gentleman is quite another. the dallas morning news de­ scribed roosevelt's presence at the unveiling as a tribute to all those "warriors in the lost cause of the confederacy." such tributes remained the order of the day in the jim crow south, also home to the army's "largest posts. one obvious reminder of the ongoing affinity between the u. s. military and the lost cause is the number of those posts named for confederate officers during the great boom in mil­ itary installations occasioned by both world wars. in addition to the ten posts now extant, there were several camps estab­ lished in 1941 or 1942 (and since decommissioned) named 288 looking for the good war for confederate officers. initially, naming was at the discre­ tion of local commanders. during the interwar period, that authority was transferred to the department of the army, which made its decisions in consultation with local command­ ers, who were naturally keen to maintain good relations with civilian leaders in the surrounding communities. the word­ ing of the regulation emphasizes the potential impact of nam­ ing decisions on a given region. the extent to which the army bowed to local prejudices, especially in the south, is clear from the list of names. in addition to the world war i-era in­ stallations bragg, lee, gordon, wheeler, battle, and beaure­ gard, some of which were closed and then reopened in the 1940s, there were the newly established fort a. p. hill, vir­ ginia (1941); fort polk, louisiana (1941); camp van dorn, mississippi (1942); and, arguably the most egregious, camp forrest, in tullahoma, tennessee, an existing installation re­ named in 1940 for nathan bedford forrest, the commander of a massacre of black soldiers at fort pillow and a leader of the postwar ku klux klan. the camp was deactivated in 1946. the contortions required for some of these decisions can be readily perceived in the official history of fort pickett, virginia, now a national guard site: at its inception, fort pickett was originally named camp pickett. the name was chosen to honor rich­ mond, virginia native major general george e. pick­ ett, whose ill-fated charge at the battle of gettysburg in pennsylvania during the us civil war, holds a unique place in the history of warfare. situated just east of the town of blackstone, virginia, the location of camp pickett was chosen for its central location and access to natural resources. approximately 46,000 acres were ac­ quired and cleared, and construction began in january 1942. the camp was formally dedicated in ceremonies m nistl oed �fi� inst! tnat �n\� de� ac( oeal ouf! clue ilie ana �u�l ci'v1 sine intl tnat aid sem am1 ivn� seen giddy minds and foreign quarrels 289 at 3 p.m. on july 3, 1942, exactly 79 years to the day and hour of pickett's charge in gettysburg. pickett's charge does indeed hold "a unique place in the history of warfare." it is the quintessential example of bad decision-making, something akin to the charge of the light brigade. the enshrinement of such a colossal failure by an institution equally enamored of douglas macarthur's claim that "there is no substitute for victory" is a mystery explained only by the lingering tyrannies of willful misremembrance. dedicating a fort to the man who led that charge signifies a desperate commitment to the romance that makes defeat bearable. robert penn warren understood that it was quite normal during "a period of crisis" for americans, as for any people, to "look back upon their past and try to find therein some clue to their nature and their destiny." but he discerned that the civil war's haunting of the second world war was a symptom of a more enduring political and cultural obsession: "world war ii merely initiated the period of crisis through which we are passing, and it is only natural that the civil war looms larger now than ever before," not only in the south but across the country. that preoccupation, chronicled so thor­ oughly by the historian david blight in american oracle: the civil war in the civil rights era, has not abated in the years since the war's 150th anniversary. in south and west, a notebook documenting her travels in the american south in the 1970s, joan didion observed that this region of the country seemed to her what the west did to most americans: "i had only some dim and unformed sense . . . that for some years the south . . . had been for america what people were still saying california was, and what california seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psy290 looking for the good war chic center." this chapter examines the ways in which the enduring power of the south as "psychic center"-an idea, a bridge, a way of imagining the future of the united states through a particular thread of its past-foreshadows the development of the myths that constitute this book's cen­ tral subject. in other words, to understand the mythology of world war ii, one must understand that of the civil war, which continues to bleed freely across the national imaginary. honor at the stake john l. o'sullivan's essay "the great nation of futurity," published in the united states democratic review in 1839, con­ stitutes the first and arguably the most influential articulation of the idea that would come to be known as manifest destiny. o'sullivan divorced the united states from the old world and even from history itself: the american people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the declaration of national independence being entirely based on the great princi­ ple of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all an­ tiquity, its glories, or its crimes. on the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire devel­ opment of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity. hi �tl 0' en iii' ai col wit �lu ml ott cot � p wei rna tile r�t od! ul�1 oir. �ia\ fou rev cal em] ov !tat witl . . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 291 here and in the later essay "annexation" (about the annex­ ation of texas), published in the democratic review in 1845, 0' sullivan attempted to exonerate the young nation of the crimes of the past-not only europe's but its own. o'sul­ livan at least initially appears to leave room for a discrete american past, but just a few clauses later he claims that the country's birth "separates us from the past and connects us with the future only." disconnecting the country from time altogether, he goes on to link its progress with space-with movement across a continent that he, together with so many others, regarded as open and empty. imagined as inviting or hostile (or both together), figured as garden, wasteland, or halcyon plantation, this continental expanse is always characterized as available to those new settlers destined to claim it. the antebellum embrace of manifest destiny committed many americans to an ideal: a country without a past. instead of the conventional freight of history, the novel weight of expansive futurity helped to license the mexican war, energize the erasure of indigenous peoples, and ulti­ mately underwrite the late-nineteenth-century recasting of the civil war's achievement from african american emanci­ pation to white reconciliation. the reconciliationist narrative obscured an earlier understanding of the war that was artic­ ulated, for example, by ulysses s. grant in his 1885 mem­ oir. there grant forcefully identified the cause of the war as slavery, which he called the "worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse." the revised history cultivated by southern apologists for the lost cause-and, after reconstruction, by many in the north­ emphasized manners over morals, an anachronistic chivalry over the brutal realities of increasingly mechanized warfare, states' rights over slavery. it invested both sides of the conflict with a moral authority by celebrating a disembodied concept 292 looking for the good war of battlefield honor at the expense of a complex discussion of the war's origins and consequences. the myth of the lost cause also gave the nation of fu­ turity a new history. the postwar canonizing of southern heroes, together with the cultivation of the plantation myth, which conjured an antebellum golden age, effectively de­ stroyed the narrative of emancipation, which had been written in the blood of war and sealed with the ink of three consti­ tutional amendments. in the historian david blight's words, "romance triumphed over reality, sentimental remembrance won over ideological memory." mark twain diagnosed this condition in life on the mississippi as "sir walter disease," his shorthand for a dreamy infatuation he identified with the postbellum south-with the "dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and de­ graded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emp­ tinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society." walter scott, the once wildly popular scottish poet and historical novelist, served twain as a useful straw man, but an infatu­ ation with the world twain delineates still holds sway in ex­ plicit and insidious ways throughout the united states today. what we might call a sham-chivalric interpretation of the american civil war won out over the nineteenth-century version of history expressed eloquently by frederick doug­ lass and abraham lincoln, the two most capacious political thinkers of the age. both understood the particular brutali­ ties of civil insurrection and the slippery promises of peace; each offered americans an expansive reading of the nation's past, present, and future. from his first publication, the 1845 narrative of the life of frederick douglass) an american slave, through the postwar period, douglass refused to understand an american future without reference to its past, even as he was willing to let go of those parts of the past that proved wn) lin lion [ou \�ol and lll� ad �n nm war navi na� iliat own lik�1 frol rell mol l�� t�e dau �ec' ana war �df, ci �nal tral col �ub --. . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 293 constricting rather than liberating. as early as the 1830s, lincoln began to cultivate a similar understanding of the na­ tion's limitless "futurity" as contingent on its past. his vision found fullest expression in the second inaugural address in 1865. the reading of the united states crafted by douglass and lincoln continues to offer a poetics of american iden­ tity that circumvents apology, revisionism, and triumphalism. at least in part, it is a vision also illuminated by the plays of shakespeare, which offered lincoln, douglass, and other nineteenth-century americans an alternative account of civil war and of political violence more generally. what might it have meant for our history had some other vision of civil war­ namely, the kind that shakespeare repeatedly dramatized and that lincoln and douglass subsequently articulated in their own forceful modes-taken root in a country that has so often liked to claim the playwright as its own? frontier shakespeare released in 1946, the year the film historian scott sim­ mon calls a "dynamic turning point" in the evolution of the western, john ford's my darling clementine replaces the wide-open expanses typical of the genre with a series of claustrophobic interiors. simmon proposes that the film re­ flects a shift from the epics about "grand historic processes and manifest destiny" that dominated the western's pre­ war phase to more intimate examinations of individual self-definition "within the confines of small communities." clementine, infused with a new darkness of visual style shared by film noir, presents a version of one of the cen­ trallegends of the american west: the gunfight at the o.k. corral. embedded within it is also a seemingly gratuitous subplot that might be described as "frontier shakespeare." 294 looking for the good war tombstone's new marshal, wyatt earp (henry fonda), )oun is out to avenge the death of his brother at the hands of the lonn clanton gang. earp has made an odd alliance with the conmoui sumptive gambler doc holliday (victor mature)-a surgeon i� in ford's version but historically a dentist-who hails from ���t� the east. when an english actor named granville thorn'irou( dyke (alan mowbray) arrives for an engagement at the local d�t\l'1 theater, holliday sighs wistfully, "shakespeare in tombiugel stone," and invites earp to go to the theater with him. that rorc( the placard out front advertises not shakespeare but sometm i thing called the convict's oath doesn't end up mattering be\vord cause thorndyke, already a bit drunk, fails to materialize on tor'� the stage. to forestall a riot, earp and holliday go looking for �a�t the actor and find him in the saloon, where he is at the mercy rowe of the clantons, who are forcing him to recite while standille! ing on a tabletop. to the uncomprehending disappointment nonp of the clanton gang, thorndyke chooses the "to be or not �lanl to be" soliloquy from hamlet. befuddled by drink, he falters !·ou� midway through, but holliday picks up where he leaves off i1� f� until a fit of tubercular coughing makes him leave the saloon. t�is j hamlet, a play rife with suspicion about violence, is perturm haps an odd choice for an audience so quick on the draw. preofml sented with the problem of avenging his father's murder, all)n hamlet looks around him to behold a world in which "honor" is everywhere "at the stake." the thirst for it galvanizes his one( peer, the norwegian prince fortinbras, who marches across ro'm denmark on his way to conquer poland. after a captain in t�e) fortinbras's army confides that he is about to risk his life for hant a piece of land he wouldn't pay five ducats to farm, hamlet nod concludes that this is precisely the sort of violent expedition �uesl that breaks out-an "impostume," or abscess-in times of i�de "wealth and peace" to kill without warning. this military �ion spectacle prompts hamlet to soliloquize about honor, but tieu!1 what spurs the belligerent fortinbras remains alien to him. rlay! giddy minds and foreign quarrels 295 sounding martial honor's hollowness, hamlet cannot but fail to find inspiration in fortinbras's willingness to bury twenty thousand men to secure his own glory and fame. in john ford: the man and his films, tag gallagher sug­ gests that the speech "is not out of place" within the film's "muddle of duty, vengeance, right, and doubt" and struggle between civilization and violence, but this rather long inter­ lude really has little bearing on the central plot of ford's film. force, not poetry, ruled the west, and even when charac­ ters wrestle with responsibility, this is a genre of action not words. the educated holliday may be able to finish an ac­ tor's lines, but his deftness with a gun, mitigating the taint of east coast sophistication, is the unambiguous source of his power in tombstone. earp, the real westerner in ford's film, is respectful of holliday's display of learning but, in truth, nonplussed. he likes doc, and anything that displeases the clantons naturally suits him. the scene suggests that while you don't have to know shakespeare-only obsolete emissar­ ies from the old world or dying easterners seem to do so in this film-you should at least listen politely. in the process it turns the quintessential action genre inward into the realms of melancholy introspection. thorndyke chose hamlet, after all, not henry v for his recitation. the clantons, of course, respect nothing. "look, yorick," one of them demands, "can't you give us nothin' but them po'ms?" the scene showcases the hecklers' ignorance, even if they do understand that they are being insulted when the de­ fiant actor announces, "shakespeare is not meant for taverns nor for tavern louts." yet there is something in the clantons' question, a demand made of the old world by the new, that is deeply suggestive, for "them po'ms" offer americans a ver­ sion of history, and of the phenomenon of civil war in par­ ticular, that we have long rejected at our peril. shakespeare's plays, especially yet not exclusively the english history cycle, 296 looking for the good war contain a civil war historiography radically different from the one manufactured in the united states during the period in which ford's film is set and during which northern and southern veterans joined together to build the union pa­ cific railroad and settle the west under the provisions of the homestead act. that deeply and dangerously sentimental vision, not shakespeare's, continues to captivate us in ways large and small. in understanding the damage it has done, we might also come closer to a recognition of the damage being done by the memory of that comparatively recent conflict: world war ii. shakespeare performances were commonplace in the nineteenth-century american west. memoirs, stories, po­ ems, and newspapers of the period confirm what observers of national life since tocqueville have insisted: namely, that many americans (the clantons excepted) have manifested a great enthusiasm for shakespeare over the years, even if, as james shapiro notes in shakespeare in a divided america, they have diverged wildly in their interpretation of his works. arguably, the two most well-known national associations with shakespeare in the nineteenth century were violent ones: the may 1849 astor place riot, sparked by rival productions of macbeth, and the april 1865 assassination of lincoln by the actor john wilkes booth, a member of the country's most celebrated acting family. the astor place riot was less about aesthetics than class antagonism: shakespeare was simply a convenient catalyst. but the assassination, an event lying at the core of our national mythology, bears a substantive link to a writer for whom political murder proved a central preoc­ cupation. we know from correspondence and other evidence that booth identified himself with shakespeare's brutus, a connection provocatively explored in david stacton's novel about the actor, the judges of the secret court, published in 1961, at the beginning of the civil war centennial. stacton explo drea �oo w)tu occal i(alr. )�eal ana coml lorm nook (ana oetal allui coml ina litiot liom colul mocl dian liter, tne! dedi (an ada m tel unil giddy minds and foreign quarrels 297 exploits the degree to which the booth family's american dream is bound up with shakespearean tragedy. john wilkes booth, whose character in the novel is a pastiche of dramatic costumes and gestures, seeks to dignify a real-life existence occasionally approaching farce by embarking on the high tragedy of assassination. "tomorrow," booth thinks on the eve of his crime, "he would be a hero and a tyrannicide." as period newspapers from across the country attest, typ­ ical nineteenth-century american engagements with shake­ speare were for the most part less sensational than booth's and less thoughtful than, for example, lincoln's own deep communion with the tragedies. theater listings featured per­ formances in east coast cities and remote western towns; booksellers regularly advertised new editions; quotations of (and references to) the plays and poems were unremarkable, detailed explanation of their significance largely unnecessary. allusions to shakespeare-not just to hamlet but also to the comparatively obscure poem the passionate pilgrim-appear in a broad range of contexts, from crime blotters and abo­ litionist orations to murder-trial summations and congres­ sional debates to serious features on literature and frivolous columns on handsome celebrity authors. inaugurating the myth of frontier shakespeare iii de­ mocracy in america, tocqueville recalled reading "the feudal drama henry vfor the first time in a log cabin" in 1831. "the literary genius of great britain still shines his rays even to the farthest reaches of the new world forests," tocqueville declared in 1840. "there is scarcely a pioneer hut where one cannot find the odd volume of shakespeare." whether that odd volume served as an object of study or a status symbol remains unclear. many of the readers drawn to this episode in democracy in america tend to ignore its context in a chap­ ter asserting the poverty of homegrown literature in the united states. there must be something deeply flattering and 298 looking for the good war affirming-else why would we regularly quote it?-either in the actual scene tocqueville depicts, that of a frenchman reading an english author in an american log cabin, pre­ sumably because the occupants are too busy doing impor­ tant things, or in another scene that must be imagined into being: that of the pioneer taking time by the light of a brief candle to read a little shakespeare after an exhausting day of hacking through the forest and taming the virgin land (to say nothing of violently removing any native americans standing in the way). armed with our muskets by necessity but our odd volumes of shakespeare by choice, we are not perhaps so uncultured and untutored after all. what we have actually gleaned from this "feudal drama," or from shake­ speare's meditations on war and peace more generally, re­ mains an open question. pointing out that shakespeare was everywhere in america-from new york city to the western frontier, from mcguffey's reader to the popular stage, in the heads (and hearts) of private citizens and public figures (even presidents and generals)-is not the same thing as asking what this phe­ nomenon might have meant. in her essay "eloquent shake­ speare," sandra gustafson has argued persuasively for the political significance of the playwright during the antebellum period, when excerpts from the plays "were incorporated into the growing body of american oratory and used to contest major ethical and political issues such as slavery" as well as to teach elocution. this cultural possession has further im­ plications, especially for the way americans rewrote their history in the latter part of the century and understood their twentieth-century global preeminence. despite the fact that so many americans knew shakespeare, it was not his under­ standing of war, civil war in particular, to which they were primarily drawn. th nott wen ian� hoi mat non ara jaml tom war tfien 01hl tfie �rot reer gra lorn enjo �la� to b ita� man ihe! �uij �he acu( knoi of p giddy minds and foreign quarrels 299 the skulls of men the antebellum u. s. army could hardly be described as a hotbed of literary study, but allusions to shakespeare's work were as common and casual among soldiers as among civil­ ians: ulysses s. grant's unremarkable use of the phrase "ocular proof" in his memoirs, for instance; or his staff officer horace porter's suggestion that one general's "intensely dra­ matic" response to the sound of distant firing ("my horse! my horse!") "recalled vividly to the bystanders the cry of rich­ ard ilion the field of bosworth." grant's west point friend james longstreet reveals in his memoir from manassas to ap­ pomattox that, while waiting for the beginning of the mexican war in their camp in corpus christi, texas, officers amused themselves by staging dramatic performances, including othello. grant, in renaissance fashion, was originally cast in the role of desdemona, but when the actor playing othello protested against "male heroines," a professional actress was recruited from new orleans. according to his son frederick, grant "had no special fondness for the theater except as a form of amusement and relaxation from the cares of life. he enjoyed shakespearean representations when they were well played, and was a great admirer of the elder booth." william t. sherman's appropriations of shakespeare tended to be more pointed, as when he railed against the elitism of staff officers with an allusion to 1 henry iv. they are, sher­ man writes in his 1875 memoirs, like "the young lord in 'henry iv,' who told harry percy ... that 'but for these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier.'" like hotspur, sherman was a soldier of the line, impatient with politics, acutely sensitive to slights. his love of shakespeare was well known among his contemporaries. in personal recollections of president abraham lincoln) general ulysses s. grant and 300 looking for the good war general william t. sherman, fellow union general grenville �ad m. dodge describes an evening at the theater in sherman's rlolo company in december 1863 in nashville, tennessee, where wa� grant had gathered his subordinates for a conference. at sherman's insistence, the party went to see a performance of chlo hamlet, followed by an oyster supper: (oun aite you all know what a fine shakespearean critic sherman was. the play was simply being butchered-to the great amusement of a theater full of soldiers, who were either coming from leave of absence or going upon one. no one in the audience seemed to recognize us, and we sat there quite a while. sherman, who was sitting next to me, talked so loudly about the play that everybody could hear him. he said: "dodge, that is no way to play ham­ let!" and he went on so excitedly that i said to him two or three times, "general, don't talk so loud, some of the boys will discover us, and there will be a scene." but he was so indignant at the butchery of the play that he could not keep still. during the grave-digger's scene, where hamlet picks up the skull of yorick and solilo­ quizes upon it, a soldier in the back part of the audience rose up and halloed out at the top of his voice. "say tile pard, what is it, yank or reb?" of course the whole tlm� house came down, and grant said, "we had better get matl out of here." we left, and no one knew that the two ulerl great soldiers of the age had been listening. wltil way at first blush, dodge's vignette seems to be of the frontier tell shakespeare variety found in my darling clementine, but a ae one should not allow the raucous atmosphere of dodge's anman ecdote to distract from its actual revelation. those soldiers ooy watching hamlet were not at all confused about what was being represented onstage. they were entirely attuned to the con --. . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 301 badness of the performance-and the license it gave them to ridicule-but the idea of death on which the play meditates was the ever-present theme of their lives. the ohioan john beatty, who fought at the battle of chickamauga in september 1863, recorded an actual en­ counter with a skull on that tennessee field three months after the battle: to day we picked up, on the battle-field of chicka­ mauga, the skull of a man who had been shot in the head. it was smooth, white, and glossy. a little over three months ago this skull was full of life, hope, and ambition. he who carried it into battle had, doubtless, mother, sisters, friends, whose happiness was, to some extent, dependent upon him. they mourn for him now, unless, possibly, they hope still to hear that he is safe and well. vain hope. sun, rain, and crows have united in the work of stripping the flesh from his bones, and while the greater part of these lay whitening where they fell, the skull has been rolling about the field the sport and plaything of the winds. this is war. the nashville theater audience had spent a good deal of time actually contemplating skulls, and they met this dra­ matic representation with the gallows humor typical of sol­ diers and the irreverent, rough-hewn practicality associated with westerners at the time. what is really at stake here is a way of understanding war and mortality. as sherman would tell a reunion of veterans in columbus, ohio, in 1880, in a descriptive claim often misread as normative: "there is many a boy here to-day who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." the two modes of understanding war that sherman contrasted-all glory and all hell-clashed on february 16, 302 looking for the good war 1862, at fort donelson, on tennessee's cumberland river. union troops under grant's command had surrounded the fort on february 13. three days later, simon bolivar buck­ ner became the first rebel general to surrender in the civil war. his immediate superiors having decamped in the night along with a cavalry detachment, buckner elected to yield the fort rather than risk a breakout. his letter to grant propos­ ing "the appointment of commissioners" to discuss terms was met with the following terse reply: "no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. i propose to move immediately upon your works." buckner was taken aback, but he had no choice. "the distribution of forces under my command," he replied frostily, "and the overwhelming force under your command, compel me ... to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose." buckner and grant were, as the latter explains in his memoirs, "quite well acquainted." they had met at west point, fought and traveled together in mexico. buckner had lent grant money in new york city in the 1850s, when the latter was unable to pay either his hotel bill or his passage home. i am not telling a sentimental story of brother fighting brother here-others have wanted to read it that way-but trying rather to establish the unsettling intimacy of civil war, something shakespeare dramatizes in 3 henry vi, when the king beholds the twinned griefs of a father who has killed his son and a son who has killed his father at the battle of tow­ ton, by some accounts the deadliest battle ever fought in en­ gland. in language befitting this gentle witness to slaughters conducted in his name but in which he plays no active part, henry pledges the only thing in his power to give: "weep, wretched man, i'll aid thee tear for tear; / and let our hearts and eyes, like civil war, / be blind with tears, and break o'er­ charged with grief." do ren un1 cal the w roi out an� �ie ci�1 jiel \'ou the re tio iho l�� un oe� cill �en to\ hor . . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 303 grant became a hero in the north for his victory at donelson-the papers nicknamed him "unconditional sur­ render" grant-but buckner was not alone in resenting his ungenerous, unchivalrous behavior, which marked a radi­ cal shift from the courteous precedent established less than a year earlier by p.g.t. beauregard, whose troops removed their caps as a sign of respect for the defeated federal garri­ son at fort sumter, commanded by beauregard's former west point artillery instructor robert anderson, as it marched out under arms. the correspondence between beauregard and anderson had been exceedingly cordial throughout the siege; beauregard even sent his former instructor brandy and cigars. anderson politely returned the gift and would not yield at first, but he wrote in his initial refusal, "thanking you for the fair, manly and courteous terms proposed, and for the high compliment paid me." in the end, his troops were permitted to salute the flag, and no one, winner or loser, men­ tioned the word surrender. two months after donelson, having presided over the shocking carnage of the two-day battle of shiloh in april 1862, grant claims to have given "up all idea of saving the union except by complete conquest. up to that time it had been the policy of our army ... to protect the property of the citizens whose territory was invaded, without regard to their sentiments ... after this, however, i regarded it as humane to both sides to protect the persons of those found at their homes, but to consume everything that could be used to sup­ port or supply armies," he writes in his memoirs. "their de­ struction was accomplished without bloodshed and tended to the same result as the destruction of armies ... this policy i believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end" of the war. even then, of course, it didn't end before the grind­ ing campaign from the wilderness to appomattox produced a stunning number of casualties on both sides. 304 looking for the good war grant's businesslike approach is perhaps all the more re­ markable given his adolescent reading of romantic tales of adventure. "much of the time" at west point, he reported, "i am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy sort. i read all of bulwer's then published, cooper's, marryat's, scott's, washington irving's works, lever's, and many others that i do not now remember." in his way of both making and writing about war, grant departed from the dominant nineteenth-century mode. his style differs radi­ cally from that of most of his contemporaries. in its rejection of sentimentality and expression of a clinical attitude toward war, it is closer to the fiction of john william de forest and ambrose bierce than it is to the many memoirs written by civil war veterans in the latter part of the nineteenth cen­ tury. but grant lacks bierce's bitterness, and his swift narra­ tive has little room for de forest's novelistic embellishment or interiority. grant's account of his second battle in the mexican war typifies the general tenor of his war writing: there was no resistance, and we captured a mexican colonel, who had been wounded, and a few men. just as i was sending them to the rear with a guard of two or three men, a private came from the front bringing back one of our officers, who had been badly wounded in ad­ vance of where i was. the ground had been charged over before. my exploit was equal to that of the soldier who boasted that he had cut off the leg of one of the enemy. when asked why he did not cut off his head, he replied: "some one had done that before." this left no doubt in my mind but that the battle of resaca de la palma would have been won, just as it was, if i had not been there. grant took particular delight in deflating the tall tales that grew up around the war: "that much talked of surrenderin� �q\'e iliat tnorl rami �� n �qin ��tt 1rat( can erat( lentl �\\m oh� �oui giddy minds and foreign quarrels 305 ing of lee's sword and my handing it back," he wrote of his adversary's surrender at appomattox, "this and much more that has been said about it is the purest romance." few au­ thors were as singularly committed to demythologizing war. most contemporaneous accounts were infused with the romance grant was busy puncturing. they are characterized by medievalism and frequent archaisms, full of knights, pal­ adins, chargers, and steeds. the following description of the battle of chancellorsville in 1863, contributed by confed­ erate officer james power smith to the century publishing company's landmark series of essays by union and confed­ erate veterans, battles and leaders of the civil war, is repre­ sentative of the style that predominated, complete with an allusion to shakespeare's julius caesar in the phrase "dogs of war." nearly contemporaneous with grant's book, this ac­ count could not be more different stylistically: for a moment all the troops seemed buried in the depths of the gloomy forest, and then suddenly the echoes waked and swept the country for miles, never failing until heard at the headquarters of hooker at chancellorsville-the wild "rebel yell" of the long confederate lines. never was assault delivered with grander enthusiasm. fresh from the long winter's waiting, and confident from the preparation of the spring, the troops were in fine condition and in high spirits. the boys were all back from home or sick leave. "old jack" was there upon the road in their midst; there could be no mistake and no failure. and there were rodes and a. p. hill. had they not seen and cheered, as long and as loud as they were permitted, the gay-hearted stuart and the long-bearded fitz lee on his fiery charger? was not crutchfield's array of brass and iron "dogs of war" at 306 looking for the good war hand, with poague and palmer, and all the rest, ready to bark loud and deep with half a chance? this style was arguably strongest in southern writers, but similar passages can be found throughout the work of north­ ern veterans as well. moreover, it survived well into the twentieth century, perhaps most notably in shelby foote's self-consciously epic history, the civil war, a project foote himself described as "my iliad." here, for example, is his account of stonewall jackson in the hours before his fatal wounding at chancellorsville: "every time jackson heard the wild yell of victory ... he would lift his head and smile grimly, as if in thanks to the god of battle. conversely, whenever he came upon the bodies of his own men, lying where panicky shots had dropped them, he would frown, draw rein briefly, and raise one hand as if blessing the slain for their valor." the romance informing this portrait of the doomed jackson is signaled by the archaic diction ("god of battle," "slain for their valor") as well as by the attribution of an almost sacred aura to jackson, a devout presbyterian who once told his wife that he prayed his troops might constitute "an army of the living god, as well as of its country." twentieth-century americans confronting their second global conflict in two decades were conditioned to imagine war in particular ways. memories of the revolutionary war were regional and distant, while memories of world war i, although they may have been bitter-they certainly were to the bonus marchers-involved a great geographical remove. memories of the civil war, the only other major war to take place on home soil, were still alive, however. and it was po­ litically expedient, especially in the jim crow south, to keep them sharp. the wild success of margaret mitchell's 1936 novel gone with the wind, to say nothing of the ensuing film adaptation, revealed the degree to which americans warmed tot �ons wor1 �n) (heil man refit with �etu rem tooa ern i �hiv men a� a �upj [or i the noel reen pres (\9' �ma me no batt mr� giddy minds and foreign quarrels 307 to the confederacy's lost cause and to the memory of re­ construction as an oppressive tyranny. in the years before world war ii, it was the civil war, to a greater degree than any other national conflict, that preoccupied americans, and their image of it was largely shaped by sentimentality and ro­ mance. this was not the way world war ii would initially be remembered, but in the ensuing three-quarters of a century, with the influential model of civil war remembrance before us, we have developed a similarly misleading mythography. return of the cattle rustlers as the headlines testify, the sentimental school of civil war remembrance, bordering at times on the mystical, endures today. it continues to animate various defenses of the south­ ern cause and nostalgic laments for a lost world of honor and chivalry effaced by a callous, chaotic modernity. southern memorial engines forged the myth of the antebellum south as an edenic green world and sold the doctrine of white supremacy in poetry, song, history and literature (written for adults and children), school textbooks, and statuary. if the lost cause appears to have been rendered largely in­ nocuous through the eccentricities of living historians who reenact civil war battles, as well as through pop-culture ex­ pressions such as the television series the dukes of hazzard (1979-85)-or, more recently, through the removal of a very small percentage of the country's thousands of confederate memorials-the original animus remains available for pe­ riodic weaponizing. witness the revival of the confederate battle flag during the civil rights movement and the flag's re­ surgent popularity today as a white-supremacist symbol. the normalizing of such sympathies is notable in hol­ lywood cinema. my darling clementine is unusual among 308 looking for the good war john ford westerns in not using the confederacy as a moral �oijl touchstone. ford's cavalry trilogy-fort apache (1948), she �rovi wore a yellow ribbon (1949), and rio grande (1950)-all celclay ebrate the confederacy in one way or another while casting �urr(doubt on union methods. the only competent recruit in fort i �til apache is a veteran of forrest's cavalry, which a sergeant lauds inaf( as "the greatest cavalry force that ever lived." the yankee toth kirby york (john wayne) must atone for the burning of his �ndl wife's shenandoah valley plantation in rio grande. she wore to re a yellow ribbon elevates rebel honor and principle over post_ bdnl war federal power. indeed, the only thing that tends to unite time northern and southern veterans in these films is a commit-did 1 ment to extirpating native americans. cavalry westerns of offer the postwar period often feature civil war veterans, whose wno experience was vital historically in a force of new recruits and of hi green west point lieutenants ill-equipped for the rigors of nihi frontier fighting. in yellow ribbon, yankee captain nathan tne j brittles (john wayne) relies heavily on the capable sergeant i�onl tyree (ben johnson), a defiantly proud southerner who takes oem orders from brittles but, to the end, remains suspicious of with the "yankee war department." after a battle with indians, uni( brittles's troop buries an old soldier killed in the fighting. known as "trooper smith," the soldier turns out to be a for�enr mer confederate general, rome clay, who had been serving riod incognito under an assumed name. the funeral provides an �a11 occasion for the reconciliation of old foes: smith is buried rid with a confederate battle flag, lovingly made for him by the �ev� wife of another cavalryman. brittles, sounding rather like �eril roosevelt at the dedication of the lee statue in dallas, eulolarggizes smith as "a gallant soldier and a christian gentleman." the if the memory of the civil war is an occasion for nos�iv� talgic remembrance in she wore a yellow ribbon, it becomes toryia source of lasting gall to ethan edwards (john wayne) in nottlthe searchers (1956). at the beginning of the film, edwards this giddy minds and foreign quarrels 309 comes home belatedly from the civil war, suspiciously well provided with gold. when his old comrade reverend sam clayton (ward bond) muses that he didn't see ethan at the surrender, ethan replies, "don't believe in surrenders. nope, i still got my saber, reverend. didn't turn it into no plow­ share neither." the implication is that edwards has turned to thieving-"you fit a lot of descriptions," clayton notes­ and he refuses to be sworn in to the posse clayton is forming to rescue ethan's niece debby from the indians who have kidnapped her. "figure a man's only good for one oath at a time. i took mine to the confederate states of america. so did you, sam," he reproaches clayton. the rest of the film offers a complex portrait of a man consumed with hate, one who has simply replaced yankees with indians as the object of his violence. even at the end of the film, having expended his rage and returned his niece home safely, he does not cross the threshold of his brother's house. instead, in the film's iconic last shot, he walks away, a disaffected odysseus con­ demned to wander, refusing or unable to be reincorporated within home and society. there will never be room in the union for this committed rebel. ford's westerns were part of a postwar resurgence of the genre, which had been a staple of cinema since the silent pe­ riod before falling on hard times in the 1930s. in gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century america richard slotkin divides the evolution of the western into several eras: the early epics of 1923-31 were followed by a period of decline throughout the 1930s, when westerns were largely relegated to low-budget b pictures. in 1939, however, the genre enjoyed a renaissance, which "established as a basic given of the form that the western is 'about' american his­ tory, and it developed a range of approaches that facilitated both celebrations and critiques of that history." it was during this period, slotkin asserts, that westerns became a site for 310 looking for the good war "the active fabrication and revision of public myth and ide�� sj ology," in some instances seeming to analogize the battle bew�n tween cowboys and indians to that between americans and nazis. later, of course, native americans would stand in for unsl the vietnamese. with world war ii, slotkin writes, "it beitea came possible to see the mythic space of the western genre as 0051 an appropriate field for the projection of real questions about lu�t the state of the nation and for the cultivation of fictions em�et bodying possible answers to those questions." [or technology and politics complemented each other in to � the 1950s, when the widespread use of technicolor and the toel proliferation of wide-screen systems made the western an catt even more attractive subject for filmmakers. the wide-open tel spaces of many of these films provide a home to disaffected neel civil war veterans who find themselves embroiled in contests 1m similar to those of their counterparts in film noir, where they toe; drift through a world of unpredictable violence. slotkin sees a ulel stylistic connection with noir beginning in 1947, with the advent of the cold war, when the western grew more sinister, its heroes "psychologically damaged and alienated," its plots dominated by vengeance. slotkin, together with many other critics, often reads these films as cold war allegories. he interprets the postwar western's treatment of the intertwined themes of violence, justice, and nation as a reflection of anxieties about the inter­ national situation. such interpretations tend to shortchange a different-domestic-point of connection for postwar au­ diences. these films offered the twentieth-century veteran a historical mirror in the figure of the alienated civil war veteran. like noir, the western anatomizes the war veteran's relationship to american civil values and examines the na­ ture and extent of society's debt to the veteran. it is also the case that commentaries on these films simply accept their southern sympathies at face value rather than reading them ans (\� ten �o tio! ri�l stil col as giddy minds and foreign quarrels 311 as symptomatic of a larger trend in the country's attitude to­ ward war. fort defiance (1951) dramatizes a postwar west made unsafe and uncertain by veterans roaming the landscape, stealing cattle and making trouble: "look here, mister, i ain't hostile to veterans," a modest rancher, rifle in hand, weary of rustlers, tells a stranger in union blue, "but the best you can get here is feed and water for your horse and a hunk a bacon for the trail. and don't let any of our herd attach themselves to you on the way out." when two more veterans ride by on their way to the california goldfields trying to buy some cattle dirt cheap, gunplay breaks out almost immediately. af­ ter the men ride away, one of them wounded, the rancher declares, "there never was much law here 'fore the war, even less now. men keep coming through, don't know where they're going, or no notion of what they're gonna do. got so used to killin' that killin's the only thing they sure of." in a plot echoed by many other films, disgruntled veter­ ans turn to cattle rustling in budd boetticher's horizons west (1952). three confederate veterans come home to a recon­ struction south dominated by unscrupulous carpetbaggers and assorted profiteers. brothers dan and neil hammond (robert ryan and rock hudson) return from the war to their parents' texas ranch together with their foreman, tiny mcgilligan (james arness). while neil and tiny seem con­ tent to resume their peacetime lives, working hard to make a go of ranching, dan is seized by impatience and the ambi­ tion to make it big. he refuses his brother's plan "to pick up right where we left off." "i don't like to lose," dan declares, still wearing his faded confederate gray, adding that he feels compelled to make up for "four stolen years." westerns such as horizons west simply transplant the typical noir plot to a new setting: the veteran, cheated out of his best years by the war-this time the civil war-determines to steal some312 looking for the good war thing for himself. and dan is not alone. riding the range with their father, the hammonds come upon a camp of drift­ ers in a valley. the elder hammond explains that the men are "ex-army deserters and renegades ... the dregs of war." it is to that camp that dan hammond will return to recruit an army of cattle rustlers to prey on the local ranchers. the campaign begins as one of vengeance against a single carpet­ bagger who has humiliated dan over a gambling debt, but greed ultimately consumes him, and he enlists a squad of vi­ olent veterans (union and confederate) in an unscrupulous land-grab scheme. he dies ignominiously in the dark street of an unnamed mexican town, his quest to build an empire having come to nothing. if veterans aren't rustling cattle in these films, they are the victims of thieves. the plot of the cheated veteran is a very old one in american cinema. slotkin cites the patriot, a 1916 film in which a spanish-american war veteran returns home to become the victim of dishonest politicians who cheat him out of his homestead. in the naked spur (1953), one of the five westerns that james stewart made with the director anthony mann after world war ii, stewart's howard kemp has become a bounty hunter in order to earn enough money to buy back the ranch that was sold out from under him. the man he has captured, ben vandergroat (robert ryan), ridi­ cules kemp: "you know what he done? when he marched off to preserve the union, he signed over his ranch to this gal so she could work it legal. guess what? come back to find out she'd sold it, used the money to run off with another fella!" kemp must repeatedly come to terms with his own violent desires over the course of the film, until he finally renounces the bounty and vows to start fresh in california with the woman he has met while hunting his quarry. the other mann-stewart collaborations are winchester '73 (1950), bend of the river (1952), the far country (1954), log t lrt i� rtoire ito �il lntal gljn wnile rrope nt � ott� t witht �nh il a � work �tam mink il thl �te\v� tnee oat� id civil ilnei djffi eram total olthl tion and the man from laramie (1955). in four of the five stew­ art is a civil war veteran. if the veteran in these films is not redirecting his violence against native americans, he is of­ ten simply trying to outrun his past in a fashion similar to the amnesia victims of noir. this is the case with stewart's glyn mclyntock in bend of the river. mclyntock is an erst­ while missouri-kansas border raider wrestling with his own propensity for violence and struggling to remake himself as he guides a party of settlers through the lawless frontier. he bets that he can triumph over his past and make a new life • 1,.\ with the settlers. he eventually does so, at the cost of tracking •• l�� and killing several men using the same skills he had honed as a guerrilla. stewart's anguish in this film is typical of the work he did with mann. in each case he is driven to take ven­ geance, often nursed for years, for a crime. david thomson thinks the roles tapped into stewart's "suppressed neuroses as the adventurer hero." the films also implicitly seized on stewart's own status as a war veteran. as a bomber pilot with the eighth air force in england, he had flown twenty comgiddy minds and foreign quarrels 313 bat missions. in the richest of the postwar westerns that engage with the civil war, and mann's are certainly among them, the veteran is neither pathologized nor sentimentalized, extremes favored by many of the post-vietnam films that depict returning vet­ erans. his repatriation may be unfinished-it may even be a total failure-but the films insist on the complexity and depth of the veteran's character as he navigates his own transforma­ tion and the expectations of a changing society. these films provide oblique commentary on the world war ii veteran and the society to which he returned by transposing the story to an earlier period. they are valuable today because they dramatize difficult truths about the violent histories of indi­ vidual and nation. they are also part of a more widespread enterprise, conducted by journalists, historians, novelists, and 314 looking for the good war others during and after the war, to examine the myth of the frontier and the place of the west in shaping national identity.their work ranges from bernard devoto's frontier trilogy­ the year of decision: 1846 (1943), across the wide missouri (1947), and the course of empire (1952)-which celebrates the story of westward expansion essentially as a romance, to richard drinnon's reinterpretative facing west: the meta­ physics of indian-hating and empire-building (1980), which traces the idea of the west and american expansion from co­ lonial days through the debacle in vietnam. general lee's broken heart if civil war mythology finds a natural home in the west­ ern, it also appears in some unexpected places. frank capra's fable mr. deeds goes to town (1936) offers an important example. longfellow deeds, played by gary cooper, is an amateur poet from mandrake falls, vermont, whose rural bliss is interrupted by news that an inheritance awaits him in new york city. his uneasiness at visiting the metropolis is mitigated only by the fact that the trip will satisfy a long­ cherished desire to see grant's tomb. all the new yorkers he meets think deeds is daft, and his wish becomes one of the film's running gags. in fact, by 1936, the tomb had become a neglected pile, while grant's reputation lay in ruins. when deeds's guide, a newspaper reporter played by jean arthur, suggests that most tourists find the tomb "an awful letdown" and "a washout," deeds responds with wonder: "oh, i see a small ohio farm boy become a great soldier. i see thousands of marching men. i see general lee with a broken heart, sur­ rendering, and i can see the beginning of a new nation." it is telling that deeds, in whom capra means us to see old­ fashioned rural american values endangered by the money �nd tom! to ret onj\ dou� wa�h occa� mentl brati( fourl ilappl theal [rom irony in ex repur o[mi need han� n�ur( inde� in� t� a la��) mvoc umel par til itwa know dyw �ept; the c �che giddy minds and foreign quarrels 315 and corruption of the modern city, should look at grant's tomb only to discover a brokenhearted lee. to understand how we got to this point, it is instructive to return to the period of transformation after the civil war. on july 5, 1875, near the end of reconstruction, frederick douglass delivered a lecture on "the color question" in washington, d.c. independence day was douglass's great occasion; in 1852 he offered one of his most searing indict­ ments of the nation's betrayed ideals and a simultaneous cele­ bration of their redemptive force in "what to the slave is the fourth of july?" sandra gustafson suggests that douglass "appropriated shakespeare's cultural authority in defense of the abolitionist cause" in this speech, in which his quotations from julius caesar and macbeth "reinforced the 'scorching irony' that he identified as his central and necessary trope" in exposing the "profound failing of the early american republic." commentators have also called attention to the use of macbeth in the 1875 speech, where douglass expresses the need for "a man ... who will boldly climb high enough to hang our banner on the outer wall," by which he means a figure who would speak for black americans and assert their independence. douglass allies himself with macbeth by turn­ ing the tyrant's final defiance into a statement of liberation. as important as the image of the banner was to doug­ lass, this allusion seems ultimately less central than his invocation of richard iii in revealing the full extent of his unsentimental understanding of civil war. richard iii is a particularly provocative choice for several reasons. first, it was the most frequently performed and one of the best­ known plays in america. it was also the first play staged by william brown's african theatre in new york city on september 17, 1821. this was right around the time that the city's most prominent theater, stephen price's park, was scheduled to reopen after a fire, with a production of the 316 looking for the good war same play. as errol g. hill and james v. hatch document in a history of african american theatre, price encouraged a campaign of police and public harassment of the successful african theatre, which was forced to move several times. at the park, black audiences were segregated at the rear. brown's theater accommodated white audiences, but in a re­ versal of custom, it was they who were required to sit in the back. when brown rented space in a hotel next door to the park and performed scenes from richard iii, price sent ruf­ fians to disrupt the performance. he subsequently incited a riot at brown's newly built theater on mercer street on au­ gust 10, 1822, and the evening ended with police arresting the actors. with this history in mind, douglass's invocation of rich­ ard ill's opening soliloquy in the 1875 speech becomes even mo_re provocative than his use of macbeth. douglass begins "the color question" by incorporating black americans into the warp and woof of national history: "colored people have had something to do with almost everything of vital importance in the life and progress of this great country." he places black men at the forefront of "resistance" during the revolution, the war of 1812, and the civil war. at the same time, he reminds his auditors, black americans' "progress and present position are due to causes almost wholly outside of our own will and our own exertions. we did not make or control the issues of our destiny ... the white people of this country quarreled and came to blows, and it was our lot to be on the side of the victorious party." the civil war therefore both is and is not the black man's war. it is, emphatically, the white man's war, and the im­ minent centennial of the revolution will, douglass predicts with his usual clarity, bring about a white man's peace. he forecasts what will happen as the carnage of the civil war continues to recede in american national memory, and he doe� �( (ozen! nc asi to abl of ac( po col bn art dou�ll (harac' leems olrectl: fraud­ �ued a 10\11oql mded o� pial orothe, 10 the �\ajln hlnry �eace i . . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 317 does so by his subversive use of richard iii, a play about the cozening peace that occasionally punctuates civil war: now when this mighty quarrel has ceased, when all the asperities and resentments have gone as they are sure to go, when all the clouds that a few years ago lowered about our national house, shall be in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, when this great white race has re­ newed its vows of patriotism and flowed back into its accustomed channels, the question for us is: in what position will this stupendous reconciliation leave the colored people? what tendencies will spring out of it, and how will they affect us? if war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring? douglass's choice of richard iii, rather than some forthright character sincerely invested in brokering an honest peace, seems deliberately provocative, for it links the postwar period directly with the antebellum in its emphasis on deceit and fraud-the very foundations of slavery, as douglass had ar­ gued as early as his 1845 narrative. here the allusion is to the soliloquy that opens the play. a yorkist victory has seemingly ended the civil wars between the houses of lancaster and york by placing the crown on the head of edward iv, richard's brother. richard, whose signally bloodthirsty contributions to the earlier insurrections were documented by the previous play in shakespeare's tetralogy-comprising the three parts of henry vi and richard iii-is as disgusted by the ascendant peace as everyone around him seems to be delighted by it: now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of york; and all the clouds that loured upon our house 318 looking for the good war in the deep bosom of the ocean buried. now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; our bruised arms hung up for monuments; our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures. grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front; and now, instead of mounting barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, he capers nimbly in a lady's chamber to the lascivious pleasing of a lute. but i, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; i, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty to strut before a wanton ambling nymph; i, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of feature by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as i halt by them; why, i, in this weak piping time of peace, have no delight to pass away the time, unless to spy my shadow in the sun and descant on mine own deformity: and therefore, since i cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, i am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days. not dl, turn p w�ves \ion b) tn�n fl lu��e� bel, dou�l rl�)' 11 tudes to the madl1 dpn arpro tnellv tnelr! douglass's allusion to richard, the breaker of the peace, underscores the perils of peace among the whites: "has jus­ tice so deep a hold upon the nation," he demands, "has re­ construction of the basis of liberty and equality become so strong that the rushing together of these mighty waves will �reclq rlctlo �lous wellq unclel majo civil tnee! warl --�. . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 319 not disturb its foundations?" douglass has here managed to turn peace itself into a violent action: a rushing together of waves that can destroy the foundations of a reconstruction won by war. it is, in other words, a peace that will erase rather than fulfill a victory. the subsequent history of the country suggests the accuracy of douglass's prophecy. before the war, in his 1853 novel, the heroic slave, douglass had quoted not only richard iii but also an earlier play in the series, 2 henry vi, which chronicles the vicissi­ tudes of civil war. its opening lines appear as the epigraph to the novel's second part, which narrates the enslaved madison washington's escape to canada. they are spoken by an unnamed lieutenant who finds in the dead of night appropriate cover for the bloody business of negotiating for the lives of his captives, who will either be ransomed or have their throats slit: the gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day is crept into the bosom of the sea, and now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades that drag the tragic melancholy night; who, with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings, clip dead men's graves, and from their misty jaws breathe foul contagious darkness in the air. predating the war, douglass's affinity for shakespeare's de­ piction of insurrection as tragic, melancholy, foul, and conta­ gious reveals at once a recognition of war's grim necessity as well as a resistance to gilding it with romance. this was an understanding shared by lincoln and grant, but not by the majority of americans who would come to write about the civil war or-as stephen ambrose's enthusiastic embrace of the chummy "band of brothers" motif implies-about world war ii. 320 looking for the good war peace that is no peace taking my cue from douglass, i would like to amplify my earlier suggestion that shakespeare's vision of civil war might serve as a kind of antidote to the ongoing misreading of our history. if shakespeare serendipitously fell in on the henry vi plays and then logically advanced his chronicle up to the advent of the tudors in richard iii, he nevertheless, by offer­ ing a kind of prequel in the second tetralogy, capitalized on the material that england's long history of civil war provided. this organization works a vertiginous effect. shakespeare's violation of chronology-his going back in time to the begin­ nings of the english civil war-serves to illustrate the very phenomena he apprehended: the uncontrollable force of war, which bursts the boundaries of genres and kingdoms alike, and the illusory nature of peace, especially in the context of civil war. orwell once described the cold war as a "peace that is no peace." it is a phrase equally suited to shakespeare's dramatization of the fragility of this condition. at the end of richard iii, richmond, the future henry vii, announces, "now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again." he asks god: "abate the edge of traitors . . . / that would reduce these bloody days again, / and make poor england weep in streams of blood!" the traitor of course will be shakespeare himself, his bloody instruments richard ii and the three plays that follow. peace is often an ambiguous, inconvenient thing in shakespeare. it is, at different moments, soft, false, and sleepy; its "fat ribs" sit ready for the hungry to feed on in king john; it is good for "nothing, but to rust iron, in­ crease tailors, and breed ballad-makers" in coriolanus; it is a "comma" of amity bought by execution in hamlet; it is easily "frighted" and short of breath in 2 henry iv. the slimness of peace's chances is signaled perhaps nowhere more emphati­ cally, however, than in edward iv's summoning of his violent �nd a "�erfl bl wmf� cion c ni� pl\ �er�ul a wid �leasu rity a argw towa ��ear( meet trage( icalp( mwil hem) o anaj "anell near omen trial � to"ei ton)'t lanai! in ali! i'ioleu tiec toe v ene --. . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 321 and duplicitous brother, the future richard iii, to make its "perfect period." but if peace is unstable and deceptive, war proves no more comforting. shakespeare seems to regard it with deep suspi­ cion even as he acknowledges it to be the engine of many of his plots. martial honor, bankrupt though hamlet and falstaff persuade us it is, ordinarily has at least the advantage of calling a soldier "hence." honor demands a rejection of the peaceful pleasures of egypt for the warlike business of rome, the secu­ rity of dunsinane's fortifications for the hazards of the field. arguably this is the root of othello's crisis: he brings his home to war. civil wars do the reverse: they bring war home. shake­ speare communicates the particular dangers of "civil strife" in the comedies and romances no less than in the histories and tragedies, but whereas the former's green worlds permit a mag­ ical politics and a largely bloodless resolution, the latter present us with "civil dissension" as a deadly "viperous worm" that henry vi tells us "gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth." civil strife is simultaneously domestic in origin-romeo and juliet's "two households," "alike" but divided by an "ancient grudge"-and cosmic in consequences, as when, near the beginning of julius caesar, that play so rich with omen and portent, casca finds in the skies a mirror of terres­ trial politics and attributes the literal storms besieging rome to "civil strife in heaven." civil war is "domestic fury," an­ tony tells us after caesar's death. it is proximate, intimate, per­ sonal, familial, shocking in the way it forces us to see ourselves in our enemy and thus to be assaulted by our own capacity for violent betrayal. in a comparison made by king john's casuis­ tic cardinal pandulph to the french king, "civil war" serves as the vehicle to describe the state of mind that makes "faith an enemy to faith," "set'st oath to oath," and "tongue against ... tongue." soldiers can never really come home from civil war: they have never left the home they have just destroyed. 322 looking for the good war it is henry iv who devises a cure for civil war in busyharol ing "giddy minds / with foreign quarrels." in the united hl�tor states, that cure would come first in the form of the spanishro�th� american war and later in the two world wars. in the open�uam ing speech of 1 henry iv, wonderful in the way it reveals the of the physiological toll of usurpation, the "shaken" and "wan" king goddi proposes his first solution in the form of a crusade in order reace to heal the "intestine shock" of the civil war he started. minl�co\ raculously, henry believes, the chaos of the recent "furious to eng close of civil butchery" will resolve itself into an orderly military progress to jerusalem. soldiers formerly opposed, but in truth "of one nature," he wishes, "shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, / march all one way and be no more opposed / against acquaintance, kindred, and allies: / the edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, / no more shall cut his master. therefore, friends, / as far as to the sepulchre of christ." henry can barely get these words out of his mouth before news arrives that the rebels are in arms again. later, an angry henry will harangue one of the rebels by likening war to a knot: "will you again unknit / this churlish knot of allabhorred war?" we must look back to richard ii, of course, for the beginning of henry's troubles. there it is richard himself who intuits before everyone, including bolingbroke, that his cousin cannot stop-the momentum of unleashed violence will not let him-until the crown is his. shakespeare gives us no access to bolingbroke's inner thoughts in this play, in part because they are not material. we need not sound his goadl rebel depths, because we see him returning home in arms. ��eec] there's no turning back from such a course. out a� as stephen greenblatt's tyrant: shakespeare on politics �eace demonstrates, the histories do not lack for contemporary donlt commentary, but they seem of less interest to twenty-firstour i century criticism than shakespeare's other plays. i would that like to turn back briefly to an earlier twentieth-century critic, lie i�) . . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 323 harold goddard, because his chapters on the two english history cycles in the meaning of shakespeare, published posthumously in 1951, were signally haunted by "foreign quarrels," specifically by world war ii and by the false peace of the 1938 munich agreement that served as its prologue. goddard discerns a similarly contradictory peace that is no peace in richard's decree banishing two difficult noblemen, his cousin bolingbroke and thomas mowbray, for attempting to engage in a trial by combat at the beginning of richard ii: for that our kingdom's earth should not be soiled with that dear blood which it hath fostered; and for our eyes do hate the dire aspect of civil wounds ploughed up with neighbors' sword; and for we think the eagle-winged pride of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts, with rival-hating envy, set on you to wake our peace, which in our country's cradle draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep; which so roused up with boisterous untuned drums, with harsh resounding trumpets' dreadful bray, and grating shock of wrathful iron arms, might from our quiet confines fright fair peace and make us wade even in our kindred's blood, therefore, we banish you our territories. goddard points out the hopelessly convoluted nature of this speech, which purports to be about preserving the peace but actually warns against awakening it: "obviously, when peace sleeps, war and domestic turmoil have their chance. don't awaken peace, says richard, lest she frighten out of our land . . . and to our logical consternation we discover that what this aroused infant peace is to scare into ex­ ile is, of all things, peace itself!" this elemental confusion 324 looking for the good war reflects, according to goddard, richard's fundamental du­ plicity and his complicity in the violent event (the murder of the king's uncle gloucester, which has taken place before the play begins) that is the ostensible cause of the trouble. subsequent events, goddard goes on to argue, turn "rich­ ard's rhetoric-falsehood, cowardice, mixed metaphors, bad grammar and all ... into truth ... 'peace' [and by this god­ dard means richard's frightened deferral of war] will indeed frighten peace out of england. it did for a century on this occasion. it did in our own day," he adds, "when an english leader [neville chamberlain] in a difficult position thought he had purchased 'peace in our time' by a similar act of fear." goddard joins many readers in seeing political disorder as a special shakespearean preoccupation. however, he observes that while a great deal has been said "of shakespeare's love of unity and order," it was in truth "harmony and peace, not unity and order, that shakespeare loved." to goddard, the "order" enforced by "strong" men-for example, the peace that henry v forces on france-is but a "forgery." goddard's recognition of the difference between "harmony and peace," on the one hand, and "unity and order," on the other, helps to illuminate the true tragedy of douglass's "peace among the whites," which enforced "unity and order" through the state­ sponsored violence of jim crow. henry v is as apt a pupil as any father could wish. he fol­ lows henry iv's advice to busy "giddy minds / with foreign quarrels" to the letter by redirecting all that english violence onto france. i could enumerate all those actions-from his illicit war to his purchased peace and wife-that make me want to place henry among the most dangerous of shake­ speare's villains, but the soldier pistol's determination after the decisive battle of agincourt to "steal" away to england where he'll "steal" is as nice an expression as one could wish of henry's own enterprise. this king is no prince of peace; he ilthe v i�ene) � minkin ine�� in �uaieno n�ve be henry's �ifranl !ta�e h� (ilor�ul to (ikeej ri�ht ba thu n� aeli! iliefutl �o'm�" �llre�n interpr( alterm� oirthol re�olutl tneira! imqu oecam( ffii!e tl li'orla � w,gri anarch tnewh �!jim to rem [or�et. cialirn onl� h giddy minds and foreign quarrels 325 is the very incarnation of war, as he confesses in the wooing scene, when he tells katherine that his ambitious father "was thinking of civil wars when he got me." the sense of uneas­ iness intensifies in the epilogue, which explicitly returns the audience's attention-we spectators, like henry's subjects, have been distracted by foreign quarrels-to the brevity of henry's life, the instability of his infant son's reign, the loss of france, and the civil bleeding of england, "which oft our stage hath shown." in vain, it now appears, did a royal coun­ cilor summon henry v's ghost at the beginning of 1 henry vi to "keep" the realm "from civil broils." here we are plunged right back into them again. thus shakespeare's dramatization of civil war presents no deliverance from history, no possibility of looking into the future without reference to the past. that is what "them po'ms" offer us, inheritors as we are of a history badly in need of fresh understanding. we have successfully suppressed the interpretation of the civil war that operated in its immediate aftermath-that of deliverance from a tragic world into a new birth of freedom. the potential "harmony and peace" of that resolution, because of the way it forced americans to regard their antebellum past as tragically corrupt rather than idyllic, was quickly revised into a narrative in which the war itself became an avoidable tragedy-the result of failed compro­ mise that worked the destruction of the plantation's green world and delivered the south into a chaos the filmmaker d. w. griffith described in the birth of a nation (1915) as "the anarchy of black rule." what douglass called "peace among the whites" would grow into the false and tyrannical order of jim crow. it repudiated the reconstruction that forced us to remember in favor of a reconciliation that enabled us to forget. this stubborn amnesia about the civil war has cru­ cial implications for our remembrance of world war ii, a war only half as old. even if the overt racism of the early myth of the civil faint bu war has gone largely underground, a tendency to make moral roll., ,j equivalents of north and south endures-in popular culmournf ture, in political speeches, in defenses of confederate memocents wi rialization. its tenacity in military circles owes in part to a unteere( desire to view the military profession in old-fashioned chivaldoesn't!ric terms but also to the refusal to acknowledge that the denomeau fection of numbers of military officers, many of them trained at west point, constituted a colossal failure of the system. not long ago, in the context of a course on american exception­ alism, my students and i encountered yet another trace of the myth in a speech douglas macarthur delivered to the corps of cadets in 1962, one hundred years after shiloh. given just two years before his death, macarthur's speech is a valedic­ tory to west point, the institution that shaped him and of which he had been a pivotal superintendent. it is character­ ized by overheated prose and by all the immodesty of a man who had been for years the de facto ruler of japan and whose insubordination as commander of u.n. forces in korea led to his firing in 1951. paul fussell dismissed macarthur's rhetoric-typified by the phrase "the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille"-in this way: "the troops may have talked and sung dirty, but they never uttered anything as offensive as that." macarthur exhorted the aspiring army officers of the early 1960s to live according to the institutional motto duty) honor) country. should they fail, he warned, "a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words." macarthur elsewhere claims (as lee did) to have hated war, but the speech's closing paragraphs reveal how much he actually loved it. he spoke of "the dreams of things that were . . . wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by smiles of yesterday . . . the witching melody of 326 looking for the good war �merica idosetl \�eare � comedy en�llsh several �is entq iotone1 t�e way �ioes 0\ mooth! �otts f� duo sce cross-pi �earts, pottl scribed of rich anahu eththy \�'ear b -� . . giddy minds and foreign quarrels 327 faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll ... the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield." when i asked my stu­ dents what they thought of macarthur's language, one vol­ unteered that it sounded shakespearean, which of course it doesn't at all. i don't mean to single out my student; he is by no means alone in his misreading. american alchemy i close this chapter with one final strange meeting of shake­ speare and hollywood. it occurs in howard hawks's 1941 comedy ball of fire, in which gary cooper plays a clueless english professor named bertram potts, who together with several other charmingly unworldly academics has devoted years to a grand encyclopedia project. on discovering that his entry on slang is hopelessly outdated, potts ventures out into new york city to learn how regular people talk. at a nightclub he encounters a singer and gangster's moll named sugarpuss o'shea (barbara stanwyck). he wants to study the way she talks, and she needs to go on the lam, so she hides out with the professors, leading them in a conga line and other adventures that enliven their dusty routine, while potts falls in love with her. part of the humor of the night­ club scene (and of the film) is that characters who speak at cross-purposes nevertheless come to understand each other's hearts. potts proposes to o'shea with a ring on which he has in­ scribed the act, scene, and line numbers (the words won't fit) of richard's duplicitous wooing of lady anne, whose father and husband he has killed: "look, how this ring encompass­ eth thy finger. / even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart; / wear both of them, for both of them are thine." trying to de328 looking for the good war cipher the inscription, in which potts has included the play's title, richard iii, o'shea asks, "who's richard ill?" there seems no irony intended in this transformation of richard's wooing of lady anne over the coffin of her father-in-law, which we know does not end well, into a proposal that leads to the marriage with which the film ends happily. clearly, sugarpuss is insufficiently familiar with shakespeare to in­ terpret the quotation potts has had inscribed on the inside of the ring as anything but a straightforward declaration of love from a man she describes to her gangster friends as a "jerk" and a "giraffe," but whom she nonetheless can't help loving. nor does potts intend that she should read it any other way. he has no motivation for cruelty. he worries only that she'll think him "corny." so the characters aren't in on the joke. whether most moviegoers are-whether the screen­ writers charles brackett and billy wilder intended such a joke (on us)-is uncertain but also slightly beside the point, for in transmuting tragedy into comedy, ball of fire makes an emphatically american mistake. the moment underwrites the pursuit of happiness that the late philosopher stanley cavell identified with hollywood comedies of remarriage-a genre he also described in pursuits of happiness as "an inher­ itor of the preoccupations and discoveries of shakespearean romantic comedy." ball of fire partakes of an unrelenting drive toward reinvention, a drive that expresses an american conception of history. the irony of american history, reinhold niebuhr's at­ tempt to make sense of america's newfound role in a world of foreign quarrels, was published in 1952, a century after douglass's "what to the slave is the fourth of july?" as i dis­ cussed in chapter 4, niebuhr insisted that the united states' commitment to beginning anew, by blinding it to the "tragic vicissitudes" so familiar to the old world, made the coun­ try all the more susceptible to them. james baldwin, whose own tren \l'ithhisl \�rly refu �ewwa o[ieentit thegi b the first ���rt fra the reca! to the col ��st livel ��st, irre sustain � o[that a woule "1 �ssess it 1 bald1 \e!�ieea thecoun rd, but 1 series of �tates' tt si�naturl real to n arepudil mo liberali! europe, ex�ress� to deny � ed)'and in hi andrew torl,liof giddy minds and foreign quarrels 329 own trenchant insights into america's troubled relationship with history were likewise a product of the early 1950s, simi­ larly refused to interpret american history as a self-contained new world comedy. when, for example, he perceived a crisis of identity among the american veterans studying in paris on the gi bill, he concluded that they had been confronted for the first time with the impossibility of considering a "person apart from all the forces which have produced him" and with the recognition that american identity is, myths of futurity to the contrary, inextricably bound up with history: "it is the past lived on the american continent, as against that other past, irrecoverable now on the shores of europe, which must sustain us into the present." slavery was the primal horror of that american history, and baldwin insisted that the past would "remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly." baldwin's meditations on america's uneasiness with the very idea of history-and with the civil butchery at the core of the country's own past-were occasioned by a foreign quar­ rel, but these illuminations were overshadowed by the long series of misguided foreign quarrels that ensued. the united states' turn inward under the trump administration, and its signature lament for lost greatness, reflected the enduring ap­ peal to many voters of a vanished green world together with a repudiation of all those connections-the hostility toward nato and other organizations constituting the postwar liberal international order-to the very real old world of europe. this retrograde fixation on isolated greatness also expresses a fundamental generic confusion. it is an impulse to deny our domestic tragedy in the relentless pursuit of com­ edy and the happy endings it provides. in his 1999 book sentimental democracy the historian andrew burstein presents what he calls the "emotional his­ tory" of the united states. burstein "charts transitions in the -330 looking for the good war language used to express america's romantic self-image." nwths jone of the most important of those transitions occurred in ��rlrlnthe nineteenth century, when the vision of a republic an\l'ar�) 1 imated by "the culture of sensibility was overtaken by a the sol more overtly aggressive consciousness" better able "to cope lion) awith an expansive capitalistic society bent more than ever �need on shows of strength. the restraining values of the culture �� the i of sensibility were supplanted by the language of manifest qwelhn destiny," burstein argues, "while chivalric male protection of female delicacy and honor was reinforced ... sentiment and coercive power, long seen in opposition, merged into the attractive combination that sentimental democrats have paraded at home and abroad ever since." this is a dangerous brew. expressions of sentiment, or genuine human feeling, in american political life have all too often degenerated into sentimentality, a quality the poet wallace stevens once described as "a failure of feeling." nowhere is this more apparent or more dangerous than in the contemplation of american wars. this chapter has been devoted to illuminating the dishonest sentimentality that has washed over the civil war and has made its myth so resistant to all subsequent attempts to undo it, the removal of a few statues and the renaming of a few buildings notwithstanding. in many respects, especially with regard to the subject of race, the damage wrought by sentimentality is incalculable. the civil war is twice as old as world war ii. now, more than seventy-five years on, frail old men in ball caps meet together at normandy as their aged forebears once did at get­ tysburg to commemorate their role in a war that is drifting out of history and into legend. before world war ii is sealed away forever, like the civil war before it, within an epic past that we can no longer retrieve, before we transform utterly those who fought it into symbols of an erstwhile greatness bought by blood, perhaps there is still time to reckon with the giddy minds and foreign quarrels 331 _myths that mask a far more complex truth. as a teacher of aspiring military officers who will likely be veterans of future wars, i don't think we can afford to shirk that responsibility. the so-called greatness of the greatest generation is a fic­ tion, a sentimental fiction, suffused with nostalgia and with a need to return to some finest hour. in a nation once billed as the great nation of futurity, there's a particular irony in dwelling so stubbornly in the past. t�ll( war," of the to 100 itep � afar a�o, 1 thor'! ana} gro�� ou� 11 o\ve� aefia then thet: two ( -representative matt gaetz (republican, florida), speculating about democratic motives in calling for the impeachment of donald j. trump, house judiciary committee hearings (december 12, 2019) epilogue: age of iron it's all because they cannot stand the fact that the america first movement is the most powerful move­ ment in american political history. "when a man is plunged up to his neck into the cauldron of war," vasily grossman writes in life and fate, his epic novel of the russian experience in world war ii, "he is quite unable to look at his life and understand anything; he needs to take a step back. then, like someone who has just reached the bank of a river, he can look round: was he really, only a moment ago, in the midst of those swirling waters?" rooted in its au­ thor's own experience as a red army war correspondent, life and fate was written during the latter part of the 1950s, after grossman had taken that step back and endured the vari­ ous indignities of postwar soviet life. the power of the book owes something to its belated and precarious birth: a child of defiance eluding a totalitarian state. in 1961, the kgb seized the manuscript and everything associated with it, including the typewriter ribbons. fortunately, grossman had secreted two copies with friends, and the text was eventually smuggled 334 looking for the good war out of the ussr. the book was published in the west in the �llcitly 1980s and, finally, in russia itself in 1988. english speakoinap ers know it through robert chandler's translation, reprinted nl�pre( in 2006, and in 2011, bbc radio 4 further popularized the �ubll�h book by presenting it in the form of a serialized drama. �lave a what grossman observes in life and fate about the psytxplo�i chological state of the individual in war might also be said it\oom of nations. pericles posited something similar about the �ctm' athenians in the middle of their war with the spartans milolmatil lennia ago. we might say it of the united states today, still with a enmeshed, directly and by proxy, in persistent violence in the ffiltdu middle east and afghanistan and, after two decades, caught w��,it between the scylla of maintaining influence in the region and of wa' the charybdis of complete withdrawal. these wars loosed \le�e ( us onto an indefinite river with inhospitable shores, but their ln�tal nature-limited war fought at a great geographical remove �pectil by a small professional force-has perhaps given americans q'oeul a false sense of perspective amid the "swirling waters." walkll grossman's novel reminds us how elusive the achievement of �le �� any kind of equilibrium during wartime really is. a natural totalit response to such dislocation is to create a myth, and world vlolen war ii offered the temptations of myth to every country that corrol endured it. in russia, of course, it was not the good war but reawl the great patriotic war. yet grossman was less interested in came perpetuating myths than in penetrating to the essence of viv� olent conflict. lcan i grossman interpreted his war through the lens of another didie one, just as the journalist w. c. heinz read the allied addoub\ vance on mons in the second world war through the lens of ofth( the british retreat in the first, william styron read vietnam mgh through world war ii, and george h. w. bush read the gulf this war through vietnam. when grossman was in the middle of coml world war ii, he read only one book: leo tolstoy's war and nas� peace. from its title to its voracious scope, life and fate is ex�tayi epilogue: age of iron 335 plicitly indebted to, yet never overwhelmed by, tolstoy's saga of napoleon's invasion of russia. grossman paid tribute to his predecessor in his notebooks (selections from which were published in a writer at war in 2005) after visiting tolstoy's grave during the war: "roar of fighters over it, humming of explosions and the majestic calm autumn. it is so hard. i have seldom felt such pain." yet grossman rarely grants his char­ acters tolstoyan luxuries of redemption, recognition, or ref­ ormation. nor, unlike war and peace, does his novel conclude with a lengthy theory of history. life and fate instead com­ mits fully to many divergent and irreconcilable voices. in this way, it has perhaps an even more audacious sweep than that of war and peace. we are now with a soldier enduring the siege of stalingrad; now with an old bolshevik imprisoned in stalin's gulag; now with eichmann pausing during an in­ spection of a newly constructed gas chamber to enjoy hors d'oeuvres and wine; now with david, a young jewish boy walking toward his death in such a chamber. few characters are spared deformation, corruption, or destruction by the totalitarian state, nazi and stalinist, or by the autonomous violence of war. grossman's anatomy of the soviet system's corrosive nature-and its resemblance to the enemy's-is the reason, as commentators have noted, that the book itself be­ came a political casualty. various interpretations of the post-9/ll passage in amer­ ican history-competing "political fictions," to borrow joan didion's phrase-have already begun to emerge and will no doubt continue to be written in the decades to come. one of the most popular story lines has to do with the liberation of afghan women from the repressive tyranny of the taliban. this liberation is inarguably one of the more palatable out­ comes of our invasion, and the protection of women's rights has been invoked on the right and the left as an argument for staying the course in afghanistan. how easily consequence 336 looking for the good war is becoming justification. how flattering it will be one day to reimagine it as original objective. some are now reading our recent wars as a tragic coda to the american century, a coda that betrayed the identity, earned by signature initiatives such as the marshall plan, of the united states as a global force for good. subscribing to the post-world war ii faith in the exceptional purposes of american force, others may well cast our war on terror as a valiant crusade betrayed, like the war in vietnam before it, by a lack of political will or perhaps by journalists and an in­ different public. still more will seek to interpret our twenty­ first-century military adventure, again, like vietnam, as an exception or an aberration rather than a true expression of national principles. the specter of vietnam is never far from view. whenever the invocation of world war ii becomes an uneasy fit, it is the shadow comparison lying in wait: the twin poles of american military adventure abroad. the language of one war bleeds through to another, even though some­ where we know that echoes can be false, that analogies may not hold. grossman knew this, too. he knew that wars are seething struggles, not object lessons. that's why his novel ends with a tentatively hopeful vision of the future that its characters greet only with ambiguous silence. the longer war stories go on, the more difficult they are to listen to. instead of needing to know how they will end, we simply want them to stop. i'm not talking here about stories of the imagination-about the iliad or war and peace or life and fate. in the hands of an expert storyteller, war proceeds at precisely the right pace. it accelerates when we need it to, before slowing down so that we can catch our breath. it re­ laxes us with irony before hurling us back into gore and grief. real wars don't work that way, although we like to pretend they do. in fact, they resist the shapely plots and satisfying conclusions we try to impose on them. authorizations, declaratloi neatn� weakn one � count) ultima and p( to peal aftertl easier in quick!] arere! nappel world in the addltll nallol worla coldl exped theatl away" offfri of thi the si whal �tepn arner sl impel matt lee� stan epilogue: age of iron 337 larations, agreements, and treaties give an impression of neatness, but these are ephemeral measures of strength and weakness, of victory and defeat. grossman understood this. one of the uneasy truths revealed by his encyclopedic ac­ count of the soviet union's struggle against the nazis-and ultimately against itself-is that the old dichotomy of war and peace in fact no longer holds. "the war had given way to peace," grossman observes in a description of stalingrad after the siege, "a poor, miserable peace that was hardly any easier than the war." in the midst of a miserable peace, the pains of war are quickly forgotten while its imagined glories grow. causes are retrofitted, participants fondly recall heroic gestures. as happens to all wars, the deep ambiguities and complexities of world war ii, so amply documented and taken for granted in the war's immediate aftermath, continue to recede. in addition to the berlin airlift, the marshall plan, the united nations, and nato, the generation that fought the second world war subsequently brought us the worst excesses of the cold war: the red scare at home and irresponsible military expeditions abroad, all of them cloaked in the rosy glow and the atomic fallout of world war ii. as that generation passes away-to be frozen within the pantheon of heroes, walled off from the present, larger than life, untouchable, not quite of this world-the real and deeply ambivalent legacies of the second world war risk becoming lost forever. so what? what harm, after all, can there be in telling exclusively, in stephen ambrose's words, "all the things that are right about america"? isn't america first, after all? speculating about democratic motives in calling for the impeachment of donald j. trump, the florida republican matt gaetz declared before the house judiciary commit­ tee hearings in the fall of 2019, "it's all because they cannot stand the fact that the america first movement is the most 338 looking for the good war powerful movement in american political history." factual inaccuracy aside, this celebration of a movement that sharesits name with a fascist organization of the 1930s might be an expression of genuine ignorance or, given that gaetz isthe same man who invited a holocaust denier to the state of the union address, it could be an example of the dog whis­ tler's specialty: the feigned ignorance that permits plausible deniability. donald trump, the man gaetz was defending, traffics in the same kind of rhetoric, suffused with vitriol in service of disruption; its frequent logical incoherence never interferes with the message. it is nevertheless telling that one of the few occasions to which trump responded with any kind of re­ straint while he was in office was the seventy-fifth anniversaryof d-day in 2019. at normandy, trump participated in what reagan established as a presidential rite. his speech earned praise from many quarters; some listeners, evidently dazzled by the solemnity of the occasion, perceived in the speaker a sudden capacity for statesmanship. somehow, the sacred aura attaching to the event managed to cow even the disrupter-in­ chief, something that had not happened on an earlier visit to france to commemorate the centennial of the end of world war i, during which trump reportedly bickered over his america first foreign policy with emmanuel macron. the world will not long remember what trump said at normandy. this is in part a function of the degree to which he did what is expected of heads of state on such occasions. in truth, it was a pedestrian speech-what passes for oratory in a tin-eared age of tweets-full of platitudes, hyperbole, and recycled phrases: "great crusade" (eisenhower), "free­ dom's altar" (a civil war song), "consecrated to history" (bastardized lincoln), "new frontiers" (misappropriated ken­ nedy), "heat of battle," "fires of hell," "nazi fury," "awesome power," "breathtaking scale," "cherished alliance," "undyiu� �ratlt are �enej �reate�t.' luthepa !ur� wal there i� 1 oe\'iceel o!carefl iiafter it coa�tlinl t)ranny but the nftleth· �oldler� thl can vlrl tlol ab\ fro only lvarbe ho to �hol di�tan\ now f� a\and a �oci\ 11m wa� a\ over�l epilogue: age of iron 339 ing gratitude" (cliches), and "tough guy" (ad lib). and there are generous helpings of greatness: "great," "greatest," "very greatest." even when a traditional rhetorical move is made, as in the parallelism of the sentence, "the full violence of nazi fury was no match for the full grandeur of british pride," there is none of the precision or economy that makes such a device effective. most of the sentences don't bear the weight of careful reading; this one makes little grammatical sense: "after months of planning, the allies had chosen this ancient coastline to mount their campaign to vanquish the wicked tyranny of the nazi empire from the face of the earth." but the emphasis throughout is entirely consistent with the fiftieth-anniversary mythology, as in this explanation of why soldiers persisted under fire on the beach: they were sustained by the confidence that america can do anything because we are a noble nation, with a virtuous people, praying to a righteous god. the exceptional might came from a truly excep­ tional spirit. the abundance of courage came from an abundance of faith. the great deeds of an army came from the great depths of their love. only by the magic alchemy of american exceptionalism can war be made to seem an act of love. how did we get here? part of the answer, as i have tried to show, can be found in world war ii, while another, more distant part can be found in the civil war, misremembered now for a century and a half. that misremembering has left a landscape littered with the stone relics of a lost cause and a society not yet recovered from the structural inequities of jim crow. the best teacher of that war, abraham lincoln, was also the best reader of another war, the revolution, which overshadowed his youth. antebellum america had to reckon 340 looking for the good war with its own "greatest generation," which had forged anation and left it with a compromise that would need to be resolved by the deaths of what is now estimated to be more than 750,000 americans in the civil war. these founders­ lincoln called them "iron men"-were much on his mind as he embarked on his political career in the 1830s. in an im­ portant early speech to the young men's lyceum of spring­field, illinois, in 1838, lincoln meditated on the theme of "the perpetuation of our political institutions." horrified bythe racially charged mob violence that had broken out in st. louis, missouri, and elsewhere, he looked back in this speech to the founding generation with a curious mixture of respect and impatience. those "deep rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge" against the british may have been necessary to founding a nation, lincoln told his audi­ ence, but they were no longer the best resources for perpet­ uating the republic. the revolutionary "state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that pro­ duced it," lincoln asserted without nostalgia or regret. he then went on to describe the proper place of these iron men in the national memory: i do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten . . . in history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read;-but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. at the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. the consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family-a history bearing the lndu \lrnt the that and thoi fof( all­ onl dul rnu wli to those e�t gel pa��a� thate1 �eem� only 1 a\\tln passl( passl( with oiffel to be epilogue: age of iron 341 indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related-a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. but those histories are gone. they can be read no more forever . . . they were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its ver­ dure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more. those "lonely trunks" were the last survivors of the great­ est generation the young country had yet known, and the passage offers at once a powerful homage and a recognition that every age demands new virtues. the founders may have seemed "giant oaks," but they were not giants. they were only men. they were heroes for their own time, but not for all time. the men of the revolution were men of passion. passion declared and won independence, but in 1838 violent passion threatened the very rule of law they had established with the violent chaos of mob rule. lincoln recognized that a different attribute altogether was required if the union were to be sustained: they were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober rea­ son. passion has helped us; but can do so no more. it will in future be our enemy. reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials 342 looking for the good war for our future support and defence. let those materi­ als be moulded into general intelligence, sound moral­ ity and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws; and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our washington. "jrol but 1 [ami! b th �l ou are 11'11 lincoln respected the past without being paralyzed by it; he understood the ways in which improvement must temper veneration and reason moderate passion. he recognized that only truth could conquer the dangerous distortions of myth. twenty years later, on the fourth of july, during the sen­ atorial debates with stephen douglas, lincoln returned to the theme of generations. he alluded to the ways in which people gathered to think about the country's development, over the course of eighty-two years, into a prosperous land of thirty million inhabitants: "we find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for," lincoln declared. "we hold this an­ nual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves-we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit." lincoln once again explores, as he had done in the lyceum speech, the relationship between the men of the revolution and the present generation. at first, he seems to be arguing for an enduring connection between one generation and the next-between the heroes of the past and his present-day listeners, who presumably see in those the thn tho not mal the: the, tru1 ana tha1 the havl blo� dec in t libe otic mi� l1neol! that on duein with j ii epilogue: age of iron 343 "iron men" their own ancestors and a source of strength. but then lincoln reveals a new development in the national family tree: but after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. there is something else connected with it. we have besides these men-descended by blood from our ancestors-among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who ... have come from europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. if they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they can­ not carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old declaration of independence they find that those old men say that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that declaration; and so they are. that is the electric cord in that declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patri­ otic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. lincoln replaces a false history of blood-the kind of history that once produced aristocracies and that is still capable of pro­ ducing nativists, white supremacists, and america firsters­ with a vital one of moral sentiment and principle embodied -344 looking for the good war in the phrase that all are "created equal." tolstoy once wrote that the military "greatness of napoleon, caesar or washing­ ton is only moonlight beside the sun of lincoln." the peculiar "greatness" of lincoln, according to tolstoy, lay in the fact that he "was a universal individualist who wanted to see him­ self in the world-not," as napoleon had done, "the world in himself." no chaser of ghosts, no aeneas trying vainly to grasp the shadow of the past only to embrace an empty present, lin­ coln knew that the superstitious veneration of iron men and the backward-looking search to recover their illusory greatness can never sustain a republic. to do that, one must stretch an "electric cord" capable of energizing future generations. on thl t/lese theim hefounl can and ing arc printed nel depll a di�patl �eem exi frombrl him. lit offontc lralcall1 called'( low who characte killed a� the meal the the infal tll'entietl goodoyej voltaire characte curably leur des , worlds]. of the \\ obviou� nature ilne-s the tin froms camp recommended books and films on thursday, june 1, 1944, a. j. liebling, a correspondent for the new yorker, boarded a landing craft that would participate in the imminent d-day landings. on another craft berthed alongside, he found members of the first division, veterans of the north afri­ can and italian campaigns, sprawled everywhere, the majority read­ ing armed services editions (ases), oblong-shaped paperbacks printed by the millions and circulated to american military person­ nel deployed across the globe. he described the soldiers' attitude in a dispatch: "they were just going on one more trip, and they didn't seem excited about it." liebling fell into conversation with a private from brooklyn. "these little books are a great thing," the soldier told him. "they take you away. i remember when my battalion was cut off on top of a hill at ei guettar, i read a whole book in one day. it was called 'knight without armor.' this one i am reading now is called 'candide.' it is kind of unusual, but i like it. i think the fel­ low who wrote it, voltaire, used the same gag too often, though. the characters are always getting killed then turning out not to have been killed after all, and they tell their friends what happened to them in the meantime. i like the character in it called pangloss." the capacious range of the ase list is suggested by the two books the infantryman mentions: knight without armour, by the popular twentieth-century english novelist james hilton (also the author of goodbye) mr. chips and lost horizon), and candide, the satire by voltaire, the french enlightenment writer. the soldier's favorite character, pangloss, is the subject of voltaire's ridicule for his in­ curably optimistic philosophy: "tout va pour le mieux dans le meil­ leur des mondes possibles" [all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds]. of course the readers of the ases were often in the midst of the worst rather than the best of all possible worlds, yet they drew obvious solace from the distractions reading provided. the catholic nature of the ase list-the reluctance to censor, the lack of a party line-seems to me of a piece with the way the war was understood at the time, before a monolithic perspective took hold and prevented us from seeing this event in our history as a complex human experience compounded of frailty and ambiguity as well as courage and clarity. 346 recommended books and films the volume of books written about world war ii is daunting, but i offer here a selection of works that might confirm some expectationsand confound others or otherwise enrich understanding. readers looking for a one-volume historical survey of the war might try john keegan's the second world war (viking) or antonybeevor's the second world war (little, brown). rick atkinson's liberation trilogy (holt)-an army at dawn: the war in north africa, 1942-1943; the day of battle: the war in sicily and italy, 1943-1944; the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945-chronicles the failures and successes of the u.s. army as it made its challenging way from north africa to germany. ian w. toll tells the u. s. navy's story of the pacific theater in a comple­ mentary trilogy: pacific crucible: war at sea in the pacific, 1941-1942; the conquering tide: war in the pacific islands, 1942-1944; twilight of the gods: war in the western pacific, 1944-1945 (w. w. norton). the mythology of the war to which my book responds was born during the war itself, but it gathered renewed strength and coher­ ence during the reagan administration as a way of coming to terms with vietnam. it then came into fullest flower around the time of the war's fiftieth anniversary in the books of stephen ambrose, espe­ cially band of brothers: e company, 506th regiment, joist airborne from normandy to hitler's eagle's nest; d-day: june 6, 1944: the cli­ mactic battle of world war ii; and citizen soldiers: the u.s. army from the normandy beaches to the bulge to the surrender of germany, june 7, 1944 to may 7, 1945 (simon & schuster). (the hbo series based on band of brothers debuted in 2001, around the time that the events of 9/11 reenergized the myth.) tom brokaw's the greatest generation (random house) coined a term that proved infectious. the theme of american "greatness" continues to characterize political rheto­ ric across the spectrum. it can be found in presidential addresses at normandy, state of the union addresses, and speeches delivered on various occasions. paul fussell offered one of the more incendiary re­ sponses to the idea of the "good war" in wartime: understanding and behavior in the second world war (oxford). studs terkel's "the good war": an oral history of world war two (the new press) presents a revelatory range of perspectives that refuse to be reduced to a single narrative. books by historians, journalists, and critics that contribute to an understanding of the war, the postwar period, and american myths more generally include michael c. c. adams, the best war ever: america and world war ii (johns hopkins univ. press); m. todd bennett, one world, big screen: hollywood, the allies, and world war ii (univ. of north carolina press); sheri chinen biesen, blackout: world war ii and the origins offilm noir (johns hopkins univ. press); david w. blight, american oracle: the civil war in the civil rights era (harvard-belknap); john bodnar, the "good war" in american memory (johns hopkins univ. press); sandra m. bolzenius, glory in their spirit: how four black women took on the army during world waf ab� ford and, ii (g harbj facin (uni char! guin)j gran in the plague ador); ondw1 the t linda athon lioertil chica� the hi �chus� civil� �tephe ihebi howq (bloon ta�e); l victor) noirin mare a press); cangi tnrou! �cran (univ. film: richat amen ihefti gunfi� ica( theil s veal � stud1 \ish' vol _. . recommended books and films 347 war ii (univ. of illinois press); peter n. carroll, the odyssey of the abraham lincoln brigade: americans in the spanish civil war (stan­ ford univ. press); thomas doherty, hollywood and hitler) 1933-1939 and projections of war: hollywood) american culture) and world war ii (columbia univ. press); john w. dower, cultures of war: pearl harbor) hiroshima) 9-11) iraq (w. w. norton); richard drinnon, facing west: the metaphysics of indian-hating and empire-building (univ. of oklahoma press); shelby foote, the civil war (vintage); charles glass, the deserters: a hidden history of world war ii (pen­ guin); joseph c. goulden, the best years: 1945-1950 (dover); greg grandin, the end of the myth: from the frontier to the border wall in the mind of america (metropolitan); david hajdu, the ten-cent plague: the great comic-book scare and how it changed america (pic­ ador); mark harris, five came back: a story ofhollywood and the sec­ ond world war (penguin); bradley w. hart, hitler's american friends: the third reich's supporters in the united states (thomas dunne); linda hervieux, forgotten: the untold story of d-day's black heroes, at home and at war (harper); aaron hiltner, taking leave) taking liberties: american troops on the world war ii home front (univ. of chicago press); william i. hitchcock, the bitter road to freedom: the human cost of allied victory in world war ii europe (simon & schuster); maria hahn and martin klimke, a breath offreedom: the civil rights struggle) african american gis) and germany (palgrave); stephen kinzer, the true flag: theodore roosevelt) mark twain) and the birth ofamerican empire (griffin); rawn james jr., the double v.. how wars) protest) and harry truman desegregated america's military (bloomsbury); jill lepore, the secret history of wonder woman (vin­ tage); richard lingeman, the noir forties: the american people from victory to cold war (nation); james naremore, more than night: film noir in its contexts (univ. of california press); mark osteen, night­ mare alley: film noir and the american dream (johns hopkins univ. press); mary louise roberts, what soldiers do: sex and the ameri­ can gi in world war ii france (univ. of chicago press) and d-day through french eyes: normandy 1944 (univ. of chicago press); roy scranton, total mobilization: world war ii and american literature (univ. of chicago press); scott simmon, the invention of the western film: a cultural history of the genre's first halfcentury (cambridge); richard slotkin, regeneration through violence: the mythology of the american frontier) 1600-1860, the fatal environment: the myth of the frontier in the age of industrialization) 1800-1890, and especially gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentiethcentury amer­ ica (univ. of oklahoma press); and jane tompkins, west ofeverything: the inner life of westerns (oxford). several publications sponsored by the government help to re­ veal a time before the myth had been fixed, including john dollard's study of spanish civil war veterans, fear in battle (originally pub­ lished in the infantry journal), and the american soldier, a multi­ volume study conducted by a team of sociologists led by samuel a. 348 recommended books and films stouffer. a number of the fascinating guidebooks and instructional pamphlets created for overseas service members have been recentlyreprinted: instructions for american servicemen in iraq during worldwar ii and instructions for american servicemen in france duringworld war ii (univ. of chicago press) and a series produced by the university of oxford's bodleian library, which includes instructions for american servicemen in britain 1942, instructions for american servicemen in australia 1942, and 112 gripes about the french, as well as the 1962 pocket guide to vietnam. the following collections of letters and reportage offer a rich tap­ estry of experience on the home front and abroad: the good fightcontinues: world war ii letters from the abraham lincoln brigade, ed­ited by peter n. carroll et al. (new york univ. press); ernie pyle's sev­eral books, including ernie pyle in england (1941), here is your war: story of g.i. joe (1943), brave men (1944), and last chapter (1946);a. j. liebling's dispatches, collected in world war ii writings (li­ brary of america) and sampled in just enough liebling (north point); virginia cowles's looking for trouble (faber & faber), which also details its author's experience in the spanish civil war; john stein­ beck's once there was a war (penguin classics); martha gellhorn's the face of war (atlantic monthly), which ranges from the spanishcivil war to u.s. intervention in central america; the journalist eric sevareid's personal history not so wild a dream (univ. of missouri press), also published as an ase; joel sayre's look into a neglected theater of the war, persian gulf command (random house); w. c. heinz's when we were one: stories of world war ii (da capo); and john hersey's into the valley: marines at guadalcanal (bison), origi­ nally published as into the valley: a skirmish of the marines (knopf), and hiroshima (1946; rev. ed. 1985). the work of these journalists and many others can be found in the two-volume reporting world war ii (library of america). wartime diaries and memoirs, often published only decades later, offer raw, unmediated responses to events. see the poet john ciardi's saipan: the war diary of john ciardi (univ. of arkansas press) and bert stiles's serenade to the big bird (w. w. norton). (stiles was killed in action in 1944, and his book was published posthumously.) although sometimes based on notes or journals, memoirs are more often written at a greater remove, layering the reflections of age and experience over the immediacy of youth. among the most incisive are e. b. sledge, with the old breed (random house); samuel hynes, flights of passage (penguin); and alvin kernan, crossing the line (na­ val institute); all three are also available in world war ii memoirs: the pacific theater (library of america). other noteworthy memoirs or journals include philip ardery, bomber pilot: a memoir of world war ii (univ. press of kentucky); elmer bendiner, the fall of for­ tresses (silvertail); harold l. bond, return to cassino: a memoir of the fight for rome (doubleday); victor brombert, trains of thought: from paris to omaha beach) memories of a wartime youth (anchor); cb in� gee ma tion (an the! lusl doq fall willi marl dries pres! linel anh ii ques� brate( anniv (�ev� jones! libral �tyrol five ( bay). ablep mischl writet foxhol (new yorkl burgla mos darou �loan chari case \� tivesl arche exam! and 1 poets dereq edite( 1 cent ram recommended books and films 349 charles r. cawthon, other clay: a remembrance of the world war ii infantry (bison); charles w. dryden, a-train: memoirs of a tuske­ gee airman (univ. of alabama press); paul fussell, doing battle: the making of a skeptic (back bay); j. glenn gray, the warriors: reflec­ tions on men in battle (bison); robert kotlowitz, before their time (anchor); robert leckie, helmet for my pillow: from parris island to the pacific (bantam); betty ann lussier, the intrepid woman: betty lussier's secret war) 1942-1945 (naval institute); charles b. mac­ donald, company commander (burford); john muirhead, those who fall (random house); bill mauldin, up front (w. w. norton) and willie & joe: back home (fantagraphics); charlton ogburn jr., the marauders (overlook); mary lee settle, all the brave promises: mem­ ories of aircraft woman 2nd class 2146391 (univ. of south carolina press); and the collection of firsthand accounts and ifi perish: front­ line u.s. army nurses in world war ii, edited by evelyn m. monahan and rosemary neidel-greenlee (anchor). imaginative literature is equally important to anyone interested in questions of cultural memory. the war produced some widely cele­ brated novels, several of which are by now available in deluxe fiftieth­ anniversary editions: nelson algren, the man with the golden arm (seven stories); joseph heller, catch-22 (simon & schuster); james jones, from here to eternity, the thin red line, and whistle (modern library); norman mailer, the naked and the dead (picador); william styron, sophie's choice (vintage); kurt vonnegut, slaughterhouse­ five (random house); and herman wouk, the caine mutiny (back bay). less heralded fiction, noir novels among them, offer invalu­ able perspectives on the war and its aftermath: charlotte armstrong, mischief (available in the library of america collection women crime writers: four suspense novels of the 1950s); richard brooks, the brick foxhole (mysterious press ebook); john horne burns, the gallery (new york review books); don carpenter, hard rain falling (new york review books); david goodis, dark passage, nightfall, and the burglar (collected in the library of america's five noir novels of the 1940s & 50s); chester himes, if he hollers let him go (da capo); dorothy b. hughes, in a lonely place (new york review books); sloan wilson, the man in the gray flannel suit (da capo); and charles willeford, pickup, available in omnibus i (orion). as is the case with "grave digger" jones and "coffin ed" johnson, the detec­ tives of himes's hardboiled harlem novels, ross macdonald's lew archer was unmistakably shaped by his world war ii service: see, for example, the way some people die, the barbarous coast, the doomsters, and the galton case (vintage crime/black lizard). world war ii poets are far less widely known, but their diverse, powerfully ren­ dered experiences are available in the anthology poets of world war ii, edited by harvey shapiro (library of america). the idea that each war is seen through the lens of other wars is central to this book. fiction and nonfiction about korea and viet­ nam also shed light on world war ii and the way it has been remem...,.� -_ ..._ -_-_ 350 recommended books and films bered. fiction of the korean war includes james a. michener, the bridges at toko-ri (dial); james salter, the hunters (vintage); and william styron, the long march (vintage), and his posthumous short story collection the suicide run: five tales of the marine corps (random house). these books might profitably be read with bruce cumings's history the korean war (modern library). essential vietnam memoirs include philip caputo, a rumor of war (picador); tim o'brien, if i die in a combat zone, box me up and ship me home (mariner); and tobias wolff, in pharaoh's army: memories of the lost war (vintage). william styron's nonfiction writing on world war ii, korea, and vietnam can be found in this quiet dust and other writings (vintage). stanley karnow's vietnam: a history (pen­ guin) remains a standard account. other books on vietnam that i found especially illuminating include robert s. mcnamara, in ret­ rospect: the tragedy and lessons of vietnam (vintage), and neil shee­ han, a bright shining lie: john paul vann and america in vietnam (vintage). also recommended are errol morris's film documentary on mcnamara, the fog of war (2003); two collections of reportage: reporting vietnam and reporting civil rights (library of america); michael chabon's rather recent world war ii novel the amazing ad­ ventures of kavalier and clay (random house); and ben fountain's iraq war novel billy lynn's long halftime walk (ecco). certain core texts have shaped my understanding of the united states in war and peace as well as of war transhistorically: james bald­ win, notes of a native son (beacon); joan didion, slouching towards bethlehem, the white album (fsg classics), after henry, and south and west: from a notebook (vintage); frederick douglass's speeches and writings, available in many editions, including the essential douglass, ed. nicholas buccola (hackett), and frederick douglass: selected speeches and writings, ed. philip s. foner and yuval taylor (lawrence hill); m. i. finley, the world of odysseus (new york re­ view books); ulysses s. grant, personal memoirs, ed. elizabeth d. samet (liveright); abraham lincoln's speeches and writings, avail­ able in the portable abraham lincoln, ed. andrew delbanco (pen­ guin classics), and speeches and writings, ed. don e. fehrenbacher (library of america); reinhold niebuhr, the irony of american his­ tory, available in an edition with a fine introduction by andrew j. bacevich (univ. of chicago press); alexis de tocqueville, democracy in america (penguin classics and many other editions); virgil, the aeneid, in robert fitzgerald's translation with his postscript about reading the poem in the western pacific (anchor); robert penn war­ ren, the legacy of the civil war (bison); and robert warshow's the immediate experience: movies, comics, theatre, and other aspects of popular culture (harvard univ. press). when i mentioned to a russian acquaintance that i was writing this book, she demanded, "what about everyone else's world war ii?" the focus of this study is the united states, but here is a nec­ essarily small collection of vital writing from other traditions: vasily gn for wrl1 ited oftn ant battl weil york la�'� aodlit murrl oor)e) ivn . tl witool lawre amer' wood of the at the toe un loguej �et: ja, overlj in tide ad al1do� )matil ifyoun �\\'a�hb aglittel infe)te� dyitnl tade,gl fuland give� m in i watchil demanl tune in degan (\942) ryo (l ao/e(l (1949' mllti� (195 ---. . �' recommended books and films 351 grossman's monumental novels life and fate and stalingrad (new york review books) as well as his wartime reporting, collected in a writer at war: a soviet journalist with the red army) 1941-1945, ed­ ited and translated by antony beevor (vintage); julien gracq's novel of the phony war, balcony in the forest (new york review books); antoine de saint-exupery's memoir about his participation in the battle of france in 1940, flight to arras (harcourt brace); simone weil's the iliad or the poem of force, trans. mary mccarthy (new york review books); and, finally, five british books: keith doug­ las's alamein to zem zem (faber & faber), patrick leigh fermor's abducting a general: the kreipe operation and soe in crete (john murray), george macdonald fraser's quartered safe out here (sky­ horse), penelope fitzgerald's novel human voices (mariner), and eve­ lyn waugh's the sword of honour trilogy (everyman's library). the project of seeing the war anew would have been incomplete without an examination of visual media. grant wood and jacob lawrence, two painters whose works wrestled with transhistorical american themes, have been especially important. an overview of wood's work can be found in barbara haskell's magnificent catalogue of the 2018 exhibit grant wood: american gothic and other fables at the whitney museum of american art in new york city. in 2000 the university of washington press and the jacob lawrence cata­ logue raisonne project of seattle published a beautiful two-volume set: jacob lawrence: paintings) drawings) and murals (1935-1999) and over the line: the art and life ofjacob lawrence. in 1964, twenty years after the event, liebling reprinted his ar­ ticle about crossing the english channel in a collection called mollie and other war pieces. he prefaced it with a characteristically wry ob­ servation about the movies: "we did get to france, as you must know if you have seen the cinemepic called the longest day, in which with swashbuckling magnificence tricked out with little homely touches a glittering team eisenhowered by darryl zanuck storms the hun­ infested shores ... everybody, of course, has his own d-day." film by its very nature tends to transform battles into choreographed spec­ tacle, giving narrative sweep and coherence to the haphazard and fit­ ful and relentless. but it is also the case that film (and now television) gives many of us our earliest and most powerful impressions of war. in an important way, this book began in the movies i grew up watching, often with my father, in the days when nothing was "on demand" and when movies began at whatever point one happened to tune in. thus, like the ancient epics, these war stories almost always began for me in medias res: wake island (1942), desperate journey (1942), sahara (1943), five graves to cairo (1943), destination to­ kyo (1943), thirty seconds over tokyo (1944), they were expend­ able (1945), the best years of our lives (1946), twelve oci-» high (1949), the desert fox (1951), flying leathernecks (1951), the caine mutiny (1954), to hell and back (1955), the bridge on the river kwai (1957), run silent) run deep (1958), patton (1970). 352 recommended books and films some of these films were of the "cinemepic" variety lampooned by liebling, but over the years this catalogue would be greatly ex­ panded as a result of new reproduction technologies, visits to revival houses, and, much later, hours spent in the library of congress mo­ tion picture and television reading room and in a screening room at the museum of modern art in new york, watching not only movies about world war ii but countless others that bear the sometimes al­ most invisible scars of american wars. i offer here only a sampling of hundreds of films, ranging from action to melodrama, from tragedy to comedy, from western to noir: the birth of a nation (1915), i am a fugitive from a chain gang (1932), heroes for sale (1933), young mr. lincoln (1939), gone with the wind (1939), the roaring twenties (1939), confessions of a nazi spy (1939), sergeant york (1941), cry 'havoc' (1943), the fallen sparrow (1943), hail the conquering hero (1944), the fighting sullivans (1944), pride of the marines (1945), till the end of time (1946), my darling clementine (1946), the blue dahlia (1946), the strange love of martha ivers (1946), crack-up (1946), nobody lives forever (1946), somewhere in the night (1946), deadhne at dawn (1946), high wall (1947), crossfire (1947), boo­ merang! (1947), desperate (1947), ride the pink horse (1947), daisy kenyon (1947), railroaded! (1947), violence (1947), the hucksters (1947), homecoming (1948), pitfall (1948), the naked city (1948), command decision (1948), act of violence (1948), brute force (1948), kiss the blood off my hands (1948), fort apache (1948), the crooked way (1949), the clay pigeon (1949), impact (1949), she wore a yellow ribbon (1949), rio grande (1950), try and get me (1950), side street (1950), in a lonely place (1950), winchester '73 (1950), bright vic­ tory (1951), the steel helmet (1951), fort defiance (1951), the phenix city story (1951), horizons west (1952), the sniper (1952), sudden fear (1952), bend of the river (1952), suddenly (1954), the bridges at toko-ri (1954), the man from laramie (1955), bad day at black rock (1955), the man in the gray flannel suit (1956), bitter victory (1957), men in war (1957), the great escape (1963), saving private ryan (1998). the] wordl wall ilieh of �tal at\'at keats chitt� mnu meml rituall adn ilii)b( my wi readn mpar �till w ilie r� ianti( �adne wari� and f four and, scret teri --. . � acknowledgments the person i most want to read this book no longer can. i write these words at my father's desk, and i knew world war ii first as my father's war. in 1942, recently out of high school, theodore samet enlisted in the army air forces. he served as an air traffic controller at a series of stateside bases before shipping out to india, where he spent his war at various airfields. i like best to imagine him in his control tower, a keatsian "watcher of the skies," alert for the planes ferrying cargo to chittagong or moving the wounded to karachi. my asking him to tell me stories of those days and his invariable reply ("who the hell re­ members? it was a hundred years ago") constituted one of our oldest rituals. but the stories sometimes came, often at unexpected moments and more frequently in recent years, when he knew i was working on this book. my father always took a much more than dutiful interest in my work, and he would ask me questions about certain details as he read my books. it took him a long time to make his way through them, in part because he was a careful reader but chiefly because he was still working until the very last months of his life and thus never had the retiree's luxury of devoting himself to the reading he so enjoyed. i anticipated our discussions about this book, and it is my persistent sadness that he died before we could have them. looking for the good w&r is dedicated to him. its writing has also been sustained by the love and fierce encouragement of my mother. i am deeply grateful to the john simon guggenheim memorial foundation for a fellowship that supported much of my research and writing. the fellowship enabled me to spend many days in the screening room at the museum of modern art's film study cen­ ter in new york city and at the motion picture, broadcasting and "" -. ,-_ 354 acknowledgments recorded sound division of the library of congress, where my visits were graciously coordinated by rosemary hanes and where dorinda hartmann has a miraculous way with old and fragile ma­ terial. i also had the great pleasure of doing research at the new york public library, and i am especially grateful for the expertise and kindness of cheryl beredo, curator of the manuscripts, archives and rare books division at the library's schomburg center for research in black culture. i thank e. t. williams, whose mother's correspon­ dence with family and friends at the schomburg center is such an extraordinary resource, for encouraging my use of the letters and for providing a biographical context for them. early versions of passages in this book were first published in armed forces & society, the dallas morning news, and foreign policy. brief portions also originally ap­ peared, in different form, in the new york times book review and are published with the permission of the new york times. i have been fortunate over the years to have taught several col­ loquia on american culture and politics with suzanne nielsen and, more recently, a seminar on the literature of world war ii with eliz­ abeth lazzari. i have learned a great deal from both of these ex­ ceptional teachers. other colleagues and friends listened to ideas, suggested books and films, or read parts of the manuscript. i am espe­ cially grateful to max adams, david brornwich, stephen greenblatt, steven johnson, adam keller, rosanna warren, and frank wilkinson. i will not forget frank's readiness to help during a difficult stage of revision. i am grateful to kees faesenkloet and brian smith for being willing to watch any movie, no matter how obscure, and to discuss it in detail. during a year of personal as well as communal loss, i have gained a deeper appreciation for their friendship as well as for that of matthew boethin, jonathan lewis, karin roffman, anne taranto, nick utzig, and noriko utzig. karin and nick were always ready to read material, often at short notice, and they responded with charac­ teristic patience and insight. it is a very good feeling to have david kuhn and nate muscato at aevitas creative management in one's corner. eric chinski and julia ringo are marvelous, deeply thoughtful editors, and it is always such a delight to work with everyone at fsg. the views expressed in this book do not reflect the official policy or position of the department of the army) the department of defense) or the us. government. fo --. . � a note about the author elizabeth d. samet is the author of no man)s land: preparing for war and peace in post-9/11 america; sol­ dier's heart: reading literature through peace and war at west point, which won the los angeles times book prize for current interest and was named one of the 100 notable books of 2007 by the new york times; and willing obedi­ ence: citizens) soldiers) and the progress of consent in america) 1776-1898. samet is the editor of leadership: essential writings by our greatest thinkers, the annotated memoirs of ulysses s. grant, and world war ii memoirs: the pacific theater. she is the recipient of a national endowment for the humanities public scholar grant and the hiett prize in the humanities, and she was awarded a guggenheim fellowship to support the research and writing of looking for the good war. she is a professor of english at west point. --. . � elizabeth d. samet is the author of no mans land: preparing for "war and peace in post-9111 america; soldiers heart: reading literature through peace and "war at west point, which won the los angeles times book prize for current interest and was named one of the 100 notable books of 2007 by the new york times; and willing obedience: citizens) soldiers) and the progress of consent in america) 1776-1898. samet is the editor of leadership: essential writings by our greatest thinkers, the annotatedmemoirs ofulysses s. grant, and, most recently, world "war ii memoirs: the pacific theater. she is the recipient of a national endowment for the humanities public scholar grant and the hiett prize in the humanities, and she was awarded a guggenheim fellowship to sup­ port the research and writing of looking for the good "war. she is a professor of english at west point. jacket design by matt chase jacket art by steven dohanos, courtesy of the national archives aul i-1(lr photograph by hedy samet praise i ii �flllllll����lllll���m 11����i�iiii���111 3 1986 06545 2032 �od war 12/21 "elizabeth d. samet's brilliant looking for the good war is essential reading. this eloquent, far-ranging analysis of the national psyche goes as far as any book i've ever read toward explaining the peculiar american yen for war and more war." -8 e n f 0 u n t a in, author of beautiful country burn again: democracy, rebellion, and revolution "powerful and pathbreaking. elizabeth d. samet challenges us to look at world war ii anew and in this exemplary study gives us the means to do so." -0 r e w 6 i l pin fa u s t, author of this republic of suffering: death and the american civil war ''a superb review of how world war ii has been remembered as a dry run for every new american war since. but historical parallels can less inform than lead astray. the delicacy and elegance of elizabeth d. samet's book paradoxically make it an even more devastating indictment." -samuel moyn, author of humane: how the united states abandoned peace and reinvented war ''a brilliant, illuminating, and vivid examination of the idea of world war ii in american culture that explores how perceptions of the 'good war' have shaped our collective identity and sense of national destiny." -6 ene ra l 0 av lop e t ra e us, u.s. army (ret.); former commander of the surge in iraq, the u.s. central command, and the international security assistance force in afghanistan; and former director of the cia "an urgent and disturbing book by one of our most morally serious and challenging cultural historians." -a nor e woe l 8 a nco, author of the war before the war: fugitive slaves and the struggle for america's soulfrom the revolution to the civil war history / political science $28.00 / $38.00 can. isbn: 978-0-374-21992-5 iii 1llllrlllllji�lrr 9 780374 219925 the project gutenberg ebook of the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman, by laurence sterne this ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the united states and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. you may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the project gutenberg license included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. if you are not located in the united states, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. title: the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman author: laurence sterne release date: october 25, 1997 [ebook #1079] [most recently updated: october 27, 2021] language: english produced by: sue asscher, stephen radcliffe and david widger *** start of the project gutenberg ebook tristram shandy *** the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman by laurence sterne contents volume i. volume ii. volume iii. volume iv. laurence sterne ταράσσει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους οὐ τὰ πράγματα, ἀλλὰ τὰ περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων δόγματα. to the right honourable m r. p i t t. s i r, never poor wight of a dedicator had less hopes from his dedication, than i have from this of mine; for it is written in a bye corner of the kingdom, and in a retir’d thatch’d house, where i live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,——but much more so, when he laughs, it adds something to this fragment of life. i humbly beg, sir, that you will honour this book, by taking it—(not under your protection,—it must protect itself, but)—into the country with you; where, if i am ever told, it has made you smile; or can conceive it has beguiled you of one moment’s pain—i shall think myself as happy as a minister of state;——perhaps much happier than any one (one only excepted) that i have read or heard of. i am, great sir, (and, what is more to your honour) i am, good sir, your well-wisher, and most humble fellow-subject, t h e a u t h o r. the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gent. c h a p. i i wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—i am verily persuaded i should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, i dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it. pray my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?—good g—! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,——did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? pray, what was your father saying?————nothing. c h a p. ii ———then, positively, there is nothing in the question that i can see, either good or bad.——then, let me tell you, sir, it was a very unseasonable question at least,—because it scattered and dispersed the animal spirits, whose business it was to have escorted and gone hand in hand with the homunculus, and conducted him safe to the place destined for his reception. the homunculus, sir, in however low and ludicrous a light he may appear, in this age of levity, to the eye of folly or prejudice;—to the eye of reason in scientific research, he stands confess’d—a being guarded and circumscribed with rights.——the minutest philosophers, who by the bye, have the most enlarged understandings, (their souls being inversely as their enquiries) shew us incontestably, that the homunculus is created by the same hand,—engender’d in the same course of nature,—endow’d with the same loco-motive powers and faculties with us:—that he consists as we do, of skin, hair, fat, flesh, veins, arteries, ligaments, nerves, cartilages, bones, marrow, brains, glands, genitals, humours, and articulations;—is a being of as much activity,—and in all senses of the word, as much and as truly our fellow-creature as my lord chancellor of england.—he may be benefitted,—he may be injured,—he may obtain redress; in a word, he has all the claims and rights of humanity, which tully, puffendorf, or the best ethick writers allow to arise out of that state and relation. now, dear sir, what if any accident had befallen him in his way alone!—or that through terror of it, natural to so young a traveller, my little gentleman had got to his journey’s end miserably spent;—his muscular strength and virility worn down to a thread;—his own animal spirits ruffled beyond description,—and that in this sad disorder’d state of nerves, he had lain down a prey to sudden starts, or a series of melancholy dreams and fancies, for nine long, long months together.—i tremble to think what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights. c h a p. iii to my uncle mr. toby shandy do i stand indebted for the preceding anecdote, to whom my father, who was an excellent natural philosopher, and much given to close reasoning upon the smallest matters, had oft, and heavily complained of the injury; but once more particularly, as my uncle toby well remember’d, upon his observing a most unaccountable obliquity, (as he call’d it) in my manner of setting up my top, and justifying the principles upon which i had done it,—the old gentleman shook his head, and in a tone more expressive by half of sorrow than reproach,—he said his heart all along foreboded, and he saw it verified in this, and from a thousand other observations he had made upon me, that i should neither think nor act like any other man’s child:—but alas! continued he, shaking his head a second time, and wiping away a tear which was trickling down his cheeks, my tristram’s misfortunes began nine months before ever he came into the world. —my mother, who was sitting by, look’d up, but she knew no more than her backside what my father meant,—but my uncle, mr. toby shandy, who had been often informed of the affair,—understood him very well. c h a p. iv i know there are readers in the world, as well as many other good people in it, who are no readers at all,—who find themselves ill at ease, unless they are let into the whole secret from first to last, of every thing which concerns you. it is in pure compliance with this humour of theirs, and from a backwardness in my nature to disappoint any one soul living, that i have been so very particular already. as my life and opinions are likely to make some noise in the world, and, if i conjecture right, will take in all ranks, professions, and denominations of men whatever,—be no less read than the pilgrim’s progress itself—and in the end, prove the very thing which montaigne dreaded his essays should turn out, that is, a book for a parlour-window;—i find it necessary to consult every one a little in his turn; and therefore must beg pardon for going on a little farther in the same way: for which cause, right glad i am, that i have begun the history of myself in the way i have done; and that i am able to go on, tracing every thing in it, as horace says, ab ovo. horace, i know, does not recommend this fashion altogether: but that gentleman is speaking only of an epic poem or a tragedy;—(i forget which,) besides, if it was not so, i should beg mr. horace’s pardon;—for in writing what i have set about, i shall confine myself neither to his rules, nor to any man’s rules that ever lived. to such however as do not choose to go so far back into these things, i can give no better advice than that they skip over the remaining part of this chapter; for i declare before-hand, ’tis wrote only for the curious and inquisitive. ——————shut the door.—————— i was begot in the night betwixt the first sunday and the first monday in the month of march, in the year of our lord one thousand seven hundred and eighteen. i am positive i was.—but how i came to be so very particular in my account of a thing which happened before i was born, is owing to another small anecdote known only in our own family, but now made publick for the better clearing up this point. my father, you must know, who was originally a turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ——, was, i believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether ’twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. as a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life,—on the first sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year,—as certain as ever the sunday-night came,—to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands:—and being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time i have been speaking of,—he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month. it was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which i fear i shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up,——but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head—& vice versa:——which strange combination of ideas, the sagacious locke, who certainly understood the nature of these things better than most men, affirms to have produced more wry actions than all other sources of prejudice whatsoever. but this by the bye. now it appears by a memorandum in my father’s pocket-book, which now lies upon the table, “that on lady-day, which was on the 25th of the same month in which i date my geniture,——my father set upon his journey to london, with my eldest brother bobby, to fix him at westminster school;” and, as it appears from the same authority, “that he did not get down to his wife and family till the second week in may following,”—it brings the thing almost to a certainty. however, what follows in the beginning of the next chapter, puts it beyond all possibility of a doubt. ———but pray, sir, what was your father doing all december, january, and february?——why, madam,—he was all that time afflicted with a sciatica. c h a p. v on the fifth day of november, 1718, which to the æra fixed on, was as near nine kalendar months as any husband could in reason have expected,—was i tristram shandy, gentleman, brought forth into this scurvy and disastrous world of ours.—i wish i had been born in the moon, or in any of the planets, (except jupiter or saturn, because i never could bear cold weather) for it could not well have fared worse with me in any of them (though i will not answer for venus) than it has in this vile, dirty planet of ours,—which, o’ my conscience, with reverence be it spoken, i take to be made up of the shreds and clippings of the rest;——not but the planet is well enough, provided a man could be born in it to a great title or to a great estate; or could any how contrive to be called up to public charges, and employments of dignity or power;——but that is not my case;——and therefore every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it;———for which cause i affirm it over again to be one of the vilest worlds that ever was made;—for i can truly say, that from the first hour i drew my breath in it, to this, that i can now scarce draw it at all, for an asthma i got in scating against the wind in flanders;—i have been the continual sport of what the world calls fortune; and though i will not wrong her by saying, she has ever made me feel the weight of any great or signal evil;——yet with all the good temper in the world i affirm it of her, that in every stage of my life, and at every turn and corner where she could get fairly at me, the ungracious duchess has pelted me with a set of as pitiful misadventures and cross accidents as ever small hero sustained. c h a p. vi in the beginning of the last chapter, i informed you exactly when i was born; but i did not inform you how. no, that particular was reserved entirely for a chapter by itself;—besides, sir, as you and i are in a manner perfect strangers to each other, it would not have been proper to have let you into too many circumstances relating to myself all at once. —you must have a little patience. i have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal i am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: as you proceed farther with me, the slight acquaintance, which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.—o diem praeclarum!—then nothing which has touched me will be thought trifling in its nature, or tedious in its telling. therefore, my dear friend and companion, if you should think me somewhat sparing of my narrative on my first setting out—bear with me,—and let me go on, and tell my story my own way:—or, if i should seem now and then to trifle upon the road,—or should sometimes put on a fool’s cap with a bell to it, for a moment or two as we pass along,—don’t fly off,—but rather courteously give me credit for a little more wisdom than appears upon my outside;—and as we jog on, either laugh with me, or at me, or in short do any thing,—only keep your temper. c h a p. vii in the same village where my father and my mother dwelt, dwelt also a thin, upright, motherly, notable, good old body of a midwife, who with the help of a little plain good sense, and some years full employment in her business, in which she had all along trusted little to her own efforts, and a great deal to those of dame nature,—had acquired, in her way, no small degree of reputation in the world:—by which word world, need i in this place inform your worship, that i would be understood to mean no more of it, than a small circle described upon the circle of the great world, of four english miles diameter, or thereabouts, of which the cottage where the good old woman lived is supposed to be the centre?—she had been left it seems a widow in great distress, with three or four small children, in her forty-seventh year; and as she was at that time a person of decent carriage,—grave deportment,—a woman moreover of few words and withal an object of compassion, whose distress, and silence under it, called out the louder for a friendly lift: the wife of the parson of the parish was touched with pity; and having often lamented an inconvenience to which her husband’s flock had for many years been exposed, inasmuch as there was no such thing as a midwife, of any kind or degree, to be got at, let the case have been never so urgent, within less than six or seven long miles riding; which said seven long miles in dark nights and dismal roads, the country thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, was almost equal to fourteen; and that in effect was sometimes next to having no midwife at all; it came into her head, that it would be doing as seasonable a kindness to the whole parish, as to the poor creature herself, to get her a little instructed in some of the plain principles of the business, in order to set her up in it. as no woman thereabouts was better qualified to execute the plan she had formed than herself, the gentlewoman very charitably undertook it; and having great influence over the female part of the parish, she found no difficulty in effecting it to the utmost of her wishes. in truth, the parson join’d his interest with his wife’s in the whole affair, and in order to do things as they should be, and give the poor soul as good a title by law to practise, as his wife had given by institution,—he cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary’s licence himself, amounting in the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings and four pence; so that betwixt them both, the good woman was fully invested in the real and corporal possession of her office, together with all its rights, members, and appurtenances whatsoever. these last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like cases had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood. but it was according to a neat formula of didius his own devising, who having a particular turn for taking to pieces, and new framing over again all kind of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this wham-wham of his inserted. i own i never could envy didius in these kinds of fancies of his:—but every man to his own taste.—did not dr. kunastrokius, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket? nay, if you come to that, sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting solomon himself,—have they not had their hobby-horses;—their running horses,—their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets,—their maggots and their butterflies?—and so long as a man rides his hobby-horse peaceably and quietly along the king’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him,—pray, sir, what have either you or i to do with it? c h a p. viii —de gustibus non est disputandum;—that is, there is no disputing against hobby-horses; and for my part, i seldom do; nor could i with any sort of grace, had i been an enemy to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain intervals and changes of the moon, to be both fiddler and painter, according as the fly stings:—be it known to you, that i keep a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do i care who knows it) i frequently ride out and take the air;—though sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, i take somewhat longer journies than what a wise man would think altogether right.—but the truth is,—i am not a wise man;—and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what i do: so i seldom fret or fume at all about it: nor does it much disturb my rest, when i see such great lords and tall personages as hereafter follow;—such, for instance, as my lord a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses,—some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace;——others on the contrary, tucked up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-coloured devils astride a mortgage,—and as if some of them were resolved to break their necks.——so much the better—say i to myself;—for in case the worst should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well without them; and for the rest,——why——god speed them——e’en let them ride on without opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this very night—’tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse mounted by one half before tomorrow morning. not one of these instances therefore can be said to break in upon my rest.——but there is an instance, which i own puts me off my guard, and that is, when i see one born for great actions, and what is still more for his honour, whose nature ever inclines him to good ones;—when i behold such a one, my lord, like yourself, whose principles and conduct are as generous and noble as his blood, and whom, for that reason, a corrupt world cannot spare one moment;—when i see such a one, my lord, mounted, though it is but for a minute beyond the time which my love to my country has prescribed to him, and my zeal for his glory wishes,—then, my lord, i cease to be a philosopher, and in the first transport of an honest impatience, i wish the hobby-horse, with all his fraternity, at the devil. “my lord, i maintain this to be a dedication, notwithstanding its singularity in the three great essentials of matter, form and place: i beg, therefore, you will accept it as such, and that you will permit me to lay it, with the most respectful humility, at your lordship’s feet—when you are upon them,—which you can be when you please;—and that is, my lord, whenever there is occasion for it, and i will add, to the best purposes too. i have the honour to be, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient, and most devoted, and most humble servant, tristram shandy.” c h a p. ix i solemnly declare to all mankind, that the above dedication was made for no one prince, prelate, pope, or potentate,—duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron, of this, or any other realm in christendom;——nor has it yet been hawked about, or offered publicly or privately, directly or indirectly, to any one person or personage, great or small; but is honestly a true virgin-dedication untried on, upon any soul living. i labour this point so particularly, merely to remove any offence or objection which might arise against it from the manner in which i propose to make the most of it;—which is the putting it up fairly to public sale; which i now do. ——every author has a way of his own in bringing his points to bear;—for my own part, as i hate chaffering and higgling for a few guineas in a dark entry;—i resolved within myself, from the very beginning, to deal squarely and openly with your great folks in this affair, and try whether i should not come off the better by it. if therefore there is any one duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron, in these his majesty’s dominions, who stands in need of a tight, genteel dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for by the bye, unless it suits in some degree, i will not part with it)——it is much at his service for fifty guineas;——which i am positive is twenty guineas less than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius. my lord, if you examine it over again, it is far from being a gross piece of daubing, as some dedications are. the design, your lordship sees, is good,—the colouring transparent,—the drawing not amiss;—or to speak more like a man of science,—and measure my piece in the painter’s scale, divided into 20,—i believe, my lord, the outlines will turn out as 12,—the composition as 9,—the colouring as 6,—the expression 13 and a half,—and the design,—if i may be allowed, my lord, to understand my own design, and supposing absolute perfection in designing, to be as 20,—i think it cannot well fall short of 19. besides all this,—there is keeping in it, and the dark strokes in the hobby-horse, (which is a secondary figure, and a kind of back-ground to the whole) give great force to the principal lights in your own figure, and make it come off wonderfully;—and besides, there is an air of originality in the tout ensemble. be pleased, my good lord, to order the sum to be paid into the hands of mr. dodsley, for the benefit of the author; and in the next edition care shall be taken that this chapter be expunged, and your lordship’s titles, distinctions, arms, and good actions, be placed at the front of the preceding chapter: all which, from the words, de gustibus non est disputandum, and whatever else in this book relates to hobby-horses, but no more, shall stand dedicated to your lordship.—the rest i dedicate to the moon, who, by the bye, of all the patrons or matrons i can think of, has most power to set my book a-going, and make the world run mad after it. bright goddess, if thou art not too busy with candid and miss cunegund’s affairs,—take tristram shandy’s under thy protection also. c h a p. x whatever degree of small merit the act of benignity in favour of the midwife might justly claim, or in whom that claim truly rested,—at first sight seems not very material to this history;——certain however it was, that the gentlewoman, the parson’s wife, did run away at that time with the whole of it: and yet, for my life, i cannot help thinking but that the parson himself, though he had not the good fortune to hit upon the design first,—yet, as he heartily concurred in it the moment it was laid before him, and as heartily parted with his money to carry it into execution, had a claim to some share of it,—if not to a full half of whatever honour was due to it. the world at that time was pleased to determine the matter otherwise. lay down the book, and i will allow you half a day to give a probable guess at the grounds of this procedure. be it known then, that, for about five years before the date of the midwife’s licence, of which you have had so circumstantial an account,—the parson we have to do with had made himself a country-talk by a breach of all decorum, which he had committed against himself, his station, and his office;—and that was in never appearing better, or otherwise mounted, than upon a lean, sorry, jackass of a horse, value about one pound fifteen shillings; who, to shorten all description of him, was full brother to rosinante, as far as similitude congenial could make him; for he answered his description to a hair-breadth in every thing,—except that i do not remember ’tis any where said, that rosinante was broken-winded; and that, moreover, rosinante, as is the happiness of most spanish horses, fat or lean,—was undoubtedly a horse at all points. i know very well that the hero’s horse was a horse of chaste deportment, which may have given grounds for the contrary opinion: but it is as certain at the same time that rosinante’s continency (as may be demonstrated from the adventure of the yanguesian carriers) proceeded from no bodily defect or cause whatsoever, but from the temperance and orderly current of his blood.—and let me tell you, madam, there is a great deal of very good chastity in the world, in behalf of which you could not say more for your life. let that be as it may, as my purpose is to do exact justice to every creature brought upon the stage of this dramatic work,—i could not stifle this distinction in favour of don quixote’s horse;——in all other points, the parson’s horse, i say, was just such another, for he was as lean, and as lank, and as sorry a jade, as humility herself could have bestrided. in the estimation of here and there a man of weak judgment, it was greatly in the parson’s power to have helped the figure of this horse of his,—for he was master of a very handsome demi-peaked saddle, quilted on the seat with green plush, garnished with a double row of silver-headed studs, and a noble pair of shining brass stirrups, with a housing altogether suitable, of grey superfine cloth, with an edging of black lace, terminating in a deep, black, silk fringe, poudré d’or,—all which he had purchased in the pride and prime of his life, together with a grand embossed bridle, ornamented at all points as it should be.——but not caring to banter his beast, he had hung all these up behind his study door: and, in lieu of them, had seriously befitted him with just such a bridle and such a saddle, as the figure and value of such a steed might well and truly deserve. in the several sallies about his parish, and in the neighbouring visits to the gentry who lived around him,—you will easily comprehend, that the parson, so appointed, would both hear and see enough to keep his philosophy from rusting. to speak the truth, he never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of both old and young.——labour stood still as he pass’d——the bucket hung suspended in the middle of the well,—the spinning-wheel forgot its round,——even chuck-farthing and shuffle-cap themselves stood gaping till he had got out of sight; and as his movement was not of the quickest, he had generally time enough upon his hands to make his observations,—to hear the groans of the serious,—and the laughter of the light-hearted; all which he bore with excellent tranquillity.—his character was,—he loved a jest in his heart—and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which he so strongly saw himself: so that to his friends, who knew his foible was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in bantering the extravagance of his humour,—instead of giving the true cause,—he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being altogether as spare a figure as his beast,—he would sometimes insist upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;—that they were, centaur-like,—both of a piece. at other times, and in other moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit,—he would say, he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat horse, without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits. at different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons for riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to one of mettle;—for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as delightfully de vanitate mundi et fugâ sæculi, as with the advantage of a death’s-head before him;—that, in all other exercitations, he could spend his time, as he rode slowly along,—to as much account as in his study;—that he could draw up an argument in his sermon,—or a hole in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other;—that brisk trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two incompatible movements.—but that upon his steed—he could unite and reconcile every thing,—he could compose his sermon—he could compose his cough,——and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise compose himself to sleep.—in short, the parson upon such encounters would assign any cause but the true cause,—and he with-held the true one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to him. but the truth of the story was as follows: in the first years of this gentleman’s life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle were purchased by him, it had been his manner, or vanity, or call it what you will,—to run into the opposite extreme.—in the language of the county where he dwelt, he was said to have loved a good horse, and generally had one of the best in the whole parish standing in his stable always ready for saddling: and as the nearest midwife, as i told you, did not live nearer to the village than seven miles, and in a vile country,—it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last;—as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this; that his horse was either clapp’d, or spavin’d, or greaz’d;—or he was twitter-bon’d, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, which would let him carry no flesh;—so that he had every nine or ten months a bad horse to get rid of,—and a good horse to purchase in his stead. what the loss in such a balance might amount to, communibus annis, i would leave to a special jury of sufferers in the same traffick, to determine;—but let it be what it would, the honest gentleman bore it for many years without a murmur, till at length, by repeated ill accidents of the kind, he found it necessary to take the thing under consideration; and upon weighing the whole, and summing it up in his mind, he found it not only disproportioned to his other expences, but withal so heavy an article in itself, as to disable him from any other act of generosity in his parish: besides this, he considered that with half the sum thus galloped away, he could do ten times as much good;—and what still weighed more with him than all other considerations put together, was this, that it confined all his charity into one particular channel, and where, as he fancied, it was the least wanted, namely, to the child-bearing and child-getting part of his parish; reserving nothing for the impotent,—nothing for the aged,—nothing for the many comfortless scenes he was hourly called forth to visit, where poverty, and sickness and affliction dwelt together. for these reasons he resolved to discontinue the expence; and there appeared but two possible ways to extricate him clearly out of it;—and these were, either to make it an irrevocable law never more to lend his steed upon any application whatever,—or else be content to ride the last poor devil, such as they had made him, with all his aches and infirmities, to the very end of the chapter. as he dreaded his own constancy in the first—he very chearfully betook himself to the second; and though he could very well have explained it, as i said, to his honour,—yet, for that very reason, he had a spirit above it; choosing rather to bear the contempt of his enemies, and the laughter of his friends, than undergo the pain of telling a story, which might seem a panegyrick upon himself. i have the highest idea of the spiritual and refined sentiments of this reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which i think comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of la mancha, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, i love more, and would actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero of antiquity. but this is not the moral of my story: the thing i had in view was to shew the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.—for you must know, that so long as this explanation would have done the parson credit,—the devil a soul could find it out,—i suppose his enemies would not, and that his friends could not.——but no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf of the midwife, and pay the expences of the ordinary’s licence to set her up,—but the whole secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their destruction, were known and distinctly remembered.—the story ran like wild-fire.—“the parson had a returning fit of pride which had just seized him; and he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if it was so, ’twas plain as the sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of the licence ten times told, the very first year:—so that every body was left to judge what were his views in this act of charity.” what were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,—or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep. about ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made entirely easy upon that score,—it being just so long since he left his parish,—and the whole world at the same time behind him,—and stands accountable to a judge of whom he will have no cause to complain. but there is a fatality attends the actions of some men: order them as they will, they pass thro’ a certain medium, which so twists and refracts them from their true directions——that, with all the titles to praise which a rectitude of heart can give, the doers of them are nevertheless forced to live and die without it. of the truth of which, this gentleman was a painful example.——but to know by what means this came to pass,—and to make that knowledge of use to you, i insist upon it that you read the two following chapters, which contain such a sketch of his life and conversation, as will carry its moral along with it.—when this is done, if nothing stops us in our way, we will go on with the midwife. c h a p. xi yorick was this parson’s name, and, what is very remarkable in it, (as appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near,—i was within an ace of saying nine hundred years;——but i would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however indisputable in itself,——and therefore i shall content myself with only saying——it had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or transposition of a single letter, for i do not know how long; which is more than i would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as many chops and changes as their owners.—has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?—in honest truth, i think sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. but a villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and swear, “that his own great grandfather was the man who did either this or that.” this evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the yorick’s family, and their religious preservation of these records i quote, which do farther inform us, that the family was originally of danish extraction, and had been transplanted into england as early as in the reign of horwendillus, king of denmark, in whose court, it seems, an ancestor of this mr. yorick’s, and from whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of his death. of what nature this considerable post was, this record saith not;—it only adds, that, for near two centuries, it had been totally abolished, as altogether unnecessary, not only in that court, but in every other court of the christian world. it has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than that of the king’s chief jester;—and that hamlet’s yorick, in our shakespeare, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated facts, was certainly the very man. i have not the time to look into saxo-grammaticus’s danish history, to know the certainty of this;—but if you have leisure, and can easily get at the book, you may do it full as well yourself. i had just time, in my travels through denmark with mr. noddy’s eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, i accompanied as governor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate thro’ most parts of europe, and of which original journey performed by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given in the progress of this work. i had just time, i say, and that was all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long sojourner in that country;——namely, “that nature was neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts of genius and capacity to its inhabitants;—but, like a discreet parent, was moderately kind to them all; observing such an equal tenor in the distribution of her favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty near to a level with each other; so that you will meet with few instances in that kingdom of refined parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold understanding amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a share;” which is, i think, very right. with us, you see, the case is quite different:—we are all ups and downs in this matter;—you are a great genius;—or ’tis fifty to one, sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;—not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,—no,—we are not so irregular as that comes to;—but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she. this is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to yorick’s extraction, who, by what i can remember of him, and by all the accounts i could ever get of him, seemed not to have had one single drop of danish blood in his whole crasis; in nine hundred years, it might possibly have all run out:——i will not philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this:—that instead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and gaité de cœur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together. with all this sail, poor yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping, unsuspicious girl of thirteen: so that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a day of somebody’s tackling; and as the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way,——you may likewise imagine, ’twas with such he had generally the ill luck to get the most entangled. for aught i know there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of such fracas:——for, to speak the truth, yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity;—not to gravity as such;—for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave or serious of mortal men for days and weeks together;—but he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared a cloak for ignorance, or for folly: and then, whenever it fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter. sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that gravity was an errant scoundrel, and he would add,—of the most dangerous kind too,—because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest, well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelve-month, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. in the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say there was no danger,—but to itself:—whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;—’twas a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its pretensions,—it was no better, but often worse, than what a french wit had long ago defined it,—viz. a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind;—which definition of gravity, yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold. but, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint. yorick had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into plain english without any periphrasis;—and too oft without much distinction of either person, time, or place;—so that when mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding——he never gave himself a moment’s time to reflect who was the hero of the piece,——what his station,——or how far he had power to hurt him hereafter;—but if it was a dirty action,—without more ado,—the man was a dirty fellow,—and so on.—and as his comments had usually the ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot, or to be enlivened throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to yorick’s indiscretion. in a word, tho’ he never sought, yet, at the same time, as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much ceremony;——he had but too many temptations in life, of scattering his wit and his humour,—his gibes and his jests about him.——they were not lost for want of gathering. what were the consequences, and what was yorick’s catastrophe thereupon, you will read in the next chapter. c h a p. xii the mortgager and mortgagee differ the one from the other, not more in length of purse, than the jester and jestee do, in that of memory. but in this the comparison between them runs, as the scholiasts call it, upon all-four; which, by the bye, is upon one or two legs more than some of the best of homer’s can pretend to;—namely, that the one raises a sum, and the other a laugh at your expence, and thinks no more about it. interest, however, still runs on in both cases;—the periodical or accidental payments of it, just serving to keep the memory of the affair alive; till, at length, in some evil hour, pop comes the creditor upon each, and by demanding principal upon the spot, together with full interest to the very day, makes them both feel the full extent of their obligations. as the reader (for i hate your ifs) has a thorough knowledge of human nature, i need not say more to satisfy him, that my hero could not go on at this rate without some slight experience of these incidental mementos. to speak the truth, he had wantonly involved himself in a multitude of small book-debts of this stamp, which, notwithstanding eugenius’s frequent advice, he too much disregarded; thinking, that as not one of them was contracted thro’ any malignancy;—but, on the contrary, from an honesty of mind, and a mere jocundity of humour, they would all of them be cross’d out in course. eugenius would never admit this; and would often tell him, that one day or other he would certainly be reckoned with; and he would often add, in an accent of sorrowful apprehension,—to the uttermost mite. to which yorick, with his usual carelessness of heart, would as often answer with a pshaw!—and if the subject was started in the fields,—with a hop, skip, and a jump at the end of it; but if close pent up in the social chimney-corner, where the culprit was barricado’d in, with a table and a couple of arm-chairs, and could not so readily fly off in a tangent,—eugenius would then go on with his lecture upon discretion in words to this purpose, though somewhat better put together. trust me, dear yorick, this unwary pleasantry of thine will sooner or later bring thee into scrapes and difficulties, which no after-wit can extricate thee out of.——in these sallies, too oft, i see, it happens, that a person laughed at, considers himself in the light of a person injured, with all the rights of such a situation belonging to him; and when thou viewest him in that light too, and reckons up his friends, his family, his kindred and allies,——and musters up with them the many recruits which will list under him from a sense of common danger;—’tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes,—thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. i cannot suspect it in the man whom i esteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—i believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—but consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or to make merry with the other:——whenever they associate for mutual defence, depend upon it, they will carry on the war in such a manner against thee, my dear friend, as to make thee heartily sick of it, and of thy life too. revenge from some baneful corner shall level a tale of dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integrity of conduct shall set right.——the fortunes of thy house shall totter,—thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it,—thy faith questioned,—thy works belied,—thy wit forgotten,—thy learning trampled on. to wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, cruelty and cowardice, twin ruffians, hired and set on by malice in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes:——the best of us, my dear lad, lie open there,——and trust me,——trust me, yorick, when to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with. yorick scarce ever heard this sad vaticination of his destiny read over to him, but with a tear stealing from his eye, and a promissory look attending it, that he was resolved, for the time to come, to ride his tit with more sobriety.—but, alas, too late!—a grand confederacy with ***** and ***** at the head of it, was formed before the first prediction of it.—the whole plan of the attack, just as eugenius had foreboded, was put in execution all at once,—with so little mercy on the side of the allies,—and so little suspicion in yorick, of what was carrying on against him,—that when he thought, good easy man! full surely preferment was o’ripening,—they had smote his root, and then he fell, as many a worthy man had fallen before him. yorick, however, fought it out with all imaginable gallantry for some time; till, overpowered by numbers, and worn out at length by the calamities of the war,—but more so, by the ungenerous manner in which it was carried on,—he threw down the sword; and though he kept up his spirits in appearance to the last, he died, nevertheless, as was generally thought, quite broken-hearted. what inclined eugenius to the same opinion was as follows: a few hours before yorick breathed his last, eugenius stept in with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. upon his drawing yorick’s curtain, and asking how he felt himself, yorick looking up in his face took hold of his hand,—and after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter,—he would thank him again and again,—he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever.—i hope not, answered eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke.—i hope not, yorick, said he.——yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of eugenius’s hand, and that was all,—but it cut eugenius to his heart.—come,—come, yorick, quoth eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the man within him,—my dear lad, be comforted,—let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis when thou most wants them;——who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of god may yet do for thee!——yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head;—for my part, continued eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,—i declare i know not, yorick, how to part with thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added eugenius, chearing up his voice, that there is still enough left of thee to make a bishop, and that i may live to see it.—i beseech thee, eugenius, quoth yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,—his right being still grasped close in that of eugenius,—i beseech thee to take a view of my head.—i see nothing that ails it, replied eugenius. then, alas! my friend, said yorick, let me tell you, that ’tis so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which ***** and *****, and some others have so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that i might say with sancho pança, that should i recover, and “mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it.”——yorick’s last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart as he uttered this:——yet still it was uttered with something of a cervantick tone;——and as he spoke it, eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;——faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as shakespeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar! eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke: he squeezed his hand,——and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. yorick followed eugenius with his eyes to the door,—he then closed them, and never opened them more. tombstone he lies buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of ———, under a plain marble slab, which his friend eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy. alas, poor yorick! ten times a day has yorick’s ghost the consolation to hear his monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;——a foot-way crossing the church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,—and sighing as he walks on, alas, poor yorick! c h a p. xiii it is so long since the reader of this rhapsodical work has been parted from the midwife, that it is high time to mention her again to him, merely to put him in mind that there is such a body still in the world, and whom, upon the best judgment i can form upon my own plan at present, i am going to introduce to him for good and all: but as fresh matter may be started, and much unexpected business fall out betwixt the reader and myself, which may require immediate dispatch;——’twas right to take care that the poor woman should not be lost in the mean time;—because when she is wanted, we can no way do without her. i think i told you that this good woman was a person of no small note and consequence throughout our whole village and township;—that her fame had spread itself to the very out-edge and circumference of that circle of importance, of which kind every soul living, whether he has a shirt to his back or no,——has one surrounding him;—which said circle, by the way, whenever ’tis said that such a one is of great weight and importance in the world,——i desire may be enlarged or contracted in your worship’s fancy, in a compound ratio of the station, profession, knowledge, abilities, height and depth (measuring both ways) of the personage brought before you. in the present case, if i remember, i fixed it about four or five miles, which not only comprehended the whole parish, but extended itself to two or three of the adjacent hamlets in the skirts of the next parish; which made a considerable thing of it. i must add, that she was, moreover, very well looked on at one large grange-house, and some other odd houses and farms within two or three miles, as i said, from the smoke of her own chimney:——but i must here, once for all, inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—i detest the thought of such a thing;—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the meaning of the word) by all the world;——which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in great britain, and of all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,—i am determined shall be the case.—i need not tell your worship, that all this is spoke in confidence. c h a p. xiv upon looking into my mother’s marriage settlement, in order to satisfy myself and reader in a point necessary to be cleared up, before we could proceed any farther in this history;—i had the good fortune to pop upon the very thing i wanted before i had read a day and a half straight forwards,—it might have taken me up a month;—which shews plainly, that when a man sits down to write a history,—tho’ it be but the history of jack hickathrift or tom thumb, he knows no more than his heels what lets and confounded hindrances he is to meet with in his way,—or what a dance he may be led, by one excursion or another, before all is over. could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,—straight forward;——for instance, from rome all the way to loretto, without ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,——he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey’s end;——but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: for, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. he will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly; he will moreover have various accounts to reconcile: anecdotes to pick up: inscriptions to make out: stories to weave in: traditions to sift: personages to call upon: panegyricks to paste up at this door; pasquinades at that:——all which both the man and his mule are quite exempt from. to sum up all; there are archives at every stage to be look’d into, and rolls, records, documents, and endless genealogies, which justice ever and anon calls him back to stay the reading of:——in short there is no end of it;——for my own part, i declare i have been at it these six weeks, making all the speed i possibly could,—and am not yet born:—i have just been able, and that’s all, to tell you when it happen’d, but not how;—so that you see the thing is yet far from being accomplished. these unforeseen stoppages, which i own i had no conception of when i first set out;—but which, i am convinced now, will rather increase than diminish as i advance,—have struck out a hint which i am resolved to follow;——and that is,—not to be in a hurry;—but to go on leisurely, writing and publishing two volumes of my life every year;——which, if i am suffered to go on quietly, and can make a tolerable bargain with my bookseller, i shall continue to do as long as i live. c h a p. xv the article in my mother’s marriage-settlement, which i told the reader i was at the pains to search for, and which, now that i have found it, i think proper to lay before him,—is so much more fully express’d in the deed itself, than ever i can pretend to do it, that it would be barbarity to take it out of the lawyer’s hand:—it is as follows. “and this indenture further witnesseth, that the said walter shandy, merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, and, by god’s blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated between the said walter shandy and elizabeth mollineux aforesaid, and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him thereunto specially moving,—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and with john dixon, and james turner, esqrs. the above-named trustees, &c. &c.—to wit,—that in case it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to pass,—that the said walter shandy, merchant, shall have left off business before the time or times, that the said elizabeth mollineux shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, in consequence of the said walter shandy having so left off business, he shall in despight, and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said elizabeth mollineux,—make a departure from the city of london, in order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at shandy hall, in the county of ——, or at any other country-seat, castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:—that then, and as often as the said elizabeth mollineux shall happen to be enceint with child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon the body of the said elizabeth mollineux, during her said coverture,—he the said walter shandy shall, at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said elizabeth mollineux’s full reckoning, or time of supposed and computed delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one hundred and twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to john dixon, and james turner, esqrs. or assigns,—upon trust and confidence, and for and unto the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:—that is to say,—that the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid into the hands of the said elizabeth mollineux, or to be otherwise applied by them the said trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one coach, with able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of the said elizabeth mollineux, and the child or children which she shall be then and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of london; and for the further paying and defraying of all other incidental costs, charges, and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and for, and relating to, her said intended delivery and lying-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof. and that the said elizabeth mollineux shall and may, from time to time, and at all such time and times as are here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, trouble, disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction, vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—and that it shall moreover be lawful to and for the said elizabeth mollineux, from time to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in her said pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed upon,—to live and reside in such place or places, and in such family or families, and with such relations, friends, and other persons within the said city of london, as she at her own will and pleasure, notwithstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a femme sole and unmarried,—shall think fit.—and this indenture further witnesseth, that for the more effectually carrying of the said covenant into execution, the said walter shandy, merchant, doth hereby grant, bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said john dixon, and james turner, esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, in their actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain and sale for a year to them the said john dixon, and james turner, esqrs. by him the said walter shandy, merchant, thereof made; which said bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the date of these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for transferring of uses into possession,—all that the manor and lordship of shandy, in the county of ——, with all the rights, members, and appurtenances thereof; and all and every the messuages, houses, buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths, cottages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes, commons, woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, waters, and water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions, services, annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge, escheats, reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, felons of themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and all other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.—and also the advowson, donation, presentation, and free disposition of the rectory or parsonage of shandy aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes, glebe-lands.”——in three words,——“my mother was to lay in, (if she chose it) in london.” but in order to put a stop to the practice of any unfair play on the part of my mother, which a marriage-article of this nature too manifestly opened a door to, and which indeed had never been thought of at all, but for my uncle toby shandy;—a clause was added in security of my father which was this:—“that in case my mother hereafter should, at any time, put my father to the trouble and expence of a london journey, upon false cries and tokens;——that for every such instance, she should forfeit all the right and title which the covenant gave her to the next turn;——but to no more,—and so on, toties quoties, in as effectual a manner, as if such a covenant betwixt them had not been made.”—this, by the way, was no more than what was reasonable;—and yet, as reasonable as it was, i have ever thought it hard that the whole weight of the article should have fallen entirely, as it did, upon myself. but i was begot and born to misfortunes;—for my poor mother, whether it was wind or water—or a compound of both,—or neither;—or whether it was simply the mere swell of imagination and fancy in her;—or how far a strong wish and desire to have it so, might mislead her judgment;—in short, whether she was deceived or deceiving in this matter, it no way becomes me to decide. the fact was this, that in the latter end of september 1717, which was the year before i was born, my mother having carried my father up to town much against the grain,—he peremptorily insisted upon the clause;—so that i was doom’d, by marriage-articles, to have my nose squeez’d as flat to my face, as if the destinies had actually spun me without one. how this event came about,—and what a train of vexatious disappointments, in one stage or other of my life, have pursued me from the mere loss, or rather compression, of this one single member,—shall be laid before the reader all in due time. c h a p. xvi my father, as any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. the first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him more than every thing else was, the provoking time of the year,—which, as i told you, was towards the end of september, when his wall-fruit and green gages especially, in which he was very curious, were just ready for pulling:——“had he been whistled up to london, upon a tom fool’s errand, in any other month of the whole year, he should not have said three words about it.” for the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he had sustain’d from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully reckon’d upon in his mind, and register’d down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case bobby should fail him. “the disappointment of this, he said, was ten times more to a wise man, than all the money which the journey, &c. had cost him, put together,—rot the hundred and twenty pounds,——he did not mind it a rush.” from stilton, all the way to grantham, nothing in the whole affair provoked him so much as the condolences of his friends, and the foolish figure they should both make at church, the first sunday;——of which, in the satirical vehemence of his wit, now sharpen’d a little by vexation, he would give so many humorous and provoking descriptions,—and place his rib and self in so many tormenting lights and attitudes in the face of the whole congregation;—that my mother declared, these two stages were so truly tragi-comical, that she did nothing but laugh and cry in a breath, from one end to the other of them all the way. from grantham, till they had cross’d the trent, my father was out of all kind of patience at the vile trick and imposition which he fancied my mother had put upon him in this affair—“certainly,” he would say to himself, over and over again, “the woman could not be deceived herself——if she could,——“what weakness!”—tormenting word!—which led his imagination a thorny dance, and, before all was over, play’d the duce and all with him;——for sure as ever the word weakness was uttered, and struck full upon his brain—so sure it set him upon running divisions upon how many kinds of weaknesses there were;——that there was such a thing as weakness of the body,——as well as weakness of the mind,—and then he would do nothing but syllogize within himself for a stage or two together, how far the cause of all these vexations might, or might not, have arisen out of himself. in short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down.——in a word, as she complained to my uncle toby, he would have tired out the patience of any flesh alive. c h a p. xvii though my father travelled homewards, as i told you, in none of the best of moods,—pshawing and pishing all the way down,—yet he had the complaisance to keep the worst part of the story still to himself;—which was the resolution he had taken of doing himself the justice, which my uncle toby’s clause in the marriage-settlement empowered him; nor was it till the very night in which i was begot, which was thirteen months after, that she had the least intimation of his design: when my father, happening, as you remember, to be a little chagrin’d and out of temper,——took occasion as they lay chatting gravely in bed afterwards, talking over what was to come,——to let her know that she must accommodate herself as well as she could to the bargain made between them in their marriage-deeds; which was to lye-in of her next child in the country, to balance the last year’s journey. my father was a gentleman of many virtues,—but he had a strong spice of that in his temper, which might, or might not, add to the number.—’tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,—and of obstinacy in a bad one: of this my mother had so much knowledge, that she knew ’twas to no purpose to make any remonstrance,—so she e’en resolved to sit down quietly, and make the most of it. c h a p. xviii as the point was that night agreed, or rather determined, that my mother should lye-in of me in the country, she took her measures accordingly; for which purpose, when she was three days, or thereabouts, gone with child, she began to cast her eyes upon the midwife, whom you have so often heard me mention; and before the week was well got round, as the famous dr. manningham was not to be had, she had come to a final determination in her mind,——notwithstanding there was a scientific operator within so near a call as eight miles of us, and who, moreover, had expressly wrote a five shillings book upon the subject of midwifery, in which he had exposed, not only the blunders of the sisterhood itself,——but had likewise super-added many curious improvements for the quicker extraction of the fœtus in cross births, and some other cases of danger, which belay us in getting into the world; notwithstanding all this, my mother, i say, was absolutely determined to trust her life, and mine with it, into no soul’s hand but this old woman’s only.—now this i like;——when we cannot get at the very thing we wish——never to take up with the next best in degree to it:—no; that’s pitiful beyond description;—it is no more than a week from this very day, in which i am now writing this book for the edification of the world;—which is march 9, 1759,——that my dear, dear jenny, observing i looked a little grave, as she stood cheapening a silk of five-and-twenty shillings a yard,—told the mercer, she was sorry she had given him so much trouble;—and immediately went and bought herself a yard-wide stuff of ten-pence a yard.—’tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother’s case, was, that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old midwife had really some little claim to be depended upon,—as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother’s son of them into the world without any one slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account. these facts, tho’ they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father’s spirits in relation to this choice.—to say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and justice—or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case of this kind;——he felt himself concerned in a particular manner, that all should go right in the present case;—from the accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at shandy-hall.——he knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of it.——“alas o’day;—had mrs. shandy, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just to lye-in and come down again;—which they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare knees,——and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which mr. shandy got with her,—was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour.” this exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;—and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself,—nor was it altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point;—my father had extensive views of things,——and stood moreover, as he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to. he was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of queen elizabeth’s reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,—set in so strong,—as to become dangerous to our civil rights,—though, by the bye,——a current was not the image he took most delight in,—a distemper was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in the body national as in the body natural, where the blood and spirits were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down;——a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases. there was little danger, he would say, of losing our liberties by french politicks or french invasions;——nor was he so much in pain of a consumption from the mass of corrupted matter and ulcerated humours in our constitution, which he hoped was not so bad as it was imagined;—but he verily feared, that in some violent push, we should go off, all at once, in a state-apoplexy;—and then he would say, the lord have mercy upon us all. my father was never able to give the history of this distemper,—without the remedy along with it. “was i an absolute prince,” he would say, pulling up his breeches with both his hands, as he rose from his arm-chair, “i would appoint able judges, at every avenue of my metropolis, who should take cognizance of every fool’s business who came there;—and if, upon a fair and candid hearing, it appeared not of weight sufficient to leave his own home, and come up, bag and baggage, with his wife and children, farmer’s sons, &c. &c. at his backside, they should be all sent back, from constable to constable, like vagrants as they were, to the place of their legal settlements. by this means i shall take care, that my metropolis totter’d not thro’ its own weight;—that the head be no longer too big for the body;—that the extremes, now wasted and pinn’d in, be restored to their due share of nourishment, and regain with it their natural strength and beauty:—i would effectually provide, that the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what i perceive my nobility are now taking from them.” “why are there so few palaces and gentlemen’s seats,” he would ask, with some emotion, as he walked across the room, “throughout so many delicious provinces in france? whence is it that the few remaining chateaus amongst them are so dismantled,—so unfurnished, and in so ruinous and desolate a condition?——because, sir” (he would say) “in that kingdom no man has any country-interest to support;—the little interest of any kind which any man has any where in it, is concentrated in the court, and the looks of the grand monarch: by the sunshine of whose countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every french man lives or dies.” another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to guard against the least evil accident in my mother’s lying-in in the country,——was, that any such instance would infallibly throw a balance of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in his own, or higher stations;——which, with the many other usurped rights which that part of the constitution was hourly establishing,—would, in the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government established in the first creation of things by god. in this point he was entirely of sir robert filmer’s opinion, that the plans and institutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern parts of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable pattern and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;—which, for a century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into a mix’d government;——the form of which, however desirable in great combinations of the species,——was very troublesome in small ones,—and seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion. for all these reasons, private and publick, put together,—my father was for having the man-midwife by all means,—my mother, by no means. my father begg’d and intreated, she would for once recede from her prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;—my mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter, to choose for herself,—and have no mortal’s help but the old woman’s.—what could my father do? he was almost at his wit’s end;——talked it over with her in all moods;—placed his arguments in all lights;—argued the matter with her like a christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like a father,—like a patriot,—like a man:—my mother answered every thing only like a woman; which was a little hard upon her;—for as she could not assume and fight it out behind such a variety of characters,—’twas no fair match:—’twas seven to one.—what could my mother do?—she had the advantage (otherwise she had been certainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her to dispute the affair with my father with so equal an advantage,——that both sides sung te deum. in a word, my mother was to have the old woman,—and the operator was to have licence to drink a bottle of wine with my father and my uncle toby shandy in the back parlour,—for which he was to be paid five guineas. i must beg leave, before i finish this chapter, to enter a caveat in the breast of my fair reader;—and it is this,——not to take it absolutely for granted, from an unguarded word or two which i have dropp’d in it,——“that i am a married man.”—i own, the tender appellation of my dear, dear jenny,—with some other strokes of conjugal knowledge, interspersed here and there, might, naturally enough, have misled the most candid judge in the world into such a determination against me.—all i plead for, in this case, madam, is strict justice, and that you do so much of it, to me as well as to yourself,—as not to prejudge, or receive such an impression of me, till you have better evidence, than, i am positive, at present can be produced against me.—not that i can be so vain or unreasonable, madam, as to desire you should therefore think, that my dear, dear jenny is my kept mistress;—no,—that would be flattering my character in the other extreme, and giving it an air of freedom, which, perhaps, it has no kind of right to. all i contend for, is the utter impossibility, for some volumes, that you, or the most penetrating spirit upon earth, should know how this matter really stands.—it is not impossible, but that my dear, dear jenny! tender as the appellation is, may be my child.—consider,—i was born in the year eighteen.—nor is there any thing unnatural or extravagant in the supposition, that my dear jenny may be my friend.—friend!—my friend.—surely, madam, a friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without———fy! mr. shandy:—without any thing, madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference of sex. let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best french romances;—it will really, madam, astonish you to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, which i have the honour to speak of, is dress’d out. c h a p. xix i would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for it, that a gentleman of my father’s great good sense,——knowing, as the reader must have observed him, and curious too in philosophy,—wise also in political reasoning,—and in polemical (as he will find) no way ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a notion in his head, so out of the common track,—that i fear the reader, when i come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a cholerick temper, will immediatly throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily at it;—and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as fanciful and extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian names, on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial minds were capable of conceiving. his opinion, in this matter, was, that there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct. the hero of cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness,——nor had he more faith,——or more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,—or on dulcinea’s name, in shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of trismegistus or archimedes, on the one hand—or of nyky and simkin on the other. how many cæsars and pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of them? and how many, he would add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and nicodemus’d into nothing? i see plainly, sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my father would say—that you do not heartily subscribe to this opinion of mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not carefully sifted it to the bottom,—i own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;——and yet, my dear sir, if i may presume to know your character, i am morally assured, i should hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;——you are a person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;—and, if i may presume to penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends. your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper you have so much to expect.—your billy, sir!—would you, for the world, have called him judas?—would you, my dear sir, he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest address,—and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,—would you, sir, if a jew of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him?——o my god! he would say, looking up, if i know your temper right, sir,—you are incapable of it;——you would have trampled upon the offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter’s head with abhorrence. your greatness of mind in this action, which i admire, with that generous contempt of money, which you shew me in the whole transaction, is really noble;—and what renders it more so, is the principle of it;—the workings of a parent’s love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely, that was your son called judas,—the forbid and treacherous idea, so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through life like his shadow, and, in the end, made a miser and a rascal of him, in spite, sir, of your example. i never knew a man able to answer this argument.—but, indeed, to speak of my father as he was;—he was certainly irresistible;—both in his orations and disputations;—he was born an orator;—θεοδίδακτος.—persuasion hung upon his lips, and the elements of logick and rhetorick were so blended up in him,—and, withal, he had so shrewd a guess at the weaknesses and passions of his respondent,——that nature might have stood up and said,—“this man is eloquent.”—in short, whether he was on the weak or the strong side of the question, ’twas hazardous in either case to attack him.—and yet, ’tis strange, he had never read cicero, nor quintilian de oratore, nor isocrates, nor aristotle, nor longinus, amongst the antients;—nor vossius, nor skioppius, nor ramus, nor farnaby, amongst the moderns;—and what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon crackenthorp or burgersdicius or any dutch logician or commentator;—he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam, and an argument ad hominem consisted; so that i well remember, when he went up along with me to enter my name at jesus college in ****,—it was a matter of just wonder with my worthy tutor, and two or three fellows of that learned society,—that a man who knew not so much as the names of his tools, should be able to work after that fashion with them. to work with them in the best manner he could, was what my father was, however, perpetually forced upon;——for he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend——most of which notions, i verily believe, at first entered upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpened his wit upon them, dismiss them till another day. i mention this, not only as matter of hypothesis or conjecture upon the progress and establishment of my father’s many odd opinions,—but as a warning to the learned reader against the indiscreet reception of such guests, who, after a free and undisturbed entrance, for some years, into our brains,—at length claim a kind of settlement there,——working sometimes like yeast;—but more generally after the manner of the gentle passion, beginning in jest,—but ending in downright earnest. whether this was the case of the singularity of my father’s notions—or that his judgment, at length, became the dupe of his wit;—or how far, in many of his notions, he might, though odd, be absolutely right;—the reader, as he comes at them, shall decide. all that i maintain here, is, that in this one, of the influence of christian names, however it gained footing, he was serious;—he was all uniformity;—he was systematical, and, like all systematic reasoners, he would move both heaven and earth, and twist and torture every thing in nature to support his hypothesis. in a word i repeat it over again;—he was serious;—and, in consequence of it, he would lose all kind of patience whenever he saw people, especially of condition, who should have known better,——as careless and as indifferent about the name they imposed upon their child,—or more so, than in the choice of ponto or cupid for their puppy-dog. this, he would say, look’d ill;—and had, moreover, this particular aggravation in it, viz. that when once a vile name was wrongfully or injudiciously given, ’twas not like the case of a man’s character, which, when wrong’d, might hereafter be cleared;——and, possibly, some time or other, if not in the man’s life, at least after his death,—be, somehow or other, set to rights with the world: but the injury of this, he would say, could never be undone;—nay, he doubted even whether an act of parliament could reach it:——he knew as well as you, that the legislature assumed a power over surnames;—but for very strong reasons, which he could give, it had never yet adventured, he would say, to go a step farther. it was observable, that tho’ my father, in consequence of this opinion, had, as i have told you, the strongest likings and dislikings towards certain names;—that there were still numbers of names which hung so equally in the balance before him, that they were absolutely indifferent to him. jack, dick, and tom were of this class: these my father called neutral names;—affirming of them, without a satire, that there had been as many knaves and fools, at least, as wise and good men, since the world began, who had indifferently borne them;—so that, like equal forces acting against each other in contrary directions, he thought they mutually destroyed each other’s effects; for which reason, he would often declare, he would not give a cherry-stone to choose amongst them. bob, which was my brother’s name, was another of these neutral kinds of christian names, which operated very little either way; and as my father happen’d to be at epsom, when it was given him,—he would oft-times thank heaven it was no worse. andrew was something like a negative quantity in algebra with him;—’twas worse, he said, than nothing.—william stood pretty high:——numps again was low with him:—and nick, he said, was the devil. but of all names in the universe he had the most unconquerable aversion for tristram;—he had the lowest and most contemptible opinion of it of any thing in the world,—thinking it could possibly produce nothing in rerum natura, but what was extremely mean and pitiful: so that in the midst of a dispute on the subject, in which, by the bye, he was frequently involved,——he would sometimes break off in a sudden and spirited epiphonema, or rather erotesis, raised a third, and sometimes a full fifth above the key of the discourse,——and demand it categorically of his antagonist, whether he would take upon him to say, he had ever remembered,——whether he had ever read,—or even whether he had ever heard tell of a man, called tristram, performing any thing great or worth recording?—no,—he would say,—tristram!—the thing is impossible. what could be wanting in my father but to have wrote a book to publish this notion of his to the world? little boots it to the subtle speculatist to stand single in his opinions,—unless he gives them proper vent:—it was the identical thing which my father did:—for in the year sixteen, which was two years before i was born, he was at the pains of writing an express dissertation simply upon the word tristram,—shewing the world, with great candour and modesty, the grounds of his great abhorrence to the name. when this story is compared with the title-page,—will not the gentle reader pity my father from his soul?—to see an orderly and well-disposed gentleman, who tho’ singular,—yet inoffensive in his notions,—so played upon in them by cross purposes;——to look down upon the stage, and see him baffled and overthrown in all his little systems and wishes; to behold a train of events perpetually falling out against him, and in so critical and cruel a way, as if they had purposedly been plann’d and pointed against him, merely to insult his speculations.——in a word, to behold such a one, in his old age, ill-fitted for troubles, ten times in a day suffering sorrow;—ten times in a day calling the child of his prayers tristram!—melancholy dissyllable of sound! which, to his ears, was unison to nincompoop, and every name vituperative under heaven.——by his ashes! i swear it,—if ever malignant spirit took pleasure, or busied itself in traversing the purposes of mortal man,—it must have been here;—and if it was not necessary i should be born before i was christened, i would this moment give the reader an account of it. c h a p. xx ——how could you, madam, be so inattentive in reading the last chapter? i told you in it, that my mother was not a papist.——papist! you told me no such thing, sir.—madam, i beg leave to repeat it over again, that i told you as plain, at least, as words, by direct inference, could tell you such a thing.—then, sir, i must have miss’d a page.—no, madam, you have not miss’d a word.—then i was asleep, sir.—my pride, madam, cannot allow you that refuge.—then, i declare, i know nothing at all about the matter.—that, madam, is the very fault i lay to your charge; and as a punishment for it, i do insist upon it, that you immediately turn back, that is as soon as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again. i have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:—’tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,—of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them——the mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made pliny the younger affirm, “that he never read a book so bad, but he drew some profit from it.” the stories of greece and rome, run over without this turn and application,—do less service, i affirm it, than the history of parismus and parismenus, or of the seven champions of england, read with it. ———but here comes my fair lady. have you read over again the chapter, madam, as i desired you?—you have: and did you not observe the passage, upon the second reading, which admits the inference?—not a word like it! then, madam, be pleased to ponder well the last line but one of the chapter, where i take upon me to say, “it was necessary i should be born before i was christen’d.” had my mother, madam, been a papist, that consequence did not follow.[1] it is a terrible misfortune for this same book of mine, but more so to the republick of letters;—so that my own is quite swallowed up in the consideration of it,—that this self-same vile pruriency for fresh adventures in all things, has got so strongly into our habit and humour,—and so wholly intent are we upon satisfying the impatience of our concupiscence that way,—that nothing but the gross and more carnal parts of a composition will go down:—the subtle hints and sly communications of science fly off, like spirits upwards,—the heavy moral escapes downwards; and both the one and the other are as much lost to the world, as if they were still left in the bottom of the ink-horn. i wish the male-reader has not pass’d by many a one, as quaint and curious as this one, in which the female-reader has been detected. i wish it may have its effects;—and that all good people, both male and female, from example, may be taught to think as well as read. memoire presenté à messieurs les docteurs de sorbonne[2] un chirurgien accoucheur, represente à messieurs les docteurs de sorbonne, qu’il y a des cas, quoique très rares, où une mere ne sçauroit accoucher, & même où l’enfant est tellement renfermé dans le sein de sa mere, qu’il ne fait parôitre aucune partie de son corps, ce qui seroit un cas, suivant les rituels, de lui conférer, du moins sous condition, le baptême. le chirurgien, qui consulte, prétend, par le moyen d’une petite canulle, de pouvoir baptiser immediatement l’enfant, sans faire aucun tort à la mere.——il demand si ce moyen, qu’il vient de proposer, est permis & légitime, & s’il peut s’en servir dans les cas qu’il vient d’exposer. r e p o n s e le conseil estime, que la question proposée souffre de grandes difficultés. les théologiens posent d’un côté pour principe, que le baptême, qui est une naissance spirituelle, suppose une premiere naissance; il faut être né dans le monde, pour renaître en jesus christ, comme ils l’enseignent. s. thomas, 3 part. quæst. 88 artic. 11. suit cette doctrine comme une verité constante; l’on ne peut, dit ce s. docteur, baptiser les enfans qui sont renférmes dans le sein de leurs meres, & s. thomas est fondé sur ce, que les enfans ne sont point nés, & ne peuvent être comptés parmi les autres hommes; d’où il conclud, qu’ils ne peuvent être l’objet d’une action extérieure, pour reçevoir par leur ministére, les sacremens nécessaires au salut: pueri in maternis uteris existentes nondum prodierunt in lucem ut cum aliis hominibus vitam ducant; unde non possunt subjici actioni humanæ, ut per eorum ministerium sacramenta recipiant ad salutem. les rituels ordonnent dans la pratique ce que les théologiens ont établi sur les mêmes matiéres, & ils deffendent tous d’une maniére uniforme, de baptiser les enfans qui sont renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, s’ils ne sont paroître quelque partie de leurs corps. le concours des théologiens, & des rituels, qui sont les régles des diocéses, paroit former une autorité qui termine la question presente; cependant le conseil de conscience considerant d’un côté, que le raisonnement des théologiens est uniquement fondé sur une raison de convenance, & que la deffense des rituels suppose que l’on ne peut baptiser immediatement les enfans ainsi renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, ce qui est contre la supposition presente; & d’un autre côté, considerant que lés mêmes théologiens enseignent, que l’on peut risquer les sacremens que jesus christ a établis comme des moyens faciles, mais nécessaires pour sanctifier les hommes; & d’ailleurs estimant, que les enfans renfermés dans le sein de leurs meres, pourroient être capables de salut, parcequ’ils sont capables de damnation;—pour ces considerations, & en egard à l’expose, suivant lequel on assure avoir trouvé un moyen certain de baptiser ces enfans ainsi renfermés, sans faire aucun tort à la mere, le conseil estime que l’on pourroit se servir du moyen proposé, dans la confiance qu’il a, que dieu n’a point laissé ces sortes d’enfans sans aucuns secours, & supposant, comme il est exposé, que le moyen dont il s’agit est propre à leur procurer le baptême; cependant comme il s’agiroit, en autorisant la pratique proposée, de changer une regle universellement établie, le conseil croit que celui qui consulte doit s’addresser à son evêque, & à qui il appartient de juger de l’utilité, & du danger du moyen proposé, & comme, sous le bon plaisir de l’evêque, le conseil estime qu’il faudroit recourir au pape, qui a le droit d’expliquer les régles de l’eglise, & d’y déroger dans le cas, ou la loi ne sçauroit obliger, quelque sage & quelque utile que paroisse la maniére de baptiser dont il s’agit, le conseil ne pourroit l’approver sans le concours de ces deux autorités. on conseile au moins à celui qui consulte, de s’addresser à son evêque, & de lui faire part de la presente décision, afin que, si le prelat entre dans les raisons sur lesquelles les docteurs soussignés s’appuyent, il puisse être autorisé dans le cas de nécessité, ou il risqueroit trop d’attendre que la permission fût demandée & accordée d’employer le moyen qu’il propose si avantageux au salut de l’enfant. au reste, le conseil, en estimant que l’on pourroit s’en servir, croit cependant, que si les enfans dont il s’agit, venoient au monde, contre l’esperance de ceux qui se seroient servis du méme moyen, il seroit nécessaire de les baptiser sous condition; & en cela le conseil se conforme à tous les rituels, qui en autorisant le baptême d’un enfant qui fait paroître quelque partie de son corps, enjoignent néantmoins, & ordonnent de le baptiser sous condition, s’il vient heureusement au monde. déliberé en sorbonne, le 10 avril, 1733. a. le moyne. l. de romigny. de marcilly. mr. tristram shandy’s compliments to messrs. le moyne, de romigny, and de marcilly; hopes they all rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation.—he begs to know, whether after the ceremony of marriage, and before that of consummation, the baptizing all the homunculi at once, slapdash, by injection, would not be a shorter and safer cut still; on condition, as above, that if the homunculi do well, and come safe into the world after this, that each and every of them shall be baptized again (sous condition)——and provided, in the second place, that the thing can be done, which mr. shandy apprehends it may, par le moyen d’une petite canulle, and sans faire aucune tort au pere. [1] the romish rituals direct the baptizing of the child, in cases of danger, before it is born;—but upon this proviso, that some part or other of the child’s body be seen by the baptizer:——but the doctors of the sorbonne, by a deliberation held amongst them, april 10, 1733,—have enlarged the powers of the midwives, by determining, that though no part of the child’s body should appear,—that baptism shall, nevertheless, be administered to it by injection,—par le moyen d’une petite canulle,—anglicè a squirt.—’tis very strange that st. thomas aquinas, who had so good a mechanical head, both for tying and untying the knots of school-divinity,—should, after so much pains bestowed upon this,—give up the point at last, as a second la chose impossible,—“infantes in maternis uteris existentes (quoth st. thomas!) baptizari possunt nullo modo.”—o thomas! thomas! if the reader has the curiosity to see the question upon baptism by injection, as presented to the doctors of the sorbonne, with their consultation thereupon, it is as follows. [2] vide deventer. paris edit. 4to, 1734, p. 366. c h a p. xxi ——i wonder what’s all that noise, and running backwards and forwards for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour and a half’s silence, to my uncle toby,——who, you must know, was sitting on the opposite side of the fire, smoaking his social pipe all the time, in mute contemplation of a new pair of black plush-breeches which he had got on:—what can they be doing, brother?—quoth my father,—we can scarce hear ourselves talk. i think, replied my uncle toby, taking his pipe from his mouth, and striking the head of it two or three times upon the nail of his left thumb, as he began his sentence,——i think, says he:——but to enter rightly into my uncle toby’s sentiments upon this matter, you must be made to enter first a little into his character, the out-lines of which i shall just give you, and then the dialogue between him and my father will go on as well again. pray what was that man’s name,—for i write in such a hurry, i have no time to recollect or look for it,——who first made the observation, “that there was great inconstancy in our air and climate?” whoever he was, ’twas a just and good observation in him.—but the corollary drawn from it, namely, “that it is this which has furnished us with such a variety of odd and whimsical characters;”—that was not his;—it was found out by another man, at least a century and a half after him: then again,—that this copious store-house of original materials, is the true and natural cause that our comedies are so much better than those of france, or any others that either have, or can be wrote upon the continent:——that discovery was not fully made till about the middle of king william’s reign,—when the great dryden, in writing one of his long prefaces, (if i mistake not) most fortunately hit upon it. indeed toward the latter end of queen anne, the great addison began to patronize the notion, and more fully explained it to the world in one or two of his spectators;—but the discovery was not his.—then, fourthly and lastly, that this strange irregularity in our climate, producing so strange an irregularity in our characters,——doth thereby, in some sort, make us amends, by giving us somewhat to make us merry with when the weather will not suffer us to go out of doors,—that observation is my own;—and was struck out by me this very rainy day, march 26, 1759, and betwixt the hours of nine and ten in the morning. thus—thus, my fellow-labourers and associates in this great harvest of our learning, now ripening before our eyes; thus it is, by slow steps of casual increase, that our knowledge physical, metaphysical, physiological, polemical, nautical, mathematical, ænigmatical, technical, biographical, romantical, chemical, and obstetrical, with fifty other branches of it, (most of ’em ending as these do, in ical) have for these two last centuries and more, gradually been creeping upwards towards that ἀκμὴ of their perfections, from which, if we may form a conjecture from the advances of these last seven years, we cannot possibly be far off. when that happens, it is to be hoped, it will put an end to all kind of writings whatsoever;—the want of all kind of writing will put an end to all kind of reading;—and that in time, as war begets poverty; poverty peace,——must, in course, put an end to all kind of knowledge,—and then——we shall have all to begin over again; or, in other words, be exactly where we started. ———happy! thrice happy times! i only wish that the æra of my begetting, as well as the mode and manner of it, had been a little alter’d,—or that it could have been put off, with any convenience to my father or mother, for some twenty or five-and-twenty years longer, when a man in the literary world might have stood some chance.—— but i forget my uncle toby, whom all this while we have left knocking the ashes out of his tobacco-pipe. his humour was of that particular species, which does honour to our atmosphere; and i should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind or water, or any modifications or combinations of them whatever: and i have, therefore, oft-times wondered, that my father, tho’ i believe he had his reasons for it, upon his observing some tokens of eccentricity, in my course, when i was a boy,—should never once endeavour to account for them in this way: for all the shandy family were of an original character throughout:——i mean the males,—the females had no character at all,—except, indeed, my great aunt dinah, who, about sixty years ago, was married and got with child by the coachman, for which my father, according to his hypothesis of christian names, would often say, she might thank her godfathers and godmothers. it will seem strange,——and i would as soon think of dropping a riddle in the reader’s way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and my uncle toby. one would have thought, that the whole force of the misfortune should have spent and wasted itself in the family at first,—as is generally the case.—but nothing ever wrought with our family after the ordinary way. possibly at the very time this happened, it might have something else to afflict it; and as afflictions are sent down for our good, and that as this had never done the shandy family any good at all, it might lie waiting till apt times and circumstances should give it an opportunity to discharge its office.——observe, i determine nothing upon this.——my way is ever to point out to the curious, different tracts of investigation, to come at the first springs of the events i tell;—not with a pedantic fescue,—or in the decisive manner or tacitus, who outwits himself and his reader;—but with the officious humility of a heart devoted to the assistance merely of the inquisitive;—to them i write,——and by them i shall be read,——if any such reading as this could be supposed to hold out so long,—to the very end of the world. why this cause of sorrow, therefore, was thus reserved for my father and uncle, is undetermined by me. but how and in what direction it exerted itself so as to become the cause of dissatisfaction between them, after it began to operate, is what i am able to explain with great exactness, and is as follows: my uncle toby shandy, madam, was a gentleman, who, with the virtues which usually constitute the character of a man of honour and rectitude,—possessed one in a very eminent degree, which is seldom or never put into the catalogue; and that was a most extreme and unparallel’d modesty of nature;——though i correct the word nature, for this reason, that i may not prejudge a point which must shortly come to a hearing, and that is, whether this modesty of his was natural or acquir’d.——whichever way my uncle toby came by it, ’twas nevertheless modesty in the truest sense of it; and that is, madam, not in regard to words, for he was so unhappy as to have very little choice in them,—but to things;——and this kind of modesty so possessed him, and it arose to such a height in him, as almost to equal, if such a thing could be, even the modesty of a woman: that female nicety, madam, and inward cleanliness of mind and fancy, in your sex, which makes you so much the awe of ours. you will imagine, madam, that my uncle toby had contracted all this from this very source;—that he had spent a great part of his time in converse with your sex, and that from a thorough knowledge of you, and the force of imitation which such fair examples render irresistible, he had acquired this amiable turn of mind. i wish i could say so,—for unless it was with his sister-in-law, my father’s wife and my mother——my uncle toby scarce exchanged three words with the sex in as many years;——no, he got it, madam, by a blow.——a blow!—yes, madam, it was owing to a blow from a stone, broke off by a ball from the parapet of a horn-work at the siege of namur, which struck full upon my uncle toby’s groin.—which way could that effect it? the story of that, madam, is long and interesting;—but it would be running my history all upon heaps to give it you here.——’tis for an episode hereafter; and every circumstance relating to it, in its proper place, shall be faithfully laid before you:—’till then, it is not in my power to give farther light into this matter, or say more than what i have said already,——that my uncle toby was a gentleman of unparallel’d modesty, which happening to be somewhat subtilized and rarified by the constant heat of a little family pride,——they both so wrought together within him, that he could never bear to hear the affair of my aunt dinah touch’d upon, but with the greatest emotion.——the least hint of it was enough to make the blood fly into his face;—but when my father enlarged upon the story in mixed companies, which the illustration of his hypothesis frequently obliged him to do,—the unfortunate blight of one of the fairest branches of the family, would set my uncle toby’s honour and modesty o’bleeding; and he would often take my father aside, in the greatest concern imaginable, to expostulate and tell him, he would give him any thing in the world, only to let the story rest. my father, i believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle toby, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir’d of another, to have made my uncle toby’s heart easy in this, or any other point. but this lay out of his power. ——my father, as i told you was a philosopher in grain,—speculative,—systematical;—and my aunt dinah’s affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the planets to copernicus:—the backslidings of venus in her orbit fortified the copernican system, called so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt dinah in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my father’s system, which, i trust, will for ever hereafter be called the shandean system, after his. in any other family dishonour, my father, i believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever;——and neither he, nor, i dare say, copernicus, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth.—amicus plato, my father would say, construing the words to my uncle toby, as he went along, amicus plato; that is, dinah was my aunt;—sed magis amica veritas—but truth is my sister. this contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. the one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace recorded,——and the other would scarce ever let a day pass to an end without some hint at it. for god’s sake, my uncle toby would cry,——and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother shandy,—do let this story of our aunt’s and her ashes sleep in peace;——how can you,——how can you have so little feeling and compassion for the character of our family?——what is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply.——nay, if you come to that—what is the life of a family?——the life of a family!—my uncle toby would say, throwing himself back in his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg——yes, the life,——my father would say, maintaining his point. how many thousands of ’em are there every year that come cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)——and considered as nothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis. in my plain sense of things, my uncle toby would answer,—every such instance is downright murder, let who will commit it.——there lies your mistake, my father would reply;——for, in foro scientiæ there is no such thing as murder,——’tis only death, brother. my uncle toby would never offer to answer this by any other kind of argument, than that of whistling half a dozen bars of lillebullero.——you must know it was the usual channel thro’ which his passions got vent, when any thing shocked or surprized him:——but especially when any thing, which he deem’d very absurd, was offered. as not one of our logical writers, nor any of the commentators upon them, that i remember, have thought proper to give a name to this particular species of argument.—i here take the liberty to do it myself, for two reasons. first, that, in order to prevent all confusion in disputes, it may stand as much distinguished for ever, from every other species of argument———as the argumentum ad verecundiam, ex absurdo, ex fortiori, or any other argument whatsoever:——and, secondly, that it may be said by my children’s children, when my head is laid to rest,——that their learn’d grandfather’s head had been busied to as much purpose once, as other people’s;—that he had invented a name, and generously thrown it into the treasury of the ars logica, for one of the most unanswerable arguments in the whole science. and, if the end of disputation is more to silence than convince,—they may add, if they please, to one of the best arguments too. i do, therefore, by these presents, strictly order and command, that it be known and distinguished by the name and title of the argumentum fistulatorium, and no other;—and that it rank hereafter with the argumentum baculinum and the argumentum ad crumenam, and for ever hereafter be treated of in the same chapter. as for the argumentum tripodium, which is never used but by the woman against the man;—and the argumentum ad rem, which, contrarywise, is made use of by the man only against the woman;—as these two are enough in conscience for one lecture;——and, moreover, as the one is the best answer to the other,—let them likewise be kept apart, and be treated of in a place by themselves. c h a p. xxii the learned bishop hall, i mean the famous dr. joseph hall, who was bishop of exeter in king james the first’s reign, tells us in one of decads, at the end of his divine art of meditation, imprinted at london, in the year 1610, by john beal, dwelling in aldersgate-street, “that it is an abominable thing for a man to commend himself;”——and i really think it is so. and yet, on the other hand, when a thing is executed in a masterly kind of a fashion, which thing is not likely to be found out;—i think it is full as abominable, that a man should lose the honour of it, and go out of the world with the conceit of it rotting in his head. this is precisely my situation. for in this long digression which i was accidentally led into, as in all my digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, i fear, been over-looked by my reader,—not for want of penetration in him,—but because ’tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;—and it is this: that tho’ my digressions are all fair, as you observe,—and that i fly off from what i am about, as far, and as often too, as any writer in great britain; yet i constantly take care to order affairs so that my main business does not stand still in my absence. i was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of my uncle toby’s most whimsical character;—when my aunt dinah and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system: notwithstanding all this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle toby’s character went on gently all the time;—not the great contours of it,—that was impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch’d on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle toby now than you was before. by this contrivance the machinery of my work is of a species by itself; two contrary motions are introduced into it, and reconciled, which were thought to be at variance with each other. in a word, my work is digressive, and it is progressive too,—and at the same time. this, sir, is a very different story from that of the earth’s moving round her axis, in her diurnal rotation, with her progress in her elliptick orbit which brings about the year, and constitutes that variety and vicissitude of seasons we enjoy;—though i own it suggested the thought,—as i believe the greatest of our boasted improvements and discoveries have come from such trifling hints. digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;——they are the life, the soul of reading!—take them out of this book, for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids all-hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail. all the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: for, if he begins a digression,—from that moment, i observe, his whole work stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of his digression. ——this is vile work.—for which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, i have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits. c h a p. xxiii i have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and i will not balk my fancy.—accordingly i set off thus: if the fixture of momus’s glass in the human breast, according to the proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,——first, this foolish consequence would certainly have followed,—that the very wisest and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid window-money every day of our lives. and, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man’s character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look’d in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their first engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose in her frisks, her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.——then taken your pen and ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn to:—but this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this planet;—in the planet mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for him;——for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red-hot iron,—must, i think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them both, all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be nothing else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the contrary, but one fine transparent body of clear glass (bating the umbilical knot)—so that, till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the rays of light, in passing through them, become so monstrously refracted,——or return reflected from their surfaces in such transverse lines to the eye, that a man cannot be seen through;—his soul might as well, unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the umbilical point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, i say, as well play the fool out o’doors as in her own house. but this, as i said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to work. many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to take, to do this thing with exactness. some, for instance, draw all their characters with wind-instruments.—virgil takes notice of that way in the affair of dido and æneas;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and, moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. i am not ignorant that the italians pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of one particular sort of character among them, from the forte or piano of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is infallible.—i dare not mention the name of the instrument in this place;—’tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making a drawing by it;—this is ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least ad populum:—and therefore, i beg, madam, when you come here, that you read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about it. there are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;—but this often gives a very incorrect outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure out of them both. i should have no objection to this method, but that i think it must smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d still more operose, by forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his non-naturals.—why the most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his non-naturals,—is another question. there are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices which the pentagraphic brethren[3] of the brush have shewn in taking copies.—these, you must know, are your great historians. one of these you will see drawing a full length character against the light;—that’s illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of the man who sits. others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the camera;—that is most unfair of all, because, there you are sure to be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes. to avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle toby’s character, i am determined to draw it by no mechanical help whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the alps;—nor will i consider either his repletions or his discharges,—or touch upon his non-naturals; but, in a word, i will draw my uncle toby’s character from his hobby-horse. [3] pentagraph, an instrument to copy prints and pictures mechanically, and in any proportion. c h a p. xxiv if i was not morally sure that the reader must be out of all patience for my uncle toby’s character,——i would here previously have convinced him that there is no instrument so fit to draw such a thing with, as that which i have pitch’d upon. a man and his hobby-horse, tho’ i cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind; and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of electrified bodies,—and that, by means of the heated parts of the rider, which come immediately into contact with the back of the hobby-horse,—by long journies and much friction, it so happens, that the body of the rider is at length fill’d as full of hobby-horsical matter as it can hold;—so that if you are able to give but a clear description of the nature of the one, you may form a pretty exact notion of the genius and character of the other. now the hobby-horse which my uncle toby always rode upon, was in my opinion an hobby-horse well worth giving a description of, if it was only upon the score of his great singularity;—for you might have travelled from york to dover,—from dover to penzance in cornwall, and from penzance to york back again, and not have seen such another upon the road; or if you had seen such a one, whatever haste you had been in, you must infallibly have stopp’d to have taken a view of him. indeed, the gait and figure of him was so strange, and so utterly unlike was he, from his head to his tail, to any one of the whole species, that it was now and then made a matter of dispute,——whether he was really a hobby-horse or no: but as the philosopher would use no other argument to the sceptic, who disputed with him against the reality of motion, save that of rising up upon his legs, and walking across the room;—so would my uncle toby use no other argument to prove his hobby-horse was a hobby-horse indeed, but by getting upon his back and riding him about;—leaving the world, after that, to determine the point as it thought fit. in good truth, my uncle toby mounted him with so much pleasure, and he carried my uncle toby so well,——that he troubled his head very little with what the world either said or thought about it. it is now high time, however, that i give you a description of him:—but to go on regularly, i only beg you will give me leave to acquaint you first, how my uncle toby came by him. c h a p. xxv the wound in my uncle toby’s groin, which he received at the siege of namur, rendering him unfit for the service, it was thought expedient he should return to england, in order, if possible, to be set to rights. he was four years totally confined,—part of it to his bed, and all of it to his room: and in the course of his cure, which was all that time in hand, suffer’d unspeakable miseries,—owing to a succession of exfoliations from the os pubis, and the outward edge of that part of the coxendix called the os illium,——both which bones were dismally crush’d, as much by the irregularity of the stone, which i told you was broke off the parapet,—as by its size,—(tho’ it was pretty large) which inclined the surgeon all along to think, that the great injury which it had done my uncle toby’s groin, was more owing to the gravity of the stone itself, than to the projectile force of it,—which he would often tell him was a great happiness. my father at that time was just beginning business in london, and had taken a house;—and as the truest friendship and cordiality subsisted between the two brothers,—and that my father thought my uncle toby could no where be so well nursed and taken care of as in his own house,——he assign’d him the very best apartment in it.—and what was a much more sincere mark of his affection still, he would never suffer a friend or an acquaintance to step into the house on any occasion, but he would take him by the hand, and lead him up stairs to see his brother toby, and chat an hour by his bed-side. the history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it;—my uncle’s visitors at least thought so, and in their daily calls upon him, from the courtesy arising out of that belief, they would frequently turn the discourse to that subject,—and from that subject the discourse would generally roll on to the siege itself. these conversations were infinitely kind; and my uncle toby received great relief from them, and would have received much more, but that they brought him into some unforeseen perplexities, which, for three months together, retarded his cure greatly; and if he had not hit upon an expedient to extricate himself out of them, i verily believe they would have laid him in his grave. what these perplexities of my uncle toby were,——’tis impossible for you to guess;—if you could,—i should blush; not as a relation,—not as a man,—nor even as a woman,—but i should blush as an author; inasmuch as i set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. and in this, sir, i am of so nice and singular a humour, that if i thought you was able to form the least judgment or probable conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,—i would tear it out of my book. c h a p. xxvi i have begun a new book, on purpose that i might have room enough to explain the nature of the perplexities in which my uncle toby was involved, from the many discourses and interrogations about the siege of namur, where he received his wound. i must remind the reader, in case he has read the history of king william’s wars,—but if he has not,—i then inform him, that one of the most memorable attacks in that siege, was that which was made by the english and dutch upon the point of the advanced counterscarp, between the gate of st. nicolas, which inclosed the great sluice or water-stop, where the english were terribly exposed to the shot of the counter-guard and demi-bastion of st. roch: the issue of which hot dispute, in three words, was this; that the dutch lodged themselves upon the counter-guard,—and that the english made themselves masters of the covered-way before st. nicolas-gate, notwithstanding the gallantry of the french officers, who exposed themselves upon the glacis sword in hand. as this was the principal attack of which my uncle toby was an eye-witness at namur,——the army of the besiegers being cut off, by the confluence of the maes and sambre, from seeing much of each other’s operations,——my uncle toby was generally more eloquent and particular in his account of it; and the many perplexities he was in, arose out of the almost insurmountable difficulties he found in telling his story intelligibly, and giving such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and covered-way,—the half-moon and ravelin,—as to make his company fully comprehend where and what he was about. writers themselves are too apt to confound these terms; so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and sometimes himself too. to speak the truth, unless the company my father led up stairs were tolerably clear-headed, or my uncle toby was in one of his explanatory moods, ’twas a difficult thing, do what he could, to keep the discourse free from obscurity. what rendered the account of this affair the more intricate to my uncle toby, was this,—that in the attack of the counterscarp, before the gate of st. nicolas, extending itself from the bank of the maes, quite up to the great water-stop,—the ground was cut and cross cut with such a multitude of dykes, drains, rivulets, and sluices, on all sides,—and he would get so sadly bewildered, and set fast amongst them, that frequently he could neither get backwards or forwards to save his life; and was oft-times obliged to give up the attack upon that very account only. these perplexing rebuffs gave my uncle toby shandy more perturbations than you would imagine; and as my father’s kindness to him was continually dragging up fresh friends and fresh enquirers,——he had but a very uneasy task of it. no doubt my uncle toby had great command of himself,—and could guard appearances, i believe, as well as most men;—yet any one may imagine, that when he could not retreat out of the ravelin without getting into the half-moon, or get out of the covered-way without falling down the counterscarp, nor cross the dyke without danger of slipping into the ditch, but that he must have fretted and fumed inwardly:—he did so;—and the little and hourly vexations, which may seem trifling and of no account to the man who has not read hippocrates, yet, whoever has read hippocrates, or dr. james mackenzie, and has considered well the effects which the passions and affections of the mind have upon the digestion—(why not of a wound as well as of a dinner?)—may easily conceive what sharp paroxysms and exacerbations of his wound my uncle toby must have undergone upon that score only. —my uncle toby could not philosophize upon it;—’twas enough he felt it was so,—and having sustained the pain and sorrows of it for three months together, he was resolved some way or other to extricate himself. he was one morning lying upon his back in his bed, the anguish and nature of the wound upon his groin suffering him to lie in no other position, when a thought came into his head, that if he could purchase such a thing, and have it pasted down upon a board, as a large map of the fortification of the town and citadel of namur, with its environs, it might be a means of giving him ease.—i take notice of his desire to have the environs along with the town and citadel, for this reason,—because my uncle toby’s wound was got in one of the traverses, about thirty toises from the returning angle of the trench, opposite to the salient angle of the demi-bastion of st. roch:——so that he was pretty confident he could stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing on when the stone struck him. all this succeeded to his wishes, and not only freed him from a world of sad explanations, but, in the end, it proved the happy means, as you will read, of procuring my uncle toby his hobby-horse. c h a p. xxvii there is nothing so foolish, when you are at the expence of making an entertainment of this kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: nor is there any thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing as a critick (by occupation) at table. ——i guard against both; for, in the first place, i have left half a dozen places purposely open for them;—and in the next place, i pay them all court.—gentlemen, i kiss your hands, i protest no company could give me half the pleasure,—by my soul i am glad to see you———i beg only you will make no strangers of yourselves, but sit down without any ceremony, and fall on heartily. i said i had left six places, and i was upon the point of carrying my complaisance so far, as to have left a seventh open for them,—and in this very spot i stand on; but being told by a critick (tho’ not by occupation,—but by nature) that i had acquitted myself well enough, i shall fill it up directly, hoping, in the mean time, that i shall be able to make a great deal of more room next year. ———how, in the name of wonder! could your uncle toby, who, it seems, was a military man, and whom you have represented as no fool,—be at the same time such a confused, pudding-headed, muddle-headed, fellow, as—go look. so, sir critick, i could have replied; but i scorn it.—’tis language unurbane,—and only befitting the man who cannot give clear and satisfactory accounts of things, or dive deep enough into the first causes of human ignorance and confusion. it is moreover the reply valiant—and therefore i reject it; for tho’ it might have suited my uncle toby’s character as a soldier excellently well,—and had he not accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle the lillabullero, as he wanted no courage, ’tis the very answer he would have given; yet it would by no means have done for me. you see as plain as can be, that i write as a man of erudition;—that even my similies, my allusions, my illustrations, my metaphors, are erudite,—and that i must sustain my character properly, and contrast it properly too,—else what would become of me? why, sir, i should be undone;—at this very moment that i am going here to fill up one place against a critick,—i should have made an opening for a couple. ——therefore i answer thus: pray, sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever read such a book as locke’s essay upon the human understanding?——don’t answer me rashly—because many, i know, quote the book, who have not read it—and many have read it who understand it not:—if either of these is your case, as i write to instruct, i will tell you in three words what the book is.—it is a history.—a history! of who? what? where? when? don’t hurry yourself—it is a history-book, sir, (which may possibly recommend it to the world) of what passes in a man’s own mind; and if you will say so much of the book, and no more, believe me, you will cut no contemptible figure in a metaphysick circle. but this by the way. now if you will venture to go along with me, and look down into the bottom of this matter, it will be found that the cause of obscurity and confusion, in the mind of a man, is threefold. dull organs, dear sir, in the first place. secondly, slight and transient impressions made by the objects, when the said organs are not dull. and thirdly, a memory like unto a sieve, not able to retain what it has received.—call down dolly your chamber-maid, and i will give you my cap and bell along with it, if i make not this matter so plain that dolly herself should understand it as well as malbranch.——when dolly has indited her epistle to robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right side;—take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing which dolly’s hand is in search of.—your organs are not so dull that i should inform you—’tis an inch, sir, of red seal-wax. when this is melted and dropped upon the letter, if dolly fumbles too long for her thimble, till the wax is over hardened, it will not receive the mark of her thimble from the usual impulse which was wont to imprint it. very well. if dolly’s wax, for want of better, is bees-wax, or of a temper too soft,—tho’ it may receive,—it will not hold the impression, how hard soever dolly thrusts against it; and last of all, supposing the wax good, and eke the thimble, but applied thereto in careless haste, as her mistress rings the bell;——in any one of these three cases the print left by the thimble will be as unlike the prototype as a brass-jack. now you must understand that not one of these was the true cause of the confusion in my uncle toby’s discourse; and it is for that very reason i enlarge upon them so long, after the manner of great physiologists—to shew the world, what it did not arise from. what it did arise from, i have hinted above, and a fertile source of obscurity it is,—and ever will be,—and that is the unsteady uses of words, which have perplexed the clearest and most exalted understandings. it is ten to one (at arthur’s) whether you have ever read the literary histories of past ages;—if you have, what terrible battles, ’yclept logomachies, have they occasioned and perpetuated with so much gall and ink-shed,—that a good-natured man cannot read the accounts of them without tears in his eyes. gentle critick! when thou hast weighed all this, and considered within thyself how much of thy own knowledge, discourse, and conversation has been pestered and disordered, at one time or other, by this, and this only:—what a pudder and racket in councils about χδια and υωοςασις; and in the schools of the learned about power and about spirit;—about essences, and about quintessences;——about substances, and about space.——what confusion in greater theatres from words of little meaning, and as indeterminate a sense! when thou considerest this, thou wilt not wonder at my uncle toby’s perplexities,—thou wilt drop a tear of pity upon his scarp and his counterscarp;—his glacis and his covered way;—his ravelin and his halfmoon: ’twas not by ideas,—by heaven; his life was put in jeopardy by words. c h a p. xxviii when my uncle toby got his map of namur to his mind, he began immediately to apply himself, and with the utmost diligence, to the study of it; for nothing being of more importance to him than his recovery, and his recovery depending, as you have read, upon the passions and affections of his mind, it behoved him to take the nicest care to make himself so far master of his subject, as to be able to talk upon it without emotion. in a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by the bye, did my uncle toby’s wound, upon his groin, no good,—he was enabled, by the help of some marginal documents at the feet of the elephant, together with gobesius’s military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the flemish, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity; and before he was two full months gone,—he was right eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the advanced counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first motive made necessary, my uncle toby was able to cross the maes and sambre; make diversions as far as vauban’s line, the abbey of salsines, &c. and give his visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the gate of st. nicolas, where he had the honour to receive his wound. but desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. the more my uncle toby pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it!—by the same process and electrical assimilation, as i told you, through which i ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled. the more my uncle toby drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in italy or flanders, of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight, that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner. in the second year my uncle toby purchased ramelli and cataneo, translated from the italian;—likewise stevinus, moralis, the chevalier de ville, lorini, cochorn, sheeter, the count de pagan, the marshal vauban, mons. blondel, with almost as many more books of military architecture, as don quixote was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library. towards the beginning of the third year, which was in august, ninety-nine, my uncle toby found it necessary to understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he began with n. tartaglia, who it seems was the first man who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball’s doing all that mischief under the notion of a right line—this n. tartaglia proved to my uncle toby to be an impossible thing. ——endless is the search of truth. no sooner was my uncle toby satisfied which road the cannon-ball did not go, but he was insensibly led on, and resolved in his mind to enquire and find out which road the ball did go: for which purpose he was obliged to set off afresh with old maltus, and studied him devoutly.—he proceeded next to galileo and torricellius, wherein, by certain geometrical rules, infallibly laid down, he found the precise path to be a parabola—or else an hyperbola,—and that the parameter, or latus rectum, of the conic section of the said path, was to the quantity and amplitude in a direct ratio, as the whole line to the sine of double the angle of incidence, formed by the breech upon an horizontal plane;—and that the semiparameter,——stop! my dear uncle toby——stop!—go not one foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track,—intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom knowledge will bring upon thee.—o my uncle;—fly—fly,—fly from it as from a serpent.——is it fit——goodnatured man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——alas! ’twill exasperate thy symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,——impair thy health,——and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.—o my uncle! my uncle toby. c h a p. xxix i would not give a groat for that man’s knowledge in pen-craft, who does not understand this,——that the best plain narrative in the world, tacked very close to the last spirited apostrophe to my uncle toby——would have felt both cold and vapid upon the reader’s palate;—therefore i forthwith put an end to the chapter, though i was in the middle of my story. ——writers of my stamp have one principle in common with painters. where an exact copying makes our pictures less striking, we choose the less evil; deeming it even more pardonable to trespass against truth, than beauty. this is to be understood cum grano salis; but be it as it will,—as the parallel is made more for the sake of letting the apostrophe cool, than any thing else,—’tis not very material whether upon any other score the reader approves of it or not. in the latter end of the third year, my uncle toby perceiving that the parameter and semi-parameter of the conic section angered his wound, he left off the study of projectiles in a kind of a huff, and betook himself to the practical part of fortification only; the pleasure of which, like a spring held back, returned upon him with redoubled force. it was in this year that my uncle began to break in upon the daily regularity of a clean shirt,——to dismiss his barber unshaven,——and to allow his surgeon scarce time sufficient to dress his wound, concerning himself so little about it, as not to ask him once in seven times dressing, how it went on: when, lo!—all of a sudden, for the change was quick as lightning, he began to sigh heavily for his recovery,——complained to my father, grew impatient with the surgeon:——and one morning, as he heard his foot coming up stairs, he shut up his books, and thrust aside his instruments, in order to expostulate with him upon the protraction of the cure, which, he told him, might surely have been accomplished at least by that time:—he dwelt long upon the miseries he had undergone, and the sorrows of his four years melancholy imprisonment;——adding, that had it not been for the kind looks and fraternal chearings of the best of brothers,—he had long since sunk under his misfortunes.——my father was by. my uncle toby’s eloquence brought tears into his eyes;——’twas unexpected:——my uncle toby, by nature was not eloquent;—it had the greater effect:——the surgeon was confounded;——not that there wanted grounds for such, or greater marks of impatience,—but ’twas unexpected too; in the four years he had attended him, he had never seen any thing like it in my uncle toby’s carriage; he had never once dropped one fretful or discontented word;——he had been all patience,—all submission. —we lose the right of complaining sometimes by forbearing it;—but we often treble the force:—the surgeon was astonished; but much more so, when he heard my uncle toby go on, and peremptorily insist upon his healing up the wound directly,—or sending for monsieur ronjat, the king’s serjeant-surgeon, to do it for him. the desire of life and health is implanted in man’s nature;——the love of liberty and enlargement is a sister-passion to it: these my uncle toby had in common with his species—and either of them had been sufficient to account for his earnest desire to get well and out of doors;——but i have told you before, that nothing wrought with our family after the common way;——and from the time and manner in which this eager desire shewed itself in the present case, the penetrating reader will suspect there was some other cause or crotchet for it in my uncle toby’s head:——there was so, and ’tis the subject of the next chapter to set forth what that cause and crotchet was. i own, when that’s done, ’twill be time to return back to the parlour fire-side, where we left my uncle toby in the middle of his sentence. c h a p. xxx when a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his hobby-horse grows headstrong,——farewell cool reason and fair discretion! my uncle toby’s wound was near well, and as soon as the surgeon recovered his surprize, and could get leave to say as much——he told him, ’twas just beginning to incarnate; and that if no fresh exfoliation happened, which there was no sign of,—it would be dried up in five or six weeks. the sound of as many olympiads, twelve hours before, would have conveyed an idea of shorter duration to my uncle toby’s mind.——the succession of his ideas was now rapid,—he broiled with impatience to put his design in execution;——and so, without consulting farther with any soul living,—which, by the bye, i think is right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul’s advice,——he privately ordered trim, his man, to pack up a bundle of lint and dressings, and hire a chariot-and-four to be at the door exactly by twelve o’clock that day, when he knew my father would be upon ’change.——so leaving a bank-note upon the table for the surgeon’s care of him, and a letter of tender thanks for his brother’s—he packed up his maps, his books of fortification, his instruments, &c. and by the help of a crutch on one side, and trim on the other,——my uncle toby embarked for shandy-hall. the reason, or rather the rise of this sudden demigration was as follows: the table in my uncle toby’s room, and at which, the night before this change happened, he was sitting with his maps, &c. about him—being somewhat of the smallest, for that infinity of great and small instruments of knowledge which usually lay crowded upon it—he had the accident, in reaching over for his tobacco-box, to throw down his compasses, and in stooping to take the compasses up, with his sleeve he threw down his case of instruments and snuffers;—and as the dice took a run against him, in his endeavouring to catch the snuffers in falling,——he thrust monsieur blondel off the table, and count de pagon o’top of him. ’twas to no purpose for a man, lame as my uncle toby was, to think of redressing these evils by himself,—he rung his bell for his man trim;——trim, quoth my uncle toby, prithee see what confusion i have here been making—i must have some better contrivance, trim.—can’st not thou take my rule, and measure the length and breadth of this table, and then go and bespeak me one as big again?——yes, an’ please your honour, replied trim, making a bow; but i hope your honour will be soon well enough to get down to your country-seat, where,—as your honour takes so much pleasure in fortification, we could manage this matter to a t. i must here inform you, that this servant of my uncle toby’s, who went by the name of trim, had been a corporal in my uncle’s own company,—his real name was james butler,—but having got the nick-name of trim, in the regiment, my uncle toby, unless when he happened to be very angry with him, would never call him by any other name. the poor fellow had been disabled for the service, by a wound on his left knee by a musket-bullet, at the battle of landen, which was two years before the affair of namur;—and as the fellow was well-beloved in the regiment, and a handy fellow into the bargain, my uncle toby took him for his servant; and of an excellent use was he, attending my uncle toby in the camp and in his quarters as a valet, groom, barber, cook, sempster, and nurse; and indeed, from first to last, waited upon him and served him with great fidelity and affection. my uncle toby loved the man in return, and what attached him more to him still, was the similitude of their knowledge.——for corporal trim, (for so, for the future, i shall call him) by four years occasional attention to his master’s discourse upon fortified towns, and the advantage of prying and peeping continually into his master’s plans, &c. exclusive and besides what he gained hobby-horsically, as a body-servant, non hobby horsical per se;——had become no mean proficient in the science; and was thought, by the cook and chamber-maid, to know as much of the nature of strong-holds as my uncle toby himself. i have but one more stroke to give to finish corporal trim’s character,——and it is the only dark line in it.—the fellow loved to advise,—or rather to hear himself talk; his carriage, however, was so perfectly respectful, ’twas easy to keep him silent when you had him so; but set his tongue a-going,—you had no hold of him—he was voluble;—the eternal interlardings of your honour, with the respectfulness of corporal trim’s manner, interceding so strong in behalf of his elocution,—that though you might have been incommoded,——you could not well be angry. my uncle toby was seldom either the one or the other with him,—or, at least, this fault, in trim, broke no squares with them. my uncle toby, as i said, loved the man;——and besides, as he ever looked upon a faithful servant,—but as an humble friend,—he could not bear to stop his mouth.——such was corporal trim. if i durst presume, continued trim, to give your honour my advice, and speak my opinion in this matter.—thou art welcome, trim, quoth my uncle toby—speak,——speak what thou thinkest upon the subject, man, without fear.—why then, replied trim, (not hanging his ears and scratching his head like a country-lout, but) stroking his hair back from his forehead, and standing erect as before his division,—i think, quoth trim, advancing his left, which was his lame leg, a little forwards,—and pointing with his right hand open towards a map of dunkirk, which was pinned against the hangings,——i think, quoth corporal trim, with humble submission to your honour’s better judgment,——that these ravelins, bastions, curtins, and hornworks, make but a poor, contemptible, fiddle-faddle piece of work of it here upon paper, compared to what your honour and i could make of it were we in the country by ourselves, and had but a rood, or a rood and a half of ground to do what we pleased with: as summer is coming on, continued trim, your honour might sit out of doors, and give me the nography—(call it ichnography, quoth my uncle,)——of the town or citadel, your honour was pleased to sit down before,—and i will be shot by your honour upon the glacis of it, if i did not fortify it to your honour’s mind.——i dare say thou would’st, trim, quoth my uncle.—for if your honour, continued the corporal, could but mark me the polygon, with its exact lines and angles—that i could do very well, quoth my uncle.—i would begin with the fossé, and if your honour could tell me the proper depth and breadth—i can to a hair’s breadth, trim, replied my uncle.—i would throw out the earth upon this hand towards the town for the scarp,—and on that hand towards the campaign for the counterscarp.—very right, trim, quoth my uncle toby:—and when i had sloped them to your mind,——an’ please your honour, i would face the glacis, as the finest fortifications are done in flanders, with sods,——and as your honour knows they should be,—and i would make the walls and parapets with sods too.—the best engineers call them gazons, trim, said my uncle toby.—whether they are gazons or sods, is not much matter, replied trim; your honour knows they are ten times beyond a facing either of brick or stone.——i know they are, trim in some respects,——quoth my uncle toby, nodding his head;—for a cannon-ball enters into the gazon right onwards, without bringing any rubbish down with it, which might fill the fossé, (as was the case at st. nicolas’s gate) and facilitate the passage over it. your honour understands these matters, replied corporal trim, better than any officer in his majesty’s service;——but would your honour please to let the bespeaking of the table alone, and let us but go into the country, i would work under your honour’s directions like a horse, and make fortifications for you something like a tansy, with all their batteries, saps, ditches, and palisadoes, that it should be worth all the world’s riding twenty miles to go and see it. my uncle toby blushed as red as scarlet as trim went on;—but it was not a blush of guilt,—of modesty,—or of anger,—it was a blush of joy;—he was fired with corporal trim’s project and description.—trim! said my uncle toby, thou hast said enough.—we might begin the campaign, continued trim, on the very day that his majesty and the allies take the field, and demolish them town by town as fast as—trim, quoth my uncle toby, say no more. your honour, continued trim, might sit in your arm-chair (pointing to it) this fine weather, giving me your orders, and i would——say no more, trim, quoth my uncle toby——besides, your honour would get not only pleasure and good pastime—but good air, and good exercise, and good health,—and your honour’s wound would be well in a month. thou hast said enough, trim,—quoth my uncle toby (putting his hand into his breeches-pocket)——i like thy project mightily.—and if your honour pleases, i’ll this moment go and buy a pioneer’s spade to take down with us, and i’ll bespeak a shovel and a pick-axe, and a couple of——say no more, trim, quoth my uncle toby, leaping up upon one leg, quite overcome with rapture,—and thrusting a guinea into trim’s hand,—trim, said my uncle toby, say no more;—but go down, trim, this moment, my lad, and bring up my supper this instant. trim ran down and brought up his master’s supper,—to no purpose:—trim’s plan of operation ran so in my uncle toby’s head, he could not taste it.—trim, quoth my uncle toby, get me to bed.—’twas all one.—corporal trim’s description had fired his imagination,—my uncle toby could not shut his eyes.—the more he considered it, the more bewitching the scene appeared to him;—so that, two full hours before day-light, he had come to a final determination and had concerted the whole plan of his and corporal trim’s decampment. my uncle toby had a little neat country-house of his own, in the village where my father’s estate lay at shandy, which had been left him by an old uncle, with a small estate of about one hundred pounds a-year. behind this house, and contiguous to it, was a kitchen-garden of about half an acre, and at the bottom of the garden, and cut off from it by a tall yew hedge, was a bowling-green, containing just about as much ground as corporal trim wished for;—so that as trim uttered the words, “a rood and a half of ground to do what they would with,”—this identical bowling-green instantly presented itself, and became curiously painted all at once, upon the retina of my uncle toby’s fancy;—which was the physical cause of making him change colour, or at least of heightening his blush, to that immoderate degree i spoke of. never did lover post down to a beloved mistress with more heat and expectation, than my uncle toby did, to enjoy this self-same thing in private;—i say in private;—for it was sheltered from the house, as i told you, by a tall yew hedge, and was covered on the other three sides, from mortal sight, by rough holly and thick-set flowering shrubs:—so that the idea of not being seen, did not a little contribute to the idea of pleasure pre-conceived in my uncle toby’s mind.—vain thought! however thick it was planted about,——or private soever it might seem,—to think, dear uncle toby, of enjoying a thing which took up a whole rood and a half of ground,—and not have it known! how my uncle toby and corporal trim managed this matter,—with the history of their campaigns, which were no way barren of events,——may make no uninteresting under-plot in the epitasis and working-up of this drama.—at present the scene must drop,—and change for the parlour fire-side. c h a p. xxxi ——what can they be doing? brother, said my father.—i think, replied my uncle toby,—taking, as i told you, his pipe from his mouth, and striking the ashes out of it as he began his sentence;——i think, replied he,—it would not be amiss, brother, if we rung the bell. pray, what’s all that racket over our heads, obadiah?——quoth my father;——my brother and i can scarce hear ourselves speak. sir, answered obadiah, making a bow towards his left shoulder,—my mistress is taken very badly.—and where’s susannah running down the garden there, as if they were going to ravish her?——sir, she is running the shortest cut into the town, replied obadiah, to fetch the old midwife.—then saddle a horse, quoth my father, and do you go directly for dr. slop, the man-midwife, with all our services,——and let him know your mistress is fallen into labour——and that i desire he will return with you with all speed. it is very strange, says my father, addressing himself to my uncle toby, as obadiah shut the door,——as there is so expert an operator as dr. slop so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;——and not only the life of my child, brother,——but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children i might, peradventure, have begot out of her hereafter. mayhap, brother, replied my uncle toby, my sister does it to save the expence:—a pudding’s end,—replied my father,——the doctor must be paid the same for inaction as action,—if not better,—to keep him in temper. ——then it can be out of nothing in the whole world, quoth my uncle toby, in the simplicity of his heart,—but modesty.—my sister, i dare say, added he, does not care to let a man come so near her ****. i will not say whether my uncle toby had completed the sentence or not;—’tis for his advantage to suppose he had,——as, i think, he could have added no one word which would have improved it. if, on the contrary, my uncle toby had not fully arrived at the period’s end—then the world stands indebted to the sudden snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe for one of the neatest examples of that ornamental figure in oratory, which rhetoricians stile the aposiopesis.——just heaven! how does the poco piu and the poco meno of the italian artists;—the insensible more or less, determine the precise line of beauty in the sentence, as well as in the statue! how do the slight touches of the chisel, the pencil, the pen, the fiddle-stick, et cætera,—give the true swell, which gives the true pleasure!—o my countrymen:—be nice; be cautious of your language; and never, o! never let it be forgotten upon what small particles your eloquence and your fame depend. ——“my sister, mayhap,” quoth my uncle toby, “does not choose to let a man come so near her ****” make this dash,—’tis an aposiopesis,—take the dash away, and write backside,—’tis bawdy.—scratch backside out, and put cover’d way in, ’tis a metaphor;—and, i dare say, as fortification ran so much in my uncle toby’s head, that if he had been left to have added one word to the sentence,——that word was it. but whether that was the case or not the case;—or whether the snapping of my father’s tobacco-pipe, so critically, happened through accident or anger, will be seen in due time. c h a p. xxxii tho’ my father was a good natural philosopher,—yet he was something of a moral philosopher too; for which reason, when his tobacco-pipe snapp’d short in the middle,—he had nothing to do, as such, but to have taken hold of the two pieces, and thrown them gently upon the back of the fire.——he did no such thing;——he threw them with all the violence in the world;—and, to give the action still more emphasis,—he started upon both his legs to do it. this looked something like heat;—and the manner of his reply to what my uncle toby was saying, proved it was so. —“not choose,” quoth my father, (repeating my uncle toby’s words) “to let a man come so near her!”——by heaven, brother toby! you would try the patience of job;—and i think i have the plagues of one already without it.——why?——where?——wherein?——wherefore?——upon what account? replied my uncle toby: in the utmost astonishment.—to think, said my father, of a man living to your age, brother, and knowing so little about women!——i know nothing at all about them,—replied my uncle toby: and i think, continued he, that the shock i received the year after the demolition of dunkirk, in my affair with widow wadman;—which shock you know i should not have received, but from my total ignorance of the sex,—has given me just cause to say, that i neither know nor do pretend to know any thing about ’em or their concerns either.—methinks, brother, replied my father, you might, at least, know so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong. it is said in aristotle’s master piece, “that when a man doth think of any thing which is past,—he looketh down upon the ground;——but that when he thinketh of something that is to come, he looketh up towards the heavens.” my uncle toby, i suppose, thought of neither, for he look’d horizontally.—right end! quoth my uncle toby, muttering the two words low to himself, and fixing his two eyes insensibly as he muttered them, upon a small crevice, formed by a bad joint in the chimney-piece——right end of a woman!——i declare, quoth my uncle, i know no more which it is than the man in the moon;——and if i was to think, continued my uncle toby (keeping his eyes still fixed upon the bad joint) this month together, i am sure i should not be able to find it out. then, brother toby, replied my father, i will tell you. every thing in this world, continued my father (filling a fresh pipe)—every thing in this world, my dear brother toby, has two handles.——not always, quoth my uncle toby.——at least, replied my father, every one has two hands,——which comes to the same thing.——now, if a man was to sit down coolly, and consider within himself the make, the shape, the construction, come-at-ability, and convenience of all the parts which constitute the whole of that animal, called woman, and compare them analogically—i never understood rightly the meaning of that word,—quoth my uncle toby.— analogy, replied my father, is the certain relation and agreement which different——here a devil of a rap at the door snapped my father’s definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,—and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of speculation;—it was some months before my father could get an opportunity to be safely delivered of it:—and, at this hour, it is a thing full as problematical as the subject of the dissertation itself,—(considering the confusion and distresses of our domestick misadventures, which are now coming thick one upon the back of another) whether i shall be able to find a place for it in the third volume or not. c h a p. xxxiii it is about an hour and a half’s tolerable good reading since my uncle toby rung the bell, when obadiah was ordered to saddle a horse, and go for dr. slop, the man-midwife;—so that no one can say, with reason, that i have not allowed obadiah time enough, poetically speaking, and considering the emergency too, both to go and come;——though, morally and truly speaking, the man perhaps has scarce had time to get on his boots. if the hypercritick will go upon this; and is resolved after all to take a pendulum, and measure the true distance betwixt the ringing of the bell, and the rap at the door;—and, after finding it to be no more than two minutes, thirteen seconds, and three-fifths,—should take upon him to insult over me for such a breach in the unity, or rather probability of time;—i would remind him, that the idea of duration, and of its simple modes, is got merely from the train and succession of our ideas——and is the true scholastic pendulum,——and by which, as a scholar, i will be tried in this matter,—abjuring and detesting the jurisdiction of all other pendulums whatever. i would therefore desire him to consider that it is but poor eight miles from shandy-hall to dr. slop, the man-midwife’s house:—and that whilst obadiah has been going those said miles and back, i have brought my uncle toby from namur, quite across all flanders, into england:—that i have had him ill upon my hands near four years;—and have since travelled him and corporal trim in a chariot-and-four, a journey of near two hundred miles down into yorkshire.—all which put together, must have prepared the reader’s imagination for the entrance of dr. slop upon the stage,—as much, at least (i hope) as a dance, a song, or a concerto between the acts. if my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,—when i have said all i can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed romance, which, before, was a book apocryphal:——if i am thus pressed—i then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by acquainting him, that obadiah had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with dr. slop;—and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too. imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter. c h a p. xxxiv imagine to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a doctor slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards. such were the out-lines of dr. slop’s figure, which—if you have read hogarth’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, i wish you would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred. imagine such a one,—for such, i say, were the outlines of dr. slop’s figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.——they were not.——imagine to yourself, obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. pray, sir, let me interest you a moment in this description. had dr. slop beheld obadiah a mile off, posting in a narrow lane directly towards him, at that monstrous rate,—splashing and plunging like a devil thro’ thick and thin, as he approached, would not such a phænomenon, with such a vortex of mud and water moving along with it, round its axis,—have been a subject of juster apprehension to dr. slop in his situation, than the worst of whiston’s comets?—to say nothing of the nucleus; that is, of obadiah and the coach-horse.—in my idea, the vortex alone of ’em was enough to have involved and carried, if not the doctor, at least the doctor’s pony, quite away with it. what then do you think must the terror and hydrophobia of dr. slop have been, when you read (which you are just going to do) that he was advancing thus warily along towards shandy-hall, and had approached to within sixty yards of it, and within five yards of a sudden turn, made by an acute angle of the garden-wall,—and in the dirtiest part of a dirty lane,—when obadiah and his coach-horse turned the corner, rapid, furious,—pop,—full upon him!—nothing, i think, in nature, can be supposed more terrible than such a rencounter,—so imprompt! so ill prepared to stand the shock of it as dr. slop was. what could dr. slop do?——he crossed himself +—pugh!—but the doctor, sir, was a papist.—no matter; he had better have kept hold of the pummel.—he had so;—nay, as it happened, he had better have done nothing at all; for in crossing himself he let go his whip,——and in attempting to save his whip betwixt his knee and his saddle’s skirt, as it slipped, he lost his stirrup,——in losing which he lost his seat;——and in the multitude of all these losses (which, by the bye, shews what little advantage there is in crossing) the unfortunate doctor lost his presence of mind. so that without waiting for obadiah’s onset, he left his pony to its destiny, tumbling off it diagonally, something in the stile and manner of a pack of wool, and without any other consequence from the fall, save that of being left (as it would have been) with the broadest part of him sunk about twelve inches deep in the mire. obadiah pull’d off his cap twice to dr. slop;—once as he was falling,—and then again when he saw him seated.——ill-timed complaisance;—had not the fellow better have stopped his horse, and got off and help’d him?—sir, he did all that his situation would allow;—but the momentum of the coach-horse was so great, that obadiah could not do it all at once; he rode in a circle three times round dr. slop, before he could fully accomplish it any how;—and at the last, when he did stop his beast, ’twas done with such an explosion of mud, that obadiah had better have been a league off. in short, never was a dr. slop so beluted, and so transubstantiated, since that affair came into fashion. c h a p. xxxv when dr. slop entered the back parlour, where my father and my uncle toby were discoursing upon the nature of women,——it was hard to determine whether dr. slop’s figure, or dr. slop’s presence, occasioned more surprize to them; for as the accident happened so near the house, as not to make it worth while for obadiah to remount him,——obadiah had led him in as he was, unwiped, unappointed, unannealed, with all his stains and blotches on him.—he stood like hamlet’s ghost, motionless and speechless, for a full minute and a half at the parlour-door (obadiah still holding his hand) with all the majesty of mud. his hinder parts, upon which he had received his fall, totally besmeared,——and in every other part of him, blotched over in such a manner with obadiah’s explosion, that you would have sworn (without mental reservation) that every grain of it had taken effect. here was a fair opportunity for my uncle toby to have triumphed over my father in his turn;—for no mortal, who had beheld dr. slop in that pickle, could have dissented from so much, at least, of my uncle toby’s opinion, “that mayhap his sister might not care to let such a dr. slop come so near her ****” but it was the argumentum ad hominem; and if my uncle toby was not very expert at it, you may think, he might not care to use it.——no; the reason was,—’twas not his nature to insult. dr. slop’s presence at that time, was no less problematical than the mode of it; tho’ it is certain, one moment’s reflexion in my father might have solved it; for he had apprized dr. slop but the week before, that my mother was at her full reckoning; and as the doctor had heard nothing since, ’twas natural and very political too in him, to have taken a ride to shandy-hall, as he did, merely to see how matters went on. but my father’s mind took unfortunately a wrong turn in the investigation; running, like the hypercritick’s, altogether upon the ringing of the bell and the rap upon the door,—measuring their distance, and keeping his mind so intent upon the operation, as to have power to think of nothing else,——common-place infirmity of the greatest mathematicians! working with might and main at the demonstration, and so wasting all their strength upon it, that they have none left in them to draw the corollary, to do good with. the ringing of the bell, and the rap upon the door, struck likewise strong upon the sensorium of my uncle toby,—but it excited a very different train of thoughts;—the two irreconcileable pulsations instantly brought stevinus, the great engineer, along with them, into my uncle toby’s mind. what business stevinus had in this affair,—is the greatest problem of all:——it shall be solved,—but not in the next chapter. c h a p. xxxvi writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure i think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. as no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;——so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: the truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself. for my own part, i am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own. ’tis his turn now;—i have given an ample description of dr. slop’s sad overthrow, and of his sad appearance in the back-parlour;—his imagination must now go on with it for a while. let the reader imagine then, that dr. slop has told his tale—and in what words, and with what aggravations, his fancy chooses;—let him suppose, that obadiah has told his tale also, and with such rueful looks of affected concern, as he thinks best will contrast the two figures as they stand by each other.—let him imagine, that my father has stepped up stairs to see my mother.—and, to conclude this work of imagination,—let him imagine the doctor washed,—rubbed down, and condoled,—felicitated,—got into a pair of obadiah’s pumps, stepping forwards towards the door, upon the very point of entering upon action. truce!—truce, good dr. slop!—stay thy obstetrick hand;——return it safe into thy bosom to keep it warm;——little dost thou know what obstacles,——little dost thou think what hidden causes, retard its operation!——hast thou, dr. slop,—hast thou been entrusted with the secret articles of the solemn treaty which has brought thee into this place?—art thou aware that at this instant, a daughter of lucina is put obstetrically over thy head? alas!—’tis too true.—besides, great son of pilumnus! what canst thou do? thou hast come forth unarm’d;—thou hast left thy tire-téte,—thy new-invented forceps,—thy crotchet,—thy squirt, and all thy instruments of salvation and deliverance, behind thee,—by heaven! at this moment they are hanging up in a green bays bag, betwixt thy two pistols, at the bed’s head!—ring;—call;—send obadiah back upon the coach-horse to bring them with all speed. ——make great haste, obadiah, quoth my father, and i’ll give thee a crown! and quoth my uncle toby, i’ll give him another. c h a p. xxxvii your sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle toby, addressing himself to dr. slop, (all three of them sitting down to the fire together, as my uncle toby began to speak)—instantly brought the great stevinus into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite author with me.—then, added my father, making use of the argument ad crumenam,—i will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which will serve to give away to obadiah when he gets back) that this same stevinus was some engineer or other—or has wrote something or other, either directly or indirectly, upon the science of fortification. he has so,—replied my uncle toby.—i knew it, said my father, though, for the soul of me, i cannot see what kind of connection there can be betwixt dr. slop’s sudden coming, and a discourse upon fortification;—yet i fear’d it.—talk of what we will, brother,——or let the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject,—you are sure to bring it in. i would not, brother toby, continued my father,——i declare i would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works.—that i dare say you would not, quoth dr. slop, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun. dennis the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he would grow testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;——he saw no difference. sir, quoth my uncle toby, addressing himself to dr. slop,—the curtins my brother shandy mentions here, have nothing to do with beadsteads;—tho’, i know du cange says, “that bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their name from them;”—nor have the horn-works he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom: but the curtin, sir, is the word we use in fortification, for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions and joins them—besiegers seldom offer to carry on their attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason, because they are so well flanked. ( ’tis the case of other curtains, quoth dr. slop, laughing.) however, continued my uncle toby, to make them sure, we generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to extend them beyond the fossé or ditch:——the common men, who know very little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon together,—tho’ they are very different things;—not in their figure or construction, for we make them exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in form of a crescent;——where then lies the difference? (quoth my father, a little testily.)—in their situations, answered my uncle toby:—for when a ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands before its bastion;——but was it to change place, and get before the curtin,—’twould be no longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in that case, is not a half-moon;—’tis no more than a ravelin.——i think, quoth my father, that the noble science of defence has its weak sides——as well as others. —as for the horn-work (high! ho! sigh’d my father) which, continued my uncle toby, my brother was speaking of, they are a very considerable part of an outwork;——they are called by the french engineers, ouvrage à corne, and we generally make them to cover such places as we suspect to be weaker than the rest;—’tis formed by two epaulments or demi-bastions—they are very pretty,—and if you will take a walk, i’ll engage to shew you one well worth your trouble.—i own, continued my uncle toby, when we crown them,—they are much stronger, but then they are very expensive, and take up a great deal of ground, so that, in my opinion, they are most of use to cover or defend the head of a camp; otherwise the double tenaille—by the mother who bore us!——brother toby, quoth my father, not able to hold out any longer,——you would provoke a saint;——here have you got us, i know not how, not only souse into the middle of the old subject again:—but so full is your head of these confounded works, that though my wife is this moment in the pains of labour, and you hear her cry out, yet nothing will serve you but to carry off the man-midwife.——accoucheur,—if you please, quoth dr. slop.—with all my heart, replied my father, i don’t care what they call you,—but i wish the whole science of fortification, with all its inventors, at the devil;—it has been the death of thousands,—and it will be mine in the end.—i would not, i would not, brother toby, have my brains so full of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, pallisadoes, ravelins, half-moons, and such trumpery, to be proprietor of namur, and of all the towns in flanders with it. my uncle toby was a man patient of injuries;—not from want of courage,—i have told you in a former chapter, “that he was a man of courage:”—and will add here, that where just occasions presented, or called it forth,—i know no man under whose arm i would have sooner taken shelter;——nor did this arise from any insensibility or obtuseness of his intellectual parts;—for he felt this insult of my father’s as feelingly as a man could do;—but he was of a peaceful, placid nature,—no jarring element in it,—all was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly. —go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—i’ll not hurt thee, says my uncle toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,—i’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should i hurt thee?——this world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me. i was but ten years old when this happened: but whether it was, that the action itself was more in unison to my nerves at that age of pity, which instantly set my whole frame into one vibration of most pleasurable sensation;—or how far the manner and expression of it might go towards it;—or in what degree, or by what secret magick,—a tone of voice and harmony of movement, attuned by mercy, might find a passage to my heart, i know not;—this i know, that the lesson of universal good-will then taught and imprinted by my uncle toby, has never since been worn out of my mind: and tho’ i would not depreciate what the study of the literæ humaniores, at the university, have done for me in that respect, or discredit the other helps of an expensive education bestowed upon me, both at home and abroad since;—yet i often think that i owe one half of my philanthropy to that one accidental impression. this is to serve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume upon the subject. i could not give the reader this stroke in my uncle toby’s picture, by the instrument with which i drew the other parts of it,—that taking in no more than the mere hobby-horsical likeness:—this is a part of his moral character. my father, in this patient endurance of wrongs, which i mention, was very different, as the reader must long ago have noted; he had a much more acute and quick sensibility of nature, attended with a little soreness of temper; tho’ this never transported him to any thing which looked like malignancy:—yet in the little rubs and vexations of life, ’twas apt to shew itself in a drollish and witty kind of peevishness:——he was, however, frank and generous in his nature;——at all times open to conviction; and in the little ebullitions of this subacid humour towards others, but particularly towards my uncle toby, whom he truly loved:——he would feel more pain, ten times told (except in the affair of my aunt dinah, or where an hypothesis was concerned) than what he ever gave. the characters of the two brothers, in this view of them, reflected light upon each other, and appeared with great advantage in this affair which arose about stevinus. i need not tell the reader, if he keeps a hobby-horse,—that a man’s hobby-horse is as tender a part as he has about him; and that these unprovoked strokes at my uncle toby’s could not be unfelt by him.——no:——as i said above, my uncle toby did feel them, and very sensibly too. pray, sir, what said he?—how did he behave?—o, sir!—it was great: for as soon as my father had done insulting his hobby-horse,——he turned his head without the least emotion, from dr. slop, to whom he was addressing his discourse, and looking up into my father’s face, with a countenance spread over with so much good-nature;——so placid;——so fraternal;——so inexpressibly tender towards him:—it penetrated my father to his heart: he rose up hastily from his chair, and seizing hold of both my uncle toby’s hands as he spoke:—brother toby, said he:—i beg thy pardon;——forgive, i pray thee, this rash humour which my mother gave me.——my dear, dear brother, answered my uncle toby, rising up by my father’s help, say no more about it;—you are heartily welcome, had it been ten times as much, brother. but ’tis ungenerous, replied my father, to hurt any man;——a brother worse;——but to hurt a brother of such gentle manners,—so unprovoking,—and so unresenting;——’tis base:——by heaven, ’tis cowardly.—you are heartily welcome, brother, quoth my uncle toby,——had it been fifty times as much.——besides, what have i to do, my dear toby, cried my father, either with your amusements or your pleasures, unless it was in my power (which it is not) to increase their measure? ——brother shandy, answered my uncle toby, looking wistfully in his face,——you are much mistaken in this point:—for you do increase my pleasure very much, in begetting children for the shandy family at your time of life.—but, by that, sir, quoth dr. slop, mr. shandy increases his own.—not a jot, quoth my father. c h a p. xxxviii my brother does it, quoth my uncle toby, out of principle.——in a family way, i suppose, quoth dr. slop.——pshaw!—said my father,—’tis not worth talking of. c h a p. xxxix at the end of the last chapter, my father and my uncle toby were left both standing, like brutus and cassius, at the close of the scene, making up their accounts. as my father spoke the three last words,——he sat down;—my uncle toby exactly followed his example, only, that before he took his chair, he rung the bell, to order corporal trim, who was in waiting, to step home for stevinus:—my uncle toby’s house being no farther off than the opposite side of the way. some men would have dropped the subject of stevinus;—but my uncle toby had no resentment in his heart, and he went on with the subject, to shew my father that he had none. your sudden appearance, dr. slop, quoth my uncle, resuming the discourse, instantly brought stevinus into my head. (my father, you may be sure, did not offer to lay any more wagers upon stevinus’s head.)——because, continued my uncle toby, the celebrated sailing chariot, which belonged to prince maurice, and was of such wonderful contrivance and velocity, as to carry half a dozen people thirty german miles, in i don’t know how few minutes,——was invented by stevinus, that great mathematician and engineer. you might have spared your servant the trouble, quoth dr. slop (as the fellow is lame) of going for stevinus’s account of it, because in my return from leyden thro’ the hague, i walked as far as schevling, which is two long miles, on purpose to take a view of it. that’s nothing, replied my uncle toby, to what the learned peireskius did, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from paris to schevling, and from schevling to paris back again, in order to see it,—and nothing else. some men cannot bear to be out-gone. the more fool peireskius, replied dr. slop. but mark, ’twas out of no contempt of peireskius at all;——but that peireskius’s indefatigable labour in trudging so far on foot, out of love for the sciences, reduced the exploit of dr. slop, in that affair, to nothing:—the more fool peireskius, said he again.—why so?—replied my father, taking his brother’s part, not only to make reparation as fast as he could for the insult he had given him, which sat still upon my father’s mind;——but partly, that my father began really to interest himself in the discourse.——why so?——said he. why is peireskius, or any man else, to be abused for an appetite for that, or any other morsel of sound knowledge: for notwithstanding i know nothing of the chariot in question, continued he, the inventor of it must have had a very mechanical head; and tho’ i cannot guess upon what principles of philosophy he has atchieved it;—yet certainly his machine has been constructed upon solid ones, be they what they will, or it could not have answered at the rate my brother mentions. it answered, replied my uncle toby, as well, if not better; for, as peireskius elegantly expresses it, speaking of the velocity of its motion, tam citus erat, quam erat ventus; which, unless i have forgot my latin, is, that it was as swift as the wind itself. but pray, dr. slop, quoth my father, interrupting my uncle (tho’ not without begging pardon for it at the same time) upon what principles was this self-same chariot set a-going?—upon very pretty principles to be sure, replied dr. slop:—and i have often wondered, continued he, evading the question, why none of our gentry, who live upon large plains like this of ours,—(especially they whose wives are not past child-bearing) attempt nothing of this kind; for it would not only be infinitely expeditious upon sudden calls, to which the sex is subject,—if the wind only served,—but would be excellent good husbandry to make use of the winds, which cost nothing, and which eat nothing, rather than horses, which (the devil take ’em) both cost and eat a great deal. for that very reason, replied my father, “because they cost nothing, and because they eat nothing,”—the scheme is bad;—it is the consumption of our products, as well as the manufactures of them, which gives bread to the hungry, circulates trade,—brings in money, and supports the value of our lands;—and tho’, i own, if i was a prince, i would generously recompense the scientifick head which brought forth such contrivances;—yet i would as peremptorily suppress the use of them. my father here had got into his element,—and was going on as prosperously with his dissertation upon trade, as my uncle toby had before, upon his of fortification;—but to the loss of much sound knowledge, the destinies in the morning had decreed that no dissertation of any kind should be spun by my father that day,——for as he opened his mouth to begin the next sentence, c h a p. xl in popped corporal trim with stevinus:—but ’twas too late,—all the discourse had been exhausted without him, and was running into a new channel. —you may take the book home again, trim, said my uncle toby, nodding to him. but prithee, corporal, quoth my father, drolling,—look first into it, and see if thou canst spy aught of a sailing chariot in it. corporal trim, by being in the service, had learned to obey,—and not to remonstrate,—so taking the book to a side-table, and running over the leaves; an’ please your honour, said trim, i can see no such thing;—however, continued the corporal, drolling a little in his turn, i’ll make sure work of it, an’ please your honour;—so taking hold of the two covers of the book, one in each hand, and letting the leaves fall down as he bent the covers back, he gave the book a good sound shake. there is something falling out, however, said trim, an’ please your honour;—but it is not a chariot, or any thing like one:—prithee, corporal, said my father, smiling, what is it then?—i think, answered trim, stooping to take it up,——’tis more like a sermon,——for it begins with a text of scripture, and the chapter and verse;—and then goes on, not as a chariot, but like a sermon directly. the company smiled. i cannot conceive how it is possible, quoth my uncle toby, for such a thing as a sermon to have got into my stevinus. i think ’tis a sermon, replied trim:—but if it please your honours, as it is a fair hand, i will read you a page;—for trim, you must know, loved to hear himself read almost as well as talk. i have ever a strong propensity, said my father, to look into things which cross my way, by such strange fatalities as these;—and as we have nothing better to do, at least till obadiah gets back, i shall be obliged to you, brother, if dr. slop has no objection to it, to order the corporal to give us a page or two of it,—if he is as able to do it, as he seems willing. an’ please your honour, quoth trim, i officiated two whole campaigns, in flanders, as clerk to the chaplain of the regiment.——he can read it, quoth my uncle toby, as well as i can.——trim, i assure you, was the best scholar in my company, and should have had the next halberd, but for the poor fellow’s misfortune. corporal trim laid his hand upon his heart, and made an humble bow to his master; then laying down his hat upon the floor, and taking up the sermon in his left hand, in order to have his right at liberty,—he advanced, nothing doubting, into the middle of the room, where he could best see, and be best seen by his audience. c h a p. xli —if you have any objection,—said my father, addressing himself to dr. slop. not in the least, replied dr. slop;—for it does not appear on which side of the question it is wrote,—it may be a composition of a divine of our church, as well as yours,—so that we run equal risques.——’tis wrote upon neither side, quoth trim, for ’tis only upon conscience, an’ please your honours. trim’s reason put his audience into good humour,—all but dr. slop, who turning his head about towards trim, looked a little angry. begin, trim,—and read distinctly, quoth my father.—i will, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow, and bespeaking attention with a slight movement of his right hand. c h a p. xlii ——but before the corporal begins, i must first give you a description of his attitude;——otherwise he will naturally stand represented, by your imagination, in an uneasy posture,—stiff,—perpendicular,—dividing the weight of his body equally upon both legs;——his eye fixed, as if on duty;—his look determined,—clenching the sermon in his left hand, like his firelock.——in a word, you would be apt to paint trim, as if he was standing in his platoon ready for action,—his attitude was as unlike all this as you can conceive. he stood before them with his body swayed, and bent forwards just so far, as to make an angle of 85 degrees and a half upon the plain of the horizon;—which sound orators, to whom i address this, know very well to be the true persuasive angle of incidence;—in any other angle you may talk and preach;—’tis certain;—and it is done every day;—but with what effect,—i leave the world to judge! the necessity of this precise angle of 85 degrees and a half to a mathematical exactness,——does it not shew us, by the way, how the arts and sciences mutually befriend each other? how the duce corporal trim, who knew not so much as an acute angle from an obtuse one, came to hit it so exactly;——or whether it was chance or nature, or good sense or imitation, &c. shall be commented upon in that part of the cyclopædia of arts and sciences, where the instrumental parts of the eloquence of the senate, the pulpit, and the bar, the coffee-house, the bed-chamber, and fire-side, fall under consideration. he stood,——for i repeat it, to take the picture of him in at one view, with his body swayed, and somewhat bent forwards,—his right leg from under him, sustaining seven-eighths of his whole weight,——the foot of his left leg, the defect of which was no disadvantage to his attitude, advanced a little,—not laterally, nor forwards, but in a line betwixt them;—his knee bent, but that not violently,—but so as to fall within the limits of the line of beauty;—and i add, of the line of science too;—for consider, it had one eighth part of his body to bear up;—so that in this case the position of the leg is determined,—because the foot could be no farther advanced, or the knee more bent, than what would allow him, mechanically to receive an eighth part of his whole weight under it, and to carry it too. => this i recommend to painters;—need i add,—to orators!—i think not; for unless they practise it,——they must fall upon their noses. so much for corporal trim’s body and legs.——he held the sermon loosely, not carelessly, in his left hand, raised something above his stomach, and detached a little from his breast;——his right arm falling negligently by his side, as nature and the laws of gravity ordered it,——but with the palm of it open and turned towards his audience, ready to aid the sentiment in case it stood in need. corporal trim’s eyes and the muscles of his face were in full harmony with the other parts of him;—he looked frank,—unconstrained,—something assured,—but not bordering upon assurance. let not the critic ask how corporal trim could come by all this.——i’ve told him it should be explained;—but so he stood before my father, my uncle toby, and dr. slop,—so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with such an oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure,——a statuary might have modelled from it;——nay, i doubt whether the oldest fellow of a college,—or the hebrew professor himself, could have much mended it. trim made a bow, and read as follows: the s e r m o n. hebrews xiii. 18. ———for we trust we have a good conscience. “trust!——trust we have a good conscience!” [certainly, trim, quoth my father, interrupting him, you give that sentence a very improper accent; for you curl up your nose, man, and read it with such a sneering tone, as if the parson was going to abuse the apostle. he is, an’ please your honour, replied trim. pugh! said my father, smiling. sir, quoth dr. slop, trim is certainly in the right; for the writer (who i perceive is a protestant) by the snappish manner in which he takes up the apostle, is certainly going to abuse him;—if this treatment of him has not done it already. but from whence, replied my father, have you concluded so soon, dr. slop, that the writer is of our church?—for aught i can see yet,—he may be of any church.——because, answered dr. slop, if he was of ours,—he durst no more take such a licence,—than a bear by his beard:—if, in our communion, sir, a man was to insult an apostle,——a saint,——or even the paring of a saint’s nail,—he would have his eyes scratched out.—what, by the saint? quoth my uncle toby. no, replied dr. slop, he would have an old house over his head. pray is the inquisition an ancient building, answered my uncle toby, or is it a modern one?—i know nothing of architecture, replied dr. slop.—an’ please your honours, quoth trim, the inquisition is the vilest——prithee spare thy description, trim, i hate the very name of it, said my father.—no matter for that, answered dr. slop,—it has its uses; for tho’ i’m no great advocate for it, yet, in such a case as this, he would soon be taught better manners; and i can tell him, if he went on at that rate, would be flung into the inquisition for his pains. god help him then, quoth my uncle toby. amen, added trim; for heaven above knows, i have a poor brother who has been fourteen years a captive in it.—i never heard one word of it before, said my uncle toby, hastily:—how came he there, trim?——o, sir, the story will make your heart bleed,—as it has made mine a thousand times;—but it is too long to be told now;—your honour shall hear it from first to last some day when i am working beside you in our fortifications;—but the short of the story is this;—that my brother tom went over a servant to lisbon,—and then married a jew’s widow, who kept a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or other, was the cause of his being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, where he was lying with his wife and two small children, and carried directly to the inquisition, where, god help him, continued trim, fetching a sigh from the bottom of his heart,—the poor honest lad lies confined at this hour; he was as honest a soul, added trim, (pulling out his handkerchief) as ever blood warmed.—— —the tears trickled down trim’s cheeks faster than he could well wipe them away.—a dead silence in the room ensued for some minutes.—certain proof of pity! come trim, quoth my father, after he saw the poor fellow’s grief had got a little vent,—read on,—and put this melancholy story out of thy head:—i grieve that i interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon again;—for if the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou sayest, i have a great desire to know what kind of provocation the apostle has given. corporal trim wiped his face, and returned his handkerchief into his pocket, and, making a bow as he did it,—he began again.] the s e r m o n. hebrews xiii. 18. ——for we trust we have a good conscience.— “trust! trust we have a good conscience! surely if there is any thing in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing,—whether he has a good conscience or no.” [i am positive i am right, quoth dr. slop.] “if a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of this account:——he must be privy to his own thoughts and desires;—he must remember his past pursuits, and know “certainly the true springs and motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.” [i defy him, without an assistant, quoth dr. slop.] “in other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the wise man complains, hardly do we guess aright at the things that are upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us. but here the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;——is conscious of the web she has wove;——knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has planned before her.” [the language is good, and i declare trim reads very well, quoth my father.] “now,—as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has within herself of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or censure, which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our lives; ’tis plain you will say, from the very terms of the proposition,—whenever this inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused, that he must necessarily be a guilty man.—and, on the contrary, when the report is favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not:—that it is not a matter of trust, as the apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and fact, that the conscience is good, and that the man must be good also.” [then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, i suppose, quoth dr. slop, and the protestant divine is in the right. sir, have patience, replied my father, for i think it will presently appear that st. paul and the protestant divine are both of an opinion.—as nearly so, quoth dr. slop, as east is to west;—but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes from the liberty of the press. it is no more at the worst, replied my uncle toby, than the liberty of the pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is printed, or ever likely to be. go on, trim, quoth my father.] “at first sight this may seem to be a true state of the case: and i make no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly impressed upon the mind of man,—that did no such thing ever happen, as that the conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures it may) insensibly become hard;—and, like some tender parts of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by degrees that nice sense and perception with which god and nature endowed it:—did this never happen;—or was it certain that self-love could never hang the least bias upon the judgment;—or that the little interests below could rise up and perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with clouds and thick darkness:——could no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred court—did wit disdain “to take a bribe in it;—or was ashamed to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment: or, lastly, were we assured that interest stood always unconcerned whilst the cause was hearing—and that passion never got into the judgment-seat, and pronounced sentence in the stead of reason, which is supposed always to preside and determine upon the case:—was this truly so, as the objection must suppose;—no doubt then the religious and moral state of a man would be exactly what he himself esteemed it:—and the guilt or innocence of every man’s life could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the degrees of his own approbation and censure. “i own, in one case, whenever a man’s conscience does accuse him (as it seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty;—and unless in melancholy and hypocondriac cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always sufficient grounds for the accusation. “but the converse of the proposition will not hold true;—namely, that whenever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does not, that a man is therefore innocent.——this is not fact——so that the common consolation which some good christian or other is hourly administering to himself,—that he thanks god his mind does not misgive him; and that, consequently, he has a good conscience, because he hath a quiet one,—is fallacious;—and as current as the inference is, and as infallible as the rule appears at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the truth of this rule upon plain facts,——you see it liable to so much error from a false application;——the principle upon which it goes so often perverted;——the whole force of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away, that it is painful to produce the common examples from human life, which confirm the account. “a man shall be vicious and utterly “debauched in his principles;—exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live shameless, in the open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can justify,——a sin by which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the deluded partner of his guilt;—rob her of her best dowry; and not only cover her own head with dishonour;—but involve a whole virtuous family in shame and sorrow for her sake. surely, you will think conscience must lead such a man a troublesome life; he can have no rest night and day from its reproaches. “alas! conscience had something else to do all this time, than break in upon him; as elijah reproached the god baal,——this domestic god was either talking, or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure he slept and could not be awoke. “perhaps he was gone out in company with honour to fight a duel: to pay off some debt at play;——or “dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; perhaps conscience all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his fortune and rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing; so that he lives as merrily;”——[if he was of our church, tho’, quoth dr. slop, he could not]—“sleeps as soundly in his bed;—and at last meets death unconcernedly;—perhaps much more so, than a much better man.” [all this is impossible with us, quoth dr. slop, turning to my father,—the case could not happen in our church.—it happens in ours, however, replied my father, but too often.——i own, quoth dr. slop, (struck a little with my father’s frank acknowledgment)—that a man in the romish church may live as badly;—but then he cannot easily die so.——’tis little matter, replied my father, with an air of indifference,—how a rascal dies.—i mean, answered dr. slop, he would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.—pray how many have you in all, said my uncle toby,——for i always forget?——seven, answered dr. slop.——humph!—said my uncle toby; tho’ not accented as a note of acquiescence,—but as an interjection of that particular species of surprize, when a man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than he expected.——humph! replied my uncle toby. dr. slop, who had an ear, understood my uncle toby as well as if he had wrote a whole volume against the seven sacraments.——humph! replied dr. slop, (stating my uncle toby’s argument over again to him)——why, sir, are there not seven cardinal virtues?——seven mortal sins?——seven golden candlesticks?——seven heavens?—’tis more than i know, replied my uncle toby.——are there not seven wonders of the world?——seven days of the creation?——seven planets?——seven plagues?——that there are, quoth my father with a most affected gravity. but prithee, continued he, go on with the rest of thy characters, trim.] “another is sordid, unmerciful,” (here trim waved his right hand) “a strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or public spirit. take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh or a prayer.” [an’ please your honours, cried trim, i think this a viler man than the other.] “shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?——no; thank god there is no occasion, i pay every man his own;—i have no fornication to answer to my conscience;—no faithless vows or promises to make up;—i have debauched no man’s wife or child; thank god, i am not as other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who stands before me. “a third is crafty and designing in his nature. view his whole life;—’tis nothing but a cunning contexture “of dark arts and unequitable subterfuges, basely to defeat the true intent of all laws,——plain dealing and the safe enjoyment of our several properties.——you will see such a one working out a frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities of the poor and needy man;—shall raise a fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted him with his life. “when old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this black account, and state it over again with his conscience—conscience looks into the statutes at large;—finds no express law broken by what he has done;—perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred;—sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon him:—what is there to affright his conscience?—conscience has got safely entrenched behind the letter of the law; sits “there invulnerable, fortified with cases and reports so strongly on all sides;—that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.” [here corporal trim and my uncle toby exchanged looks with each other.—aye, aye, trim! quoth my uncle toby, shaking his head,——these are but sorry fortifications, trim.———o! very poor work, answered trim, to what your honour and i make of it.——the character of this last man, said dr. slop, interrupting trim, is more detestable than all the rest; and seems to have been taken from some pettifogging lawyer amongst you:—amongst us, a man’s conscience could not possibly continue so long blinded,——three times in a year, at least, he must go to confession. will that restore it to sight? quoth my uncle toby,——go on, trim, quoth my father, or obadiah will have got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon.——’tis a very short one, replied trim.—i wish it was longer, quoth my uncle toby, for i like it hugely.—trim went on.] “a fourth man shall want even this refuge;—shall break through all their ceremony of slow chicane;—scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and cautious trains to bring about his purpose:——see the bare-faced villain, how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders!—horrid!—but indeed much better was not to be expected, in the present case—the poor man was in the dark!——his priest had got the keeping of his conscience;——and all he would let him know of it, was, that he must believe in the pope;—go to mass;—cross himself;—tell his beads;—be a good catholic, and that this, in all conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. what;—if he perjures?—why;—he had a mental reservation in it.—but if he is so wicked and abandoned a wretch as you represent him;—if he robs,—if he stabs, will not conscience, “on every such act, receive a wound itself?—aye,—but the man has carried it to confession;—the wound digests there, and will do well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution. o popery! what hast thou to answer for!——when not content with the too many natural and fatal ways, thro’ which the heart of man is every day thus treacherous to itself above all things;—thou hast wilfully set open the wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, god knows, to go astray of himself, and confidently speak peace to himself, when there is no peace. “of this the common instances which i have drawn out of life, are too notorious to require much evidence. if any man doubts the reality of them, or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to himself,—i must refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust my appeal with his own heart. “let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of wicked actions stand there, tho’ equally bad and vicious in their own natures;—he will soon find, that such of them as strong inclination and custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and painted with all the false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand can give them;—and that the others, to which he feels no propensity, appear, at once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all the true circumstances of folly and dishonour. “when david surprized saul sleeping in the cave, and cut off the skirt of his robe—we read his heart smote him for what he had done:——but in the matter of uriah, where a faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought to have loved and honoured, fell to make way for his lust,—where conscience had so much greater reason to take the alarm, his heart smote him not. a whole year had almost passed “from first commission of that crime, to the time nathan was sent to reprove him; and we read not once of the least sorrow or compunction of heart which he testified, during all that time, for what he had done. “thus conscience, this once able monitor,——placed on high as a judge within us, and intended by our maker as a just and equitable one too,—by an unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect cognizance of what passes,——does its office so negligently,——sometimes so corruptly,—that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore we find there is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining another principle with it, to aid, if not govern, its determinations. “so that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite importance to you not to be misled in,—namely, in what degree of real merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful subject to your king, “or a good servant to your god,——call in religion and morality.—look, what is written in the law of god?——how readest thou?—consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;——what say they? “let conscience determine the matter upon these reports;——and then if thy heart condemns thee not, which is the case the apostle supposes,——the rule will be infallible;”—[here dr. slop fell asleep]—“thou wilt have confidence towards god;——that is, have just grounds to believe the judgment thou hast past upon thyself, is the judgment of god; and nothing else but an anticipation of that righteous sentence which will be pronounced upon thee hereafter by that being, to whom thou art finally to give an account of thy actions. “blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the author of the book of ecclesiasticus expresses it, who is not pricked with the multitude of his sins: blessed is the man “whose heart hath not condemned him; whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided and informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower on high.”—[a tower has no strength, quoth my uncle toby, unless ’tis flank’d.]—“in the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for his behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together, which law-makers are forced to multiply:—forced, i say, as things stand; human laws not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to fence against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,—that in all such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks of conscience will not make us upright,—to supply their “force, and, by the terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.” [i see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been composed to be preached at the temple,——or at some assize.—i like the reasoning,—and am sorry that dr. slop has fallen asleep before the time of his conviction:—for it is now clear, that the parson, as i thought at first, never insulted st. paul in the least;—nor has there been, brother, the least difference between them.——a great matter, if they had differed, replied my uncle toby,—the best friends in the world may differ sometimes.——true,—brother toby quoth my father, shaking hands with him,—we’ll fill our pipes, brother, and then trim shall go on. well,——what dost thou think of it? said my father, speaking to corporal trim, as he reached his tobacco-box. i think, answered the corporal, that the seven watch-men upon the tower, who, i suppose, are all centinels there,—are more, an’ please your honour, than were necessary;—and, to go on at that rate, would harrass a regiment all to pieces, which a commanding officer, who loves his men, will never do, if he can help it, because two centinels, added the corporal, are as good as twenty.—i have been a commanding officer myself in the corps de garde a hundred times, continued trim, rising an inch higher in his figure, as he spoke,—and all the time i had the honour to serve his majesty king william, in relieving the most considerable posts, i never left more than two in my life.——very right, trim, quoth my uncle toby,—but you do not consider, trim, that the towers, in solomon’s days, were not such things as our bastions, flanked and defended by other works;—this, trim, was an invention since solomon’s death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time;——or such a fossé as we make with a cuvette in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to guard against a coup de main:—so that the seven men upon the tower were a party, i dare say, from the corps de garde, set there, not only to look out, but to defend it.—they could be no more, an’ please your honour, than a corporal’s guard.—my father smiled inwardly, but not outwardly—the subject being rather too serious, considering what had happened, to make a jest of.—so putting his pipe into his mouth, which he had just lighted,—he contented himself with ordering trim to read on. he read on as follows: “to have the fear of god before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and wrong:——the first of these will comprehend the duties of religion;—the second, those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that you cannot divide these two tables, even in imagination, (tho’ the attempt is often made in practice) without breaking and mutually destroying them both. “i said the attempt is often made; and so it is;——there being nothing “more common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, and indeed has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character,——or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite. “when there is some appearance that it is so,—tho’ one is unwilling even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, i am persuaded we should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive. “let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great distress. “i will illustrate this by an example. “i know the banker i deal with, or the physician i usually call in,”—[there is no need, cried dr. slop, (waking) to call in any physician in this case]—“to be neither of them men of much religion: i hear them make a jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as to put the matter past doubt. well;—notwithstanding this, i put my fortune into the hands of the one:—and what is dearer still to me, i trust my life to the honest skill of the other. “now let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence. why, in the first place, i believe there is no probability that either of them will employ the power i put into their hands to my disadvantage;—i consider that honesty serves the purposes of this life:—i know their success in the world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—in a word, i’m persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more. “but put it otherwise, namely, “that interest lay, for once, on the other side; that a case should happen, wherein the one, without stain to his reputation, could secrete my fortune, and leave me naked in the world;—or that the other could send me out of it, and enjoy an estate by my death, without dishonour to himself or his art:—in this case, what hold have i of either of them?—religion, the strongest of all motives, is out of the question;—interest, the next most powerful motive in the world, is strongly against me:——what have i left to cast into the opposite scale to balance this temptation?——alas! i have nothing,——nothing but what is lighter than a bubble——i must lie at the mercy of honour, or some such capricious principle—strait security for two of the most valuable blessings!—my property and myself. “as, therefore, we can have no dependence upon morality without religion;—so, on the other hand, there is nothing better to be expected from “religion without morality; nevertheless, ’tis no prodigy to see a man whose real moral character stands very low, who yet entertains the highest notion of himself in the light of a religious man. “he shall not only be covetous, revengeful, implacable,—but even wanting in points of common honesty; yet inasmuch as he talks aloud against the infidelity of the age,——is zealous for some points of religion,——goes twice a day to church,—attends the sacraments,—and amuses himself with a few instrumental parts of religion,—shall cheat his conscience into a judgment, that, for this, he is a religious man, and has discharged truly his duty to god: and you will find that such a man, through force of this delusion, generally looks down with spiritual pride upon every other man who has less affectation of piety,—though, perhaps, ten times more real honesty than himself. “this likewise is a sore evil under the sun; and i believe, there is no one mistaken principle, which, for its time, has wrought more serious mischiefs.——for a general proof of this,—examine the history of the romish church;”—[well what can you make of that? cried dr. slop]—“see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed,”——[they may thank their own obstinacy, cried dr. slop]——have all been sanctified by a religion not strictly governed by morality. “in how many kingdoms of the world”—[here trim kept waving his right-hand from the sermon to the extent of his arm, returning it backwards and forwards to the conclusion of the paragraph.] “in how many kingdoms of the world has the crusading sword of this misguided saint-errant, spared neither age or merit, or sex, or condition?—and, as he fought under the banners of a religion which set him loose from justice and humanity, he shewed none; mercilessly trampled upon both,—“heard neither the cries of the unfortunate, nor pitied their distresses.” [i have been in many a battle, an’ please your honour, quoth trim, sighing, but never in so melancholy a one as this,—i would not have drawn a tricker in it against these poor souls,——to have been made a general officer.——why? what do you understand of the affair? said dr. slop, looking towards trim, with something more of contempt than the corporal’s honest heart deserved.——what do you know, friend, about this battle you talk of?—i know, replied trim, that i never refused quarter in my life to any man who cried out for it;——but to a woman or a child, continued trim, before i would level my musket at them, i would lose my life a thousand times.——here’s a crown for thee, trim, to drink with obadiah to-night, quoth my uncle toby, and i’ll give obadiah another too.—god bless your honour, replied trim,——i had rather these poor women and children had it.——thou art an honest fellow, quoth my uncle toby.——my father nodded his head, as much as to say—and so he is.—— but prithee, trim, said my father, make an end,—for i see thou hast but a leaf or two left. corporal trim read on.] “if the testimony of past centuries in this matter is not sufficient,—consider at this instant, how the votaries of that religion are every day thinking to do service and honour to god, by actions which are a dishonour and scandal to themselves. “to be convinced of this, go with me for a moment into the prisons of the inquisition.”—[god help my poor brother tom.]—“behold religion, with mercy and justice chained down under her feet,——there sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks and instruments of torment. hark!—hark! what a piteous groan!”—[here trim’s face turned as pale as ashes.]——“see the melancholy wretch who uttered it”—[here the tears began to trickle down]——“just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock trial, and endure the utmost pains that a studied system of cruelty has been able to invent.”—[d—n them all, quoth trim, his colour returning into his face as red as blood.]—“behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with sorrow and confinement.”—[oh! ’tis my brother, cried poor trim in a most passionate exclamation, dropping the sermon upon the ground, and clapping his hands together—i fear ’tis poor tom. my father’s and my uncle toby’s heart yearned with sympathy for the poor fellow’s distress; even slop himself acknowledged pity for him.——why, trim, said my father, this is not a history,——’tis a sermon thou art reading; prithee begin the sentence again.]——“behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with sorrow and confinement, you will see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. “observe the last movement of that horrid engine!”—[i would rather face a cannon, quoth trim, stamping.)—“see what convulsions it has thrown him into!——consider the nature of the posture in which he how lies stretched,—what exquisite tortures he endures by it!”—[i hope ’tis not in portugal.]—“’tis all nature can bear! good god! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips!” [i would not read another line of it, quoth trim for all this world;—i fear, an’ please your honours, all this is in portugal, where my poor brother tom is. i tell thee, trim, again, quoth my father, ’tis not an historical account,—’tis a description.—’tis only a description, honest man, quoth slop, there’s not a word of truth in it.——that’s another story, replied my father.—however, as trim reads it with so much concern,—’tis cruelty to force him to go on with it.—give me hold of the sermon, trim,—i’ll finish it for thee, and thou may’st go. i must stay and hear it too, replied trim, if your honour will allow me;—tho’ i would not read it myself for a colonel’s pay.——poor trim! quoth my uncle toby. my father went on.] “——consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched,—what exquisite torture he endures by it!—’tis all nature can bear! good god! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips,—willing to take its leave,——but not suffered to depart!—behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell!”——[then, thank god, however, quoth trim, they have not killed him.]—“see him dragged out of it again to meet the flames, and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle,—this principle, that there can be religion without mercy, has prepared for him.”——[then, thank god,——he is dead, quoth trim,—he is out of his pain,—and they have done their worst at him.—o sirs!—hold your peace, trim, said my father, going on with the sermon, lest trim should incense dr. slop,—we shall never have done at this rate.] “the surest way to try the merit of “any disputed notion is, to trace down the consequences such a notion has produced, and compare them with the spirit of christianity;——’tis the short and decisive rule which our saviour hath left us, for these and such like cases, and it is worth a thousand arguments——by their fruits ye shall know them. “i will add no farther to the length of this sermon, than by two or three short and independent rules deducible from it. “first, whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions, which have got the better of his creed. a bad life and a good belief are disagreeable and troublesome neighbours, and where they separate, depend upon it, ’tis for no other cause but quietness sake. “secondly, when a man, thus represented, tells you in any particular instance,——that such a thing goes “against his conscience,——always believe he means exactly the same thing, as when he tells you such a thing goes against his stomach;—a present want of appetite being generally the true cause of both. “in a word,—trust that man in nothing, who has not a conscience in every thing. “and, in your own case, remember this plain distinction, a mistake in which has ruined thousands,—that your conscience is not a law;—no, god and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;——not, like an asiatic cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,—but like a british judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he knows already written.” f i n i s. thou hast read the sermon extremely well, trim, quoth my father.—if he had spared his comments, replied dr. slop,——he would have read it much better. i should have read it ten times better, sir, answered trim, but that my heart was so full.—that was the very reason, trim, replied my father, which has made thee read the sermon as well as thou hast done; and if the clergy of our church, continued my father, addressing himself to dr. slop, would take part in what they deliver as deeply as this poor fellow has done,—as their compositions are fine;—[i deny it, quoth dr. slop]—i maintain it,—that the eloquence of our pulpits, with such subjects to enflame it, would be a model for the whole world:——but alas! continued my father, and i own it, sir, with sorrow, that, like french politicians in this respect, what they gain in the cabinet they lose in the field.——’twere a pity, quoth my uncle, that this should be lost. i like the sermon well, replied my father,——’tis dramatick,—and there is something in that way of writing, when skilfully managed, which catches the attention.——we preach much in that way with us, said dr. slop.—i know that very well, said my father,—but in a tone and manner which disgusted dr. slop, full as much as his assent, simply, could have pleased him.——but in this, added dr. slop, a little piqued,—our sermons have greatly the advantage, that we never introduce any character into them below a patriarch or a patriarch’s wife, or a martyr or a saint.—there are some very bad characters in this, however, said my father, and i do not think the sermon a jot the worse for ’em.——but pray, quoth my uncle toby,—who’s can this be?—how could it get into my stevinus? a man must be as great a conjurer as stevinus, said my father, to resolve the second question:—the first, i think, is not so difficult;—for unless my judgment greatly deceives me,——i know the author, for ’tis wrote, certainly, by the parson of the parish. the similitude of the stile and manner of it, with those my father constantly had heard preached in his parish-church, was the ground of his conjecture,—proving it as strongly, as an argument à priori could prove such a thing to a philosophic mind, that it was yorick’s and no one’s else:—it was proved to be so, à posteriori, the day after, when yorick sent a servant to my uncle toby’s house to enquire after it. it seems that yorick, who was inquisitive after all kinds of knowledge, had borrowed stevinus of my uncle toby, and had carelesly popped his sermon, as soon as he had made it, into the middle of stevinus; and by an act of forgetfulness, to which he was ever subject, he had sent stevinus home, and his sermon to keep him company. ill-fated sermon! thou wast lost, after this recovery of thee, a second time, dropped thru’ an unsuspected fissure in thy master’s pocket, down into a treacherous and a tattered lining,—trod deep into the dirt by the left hind-foot of his rosinante inhumanly stepping upon thee as thou falledst;—buried ten days in the mire,——raised up out of it by a beggar,—sold for a halfpenny to a parish-clerk,——transferred to his parson,——lost for ever to thy own, the remainder of his days,—nor restored to his restless manes till this very moment, that i tell the world the story. can the reader believe, that this sermon of yorick’s was preached at an assize, in the cathedral of york, before a thousand witnesses, ready to give oath of it, by a certain prebendary of that church, and actually printed by him when he had done,——and within so short a space as two years and three months after yorick’s death?—yorick indeed, was never better served in his life;——but it was a little hard to maltreat him after, and plunder him after he was laid in his grave. however, as the gentleman who did it was in perfect charity with yorick,—and, in conscious justice, printed but a few copies to give away;—and that i am told he could moreover have made as good a one himself, had he thought fit,—i declare i would not have published this anecdote to the world;——nor do i publish it with an intent to hurt his character and advancement in the church;—i leave that to others;——but i find myself impelled by two reasons, which i cannot withstand. the first is, that in doing justice, i may give rest to yorick’s ghost;——which—as the country-people, and some others believe,——still walks. the second reason is, that, by laying open this story to the world, i gain an opportunity of informing it,—that in case the character of parson yorick, and this sample of his sermons, is liked,——there are now in the possession of the shandy family, as many as will make a handsome volume, at the world’s service,——and much good may they do it. c h a p. xliii obadiah gained the two crowns without dispute;—for he came in jingling, with all the instruments in the green baize bag we spoke of, flung across his body, just as corporal trim went out of the room. it is now proper, i think, quoth dr. slop, (clearing up his looks) as we are in a condition to be of some service to mrs. shandy, to send up stairs to know how she goes on. i have ordered, answered my father, the old midwife to come down to us upon the least difficulty;—for you must know, dr. slop, continued my father, with a perplexed kind of a smile upon his countenance, that by express treaty, solemnly ratified between me and my wife, you are no more than an auxiliary in this affair,—and not so much as that,—unless the lean old mother of a midwife above stairs cannot do without you.—women have their particular fancies, and in points of this nature, continued my father, where they bear the whole burden, and suffer so much acute pain for the advantage of our families, and the good of the species,—they claim a right of deciding, en souveraines, in whose hands, and in what fashion, they choose to undergo it. they are in the right of it,——quoth my uncle toby. but sir, replied dr. slop, not taking notice of my uncle toby’s opinion, but turning to my father,—they had better govern in other points;——and a father of a family, who wishes its perpetuity, in my opinion, had better exchange this prerogative with them, and give up some other rights in lieu of it.——i know not, quoth my father, answering a letter too testily, to be quite dispassionate in what he said,—i know not, quoth he, what we have left to give up, in lieu of who shall bring our children into the world, unless that,—of who shall beget them.——one would almost give up any thing, replied dr. slop.—i beg your pardon,——answered my uncle toby.—sir, replied dr. slop, it would astonish you to know what improvements we have made of late years in all branches of obstetrical knowledge, but particularly in that one single point of the safe and expeditious extraction of the fœtus,——which has received such lights, that, for my part (holding up his hand) i declare i wonder how the world has——i wish, quoth my uncle toby, you had seen what prodigious armies we had in flanders. c h a p. xliv i have dropped the curtain over this scene for a minute,——to remind you of one thing,——and to inform you of another. what i have to inform you, comes, i own, a little out of its due course;——for it should have been told a hundred and fifty pages ago, but that i foresaw then ’twould come in pat hereafter, and be of more advantage here than elsewhere.——writers had need look before them, to keep up the spirit and connection of what they have in hand. when these two things are done,—the curtain shall be drawn up again, and my uncle toby, my father, and dr. slop, shall go on with their discourse, without any more interruption. first, then, the matter which i have to remind you of, is this;——that from the specimens of singularity in my father’s notions in the point of christian-names, and that other previous point thereto,—you was led, i think, into an opinion,—(and i am sure i said as much) that my father was a gentleman altogether as odd and whimsical in fifty other opinions. in truth, there was not a stage in the life of man, from the very first act of his begetting,——down to the lean and slippered pantaloon in his second childishness, but he had some favourite notion to himself, springing out of it, as sceptical, and as far out of the high-way of thinking, as these two which have been explained. —mr. shandy, my father, sir, would see nothing in the light in which others placed it;—he placed things in his own light;—he would weigh nothing in common scales;—no, he was too refined a researcher to lie open to so gross an imposition.—to come at the exact weight of things in the scientific steel-yard, the fulcrum, he would say, should be almost invisible, to avoid all friction from popular tenets;—without this the minutiæ of philosophy, which would always turn the balance, will have no weight at all. knowledge, like matter, he would affirm, was divisible in infinitum;——that the grains and scruples were as much a part of it, as the gravitation of the whole world.—in a word, he would say, error was error,—no matter where it fell,——whether in a fraction,——or a pound,—’twas alike fatal to truth, and she was kept down at the bottom of her well, as inevitably by a mistake in the dust of a butterfly’s wing,——as in the disk of the sun, the moon, and all the stars of heaven put together. he would often lament that it was for want of considering this properly, and of applying it skilfully to civil matters, as well as to speculative truths, that so many things in this world were out of joint;——that the political arch was giving way;——and that the very foundations of our excellent constitution in church and state, were so sapped as estimators had reported. you cry out, he would say, we are a ruined, undone people. why? he would ask, making use of the sorites or syllogism of zeno and chrysippus, without knowing it belonged to them.—why? why are we a ruined people?—because we are corrupted.—whence is it, dear sir, that we are corrupted?——because we are needy;——our poverty, and not our wills, consent.——and wherefore, he would add, are we needy?—from the neglect, he would answer, of our pence and our halfpence:—our bank notes, sir, our guineas,—nay our shillings take care of themselves. ’tis the same, he would say, throughout the whole circle of the sciences;—the great, the established points of them, are not to be broke in upon.—the laws of nature will defend themselves;—but error——(he would add, looking earnestly at my mother)——error, sir, creeps in thro’ the minute holes and small crevices which human nature leaves unguarded. this turn of thinking in my father, is what i had to remind you of:—the point you are to be informed of, and which i have reserved for this place, is as follows. amongst the many and excellent reasons, with which my father had urged my mother to accept of dr. slop’s assistance preferably to that of the old woman,——there was one of a very singular nature; which, when he had done arguing the matter with her as a christian, and came to argue it over again with her as a philosopher, he had put his whole strength to, depending indeed upon it as his sheet-anchor.——it failed him, tho’ from no defect in the argument itself; but that, do what he could, he was not able for his soul to make her comprehend the drift of it.——cursed luck!——said he to himself, one afternoon, as he walked out of the room, after he had been stating it for an hour and a half to her, to no manner of purpose;—cursed luck! said he, biting his lip as he shut the door,——for a man to be master of one of the finest chains of reasoning in nature,——and have a wife at the same time with such a head-piece, that he cannot hang up a single inference within side of it, to save his soul from destruction. this argument, though it was entirely lost upon my mother,——had more weight with him, than all his other arguments joined together:—i will therefore endeavour to do it justice,—and set it forth with all the perspicuity i am master of. my father set out upon the strength of these two following axioms: first, that an ounce of a man’s own wit, was worth a ton of other people’s; and, secondly, (which by the bye, was the ground-work of the first axiom,——tho’ it comes last) that every man’s wit must come from every man’s own soul,——and no other body’s. now, as it was plain to my father, that all souls were by nature equal,——and that the great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding——was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or below another,——but arose merely from the lucky or unlucky organization of the body, in that part where the soul principally took up her residence,——he had made it the subject of his enquiry to find out the identical place. now, from the best accounts he had been able to get of this matter, he was satisfied it could not be where des cartes had fixed it, upon the top of the pineal gland of the brain; which, as he philosophized, formed a cushion for her about the size of a marrow pea; tho’ to speak the truth, as so many nerves did terminate all in that one place,—’twas no bad conjecture;——and my father had certainly fallen with that great philosopher plumb into the centre of the mistake, had it not been for my uncle toby, who rescued him out of it, by a story he told him of a walloon officer at the battle of landen, who had one part of his brain shot away by a musket-ball,—and another part of it taken out after by a french surgeon; and after all, recovered, and did his duty very well without it. if death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body;—and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains,—then certes the soul does not inhabit there. q.e.d. as for that certain, very thin, subtle and very fragrant juice which coglionissimo borri, the great milaneze physician affirms, in a letter to bartholine, to have discovered in the cellulæ of the occipital parts of the cerebellum, and which he likewise affirms to be the principal seat of the reasonable soul, (for, you must know, in these latter and more enlightened ages, there are two souls in every man living,—the one, according to the great metheglingius, being called the animus, the other, the anima;)—as for the opinion, i say of borri,—my father could never subscribe to it by any means; the very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as the anima, or even the animus, taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,——or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, shocked his imagination; he would scarce give the doctrine a hearing. what, therefore, seemed the least liable to objections of any, was that the chief sensorium, or head-quarters of the soul, and to which place all intelligences were referred, and from whence all her mandates were issued,—was in, or near, the cerebellum,—or rather somewhere about the medulla oblongata, wherein it was generally agreed by dutch anatomists, that all the minute nerves from all the organs of the seven senses concentered, like streets and winding alleys, into a square. so far there was nothing singular in my father’s opinion,—he had the best of philosophers, of all ages and climates, to go along with him.——but here he took a road of his own, setting up another shandean hypothesis upon these corner-stones they had laid for him;——and which said hypothesis equally stood its ground; whether the subtilty and fineness of the soul depended upon the temperature and clearness of the said liquor, or of the finer net-work and texture in the cerebellum itself; which opinion he favoured. he maintained, that next to the due care to be taken in the act of propagation of each individual, which required all the thought in the world, as it laid the foundation of this incomprehensible contexture, in which wit, memory, fancy, eloquence, and what is usually meant by the name of good natural parts, do consist;—that next to this and his christian-name, which were the two original and most efficacious causes of all;——that the third cause, or rather what logicians call the causa sina qua non, and without which all that was done was of no manner of significance,——was the preservation of this delicate and fine-spun web, from the havock which was generally made in it by the violent compression and crush which the head was made to undergo, by the nonsensical method of bringing us into the world by that foremost. ——this requires explanation. my father, who dipped into all kinds of books, upon looking into lithopædus senonesis de portu difficili,[4] published by adrianus smelvgot, had found out, that the lax and pliable state of a child’s head in parturition, the bones of the cranium having no sutures at that time, was such,——that by force of the woman’s efforts, which, in strong labour-pains, was equal, upon an average, to the weight of 470 pounds avoirdupois acting perpendicularly upon it;—it so happened, that in 49 instances out of 50, the said head was compressed and moulded into the shape of an oblong conical piece of dough, such as a pastry-cook generally rolls up in order to make a pye of.—good god! cried my father, what havock and destruction must this make in the infinitely fine and tender texture of the cerebellum!—or if there is such a juice as borri pretends—is it not enough to make the clearest liquid in the world both seculent and mothery? but how great was his apprehension, when he farther understood, that this force acting upon the very vertex of the head, not only injured the brain itself, or cerebrum,—but that it necessarily squeezed and propelled the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, which was the immediate seat of the understanding!——angels and ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,——can any soul withstand this shock?—no wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tattered as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,——all perplexity,——all confusion within-side. but when my father read on, and was let into the secret, that when a child was turned topsy-turvy, which was easy for an operator to do, and was extracted by the feet;—that instead of the cerebrum being propelled towards the cerebellum, the cerebellum, on the contrary, was propelled simply towards the cerebrum, where it could do no manner of hurt:——by heavens! cried he, the world is in conspiracy to drive out what little wit god has given us,——and the professors of the obstetric art are listed into the same conspiracy.—what is it to me which end of my son comes foremost into the world, provided all goes right after, and his cerebellum escapes uncrushed? it is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand. this is of great use. when my father was gone with this about a month, there was scarce a phænomenon of stupidity or of genius, which he could not readily solve by it;—it accounted for the eldest son being the greatest blockhead in the family.——poor devil, he would say,—he made way for the capacity of his younger brothers.——it unriddled the observations of drivellers and monstrous heads,——shewing à priori, it could not be otherwise,——unless **** i don’t know what. it wonderfully explained and accounted for the acumen of the asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sunshine, &c.—which for aught he knew, might as well rarefy and dilute the faculties of the soul into nothing, by one extreme,—as they are condensed in colder climates by the other;——but he traced the affair up to its spring-head;—shewed that, in warmer climates, nature had laid a lighter tax upon the fairest parts of the creation;—their pleasures more;—the necessity of their pains less, insomuch that the pressure and resistance upon the vertex was so slight, that the whole organization of the cerebellum was preserved;——nay, he did not believe, in natural births, that so much as a single thread of the network was broke or displaced,——so that the soul might just act as she liked. when my father had got so far,——what a blaze of light did the accounts of the caesarian section, and of the towering geniuses who had come safe into the world by it, cast upon this hypothesis? here you see, he would say, there was no injury done to the sensorium;—no pressure of the head against the pelvis;——no propulsion of the cerebrum towards the cerebellum, either by the os pubis on this side, or os coxygis on that;——and pray, what were the happy consequences? why, sir, your julius caesar, who gave the operation a name;—and your hermes trismegistus, who was born so before ever the operation had a name;——your scipio africanus; your manlius torquatus; our edward the sixth,—who, had he lived, would have done the same honour to the hypothesis:——these, and many more who figured high in the annals of fame,—all came side-way, sir, into the world. the incision of the abdomen and uterus ran for six weeks together in my father’s head;——he had read, and was satisfied, that wounds in the epigastrium, and those in the matrix, were not mortal;—so that the belly of the mother might be opened extremely well to give a passage to the child.—he mentioned the thing one afternoon to my mother,——merely as a matter of fact; but seeing her turn as pale as ashes at the very mention of it, as much as the operation flattered his hopes,—he thought it as well to say no more of it,——contenting himself with admiring,—what he thought was to no purpose to propose. this was my father mr. shandy’s hypothesis; concerning which i have only to add, that my brother bobby did as great honour to it (whatever he did to the family) as any one of the great heroes we spoke of: for happening not only to be christened, as i told you, but to be born too, when my father was at epsom,——being moreover my mother’s first child,—coming into the world with his head foremost,—and turning out afterwards a lad of wonderful slow parts,——my father spelt all these together into his opinion: and as he had failed at one end,—he was determined to try the other. this was not to be expected from one of the sisterhood, who are not easily to be put out of their way,——and was therefore one of my father’s great reasons in favour of a man of science, whom he could better deal with. of all men in the world, dr. slop was the fittest for my father’s purpose;——for though this new-invented forceps was the armour he had proved, and what he maintained to be the safest instrument of deliverance, yet, it seems, he had scattered a word or two in his book, in favour of the very thing which ran in my father’s fancy;——tho’ not with a view to the soul’s good in extracting by the feet, as was my father’s system,—but for reasons merely obstetrical. this will account for the coalition betwixt my father and dr. slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle toby.——in what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such allies in science,—is hard to conceive.—you may conjecture upon it, if you please,——and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could come to pass, that my uncle toby got his modesty by the wound he received upon his groin.—you may raise a system to account for the loss of my nose by marriage-articles,—and shew the world how it could happen, that i should have the misfortune to be called tristram, in opposition to my father’s hypothesis, and the wish of the whole family, godfathers and godmothers not excepted.—these, with fifty other points left yet unravelled, you may endeavour to solve if you have time;——but i tell you beforehand it will be in vain, for not the sage alquise, the magician in don belianis of greece, nor the no less famous urganda, the sorceress his wife, (were they alive) could pretend to come within a league of the truth. the reader will be content to wait for a full explanation of these matters till the next year,——when a series of things will be laid open which he little expects. [4] the author is here twice mistaken; for lithopædus should be wrote thus, lithopædii senonensis icon. the second mistake is, that this lithopædus is not an author, but a drawing of a petrified child. the account of this, published by athosius 1580, may be seen at the end of cordæus’s works in spachius. mr. tristram shandy has been led into this error, either from seeing lithopædus’s name of late in a catalogue of learned writers in dr. ——, or by mistaking lithopædus for trinecavellius,—from the too great similitude of the names. c h a p. xlv ——“i wish, dr. slop,” quoth my uncle toby, (repeating his wish for dr. slop a second time, and with a degree of more zeal and earnestness in his manner of wishing, than he had wished at first[5])——“i wish, dr. slop,” quoth my uncle toby, “you had seen what prodigious armies we had in flanders.” my uncle toby’s wish did dr. slop a disservice which his heart never intended any man,—sir, it confounded him——and thereby putting his ideas first into confusion, and then to flight, he could not rally them again for the soul of him. in all disputes,——male or female, —whether for honour, for profit, or for love,—it makes no difference in the case;—nothing is more dangerous, madam, than a wish coming sideways in this unexpected manner upon a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the party wish’d at, instantly to get upon his legs—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,——so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the attack by it. this will be fully illustrated to the world in my chapter of wishes.— dr. slop did not understand the nature of this defence;—he was puzzled with it, and it put an entire stop to the dispute for four minutes and a half;—five had been fatal to it:—my father saw the danger—the dispute was one of the most interesting disputes in the world, “whether the child of his prayers and endeavours should be born without a head or with one:”—he waited to the last moment, to allow dr. slop, in whose behalf the wish was made, his right of returning it; but perceiving, i say, that he was confounded, and continued looking with that perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with—first in my uncle toby’s face—then in his—then up—then down—then east—east and by east, and so on,——coasting it along by the plinth of the wainscot till he had got to the opposite point of the compass,——and that he had actually begun to count the brass nails upon the arm of his chair,—my father thought there was no time to be lost with my uncle toby, so took up the discourse as follows. [5] vide page 260. c h a p. xlvi “—what prodigious armies you had in flanders!”— brother toby, replied my father, taking his wig from off his head with his right hand, and with his left pulling out a striped india handkerchief from his right coat pocket, in order to rub his head, as he argued the point with my uncle toby.—— ——now, in this i think my father was much to blame; and i will give you my reasons for it. matters of no more seeming consequence in themselves than, “whether my father should have taken off his wig with his right hand or with his left,”—have divided the greatest kingdoms, and made the crowns of the monarchs who governed them, to totter upon their heads.——but need i tell you, sir, that the circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape!—and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is—great—little—good—bad—indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens? as my father’s india handkerchief was in his right coat pocket, he should by no means have suffered his right hand to have got engaged: on the contrary, instead of taking off his wig with it, as he did, he ought to have committed that entirely to the left; and then, when the natural exigency my father was under of rubbing his head, called out for his handkerchief, he would have had nothing in the world to have done, but to have put his right hand into his right coat pocket and taken it out;——which he might have done without any violence, or the least ungraceful twist in any one tendon or muscle of his whole body. in this case, (unless, indeed, my father had been resolved to make a fool of himself by holding the wig stiff in his left hand——or by making some nonsensical angle or other at his elbow-joint, or armpit)—his whole attitude had been easy—natural—unforced: reynolds himself, as great and gracefully as he paints, might have painted him as he sat. now as my father managed this matter,—consider what a devil of a figure my father made of himself. in the latter end of queen anne’s reign, and in the beginning of the reign of king george the first—“coat pockets were cut very low down in the skirt.”—i need say no more—the father of mischief, had he been hammering at it a month, could not have contrived a worse fashion for one in my father’s situation. c h a p. xlvii it was not an easy matter in any king’s reign (unless you were as lean a subject as myself) to have forced your hand diagonally, quite across your whole body, so as to gain the bottom of your opposite coat pocket.——in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighteen, when this happened, it was extremely difficult; so that when my uncle toby discovered the transverse zig-zaggery of my father’s approaches towards it, it instantly brought into his mind those he had done duty in, before the gate of st. nicolas;—the idea of which drew off his attention so intirely from the subject in debate, that he had got his right hand to the bell to ring up trim to go and fetch his map of namur, and his compasses and sector along with it, to measure the returning angles of the traverses of that attack,—but particularly of that one, where he received his wound upon his groin. my father knit his brows, and as he knit them, all the blood in his body seemed to rush up into his face——my uncle toby dismounted immediately. ——i did not apprehend your uncle toby was o’horseback.—— c h a p. xlviii a man’s body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both i speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin’s lining;—rumple the one,—you rumple the other. there is one certain exception however in this case, and that is, when you are so fortunate a fellow, as to have had your jerkin made of gum-taffeta, and the body-lining to it of a sarcenet, or thin persian. zeno, cleanthes, diogenes babylonius, dionysius, heracleotes, antipater, panætius, and possidonius amongst the greeks;——cato and varro and seneca amongst the romans;——pantenus and clemens alexandrinus and montaigne amongst the christians; and a score and a half of good, honest, unthinking shandean people as ever lived, whose names i can’t recollect,—all pretended that their jerkins were made after this fashion,—you might have rumpled and crumpled, and doubled and creased, and fretted and fridged the outside of them all to pieces;——in short, you might have played the very devil with them, and at the same time, not one of the insides of them would have been one button the worse, for all you had done to them. i believe in my conscience that mine is made up somewhat after this sort:——for never poor jerkin has been tickled off at such a rate as it has been these last nine months together,——and yet i declare, the lining to it,——as far as i am a judge of the matter,——is not a three-penny piece the worse;—pell-mell, helter-skelter, ding-dong, cut and thrust, back stroke and fore stroke, side way and long-way, have they been trimming it for me:—had there been the least gumminess in my lining,—by heaven! it had all of it long ago been frayed and fretted to a thread. ——you messrs. the monthly reviewers!——how could you cut and slash my jerkin as you did?——how did you know but you would cut my lining too? heartily and from my soul, to the protection of that being who will injure none of us, do i recommend you and your affairs,—so god bless you;—only next month, if any one of you should gnash his teeth, and storm and rage at me, as some of you did last may (in which i remember the weather was very hot)—don’t be exasperated, if i pass it by again with good temper,—being determined as long as i live or write) which in my case means the same thing) never to give the honest gentleman a worse word or a worse wish than my uncle toby gave the fly which buzz’d about his nose all dinner-time,——“go,—go, poor devil,” quoth he,—“get thee gone,—why should i hurt thee! this world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me.” c h a p. xlix any man, madam, reasoning upwards, and observing the prodigious suffusion of blood in my father’s countenance,—by means of which (as all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his face, as i told you) he must have reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:—any man, madam, but my uncle toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father’s brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew’d up his, to the same pitch;—and then the devil and all had broke loose—the whole piece, madam, must have been played off like the sixth of avison scarlatti—con furia,—like mad.—grant me patience!——what has con furia,——con strepito,——or any other hurly burly whatever to do with harmony? any man, i say, madam, but my uncle toby, the benignity of whose heart interpreted every motion of the body in the kindest sense the motion would admit of, would have concluded my father angry, and blamed him too. my uncle toby blamed nothing but the taylor who cut the pocket-hole;——so sitting still till my father had got his handkerchief out of it, and looking all the time up in his face with inexpressible good-will——my father, at length, went on as follows. c h a p. l “what prodigious armies you had in flanders!” ——brother toby, quoth my father, i do believe thee to be as honest a man, and with as good and as upright a heart as ever god created;—nor is it thy fault, if all the children which have been, may, can, shall, will, or ought to be begotten, come with their heads foremost into the world:——but believe me, dear toby, the accidents which unavoidably way-lay them, not only in the article of our begetting ’em——though these, in my opinion, are well worth considering,——but the dangers and difficulties our children are beset with, after they are got forth into the world, are enow—little need is there to expose them to unnecessary ones in their passage to it.——are these dangers, quoth my uncle toby, laying his hand upon my father’s knee, and looking up seriously in his face for an answer,——are these dangers greater now o’days, brother, than in times past? brother toby, answered my father, if a child was but fairly begot, and born alive, and healthy, and the mother did well after it,—our forefathers never looked farther.——my uncle toby instantly withdrew his hand from off my father’s knee, reclined his body gently back in his chair, raised his head till he could just see the cornice of the room, and then directing the buccinatory muscles along his cheeks, and the orbicular muscles around his lips to do their duty—he whistled lillabullero. c h a p. li whilst my uncle toby was whistling lillabullero to my father,—dr. slop was stamping, and cursing and damning at obadiah at a most dreadful rate,——it would have done your heart good, and cured you, sir, for ever of the vile sin of swearing, to have heard him, i am determined therefore to relate the whole affair to you. when dr. slop’s maid delivered the green baize bag with her master’s instruments in it, to obadiah, she very sensibly exhorted him to put his head and one arm through the strings, and ride with it slung across his body: so undoing the bow-knot, to lengthen the strings for him, without any more ado, she helped him on with it. however, as this, in some measure, unguarded the mouth of the bag, lest any thing should bolt out in galloping back, at the speed obadiah threatened, they consulted to take it off again: and in the great care and caution of their hearts, they had taken the two strings and tied them close (pursing up the mouth of the bag first) with half a dozen hard knots, each of which obadiah, to make all safe, had twitched and drawn together with all the strength of his body. this answered all that obadiah and the maid intended; but was no remedy against some evils which neither he or she foresaw. the instruments, it seems, as tight as the bag was tied above, had so much room to play in it, towards the bottom (the shape of the bag being conical) that obadiah could not make a trot of it, but with such a terrible jingle, what with the tire téte, forceps, and squirt, as would have been enough, had hymen been taking a jaunt that way, to have frightened him out of the country; but when obadiah accelerated his motion, and from a plain trot assayed to prick his coach-horse into a full gallop——by heaven! sir, the jingle was incredible. as obadiah had a wife and three children——the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,——he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest patriots.——“the poor fellow, sir, was not able to hear himself whistle.” c h a p. lii as obadiah loved wind-music preferably to all the instrumental music he carried with him,—he very considerately set his imagination to work, to contrive and to invent by what means he should put himself in a condition of enjoying it. in all distresses (except musical) where small cords are wanted, nothing is so apt to enter a man’s head as his hat-band:——the philosophy of this is so near the surface——i scorn to enter into it. as obadiah’s was a mixed case——mark, sirs,——i say, a mixed case; for it was obstetrical,——scrip-tical, squirtical, papistical——and as far as the coach-horse was concerned in it,——caballistical——and only partly musical;—obadiah made no scruple of availing himself of the first expedient which offered; so taking hold of the bag and instruments, and griping them hard together with one hand, and with the finger and thumb of the other putting the end of the hat-band betwixt his teeth, and then slipping his hand down to the middle of it,—he tied and cross-tied them all fast together from one end to the other (as you would cord a trunk) with such a multiplicity of round-abouts and intricate cross turns, with a hard knot at every intersection or point where the strings met,—that dr. slop must have had three fifths of job’s patience at least to have unloosed them.—i think in my conscience, that had nature been in one of her nimble moods, and in humour for such a contest——and she and dr. slop both fairly started together——there is no man living which had seen the bag with all that obadiah had done to it,——and known likewise the great speed the goddess can make when she thinks proper, who would have had the least doubt remaining in his mind—which of the two would have carried off the prize. my mother, madam, had been delivered sooner than the green bag infallibly——at least by twenty knots.——sport of small accidents, tristram shandy! that thou art, and ever will be! had that trial been for thee, and it was fifty to one but it had,——thy affairs had not been so depress’d—(at least by the depression of thy nose) as they have been; nor had the fortunes of thy house and the occasions of making them, which have so often presented themselves in the course of thy life, to thee, been so often, so vexatiously, so tamely, so irrecoverably abandoned—as thou hast been forced to leave them;——but ’tis over,——all but the account of ’em, which cannot be given to the curious till i am got out into the world. end of the first volume tristram shandy tristram shandy the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman volume the second multitudinis imperitæ non formido judicia, meis tamen, rogo, parcant opusculis——in quibus fuit propositi semper, a jocis ad seria, in seriis vicissim ad jocos transire. joan. saresberiensis, episcopus lugdun. c h a p. i great wits jump: for the moment dr. slop cast his eyes upon his bag (which he had not done till the dispute with my uncle toby about mid-wifery put him in mind of it)—the very same thought occurred.—’tis god’s mercy, quoth he (to himself) that mrs. shandy has had so bad a time of it,——else she might have been brought to bed seven times told, before one half of these knots could have got untied.——but here you must distinguish—the thought floated only in dr. slop’s mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swimming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man’s understanding, without being carried backwards or forwards, till some little gusts of passion or interest drive them to one side. a sudden trampling in the room above, near my mother’s bed, did the proposition the very service i am speaking of. by all that’s unfortunate, quoth dr. slop, unless i make haste, the thing will actually befall me as it is. c h a p. ii in the case of knots,—by which, in the first place, i would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when i mention the catastrophe of my great uncle mr. hammond shandy,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of monmouth’s affair:——nor, secondly, in this place, do i mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—but by the knots i am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that i mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as obadiah made his;——in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.——i hope you apprehend me. in the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life——every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and cut through them.——’tis wrong. believe me, sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate——is to take our teeth or our fingers to them.——dr. slop had lost his teeth—his favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of it:——he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.—the duce take it! i can make nothing of it either way, cried dr. slop.——the trampling over head near my mother’s bed-side increased.—pox take the fellow! i shall never get the knots untied as long as i live.——my mother gave a groan.——lend me your penknife—i must e’en cut the knots at last——pugh!——psha!—lord! i have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone——curse the fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty miles——i am undone for this bout—i wish the scoundrel hang’d—i wish he was shot——i wish all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead!—— my father had a great respect for obadiah, and could not bear to hear him disposed of in such a manner—he had moreover some little respect for himself—and could as ill bear with the indignity offered to himself in it. had dr. slop cut any part about him, but his thumb——my father had pass’d it by—his prudence had triumphed: as it was, he was determined to have his revenge. small curses, dr. slop, upon great occasions, quoth my father (condoling with him first upon the accident) are but so much waste of our strength and soul’s health to no manner of purpose.—i own it, replied dr. slop.—they are like sparrow-shot, quoth my uncle toby (suspending his whistling) fired against a bastion.——they serve, continued my father, to stir the humours——but carry off none of their acrimony:—for my own part, i seldom swear or curse at all—i hold it bad——but if i fall into it by surprize, i generally retain so much presence of mind (right, quoth my uncle toby) as to make it answer my purpose——that is, i swear on till i find myself easy. a wife and a just man however would always endeavour to proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself—but to the size and ill intent of the offence upon which they are to fall.—“injuries come only from the heart,”—quoth my uncle toby. for this reason, continued my father, with the most cervantick gravity, i have the greatest veneration in the world for that gentleman, who, in distrust of his own discretion in this point, sat down and composed (that is at his leisure) fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases, from the lowest to the highest provocation which could possibly happen to him——which forms being well considered by him, and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece, within his reach, ready for use.—i never apprehended, replied dr. slop, that such a thing was ever thought of——much less executed. i beg your pardon, answered my father; i was reading, though not using, one of them to my brother toby this morning, whilst he pour’d out the tea—’tis here upon the shelf over my head;—but if i remember right, ’tis too violent for a cut of the thumb.—not at all, quoth dr. slop—the devil take the fellow.——then, answered my father, ’tis much at your service, dr. slop—on condition you will read it aloud;——so rising up and reaching down a form of excommunication of the church of rome, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his collections) had procured out of the leger-book of the church of rochester, writ by ernulphus the bishop——with a most affected seriousness of look and voice, which might have cajoled ernulphus himself—he put it into dr. slop’s hands.——dr. slop wrapt his thumb up in the corner of his handkerchief, and with a wry face, though without any suspicion, read aloud, as follows——my uncle toby whistling lillabullero as loud as he could all the time. textus de ecclesiâ roffensi, per ernulfum episcopum. c a p. iii excommunicatio.[6] ex auctoritate dei omnipotentis, patris, et filij, et spiritus sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanctæque et entemeratæ virginis dei genetricis mariae,— ——atque omnium cœlestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thronorum, dominationum, potestatuum, cherubin ac seraphin, & sanctorum patriarchum, prophetarum, & omnium apolstolorum & evangelistarum, & sanctorum innocentum, qui in conspectu agni soli digni inventi sunt canticum cantare novum, et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confessorum, et sanctarum virginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et electorum dei,——excommunicamus, et        vel  os    s  vel os anathematizamus hunc furem, vel hunc       s malefactorem, n.n. et a liminibus sanctæ dei ecclesiæ sequestramus, et æternis     vel i     n suppliciis excruciandus, mancipetur, cum dathan et abiram, et cum his qui dixerunt domino deo, recede à nobis, scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus: et ficut aquâ ignis extinguatur lu  vel eorum cerna ejus in secula seculorum nisi resque n                  n rit, et ad satisfactionem venerit. amen.       os maledicat illum deus pater qui homi            os nem creavit. maledicat illum dei filius qui pro homine passus est. maledicat  os illum spiritus sanctus qui in baptismo ef            os fusus est. maledicat illum sancta crux, quam christus pro nostrâ salute hostem triumphans ascendit.         os maledicat illum sancta dei genetrix et                      os perpetua virgo maria. maledicat illum sanctus michael, animarum susceptor sa            os crarum. maledicant illum omnes angeli et archangeli, principatus et potestates, omnisque militia cœlestis.        os maledicat illum patriarcharum et prophetarum laudabilis numerus. maledicat   os illum sanctus johannes præcursor et baptista christi, et sanctus petrus, et sanctus paulus, atque sanctus andreas, omnesque christi apostoli, simul et cæteri discipuli, quatuor quoque evangelistæ, qui sua prædicatione mundum universum converte           os runt. maledicat illum cuneus martyrum et confessorum mirificus, qui deo bonis operibus placitus inventus est.       os maledicant illum sacrarum virginum chori, quæ mundi vana causa honoris christi respuenda contempserunt. male     os dicant illum omnes sancti qui ab initio mundi usque in finem seculi deo dilecti inveniuntur.         os maledicant illum cœli et terra, et omnia sancta in eis manentia.      i  n          n maledictus sit ubicunque, fuerit, sive in domo, sive in agro, sive in viâ, sive in semitâ, sive in silvâ, sive in aquâ, sive in ecclesiâ.      i  n maledictus sit vivendo, moriendo,—— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— ———      ———      ——— manducando, bibendo, esuriendo, sitiendo, jejunando, dormitando, dormiendo, vigilando, ambulando, stando, sedendo, jacendo, operando, quiescendo, mingendo, cacando, flebotomando.       i  n maledictus sit in totis viribus corporis.       i  n maledictus sit intus et exterius.       i  n           i maledictus sit in capillis; maledictus n              i  n sit in cerebro. maledictus sit in vertice, in temporibus, in fronte, in auriculis, in superciliis, in oculis, in genis, in maxillis, in naribus, in dentibus, mordacibus, in labris sive molibus, in labiis, in guttere, in humeris, in harnis, in brachiis, in manubus, in digitis, in pectore, in corde, et in omnibus interioribus stomacho tenus, in renibus, in inguinibus, in femore, in genitalibus, in coxis, in genubus, in cruribus, in pedibus, et in unguibus. maledictus sit in totis compagibus membrorum, a vertice capitis, usque ad plantam pedis—non sit in eo sanitas. maledicat illum christus filius dei vivi toto suæ majestatis imperio—— —et insurgat adversus illum cœlum cum omnibus virtutibus quæ in eo moventur ad damnandum eum, nisi penituerit et ad satisfactionem venerit.  amen. fiat, fiat.  amen. [6] as the geniuneness of the consultation of the sorbonne upon the question of baptism, was doubted by some, and denied by others——’twas thought proper to print the original of this excommunication; for the copy of which mr. shandy returns thanks to the chapter clerk of the dean and chapter of rochester. c h a p. iv “by the authority of god almighty, the father, son, and holy ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the undefiled virgin mary, mother and patroness of our saviour.” i think there is no necessity, quoth dr. slop, dropping the paper down to his knee, and addressing himself to my father——as you have read it over, sir, so lately, to read it aloud——and as captain shandy seems to have no great inclination to hear it——i may as well read it to myself. that’s contrary to treaty, replied my father:——besides, there is something so whimsical, especially in the latter part of it, i should grieve to lose the pleasure of a second reading. dr. slop did not altogether like it,——but my uncle toby offering at that instant to give over whistling, and read it himself to them;——dr. slop thought he might as well read it under the cover of my uncle toby’s whistling——as suffer my uncle toby to read it alone;——so raising up the paper to his face, and holding it quite parallel to it, in order to hide his chagrin——he read it aloud as follows——my uncle toby whistling lillabullero, though not quite so loud as before. “by the authority of god almighty, the father, son, and holy ghost, and of the undefiled virgin mary, mother and patroness of our saviour, and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight of the holy lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with the holy and elect of god,—may he” (obadiah) “be damn’d” (for tying these knots)——“we excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from the thresholds of the holy “church of god almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over with dathan and abiram, and with those who say unto the lord god, depart from us, we desire none of thy ways. and as fire is quenched with water, so let the light of him be put out for evermore, unless it shall repent him” (obadiah, of the knots which he has tied) “and make satisfaction” (for them) “amen.” “may the father who created man, curse him.——may the son who suffered for us curse him.——may the holy ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him” (obadiah)——“may the holy cross which christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him. “may the holy and eternal virgin mary, mother of god, curse him.——may st. michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him.——may all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him.” [our armies swore terribly in flanders, cried my uncle toby,——but nothing to this.——for my own part i could not have a heart to curse my dog so.] “may st. john, the præcursor, and st. john the baptist, and st. peter and st. paul, and st. andrew, and all other christ’s apostles, together curse him. and may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found pleasing to god almighty, curse him’ (obadiah.) “may the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of christ have despised the things of the world, damn him——may all the saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of god, damn him— “may the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him,” (obadiah) “or her,” (or whoever else had a hand in tying these knots.) “may he (obadiah) be damn’d wherever he be——whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church.——may he be cursed in living, in dying.” [here my uncle toby, taking the advantage of a minim in the second bar of his tune, kept whistling one continued note to the end of the sentence.——dr. slop, with his division of curses moving under him, like a running bass all the way.] “may he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting! “may he” (obadiah) “be cursed in all the faculties of his body! “may he be cursed inwardly and outwardly!——may he be cursed in the hair of his head!——may he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex,” (that is a sad curse, quoth my father) “in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers! “may he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach! “may he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (god in heaven forbid! quoth my uncle toby) “in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my father shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toenails! “may he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! may there be no soundness in him! “may the son of the living god, with all the glory of his majesty”——(here my uncle toby, throwing back his head, gave a monstrous, long, loud whew—w—w———something betwixt the interjectional whistle of hay-day! and the word itself.—— ——by the golden beard of jupiter—and of juno (if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatick—to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore them)——all which beards, as varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the pagan establishment;——every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn by—by all these beards together then——i vow and protest, that of the two bad cassocks i am worth in the world, i would have given the better of them, as freely as ever cid hamet offered his——to have stood by, and heard my uncle toby’s accompanyment. ——“curse him!”—continued dr. slop,—“and may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him” (obadiah) “unless he repent and make satisfaction! amen. so be it,—so be it. amen.” i declare, quoth my uncle toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness.—he is the father of curses, replied dr. slop.——so am not i, replied my uncle.——but he is cursed, and damn’d already, to all eternity, replied dr. slop. i am sorry for it, quoth my uncle toby. dr. slop drew up his mouth, and wasjust beginning to return my uncle toby the compliment of his whu—u—u—or interjectional whistle——when the door hastily opening in the next chapter but one——put an end to the affair. c h a p. v now don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs, and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,——imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too. i’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur:——though i declare i object only to a connoisseur in swearing,——as i would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c. &c. the whole set of ’em are so hung round and befetish’d with the bobs and trinkets of criticism,——or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity——for i have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of guiney;—their heads, sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em. —and how did garrick speak the soliloquy last night?—oh, against all rule, my lord,—most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,—stopping, as if the point wanted settling;—and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three fifths by a stop watch, my lord, each time.—admirable grammarian!——but in suspending his voice——was the sense suspended likewise? did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm?——was the eye silent? did you narrowly look?——i look’d only at the stop-watch, my lord.—excellent observer! and what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?——oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my lord,——quite an irregular thing!—not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle.—i had my rule and compasses, &c. my lord, in my pocket.—excellent critick! ——and for the epick poem your lordship bid me look at——upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of bossu’s——’tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions.—admirable connoisseur! ——and did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way back?—’tis a melancholy daub! my lord; not one principle of the pyramid in any one group!——and what a price!——for there is nothing of the colouring of titian—the expression of rubens—the grace of raphael—the purity of dominichino—the corregiescity of corregio—the learning of poussin—the airs of guido—the taste of the carrachis—or the grand contour of angelo.—grant me patience, just heaven!—of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst——the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! i would go fifty miles on foot, for i have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands——be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore. great apollo! if thou art in a giving humour—give me—i ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it——and send mercury, with the rules and compasses, if he can be spared, with my compliments to—no matter. now to any one else i will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past as originals——except st. paul’s thumb——god’s flesh and god’s fish, which were oaths monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;—else i say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of ernulphus a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!—it is thought to be no bad oath——and by itself passes very well—“g—d damn you.”—set it beside ernulphus’s——“god almighty the father damn you—god the son damn you—god the holy ghost damn you”—you see ’tis nothing.—there is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention—possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer——had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations,—that when ernulphus cursed—no part escaped him.—’tis true there is something of a hardness in his manner——and, as in michael angelo, a want of grace——but then there is such a greatness of gusto! my father, who generally look’d upon every thing in a light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original.——he considered rather ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;—for the same reason that justinian, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor tribonian to collect the roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest——lest, through the rust of time——and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition—they should be lost to the world for ever. for this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath from the great and tremendous oath of william the conqueror (by the splendour of god) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (damn your eyes) which was not to be found in ernulphus.—in short, he would add—i defy a man to swear out of it. the hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too;——nor have i any objection to it, but that it overturns my own. c h a p. vi ——bless my soul!—my poor mistress is ready to faint——and her pains are gone—and the drops are done—and the bottle of julap is broke——and the nurse has cut her arm—(and i, my thumb, cried dr. slop,) and the child is where it was, continued susannah,—and the midwife has fallen backwards upon the edge of the fender, and bruised her hip as black as your hat.—i’ll look at it, quoth dr slop.—there is no need of that, replied susannah,—you had better look at my mistress—but the midwife would gladly first give you an account how things are, so desires you would go up stairs and speak to her this moment. human nature is the same in all professions. the midwife had just before been put over dr. slop’s head—he had not digested it.—no, replied dr. slop, ’twould be full as proper if the midwife came down to me.—i like subordination, quoth my uncle toby,—and but for it, after the reduction of lisle, i know not what might have become of the garrison of ghent, in the mutiny for bread, in the year ten.—nor, replied dr. slop, (parodying my uncle toby’s hobby-horsical reflection; though full as hobby-horsical himself)——do i know, captain shandy, what might have become of the garrison above stairs, in the mutiny and confusion i find all things are in at present, but for the subordination of fingers and thumbs to ******——the application of which, sir, under this accident of mine, comes in so à propos, that without it, the cut upon my thumb might have been felt by the shandy family, as long as the shandy family had a name. c h a p. vii let us go back to the ******——in the last chapter. it is a singular stroke of eloquence (at least it was so, when eloquence flourished at athens and rome, and would be so now, did orators wear mantles) not to mention the name of a thing, when you had the thing about you in petto, ready to produce, pop, in the place you want it. a scar, an axe, a sword, a pink’d doublet, a rusty helmet, a pound and a half of pot-ashes in an urn, or a three-halfpenny pickle pot—but above all, a tender infant royally accoutred.—tho’ if it was too young, and the oration as long as tully’s second philippick—it must certainly have beshit the orator’s mantle.—and then again, if too old,—it must have been unwieldly and incommodious to his action—so as to make him lose by his child almost as much as he could gain by it.—otherwise, when a state orator has hit the precise age to a minute——hid his bambino in his mantle so cunningly that no mortal could smell it——and produced it so critically, that no soul could say, it came in by head and shoulders—oh sirs! it has done wonders—it has open’d the sluices, and turn’d the brains, and shook the principles, and unhinged the politicks of half a nation. these feats however are not to be done, except in those states and times, i say, where orators wore mantles——and pretty large ones too, my brethren, with some twenty or five-and-twenty yards of good purple, superfine, marketable cloth in them—with large flowing folds and doubles, and in a great style of design.—all which plainly shews, may it please your worships, that the decay of eloquence, and the little good service it does at present, both within and without doors, is owing to nothing else in the world, but short coats, and the disuse of trunk-hose.—we can conceal nothing under ours, madam, worth shewing. c h a p. viii dr. slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle toby—’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed——my uncle toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,——dr. slop would never have given them up;—and my uncle toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but dr. slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it. when a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in disputation, that the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——this threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle toby’s side.—“good god!” cried my uncle toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?” c h a p. ix —upon my honour, sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle toby—and you have crush’d all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. ’tis your own fault, said dr. slop——you should have clinch’d your two fists together into the form of a child’s head as i told you, and sat firm.—i did so, answered my uncle toby.——then the points of my forceps have not been sufficiently arm’d, or the rivet wants closing—or else the cut on my thumb has made me a little aukward—or possibly—’tis well, quoth my father, interrupting the detail of possibilities—that the experiment was not first made upon my child’s head-piece.——it would not have been a cherry-stone the worse, answered dr. slop.—i maintain it, said my uncle toby, it would have broke the cerebellum (unless indeed the skull had been as hard as a granado) and turn’d it all into a perfect posset.——pshaw! replied dr. slop, a child’s head is naturally as soft as the pap of an apple;—the sutures give way—and besides, i could have extracted by the feet after.—not you, said she.——i rather wish you would begin that way, quoth my father. pray do, added my uncle toby. c h a p. x ——and pray, good woman, after all, will you take upon you to say, it may not be the child’s hip, as well as the child’s head?——’tis most certainly the head, replied the midwife. because, continued dr. slop (turning to my father) as positive as these old ladies generally are—’tis a point very difficult to know—and yet of the greatest consequence to be known;——because, sir, if the hip is mistaken for the head—there is a possibility (if it is a boy) that the forceps * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ——what the possibility was, dr. slop whispered very low to my father, and then to my uncle toby.——there is no such danger, continued he, with the head.—no, in truth quoth my father—but when your possibility has taken place at the hip—you may as well take off the head too. ——it is morally impossible the reader should understand this——’tis enough dr. slop understood it;——so taking the green baize bag in his hand, with the help of obadiah’s pumps, he tripp’d pretty nimbly, for a man of his size, across the room to the door——and from the door was shewn the way, by the good old midwife, to my mother’s apartments. c h a p. xi it is two hours, and ten minutes—and no more—cried my father, looking at his watch, since dr. slop and obadiah arrived—and i know not how it happens, brother toby—but to my imagination it seems almost an age. ——here—pray, sir, take hold of my cap—nay, take the bell along with it, and my pantoufles too. now, sir, they are all at your service; and i freely make you a present of ’em, on condition you give me all your attention to this chapter. though my father said, “he knew not how it happen’d,”—yet he knew very well how it happen’d;——and at the instant he spoke it, was pre-determined in his mind to give my uncle toby a clear account of the matter by a metaphysical dissertation upon the subject of duration and its simple modes, in order to shew my uncle toby by what mechanism and mensurations in the brain it came to pass, that the rapid succession of their ideas, and the eternal scampering of the discourse from one thing to another, since dr. slop had come into the room, had lengthened out so short a period to so inconceivable an extent.——“i know not how it happens—cried my father,—but it seems an age.” ——’tis owing entirely, quoth my uncle toby, to the succession of our ideas. my father, who had an itch, in common with all philosophers, of reasoning upon every thing which happened, and accounting for it too—proposed infinite pleasure to himself in this, of the succession of ideas, and had not the least apprehension of having it snatch’d out of his hands by my uncle toby, who (honest man!) generally took every thing as it happened;——and who, of all things in the world, troubled his brain the least with abstruse thinking;—the ideas of time and space—or how we came by those ideas—or of what stuff they were made——or whether they were born with us—or we picked them up afterwards as we went along—or whether we did it in frocks——or not till we had got into breeches—with a thousand other inquiries and disputes about infinity prescience, liberty, necessity, and so forth, upon whose desperate and unconquerable theories so many fine heads have been turned and cracked——never did my uncle toby’s the least injury at all; my father knew it—and was no less surprized than he was disappointed, with my uncle’s fortuitous solution. do you understand the theory of that affair? replied my father. not i, quoth my uncle. —but you have some ideas, said my father, of what you talk about? no more than my horse, replied my uncle toby. gracious heaven! cried my father, looking upwards, and clasping his two hands together——there is a worth in thy honest ignorance, brother toby——’twere almost a pity to exchange it for a knowledge.—but i’ll tell thee.—— to understand what time is aright, without which we never can comprehend infinity, insomuch as one is a portion of the other——we ought seriously to sit down and consider what idea it is we have of duration, so as to give a satisfactory account how we came by it.——what is that to any body? quoth my uncle toby.[7] for if you will turn your eyes inwards upon your mind, continued my father, and observe attentively, you will perceive, brother, that whilst you and i are talking together, and thinking, and smoking our pipes, or whilst we receive successively ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist, and so we estimate the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co-existing with our thinking——and so according to that preconceived——you puzzle me to death, cried my uncle toby. ——’tis owing to this, replied my father, that in our computations of time, we are so used to minutes, hours, weeks, and months——and of clocks (i wish there was not a clock in the kingdom) to measure out their several portions to us, and to those who belong to us——that ’twill be well, if in time to come, the succession of our ideas be of any use or service to us at all. now, whether we observe it or no, continued my father, in every sound man’s head, there is a regular succession of ideas of one sort or other, which follow each other in train just like——a train of artillery? said my uncle toby——a train of a fiddle-stick!—quoth my father—which follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle.—i declare, quoth my uncle toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack.——then, brother toby, i have nothing more to say to you upon that subject, said my father. [7] vide locke. c h a p. xii ——what a conjuncture was here lost!——my father in one of his best explanatory moods—in eager pursuit of a metaphysical point into the very regions, where clouds and thick darkness would soon have encompassed it about;—my uncle toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;—his head like a smoke-jack;——the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!—by the tomb-stone of lucian——if it is in being——if not, why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear rabelais, and dearer cervantes!——my father and my uncle toby’s discourse upon time and eternity——was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! and the petulancy of my father’s humour, in putting a stop to it as he did, was a robbery of the ontologic treasury of such a jewel, as no coalition of great occasions and great men are ever likely to restore to it again. c h a p. xiii tho’ my father persisted in not going on with the discourse—yet he could not get my uncle toby’s smoke-jack out of his head—piqued as he was at first with it;—there was something in the comparison at the bottom, which hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table, and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand——but looking first stedfastly in the fire——he began to commune with himself, and philosophize about it: but his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse——the idea of the smoke jack soon turned all his ideas upside down—so that he fell asleep almost before he knew what he was about. as for my uncle toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen revolutions, before he fell asleep also.——peace be with them both!——dr. slop is engaged with the midwife and my mother above stairs.——trim is busy in turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple of mortars, to be employed in the siege of messina next summer—and is this instant boring the touch-holes with the point of a hot poker.——all my heroes are off my hands;—’tis the first time i have had a moment to spare—and i’ll make use of it, and write my preface. the a u t h o r ’s p r e f a c e no, i’ll not say a word about it——here it is;—in publishing it—i have appealed to the world——and to the world i leave it;—it must speak for itself. all i know of the matter is—when i sat down, my intent was to write a good book; and as far as the tenuity of my understanding would hold out—a wise, aye, and a discreet—taking care only, as i went along, to put into it all the wit and the judgment (be it more or less) which the great author and bestower of them had thought fit originally to give me——so that, as your worships see—’tis just as god pleases. now, agalastes (speaking dispraisingly) sayeth, that there may be some wit in it, for aught he knows——but no judgment at all. and triptolemus and phutatorius agreeing thereto, ask, how is it possible there should? for that wit and judgment in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east from west——so, says locke——so are farting and hickuping, say i. but in answer to this, didius the great church lawyer, in his code de fartendi et illustrandi fallaciis, doth maintain and make fully appear, that an illustration is no argument——nor do i maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean to be a syllogism;—but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it——so that the main good these things do is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument itself, in order to free it from any little motes, or specks of opacular matter, which, if left swimming therein, might hinder a conception and spoil all. now, my dear anti-shandeans, and thrice able criticks, and fellow-labourers (for to you i write this preface)——and to you, most subtle statesmen and discreet doctors (do—pull off your beards) renowned for gravity and wisdom;——monopolus, my politician—didius, my counsel; kysarcius, my friend;—phutatorius, my guide;——gastripheres, the preserver of my life; somnolentius, the balm and repose of it——not forgetting all others, as well sleeping as waking, ecclesiastical as civil, whom for brevity, but out of no resentment to you, i lump all together.——believe me, right worthy, my most zealous wish and fervent prayer in your behalf, and in my own too, in case the thing is not done already for us——is, that the great gifts and endowments both of wit and judgment, with every thing which usually goes along with them——such as memory, fancy, genius, eloquence, quick parts, and what not, may this precious moment, without stint or measure, let or hindrance, be poured down warm as each of us could bear it—scum and sediment and all (for i would not have a drop lost) into the several receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains——in such sort, that they might continue to be injected and tunn’d into, according to the true intent and meaning of my wish, until every vessel of them, both great and small, be so replenish’d, saturated, and filled up therewith, that no more, would it save a man’s life, could possibly be got either in or out. bless us!—what noble work we should make!——how should i tickle it off!——and what spirits should i find myself in, to be writing away for such readers!——and you—just heaven!——with what raptures would you sit and read—but oh!—’tis too much——i am sick——i faint away deliciously at the thoughts of it—’tis more than nature can bear!—lay hold of me——i am giddy—i am stone blind—i’m dying—i am gone.—help! help! help!—but hold—i grow something better again, for i am beginning to foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits—we should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:——there would be so much satire and sarcasm——scoffing and flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or another——there would be nothing but mischief among us——chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make, what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places—there would be no such thing as living for us. but then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong; and though we should abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we should nevertheless, my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk and honey—’twould be a second land of promise—a paradise upon earth, if there was such a thing to be had—so that upon the whole we should have done well enough. all i fret and fume at, and what most distresses my invention at present, is how to bring the point itself to bear; for as your worships well know, that of these heavenly emanations of wit and judgment, which i have so bountifully wished both for your worships and myself—there is but a certain quantum stored up for us all, for the use and behoof of the whole race of mankind; and such small modicums of ’em are only sent forth into this wide world, circulating here and there in one bye corner or another—and in such narrow streams, and at such prodigious intervals from each other, that one would wonder how it holds out, or could be sufficient for the wants and emergencies of so many great estates, and populous empires. indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in nova zembla, north lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracks of the globe, which lie more directly under the arctick and antartick circles, where the whole province of a man’s concernments lies for near nine months together within the narrow compass of his cave—where the spirits are compressed almost to nothing—and where the passions of a man, with every thing which belongs to them, are as frigid as the zone itself—there the least quantity of judgment imaginable does the business——and of wit——there is a total and an absolute saving—for as not one spark is wanted—so not one spark is given. angels and ministers of grace defend us! what a dismal thing would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us! for mercy’s sake, let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into norway—crossing over swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of angermania to the lake of bothmia; coasting along it through east and west bothnia, down to carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the gulf of finland, and the north-east of the baltick, up to petersbourg, and just stepping into ingria;—then stretching over directly from thence through the north parts of the russian empire—leaving siberia a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of russian and asiatick tartary. now through this long tour which i have led you, you observe the good people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have just left:—for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment, which, taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with——and had they more of either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and i am satisfied moreover they would want occasions to put them to use. now, sir, if i conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and humours runs high——where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason——the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our necessities——and accordingly we have them sent down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has any cause to complain. it must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and cold—wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled way;—so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of amongst us:——the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up——then all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running again like fury——you would think they would never stop:——and then it is, that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive all the world before us. it is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which suidas calls dialectick induction——that i draw and set up this position as most true and veritable; that of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity; so that your reverences and worships now find out, nor is it a moment longer in my power to conceal it from you, that the fervent wish in your behalf with which i set out, was no more than the first insinuating how d’ye of a caressing prefacer, stifling his reader, as a lover sometimes does a coy mistress, into silence. for alas! could this effusion of light have been as easily procured, as the exordium wished it—i tremble to think how many thousands for it, of benighted travellers (in the learned sciences at least) must have groped and blundered on in the dark, all the nights of their lives——running their heads against posts, and knocking out their brains without ever getting to their journies end;——some falling with their noses perpendicularly into sinks——others horizontally with their tails into kennels. here one half of a learned profession tilting full but against the other half of it, and then tumbling and rolling one over the other in the dirt like hogs.—here the brethren of another profession, who should have run in opposition to each other, flying on the contrary like a flock of wild geese, all in a row the same way.—what confusion!—what mistakes!——fiddlers and painters judging by their eyes and ears—admirable!—trusting to the passions excited—in an air sung, or a story painted to the heart——instead of measuring them by a quadrant. in the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round——against the stream of corruption—by heaven!——instead of with it. in this corner, a son of the divine esculapius, writing a book against predestination; perhaps worse—feeling his patient’s pulse, instead of his apothecary’s——a brother of the faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in tears—drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;—offering a fee—instead of taking one. in that spacious hall, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it, driving a damn’d, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might and main, the wrong way!——kicking it out of the great doors, instead of, in——and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind:——perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still——a litigated point fairly hung up;——for instance, whether john o’nokes his nose could stand in tom o’stiles his face, without a trespass, or not—rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many months——and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know an action should be, with all the stratagems practicable therein,——such as feints,—forced marches,—surprizes—ambuscades—mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides——might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession. as for the clergy——no——if i say a word against them, i’ll be shot.——i have no desire; and besides, if i had—i durst not for my soul touch upon the subject——with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition i am in at present, ’twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account—and therefore ’tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as i can, to the main and principal point i have undertaken to clear up——and that is, how it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.——but mark—i say, reported to be—for it is no more, my dear sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, i maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain. this by the help of the observation already premised, and i hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, i shall forthwith make appear. i hate set dissertations——and above all things in the world, ’tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader’s conception—when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once—“for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith’s crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?”—i am this moment sitting upon one. will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?—they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what i have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams. i enter now directly upon the point. —here stands wit—and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like the two knobs i’m speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on which i am sitting. —you see, they are the highest and most ornamental parts of its frame—as wit and judgment are of ours—and like them too, indubitably both made and fitted to go together, in order, as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments——to answer one another. now for the sake of an experiment, and for the clearer illustrating this matter—let us for a moment take off one of these two curious ornaments (i care not which) from the point or pinnacle of the chair it now stands on—nay, don’t laugh at it,—but did you ever see, in the whole course of your lives, such a ridiculous business as this has made of it?—why, ’tis as miserable a sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the one as in the other:——do——pray, get off your seats only to take a view of it,——now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece of work out of his hand in such a condition?——nay, lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer this plain question, whether this one single knob, which now stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to put one in mind of the want of the other?—and let me farther ask, in case the chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all? now these two knobs——or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the whole entablature——being, as i said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as i have proved it, are the most needful——the most priz’d—the most calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at—for all these reasons put together, there is not a mortal among us, so destitute of a love of good fame or feeding——or so ignorant of what will do him good therein—who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or to be thought at least, master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass. now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the one—unless they laid hold of the other,——pray what do you think would become of them?——why, sirs, in spite of all their gravities, they must e’en have been contented to have gone with their insides naked——this was not to be borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are upon——so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their cloaks and great perriwigs, had they not raised a hue and cry at the same time against the lawful owners. i need not tell your worships, that this was done with so much cunning and artifice——that the great locke, who was seldom outwitted by false sounds——was nevertheless bubbled here. the cry, it seems, was so deep and solemn a one, and what with the help of great wigs, grave faces, and other implements of deceit, was rendered so general a one against the poor wits in this matter, that the philosopher himself was deceived by it—it was his glory to free the world from the lumber of a thousand vulgar errors;——but this was not of the number; so that instead of sitting down coolly, as such a philosopher should have done, to have examined the matter of fact before he philosophised upon it—on the contrary he took the fact for granted, and so joined in with the cry, and halloo’d it as boisterously as the rest. this has been made the magna charta of stupidity ever since——but your reverences plainly see, it has been obtained in such a manner, that the title to it is not worth a groat:——which by-the-bye is one of the many and vile impositions which gravity and grave folks have to answer for hereafter. as for great wigs, upon which i may be thought to have spoken my mind too freely——i beg leave to qualify whatever has been unguardedly said to their dispraise or prejudice, by one general declaration —that i have no abhorrence whatever, nor do i detest and abjure either great wigs or long beards, any farther than when i see they are bespoke and let grow on purpose to carry on this self-same imposture—for any purpose——peace be with them!— =>mark only——i write not for them. c h a p. xiv every day for at least ten years together did my father resolve to have it mended—’tis not mended yet;—no family but ours would have borne with it an hour——and what is most astonishing, there was not a subject in the world upon which my father was so eloquent, as upon that of door-hinges.——and yet at the same time, he was certainly one of the greatest bubbles to them, i think, that history can produce: his rhetorick and conduct were at perpetual handy-cuffs.—never did the parlour-door open—but his philosophy or his principles fell a victim to it;——three drops of oil with a feather, and a smart stroke of a hammer, had saved his honour for ever. ——inconsistent soul that man is!——languishing under wounds, which he has the power to heal!—his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge!—his reason, that precious gift of god to him—(instead of pouring in oil) serving but to sharpen his sensibilities—to multiply his pains, and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!—poor unhappy creature, that he should do so!——are not the necessary causes of misery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of sorrow;—struggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and submit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him would remove from his heart for ever? by all that is good and virtuous, if there are three drops of oil to be got, and a hammer to be found within ten miles of shandy hall——the parlour door hinge shall be mended this reign. c h a p. xv when corporal trim had brought his two mortars to bear, he was delighted with his handy-work above measure; and knowing what a pleasure it would be to his master to see them, he was not able to resist the desire he had of carrying them directly into his parlour. now next to the moral lesson i had in view in mentioning the affair of hinges, i had a speculative consideration arising out of it, and it is this. had the parlour door opened and turn’d upon its hinges, as a door should do— or for example, as cleverly as our government has been turning upon its hinges——(that is, in case things have all along gone well with your worship,—otherwise i give up my simile)—in this case, i say, there had been no danger either to master or man, in corporal trim’s peeping in: the moment he had beheld my father and my uncle toby fast asleep—the respectfulness of his carriage was such, he would have retired as silent as death, and left them both in their arm-chairs, dreaming as happy as he had found them: but the thing was, morally speaking, so very impracticable, that for the many years in which this hinge was suffered to be out of order, and amongst the hourly grievances my father submitted to upon its account—this was one; that he never folded his arms to take his nap after dinner, but the thoughts of being unavoidably awakened by the first person who should open the door, was always uppermost in his imagination, and so incessantly stepp’d in betwixt him and the first balmy presage of his repose, as to rob him, as he often declared, of the whole sweets of it. “when things move upon bad hinges, an’ please your lordships, how can it be otherwise?” pray what’s the matter? who is there? cried my father, waking, the moment the door began to creak.——i wish the smith would give a peep at that confounded hinge.——’tis nothing, an please your honour, said trim, but two mortars i am bringing in.—they shan’t make a clatter with them here, cried my father hastily.—if dr. slop has any drugs to pound, let him do it in the kitchen.—may it please your honour, cried trim, they are two mortar-pieces for a siege next summer, which i have been making out of a pair of jack-boots, which obadiah told me your honour had left off wearing.—by heaven! cried my father, springing out of his chair, as he swore——i have not one appointment belonging to me, which i set so much store by as i do by these jack-boots——they were our great grandfather’s brother toby—they were hereditary. then i fear, quoth my uncle toby, trim has cut off the entail.—i have only cut off the tops, an’ please your honour, cried trim——i hate perpetuities as much as any man alive, cried my father——but these jack-boots, continued he (smiling, though very angry at the same time) have been in the family, brother, ever since the civil wars;——sir roger shandy wore them at the battle of marston-moor.—i declare i would not have taken ten pounds for them.——i’ll pay you the money, brother shandy, quoth my uncle toby, looking at the two mortars with infinite pleasure, and putting his hand into his breeches pocket as he viewed them——i’ll pay you the ten pounds this moment with all my heart and soul.—— brother toby, replied my father, altering his tone, you care not what money you dissipate and throw away, provided, continued he, ’tis but upon a siege.——have i not one hundred and twenty pounds a year, besides my half pay? cried my uncle toby.—what is that—replied my father hastily—to ten pounds for a pair of jack-boots?—twelve guineas for your pontoons?—half as much for your dutch draw-bridge?—to say nothing of the train of little brass artillery you bespoke last week, with twenty other preparations for the siege of messina: believe me, dear brother toby, continued my father, taking him kindly by the hand—these military operations of yours are above your strength;—you mean well brother——but they carry you into greater expences than you were first aware of;—and take my word, dear toby, they will in the end quite ruin your fortune, and make a beggar of you.—what signifies it if they do, brother, replied my uncle toby, so long as we know ’tis for the good of the nation?—— my father could not help smiling for his soul—his anger at the worst was never more than a spark;—and the zeal and simplicity of trim—and the generous (though hobby-horsical) gallantry of my uncle toby, brought him into perfect good humour with them in an instant. generous souls!—god prosper you both, and your mortar-pieces too! quoth my father to himself. c h a p. xvi all is quiet and hush, cried my father, at least above stairs—i hear not one foot stirring.—prithee trim, who’s in the kitchen? there is no one soul in the kitchen, answered trim, making a low bow as he spoke, except dr. slop.—confusion! cried my father (getting upon his legs a second time)—not one single thing has gone right this day! had i faith in astrology, brother, (which, by the bye, my father had) i would have sworn some retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, and turning every individual thing in it out of its place.——why, i thought dr. slop had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you.——what can the fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen!—he is busy, an’ please your honour, replied trim, in making a bridge.——’tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle toby:——pray, give my humble service to dr. slop, trim, and tell him i thank him heartily. you must know, my uncle toby mistook the bridge—as widely as my father mistook the mortars:——but to understand how my uncle toby could mistake the bridge—i fear i must give you an exact account of the road which led to it;—or to drop my metaphor (for there is nothing more dishonest in an historian than the use of one)——in order to conceive the probability of this error in my uncle toby aright, i must give you some account of an adventure of trim’s, though much against my will, i say much against my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its place here; for by right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle toby’s amours with widow wadman, in which corporal trim was no mean actor—or else in the middle of his and my uncle toby’s campaigns on the bowling-green—for it will do very well in either place;—but then if i reserve it for either of those parts of my story——i ruin the story i’m upon;——and if i tell it here——i anticipate matters, and ruin it there. —what would your worship have me to do in this case? —tell it, mr. shandy, by all means.—you are a fool, tristram, if you do. o ye powers! (for powers ye are, and great ones too)—which enable mortal man to tell a story worth the hearing——that kindly shew him, where he is to begin it—and where he is to end it——what he is to put into it——and what he is to leave out—how much of it he is to cast into a shade—and whereabouts he is to throw his light!—ye, who preside over this vast empire of biographical freebooters, and see how many scrapes and plunges your subjects hourly fall into;——will you do one thing? i beg and beseech you (in case you will do nothing better for us) that wherever in any part of your dominions it so falls out, that three several roads meet in one point, as they have done just here——that at least you set up a guide-post in the centre of them, in mere charity, to direct an uncertain devil which of the three he is to take. c h a p. xvii tho’ the shock my uncle toby received the year after the demolition of dunkirk, in his affair with widow wadman, had fixed him in a resolution never more to think of the sex—or of aught which belonged to it;—yet corporal trim had made no such bargain with himself. indeed in my uncle toby’s case there was a strange and unaccountable concurrence of circumstances, which insensibly drew him in, to lay siege to that fair and strong citadel.——in trim’s case there was a concurrence of nothing in the world, but of him and bridget in the kitchen;—though in truth, the love and veneration he bore his master was such, and so fond was he of imitating him in all he did, that had my uncle toby employed his time and genius in tagging of points——i am persuaded the honest corporal would have laid down his arms, and followed his example with pleasure. when therefore my uncle toby sat down before the mistress—corporal trim incontinently took ground before the maid. now, my dear friend garrick, whom i have so much cause to esteem and honour—(why, or wherefore, ’tis no matter)—can it escape your penetration—i defy it—that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit-chat have ever since been working upon trim’s and my uncle toby’s pattern.——i care not what aristotle, or pacuvius, or bossu, or ricaboni say—(though i never read one of them)——there is not a greater difference between a single-horse chair and madam pompadour’s vis-a-vis; than betwixt a single amour, and an amour thus nobly doubled, and going upon all four, prancing throughout a grand drama——sir, a simple, single, silly affair of that kind—is quite lost in five acts—but that is neither here nor there. after a series of attacks and repulses in a course of nine months on my uncle toby’s quarter, a most minute account of every particular of which shall be given in its proper place, my uncle toby, honest man! found it necessary to draw off his forces and raise the siege somewhat indignantly. corporal trim, as i said, had made no such bargain either with himself——or with any one else——the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust——he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off;—for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her—or (as circumstances directed) he would shake her by the hand—or ask her lovingly how she did—or would give her a ribbon—and now-and-then, though never but when it could be done with decorum, would give bridget a— precisely in this situation, did these things stand for five years; that is from the demolition of dunkirk in the year 13, to the latter end of my uncle toby’s campaign in the year 18, which was about six or seven weeks before the time i’m speaking of.——when trim, as his custom was, after he had put my uncle toby to bed, going down one moon-shiny night to see that every thing was right at his fortifications——in the lane separated from the bowling-green with flowering shrubs and holly—he espied his bridget. as the corporal thought there was nothing in the world so well worth shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle toby had made, trim courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth’d trumpet of fame carried it from ear to ear, till at length it reach’d my father’s, with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my uncle toby’s curious draw-bridge, constructed and painted after the dutch fashion, and which went quite across the ditch—was broke down, and somehow or other crushed all to pieces that very night. my father, as you have observed, had no great esteem for my uncle toby’s hobby-horse; he thought it the most ridiculous horse that ever gentleman mounted; and indeed unless my uncle toby vexed him about it, could never think of it once, without smiling at it——so that it could never get lame or happen any mischance, but it tickled my father’s imagination beyond measure; but this being an accident much more to his humour than any one which had yet befall’n it, it proved an inexhaustible fund of entertainment to him——well——but dear toby! my father would say, do tell me seriously how this affair of the bridge happened.——how can you teaze me so much about it? my uncle toby would reply—i have told it you twenty times, word for word as trim told it me.—prithee, how was it then, corporal? my father would cry, turning to trim.—it was a mere misfortune, an’ please your honour;——i was shewing mrs. bridget our fortifications, and in going too near the edge of the fosse, i unfortunately slipp’d in——very well, trim! my father would cry——(smiling mysteriously, and giving a nod—but without interrupting him)——and being link’d fast, an’ please your honour, arm in arm with mrs. bridget, i dragg’d her after me, by means of which she fell backwards soss against the bridge——and trim’s foot (my uncle toby would cry, taking the story out of his mouth) getting into the cuvette, he tumbled full against the bridge too.—it was a thousand to one, my uncle toby would add, that the poor fellow did not break his leg.——ay truly, my father would say——a limb is soon broke, brother toby, in such encounters.——and so, an’ please your honour, the bridge, which your honour knows was a very slight one, was broke down betwixt us, and splintered all to pieces. at other times, but especially when my uncle toby was so unfortunate as to say a syllable about cannons, bombs, or petards—my father would exhaust all the stores of his eloquence (which indeed were very great) in a panegyric upon the battering-rams of the ancients—the vinea which alexander made use of at the siege of troy.—he would tell my uncle toby of the catapultæ of the syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation:—he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the ballista which marcellinus makes so much rout about!—the terrible effects of the pyraboli, which cast fire;—the danger of the terebra and scorpio, which cast javelins.——but what are these, would he say, to the destructive machinery of corporal trim?—believe me, brother toby, no bridge, or bastion, or sally-port, that ever was constructed in this world, can hold out against such artillery. my uncle toby would never attempt any defence against the force of this ridicule, but that of redoubling the vehemence of smoaking his pipe; in doing which, he raised so dense a vapour one night after supper, that it set my father, who was a little phthisical, into a suffocating fit of violent coughing: my uncle toby leap’d up without feeling the pain upon his groin—and, with infinite pity, stood beside his brother’s chair, tapping his back with one hand, and holding his head with the other, and from time to time wiping his eyes with a clean cambrick handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket.——the affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle toby did these little offices—cut my father thro’ his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him.——may my brains be knock’d out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, i care not which, quoth my father to himself—if ever i insult this worthy soul more! c h a p. xviii the draw-bridge being held irreparable, trim was ordered directly to set about another——but not upon the same model: for cardinal alberoni’s intrigues at that time being discovered, and my uncle toby rightly foreseeing that a flame would inevitably break out betwixt spain and the empire, and that the operations of the ensuing campaign must in all likelihood be either in naples or sicily——he determined upon an italian bridge—(my uncle toby, by-the-bye, was not far out of his conjectures)——but my father, who was infinitely the better politician, and took the lead as far of my uncle toby in the cabinet, as my uncle toby took it of him in the field——convinced him, that if the king of spain and the emperor went together by the ears, england and france and holland must, by force of their pre-engagements, all enter the lists too;——and if so, he would say, the combatants, brother toby, as sure as we are alive, will fall to it again, pell-mell, upon the old prize-fighting stage of flanders;—then what will you do with your italian bridge? —we will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle toby. when corporal trim had about half finished it in that style——my uncle toby found out a capital defect in it, which he had never thoroughly considered before. it turned, it seems, upon hinges at both ends of it, opening in the middle, one half of which turning to one side of the fosse, and the other to the other; the advantage of which was this, that by dividing the weight of the bridge into two equal portions, it impowered my uncle toby to raise it up or let it down with the end of his crutch, and with one hand, which, as his garrison was weak, was as much as he could well spare—but the disadvantages of such a construction were insurmountable;——for by this means, he would say, i leave one half of my bridge in my enemy’s possession——and pray of what use is the other? the natural remedy for this was, no doubt, to have his bridge fast only at one end with hinges, so that the whole might be lifted up together, and stand bolt upright——but that was rejected for the reason given above. for a whole week after he was determined in his mind to have one of that particular construction which is made to draw back horizontally, to hinder a passage; and to thrust forwards again to gain a passage—of which sorts your worship might have seen three famous ones at spires before its destruction—and one now at brisac, if i mistake not;—but my father advising my uncle toby, with great earnestness, to have nothing more to do with thrusting bridges—and my uncle foreseeing moreover that it would but perpetuate the memory of the corporal’s misfortune—he changed his mind for that of the marquis d’hôpital ’s invention, which the younger bernouilli has so well and learnedly described, as your worships may see——act. erud. lips. an. 1695—to these a lead weight is an eternal balance, and keeps watch as well as a couple of centinels, inasmuch as the construction of them was a curve line approximating to a cycloid——if not a cycloid itself. my uncle toby understood the nature of a parabola as well as any man in england—but was not quite such a master of the cycloid;——he talked however about it every day——the bridge went not forwards.——we’ll ask somebody about it, cried my uncle toby to trim. c h a p. xix when trim came in and told my father, that dr. slop was in the kitchen, and busy in making a bridge—my uncle toby——the affair of the jack-boots having just then raised a train of military ideas in his brain——took it instantly for granted that dr. slop was making a model of the marquis d’hôpital ’s bridge.——’tis very obliging in him, quoth my uncle toby;—pray give my humble service to dr. slop, trim, and tell him i thank him heartily. had my uncle toby’s head been a savoyard ’s box, and my father peeping in all the time at one end of it——it could not have given him a more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle toby’s imagination, than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph—— when trim’s answer, in an instant, tore the laurel from his brows, and twisted it to pieces. c h a p. xx ——this unfortunate draw-bridge of yours, quoth my father——god bless your honour, cried trim, ’tis a bridge for master’s nose.——in bringing him into the world with his vile instruments, he has crushed his nose, susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face, and he is making a false bridge with a piece of cotton and a thin piece of whalebone out of susannah ’s stays, to raise it up. ——lead me, brother toby, cried my father, to my room this instant. c h a p. xxi from the first moment i sat down to write my life for the amusement of the world, and my opinions for its instruction, has a cloud insensibly been gathering over my father.——a tide of little evils and distresses has been setting in against him.—not one thing, as he observed himself, has gone right: and now is the storm thicken’d and going to break, and pour down full upon his head. i enter upon this part of my story in the most pensive and melancholy frame of mind that ever sympathetic breast was touched with.——my nerves relax as i tell it.——every line i write, i feel an abatement of the quickness of my pulse, and of that careless alacrity with it, which every day of my life prompts me to say and write a thousand things i should not——and this moment that i last dipp’d my pen into my ink, i could not help taking notice what a cautious air of sad composure and solemnity there appear’d in my manner of doing it.——lord! how different from the rash jerks and hair-brain’d squirts thou art wont, tristram, to transact it with in other humours—dropping thy pen——spurting thy ink about thy table and thy books—as if thy pen and thy ink, thy books and furniture cost thee nothing! c h a p. xxii ——i won’t go about to argue the point with you—’tis so——and i am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, “that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow (and, for aught i know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.” the moment my father got up into his chamber, he threw himself prostrate across his bed in the wildest disorder imaginable, but at the same time in the most lamentable attitude of a man borne down with sorrows, that ever the eye of pity dropp’d a tear for.——the palm of his right hand, as he fell upon the bed, receiving his forehead, and covering the greatest part of both his eyes, gently sunk down with his head (his elbow giving way backwards) till his nose touch’d the quilt;——his left arm hung insensible over the side of the bed, his knuckles reclining upon the handle of the chamber-pot, which peep’d out beyond the valance—his right leg (his left being drawn up towards his body) hung half over the side of the bed, the edge of it pressing upon his shin bone—he felt it not. a fix’d, inflexible sorrow took possession of every line of his face.—he sigh’d once——heaved his breast often—but uttered not a word. an old set-stitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party coloured worsted bobs, stood at the bed’s head, opposite to the side where my father’s head reclined.—my uncle toby sat him down in it. before an affliction is digested—consolation ever comes too soon;—and after it is digested—it comes too late: so that you see, madam, there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at:—my uncle toby was always either on this side, or on that of it, and would often say, he believed in his heart he could as soon hit the longitude; for this reason, when he sat down in the chair, he drew the curtain a little forwards, and having a tear at every one’s service——he pull’d out a cambrick handkerchief——gave a low sigh——but held his peace. c h a p. xxiii ——“all is not gain that is got into the purse.”—so that notwithstanding my father had the happiness of reading the oddest books in the universe, and had moreover, in himself, the oddest way of thinking that ever man in it was bless’d with, yet it had this drawback upon him after all——that it laid him open to some of the oddest and most whimsical distresses; of which this particular one, which he sunk under at present, is as strong an example as can be given. no doubt, the breaking down of the bridge of a child’s nose, by the edge of a pair of forceps—however scientifically applied—would vex any man in the world, who was at so much pains in begetting a child, as my father was—yet it will not account for the extravagance of his affliction, nor will it justify the un-christian manner he abandoned and surrendered himself up to. to explain this, i must leave him upon the bed for half an hour—and my uncle toby in his old fringed chair sitting beside him. c h a p. xxiv ——i think it a very unreasonable demand—cried my great-grandfather, twisting up the paper, and throwing it upon the table.——by this account, madam, you have but two thousand pounds fortune, and not a shilling more—and you insist upon having three hundred pounds a year jointure for it.— —“because,” replied my great-grandmother, “you have little or no nose, sir.”— now before i venture to make use of the word nose a second time—to avoid all confusion in what will be said upon it, in this interesting part of my story, it may not be amiss to explain my own meaning, and define, with all possible exactness and precision, what i would willingly be understood to mean by the term: being of opinion, that ’tis owing to the negligence and perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else——that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and demonstrative as those upon a will o’ the wisp, or any other sound part of philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do, before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of judgment——but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the main word you have most occasion for——changing it, sir, as you would a guinea, into small coin?—which done—let the father of confusion puzzle you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your reader’s head, if he knows how. in books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as i am engaged in—the neglect is inexcusable; and heaven is witness, how the world has revenged itself upon me for leaving so many openings to equivocal strictures—and for depending so much as i have done, all along, upon the cleanliness of my readers imaginations. ——here are two senses, cried eugenius, as we walk’d along, pointing with the fore finger of his right hand to the word crevice, in the one hundred and seventy-eighth page of the first volume of this book of books,——here are two senses—quoth he.—and here are two roads, replied i, turning short upon him——a dirty and a clean one——which shall we take?—the clean, by all means, replied eugenius. eugenius, said i, stepping before him, and laying my hand upon his breast——to define—is to distrust.——thus i triumph’d over eugenius; but i triumph’d over him as i always do, like a fool.——’tis my comfort, however, i am not an obstinate one: therefore i define a nose as follows—intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of god and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what i put into my definition—for by the word nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word nose occurs—i declare, by that word i mean a nose, and nothing more, or less. c h a p. xxv ——“because,” quoth my great grandmother, repeating the words again—“you have little or no nose, sir.”—— s’death! cried my great-grandfather, clapping his hand upon his nose,—’tis not so small as that comes to;——’tis a full inch longer than my father’s.—now, my great-grandfather’s nose was for all the world like unto the noses of all the men, women, and children, whom pantagruel found dwelling upon the island of ennasin.——by the way, if you would know the strange way of getting a-kin amongst so flat-nosed a people——you must read the book;——find it out yourself, you never can.—— —’twas shaped, sir, like an ace of clubs. —’tis a full inch, continued my grandfather, pressing up the ridge of his nose with his finger and thumb; and repeating his assertion——’tis a full inch longer, madam, than my father’s——you must mean your uncle’s, replied my great-grandmother. ——my great-grandfather was convinced.—he untwisted the paper, and signed the article. c h a p. xxvi ——what an unconscionable jointure, my dear, do we pay out of this small estate of ours, quoth my grandmother to my grandfather. my father, replied my grandfather, had no more nose, my dear, saving the mark, than there is upon the back of my hand. —now, you must know, that my great-grandmother outlived my grandfather twelve years; so that my father had the jointure to pay, a hundred and fifty pounds half-yearly—(on michaelmas and lady-day,)—during all that time. no man discharged pecuniary obligations with a better grace than my father.——and as far as a hundred pounds went, he would fling it upon the table, guinea by guinea, with that spirited jerk of an honest welcome, which generous souls, and generous souls only, are able to fling down money: but as soon as ever he enter’d upon the odd fifty—he generally gave a loud hem! rubb’d the side of his nose leisurely with the flat part of his fore finger——inserted his hand cautiously betwixt his head and the cawl of his wig—look’d at both sides of every guinea as he parted with it——and seldom could get to the end of the fifty pounds, without pulling out his handkerchief, and wiping his temples. defend me, gracious heaven! from those persecuting spirits who make no allowances for these workings within us.—never—o never may i lay down in their tents, who cannot relax the engine, and feel pity for the force of education, and the prevalence of opinions long derived from ancestors! for three generations at least this tenet in favour of long noses had gradually been taking root in our family.——tradition was all along on its side, and interest was every half-year stepping in to strengthen it; so that the whimsicality of my father’s brain was far from having the whole honour of this, as it had of almost all his other strange notions.—for in a great measure he might be said to have suck’d this in with his mother’s milk. he did his part however.——if education planted the mistake (in case it was one) my father watered it, and ripened it to perfection. he would often declare, in speaking his thoughts upon the subject, that he did not conceive how the greatest family in england could stand it out against an uninterrupted succession of six or seven short noses.—and for the contrary reason, he would generally add, that it must be one of the greatest problems in civil life, where the same number of long and jolly noses, following one another in a direct line, did not raise and hoist it up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.——he would often boast that the shandy family rank’d very high in king harry the viiith’s time, but owed its rise to no state engine—he would say—but to that only;——but that, like other families, he would add——it had felt the turn of the wheel, and had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather’s nose.——it was an ace of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head—and as vile a one for an unfortunate family as ever turn’d up trumps. ——fair and softly, gentle reader!——where is thy fancy carrying thee!——if there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather’s nose, i mean the external organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face——and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces, should comprehend a full third——that is, measured downwards from the setting on of the hair. ——what a life of it has an author, at this pass! c h a p. xxvii it is a singular blessing, that nature has form’d the mind of man with the same happy backwardness and renitency against conviction, which is observed in old dogs—“of not learning new tricks.” what a shuttlecock of a fellow would the greatest philosopher that ever existed be whisk’d into at once, did he read such books, and observe such facts, and think such thoughts, as would eternally be making him change sides! now, my father, as i told you last year, detested all this—he pick’d up an opinion, sir, as a man in a state of nature picks up an apple.—it becomes his own—and if he is a man of spirit, he would lose his life rather than give it up. i am aware that didius, the great civilian, will contest this point; and cry out against me, whence comes this man’s right to this apple? ex confesso, he will say—things were in a state of nature—the apple, is as much frank’s apple as john’s. pray, mr. shandy, what patent has he to shew for it? and how did it begin to be his? was it, when he set his heart upon it? or when he gathered it? or when he chew’d it? or when he roasted it? or when he peel’d, or when he brought it home? or when he digested?——or when he——?——for ’tis plain, sir, if the first picking up of the apple, made it not his—that no subsequent act could. brother didius, tribonius will answer—(now tribonius the civilian and church lawyer’s beard being three inches and a half and three eighths longer than didius his beard—i’m glad he takes up the cudgels for me, so i give myself no farther trouble about the answer.)—brother didius, tribonius will say, it is a decreed case, as you may find it in the fragments of gregorius and hermogines’s codes, and in all the codes from justinian’s down to the codes of louis and des eaux—that the sweat of a man’s brows, and the exsudations of a man’s brains, are as much a man’s own property as the breeches upon his backside;—which said exsudations, &c. being dropp’d upon the said apple by the labour of finding it, and picking it up; and being moreover indissolubly wasted, and as indissolubly annex’d, by the picker up, to the thing pick’d up, carried home, roasted, peel’d, eaten, digested, and so on;——’tis evident that the gatherer of the apple, in so doing, has mix’d up something which was his own, with the apple which was not his own, by which means he has acquired a property;—or, in other words, the apple is john’s apple. by the same learned chain of reasoning my father stood up for all his opinions; he had spared no pains in picking them up, and the more they lay out of the common way, the better still was his title.——no mortal claimed them; they had cost him moreover as much labour in cooking and digesting as in the case above, so that they might well and truly be said to be of his own goods and chattels.—accordingly he held fast by ’em, both by teeth and claws—would fly to whatever he could lay his hands on—and, in a word, would intrench and fortify them round with as many circumvallations and breast-works, as my uncle toby would a citadel. there was one plaguy rub in the way of this——the scarcity of materials to make any thing of a defence with, in case of a smart attack; inasmuch as few men of great genius had exercised their parts in writing books upon the subject of great noses: by the trotting of my lean horse, the thing is incredible! and i am quite lost in my understanding, when i am considering what a treasure of precious time and talents together has been wasted upon worse subjects—and how many millions of books in all languages and in all possible types and bindings, have been fabricated upon points not half so much tending to the unity and peace-making of the world. what was to be had, however, he set the greater store by; and though my father would oft-times sport with my uncle toby’s library—which, by-the-bye, was ridiculous enough—yet at the very same time he did it, he collected every book and treatise which had been systematically wrote upon noses, with as much care as my honest uncle toby had done those upon military architecture.——’tis true, a much less table would have held them—but that was not thy transgression, my dear uncle.—— here——but why here——rather than in any other part of my story——i am not able to tell:——but here it is——my heart stops me to pay to thee, my dear uncle toby, once for all, the tribute i owe thy goodness.—here let me thrust my chair aside, and kneel down upon the ground, whilst i am pouring forth the warmest sentiment of love for thee, and veneration for the excellency of thy character, that ever virtue and nature kindled in a nephew’s bosom.——peace and comfort rest for evermore upon thy head!—thou enviedst no man’s comforts——insultedst no man’s opinions——thou blackenedst no man’s character—devouredst no man’s bread: gently, with faithful trim behind thee, didst thou amble round the little circle of thy pleasures, jostling no creature in thy way:—for each one’s sorrows, thou hadst a tear,—for each man’s need, thou hadst a shilling. whilst i am worth one, to pay a weeder—thy path from thy door to thy bowling-green shall never be grown up.——whilst there is a rood and a half of land in the shandy family, thy fortifications, my dear uncle toby, shall never be demolish’d. c h a p. xxviii my father’s collection was not great, but to make amends, it was curious; and consequently he was some time in making it; he had the great good fortune hewever, to set off well, in getting bruscambille’s prologue upon long noses, almost for nothing—for he gave no more for bruscambille than three half-crowns; owing indeed to the strong fancy which the stall-man saw my father had for the book the moment he laid his hands upon it.——there are not three bruscambilles in christendom—said the stall-man, except what are chain’d up in the libraries of the curious. my father flung down the money as quick as lightning——took bruscambille into his bosom——hied home from piccadilly to coleman-street with it, as he would have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from bruscambille all the way. to those who do not yet know of which gender bruscambille is——inasmuch as a prologue upon long noses might easily be done by either——’twill be no objection against the simile—to say, that when my father got home, he solaced himself with bruscambille after the manner in which, ’tis ten to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress——that is, from morning even unto night: which, by-the-bye, how delightful soever it may prove to the inamorato—is of little or no entertainment at all to by-standers.——take notice, i go no farther with the simile—my father’s eye was greater than his appetite—his zeal greater than his knowledge—he cool’d—his affections became divided——he got hold of prignitz—purchased scroderus, andrea paraeus, bouchet’s evening conferences, and above all, the great and learned hafen slawkenbergius; of which, as i shall have much to say by-and-bye—i will say nothing now. c h a p. xxix of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between pamphagus and cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and venerable erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of long noses.——now don’t let satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on—let me beg of you, like an unback’d filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it—and to kick it, with long kicks and short kicks, till like tickletoby’s mare, you break a strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.—you need not kill him.— —and pray who was tickletoby’s mare?—’tis just as discreditable and unscholar-like a question, sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb. con.) the second punic war broke out.—who was tickletoby’s mare!—read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read—or by the knowledge of the great saint paraleipomenon—i tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence knows i mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions, transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark veil of the black one. marble image marble image c h a p. xxx “nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,” quoth pamphagus;——that is—“my nose has been the making of me.”——“nec est cur poeniteat,” replies cocles; that is, “how the duce should such a nose fail?” the doctrine, you see, was laid down by erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father’s disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which heaven had bestow’d upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.——my father pish’d and pugh’d at first most terribly——’tis worth something to have a good name. as the dialogue was of erasmus, my father soon came to himself, and read it over and over again with great application, studying every word and every syllable of it thro’ and thro’ in its most strict and literal interpretation—he could still make nothing of it, that way. mayhap there is more meant, than is said in it, quoth my father.——learned men, brother toby, don’t write dialogues upon long noses for nothing.——i’ll study the mystick and the allegorick sense——here is some room to turn a man’s self in, brother. my father read on.—— now i find it needful to inform your reverences and worships, that besides the many nautical uses of long noses enumerated by erasmus, the dialogist affirmeth that a long nose is not without its domestic conveniences also; for that in a case of distress—and for want of a pair of bellows, it will do excellently well, ad ixcitandum focum (to stir up the fire.) nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had done the seeds of all other knowledge——so that he had got out his penknife, and was trying experiments upon the sentence, to see if he could not scratch some better sense into it.——i’ve got within a single letter, brother toby, cried my father, of erasmus his mystic meaning.—you are near enough, brother, replied my uncle, in all conscience.——pshaw! cried my father, scratching on——i might as well be seven miles off.—i’ve done it—said my father, snapping his fingers—see, my dear brother toby, how i have mended the sense.——but you have marr’d a word, replied my uncle toby.—my father put on his spectacles——bit his lip——and tore out the leaf in a passion. c h a p. xxxi o slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my disgrazias—thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which on one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that i am conscious of.—tell me, slawkenbergius! what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?——art thou sure thou heard’st it?——which first cried out to thee——go——go, slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life—neglect thy pastimes——call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature——macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand folio for them, upon the subject of their noses. how the communication was conveyed into slawkenbergius’s sensorium——so that slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch’d the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows—as hafen slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years——we can only raise conjectures. slawkenbergius was play’d upon, for aught i know, like one of whitefield’s disciples——that is, with such a distinct intelligence, sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument——as to make all reasoning upon it needless. ——for in the account which hafen slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one work—towards the end of his prolegomena, which by-the-bye should have come first——but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and the book itself—he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and consider within himself the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the main end and design of his being;——or—to shorten my translation, for slawkenbergius’s book is in latin, and not a little prolix in this passage—ever since i understood, quoth slawkenbergius, any thing—or rather what was what——and could perceive that the point of long noses had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before;——have i slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and unresistible call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking. and to do justice to slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one man who had ever entered it before him——and indeed, in many respects, deserves to be en-nich’d as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous works at least, to model their books by——for he has taken in, sir, the whole subject—examined every part of it dialectically——then brought it into full day; dilucidating it with all the light which either the collision of his own natural parts could strike—or the profoundest knowledge of the sciences had impowered him to cast upon it—collating, collecting, and compiling——begging, borrowing, and stealing, as he went along, all that had been wrote or wrangled thereupon in the schools and porticos of the learned: so that slawkenbergius his book may properly be considered, not only as a model—but as a thorough-stitched digest and regular institute of noses, comprehending in it all that is or can be needful to be known about them. for this cause it is that i forbear to speak of so many (otherwise) valuable books and treatises of my father’s collecting, wrote either, plump upon noses——or collaterally touching them;——such for instance as prignitz, now lying upon the table before me, who with infinite learning, and from the most candid and scholar-like examination of above four thousand different skulls, in upwards of twenty charnel-houses in silesia, which he had rummaged——has informed us, that the mensuration and configuration of the osseous or bony parts of human noses, in any given tract of country, except crim tartary, where they are all crush’d down by the thumb, so that no judgment can be formed upon them—are much nearer alike, than the world imagines;—the difference amongst them being, he says, a mere trifle, not worth taking notice of;——but that the size and jollity of every individual nose, and by which one nose ranks above another, and bears a higher price, is owing to the cartilaginous and muscular parts of it, into whose ducts and sinuses the blood and animal spirits being impell’d and driven by the warmth and force of the imagination, which is but a step from it (bating the case of idiots, whom prignitz, who had lived many years in turky, supposes under the more immediate tutelage of heaven)—it so happens, and ever must, says prignitz, that the excellency of the nose is in a direct arithmetical proportion to the excellency of the wearer’s fancy. it is for the same reason, that is, because ’tis all comprehended in slawkenbergius, that i say nothing likewise of scroderus (andrea) who, all the world knows, set himself to oppugn prignitz with great violence—proving it in his own way, first logically, and then by a series of stubborn facts, “that so far was prignitz from the truth, in affirming that the fancy begat the nose, that on the contrary—the nose begat the fancy.” —the learned suspected scroderus of an indecent sophism in this—and prignitz cried out aloud in the dispute, that scroderus had shifted the idea upon him——but scroderus went on, maintaining his thesis. my father was just balancing within himself, which of the two sides he should take in this affair; when ambrose paræus decided it in a moment, and by overthrowing the systems, both of prignitz and scroderus, drove my father out of both sides of the controversy at once. be witness—— i don’t acquaint the learned reader—in saying it, i mention it only to shew the learned, i know the fact myself—— that this ambrose paræus was chief surgeon and nose-mender to francis the ninth of france, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (i know not which)—and that, except in the slip he made in his story of taliacotius’s noses, and his manner of setting them on—he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand. now ambrose paræus convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which prignitz and scroderus had wasted so much learning and fine parts——was neither this nor that——but that the length and goodness of the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s breast——as the flatness and shortness of puisne noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively—which, tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive ad mensuram suam legitimam;——but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s breast—by sinking into it, quoth paraeus, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever. i have but two things to observe of paraeus; first, that he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression:—for which may his soul for ever rest in peace! and, secondly, that besides the systems of prignitz and scroderus, which ambrose paræus his hypothesis effectually overthrew—it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and every thing in it, except my uncle toby, quite upside down. such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door. my mother, you must know———but i have fifty things more necessary to let you know first—i have a hundred difficulties which i have promised to clear up, and a thousand distresses and domestick misadventures crowding in upon me thick and threefold, one upon the neck of another. a cow broke in (tomorrow morning) to my uncle toby’s fortifications, and eat up two rations and a half of dried grass, tearing up the sods with it, which faced his horn-work and covered way.——trim insists upon being tried by a court-martial—the cow to be shot—slop to be crucifix’d—myself to be tristram’d and at my very baptism made a martyr of;——poor unhappy devils that we all are!——i want swaddling——but there is no time to be lost in exclamations——i have left my father lying across his bed, and my uncle toby in his old fringed chair, sitting beside him, and promised i would go back to them in half an hour; and five-and-thirty minutes are laps’d already.——of all the perplexities a mortal author was ever seen in—this certainly is the greatest, for i have hafen slawkenbergius’s folio, sir, to finish——a dialogue between my father and my uncle toby, upon the solution of prignitz, scroderus, ambrose paræus, panocrates, and grangousier to relate—a tale out of slawkenbergius to translate, and all this in five minutes less than no time at all;——such a head!—would to heaven my enemies only saw the inside of it! c h a p. xxxii there was not any one scene more entertaining in our family—and to do it justice in this point;——and i here put off my cap and lay it upon the table close beside my ink-horn, on purpose to make my declaration to the world concerning this one article the more solemn——that i believe in my soul (unless my love and partiality to my understanding blinds me) the hand of the supreme maker and first designer of all things never made or put a family together (in that period at least of it which i have sat down to write the story of)——where the characters of it were cast or contrasted with so dramatick a felicity as ours was, for this end; or in which the capacities of affording such exquisite scenes, and the powers of shifting them perpetually from morning to night, were lodged and intrusted with so unlimited a confidence, as in the shandy family. not any one of these was more diverting, i say, in this whimsical theatre of ours——than what frequently arose out of this self-same chapter of long noses——especially when my father’s imagination was heated with the enquiry, and nothing would serve him but to heat my uncle toby’s too. my uncle toby would give my father all possible fair play in this attempt; and with infinite patience would sit smoking his pipe for whole hours together, whilst my father was practising upon his head, and trying every accessible avenue to drive prignitz and scroderus’s solutions into it. whether they were above my uncle toby’s reason——or contrary to it——or that his brain was like damp timber, and no spark could possibly take hold——or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into prignitz and scroderus’s doctrines——i say not—let schoolmen—scullions, anatomists, and engineers, fight for it among themselves—— ’twas some misfortune, i make no doubt, in this affair, that my father had every word of it to translate for the benefit of my uncle toby, and render out of slawkenbergius’s latin, of which, as he was no great master, his translation was not always of the purest——and generally least so where ’twas most wanted.—this naturally open’d a door to a second misfortune;——that in the warmer paroxysms of his zeal to open my uncle toby’s eyes——my father’s ideas ran on as much faster than the translation, as the translation outmoved my uncle toby’s——neither the one or the other added much to the perspicuity of my father’s lecture. c h a p. xxxiii the gift of ratiocination and making syllogisms——i mean in man—for in superior classes of being, such as angels and spirits——’tis all done, may it please your worships, as they tell me, by intuition;—and beings inferior, as your worships all know——syllogize by their noses: though there is an island swimming in the sea (though not altogether at its ease) whose inhabitants, if my intelligence deceives me not, are so wonderfully gifted, as to syllogize after the same fashion, and oft-times to make very well out too:——but that’s neither here nor there—— the gift of doing it as it should be, amongst us, or—the great and principal act of ratiocination in man, as logicians tell us, is the finding out the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third (called the medius terminus); just as a man, as locke well observes, by a yard, finds two mens nine-pin-alleys to be of the same length, which could not be brought together, to measure their equality, by juxta-position. had the same great reasoner looked on, as my father illustrated his systems of noses, and observed my uncle toby’s deportment—what great attention he gave to every word—and as oft as he took his pipe from his mouth, with what wonderful seriousness he contemplated the length of it——surveying it transversely as he held it betwixt his finger and his thumb——then fore-right——then this way, and then that, in all its possible directions and fore-shortenings——he would have concluded my uncle toby had got hold of the medius terminus, and was syllogizing and measuring with it the truth of each hypothesis of long noses, in order, as my father laid them before him. this, by-the-bye, was more than my father wanted——his aim in all the pains he was at in these philosophick lectures—was to enable my uncle toby not to discuss——but comprehend—to hold the grains and scruples of learning——not to weigh them.——my uncle toby, as you will read in the next chapter, did neither the one or the other. c h a p. xxxiv ’tis a pity, cried my father one winter’s night, after a three hours painful translation of slawkenbergius——’tis a pity, cried my father, putting my mother’s threadpaper into the book for a mark, as he spoke——that truth, brother toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as not to surrender herself sometimes up upon the closest siege.—— now it happened then, as indeed it had often done before, that my uncle toby’s fancy, during the time of my father’s explanation of prignitz to him——having nothing to stay it there, had taken a short flight to the bowling-green;——his body might as well have taken a turn there too—so that with all the semblance of a deep school-man intent upon the medius terminus——my uncle toby was in fact as ignorant of the whole lecture, and all its pros and cons, as if my father had been translating hafen slawkenbergius from the latin tongue into the cherokee. but the word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch—he open’d his ears——and my father observing that he took his pipe out of his mouth, and shuffled his chair nearer the table, as with a desire to profit—my father with great pleasure began his sentence again——changing only the plan, and dropping the metaphor of the siege of it, to keep clear of some dangers my father apprehended from it. ’tis a pity, said my father, that truth can only be on one side, brother toby——considering what ingenuity these learned men have all shewn in their solutions of noses.——can noses be dissolved? replied my uncle toby. ——my father thrust back his chair——rose up—put on his hat——took four long strides to the door——jerked it open——thrust his head half way out——shut the door again——took no notice of the bad hinge—returned to the table—pluck’d my mother’s thread-paper out of slawkenbergius’s book——went hastily to his bureau—walked slowly back—twisted my mother’s thread-paper about his thumb—unbutton’d his waistcoat—threw my mother’s thread-paper into the fire——bit her sattin pin-cushion in two, fill’d his mouth with bran—confounded it;—but mark!—the oath of confusion was levell’d at my uncle toby’s brain—which was e’en confused enough already——the curse came charged only with the bran—the bran, may it please your honours, was no more than powder to the ball. ’twas well my father’s passions lasted not long; for so long as they did last, they led him a busy life on’t; and it is one of the most unaccountable problems that ever i met with in my observations of human nature, that nothing should prove my father’s mettle so much, or make his passions go off so like gun-powder, as the unexpected strokes his science met with from the quaint simplicity of my uncle toby’s questions.——had ten dozen of hornets stung him behind in so many different places all at one time—he could not have exerted more mechanical functions in fewer seconds——or started half so much, as with one single quære of three words unseasonably popping in full upon him in his hobby-horsical career. ’twas all one to my uncle toby——he smoked his pipe on with unvaried composure——his heart never intended offence to his brother—and as his head could seldom find out where the sting of it lay——he always gave my father the credit of cooling by himself.——he was five minutes and thirty-five seconds about it in the present case. by all that’s good! said my father, swearing, as he came to himself, and taking the oath out of ernulphus’s digest of curses——(though to do my father justice it was a fault (as he told dr. slop in the affair of ernulphus) which he as seldom committed as any man upon earth)——by all that’s good and great! brother toby, said my father, if it was not for the aids of philosophy, which befriend one so much as they do—you would put a man beside all temper.——why, by the solutions of noses, of which i was telling you, i meant, as you might have known, had you favoured me with one grain of attention, the various accounts which learned men of different kinds of knowledge have given the world of the causes of short and long noses.——there is no cause but one, replied my uncle toby——why one man’s nose is longer than another’s, but because that god pleases to have it so.——that is grangousier’s solution, said my father.—’tis he, continued my uncle toby, looking up, and not regarding my father’s interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom,.——’tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical—there is more religion in it than sound science. ’twas no inconsistent part of my uncle toby’s character——that he feared god, and reverenced religion.——so the moment my father finished his remark——my uncle toby fell a whistling lillabullero with more zeal (though more out of tune) than usual.— what is become of my wife’s thread-paper? c h a p. xxxv no matter—as an appendage to seamstressy, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my mother—of none to my father, as a mark in slawkenbergius. slawkenbergius in every page of him was a rich treasure of inexhaustible knowledge to my father—he could not open him amiss; and he would often say in closing the book, that if all the arts and sciences in the world, with the books which treated of them, were lost—should the wisdom and policies of governments, he would say, through disuse, ever happen to be forgot, and all that statesmen had wrote or caused to be written, upon the strong or the weak sides of courts and kingdoms, should they be forgot also—and slawkenbergius only left——there would be enough in him in all conscience, he would say, to set the world a-going again. a treasure therefore was he indeed! an institute of all that was necessary to be known of noses, and every thing else—at matin, noon, and vespers was hafen slawkenbergius his recreation and delight: ’twas for ever in his hands——you would have sworn, sir, it had been a canon’s prayer-book—so worn, so glazed, so contrited and attrited was it with fingers and with thumbs in all its parts, from one end even unto the other. i am not such a bigot to slawkenbergius as my father;——there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best, i don’t say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of hafen slawkenbergius, is his tales——and, considering he was a german, many of them told not without fancy:——these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten decads, each decad containing ten tales——philosophy is not built upon tales; and therefore ’twas certainly wrong in slawkenbergius to send them into the world by that name!——there are a few of them in his eighth, ninth, and tenth decads, which i own seem rather playful and sportive, than speculative—but in general they are to be looked upon by the learned as a detail of so many independent facts, all of them turning round somehow or other upon the main hinges of his subject, and added to his work as so many illustrations upon the doctrines of noses. as we have leisure enough upon our hands——if you give me leave, madam, i’ll tell you the ninth tale of his tenth decad. s l a w k e n b e r g i i f a b e l l a[8] vespera quâdam frigidula, posteriori in parte mensis augusti, peregrinus, mulo fusco colore incidens, manticâ a tergo, paucis indusiis, binis calceis, braccisque sericis coccineis repleta, argentoratum ingressus est. militi eum percontanti, quum portus intraret dixit, se apud nasorum promontorium fuisse, francofurtum proficisci, et argentoratum, transitu ad fines sarmatiæ mensis intervallo, reversurum. miles peregrini in faciem suspexit——di boni, nova forma nasi! at multum mihi profuit, inquit peregrinus, carpum amento extrahens, e quo pependit acinaces: loculo manum inseruit; et magna cum urbanitate, pilei parte anteriore tactâ manu sinistrâ, ut extendit dextram, militi florinum dedit et processit. dolet mihi, ait miles, tympanistam nanum et valgum alloquens, virum adeo urbanum vaginam perdidisse: itinerari haud poterit nudâ acinaci; neque vaginam toto argentorato, habilem inveniet.——nullam unquam habui, respondit peregrinus respiciens——seque comiter inclinans—hoc more gesto, nudam acinacem elevans, mulo lentò progrediente, ut nasum tueri possim. non immerito, benigne peregrine, respondit miles. nihili aestimo, ait ille tympanista, e pergamenâ factitius est. prout christianus sum, inquit miles, nasus ille, ni sexties major fit, meo esset conformis. crepitare audivi ait tympanista. mehercule! sanguinem emisit, respondit miles. miseret me, inquit tympanista, qui non ambo tetigimus! eodem temporis puncto, quo hæc res argumentata fuit inter militem et tympanistam, disceptabatur ibidem tubicine et uxore suâ qui tunc accesserunt, et peregrino prætereunte, restiterunt. quantus nasus! æque longus est, ait tubicina, ac tuba. et ex eodem metallo, ait tubicen, velut sternutamento audias. tantum abest, respondit illa, quod fistulam dulcedine vincit. æneus est, ait tubicen. nequaquam, respondit uxor. rursum affirmo, ait tubicen, quod æneus est. rem penitus explorabo; prius, enim digito tangam, ait uxor, quam dormivero. mulus peregrini gradu lento progressus est, ut unumquodque verbum controversiæ, non tantum inter militem et tympanistam, verum etiam inter tubicinem et uxorum ejus, audiret. nequaquam, ait ille, in muli collum fræna demittens, et manibus ambabus in pectus positis, (mulo lentè progrediente) nequaquam, ait ille respiciens, non necesse est ut res isthæc dilucidata foret. minime gentium! meus nasus nunquam tangetur, dum spiritus hos reget artus—ad quid agendum? air uxor burgomagistri. peregrinus illi non respondit. votum faciebat tunc temporis sancto nicolao; quo facto, sinum dextrum inserens, e quâ negligenter pependit acinaces, lento gradu processit per plateam argentorati latam quæ ad diversorium templo ex adversum ducit. peregrinus mulo descendens stabulo includi, et manticam inferri jussit: quâ apertâ et coccineis sericis femoralibus extractis cum argento laciniato περιζομαυτε, his sese induit, statimque, acinaci in manu, ad forum deambulavit. quod ubi peregrinus esset ingressus, uxorem tubicinis obviam euntem aspicit; illico cursum flectit, metuens ne nasus suus exploraretur, atque ad diversorium regressus est—exuit se vestibus; braccas coccineas sericas manticæ imposuit mulumque educi jussit. francofurtum proficiscor, ait ille, et argentoratum quatuor abhinc hebdomadis revertar. bene curasti hoc jumentam? (ait) muli faciem manu demulcens—me, manticamque meam, plus sexcentis mille passibus portavit. longa via est! respondet hospes, nisi plurimum esset negoti.—enimvero, ait peregrinus, a nasorum promontorio redii, et nasum speciosissimum, egregiosissimumque quem unquam quisquam sortitus est, acquisivi? dum peregrinus hanc miram rationem de seipso reddit, hospes et uxor ejus, oculis intentis, peregrini nasum contemplantur——per sanctos sanctasque omnes, ait hospitis uxor, nasis duodecim maximis in toto argentorato major est!—estne, ait illa mariti in aurem insusurrans, nonne est nasus prægrandis? dolus inest, anime mi, ait hospes—nasus est falsus. verus est, respondit uxor—— ex abiete factus est, ait ille, terebinthinum olet— carbunculus inest, ait uxor. mortuus est nasus, respondit hospes. vivus est ait illa,—et si ipsa vivam tangam. votum feci sancto nicolao, ait peregrinus, nasum meum intactum fore usque ad—quodnam tempus? illico respondit illa. minimo tangetur, inquit ille (manibus in pectus compositis) usque ad illam horam——quam horam? ait illa——nullam, respondit peregrinus, donec pervenio ad—quem locum,—obsecro? ait illa——peregrinus nil respondens mulo conscenso discessit. s l a w k e n b e r g i u s’s t a l e it was one cool refreshing evening, at the close of a very sultry day, in the latter end of the month of august, when a stranger, mounted upon a dark mule, with a small cloak-bag behind him, containing a few shirts, a pair of shoes, and a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, entered the town of strasburg. he told the centinel, who questioned him as he entered the gates, that he had been at the promontory of noses—was going on to frankfort——and should be back again at strasburg that day month, in his way to the borders of crim tartary. the centinel looked up into the stranger’s face——he never saw such a nose in his life! —i have made a very good venture of it, quoth the stranger—so slipping his wrist out of the loop of a black ribbon, to which a short scymetar was hung, he put his hand into his pocket, and with great courtesy touching the fore part of his cap with his left hand, as he extended his right——he put a florin into the centinel’s hand, and passed on. it grieves, me, said the centinel, speaking to a little dwarfish bandylegg’d drummer, that so courteous a soul should have lost his scabbard——he cannot travel without one to his scymetar, and will not be able to get a scabbard to fit it in all strasburg.——i never had one, replied the stranger, looking back to the centinel, and putting his hand up to his cap as he spoke——i carry it, continued he, thus——holding up his naked scymetar, his mule moving on slowly all the time—on purpose to defend my nose. it is well worth it, gentle stranger, replied the centinel. ——’tis not worth a single stiver, said the bandy-legg’d drummer——’tis a nose of parchment. as i am a true catholic—except that it is six times as big—’tis a nose, said the centinel, like my own. —i heard it crackle, said the drummer. by dunder, said the centinel, i saw it bleed. what a pity, cried the bandy-legg’d drummer, we did not both touch it! at the very time that this dispute was maintaining by the centinel and the drummer—was the same point debating betwixt a trumpeter and a trumpeter’s wife, who were just then coming up, and had stopped to see the stranger pass by. benedicity!——what a nose! ’tis as long, said the trumpeter’s wife, as a trumpet. and of the same metal said the trumpeter, as you hear by its sneezing. ’tis as soft as a flute, said she. —’tis brass, said the trumpeter. —’tis a pudding’s end, said his wife. i tell thee again, said the trumpeter, ’tis a brazen nose, i’ll know the bottom of it, said the trumpeter’s wife, for i will touch it with my finger before i sleep. the stranger’s mule moved on at so slow a rate, that he heard every word of the dispute, not only betwixt the centinel and the drummer, but betwixt the trumpeter and trumpeter’s wife. no! said he, dropping his reins upon his mule’s neck, and laying both his hands upon his breast, the one over the other in a saint-like position (his mule going on easily all the time) no! said he, looking up—i am not such a debtor to the world——slandered and disappointed as i have been—as to give it that conviction——no! said he, my nose shall never be touched whilst heaven gives me strength——to do what? said a burgomaster’s wife. the stranger took no notice of the burgomaster’s wife——he was making a vow to saint nicolas; which done, having uncrossed his arms with the same solemnity with which he crossed them, he took up the reins of his bridle with his left-hand, and putting his right hand into his bosom, with the scymetar hanging loosely to the wrist of it, he rode on, as slowly as one foot of the mule could follow another, thro’ the principal streets of strasburg, till chance brought him to the great inn in the market-place over-against the church. the moment the stranger alighted, he ordered his mule to be led into the stable, and his cloak-bag to be brought in; then opening, and taking out of it his crimson-sattin breeches, with a silver-fringed—(appendage to them, which i dare not translate)—he put his breeches, with his fringed cod-piece on, and forth-with, with his short scymetar in his hand, walked out to the grand parade. the stranger had just taken three turns upon the parade, when he perceived the trumpeter’s wife at the opposite side of it—so turning short, in pain lest his nose should be attempted, he instantly went back to his inn—undressed himself, packed up his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in his cloakbag, and called for his mule. i am going forwards, said the stranger, for frankfort——and shall be back at strasburg this day month. i hope, continued the stranger, stroking down the face of his mule with his left hand as he was going to mount it, that you have been kind to this faithful slave of mine—it has carried me and my cloak-bag, continued he, tapping the mule’s back, above six hundred leagues. ——’tis a long journey, sir, replied the master of the inn——unless a man has great business.——tut! tut! said the stranger, i have been at the promontory of noses; and have got me one of the goodliest, thank heaven, that ever fell to a single man’s lot. whilst the stranger was giving this odd account of himself, the master of the inn and his wife kept both their eyes fixed full upon the stranger’s nose——by saint radagunda, said the inn-keeper’s wife to herself, there is more of it than in any dozen of the largest noses put together in all strasburg! is it not, said she, whispering her husband in his ear, is it not a noble nose? ’tis an imposture, my dear, said the master of the inn——’tis a false nose. ’tis a true nose, said his wife. ’tis made of fir-tree, said he, i smell the turpentine.—— there’s a pimple on it, said she. ’tis a dead nose, replied the inn-keeper. ’tis a live nose, and if i am alive myself, said the inn-keeper’s, wife, i will touch it. i have made a vow to saint nicolas this day, said the stranger, that my nose shall not be touched till—here the stranger suspending his voice, looked up.——till when? said she hastily. it never shall be touched, said he, clasping his hands and bringing them close to his breast, till that hour—what hour? cried the inn keeper’s wife.—never!—never! said the stranger, never till i am got—for heaven’s sake, into what place? said she——the stranger rode away without saying a word. the stranger had not got half a league on his way towards frankfort before all the city of strasburg was in an uproar about his nose. the compline bells were just ringing to call the strasburgers to their devotions, and shut up the duties of the day in prayer:—no soul in all strasburg heard ’em—the city was like a swarm of bees——men, women, and children, (the compline bells tinkling all the time) flying here and there—in at one door, out at another——this way and that way—long ways and cross ways—up one street, down another street——in at this alley, out of that——did you see it? did you see it? did you see it? o! did you see it?——who saw it? who did see it? for mercy’s sake, who saw it? alack o’day! i was at vespers!—i was washing, i was starching, i was scouring, i was quilting——god help me! i never saw it——i never touch’d it!——would i had been a centinel, a bandy-legg’d drummer, a trumpeter, a trumpeter’s wife, was the general cry and lamentation in every street and corner of strasburg. whilst all this confusion and disorder triumphed throughout the great city of strasburg, was the courteous stranger going on as gently upon his mule in his way to frankfort, as if he had no concern at all in the affair——talking all the way he rode in broken sentences, sometimes to his mule—sometimes to himself—sometimes to his julia. o julia, my lovely julia!—nay i cannot stop to let thee bite that thistle——that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should have robbed me of enjoyment when i was upon the point of tasting it.—— ——pugh!—’tis nothing but a thistle—never mind it—thou shalt have a better supper at night. ——banish’d from my country——my friends——from thee.—— poor devil, thou’rt sadly tired with thy journey!——come—get on a little faster—there’s nothing in my cloak-bag but two shirts——a crimson-sattin pair of breeches, and a fringed——dear julia! ——but why to frankfort?—is it that there is a hand unfelt, which secretly is conducting me through these meanders and unsuspected tracts? ——stumbling! by saint nicolas! every step—why at this rate we shall be all night in getting in—— ——to happiness——or am i to be the sport of fortune and slander—destined to be driven forth unconvicted——unheard——untouch’d——if so, why did i not stay at strasburg, where justice—but i had sworn! come, thou shalt drink—to st. nicolas—o julia!——what dost thou prick up thy ears at?——’tis nothing but a man, &c. the stranger rode on communing in this manner with his mule and julia—till he arrived at his inn, where, as soon as he arrived, he alighted——saw his mule, as he had promised it, taken good care of——took off his cloak-bag, with his crimson-sattin breeches, &c. in it—called for an omelet to his supper, went to his bed about twelve o’clock, and in five minutes fell fast asleep. it was about the same hour when the tumult in strasburg being abated for that night,—the strasburgers had all got quietly into their beds—but not like the stranger, for the rest either of their minds or bodies; queen mab, like an elf as she was, had taken the stranger’s nose, and without reduction of its bulk, had that night been at the pains of slitting and dividing it into as many noses of different cuts and fashions, as there were heads in strasburg to hold them. the abbess of quedlingberg, who with the four great dignitaries of her chapter, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, and senior canonness, had that week come to strasburg to consult the university upon a case of conscience relating to their placketholes——was ill all the night. the courteous stranger’s nose had got perched upon the top of the pineal gland of her brain, and made such rousing work in the fancies of the four great dignitaries of her chapter, they could not get a wink of sleep the whole night thro’ for it——there was no keeping a limb still amongst them——in short, they got up like so many ghosts. the penitentiaries of the third order of saint francis——the nuns of mount calvary——the præmonstratenses——the clunienses[9]——the carthusians, and all the severer orders of nuns, who lay that night in blankets or hair-cloth, were still in a worse condition than the abbess of quedlingberg—by tumbling and tossing, and tossing and tumbling from one side of their beds to the other the whole night long——the several sisterhoods had scratch’d and maul’d themselves all to death——they got out of their beds almost flay’d alive—every body thought saint antony had visited them for probation with his fire——they had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins. the nuns of saint ursula acted the wisest—they never attempted to go to bed at all. the dean of strasburg, the prebendaries, the capitulars and domiciliars (capitularly assembled in the morning to consider the case of butter’d buns) all wished they had followed the nuns of saint ursula’s example.—— in the hurry and confusion every thing had been in the night before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there were no butter’d buns to be had for breakfast in all strasburg—the whole close of the cathedral was in one eternal commotion——such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the restlessness, had never happened in strasburg, since martin luther, with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down. if the stranger’s nose took this liberty of thrusting himself thus into the dishes[10] of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity!—’tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power to describe; tho’, i acknowledge, (cries slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than i could have expected from him) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in the world which might give my countrymen some idea of it; but at the close of such a folio as this, wrote for their sakes, and in which i have spent the greatest part of my life——tho’ i own to them the simile is in being, yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect i should have either time or inclination to search for it? let it suffice to say, that the riot and disorder it occasioned in the strasburgers fantasies was so general—such an overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of the strasburgers minds—so many strange things, with equal confidence on all sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder towards it—every soul, good and bad—rich and poor—learned and unlearned——doctor and student——mistress and maid——gentle and simple——nun’s flesh and woman’s flesh, in strasburg spent their time in hearing tidings about it—every eye in strasburg languished to see it——every finger——every thumb in strasburg burned to touch it. now what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add, to so vehement a desire—was this, that the centinel, the bandy-legg’d drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter’s wife, the burgomaster’s widow, the master of the inn, and the master of the inn’s wife, how widely soever they all differed every one from another in their testimonies and description of the stranger’s nose—they all agreed together in two points—namely, that he was gone to frankfort, and would not return to strasburg till that day month; and secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the stranger himself was one of the most perfect paragons of beauty—the finest-made man—the most genteel!—the most generous of his purse—the most courteous in his carriage, that had ever entered the gates of strasburg—that as he rode, with scymetar slung loosely to his wrist, thro’ the streets—and walked with his crimson-sattin breeches across the parade—’twas with so sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly withal——as would have put the heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin who had cast her eyes upon him. i call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of quedlingberg, the prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter’s wife: she went through the streets of strasburg with her husband’s trumpet in her hand,——the best apparatus the straitness of the time would allow her, for the illustration of her theory—she staid no longer than three days. the centinel and bandy-legg’d drummer!——nothing on this side of old athens could equal them! they read their lectures under the city-gates to comers and goers, with all the pomp of a chrysippus and a crantor in their porticos. the master of the inn, with his ostler on his left-hand, read his also in the same stile—under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard—his wife, hers more privately in a back room: all flocked to their lectures; not promiscuously—but to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity marshal’d them——in a word, each strasburger came crouding for intelligence—and every strasburger had the intelligence he wanted. ’tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter’s wife had finished the abbess of quedlingberg’s private lecture, and had begun to read in public, which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great parade,——she incommoded the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently the most fashionable part of the city of strasburg for her auditory—but when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray what rival in science can pretend to be heard besides him? whilst the unlearned, thro’ these conduits of intelligence, were all busied in getting down to the bottom of the well, where truth keeps her little court——were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up thro’ the conduits of dialect induction——they concerned themselves not with facts——they reasoned—— not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the faculty—had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of wens and œdematous swellings, they could not keep clear of them for their bloods and souls——the stranger’s nose had nothing to do either with wens or œdematous swellings. it was demonstrated however very satisfactorily, that such a ponderous mass of heterogenous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant was in utera, without destroying the statical balance of the fœtus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months before the time.—— ——the opponents granted the theory——they denied the consequences. and if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first stamina and rudiments of its formation, before it came into the world (bating the case of wens) it could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards. this was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion imaginable—in the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm, that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of the man himself. the respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs——for the stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of food, and turning it into chyle—and the lungs the only engine of sanguification—it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite brought it: or admitting the possibility of a man’s overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lungs—the engine was of a determined size and strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given time——that is, it could produce just as much blood as was sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, if there was as much nose as man——they proved a mortification must necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a support for both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or the man inevitably fall off from his nose. nature accommodates herself to these emergencies, cried the opponents—else what do you say to the case of a whole stomach—a whole pair of lungs, and but half a man, when both his legs have been unfortunately shot off? he dies of a plethora, said they—or must spit blood, and in a fortnight or three weeks go off in a consumption.—— ——it happens otherwise—replied the opponents.—— it ought not, said they. the more curious and intimate inquirers after nature and her doings, though they went hand in hand a good way together, yet they all divided about the nose at last, almost as much as the faculty itself. they amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to its several destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be transgressed but within certain limits—that nature, though she sported——she sported within a certain circle;—and they could not agree about the diameter of it. the logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of the classes of the literati;——they began and ended with the word nose; and had it not been for a petitio principii, which one of the ablest of them ran his head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had been settled at once. a nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood—and not only blood—but blood circulating in it to supply the phænomenon with a succession of drops—(a stream being but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, said he.)——now death, continued the logician, being nothing but the stagnation of the blood—— i deny the definition——death is the separation of the soul from the body, said his antagonist——then we don’t agree about our weapons, said the logician—then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist. the civilians were still more concise: what they offered being more in the nature of a decree——than a dispute. such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not possibly have been suffered in civil society——and if false—to impose upon society with such false signs and tokens, was a still greater violation of its rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it. the only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false. this left room for the controversy to go on. it was maintained by the advocates of the ecclesiastic court, that there was nothing to inhibit a decree, since the stranger ex mero motu had confessed he had been at the promontory of noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c.——to this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the promontory of noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay. the commissary of the bishop of strasburg undertook the advocates, explained this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the promontory of noses was a mere allegorick expression, importing no more than that nature had given him a long nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the underwritten authorities,[11] which had decided the point incontestably, had it not appeared that a dispute about some franchises of dean and chapter-lands had been determined by it nineteen years before. it happened——i must say unluckily for truth, because they were giving her a lift another way in so doing; that the two universities of strasburg——the lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by jacobus surmis, counsellor of the senate,——and the popish, founded by leopold, arch-duke of austria, were, during all this time, employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the affair of the abbess of quedlingberg’s placket-holes required)——in determining the point of martin luther’s damnation. the popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate à priori, that from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of october 1483——when the moon was in the twelfth house, jupiter, mars, and venus in the third, the sun, saturn, and mercury, all got together in the fourth—that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a damn’d man—and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn’d doctrines too. by inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at once with scorpio[12] (in reading this my father would always shake his head) in the ninth house, with the arabians allotted to religion—it appeared that martin luther did not care one stiver about the matter——and that from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of mars—they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming——with the blast of which his soul (being steep’d in guilt) sailed before the wind, in the lake of hell-fire. the little objection of the lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must certainly be the soul of another man, born oct. 22, 83. which was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner—inasmuch as it appeared from the register of islaben in the county of mansfelt, that luther was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of october, but on the 10th of november, the eve of martinmas day, from whence he had the name of martin. [——i must break off my translation for a moment; for if i did not, i know i should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess of quedlingberg——it is to tell the reader; that my father never read this passage of slawkenbergius to my uncle toby, but with triumph——not over my uncle toby, for he never opposed him in it——but over the whole world. —now you see, brother toby, he would say, looking up, “that christian names are not such indifferent things;”——had luther here been called by any other name but martin, he would have been damn’d to all eternity——not that i look upon martin, he would add, as a good name——far from it——’tis something better than a neutral, and but a little——yet little as it is you see it was of some service to him. my father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him——yet so strange is the weakness of man at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in hafen slawkenbergius’s decades full as entertaining as this i am translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the delight——it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together——his names and his noses.——i will be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the alexandrian library, had not fate taken other care of them, and not have met with a book or passage in one, which hit two such nails as these upon the head at one stroke.] the two universities of strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of luther’s navigation. the protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he had not sailed right before the wind, as the popish doctors had pretended; and as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it—they were going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; whether martin had doubled the cape, or had fallen upon a lee-shore; and no doubt, as it was an enquiry of much edification, at least to those who understood this sort of navigation, they had gone on with it in spite of the size of the stranger’s nose, had not the size of the stranger’s nose drawn off the attention of the world from what they were about—it was their business to follow. the abbess of quedlingberg and her four dignitaries was no stop; for the enormity of the stranger’s nose running full as much in their fancies as their case of conscience——the affair of their placket-holes kept cold—in a word, the printers were ordered to distribute their types——all controversies dropp’d. ’twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of it—to a nut-shell—to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would split. ’tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side. ’tis below reason, cried the others. ’tis faith, cried one. ’tis a fiddle-stick, said the other. ’tis possible, cried the one. ’tis impossible, said the other. god’s power is infinite, cried the nosarians, he can do any thing. he can do nothing, replied the anti-nosarians, which implies contradictions. he can make matter think, said the nosarians. as certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow’s ear, replied the anti-nosarians. he cannot make two and two five, replied the popish doctors.——’tis false, said their other opponents.—— infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the reality of the nose.—it extends only to all possible things, replied the lutherans. by god in heaven, cried the popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he thinks fit, as big as the steeple of strasburg. now the steeple of strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the anti-nosarians denied that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by a middle-siz’d man——the popish doctors swore it could—the lutheran doctors said no;—it could not. this at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way, upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of god—that controversy led them naturally into thomas aquinas, and thomas aquinas to the devil. the stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the dispute—it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity——and then they all sailed before the wind. heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge. the controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree——the less they understood of the matter the greater was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied——saw their doctors, the parchmentarians, the brassarians, the turpentarians, on one side—the popish doctors on the other, like pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all embarked out of sight. ——the poor strasburgers left upon the beach! ——what was to be done?—no delay—the uproar increased——every one in disorder——the city gates set open.—— unfortunate strasbergers! was there in the store-house of nature——was there in the lumber-rooms of learning——was there in the great arsenal of chance, one single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of fate to play upon your hearts?——i dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves—’tis to write your panegyrick. shew me a city so macerated with expectation——who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer. on the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to strasburg. seven thousand coaches (slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake in his numeral characters) 7000 coaches——15000 single-horse chairs—20000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, syndicks—beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches—the abbess of quedlingberg, with the prioress, the deaness and sub-chantress, leading the procession in one coach, and the dean of strasburg, with the four great dignitaries of his chapter, on her left-hand—the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback——some on foot——some led——some driven——some down the rhine——some this way——some that——all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road. haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale——i say catastrophe (cries slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the catastrophe and peripeitia of a drama, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it——it has its protasis, epitasis, catastasis, its catastrophe or peripeitia growing one out of the other in it, in the order aristotle first planted them——without which a tale had better never be told at all, says slawkenbergius, but be kept to a man’s self. in all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have i slawkenbergius tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as i have done this of the stranger and his nose. ——from his first parley with the centinel, to his leaving the city of strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-sattin pair of breeches, is the protasis or first entrance——where the characters of the personæ dramatis are just touched in, and the subject slightly begun. the epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened, till it arrives at its state or height called the catastasis, and which usually takes up the 2d and 3d act, is included within that busy period of my tale, betwixt the first night’s uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter’s wife’s lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute—to the doctors finally sailing away, and leaving the strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the catastasis or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act. this commences with the setting out of the strasburgers in the frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness. this, says hafen slawkenbergius, constitutes the catastrophe or peripeitia of my tale—and that is the part of it i am going to relate. we left the stranger behind the curtain asleep——he enters now upon the stage. —what dost thou prick up thy ears at?—’tis nothing but a man upon a horse——was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. it was not proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master’s word for it; and without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass by. the traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to strasburg that night. what a fool am i, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, to think of getting into strasburg this night.—strasburg!——the great strasburg!——strasburg, the capital of all alsatia! strasburg, an imperial city! strasburg, a sovereign state! strasburg, garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops in all the world!—alas! if i was at the gates of strasburg this moment, i could not gain admittance into it for a ducat—nay a ducat and half—’tis too much—better go back to the last inn i have passed——than lie i know not where——or give i know not what. the traveller, as he made these reflections in his mind, turned his horse’s head about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted into his chamber, he arrived at the same inn. ——we have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread——and till eleven o’clock this night had three eggs in it——but a stranger, who arrived an hour ago, has had them dressed into an omelet, and we have nothing.—— alas! said the traveller, harassed as i am, i want nothing but a bed.——i have one as soft as is in alsatia, said the host. ——the stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for ’tis my best bed, but upon the score of his nose.——he has got a defluxion, said the traveller.——not that i know, cried the host.——but ’tis a camp-bed, and jacinta, said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not room in it to turn his nose in.——why so? cried the traveller, starting back.—it is so long a nose, replied the host.——the traveller fixed his eyes upon jacinta, then upon the ground—kneeled upon his right knee—had just got his hand laid upon his breast——trifle not with my anxiety, said he rising up again.——’tis no trifle, said jacinta, ’tis the most glorious nose!——the traveller fell upon his knee again—laid his hand upon his breast—then, said he, looking up to heaven, thou hast conducted me to the end of my pilgrimage—’tis diego. the traveller was the brother of the julia, so often invoked that night by the stranger as he rode from strasburg upon his mule; and was come, on her part, in quest of him. he had accompanied his sister from valadolid across the pyrenean mountains through france, and had many an entangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him through the many meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover’s thorny tracks. ——julia had sunk under it——and had not been able to go a step farther than to lyons, where, with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, which all talk of——but few feel—she sicken’d, but had just strength to write a letter to diego; and having conjured her brother never to see her face till he had found him out, and put the letter into his hands, julia took to her bed. fernandez (for that was her brother’s name)——tho’ the camp-bed was as soft as any one in alsace, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.——as soon as it was day he rose, and hearing diego was risen too, he entered his chamber, and discharged his sister’s commission. the letter was as follows: “seig. diego, “whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited or not——’tis not now to inquire—it is enough i have not had firmness to put them to farther tryal. “how could i know so little of myself, when i sent my duenna to forbid your coming more under my lattice? or how could i know so little of you, diego, as to imagine you would not have staid one day in valadolid to have given ease to my doubts?—was i to be abandoned, diego, because i was deceived? or was it kind to take me at my word, whether my suspicions were just or no, and leave me, as you did, a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow? “in what manner julia has resented this——my brother, when he puts this letter into your hands, will tell you; he will tell you in how few moments she repented of the rash message she had sent you——in what frantic haste she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights together she leaned immoveably upon her elbow, looking through it towards the way which diego was wont to come. “he will tell you, when she heard of your departure—how her spirits deserted her——how her heart sicken’d——how piteously she mourned——how low she hung her head. o diego! how many weary steps has my brother’s pity led me by the hand languishing to trace out yours; how far has desire carried me beyond strength——and how oft have i fainted by the way, and sunk into his arms, with only power to cry out—o my diego! “if the gentleness of your carriage has not belied your heart, you will fly to me, almost as fast as you fled from me—haste as you will——you will arrive but to see me expire.——’tis a bitter draught, diego, but oh! ’tis embittered still more by dying un———” she could proceed no farther. slawkenbergius supposes the word intended was unconvinced, but her strength would not enable her to finish her letter. the heart of the courteous diego over-flowed as he read the letter——he ordered his mule forthwith and fernandez’s horse to be saddled; and as no vent in prose is equal to that of poetry in such conflicts——chance, which as often directs us to remedies as to diseases, having thrown a piece of charcoal into the window——diego availed himself of it, and whilst the hostler was getting ready his mule, he eased his mind against the wall as follows. o d e. harsh and untuneful are the notes of love, unless my julia strikes the key, her hand alone can touch the part, whose dulcet movement charms the heart, and governs all the man with sympathetick sway.          2d. o julia! the lines were very natural——for they were nothing at all to the purpose, says slawkenbergius, and ’tis a pity there were no more of them; but whether it was that seig. diego was slow in composing verses—or the hostler quick in saddling mules——is not averred; certain it was, that diego’s mule and fernandez’s horse were ready at the door of the inn, before diego was ready for his second stanza; so without staying to finish his ode, they both mounted, sallied forth, passed the rhine, traversed alsace, shaped their course towards lyons, and before the strasburgers and the abbess of quedlingberg had set out on their cavalcade, had fernandez, diego, and his julia, crossed the pyrenean mountains, and got safe to valadolid. ’tis needless to inform the geographical reader, that when diego was in spain, it was not possible to meet the courteous stranger in the frankfort road; it is enough to say, that of all restless desires, curiosity being the strongest——the strasburgers felt the full force of it; and that for three days and nights they were tossed to and fro in the frankfort road, with the tempestuous fury of this passion, before they could submit to return home.——when alas! an event was prepared for them, of all other, the most grievous that could befal a free people. as this revolution of the strasburgers affairs is often spoken of, and little understood, i will, in ten words, says slawkenbergius, give the world an explanation of it, and with it put an end to my tale. every body knows of the grand system of universal monarchy, wrote by order of mons. colbert, and put in manuscript into the hands of lewis the fourteenth, in the year 1664. ’tis as well known, that one branch out of many of that system, was the getting possession of strasburg, to favour an entrance at all times into suabia, in order to disturb the quiet of germany——and that in consequence of this plan, strasburg unhappily fell at length into their hands. it is the lot of a few to trace out the true springs of this and such like revolutions—the vulgar look too high for them—statesmen look too low——truth (for once) lies in the middle. what a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one historian—the strasburgers deemed it a diminution of their freedom to receive an imperial garrison——so fell a prey to a french one. the fate, says another, of the strasburgers, may be a warning to all free people to save their money.——they anticipated their revenues——brought themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so weak a people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the french pushed them open. alas! alas! cries slawkenbergius, ’twas not the french,——’twas curiosity pushed them open——the french indeed, who are ever upon the catch, when they saw the strasburgers, men, women and children, all marched out to follow the stranger’s nose——each man followed his own, and marched in. trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever since—but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned; for it is owing to this only, that noses have ever so run in their heads, that the strasburgers could not follow their business. alas! alas! cries slawkenbergius, making an exclamation—it is not the first——and i fear will not be the last fortress that has been either won——or lost by noses. the e n d of slawkenbergius’s tale. [8] as hafen slawkenbergius de nasis is extremely scarce, it may not be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his original; i will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling latin is much more concise than his philosophic—and, i think, has more of latinity in it. [9] hafen slawkenbergius means the benedictine nuns of cluny, founded in the year 940, by odo, abbé de cluny. [10] mr. shandy’s compliments to orators——is very sensible that slawkenbergius has here changed his metaphor——which he is very guilty of:——that as a translator, mr. shandy has all along done what he could to make him stick to it—but that here ’twas impossible. [11] nonnulli ex nostratibus eadem loquendi formulâ utun. quinimo & logistæ & canonistæ——vid. parce barne jas in d. l. provincial. constitut. de conjec. vid. vol. lib. 4. titul. i. n. 7 quâ etiam in re conspir. om de promontorio nas. tichmak. ff. d. tit. 3. fol. 189. passim. vid. glos. de contrahend. empt. &c. necnon j. scrudr. in cap. § refut. per totum. cum his cons. rever. j. tubal, sentent. & prov. cap. 9. ff. 11, 12. obiter. v. & librum, cui tit. de terris & phras. belg. ad finem, cum comment. n. bardy belg. vid. scrip. argentotarens. de antiq. ecc. in episc archiv. fid coll. per von jacobum koinshoven folio argent. 1583. præcip. ad finem. quibus add. rebuff in l. obvenire de signif. nom. ff. fol. & de jure gent. & civil. de protib. aliena feud. per federa, test. joha. luxius in prolegom. quem velim videas, de analy. cap. 1, 2, 3. vid. idea. [12] haec mira, satisque horrenda. planetarum coitio sub scorpio asterismo in nona cœli statione, quam arabes religioni deputabant efficit martinum lutherum sacrilegum hereticum, christianæ religionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione ad martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus anima scelestissima ad infernos navigavit—ab alecto, tisiphone & megara flagellis igneis cruciata perenniter. ——lucas gaurieus in tractatu astrologico de præteritis multorum hominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis. c h a p. xxxvi with all this learning upon noses running perpetually in my father’s fancy——with so many family prejudices—and ten decades of such tales running on for ever along with them——how was it possible with such exquisite——was it a true nose?——that a man with such exquisite feelings as my father had, could bear the shock at all below stairs——or indeed above stairs, in any other posture, but the very posture i have described? ——throw yourself down upon the bed, a dozen times——taking care only to place a looking-glass first in a chair on one side of it, before you do it—but was the stranger’s nose a true nose, or was it a false one? to tell that before-hand, madam, would be to do injury to one of the best tales in the christian-world; and that is the tenth of the tenth decade, which immediately follows this. this tale, cried slawkenbergius, somewhat exultingly, has been reserved by me for the concluding tale of my whole work; knowing right well, that when i shall have told it, and my reader shall have read it thro’—’twould be even high time for both of us to shut up the book; inasmuch, continues slawkenbergius, as i know of no tale which could possibly ever go down after it. ’tis a tale indeed! this sets out with the first interview in the inn at lyons, when fernandez left the courteous stranger and his sister julia alone in her chamber, and is over-written. the i n t r i c a c i e s o f diego and julia. heavens! thou art a strange creature, slawkenbergius! what a whimsical view of the involutions of the heart of woman hast thou opened! how this can ever be translated, and yet if this specimen of slawkenbergius’s tales, and the exquisitiveness of his moral, should please the world—translated shall a couple of volumes be.——else, how this can ever be translated into good english, i have no sort of conception—there seems in some passages to want a sixth sense to do it rightly.——what can he mean by the lambent pupilability of slow, low, dry chat, five notes below the natural tone——which you know, madam, is little more than a whisper? the moment i pronounced the words, i could perceive an attempt towards a vibration in the strings, about the region of the heart.——the brain made no acknowledgment.——there’s often no good understanding betwixt ’em—i felt as if i understood it.——i had no ideas.——the movement could not be without cause.—i’m lost. i can make nothing of it—unless, may it please your worships, the voice, in that case being little more than a whisper, unavoidably forces the eyes to approach not only within six inches of each other—but to look into the pupils—is not that dangerous?——but it can’t be avoided—for to look up to the cieling, in that case the two chins unavoidably meet——and to look down into each other’s lap, the foreheads come to immediate contact, which at once puts an end to the conference——i mean to the sentimental part of it.——what is left, madam, is not worth stooping for. c h a p. xxxvii my father lay stretched across the bed as still as if the hand of death had pushed him down, for a full hour and a half before he began to play upon the floor with the toe of that foot which hung over the bed-side; my uncle toby’s heart was a pound lighter for it.——in a few moments, his left-hand, the knuckles of which had all the time reclined upon the handle of the chamber-pot, came to its feeling—he thrust it a little more within the valance—drew up his hand, when he had done, into his bosom—gave a hem! my good uncle toby, with infinite pleasure, answered it; and full gladly would have ingrafted a sentence of consolation upon the opening it afforded: but having no talents, as i said, that way, and fearing moreover that he might set out with something which might make a bad matter worse, he contented himself with resting his chin placidly upon the cross of his crutch. now whether the compression shortened my uncle toby’s face into a more pleasurable oval—or that the philanthropy of his heart, in seeing his brother beginning to emerge out of the sea of his afflictions, had braced up his muscles——so that the compression upon his chin only doubled the benignity which was there before, is not hard to decide.——my father, in turning his eyes, was struck with such a gleam of sun-shine in his face, as melted down the sullenness of his grief in a moment. he broke silence as follows: c h a p. xxxviii did ever man, brother toby, cried my father, raising himself upon his elbow, and turning himself round to the opposite side of the bed, where my uncle toby was sitting in his old fringed chair, with his chin resting upon his crutch——did ever a poor unfortunate man, brother toby, cried my father, receive so many lashes?——the most i ever saw given, quoth my uncle toby (ringing the bell at the bed’s head for trim) was to a grenadier, i think in mackay’s regiment. ——had my uncle toby shot a bullet through my father’s heart, he could not have fallen down with his nose upon the quilt more suddenly. bless me! said my uncle toby. c h a p. xxxix was it mackay’s regiment, quoth my uncle toby, where the poor grenadier was so unmercifully whipp’d at bruges about the ducats?—o christ! he was innocent! cried trim, with a deep sigh.—and he was whipp’d, may it please your honour, almost to death’s door.—they had better have shot him outright, as he begg’d, and he had gone directly to heaven, for he was as innocent as your honour.——i thank thee, trim, quoth my uncle toby.——i never think of his, continued trim, and my poor brother tom’s misfortunes, for we were all three school-fellows, but i cry like a coward.——tears are no proof of cowardice, trim.—i drop them oft-times myself, cried my uncle toby.——i know your honour does, replied trim, and so am not ashamed of it myself.—but to think, may it please your honour, continued trim, a tear stealing into the corner of his eye as he spoke—to think of two virtuous lads with hearts as warm in their bodies, and as honest as god could make them—the children of honest people, going forth with gallant spirits to seek their fortunes in the world—and fall into such evils!—poor tom! to be tortured upon a rack for nothing—but marrying a jew’s widow who sold sausages—honest dick johnson’s soul to be scourged out of his body, for the ducats another man put into his knapsack!—o!—these are misfortunes, cried trim,—pulling out his handkerchief—these are misfortunes, may it please your honour, worth lying down and crying over. —my father could not help blushing. ’twould be a pity, trim, quoth my uncle toby, thou shouldst ever feel sorrow of thy own—thou feelest it so tenderly for others.—alack-o-day, replied the corporal, brightening up his face——your honour knows i have neither wife or child——i can have no sorrows in this world.——my father could not help smiling.—as few as any man, trim, replied my uncle toby; nor can i see how a fellow of thy light heart can suffer, but from the distress of poverty in thy old age—when thou art passed all services, trim—and hast outlived thy friends.——an’ please your honour, never fear, replied trim, chearily.——but i would have thee never fear, trim, replied my uncle toby, and therefore, continued my uncle toby, throwing down his crutch, and getting up upon his legs as he uttered the word therefore—in recompence, trim, of thy long fidelity to me, and that goodness of thy heart i have had such proofs of—whilst thy master is worth a shilling——thou shalt never ask elsewhere, trim, for a penny. trim attempted to thank my uncle toby—but had not power——tears trickled down his cheeks faster than he could wipe them off—he laid his hands upon his breast——made a bow to the ground, and shut the door. ——i have left trim my bowling-green, cried my uncle toby——my father smiled.——i have left him moreover a pension, continued my uncle toby.——my father looked grave. c h a p. xl is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of pensions and grenadiers? c h a p. xli when my uncle toby first mentioned the grenadier, my father, i said, fell down with his nose flat to the quilt, and as suddenly as if my uncle toby had shot him; but it was not added that every other limb and member of my father instantly relapsed with his nose into the same precise attitude in which he lay first described; so that when corporal trim left the room, and my father found himself disposed to rise off the bed—he had all the little preparatory movements to run over again, before he could do it. attitudes are nothing, madam——’tis the transition from one attitude to another——like the preparation and resolution of the discord into harmony, which is all in all. for which reason my father played the same jig over again with his toe upon the floor——pushed the chamber-pot still a little farther within the valance—gave a hem—raised himself up upon his elbow—and was just beginning to address himself to my uncle toby—when recollecting the unsuccessfulness of his first effort in that attitude——he got upon his legs, and in making the third turn across the room, he stopped short before my uncle toby; and laying the three first fingers of his right-hand in the palm of his left, and stooping a little, he addressed himself to my uncle toby as follows: c h a p. xlii when i reflect, brother toby, upon man; and take a view of that dark side of him which represents his life as open to so many causes of trouble—when i consider, brother toby, how oft we eat the bread of affliction, and that we are born to it, as to the portion of our inheritance——i was born to nothing, quoth my uncle toby, interrupting my father—but my commission. zooks! said my father, did not my uncle leave you a hundred and twenty pounds a year?——what could i have done without it? replied my uncle toby——that’s another concern, said my father testily—but i say toby, when one runs over the catalogue of all the cross-reckonings and sorrowful items with which the heart of man is overcharged, ’tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the impositions laid upon our nature.——’tis by the assistance of almighty god, cried my uncle toby, looking up, and pressing the palms of his hands close together——’tis not from our own strength, brother shandy——a centinel in a wooden centry-box might as well pretend to stand it out against a detachment of fifty men.——we are upheld by the grace and the assistance of the best of beings. ——that is cutting the knot, said my father, instead of untying it,——but give me leave to lead you, brother toby, a little deeper into the mystery. with all my heart, replied my uncle toby. my father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which socrates is so finely painted by raffael in his school of athens; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of socrates is expressed by it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and the thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming——“you grant me this——and this: and this, and this, i don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.” so stood my father, holding fast his fore-finger betwixt his finger and his thumb, and reasoning with my uncle toby as he sat in his old fringed chair, valanced around with party-coloured worsted bobs——o garrick!——what a rich scene of this would thy exquisite powers make! and how gladly would i write such another to avail myself of thy immortality, and secure my own behind it. c h a p. xliii though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of so slight a frame, and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day——was it not, brother toby, that there is a secret spring within us.—which spring, said my uncle toby, i take to be religion.—will that set my child’s nose on? cried my father, letting go his finger, and striking one hand against the other.——it makes every thing straight for us, answered my uncle toby.——figuratively speaking, dear toby, it may, for aught i know, said my father; but the spring i am speaking of, is that great and elastic power within us of counterbalancing evil, which, like a secret spring in a well-ordered machine, though it can’t prevent the shock——at least it imposes upon our sense of it. now, my dear brother, said my father, replacing his fore-finger, as he was coming closer to the point——had my child arrived safe into the world, unmartyr’d in that precious part of him—fanciful and extravagant as i may appear to the world in my opinion of christian names, and of that magic bias which good or bad names irresistibly impress upon our characters and conducts—heaven is witness! that in the warmest transports of my wishes for the prosperity of my child, i never once wished to crown his head with more glory and honour than what george or edward would have spread around it. but alas! continued my father, as the greatest evil has befallen him——i must counteract and undo it with the greatest good. he shall be christened trismegistus, brother. i wish it may answer——replied my uncle toby, rising up. c h a p. xliv what a chapter of chances, said my father, turning himself about upon the first landing, as he and my uncle toby were going down stairs, what a long chapter of chances do the events of this world lay open to us! take pen and ink in hand, brother toby, and calculate it fairly——i know no more of calculation than this balluster, said my uncle toby (striking short of it with his crutch, and hitting my father a desperate blow souse upon his shin-bone)——’twas a hundred to one—cried my uncle toby—i thought, quoth my father, (rubbing his shin) you had known nothing of calculations, brother toby. a mere chance, said my uncle toby.——then it adds one to the chapter——replied my father. the double success of my father’s repartees tickled off the pain of his shin at once—it was well it so fell out—(chance! again)—or the world to this day had never known the subject of my father’s calculation——to guess it—there was no chance——what a lucky chapter of chances has this turned out! for it has saved me the trouble of writing one express, and in truth i have enough already upon my hands without it.—have not i promised the world a chapter of knots? two chapters upon the right and the wrong end of a woman? a chapter upon whiskers? a chapter upon wishes?——a chapter of noses?—no, i have done that—a chapter upon my uncle toby’s modesty? to say nothing of a chapter upon chapters, which i will finish before i sleep—by my great grandfather’s whiskers, i shall never get half of ’em through this year. take pen and ink in hand, and calculate it fairly, brother toby, said my father, and it will turn out a million to one, that of all the parts of the body, the edge of the forceps should have the ill luck just to fall upon and break down that one part, which should break down the fortunes of our house with it. it might have been worse, replied my uncle toby.——i don’t comprehend, said my father.——suppose the hip had presented, replied my uncle toby, as dr. slop foreboded. my father reflected half a minute—looked down——touched the middle of his forehead slightly with his finger—— —true, said he. c h a p. xlv is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught i know, as my father and my uncle toby are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps:——let that be as it will, sir, i can no more help it than my destiny:—a sudden impulse comes across me——drop the curtain, shandy——i drop it—strike a line here across the paper, tristram—i strike it—and hey for a new chapter. the deuce of any other rule have i to govern myself by in this affair—and if i had one—as i do all things out of all rule—i would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when i had done—am i warm? i am, and the cause demands it——a pretty story! is a man to follow rules——or rules to follow him? now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which i promised to write before i went to sleep, i thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely before i laid down, by telling the world all i knew about the matter at once: is not this ten times better than to set out dogmatically with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a roasted horse——that chapters relieve the mind—that they assist—or impose upon the imagination—and that in a work of this dramatic cast they are as necessary as the shifting of scenes——with fifty other cold conceits, enough to extinguish the fire which roasted him?—o! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of diana’s temple—you must read longinus—read away—if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over—never fear—read him again—avicenna and licetus read aristotle’s metaphysicks forty times through a-piece, and never understood a single word.—but mark the consequence—avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing—for he wrote books de omni scribili; and for licetus (fortunio) though all the world knows he was born a fœtus,[13] of no more than five inches and a half in length, yet he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a book with a title as long as himself——the learned know i mean his gonopsychanthropologia, upon the origin of the human soul. so much for my chapter upon chapters, which i hold to be the best chapter in my whole work; and take my word, whoever reads it, is full as well employed, as in picking straws. [13] ce fœtus n’étoit pas plus grand que la paume de la main; mais son pere l’ayant éxaminé en qualité de médecin, & ayant trouvé que c’etoit quelque chose de plus qu’un embryon, le fit transporter tout vivant à rapallo, ou il le fit voir à jerôme bardi & à d’autres médecins du lieu. on trouva qu’il ne lui manquoit rien d’essentiel à la vie; & son pere pour faire voir un essai de son experience, entreprit d’achever l’ouvrage de la nature, & de travailler à la formation de l’enfant avec le même artifice que celui dont on se sert pour faire écclorre les poulets en egypte. il instruisit une nourisse de tout ce qu’elle avoit à faire, & ayant fait mettre son fils dans un pour proprement accommodé, il reussit à l’elever & a lui faire prendre ses accroissemens necessaires, par l’uniformité d’une chaleur étrangere mesurée éxactement sur les dégrés d’un thermométre, ou d’un autre instrument équivalent. (vide mich. giustinian, ne gli scritt. liguri à cart. 223. 488.) on auroit toujours été très satisfait de l’industrie d’un pere si experimenté dans l’art de la generation, quand il n’auroit pû prolonger la vie à son fils que pour puelques mois, ou pour peu d’années. mais quand on se represente que l’enfant a vecu près de quatre-vingts ans, & qu’il a composé quatre-vingts ouvrages differents tous fruits d’une longue lecture—il faut convenir que tout ce qui est incroyable n’est pas toujours faux, & que la vraisemblance n’est pas toujours du côté la verité. il n’avoit que dix neuf ans lorsqu’il composa gonopsychanthropologia de origine animæ humanæ. (les enfans celebres, revûs & corrigés par m. de la monnoye de l’academie françoise. c h a p. xlvi we shall bring all things to rights, said my father, setting his foot upon the first step from the landing.—this trismegistus, continued my father, drawing his leg back and turning to my uncle toby——was the greatest (toby) of all earthly beings—he was the greatest king——the greatest lawgiver——the greatest philosopher——and the greatest priest——and engineer—said my uncle toby. ——in course, said my father. c h a p. xlvii —and how does your mistress? cried my father, taking the same step over again from the landing, and calling to susannah, whom he saw passing by the foot of the stairs with a huge pin-cushion in her hand—how does your mistress? as well, said susannah, tripping by, but without looking up, as can be expected.—what a fool am i! said my father, drawing his leg back again—let things be as they will, brother toby, ’tis ever the precise answer——and how is the child, pray?——no answer. and where is dr. slop? added my father, raising his voice aloud, and looking over the ballusters—susannah was out of hearing. of all the riddles of a married life, said my father, crossing the landing in order to set his back against the wall, whilst he propounded it to my uncle toby——of all the puzzling riddles, said he, in a marriage state,——of which you may trust me, brother toby, there are more asses loads than all job’s stock of asses could have carried——there is not one that has more intricacies in it than this—that from the very moment the mistress of the house is brought to bed, every female in it, from my lady’s gentlewoman down to the cinder-wench, becomes an inch taller for it; and give themselves more airs upon that single inch, than all their other inches put together. i think rather, replied my uncle toby, that ’tis we who sink an inch lower.—if i meet but a woman with child—i do it.—’tis a heavy tax upon that half of our fellow-creatures, brother shandy, said my uncle toby—’tis a piteous burden upon ’em, continued he, shaking his head—yes, yes, ’tis a painful thing—said my father, shaking his head too——but certainly since shaking of heads came into fashion, never did two heads shake together, in concert, from two such different springs. god bless / deuce take ’em all—said my uncle toby and my father, each to himself. c h a p. xvliii holla!——you, chairman!——here’s sixpence——do step into that bookseller’s shop, and call me a day-tall critick. i am very willing to give any one of ’em a crown to help me with his tackling, to get my father and my uncle toby off the stairs, and to put them to bed. —’tis even high time; for except a short nap, which they both got whilst trim was boring the jack-boots—and which, by-the-bye, did my father no sort of good, upon the score of the bad hinge—they have not else shut their eyes, since nine hours before the time that doctor slop was led into the back parlour in that dirty pickle by obadiah. was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and to take up—truce. i will not finish that sentence till i have made an observation upon the strange state of affairs between the reader and myself, just as things stand at present—an observation never applicable before to any one biographical writer since the creation of the world, but to myself—and i believe, will never hold good to any other, until its final destruction—and therefore, for the very novelty of it alone, it must be worth your worships attending to. i am this month one whole year older than i was this time twelve-month; and having got, as you perceive, almost into the middle of my third volume[14]—and no farther than to my first day’s life—’tis demonstrative that i have three hundred and sixty-four days more life to write just now, than when i first set out; so that instead of advancing, as a common writer, in my work with what i have been doing at it—on the contrary, i am just thrown so many volumes back—was every day of my life to be as busy a day as this—and why not?——and the transactions and opinions of it to take up as much description—and for what reason should they be cut short? as at this rate i should just live 364 times faster than i should write—it must follow, an’ please your worships, that the more i write, the more i shall have to write—and consequently, the more your worships read, the more your worships will have to read. will this be good for your worships eyes? it will do well for mine; and, was it not that my opinions will be the death of me, i perceive i shall lead a fine life of it out of this self-same life of mine; or, in other words, shall lead a couple of fine lives together. as for the proposal of twelve volumes a year, or a volume a month, it no way alters my prospect—write as i will, and rush as i may into the middle of things, as horace advises—i shall never overtake myself whipp’d and driven to the last pinch; at the worst i shall have one day the start of my pen—and one day is enough for two volumes——and two volumes will be enough for one year.— heaven prosper the manufacturers of paper under this propitious reign, which is now opened to us——as i trust its providence will prosper every thing else in it that is taken in hand. as for the propagation of geese—i give myself no concern—nature is all-bountiful—i shall never want tools to work with. —so then, friend! you have got my father and my uncle toby off the stairs, and seen them to bed?——and how did you manage it?——you dropp’d a curtain at the stair-foot—i thought you had no other way for it——here’s a crown for your trouble. [14] according to the preceding editions. c h a p. xlix —then reach me my breeches off the chair, said my father to susannah.—there is not a moment’s time to dress you, sir, cried susannah—the child is as black in the face as my——as your what? said my father, for like all orators, he was a dear searcher into comparisons.—bless, me, sir, said susannah, the child’s in a fit.—and where’s mr. yorick?—never where he should be, said susannah, but his curate’s in the dressing-room, with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name—and my mistress bid me run as fast as i could to know, as captain shandy is the godfather, whether it should not be called after him. were one sure, said my father to himself, scratching his eye-brow, that the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother toby as not—and it would be a pity, in such a case, to throw away so great a name as trismegistus upon him——but he may recover. no, no,——said my father to susannah, i’ll get up——there is no time, cried susannah, the child’s as black as my shoe. trismegistus, said my father——but stay—thou art a leaky vessel, susannah, added my father; canst thou carry trismegistus in thy head, the length of the gallery without scattering?——can i? cried susannah, shutting the door in a huff.——if she can, i’ll be shot, said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark, and groping for his breeches. susannah ran with all speed along the gallery. my father made all possible speed to find his breeches. susannah got the start, and kept it—’tis tris—something, cried susannah—there is no christian-name in the world, said the curate, beginning with tris—but tristram. then ’tis tristram-gistus, quoth susannah. ——there is no gistus to it, noodle!—’tis my own name, replied the curate, dipping his hand, as he spoke, into the bason—tristram! said he, &c. &c. &c. &c.—so tristram was i called, and tristram shall i be to the day of my death. my father followed susannah, with his night-gown across his arm, with nothing more than his breeches on, fastened through haste with but a single button, and that button through haste thrust only half into the button-hole. ——she has not forgot the name, cried my father, half opening the door?——no, no, said the curate, with a tone of intelligence.——and the child is better, cried susannah.——and how does your mistress? as well, said susannah, as can be expected.—pish! said my father, the button of his breeches slipping out of the button-hole—so that whether the interjection was levelled at susannah, or the button-hole—whether pish was an interjection of contempt or an interjection of modesty, is a doubt, and must be a doubt till i shall have time to write the three following favourite chapters, that is, my chapter of chamber-maids, my chapter of pishes, and my chapter of button-holes. all the light i am able to give the reader at present is this, that the moment my father cried pish! he whisk’d himself about—and with his breeches held up by one hand, and his night-gown thrown across the arm of the other, he turned along the gallery to bed, something slower than he came. c h a p. l i wish i could write a chapter upon sleep. a fitter occasion could never have presented itself, than what this moment offers, when all the curtains of the family are drawn—the candles put out—and no creature’s eyes are open but a single one, for the other has been shut these twenty years, of my mother’s nurse. it is a fine subject. and yet, as fine as it is, i would undertake to write a dozen chapters upon button-holes, both quicker and with more fame, than a single chapter upon this. button-holes! there is something lively in the very idea of ’em——and trust me, when i get amongst ’em——you gentry with great beards——look as grave as you will——i’ll make merry work with my button-holes—i shall have ’em all to myself—’tis a maiden subject—i shall run foul of no man’s wisdom or fine sayings in it. but for sleep—i know i shall make nothing of it before i begin—i am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place—and in the next, i cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world—’tis the refuge of the unfortunate—the enfranchisement of the prisoner—the downy lap of the hopeless, the weary, and the broken-hearted; nor could i set out with a lye in my mouth, by affirming, that of all the soft and delicious functions of our nature, by which the great author of it, in his bounty, has been pleased to recompence the sufferings wherewith his justice and his good pleasure has wearied us——that this is the chiefest (i know pleasures worth ten of it); or what a happiness it is to man, when the anxieties and passions of the day are over, and he lies down upon his back, that his soul shall be so seated within him, that whichever way she turns her eyes, the heavens shall look calm and sweet above her—no desire—or fear—or doubt that troubles the air, nor any difficulty past, present, or to come, that the imagination may not pass over without offence, in that sweet secession. “god’s blessing,” said sancho pança, “be upon the man who first invented this self-same thing called sleep—it covers a man all over like a cloak.” now there is more to me in this, and it speaks warmer to my heart and affections, than all the dissertations squeez’d out of the heads of the learned together upon the subject. —not that i altogether disapprove of what montaigne advances upon it—’tis admirable in its way—(i quote by memory.) the world enjoys other pleasures, says he, as they do that of sleep, without tasting or feeling it as it slips and passes by.—we should study and ruminate upon it, in order to render proper thanks to him who grants it to us.—for this end i cause myself to be disturbed in my sleep, that i may the better and more sensibly relish it.——and yet i see few, says he again, who live with less sleep, when need requires; my body is capable of a firm, but not of a violent and sudden agitation—i evade of late all violent exercises——i am never weary with walking——but from my youth, i never looked to ride upon pavements. i love to lie hard and alone, and even without my wife——this last word may stagger the faith of the world——but remember, “la vraisemblance’ (as bayle says in the affair of liceti) ’est pas toujours du côté de la verité.” and so much for sleep. c h a p. li if my wife will but venture him—brother toby, trismegistus shall be dress’d and brought down to us, whilst you and i are getting our breakfasts together.—— ——go, tell susannah, obadiah, to step here. she is run up stairs, answered obadiah, this very instant, sobbing and crying, and wringing her hands as if her heart would break. we shall have a rare month of it, said my father, turning his head from obadiah, and looking wistfully in my uncle toby’s face for some time—we shall have a devilish month of it, brother toby, said my father, setting his arms a’kimbo, and shaking his head; fire, water, women, wind—brother toby!—’tis some misfortune, quoth my uncle toby.——that it is, cried my father—to have so many jarring elements breaking loose, and riding triumph in every corner of a gentleman’s house—little boots it to the peace of a family, brother toby, that you and i possess ourselves, and sit here silent and unmoved——whilst such a storm is whistling over our heads.—— and what’s the matter, susannah? they have called the child tristram——and my mistress is just got out of an hysterick fit about it——no!——’tis not my fault, said susannah—i told him it was tristram-gistus. ——make tea for yourself, brother toby, said my father, taking down his hat——but how different from the sallies and agitations of voice and members which a common reader would imagine! —for he spake in the sweetest modulation—and took down his hat with the genteelest movement of limbs, that ever affliction harmonized and attuned together. ——go to the bowling-green for corporal trim, said my uncle toby, speaking to obadiah, as soon as my father left the room. c h a p. lii when the misfortune of my nose fell so heavily upon my father’s head;—the reader remembers that he walked instantly up stairs, and cast himself down upon his bed; and from hence, unless he has a great insight into human nature, he will be apt to expect a rotation of the same ascending and descending movements from him, upon this misfortune of my name;—no. the different weight, dear sir——nay even the different package of two vexations of the same weight——makes a very wide difference in our manner of bearing and getting through with them.——it is not half an hour ago, when (in the great hurry and precipitation of a poor devil’s writing for daily bread) i threw a fair sheet, which i had just finished, and carefully wrote out, slap into the fire, instead of the foul one. instantly i snatch’d off my wig, and threw it perpendicularly, with all imaginable violence, up to the top of the room—indeed i caught it as it fell——but there was an end of the matter; nor do i think any think else in nature would have given such immediate ease: she, dear goddess, by an instantaneous impulse, in all provoking cases, determines us to a sally of this or that member—or else she thrusts us into this or that place, or posture of body, we know not why——but mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries——the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature’s works: so that this, like a thousand other things, falls out for us in a way, which tho’ we cannot reason upon it—yet we find the good of it, may it please your reverences and your worships——and that’s enough for us. now, my father could not lie down with this affliction for his life——nor could he carry it up stairs like the other—he walked composedly out with it to the fish-pond. had my father leaned his head upon his hand, and reasoned an hour which way to have gone——reason, with all her force, could not have directed him to any think like it: there is something, sir, in fish-ponds——but what it is, i leave to system-builders and fish-pond-diggers betwixt ’em to find out—but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that i have often wondered that neither pythagoras, nor plato, nor solon, nor lycurgus, nor mahomet, nor any one of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about them. c h a p. liii your honour, said trim, shutting the parlour-door before he began to speak, has heard, i imagine, of this unlucky accident——o yes, trim, said my uncle toby, and it gives me great concern.—i am heartily concerned too, but i hope your honour, replied trim, will do me the justice to believe, that it was not in the least owing to me.——to thee—trim?—cried my uncle toby, looking kindly in his face——’twas susannah’s and the curate’s folly betwixt them.——what business could they have together, an’ please your honour, in the garden?——in the gallery thou meanest, replied my uncle toby. trim found he was upon a wrong scent, and stopped short with a low bow——two misfortunes, quoth the corporal to himself, are twice as many at least as are needful to be talked over at one time;——the mischief the cow has done in breaking into the fortifications, may be told his honour hereafter.——trim’s casuistry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle toby, so he went on with what he had to say to trim as follows: ——for my own part, trim, though i can see little or no difference betwixt my nephew’s being called tristram or trismegistus—yet as the thing sits so near my brother’s heart, trim——i would freely have given a hundred pounds rather than it should have happened.——a hundred pounds, an’ please your honour! replied trim,—i would not give a cherry-stone to boot.——nor would i, trim, upon my own account, quoth my uncle toby——but my brother, whom there is no arguing with in this case—maintains that a great deal more depends, trim, upon christian-names, than what ignorant people imagine——for he says there never was a great or heroic action performed since the world began by one called tristram—nay, he will have it, trim, that a man can neither be learned, or wise, or brave.——’tis all fancy, an’ please your honour—i fought just as well, replied the corporal, when the regiment called me trim, as when they called me james butler.——and for my own part, said my uncle toby, though i should blush to boast of myself, trim——yet had my name been alexander, i could have done no more at namur than my duty.—bless your honour! cried trim, advancing three steps as he spoke, does a man think of his christian-name when he goes upon the attack?——or when he stands in the trench, trim? cried my uncle toby, looking firm.——or when he enters a breach? said trim, pushing in between two chairs.——or forces the lines? cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a pike.——or facing a platoon? cried trim, presenting his stick like a firelock.——or when he marches up the glacis? cried my uncle toby, looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool.—— c h a p. liv my father was returned from his walk to the fish-pond——and opened the parlour-door in the very height of the attack, just as my uncle toby was marching up the glacis——trim recovered his arms——never was my uncle toby caught in riding at such a desperate rate in his life! alas! my uncle toby! had not a weightier matter called forth all the ready eloquence of my father—how hadst thou then and thy poor hobby-horse too been insulted! my father hung up his hat with the same air he took it down; and after giving a slight look at the disorder of the room, he took hold of one of the chairs which had formed the corporal’s breach, and placing it over-against my uncle toby, he sat down in it, and as soon as the tea-things were taken away, and the door shut, he broke out in a lamentation as follows: my father's lamentation it is in vain longer, said my father, addressing himself as much to ernulphus’s curse, which was laid upon the corner of the chimney-piece——as to my uncle toby who sat under it——it is in vain longer, said my father, in the most querulous monotony imaginable, to struggle as i have done against this most uncomfortable of human persuasions——i see it plainly, that either for my own sins, brother toby, or the sins and follies of the shandy family, heaven has thought fit to draw forth the heaviest of its artillery against me; and that the prosperity of my child is the point upon which the whole force of it is directed to play.——such a thing would batter the whole universe about our ears, brother shandy, said my uncle toby—if it was so—unhappy tristram! child of wrath! child of decrepitude! interruption! mistake! and discontent! what one misfortune or disaster in the book of embryotic evils, that could unmechanize thy frame, or entangle thy filaments! which has not fallen upon thy head, or ever thou camest into the world——what evils in thy passage into it!——what evils since!——produced into being, in the decline of thy father’s days——when the powers of his imagination and of his body were waxing feeble——when radical heat and radical moisture, the elements which should have temper’d thine, were drying up; and nothing left to found thy stamina in, but negations—’tis pitiful——brother toby, at the best, and called out for all the little helps that care and attention on both sides could give it. but how were we defeated! you know the event, brother toby——’tis too melancholy a one to be repeated now——when the few animal spirits i was worth in the world, and with which memory, fancy, and quick parts should have been convey’d——were all dispersed, confused, confounded, scattered, and sent to the devil.—— here then was the time to have put a stop to this persecution against him;——and tried an experiment at least——whether calmness and serenity of mind in your sister, with a due attention, brother toby, to her evacuations and repletions——and the rest of her non-naturals, might not, in a course of nine months gestation, have set all things to rights.——my child was bereft of these!——what a teazing life did she lead herself, and consequently her fœtus too, with that nonsensical anxiety of hers about lying-in in town? i thought my sister submitted with the greatest patience, replied my uncle toby——i never heard her utter one fretful word about it.——she fumed inwardly, cried my father; and that, let me tell you, brother, was ten times worse for the child—and then! what battles did she fight with me, and what perpetual storms about the midwife.——there she gave vent, said my uncle toby.——vent! cried my father, looking up. but what was all this, my dear toby, to the injuries done us by my child’s coming head foremost into the world, when all i wished, in this general wreck of his frame, was to have saved this little casket unbroke, unrifled.—— with all my precautions, how was my system turned topside-turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds avoirdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex—that at this hour ’tis ninety per cent. insurance, that the fine net-work of the intellectual web be not rent and torn to a thousand tatters. ——still we could have done.——fool, coxcomb, puppy——give him but a nose——cripple, dwarf, driveller, goosecap——shape him as you will) the door of fortune stands open—o licetus! licetus! had i been blest with a fœtus five inches long and a half, like thee—fate might have done her worst. still, brother toby, there was one cast of the dye left for our child after all—o tristram! tristram! tristram! we will send for mr. yorick, said my uncle toby. ——you may send for whom you will, replied my father. c h a p. lv what a rate have i gone on at, curvetting and striking it away, two up and two down for three volumes[15] together, without looking once behind, or even on one side of me, to see whom i trod upon!—i’ll tread upon no one——quoth i to myself when i mounted——i’ll take a good rattling gallop; but i’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the road.——so off i set——up one lane——down another, through this turnpike——over that, as if the arch-jockey of jockeys had got behind me. now ride at this rate with what good intention and resolution you may——’tis a million to one you’ll do some one a mischief, if not yourself——he’s flung—he’s off—he’s lost his hat—he’s down——he’ll break his neck——see!——if he has not galloped full among the scaffolding of the undertaking criticks!——he’ll knock his brains out against some of their posts—he’s bounced out!—look—he’s now riding like a mad-cap full tilt through a whole crowd of painters, fiddlers, poets, biographers, physicians, lawyers, logicians, players, school-men, churchmen, statesmen, soldiers, casuists, connoisseurs, prelates, popes, and engineers.—don’t fear, said i—i’ll not hurt the poorest jack-ass upon the king’s highway.—but your horse throws dirt; see you’ve splash’d a bishop——i hope in god, ’twas only ernulphus, said i.——but you have squirted full in the faces of mess. le moyne, de romigny, and de marcilly, doctors of the sorbonne.——that was last year, replied i.—but you have trod this moment upon a king.——kings have bad times on’t, said i, to be trod upon by such people as me. you have done it, replied my accuser. i deny it, quoth i, and so have got off, and here am i standing with my bridle in one hand, and with my cap in the other, to tell my story.——and what in it? you shall hear in the next chapter. [15] according to the preceding editions. c h a p. lvi as francis the first of france was one winterly night warming himself over the embers of a wood fire, and talking with his first minister of sundry things for the good of the state[16]—it would not be amiss, said the king, stirring up the embers with his cane, if this good understanding betwixt ourselves and switzerland was a little strengthened.—there is no end, sire, replied the minister, in giving money to these people—they would swallow up the treasury of france.—poo! poo! answered the king—there are more ways, mons. le premier, of bribing states, besides that of giving money—i’ll pay switzerland the honour of standing godfather for my next child.——your majesty, said the minister, in so doing, would have all the grammarians in europe upon your back;——switzerland, as a republic, being a female, can in no construction be godfather.—she may be godmother, replied francis hastily—so announce my intentions by a courier to-morrow morning. i am astonished, said francis the first, (that day fortnight) speaking to his minister as he entered the closet, that we have had no answer from switzerland.——sire, i wait upon you this moment, said mons. le premier, to lay before you my dispatches upon that business.—they take it kindly, said the king.—they do, sire, replied the minister, and have the highest sense of the honour your majesty has done them——but the republick, as godmother, claims her right, in this case, of naming the child. in all reason, quoth the king—she will christen him francis, or henry, or lewis, or some name that she knows will be agreeable to us. your majesty is deceived, replied the minister——i have this hour received a dispatch from our resident, with the determination of the republic on that point also.——and what name has the republick fixed upon for the dauphin?——shadrach, mesech, abed-nego, replied the minister.—by saint peter’s girdle, i will have nothing to do with the swiss, cried francis the first, pulling up his breeches and walking hastily across the floor. your majesty, replied the minister calmly, cannot bring yourself off. we’ll pay them in money——said the king. sire, there are not sixty thousand crowns in the treasury, answered the minister.——i’ll pawn the best jewel in my crown, quoth francis the first. your honour stands pawn’d already in this matter, answered monsieur le premier. then, mons. le premier, said the king, by——we’ll go to war with ’em. [16] vide menagiana, vol. i. c h a p. lvii albeit, gentle reader, i have lusted earnestly, and endeavoured carefully (according to the measure of such a slender skill as god has vouchsafed me, and as convenient leisure from other occasions of needful profit and healthful pastime have permitted) that these little books which i here put into thy hands, might stand instead of many bigger books—yet have i carried myself towards thee in such fanciful guise of careless disport, that right sore am i ashamed now to intreat thy lenity seriously——in beseeching thee to believe it of me, that in the story of my father and his christian-names—i have no thoughts of treading upon francis the first——nor in the affair of the nose—upon francis the ninth—nor in the character of my uncle toby——of characterizing the militiating spirits of my country—the wound upon his groin, is a wound to every comparison of that kind—nor by trim—that i meant the duke of ormond—or that my book is wrote against predestination, or free-will, or taxes—if ’tis wrote against any thing,——’tis wrote, an’ please your worships, against the spleen! in order, by a more frequent and a more convulsive elevation and depression of the diaphragm, and the succussations of the intercostal and abdominal muscles in laughter, to drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall-bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his majesty’s subjects, with all the inimicitious passions which belong to them, down into their duodenums. c h a p. lviii —but can the thing be undone, yorick? said my father—for in my opinion, continued he, it cannot. i am a vile canonist, replied yorick—but of all evils, holding suspence to be the most tormenting, we shall at least know the worst of this matter. i hate these great dinners——said my father—the size of the dinner is not the point, answered yorick——we want, mr. shandy, to dive into the bottom of this doubt, whether the name can be changed or not—and as the beards of so many commissaries, officials, advocates, proctors, registers, and of the most eminent of our school-divines, and others, are all to meet in the middle of one table, and didius has so pressingly invited you—who in your distress would miss such an occasion? all that is requisite, continued yorick, is to apprize didius, and let him manage a conversation after dinner so as to introduce the subject.—then my brother toby, cried my father, clapping his two hands together, shall go with us. ——let my old tye-wig, quoth my uncle toby, and my laced regimentals, be hung to the fire all night, trim. c h a p. lx —no doubt, sir,—there is a whole chapter wanting here—and a chasm of ten pages made in the book by it—but the book-binder is neither a fool, or a knave, or a puppy—nor is the book a jot more imperfect (at least upon that score)——but, on the contrary, the book is more perfect and complete by wanting the chapter, than having it, as i shall demonstrate to your reverences in this manner.—i question first, by-the-bye, whether the same experiment might not be made as successfully upon sundry other chapters——but there is no end, an’ please your reverences, in trying experiments upon chapters——we have had enough of it——so there’s an end of that matter. but before i begin my demonstration, let me only tell you, that the chapter which i have torn out, and which otherwise you would all have been reading just now, instead of this——was the description of my father’s, my uncle toby’s, trim’s, and obadiah’s setting out and journeying to the visitation at **** we’ll go in the coach, said my father—prithee, have the arms been altered, obadiah?—it would have made my story much better to have begun with telling you, that at the time my mother’s arms were added to the shandy’s, when the coach was re-painted upon my father’s marriage, it had so fallen out that the coach-painter, whether by performing all his works with the left hand, like turpilius the roman, or hans holbein of basil——or whether ’twas more from the blunder of his head than hand——or whether, lastly, it was from the sinister turn which every thing relating to our family was apt to take——it so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the bend-dexter, which since harry the eighth’s reign was honestly our due——a bend-sinister, by some of these fatalities, had been drawn quite across the field of the shandy arms. ’tis scarce credible that the mind of so wise a man as my father was, could be so much incommoded with so small a matter. the word coach—let it be whose it would—or coach-man, or coach-horse, or coach-hire, could never be named in the family, but he constantly complained of carrying this vile mark of illegitimacy upon the door of his own; he never once was able to step into the coach, or out of it, without turning round to take a view of the arms, and making a vow at the same time, that it was the last time he would ever set his foot in it again, till the bend-sinister was taken out—but like the affair of the hinge, it was one of the many things which the destinies had set down in their books ever to be grumbled at (and in wiser families than ours)—but never to be mended. —has the bend-sinister been brush’d out, i say? said my father.——there has been nothing brush’d out, sir, answered obadiah, but the lining. we’ll go o’horseback, said my father, turning to yorick—of all things in the world, except politicks, the clergy know the least of heraldry, said yorick.—no matter for that, cried my father——i should be sorry to appear with a blot in my escutcheon before them.—never mind the bend-sinister, said my uncle toby, putting on his tye-wig.——no, indeed, said my father—you may go with my aunt dinah to a visitation with a bend-sinister, if you think fit—my poor uncle toby blush’d. my father was vexed at himself.——no——my dear brother toby, said my father, changing his tone——but the damp of the coach-lining about my loins, may give me the sciatica again, as it did december, january, and february last winter—so if you please you shall ride my wife’s pad——and as you are to preach, yorick, you had better make the best of your way before——and leave me to take care of my brother toby, and to follow at our own rates. now the chapter i was obliged to tear out, was the description of this cavalcade, in which corporal trim and obadiah, upon two coach-horses a-breast, led the way as slow as a patrole——whilst my uncle toby, in his laced regimentals and tye-wig, kept his rank with my father, in deep roads and dissertations alternately upon the advantage of learning and arms, as each could get the start. —but the painting of this journey, upon reviewing it, appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else i have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating every other scene; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. for my own part, i am but just set up in the business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, ’tis no matter how high or how low you take it. —this is the reason, may it please your reverences, that some of the lowest and flattest compositions pass off very well——(as yorick told my uncle toby one night) by siege.——my uncle toby looked brisk at the sound of the word siege, but could make neither head or tail of it. i’m to preach at court next sunday, said homenas——run over my notes——so i humm’d over doctor homenas’s notes—the modulation’s very well—’twill do, homenas, if it holds on at this rate——so on i humm’d——and a tolerable tune i thought it was; and to this hour, may it please your reverences, had never found out how low, how flat, how spiritless and jejune it was, but that all of a sudden, up started an air in the middle of it, so fine, so rich, so heavenly,—it carried my soul up with it into the other world; now had i (as montaigne complained in a parallel accident)—had i found the declivity easy, or the ascent accessible——certes i had been outwitted.——your notes, homenas, i should have said, are good notes;——but it was so perpendicular a precipice——so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the first note i humm’d i found myself flying into the other world, and from thence discovered the vale from whence i came, so deep, so low, and dismal, that i shall never have the heart to descend into it again. =>a dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size—take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.—and so much for tearing out of chapters. c h a p. lxi ——see if he is not cutting it into slips, and giving them about him to light their pipes!——’tis abominable, answered didius; it should not go unnoticed, said doctor kysarcius—— => he was of the kysarcii of the low countries. methinks, said didius, half rising from his chair, in order to remove a bottle and a tall decanter, which stood in a direct line betwixt him and yorick——you might have spared this sarcastic stroke, and have hit upon a more proper place, mr. yorick—or at least upon a more proper occasion to have shewn your contempt of what we have been about: if the sermon is of no better worth than to light pipes with——’twas certainly, sir, not good enough to be preached before so learned a body; and if ’twas good enough to be preached before so learned a body——’twas certainly sir, too good to light their pipes with afterwards. ——i have got him fast hung up, quoth didius to himself, upon one of the two horns of my dilemma——let him get off as he can. i have undergone such unspeakable torments, in bringing forth this sermon, quoth yorick, upon this occasion——that i declare, didius, i would suffer martyrdom—and if it was possible my horse with me, a thousand times over, before i would sit down and make such another: i was delivered of it at the wrong end of me——it came from my head instead of my heart——and it is for the pain it gave me, both in the writing and preaching of it, that i revenge myself of it, in this manner—to preach, to shew the extent of our reading, or the subtleties of our wit—to parade in the eyes of the vulgar with the beggarly accounts of a little learning, tinsel’d over with a few words which glitter, but convey little light and less warmth——is a dishonest use of the poor single half hour in a week which is put into our hands—’tis not preaching the gospel—but ourselves——for my own part, continued yorick, i had rather direct five words point-blank to the heart.— as yorick pronounced the word point-blank, my uncle toby rose up to say something upon projectiles——when a single word and no more uttered from the opposite side of the table drew every one’s ears towards it—a word of all others in the dictionary the last in that place to be expected—a word i am ashamed to write—yet must be written——must be read—illegal—uncanonical—guess ten thousand guesses, multiplied into themselves—rack—torture your invention for ever, you’re where you was——in short, i’ll tell it in the next chapter. c h a p. lxii zounds!————————————————————————z——ds! cried phutatorius, partly to himself——and yet high enough to be heard—and what seemed odd, ’twas uttered in a construction of look, and in a tone of voice, somewhat between that of a man in amazement and one in bodily pain. one or two who had very nice ears, and could distinguish the expression and mixture of the two tones as plainly as a third or a fifth, or any other chord in musick—were the most puzzled and perplexed with it—the concord was good in itself—but then ’twas quite out of the key, and no way applicable to the subject started;——so that with all their knowledge, they could not tell what in the world to make of it. others who knew nothing of musical expression, and merely lent their ears to the plain import of the word, imagined that phutatorius, who was somewhat of a cholerick spirit, was just going to snatch the cudgels out of didius’s hands, in order to bemaul yorick to some purpose—and that the desperate monosyllable z——ds was the exordium to an oration, which, as they judged from the sample, presaged but a rough kind of handling of him; so that my uncle toby’s good-nature felt a pang for what yorick was about to undergo. but seeing phutatorius stop short, without any attempt or desire to go on—a third party began to suppose, that it was no more than an involuntary respiration, casually forming itself into the shape of a twelve-penny oath—without the sin or substance of one. others, and especially one or two who sat next him, looked upon it on the contrary as a real and substantial oath, propensly formed against yorick, to whom he was known to bear no good liking—which said oath, as my father philosophized upon it, actually lay fretting and fuming at that very time in the upper regions of phutatorius’s purtenance; and so was naturally, and according to the due course of things, first squeezed out by the sudden influx of blood which was driven into the right ventricle of phutatorius’s heart, by the stroke of surprize which so strange a theory of preaching had excited. how finely we argue upon mistaken facts! there was not a soul busied in all these various reasonings upon the monosyllable which phutatorius uttered—who did not take this for granted, proceeding upon it as from an axiom, namely, that phutatorius’s mind was intent upon the subject of debate which was arising between didius and yorick; and indeed as he looked first towards the one and then towards the other, with the air of a man listening to what was going forwards—who would not have thought the same? but the truth was, that phutatorius knew not one word or one syllable of what was passing—but his whole thoughts and attention were taken up with a transaction which was going forwards at that very instant within the precincts of his own galligaskins, and in a part of them, where of all others he stood most interested to watch accidents: so that notwithstanding he looked with all the attention in the world, and had gradually skrewed up every nerve and muscle in his face, to the utmost pitch the instrument would bear, in order, as it was thought, to give a sharp reply to yorick, who sat over-against him——yet, i say, was yorick never once in any one domicile of phutatorius’s brain——but the true cause of his exclamation lay at least a yard below. this i will endeavour to explain to you with all imaginable decency. you must be informed then, that gastripheres, who had taken a turn into the kitchen a little before dinner, to see how things went on—observing a wicker-basket of fine chesnuts standing upon the dresser, had ordered that a hundred or two of them might be roasted and sent in, as soon as dinner was over— gastripheres inforcing his orders about them, that didius, but phutatorius especially, were particularly fond of ’em. about two minutes before the time that my uncle toby interrupted yorick’s harangue—gastripheres’s chesnuts were brought in—and as phutatorius’s fondness for ’em was uppermost in the waiter’s head, he laid them directly before phutatorius, wrapt up hot in a clean damask napkin. now whether it was physically impossible, with half a dozen hands all thrust into the napkin at a time—but that some one chesnut, of more life and rotundity than the rest, must be put in motion—it so fell out, however, that one was actually sent rolling off the table; and as phutatorius sat straddling under——it fell perpendicularly into that particular aperture of phutatorius’s breeches, for which, to the shame and indelicacy of our language be it spoke, there is no chaste word throughout all johnson’s dictionary——let it suffice to say——it was that particular aperture which, in all good societies, the laws of decorum do strictly require, like the temple of janus (in peace at least) to be universally shut up. the neglect of this punctilio in phutatorius (which by-the-bye should be a warning to all mankind) had opened a door to this accident.—— accident i call it, in compliance to a received mode of speaking——but in no opposition to the opinion either of acrites or mythogeras in this matter; i know they were both prepossessed and fully persuaded of it—and are so to this hour, that there was nothing of accident in the whole event——but that the chesnut’s taking that particular course, and in a manner of its own accord—and then falling with all its heat directly into that one particular place, and no other——was a real judgment upon phutatorius for that filthy and obscene treatise de concubinis retinendis, which phutatorius had published about twenty years ago——and was that identical week going to give the world a second edition of. it is not my business to dip my pen in this controversy——much undoubtedly may be wrote on both sides of the question—all that concerns me as an historian, is to represent the matter of fact, and render it credible to the reader, that the hiatus in phutatorius’s breeches was sufficiently wide to receive the chesnut;——and that the chesnut, somehow or other, did fall perpendicularly, and piping hot into it, without phutatorius’s perceiving it, or any one else at that time. the genial warmth which the chesnut imparted, was not undelectable for the first twenty or five-and-twenty seconds——and did no more than gently solicit phutatorius’s attention towards the part:——but the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain, the soul of phutatorius, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deliberation, ratiocination, memory, fancy, with ten battalions of animal spirits, all tumultuously crowded down, through different defiles and circuits, to the place of danger, leaving all his upper regions, as you may imagine, as empty as my purse. with the best intelligence which all these messengers could bring him back, phutatorius was not able to dive into the secret of what was going forwards below, nor could he make any kind of conjecture, what the devil was the matter with it: however, as he knew not what the true cause might turn out, he deemed it most prudent in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a stoick; which, with the help of some wry faces and compursions of the mouth, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued neuter;——but the sallies of the imagination are ungovernable in things of this kind—a thought instantly darted into his mind, that tho’ the anguish had the sensation of glowing heat—it might, notwithstanding that, be a bite as well as a burn; and if so, that possibly a newt or an asker, or some such detested reptile, had crept up, and was fastening his teeth——the horrid idea of which, with a fresh glow of pain arising that instant from the chesnut, seized phutatorius with a sudden panick, and in the first terrifying disorder of the passion, it threw him, as it has done the best generals upon earth, quite off his guard:——the effect of which was this, that he leapt incontinently up, uttering as he rose that interjection of surprise so much descanted upon, with the aposiopestic break after it, marked thus, z——ds—which, though not strictly canonical, was still as little as any man could have said upon the occasion;——and which, by-the-bye, whether canonical or not, phutatorius could no more help than he could the cause of it. though this has taken up some time in the narrative, it took up little more time in the transaction, than just to allow time for phutatorius to draw forth the chesnut, and throw it down with violence upon the floor—and for yorick to rise from his chair, and pick the chesnut up. it is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:——what incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things——that trifles, light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it——that euclid’s demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it. yorick, i said, picked up the chesnut which phutatorius’s wrath had flung down——the action was trifling——i am ashamed to account for it—he did it, for no reason, but that he thought the chesnut not a jot worse for the adventure—and that he held a good chesnut worth stooping for.——but this incident, trifling as it was, wrought differently in phutatorius’s head: he considered this act of yorick’s in getting off his chair and picking up the chesnut, as a plain acknowledgment in him, that the chesnut was originally his—and in course, that it must have been the owner of the chesnut, and no one else, who could have played him such a prank with it: what greatly confirmed him in this opinion, was this, that the table being parallelogramical and very narrow, it afforded a fair opportunity for yorick, who sat directly over against phutatorius, of slipping the chesnut in——and consequently that he did it. the look of something more than suspicion, which phutatorius cast full upon yorick as these thoughts arose, too evidently spoke his opinion——and as phutatorius was naturally supposed to know more of the matter than any person besides, his opinion at once became the general one;——and for a reason very different from any which have been yet given——in a little time it was put out of all manner of dispute. when great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world——the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them.—the search was not long in this instance. it was well known that yorick had never a good opinion of the treatise which phutatorius had wrote de concubinis retinendis, as a thing which he feared had done hurt in the world——and ’twas easily found out, that there was a mystical meaning in yorick’s prank—and that his chucking the chesnut hot into phutatorius’s ***——***, was a sarcastical fling at his book—the doctrines of which, they said, had enflamed many an honest man in the same place. this conceit awaken’d somnolentus——made agelastes smile——and if you can recollect the precise look and air of a man’s face intent in finding out a riddle——it threw gastripheres’s into that form—and in short was thought by many to be a master-stroke of arch-wit. this, as the reader has seen from one end to the other, was as groundless as the dreams of philosophy: yorick, no doubt, as shakespeare said of his ancestor——“was a man of jest,” but it was temper’d with something which withheld him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but it was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and doing a thousand things, of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his nature was incapable. all i blame him for——or rather, all i blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, however in his power. in every ill usage of that sort, he acted precisely as in the affair of his lean horse——he could have explained it to his honour, but his spirit was above it; and besides, he ever looked upon the inventor, the propagator and believer of an illiberal report alike so injurious to him—he could not stoop to tell his story to them——and so trusted to time and truth to do it for him. this heroic cast produced him inconveniences in many respects—in the present it was followed by the fixed resentment of phutatorius, who, as yorick had just made an end of his chesnut, rose up from his chair a second time, to let him know it—which indeed he did with a smile; saying only—that he would endeavour not to forget the obligation. but you must mark and carefully separate and distinguish these two things in your mind. ——the smile was for the company. ——the threat was for yorick. c h a p. lxiii —can you tell me, quoth phutatorius, speaking to gastripheres who sat next to him——for one would not apply to a surgeon in so foolish an affair——can you tell me, gastripheres, what is best to take out the fire?——ask eugenius, said gastripheres.——that greatly depends, said eugenius, pretending ignorance of the adventure, upon the nature of the part——if it is a tender part, and a part which can conveniently be wrapt up——it is both the one and the other, replied phutatorius, laying his hand as he spoke, with an emphatical nod of his head, upon the part in question, and lifting up his right leg at the same time to ease and ventilate it.——if that is the case, said eugenius, i would advise you, phutatorius, not to tamper with it by any means; but if you will send to the next printer, and trust your cure to such a simple thing as a soft sheet of paper just come off the press—you need do nothing more than twist it round.—the damp paper, quoth yorick (who sat next to his friend eugenius) though i know it has a refreshing coolness in it—yet i presume is no more than the vehicle—and that the oil and lamp-black with which the paper is so strongly impregnated, does the business.—right, said eugenius, and is, of any outward application i would venture to recommend, the most anodyne and safe. was it my case, said gastripheres, as the main thing is the oil and lamp-black, i should spread them thick upon a rag, and clap it on directly.——that would make a very devil of it, replied yorick.——and besides, added eugenius, it would not answer the intention, which is the extreme neatness and elegance of the prescription, which the faculty hold to be half in half;——for consider, if the type is a very small one (which it should be) the sanative particles, which come into contact in this form, have the advantage of being spread so infinitely thin, and with such a mathematical equality (fresh paragraphs and large capitals excepted) as no art or management of the spatula can come up to.——it falls out very luckily, replied phutatorius, that the second edition of my treatise de concubinis retinendis is at this instant in the press.——you may take any leaf of it, said eugenius——no matter which.——provided, quoth yorick, there is no bawdry in it.—— they are just now, replied phutatorius, printing off the ninth chapter——which is the last chapter but one in the book.——pray what is the title of that chapter? said yorick; making a respectful bow to phutatorius as he spoke.——i think, answered phutatorius, ’tis that de re concubinaria. for heaven’s sake keep out of that chapter, quoth yorick. ——by all means—added eugenius. c h a p. lxiv —now, quoth didius, rising up, and laying his right hand with his fingers spread upon his breast——had such a blunder about a christian-name happened before the reformation——[it happened the day before yesterday, quoth my uncle toby to himself]—and when baptism was administer’d in latin—[’twas all in english, said my uncle]——many things might have coincided with it, and upon the authority of sundry decreed cases, to have pronounced the baptism null, with a power of giving the child a new name—had a priest, for instance, which was no uncommon thing, through ignorance of the latin tongue, baptized a child of tom-o’stiles, in nomine patriæ & filia & spiritum sanctos—the baptism was held null.——i beg your pardon, replied kysarcius——in that case, as the mistake was only the terminations, the baptism was valid——and to have rendered it null, the blunder of the priest should have fallen upon the first syllable of each noun——and not, as in your case, upon the last. my father delighted in subtleties of this kind, and listen’d with infinite attention. gastripheres, for example, continued kysarcius, baptizes a child of john stradling’s in gomine gatris, &c. &c. instead of in nomine patris, &c.——is this a baptism? no—say the ablest canonists; in as much as the radix of each word is hereby torn up, and the sense and meaning of them removed and changed quite to another object; for gomine does not signify a name, nor gatris a father.—what do they signify? said my uncle toby.—nothing at all——quoth yorick.——ergo, such a baptism is null, said kysarcius.—— in course, answered yorick, in a tone two parts jest and one part earnest.—— but in the case cited, continued kysarcius, where patriæ is put for patris, filia for filii, and so on——as it is a fault only in the declension, and the roots of the words continue untouch’d, the inflections of their branches either this way or that, does not in any sort hinder the baptism, inasmuch as the same sense continues in the words as before.——but then, said didius, the intention of the priest’s pronouncing them grammatically must have been proved to have gone along with it.——————right, answered kysarcius; and of this, brother didius, we have an instance in a decree of the decretals of pope leo the iiid.——but my brother’s child, cried my uncle toby, has nothing to do with the pope——’tis the plain child of a protestant gentleman, christen’d tristram against the wills and wishes both of his father and mother, and all who are a-kin to it.—— if the wills and wishes, said kysarcius, interrupting my uncle toby, of those only who stand related to mr. shandy’s child, were to have weight in this matter, mrs. shandy, of all people, has the least to do in it.——my uncle toby lay’d down his pipe, and my father drew his chair still closer to the table, to hear the conclusion of so strange an introduction. ——it has not only been a question, captain shandy, amongst the[17] best lawyers and civilians in this land, continued kysarcius, “whether the mother be of kin to her child,”—but, after much dispassionate enquiry and jactitation of the arguments on all sides—it has been adjudged for the negative—namely, “that the mother is not of kin to her child.”[18] my father instantly clapp’d his hand upon my uncle toby’s mouth, under colour of whispering in his ear;—the truth was, he was alarmed for lillabullero—and having a great desire to hear more of so curious an argument—he begg’d my uncle toby, for heaven’s sake, not to disappoint him in it.—my uncle toby gave a nod—resumed his pipe, and contenting himself with whistling lillabullero inwardly——kysarcius, didius, and triptolemus went on with the discourse as follows: this determination, continued kysarcius, how contrary soever it may seem to run to the stream of vulgar ideas, yet had reason strongly on its side; and has been put out of all manner of dispute from the famous case, known commonly by the name of the duke of suffolk’s case.——it is cited in brook, said triptolemus——and taken notice of by lord coke, added didius.—and you may find it in swinburn on testaments, said kysarcius. the case, mr. shandy, was this: in the reign of edward the sixth, charles duke of suffolk having issue a son by one venter, and a daughter by another venter, made his last will, wherein he devised goods to his son, and died; after whose death the son died also——but without will, without wife, and without child—his mother and his sister by the father’s side (for she was born of the former venter) then living. the mother took the administration of her son’s goods, according to the statute of the 21st of harry the eighth, whereby it is enacted, that in case any person die intestate the administration of his goods shall be committed to the next of kin. the administration being thus (surreptitiously) granted to the mother, the sister by the father’s side commenced a suit before the ecclesiastical judge, alledging, 1st, that she herself was next of kin; and 2dly, that the mother was not of kin at all to the party deceased; and therefore prayed the court, that the administration granted to the mother might be revoked, and be committed unto her, as next of kin to the deceased, by force of the said statute. hereupon, as it was a great cause, and much depending upon its issue—and many causes of great property likely to be decided in times to come, by the precedent to be then made——the most learned, as well in the laws of this realm, as in the civil law, were consulted together, whether the mother was of kin to her son, or no.—whereunto not only the temporal lawyers——but the church lawyers—the juris-consulti—the jurisprudentes—the civilians—the advocates—the commissaries—the judges of the consistory and prerogative courts of canterbury and york, with the master of the faculties, were all unanimously of opinion, that the mother was not of[19] kin to her child.—— and what said the duchess of suffolk to it? said my uncle toby. the unexpectedness of my uncle toby’s question, confounded kysarcius more than the ablest advocate——he stopp’d a full minute, looking in my uncle toby’s face without replying——and in that single minute triptolemus put by him, and took the lead as follows. ’tis a ground and principle in the law, said triptolemus, that things do not ascend, but descend in it; and i make no doubt ’tis for this cause, that however true it is, that the child may be of the blood and seed of its parents——that the parents, nevertheless, are not of the blood and seed of it; inasmuch as the parents are not begot by the child, but the child by the parents—for so they write, liberi sunt de sanguine patris & matris, sed pater & mater non sunt de sanguine liberorum. ——but this, triptolemus, cried didius, proves too much—for from this authority cited it would follow, not only what indeed is granted on all sides, that the mother is not of kin to her child—but the father likewise.——it is held, said triptolemus, the better opinion; because the father, the mother, and the child, though they be three persons, yet are they but (una caro[20]) one flesh; and consequently no degree of kindred——or any method of acquiring one in nature.——there you push the argument again too far, cried didius——for there is no prohibition in nature, though there is in the levitical law——but that a man may beget a child upon his grandmother——in which case, supposing the issue a daughter, she would stand in relation both of——but who ever thought, cried kysarcius, of laying with his grandmother?——the young gentleman, replied yorick, whom selden speaks of——who not only thought of it, but justified his intention to his father by the argument drawn from the law of retaliation.—“you laid, sir, with my mother,” said the lad—“why may not i lay with yours?”——’tis the argumentum commune, added yorick.——’tis as good, replied eugenius, taking down his hat, as they deserve. the company broke up. [17] vide swinburn on testaments, part 7. §8. [18] vide brook abridg. tit. administr. n. 47. [19] mater non numeratur inter consanguineos, bald. in ult. c. de verb. signific. [20] vide brook abridg. tit. administr. n .47. c h a p. lxv —and pray, said my uncle toby, leaning upon yorick, as he and my father were helping him leisurely down the stairs——don’t be terrified, madam, this stair-case conversation is not so long as the last——and pray, yorick, said my uncle toby, which way is this said affair of tristram at length settled by these learned men? very satisfactorily, replied yorick; no mortal, sir, has any concern with it——for mrs. shandy the mother is nothing at all a-kin to him——and as the mother’s is the surest side——mr. shandy, in course is still less than nothing——in short, he is not as much a-kin to him, sir, as i am.—— ——that may well be, said my father, shaking his head. ——let the learned say what they will, there must certainly, quoth my uncle toby, have been some sort of consanguinity betwixt the duchess of suffolk and her son. the vulgar are of the same opinion, quoth yorick, to this hour. c h a p. lxvi though my father was hugely tickled with the subtleties of these learned discourses——’twas still but like the anointing of a broken bone——the moment he got home, the weight of his afflictions returned upon him but so much the heavier, as is ever the case when the staff we lean on slips from under us.—he became pensive—walked frequently forth to the fish-pond—let down one loop of his hat——sigh’d often——forbore to snap—and, as the hasty sparks of temper, which occasion snapping, so much assist perspiration and digestion, as hippocrates tells us—he had certainly fallen ill with the extinction of them, had not his thoughts been critically drawn off, and his health rescued by a fresh train of disquietudes left him, with a legacy of a thousand pounds, by my aunt dinah. my father had scarce read the letter, when taking the thing by the right end, he instantly began to plague and puzzle his head how to lay it out mostly to the honour of his family.—a hundred-and-fifty odd projects took possession of his brains by turns—he would do this, and that and t’other—he would go to rome——he would go to law——he would buy stock——he would buy john hobson’s farm—he would new fore front his house, and add a new wing to make it even——there was a fine water-mill on this side, and he would build a wind-mill on the other side of the river in full view to answer it—but above all things in the world, he would inclose the great ox-moor, and send out my brother bobby immediately upon his travels. but as the sum was finite, and consequently could not do every thing——and in truth very few of these to any purpose—of all the projects which offered themselves upon this occasion, the two last seemed to make the deepest impression; and he would infallibly have determined upon both at once, but for the small inconvenience hinted at above, which absolutely put him under a necessity of deciding in favour either of the one or the other. this was not altogether so easy to be done; for though ’tis certain my father had long before set his heart upon this necessary part of my brother’s education, and like a prudent man had actually determined to carry it into execution, with the first money that returned from the second creation of actions in the missisippi-scheme, in which he was an adventurer——yet the ox-moor, which was a fine, large, whinny, undrained, unimproved common, belonging to the shandy-estate, had almost as old a claim upon him: he had long and affectionately set his heart upon turning it likewise to some account. but having never hitherto been pressed with such a conjuncture of things, as made it necessary to settle either the priority or justice of their claims——like a wise man he had refrained entering into any nice or critical examination about them: so that upon the dismission of every other project at this crisis——the two old projects, the ox-moor and my brother, divided him again; and so equal a match were they for each other, as to become the occasion of no small contest in the old gentleman’s mind—which of the two should be set o’going first. ——people may laugh as they will—but the case was this. it had ever been the custom of the family, and by length of time was almost become a matter of common right, that the eldest son of it should have free ingress, egress, and regress into foreign parts before marriage—not only for the sake of bettering his own private parts, by the benefit of exercise and change of so much air—but simply for the mere delectation of his fancy, by the feather put into his cap, of having been abroad—tantum valet, my father would say, quantum sonat. now as this was a reasonable, and in course a most christian indulgence——to deprive him of it, without why or wherefore——and thereby make an example of him, as the first shandy unwhirl’d about europe in a post-chaise, and only because he was a heavy lad——would be using him ten times worse than a turk. on the other hand, the case of the ox-moor was full as hard. exclusive of the original purchase-money, which was eight hundred pounds——it had cost the family eight hundred pounds more in a law-suit about fifteen years before—besides the lord knows what trouble and vexation. it had been moreover in possession of the shandy-family ever since the middle of the last century; and though it lay full in view before the house, bounded on one extremity by the water-mill, and on the other by the projected wind-mill spoken of above—and for all these reasons seemed to have the fairest title of any part of the estate to the care and protection of the family—yet by an unaccountable fatality, common to men, as well as the ground they tread on——it had all along most shamefully been overlook’d; and to speak the truth of it, had suffered so much by it, that it would have made any man’s heart have bled (obadiah said) who understood the value of the land, to have rode over it, and only seen the condition it was in. however, as neither the purchasing this tract of ground—nor indeed the placing of it where it lay, were either of them, properly speaking, of my father’s doing——he had never thought himself any way concerned in the affair——till the fifteen years before, when the breaking out of that cursed law-suit mentioned above (and which had arose about its boundaries)——which being altogether my father’s own act and deed, it naturally awakened every other argument in its favour, and upon summing them all up together, he saw, not merely in interest, but in honour, he was bound to do something for it——and that now or never was the time. i think there must certainly have been a mixture of ill-luck in it, that the reasons on both sides should happen to be so equally balanced by each other; for though my father weigh’d them in all humours and conditions——spent many an anxious hour in the most profound and abstracted meditation upon what was best to be done—reading books of farming one day——books of travels another——laying aside all passion whatever—viewing the arguments on both sides in all their lights and circumstances—communing every day with my uncle toby—arguing with yorick, and talking over the whole affair of the ox-moor with obadiah——yet nothing in all that time appeared so strongly in behalf of the one, which was not either strictly applicable to the other, or at least so far counterbalanced by some consideration of equal weight, as to keep the scales even. for to be sure, with proper helps, in the hands of some people, tho’ the ox-moor would undoubtedly have made a different appearance in the world from what it did, or ever could do in the condition it lay——yet every tittle of this was true, with regard to my brother bobby——let obadiah say what he would.—— in point of interest——the contest, i own, at first sight, did not appear so undecisive betwixt them; for whenever my father took pen and ink in hand, and set about calculating the simple expence of paring and burning, and fencing in the ox-moor, &c. &c.—with the certain profit it would bring him in return——the latter turned out so prodigiously in his way of working the account, that you would have sworn the ox-moor would have carried all before it. for it was plain he should reap a hundred lasts of rape, at twenty pounds a last, the very first year——besides an excellent crop of wheat the year following——and the year after that, to speak within bounds, a hundred——but in all likelihood, a hundred and fifty——if not two hundred quarters of pease and beans——besides potatoes without end.——but then, to think he was all this while breeding up my brother, like a hog to eat them——knocked all on the head again, and generally left the old gentleman in such a state of suspense——that, as he often declared to my uncle toby——he knew no more than his heels what to do. no body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time: for to say nothing of the havock, which by a certain consequence is unavoidably made by it all over the finer system of the nerves, which you know convey the animal spirits and more subtle juices from the heart to the head, and so on——it is not to be told in what a degree such a wayward kind of friction works upon the more gross and solid parts, wasting the fat and impairing the strength of a man every time as it goes backwards and forwards. my father had certainly sunk under this evil, as certainly as he had done under that of my christian name——had he not been rescued out of it, as he was out of that, by a fresh evil——the misfortune of my brother bobby’s death. what is the life of man! is it not to shift from side to side?——from sorrow to sorrow?——to button up one cause of vexation——and unbutton another? c h a p. lxvii from this moment i am to be considered as heir-apparent to the shandy family——and it is from this point properly, that the story of my life and my opinions sets out. with all my hurry and precipitation, i have but been clearing the ground to raise the building——and such a building do i foresee it will turn out, as never was planned, and as never was executed since adam. in less than five minutes i shall have thrown my pen into the fire, and the little drop of thick ink which is left remaining at the bottom of my ink-horn, after it—i have but half a score things to do in the time——i have a thing to name——a thing to lament——a thing to hope——a thing to promise, and a thing to threaten—i have a thing to suppose—a thing to declare——a thing to conceal——a thing to choose, and a thing to pray for——this chapter, therefore, i name the chapter of things——and my next chapter to it, that is, the first chapter of my next volume, if i live, shall be my chapter upon whiskers, in order to keep up some sort of connection in my works. the thing i lament is, that things have crowded in so thick upon me, that i have not been able to get into that part of my work, towards which i have all the way looked forwards, with so much earnest desire; and that is the campaigns, but especially the amours of my uncle toby, the events of which are of so singular a nature, and so cervantick a cast, that if i can so manage it, as to convey but the same impressions to every other brain, which the occurrences themselves excite in my own—i will answer for it the book shall make its way in the world, much better than its master has done before it.——oh tristram! tristram! can this but be once brought about——the credit, which will attend thee as an author, shall counterbalance the many evils will have befallen thee as a man——thou wilt feast upon the one——when thou hast lost all sense and remembrance of the other!—— no wonder i itch so much as i do, to get at these amours—they are the choicest morsel of my whole story! and when i do get at ’em——assure yourselves, good folks—(nor do i value whose squeamish stomach takes offence at it) i shall not be at all nice in the choice of my words!——and that’s the thing i have to declare.——i shall never get all through in five minutes, that i fear——and the thing i hope is, that your worships and reverences are not offended—if you are, depend upon’t i’ll give you something, my good gentry, next year to be offended at——that’s my dear jenny’s way—but who my jenny is—and which is the right and which the wrong end of a woman, is the thing to be concealed—it shall be told you in the next chapter but one to my chapter of button-holes——and not one chapter before. and now that you have just got to the end of these[21] three volumes——the thing i have to ask is, how you feel your heads? my own akes dismally!——as for your healths, i know, they are much better.—true shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round. was i left, like sancho pança, to choose my kingdom, it should not be maritime—or a kingdom of blacks to make a penny of;—no, it should be a kingdom of hearty laughing subjects: and as the bilious and more saturnine passions, by creating disorders in the blood and humours, have as bad an influence, i see, upon the body politick as body natural——and as nothing but a habit of virtue can fully govern those passions, and subject them to reason——i should add to my prayer—that god would give my subjects grace to be as wise as they were merry; and then should i be the happiest monarch, and they are the happiest people under heaven. and so with this moral for the present, may it please your worships and your reverences, i take my leave of you till this time twelve-month, when, (unless this vile cough kills me in the mean time) i’ll have another pluck at your beards, and lay open a story to the world you little dream of. [21] according to the preceding editions. end of the second volume tristram shandy tristram shandy the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman ——— volume the third ——— dixero si quid fortè jocosius, hoc mihi juris cum venia dabis.——                  hor. —si quis calumnietur levius esse quam decet theologum, aut mordacius quam deceat christianum—non ego, sed democritus dixit.—                 erasmus. si quis clericus, aut monachus, verba joculatoria, risum moventia, sciebat, anathema esto.                 second council of carthage. to the right honourable j o h n, lord viscount spencer my lord, i humbly beg leave to offer you these two volumes[22]; they are the best my talents, with such bad health as i have, could produce:—had providence granted me a larger stock of either, they had been a much more proper present to your lordship. i beg your lordship will forgive me, if, at the same time i dedicate this work to you, i join lady spencer, in the liberty i take of inscribing the story of le fever to her name; for which i have no other motive, which my heart has informed me of, but that the story is a humane one. i am, my lord, your lordship’s most devoted and most humble servant, laur. sterne. [22] volumes v. and vi. in the first edition. c h a p. i if it had not been for those two mettlesome tits, and that madcap of a postillion who drove them from stilton to stamford, the thought had never entered my head. he flew like lightning——there was a slope of three miles and a half——we scarce touched the ground——the motion was most rapid——most impetuous——’twas communicated to my brain—my heart partook of it——“by the great god of day,” said i, looking towards the sun, and thrusting my arm out of the fore-window of the chaise, as i made my vow, “i will lock up my study-door the moment i get home, and throw the key of it ninety feet below the surface of the earth, into the draw-well at the back of my house.” the london waggon confirmed me in my resolution; it hung tottering upon the hill, scarce progressive, drag’d—drag’d up by eight heavy beasts—“by main strength!——quoth i, nodding——but your betters draw the same way——and something of every body’s!——o rare!” tell me, ye learned, shall we for ever be adding so much to the bulk—so little to the stock? shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever in the same track—for ever at the same pace? shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be shewing the relicks of learning, as monks do the relicks of their saints—without working one—one single miracle with them? who made man, with powers which dart him from earth to heaven in a moment—that great, that most excellent, and most noble creature of the world—the miracle of nature, as zoroaster in his book ωεσι φυσεως called him—the shekinah of the divine presence, as chrysostom——the image of god, as moses——the ray of divinity, as plato—the marvel of marvels, as aristotle—to go sneaking on at this pitiful—pimping——pettifogging rate? i scorn to be as abusive as horace upon the occasion——but if there is no catachresis in the wish, and no sin in it, i wish from my soul, that every imitator in great britain, france, and ireland, had the farcy for his pains; and that there was a good farcical house, large enough to hold—aye—and sublimate them, shag rag and bob-tail, male and female, all together: and this leads me to the affair of whiskers——but, by what chain of ideas—i leave as a legacy in mort-main to prudes and tartufs, to enjoy and make the most of. upon whiskers. i’m sorry i made it——’twas as inconsiderate a promise as ever entered a man’s head——a chapter upon whiskers! alas! the world will not bear it—’tis a delicate world——but i knew not of what mettle it was made—nor had i ever seen the under-written fragment; otherwise, as surely as noses are noses, and whiskers are whiskers still (let the world say what it will to the contrary); so surely would i have steered clear of this dangerous chapter. the fragment. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ——you are half asleep, my good lady, said the old gentleman, taking hold of the old lady’s hand, and giving it a gentle squeeze, as he pronounced the word whiskers——shall we change the subject? by no means, replied the old lady—i like your account of those matters; so throwing a thin gauze handkerchief over her head, and leaning it back upon the chair with her face turned towards him, and advancing her two feet as she reclined herself——i desire, continued she, you will go on. the old gentleman went on as follows:——whiskers! cried the queen of navarre, dropping her knotting ball, as la fosseuse uttered the word——whiskers, madam, said la fosseuse, pinning the ball to the queen’s apron, and making a courtesy as she repeated it. la fosseuse’s voice was naturally soft and low, yet ’twas an articulate voice: and every letter of the word whiskers fell distinctly upon the queen of navarre’s ear—whiskers! cried the queen, laying a greater stress upon the word, and as if she had still distrusted her ears——whiskers! replied la fosseuse, repeating the word a third time——there is not a cavalier, madam, of his age in navarre, continued the maid of honour, pressing the page’s interest upon the queen, that has so gallant a pair——of what? cried margaret, smiling—of whiskers, said la fosseuse, with infinite modesty. the word whiskers still stood its ground, and continued to be made use of in most of the best companies throughout the little kingdom of navarre, notwithstanding the indiscreet use which la fosseuse had made of it: the truth was, la fosseuse had pronounced the word, not only before the queen, but upon sundry other occasions at court, with an accent which always implied something of a mystery—and as the court of margaret, as all the world knows, was at that time a mixture of gallantry and devotion——and whiskers being as applicable to the one, as the other, the word naturally stood its ground——it gained full as much as it lost; that is, the clergy were for it——the laity were against it——and for the women,——they were divided. the excellency of the figure and mien of the young sieur de croix, was at that time beginning to draw the attention of the maids of honour towards the terrace before the palace gate, where the guard was mounted. the lady de baussiere fell deeply in love with him,——la battarelle did the same—it was the finest weather for it, that ever was remembered in navarre——la guyol, la maronette, la sabatiere, fell in love with the sieur de croix also——la rebours and la fosseuse knew better——de croix had failed in an attempt to recommend himself to la rebours; and la rebours and la fosseuse were inseparable. the queen of navarre was sitting with her ladies in the painted bow-window, facing the gate of the second court, as de croix passed through it—he is handsome, said the lady baussiere——he has a good mien, said la battarelle——he is finely shaped, said la guyol—i never saw an officer of the horse-guards in my life, said la maronette, with two such legs——or who stood so well upon them, said la sabatiere——but he has no whiskers, cried la fosseuse——not a pile, said la rebours. the queen went directly to her oratory, musing all the way, as she walked through the gallery, upon the subject; turning it this way and that way in her fancy—ave maria!——what can la-fosseuse mean? said she, kneeling down upon the cushion. la guyol, la battarelle, la maronette, la sabatiere, retired instantly to their chambers——whiskers! said all four of them to themselves, as they bolted their doors on the inside. the lady carnavallette was counting her beads with both hands, unsuspected, under her farthingal——from st. antony down to st. ursula inclusive, not a saint passed through her fingers without whiskers; st. francis, st. dominick, st. bennet, st. basil, st. bridget, had all whiskers. the lady baussiere had got into a wilderness of conceits, with moralizing too intricately upon la fosseuse’s text——she mounted her palfrey, her page followed her——the host passed by—the lady baussiere rode on. one denier, cried the order of mercy—one single denier, in behalf of a thousand patient captives, whose eyes look towards heaven and you for their redemption. ——the lady baussiere rode on. pity the unhappy, said a devout, venerable, hoary-headed man, meekly holding up a box, begirt with iron, in his withered hands——i beg for the unfortunate—good my lady, ’tis for a prison—for an hospital—’tis for an old man—a poor man undone by shipwreck, by suretyship, by fire——i call god and all his angels to witness——’tis to clothe the naked——to feed the hungry——’tis to comfort the sick and the broken-hearted. the lady baussiere rode on. a decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground. ——the lady baussiere rode on. he ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfrey, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, &c.——cousin, aunt, sister, mother,——for virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for christ’s sake, remember me——pity me. ——the lady baussiere rode on. take hold of my whiskers, said the lady baussiere—the page took hold of her palfrey. she dismounted at the end of the terrace. there are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of themselves about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a consciousness of it, somewhere about the heart, which serves but to make these etchings the stronger—we see, spell, and put them together without a dictionary. ha, ha! he, hee! cried la guyol and la sabatiere, looking close at each other’s prints——ho, ho! cried la battarelle and maronette, doing the same:—whist! cried one—ft, ft,—said a second—hush, quoth a third—poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the lady carnavallette;——’twas she who bewhisker’d st. bridget. la fosseuse drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put in into la rebours’ hand—la rebours shook her head. the lady baussiere coughed thrice into the inside of her muff—la guyol smiled—fy, said the lady baussiere. the queen of navarre touched her eye with the tip of her fore-finger—as much as to say, i understand you all. ’twas plain to the whole court the word was ruined: la fosseuse had given it a wound, and it was not the better for passing through all these defiles——it made a faint stand, however, for a few months, by the expiration of which, the sieur de croix, finding it high time to leave navarre for want of whiskers——the word in course became indecent, and (after a few efforts) absolutely unfit for use. the best word, in the best language of the best world, must have suffered under such combinations.——the curate of d’estella wrote a book against them, setting forth the dangers of accessory ideas, and warning the navarois against them. does not all the world know, said the curate d’estella at the conclusion of his work, that noses ran the same fate some centuries ago in most parts of europe, which whiskers have now done in the kingdom of navarre?—the evil indeed spread no farther then—but have not beds and bolsters, and night-caps and chamber-pots stood upon the brink of destruction ever since? are not trouse, and placket-holes, and pump-handles—and spigots and faucets, in danger still from the same association?—chastity, by nature, the gentlest of all affections—give it but its head——’tis like a ramping and a roaring lion. the drift of the curate d’estella’s argument was not understood.—they ran the scent the wrong way.—the world bridled his ass at the tail.—and when the extremes of delicacy, and the beginnings of concupiscence, hold their next provincial chapter together, they may decree that bawdy also. c h a p. ii when my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy account of my brother bobby’s death, he was busy calculating the expence of his riding post from calais to paris, and so on to lyons. ’twas a most inauspicious journey; my father having had every foot of it to travel over again, and his calculation to begin afresh, when he had almost got to the end of it, by obadiah’s opening the door to acquaint him the family was out of yeast—and to ask whether he might not take the great coach-horse early in the morning and ride in search of some.—with all my heart, obadiah, said my father (pursuing his journey)—take the coach-horse, and welcome.——but he wants a shoe, poor creature! said obadiah.——poor creature! said my uncle toby, vibrating the note back again, like a string in unison. then ride the scotch horse, quoth my father hastily.—he cannot bear a saddle upon his back, quoth obadiah, for the whole world.——the devil’s in that horse; then take patriot, cried my father, and shut the door.——patriot is sold, said obadiah. here’s for you! cried my father, making a pause, and looking in my uncle toby’s face, as if the thing had not been a matter of fact.—your worship ordered me to sell him last april, said obadiah.—then go on foot for your pains, cried my father——i had much rather walk than ride, said obadiah, shutting the door. what plagues, cried my father, going on with his calculation.——but the waters are out, said obadiah,—opening the door again. till that moment, my father, who had a map of sanson’s, and a book of the post-roads before him, had kept his hand upon the head of his compasses, with one foot of them fixed upon nevers, the last stage he had paid for—purposing to go on from that point with his journey and calculation, as soon as obadiah quitted the room: but this second attack of obadiah’s, in opening the door and laying the whole country under water, was too much.——he let go his compasses—or rather with a mixed motion between accident and anger, he threw them upon the table; and then there was nothing for him to do, but to return back to calais (like many others) as wise as he had set out. when the letter was brought into the parlour, which contained the news of my brother’s death, my father had got forwards again upon his journey to within a stride of the compasses of the very same stage of nevers.——by your leave, mons. sanson, cried my father, striking the point of his compasses through nevers into the table—and nodding to my uncle toby to see what was in the letter—twice of one night, is too much for an english gentleman and his son, mons. sanson, to be turned back from so lousy a town as nevers—what think’st thou, toby? added my father in a sprightly tone.——unless it be a garrison town, said my uncle toby——for then—i shall be a fool, said my father, smiling to himself, as long as i live.—so giving a second nod—and keeping his compasses still upon nevers with one hand, and holding his book of the post-roads in the other—half calculating and half listening, he leaned forwards upon the table with both elbows, as my uncle toby hummed over the letter. —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —he’s gone! said my uncle toby——where——who? cried my father.——my nephew, said my uncle toby.——what—without leave—without money—without governor? cried my father in amazement. no:——he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my uncle toby.—without being ill? cried my father again.—i dare say not, said my uncle toby, in a low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, he has been ill enough, poor lad! i’ll answer for him——for he is dead. when agrippina was told of her son’s death, tacitus informs us, that, not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off her work—my father stuck his compasses into nevers, but so much the faster.—what contrarieties! his, indeed, was matter of calculation!—agrippina’s must have been quite a different affair; who else could pretend to reason from history? how my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.— c h a p. iii ————and a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too—so look to yourselves. ’tis either plato, or plutarch, or seneca, or xenophon, or epictetus, or theophrastus, or lucian—or some one perhaps of later date—either cardan, or budæus, or petrarch, or stella—or possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, st. austin, or st. cyprian, or barnard, who affirms that it is an irresistible and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children—and seneca (i’m positive) tells us somewhere, that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel—and accordingly we find, that david wept for his son absalom—adrian for his antinous—niobe for her children, and that apollodorus and crito both shed tears for socrates before his death. my father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the hebrews and the romans—or slept it off, as the laplanders—or hanged it, as the english, or drowned it, as the germans,—nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lillabullero it.—— ——he got rid of it, however. will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these two pages? when tully was bereft of his dear daughter tullia, at first he laid it to his heart,—he listened to the voice of nature, and modulated his own unto it.—o my tullia! my daughter! my child!—still, still, still,—’twas o my tullia!—my tullia! methinks i see my tullia, i hear my tullia, i talk with my tullia.—but as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion—no body upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me. my father was as proud of his eloquence as marcus tullius cicero could be for his life, and, for aught i am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness too.——his strength—for he was by nature eloquent; and his weakness—for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in life would but permit him to shew his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one—(bating the case of a systematic misfortune)—he had all he wanted.—a blessing which tied up my father’s tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as five—my father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off, as if it had never befallen him. this clue will unravel what otherwise would seem very inconsistent in my father’s domestic character; and it is this, that, in the provocations arising from the neglects and blunders of servants, or other mishaps unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather the duration of it, eternally ran counter to all conjecture. my father had a favourite little mare, which he had consigned over to a most beautiful arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke,—and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. by some neglect or other in obadiah, it so fell out, that my father’s expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced. my mother and my uncle toby expected my father would be the death of obadiah—and that there never would be an end of the disaster——see here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done!——it was not me, said obadiah.——how do i know that? replied my father. triumph swam in my father’s eyes, at the repartee—the attic salt brought water into them—and so obadiah heard no more about it. now let us go back to my brother’s death. philosophy has a fine saying for every thing.—for death it has an entire set; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father’s head, that ’twas difficult to string them together, so as to make any thing of a consistent show out of them.—he took them as they came. “’tis an inevitable chance—the first statute in magna charta—it is an everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother,—all must die. “if my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder,—not that he is dead. “monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us. “—to die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have erected, has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller’s horizon.” (my father found he got great ease, and went on)—“kingdoms and provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put them together, performed their several evolutions, they fall back.”—brother shandy, said my uncle toby, laying down his pipe at the word evolutions—revolutions, i meant, quoth my father,—by heaven! i meant revolutions, brother toby—evolutions is nonsense.——’tis not nonsense—said my uncle toby.——but is it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father—do not—dear toby, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not—do not, i beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.——my uncle toby put his pipe into his mouth. “where is troy and mycenæ, and thebes and delos, and persepolis and agrigentum?”—continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads, which he had laid down.—“what is become, brother toby, of nineveh and babylon, of cizicum and mitylenæ? the fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piece-meals to decay, and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with every thing in a perpetual night: the world itself, brother toby, must—must come to an end. “returning out of asia, when i sailed from ægina towards megara,” (when can this have been? thought my uncle toby,) “i began to view the country round about. ægina was behind me, megara was before, pyræus on the right hand, corinth on the left.—what flourishing towns now prostrate upon the earth! alas! alas! said i to myself, that man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully buried in his presence——remember, said i to myself again—remember thou art a man.”— now my uncle toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of servius sulpicius’s consolatory letter to tully.—he had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity.—and as my father, whilst he was concerned in the turkey trade, had been three or four different times in the levant, in one of which he had stayed a whole year and an half at zant, my uncle toby naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a trip across the archipelago into asia; and that all this sailing affair with ægina behind, and megara before, and pyræus on the right hand, &c. &c. was nothing more than the true course of my father’s voyage and reflections.—’twas certainly in his manner, and many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations.—and pray, brother, quoth my uncle toby, laying the end of his pipe upon my father’s hand in a kindly way of interruption—but waiting till he finished the account—what year of our lord was this?—’twas no year of our lord, replied my father.—that’s impossible, cried my uncle toby.—simpleton! said my father,—’twas forty years before christ was born. my uncle toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother to be the wandering jew, or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain.—“may the lord god of heaven and earth protect him and restore him!” said my uncle toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his eyes. —my father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his harangue with great spirit. “there is not such great odds, brother toby, betwixt good and evil, as the world imagines”——(this way of setting off, by the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle toby’s suspicions).——“labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life.”—much good may do them—said my uncle toby to himself.—— “my son is dead!—so much the better;—’tis a shame in such a tempest to have but one anchor. “but he is gone for ever from us!—be it so. he is got from under the hands of his barber before he was bald—he is but risen from a feast before he was surfeited—from a banquet before he had got drunken. “the thracians wept when a child was born,”—(and we were very near it, quoth my uncle toby,)—“and feasted and made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason.——death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it,—it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s task into another man’s hands. “shew me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and i’ll shew thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.” is it not better, my dear brother toby, (for mark—our appetites are but diseases,)—is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat?—not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it? is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh? there is no terrour, brother toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions—and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man’s room.—strip it of these, what is it?—’tis better in battle than in bed, said my uncle toby.—take away its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning,—its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids—what is it?—better in battle! continued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother bobby—’tis terrible no way—for consider, brother toby,—when we are—death is not;—and when death is—we are not. my uncle toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition; my father’s eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man—away it went,—and hurried my uncle toby’s ideas along with it.—— for this reason, continued my father, ’tis worthy to recollect, how little alteration, in great men, the approaches of death have made.—vespasian died in a jest upon his close-stool—galba with a sentence—septimus severus in a dispatch—tiberius in dissimulation, and cæsar augustus in a compliment.—i hope ’twas a sincere one—quoth my uncle toby. —’twas to his wife,—said my father. c h a p. iv ——and lastly—for all the choice anecdotes which history can produce of this matter, continued my father,—this, like the gilded dome which covers in the fabric—crowns all.— ’tis of cornelius gallus, the prætor—which, i dare say, brother toby, you have read.—i dare say i have not, replied my uncle.—he died, said my father as * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * —and if it was with his wife, said my uncle toby—there could be no hurt in it.—that’s more than i know—replied my father. c h a p. v my mother was going very gingerly in the dark along the passage which led to the parlour, as my uncle toby pronounced the word wife.—’tis a shrill penetrating sound of itself, and obadiah had helped it by leaving the door a little a-jar, so that my mother heard enough of it to imagine herself the subject of the conversation; so laying the edge of her finger across her two lips—holding in her breath, and bending her head a little downwards, with a twist of her neck—(not towards the door, but from it, by which means her ear was brought to the chink)—she listened with all her powers:——the listening slave, with the goddess of silence at his back, could not have given a finer thought for an intaglio. in this attitude i am determined to let her stand for five minutes: till i bring up the affairs of the kitchen (as rapin does those of the church) to the same period. c h a p. vi though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels; yet there was thus much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses——that though it was a simple machine, it had all the honour and advantages of a complex one,——and a number of as odd movements within it, as ever were beheld in the inside of a dutch silk-mill. amongst these there was one, i am going to speak of, in which, perhaps, it was not altogether so singular, as in many others; and it was this, that whatever motion, debate, harangue, dialogue, project, or dissertation, was going forwards in the parlour, there was generally another at the same time, and upon the same subject, running parallel along with it in the kitchen. now to bring this about, whenever an extraordinary message, or letter, was delivered in the parlour—or a discourse suspended till a servant went out—or the lines of discontent were observed to hang upon the brows of my father or mother—or, in short, when any thing was supposed to be upon the tapis worth knowing or listening to, ’twas the rule to leave the door, not absolutely shut, but somewhat a-jar—as it stands just now,—which, under covert of the bad hinge, (and that possibly might be one of the many reasons why it was never mended,) it was not difficult to manage; by which means, in all these cases, a passage was generally left, not indeed as wide as the dardanelles, but wide enough, for all that, to carry on as much of this windward trade, as was sufficient to save my father the trouble of governing his house;—my mother at this moment stands profiting by it.—obadiah did the same thing, as soon as he had left the letter upon the table which brought the news of my brother’s death, so that before my father had well got over his surprise, and entered upon his harangue,—had trim got upon his legs, to speak his sentiments upon the subject. a curious observer of nature, had he been worth the inventory of all job’s stock—though by the bye, your curious observers are seldom worth a groat—would have given the half of it, to have heard corporal trim and my father, two orators so contrasted by nature and education, haranguing over the same bier. my father—a man of deep reading—prompt memory—with cato, and seneca, and epictetus, at his fingers ends.— the corporal—with nothing—to remember—of no deeper reading than his muster-roll—or greater names at his fingers end, than the contents of it. the one proceeding from period to period, by metaphor and allusion, and striking the fancy as he went along (as men of wit and fancy do) with the entertainment and pleasantry of his pictures and images. the other, without wit or antithesis, or point, or turn, this way or that; but leaving the images on one side, and the picture on the other, going straight forwards as nature could lead him, to the heart. o trim! would to heaven thou had’st a better historian!—would!—thy historian had a better pair of breeches!——o ye critics! will nothing melt you? c h a p. vii ——my young master in london is dead? said obadiah.— ——a green sattin night-gown of my mother’s, which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which obadiah’s exclamation brought into susannah’s head. —well might locke write a chapter upon the imperfections of words.—then, quoth susannah, we must all go into mourning.—but note a second time: the word mourning, notwithstanding susannah made use of it herself—failed also of doing its office; it excited not one single idea, tinged either with grey or black,—all was green.——the green sattin night-gown hung there still. —o! ’twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried susannah.—my mother’s whole wardrobe followed.—what a procession! her red damask,—her orange tawney,—her white and yellow lutestrings,—her brown taffata,—her bone-laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable under-petticoats.—not a rag was left behind.—“no,—she will never look up again,” said susannah. we had a fat, foolish scullion—my father, i think, kept her for her simplicity;—she had been all autumn struggling with a dropsy.—he is dead, said obadiah,—he is certainly dead!—so am not i, said the foolish scullion. ——here is sad news, trim, cried susannah, wiping her eyes as trim stepp’d into the kitchen,—master bobby is dead and buried—the funeral was an interpolation of susannah’s—we shall have all to go into mourning, said susannah. i hope not, said trim.—you hope not! cried susannah earnestly.—the mourning ran not in trim’s head, whatever it did in susannah’s.—i hope—said trim, explaining himself, i hope in god the news is not true. i heard the letter read with my own ears, answered obadiah; and we shall have a terrible piece of work of it in stubbing the ox-moor.—oh! he’s dead, said susannah.—as sure, said the scullion, as i’m alive. i lament for him from my heart and my soul, said trim, fetching a sigh.—poor creature!—poor boy!—poor gentleman! —he was alive last whitsontide! said the coachman.—whitsontide! alas! cried trim, extending his right arm, and falling instantly into the same attitude in which he read the sermon,—what is whitsontide, jonathan (for that was the coachman’s name), or shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to this? are we not here now, continued the corporal (striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and stability)—and are we not—(dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a moment!—’twas infinitely striking! susannah burst into a flood of tears.—we are not stocks and stones.—jonathan, obadiah, the cook-maid, all melted.—the foolish fat scullion herself, who was scouring a fish-kettle upon her knees, was rous’d with it.—the whole kitchen crowded about the corporal. now, as i perceive plainly, that the preservation of our constitution in church and state,—and possibly the preservation of the whole world—or what is the same thing, the distribution and balance of its property and power, may in time to come depend greatly upon the right understanding of this stroke of the corporal’s eloquence—i do demand your attention—your worships and reverences, for any ten pages together, take them where you will in any other part of the work, shall sleep for it at your ease. i said, “we were not stocks and stones”—’tis very well. i should have added, nor are we angels, i wish we were,—but men clothed with bodies, and governed by our imaginations;—and what a junketing piece of work of it there is, betwixt these and our seven senses, especially some of them, for my own part, i own it, i am ashamed to confess. let it suffice to affirm, that of all the senses, the eye (for i absolutely deny the touch, though most of your barbati, i know, are for it) has the quickest commerce with the soul,—gives a smarter stroke, and leaves something more inexpressible upon the fancy, than words can either convey—or sometimes get rid of. —i’ve gone a little about—no matter, ’tis for health—let us only carry it back in our mind to the mortality of trim’s hat—“are we not here now,—and gone in a moment?”—there was nothing in the sentence—’twas one of your self-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if trim had not trusted more to his hat than his head—he made nothing at all of it. ——“are we not here now;” continued the corporal, “and are we not”—(dropping his hat plumb upon the ground—and pausing, before he pronounced the word)—“gone! in a moment?” the descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneaded into the crown of it.——nothing could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was the type and fore-runner, like it,—his hand seemed to vanish from under it,—it fell dead,—the corporal’s eye fixed upon it, as upon a corpse,—and susannah burst into a flood of tears. now—ten thousand, and ten thousand times ten thousand (for matter and motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat may be dropped upon the ground, without any effect.——had he flung it, or thrown it, or cast it, or skimmed it, or squirted it, or let it slip or fall in any possible direction under heaven,—or in the best direction that could be given to it,—had he dropped it like a goose—like a puppy—like an ass—or in doing it, or even after he had done, had he looked like a fool—like a ninny—like a nincompoop—it had fail’d, and the effect upon the heart had been lost. ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with the engines of eloquence,—who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, and mollify it,——and then harden it again to your purpose—— ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, and, having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet. ye, lastly, who drive——and why not, ye also who are driven, like turkeys to market with a stick and a red clout—meditate—meditate, i beseech you, upon trim’s hat. c h a p. viii stay—i have a small account to settle with the reader before trim can go on with his harangue.—it shall be done in two minutes. amongst many other book-debts, all of which i shall discharge in due time,—i own myself a debtor to the world for two items,—a chapter upon chamber-maids and button-holes, which, in the former part of my work, i promised and fully intended to pay off this year: but some of your worships and reverences telling me, that the two subjects, especially so connected together, might endanger the morals of the world,—i pray the chapter upon chamber-maids and button-holes may be forgiven me,—and that they will accept of the last chapter in lieu of it; which is nothing, an’t please your reverences, but a chapter of chamber-maids, green gowns, and old hats. trim took his hat off the ground,—put it upon his head,—and then went on with his oration upon death, in manner and form following. c h a p. ix ——to us, jonathan, who know not what want or care is—who live here in the service of two of the best of masters—(bating in my own case his majesty king william the third, whom i had the honour to serve both in ireland and flanders)—i own it, that from whitsontide to within three weeks of christmas,—’tis not long—’tis like nothing;—but to those, jonathan, who know what death is, and what havock and destruction he can make, before a man can well wheel about—’tis like a whole age.—o jonathan! ’twould make a good-natured man’s heart bleed, to consider, continued the corporal (standing perpendicularly), how low many a brave and upright fellow has been laid since that time!—and trust me, susy, added the corporal, turning to susannah, whose eyes were swimming in water,—before that time comes round again,—many a bright eye will be dim.—susannah placed it to the right side of the page—she wept—but she court’sied too.—are we not, continued trim, looking still at susannah—are we not like a flower of the field—a tear of pride stole in betwixt every two tears of humiliation—else no tongue could have described susannah’s affliction—is not all flesh grass?—tis clay,—’tis dirt.—they all looked directly at the scullion,—the scullion had just been scouring a fish-kettle.—it was not fair.— —what is the finest face that ever man looked at!—i could hear trim talk so for ever, cried susannah,—what is it! (susannah laid her hand upon trim’s shoulder)—but corruption?——susannah took it off. now i love you for this—and ’tis this delicious mixture within you which makes you dear creatures what you are—and he who hates you for it——all i can say of the matter is—that he has either a pumpkin for his head—or a pippin for his heart,—and whenever he is dissected ’twill be found so. c h a p. x whether susannah, by taking her hand too suddenly from off the corporal’s shoulder (by the whisking about of her passions)——broke a little the chain of his reflexions—— or whether the corporal began to be suspicious, he had got into the doctor’s quarters, and was talking more like the chaplain than himself—— or whether or whether——for in all such cases a man of invention and parts may with pleasure fill a couple of pages with suppositions——which of all these was the cause, let the curious physiologist, or the curious any body determine——’tis certain, at least, the corporal went on thus with his harangue. for my own part, i declare it, that out of doors, i value not death at all:—not this . . added the corporal, snapping his fingers,—but with an air which no one but the corporal could have given to the sentiment.—in battle, i value death not this . . . and let him not take me cowardly, like poor joe gibbins, in scouring his gun.—what is he? a pull of a trigger—a push of a bayonet an inch this way or that—makes the difference.—look along the line—to the right—see! jack’s down! well,—’tis worth a regiment of horse to him.—no—’tis dick. then jack’s no worse.—never mind which,—we pass on,—in hot pursuit the wound itself which brings him is not felt,—the best way is to stand up to him,—the man who flies, is in ten times more danger than the man who marches up into his jaws.—i’ve look’d him, added the corporal, an hundred times in the face,—and know what he is.—he’s nothing, obadiah, at all in the field.—but he’s very frightful in a house, quoth obadiah.——i never mind it myself, said jonathan, upon a coach-box.—it must, in my opinion, be most natural in bed, replied susannah.—and could i escape him by creeping into the worst calf’s skin that ever was made into a knapsack, i would do it there—said trim—but that is nature. ——nature is nature, said jonathan.—and that is the reason, cried susannah, i so much pity my mistress.—she will never get the better of it.—now i pity the captain the most of any one in the family, answered trim.——madam will get ease of heart in weeping,—and the squire in talking about it,—but my poor master will keep it all in silence to himself.—i shall hear him sigh in his bed for a whole month together, as he did for lieutenant le fever. an’ please your honour, do not sigh so piteously, i would say to him as i laid besides him. i cannot help it, trim, my master would say,—’tis so melancholy an accident—i cannot get it off my heart.—your honour fears not death yourself.—i hope, trim, i fear nothing, he would say, but the doing a wrong thing.——well, he would add, whatever betides, i will take care of le fever’s boy.—and with that, like a quieting draught, his honour would fall asleep. i like to hear trim’s stories about the captain, said susannah.—he is a kindly-hearted gentleman, said obadiah, as ever lived.—aye, and as brave a one too, said the corporal, as ever stept before a platoon.—there never was a better officer in the king’s army,—or a better man in god’s world; for he would march up to the mouth of a cannon, though he saw the lighted match at the very touch-hole,—and yet, for all that, he has a heart as soft as a child for other people.——he would not hurt a chicken.——i would sooner, quoth jonathan, drive such a gentleman for seven pounds a year—than some for eight.—thank thee, jonathan! for thy twenty shillings,—as much, jonathan, said the corporal, shaking him by the hand, as if thou hadst put the money into my own pocket.——i would serve him to the day of my death out of love. he is a friend and a brother to me,—and could i be sure my poor brother tom was dead,—continued the corporal, taking out his handkerchief,—was i worth ten thousand pounds, i would leave every shilling of it to the captain.——trim could not refrain from tears at this testamentary proof he gave of his affection to his master.——the whole kitchen was affected.—do tell us the story of the poor lieutenant, said susannah.——with all my heart, answered the corporal. susannah, the cook, jonathan, obadiah, and corporal trim, formed a circle about the fire; and as soon as the scullion had shut the kitchen door,—the corporal begun. c h a p. xi i am a turk if i had not as much forgot my mother, as if nature had plaistered me up, and set me down naked upon the banks of the river nile, without one.——your most obedient servant, madam—i’ve cost you a great deal of trouble,—i wish it may answer;—but you have left a crack in my back,—and here’s a great piece fallen off here before,—and what must i do with this foot?——i shall never reach england with it. for my own part, i never wonder at any thing;—and so often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that i always suspect it, right or wrong,—at least i am seldom hot upon cold subjects. for all this, i reverence truth as much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost, and can neither of us do well without,—i’ll go to the world’s end with him:——but i hate disputes,—and therefore (bating religious points, or such as touch society) i would almost subscribe to any thing which does not choak me in the first passage, rather than be drawn into one——but i cannot bear suffocation,——and bad smells worst of all.——for which reasons, i resolved from the beginning, that if ever the army of martyrs was to be augmented,—or a new-one raised,—i would have no hand in it, one way or t’other. c h a p. xii ——but to return to my mother. my uncle toby’s opinion, madam, “that there could be no harm in cornelius gallus, the roman prætor’s lying with his wife;”——or rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:——you shall not mistake me,—i mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns. ——pray, madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have done the same? from the strange mode of cornelius’s death, my father had made a transition to that of socrates, and was giving my uncle toby an abstract of his pleading before his judges;——’twas irresistible:——not the oration of socrates,—but my father’s temptation to it.——he had wrote the life of socrates[23] himself the year before he left off trade, which, i fear, was the means of hastening him out of it;——so that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. not a period in socrates’s oration, which closed with a shorter word than transmigration, or annihilation,—or a worse thought in the middle of it than to be—or not to be,—the entering upon a new and untried state of things,—or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep, without dreams, without disturbance?——that we and our children were born to die,—but neither of us born to be slaves.——no—there i mistake; that was part of eleazer’s oration, as recorded by josephus (de bell. judaic)——eleazer owns he had it from the philosophers of india; in all likelihood alexander the great, in his irruption into india, after he had over-run persia, amongst the many things he stole,—stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not all the way by himself (for we all know he died at babylon), at least by some of his maroders, into greece,—from greece it got to rome,—from rome to france,—and from france to england:——so things come round.—— by land carriage, i can conceive no other way.—— by water the sentiment might easily have come down the ganges into the sinus gangeticus, or bay of bengal, and so into the indian sea; and following the course of trade (the way from india by the cape of good hope being then unknown), might be carried with other drugs and spices up the red sea to joddah, the port of mekka, or else to tor or sues, towns at the bottom of the gulf; and from thence by karrawans to coptos, but three days journey distant, so down the nile directly to alexandria, where the sentiment would be landed at the very foot of the great stair-case of the alexandrian library,——and from that store-house it would be fetched.——bless me! what a trade was driven by the learned in those days! [23] this book my father would never consent to publish; ’tis in manuscript, with some other tracts of his, in the family, all, or most of which will be printed in due time. c h a p. xiii ——now my father had a way, a little like that of job’s (in case there ever was such a man——if not, there’s an end of the matter.—— though, by the bye, because your learned men find some difficulty in fixing the precise æra in which so great a man lived;—whether, for instance, before or after the patriarchs, &c.——to vote, therefore, that he never lived at all, is a little cruel,—’tis not doing as they would be done by,—happen that as it may)——my father, i say, had a way, when things went extremely wrong with him, especially upon the first sally of his impatience,—of wondering why he was begot,—wishing himself dead;—sometimes worse:——and when the provocation ran high, and grief touched his lips with more than ordinary powers—sir, you scarce could have distinguished him from socrates himself.——every word would breathe the sentiments of a soul disdaining life, and careless about all its issues; for which reason, though my mother was a woman of no deep reading, yet the abstract of socrates’s oration, which my father was giving my uncle toby, was not altogether new to her.—she listened to it with composed intelligence, and would have done so to the end of the chapter, had not my father plunged (which he had no occasion to have done) into that part of the pleading where the great philosopher reckons up his connections, his alliances, and children; but renounces a security to be so won by working upon the passions of his judges.—“i have friends—i have relations,—i have three desolate children,”—says socrates.— ——then, cried my mother, opening the door,——you have one more, mr. shandy, than i know of. by heaven! i have one less,—said my father, getting up and walking out of the room. c h a p. xiv ——they are socrates’s children, said my uncle toby. he has been dead a hundred years ago, replied my mother. my uncle toby was no chronologer—so not caring to advance one step but upon safe ground, he laid down his pipe deliberately upon the table, and rising up, and taking my mother most kindly by the hand, without saying another word, either good or bad, to her, he led her out after my father, that he might finish the ecclaircissement himself. c h a p. xv had this volume been a farce, which, unless every one’s life and opinions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, i see no reason to suppose—the last chapter, sir, had finished the first act of it, and then this chapter must have set off thus. pt . . . r . . . r . . . ing—twing—twang—prut—trut——’tis a cursed bad fiddle.—do you know whether my fiddle’s in tune or no?—trut . . . prut. . — they should be fifths.——’tis wickedly strung—tr . . . a . e . i . o . u .-twang.—the bridge is a mile too high, and the sound post absolutely down,—else—trut . . prut—hark! tis not so bad a tone.—diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle, dum. there is nothing in playing before good judges,—but there’s a man there—no—not him with the bundle under his arm—the grave man in black.—’sdeath! not the gentleman with the sword on.—sir, i had rather play a caprichio to calliope herself, than draw my bow across my fiddle before that very man; and yet i’ll stake my cremona to a jew’s trump, which is the greatest musical odds that ever were laid, that i will this moment stop three hundred and fifty leagues out of tune upon my fiddle, without punishing one single nerve that belongs to him—twaddle diddle, tweddle diddle,—twiddle diddle,—twoddle diddle,—twuddle diddle,——prut trut—krish—krash—krush.—i’ve undone you, sir,—but you see he’s no worse,—and was apollo to take his fiddle after me, he can make him no better. diddle diddle, diddle diddle, diddle diddle—hum—dum—drum. —your worships and your reverences love music—and god has made you all with good ears—and some of you play delightfully yourselves—trut-prut,—prut-trut. o! there is—whom i could sit and hear whole days,—whose talents lie in making what he fiddles to be felt,—who inspires me with his joys and hopes, and puts the most hidden springs of my heart into motion.—if you would borrow five guineas of me, sir,—which is generally ten guineas more than i have to spare—or you messrs. apothecary and taylor, want your bills paying,—that’s your time. c h a p. xvi the first thing which entered my father’s head, after affairs were a little settled in the family, and susanna had got possession of my mother’s green sattin night-gown,—was to sit down coolly, after the example of xenophon, and write a tristra-pædia, or system of education for me; collecting first for that purpose his own scattered thoughts, counsels, and notions; and binding them together, so as to form an institute for the government of my childhood and adolescence. i was my father’s last stake—he had lost my brother bobby entirely,—he had lost, by his own computation, full three-fourths of me—that is, he had been unfortunate in his three first great casts for me—my geniture, nose, and name,—there was but this one left; and accordingly my father gave himself up to it with as much devotion as ever my uncle toby had done to his doctrine of projectils.—the difference between them was, that my uncle toby drew his whole knowledge of projectils from nicholas tartaglia—my father spun his, every thread of it, out of his own brain,—or reeled and cross-twisted what all other spinners and spinsters had spun before him, that ’twas pretty near the same torture to him. in about three years, or something more, my father had got advanced almost into the middle of his work.—like all other writers, he met with disappointments.—he imagined he should be able to bring whatever he had to say, into so small a compass, that when it was finished and bound, it might be rolled up in my mother’s hussive.—matter grows under our hands.—let no man say,—“come—i’ll write a duodecimo.” my father gave himself up to it, however, with the most painful diligence, proceeding step by step in every line, with the same kind of caution and circumspection (though i cannot say upon quite so religious a principle) as was used by john de la casse, the lord archbishop of benevento, in compassing his galatea; in which his grace of benevento spent near forty years of his life; and when the thing came out, it was not of above half the size or the thickness of a rider’s almanack.—how the holy man managed the affair, unless he spent the greatest part of his time in combing his whiskers, or playing at primero with his chaplain,—would pose any mortal not let into the true secret;—and therefore ’tis worth explaining to the world, was it only for the encouragement of those few in it, who write not so much to be fed—as to be famous. i own had john de la casse, the archbishop of benevento, for whose memory (notwithstanding his galatea,) i retain the highest veneration,—had he been, sir, a slender clerk—of dull wit—slow parts—costive head, and so forth,—he and his galatea might have jogged on together to the age of methuselah for me,—the phænomenon had not been worth a parenthesis.— but the reverse of this was the truth: john de la casse was a genius of fine parts and fertile fancy; and yet with all these great advantages of nature, which should have pricked him forwards with his galatea, he lay under an impuissance at the same time of advancing above a line and a half in the compass of a whole summer’s day: this disability in his grace arose from an opinion he was afflicted with,—which opinion was this,—viz. that whenever a christian was writing a book (not for his private amusement, but) where his intent and purpose was, bonâ fide, to print and publish it to the world, his first thoughts were always the temptations of the evil one.—this was the state of ordinary writers: but when a personage of venerable character and high station, either in church or state, once turned author,—he maintained, that from the very moment he took pen in hand—all the devils in hell broke out of their holes to cajole him.—’twas term-time with them,—every thought, first and last, was captious;—how specious and good soever,—’twas all one;—in whatever form or colour it presented itself to the imagination,—’twas still a stroke of one or other of ’em levell’d at him, and was to be fenced off.—so that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his wit—as his resistance. my father was hugely pleased with this theory of john de la casse, archbishop of benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) i believe would have given ten of the best acres in the shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.—how far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when i come to speak of my father’s religious notions, in the progress of this work: ’tis enough to say here, as he could not have the honour of it, in the literal sense of the doctrine—he took up with the allegory of it; and would often say, especially when his pen was a little retrograde, there was as much good meaning, truth, and knowledge, couched under the veil of john de la casse’s parabolical representation,—as was to be found in any one poetic fiction or mystic record of antiquity.—prejudice of education, he would say, is the devil,—and the multitudes of them which we suck in with our mother’s milk—are the devil and all.——we are haunted with them, brother toby, in all our lucubrations and researches; and was a man fool enough to submit tamely to what they obtruded upon him,—what would his book be? nothing,—he would add, throwing his pen away with a vengeance,—nothing but a farrago of the clack of nurses, and of the nonsense of the old women (of both sexes) throughout the kingdom. this is the best account i am determined to give of the slow progress my father made in his tristra-pædia; at which (as i said) he was three years, and something more, indefatigably at work, and, at last, had scarce completed, by this own reckoning, one half of his undertaking: the misfortune was, that i was all that time totally neglected and abandoned to my mother; and what was almost as bad, by the very delay, the first part of the work, upon which my father had spent the most of his pains, was rendered entirely useless,——every day a page or two became of no consequence.—— ——certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them. in short my father was so long in all his acts of resistance,—or in other words,—he advanced so very slow with his work, and i began to live and get forwards at such a rate, that if an event had not happened,——which, when we get to it, if it can be told with decency, shall not be concealed a moment from the reader——i verily believe, i had put by my father, and left him drawing a sundial, for no better purpose than to be buried under ground. c h a p. xvii ——’twas nothing,—i did not lose two drops of blood by it——’twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us——thousands suffer by choice, what i did by accident.——doctor slop made ten times more of it, than there was occasion:——some men rise, by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires,—and i am this day (august the 10th, 1761) paying part of the price of this man’s reputation.——o ’twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this world!——the chamber-maid had left no ******* *** under the bed:——cannot you contrive, master, quoth susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me up into the window-seat with the other,—cannot you manage, my dear, for a single time, to **** *** ** *** ****** ? i was five years old.——susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family,——so slap came the sash down like lightning upon us;—nothing is left,—cried susannah,—nothing is left—for me, but to run my country.—— my uncle toby’s house was a much kinder sanctuary; and so susannah fled to it. c h a p. xviii when susannah told the corporal the misadventure of the sash, with all the circumstances which attended the murder of me,—(as she called it,)—the blood forsook his cheeks,—all accessaries in murder being principals,—trim’s conscience told him he was as much to blame as susannah,—and if the doctrine had been true, my uncle toby had as much of the bloodshed to answer for to heaven, as either of ’em;—so that neither reason or instinct, separate or together, could possibly have guided susannah’s steps to so proper an asylum. it is in vain to leave this to the reader’s imagination:——to form any kind of hypothesis that will render these propositions feasible, he must cudgel his brains sore,—and to do it without,—he must have such brains as no reader ever had before him.—why should i put them either to trial or to torture? ’tis my own affair: i’ll explain it myself. c h a p. xix ’tis a pity, trim, said my uncle toby, resting with his hand upon the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;—’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, trim. your honour shall have them, replied trim, before tomorrow morning. it was the joy of trim’s heart, nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle toby in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; had it been his last crown, he would have sate down and hammered it into a paderero, to have prevented a single wish in his master. the corporal had already,—what with cutting off the ends of my uncle toby’s spouts—hacking and chiseling up the sides of his leaden gutters,—melting down his pewter shaving-bason,—and going at last, like lewis the fourteenth, on to the top of the church, for spare ends, &c.——he had that very campaign brought no less than eight new battering cannons, besides three demi-culverins, into the field; my uncle toby’s demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages. he had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle toby’s house long before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he began with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too. ——a great moral might be picked handsomely out of this, but i have not time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window. c h a p. xx the corporal had not taken his measures so badly in this stroke of artilleryship, but that he might have kept the matter entirely to himself, and left susannah to have sustained the whole weight of the attack, as she could;—true courage is not content with coming off so.——the corporal, whether as general or comptroller of the train,—’twas no matter,——had done that, without which, as he imagined, the misfortune could never have happened,—at least in susannah’s hands;——how would your honours have behaved?——he determined at once, not to take shelter behind susannah,—but to give it; and with this resolution upon his mind, he marched upright into the parlour, to lay the whole manœuvre before my uncle toby. my uncle toby had just then been giving yorick an account of the battle of steenkirk, and of the strange conduct of count solmes in ordering the foot to halt, and the horse to march where it could not act; which was directly contrary to the king’s commands, and proved the loss of the day. there are incidents in some families so pat to the purpose of what is going to follow,—they are scarce exceeded by the invention of a dramatic writer;—i mean of ancient days.—— trim, by the help of his fore-finger, laid flat upon the table, and the edge of his hand striking across it at right angles, made a shift to tell his story so, that priests and virgins might have listened to it;—and the story being told,—the dialogue went on as follows. c h a p. xxi ——i would be picquetted to death, cried the corporal, as he concluded susannah’s story, before i would suffer the woman to come to any harm,—’twas my fault, an’ please your honour,—not her’s. corporal trim, replied my uncle toby, putting on his hat which lay upon the table,——if any thing can be said to be a fault, when the service absolutely requires it should be done,—’tis i certainly who deserve the blame,—you obeyed your orders. had count solmes, trim, done the same at the battle of steenkirk, said yorick, drolling a little upon the corporal, who had been run over by a dragoon in the retreat,——he had saved thee;——saved! cried trim, interrupting yorick, and finishing the sentence for him after his own fashion,——he had saved five battalions, an’ please your reverence, every soul of them:——there was cutt ’s,—continued the corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand,——there was cutt ’s,——mackay ’s,——angus ’s,——graham ’s,——and leven ’s, all cut to pieces;——and so had the english life-guards too, had it not been for some regiments upon the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy’s fire in their faces, before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket,——they’ll go to heaven for it,—added trim.—trim is right, said my uncle toby, nodding to yorick,——he’s perfectly right. what signified his marching the horse, continued the corporal, where the ground was so strait, that the french had such a nation of hedges, and copses, and ditches, and fell’d trees laid this way and that to cover them (as they always have).——count solmes should have sent us,——we would have fired muzzle to muzzle with them for their lives.——there was nothing to be done for the horse:——he had his foot shot off however for his pains, continued the corporal, the very next campaign at landen.—poor trim got his wound there, quoth my uncle toby.——’twas owing, an’ please your honour, entirely to count solmes,——had he drubbed them soundly at steenkirk, they would not have fought us at landen.——possibly not,——trim, said my uncle toby;——though if they have the advantage of a wood, or you give them a moment’s time to intrench themselves, they are a nation which will pop and pop for ever at you.——there is no way but to march coolly up to them,——receive their fire, and fall in upon them, pell-mell——ding dong, added trim.——horse and foot, said my uncle toby.——helter skelter, said trim.——right and left, cried my uncle toby.——blood an’ ounds, shouted the corporal;——the battle raged,——yorick drew his chair a little to one side for safety, and after a moment’s pause, my uncle toby sinking his voice a note,—resumed the discourse as follows. c h a p. xxii king william, said my uncle toby, addressing himself to yorick, was so terribly provoked at count solmes for disobeying his orders, that he would not suffer him to come into his presence for many months after.——i fear, answered yorick, the squire will be as much provoked at the corporal, as the king at the count.——but ’twould be singularly hard in this case, continued be, if corporal trim, who has behaved so diametrically opposite to count solmes, should have the fate to be rewarded with the same disgrace:——too oft in this world, do things take that train.——i would spring a mine, cried my uncle toby, rising up,——and blow up my fortifications, and my house with them, and we would perish under their ruins, ere i would stand by and see it.——trim directed a slight,——but a grateful bow towards his master,——and so the chapter ends. c h a p. xxiii ——then, yorick, replied my uncle toby, you and i will lead the way abreast,——and do you, corporal, follow a few paces behind us.——and susannah, an’ please your honour, said trim, shall be put in the rear.——’twas an excellent disposition,—and in this order, without either drums beating, or colours flying, they marched slowly from my uncle toby’s house to shandy-hall. ——i wish, said trim, as they entered the door,—instead of the sash weights, i had cut off the church spout, as i once thought to have done.—you have cut off spouts enow, replied yorick. c h a p. xxiv as many pictures as have been given of my father, how like him soever in different airs and attitudes,—not one, or all of them, can ever help the reader to any kind of preconception of how my father would think, speak, or act, upon any untried occasion or occurrence of life.—there was that infinitude of oddities in him, and of chances along with it, by which handle he would take a thing,—it baffled, sir, all calculations.——the truth was, his road lay so very far on one side, from that wherein most men travelled,—that every object before him presented a face and section of itself to his eye, altogether different from the plan and elevation of it seen by the rest of mankind.—in other words, ’twas a different object, and in course was differently considered: this is the true reason, that my dear jenny and i, as well as all the world besides us, have such eternal squabbles about nothing.—she looks at her outside,—i, at her in—. how is it possible we should agree about her value? c h a p. xxv ’tis a point settled,—and i mention it for the comfort of confucius,[24] who is apt to get entangled in telling a plain story—that provided he keeps along the line of his story,—he may go backwards and forwards as he will,—’tis still held to be no digression. this being premised, i take the benefit of the act of going backwards myself. [24] mr shandy is supposed to mean * * * * * * * * * * *, esq; member for * * * * * *,——and not the chinese legislator. c h a p. xxvi fifty thousand pannier loads of devils—(not of the archbishop of benevento’s—i mean of rabelais’s devils), with their tails chopped off by their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it, as i did—when the accident befel me: it summoned up my mother instantly into the nursery,—so that susannah had but just time to make her escape down the back stairs, as my mother came up the fore. now, though i was old enough to have told the story myself,—and young enough, i hope, to have done it without malignity; yet susannah, in passing by the kitchen, for fear of accidents, had left it in short-hand with the cook—the cook had told it with a commentary to jonathan, and jonathan to obadiah; so that by the time my father had rung the bell half a dozen times, to know what was the matter above,—was obadiah enabled to give him a particular account of it, just as it had happened.—i thought as much, said my father, tucking up his night-gown;—and so walked up stairs. one would imagine from this——(though for my own part i somewhat question it)—that my father, before that time, had actually wrote that remarkable character in the tristra-pædia, which to me is the most original and entertaining one in the whole book;—and that is the chapter upon sash-windows, with a bitter philippick at the end of it, upon the forgetfulness of chamber-maids.—i have but two reasons for thinking otherwise. first, had the matter been taken into consideration, before the event happened, my father certainly would have nailed up the sash window for good an’ all;—which, considering with what difficulty he composed books,—he might have done with ten times less trouble, than he could have wrote the chapter: this argument i foresee holds good against his writing a chapter, even after the event; but ’tis obviated under the second reason, which i have the honour to offer to the world in support of my opinion, that my father did not write the chapter upon sash-windows and chamber-pots, at the time supposed,—and it is this. ——that, in order to render the tristra-pædia complete,—i wrote the chapter myself. c h a p. xxvii my father put on his spectacles—looked,—took them off,—put them into the case—all in less than a statutable minute; and without opening his lips, turned about and walked precipitately down stairs: my mother imagined he had stepped down for lint and basilicon; but seeing him return with a couple of folios under his arm, and obadiah following him with a large reading-desk, she took it for granted ’twas an herbal, and so drew him a chair to the bedside, that he might consult upon the case at his ease. ——if it be but right done,—said my father, turning to the section—de sede vel subjecto circumcisionis,—for he had brought up spenser de legibus hebræorum ritualibus—and maimonides, in order to confront and examine us altogether.—— ——if it be but right done, quoth he:—only tell us, cried my mother, interrupting him, what herbs?——for that, replied my father, you must send for dr. slop. my mother went down, and my father went on, reading the section as follows, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—very well,—said my father, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—nay, if it has that convenience——and so without stopping a moment to settle it first in his mind, whether the jews had it from the egyptians, or the egyptians from the jews,—he rose up, and rubbing his forehead two or three times across with the palm of his hand, in the manner we rub out the footsteps of care, when evil has trod lighter upon us than we foreboded,—he shut the book, and walked down stairs.—nay, said he, mentioning the name of a different great nation upon every step as he set his foot upon it—if the egyptians,—the syrians,—the phoenicians,—the arabians,—the cappadocians,——if the colchi, and troglodytes did it——if solon and pythagoras submitted,—what is tristram?——who am i, that i should fret or fume one moment about the matter? c h a p. xxviii dear yorick, said my father smiling (for yorick had broke his rank with my uncle toby in coming through the narrow entry, and so had stept first into the parlour)—this tristram of ours, i find, comes very hardly by all his religious rites.—never was the son of jew, christian, turk, or infidel initiated into them in so oblique and slovenly a manner.—but he is no worse, i trust, said yorick.—there has been certainly, continued my father, the deuce and all to do in some part or other of the ecliptic, when this offspring of mine was formed.—that, you are a better judge of than i, replied yorick.—astrologers, quoth my father, know better than us both:—the trine and sextil aspects have jumped awry,—or the opposite of their ascendents have not hit it, as they should,—or the lords of the genitures (as they call them) have been at bo-peep,—or something has been wrong above, or below with us. ’tis possible, answered yorick.—but is the child, cried my uncle toby, the worse?—the troglodytes say not, replied my father. and your theologists, yorick, tell us—theologically? said yorick,—or speaking after the manner of apothecaries?[25]—statesmen?[26]—or washer-women?[27] ——i’m not sure, replied my father,—but they tell us, brother toby, he’s the better for it.——provided, said yorick, you travel him into egypt.—of that, answered my father, he will have the advantage, when he sees the pyramids.—— now every word of this, quoth my uncle toby, is arabic to me.——i wish, said yorick, ’twas so, to half the world. —ilus,[28] continued my father, circumcised his whole army one morning.—not without a court martial? cried my uncle toby.——though the learned, continued he, taking no notice of my uncle toby’s remark, but turning to yorick,—are greatly divided still who ilus was;—some say saturn;—some the supreme being;—others, no more than a brigadier general under pharaoh-neco.——let him be who he will, said my uncle toby, i know not by what article of war he could justify it. the controvertists, answered my father, assign two-and-twenty different reasons for it:—others, indeed, who have drawn their pens on the opposite side of the question, have shewn the world the futility of the greatest part of them.—but then again, our best polemic divines—i wish there was not a polemic divine, said yorick, in the kingdom;—one ounce of practical divinity—is worth a painted ship-load of all their reverences have imported these fifty years.—pray, mr. yorick, quoth my uncle toby,—do tell me what a polemic divine is?——the best description, captain shandy, i have ever read, is of a couple of ’em, replied yorick, in the account of the battle fought single hands betwixt gymnast and captain tripet; which i have in my pocket.——i beg i may hear it, quoth my uncle toby earnestly.—you shall, said yorick.—and as the corporal is waiting for me at the door,—and i know the description of a battle will do the poor fellow more good than his supper,—i beg, brother, you’ll give him leave to come in.—with all my soul, said my father.——trim came in, erect and happy as an emperor; and having shut the door, yorick took a book from his right-hand coat-pocket, and read, or pretended to read, as follows. [25] χαλεπῆς νόσου, καὶ δυσιάτου ἀπαλλαγὴν, ἣν ἄνθρακα καλοῦσιν.—philo [26] τὰ τεμνόμενα τῶν ἐθνῶν τολυγονώτατα, καὶ πολυανθρωπότατα εἶναι. [27] καθαριότητος εἵνεκεν.—bochart. [28] ὁ ἶλος, τὰ αἰδοῖα περιτέμνεται, ταὐτὸ ποιῆσαι καὶ τοὺς ἅμ’ αυτῷ συμμάχους καταναγκάσας.—sanchuniatho. c h a p. xxix ——“which words being heard by all the soldiers which were there, divers of them being inwardly terrified, did shrink back and make room for the assailant: all this did gymnast very well remark and consider; and therefore, making as if he would have alighted from off his horse, as he was poising himself on the mounting side, he most nimbly (with his short sword by this thigh) shifting his feet in the stirrup, and performing the stirrup-leather feat, whereby, after the inclining of his body downwards, he forthwith launched himself aloft into the air, and placed both his feet together upon the saddle, standing upright, with his back turned towards his horse’s head,—now, (said he) my case goes forward. then suddenly in the same posture wherein he was, he fetched a gambol upon one foot, and turning to the left-hand, failed not to carry his body perfectly round, just into his former position, without missing one jot.——ha! said tripet, i will not do that at this time,—and not without cause. well, said gymnast, i have failed,—i will undo this leap; then with a marvellous strength and agility, turning towards the right-hand, he fetched another striking gambol as before; which done, he set his right hand thumb upon the bow of the saddle, raised himself up, and sprung into the air, poising and upholding his whole weight upon the muscle and nerve of the said thumb, and so turned and whirled himself about three times: at the fourth, reversing his body, and overturning it upside down, and foreside back, without touching any thing, he brought himself betwixt the horse’s two ears, and then giving himself a jerking swing, he seated himself upon the crupper—” (this can’t be fighting, said my uncle toby.——the corporal shook his head at it.——have patience, said yorick.) “then (tripet) pass’d his right leg over his saddle, and placed himself en croup.—but, said he, ’twere better for me to get into the saddle; then putting the thumbs of both hands upon the crupper before him, and there-upon leaning himself, as upon the only supporters of his body, he incontinently turned heels over head in the air, and strait found himself betwixt the bow of the saddle in a tolerable seat; then springing into the air with a summerset, he turned him about like a wind-mill, and made above a hundred frisks, turns, and demi-pommadas.”—good god! cried trim, losing all patience,—one home thrust of a bayonet is worth it all.——i think so too, replied yorick.—— i am of a contrary opinion, quoth my father. c h a p. xxx ——no,—i think i have advanced nothing, replied my father, making answer to a question which yorick had taken the liberty to put to him,—i have advanced nothing in the tristra-pædia, but what is as clear as any one proposition in euclid.—reach me, trim, that book from off the scrutoir:—it has oft-times been in my mind, continued my father, to have read it over both to you, yorick, and to my brother toby, and i think it a little unfriendly in myself, in not having done it long ago:——shall we have a short chapter or two now,—and a chapter or two hereafter, as occasions serve; and so on, till we get through the whole? my uncle toby and yorick made the obeisance which was proper; and the corporal, though he was not included in the compliment, laid his hand upon his breast, and made his bow at the same time.——the company smiled. trim, quoth my father, has paid the full price for staying out the entertainment.——he did not seem to relish the play, replied yorick.——’twas a tom-fool-battle, an’ please your reverence, of captain tripet ’s and that other officer, making so many summersets, as they advanced;——the french come on capering now and then in that way,—but not quite so much. my uncle toby never felt the consciousness of his existence with more complacency than what the corporal’s, and his own reflections, made him do at that moment;——he lighted his pipe,——yorick drew his chair closer to the table,—trim snuff’d the candle,—my father stirr’d up the fire,—took up the book,—cough’d twice, and begun. c h a p. xxxi the first thirty pages, said my father, turning over the leaves,—are a little dry; and as they are not closely connected with the subject,——for the present we’ll pass them by: ’tis a prefatory introduction, continued my father, or an introductory preface (for i am not determined which name to give it) upon political or civil government; the foundation of which being laid in the first conjunction betwixt male and female, for procreation of the species——i was insensibly led into it.——’twas natural, said yorick. the original of society, continued my father, i’m satisfied is, what politian tells us, i.e. merely conjugal; and nothing more than the getting together of one man and one woman;—to which, (according to hesiod) the philosopher adds a servant:—but supposing in the first beginning there were no men servants born——he lays the foundation of it, in a man,—a woman—and a bull.——i believe ’tis an ox, quoth yorick, quoting the passage ([greek text])——a bull must have given more trouble than his head was worth.—but there is a better reason still, said my father (dipping his pen into his ink); for the ox being the most patient of animals, and the most useful withal in tilling the ground for their nourishment,—was the properest instrument, and emblem too, for the new joined couple, that the creation could have associated with them.—and there is a stronger reason, added my uncle toby, than them all for the ox.—my father had not power to take his pen out of his ink-horn, till he had heard my uncle toby’s reason.—for when the ground was tilled, said my uncle toby, and made worth inclosing, then they began to secure it by walls and ditches, which was the origin of fortification.——true, true, dear toby, cried my father, striking out the bull, and putting the ox in his place. my father gave trim a nod, to snuff the candle, and resumed his discourse. ——i enter upon this speculation, said my father carelessly, and half shutting the book, as he went on, merely to shew the foundation of the natural relation between a father and his child; the right and jurisdiction over whom he acquires these several ways— 1st, by marriage. 2d, by adoption. 3d, by legitimation. and 4th, by procreation; all which i consider in their order. i lay a slight stress upon one of them, replied yorick——the act, especially where it ends there, in my opinion lays as little obligation upon the child, as it conveys power to the father.—you are wrong,—said my father argutely, and for this plain reason * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.—i own, added my father, that the offspring, upon this account, is not so under the power and jurisdiction of the mother.—but the reason, replied yorick, equally holds good for her.—she is under authority herself, said my father:—and besides, continued my father, nodding his head, and laying his finger upon the side of his nose, as he assigned his reason,—she is not the principal agent, yorick.—in what, quoth my uncle toby? stopping his pipe.—though by all means, added my father (not attending to my uncle toby), “the son ought to pay her respect,” as you may read, yorick, at large in the first book of the institutes of justinian, at the eleventh title and the tenth section.—i can read it as well, replied yorick, in the catechism. c h a p. xxxii trim can repeat every word of it by heart, quoth my uncle toby.—pugh! said my father, not caring to be interrupted with trim’s saying his catechism. he can, upon my honour, replied my uncle toby.—ask him, mr. yorick, any question you please.—— —the fifth commandment, trim,—said yorick, speaking mildly, and with a gentle nod, as to a modest catechumen. the corporal stood silent.—you don’t ask him right, said my uncle toby, raising his voice, and giving it rapidly like the word of command:——the fifth———cried my uncle toby.—i must begin with the first, an’ please your honour, said the corporal.—— —yorick could not forbear smiling.—your reverence does not consider, said the corporal, shouldering his stick like a musket, and marching into the middle of the room, to illustrate his position,—that ’tis exactly the same thing, as doing one’s exercise in the field.— “join your right-hand to your firelock,” cried the corporal, giving the word of command, and performing the motion.— “poise your firelock,” cried the corporal, doing the duty still both of adjutant and private man. “rest your firelock;”—one motion, an’ please your reverence, you see leads into another.—if his honour will begin but with the first— the first—cried my uncle toby, setting his hand upon his side—* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. the second—cried my uncle toby, waving his tobacco-pipe, as he would have done his sword at the head of a regiment.—the corporal went through his manual with exactness; and having honoured his father and mother, made a low bow, and fell back to the side of the room. every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest, and has wit in it, and instruction too,—if we can but find it out. —here is the scaffold work of instruction, its true point of folly, without the building behind it. —here is the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors, gerund-grinders, and bear-leaders to view themselves in, in their true dimensions.— oh! there is a husk and shell, yorick, which grows up with learning, which their unskilfulness knows not how to fling away! —sciences may be learned by rote but wisdom not. yorick thought my father inspired.—i will enter into obligations this moment, said my father, to lay out all my aunt dinah’s legacy in charitable uses (of which, by the bye, my father had no high opinion), if the corporal has any one determinate idea annexed to any one word he has repeated.—prithee, trim, quoth my father, turning round to him,—what dost thou mean, by “honouring thy father and mother?” allowing them, an’ please your honour, three halfpence a day out of my pay, when they grow old.—and didst thou do that, trim? said yorick.—he did indeed, replied my uncle toby.—then, trim, said yorick, springing out of his chair, and taking the corporal by the hand, thou art the best commentator upon that part of the decalogue; and i honour thee more for it, corporal trim, than if thou hadst had a hand in the talmud itself. c h a p. xxxiiiv o blessed health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; ’tis thou who enlargest the soul,—and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.—he that has thee, has little more to wish for;—and he that is so wretched as to want thee,—wants every thing with thee. i have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said my father, into a very little room, therefore we’ll read the chapter quite through. my father read as follows: “the whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture”—you have proved that matter of fact, i suppose, above, said yorick. sufficiently, replied my father. in saying this, my father shut the book,—not as if he resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his fore-finger in the chapter:——nor pettishly,—for he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.—— i have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding to yorick, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter. now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, that the secret of all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture,—and that he had managed the point so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole chapter,—or a single syllable in it, pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal œconomy—— “o thou eternal maker of all beings!”—he would cry, striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had one)—“thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of excellence and perfection,—what have we moonites done?” c h a p. xxxiv with two strokes, the one at hippocrates, the other at lord verulam, did my father achieve it. the stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the ars longa,—and vita brevis.——life short, cried my father,—and the art of healing tedious! and who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads of chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, they have first flatter’d the world, and at last deceived it? ——o my lord verulam! cried my father, turning from hippocrates, and making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,—what shall i say to thee, my great lord verulam? what shall i say to thy internal spirit,—thy opium, thy salt-petre,——thy greasy unctions,—thy daily purges,—thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums? ——my father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing: how he dealt with his lordship’s opinion,——you shall see;——but when—i know not:——we must first see what his lordship’s opinion was. c h a p. xxxv “the two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, says lord verulam, are first—— “the internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to death:—and secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes:—which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life.” this being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you got up.—— still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula could enter;——nor could any one get out.——this put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off redundant humours,—and render the system complete. what my father had to say to my lord of verulam’s opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,—but not to-day—or to-morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—i must get forwards——you shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you chuse it), as soon as ever the tristra-pædia is published.—— sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his own.—— c h a p. xxxvi the whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us;—the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the school-men confounded the task, merely (as van helmont, the famous chymist, has proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies. now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of aristotle, “quod omne animal post coitum est triste.” now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but whether vice versa, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness——or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies.——so that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of ’em threaten his destruction,——’twill be all that is needful to be done upon that head.—— c h a p. xxxvii the description of the siege of jericho itself, could not have engaged the attention of my uncle toby more powerfully than the last chapter;—his eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it;—he never mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle toby took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to come close to his chair, to ask him the following question,—aside.— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. it was at the siege of limerick, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow. the poor fellow and i, quoth my uncle toby, addressing himself to my father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of limerick was raised, upon the very account you mention.——now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother toby? cried my father, mentally.——by heaven! continued he, communing still with himself, it would puzzle an œdipus to bring it in point.—— i believe, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which i plyed your honour off;—and the geneva, trim, added my uncle toby, which did us more good than all——i verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an’ please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them too.——the noblest grave, corporal! cried my uncle toby, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in.——but a pitiful death for him! an’ please your honour, replied the corporal. all this was as much arabick to my father, as the rites of the colchi and troglodites had been before to my uncle toby; my father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile. my uncle toby, turning to yorick, resumed the case at limerick, more intelligibly than he had begun it,—and so settled the point for my father at once. c h a p. xxxviii it was undoubtedly, said my uncle toby, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as i conceive it, inevitably have got the better.——my father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly could.—— ——it was heaven’s mercy to us, continued my uncle toby, which put it into the corporal’s head to maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.——upon my honour, added my uncle toby, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother shandy, twenty toises.—if there was no firing, said yorick. well—said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word——was i a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, i would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy—————————————yorick, foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father’s breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.——prithee, trim, said yorick, without staying for my father’s leave,—tell us honestly—what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture? with humble submission to his honour’s better judgment, quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle toby—speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle toby.—the poor fellow is my servant,—not my slave,—added my uncle toby, turning to my father.—— the corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,——he delivered his notion thus. c h a p. xxxix just as the corporal was humming, to begin—in waddled dr. slop.—’tis not two-pence matter—the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.—— well, my good doctor, cried my father sportively, for the transitions of his passions were unaccountably sudden,—and what has this whelp of mine to say to the matter? had my father been asking after the amputation of the tail of a puppy-dog—he could not have done it in a more careless air: the system which dr. slop had laid down, to treat the accident by, no way allowed of such a mode of enquiry.—he sat down. pray, sir, quoth my uncle toby, in a manner which could not go unanswered,—in what condition is the boy?—’twill end in a phimosis, replied dr. slop. i am no wiser than i was, quoth my uncle toby—returning his pipe into his mouth.——then let the corporal go on, said my father, with his medical lecture.—the corporal made a bow to his old friend, dr. slop, and then delivered his opinion concerning radical heat and radical moisture, in the following words. c h a p. xl the city of limerick, the siege of which was begun under his majesty king william himself, the year after i went into the army—lies, an’ please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet, swampy country.—’tis quite surrounded, said my uncle toby, with the shannon, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in ireland.—— i think this is a new fashion, quoth dr. slop, of beginning a medical lecture.—’tis all true, answered trim.—then i wish the faculty would follow the cut of it, said yorick.—’tis all cut through, an’ please your reverence, said the corporal, with drains and bogs; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle,—’twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and myself; now there was no such thing, after the first ten days, continued the corporal, for a soldier to lie dry in his tent, without cutting a ditch round it, to draw off the water;—nor was that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove.—— and what conclusion dost thou draw, corporal trim, cried my father, from all these premises? i infer, an’ please your worship, replied trim, that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water—and that the radical heat, of those who can go to the expence of it, is burnt brandy,—the radical heat and moisture of a private man, an’ please your honour, is nothing but ditch-water—and a dram of geneva——and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits, and drive away the vapours—we know not what it is to fear death. i am at a loss, captain shandy, quoth doctor slop, to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology or divinity.—slop had not forgot trim’s comment upon the sermon.— it is but an hour ago, replied yorick, since the corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour.—— the radical heat and moisture, quoth doctor slop, turning to my father, you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being—as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation.—it is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally in my opinion by consubstantials, impriments, and occludents.——now this poor fellow, continued dr. slop, pointing to the corporal, has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point.——that he has,—said my father.——very likely, said my uncle.—i’m sure of it—quoth yorick.—— c h a p. xli doctor slop being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the tristra-pædia.——come! cheer up, my lads; i’ll shew you land——for when we have tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelve-month.—huzza!— c h a p. xlii ——five years with a bib under his chin; four years in travelling from christ-cross-row to malachi; a year and a half in learning to write his own name; seven long years and more τυπιω-ing it, at greek and latin; four years at his probations and his negations—the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block,—and nothing done, but his tools sharpened to hew it out!—’tis a piteous delay!—was not the great julius scaliger within an ace of never getting his tools sharpened at all?——forty-four years old was he before he could manage his greek;—and peter damianus, lord bishop of ostia, as all the world knows, could not so much as read, when he was of man’s estate.—and baldus himself, as eminent as he turned out after, entered upon the law so late in life, that every body imagined he intended to be an advocate in the other world: no wonder, when eudamidas, the son of archidamas, heard xenocrates at seventy-five disputing about wisdom, that he asked gravely,—if the old man be yet disputing and enquiring concerning wisdom,—what time will he have to make use of it? yorick listened to my father with great attention; there was a seasoning of wisdom unaccountably mixed up with his strangest whims, and he had sometimes such illuminations in the darkest of his eclipses, as almost atoned for them:—be wary, sir, when you imitate him. i am convinced, yorick, continued my father, half reading and half discoursing, that there is a north-west passage to the intellectual world; and that the soul of man has shorter ways of going to work, in furnishing itself with knowledge and instruction, than we generally take with it.——but, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, yorick, has not a parent to point it out. ——the whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the auxiliary verbs, mr. yorick. had yorick trod upon virgil ’s snake, he could not have looked more surprised.—i am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and i reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befel the republic of letters, that those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done——so that, except raymond lullius, and the elder pelegrini, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—i should be glad, said yorick, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. you shall, said my father. the highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor,——for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better;——but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea enters;—and so on. now the use of the auxiliaries is, at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions. you excite my curiosity greatly, said yorick. for my own part, quoth my uncle toby, i have given it up.——the danes, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of limerick, were all auxiliaries.——and very good ones, said my uncle toby.—but the auxiliaries, trim, my brother is talking about,—i conceive to be different things.—— ——you do? said my father, rising up. c h a p. xliii my father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and finished the chapter. the verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont.—and these varied with tenses, present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb see,—or with these questions added to them;—is it? was it? will it be? would it be? may it be? might it be? and these again put negatively, is it not? was it not? ought it not?—or affirmatively,—it is; it was; it ought to be. or chronologically,—has it been always? lately? how long ago?—or hypothetically,—if it was? if it was not? what would follow?—if the french should beat the english? if the sun go out of the zodiac? now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it.——didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to trim, who stood at the back of his chair:—no, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal.——but thou couldst discourse about one, trim, said my father, in case of need?——how is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle toby, if the corporal never saw one?——’tis the fact i want, replied my father,—and the possibility of it is as follows. a white bear! very well. have i ever seen one? might i ever have seen one? am i ever to see one? ought i ever to have seen one? or can i ever see one? would i had seen a white bear! (for how can i imagine it?) if i should see a white bear, what should i say? if i should never see a white bear, what then? if i never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; have i ever seen the skin of one? did i ever see one painted?—described? have i never dreamed of one? did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? what would they give? how would they behave? how would the white bear have behaved? is he wild? tame? terrible? rough? smooth? —is the white bear worth seeing?— —is there no sin in it?— is it better than a black one? c h a p. xliv ——we’ll not stop two moments, my dear sir,—only, as we have got through these five volumes[29], (do, sir, sit down upon a set——they are better than nothing) let us just look back upon the country we have pass’d through.—— ——what a wilderness has it been! and what a mercy that we have not both of us been lost, or devoured by wild beasts in it! did you think the world itself, sir, had contained such a number of jack asses?——how they view’d and review’d us as we passed over the rivulet at the bottom of that little valley!——and when we climbed over that hill, and were just getting out of sight—good god! what a braying did they all set up together! ——prithee, shepherd! who keeps all those jack asses? * * * ——heaven be their comforter——what! are they never curried?——are they never taken in in winter?——bray bray—bray. bray on,—the world is deeply your debtor;——louder still—that’s nothing:—in good sooth, you are ill-used:——was i a jack asse, i solemnly declare, i would bray in g-sol-re-ut from morning, even unto night. [29] in the first edition, the sixth volume began with this chapter. c h a p. xlv when my father had danced his white bear backwards and forwards through half a dozen pages, he closed the book for good an’ all,—and in a kind of triumph redelivered it into trim’s hand, with a nod to lay it upon the ’scrutoire, where he found it.——tristram, said he, shall be made to conjugate every word in the dictionary, backwards and forwards the same way;——every word, yorick, by this means, you see, is converted into a thesis or an hypothesis;—every thesis and hypothesis have an off-spring of propositions;—and each proposition has its own consequences and conclusions; every one of which leads the mind on again, into fresh tracks of enquiries and doubtings.——the force of this engine, added my father, is incredible in opening a child’s head.——’tis enough, brother shandy, cried my uncle toby, to burst it into a thousand splinters.—— i presume, said yorick, smiling,—it must be owing to this,—(for let logicians say what they will, it is not to be accounted for sufficiently from the bare use of the ten predicaments)——that the famous vincent quirino, amongst the many other astonishing feats of his childhood, of which the cardinal bembo has given the world so exact a story,—should be able to paste up in the public schools at rome, so early as in the eighth year of his age, no less than four thousand five hundred and fifty different theses, upon the most abstruse points of the most abstruse theology;—and to defend and maintain them in such sort, as to cramp and dumbfound his opponents.——what is that, cried my father, to what is told us of alphonsus tostatus, who, almost in his nurse’s arms, learned all the sciences and liberal arts without being taught any one of them?——what shall we say of the great piereskius?—that’s the very man, cried my uncle toby, i once told you of, brother shandy, who walked a matter of five hundred miles, reckoning from paris to shevling, and from shevling back again, merely to see stevinus’s flying chariot.——he was a very great man! added my uncle toby (meaning stevinus)—he was so, brother toby, said my father (meaning piereskius)——and had multiplied his ideas so fast, and increased his knowledge to such a prodigious stock, that, if we may give credit to an anecdote concerning him, which we cannot withhold here, without shaking the authority of all anecdotes whatever—at seven years of age, his father committed entirely to his care the education of his younger brother, a boy of five years old,—with the sole management of all his concerns.—was the father as wise as the son? quoth my uncle toby:—i should think not, said yorick:—but what are these, continued my father—(breaking out in a kind of enthusiasm)—what are these, to those prodigies of childhood in grotius, scioppius, heinsius, politian, pascal, joseph scaliger, ferdinand de cordouè, and others—some of which left off their substantial forms at nine years old, or sooner, and went on reasoning without them;—others went through their classics at seven;—wrote tragedies at eight;—ferdinand de cordouè was so wise at nine,—’twas thought the devil was in him;—and at venice gave such proofs of his knowledge and goodness, that the monks imagined he was antichrist, or nothing.——others were masters of fourteen languages at ten,—finished the course of their rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics, at eleven,—put forth their commentaries upon servius and martianus capella at twelve,—and at thirteen received their degrees in philosophy, laws, and divinity:——but you forget the great lipsius, quoth yorick, who composed a work[30] the day he was born:——they should have wiped it up, said my uncle toby, and said no more about it. [30] nous aurions quelque interêt, says baillet, de montrer qu’il n’a rien de ridicule s’il étoit veritable, au moins dans le sens énigmatique que nicius erythræus a tâ hé de lui donner. cet auteur dit que pour comprendre comme lipse, il a pû composer un ouvrage le premier jour de sa vie, il faut s’imaginer, que ce premier jour n’est pas celui de sa naissance charnelle, mais celui au quel il a commencé d’user de la raison; il veut que ç’ait été à l’âge de neuf ans; et il nous veut persuader que ce fut en cet âge, que lipse fit un poëme.——le tour est ingénieux, &c. &c. c h a p. xlvi when the cataplasm was ready, a scruple of decorum had unseasonably rose up in susannah’s conscience, about holding the candle, whilst slop tied it on; slop had not treated susannah’s distemper with anodynes,—and so a quarrel had ensued betwixt them. ——oh! oh!——said slop, casting a glance of undue freedom in susannah’s face, as she declined the office;——then, i think i know you, madam——you know me, sir! cried susannah fastidiously, and with a toss of her head, levelled evidently, not at his profession, but at the doctor himself,——you know me! cried susannah again.——doctor slop clapped his finger and his thumb instantly upon his nostrils;——susannah’s spleen was ready to burst at it;——’tis false, said susannah.—come, come, mrs. modesty, said slop, not a little elated with the success of his last thrust,——if you won’t hold the candle, and look—you may hold it and shut your eyes:—that’s one of your popish shifts, cried susannah:—’tis better, said slop, with a nod, than no shift at all, young woman;——i defy you, sir, cried susannah, pulling her shift sleeve below her elbow. it was almost impossible for two persons to assist each other in a surgical case with a more splenetic cordiality. slop snatched up the cataplasm——susannah snatched up the candle;——a little this way, said slop; susannah looking one way, and rowing another, instantly set fire to slop’s wig, which being somewhat bushy and unctuous withal, was burnt out before it was well kindled.——you impudent whore! cried slop,—(for what is passion, but a wild beast?)—you impudent whore, cried slop, getting upright, with the cataplasm in his hand;——i never was the destruction of any body’s nose, said susannah,—which is more than you can say:——is it? cried slop, throwing the cataplasm in her face;——yes, it is, cried susannah, returning the compliment with what was left in the pan. c h a p. xlvii doctor slop and susannah filed cross-bills against each other in the parlour; which done, as the cataplasm had failed, they retired into the kitchen to prepare a fomentation for me;—and whilst that was doing, my father determined the point as you will read. c h a p. xlviii you see ’tis high time, said my father, addressing himself equally to my uncle toby and yorick, to take this young creature out of these women’s hands, and put him into those of a private governor. marcus antoninus provided fourteen governors all at once to superintend his son commodus’s education,—and in six weeks he cashiered five of them;—i know very well, continued my father, that commodus’s mother was in love with a gladiator at the time of her conception, which accounts for a great many of commodus’s cruelties when he became emperor;—but still i am of opinion, that those five whom antoninus dismissed, did commodus’s temper, in that short time, more hurt than the other nine were able to rectify all their lives long. now as i consider the person who is to be about my son, as the mirror in which he is to view himself from morning to night, by which he is to adjust his looks, his carriage, and perhaps the inmost sentiments of his heart;—i would have one, yorick, if possible, polished at all points, fit for my child to look into.——this is very good sense, quoth my uncle toby to himself. ——there is, continued my father, a certain mien and motion of the body and all its parts, both in acting and speaking, which argues a man well within; and i am not at all surprised that gregory of nazianzum, upon observing the hasty and untoward gestures of julian, should foretel he would one day become an apostate;——or that st. ambrose should turn his amanuensis out of doors, because of an indecent motion of his head, which went backwards and forwards like a flail;——or that democritus should conceive protagoras to be a scholar, from seeing him bind up a faggot, and thrusting, as he did it, the small twigs inwards.——there are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s soul; and i maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him. it is for these reasons, continued my father, that the governor i make choice of shall neither[31] lisp, or squint, or wink, or talk loud, or look fierce, or foolish;——or bite his lips, or grind his teeth, or speak through his nose, or pick it, or blow it with his fingers.—— he shall neither walk fast,—or slow, or fold his arms,—for that is laziness;—or hang them down,—for that is folly; or hide them in his pocket, for that is nonsense.—— he shall neither strike, or pinch, or tickle—or bite, or cut his nails, or hawk, or spit, or snift, or drum with his feet or fingers in company;——nor (according to erasmus) shall he speak to any one in making water,—nor shall he point to carrion or excrement.——now this is all nonsense again, quoth my uncle toby to himself.—— i will have him, continued my father, cheerful, faceté, jovial; at the same time, prudent, attentive to business, vigilant, acute, argute, inventive, quick in resolving doubts and speculative questions;——he shall be wise, and judicious, and learned:——and why not humble, and moderate, and gentle-tempered, and good? said yorick:——and why not, cried my uncle toby, free, and generous, and bountiful, and brave?——he shall, my dear toby, replied my father, getting up and shaking him by his hand.—then, brother shandy, answered my uncle toby, raising himself off the chair, and laying down his pipe to take hold of my father’s other hand,—i humbly beg i may recommend poor le fever’s son to you;——a tear of joy of the first water sparkled in my uncle toby’s eye, and another, the fellow to it, in the corporal’s, as the proposition was made;——you will see why when you read le fever’s story:——fool that i was! nor can i recollect (nor perhaps you) without turning back to the place, what it was that hindered me from letting the corporal tell it in his own words;—but the occasion is lost,—i must tell it now in my own. [31] vid. pellegrina. c h a p. xlix the story of le fever it was some time in the summer of that year in which dendermond was taken by the allies,—which was about seven years before my father came into the country,—and about as many, after the time, that my uncle toby and trim had privately decamped from my father’s house in town, in order to lay some of the finest sieges to some of the finest fortified cities in europe——when my uncle toby was one evening getting his supper, with trim sitting behind him at a small sideboard,—i say, sitting—for in consideration of the corporal’s lame knee (which sometimes gave him exquisite pain)—when my uncle toby dined or supped alone, he would never suffer the corporal to stand; and the poor fellow’s veneration for his master was such, that, with a proper artillery, my uncle toby could have taken dendermond itself, with less trouble than he was able to gain this point over him; for many a time when my uncle toby supposed the corporal’s leg was at rest, he would look back, and detect him standing behind him with the most dutiful respect: this bred more little squabbles betwixt them, than all other causes for five-and-twenty years together—but this is neither here nor there—why do i mention it?——ask my pen,—it governs me,—i govern not it. he was one evening sitting thus at his supper, when the landlord of a little inn in the village came into the parlour, with an empty phial in his hand, to beg a glass or two of sack; ’tis for a poor gentleman,—i think, of the army, said the landlord, who has been taken ill at my house four days ago, and has never held up his head since, or had a desire to taste any thing, till just now, that he has a fancy for a glass of sack and a thin toast,——i think, says he, taking his hand from his forehead, it would comfort me.—— ——if i could neither beg, borrow, or buy such a thing—added the landlord,—i would almost steal it for the poor gentleman, he is so ill.——i hope in god he will still mend, continued he,—we are all of us concerned for him. thou art a good-natured soul, i will answer for thee, cried my uncle toby; and thou shalt drink the poor gentleman’s health in a glass of sack thyself,—and take a couple of bottles with my service, and tell him he is heartily welcome to them, and to a dozen more if they will do him good. though i am persuaded, said my uncle toby, as the landlord shut the door, he is a very compassionate fellow—trim,—yet i cannot help entertaining a high opinion of his guest too; there must be something more than common in him, that in so short a time should win so much upon the affections of his host;——and of his whole family, added the corporal, for they are all concerned for him.——step after him, said my uncle toby,—do trim,—and ask if he knows his name. ——i have quite forgot it truly, said the landlord, coming back into the parlour with the corporal,—but i can ask his son again:——has he a son with him then? said my uncle toby.—a boy, replied the landlord, of about eleven or twelve years of age;—but the poor creature has tasted almost as little as his father; he does nothing but mourn and lament for him night and day:——he has not stirred from the bed-side these two days. my uncle toby laid down his knife and fork, and thrust his plate from before him, as the landlord gave him the account; and trim, without being ordered, took away, without saying one word, and in a few minutes after brought him his pipe and tobacco. ——stay in the room a little, said my uncle toby. trim!——said my uncle toby, after he lighted his pipe, and smoak’d about a dozen whiffs.——trim came in front of his master, and made his bow;—my uncle toby smoak’d on, and said no more.——corporal! said my uncle toby—the corporal made his bow.——my uncle toby proceeded no farther, but finished his pipe. trim! said my uncle toby, i have a project in my head, as it is a bad night, of wrapping myself up warm in my roquelaure, and paying a visit to this poor gentleman.——your honour’s roquelaure, replied the corporal, has not once been had on, since the night before your honour received your wound, when we mounted guard in the trenches before the gate of st. nicholas;—and besides, it is so cold and rainy a night, that what with the roquelaure, and what with the weather, ’twill be enough to give your honour your death, and bring on your honour’s torment in your groin. i fear so, replied my uncle toby; but i am not at rest in my mind, trim, since the account the landlord has given me.——i wish i had not known so much of this affair,—added my uncle toby,—or that i had known more of it:——how shall we manage it? leave it, an’t please your honour, to me, quoth the corporal;——i’ll take my hat and stick and go to the house and reconnoitre, and act accordingly; and i will bring your honour a full account in an hour.——thou shalt go, trim, said my uncle toby, and here’s a shilling for thee to drink with his servant.——i shall get it all out of him, said the corporal, shutting the door. my uncle toby filled his second pipe; and had it not been, that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line, as a crooked one,—he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor le fever and his boy the whole time he smoaked it. c h a p. l the story of le fever continued it was not till my uncle toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, that corporal trim returned from the inn, and gave him the following account. i despaired, at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back your honour any kind of intelligence concerning the poor sick lieutenant—is he in the army, then? said my uncle toby——he is, said the corporal——and in what regiment? said my uncle toby——i’ll tell your honour, replied the corporal, every thing straight forwards, as i learnt it.—then, trim, i’ll fill another pipe, said my uncle toby, and not interrupt thee till thou hast done; so sit down at thy ease, trim, in the window-seat, and begin thy story again. the corporal made his old bow, which generally spoke as plain as a bow could speak it—your honour is good:—and having done that, he sat down, as he was ordered,—and begun the story to my uncle toby over again in pretty near the same words. i despaired at first, said the corporal, of being able to bring back any intelligence to your honour, about the lieutenant and his son; for when i asked where his servant was, from whom i made myself sure of knowing every thing which was proper to be asked,—that’s a right distinction, trim, said my uncle toby—i was answered, an’ please your honour, that he had no servant with him;——that he had come to the inn with hired horses, which, upon finding himself unable to proceed (to join, i suppose, the regiment), he had dismissed the morning after he came.—if i get better, my dear, said he, as he gave his purse to his son to pay the man,—we can hire horses from hence.——but alas! the poor gentleman will never get from hence, said the landlady to me,—for i heard the death-watch all night long;——and when he dies, the youth, his son, will certainly die with him; for he is brokenhearted already. i was hearing this account, continued the corporal, when the youth came into the kitchen, to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of;——but i will do it for my father myself, said the youth.——pray let my save you the trouble, young gentleman, said i, taking up a fork for the purpose, and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst i did it.——i believe, sir, said he, very modestly, i can please him best myself.——i am sure, said i, his honour will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by an old soldier.——the youth took hold of my hand, and instantly burst into tears.——poor youth! said my uncle toby,—he has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, trim, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend;—i wish i had him here. ——i never, in the longest march, said the corporal, had so great a mind to my dinner, as i had to cry with him for company:—what could be the matter with me, an’ please your honour? nothing in the world, trim, said my uncle toby, blowing his nose,—but that thou art a good-natured fellow. when i gave him the toast, continued the corporal, i thought it was proper to tell him i was captain shandy’s servant, and that your honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father;—and that if there was any thing in your house or cellar——(and thou might’st have added my purse too, said my uncle toby),——he was heartily welcome to it:——he made a very low bow (which was meant to your honour), but no answer—for his heart was full—so he went up stairs with the toast;—i warrant you, my dear, said i, as i opened the kitchen-door, your father will be well again.——mr. yorick’s curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire,—but said not a word good or bad to comfort the youth.——i thought it wrong; added the corporal——i think so too, said my uncle toby. when the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me know, that in about ten minutes he should be glad if i would step up stairs.——i believe, said the landlord, he is going to say his prayers,——for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and as i shut the door, i saw his son take up a cushion.—— i thought, said the curate, that you gentlemen of the army, mr. trim, never said your prayers at all.——i heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night, said the landlady, very devoutly, and with my own ears, or i could not have believed it.——are you sure of it? replied the curate.——a soldier, an’ please your reverence, said i, prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson;——and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to god of any one in the whole world——’twas well said of thee, trim, said my uncle toby.——but when a soldier, said i, an’ please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water,—or engaged, said i, for months together in long and dangerous marches;—harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day;—harassing others to-morrow;—detached here;—countermanded there;—resting this night out upon his arms;—beat up in his shirt the next;—benumbed in his joints;—perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on;—must say his prayers how and when he can.—i believe, said i,—for i was piqued, quoth the corporal, for the reputation of the army,—i believe, an’ please your reverence, said i, that when a soldier gets time to pray,—he prays as heartily as a parson,—though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.——thou shouldst not have said that, trim, said my uncle toby,—for god only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not:——at the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then)—it will be seen who has done their duties in this world,—and who has not; and we shall be advanced, trim, accordingly.——i hope we shall, said trim.——it is in the scripture, said my uncle toby; and i will shew it thee to-morrow:—in the mean time we may depend upon it, trim, for our comfort, said my uncle toby, that god almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it,—it will never be enquired into, whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one:——i hope not, said the corporal——but go on, trim, said my uncle toby, with thy story. when i went up, continued the corporal, into the lieutenant’s room, which i did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes,—he was lying in his bed with his head raised upon his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow, and a clean white cambrick handkerchief beside it:——the youth was just stooping down to take up the cushion, upon which i supposed he had been kneeling,—the book was laid upon the bed,—and, as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the same time.——let it remain there, my dear, said the lieutenant. he did not offer to speak to me, till i had walked up close to his bedside:—if you are captain shandy’s servant, said he, you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy’s thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me;—if he was of levens’s—said the lieutenant.—i told him your honour was—then, said he, i served three campaigns with him in flanders, and remember him,—but ’tis most likely, as i had not the honour of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me.——you will tell him, however, that the person his good-nature has laid under obligations to him, is one le fever, a lieutenant in angus’s——but he knows me not,—said he, a second time, musing;——possibly he may my story—added he—pray tell the captain, i was the ensign at breda, whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.——i remember the story, an’t please your honour, said i, very well.——do you so? said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief—then well may i.—in saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribband about his neck, and kiss’d it twice——here, billy, said he,—the boy flew across the room to the bed-side,—and falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it too,—then kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed and wept. i wish, said my uncle toby, with a deep sigh,—i wish, trim, i was asleep. your honour, replied the corporal, is too much concerned;—shall i pour your honour out a glass of sack to your pipe?——do, trim, said my uncle toby. i remember, said my uncle toby, sighing again, the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circumstance his modesty omitted;—and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other (i forget what) was universally pitied by the whole regiment;—but finish the story thou art upon:—’tis finished already, said the corporal,—for i could stay no longer,—so wished his honour a good night; young le fever rose from off the bed, and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and as we went down together, told me, they had come from ireland, and were on their route to join the regiment in flanders.——but alas! said the corporal,—the lieutenant’s last day’s march is over.—then what is to become of his poor boy? cried my uncle toby. c h a p. li the story of le fever continued it was to my uncle toby’s eternal honour,——though i tell it only for the sake of those, who, when coop’d in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves——that notwithstanding my uncle toby was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of dendermond, parallel with the allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously, that they scarce allowed him time to get his dinner——that nevertheless he gave up dendermond, though he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp;—and bent his whole thoughts towards the private distresses at the inn; and except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of dendermond into a blockade,—he left dendermond to itself—to be relieved or not by the french king, as the french king thought good; and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son. ——that kind being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompence thee for this. thou hast left this matter short, said my uncle toby to the corporal, as he was putting him to bed,——and i will tell thee in what, trim.——in the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to le fever,——as sickness and travelling are both expensive, and thou knowest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay,—that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself.——your honour knows, said the corporal, i had no orders;——true, quoth my uncle toby,—thou didst very right, trim, as a soldier,—but certainly very wrong as a man. in the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse, continued my uncle toby,——when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house,——thou shouldst have offered him my house too:——a sick brother officer should have the best quarters, trim, and if we had him with us,—we could tend and look to him:——thou art an excellent nurse thyself, trim,—and what with thy care of him, and the old woman’s and his boy’s, and mine together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.—— ——in a fortnight or three weeks, added my uncle toby, smiling,——he might march.——he will never march; an’ please your honour, in this world, said the corporal:——he will march; said my uncle toby, rising up from the side of the bed, with one shoe off:——an’ please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave:——he shall march, cried my uncle toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch,—he shall march to his regiment.——he cannot stand it, said the corporal;——he shall be supported, said my uncle toby;——he’ll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy?——he shall not drop, said my uncle toby, firmly.——a-well-o’day,—do what we can for him, said trim, maintaining his point,—the poor soul will die:——he shall not die, by g—, cried my uncle toby. —the accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever. c h a p. lii ——my uncle toby went to his bureau,—put his purse into his breeches pocket, and having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician,—he went to bed, and fell asleep. c h a p. liii the story of le fever continued the sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but le fever’s and his afflicted son’s; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eye-lids,——and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle,—when my uncle toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant’s room, and without preface or apology, sat himself down upon the chair by the bed-side, and, independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did,—how he had rested in the night,—what was his complaint,—where was his pain,—and what he could do to help him:——and without giving him time to answer any one of the enquiries, went on, and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal the night before for him.—— ——you shall go home directly, le fever, said my uncle toby, to my house,—and we’ll send for a doctor to see what’s the matter,—and we’ll have an apothecary,—and the corporal shall be your nurse;——and i’ll be your servant, le fever. there was a frankness in my uncle toby,—not the effect of familiarity,—but the cause of it,—which let you at once into his soul, and shewed you the goodness of his nature; to this there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner, superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him, so that before my uncle toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him.——the blood and spirits of le fever, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart—rallied back,—the film forsook his eyes for a moment,—he looked up wishfully in my uncle toby’s face,—then cast a look upon his boy,——and that ligament, fine as it was,—was never broken.—— nature instantly ebb’d again,—the film returned to its place,——the pulse fluttered——stopp’d——went on——throbb’d———stopp’d again——moved——stopp’d——shall i go on?——no. c h a p. liv i am so impatient to return to my own story, that what remains of young le fever’s, that is, from this turn of his fortune, to the time my uncle toby recommended him for my preceptor, shall be told in a very few words in the next chapter.—all that is necessary to be added to this chapter is as follows.— that my uncle toby, with young le fever in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant, as chief mourners, to his grave. that the governor of dendermond paid his obsequies all military honours,—and that yorick, not to be behind-hand—paid him all ecclesiastic—for he buried him in his chancel:—and it appears likewise, he preached a funeral sermon over him——i say it appears,—for it was yorick’s custom, which i suppose a general one with those of his profession, on the first leaf of every sermon which he composed, to chronicle down the time, the place, and the occasion of its being preached: to this, he was ever wont to add some short comment or stricture upon the sermon itself, seldom, indeed, much to its credit:—for instance, this sermon upon the jewish dispensation—i don’t like it at all;—though i own there is a world of water-landish knowledge in it;—but ’tis all tritical, and most tritically put together.—this is but a flimsy kind of a composition; what was in my head when i made it? ——n.b. the excellency of this text is, that it will suit any sermon,—and of this sermon,——that it will suit any text.—— ——for this sermon i shall be hanged,—for i have stolen the greatest part of it. doctor paidagunes found me out. => set a thief to catch a thief.—— on the back of half a dozen i find written, so, so, and no more——and upon a couple moderato; by which, as far as one may gather from altieri’s italian dictionary,—but mostly from the authority of a piece of green whipcord, which seemed to have been the unravelling of yorick’s whip-lash, with which he has left us the two sermons marked moderato, and the half dozen of so, so, tied fast together in one bundle by themselves,—one may safely suppose he meant pretty near the same thing. there is but one difficulty in the way of this conjecture, which is this, that the moderato’s are five times better than the so, so’s;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which reason, whene’er yorick’s dramatic sermons are offered to the world, though i shall admit but one out of the whole number of the so, so’s, i shall, nevertheless, adventure to print the two moderato’s without any sort of scruple. what yorick could mean by the words lentamente,—tenutè,—grave,—and sometimes adagio,—as applied to theological compositions, and with which he has characterised some of these sermons, i dare not venture to guess.——i am more puzzled still upon finding a l’octava alta! upon one;——con strepito upon the back of another;——scicilliana upon a third;——alla capella upon a fourth;——con l’arco upon this;——senza l’arco upon that.——all i know is, that they are musical terms, and have a meaning;——and as he was a musical man, i will make no doubt, but that by some quaint application of such metaphors to the compositions in hand, they impressed very distinct ideas of their several characters upon his fancy,—whatever they may do upon that of others. amongst these, there is that particular sermon which has unaccountably led me into this digression——the funeral sermon upon poor le fever, wrote out very fairly, as if from a hasty copy.—i take notice of it the more, because it seems to have been his favourite composition——it is upon mortality; and is tied length-ways and cross-ways with a yarn thrum, and then rolled up and twisted round with a half-sheet of dirty blue paper, which seems to have been once the cast cover of a general review, which to this day smells horribly of horse drugs.——whether these marks of humiliation were designed,—i something doubt;——because at the end of the sermon (and not at the beginning of it)—very different from his way of treating the rest, he had wrote—— bravo! ——though not very offensively,——for it is at two inches, at least, and a half’s distance from, and below the concluding line of the sermon, at the very extremity of the page, and in that right hand corner of it, which, you know, is generally covered with your thumb; and, to do it justice, it is wrote besides with a crow’s quill so faintly in a small italian hand, as scarce to solicit the eye towards the place, whether your thumb is there or not,—so that from the manner of it, it stands half excused; and being wrote moreover with very pale ink, diluted almost to nothing,—’tis more like a ritratto of the shadow of vanity, than of vanity herself—of the two; resembling rather a faint thought of transient applause, secretly stirring up in the heart of the composer; than a gross mark of it, coarsely obtruded upon the world. with all these extenuations, i am aware, that in publishing this, i do no service to yorick’s character as a modest man;—but all men have their failings! and what lessens this still farther, and almost wipes it away, is this; that the word was struck through sometime afterwards (as appears from a different tint of the ink) with a line quite across it in this manner, bravo——as if he had retracted, or was ashamed of the opinion he had once entertained of it. these short characters of his sermons were always written, excepting in this one instance, upon the first leaf of his sermon, which served as a cover to it; and usually upon the inside of it, which was turned towards the text;—but at the end of his discourse, where, perhaps, he had five or six pages, and sometimes, perhaps, a whole score to turn himself in,—he took a large circuit, and, indeed, a much more mettlesome one;—as if he had snatched the occasion of unlacing himself with a few more frolicksome strokes at vice, than the straitness of the pulpit allowed.—these, though hussar-like, they skirmish lightly and out of all order, are still auxiliaries on the side of virtue;—tell me then, mynheer vander blonederdondergewdenstronke, why they should not be printed together? c h a p. lv when my uncle toby had turned every thing into money, and settled all accounts betwixt the agent of the regiment and le fever, and betwixt le fever and all mankind,——there remained nothing more in my uncle toby’s hands, than an old regimental coat and a sword; so that my uncle toby found little or no opposition from the world in taking administration. the coat my uncle toby gave the corporal;——wear it, trim, said my uncle toby, as long as it will hold together, for the sake of the poor lieutenant——and this,——said my uncle toby, taking up the sword in his hand, and drawing it out of the scabbard as he spoke——and this, le fever, i’ll save for thee,—’tis all the fortune, continued my uncle toby, hanging it up upon a crook, and pointing to it,—’tis all the fortune, my dear le fever, which god has left thee; but if he has given thee a heart to fight thy way with it in the world,—and thou doest it like a man of honour,—’tis enough for us. as soon as my uncle toby had laid a foundation, and taught him to inscribe a regular polygon in a circle, he sent him to a public school, where, excepting whitsontide and christmas, at which times the corporal was punctually dispatched for him,—he remained to the spring of the year, seventeen; when the stories of the emperor’s sending his army into hungary against the turks, kindling a spark of fire in his bosom, he left his greek and latin without leave, and throwing himself upon his knees before my uncle toby, begged his father’s sword, and my uncle toby’s leave along with it, to go and try his fortune under eugene.—twice did my uncle toby forget his wound and cry out, le fever! i will go with thee, and thou shalt fight beside me——and twice he laid his hand upon his groin, and hung down his head in sorrow and disconsolation.—— my uncle toby took down the sword from the crook, where it had hung untouched ever since the lieutenant’s death, and delivered it to the corporal to brighten up;——and having detained le fever a single fortnight to equip him, and contract for his passage to leghorn,—he put the sword into his hand.——if thou art brave, le fever, said my uncle toby, this will not fail thee,——but fortune, said he (musing a little),——fortune may——and if she does,—added my uncle toby, embracing him, come back again to me, le fever, and we will shape thee another course. the greatest injury could not have oppressed the heart of le fever more than my uncle toby’s paternal kindness;——he parted from my uncle toby, as the best of sons from the best of fathers——both dropped tears——and as my uncle toby gave him his last kiss, he slipped sixty guineas, tied up in an old purse of his father’s, in which was his mother’s ring, into his hand,—and bid god bless him. c h a p. lvi le fever got up to the imperial army just time enough to try what metal his sword was made of, at the defeat of the turks before belgrade; but a series of unmerited mischances had pursued him from that moment, and trod close upon his heels for four years together after; he had withstood these buffetings to the last, till sickness overtook him at marseilles, from whence he wrote my uncle toby word, he had lost his time, his services, his health, and, in short, every thing but his sword;——and was waiting for the first ship to return back to him. as this letter came to hand about six weeks before susannah’s accident, le fever was hourly expected; and was uppermost in my uncle toby’s mind all the time my father was giving him and yorick a description of what kind of a person he would chuse for a preceptor to me: but as my uncle toby thought my father at first somewhat fanciful in the accomplishments he required, he forbore mentioning le fever’s name,——till the character, by yorick’s inter-position, ending unexpectedly, in one, who should be gentle-tempered, and generous, and good, it impressed the image of le fever, and his interest, upon my uncle toby so forcibly, he rose instantly off his chair; and laying down his pipe, in order to take hold of both my father’s hands——i beg, brother shandy, said my uncle toby, i may recommend poor le fever’s son to you—i beseech you do, added yorick——he has a good heart, said my uncle toby——and a brave one too, an’ please your honour, said the corporal. ——the best hearts, trim, are ever the bravest, replied my uncle toby.——and the greatest cowards, an’ please your honour, in our regiment, were the greatest rascals in it.—there was serjeant kumber, and ensign—— ——we’ll talk of them, said my father, another time. c h a p. lvii what a jovial and a merry world would this be, may it please your worships, but for that inextricable labyrinth of debts, cares, woes, want, grief, discontent, melancholy, large jointures, impositions, and lies! doctor slop, like a son of a w——, as my father called him for it,—to exalt himself,—debased me to death,—and made ten thousand times more of susannah’s accident, than there was any grounds for; so that in a week’s time, or less, it was in every body’s mouth, that poor master shandy * * * * * * * * * * * * entirely.—and fame, who loves to double every thing,—in three days more, had sworn, positively she saw it,—and all the world, as usual, gave credit to her evidence——“that the nursery window had not only * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ;—but that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ’s also.” could the world have been sued like a body-corporate,—my father had brought an action upon the case, and trounced it sufficiently; but to fall foul of individuals about it——as every soul who had mentioned the affair, did it with the greatest pity imaginable;——’twas like flying in the very face of his best friends:——and yet to acquiesce under the report, in silence—was to acknowledge it openly,—at least in the opinion of one half of the world; and to make a bustle again, in contradicting it,—was to confirm it as strongly in the opinion of the other half.—— ——was ever poor devil of a country gentleman so hampered? said my father. i would shew him publickly, said my uncle toby, at the market cross. ——’twill have no effect, said my father. c h a p. lviii ——i’ll put him, however, into breeches, said my father,—let the world say what it will. c h a p. lix there are a thousand resolutions, sir, both in church and state, as well as in matters, madam, of a more private concern;—which, though they have carried all the appearance in the world of being taken, and entered upon in a hasty, hare-brained, and unadvised manner, were, notwithstanding this, (and could you or i have got into the cabinet, or stood behind the curtain, we should have found it was so) weighed, poized, and perpended——argued upon——canvassed through——entered into, and examined on all sides with so much coolness, that the goddess of coolness herself (i do not take upon me to prove her existence) could neither have wished it, or done it better. of the number of these was my father’s resolution of putting me into breeches; which, though determined at once,—in a kind of huff, and a defiance of all mankind, had, nevertheless, been pro’d and conn’d, and judicially talked over betwixt him and my mother about a month before, in two several beds of justice, which my father had held for that purpose. i shall explain the nature of these beds of justice in my next chapter; and in the chapter following that, you shall step with me, madam, behind the curtain, only to hear in what kind of manner my father and my mother debated between themselves, this affair of the breeches,—from which you may form an idea, how they debated all lesser matters. c h a p. lx the ancient goths of germany, who (the learned cluverius is positive) were first seated in the country between the vistula and the oder, and who afterwards incorporated the herculi, the bugians, and some other vandallick clans to ’em—had all of them a wise custom of debating every thing of importance to their state, twice, that is,—once drunk, and once sober:——drunk—that their councils might not want vigour;——and sober—that they might not want discretion. now my father being entirely a water-drinker,—was a long time gravelled almost to death, in turning this as much to his advantage, as he did every other thing which the ancients did or said; and it was not till the seventh year of his marriage, after a thousand fruitless experiments and devices, that he hit upon an expedient which answered the purpose;——and that was, when any difficult and momentous point was to be settled in the family, which required great sobriety, and great spirit too, in its determination,——he fixed and set apart the first sunday night in the month, and the saturday night which immediately preceded it, to argue it over, in bed with my mother: by which contrivance, if you consider, sir, with yourself, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * these my father, humorously enough, called his beds of justice;——for from the two different counsels taken in these two different humours, a middle one was generally found out which touched the point of wisdom as well, as if he had got drunk and sober a hundred times. i must not be made a secret of to the world, that this answers full as well in literary discussions, as either in military or conjugal; but it is not every author that can try the experiment as the goths and vandals did it——or, if he can, may it be always for his body’s health; and to do it, as my father did it,—am i sure it would be always for his soul’s. my way is this:—— in all nice and ticklish discussions,—(of which, heaven knows, there are but too many in my book)—where i find i cannot take a step without the danger of having either their worships or their reverences upon my back——i write one-half full,—and t’other fasting;——or write it all full,—and correct it fasting;——or write it fasting,—and correct it full, for they all come to the same thing:——so that with a less variation from my father’s plan, than my father’s from the gothick—i feel myself upon a par with him in his first bed of justice,—and no way inferior to him in his second.——these different and almost irreconcileable effects, flow uniformly from the wise and wonderful mechanism of nature,—of which,—be her’s the honour.——all that we can do, is to turn and work the machine to the improvement and better manufactory of the arts and sciences.—— now, when i write full,—i write as if i was never to write fasting again as long as i live;——that is, i write free from the cares as well as the terrors of the world.——i count not the number of my scars,—nor does my fancy go forth into dark entries and bye-corners to ante-date my stabs.——in a word, my pen takes its course; and i write on as much from the fulness of my heart, as my stomach.—— but when, an’ please your honours, i indite fasting, ’tis a different history.——i pay the world all possible attention and respect,—and have as great a share (whilst it lasts) of that under strapping virtue of discretion as the best of you.——so that betwixt both, i write a careless kind of a civil, nonsensical, good-humoured shandean book, which will do all your hearts good—— ——and all your heads too,—provided you understand it. c h a p. lxi we should begin, said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and shifting his pillow a little towards my mother’s, as he opened the debate——we should begin to think, mrs. shandy, of putting this boy into breeches.—— we should so,—said my mother.——we defer it, my dear, quoth my father, shamefully.—— i think we do, mr. shandy,—said my mother. ——not but the child looks extremely well, said my father, in his vests and tunicks.—— ——he does look very well in them,—replied my mother.—— ——and for that reason it would be almost a sin, added my father, to take him out of ’em.—— ——it would so,—said my mother:——but indeed he is growing a very tall lad,—rejoined my father. ——he is very tall for his age, indeed,—said my mother.—— ——i can not (making two syllables of it) imagine, quoth my father, who the deuce he takes after.—— i cannot conceive, for my life, said my mother.—— humph!——said my father. (the dialogue ceased for a moment.) ——(i am very short myself,—continued my father gravely. you are very short, mr shandy,—said my mother. humph! quoth my father to himself, a second time: in muttering which, he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother’s,—and turning about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half. ——when he gets these breeches made, cried my father in a higher tone, he’ll look like a beast in ’em. he will be very awkward in them at first, replied my mother. ——and ’twill be lucky, if that’s the worst on’t, added my father. it will be very lucky, answered my mother. i suppose, replied my father,—making some pause first,—he’ll be exactly like other people’s children.—— exactly, said my mother.—— ——though i shall be sorry for that, added my father: and so the debate stopp’d again. ——they should be of leather, said my father, turning him about again.— they will last him, said my mother, the longest. but he can have no linings to ’em, replied my father.—— he cannot, said my mother. ’twere better to have them of fustian, quoth my father. nothing can be better, quoth my mother.—— ——except dimity,—replied my father:——’tis best of all,—replied my mother. ——one must not give him his death, however,—interrupted my father. by no means, said my mother:——and so the dialogue stood still again. i am resolved, however, quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth time, he shall have no pockets in them.—— ——there is no occasion for any, said my mother.—— i mean in his coat and waistcoat,—cried my father. ——i mean so too,—replied my mother. ——though if he gets a gig or top——poor souls! it is a crown and a sceptre to them,—they should have where to secure it.—— order it as you please, mr. shandy, replied my mother.—— ——but don’t you think it right? added my father, pressing the point home to her. perfectly, said my mother, if it pleases you, mr. shandy.—— ——there’s for you! cried my father, losing his temper——pleases me!——you never will distinguish, mrs. shandy, nor shall i ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and a point of convenience.——this was on the sunday night:——and further this chapter sayeth not. c h a p. lxii after my father had debated the affair of the breeches with my mother,—he consulted albertus rubenius upon it; and albertus rubenius used my father ten times worse in the consultation (if possible) than even my father had used my mother: for as rubenius had wrote a quarto express, de re vestiaria veterum,—it was rubenius’s business to have given my father some lights.—on the contrary, my father might as well have thought of extracting the seven cardinal virtues out of a long beard,—as of extracting a single word out of rubenius upon the subject. upon every other article of ancient dress, rubenius was very communicative to my father;—gave him a full satisfactory account of the toga, or loose gown. the chlamys. the ephod. the tunica, or jacket. the synthesis. the pænula. the lacema, with its cucullus. the paludamentum. the prætexta. the sagum, or soldier’s jerkin. the trabea: of which, according to suetonius, there was three kinds.— ——but what are all these to the breeches? said my father. rubenius threw him down upon the counter all kinds of shoes which had been in fashion with the romans.—— there was, the open shoe. the close shoe. the slip shoe. the wooden shoe. the soc. the buskin. and the military shoe with hobnails in it, which juvenal takes notice of. there were, the clogs. the pattins. the pantoufles. the brogues. the sandals, with latchets to them. there was, the felt shoe. the linen shoe. the laced shoe. the braided shoe. the calceus incisus. and the calceus rostratus. rubenius shewed my father how well they all fitted,—in what manner they laced on,—with what points, straps, thongs, latchets, ribbands, jaggs, and ends.—— ——but i want to be informed about the breeches, said my father. albertus rubenius informed my father that the romans manufactured stuffs of various fabrics,——some plain,—some striped,—others diapered throughout the whole contexture of the wool, with silk and gold——that linen did not begin to be in common use till towards the declension of the empire, when the egyptians coming to settle amongst them, brought it into vogue. ——that persons of quality and fortune distinguished themselves by the fineness and whiteness of their clothes; which colour (next to purple, which was appropriated to the great offices) they most affected, and wore on their birth-days and public rejoicings.——that it appeared from the best historians of those times, that they frequently sent their clothes to the fuller, to be clean’d and whitened:——but that the inferior people, to avoid that expence, generally wore brown clothes, and of a something coarser texture,—till towards the beginning of augustus’s reign, when the slave dressed like his master, and almost every distinction of habiliment was lost, but the latus clavus. and what was the latus clavus? said my father. rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the learned:——that egnatius, sigonius, bossius ticinensis, bayfius budæus, salmasius, lipsius, lazius, isaac casaubon, and joseph scaliger, all differed from each other,—and he from them: that some took it to be the button,—some the coat itself,—others only the colour of it;—that the great bayfuis in his wardrobe of the ancients, chap. 12—honestly said, he knew not what it was,—whether a tibula,—a stud,—a button,—a loop,—a buckle,—or clasps and keepers.—— ——my father lost the horse, but not the saddle——they are hooks and eyes, said my father——and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be made. c h a p. lxiii we are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.—— ——leave we then the breeches in the taylor’s hands, with my father standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.—— leave we my mother—(truest of all the poco-curante’s of her sex!)—careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which concerned her;—that is,—indifferent whether it was done this way or that,——provided it was but done at all.—— leave we slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.—— leave we poor le fever to recover, and get home from marseilles as he can.——and last of all,—because the hardest of all—— let us leave, if possible, myself:——but ’tis impossible,—i must go along with you to the end of the work. c h a p. lxiv if the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle toby’s kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours,—the fault is not in me,—but in his imagination;—for i am sure i gave him so minute a description, i was almost ashamed of it. when fate was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to nature,—’twas enough—nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather. my uncle toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in italy and flanders; so let the duke of marlborough, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle toby was prepared for them. his way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever a town was invested—(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches,—the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, &c.—he set the corporal to work——and sweetly went it on:——the nature of the soil,—the nature of the work itself,—and above all, the good-nature of my uncle toby sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon pastdone deeds,—left labour little else but the ceremony of the name. when the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence,—it was invested,—and my uncle toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel.—i beg i may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, that the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place,—and that i have not left a single inch for it;——for my uncle toby took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle toby’s and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this i’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if i conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing)——the campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore i apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as i once intended, into the body of the work——surely they had better be printed apart,——we’ll consider the affair——so take the following sketch of them in the mean time. c h a p. lxv when the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel——not at random, or any how——but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle toby received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies. when the duke of marlborough made a lodgment,——my uncle toby made a lodgment too.——and when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so on;——gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands. to one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not have been a greater sight in world, than on a post morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the duke of marlborough, in the main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle toby, with trim behind him, sallied forth;——the one with the gazette in his hand,—the other with a spade on his shoulder to execute the contents.——what an honest triumph in my uncle toby’s looks as he marched up to the ramparts! what intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow.——but when the chamade was beat, and the corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts—heaven! earth! sea!——but what avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught. in this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——in this track, i say, did my uncle toby and trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on. the first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method i’ve related. in the second year, in which my uncle toby took liege and ruremond, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which i have given an exact description in the former part of my work. at the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port-cullises:——these last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon. ——the sentry-box was in case of rain. all these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle toby to take the field with great splendour. my father would often say to yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which lewis xiv. from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field——but ’tis not my brother toby’s nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one. ——but let us go on. c h a p. lxvi i must observe, that although in the first year’s campaign, the word town is often mentioned,—yet there was no town at that time within the polygon; that addition was not made till the summer following the spring in which the bridges and sentry-box were painted, which was the third year of my uncle toby’s campaigns,—when upon his taking amberg, bonn, and rhinberg, and huy and limbourg, one after another, a thought came into the corporal’s head, that to talk of taking so many towns, without one town to shew for it,—was a very nonsensical way of going to work, and so proposed to my uncle toby, that they should have a little model of a town built for them,—to be run up together of slit deals, and then painted, and clapped within the interior polygon to serve for all. my uncle toby felt the good of the project instantly, and instantly agreed to it, but with the addition of two singular improvements, of which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of the project itself. the one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of which it was most likely to be the representative:——with grated windows, and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.—as those in ghent and bruges, and the rest of the towns in brabant and flanders. the other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. this was put directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation was exchanged between my uncle toby and the corporal, as the carpenter did the work. ——it answered prodigiously the next summer——the town was a perfect proteus——it was landen, and trerebach, and santvliet, and drusen, and hagenau,—and then it was ostend and menin, and aeth and dendermond. ——surely never did any town act so many parts, since sodom and gomorrah, as my uncle toby’s town did. in the fourth year, my uncle toby thinking a town looked foolishly without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.——trim was for having bells in it;——my uncle toby said, the metal had better be cast into cannon. this led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field-pieces, to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle toby’s sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train of somewhat larger,—and so on—(as must always be the case in hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came at last to my father’s jack boots. the next year, which was that in which lisle was besieged, and at the close of which both ghent and bruges fell into our hands,—my uncle toby was sadly put to it for proper ammunition;——i say proper ammunition——because his great artillery would not bear powder; and ’twas well for the shandy family they would not——for so full were the papers, from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant firings kept up by the besiegers,——and so heated was my uncle toby’s imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his estate. something therefore was wanting as a succedaneum, especially in one or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination,——and this something, the corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an entire new system of battering of his own,—without which, this had been objected to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the great desiderata of my uncle toby’s apparatus. this will not be explained the worse, for setting off, as i generally do, at a little distance from the subject. c h a p. lxvii with two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great regard, which poor tom, the corporal’s unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with the account of his marriage with the jew’s widow——there was a montero-cap and two turkish tobacco-pipes. the montero-cap i shall describe by and bye.—the turkish tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them, they were fitted up and ornamented as usual, with flexible tubes of morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory,—the other with black ebony, tipp’d with silver. my father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the world, would say to the corporal, that he ought to look upon these two presents more as tokens of his brother’s nicety, than his affection.——tom did not care, trim, he would say, to put on the cap, or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a jew.——god bless your honour, the corporal would say (giving a strong reason to the contrary)—how can that be? the montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine spanish cloth, dyed in grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered,—and seemed to have been the property of a portuguese quarter-master, not of foot, but of horse, as the word denotes. the corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake, as the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon gala-days; and yet never was a montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all controverted points, whether military or culinary, provided the corporal was sure he was in the right,—it was either his oath,—his wager,—or his gift. ——’twas his gift in the present case. i’ll be bound, said the corporal, speaking to himself, to give away my montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if i do not manage this matter to his honour’s satisfaction. the completion was no further off, than the very next morning; which was that of the storm of the counterscarp betwixt the lower deule, to the right, and the gate st. andrew,—and on the left, between st. magdalen’s and the river. as this was the most memorable attack in the whole war,—the most gallant and obstinate on both sides,—and i must add the most bloody too, for it cost the allies themselves that morning above eleven hundred men,—my uncle toby prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity. the eve which preceded, as my uncle toby went to bed, he ordered his ramallie wig, which had laid inside out for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning;—and the very first thing he did in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle toby, after he had turned the rough side outwards,—put it on:——this done, he proceeded next to his breeches, and having buttoned the waist-band, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way in,—when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on,—so took it off:——in essaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle toby found the same objection in his wig,—so that went off too:—so that what with one thing and what with another, as always falls out when a man is in the most haste,—’twas ten o’clock, which was half an hour later than his usual time, before my uncle toby sallied out. c h a p. lxviii my uncle toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the corporal had begun the attack without him.—— let me stop and give you a picture of the corporal’s apparatus; and of the corporal himself in the height of his attack, just as it struck my uncle toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the corporal was at work,——for in nature there is not such another,——nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal. the corporal——— ——tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,——for he was your kinsman: weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness,—for he was your brother.—oh corporal! had i thee, but now,—now, that i am able to give thee a dinner and protection,—how would i cherish thee! thou should’st wear thy montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week.—and when it was worn out, i would purchase thee a couple like it:——but alas! alas! alas! now that i can do this in spite of their reverences—the occasion is lost—for thou art gone;—thy genius fled up to the stars from whence it came;—and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a clod of the valley! ——but what——what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where i look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy master—the first—the foremost of created beings;——where, i shall see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard with a trembling hand across his coffin, and then returning pale as ashes to the door, to take his mourning horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he directed thee;——where—all my father’s systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, i shall behold him, as he inspects the lackered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them——when i see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,——o toby! in what corner of the world shall i seek thy fellow? ——gracious powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain—when i shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand. c h a p. lxix the corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack,—had no further idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle toby’s six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects. upon turning it this way, and that, a little in his mind, he soon began to find out, that by means of his two turkish tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagg’d by the same number of tin-pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the morocco tube,—he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.——— ——let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. let no man, who has read my father’s first and second beds of justice, ever rise up and say again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.——heaven! thou knowest how i love them;——thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that i would this moment give my shirt——thou art a fool, shandy, says eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world,—and ’twill break thy set.—— no matter for that, eugenius; i would give the shirt off my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish enquirer, how many sparks at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it.——think ye not that in striking these in,—he might, per-adventure, strike something out? as sure as a gun.—— ——but this project, by the bye. the corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing his to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging them to the top with tobacco,—he went with contentment to bed. c h a p. lxx the corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle toby, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle toby came. he had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle toby’s sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c.—and the sake possibly of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one. in the rear and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the corporal wisely taken his post:——he held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand,—and the ebony pipe tipp’d with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other——and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the corporal, with his montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which faced the counterscarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. his first intention, as i said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two;—but the pleasure of the puffs, as well as the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle toby joined him. ’twas well for my father, that my uncle toby had not his will to make that day. c h a p. lxxi my uncle toby took the ivory pipe out of the corporal’s hand,—looked at it for half a minute, and returned it. in less than two minutes, my uncle toby took the pipe from the corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth——then hastily gave it back a second time. the corporal redoubled the attack,——my uncle toby smiled,——then looked grave,——then smiled for a moment,——then looked serious for a long time;——give me hold of the ivory pipe, trim, said my uncle toby——my uncle toby put it to his lips,——drew it back directly,——gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge;——never did my uncle toby’s mouth water so much for a pipe in his life.——my uncle toby retired into the sentry-box with the pipe in his hand.——— ——dear uncle toby! don’t go into the sentry-box with the pipe,—there’s no trusting a man’s self with such a thing in such a corner. c h a p. lxxii i beg the reader will assist me here, to wheel off my uncle toby’s ordnance behind the scenes,——to remove his sentry-box, and clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half moons, and get the rest of his military apparatus out of the way;——that done, my dear friend garrick, we’ll snuff the candles bright,—sweep the stage with a new broom,—draw up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle toby dressed in a new character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will act: and yet, if pity be a-kin to love,—and bravery no alien to it, you have seen enough of my uncle toby in these, to trace these family likenesses, betwixt the two passions (in case there is one) to your heart’s content. vain science! thou assistest us in no case of this kind—and thou puzzlest us in every one. there was, madam, in my uncle toby, a singleness of heart which misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which things of this nature usually go on; you can—you can have no conception of it: with this, there was a plainness and simplicity of thinking, with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the plies and foldings of the heart of woman;——and so naked and defenceless did he stand before you, (when a siege was out of his head,) that you might have stood behind any one of your serpentine walks, and shot my uncle toby ten times in a day, through his liver, if nine times in a day, madam, had not served your purpose. with all this, madam,—and what confounded every thing as much on the other hand, my uncle toby had that unparalleled modesty of nature i once told you of, and which, by the bye, stood eternal sentry upon his feelings, that you might as soon——but where am i going? these reflections crowd in upon me ten pages at least too soon, and take up that time, which i ought to bestow upon facts. c h a p. lxxiii of the few legitimate sons of adam whose breasts never felt what the sting of love was,—(maintaining first, all mysogynists to be bastards,)—the greatest heroes of ancient and modern story have carried off amongst them nine parts in ten of the honour; and i wish for their sakes i had the key of my study, out of my draw-well, only for five minutes, to tell you their names—recollect them i cannot—so be content to accept of these, for the present, in their stead. there was the great king aldrovandus, and bosphorus, and cappadocius, and dardanus, and pontus, and asius,——to say nothing of the iron-hearted charles the xiith, whom the countess of k***** herself could make nothing of.——there was babylonicus, and mediterraneus, and polixenes, and persicus, and prusicus, not one of whom (except cappadocius and pontus, who were both a little suspected) ever once bowed down his breast to the goddess——the truth is, they had all of them something else to do—and so had my uncle toby—till fate—till fate i say, envying his name the glory of being handed down to posterity with aldrovandus’s and the rest,—she basely patched up the peace of utrecht. ——believe me, sirs, ’twas the worst deed she did that year. c h a p. lxxiv amongst the many ill consequences of the treaty of utrecht, it was within a point of giving my uncle toby a surfeit of sieges; and though he recovered his appetite afterwards, yet calais itself left not a deeper scar in mary’s heart, than utrecht upon my uncle toby’s. to the end of his life he never could hear utrecht mentioned upon any account whatever,—or so much as read an article of news extracted out of the utrecht gazette, without fetching a sigh, as if his heart would break in twain. my father, who was a great motive-monger, and consequently a very dangerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying,—for he generally knew your motive for doing both, much better than you knew it yourself—would always console my uncle toby upon these occasions, in a way, which shewed plainly, he imagined my uncle toby grieved for nothing in the whole affair, so much as the loss of his hobby-horse.——never mind, brother toby, he would say,—by god’s blessing we shall have another war break out again some of these days; and when it does,—the belligerent powers, if they would hang themselves, cannot keep us out of play.——i defy ’em, my dear toby, he would add, to take countries without taking towns,——or towns without sieges. my uncle toby never took this back-stroke of my father’s at his hobby-horse kindly.——he thought the stroke ungenerous; and the more so, because in striking the horse he hit the rider too, and in the most dishonourable part a blow could fall; so that upon these occasions, he always laid down his pipe upon the table with more fire to defend himself than common. i told the reader, this time two years, that my uncle toby was not eloquent; and in the very same page gave an instance to the contrary:——i repeat the observation, and a fact which contradicts it again.—he was not eloquent,—it was not easy to my uncle toby to make long harangues,—and he hated florid ones; but there were occasions where the stream overflowed the man, and ran so counter to its usual course, that in some parts my uncle toby, for a time, was at least equal to tertullus——but in others, in my own opinion, infinitely above him. my father was so highly pleased with one of these apologetical orations of my uncle toby’s, which he had delivered one evening before him and yorick, that he wrote it down before he went to bed. i have had the good fortune to meet with it amongst my father’s papers, with here and there an insertion of his own, betwixt two crooks, thus [  ], and is endorsed, my brother toby’s justification of his own principles and conduct in wishing to continue the war. i may safely say, i have read over this apologetical oration of my uncle toby’s a hundred times, and think it so fine a model of defence,—and shews so sweet a temperament of gallantry and good principles in him, that i give it the world, word for word (interlineations and all), as i find it. c h a p. lxxv my uncle toby’s apologetical oration i am not insensible, brother shandy, that when a man whose profession is arms, wishes, as i have done, for war,—it has an ill aspect to the world;——and that, how just and right soever his motives the intentions may be,—he stands in an uneasy posture in vindicating himself from private views in doing it. for this cause, if a soldier is a prudent man, which he may be without being a jot the less brave, he will be sure not to utter his wish in the hearing of an enemy; for say what he will, an enemy will not believe him.——he will be cautious of doing it even to a friend,—lest he may suffer in his esteem:——but if his heart is overcharged, and a secret sigh for arms must have its vent, he will reserve it for the ear of a brother, who knows his character to the bottom, and what his true notions, dispositions, and principles of honour are: what, i hope, i have been in all these, brother shandy, would be unbecoming in me to say:——much worse, i know, have i been than i ought,—and something worse, perhaps, than i think: but such as i am, you, my dear brother shandy, who have sucked the same breasts with me,—and with whom i have been brought up from my cradle,—and from whose knowledge, from the first hours of our boyish pastimes, down to this, i have concealed no one action of my life, and scarce a thought in it——such as i am, brother, you must by this time know me, with all my vices, and with all my weaknesses too, whether of my age, my temper, my passions, or my understanding. tell me then, my dear brother shandy, upon which of them it is, that when i condemned the peace of utrecht, and grieved the war was not carried on with vigour a little longer, you should think your brother did it upon unworthy views; or that in wishing for war, he should be bad enough to wish more of his fellow-creatures slain,—more slaves made, and more families driven from their peaceful habitations, merely for his own pleasure:——tell me, brother shandy, upon what one deed of mine do you ground it? [the devil a deed do i know of, dear toby, but one for a hundred pounds, which i lent thee to carry on these cursed sieges.] if, when i was a school-boy, i could not hear a drum beat, but my heart beat with it—was it my fault?——did i plant the propensity there?——did i sound the alarm within, or nature? when guy, earl of warwick, and parismus and parismenus, and valentine and orson, and the seven champions of england, were handed around the school,—were they not all purchased with my own pocket-money? was that selfish, brother shandy? when we read over the siege of troy, which lasted ten years and eight months,——though with such a train of artillery as we had at namur, the town might have been carried in a week—was i not as much concerned for the destruction of the greeks and trojans as any boy of the whole school? had i not three strokes of a ferula given me, two on my right hand, and one on my left, for calling helena a bitch for it? did any one of you shed more tears for hector? and when king priam came to the camp to beg his body, and returned weeping back to troy without it,—you know, brother, i could not eat my dinner.—— ——did that bespeak me cruel? or because, brother shandy, my blood flew out into the camp, and my heart panted for war,—was it a proof it could not ache for the distresses of war too? o brother! ’tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,—and ’tis another to scatter cypress.——[who told thee, my dear toby, that cypress was used by the antients on mournful occasions? ] ——’tis one thing, brother shandy, for a soldier to hazard his own life—to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces:——’tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man,—to stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears:——’tis one thing, i say, brother shandy, to do this,—and ’tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war;—to view the desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo. need i be told, dear yorick, as i was by you, in le fever’s funeral sermon, that so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?——but why did you not add, yorick,—if not by nature—that he is so by necessity?——for what is war? what is it, yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of liberty, and upon principles of honour—what is it, but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? and heaven is my witness, brother shandy, that the pleasure i have taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, and i hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our creation. c h a p. lxxvi i told the christian reader—i say christian——hoping he is one——and if he is not, i am sorry for it——and only beg he will consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book—— i told him, sir——for in good truth, when a man is telling a story in the strange way i do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader’s fancy——which, for my own part, if i did not take heed to do more than at first, there is so much unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, with so many breaks and gaps in it,—and so little service do the stars afford, which, nevertheless, i hang up in some of the darkest passages, knowing that the world is apt to lose its way, with all the lights the sun itself at noon-day can give it——and now you see, i am lost myself!—— ——but ’tis my father’s fault; and whenever my brains come to be dissected, you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has left a large uneven thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of cambrick, running along the whole length of the web, and so untowardly, you cannot so much as cut out a * *, (here i hang up a couple of lights again)——or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but it is seen or felt.—— quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum, sayeth cardan. all which being considered, and that you see ’tis morally impracticable for me to wind this round to where i set out—— i begin the chapter over again. c h a p. lxxvii i told the christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which preceded my uncle toby’s apologetical oration,—though in a different trope from what i should make use of now, that the peace of utrecht was within an ace of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle toby and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the confederating powers. there is an indignant way in which a man sometimes dismounts his horse, which, as good as says to him, “i’ll go afoot, sir, all the days of my life before i would ride a single mile upon your back again.” now my uncle toby could not be said to dismount his horse in this manner; for in strictness of language, he could not be said to dismount his horse at all——his horse rather flung him——and somewhat viciously, which made my uncle toby take it ten times more unkindly. let this matter be settled by state-jockies as they like.——it created, i say, a sort of shyness betwixt my uncle toby and his hobby-horse.——he had no occasion for him from the month of march to november, which was the summer after the articles were signed, except it was now and then to take a short ride out, just to see that the fortifications and harbour of dunkirk were demolished, according to stipulation. the french were so backwards all that summer in setting about that affair, and monsieur tugghe, the deputy from the magistrates of dunkirk, presented so many affecting petitions to the queen,—beseeching her majesty to cause only her thunderbolts to fall upon the martial works, which might have incurred her displeasure,—but to spare—to spare the mole, for the mole’s sake; which, in its naked situation, could be no more than an object of pity——and the queen (who was but a woman) being of a pitiful disposition,—and her ministers also, they not wishing in their hearts to have the town dismantled, for these private reasons, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ; so that the whole went heavily on with my uncle toby; insomuch, that it was not within three full months, after he and the corporal had constructed the town, and put it in a condition to be destroyed, that the several commandants, commissaries, deputies, negociators, and intendants, would permit him to set about it.——fatal interval of inactivity! the corporal was for beginning the demolition, by making a breach in the ramparts, or main fortifications of the town——no,—that will never do, corporal, said my uncle toby, for in going that way to work with the town, the english garrison will not be safe in it an hour; because if the french are treacherous——they are as treacherous as devils, an’ please your honour, said the corporal——it gives me concern always when i hear it, trim, said my uncle toby;—for they don’t want personal bravery; and if a breach is made in the ramparts, they may enter it, and make themselves masters of the place when they please:—let them enter it, said the corporal, lifting up his pioneer’s spade in both his hands, as if he was going to lay about him with it,—let them enter, an’ please your honour, if they dare.——in cases like this, corporal, said my uncle toby, slipping his right hand down to the middle of his cane, and holding it afterwards truncheon-wise with his fore-finger extended,——’tis no part of the consideration of a commandant, what the enemy dare,—or what they dare not do; he must act with prudence. we will begin with the outworks both towards the sea and the land, and particularly with fort louis, the most distant of them all, and demolish it first,—and the rest, one by one, both on our right and left, as we retreat towards the town;——then we’ll demolish the mole,—next fill up the harbour,—then retire into the citadel, and blow it up into the air: and having done that, corporal, we’ll embark for england.——we are there, quoth the corporal, recollecting himself——very true, said my uncle toby—looking at the church. c h a p. lxxviii a delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle toby and trim, upon the demolition of dunkirk,—for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:——still—still all went on heavily——the magic left the mind the weaker—stillness, with silence at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle toby’s head;—and listlessness, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.——no longer amberg and rhinberg, and limbourg, and huy, and bonn, in one year,—and the prospect of landen, and trerebach, and drusen, and dendermond, the next,—hurried on the blood:—no longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s repose:——no more could my uncle toby, after passing the french lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of france,—cross over the oyes, and with all picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:——no more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head. ——softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most difficult!——how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle toby? c h a p. lxxix now, because i have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking, that i was confident the following memoirs of my uncle toby’s courtship of widow wadman, whenever i got time to write them, would turn out one of the most complete systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world——are you to imagine from thence, that i shall set out with a description of what love is? whether part god and part devil, as plotinus will have it—— ——or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as ten——to determine with ficinus, “how many parts of it—the one,—and how many the other;”—or whether it is all of it one great devil, from head to tail, as plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of his, i shall not offer my opinion:—but my opinion of plato is this; that he appears, from this instance, to have been a man of much the same temper and way of reasoning with doctor baynyard, who being a great enemy to blisters, as imagining that half a dozen of ’em at once, would draw a man as surely to his grave, as a herse and six—rashly concluded, that the devil himself was nothing in the world, but one great bouncing cantharidis.—— i have nothing to say to people who allow themselves this monstrous liberty in arguing, but what nazianzen cried out (that is, polemically) to philagrius—— “’ευγε!” o rare! ’tis fine reasoning, sir indeed!—“οτι φιλοσοφεισ ευ παθεσ.” and most nobly do you aim at truth, when you philosophize about it in your moods and passions. nor is it to be imagined, for the same reason, i should stop to inquire, whether love is a disease,——or embroil myself with rhasis and dioscorides, whether the seat of it is in the brain or liver;—because this would lead me on, to an examination of the two very opposite manners, in which patients have been treated——the one, of aœtius, who always begun with a cooling clyster of hempseed and bruised cucumbers;—and followed on with thin potations of water-lilies and purslane—to which he added a pinch of snuff, of the herb hanea;—and where aœtius durst venture it,—his topaz-ring. ——the other, that of gordonius, who (in his cap. 15. de amore) directs they should be thrashed, “ad putorem usque,”——till they stink again. these are disquisitions which my father, who had laid in a great stock of knowledge of this kind, will be very busy with in the progress of my uncle toby’s affairs: i must anticipate thus much, that from his theories of love, (with which, by the way, he contrived to crucify my uncle toby’s mind, almost as much as his amours themselves,)—he took a single step into practice;—and by means of a camphorated cerecloth, which he found means to impose upon the taylor for buckram, whilst he was making my uncle toby a new pair of breeches, he produced gordonius’s effect upon my uncle toby without the disgrace. what changes this produced, will be read in its proper place: all that is needful to be added to the anecdote, is this——that whatever effect it had upon my uncle toby,——it had a vile effect upon the house;——and if my uncle toby had not smoaked it down as he did, it might have had a vile effect upon my father too. c h a p. lxxx ——’twill come out of itself by and bye.——all i contend for is, that i am not obliged to set out with a definition of what love is; and so long as i can go on with my story intelligibly, with the help of the word itself, without any other idea to it, than what i have in common with the rest of the world, why should i differ from it a moment before the time?——when i can get on no further,—and find myself entangled on all sides of this mystic labyrinth,—my opinion will then come in, in course,—and lead me out. at present, i hope i shall be sufficiently understood, in telling the reader, my uncle toby fell in love: —not that the phrase is at all to my liking: for to say a man is fallen in love,—or that he is deeply in love,—or up to the ears in love,—and sometimes even over head and ears in it,—carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:—this is recurring again to plato’s opinion, which, with all his divinityship,—i hold to be damnable and heretical:—and so much for that. let love therefore be what it will,—my uncle toby fell into it. ——and possibly, gentle reader, with such a temptation—so wouldst thou: for never did thy eyes behold, or thy concupiscence covet any thing in this world, more concupiscible than widow wadman. c h a p. lxxxi to conceive this right,—call for pen and ink—here’s paper ready to your hand.——sit down, sir, paint her to your own mind——as like your mistress as you can——as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you—’tis all one to me——please but your own fancy in it. ——was ever any thing in nature so sweet!—so exquisite! ——then, dear sir, how could my uncle toby resist it? thrice happy book! thou wilt have one page, at least, within thy covers, which malice will not blacken, and which ignorance cannot misrepresent. c h a p. lxxxii as susannah was informed by an express from mrs. bridget, of my uncle toby’s falling in love with her mistress fifteen days before it happened,—the contents of which express, susannah communicated to my mother the next day,—it has just given me an opportunity of entering upon my uncle toby’s amours a fortnight before their existence. i have an article of news to tell you, mr. shandy, quoth my mother, which will surprise you greatly.—— now my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence.—— “—my brother toby, quoth she, is going to be married to mrs. wadman.” ——then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives. it was a consuming vexation to my father, that my mother never asked the meaning of a thing she did not understand. ——that she is not a woman of science, my father would say—is her misfortune—but she might ask a question.— my mother never did.——in short, she went out of the world at last without knowing whether it turned round, or stood still.——my father had officiously told her above a thousand times which way it was,—but she always forgot. for these reasons, a discourse seldom went on much further betwixt them, than a proposition,—a reply, and a rejoinder; at the end of which, it generally took breath for a few minutes (as in the affair of the breeches), and then went on again. if he marries, ’twill be the worse for us,—quoth my mother. not a cherry-stone, said my father,—he may as well batter away his means upon that, as any thing else, ——to be sure, said my mother: so here ended the proposition—the reply,—and the rejoinder, i told you of. it will be some amusement to him, too,——said my father. a very great one, answered my mother, if he should have children.—— ——lord have mercy upon me,—said my father to himself——* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * c h a p. lxxxiii i am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, i make no doubt but i shall be able to go on with my uncle toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable straight line. now, four very squiggly lines across the page signed inv.t.s and scw.t.s these were the four lines i moved in through my first, second, third, and fourth volumes[32]——in the fifth volume i have been very good,——the precise line i have described in it being this: one very squiggly line across the page with loops marked a,b,c,c,c,c,c,d. by which it appears, that except at the curve, marked a. where i took a trip to navarre,—and the indented curve b. which is the short airing when i was there with the lady baussiere and her page,—i have not taken the least frisk of a digression, till john de la casse’s devils led me the round you see marked d.—for as for c c c c c they are nothing but parentheses, and the common ins and outs incident to the lives of the greatest ministers of state; and when compared with what men have done,—or with my own transgressions at the letters a b d—they vanish into nothing. in this last volume i have done better still—for from the end of le fever’s episode, to the beginning of my uncle toby’s campaigns,—i have scarce stepped a yard out of my way. if i mend at this rate, it is not impossible——by the good leave of his grace of benevento’s devils——but i may arrive hereafter at the excellency of going on even thus: which is a line drawn as straight as i could draw it, by a writing-master’s ruler (borrowed for that purpose), turning neither to the right hand or to the left. this right line,—the path-way for christians to walk in! say divines—— ——the emblem of moral rectitude! says cicero—— ——the best line! say cabbage planters——is the shortest line, says archimedes, which can be drawn from one given point to another.—— i wish your ladyships would lay this matter to heart, in your next birthday suits! ——what a journey! pray can you tell me,—that is, without anger, before i write my chapter upon straight lines——by what mistake——who told them so——or how it has come to pass, that your men of wit and genius have all along confounded this line, with the line of gravitation? [32] alluding to the first edition. c h a p. lxxxiv no——i think, i said, i would write two volumes every year, provided the vile cough which then tormented me, and which to this hour i dread worse than the devil, would but give me leave—and in another place—(but where, i can’t recollect now) speaking of my book as a machine, and laying my pen and ruler down cross-wise upon the table, in order to gain the greater credit to it—i swore it should be kept a going at that rate these forty years, if it pleased but the fountain of life to bless me so long with health and good spirits. now as for my spirits, little have i to lay to their charge—nay so very little (unless the mounting me upon a long stick and playing the fool with me nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, be accusations) that on the contrary, i have much—much to thank ’em for: cheerily have ye made me tread the path of life with all the burthens of it (except its cares) upon my back; in no one moment of my existence, that i remember, have ye once deserted me, or tinged the objects which came in my way, either with sable, or with a sickly green; in dangers ye gilded my horizon with hope, and when death himself knocked at my door—ye bad him come again; and in so gay a tone of careless indifference, did ye do it, that he doubted of his commission—— “—there must certainly be some mistake in this matter,” quoth he. now there is nothing in this world i abominate worse, than to be interrupted in a story——and i was that moment telling eugenius a most tawdry one in my way, of a nun who fancied herself a shell-fish, and of a monk damn’d for eating a muscle, and was shewing him the grounds and justice of the procedure—— “—did ever so grave a personage get into so vile a scrape?” quoth death. thou hast had a narrow escape, tristram, said eugenius, taking hold of my hand as i finished my story—— but there is no living, eugenius, replied i, at this rate; for as this son of a whore has found out my lodgings—— —you call him rightly, said eugenius,—for by sin, we are told, he enter’d the world——i care not which way he enter’d, quoth i, provided he be not in such a hurry to take me out with him—for i have forty volumes to write, and forty thousand things to say and do which no body in the world will say and do for me, except thyself; and as thou seest he has got me by the throat (for eugenius could scarce hear me speak across the table), and that i am no match for him in the open field, had i not better, whilst these few scatter’d spirits remain, and these two spider legs of mine (holding one of them up to him) are able to support me—had i not better, eugenius, fly for my life? ’tis my advice, my dear tristram, said eugenius—then by heaven! i will lead him a dance he little thinks of——for i will gallop, quoth i, without looking once behind me, to the banks of the garonne; and if i hear him clattering at my heels——i’ll scamper away to mount vesuvius——from thence to joppa, and from joppa to the world’s end; where, if he follows me, i pray god he may break his neck—— —he runs more risk there, said eugenius, than thou. eugenius’s wit and affection brought blood into the cheek from whence it had been some months banish’d——’twas a vile moment to bid adieu in; he led me to my chaise——allons! said i; the post-boy gave a crack with his whip——off i went like a cannon, and in half a dozen bounds got into dover. c h a p. lxxxv now hang it! quoth i, as i look’d towards the french coast—a man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad——and i never gave a peep into rochester church, or took notice of the dock of chatham, or visited st. thomas at canterbury, though they all three laid in my way—— —but mine, indeed, is a particular case—— so without arguing the matter further with thomas o’becket, or any one else—i skip’d into the boat, and in five minutes we got under sail, and scudded away like the wind. pray, captain, quoth i, as i was going down into the cabin, is a man never overtaken by death in this passage? why, there is not time for a man to be sick in it, replied he——what a cursed lyar! for i am sick as a horse, quoth i, already——what a brain!——upside down!——hey-day! the cells are broke loose one into another, and the blood, and the lymph, and the nervous juices, with the fix’d and volatile salts, are all jumbled into one mass——good g—! every thing turns round in it like a thousand whirlpools——i’d give a shilling to know if i shan’t write the clearer for it—— sick! sick! sick! sick!—— —when shall we get to land? captain—they have hearts like stones——o i am deadly sick!——reach me that thing, boy——’tis the most discomfiting sickness——i wish i was at the bottom—madam! how is it with you? undone! undone! un——o! undone! sir——what the first time?——no, ’tis the second, third, sixth, tenth time, sir,——hey-day!—what a trampling over head!—hollo! cabin boy! what’s the matter? the wind chopp’d about! s’death—then i shall meet him full in the face. what luck!—’tis chopp’d about again, master——o the devil chop it—— captain, quoth she, for heaven’s sake, let us get ashore. c h a p. lxxxvi it is a great inconvenience to a man in a haste, that there are three distinct roads between calais and paris, in behalf of which there is so much to be said by the several deputies from the towns which lie along them, that half a day is easily lost in settling which you’ll take. first, the road by lisle and arras, which is the most about——but most interesting, and instructing. the second, that by amiens, which you may go, if you would see chantilly—— and that by beauvais, which you may go, if you will. for this reason a great many chuse to go by beauvais. c h a p. lxxxvii “now before i quit calais,” a travel-writer would say, “it would not be amiss to give some account of “it.”—now i think it very much amiss—that a man cannot go quietly through a town and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o’ my conscience for the sake of drawing it; because, if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all who have wrote and gallop’d—or who have gallop’d and wrote, which is a different way still; or who, for more expedition than the rest, have wrote galloping, which is the way i do at present——from the great addison, who did it with his satchel of school books hanging at his a—, and galling his beast’s crupper at every stroke—there is not a gallopper of us all who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in case he had any), and have wrote all he had to write, dry-shod, as well as not. for my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which i shall ever make my last appeal—i know no more of calais (except the little my barber told me of it as he was whetting his razor) than i do this moment of grand cairo; for it was dusky in the evening when i landed, and dark as pitch in the morning when i set out, and yet by merely knowing what is what, and by drawing this from that in one part of the town, and by spelling and putting this and that together in another—i would lay any travelling odds, that i this moment write a chapter upon calais as long as my arm; and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every item, which is worth a stranger’s curiosity in the town—that you would take me for the town-clerk of calais itself—and where, sir, would be the wonder? was not democritus, who laughed ten times more than i—town-clerk of abdera? and was not (i forget his name) who had more discretion than us both, town-clerk of ephesus?——it should be penn’d moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth, and precision—— —nay—if you don’t believe me, you may read the chapter for your pains. c h a p. lxxxviii calais, calatium, calusium, calesium. this town, if we may trust its archives, the authority of which i see no reason to call in question in this place—was once no more than a small village belonging to one of the first counts de guignes; and as it boasts at present of no less than fourteen thousand inhabitants, exclusive of four hundred and twenty distinct families in the basse ville, or suburbs——it must have grown up by little and little, i suppose, to its present size. though there are four convents, there is but one parochial church in the whole town; i had not an opportunity of taking its exact dimensions, but it is pretty easy to make a tolerable conjecture of ’em—for as there are fourteen thousand inhabitants in the town, if the church holds them all it must be considerably large—and if it will not—’tis a very great pity they have not another—it is built in form of a cross, and dedicated to the virgin mary; the steeple, which has a spire to it, is placed in the middle of the church, and stands upon four pillars elegant and light enough, but sufficiently strong at the same time—it is decorated with eleven altars, most of which are rather fine than beautiful. the great altar is a masterpiece in its kind; ’tis of white marble, and, as i was told, near sixty feet high—had it been much higher, it had been as high as mount calvary itself—therefore, i suppose it must be high enough in all conscience. there was nothing struck me more than the great square; tho’ i cannot say ’tis either well paved or well built; but ’tis in the heart of the town, and most of the streets, especially those in that quarter, all terminate in it; could there have been a fountain in all calais, which it seems there cannot, as such an object would have been a great ornament, it is not to be doubted, but that the inhabitants would have had it in the very centre of this square,—not that it is properly a square,—because ’tis forty feet longer from east to west, than from north to south; so that the french in general have more reason on their side in calling them places than squares, which, strictly speaking, to be sure, they are not. the town-house seems to be but a sorry building, and not to be kept in the best repair; otherwise it had been a second great ornament to this place; it answers however its destination, and serves very well for the reception of the magistrates, who assemble in it from time to time; so that ’tis presumable, justice is regularly distributed. i have heard much of it, but there is nothing at all curious in the courgain; ’tis a distinct quarter of the town, inhabited solely by sailors and fishermen; it consists of a number of small streets, neatly built and mostly of brick; ’tis extremely populous, but as that may be accounted for, from the principles of their diet,—there is nothing curious in that neither.——a traveller may see it to satisfy himself—he must not omit however taking notice of la tour de guet, upon any account; ’tis so called from its particular destination, because in war it serves to discover and give notice of the enemies which approach the place, either by sea or land;——but ’tis monstrous high, and catches the eye so continually, you cannot avoid taking notice of it if you would. it was a singular disappointment to me, that i could not have permission to take an exact survey of the fortifications, which are the strongest in the world, and which, from first to last, that is, for the time they were set about by philip of france, count of bologne, to the present war, wherein many reparations were made, have cost (as i learned afterwards from an engineer in gascony)—above a hundred millions of livres. it is very remarkable, that at the tête de gravelenes, and where the town is naturally the weakest, they have expended the most money; so that the outworks stretch a great way into the campaign, and consequently occupy a large tract of ground—however, after all that is said and done, it must be acknowledged that calais was never upon any account so considerable from itself, as from its situation, and that easy entrance which it gave our ancestors, upon all occasions, into france: it was not without its inconveniences also; being no less troublesome to the english in those times, than dunkirk has been to us, in ours; so that it was deservedly looked upon as the key to both kingdoms, which no doubt is the reason that there have arisen so many contentions who should keep it: of these, the siege of calais, or rather the blockade (for it was shut up both by land and sea), was the most memorable, as it with-stood the efforts of edward the third a whole year, and was not terminated at last but by famine and extreme misery; the gallantry of eustace de st. pierre, who first offered himself a victim for his fellow-citizens, has rank’d his name with heroes. as it will not take up above fifty pages, it would be injustice to the reader, not to give him a minute account of that romantic transaction, as well as of the siege itself, in rapin’s own words: c h a p. lxxxix ——but courage! gentle reader!——i scorn it——’tis enough to have thee in my power——but to make use of the advantage which the fortune of the pen has now gained over thee, would be too much——no——! by that all-powerful fire which warms the visionary brain, and lights the spirits through unworldly tracts! ere i would force a helpless creature upon this hard service, and make thee pay, poor soul! for fifty pages, which i have no right to sell thee,——naked as i am, i would browse upon the mountains, and smile that the north wind brought me neither my tent or my supper. —so put on, my brave boy! and make the best of thy way to boulogne. c h a p. xc ——boulogne!——hah!——so we are all got together——debtors and sinners before heaven; a jolly set of us—but i can’t stay and quaff it off with you—i’m pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be overtaken, before i can well change horses:——for heaven’s sake, make haste——’tis for high-treason, quoth a very little man, whispering as low as he could to a very tall man, that stood next him——or else for murder; quoth the tall man——well thrown, size-ace! quoth i. no; quoth a third, the gentleman has been committing——— ah! ma chere fille! said i, as she tripp’d by from her matins—you look as rosy as the morning (for the sun was rising, and it made the compliment the more gracious)—no; it can’t be that, quoth a fourth——(she made a curt’sy to me—i kiss’d my hand) ’tis debt, continued he: ’tis certainly for debt; quoth a fifth; i would not pay that gentleman’s debts, quoth ace, for a thousand pounds; nor would i, quoth size, for six times the sum—well thrown, size-ace, again! quoth i;—but i have no debt but the debt of nature, and i want but patience of her, and i will pay her every farthing i owe her——how can you be so hard-hearted, madam, to arrest a poor traveller going along without molestation to any one upon his lawful occasions? do stop that death-looking, long-striding scoundrel of a scare-sinner, who is posting after me——he never would have followed me but for you——if it be but for a stage or two, just to give me start of him, i beseech you, madam——do, dear lady—— ——now, in troth, ’tis a great pity, quoth mine irish host, that all this good courtship should be lost; for the young gentlewoman has been after going out of hearing of it all along.—— ——simpleton! quoth i. ——so you have nothing else in boulogne worth seeing? —by jasus! there is the finest seminary for the humanities—— —there cannot be a finer; quoth i. c h a p. xci when the precipitancy of a man’s wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in—woe be to truth! and woe be to the vehicle and its tackling (let ’em be made of what stuff you will) upon which he breathes forth the disappointment of his soul! as i never give general characters either of men or things in choler, “the most haste the worse speed,” was all the reflection i made upon the affair, the first time it happen’d;—the second, third, fourth, and fifth time, i confined it respectively to those times, and accordingly blamed only the second, third, fourth, and fifth post-boy for it, without carrying my reflections further; but the event continuing to befal me from the fifth, to the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth time, and without one exception, i then could not avoid making a national reflection of it, which i do in these words; that something is always wrong in a french post-chaise, upon first setting out. or the proposition may stand thus: a french postilion has always to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town. what’s wrong now?——diable!——a rope’s broke!——a knot has slipt!——a staple’s drawn!——a bolt’s to whittle!——a tag, a rag, a jag, a strap, a buckle, or a buckle’s tongue, want altering. now true as all this is, i never think myself impowered to excommunicate thereupon either the post-chaise, or its driver——nor do i take it into my head to swear by the living g—, i would rather go a-foot ten thousand times——or that i will be damn’d, if ever i get into another——but i take the matter coolly before me, and consider, that some tag, or rag, or jag, or bolt, or buckle, or buckle’s tongue, will ever be a wanting or want altering, travel where i will—so i never chaff, but take the good and the bad as they fall in my road, and get on:——do so, my lad! said i; he had lost five minutes already, in alighting in order to get at a luncheon of black bread, which he had cramm’d into the chaise-pocket, and was remounted, and going leisurely on, to relish it the better.——get on, my lad, said i, briskly—but in the most persuasive tone imaginable, for i jingled a four-and-twenty sous piece against the glass, taking care to hold the flat side towards him, as he look’d back: the dog grinn’d intelligence from his right ear to his left, and behind his sooty muzzle discovered such a pearly row of teeth, that sovereignty would have pawn’d her jewels for them. just heaven! {what masticators!—/what bread!— and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of montreuil. c h a p. xcii there is not a town in all france which, in my opinion, looks better in the map, than montreuil;——i own, it does not look so well in the book of post-roads; but when you come to see it—to be sure it looks most pitifully. there is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is, the inn-keeper’s daughter: she has been eighteen months at amiens, and six at paris, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and does the little coquetries very well.—— —a slut! in running them over within these five minutes that i have stood looking at her, she has let fall at least a dozen loops in a white thread stocking——yes, yes—i see, you cunning gipsy!—’tis long and taper—you need not pin it to your knee—and that ’tis your own—and fits you exactly.—— ——that nature should have told this creature a word about a statue’s thumb! —but as this sample is worth all their thumbs—besides, i have her thumbs and fingers in at the bargain, if they can be any guide to me,—and as janatone withal (for that is her name) stands so well for a drawing——may i never draw more, or rather may i draw like a draught-horse, by main strength all the days of my life,—if i do not draw her in all her proportions, and with as determined a pencil, as if i had her in the wettest drapery.—— —but your worships chuse rather that i give you the length, breadth, and perpendicular height of the great parish-church, or drawing of the façade of the abbey of saint austreberte which has been transported from artois hither—every thing is just i suppose as the masons and carpenters left them,—and if the belief in christ continues so long, will be so these fifty years to come—so your worships and reverences may all measure them at your leisures——but he who measures thee, janatone, must do it now—thou carriest the principles of change within thy frame; and considering the chances of a transitory life, i would not answer for thee a moment; ere twice twelve months are passed and gone, thou mayest grow out like a pumpkin, and lose thy shapes——or thou mayest go off like a flower, and lose thy beauty—nay, thou mayest go off like a hussy—and lose thyself.—i would not answer for my aunt dinah, was she alive——’faith, scarce for her picture——were it but painted by reynolds— but if i go on with my drawing, after naming that son of apollo, i’ll be shot—— so you must e’en be content with the original; which, if the evening is fine in passing thro’ montreuil, you will see at your chaise-door, as you change horses: but unless you have as bad a reason for haste as i have—you had better stop:—she has a little of the devote: but that, sir, is a terce to a nine in your favour—— —l— help me! i could not count a single point: so had been piqued and repiqued, and capotted to the devil. c h a p. xciii all which being considered, and that death moreover might be much nearer me than i imagined——i wish i was at abbeville, quoth i, were it only to see how they card and spin——so off we set. [33]de montreuil a nampont poste et demi de nampont a bernay poste de bernay a nouvion poste de nouvion a abbeville poste ——but the carders and spinners were all gone to bed. [33] vid. book of french post-roads, page 36. edition of 1762. c h a p. xciv what a vast advantage is travelling! only it heats one; but there is a remedy for that, which you may pick out of the next chapter. c h a p. xcv was i in a condition to stipulate with death, as i am this moment with my apothecary, how and where i will take his clyster——i should certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and therefore i never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much as the catastrophe itself; but i constantly draw the curtain across it with this wish, that the disposer of all things may so order it, that it happen not to me in my own house——but rather in some decent inn——at home, i know it,——the concern of my friends, and the last services of wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul, that i shall die of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the few cold offices i wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention——but mark. this inn should not be the inn at abbeville——if there was not another inn in the universe, i would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning——yes, by four, sir,——or by genevieve! i’ll raise a clatter in the house shall wake the dead. c h a p. xcvi “make them like unto a wheel,” is a bitter sarcasm, as all the learned know, against the grand tour, and that restless spirit for making it, which david prophetically foresaw would haunt the children of men in the latter days; and therefore, as thinketh the great bishop hall, ’tis one of the severest imprecations which david ever utter’d against the enemies of the lord—and, as if he had said, “i wish them no worse luck than always to be rolling about.”—so much motion, continues he (for he was very corpulent)—is so much unquietness; and so much of rest, by the same analogy, is so much of heaven. now, i (being very thin) think differently; and that so much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy——and that to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil—— hollo! ho!——the whole world’s asleep!——bring out the horses——grease the wheels——tie on the mail——and drive a nail into that moulding——i’ll not lose a moment—— now the wheel we are talking of, and whereinto (but not whereonto, for that would make an ixion’s wheel of it) he curseth his enemies, according to the bishop’s habit of body, should certainly be a post-chaise wheel, whether they were set up in palestine at that time or not——and my wheel, for the contrary reasons, must as certainly be a cart-wheel groaning round its revolution once in an age; and of which sort, were i to turn commentator, i should make no scruple to affirm, they had great store in that hilly country. i love the pythagoreans (much more than ever i dare tell my dear jenny) for their “χωξισμον απο τκ εωμαιος, εις το καλως φιλοσοφειν”——[their] “getting out of the body, in order to think well.” no man thinks right, whilst he is in it; blinded as he must be, with his congenial humours, and drawn differently aside, as the bishop and myself have been, with too lax or too tense a fibre——reason is, half of it, sense; and the measure of heaven itself is but the measure of our present appetites and concoctions.—— ——but which of the two, in the present case, do you think to be mostly in the wrong? you, certainly: quoth she, to disturb a whole family so early. c h a p. xcvii ——but she did not know i was under a vow not to shave my beard till i got to paris;——yet i hate to make mysteries of nothing;——’tis the cold cautiousness of one of those little souls from which lessius (lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24.) hath made his estimate, wherein he setteth forth, that one dutch mile, cubically multiplied, will allow room enough, and to spare, for eight hundred thousand millions, which he supposes to be as great a number of souls (counting from the fall of adam) as can possibly be damn’d to the end of the world. from what he has made this second estimate——unless from the parental goodness of god—i don’t know—i am much more at a loss what could be in franciscus ribbera’s head, who pretends that no less a space than one of two hundred italian miles multiplied into itself, will be sufficient to hold the like number——he certainly must have gone upon some of the old roman souls, of which he had read, without reflecting how much, by a gradual and most tabid decline, in the course of eighteen hundred years, they must unavoidably have shrunk so as to have come, when he wrote, almost to nothing. in lessius’s time, who seems the cooler man, they were as little as can be imagined—— ——we find them less now—— and next winter we shall find them less again; so that if we go on from little to less, and from less to nothing, i hesitate not one moment to affirm, that in half a century at this rate, we shall have no souls at all; which being the period beyond which i doubt likewise of the existence of the christian faith, ’twill be one advantage that both of ’em will be exactly worn out together. blessed jupiter! and blessed every other heathen god and goddess! for now ye will all come into play again, and with priapus at your tails——what jovial times!——but where am i? and into what a delicious riot of things am i rushing? i——i who must be cut short in the midst of my days, and taste no more of ’em than what i borrow from my imagination——peace to thee, generous fool! and let me go on. c h a p. xcviii ——“so hating, i say, to make mysteries of nothing”——i intrusted it with the post-boy, as soon as ever i got off the stones; he gave a crack with his whip to balance the compliment; and with the thill-horse trotting, and a sort of an up and a down of the other, we danced it along to ailly au clochers, famed in days of yore for the finest chimes in the world; but we danced through it without music—the chimes being greatly out of order—(as in truth they were through all france). and so making all possible speed, from ailly au clochers, i got to hixcourt, from hixcourt i got to pequignay, and from pequignay, i got to amiens, concerning which town i have nothing to inform you, but what i have informed you once before——and that was—that janatone went there to school. c h a p. xcix in the whole catalogue of those whiffling vexations which come puffing across a man’s canvass, there is not one of a more teasing and tormenting nature, than this particular one which i am going to describe——and for which (unless you travel with an avance-courier, which numbers do in order to prevent it)——there is no help: and it is this. that be you in never so kindly a propensity to sleep——though you are passing perhaps through the finest country—upon the best roads, and in the easiest carriage for doing it in the world——nay, was you sure you could sleep fifty miles straight forwards, without once opening your eyes—nay, what is more, was you as demonstratively satisfied as you can be of any truth in euclid, that you should upon all accounts be full as well asleep as awake——nay, perhaps better——yet the incessant returns of paying for the horses at every stage,——with the necessity thereupon of putting your hand into your pocket, and counting out from thence three livres fifteen sous (sous by sous), puts an end to so much of the project, that you cannot execute above six miles of it (or supposing it is a post and a half, that is but nine)——were it to save your soul from destruction. —i’ll be even with ’em, quoth i, for i’ll put the precise sum into a piece of paper, and hold it ready in my hand all the way: “now i shall have nothing to do,” said i (composing myself to rest), “but to drop this gently into the post-boy’s hat, and not say a word.”——then there wants two sous more to drink——or there is a twelve sous piece of louis xiv. which will not pass—or a livre and some odd liards to be brought over from the last stage, which monsieur had forgot; which altercations (as a man cannot dispute very well asleep) rouse him: still is sweet sleep retrievable; and still might the flesh weigh down the spirit, and recover itself of these blows—but then, by heaven! you have paid but for a single post—whereas ’tis a post and a half; and this obliges you to pull out your book of post-roads, the print of which is so very small, it forces you to open your eyes, whether you will or no: then monsieur le curé offers you a pinch of snuff——or a poor soldier shews you his leg——or a shaveling his box——or the priestesse of the cistern will water your wheels——they do not want it——but she swears by her priesthood (throwing it back) that they do:——then you have all these points to argue, or consider over in your mind; in doing of which, the rational powers get so thoroughly awakened——you may get ’em to sleep again as you can. it was entirely owing to one of these misfortunes, or i had pass’d clean by the stables of chantilly—— ——but the postillion first affirming, and then persisting in it to my face, that there was no mark upon the two sous piece, i open’d my eyes to be convinced—and seeing the mark upon it as plain as my nose—i leap’d out of the chaise in a passion, and so saw every thing at chantilly in spite.——i tried it but for three posts and a half, but believe ’tis the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; for as few objects look very inviting in that mood—you have little or nothing to stop you; by which means it was that i passed through st. dennis, without turning my head so much as on one side towards the abby—— ——richness of their treasury! stuff and nonsense!——bating their jewels, which are all false, i would not give three sous for any one thing in it, but jaidas’s lantern——nor for that either, only as it grows dark, it might be of use. c h a p. c crack, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack—so this is paris! quoth i (continuing in the same mood)—and this is paris!——humph!——paris! cried i, repeating the name the third time—— the first, the finest, the most brilliant—— the streets however are nasty. but it looks, i suppose, better than it smells——crack, crack——crack, crack——what a fuss thou makest!—as if it concerned the good people to be informed, that a man with pale face and clad in black, had the honour to be driven into paris at nine o’clock at night, by a postillion in a tawny yellow jerkin, turned up with red calamanco—crack, crack——crack, crack——crack, crack,——i wish thy whip—— ——but ’tis the spirit of thy nation; so crack—crack on. ha!——and no one gives the wall!——but in the school of urbanity herself, if the walls are besh-t—how can you do otherwise? and prithee when do they light the lamps? what?—never in the summer months!——ho! ’tis the time of sallads.——o rare! sallad and soup—soup and sallad—sallad and soup, encore—— ——’tis too much for sinners. now i cannot bear the barbarity of it; how can that unconscionable coachman talk so much bawdy to that lean horse? don’t you see, friend, the streets are so villanously narrow, that there is not room in all paris to turn a wheelbarrow? in the grandest city of the whole world, it would not have been amiss, if they had been left a thought wider; nay, were it only so much in every single street, as that a man might know (was it only for satisfaction) on which side of it he was walking. one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten.—ten cooks shops! and twice the number of barbers! and all within three minutes driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world, on some great merry-meeting with the barbers, by joint consent had said—come, let us all go live at paris: the french love good eating——they are all gourmands——we shall rank high; if their god is their belly——their cooks must be gentlemen: and forasmuch as the periwig maketh the man, and the periwig-maker maketh the periwig—ergo, would the barbers say, we shall rank higher still—we shall be above you all—we shall be capitouls[34] at least—pardi! we shall all wear swords—— —and so, one would swear, (that is, by candle-light,—but there is no depending upon it,) they continued to do, to this day. [34] chief magistrate in toulouse, &c. &c. &c. c h a p. ci the french are certainly misunderstood:——but whether the fault is theirs, in not sufficiently explaining themselves; or speaking with that exact limitation and precision which one would expect on a point of such importance, and which, moreover, is so likely to be contested by us——or whether the fault may not be altogether on our side, in not understanding their language always so critically as to know “what they would be at”——i shall not decide; but ’tis evident to me, when they affirm, “that they who have seen paris, have seen every thing,” they must mean to speak of those who have seen it by day-light. as for candle-light—i give it up——i have said before, there was no depending upon it—and i repeat it again; but not because the lights and shades are too sharp—or the tints confounded—or that there is neither beauty or keeping, &c. . . . for that’s not truth—but it is an uncertain light in this respect, that in all the five hundred grand hôtels, which they number up to you in paris—and the five hundred good things, at a modest computation (for ’tis only allowing one good thing to a hôtel), which by candle-light are best to be seen, felt, heard, and understood (which, by the bye, is a quotation from lilly)——the devil a one of us out of fifty, can get our heads fairly thrust in amongst them. this is no part of the french computation: ’tis simply this, that by the last survey taken in the year one thousand seven hundred and sixteen, since which time there have been considerable augmentations, paris doth contain nine hundred streets; (viz) in the quarter called the city—there are fifty-three streets. in st. james of the shambles, fifty-five streets. in st. oportune, thirty-four streets. in the quarter of the louvre, twenty-five streets. in the palace royal, or st. honorius, forty-nine streets. in mont. martyr, forty-one streets. in st. eustace, twenty-nine streets. in the halles, twenty-seven streets. in st. dennis, fifty-five streets. in st. martin, fifty-four streets. in st. paul, or the mortellerie, twenty-seven streets. the greve, thirty-eight streets. in st. avoy, or the verrerie, nineteen streets. in the marais, or the temple, fifty-two streets. in st. antony’s, sixty-eight streets. in the place maubert, eighty-one streets. in st. bennet, sixty streets. in st. andrews de arcs, fifty-one streets. in the quarter of the luxembourg, sixty-two streets. and in that of st. germain, fifty-five streets, into any of which you may walk; and that when you have seen them with all that belongs to them, fairly by day-light—their gates, their bridges, their squares, their statues and have crusaded it moreover, through all their parish-churches, by no means omitting st. roche and sulpice and to crown all, have taken a walk to the four palaces, which you may see, either with or without the statues and pictures, just as you chuse— ——then you will have seen—— ——but ’tis what no one needeth to tell you, for you will read of it yourself upon the portico of the louvre, in these words, [35]earth no such folks!—no folks e’er such a town as paris is!—sing, derry, derry, down. the french have a gay way of treating every thing that is great; and that is all can be said upon it. [35] non orbis gentem, non urbem gens habet ullam ——————ulla parem. c h a p. cii in mentioning the word gay (as in the close of the last chapter) it puts one (i.e. an author) in mind of the word spleen——especially if he has any thing to say upon it: not that by any analysis—or that from any table of interest or genealogy, there appears much more ground of alliance betwixt them, than betwixt light and darkness, or any two of the most unfriendly opposites in nature——only ’tis an undercraft of authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as politicians do amongst men—not knowing how near they may be under a necessity of placing them to each other——which point being now gain’d, and that i may place mine exactly to my mind, i write it down here— s p l e e n this, upon leaving chantilly, i declared to be the best principle in the world to travel speedily upon; but i gave it only as matter of opinion. i still continue in the same sentiments—only i had not then experience enough of its working to add this, that though you do get on at a tearing rate, yet you get on but uneasily to yourself at the same time; for which reason i here quit it entirely, and for ever, and ’tis heartily at any one’s service—it has spoiled me the digestion of a good supper, and brought on a bilious diarrhœa, which has brought me back again to my first principle on which i set out——and with which i shall now scamper it away to the banks of the garonne— ——no;——i cannot stop a moment to give you the character of the people—their genius—— their manners—their customs—their laws——their religion—their government— their manufactures—their commerce—their finances, with all the resources and hidden springs which sustain them: qualified as i may be, by spending three days and two nights amongst them, and during all that time making these things the entire subject of my enquiries and reflections—— still—still i must away——the roads are paved—the posts are short—the days are long—’tis no more than noon—i shall be at fontainebleau before the king—— —was he going there? not that i know—— end of the third volume tristram shandy tristram shandy the life and opinions of tristram shandy, gentleman ——— volume the fourth ——— non enim excursus hic ejus, sed opus ipsum est. plin. lib. v. epist. 6. si quid urbaniusculè lusum a nobis, per musas et charitas et omnium poëtarum numina, oro te, ne me malè capias. a d e d i c a t i o n to a great man having, a priori, intended to dedicate the amours of my uncle toby to mr. ***——i see more reasons, a posteriori, for doing it to lord *******. i should lament from my soul, if this exposed me to the jealousy of their reverences; because a posteriori, in court-latin, signifies the kissing hands for preferment—or any thing else—in order to get it. dedication my opinion of lord ******* is neither better nor worse, than it was of mr. ***. honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but gold and silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight. the same good-will that made me think of offering up half an hour’s amusement to mr. *** when out of place—operates more forcibly at present, as half an hour’s amusement will be more serviceable and refreshing after labour and sorrow, than after a philosophical repast. nothing is so perfectly amusement as a total change of ideas; no ideas are so totally different as those of ministers, and innocent lovers: for which reason, when i come to talk of statesmen and patriots, and set such marks upon them as will prevent confusion and mistakes concerning them for the future—i propose to dedicate that volume to some gentle shepherd, whose thoughts proud science never taught to stray, far as the statesman’s walk or patriot-way; yet simple nature to his hopes had given out of a cloud-capp’d head a humbler heaven; some untam’d world in depths of wood embraced— some happier island in the wat’ry-waste— and where admitted to that equal sky, his faithful dogs should bear him company. in a word, by thus introducing an entire new set of objects to his imagination, i shall unavoidably give a diversion to his passionate and love-sick contemplations. in the mean time, i am the author. c h a p. i now i hate to hear a person, especially if he be a traveller, complain that we do not get on so fast in france as we do in england; whereas we get on much faster, consideratis considerandis; thereby always meaning, that if you weigh their vehicles with the mountains of baggage which you lay both before and behind upon them—and then consider their puny horses, with the very little they give them—’tis a wonder they get on at all: their suffering is most unchristian, and ’tis evident thereupon to me, that a french post-horse would not know what in the world to do, was it not for the two words * * * * * * and * * * * * * in which there is as much sustenance, as if you give him a peck of corn: now as these words cost nothing, i long from my soul to tell the reader what they are; but here is the question—they must be told him plainly, and with the most distinct articulation, or it will answer no end—and yet to do it in that plain way—though their reverences may laugh at it in the bed-chamber—full well i wot, they will abuse it in the parlour: for which cause, i have been volving and revolving in my fancy some time, but to no purpose, by what clean device or facette contrivance i might so modulate them, that whilst i satisfy that ear which the reader chuses to lend me—i might not dissatisfy the other which he keeps to himself. ——my ink burns my finger to try——and when i have——’twill have a worse consequence——it will burn (i fear) my paper. ——no;——i dare not—— but if you wish to know how the abbess of andoüillets and a novice of her convent got over the difficulty (only first wishing myself all imaginable success)—i’ll tell you without the least scruple. c h a p. ii the abbess of andoüillets, which if you look into the large set of provincial maps now publishing at paris, you will find situated amongst the hills which divide burgundy from savoy, being in danger of an anchylosis or stiff joint (the sinovia of her knee becoming hard by long matins), and having tried every remedy——first, prayers and thanksgiving; then invocations to all the saints in heaven promiscuously——then particularly to every saint who had ever had a stiff leg before her——then touching it with all the reliques of the convent, principally with the thigh-bone of the man of lystra, who had been impotent from his youth——then wrapping it up in her veil when she went to bed—then cross-wise her rosary—then bringing in to her aid the secular arm, and anointing it with oils and hot fat of animals——then treating it with emollient and resolving fomentations——then with poultices of marsh-mallows, mallows, bonus henricus, white lillies and fenugreek—then taking the woods, i mean the smoak of ’em, holding her scapulary across her lap——then decoctions of wild chicory, water-cresses, chervil, sweet cecily and cochlearia——and nothing all this while answering, was prevailed on at last to try the hot-baths of bourbon——so having first obtained leave of the visitor-general to take care of her existence—she ordered all to be got ready for her journey: a novice of the convent of about seventeen, who had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle finger, by sticking it constantly into the abbess’s cast poultices, &c.—had gained such an interest, that overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been set up for ever by the hot-baths of bourbon, margarita, the little novice, was elected as the companion of the journey. an old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, was ordered to be drawn out into the sun—the gardener of the convent being chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules, to clip the hair from the rumpends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, the one in darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreds of yellow binding, which the teeth of time had unravelled——the under-gardener dress’d the muleteer’s hat in hot wine-lees——and a taylor sat musically at it, in a shed over-against the convent, in assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each bell, as he tied it on with a thong.—— ——the carpenter and the smith of andoüillets held a council of wheels; and by seven, the morning after, all look’d spruce, and was ready at the gate of the convent for the hot-baths of bourbon—two rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before. the abbess of andoüillets, supported by margarita the novice, advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white, with their black rosaries hanging at their breasts—— ——there was a simple solemnity in the contrast: they entered the calesh; the nuns in the same uniform, sweet emblem of innocence, each occupied a window, and as the abbess and margarita look’d up—each (the sciatical poor nun excepted)—each stream’d out the end of her veil in the air—then kiss’d the lilly hand which let it go: the good abbess and margarita laid their hands saint-wise upon their breasts—look’d up to heaven—then to them—and look’d “god bless you, dear sisters.” i declare i am interested in this story, and wish i had been there. the gardener, whom i shall now call the muleteer, was a little, hearty, broad-set, good-natured, chattering, toping kind of a fellow, who troubled his head very little with the hows and whens of life; so had mortgaged a month of his conventical wages in a borrachio, or leathern cask of wine, which he had disposed behind the calesh, with a large russet-coloured riding-coat over it, to guard it from the sun; and as the weather was hot, and he not a niggard of his labours, walking ten times more than he rode—he found more occasions than those of nature, to fall back to the rear of his carriage; till by frequent coming and going, it had so happen’d, that all his wine had leak’d out at the legal vent of the borrachio, before one half of the journey was finish’d. man is a creature born to habitudes. the day had been sultry—the evening was delicious—the wine was generous—the burgundian hill on which it grew was steep—a little tempting bush over the door of a cool cottage at the foot of it, hung vibrating in full harmony with the passions—a gentle air rustled distinctly through the leaves—“come—come, thirsty muleteer,—come in.” —the muleteer was a son of adam, i need not say a word more. he gave the mules, each of ’em, a sound lash, and looking in the abbess’s and margarita’s faces (as he did it)—as much as to say “here i am”—he gave a second good crack—as much as to say to his mules, “get on”——so slinking behind, he enter’d the little inn at the foot of the hill. the muleteer, as i told you, was a little, joyous, chirping fellow, who thought not of to-morrow, nor of what had gone before, or what was to follow it, provided he got but his scantling of burgundy, and a little chit-chat along with it; so entering into a long conversation, as how he was chief gardener to the convent of andoüillets, &c. &c. and out of friendship for the abbess and mademoiselle margarita, who was only in her noviciate, he had come along with them from the confines of savoy, &c. &c.—and as how she had got a white swelling by her devotions—and what a nation of herbs he had procured to mollify her humours, &c. &c. and that if the waters of bourbon did not mend that leg—she might as well be lame of both—&c. &c. &c.—he so contrived his story, as absolutely to forget the heroine of it—and with her the little novice, and what was a more ticklish point to be forgot than both—the two mules; who being creatures that take advantage of the world, inasmuch as their parents took it of them—and they not being in a condition to return the obligation downwards (as men and women and beasts are)—they do it side-ways, and long-ways, and back-ways—and up hill, and down hill, and which way they can.——philosophers, with all their ethicks, have never considered this rightly—how should the poor muleteer, then in his cups, consider it at all? he did not in the least—’tis time we do; let us leave him then in the vortex of his element, the happiest and most thoughtless of mortal men—and for a moment let us look after the mules, the abbess, and margarita. by virtue of the muleteer’s two last strokes the mules had gone quietly on, following their own consciences up the hill, till they had conquer’d about one half of it; when the elder of them, a shrewd crafty old devil, at the turn of an angle, giving a side glance, and no muleteer behind them,—— by my fig! said she, swearing, i’ll go no further——and if i do, replied the other, they shall make a drum of my hide.—— and so with one consent they stopp’d thus—— c h a p. iii ——get on with you, said the abbess. ——wh ysh——ysh——cried margarita. sh a——shu u——shu u—sh aw——shaw’d the abbess. ——whu—v—w—whew—w—w—whuv’d margarita, pursing up her sweet lips betwixt a hoot and a whistle. thump—thump—thump—obstreperated the abbess of andoüillets with the end of her gold-headed cane against the bottom of the calesh—— the old mule let a f— c h a p. iv we are ruin’d and undone, my child, said the abbess to margarita,——we shall be here all night——we shall be plunder’d——we shall be ravished—— ——we shall be ravish’d, said margarita, as sure as a gun. sancta maria! cried the abbess (forgetting the o!)—why was i govern’d by this wicked stiff joint? why did i leave the convent of andoüillets? and why didst thou not suffer thy servant to go unpolluted to her tomb? o my finger! my finger! cried the novice, catching fire at the word servant—why was i not content to put it here, or there, any where rather than be in this strait? strait! said the abbess. strait——said the novice; for terror had struck their understandings——the one knew not what she said——the other what she answer’d. o my virginity! virginity! cried the abbess. ——inity!——inity! said the novice, sobbing. c h a p. v my dear mother, quoth the novice, coming a little to herself,—there are two certain words, which i have been told will force any horse, or ass, or mule, to go up a hill whether he will or no; be he never so obstinate or ill-will’d, the moment he hears them utter’d, he obeys. they are words magic! cried the abbess in the utmost horror—no; replied margarita calmly—but they are words sinful—what are they? quoth the abbess, interrupting her: they are sinful in the first degree, answered margarita,—they are mortal—and if we are ravished and die unabsolved of them, we shall both——but you may pronounce them to me, quoth the abbess of andoüillets——they cannot, my dear mother, said the novice, be pronounced at all; they will make all the blood in one’s body fly up into one’s face—but you may whisper them in my ear, quoth the abbess. heaven! hadst thou no guardian angel to delegate to the inn at the bottom of the hill? was there no generous and friendly spirit unemployed——no agent in nature, by some monitory shivering, creeping along the artery which led to his heart, to rouse the muleteer from his banquet?——no sweet minstrelsy to bring back the fair idea of the abbess and margarita, with their black rosaries! rouse! rouse!——but ’tis too late—the horrid words are pronounced this moment—— ——and how to tell them—ye, who can speak of every thing existing, with unpolluted lips—instruct me——guide me—— c h a p. vi all sins whatever, quoth the abbess, turning casuist in the distress they were under, are held by the confessor of our convent to be either mortal or venial: there is no further division. now a venial sin being the slightest and least of all sins—being halved—by taking either only the half of it, and leaving the rest—or, by taking it all, and amicably halving it betwixt yourself and another person—in course becomes diluted into no sin at all. now i see no sin in saying, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, a hundred times together; nor is there any turpitude in pronouncing the syllable ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, were it from our matins to our vespers: therefore, my dear daughter, continued the abbess of andoüillets—i will say bou, and thou shalt say ger; and then alternately, as there is no more sin in fou than in bou—thou shalt say fou—and i will come in (like fa, sol, la, re, mi, ut, at our complines) with ter. and accordingly the abbess, giving the pitch note, set off thus: abbess, )  bou bou bou margarita,) ——ger, ger, ger. margarita,)  fou...fou...fou.. abbess, ) —ter, ter, ter. the two mules acknowledged the notes by a mutual lash of their tails; but it went no further——’twill answer by an’ by, said the novice. abbess, )  bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. bou. margarita,) —ger, ger, ger, ger, ger, ger. quicker still, cried margarita. fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou, fou. quicker still, cried margarita. bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou, bou. quicker still—god preserve me; said the abbess—they do not understand us, cried margarita—but the devil does, said the abbess of andoüillets. c h a p. vii what a tract of country have i run!—how many degrees nearer to the warm sun am i advanced, and how many fair and goodly cities have i seen, during the time you have been reading and reflecting, madam, upon this story! there’s fontainbleau, and sens, and joigny, and auxerre, and dijon the capital of burgundy, and challon, and mâcon the capital of the maconese, and a score more upon the road to lyons——and now i have run them over——i might as well talk to you of so many market towns in the moon, as tell you one word about them: it will be this chapter at the least, if not both this and the next entirely lost, do what i will—— —why, ’tis a strange story! tristram. ——alas! madam, had it been upon some melancholy lecture of the cross—the peace of meekness, or the contentment of resignation——i had not been incommoded: or had i thought of writing it upon the purer abstractions of the soul, and that food of wisdom and holiness and contemplation, upon which the spirit of man (when separated from the body) is to subsist for ever——you would have come with a better appetite from it—— ——i wish i never had wrote it: but as i never blot any thing out——let us use some honest means to get it out of our heads directly. ——pray reach me my fool’s cap——i fear you sit upon it, madam——’tis under the cushion——i’ll put it on—— bless me! you have had it upon your head this half hour.——there then let it stay, with a fa-ra diddle di and a fa-ri diddle d and a high-dum—dye-dum fiddle dumb c. and now, madam, we may venture, i hope a little to go on. c h a p. viii ——all you need say of fontainbleau (in case you are ask’d) is, that it stands about forty miles (south something) from paris, in the middle of a large forest—that there is something great in it—that the king goes there once every two or three years, with his whole court, for the pleasure of the chace—and that, during that carnival of sporting, any english gentleman of fashion (you need not forget yourself) may be accommodated with a nag or two, to partake of the sport, taking care only not to out-gallop the king—— though there are two reasons why you need not talk loud of this to every one. first, because ’twill make the said nags the harder to be got; and secondly, ’tis not a word of it true.——allons! as for sens——you may dispatch—in a word——“’tis an archiepiscopal see.” ——for joigny—the less, i think, one says of it the better. but for auxerre—i could go on for ever: for in my grand tour through europe, in which, after all, my father (not caring to trust me with any one) attended me himself, with my uncle toby, and trim, and obadiah, and indeed most of the family, except my mother, who being taken up with a project of knitting my father a pair of large worsted breeches—(the thing is common sense)—and she not caring to be put out of her way, she staid at home, at shandy hall, to keep things right during the expedition; in which, i say, my father stopping us two days at auxerre, and his researches being ever of such a nature, that they would have found fruit even in a desert——he has left me enough to say upon auxerre: in short, wherever my father went——but ’twas more remarkably so, in this journey through france and italy, than in any other stages of his life—his road seemed to lie so much on one side of that, wherein all other travellers have gone before him—he saw kings and courts and silks of all colours, in such strange lights——and his remarks and reasonings upon the characters, the manners, and customs of the countries we pass’d over, were so opposite to those of all other mortal men, particularly those of my uncle toby and trim—(to say nothing of myself)—and to crown all—the occurrences and scrapes which we were perpetually meeting and getting into, in consequence of his systems and opiniotry—they were of so odd, so mix’d and tragi-comical a contexture—that the whole put together, it appears of so different a shade and tint from any tour of europe, which was ever executed—that i will venture to pronounce—the fault must be mine and mine only—if it be not read by all travellers and travel-readers, till travelling is no more,—or which comes to the same point—till the world, finally, takes it into its head to stand still.—— ——but this rich bale is not to be open’d now; except a small thread or two of it, merely to unravel the mystery of my father’s stay at auxerre. ——as i have mentioned it—’tis too slight to be kept suspended; and when ’tis wove in, there is an end of it. we’ll go, brother toby, said my father, whilst dinner is coddling—to the abbey of saint germain, if it be only to see these bodies, of which monsieur sequier has given such a recommendation.——i’ll go see any body, quoth my uncle toby; for he was all compliance through every step of the journey——defend me! said my father—they are all mummies——then one need not shave; quoth my uncle toby——shave! no—cried my father—’twill be more like relations to go with our beards on—so out we sallied, the corporal lending his master his arm, and bringing up the rear, to the abbey of saint germain. every thing is very fine, and very rich, and very superb, and very magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who was a younger brother of the order of benedictines—but our curiosity has led us to see the bodies, of which monsieur sequier has given the world so exact a description.—the sacristan made a bow, and lighting a torch first, which he had always in the vestry ready for the purpose; he led us into the tomb of st. heribald——this, said the sacristan, laying his hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of bavaria, who under the successive reigns of charlemagne, louis le debonnair, and charles the bald, bore a great sway in the government, and had a principal hand in bringing every thing into order and discipline—— then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in the cabinet——i dare say he has been a gallant soldier——he was a monk—said the sacristan. my uncle toby and trim sought comfort in each other’s faces—but found it not: my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a way he had when any thing hugely tickled him: for though he hated a monk and the very smell of a monk worse than all the devils in hell——yet the shot hitting my uncle toby and trim so much harder than him, ’twas a relative triumph; and put him into the gayest humour in the world. ——and pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather sportingly: this tomb, said the young benedictine, looking downwards, contains the bones of saint maxima, who came from ravenna on purpose to touch the body—— ——of saint maximus, said my father, popping in with his saint before him,—they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology, added my father——excuse me, said the sacristan——’twas to touch the bones of saint germain, the builder of the abbey——and what did she get by it? said my uncle toby——what does any woman get by it? said my father——martyrdome; replied the young benedictine, making a bow down to the ground, and uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a cadence, it disarmed my father for a moment. ’tis supposed, continued the benedictine, that st. maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred years, and two hundred before her canonization——’tis but a slow rise, brother toby, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.——a desperate slow one, an’ please your honour, said trim, unless one could purchase——i should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle toby——i am pretty much of your opinion, brother toby, said my father. ——poor st. maxima! said my uncle toby low to himself, as we turn’d from her tomb: she was one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies either of italy or france, continued the sacristan——but who the duce has got lain down here, besides her? quoth my father, pointing with his cane to a large tomb as we walked on——it is saint optat, sir, answered the sacristan——and properly is saint optat plac’d! said my father: and what is saint optat’s story? continued he. saint optat, replied the sacristan, was a bishop—— ——i thought so, by heaven! cried my father, interrupting him—saint optat!——how should saint optat fail? so snatching out his pocket-book, and the young benedictine holding him the torch as he wrote, he set it down as a new prop to his system of christian names, and i will be bold to say, so disinterested was he in the search of truth, that had he found a treasure in saint optat’s tomb, it would not have made him half so rich: ’twas as successful a short visit as ever was paid to the dead; and so highly was his fancy pleas’d with all that had passed in it,—that he determined at once to stay another day in auxerre. —i’ll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, said my father, as we cross’d over the square—and while you are paying that visit, brother shandy, quoth my uncle toby—the corporal and i will mount the ramparts. c h a p. ix ——now this is the most puzzled skein of all——for in this last chapter, as far at least as it has help’d me through auxerre, i have been getting forwards in two different journies together, and with the same dash of the pen—for i have got entirely out of auxerre in this journey which i am writing now, and i am got half way out of auxerre in that which i shall write hereafter——there is but a certain degree of perfection in every thing; and by pushing at something beyond that, i have brought myself into such a situation, as no traveller ever stood before me; for i am this moment walking across the market-place of auxerre with my father and my uncle toby, in our way back to dinner——and i am this moment also entering lyons with my post-chaise broke into a thousand pieces—and i am moreover this moment in a handsome pavillion built by pringello,[36] upon the banks of the garonne, which mons. sligniac has lent me, and where i now sit rhapsodising all these affairs. ——let me collect myself, and pursue my journey. [36] the same don pringello, the celebrated spanish architect, of whom my cousin antony has made such honourable mention in a scholium to the tale inscribed to his name.—vid. p.129, small edit. c h a p. x i am glad of it, said i, settling the account with myself, as i walk’d into lyons——my chaise being all laid higgledy-piggledy with my baggage in a cart, which was moving slowly before me——i am heartily glad, said i, that ’tis all broke to pieces; for now i can go directly by water to avignon, which will carry me on a hundred and twenty miles of my journey, and not cost me seven livres——and from thence, continued i, bringing forwards the account, i can hire a couple of mules—or asses, if i like, (for nobody knows me,) and cross the plains of languedoc for almost nothing——i shall gain four hundred livres by the misfortune clear into my purse: and pleasure! worth—worth double the money by it. with what velocity, continued i, clapping my two hands together, shall i fly down the rapid rhône, with the vivares on my right hand, and dauphiny on my left, scarce seeing the ancient cities of vienne, valence, and vivieres. what a flame will it rekindle in the lamp, to snatch a blushing grape from the hermitage and cotê roti, as i shoot by the foot of them! and what a fresh spring in the blood! to behold upon the banks advancing and retiring, the castles of romance, whence courteous knights have whilome rescued the distress’d——and see vertiginous, the rocks, the mountains, the cataracts, and all the hurry which nature is in with all her great works about her. as i went on thus, methought my chaise, the wreck of which look’d stately enough at the first, insensibly grew less and less in its size; the freshness of the painting was no more—the gilding lost its lustre—and the whole affair appeared so poor in my eyes—so sorry!—so contemptible! and, in a word, so much worse than the abbess of andoüillets’ itself—that i was just opening my mouth to give it to the devil—when a pert vamping chaise-undertaker, stepping nimbly across the street, demanded if monsieur would have his chaise refitted——no, no, said i, shaking my head sideways—would monsieur choose to sell it? rejoined the undertaker—with all my soul, said i—the iron work is worth forty livres—and the glasses worth forty more—and the leather you may take to live on. what a mine of wealth, quoth i, as he counted me the money, has this post-chaise brought me in? and this is my usual method of book-keeping, at least with the disasters of life—making a penny of every one of ’em as they happen to me—— ——do, my dear jenny, tell the world for me, how i behaved under one, the most oppressive of its kind, which could befal me as a man, proud as he ought to be of his manhood—— ’tis enough, saidst thou, coming close up to me, as i stood with my garters in my hand, reflecting upon what had not pass’d——’tis enough, tristram, and i am satisfied, saidst thou, whispering these words in my ear, * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *;—* * * * * * * * *——any other man would have sunk down to the centre—— ——every thing is good for something, quoth i. ——i’ll go into wales for six weeks, and drink goat’s whey—and i’ll gain seven years longer life for the accident. for which reason i think myself inexcusable, for blaming fortune so often as i have done, for pelting me all my life long, like an ungracious duchess, as i call’d her, with so many small evils: surely, if i have any cause to be angry with her, ’tis that she has not sent me great ones—a score of good cursed, bouncing losses, would have been as good as a pension to me. ——one of a hundred a year, or so, is all i wish—i would not be at the plague of paying land-tax for a larger. c h a p. xi to those who call vexations, vexations, as knowing what they are, there could not be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at lyons, the most opulent and flourishing city in france, enriched with the most fragments of antiquity—and not be able to see it. to be withheld upon any account, must be a vexation; but to be withheld by a vexation——must certainly be, what philosophy justly calls vexation upon vexation. i had got my two dishes of milk coffee (which by the bye is excellently good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee together—otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk)—and as it was no more than eight in the morning, and the boat did not go off till noon, i had time to see enough of lyons to tire the patience of all the friends i had in the world with it. i will take a walk to the cathedral, said i, looking at my list, and see the wonderful mechanism of this great clock of lippius of basil, in the first place—— now, of all things in the world, i understand the least of mechanism——i have neither genius, or taste, or fancy—and have a brain so entirely unapt for every thing of that kind, that i solemnly declare i was never yet able to comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel cage, or a common knife-grinder’s wheel—tho’ i have many an hour of my life look’d up with great devotion at the one—and stood by with as much patience as any christian ever could do, at the other—— i’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, said i, the very first thing i do: and then i will pay a visit to the great library of the jesuits, and procure, if possible, a sight of the thirty volumes of the general history of china, wrote (not in the tartarean, but) in the chinese language, and in the chinese character too. now i almost know as little of the chinese language, as i do of the mechanism of lippius’s clock-work; so, why these should have jostled themselves into the two first articles of my list——i leave to the curious as a problem of nature. i own it looks like one of her ladyship’s obliquities; and they who court her, are interested in finding out her humour as much as i. when these curiosities are seen, quoth i, half addressing myself to my valet de place, who stood behind me——’twill be no hurt if we go to the church of st. irenæus, and see the pillar to which christ was tied——and after that, the house where pontius pilate lived——’twas at the next town, said the valet de place—at vienne; i am glad of it, said i, rising briskly from my chair, and walking across the room with strides twice as long as my usual pace——“for so much the sooner shall i be at the tomb of the two lovers.” what was the cause of this movement, and why i took such long strides in uttering this——i might leave to the curious too; but as no principle of clock-work is concerned in it——’twill be as well for the reader if i explain it myself. c h a p. xii o! there is a sweet æra in the life of man, when (the brain being tender and fibrillous, and more like pap than any thing else)——a story read of two fond lovers, separated from each other by cruel parents, and by still more cruel destiny——      amandus——he      amanda——she—— each ignorant of the other’s course,      he——east      she——west amandus taken captive by the turks, and carried to the emperor of morocco’s court, where the princess of morocco falling in love with him, keeps him twenty years in prison for the love of his amanda.—— she—(amanda) all the time wandering barefoot, and with dishevell’d hair, o’er rocks and mountains, enquiring for amandus!——amandus! amandus!—making every hill and valley to echo back his name—— amandus! amandus! at every town and city, sitting down forlorn at the gate——has amandus!—has my amandus enter’d?——till,——going round, and round, and round the world——chance unexpected bringing them at the same moment of the night, though by different ways, to the gate of lyons, their native city, and each in well-known accents calling out aloud, is amandus still alive? is my amanda they fly into each other’s arms, and both drop down dead for joy. there is a soft æra in every gentle mortal’s life, where such a story affords more pabulum to the brain, than all the frusts, and crusts, and rusts of antiquity, which travellers can cook up for it. ——’twas all that stuck on the right side of the cullender in my own, of what spon and others, in their accounts of lyons, had strained into it; and finding, moreover, in some itinerary, but in what god knows——that sacred to the fidelity of amandus and amanda, a tomb was built without the gates, where, to this hour, lovers called upon them to attest their truths——i never could get into a scrape of that kind in my life, but this tomb of the lovers would, somehow or other, come in at the close —nay such a kind of empire had it establish’d over me, that i could seldom think or speak of lyons—and sometimes not so much as see even a lyons-waistcoat, but this remnant of antiquity would present itself to my fancy; and i have often said in my wild way of running on——tho’ i fear with some irreverence——“i thought this shrine (neglected as it was) as valuable as that of mecca, and so little short, except in wealth, of the santa casa itself, that some time or other, i would go a pilgrimage (though i had no other business at lyons) on purpose to pay it a visit.” in my list, therefore, of videnda at lyons, this, tho’ last,—was not, you see, least ; so taking a dozen or two of longer strides than usual cross my room, just whilst it passed my brain, i walked down calmly into the basse cour, in order to sally forth; and having called for my bill—as it was uncertain whether i should return to my inn, i had paid it——had moreover given the maid ten sous, and was just receiving the dernier compliments of monsieur le blanc, for a pleasant voyage down the rhône——when i was stopped at the gate—— c h a p. xiii ——’twas by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves; and stood dubious, with his two fore-feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or no. now, ’tis an animal (be in what hurry i may) i cannot bear to strike——there is a patient endurance of sufferings, wrote so unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that i do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where i will—whether in town or country—in cart or under panniers—whether in liberty or bondage——i have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as i)——i generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance—and where those carry me not deep enough—in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think—as well as a man, upon the occasion. in truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom i can do this: for parrots, jackdaws, &c.——i never exchange a word with them——nor with the apes, &c. for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay my dog and my cat, though i value them both——(and for my dog he would speak if he could)—yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation——i can make nothing of a discourse with them, beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father’s and my mother’s conversations, in his beds of justice——and those utter’d——there’s an end of the dialogue—— —but with an ass, i can commune for ever. come, honesty! said i,——seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate——art thou for coming in, or going out? the ass twisted his head round to look up the street—— well—replied i—we’ll wait a minute for thy driver: ——he turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way—— i understand thee perfectly, answered i——if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death——well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent. he was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropt it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and pick’d it up again——god help thee, jack! said i, thou hast a bitter breakfast on’t—and many a bitter day’s labour,—and many a bitter blow, i fear, for its wages——’tis all—all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others.——and now thy mouth, if one knew the truth of it, is as bitter, i dare say, as soot—(for he had cast aside the stem) and thou hast not a friend perhaps in all this world, that will give thee a macaroon.——in saying this, i pull’d out a paper of ’em, which i had just purchased, and gave him one—and at this moment that i am telling it, my heart smites me, that there was more of pleasantry in the conceit, of seeing how an ass would eat a macaroon——than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. when the ass had eaten his macaroon, i press’d him to come in——the poor beast was heavy loaded——his legs seem’d to tremble under him——he hung rather backwards, and as i pull’d at his halter, it broke short in my hand——he look’d up pensive in my face—“don’t thrash me with it—but if you will, you may”——if i do, said i, i’ll be d——d. the word was but one-half of it pronounced, like the abbess of andoüillet’s—(so there was no sin in it)—when a person coming in, let fall a thundering bastinado upon the poor devil’s crupper, which put an end to the ceremony. out upon it! cried i——but the interjection was equivocal——and, i think, wrong placed too—for the end of an osier which had started out from the contexture of the ass’s panier, had caught hold of my breeches pocket, as he rush’d by me, and rent it in the most disastrous direction you can imagine——so that the out upon it! in my opinion, should have come in here——but this i leave to be settled by the reviewers of my breeches, which i have brought over along with me for that purpose. c h a p. xiv when all was set to rights, i came down stairs again into the basse cour with my valet de place, in order to sally out towards the tomb of the two lovers, &c.—and was a second time stopp’d at the gate——not by the ass—but by the person who struck him; and who, by that time, had taken possession (as is not uncommon after a defeat) of the very spot of ground where the ass stood. it was a commissary sent to me from the post-office, with a rescript in his hand for the payment of some six livres odd sous. upon what account? said i.——’tis upon the part of the king, replied the commissary, heaving up both his shoulders—— ——my good friend, quoth i——as sure as i am i—and you are you—— ——and who are you? said he.—— ——don’t puzzle me; said i. c h a p. xv ——but it is an indubitable verity, continued i, addressing myself to the commissary, changing only the form of my asseveration——that i owe the king of france nothing but my good will; for he is a very honest man, and i wish him all health and pastime in the world—— pardonnez moi—replied the commissary, you are indebted to him six livres four sous, for the next post from hence to st. fons, in your route to avignon—which being a post royal, you pay double for the horses and postillion—otherwise ’twould have amounted to no more than three livres two sous—— ——but i don’t go by land; said i. ——you may if you please; replied the commissary—— your most obedient servant——said i, making him a low bow—— the commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding—made me one, as low again.——i never was more disconcerted with a bow in my life. ——the devil take the serious character of these people! quoth i—(aside) they understand no more of irony than this—— the comparison was standing close by with his panniers—but something seal’d up my lips—i could not pronounce the name— sir, said i, collecting myself—it is not my intention to take post—— —but you may—said he, persisting in his first reply—you may take post if you chuse—— —and i may take salt to my pickled herring, said i, if i chuse— —but i do not chuse— —but you must pay for it, whether you do or no. aye! for the salt; said i (i know)—— —and for the post too; added he. defend me! cried i—— i travel by water—i am going down the rhône this very afternoon—my baggage is in the boat—and i have actually paid nine livres for my passage—— c’est tout egal—’tis all one; said he. bon dieu! what, pay for the way i go! and for the way i do not go! ——c’est tout egal; replied the commissary—— ——the devil it is! said i—but i will go to ten thousand bastiles first—— o england! england! thou land of liberty, and climate of good sense, thou tenderest of mothers—and gentlest of nurses, cried i, kneeling upon one knee, as i was beginning my apostrophè. when the director of madam le blanc’s conscience coming in at that instant, and seeing a person in black, with a face as pale as ashes, at his devotions—looking still paler by the contrast and distress of his drapery—ask’d, if i stood in want of the aids of the church—— i go by water—said i—and here’s another will be for making me pay for going by oil. c h a p. xvi as i perceived the commissary of the post-office would have his six livres four sous, i had nothing else for it, but to say some smart thing upon the occasion, worth the money: and so i set off thus:—— ——and pray, mr. commissary, by what law of courtesy is a defenceless stranger to be used just the reverse from what you use a frenchman in this matter? by no means; said he. excuse me; said i—for you have begun, sir, with first tearing off my breeches—and now you want my pocket—— whereas—had you first taken my pocket, as you do with your own people—and then left me bare a—’d after—i had been a beast to have complain’d—— as it is—— ——’tis contrary to the law of nature. ——’tis contrary to reason. ——’tis contrary to the gospel. but not to this——said he—putting a printed paper into my hand, par le roy. ———’tis a pithy prolegomenon, quoth i—and so read on — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — ——by all which it appears, quoth i, having read it over, a little too rapidly, that if a man sets out in a post-chaise from paris—he must go on travelling in one, all the days of his life—or pay for it.—excuse me, said the commissary, the spirit of the ordinance is this—that if you set out with an intention of running post from paris to avignon, &c. you shall not change that intention or mode of travelling, without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further than the place you repent at—and ’tis founded, continued he, upon this, that the revenues are not to fall short through your fickleness—— ——o by heavens! cried i—if fickleness is taxable in france—we have nothing to do but to make the best peace with you we can—— and so the peace was made; ——and if it is a bad one—as tristram shandy laid the corner-stone of it—nobody but tristram shandy ought to be hanged. c h a p. xvii though i was sensible i had said as many clever things to the commissary as came to six livres four sous, yet i was determined to note down the imposition amongst my remarks before i retired from the place; so putting my hand into my coat-pocket for my remarks—(which, by the bye, may be a caution to travellers to take a little more care of their remarks for the future) “my remarks were stolen”——never did sorry traveller make such a pother and racket about his remarks as i did about mine, upon the occasion. heaven! earth! sea! fire! cried i, calling in every thing to my aid but what i should——my remarks are stolen!—what shall i do?——mr. commissary! pray did i drop any remarks, as i stood besides you?—— you dropp’d a good many very singular ones; replied he——pugh! said i, those were but a few, not worth above six livres two sous—but these are a large parcel——he shook his head——monsieur le blanc! madam le blanc! did you see any papers of mine?—you maid of the house! run up stairs—françois! run up after her—— —i must have my remarks——they were the best remarks, cried i, that ever were made—the wisest—the wittiest—what shall i do?—which way shall i turn myself? sancho pança, when he lost his ass’s furniture, did not exclaim more bitterly. c h a p. xviii when the first transport was over, and the registers of the brain were beginning to get a little out of the confusion into which this jumble of cross accidents had cast them—it then presently occurr’d to me, that i had left my remarks in the pocket of the chaise—and that in selling my chaise, i had sold my remarks along with it, to the chaise-vamper.         i leave this void space that the reader may swear into it any oath that he is most accustomed to——for my own part, if ever i swore a whole oath into a vacancy in my life, i think it was into that—— * * * * * * * * *, said i—and so my remarks through france, which were as full of wit, as an egg is full of meat, and as well worth four hundred guineas, as the said egg is worth a penny—have i been selling here to a chaise-vamper—for four louis d’ors—and giving him a post-chaise (by heaven) worth six into the bargain; had it been to dodsley, or becket, or any creditable bookseller, who was either leaving off business, and wanted a post-chaise—or who was beginning it—and wanted my remarks, and two or three guineas along with them—i could have borne it——but to a chaise-vamper!—shew me to him this moment, françois,—said i—the valet de place put on his hat, and led the way—and i pull’d off mine, as i pass’d the commissary, and followed him. c h a p. xix when we arrived at the chaise-vamper’s house, both the house and the shop were shut up; it was the eighth of september, the nativity of the blessed virgin mary, mother of god— ——tantarra ra tan tivi——the whole world was gone out a may-poling—frisking here—capering there——no body cared a button for me or my remarks; so i sat me down upon a bench by the door, philosophating upon my condition: by a better fate than usually attends me, i had not waited half an hour, when the mistress came in to take the papilliotes from off her hair, before she went to the may-poles—— the french women, by the bye, love may-poles, à la folie—that is, as much as their matins——give ’em but a may-pole, whether in may, june, july or september—they never count the times——down it goes——’tis meat, drink, washing, and lodging to ’em——and had we but the policy, an’ please your worships (as wood is a little scarce in france), to send them but plenty of may-poles—— the women would set them up; and when they had done, they would dance round them (and the men for company) till they were all blind. the wife of the chaise-vamper stepp’d in, i told you, to take the papilliotes from off her hair——the toilet stands still for no man——so she jerk’d off her cap, to begin with them as she open’d the door, in doing which, one of them fell upon the ground—i instantly saw it was my own writing—— o seigneur! cried i—you have got all my remarks upon your head, madam!——j’en suis bien mortifiée, said she——’tis well, thinks i, they have stuck there—for could they have gone deeper, they would have made such confusion in a french woman’s noddle—she had better have gone with it unfrizled, to the day of eternity. tenez—said she—so without any idea of the nature of my suffering, she took them from her curls, and put them gravely one by one into my hat——one was twisted this way——another twisted that——ey! by my faith; and when they are published, quoth i,—— they will be worse twisted still. c h a p. xx ans now for lippius’s clock! said i, with the air of a man, who had got thro’ all his difficulties——nothing can prevent us seeing that, and the chinese history, &c. except the time, said françois——for ’tis almost eleven—then we must speed the faster, said i, striding it away to the cathedral. i cannot say, in my heart, that it gave me any concern in being told by one of the minor canons, as i was entering the west door,—that lippius’s great clock was all out of joints, and had not gone for some years——it will give me the more time, thought i, to peruse the chinese history; and besides i shall be able to give the world a better account of the clock in its decay, than i could have done in its flourishing condition—— ——and so away i posted to the college of the jesuits. now it is with the project of getting a peep at the history of china in chinese characters—as with many others i could mention, which strike the fancy only at a distance; for as i came nearer and nearer to the point—my blood cool’d—the freak gradually went off, till at length i would not have given a cherry-stone to have it gratified——the truth was, my time was short, and my heart was at the tomb of the lovers——i wish to god, said i, as i got the rapper in my hand, that the key of the library may be but lost; it fell out as well—— for all the jesuits had got the cholic—and to that degree, as never was known in the memory of the oldest practitioner. c h a p. xxi as i knew the geography of the tomb of the lovers, as well as if i had lived twenty years in lyons, namely, that it was upon the turning of my right hand, just without the gate, leading to the fauxbourg de vaise——i dispatched françois to the boat, that i might pay the homage i so long ow’d it, without a witness of my weakness—i walk’d with all imaginable joy towards the place——when i saw the gate which intercepted the tomb, my heart glowed within me—— —tender and faithful spirits! cried i, addressing myself to amandus and amanda—long—long have i tarried to drop this tear upon your tomb——i come——i come—— when i came—there was no tomb to drop it upon. what would i have given for my uncle toby, to have whistled lillo bullero! c h a p. xxii no matter how, or in what mood—but i flew from the tomb of the lovers—or rather i did not fly from it—(for there was no such thing existing) and just got time enough to the boat to save my passage;—and ere i had sailed a hundred yards, the rhône and the saôn met together, and carried me down merrily betwixt them. but i have described this voyage down the rhône, before i made it—— ——so now i am at avignon, and as there is nothing to see but the old house, in which the duke of ormond resided, and nothing to stop me but a short remark upon the place, in three minutes you will see me crossing the bridge upon a mule, with françois upon a horse with my portmanteau behind him, and the owner of both, striding the way before us, with a long gun upon his shoulder, and a sword under his arm, lest peradventure we should run away with his cattle. had you seen my breeches in entering avignon,——though you’d have seen them better, i think, as i mounted—you would not have thought the precaution amiss, or found in your heart to have taken it in dudgeon; for my own part, i took it most kindly; and determined to make him a present of them, when we got to the end of our journey, for the trouble they had put him to, of arming himself at all points against them. before i go further, let me get rid of my remark upon avignon, which is this: that i think it wrong, merely because a man’s hat has been blown off his head by chance the first night he comes to avignon,——that he should therefore say, “avignon is more subject to high winds than any town in all france:” for which reason i laid no stress upon the accident till i had enquired of the master of the inn about it, who telling me seriously it was so——and hearing, moreover, the windiness of avignon spoke of in the country about as a proverb——i set it down, merely to ask the learned what can be the cause——the consequence i saw—for they are all dukes, marquisses, and counts, there——the duce a baron, in all avignon——so that there is scarce any talking to them on a windy day. prithee, friend, said i, take hold of my mule for a moment——for i wanted to pull off one of my jack-boots, which hurt my heel—the man was standing quite idle at the door of the inn, and as i had taken it into my head, he was someway concerned about the house or stable, i put the bridle into his hand—so begun with the boot:—when i had finished the affair, i turned about to take the mule from the man, and thank him—— ——but monsieur le marquis had walked in—— c h a p. xxiii i had now the whole south of france, from the banks of the rhône to those of the garonne, to traverse upon my mule at my own leisure—at my own leisure——for i had left death, the lord knows——and he only—how far behind me——“i have followed many a man thro’ france, quoth he—but never at this mettlesome rate.”——still he followed,——and still i fled him——but i fled him cheerfully——still he pursued——but, like one who pursued his prey without hope——as he lagg’d, every step he lost, softened his looks——why should i fly him at this rate? so notwithstanding all the commissary of the post-office had said, i changed the mode of my travelling once more; and, after so precipitate and rattling a course as i had run, i flattered my fancy with thinking of my mule, and that i should traverse the rich plains of languedoc upon his back, as slowly as foot could fall. there is nothing more pleasing to a traveller——or more terrible to travel-writers, than a large rich plain; especially if it is without great rivers or bridges; and presents nothing to the eye, but one unvaried picture of plenty: for after they have once told you, that ’tis delicious! or delightful! (as the case happens)—that the soil was grateful, and that nature pours out all her abundance, &c. . . . they have then a large plain upon their hands, which they know not what to do with—and which is of little or no use to them but to carry them to some town; and that town, perhaps of little more, but a new place to start from to the next plain——and so on. —this is most terrible work; judge if i don’t manage my plains better. c h a p. xxiv i had not gone above two leagues and a half, before the man with his gun began to look at his priming. i had three several times loiter’d terribly behind; half a mile at least every time; once, in deep conference with a drum-maker, who was making drums for the fairs of baucaira and tarascone—i did not understand the principles—— the second time, i cannot so properly say, i stopp’d——for meeting a couple of franciscans straitened more for time than myself, and not being able to get to the bottom of what i was about——i had turn’d back with them—— the third, was an affair of trade with a gossip, for a hand-basket of provence figs for four sous; this would have been transacted at once; but for a case of conscience at the close of it; for when the figs were paid for, it turn’d out, that there were two dozen of eggs covered over with vine-leaves at the bottom of the basket—as i had no intention of buying eggs—i made no sort of claim of them—as for the space they had occupied—what signified it? i had figs enow for my money—— —but it was my intention to have the basket—it was the gossip’s intention to keep it, without which, she could do nothing with her eggs——and unless i had the basket, i could do as little with my figs, which were too ripe already, and most of ’em burst at the side: this brought on a short contention, which terminated in sundry proposals, what we should both do—— ——how we disposed of our eggs and figs, i defy you, or the devil himself, had he not been there (which i am persuaded he was), to form the least probable conjecture: you will read the whole of it——not this year, for i am hastening to the story of my uncle toby’s amours—but you will read it in the collection of those which have arose out of the journey across this plain—and which, therefore, i call my plain stories. how far my pen has been fatigued, like those of other travellers, in this journey of it, over so barren a track—the world must judge—but the traces of it, which are now all set o’ vibrating together this moment, tell me ’tis the most fruitful and busy period of my life; for as i had made no convention with my man with the gun, as to time—by stopping and talking to every soul i met, who was not in a full trot—joining all parties before me—waiting for every soul behind—hailing all those who were coming through cross-roads—arresting all kinds of beggars, pilgrims, fiddlers, friars—not passing by a woman in a mulberry-tree without commending her legs, and tempting her into conversation with a pinch of snuff——in short, by seizing every handle, of what size or shape soever, which chance held out to me in this journey—i turned my plain into a city—i was always in company, and with great variety too; and as my mule loved society as much as myself, and had some proposals always on his part to offer to every beast he met—i am confident we could have passed through pall-mall, or st. james’s-street, for a month together, with fewer adventures—and seen less of human nature. o! there is that sprightly frankness, which at once unpins every plait of a languedocian’s dress—that whatever is beneath it, it looks so like the simplicity which poets sing of in better days—i will delude my fancy, and believe it is so. ’twas in the road betwixt nismes and lunel, where there is the best muscatto wine in all france, and which by the bye belongs to the honest canons of montpellier—and foul befal the man who has drunk it at their table, who grudges them a drop of it. ——the sun was set—they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh—and the swains were preparing for a carousal—my mule made a dead point——’tis the fife and tabourin, said i——i’m frighten’d to death, quoth he——they are running at the ring of pleasure, said i, giving him a prick——by saint boogar, and all the saints at the backside of the door of purgatory, said he—(making the same resolution with the abbesse of andoüillets) i’ll not go a step further——’tis very well, sir, said i——i never will argue a point with one of your family, as long as i live; so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch, and t’other into that—i’ll take a dance, said i—so stay you here. a sun-burnt daughter of labour rose up from the groupe to meet me, as i advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut approaching rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress. we want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer them—and a cavalier ye shall have; said i, taking hold of both of them. hadst thou, nannette, been array’d like a duchesse! ——but that cursed slit in thy petticoat! nannette cared not for it. we could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other. a lame youth, whom apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude, as he sat upon the bank——tie me up this tress instantly, said nannette, putting a piece of string into my hand—it taught me to forget i was a stranger—— the whole knot fell down——we had been seven years acquainted. the youth struck the note upon the tabourin—his pipe followed, and off we bounded——“the duce take that slit!” the sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung alternately with her brother——’twas a gascoigne roundelay. viva la joia! fidon la tristessa! the nymphs join’d in unison, and their swains an octave below them—— i would have given a crown to have it sew’d up—nannette would not have given a sous—viva la joia! was in her lips—viva la joia! was in her eyes. a transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us——she look’d amiable!——why could i not live, and end my days thus? just disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried i, why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here——and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious——then ’tis time to dance off, quoth i; so changing only partners and tunes, i danced it away from lunel to montpellier——from thence to pesçnas, beziers——i danced it along through narbonne, carcasson, and castle naudairy, till at last i danced myself into perdrillo’s pavillion, where pulling out a paper of black lines, that i might go on straight forwards, without digression or parenthesis, in my uncle toby’s amours—— i begun thus—— c h a p. xxv ——but softly——for in these sportive plains, and under this genial sun, where at this instant all flesh is running out piping, fiddling, and dancing to the vintage, and every step that’s taken, the judgment is surprised by the imagination, i defy, notwithstanding all that has been said upon straight lines[37] in sundry pages of my book—i defy the best cabbage planter that ever existed, whether he plants backwards or forwards, it makes little difference in the account (except that he will have more to answer for in the one case than in the other)—i defy him to go on coolly, critically, and canonically, planting his cabbages one by one, in straight lines, and stoical distances, especially if slits in petticoats are unsew’d up—without ever and anon straddling out, or sidling into some bastardly digression——in freeze-land, fog-land, and some other lands i wot of—it may be done—— but in this clear climate of fantasy and perspiration, where every idea, sensible and insensible, gets vent—in this land, my dear eugenius—in this fertile land of chivalry and romance, where i now sit, unskrewing my ink-horn to write my uncle toby’s amours, and with all the meanders of julia’s track in quest of her diego, in full view of my study window—if thou comest not and takest me by the hand—— what a work it is likely to turn out! let us begin it. [37] vid. vol. iii. p. 243. c h a p. xxvi it is with love as with cuckoldom—— but now i am talking of beginning a book, and have long had a thing upon my mind to be imparted to the reader, which, if not imparted now, can never be imparted to him as long as i live (whereas the comparison may be imparted to him any hour in the day)——i’ll just mention it, and begin in good earnest. the thing is this. that of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, i am confident my own way of doing it is the best——i’m sure it is the most religious——for i begin with writing the first sentence——and trusting to almighty god for the second. ’twould cure an author for ever of the fuss and folly of opening his street-door, and calling in his neighbours and friends, and kinsfolk, with the devil and all his imps, with their hammers and engines, &c. only to observe how one sentence of mine follows another, and how the plan follows the whole. i wish you saw me half starting out of my chair, with what confidence, as i grasp the elbow of it, i look up——catching the idea, even sometimes before it half way reaches me—— i believe in my conscience i intercept many a thought which heaven intended for another man. pope and his portrait[38] are fools to me——no martyr is ever so full of faith or fire——i wish i could say of good works too——but i have no zeal or anger——or anger or zeal—— and till gods and men agree together to call it by the same name——the errantest tartuffe, in science——in politics—or in religion, shall never kindle a spark within me, or have a worse word, or a more unkind greeting, than what he will read in the next chapter. [38] vid. pope’s portrait. c h a p. xxvii ——bon jour!——good morrow!——so you have got your cloak on betimes!——but ’tis a cold morning, and you judge the matter rightly——’tis better to be well mounted, than go o’ foot——and obstructions in the glands are dangerous——and how goes it with thy concubine—thy wife,—and thy little ones o’ both sides? and when did you hear from the old gentleman and lady—your sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins——i hope they have got better of their colds, coughs, claps, tooth-aches, fevers, stranguries, sciaticas, swellings, and sore eyes. ——what a devil of an apothecary! to take so much blood—give such a vile purge—puke—poultice—plaister—night-draught—clyster—blister?——and why so many grains of calomel? santa maria! and such a dose of opium! periclitating, pardi! the whole family of ye, from head to tail——by my great-aunt dinah’s old black velvet mask! i think there is no occasion for it. now this being a little bald about the chin, by frequently putting off and on, before she was got with child by the coachman—not one of our family would wear it after. to cover the mask afresh, was more than the mask was worth——and to wear a mask which was bald, or which could be half seen through, was as bad as having no mask at all—— this is the reason, may it please your reverences, that in all our numerous family, for these four generations, we count no more than one archbishop, a welch judge, some three or four aldermen, and a single mountebank—— in the sixteenth century, we boast of no less than a dozen alchymists. c h a p. xxviii “it is with love as with cuckoldom”——the suffering party is at least the third, but generally the last in the house who knows any thing about the matter: this comes, as all the world knows, from having half a dozen words for one thing; and so long, as what in this vessel of the human frame, is love—may be hatred, in that——sentiment half a yard higher——and nonsense———no, madam,—not there——i mean at the part i am now pointing to with my forefinger——how can we help ourselves? of all mortal, and immortal men too, if you please, who ever soliloquized upon this mystic subject, my uncle toby was the worst fitted, to have push’d his researches, thro’ such a contention of feelings; and he had infallibly let them all run on, as we do worse matters, to see what they would turn out——had not bridget’s pre-notification of them to susannah, and susannah’s repeated manifestoes thereupon to all the world, made it necessary for my uncle toby to look into the affair. c h a p. xxix why weavers, gardeners, and gladiators—or a man with a pined leg (proceeding from some ailment in the foot)—should ever have had some tender nymph breaking her heart in secret for them, are points well and duly settled and accounted for, by ancient and modern physiologists. a water-drinker, provided he is a profess’d one, and does it without fraud or covin, is precisely in the same predicament: not that, at first sight, there is any consequence, or show of logic in it, “that a rill of cold water dribbling through my inward parts, should light up a torch in my jenny’s—” ——the proposition does not strike one; on the contrary, it seems to run opposite to the natural workings of causes and effects—— but it shews the weakness and imbecility of human reason. ——“and in perfect good health with it?” —the most perfect,—madam, that friendship herself could wish me—— “and drink nothing!—nothing but water?” —impetuous fluid! the moment thou pressest against the flood-gates of the brain——see how they give way!—— in swims curiosity, beckoning to her damsels to follow—they dive into the center of the current—— fancy sits musing upon the bank, and with her eyes following the stream, turns straws and bulrushes into masts and bow-sprits——and desire, with vest held up to the knee in one hand, snatches at them, as they swim by her, with the other—— o ye water drinkers! is it then by this delusive fountain, that ye have so often governed and turn’d this world about like a mill-wheel—grinding the faces of the impotent—bepowdering their ribs—bepeppering their noses, and changing sometimes even the very frame and face of nature—— if i was you, quoth yorick, i would drink more water, eugenius—and, if i was you, yorick, replied eugenius, so would i. which shews they had both read longinus— for my own part, i am resolved never to read any book but my own, as long as i live. c h a p. xxx i wish my uncle toby had been a water-drinker; for then the thing had been accounted for, that the first moment widow wadman saw him, she felt something stirring within her in his favour—something!—something. —something perhaps more than friendship—less than love—something—no matter what—no matter where—i would not give a single hair off my mule’s tail, and be obliged to pluck it off myself (indeed the villain has not many to spare, and is not a little vicious into the bargain), to be let by your worships into the secret—— but the truth is, my uncle toby was not a water-drinker; he drank it neither pure nor mix’d, or any how, or any where, except fortuitously upon some advanced posts, where better liquor was not to be had——or during the time he was under cure; when the surgeon telling him it would extend the fibres, and bring them sooner into contact——my uncle toby drank it for quietness sake. now as all the world knows, that no effect in nature can be produced without a cause, and as it is as well known, that my uncle toby was neither a weaver—a gardener, or a gladiator——unless as a captain, you will needs have him one—but then he was only a captain of foot—and besides, the whole is an equivocation——there is nothing left for us to suppose, but that my uncle toby’s leg——but that will avail us little in the present hypothesis, unless it had proceeded from some ailment in the foot—whereas his leg was not emaciated from any disorder in his foot—for my uncle toby’s leg was not emaciated at all. it was a little stiff and awkward, from a total disuse of it, for the three years he lay confined at my father’s house in town; but it was plump and muscular, and in all other respects as good and promising a leg as the other. i declare, i do not recollect any one opinion or passage of my life, where my understanding was more at a loss to make ends meet, and torture the chapter i had been writing, to the service of the chapter following it, than in the present case: one would think i took a pleasure in running into difficulties of this kind, merely to make fresh experiments of getting out of ’em——inconsiderate soul that thou art! what! are not the unavoidable distresses with which, as an author and a man, thou art hemm’d in on every side of thee——are they, tristram, not sufficient, but thou must entangle thyself still more? is it not enough that thou art in debt, and that thou hast ten cart-loads of thy fifth and sixth volumes[39] still—still unsold, and art almost at thy wit’s ends, how to get them off thy hands? to this hour art thou not tormented with the vile asthma that thou gattest in skating against the wind in flanders? and is it but two months ago, that in a fit of laughter, on seeing a cardinal make water like a quirister (with both hands) thou brakest a vessel in thy lungs, whereby, in two hours, thou lost as many quarts of blood; and hadst thou lost as much more, did not the faculty tell thee——it would have amounted to a gallon?—— [39] alluding to the first edition. c h a p. xxxi —but for heaven’s sake, let us not talk of quarts or gallons——let us take the story straight before us; it is so nice and intricate a one, it will scarce bear the transposition of a single tittle; and, somehow or other, you have got me thrust almost into the middle of it— —i beg we may take more care. c h a p. xxxii my uncle toby and the corporal had posted down with so much heat and precipitation, to take possession of the spot of ground we have so often spoke of, in order to open their campaign as early as the rest of the allies; that they had forgot one of the most necessary articles of the whole affair, it was neither a pioneer’s spade, a pickax, or a shovel— —it was a bed to lie on: so that as shandy-hall was at that time unfurnished; and the little inn where poor le fever died, not yet built; my uncle toby was constrained to accept of a bed at mrs. wadman’s, for a night or two, till corporal trim (who to the character of an excellent valet, groom, cook, sempster, surgeon, and engineer, superadded that of an excellent upholsterer too), with the help of a carpenter and a couple of taylors, constructed one in my uncle toby’s house. a daughter of eve, for such was widow wadman, and ’tis all the character i intend to give of her— —“ that she was a perfect woman—” had better be fifty leagues off—or in her warm bed—or playing with a case-knife—or any thing you please—than make a man the object of her attention, when the house and all the furniture is her own. there is nothing in it out of doors and in broad day-light, where a woman has a power, physically speaking, of viewing a man in more lights than one—but here, for her soul, she can see him in no light without mixing something of her own goods and chattels along with him——till by reiterated acts of such combination, he gets foisted into her inventory—— —and then good night. but this is not matter of system; for i have delivered that above——nor is it matter of breviary——for i make no man’s creed but my own——nor matter of fact——at least that i know of; but ’tis matter copulative and introductory to what follows. c h a p. xxxiii i do not speak it with regard to the coarseness or cleanness of them—or the strength of their gussets——but pray do not night-shifts differ from day-shifts as much in this particular, as in any thing else in the world; that they so far exceed the others in length, that when you are laid down in them, they fall almost as much below the feet, as the day-shifts fall short of them? widow wadman’s night-shifts (as was the mode i suppose in king william’s and queen anne’s reigns) were cut however after this fashion; and if the fashion is changed (for in italy they are come to nothing)——so much the worse for the public; they were two flemish ells and a half in length, so that allowing a moderate woman two ells, she had half an ell to spare, to do what she would with. now from one little indulgence gained after another, in the many bleak and decemberley nights of a seven years widow-hood, things had insensibly come to this pass, and for the two last years had got establish’d into one of the ordinances of the bed-chamber—that as soon as mrs. wadman was put to bed, and had got her legs stretched down to the bottom of it, of which she always gave bridget notice—bridget, with all suitable decorum, having first open’d the bed-clothes at the feet, took hold of the half-ell of cloth we are speaking of, and having gently, and with both her hands, drawn it downwards to its furthest extension, and then contracted it again side-long by four or five even plaits, she took a large corking-pin out of her sleeve, and with the point directed towards her, pinn’d the plaits all fast together a little above the hem; which done, she tuck’d all in tight at the feet, and wish’d her mistress a good night. this was constant, and without any other variation than this; that on shivering and tempestuous nights, when bridget untuck’d the feet of the bed, &c. to do this——she consulted no thermometer but that of her own passions; and so performed it standing—kneeling—or squatting, according to the different degrees of faith, hope, and charity, she was in, and bore towards her mistress that night. in every other respect, the etiquette was sacred, and might have vied with the most mechanical one of the most inflexible bed-chamber in christendom. the first night, as soon as the corporal had conducted my uncle toby up stairs, which was about ten——mrs. wadman threw herself into her arm-chair, and crossing her left knee with her right, which formed a resting-place for her elbow, she reclin’d her cheek upon the palm of her hand, and leaning forwards, ruminated till midnight upon both sides of the question. the second night she went to her bureau, and having ordered bridget to bring her up a couple of fresh candles and leave them upon the table, she took out her marriage-settlement, and read it over with great devotion: and the third night (which was the last of my uncle toby’s stay) when bridget had pull’d down the night-shift, and was assaying to stick in the corking pin—— ——with a kick of both heels at once, but at the same time the most natural kick that could be kick’d in her situation——for supposing * * * * * * * * * to be the sun in its meridian, it was a north-east kick——she kick’d the pin out of her fingers——the etiquette which hung upon it, down——down it fell to the ground, and was shiver’d into a thousand atoms. from all which it was plain that widow wadman was in love with my uncle toby. c h a p. xxxiv my uncle toby’s head at that time was full of other matters, so that it was not till the demolition of dunkirk, when all the other civilities of europe were settled, that he found leisure to return this. this made an armistice (that is, speaking with regard to my uncle toby—but with respect to mrs. wadman, a vacancy)—of almost eleven years. but in all cases of this nature, as it is the second blow, happen at what distance of time it will, which makes the fray——i chuse for that reason to call these the amours of my uncle toby with mrs. wadman, rather than the amours of mrs. wadman with my uncle toby. this is not a distinction without a difference. it is not like the affair of an old hat cock’d——and a cock’d old hat, about which your reverences have so often been at odds with one another——but there is a difference here in the nature of things—— and let me tell you, gentry, a wide one too. c h a p. xxxv now as widow wadman did love my uncle toby——and my uncle toby did not love widow wadman, there was nothing for widow wadman to do, but to go on and love my uncle toby——or let it alone. widow wadman would do neither the one or the other. ——gracious heaven!——but i forget i am a little of her temper myself; for whenever it so falls out, which it sometimes does about the equinoxes, that an earthly goddess is so much this, and that, and t’other, that i cannot eat my breakfast for her——and that she careth not three halfpence whether i eat my breakfast or no—— ——curse on her! and so i send her to tartary, and from tartary to terra del fuogo, and so on to the devil: in short, there is not an infernal nitch where i do not take her divinityship and stick it. but as the heart is tender, and the passions in these tides ebb and flow ten times in a minute, i instantly bring her back again; and as i do all things in extremes, i place her in the very center of the milky-way—— brightest of stars! thou wilt shed thy influence upon some one—— ——the duce take her and her influence too——for at that word i lose all patience——much good may it do him!——by all that is hirsute and gashly! i cry, taking off my furr’d cap, and twisting it round my finger——i would not give sixpence for a dozen such! ——but ’tis an excellent cap too (putting it upon my head, and pressing it close to my ears)—and warm—and soft; especially if you stroke it the right way—but alas! that will never be my luck——(so here my philosophy is shipwreck’d again.) ——no; i shall never have a finger in the pye (so here i break my metaphor)—— crust and crumb inside and out top and bottom——i detest it, i hate it, i repudiate it——i’m sick at the sight of it—— ’tis all pepper,      garlick,      speak-punctuation:,      salt, and      devil’s dung——by the great arch-cooks of cooks, who does nothing, i think, from morning to night, but sit down by the fire-side and invent inflammatory dishes for us, i would not touch it for the world—— ——o tristram! tristram! cried jenny. o jenny! jenny! replied i, and so went on with the thirty-sixth chapter. c h a p. xxxvi ——“not touch it for the world,” did i say—— lord, how i have heated my imagination with this metaphor! c h a p. xxxvii which shews, let your reverences and worships say what you will of it (for as for thinking——all who do think—think pretty much alike both upon it and other matters)——love is certainly, at least alphabetically speaking, one of the most a gitating b ewitching c onfounded d evilish affairs of life——the most e xtravagant f utilitous g alligaskinish h andy-dandyish i racundulous (there is no k to it) and l yrical of all human passions: at the same time, the most m isgiving n innyhammering o bstipating p ragmatical s tridulous r idiculous—though by the bye the r should have gone first—but in short ’tis of such a nature, as my father once told my uncle toby upon the close of a long dissertation upon the subject——“you can scarce,” said he, “combine two ideas together upon it, brother toby, without an hypallage”——what’s that? cried my uncle toby. the cart before the horse, replied my father—— ——and what is he to do there? cried my uncle toby. nothing, quoth my father, but to get in——or let it alone. now widow wadman, as i told you before, would do neither the one or the other. she stood however ready harnessed and caparisoned at all points, to watch accidents. c h a p. xxxviii the fates, who certainly all fore-knew of these amours of widow wadman and my uncle toby, had, from the first creation of matter and motion (and with more courtesy than they usually do things of this kind), established such a chain of causes and effects hanging so fast to one another, that it was scarce possible for my uncle toby to have dwelt in any other house in the world, or to have occupied any other garden in christendom, but the very house and garden which join’d and laid parallel to mrs. wadman’s; this, with the advantage of a thickset arbour in mrs. wadman’s garden, but planted in the hedge-row of my uncle toby’s, put all the occasions into her hands which love-militancy wanted; she could observe my uncle toby’s motions, and was mistress likewise of his councils of war; and as his unsuspecting heart had given leave to the corporal, through the mediation of bridget, to make her a wicker-gate of communication to enlarge her walks, it enabled her to carry on her approaches to the very door of the sentry-box; and sometimes out of gratitude, to make an attack, and endeavour to blow my uncle toby up in the very sentry-box itself. c h a p. xxxix it is a great pity——but ’tis certain from every day’s observation of man, that he may be set on fire like a candle, at either end—provided there is a sufficient wick standing out; if there is not—there’s an end of the affair; and if there is—by lighting it at the bottom, as the flame in that case has the misfortune generally to put out itself—there’s an end of the affair again. for my part, could i always have the ordering of it which way i would be burnt myself—for i cannot bear the thoughts of being burnt like a beast—i would oblige a housewife constantly to light me at the top; for then i should burn down decently to the socket; that is, from my head to my heart, from my heart to my liver, from my liver to my bowels, and so on by the meseraick veins and arteries, through all the turns and lateral insertions of the intestines and their tunicles to the blind gut—— ——i beseech you, doctor slop, quoth my uncle toby, interrupting him as he mentioned the blind gut, in a discourse with my father the night my mother was brought to bed of me——i beseech you, quoth my uncle toby, to tell me which is the blind gut; for, old as i am, i vow i do not know to this day where it lies. the blind gut, answered doctor slop, lies betwixt the ilion and colon—— in a man? said my father. ——’tis precisely the same, cried doctor slop, in a woman.—— that’s more than i know; quoth my father. c h a p. xl ——and so to make sure of both systems, mrs. wadman predetermined to light my uncle toby neither at this end or that; but, like a prodigal’s candle, to light him, if possible, at both ends at once. now, through all the lumber rooms of military furniture, including both of horse and foot, from the great arsenal of venice to the tower of london (exclusive), if mrs. wadman had been rummaging for seven years together, and with bridget to help her, she could not have found any one blind or mantelet so fit for her purpose, as that which the expediency of my uncle toby’s affairs had fix’d up ready to her hands. i believe i have not told you——but i don’t know——possibly i have——be it as it will, ’tis one of the number of those many things, which a man had better do over again, than dispute about it—that whatever town or fortress the corporal was at work upon, during the course of their campaign, my uncle toby always took care, on the inside of his sentry-box, which was towards his left hand, to have a plan of the place, fasten’d up with two or three pins at the top, but loose at the bottom, for the conveniency of holding it up to the eye, &c. . . . as occasions required; so that when an attack was resolved upon, mrs. wadman had nothing more to do, when she had got advanced to the door of the sentry-box, but to extend her right hand; and edging in her left foot at the same movement, to take hold of the map or plan, or upright, or whatever it was, and with out-stretched neck meeting it half way,—to advance it towards her; on which my uncle toby’s passions were sure to catch fire——for he would instantly take hold of the other corner of the map in his left hand, and with the end of his pipe in the other, begin an explanation. when the attack was advanced to this point;——the world will naturally enter into the reasons of mrs. wadman’s next stroke of generalship——which was, to take my uncle toby’s tobacco-pipe out of his hand as soon as she possibly could; which, under one pretence or other, but generally that of pointing more distinctly at some redoubt or breastwork in the map, she would effect before my uncle toby (poor soul!) had well march’d above half a dozen toises with it. —it obliged my uncle toby to make use of his forefinger. the difference it made in the attack was this; that in going upon it, as in the first case, with the end of her fore-finger against the end of my uncle toby’s tobacco-pipe, she might have travelled with it, along the lines, from dan to beersheba, had my uncle toby’s lines reach’d so far, without any effect: for as there was no arterial or vital heat in the end of the tobacco-pipe, it could excite no sentiment——it could neither give fire by pulsation——or receive it by sympathy——’twas nothing but smoke. whereas, in following my uncle toby’s forefinger with hers, close thro’ all the little turns and indentings of his works——pressing sometimes against the side of it——then treading upon its nail——then tripping it up——then touching it here——then there, and so on——it set something at least in motion. this, tho’ slight skirmishing, and at a distance from the main body, yet drew on the rest; for here, the map usually falling with the back of it, close to the side of the sentry-box, my uncle toby, in the simplicity of his soul, would lay his hand flat upon it, in order to go on with his explanation; and mrs. wadman, by a manœuvre as quick as thought, would as certainly place her’s close beside it; this at once opened a communication, large enough for any sentiment to pass or re-pass, which a person skill’d in the elementary and practical part of love-making, has occasion for—— by bringing up her forefinger parallel (as before) to my uncle toby’s——it unavoidably brought the thumb into action——and the forefinger and thumb being once engaged, as naturally brought in the whole hand. thine, dear uncle toby! was never now in ’ts right place——mrs. wadman had it ever to take up, or, with the gentlest pushings, protrusions, and equivocal compressions, that a hand to be removed is capable of receiving——to get it press’d a hair breadth of one side out of her way. whilst this was doing, how could she forget to make him sensible, that it was her leg (and no one’s else) at the bottom of the sentry-box, which slightly press’d against the calf of his——so that my uncle toby being thus attack’d and sore push’d on both his wings——was it a wonder, if now and then, it put his centre into disorder?—— ——the duce take it! said my uncle toby. c h a p. xli these attacks of mrs. wadman, you will readily conceive to be of different kinds; varying from each other, like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. a general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all——or if he did, would confound them all together——but i write not to them: it will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them, as i come up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings which my father took care to roll up by themselves, there is a plan of bouchain in perfect preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst i have power to preserve any thing), upon the lower corner of which, on the right hand side, there is still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb, which there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were mrs. wadman’s; for the opposite side of the margin, which i suppose to have been my uncle toby’s, is absolutely clean: this seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of the map, which are unquestionably the very holes, through which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box—— by all that is priestly! i value this precious relick, with its stigmata and pricks, more than all the relicks of the romish church——always excepting, when i am writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered the flesh of st. radagunda in the desert, which in your road from fesse to cluny, the nuns of that name will shew you for love. c h a p. xlii i think, an’ please your honour, quoth trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed——and the bason is upon a level with the mole——i think so too; replied my uncle toby with a sigh half suppress’d——but step into the parlour, trim, for the stipulation——it lies upon the table. it has lain there these six weeks, replied the corporal, till this very morning that the old woman kindled the fire with it— ——then, said my uncle toby, there is no further occasion for our services. the more, an’ please your honour, the pity, said the corporal; in uttering which he cast his spade into the wheel-barrow, which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pickax, his pioneer’s shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the field——when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box, which being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbad him. ——no; said the corporal to himself, i’ll do it before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheel-barrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis——but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert him——he loosen’d a sod or two——pared their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle toby’s feet and began as follows. c h a p. xliii it was a thousand pities——though i believe, an’ please your honour, i am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier—— a soldier, cried my uncle toby, interrupting the corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, trim, than a man of letters——but not so often, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal——my uncle toby gave a nod. it was a thousand pities then, said the corporal, casting his eye upon dunkirk, and the mole, as servius sulpicius, in returning out of asia (when he sailed from ægina towards megara), did upon corinth and pyreus—— —“it was a thousand pities, an’ please your honour, to destroy these works——and a thousand pities to have let them stood.”—— ——thou art right, trim, in both cases; said my uncle toby.——this, continued the corporal, is the reason, that from the beginning of their demolition to the end——i have never once whistled, or sung, or laugh’d, or cry’d, or talk’d of past done deeds, or told your honour one story good or bad—— ——thou hast many excellencies, trim, said my uncle toby, and i hold it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a story-teller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones—thou hast seldom told me a bad one—— ——because, an’ please your honour, except one of a king of bohemia and his seven castles,—they are all true; for they are about myself—— i do not like the subject the worse, trim, said my uncle toby, on that score: but prithee what is this story? thou hast excited my curiosity. i’ll tell it your honour, quoth the corporal, directly—provided, said my uncle toby, looking earnestly towards dunkirk and the mole again——provided it is not a merry one; to such, trim, a man should ever bring one half of the entertainment along with him; and the disposition i am in at present would wrong both thee, trim, and thy story——it is not a merry one by any means, replied the corporal—nor would i have it altogether a grave one, added my uncle toby——it is neither the one nor the other, replied the corporal, but will suit your honour exactly——then i’ll thank thee for it with all my heart, cried my uncle toby; so prithee begin it, trim. the corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a matter as the world imagines, to pull off a lank montero-cap with grace——or a whit less difficult, in my conceptions, when a man is sitting squat upon the ground, to make a bow so teeming with respect as the corporal was wont; yet by suffering the palm of his right hand, which was towards his master, to slip backwards upon the grass, a little beyond his body, in order to allow it the greater sweep——and by an unforced compression, at the same time, of his cap with the thumb and the two forefingers of his left, by which the diameter of the cap became reduced, so that it might be said, rather to be insensibly squeez’d—than pull’d off with a flatus——the corporal acquitted himself of both in a better manner than the posture of his affairs promised; and having hemmed twice, to find in what key his story would best go, and best suit his master’s humour,—he exchanged a single look of kindness with him, and set off thus. the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles there was a certain king of bo he—— as the corporal was entering the confines of bohemia, my uncle toby obliged him to halt for a single moment; he had set out bare-headed, having, since he pull’d off his montero-cap in the latter end of the last chapter, left it lying beside him on the ground. ——the eye of goodness espieth all things——so that before the corporal had well got through the first five words of his story, had my uncle toby twice touch’d his montero-cap with the end of his cane, interrogatively——as much as to say, why don’t you put it on, trim? trim took it up with the most respectful slowness, and casting a glance of humiliation as he did it, upon the embroidery of the fore-part, which being dismally tarnish’d and fray’d moreover in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he lay’d it down again between his two feet, in order to moralize upon the subject. ——’tis every word of it but too true, cried my uncle toby, that thou art about to observe—— “nothing in this world, trim, is made to last for ever.” ——but when tokens, dear tom, of thy love and remembrance wear out, said trim, what shall we say? there is no occasion, trim, quoth my uncle toby, to say any thing else; and was a man to puzzle his brains till doom’s day, i believe, trim, it would be impossible. the corporal, perceiving my uncle toby was in the right, and that it would be in vain for the wit of man to think of extracting a purer moral from his cap, without further attempting it, he put it on; and passing his hand across his forehead to rub out a pensive wrinkle, which the text and the doctrine between them had engender’d, he return’d, with the same look and tone of voice, to his story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles. the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles, continued there was a certain king of bohemia, but in whose reign, except his own, i am not able to inform your honour—— i do not desire it of thee, trim, by any means, cried my uncle toby. ——it was a little before the time, an’ please your honour, when giants were beginning to leave off breeding:—but in what year of our lord that was— i would not give a halfpenny to know, said my uncle toby. ——only, an’ please your honour, it makes a story look the better in the face—— ——’tis thy own, trim, so ornament it after thy own fashion; and take any date, continued my uncle toby, looking pleasantly upon him—take any date in the whole world thou chusest, and put it to—thou art heartily welcome—— the corporal bowed; for of every century, and of every year of that century, from the first creation of the world down to noah’s flood; and from noah’s flood to the birth of abraham; through all the pilgrimages of the patriarchs, to the departure of the israelites out of egypt——and throughout all the dynasties, olympiads, urbeconditas, and other memorable epochas of the different nations of the world, down to the coming of christ, and from thence to the very moment in which the corporal was telling his story——had my uncle toby subjected this vast empire of time and all its abysses at his feet; but as modesty scarce touches with a finger what liberality offers her with both hands open—the corporal contented himself with the very worst year of the whole bunch; which, to prevent your honours of the majority and minority from tearing the very flesh off your bones in contestation, ‘ whether that year is not always the last cast-year of the last cast-almanack’——i tell you plainly it was; but from a different reason than you wot of—— ——it was the year next him——which being the year of our lord seventeen hundred and twelve, when the duke of ormond was playing the devil in flanders——the corporal took it, and set out with it afresh on his expedition to bohemia. the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles, continued in the year of our lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve, there was, an’ please your honour—— —to tell thee truly, trim, quoth my uncle toby, any other date would have pleased me much better, not only on account of the sad stain upon our history that year, in marching off our troops, and refusing to cover the siege of quesnoi, though fagel was carrying on the works with such incredible vigour—but likewise on the score, trim, of thy own story; because if there are—and which, from what thou hast dropt, i partly suspect to be the fact—if there are giants in it—— there is but one, an’ please your honour—— ——’tis as bad as twenty, replied my uncle toby——thou should’st have carried him back some seven or eight hundred years out of harm’s way, both of critics and other people: and therefore i would advise thee, if ever thou tellest it again—— ——if i live, an’ please your honour, but once to get through it, i will never tell it again, quoth trim, either to man, woman, or child——poo—poo! said my uncle toby—but with accents of such sweet encouragement did he utter it, that the corporal went on with his story with more alacrity than ever. the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles, continued there was, an’ please your honour, said the corporal, raising his voice and rubbing the palms of his two hands cheerily together as he begun, a certain king of bohemia—— ——leave out the date entirely, trim, quoth my uncle toby, leaning forwards, and laying his hand gently upon the corporal’s shoulder to temper the interruption—leave it out entirely, trim; a story passes very well without these niceties, unless one is pretty sure of ’em——sure of ’em! said the corporal, shaking his head—— right; answered my uncle toby, it is not easy, trim, for one, bred up as thou and i have been to arms, who seldom looks further forward than to the end of his musket, or backwards beyond his knapsack, to know much about this matter——god bless your honour! said the corporal, won by the manner of my uncle toby’s reasoning, as much as by the reasoning itself, he has something else to do; if not on action, or a march, or upon duty in his garrison—he has his firelock, an’ please your honour, to furbish—his accoutrements to take care of—his regimentals to mend—himself to shave and keep clean, so as to appear always like what he is upon the parade; what business, added the corporal triumphantly, has a soldier, an’ please your honour, to know any thing at all of geography? ——thou would’st have said chronology, trim, said my uncle toby; for as for geography, ’tis of absolute use to him; he must be acquainted intimately with every country and its boundaries where his profession carries him; he should know every town and city, and village and hamlet, with the canals, the roads, and hollow ways which lead up to them; there is not a river or a rivulet he passes, trim, but he should be able at first sight to tell thee what is its name—in what mountains it takes its rise—what is its course—how far it is navigable—where fordable—where not; he should know the fertility of every valley, as well as the hind who ploughs it; and be able to describe, or, if it is required, to give thee an exact map of all the plains and defiles, the forts, the acclivities, the woods and morasses, thro’ and by which his army is to march; he should know their produce, their plants, their minerals, their waters, their animals, their seasons, their climates, their heats and cold, their inhabitants, their customs, their language, their policy, and even their religion. is it else to be conceived, corporal, continued my uncle toby, rising up in his sentry-box, as he began to warm in this part of his discourse—how marlborough could have marched his army from the banks of the maes to belburg; from belburg to kerpenord—(here the corporal could sit no longer) from kerpenord, trim, to kalsaken; from kalsaken to newdorf; from newdorf to landenbourg; from landenbourg to mildenheim; from mildenheim to elchingen; from elchingen to gingen; from gingen to balmerchoffen; from balmerchoffen to skellenburg, where he broke in upon the enemy’s works; forced his passage over the danube; cross’d the lech—push’d on his troops into the heart of the empire, marching at the head of them through fribourg, hokenwert, and schonevelt, to the plains of blenheim and hochstet?——great as he was, corporal, he could not have advanced a step, or made one single day’s march without the aids of geography.——as for chronology, i own, trim, continued my uncle toby, sitting down again coolly in his sentry-box, that of all others, it seems a science which the soldier might best spare, was it not for the lights which that science must one day give him, in determining the invention of powder; the furious execution of which, renversing every thing like thunder before it, has become a new æra to us of military improvements, changing so totally the nature of attacks and defences both by sea and land, and awakening so much art and skill in doing it, that the world cannot be too exact in ascertaining the precise time of its discovery, or too inquisitive in knowing what great man was the discoverer, and what occasions gave birth to it. i am far from controverting, continued my uncle toby, what historians agree in, that in the year of our lord 1380, under the reign of wencelaus, son of charles the fourth——a certain priest, whose name was schwartz, shew’d the use of powder to the venetians, in their wars against the genoese; but ’tis certain he was not the first; because if we are to believe don pedro, the bishop of leon—how came priests and bishops, an’ please your honour, to trouble their heads so much about gun-powder? god knows, said my uncle toby——his providence brings good out of every thing—and he avers, in his chronicle of king alphonsus, who reduced toledo, that in the year 1343, which was full thirty-seven years before that time, the secret of powder was well known, and employed with success, both by moors and christians, not only in their sea-combats, at that period, but in many of their most memorable sieges in spain and barbary—and all the world knows, that friar bacon had wrote expressly about it, and had generously given the world a receipt to make it by, above a hundred and fifty years before even schwartz was born—and that the chinese, added my uncle toby, embarrass us, and all accounts of it, still more, by boasting of the invention some hundreds of years even before him—— they are a pack of liars, i believe, cried trim—— ——they are somehow or other deceived, said my uncle toby, in this matter, as is plain to me from the present miserable state of military architecture amongst them; which consists of nothing more than a fossé with a brick wall without flanks—and for what they gave us as a bastion at each angle of it, ’tis so barbarously constructed, that it looks for all the world—————like one of my seven castles, an’ please your honour, quoth trim. my uncle toby, tho’ in the utmost distress for a comparison, most courteously refused trim’s offer—till trim telling him, he had half a dozen more in bohemia, which he knew not how to get off his hands——my uncle toby was so touch’d with the pleasantry of heart of the corporal——that he discontinued his dissertation upon gun-powder——and begged the corporal forthwith to go on with his story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles. the story of the king of bohemia and his seven castles, continued this unfortunate king of bohemia, said trim,——was he unfortunate, then? cried my uncle toby, for he had been so wrapt up in his dissertation upon gun-powder, and other military affairs, that tho’ he had desired the corporal to go on, yet the many interruptions he had given, dwelt not so strong upon his fancy as to account for the epithet——was he unfortunate, then, trim? said my uncle toby, pathetically——the corporal, wishing first the word and all its synonimas at the devil, forthwith began to run back in his mind, the principal events in the king of bohemia’s story; from every one of which, it appearing that he was the most fortunate man that ever existed in the world——it put the corporal to a stand: for not caring to retract his epithet——and less to explain it——and least of all, to twist his tale (like men of lore) to serve a system——he looked up in my uncle toby’s face for assistance——but seeing it was the very thing my uncle toby sat in expectation of himself——after a hum and a haw, he went on—— the king of bohemia, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, was unfortunate, as thus——that taking great pleasure and delight in navigation and all sort of sea affairs——and there happening throughout the whole kingdom of bohemia, to be no sea-port town whatever—— how the duce should there—trim? cried my uncle toby; for bohemia being totally inland, it could have happen’d no otherwise——it might, said trim, if it had pleased god—— my uncle toby never spoke of the being and natural attributes of god, but with diffidence and hesitation—— ——i believe not, replied my uncle toby, after some pause—for being inland, as i said, and having silesia and moravia to the east; lusatia and upper saxony to the north; franconia to the west; and bavaria to the south; bohemia could not have been propell’d to the sea without ceasing to be bohemia——nor could the sea, on the other hand, have come up to bohemia, without overflowing a great part of germany, and destroying millions of unfortunate inhabitants who could make no defence against it——scandalous! cried trim—which would bespeak, added my uncle toby, mildly, such a want of compassion in him who is the father of it——that, i think, trim——the thing could have happen’d no way. the corporal made the bow of unfeign’d conviction; and went on. now the king of bohemia with his queen and courtiers happening one fine summer’s evening to walk out——aye! there the word happening is right, trim, cried my uncle toby; for the king of bohemia and his queen might have walk’d out or let it alone:——’twas a matter of contingency, which might happen, or not, just as chance ordered it. king william was of an opinion, an’ please your honour, quoth trim, that every thing was predestined for us in this world; insomuch, that he would often say to his soldiers, that “every ball had its billet.” he was a great man, said my uncle toby——and i believe, continued trim, to this day, that the shot which disabled me at the battle of landen, was pointed at my knee for no other purpose, but to take me out of his service, and place me in your honour’s, where i should be taken so much better care of in my old age——it shall never, trim, be construed otherwise, said my uncle toby. the heart, both of the master and the man, were alike subject to sudden over-flowings;——a short silence ensued. besides, said the corporal, resuming the discourse—but in a gayer accent——if it had not been for that single shot, i had never, ’an please your honour, been in love—— so, thou wast once in love, trim! said my uncle toby, smiling—— souse! replied the corporal—over head and ears! an’ please your honour. prithee when? where?—and how came it to pass?—i never heard one word of it before; quoth my uncle toby:——i dare say, answered trim, that every drummer and serjeant’s son in the regiment knew of it——it’s high time i should——said my uncle toby. your honour remembers with concern, said the corporal, the total rout and confusion of our camp and army at the affair of landen; every one was left to shift for himself; and if it had not been for the regiments of wyndham, lumley, and galway, which covered the retreat over the bridge neerspeeken, the king himself could scarce have gained it——he was press’d hard, as your honour knows, on every side of him—— gallant mortal! cried my uncle toby, caught up with enthusiasm—this moment, now that all is lost, i see him galloping across me, corporal, to the left, to bring up the remains of the english horse along with him to support the right, and tear the laurel from luxembourg’s brows, if yet ’tis possible——i see him with the knot of his scarfe just shot off, infusing fresh spirits into poor galway’s regiment—riding along the line—then wheeling about, and charging conti at the head of it——brave, brave, by heaven! cried my uncle toby—he deserves a crown——as richly, as a thief a halter; shouted trim. my uncle toby knew the corporal’s loyalty;—otherwise the comparison was not at all to his mind——it did not altogether strike the corporal’s fancy when he had made it——but it could not be recall’d——so he had nothing to do, but proceed. as the number of wounded was prodigious, and no one had time to think of any thing but his own safety—though talmash, said my uncle toby, brought off the foot with great prudence——but i was left upon the field, said the corporal. thou wast so; poor fellow! replied my uncle toby—so that it was noon the next day, continued the corporal, before i was exchanged, and put into a cart with thirteen or fourteen more, in order to be convey’d to our hospital. there is no part of the body, an’ please your honour, where a wound occasions more intolerable anguish than upon the knee—— except the groin; said my uncle toby. an’ please your honour, replied the corporal, the knee, in my opinion, must certainly be the most acute, there being so many tendons and what-d’ye-call-’ems all about it. it is for that reason, quoth my uncle toby, that the groin is infinitely more sensible——there being not only as many tendons and what-d’ye-call-’ems (for i know their names as little as thou dost)——about it——but moreover * * *—— mrs. wadman, who had been all the time in her arbour—instantly stopp’d her breath—unpinn’d her mob at the chin, and stood upon one leg—— the dispute was maintained with amicable and equal force betwixt my uncle toby and trim for some time; till trim at length recollecting that he had often cried at his master’s sufferings, but never shed a tear at his own—was for giving up the point, which my uncle toby would not allow——’tis a proof of nothing, trim, said he, but the generosity of thy temper—— so that whether the pain of a wound in the groin (cæteris paribus) is greater than the pain of a wound in the knee——or whether the pain of a wound in the knee is not greater than the pain of a wound in the groin——are points which to this day remain unsettled. c h a p. xliv the anguish of my knee, continued the corporal, was excessive in itself; and the uneasiness of the cart, with the roughness of the roads, which were terribly cut up—making bad still worse—every step was death to me: so that with the loss of blood, and the want of care-taking of me, and a fever i felt coming on besides——(poor soul! said my uncle toby)——all together, an’ please your honour, was more than i could sustain. i was telling my sufferings to a young woman at a peasant’s house, where our cart, which was the last of the line, had halted; they had help’d me in, and the young woman had taken a cordial out of her pocket and dropp’d it upon some sugar, and seeing it had cheer’d me, she had given it me a second and a third time——so i was telling her, an’ please your honour, the anguish i was in, and was saying it was so intolerable to me, that i had much rather lie down upon the bed, turning my face towards one which was in the corner of the room—and die, than go on——when, upon her attempting to lead me to it, i fainted away in her arms. she was a good soul! as your honour, said the corporal, wiping his eyes, will hear. i thought love had been a joyous thing, quoth my uncle toby. ’tis the most serious thing, an’ please your honour (sometimes), that is in the world. by the persuasion of the young woman, continued the corporal, the cart with the wounded men set off without me: she had assured them i should expire immediately if i was put into the cart. so when i came to myself——i found myself in a still quiet cottage, with no one but the young woman, and the peasant and his wife. i was laid across the bed in the corner of the room, with my wounded leg upon a chair, and the young woman beside me, holding the corner of her handkerchief dipp’d in vinegar to my nose with one hand, and rubbing my temples with the other. i took her at first for the daughter of the peasant (for it was no inn)—so had offer’d her a little purse with eighteen florins, which my poor brother tom (here trim wip’d his eyes) had sent me as a token, by a recruit, just before he set out for lisbon—— ——i never told your honour that piteous story yet——here trim wiped his eyes a third time. the young woman call’d the old man and his wife into the room, to shew them the money, in order to gain me credit for a bed and what little necessaries i should want, till i should be in a condition to be got to the hospital——come then! said she, tying up the little purse—i’ll be your banker—but as that office alone will not keep me employ’d, i’ll be your nurse too. i thought by her manner of speaking this, as well as by her dress, which i then began to consider more attentively——that the young woman could not be the daughter of the peasant. she was in black down to her toes, with her hair conceal’d under a cambric border, laid close to her forehead: she was one of those kind of nuns, an’ please your honour, of which, your honour knows, there are a good many in flanders, which they let go loose——by thy description, trim, said my uncle toby, i dare say she was a young beguine, of which there are none to be found any where but in the spanish netherlands—except at amsterdam——they differ from nuns in this, that they can quit their cloister if they choose to marry; they visit and take care of the sick by profession——i had rather, for my own part, they did it out of good-nature. ——she often told me, quoth trim, she did it for the love of christ—i did not like it.——i believe, trim, we are both wrong, said my uncle toby—we’ll ask mr. yorick about it to-night at my brother shandy’s——so put me in mind; added my uncle toby. the young beguine, continued the corporal, had scarce given herself time to tell me “she would be my nurse,” when she hastily turned about to begin the office of one, and prepare something for me——and in a short time—though i thought it a long one—she came back with flannels, &c. &c. and having fomented my knee soundly for a couple of hours, &c. and made me a thin bason of gruel for my supper—she wish’d me rest, and promised to be with me early in the morning.——she wish’d me, an’ please your honour, what was not to be had. my fever ran very high that night—her figure made sad disturbance within me—i was every moment cutting the world in two—to give her half of it—and every moment was i crying, that i had nothing but a knapsack and eighteen florins to share with her——the whole night long was the fair beguine, like an angel, close by my bed-side, holding back my curtain and offering me cordials—and i was only awakened from my dream by her coming there at the hour promised, and giving them in reality. in truth, she was scarce ever from me; and so accustomed was i to receive life from her hands, that my heart sickened, and i lost colour when she left the room: and yet, continued the corporal (making one of the strangest reflections upon it in the world)—— ——“it was not love”——for during the three weeks she was almost constantly with me, fomenting my knee with her hand, night and day—i can honestly say, an’ please your honour—that * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * once. that was very odd, trim, quoth my uncle toby. i think so too—said mrs. wadman. it never did, said the corporal. c h a p. xlv ——but ’tis no marvel, continued the corporal—seeing my uncle toby musing upon it—for love, an’ please your honour, is exactly like war, in this; that a soldier, though he has escaped three weeks complete o’saturday night,—may nevertheless be shot through his heart on sunday morning——it happened so here, an’ please your honour, with this difference only—that it was on sunday in the afternoon, when i fell in love all at once with a sisserara——it burst upon me, an’ please your honour, like a bomb——scarce giving me time to say, “god bless me.” i thought, trim, said my uncle toby, a man never fell in love so very suddenly. yes, an’ please your honour, if he is in the way of it——replied trim. i prithee, quoth my uncle toby, inform me how this matter happened. ——with all pleasure, said the corporal, making a bow. c h a p. xlvi i had escaped, continued the corporal, all that time from falling in love, and had gone on to the end of the chapter, had it not been predestined otherwise——there is no resisting our fate. it was on a sunday, in the afternoon, as i told your honour. the old man and his wife had walked out—— every thing was still and hush as midnight about the house—— there was not so much as a duck or a duckling about the yard—— ——when the fair beguine came in to see me. my wound was then in a fair way of doing well——the inflammation had been gone off for some time, but it was succeeded with an itching both above and below my knee, so insufferable, that i had not shut my eyes the whole night for it. let me see it, said she, kneeling down upon the ground parallel to my knee, and laying her hand upon the part below it——it only wants rubbing a little, said the beguine; so covering it with the bed-clothes, she began with the fore-finger of her right hand to rub under my knee, guiding her fore-finger backwards and forwards by the edge of the flannel which kept on the dressing. in five or six minutes i felt slightly the end of her second finger—and presently it was laid flat with the other, and she continued rubbing in that way round and round for a good while; it then came into my head, that i should fall in love—i blush’d when i saw how white a hand she had—i shall never, an’ please your honour, behold another hand so white whilst i live—— ——not in that place, said my uncle toby—— though it was the most serious despair in nature to the corporal—he could not forbear smiling. the young beguine, continued the corporal, perceiving it was of great service to me—from rubbing for some time, with two fingers—proceeded to rub at length, with three—till by little and little she brought down the fourth, and then rubb’d with her whole hand: i will never say another word, an’ please your honour, upon hands again—but it was softer than sattin—— ——prithee, trim, commend it as much as thou wilt, said my uncle toby; i shall hear thy story with the more delight——the corporal thank’d his master most unfeignedly; but having nothing to say upon the beguine’s hand but the same over again——he proceeded to the effects of it. the fair beguine, said the corporal, continued rubbing with her whole hand under my knee—till i fear’d her zeal would weary her——“i would do a thousand times more,” said she, “for the love of christ”——in saying which, she pass’d her hand across the flannel, to the part above my knee, which i had equally complain’d of, and rubb’d it also. i perceiv’d, then, i was beginning to be in love—— as she continued rub-rub-rubbing—i felt it spread from under her hand, an’ please your honour, to every part of my frame—— the more she rubb’d, and the longer strokes she took——the more the fire kindled in my veins——till at length, by two or three strokes longer than the rest——my passion rose to the highest pitch——i seiz’d her hand—— ——and then thou clapped’st it to thy lips, trim, said my uncle toby——and madest a speech. whether the corporal’s amour terminated precisely in the way my uncle toby described it, is not material; it is enough that it contained in it the essence of all the love romances which ever have been wrote since the beginning of the world. c h a p. xlvii as soon as the corporal had finished the story of his amour—or rather my uncle toby for him—mrs. wadman silently sallied forth from her arbour, replaced the pin in her mob, pass’d the wicker gate, and advanced slowly towards my uncle toby’s sentry-box: the disposition which trim had made in my uncle toby’s mind, was too favourable a crisis to be let slipp’d—— ——the attack was determin’d upon: it was facilitated still more by my uncle toby’s having ordered the corporal to wheel off the pioneer’s shovel, the spade, the pick-axe, the picquets, and other military stores which lay scatter’d upon the ground where dunkirk stood—the corporal had march’d—the field was clear. now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting, or writing, or any thing else (whether in rhyme to it, or not) which a man has occasion to do—to act by plan: for if ever plan, independent of all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (i mean in the archives of gotham)—it was certainly the plan of mrs. wadman’s attack of my uncle toby in his sentry-box, by plan——now the plan hanging up in it at this juncture, being the plan of dunkirk—and the tale of dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she could make: and besides, could she have gone upon it—the manœuvre of fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box, was so outdone by that of the fair beguine’s, in trim’s story—that just then, that particular attack, however successful before—became the most heartless attack that could be made—— o! let woman alone for this. mrs. wadman had scarce open’d the wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances. ——she formed a new attack in a moment. c h a p. xlviii ——i am half distracted, captain shandy, said mrs. wadman, holding up her cambrick handkerchief to her left eye, as she approach’d the door of my uncle toby’s sentry-box——a mote——or sand——or something——i know not what, has got into this eye of mine——do look into it—it is not in the white— in saying which, mrs. wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up—do look into it—said she. honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart, as ever child look’d into a raree-shew-box; and ’twere as much a sin to have hurt thee. ——if a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature——i’ve nothing to say to it—— my uncle toby never did: and i will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly upon a sofa from june to january (which, you know, takes in both the hot and cold months), with an eye as fine as the thracian[40] rodope’s besides him, without being able to tell, whether it was a black or blue one. the difficulty was to get my uncle toby, to look at one at all. ’tis surmounted. and i see him yonder with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes falling out of it—looking—and looking—then rubbing his eyes—and looking again, with twice the good-nature that ever galileo look’d for a spot in the sun. ——in vain! for by all the powers which animate the organ——widow wadman’s left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right——there is neither mote, or sand, or dust, or chaff, or speck, or particle of opake matter floating in it—there is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine—— ——if thou lookest, uncle toby, in search of this mote one moment longer,——thou art undone. [40] rodope thracia tam inevitabili fascino instructa, tam exactè oculus intuens attraxit, ut si in illam quis incidisset, fieri non posset, quin caperetur.——i know not who. c h a p. xlix an eye is for all the world exactly like a cannon, in this respect; that it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is the carriage of the eye——and the carriage of the cannon, by which both the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. i don’t think the comparison a bad one: however, as ’tis made and placed at the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all i desire in return, is, that whenever i speak of mrs. wadman’s eyes (except once in the next period), that you keep it in your fancy. i protest, madam, said my uncle toby, i can see nothing whatever in your eye. it is not in the white; said mrs wadman: my uncle toby look’d with might and main into the pupil—— now of all the eyes which ever were created——from your own, madam, up to those of venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of eyes as ever stood in a head——there never was an eye of them all, so fitted to rob my uncle toby of his repose, as the very eye, at which he was looking——it was not, madam a rolling eye——a romping or a wanton one—nor was it an eye sparkling—petulant or imperious—of high claims and terrifying exactions, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my uncle toby was made up——but ’twas an eye full of gentle salutations——and soft responses——speaking——not like the trumpet stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye i talk to, holds coarse converse——but whispering soft——like the last low accent of an expiring saint——“how can you live comfortless, captain shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on——or trust your cares to?” it was an eye—— but i shall be in love with it myself, if i say another word about it. ——it did my uncle toby’s business. c h a p. l there is nothing shews the character of my father and my uncle toby, in a more entertaining light, than their different manner of deportment, under the same accident——for i call not love a misfortune, from a persuasion, that a man’s heart is ever the better for it——great god! what must my uncle toby’s have been, when ’twas all benignity without it. my father, as appears from many of his papers, was very subject to this passion, before he married——but from a little subacid kind of drollish impatience in his nature, whenever it befell him, he would never submit to it like a christian; but would pish, and huff, and bounce, and kick, and play the devil, and write the bitterest philippicks against the eye that ever man wrote——there is one in verse upon somebody’s eye or other, that for two or three nights together, had put him by his rest; which in his first transport of resentment against it, he begins thus: “a devil ’tis——and mischief such doth work as never yet did pagan, jew, or turk.”[41] in short, during the whole paroxism, my father was all abuse and foul language, approaching rather towards malediction——only he did not do it with as much method as ernulphus——he was too impetuous; nor with ernulphus’s policy——for tho’ my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love——yet never concluded his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would say, that ever was let loose in the world. my uncle toby, on the contrary, took it like a lamb——sat still and let the poison work in his veins without resistance——in the sharpest exacerbations of his wound (like that on his groin) he never dropt one fretful or discontented word——he blamed neither heaven nor earth——or thought or spoke an injurious thing of any body, or any part of it; he sat solitary and pensive with his pipe——looking at his lame leg——then whiffing out a sentimental heigh ho! which mixing with the smoke, incommoded no one mortal. he took it like a lamb——i say. in truth he had mistook it at first; for having taken a ride with my father, that very morning, to save if possible a beautiful wood, which the dean and chapter were hewing down to give to the poor;[42] which said wood being in full view of my uncle toby’s house, and of singular service to him in his description of the battle of wynnendale—by trotting on too hastily to save it——upon an uneasy saddle——worse horse, &c. &c. . . it had so happened, that the serous part of the blood had got betwixt the two skins, in the nethermost part of my uncle toby——the first shootings of which (as my uncle toby had no experience of love) he had taken for a part of the passion—till the blister breaking in the one case—and the other remaining—my uncle toby was presently convinced, that his wound was not a skin-deep wound——but that it had gone to his heart. [41] this will be printed with my father’s life of socrates, &c. &c. [42] mr shandy must mean the poor in spirit; inasmuch as they divided the money amongst themselves. c h a p. li the world is ashamed of being virtuous——my uncle toby knew little of the world; and therefore when he felt he was in love with widow wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a mystery of, than if mrs. wadman had given him a cut with a gap’d knife across his finger: had it been otherwise——yet as he ever look’d upon trim as a humble friend; and saw fresh reasons every day of his life, to treat him as such——it would have made no variation in the manner in which he informed him of the affair. “i am in love, corporal!” quoth my uncle toby. c h a p. lii in love!——said the corporal—your honour was very well the day before yesterday, when i was telling your honour of the story of the king of bohemia—bohemia! said my uncle toby musing a long time what became of that story, trim? —we lost it, an’ please your honour, somehow betwixt us—but your honour was as free from love then, as i am——’twas just whilst thou went’st off with the wheel-barrow——with mrs. wadman, quoth my uncle toby——she has left a ball here—added my uncle toby—pointing to his breast—— ——she can no more, an’ please your honour, stand a siege, than she can fly—cried the corporal—— ——but as we are neighbours, trim,—the best way i think is to let her know it civilly first—quoth my uncle toby. now if i might presume, said the corporal, to differ from your honour—— —why else do i talk to thee, trim? said my uncle toby, mildly—— —then i would begin, an’ please your honour, with making a good thundering attack upon her, in return—and telling her civilly afterwards—for if she knows any thing of your honour’s being in love, before hand——l—d help her!—she knows no more at present of it, trim, said my uncle toby—than the child unborn—— precious souls!—— mrs. wadman had told it, with all its circumstances, to mrs. bridget twenty-four hours before; and was at that very moment sitting in council with her, touching some slight misgivings with regard to the issue of the affairs, which the devil, who never lies dead in a ditch, had put into her head—before he would allow half time, to get quietly through her te deum. i am terribly afraid, said widow wadman, in case i should marry him, bridget—that the poor captain will not enjoy his health, with the monstrous wound upon his groin—— it may not, madam, be so very large, replied bridget, as you think——and i believe, besides, added she—that ’tis dried up—— ——i could like to know—merely for his sake, said mrs. wadman—— —we’ll know and long and the broad of it, in ten days—answered mrs. bridget, for whilst the captain is paying his addresses to you—i’m confident mr. trim will be for making love to me—and i’ll let him as much as he will—added bridget—to get it all out of him—— the measures were taken at once——and my uncle toby and the corporal went on with theirs. now, quoth the corporal, setting his left hand a-kimbo, and giving such a flourish with his right, as just promised success—and no more——if your honour will give me leave to lay down the plan of this attack—— ——thou wilt please me by it, trim, said my uncle toby, exceedingly—and as i foresee thou must act in it as my aid de camp, here’s a crown, corporal, to begin with, to steep thy commission. then, an’ please your honour, said the corporal (making a bow first for his commission)—we will begin with getting your honour’s laced clothes out of the great campaign-trunk, to be well air’d, and have the blue and gold taken up at the sleeves—and i’ll put your white ramallie-wig fresh into pipes—and send for a taylor, to have your honour’s thin scarlet breeches turn’d—— —i had better take the red plush ones, quoth my uncle toby—they will be too clumsy—said the corporal. c h a p. liii ——thou wilt get a brush and a little chalk to my sword——’twill be only in your honour’s way, replied trim. c h a p. liv —but your honour’s two razors shall be new set—and i will get my montero cap furbish’d up, and put on poor lieutenant le fever’s regimental coat, which your honour gave me to wear for his sake—and as soon as your honour is clean shaved—and has got your clean shirt on, with your blue and gold, or your fine scarlet——sometimes one and sometimes t’other—and every thing is ready for the attack—we’ll march up boldly, as if ’twas to the face of a bastion; and whilst your honour engages mrs. wadman in the parlour, to the right——i’ll attack mrs. bridget in the kitchen, to the left; and having seiz’d the pass, i’ll answer for it, said the corporal, snapping his fingers over his head—that the day is our own. i wish i may but manage it right; said my uncle toby—but i declare, corporal, i had rather march up to the very edge of a trench—— —a woman is quite a different thing—said the corporal. —i suppose so, quoth my uncle toby. c h a p. lv if any thing in this world, which my father said, could have provoked my uncle toby, during the time he was in love, it was the perverse use my father was always making of an expression of hilarion the hermit; who, in speaking of his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations, and other instrumental parts of his religion—would say—tho’ with more facetiousness than became an hermit—“that they were the means he used, to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking.” it pleased my father well; it was not only a laconick way of expressing——but of libelling, at the same time, the desires and appetites of the lower part of us; so that for many years of my father’s life, ’twas his constant mode of expression—he never used the word passions once—but ass always instead of them——so that he might be said truly, to have been upon the bones, or the back of his own ass, or else of some other man’s, during all that time. i must here observe to you the difference betwixt my father’s ass and my hobby-horse—in order to keep characters as separate as may be, in our fancies as we go along. for my hobby-horse, if you recollect a little, is no way a vicious beast; he has scarce one hair or lineament of the ass about him——’tis the sporting little filly-folly which carries you out for the present hour—a maggot, a butterfly, a picture, a fiddlestick—an uncle toby’s siege—or an any thing, which a man makes a shift to get a-stride on, to canter it away from the cares and solicitudes of life—’tis as useful a beast as is in the whole creation—nor do i really see how the world could do without it—— ——but for my father’s ass——oh! mount him—mount him—mount him—(that’s three times, is it not?)—mount him not:—’tis a beast concupiscent—and foul befal the man, who does not hinder him from kicking. c h a p. lvi well! dear brother toby, said my father, upon his first seeing him after he fell in love—and how goes it with your asse? now my uncle toby thinking more of the part where he had had the blister, than of hilarion’s metaphor—and our preconceptions having (you know) as great a power over the sounds of words as the shapes of things, he had imagined, that my father, who was not very ceremonious in his choice of words, had enquired after the part by its proper name: so notwithstanding my mother, doctor slop, and mr. yorick, were sitting in the parlour, he thought it rather civil to conform to the term my father had made use of than not. when a man is hemm’d in by two indecorums, and must commit one of ’em—i always observe—let him chuse which he will, the world will blame him—so i should not be astonished if it blames my uncle toby. my a—e, quoth my uncle toby, is much better—brother shandy—my father had formed great expectations from his asse in this onset; and would have brought him on again; but doctor slop setting up an intemperate laugh—and my mother crying out l— bless us!—it drove my father’s asse off the field—and the laugh then becoming general—there was no bringing him back to the charge, for some time—— and so the discourse went on without him. every body, said my mother, says you are in love, brother toby,—and we hope it is true. i am as much in love, sister, i believe, replied my uncle toby, as any man usually is——humph! said my father——and when did you know it? quoth my mother—— ——when the blister broke; replied my uncle toby. my uncle toby’s reply put my father into good temper—so he charg’d o’ foot. c h a p. lvii as the ancients agree, brother toby, said my father, that there are two different and distinct kinds of love, according to the different parts which are affected by it—the brain or liver——i think when a man is in love, it behoves him a little to consider which of the two he is fallen into. what signifies it, brother shandy, replied my uncle toby, which of the two it is, provided it will but make a man marry, and love his wife, and get a few children? ——a few children! cried my father, rising out of his chair, and looking full in my mother’s face, as he forced his way betwixt her’s and doctor slop’s—a few children! cried my father, repeating my uncle toby’s words as he walk’d to and fro—— ——not, my dear brother toby, cried my father, recovering himself all at once, and coming close up to the back of my uncle toby’s chair—not that i should be sorry hadst thou a score—on the contrary, i should rejoice—and be as kind, toby, to every one of them as a father— my uncle toby stole his hand unperceived behind his chair, to give my father’s a squeeze—— ——nay, moreover, continued he, keeping hold of my uncle toby’s hand—so much dost thou possess, my dear toby, of the milk of human nature, and so little of its asperities—’tis piteous the world is not peopled by creatures which resemble thee; and was i an asiatic monarch, added my father, heating himself with his new project—i would oblige thee, provided it would not impair thy strength—or dry up thy radical moisture too fast—or weaken thy memory or fancy, brother toby, which these gymnics inordinately taken are apt to do—else, dear toby, i would procure thee the most beautiful woman in my empire, and i would oblige thee, nolens, volens, to beget for me one subject every month—— as my father pronounced the last word of the sentence—my mother took a pinch of snuff. now i would not, quoth my uncle toby, get a child, nolens, volens, that is, whether i would or no, to please the greatest prince upon earth—— ——and ’twould be cruel in me, brother toby, to compel thee; said my father—but ’tis a case put to shew thee, that it is not thy begetting a child—in case thou should’st be able—but the system of love and marriage thou goest upon, which i would set thee right in—— there is at least, said yorick, a great deal of reason and plain sense in captain shandy’s opinion of love; and ’tis amongst the ill-spent hours of my life, which i have to answer for, that i have read so many flourishing poets and rhetoricians in my time, from whom i never could extract so much—— i wish, yorick, said my father, you had read plato; for there you would have learnt that there are two loves—i know there were two religions, replied yorick, amongst the ancients——one—for the vulgar, and another for the learned;—but i think one love might have served both of them very well— i could not; replied my father—and for the same reasons: for of these loves, according to ficinus’s comment upon velasius, the one is rational—— ——the other is natural—— the first ancient——without mother——where venus had nothing to do: the second, begotten of jupiter and dione— ——pray, brother, quoth my uncle toby, what has a man who believes in god to do with this? my father could not stop to answer, for fear of breaking the thread of his discourse—— this latter, continued he, partakes wholly of the nature of venus. the first, which is the golden chain let down from heaven, excites to love heroic, which comprehends in it, and excites to the desire of philosophy and truth——the second, excites to desire, simply—— ——i think the procreation of children as beneficial to the world, said yorick, as the finding out the longitude—— ——to be sure, said my mother, love keeps peace in the world—— ——in the house—my dear, i own— ——it replenishes the earth; said my mother—— but it keeps heaven empty—my dear; replied my father. ——’tis virginity, cried slop, triumphantly, which fills paradise. well push’d nun! quoth my father. c h a p. lviii my father had such a skirmishing, cutting kind of a slashing way with him in his disputations, thrusting and ripping, and giving every one a re were twenty people in company—in less than half an hour he was sure to have every one of ’em against him. what did not a little contribute to leave him thus without an ally, was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the rest, he would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him justice, when he was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, that ’twould have been a concern, either to a brave man or a good-natured one, to have seen him driven out. yorick, for this reason, though he would often attack him—yet could never bear to do it with all his force. doctor slop’s virginity, in the close of the last chapter, had got him for once on the right side of the rampart; and he was beginning to blow up all the convents in christendom about slop’s ears, when corporal trim came into the parlour to inform my uncle toby, that his thin scarlet breeches, in which the attack was to be made upon mrs. wadman, would not do; for that the taylor, in ripping them up, in order to turn them, had found they had been turn’d before——then turn them again, brother, said my father, rapidly, for there will be many a turning of ’em yet before all’s done in the affair——they are as rotten as dirt, said the corporal——then by all means, said my father, bespeak a new pair, brother——for though i know, continued my father, turning himself to the company, that widow wadman has been deeply in love with my brother toby for many years, and has used every art and circumvention of woman to outwit him into the same passion, yet now that she has caught him——her fever will be pass’d its height—— ——she has gained her point. in this case, continued my father, which plato, i am persuaded, never thought of——love, you see, is not so much a sentiment as a situation, into which a man enters, as my brother toby would do, into a corps——no matter whether he loves the service or no——being once in it—he acts as if he did; and takes every step to shew himself a man of prowesse. the hypothesis, like the rest of my father’s, was plausible enough, and my uncle toby had but a single word to object to it—in which trim stood ready to second him——but my father had not drawn his conclusion—— for this reason, continued my father (stating the case over again)—notwithstanding all the world knows, that mrs. wadman affects my brother toby—and my brother toby contrariwise affects mrs. wadman, and no obstacle in nature to forbid the music striking up this very night, yet will i answer for it, that this self-same tune will not be play’d this twelvemonth. we have taken our measures badly, quoth my uncle toby, looking up interrogatively in trim’s face. i would lay my montero-cap, said trim——now trim’s montero-cap, as i once told you, was his constant wager; and having furbish’d it up that very night, in order to go upon the attack—it made the odds look more considerable——i would lay, an’ please your honour, my montero-cap to a shilling—was it proper, continued trim (making a bow), to offer a wager before your honours—— ——there is nothing improper in it, said my father—’tis a mode of expression; for in saying thou would’st lay thy montero-cap to a shilling—all thou meanest is this—that thou believest—— ——now, what do’st thou believe? that widow wadman, an’ please your worship, cannot hold it out ten days—— and whence, cried slop, jeeringly, hast thou all this knowledge of woman, friend? by falling in love with a popish clergy-woman; said trim. ’twas a beguine, said my uncle toby. doctor slop was too much in wrath to listen to the distinction; and my father taking that very crisis to fall in helter-skelter upon the whole order of nuns and beguines, a set of silly, fusty, baggages——slop could not stand it——and my uncle toby having some measures to take about his breeches—and yorick about his fourth general division—in order for their several attacks next day—the company broke up: and my father being left alone, and having half an hour upon his hands betwixt that and bed-time; he called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote my uncle toby the following letter of instructions: my dear brother toby, what i am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee—tho’ not so well for me—that thou hast occasion for a letter of instructions upon that head, and that i am able to write it to thee. had it been the good pleasure of him who disposes of our lots—and thou no sufferer by the knowledge, i had been well content that thou should’st have dipp’d the pen this moment into the ink, instead of myself; but that not being the case———mrs shandy being now close beside me, preparing for bed——i have thrown together without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints and documents as i deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this, to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear toby, of the manner in which it will be accepted. in the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in the affair——though i perceive from a glow in my cheek, that i blush as i begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its offices thou neglectest—yet i would remind thee of one (during the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which i would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the enterprize, whether it be in the morning or the afternoon, without first recommending thyself to the protection of almighty god, that he may defend thee from the evil one. shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or five days, but oftner if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig before her, thro’ absence of mind, she should be able to discover how much has been cut away by time——how much by trim. —’twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy. always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim, toby—— “that women are timid:” and ’tis well they are——else there would be no dealing with them. let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors. ——a just medium prevents all conclusions. whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter it in a low soft tone of voice. silence, and whatever approaches it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: for this cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and poker. avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to keep her from all books and writings which tend thereto: there are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to read over—it will be well: but suffer her not to look into rabelais, or scarron, or don quixote—— ——they are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust. stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her parlour. and if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sopha with her, and she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers—beware of taking it——thou canst not lay thy hand on hers, but she will feel the temper of thine. leave that and as many other things as thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and thy asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to suppose——thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by that means. avicenna, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges——and i believe rightly. but thou must eat little or no goat’s flesh, nor red deer——nor even foal’s flesh by any means; and carefully abstain——that is, as much as thou canst, from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers, and water-hens—— as for thy drink—i need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of vervain and the herb hanea, of which ælian relates such effects—but if thy stomach palls with it—discontinue it from time to time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lillies, woodbine, and lettice, in the stead of them. there is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present—— ——unless the breaking out of a fresh war——so wishing every thing, dear toby, for best, i rest thy affectionate brother, walter shandy. c h a p. lix whilst my father was writing his letter of instructions, my uncle toby and the corporal were busy in preparing every thing for the attack. as the turning of the thin scarlet breeches was laid aside (at least for the present), there was nothing which should put it off beyond the next morning; so accordingly it was resolv’d upon, for eleven o’clock. come, my dear, said my father to my mother—’twill be but like a brother and sister, if you and i take a walk down to my brother toby’s——to countenance him in this attack of his. my uncle toby and the corporal had been accoutred both some time, when my father and mother enter’d, and the clock striking eleven, were that moment in motion to sally forth—but the account of this is worth more than to be wove into the fag end of the eighth[43] volume of such a work as this.——my father had no time but to put the letter of instructions into my uncle toby’s coat-pocket——and join with my mother in wishing his attack prosperous. i could like, said my mother, to look through the key-hole out of curiosity——call it by its right name, my dear, quoth my father— and look through the key-hole as long as you will. [43] alluding to the first edition. c h a p. lx i call all the powers of time and chance, which severally check us in our careers in this world, to bear me witness, that i could never yet get fairly to my uncle toby’s amours, till this very moment, that my mother’s curiosity, as she stated the affair,——or a different impulse in her, as my father would have it——wished her to take a peep at them through the key-hole. “call it, my dear, by its right name, quoth my father, and look through the key-hole as long as you will.” nothing but the fermentation of that little subacid humour, which i have often spoken of, in my father’s habit, could have vented such an insinuation——he was however frank and generous in his nature, and at all times open to conviction; so that he had scarce got to the last word of this ungracious retort, when his conscience smote him. my mother was then conjugally swinging with her left arm twisted under his right, in such wise, that the inside of her hand rested upon the back of his—she raised her fingers, and let them fall—it could scarce be call’d a tap; or if it was a tap——’twould have puzzled a casuist to say, whether ’twas a tap of remonstrance, or a tap of confession: my father, who was all sensibilities from head to foot, class’d it right—conscience redoubled her blow—he turn’d his face suddenly the other way, and my mother supposing his body was about to turn with it in order to move homewards, by a cross movement of her right leg, keeping her left as its centre, brought herself so far in front, that as he turned his head, he met her eye——confusion again! he saw a thousand reasons to wipe out the reproach, and as many to reproach himself——a thin, blue, chill, pellucid chrystal with all its humours so at rest, the least mote or speck of desire might have been seen, at the bottom of it, had it existed——it did not——and how i happen to be so lewd myself, particularly a little before the vernal and autumnal equinoxes——heaven above knows——my mother——madam——was so at no time, either by nature, by institution, or example. a temperate current of blood ran orderly through her veins in all months of the year, and in all critical moments both of the day and night alike; nor did she superinduce the least heat into her humours from the manual effervescencies of devotional tracts, which having little or no meaning in them, nature is oft-times obliged to find one——and as for my father’s example! ’twas so far from being either aiding or abetting thereunto, that ’twas the whole business of his life, to keep all fancies of that kind out of her head——nature had done her part, to have spared him this trouble; and what was not a little inconsistent, my father knew it——and here am i sitting, this 12th day of august 1766, in a purple jerkin and yellow pair of slippers, without either wig or cap on, a most tragicomical completion of his prediction, “that i should neither think, nor act like any other man’s child, upon that very account.” the mistake in my father, was in attacking my mother’s motive, instead of the act itself; for certainly key-holes were made for other purposes; and considering the act, as an act which interfered with a true proposition, and denied a key-hole to be what it was——it became a violation of nature; and was so far, you see, criminal. it is for this reason, an’ please your reverences, that key-holes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together. ——which leads me to my uncle toby’s amours. c h a p. lxi though the corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle toby’s great ramallie-wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. the corporal with cheary eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air——had spleen given a look at it, ’twould have cost her ladyship a smile——it curl’d every where but where the corporal would have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it honour, he could as soon have raised the dead. such it was——or rather such would it have seem’d upon any other brow; but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle toby’s, assimilated every thing around it so sovereignly to itself, and nature had moreover wrote gentleman with so fair a hand in every line of his countenance, that even his tarnish’d gold-laced hat and huge cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; and though not worth a button in themselves, yet the moment my uncle toby put them on, they became serious objects, and altogether seem’d to have been picked up by the hand of science to set him off to advantage. nothing in this world could have co-operated more powerfully towards this, than my uncle toby’s blue and gold——had not quantity in some measure been necessary to grace: in a period of fifteen or sixteen years since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle toby’s life, for he seldom went further than the bowling-green—his blue and gold had become so miserably too straight for him, that it was with the utmost difficulty the corporal was able to get him into them; the taking them up at the sleeves, was of no advantage.——they were laced however down the back, and at the seams of the sides, &c. in the mode of king william’s reign; and to shorten all description, they shone so bright against the sun that morning, and had so metallick and doughty an air with them, that had my uncle toby thought of attacking in armour, nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination. as for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripp’d by the taylor between the legs, and left at sixes and sevens—— ——yes, madam,——but let us govern our fancies. it is enough they were held impracticable the night before, and as there was no alternative in my uncle toby’s wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush. the corporal had array’d himself in poor le fever’s regimental coat; and with his hair tuck’d up under his montero-cap, which he had furbish’d up for the occasion, march’d three paces distant from his master: a whiff of military pride had puff’d out his shirt at the wrist; and upon that in a black leather thong clipp’d into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the corporal’s stick——my uncle toby carried his cane like a pike. ——it looks well at least; quoth my father to himself. c h a p. lxii my uncle toby turn’d his head more than once behind him, to see how he was supported by the corporal; and the corporal as oft as he did it, gave a slight flourish with his stick—but not vapouringly; and with the sweetest accent of most respectful encouragement, bid his honour “never fear.” now my uncle toby did fear; and grievously too; he knew not (as my father had reproach’d him) so much as the right end of a woman from the wrong, and therefore was never altogether at his ease near any one of them——unless in sorrow or distress; then infinite was his pity; nor would the most courteous knight of romance have gone further, at least upon one leg, to have wiped away a tear from a woman’s eye; and yet excepting once that he was beguiled into it by mrs. wadman, he had never looked stedfastly into one; and would often tell my father in the simplicity of his heart, that it was almost (if not about) as bad as taking bawdy.—— ——and suppose it is? my father would say. c h a p. lxiii she cannot, quoth my uncle toby, halting, when they had march’d up to within twenty paces of mrs. wadman’s door—she cannot, corporal, take it amiss.—— ——she will take it, an’ please your honour, said the corporal, just as the jew’s widow at lisbon took it of my brother tom.—— ——and how was that? quoth my uncle toby, facing quite about to the corporal. your honour, replied the corporal, knows of tom’s misfortunes; but this affair has nothing to do with them any further than this, that if tom had not married the widow——or had it pleased god after their marriage, that they had but put pork into their sausages, the honest soul had never been taken out of his warm bed, and dragg’d to the inquisition——’tis a cursed place—added the corporal, shaking his head,—when once a poor creature is in, he is in, an’ please your honour, for ever. ’tis very true; said my uncle toby, looking gravely at mrs. wadman’s house, as he spoke. nothing, continued the corporal, can be so sad as confinement for life—or so sweet, an’ please your honour, as liberty. nothing, trim——said my uncle toby, musing—— whilst a man is free,—cried the corporal, giving a flourish with his stick thus—— squiqqly line diagonally across the page a thousand of my father’s most subtle syllogisms could not have said more for celibacy. my uncle toby look’d earnestly towards his cottage and his bowling-green. the corporal had unwarily conjured up the spirit of calculation with his wand; and he had nothing to do, but to conjure him down again with his story, and in this form of exorcism, most un-ecclesiastically did the corporal do it. c h a p. lxiv as tom’s place, an’ please your honour, was easy—and the weather warm—it put him upon thinking seriously of settling himself in the world; and as it fell out about that time, that a jew who kept a sausage shop in the same street, had the ill luck to die of a strangury, and leave his widow in possession of a rousing trade——tom thought (as every body in lisbon was doing the best he could devise for himself) there could be no harm in offering her his service to carry it on: so without any introduction to the widow, except that of buying a pound of sausages at her shop—tom set out—counting the matter thus within himself, as he walk’d along; that let the worst come of it that could, he should at least get a pound of sausages for their worth—but, if things went well, he should be set up; inasmuch as he should get not only a pound of sausages—but a wife and—a sausage shop, an’ please your honour, into the bargain. every servant in the family, from high to low, wish’d tom success; and i can fancy, an’ please your honour, i see him this moment with his white dimity waist-coat and breeches, and hat a little o’ one side, passing jollily along the street, swinging his stick, with a smile and a chearful word for every body he met:——but alas! tom! thou smilest no more, cried the corporal, looking on one side of him upon the ground, as if he apostrophised him in his dungeon. poor fellow! said my uncle toby, feelingly. he was an honest, light-hearted lad, an’ please your honour, as ever blood warm’d—— ——then he resembled thee, trim, said my uncle toby, rapidly. the corporal blush’d down to his fingers ends—a tear of sentimental bashfulness—another of gratitude to my uncle toby—and a tear of sorrow for his brother’s misfortunes, started into his eye, and ran sweetly down his cheek together; my uncle toby’s kindled as one lamp does at another; and taking hold of the breast of trim’s coat (which had been that of le fever’s) as if to ease his lame leg, but in reality to gratify a finer feeling——he stood silent for a minute and a half; at the end of which he took his hand away, and the corporal making a bow, went on with his story of his brother and the jew’s widow. c h a p. lxv when tom, an’ please your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody in it, but a poor negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers slightly tied to the end of a long cane, flapping away flies—not killing them.——’tis a pretty picture! said my uncle toby—she had suffered persecution, trim, and had learnt mercy—— ——she was good, an’ please your honour, from nature, as well as from hardships; and there are circumstances in the story of that poor friendless slut, that would melt a heart of stone, said trim; and some dismal winter’s evening, when your honour is in the humour, they shall be told you with the rest of tom’s story, for it makes a part of it—— then do not forget, trim, said my uncle toby. a negro has a soul? an’ please your honour, said the corporal (doubtingly). i am not much versed, corporal, quoth my uncle toby, in things of that kind; but i suppose, god would not leave him without one, any more than thee or me—— ——it would be putting one sadly over the head of another, quoth the corporal. it would so; said my uncle toby. why then, an’ please your honour, is a black wench to be used worse than a white one? i can give no reason, said my uncle toby—— ——only, cried the corporal, shaking his head, because she has no one to stand up for her—— ——’tis that very thing, trim, quoth my uncle toby,——which recommends her to protection——and her brethren with her; ’tis the fortune of war which has put the whip into our hands now——where it may be hereafter, heaven knows!——but be it where it will, the brave, trim! will not use it unkindly. ——god forbid, said the corporal. amen, responded my uncle toby, laying his hand upon his heart. the corporal returned to his story, and went on——but with an embarrassment in doing it, which here and there a reader in this world will not be able to comprehend; for by the many sudden transitions all along, from one kind and cordial passion to another, in getting thus far on his way, he had lost the sportable key of his voice, which gave sense and spirit to his tale: he attempted twice to resume it, but could not please himself; so giving a stout hem! to rally back the retreating spirits, and aiding nature at the same time with his left arm a kimbo on one side, and with his right a little extended, supporting her on the other—the corporal got as near the note as he could; and in that attitude, continued his story. c h a p. lxvi as tom, an’ please your honour, had no business at that time with the moorish girl, he passed on into the room beyond, to talk to the jew’s widow about love——and this pound of sausages; and being, as i have told your honour, an open cheary-hearted lad, with his character wrote in his looks and carriage, he took a chair, and without much apology, but with great civility at the same time, placed it close to her at the table, and sat down. there is nothing so awkward, as courting a woman, an’ please your honour, whilst she is making sausages——so tom began a discourse upon them; first, gravely,——“as how they were made——with what meats, herbs, and spices.”—then a little gayly,—as, “with what skins——and if they never burst——whether the largest were not the best?”—and so on—taking care only as he went along, to season what he had to say upon sausages, rather under than over;——that he might have room to act in—— it was owing to the neglect of that very precaution, said my uncle toby, laying his hand upon trim’s shoulder, that count de la motte lost the battle of wynendale: he pressed too speedily into the wood; which if he had not done, lisle had not fallen into our hands, nor ghent and bruges, which both followed her example; it was so late in the year, continued my uncle toby, and so terrible a season came on, that if things had not fallen out as they did, our troops must have perish’d in the open field.—— ——why, therefore, may not battles, an’ please your honour, as well as marriages, be made in heaven?—my uncle toby mused—— religion inclined him to say one thing, and his high idea of military skill tempted him to say another; so not being able to frame a reply exactly to his mind——my uncle toby said nothing at all; and the corporal finished his story. as tom perceived, an’ please your honour, that he gained ground, and that all he had said upon the subject of sausages was kindly taken, he went on to help her a little in making them.——first, by taking hold of the ring of the sausage whilst she stroked the forced meat down with her hand——then by cutting the strings into proper lengths, and holding them in his hand, whilst she took them out one by one——then, by putting them across her mouth, that she might take them out as she wanted them——and so on from little to more, till at last he adventured to tie the sausage himself, whilst she held the snout.—— ——now a widow, an’ please your honour, always chuses a second husband as unlike the first as she can: so the affair was more than half settled in her mind before tom mentioned it. she made a feint however of defending herself, by snatching up a sausage:——tom instantly laid hold of another—— but seeing tom’s had more gristle in it—— she signed the capitulation——and tom sealed it; and there was an end of the matter. c h a p. lxvii all womankind, continued trim, (commenting upon his story) from the highest to the lowest, an’ please your honour, love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they chuse to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark.—— ——i like the comparison, said my uncle toby, better than the thing itself—— ——because your honour, quoth the corporal, loves glory, more than pleasure. i hope, trim, answered my uncle toby, i love mankind more than either; and as the knowledge of arms tends so apparently to the good and quiet of the world——and particularly that branch of it which we have practised together in our bowling-green, has no object but to shorten the strides of ambition, and intrench the lives and fortunes of the few, from the plunderings of the many——whenever that drum beats in our ears, i trust, corporal, we shall neither of us want so much humanity and fellow-feeling, as to face about and march. in pronouncing this, my uncle toby faced about, and march’d firmly as at the head of his company——and the faithful corporal, shouldering his stick, and striking his hand upon his coat-skirt as he took his first step——march’d close behind him down the avenue. ——now what can their two noddles be about? cried my father to my mother——by all that’s strange, they are besieging mrs. wadman in form, and are marching round her house to mark out the lines of circumvallation. i dare say, quoth my mother——but stop, dear sir——for what my mother dared to say upon the occasion——and what my father did say upon it——with her replies and his rejoinders, shall be read, perused, paraphrased, commented, and descanted upon—or to say it all in a word, shall be thumb’d over by posterity in a chapter apart——i say, by posterity—and care not, if i repeat the word again—for what has this book done more than the legation of moses, or the tale of a tub, that it may not swim down the gutter of time along with them? i will not argue the matter: time wastes too fast: every letter i trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen: the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more——every thing presses on——whilst thou art twisting that lock,——see! it grows grey; and every time i kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.—— ——heaven have mercy upon us both! c h a p. lxviii now, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation——i would not give a groat. c h a p. lxix my mother had gone with her left arm twisted in my father’s right, till they had got to the fatal angle of the old garden wall, where doctor slop was overthrown by obadiah on the coach-horse: as this was directly opposite to the front of mrs. wadman’s house, when my father came to it, he gave a look across; and seeing my uncle toby and the corporal within ten paces of the door, he turn’d about——“let us just stop a moment, quoth my father, and see with what ceremonies my brother toby and his man trim make their first entry——it will not detain us, added my father, a single minute:”——no matter, if it be ten minutes, quoth my mother. ——it will not detain us half one; said my father. the corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother tom and the jew’s widow: the story went on—and on——it had episodes in it——it came back, and went on——and on again; there was no end of it——the reader found it very long—— ——g— help my father! he pish’d fifty times at every new attitude, and gave the corporal’s stick, with all its flourishings and danglings, to as many devils as chose to accept of them. when issues of events like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have power to see it out. curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all œconomy to justify the expence of the first——and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment—’tis a point of honour. i need not be told, that the ethic writers have assigned this all to patience; but that virtue, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which honour has left him upon the earth. my father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries to the end of trim’s story; and from thence to the end of my uncle toby’s panegyrick upon arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing, that instead of marching up to mrs. wadman’s door, they both faced about and march’d down the avenue diametrically opposite to his expectation—he broke out at once with that little subacid soreness of humour, which, in certain situations, distinguished his character from that of all other men. c h a p. lxx ——“now what can their two noddles be about?” cried my father &c. i dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications—— ——not on mrs. wadman’s premises! cried my father, stepping back—— i suppose not: quoth my mother. i wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts—— ——they are foolish things——said my mother. now she had a way, which, by the bye, i would this moment give away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate—and that was, never to refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. she contented herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her—but no more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years together—and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it. this was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have done the most petulant contradiction——the few which survived were the better for the cuvetts—— —“they are foolish things;” said my mother. ——particularly the cuvetts; replied my father. ’tis enough—he tasted the sweet of triumph—and went on. —not that they are, properly speaking, mrs. wadman’s premises, said my father, partly correcting himself—because she is but tenant for life—— ——that makes a great difference—said my mother—— —in a fool’s head, replied my father—— unless she should happen to have a child—said my mother—— ——but she must persuade my brother toby first to get her one— to be sure, mr. shandy, quoth my mother. ——though if it comes to persuasion—said my father—lord have mercy upon them. amen: said my mother, piano. amen: cried my father, fortissimè. amen: said my mother again——but with such a sighing cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father—he instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, yorick’s congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his business with it—and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day—left him as little in doubt, as to the other part—he put his almanack into his pocket. the first lord of the treasury thinking of ways and means, could not have returned home with a more embarrassed look. c h a p. lxxi upon looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as well going on in the king’s highway) which will do the business——no; if it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but by rebound. the only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the service: fancy is capricious—wit must not be searched for—and pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet. ——the best way for a man, is to say his prayers—— only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well ghostly as bodily—for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has said them than before—for other purposes, better. for my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical under heaven that i could think of, which i have not taken with myself in this case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own faculties—— ——i never could make them an inch the wider—— then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: these are good, quoth i, in themselves—they are good, absolutely;—they are good, relatively;—they are good for health—they are good for happiness in this world—they are good for happiness in the next—— in short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it: as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage; but then that snivelling virtue of meekness (as my father would always call it) takes it quite away again, so you are exactly where you started. now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which i have found to answer so well as this—— ——certainly, if there is any dependence upon logic, and that i am not blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me, merely upon this symptom of it, that i do not know what envy is: for never do i hit upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of good writing, but i instantly make it public; willing that all mankind should write as well as myself. ——which they certainly will, when they think as little. c h a p. lxxii now in ordinary cases, that is, when i am only stupid, and the thoughts rise heavily and pass gummous through my pen—— or that i am got, i know not how, into a cold unmetaphorical vein of infamous writing, and cannot take a plumb-lift out of it for my soul; so must be obliged to go on writing like a dutch commentator to the end of the chapter, unless something be done— ——i never stand conferring with pen and ink one moment; for if a pinch of snuff, or a stride or two across the room will not do the business for me—i take a razor at once; and having tried the edge of it upon the palm of my hand, without further ceremony, except that of first lathering my beard, i shave it off; taking care only if i do leave a hair, that it be not a grey one: this done, i change my shirt—put on a better coat—send for my last wig—put my topaz ring upon my finger; and in a word, dress myself from one end to the other of me, after my best fashion. now the devil in hell must be in it, if this does not do: for consider, sir, as every man chuses to be present at the shaving of his own beard (though there is no rule without an exception), and unavoidably sits over-against himself the whole time it is doing, in case he has a hand in it—the situation, like all others, has notions of her own to put into the brain.—— ——i maintain it, the conceits of a rough-bearded man, are seven years more terse and juvenile for one single operation; and if they did not run a risk of being quite shaved away, might be carried up by continual shavings, to the highest pitch of sublimity—how homer could write with so long a beard, i don’t know——and as it makes against my hypothesis, i as little care——but let us return to the toilet. ludovicus sorbonensis makes this entirely an affair of the body (εξωιεριχη πραξις) as he calls it——but he is deceived: the soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: a man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloth’d at the same time; and if he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him—so that he has nothing to do, but take his pen, and write like himself. for this cause, when your honours and reverences would know whether i writ clean and fit to be read, you will be able to judge full as well by looking into my laundress’s bill, as my book: there is one single month in which i can make it appear, that i dirtied one and thirty shirts with clean writing; and after all, was more abus’d, cursed, criticis’d, and confounded, and had more mystic heads shaken at me, for what i had wrote in that one month, than in all the other months of that year put together. ——but their honours and reverences had not seen my bills. c h a p. lxxiii as i never had any intention of beginning the digression, i am making all this preparation for, till i come to the 74th chapter——i have this chapter to put to whatever use i think proper——i have twenty this moment ready for it——i could write my chapter of button-holes in it—— or my chapter of pishes, which should follow them—— or my chapter of knots, in case their reverences have done with them——they might lead me into mischief: the safest way is to follow the track of the learned, and raise objections against what i have been writing, tho’ i declare before-hand, i know no more than my heels how to answer them. and first, it may be said, there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire, as black as the very ink ’tis wrote with——(and by the bye, whoever says so, is indebted to the muster-master general of the grecian army, for suffering the name of so ugly and foul-mouth’d a man as thersites to continue upon his roll——for it has furnish’d him with an epithet)——in these productions he will urge, all the personal washings and scrubbings upon earth do a sinking genius no sort of good——but just the contrary, inasmuch as the dirtier the fellow is, the better generally he succeeds in it. to this, i have no other answer——at least ready——but that the archbishop of benevento wrote his nasty romance of the galatea, as all the world knows, in a purple coat, waistcoat, and purple pair of breeches; and that the penance set him of writing a commentary upon the book of the revelations, as severe as it was look’d upon by one part of the world, was far from being deem’d so, by the other, upon the single account of that investment. another objection, to all this remedy, is its want of universality; forasmuch as the shaving part of it, upon which so much stress is laid, by an unalterable law of nature excludes one half of the species entirely from its use: all i can say is, that female writers, whether of england, or of france, must e’en go without it—— as for the spanish ladies——i am in no sort of distress—— c h a p. lxxiv the seventy-fourth chapter is come at last; and brings nothing with it but a sad signature of “how our pleasures slip from under us in this world!” for in talking of my digression——i declare before heaven i have made it! what a strange creature is mortal man! said she. ’tis very true, said i——but ’twere better to get all these things out of our heads, and return to my uncle toby. c h a p. lxxv when my uncle toby and the corporal had marched down to the bottom of the avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they faced about and marched up straight to mrs. wadman’s door. i warrant your honour; said the corporal, touching his montero-cap with his hand, as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door——my uncle toby, contrary to his invariable way of treating his faithful servant, said nothing good or bad: the truth was, he had not altogether marshal’d his ideas; he wish’d for another conference, and as the corporal was mounting up the three steps before the door—he hem’d twice—a portion of my uncle toby’s most modest spirits fled, at each expulsion, towards the corporal; he stood with the rapper of the door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he scarce knew why. bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb upon the latch, benumb’d with expectation; and mrs wadman, with an eye ready to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-curtain of her bed-chamber, watching their approach. trim! said my uncle toby——but as he articulated the word, the minute expired, and trim let fall the rapper. my uncle toby perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knock’d on the head by it——whistled lillabullero. c h a p. lxxvi as mrs. bridget’s finger and thumb were upon the latch, the corporal did not knock as often as perchance your honour’s taylor——i might have taken my example something nearer home; for i owe mine, some five and twenty pounds at least, and wonder at the man’s patience—— ——but this is nothing at all to the world: only ’tis a cursed thing to be in debt; and there seems to be a fatality in the exchequers of some poor princes, particularly those of our house, which no economy can bind down in irons: for my own part, i’m persuaded there is not any one prince, prelate, pope, or potentate, great or small upon earth, more desirous in his heart of keeping straight with the world than i am——or who takes more likely means for it. i never give above half a guinea——or walk with boots——or cheapen tooth-picks——or lay out a shilling upon a band-box the year round; and for the six months i’m in the country, i’m upon so small a scale, that with all the good temper in the world, i outdo rousseau, a bar length——for i keep neither man or boy, or horse, or cow, or dog, or cat, or any thing that can eat or drink, except a thin poor piece of a vestal (to keep my fire in), and who has generally as bad an appetite as myself——but if you think this makes a philosopher of me——i would not, my good people! give a rush for your judgments. true philosophy——but there is no treating the subject whilst my uncle is whistling lillabullero. ——let us go into the house. c h a p. lxxvii c h a p. lxxviii c h a p. lxxix —— * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *.—— ——you shall see the very place, madam; said my uncle toby. mrs. wadman blush’d——look’d towards the door——turn’d pale——blush’d slightly again——recover’d her natural colour——blush’d worse than ever; which, for the sake of the unlearned reader, i translate thus—— “l—d! i cannot look at it—— what would the world say if i look’d at it? i should drop down, if i look’d at it— i wish i could look at it— there can be no sin in looking at it. ——i will look at it.” whilst all this was running through mrs. wadman’s imagination, my uncle toby had risen from the sopha, and got to the other side of the parlour door, to give trim an order about it in the passage—— * * * * * * * * * * * * * *——i believe it is in the garret, said my uncle toby——i saw it there, an’ please your honour, this morning, answered trim——then prithee, step directly for it, trim, said my uncle toby, and bring it into the parlour. the corporal did not approve of the orders, but most cheerfully obeyed them. the first was not an act of his will—the second was; so he put on his montero-cap, and went as fast as his lame knee would let him. my uncle toby returned into the parlour, and sat himself down again upon the sopha. ——you shall lay your finger upon the place—said my uncle toby.——i will not touch it, however, quoth mrs. wadman to herself. this requires a second translation:—it shews what little knowledge is got by mere words—we must go up to the first springs. now in order to clear up the mist which hangs upon these three pages, i must endeavour to be as clear as possible myself. rub your hands thrice across your foreheads—blow your noses—cleanse your emunctories—sneeze, my good people!——god bless you—— now give me all the help you can. c h a p. lxxx as there are fifty different ends (counting all ends in——as well civil as religious) for which a woman takes a husband, the first sets about and carefully weighs, then separates and distinguishes in her mind, which of all that number of ends is hers; then by discourse, enquiry, argumentation, and inference, she investigates and finds out whether she has got hold of the right one——and if she has——then, by pulling it gently this way and that way, she further forms a judgment, whether it will not break in the drawing. the imagery under which slawkenbergius impresses this upon the reader’s fancy, in the beginning of his third decad, is so ludicrous, that the honour i bear the sex, will not suffer me to quote it——otherwise it is not destitute of humour. “she first, saith slawkenbergius, stops the asse, and holding his halter in her left hand (lest he should get away) she thrusts her right hand into the very bottom of his pannier to search for it—for what?—you’ll not know the sooner, quoth slawkenbergius, for interrupting me—— “i have nothing, good lady, but empty bottles;’ says the asse. “i’m loaded with tripes;” says the second. ——and thou art little better, quoth she to the third; for nothing is there in thy panniers but trunk-hose and pantofles—and so to the fourth and fifth, going on one by one through the whole string, till coming to the asse which carries it, she turns the pannier upside down, looks at it—considers it—samples it—measures it—stretches it—wets it—dries it—then takes her teeth both to the warp and weft of it. ——of what? for the love of christ! i am determined, answered slawkenbergius, that all the powers upon earth shall never wring that secret from my breast. c h a p. lxxxi we live in a world beset on all sides with mysteries and riddles—and so ’tis no matter——else it seems strange, that nature, who makes every thing so well to answer its destination, and seldom or never errs, unless for pastime, in giving such forms and aptitudes to whatever passes through her hands, that whether she designs for the plough, the caravan, the cart—or whatever other creature she models, be it but an asse’s foal, you are sure to have the thing you wanted; and yet at the same time should so eternally bungle it as she does, in making so simple a thing as a married man. whether it is in the choice of the clay——or that it is frequently spoiled in the baking; by an excess of which a husband may turn out too crusty (you know) on one hand——or not enough so, through defect of heat, on the other——or whether this great artificer is not so attentive to the little platonic exigences of that part of the species, for whose use she is fabricating this——or that her ladyship sometimes scarce knows what sort of a husband will do——i know not: we will discourse about it after supper. it is enough, that neither the observation itself, or the reasoning upon it, are at all to the purpose—but rather against it; since with regard to my uncle toby’s fitness for the marriage state, nothing was ever better: she had formed him of the best and kindliest clay——had temper’d it with her own milk, and breathed into it the sweetest spirit——she had made him all gentle, generous, and humane——she had filled his heart with trust and confidence, and disposed every passage which led to it, for the communication of the tenderest offices——she had moreover considered the other causes for which matrimony was ordained—— and accordingly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. the donation was not defeated by my uncle toby’s wound. now this last article was somewhat apocryphal; and the devil, who is the great disturber of our faiths in this world, had raised scruples in mrs. wadman’s brain about it; and like a true devil as he was, had done his own work at the same time, by turning my uncle toby’s virtue thereupon into nothing but empty bottles, tripes, trunk-hose, and pantofles. c h a p. lxxxii mrs. bridget had pawn’d all the little stock of honour a poor chamber-maid was worth in the world, that she would get to the bottom of the affair in ten days; and it was built upon one of the most concessible postulata in nature: namely, that whilst my uncle toby was making love to her mistress, the corporal could find nothing better to do, than make love to her——“and i’ll let him as much as he will, said bridget, to get it out of him.” friendship has two garments; an outer and an under one. bridget was serving her mistress’s interests in the one—and doing the thing which most pleased herself in the other: so had as many stakes depending upon my uncle toby’s wound, as the devil himself——mrs. wadman had but one—and as it possibly might be her last (without discouraging mrs. bridget, or discrediting her talents) was determined to play her cards herself. she wanted not encouragement: a child might have look’d into his hand——there was such a plainness and simplicity in his playing out what trumps he had——with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the ten-ace——and so naked and defenceless did he sit upon the same sopha with widow wadman, that a generous heart would have wept to have won the game of him. let us drop the metaphor. c h a p. lxxxiii ——and the story too—if you please: for though i have all along been hastening towards this part of it, with so much earnest desire, as well knowing it to be the choicest morsel of what i had to offer to the world, yet now that i am got to it, any one is welcome to take my pen, and go on with the story for me that will—i see the difficulties of the descriptions i’m going to give—and feel my want of powers. it is one comfort at least to me, that i lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that i have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtile aura of the brain——be it which it will—an invocation can do no hurt——and i leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he sees good. t h e i n v o c a t i o n gentle spirit of sweetest humour, who erst did sit upon the easy pen of my beloved cervantes; thou who glidedst daily through his lattice, and turned’st the twilight of his prison into noon-day brightness by thy presence——tinged’st his little urn of water with heaven-sent nectar, and all the time he wrote of sancho and his master, didst cast thy mystic mantle o’er his wither’d stump[44], and wide extended it to all the evils of his life—— ——turn in hither, i beseech thee!——behold these breeches!——they are all i have in world——that piteous rent was given them at lyons—— my shirts! see what a deadly schism has happen’d amongst ’em—for the laps are in lombardy, and the rest of ’em here—i never had but six, and a cunning gypsey of a laundress at milan cut me off the fore-laps of five—to do her justice, she did it with some consideration—for i was returning out of italy. and yet, notwithstanding all this, and a pistol tinder-box which was moreover filch’d from me at sienna, and twice that i pay’d five pauls for two hard eggs, once at raddicoffini, and a second time at capua—i do not think a journey through france and italy, provided a man keeps his temper all the way, so bad a thing as some people would make you believe: there must be ups and downs, or how the duce should we get into vallies where nature spreads so many tables of entertainment.—’tis nonsense to imagine they will lend you their voitures to be shaken to pieces for nothing; and unless you pay twelve sous for greasing your wheels, how should the poor peasant get butter to his bread?—we really expect too much—and for the livre or two above par for your suppers and bed—at the most they are but one shilling and ninepence halfpenny——who would embroil their philosophy for it? for heaven’s and for your own sake, pay it——pay it with both hands open, rather than leave disappointment sitting drooping upon the eye of your fair hostess and her damsels in the gate-way, at your departure—and besides, my dear sir, you get a sisterly kiss of each of ’em worth a pound——at least i did—— ——for my uncle toby’s amours running all the way in my head, they had the same effect upon me as if they had been my own——i was in the most perfect state of bounty and good-will; and felt the kindliest harmony vibrating within me, with every oscillation of the chaise alike; so that whether the roads were rough or smooth, it made no difference; every thing i saw or had to do with, touch’d upon some secret spring either of sentiment or rapture. ——they were the sweetest notes i ever heard; and i instantly let down the fore-glass to hear them more distinctly——’tis maria; said the postillion, observing i was listening——poor maria, continued he (leaning his body on one side to let me see her, for he was in a line betwixt us), is sitting upon a bank playing her vespers upon her pipe, with her little goat beside her. the young fellow utter’d this with an accent and a look so perfectly in tune to a feeling heart, that i instantly made a vow, i would give him a four-and-twenty sous piece, when i got to moulins—— ——and who is poor maria? said i. the love and piety of all the villages around us; said the postillion——it is but three years ago, that the sun did not shine upon so fair, so quickwitted and amiable a maid; and better fate did maria deserve, than to have her banns forbid, by the intrigues of the curate of the parish who published them—— he was going on, when maria, who had made a short pause, put the pipe to her mouth, and began the air again——they were the same notes;——yet were ten times sweeter: it is the evening service to the virgin, said the young man——but who has taught her to play it—or how she came by her pipe, no one knows; we think that heaven has assisted her in both; for ever since she has been unsettled in her mind, it seems her only consolation——she has never once had the pipe out of her hand, but plays that service upon it almost night and day. the postillion delivered this with so much discretion and natural eloquence, that i could not help decyphering something in his face above his condition, and should have sifted out his history, had not poor maria taken such full possession of me. we had got up by this time almost to the bank where maria was sitting: she was in a thin white jacket, with her hair, all but two tresses, drawn up into a silk-net, with a few olive leaves twisted a little fantastically on one side——she was beautiful; and if ever i felt the full force of an honest heart-ache, it was the moment i saw her—— ——god help her! poor damsel! above a hundred masses, said the postillion, have been said in the several parish churches and convents around, for her,——but without effect; we have still hopes, as she is sensible for short intervals, that the virgin at last will restore her to herself; but her parents, who know her best, are hopeless upon that score, and think her senses are lost for ever. as the postillion spoke this, maria made a cadence so melancholy, so tender and querulous, that i sprung out of the chaise to help her, and found myself sitting betwixt her and her goat before i relapsed from my enthusiasm. maria look’d wistfully for some time at me, and then at her goat——and then at me——and then at her goat again, and so on, alternately—— ——well, maria, said i softly——what resemblance do you find? i do entreat the candid reader to believe me, that it was from the humblest conviction of what a beast man is,——that i asked the question; and that i would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of misery, to be entitled to all the wit that ever rabelais scatter’d——and yet i own my heart smote me, and that i so smarted at the very idea of it, that i swore i would set up for wisdom, and utter grave sentences the rest of my days——and never——never attempt again to commit mirth with man, woman, or child, the longest day i had to live. as for writing nonsense to them——i believe there was a reserve—but that i leave to the world. adieu, maria!—adieu, poor hapless damsel!——some time, but not now, i may hear thy sorrows from thy own lips——but i was deceived; for that moment she took her pipe and told me such a tale of woe with it, that i rose up, and with broken and irregular steps walk’d softly to my chaise. ——what an excellent inn at moulins! [44] he lost his hand at the battle of lepanto. c h a p. lxxxiv when we have got to the end of this chapter (but not before) we must all turn back to the two blank chapters, on the account of which my honour has lain bleeding this half hour——i stop it, by pulling off one of my yellow slippers and throwing it with all my violence to the opposite side of my room, with a declaration at the heel of it—— ——that whatever resemblance it may bear to half the chapters which are written in the world, or for aught i know may be now writing in it—that it was as casual as the foam of zeuxis his horse; besides, i look upon a chapter which has only nothing in it, with respect; and considering what worse things there are in the world——that it is no way a proper subject for satire—— ——why then was it left so? and here without staying for my reply, shall i be called as many blockheads, numsculs, doddypoles, dunderheads, ninny-hammers, goosecaps, joltheads, nincompoops, and sh-t-a-beds——and other unsavoury appellations, as ever the cake-bakers of lernè cast in the teeth of king garangantan’s shepherds——and i’ll let them do it, as bridget said, as much as they please; for how was it possible they should foresee the necessity i was under of writing the 84th chapter of my book, before the 77th, &c? ——so i don’t take it amiss——all i wish is, that it may be a lesson to the world, “to let people tell their stories their own way.” the seventy-seventh chapter as mrs. bridget opened the door before the corporal had well given the rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle toby’s introduction into the parlour, was so short, that mrs. wadman had but just time to get from behind the curtain——lay a bible upon the table, and advance a step or two towards the door to receive him. my uncle toby saluted mrs. wadman, after the manner in which women were saluted by men in the year of our lord god one thousand seven hundred and thirteen——then facing about, he march’d up abreast with her to the sopha, and in three plain words——though not before he was sat down——nor after he was sat down——but as he was sitting down, told her, “he was in love”——so that my uncle toby strained himself more in the declaration than he needed. mrs. wadman naturally looked down, upon a slit she had been darning up in her apron, in expectation every moment, that my uncle toby would go on; but having no talents for amplification, and love moreover of all others being a subject of which he was the least a master——when he had told mrs. wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and left the matter to work after its own way. my father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle toby’s, as he falsely called it, and would often say, that could his brother toby to his processe have added but a pipe of tobacco——he had wherewithal to have found his way, if there was faith in a spanish proverb, towards the hearts of half the women upon the globe. my uncle toby never understood what my father meant; nor will i presume to extract more from it, than a condemnation of an error which the bulk of the world lie under——but the french, every one of ’em to a man, who believe in it, almost as much as the real presence, “that talking of love, is making it.” ——i would as soon set about making a black-pudding by the same receipt. let us go on: mrs. wadman sat in expectation my uncle toby would do so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on one side or the other, generally becomes indecent: so edging herself a little more towards him, and raising up her eyes, sub blushing, as she did it——she took up the gauntlet——or the discourse (if you like it better) and communed with my uncle toby, thus: the cares and disquietudes of the marriage state, quoth mrs. wadman, are very great. i suppose so—said my uncle toby: and therefore when a person, continued mrs. wadman, is so much at his ease as you are—so happy, captain shandy, in yourself, your friends and your amusements—i wonder, what reasons can incline you to the state—— ——they are written, quoth my uncle toby, in the common-prayer book. thus far my uncle toby went on warily, and kept within his depth, leaving mrs. wadman to sail upon the gulph as she pleased. ——as for children—said mrs. wadman—though a principal end perhaps of the institution, and the natural wish, i suppose, of every parent—yet do not we all find, they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-achs—what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenceless mother who brings them into life? i declare, said my uncle toby, smit with pity, i know of none; unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased god—— a fiddlestick! quoth she. chapter the seventy-eighth now there are such an infinitude of notes, tunes, cants, chants, airs, looks, and accents with which the word fiddlestick may be pronounced in all such causes as this, every one of ’em impressing a sense and meaning as different from the other, as dirt from cleanliness—that casuists (for it is an affair of conscience on that score) reckon up no less than fourteen thousand in which you may do either right or wrong. mrs. wadman hit upon the fiddlestick, which summoned up all my uncle toby’s modest blood into his cheeks—so feeling within himself that he had somehow or other got beyond his depth, he stopt short; and without entering further either into the pains or pleasures of matrimony, he laid his hand upon his heart, and made an offer to take them as they were, and share them along with her. when my uncle toby had said this, he did not care to say it again; so casting his eye upon the bible which mrs. wadman had laid upon the table, he took it up; and popping, dear soul! upon a passage in it, of all others the most interesting to him—which was the siege of jericho—he set himself to read it over—leaving his proposal of marriage, as he had done his declaration of love, to work with her after its own way. now it wrought neither as an astringent or a loosener; nor like opium, or bark, or mercury, or buckthorn, or any one drug which nature had bestowed upon the world—in short, it work’d not at all in her; and the cause of that was, that there was something working there before——babbler that i am! i have anticipated what it was a dozen times; but there is fire still in the subject——allons. c h a p. lxxxv it is natural for a perfect stranger who is going from london to edinburgh, to enquire before he sets out, how many miles to york; which is about the half way——nor does any body wonder, if he goes on and asks about the corporation, &c. it was just as natural for mrs. wadman, whose first husband was all his time afflicted with a sciatica, to wish to know how far from the hip to the groin; and how far she was likely to suffer more or less in her feelings, in the one case than in the other. she had accordingly read drake’s anatomy from one end to the other. she had peeped into wharton upon the brain, and borrowed[45] graaf upon the bones and muscles; but could make nothing of it. she had reason’d likewise from her own powers——laid down theorems——drawn consequences, and come to no conclusion. to clear up all, she had twice asked doctor slop, “if poor captain shandy was ever likely to recover of his wound——?” ——he is recovered, doctor slop would say—— what! quite? quite: madam—— but what do you mean by a recovery? mrs. wadman would say. doctor slop was the worst man alive at definitions; and so mrs. wadman could get no knowledge: in short, there was no way to extract it, but from my uncle toby himself. there is an accent of humanity in an enquiry of this kind which lulls suspicion to rest——and i am half persuaded the serpent got pretty near it, in his discourse with eve; for the propensity in the sex to be deceived could not be so great, that she should have boldness to hold chat with the devil, without it——but there is an accent of humanity——how shall i describe it?—’tis an accent which covers the part with a garment, and gives the enquirer a right to be as particular with it, as your body-surgeon. “——was it without remission?— “——was it more tolerable in bed? “——could he lie on both sides alike with it? “——was he able to mount a horse? “——was motion bad for it?’ et cætera, were so tenderly spoke to, and so directed towards my uncle toby’s heart, that every item of them sunk ten times deeper into it than the evils themselves——but when mrs. wadman went round about by namur to get at my uncle toby’s groin; and engaged him to attack the point of the advanced counterscarp, and péle mele with the dutch to take the counterguard of st. roch sword in hand—and then with tender notes playing upon his ear, led him all bleeding by the hand out of the trench, wiping her eye, as he was carried to his tent——heaven! earth! sea!—all was lifted up—the springs of nature rose above their levels—an angel of mercy sat besides him on the sopha—his heart glow’d with fire—and had he been worth a thousand, he had lost every heart of them to mrs. wadman. —and whereabouts, dear sir, quoth mrs. wadman, a little categorically, did you receive this sad blow?——in asking this question, mrs. wadman gave a slight glance towards the waistband of my uncle toby’s red plush breeches, expecting naturally, as the shortest reply to it, that my uncle toby would lay his fore-finger upon the place——it fell out otherwise——for my uncle toby having got his wound before the gate of st. nicolas, in one of the traverses of the trench opposite to the salient angle of the demibastion of st. roch; he could at any time stick a pin upon the identical spot of ground where he was standing when the stone struck him: this struck instantly upon my uncle toby’s sensorium——and with it, struck his large map of the town and citadel of namur and its environs, which he had purchased and pasted down upon a board, by the corporal’s aid, during his long illness——it had lain with other military lumber in the garret ever since, and accordingly the corporal was detached to the garret to fetch it. my uncle toby measured off thirty toises, with mrs. wadman’s scissars, from the returning angle before the gate of st. nicolas; and with such a virgin modesty laid her finger upon the place, that the goddess of decency, if then in being—if not, ’twas her shade—shook her head, and with a finger wavering across her eyes—forbid her to explain the mistake. unhappy mrs. wadman! ——for nothing can make this chapter go off with spirit but an apostrophe to thee——but my heart tells me, that in such a crisis an apostrophe is but an insult in disguise, and ere i would offer one to a woman in distress—let the chapter go to the devil; provided any damn’d critic in keeping will be but at the trouble to take it with him. [45] this must be a mistake in mr. shandy; for graaf wrote upon the pancreatick juice, and the parts of generation. c h a p. lxxxvi myy uncle toby’s map is carried down into the kitchen. c h a p. lxxxvii ——and here is the maes—and this is the sambre; said the corporal, pointing with his right hand extended a little towards the map, and his left upon mrs. bridget’s shoulder—but not the shoulder next him—and this, said he, is the town of namur—and this the citadel—and there lay the french—and here lay his honour and myself——and in this cursed trench, mrs. bridget, quoth the corporal, taking her by the hand, did he receive the wound which crush’d him so miserably here.——in pronouncing which, he slightly press’d the back of her hand towards the part he felt for——and let it fall. we thought, mr. trim, it had been more in the middle,——said mrs. bridget—— that would have undone us for ever—said the corporal. ——and left my poor mistress undone too, said bridget. the corporal made no reply to the repartee, but by giving mrs. bridget a kiss. come—come—said bridget—holding the palm of her left hand parallel to the plane of the horizon, and sliding the fingers of the other over it, in a way which could not have been done, had there been the least wart or protruberance——’tis every syllable of it false, cried the corporal, before she had half finished the sentence—— —i know it to be fact, said bridget, from credible witnesses. ——upon my honour, said the corporal, laying his hand upon his heart, and blushing, as he spoke, with honest resentment—’tis a story, mrs. bridget, as false as hell——not, said bridget, interrupting him, that either i or my mistress care a halfpenny about it, whether ’tis so or no——only that when one is married, one would chuse to have such a thing by one at least—— it was somewhat unfortunate for mrs. bridget, that she had begun the attack with her manual exercise; for the corporal instantly * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *. c h a p. lxxxviii it was like the momentary contest in the moist eye-lids of an april morning, “whether bridget should laugh or cry.” she snatch’d up a rolling-pin——’twas ten to one, she had laugh’d—— she laid it down——she cried; and had one single tear of ’em but tasted of bitterness, full sorrowful would the corporal’s heart have been that he had used the argument; but the corporal understood the sex, a quart major to a terce at least, better than my uncle toby, and accordingly he assailed mrs. bridget after this manner. i know, mrs. bridget, said the corporal, giving her a most respectful kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature, and art withal so generous a girl in thyself, that, if i know thee rightly, thou would’st not wound an insect, much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master, wast thou sure to be made a countess of——but thou hast been set on, and deluded, dear bridget, as is often a woman’s case, “to please others more than themselves——” bridget’s eyes poured down at the sensations the corporal excited. ——tell me——tell me, then, my dear bridget, continued the corporal, taking hold of her hand, which hung down dead by her side,——and giving a second kiss——whose suspicion has misled thee? bridget sobb’d a sob or two——then open’d her eyes——the corporal wiped ’em with the bottom of her apron——she then open’d her heart and told him all. c h a p. lxxxix my uncle toby and the corporal had gone on separately with their operations the greatest part of the campaign, and as effectually cut off from all communication of what either the one or the other had been doing, as if they had been separated from each other by the maes or the sambre. my uncle toby, on his side, had presented himself every afternoon in his red and silver, and blue and gold alternately, and sustained an infinity of attacks in them, without knowing them to be attacks—and so had nothing to communicate—— the corporal, on his side, in taking bridget, by it had gain’d considerable advantages——and consequently had much to communicate——but what were the advantages——as well as what was the manner by which he had seiz’d them, required so nice an historian, that the corporal durst not venture upon it; and as sensible as he was of glory, would rather have been contented to have gone bareheaded and without laurels for ever, than torture his master’s modesty for a single moment—— ——best of honest and gallant servants!——but i have apostrophiz’d thee, trim! once before——and could i apotheosize thee also (that is to say) with good company——i would do it without ceremony in the very next page. c h a p. xc now my uncle toby had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and was counting over to himself upon his finger ends (beginning at his thumb) all mrs. wadman’s perfections one by one; and happening two or three times together, either by omitting some, or counting others twice over, to puzzle himself sadly before he could get beyond his middle finger——prithee, trim! said he, taking up his pipe again,——bring me a pen and ink: trim brought paper also. take a full sheet——trim! said my uncle toby, making a sign with his pipe at the same time to take a chair and sit down close by him at the table. the corporal obeyed——placed the paper directly before him——took a pen, and dipp’d it in the ink. —she has a thousand virtues, trim! said my uncle toby—— am i to set them down, an’ please your honour? quoth the corporal. ——but they must be taken in their ranks, replied my uncle toby; for of them all, trim, that which wins me most, and which is a security for all the rest, is the compassionate turn and singular humanity of her character—i protest, added my uncle toby, looking up, as he protested it, towards the top of the ceiling—that was i her brother, trim, a thousand fold, she could not make more constant or more tender enquiries after my sufferings——though now no more. the corporal made no reply to my uncle toby’s protestation, but by a short cough—he dipp’d the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my uncle toby, pointing with the end of his pipe as close to the top of the sheet at the left hand corner of it, as he could get it——the corporal wrote down the word h u m a n i t y thus. prithee, corporal, said my uncle toby, as soon as trim had done it——how often does mrs. bridget enquire after the wound on the cap of thy knee, which thou received’st at the battle of landen? she never, an’ please your honour, enquires after it at all. that, corporal, said my uncle toby, with all the triumph the goodness of his nature would permit——that shews the difference in the character of the mistress and maid——had the fortune of war allotted the same mischance to me, mrs. wadman would have enquired into every circumstance relating to it a hundred times——she would have enquired, an’ please your honour, ten times as often about your honour’s groin——the pain, trim, is equally excruciating,——and compassion has as much to do with the one as the other—— ——god bless your honour! cried the corporal——what has a woman’s compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man’s knee? had your honour’s been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of landen, mrs. wadman would have troubled her head as little about it as bridget; because, added the corporal, lowering his voice, and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason—— “the knee is such a distance from the main body——whereas the groin, your honour knows, is upon the very curtain of the place.” my uncle toby gave a long whistle——but in a note which could scarce be heard across the table. the corporal had advanced too far to retire——in three words he told the rest—— my uncle toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender, as if it had been spun from the unravellings of a spider’s web—— ——let us go to my brother shandy’s, said he. c h a p. xci there will be just time, whilst my uncle toby and trim are walking to my father’s, to inform you that mrs. wadman had, some moons before this, made a confident of my mother; and that mrs. bridget, who had the burden of her own, as well as her mistress’s secret to carry, had got happily delivered of both to susannah behind the garden-wall. as for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least bustle about——but susannah was sufficient by herself for all the ends and purposes you could possibly have, in exporting a family secret; for she instantly imparted it by signs to jonathan——and jonathan by tokens to the cook as she was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it with some kitchen-fat to the postillion for a groat, who truck’d it with the dairy maid for something of about the same value——and though whisper’d in the hay-loft, fame caught the notes with her brazen trumpet, and sounded them upon the house-top—in a word, not an old woman in the village or five miles round, who did not understand the difficulties of my uncle toby’s siege, and what were the secret articles which had delayed the surrender.—— my father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified truth at the rate he did——had but just heard of the report as my uncle toby set out; and catching fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother by it, was demonstrating to yorick, notwithstanding my mother was sitting by——not only, “that the devil was in women, and that the whole of the affair was lust;” but that every evil and disorder in the world, of what kind or nature soever, from the first fall of adam, down to my uncle toby’s (inclusive), was owing one way or other to the same unruly appetite. yorick was just bringing my father’s hypothesis to some temper, when my uncle toby entering the room with marks of infinite benevolence and forgiveness in his looks, my father’s eloquence re-kindled against the passion——and as he was not very nice in the choice of his words when he was wroth——as soon as my uncle toby was seated by the fire, and had filled his pipe, my father broke out in this manner. c h a p. xcii ——that provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so exalted and godlike a being as man—i am far from denying—but philosophy speaks freely of every thing; and therefore i still think and do maintain it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a passion which bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, contemplations, and operations of the soul backwards——a passion, my dear, continued my father, addressing himself to my mother, which couples and equals wise men with fools, and makes us come out of our caverns and hiding-places more like satyrs and four-footed beasts than men. i know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the prolepsis), that in itself, and simply taken——like hunger, or thirst, or sleep——’tis an affair neither good or bad—or shameful or otherwise.——why then did the delicacy of diogenes and plato so recalcitrate against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it, that all the parts thereof—the congredients—the preparations—the instruments, and whatever serves thereto, are so held as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language, translation, or periphrasis whatever? ——the act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising his voice—and turning to my uncle toby—you see, is glorious—and the weapons by which we do it are honourable——we march with them upon our shoulders——we strut with them by our sides——we gild them——we carve them——we in-lay them——we enrich them——nay, if it be but a scoundrel cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breach of it.— ——my uncle toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better epithet——and yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to pieces—— ——when obadiah broke into the middle of the room with a complaint, which cried out for an immediate hearing. the case was this: my father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as impropriator of the great tythes, was obliged to keep a bull for the service of the parish, and obadiah had led his cow upon a pop-visit to him one day or other the preceding summer——i say, one day or other—because as chance would have it, it was the day on which he was married to my father’s house-maid——so one was a reckoning to the other. therefore when obadiah’s wife was brought to bed—obadiah thanked god—— ——now, said obadiah, i shall have a calf: so obadiah went daily to visit his cow. she’ll calve on monday—on tuesday—on wednesday at the farthest—— the cow did not calve——no—she’ll not calve till next week——the cow put it off terribly——till at the end of the sixth week obadiah’s suspicions (like a good man’s) fell upon the bull. now the parish being very large, my father’s bull, to speak the truth of him, was no way equal to the department; he had, however, got himself, somehow or other, thrust into employment—and as he went through the business with a grave face, my father had a high opinion of him. ——most of the townsmen, an’ please your worship, quoth obadiah, believe that ’tis all the bull’s fault—— ——but may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to doctor slop. it never happens: said dr. slop, but the man’s wife may have come before her time naturally enough——prithee has the child hair upon his head?—added dr. slop—— ——it is as hairy as i am; said obadiah.——obadiah had not been shaved for three weeks——wheu u u cried my father; beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle——and so, brother toby, this poor bull of mine, who is as good a bull as ever p—ss’d, and might have done for europa herself in purer times——had he but two legs less, might have been driven into doctors commons and lost his character——which to a town bull, brother toby, is the very same thing as his life—— l—d! said my mother, what is all this story about?—— a cock and a bull, said yorick——and one of the best of its kind, i ever heard. end of the fourth volume *** end of the project gutenberg ebook tristram shandy *** updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. creating the works from print editions not protected by u.s. copyright law means that no one owns a united states copyright in these works, so the foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the united states without permission and without paying copyright royalties. special rules, set forth in the general terms of use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing project gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the project gutenberg-tm concept and trademark. project gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an ebook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the project gutenberg trademark. if you do not charge anything for copies of this ebook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. you may use this ebook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. project gutenberg ebooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may do practically anything in the united states with ebooks not protected by u.s. copyright law. redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. start: full license the full project gutenberg license please read this before you distribute or use this work to protect the project gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "project gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the full project gutenberg-tm license available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license. section 1. general terms of use and redistributing project gutenberg-tm electronic works 1.a. by reading or using any part of this project gutenberg-tm electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. if you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of project gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. if you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a project gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.e.8. 1.b. 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anyone. for forty years, he produced and distributed project gutenberg-tm ebooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. project gutenberg-tm ebooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the u.s. unless a copyright notice is included. thus, we do not necessarily keep ebooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. most people start at our website which has the main pg search facility: www.gutenberg.org this website includes information about project gutenberg-tm, including how to make donations to the project gutenberg literary archive foundation, how to help produce our new ebooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new ebooks. the_gallery the gallery the harper & row, publishers new york and evanston harper colophon books hov £gallery by john horne burns how are ye bl ind, ye treaders-down of cities] -the trojan women �d evanston ps the c,allery • copyright 1947 by john home burns. printed in the unitedstates of america. all rights reserved. no part of this book may be used orreproduce� in any 1r:anner wha�soe,!er w_i�hout w.ritten permi�sion except in thecase of brie] quotations embodied in critical articles and reoieios. for informa­tion address harper & row, publishers, incorporated, 49 east 33rd street, newyork 16, n. y. first harper colophon edition published 1963 by harper & row, publishers,incorporated, new york and evanston. in memory of robert b. mac lennan germany, 7 april 1945 and for holger & beulah hagen n/ed ill/he cnileo r mo; be �ed or lion except in inl 'so for in/orma' j)rd street, new all characters whose portraits hang in this gallery are fictitious. any resemblance to persons jiving or dead is pure coincidence. only the descriptions of casablanca, algiers, and naples are based on fact. fo !evi !eleigeig nin� thi gallery floorp/an of the gallery entra�ce first portrait: the t'renchjoot of michael patrick 3 first promenade: (casablanca) 18 second portrait: louella 25 second promenade: (fedhala) 45 third portrait: hal 54 third promenade: (casablanca-algiers) go fourth portrait: father donovan and chaplain bascom g8 fourth promenade: (algiers) 117 fifth portrait: momma 125 fifth promenade: (algiers) 153 sixth portrait: the leaf 160 sixth promenade: (naples) 206 seventh portrait: giulia 215 seventh promenade: (naples) 259 eighth portrait: queen penicillin 269 eighth promenade: (naples) 2g8 ninth portrait: moe 312 exit 342 vii entrance there's an arcade in naples that they call the galleria umberto primo. it's a cross between a railroad station and a church. you think you're in a museum till you see the bars and the shops. once this galleria had a dome of glass, but the bombings of naples shattered this skylight, and tinkling glass fell like cruel snow to the pavement. but life went on in the galleria. in august, 1944, it was the unofficial heart of naples. it was a living and sub­ dividing cell of vermouth, allied soldiery, and the italian people. everybody in naples came to the galleria umberto. at night the flags, the columns, the archangels blowing their trumpets on the cornices, the metal grids that held the glass before the bombs broke it heard more than they saw in the daytime. there was t.he pad of american combat boots on the prowl, the slide of neapolitan sandals, the click of british hobnails out of rhythm from vermouth. there were screams and coos and slaps and stumbles. there were the hasty press of kisses and sibilance of urine on the pavement. by moonlight, shadows singly and in pairs chased from corner to corner. in the galleria umberto you could walk from portrait to portrait, thinking to yourself during your promenade.... first portrait the trenchfoot of michael patrick he limped hurriedly along via roma, bumping into the swarms coming the other way. he kept saying scusate be­ cause he wanted to make amends for the way the other doughfeet yelled at the neapolitans and called them paesan. meanwhile his chin kept peeling back over his shoulder, for he had the feeling that two mp's were stalking him. in his pocket there was a hospital pass to which he'd forged a name. he had butter­ flies in his stomach from last night's italian gin, and the sun and his sweat weren't helping things much. the speed with which he was moving hurt the feet inside his boots: it was all too clear why the medics wouldn't have given him a naples pass until it was time to send him back to the line. this was why, limping more than a little he'd taken off to naples every night this week. the nurses couldn't figure out why his feet healed so slowly. naples. the name spelled a certain freedom and relief to him, in opposition to that other idea of being flown up to south of florence.... he saw two little concrete posts that made a stile into a covered arcade. inside there was a crowd loitering, almost as big as that pushing along via roma. he sighed to be out of the relentless moving on the sidewalk. it seemed cooler in this arcade. he couldn't see an mp, and there were a lot of bars. he preferred not to sit at one of the tables on the pavement. what he was looking for was some bar as small and tight as a telephone booth. there he could wedge his chest and swallow one vermouth after another. the butterflies would go away, and he could dwell lovingly on what he would do after the sun went down. 3 4 the gallery to do? the important thing was to forget that tomorrow or the next day his feet would be well, and he'd be waiting for that plane at capodichino. after that the truck ride toward florence, with the sound of the guns getting stronger.... perhaps his trenchfoot was something sent him by saint rita of cascia, to whom his mother used to have special devotion. saint rita had been pierced with thorns during her ecstasies. and he, after standing in his wet foxhole for weeks and listening to the artillery go screaming toward florence, had been pierced with trenchfoot. perhaps it was some subconscious cowardice that had broken out in his feet. he'd thought for a long time anyhow that he was going to crack, and trenchfoot was a more honorable way of doing it than becoming a psycho. so he smiled down on the cl? patch on his left shoulder and thanked saint rita that he'd been able to take the cure in naples. first he wanted some vermouth. then some music. at the gi red cross he'd picked up two tickets to the san carlo while work.. ing a little sympathy out of betty, rapid and abstracted behind the information desk. she was thinking about her date with a colonel tonight. she didn't have much time for him except her hospitality song and dance. but she'd introduced him to music in oran. so tonight he would hear la boheme. and after the opera he hoped for that last release. he'd never been a lover in his life, but tonight he'd like to have somebody kiss him, to feel somebody's disinterested hands going all over his body. he didn't much care whom the hands belonged to, but he cringed at the idea of paying on via roma for such a rite. in the middle of the arcade he came upon a bar that was nearly empty. on the marble .counter were two shining boilers of the coffee machines. he ripped out of his chest pocket a beatup hundred-lira note and bought some chits. his hands were quivering under their ayrab and italian silver rings. the fat neapolitan behind the cashbox didn't miss this jittering of his fingers. a double vermouth was set at his elbow by a girl wearing a fur­ piece. she was proud of this and kept emphasizing it by stroking it in the august afternoon. she missed being pretty because she was so mouselike. as she served him, she looked at him, but then her eyes darted away. then he decided he wouldn't take off his cap, for he was getting bald at twenty-seven. -my red face, he said, isn't from drinking, but from those c-rations they feed us. the look she threw at the fat neapolitan made it evident that the trenchfoot of michael patrick she was as strictly brought up as neapolitans could be in wartime. then her eyes went down to the two wrist watches strapped side by side on his left wrist, like twins in bed. -tedeschi watches, he said, unstrapping one for her. i figured they couldn't use them. stiffs can't tell time.... her father slithered around from behind the cash register, came over, and held out his plump hairy hand for the watch. he weighed it, smelled it, tapped it, and listened to its pulse with a flicker of love in his eyes. the deal was on. -you speak, joe. quanto? -0 my back! sure you don't want to buy my cigarettes too? but i smoke two packs a day. so i can't help your black market, except to get rid of a tedeschi watch or two. the signorina's eyes began to sparkle in a pleased way, as though her father had telegraphed her to play up to him. he began to wonder if perhaps she might come to the opera with him and how it would feel to touch her hair. her breasts pressed the counter as she leaned over to look at the watch her father was appraising. he thought that no gi had touched her-yet. -quattro mila lire, the fat neapolitan said. forty dollar, joe. -0 my aching back. and for a tedeschi watch too. his elbow gave a jerk and the glass of vermouth splintered on the floor. its smell arose in the hot air-sweet, dry, and wistful. the signorina looked disdainful but served another glass. from his cash drawer her father counted out four thousand-lira notes in allied military currency. that left only one tedeschi watch to be sold. he toyed again with the idea of taking the signorina to the opera, of sliding the tedeschi watch on her wrist in some darkened box. she had slim hands with nails a little gray under their chipped vermilion paint. he leaned on both his elbows, thrusting his face a little closer to her furpiece. and the second glass of vermouth hit the floor. -my mother said i was very high-strung. the neapolitan flounced out with a broom and swept up the splinters. the signorina drew another double vermouth setting it quite a length from his elbow. he watched the cold superiority creep over her face as pettishly she stroked her furpiece. she looked at him the way a nun regards the convent cat who has just made a mess in the parlor. he laughed to cover his chagrin, but he didn't care much for the sound of his laugh. it trailed into a cough, and he started thinking up some more ways to get in touch ut from tholt evident thai 5 6 th e gallery with the signorina. she was only a foot away from him, but she seemed to be receding into an icy planet. he had the impression that she'd contine to sell him double vermouths till closing time, but that she considered him just some maggot in boots and suntans that had wriggled out of the cracks in the arcade. and with this thought his elbow flinched into a spasm that sent the third glass jingling to the floor. -1 guess the point is to drink it, he said, laughing again. out came the broom; a fourth vermouth was poured. panicky, he lifted it to his lips, noticing that his whole arm vibrated like a drunkard's who laces a towel round his neck to guide a pick-me-up to his mouth in the morning. he closed his eyes and swallowed _ three doubles in a row. he waited, leaning his red face in his hands, till he could feel the stuff flickering in his gut wi th an uneasy flame. the tremors in his muscles gave one final flip and ironed _ out into a kind of feverish peace. he lifted his glance to look at -the signorina, but she'd moved off to wait on some new zealand soldier at the far end of the bar. where she'd been standing, he now saw his own face in the mirror behind the tiers of wine bottles . . -michael patrick, he said, how even your own mother could have loved you? . . . <y. for his was a face pretty much like everyone else's who isn't any­ body in america and less than that in the army. his eyes were raw from a week's drinking; his cheeks looked burnt from the inside by afire without point or focus. and his body, slim and lithe, was good ellough to draw fire from jerry and to dish it out in return. his cap w.as set on his head, not at the jive angle that young parachutistslove but strategically, to mask the fact that at twenty-seven he was losing his hair, but fast. he couldn't bear to look at himself, and hedidn't see how anybody else would want to either. naturally t�is signorina had moved away. he was just another gi who'd been ort', the line and was going back to it. there were thousands in n aples like him, except that they pretended to be surer of them­ selves. they had the ability, in place of his tired negation, to dramatize themselves for the appropriate minute. they hadn't yet seen the pointlessness of themselves. nevertheless he moved toward the signorina with his empty glass. as long as he could afford to buy her rotten vermouth, she'd have to serve him. he pushed his glass almost imperiously into her folded hands. this brought a smile to her face, her small pointed !e h' to to 1m, but she � \m�tession t\�\l\� time, ts and suntan! .-\nd with thi! the third �la� no' again. �, panickr, nf nbrated l�e a e a pick.me,ur and swallowe� ce in hh hanoi 'ith an unea� rip and ironea 1 nce to look at e �ew zealan� the trenchfoot of michael patrick 7 teeth looking as though they'd nip her own lips, or whomever she kissed. michael patrick had an envy of italians, seeing a certain kinship between them and the irish. but the irish stayed hurt all their lives; the italians had a bounce-back in them. all his life he'd been silent, waiting and listening for some cue that would set him off on one of those oily harangues that people vent at wakes, twisting their rhetoric and loving it for its own cadence and invention. but after months of being alone with himself a reserve of chatter had been dammed up in him, punctuated with shellfire. he so wanted to talk on and on just for the joy of creating sentences i but he couldn't talk to himself. nor did he want what is known as polite conversation. he wondered if in all naples tonight there was some­ one to whom he could address himself, in whom he could find the function of an ear, an ear that would listen him out of himself till there'd be nothing more to say. actually he had nothing special to say-a mere loving recitation of facts about himself, the flight of the plane from the evac hospital, his thoughts while circling over rome. and after that he might start on the old days in easton, pennsylvania, on his brother who always did him dirt in their partnership in the seed business. his life was bursting to be re­ leased to someone, someone who would really listen to him. words -they meant so little, but he felt like a bottle with a narrow open­ ing that must be drained drop by drop. he wanted to purge him­ self by talking. after that he might feel like reaching forward with his mouth opened for a kiss.... she poured him another vermouth. in grabbing for the chit to pay her, he spilled everything he had in his breast pocket over the top of the bar. the two opera tickets lay face up before her. -if you'd like to come tonight, he said in a rush. if your father would let you.... it's la boheme. a quick delight coursed over her face, like all the women in the world when a treat is offered them. -ma ... , she whispered back, senza papa non potrei. the fat neapolitan made a clucking noise in his throat. -0 my back, michael patrick said, raising his voice. you ginso girls are all alike. you automatically assume that every gi wants to get in your pants.... and of course you're right. he put out his hand and touched the wolf's head that bit its own tail and clasped her furpiece. she straightened up, and he saw that she was looking at his fingernails, bitten back so far that they formed mangled halfmoons. 8 the gallery -listen, he said, trying to force the stridency out of his voice. i'm not pulling any hero stuff on you. but this is my last night in napoli. do you know where i'm going tomorrow? i don't look !o-:-ward to it oh i know you've all been bombed here. but this is different i'll be out there all alone with the noise, running through hell all by myself. it's different. you have no idea of how alone it is. and while i was there last month, i dreamed of all the things i'd do if i ever got back to napoli.... and here i am, and nothing's panning out the way i hoped it would.... i feel like a kid reaching for jam on i a shelf that's too high up. and i don't r know what it really is i'm reaching for. maybe life itself.... do hi you suppose maybe i'm already dead? what would you do if i h� touched you? i'm in a dream from which i can't wake up...• capeesh? -cosa? she asked, and he realized that coquetry wasn't atrophied anin her. ca -now if i was an officer, you'd be nicer to me. i haven't got !i�l any gum or chocolates. just me and two opera tickets and some cigarettes. to he knew he was hitting too gloomy a strain. so he drank another dee vermouth and lit a cigarette. he carried his butts in a small plastic mn case. inside the transparent cover was the picture of a dark girl he'dfound when his company looted a farmhouse near poggibonsi. an!he'd never had a steady girl in his life like all the other gl's. im -e bella la boheme, she said, stroking her fur speculatively. jou -no, i don't know whatall about music, he said, re-establishalling himself on her plane. in the states i was too busy for it. then �lwhen i hit oran, all the cravings of my life caught up with me. latalike a disease when you stop treatment in the middle of the cure. lor one day at the red cross in oran i found out that the music expresses all that i look for and never find. . .. i don't see very anemuch to our own music. you see, it doesn't give me that feeling of tnwatching someone die, and you can't do anything to help. �she began to sing "pistol-packin' momma." flea -0 my back! he said excitedly. that's what i mean. i hate �outhat goddam tune. it reminds me of a fat old bitch jigtiming !ll on the edge of her grave. she's wearing black lace stockings, she's e1rtearing off her corset, she's kicking off her shoes, and the paint is horunning down her face. a r-e bella, pen), la musica americana, she said, and sang it through lliil again. kl�with another vermouth in his hand michael patrick walked to l' -at his volce, last night in uan't look lor, ere. "but thi!ij noise, runninv 'd 0 no 1 ea 01 now amed 01 a]]ili1 here i am, aij� . . , i feellik1l up. and [ oon'l me itsell, , , , d� id vou do ul , wake ur, '" k walked to the trenchfoot of michael patrick 9 the entrance of the bar and looked out into the arcade. the hour was close to sunset and the place was humming like an anthill. a lounging kid screamed, wanna eat, joe? old ladies in black passed on the arms of their daughters. neapolitan doctors and lawyers swarmed by arm in arm from their offices, gesticulating and complaining. and michael patrick saw that sunlight in this arcade had a thick swooning texture like tired gold melting. the vermouth was now well into his brain, his nerves no longer snapped . he began to taste that half-mulled feeling of time deliciously un­ rolling before him. this reaching out in vain was only felt when he tried to mesh himself with the gears of other people. when he was drinking alone, he was aware of certain untapped poten­ tialities in himself. but when he talked to others, something in him went limp and kept sneering at him that he was alone alone alone and wrapped in some inaccessible womb, that nobody else really cared, or that they were doubled up with secret laughter at the sight of him. these long-felt nibblings of defeat so enraged him that he spun round in his boots and went back to the bar. the signorina had been watching him where he stood between her and the setting sun. this time he broached her almost in ardor. -tell me the difference between your' life and mine. don't answer, even if you could .... it's a quest.ion of time.... but how important that is, like looking back over a hundred years after you've lived through them.... i suppose you've got a fidanzato? a little ginso who's a pjw in africa? she stared curiously into his eyes, having caught the word fidan­ zato. and she seemed to catch some of the virus of his desperation, for her hands lay quiet where they'd been fretting her furpiece. -you lucky lucky girl ... and that long stretch you've got ahead of you.... he'll come home to you when the war's over. then you'll have one of those neapolitan weddings, which will be the last thing you'll have to look forward to till a big black hearse pulls you through the streets. . . . 0 that long long time you've got ahead of you! you'll both go walking arm in arm on summer evenings on via chiaia. you'll stop for ice cream or caffe espresso. and each year there'll be one more kid by your side. . . . how many rooms will you have? maybe two, and one big bed with a picture of the madonna of pompei over it. she'll watch you two kissing and fighting at night, and she'll hear your cries when your kids are born.... i can see them now neapolitan kids i kind of liked even when they stole from me that'll be your 10 the gallery life. it's not very much, but it's life. and it's more than ers think it is.... michael patrick had started to flail his arms about just like acinso. but his voice hadn't risen out of that low weariness that always sounded as though he were going to cry. the signorina's father had come out from behind the cash register, put both hands on his hips, and was watching them with a kind of sly benevolence. neapolitans take their theater wherever they find it. the old man had a stomach that rippled and creased under a gi belt fastened into a rattail along his shiny pencil-striped pants. then he made a motion, graceful and insinuating, that his daughter should serve a drink on the house. -sometimes, said michael patrick, wiping his mouth with an olive-drab handkerchief, i like you eyeties better than i do my n own. there's something ... good and gentle in most of you. oa ... where are we going in this war? i don't know, for all the n orientation talks they used to give us there's something about italy and you eyeties that gets me. there's dirt and poverty here . . . . but there's something else that gets me. seems to survive yourbattered towns and your bitter men and your degraded women .... why is all this? why must it be? something terrible has come into this world.... there was a small kiwi listening now at the back of the bar. lor he wore tight shorts and a crazy beret. he leaned against his mar10sal a and cheered feebly: ou -give em whatall, yank! in -hi, dig, michael patrick said listlessly. nl! -grazie, nazi. rill -prego, dago. in his life michael patrick hadn't said three sentences in a row. to yet here he was like a priest at the time for the monthly collection, !l� ringing all the changes on a theme. the signorina'd been watchnan ing him with penetration. he took his vermouth and paced again arrestlessly to the door of the bar, where the iron shutters were rolled up over his head. his gait was easy now in those same polished i'llboots in which he'd got trenchfoot. m� through a sudden gap in the crowd he saw to the other arch dar of the arcade, to a flight of stairs down into via verdi. up these lickbounded three alpini lieutenants in their shorts and feathered ito sugarloaf caps. he mused on what it must be like to be an italian tnd soldier in august, 1944-half of them walking shyly around naples, rouunable to have a girl because the allies were paying twenty hunion out lust llk� i wearines! tnlt , the signorim'l r, put both nanm ()t 1} benevaltn(1 d it. the ala m� a gi belt f�t�nm then h� maijl hte !noula�nl o the other artn j erdi, up td1re and feathmo o be an italian round naplel, twenty hun· the trenchfoot of michael patrick dred lire; half of them in pjw stockades scattered from india to the states. italian soldiers of a vanquished army, inured to the idea of patria and screaming throngs in piazza venezia and their names among the fallen on a bronze plate in the municipio.... and michael patrick saw the posters with which the arcade was spattered, urging the neapolitans to join a hundred political par­ ties, to drive out the king if they wanted white bread for their babies. and there were some hammer-and-sickles daubed in red on the walls. and there was a quotation from a mussolini speech on the heroism of the people of naples. the hysterical block letters had been half scratched out; there were mud and liquid streaks blotching the duce's ranting words. office girls padded by him in their makeshift sandals. they had no stockings to wear. the fuzz and the sandfly bites showed on their dark legs. they crooned together in a misty passion, resting their heads on one another's shoulders: core, 0 core 'ngrato, t'aie pigliato 'a vita mia; tutto e passato, e nun 'nee pienz.e chiii ... it was time to move on someplace else. the opera didn't begin for another hour, yet an infantry itch was in his legs. he hadn't found the ear he wanted. the vermouth had heated him to the bubbling slow gold of the broiling sun in the arcade. the tune that the girls had sung invaded him with a yearning stronger than his tentative desire for the smug little signorina with her furpiece, pitiful as an easter hat on a hungry whore. michael patrick set down his glass with a gesture that he strove to make as calm as possible. he took the girl's hand. her father sighed noisily behind the cash register. she didn't withdraw her hand, though a remoteness which veiled her eyes showed a dis­ appointment that he hadn't played her game her way. -good-by to you and your lousy vermouth. i don't know what i'll do with the other opera ticket.... and when i say good-by, i mean addio.... there'll be so many others who'll come in this bar and plank down twenty-four lire for vermouth.... but how sick you must be of all of us, the whole goddam crowd with their trousers tucked into their buckled boots, their shoulder patches, their yelling, and their cussing.... but anyhow i never rumpled your hair or made a pass at your breasts.... i'll remember you longer than you'll remember me.... why? because you'll be one 11 12 the gallery of the last things i saw in naples.... next week, a few hundred miles north of here, there's something waiting for me with my name on it.... i feel it. the father raised his hands to heaven with the soft horror of a jew. -well, said michael patrick, avoiding his own smile in the mir­ ror, there are worse places to be buried than in italy. in the sum­ mer the ground is warm and dry, and the gi mattress cover seals in the rot and stink. . .. but ... i wish someone would tell me why i must go up to florence when life's all around me here. he clapped his hand over his mouth, tasting the dank tobacco on his blunt fingernails. this was the same hand that had sold seed packets to housewives in easton, pennsylvania, that had jerked the trigger of his carbine, that had slipped tedeschi watches off the sprawled hushed bodies of feldwebels, that had cooked a chicken in an op at frosinone. he pushed his cap a little farther back on his head-to where the hair began to fade out-and went off into the arcade. the sun knifed his eyes, dilated from vermouth. blinking, hehated the fierce neapolitan sun. until he hit the light, he'd been at just the right stage, but he knew how margins are: you exceedthem because you're always reaching for a horizon. pigeons were scooping down through the domed skylight of the arcade, scudding mockingly through the grates where the glassused to be, dropping their white excretions on the stone parquet. they had a meditative way of calling one another that carried like a ground bass under the squeaking hurrying human beingsbelow them. the vermouth he'd drunk was pressing on his abdomen, so he nosed out a dark slit opening off the arcade into a garden with afountain. it was cool in this court within a court. and since no housewives were screaming to one another across the balconies,michael patrick stood on the rim of the fountain, unbuttoned his trousers, and drilled the dead water in the pool. -mamma mial a voice cried behind his shoulder. ecco le por­cherie pubbliche che fanno gli alleatil hastily he righted his fly and tottered back off the fountain. a woman in a soiled house dress was scolding at him from a balcony ..she had a baby by the hand and a smile on her big face as thoughthe whole world was among the category of her children. her child wrapped its little legs around the gratings and waved at michael patrick, whose face got redder than ever. on mile in th� ron. hal . in the !um. attress cov�r� ne wouln tellm1 ound me nm. he dank t001((0 d that nao rolij yania, tnatfl1ij tell cnl watffi� thancook101 cap a little lanflfr oui-anowfnt . abdomen,!o flf . toamaenwiwi . :�nd iince no . the oalconi5, in, unbuttoneanil the trench foot of michael patrick 13 -joel gimme caramellel the baby called. -ma stai zittol the woman shrieked, slapping its little head. then with another wave the two whisked behind the long shut.. ter of the balcony door. he'd have liked to call them back to talk to him for a little while, yet he was ashamed that they'd surprised him going about his business. something in the woman's face had been so innocent of meanness, something easy and strong in the sloppy braid of her hair about her temples. she reminded him of all the good mothers he'd ever known, who go about their childbearing and cooking and slavery with a comic abstraction and a delight in what they are doing. he knew that she loved her child. and something told him that at the very moment of her railing, she'd loved himself too. but now she'd gone back into her house. probably on the stove she had a kettle of pasta cooking, making supper for her man and the other children. anyhow she'd gone. he went back into the blaring arcade, the grilling sun, the crowds. an american parachutist lounged against one of the col­ umns, his knee arched so that a boot was off the pavement. he was chewing gum and wiping away the sweat from under his cap. this parachutist was arriving at a price agreement with a small girl in a tight blue dress. her body was skinny, on her bolero she wore officers' insignia, wings, and divisional patches. she also chewed gum. beside her stood a scabrous urchin presiding as auctioneer, screaming out a sales talk, the specifications of her charms. the parachutist had his eyes half-closed and worked lazily on his gum while he reached out for the girl's waist. he muttered slowly: -i said vieni qua. ya know it's all a crocka shit. michael patrick in passing attempted by some secret glance to show the girl that he understood and apologized. but she spat her gum on his shoes. he blushed and entered a little shop where rows of bottles stood like soldiers at attention. he knew very well what he could buy here-benevento alcohol at five hundred lire a bottle. it carried labels of scotch, cognac, and gin, but it was all the same stuff with different flavoring. you weren't supposed to buy it because it went to your liver or to your eyes. but it did hit you with a hard bright drunkenness, and that was what he was seeking. he came out of the shop with the bottle propped like a ramrod inside his trousers. it couldn't fall to the ground because, his pants were tucked into the tops of his boots. he went back to the courtyard with the fountain and sat down on the rim. perhaps the woman who had called out the friendlj 14 the gallery lambasting might appear again. but most of all he wanted to get the sun out of his eyes. sprawled along the lip of the fountain, he wondered whether he should pull out his bottle and taste it. he put his head between his thighs. almost at once a dark heaviness passed over him like a wing, and he fell asleep. no dreams visited him: he blacked out for an hour or so. often when he tried to sleep sober, he'd hear the shriek and thud of artillery or screaming and lamenting that seemed to seep up from a rocking earth. but this was a sleep of negation in which he ceased to be for a while. on the line sleep had been the one pleas­ ure he'd had to look forward to. he twitched up suddenly with the beginnings of a sick head­ ache. the tedeschi watch told him it was time. his chin had been scraping the blue infantry badge above his heart. he got up and dragged along with a new sort of limp, for the bottle stiffened his right knee. he barged across the arcade wi th his head down, in that same feeling of apprehension when he'd crossed the new york streets with a hangover, the feeling of a frightful doom suspended over his head. there was a portico running along the outside of the san carlo theater. there was also a traffic island and a green-lighted pro sta­ tion. the opera crowd reached in a queue out of sight, except for a few who waited for their opera guests outside the arches. or those who were more than usually lonely waited here to invite or to be invi ted inside. michael patrick managed to get across from the arcade in blind lunges that carried him to the doors of the san carlo. at first he thought he'd give away his extra ticket to somebody in the wait­ ing line, but instead he ran up the stairway and shoved his ticket at one of the neapolitans. they wore dirty powdered wigs, brocade crimson coats, knee breeches and stained white stockings. as his ticket was torn in half, he laughed and looked down at the splayed pumps of the ticket taker. -trade ya my boots, he said a little thickly, and watched the bowing flunky bounce back from the impact of his own vermouthy breath. michael patrick climbed to his box in the sixth tier at the right-hand corner of the proscenium arch. there was no one else in this palco. the box door was unlocked by yet another character in eighteenth-century costume. michael patrick dug out a tip of one hundred lire and settled himself in a high-backed poltrona by the railing of his box. he could look straight down into the (0 rol �our or �o, oi� hm and tuua �i en, to �ep u� rr�m lion in wnltn!1 been the one ritl) e arcaae to oli�q carlo, at �t oe �viniliewai!, , wo\'ea hil tjch! d; lxlwgerea m�j 'n white !toclin�, 100 ked gown �t we itth tier at wi e was no one fl� another charactb �ug out a tip �i backed poluod! down into the the trenchfoot of michael patrick 15 orchestra pit, where sweating gossiping men and women were tun­ ing up or chaffing their friends who had dropped in casually on them in the pit. the san carlo orchestra pit was as friendly and communal as a bomb shelter. over the burr of the oboe and the running scales of the strings, the players and their guests chat­ tered and fanned themselves with the evening newspaper. looking again with relief to see that there wasn't anybody else besides himself in the box, michael patrick loosened his belt and extracted the bottle of cognac from his trouser leg. as he took his first swig, all the lights in the theater blinked out. red glows ap­ peared over the exits. the flutter and movement in the house abated, giving way to a noisy shushing by the audience. only the orchestra in their cellar gave off a nimbus of phosphorescence; the footlights stained the velvet curtain as rich and dark as blood. michael patrick gasped with delight and leaned far out over the barrier of his box. a tired old man, a turkey wearing a frock coat, came into the orchestra pit from under the stage. he groped his way among the crowded music desks until his grizzled skull jutted over the podium and the wall of the pit. a hand reached out of the prompter's box and diddled with a mirror. for a while the old neapolitan talked to the orchestra, dispensing wisdom and sadness to them like a dutch uncle. he seemed intolerably weary, sternly kind. then he lifted his stick and the trombones blatted out a hectic and cynical phrase. the strings muttered and swayed, and the cur­ tain went up on a skylighted garret overlooking the frozen roofs of paris. like a child michael patrick peered and listened to the persiflage of the painter with green smock and easel and the writer who burned his manuscripts to keep warm. he heard the tenor and the violins in unison lift and drop in long tender melodies that were both sad and gay. sometimes michael patrick would raise his bottle to his lips, never taking his eyes or his ears from that sweet world on the stage. there was a rap on the door of the garret. -chi e hi? -scusi. -una donna! he watched the violins plug on their mutes. the old maestro concertante leaned over them cajolingly. an aching perfumed strain rose in the darkness till michael patrick felt his heart begin to ache with a wild wistfulness. a shy little seamstress came onto the 16 th e gallery stage carrying a lighted candle. at this moment michael patrick ceased to be anywhere particular in this world, least of all in naples of august, 1944. he was happy. what was there here in the sweetness of this reality that he'd missed out on in america? he'd opened a door into a world tilat had nothing to do with merchandising and selling, with the trapped four-four beat of boogie-woogie, with naked girls shaking their navels through cigar smoke on a runway, with nervous old ladies totting up their insurance, with the fact that he wouldn't live to be twenty-eight, with the gum-beatings of topkicks, with the smell of a world like a slaughterhouse, with groping and misunderstanding and cruelty. he felt himself inundated with the loveliness that men seek in a woman's arms, that old nuns sense on their deathrilbeds. he saw for the first time in his life that the things which d� keep the world going are not to be bought or sold, that every iflower grows out of decay, that for all the mud and grief there are nl precious things which make it worth while for us to leave our mothers' wombs-if someone shows us these priceless things. be­ fore and after this truth, he saw, there's nothing, nothing at all.... -0 soave fanciulia! . . . his body was racked with a delight from outside himself. and when the lights came up again at the end of the first act, he fell from his paradise. the applause, the simpering curtain calls had nothing to do with what he'd felt-for the first time to be ab­ stracted from his own sweating tired body, from a regimen that tormented him because it had no meaning he could decipher. so he retired sulkily to the rear of the box, sat on the floor out of range of the theater lights and the chatter of the audience, and drank slowly and methodically. there were no odds in walking down to the foyer and making a pretense at a social promenade. besides he was pretty drunk. near the close of the third act of la boheme michael patrick had emptied his cognac bottle. it lay by his boots like a spentrifle. he leaned heavily on the barrier and stared out at the stage. he couldn't see too distinctly now, but the music and the voices carne up to him in a vortex that carried him along in its conical eye. his sight was blinking and bloodshot. -se vuoi ... se vuoi serbarla per ricordo d'amore, addie, addio ... senza rancor ... he laid his head on the plush railing by his arms. his tears fell on his knees. he wept very quietly but at length. it was okay to ·tea\lt� that n111 mto a worlq wit :w\tbthetrar� lth shakin� tn1! nenou! 010 laoio �e 'oulonlt livlm , , \litn ilif im1� a d misunaml��, . ilie 10\,fline� ilili on tofu qla�' the tnin� wnirn sold, tnatmn and �e!tnfrli1f u' to lem �m 'cele tnin�,�, nothjn� at ail" the trench foot of michael patrick 17 cry because he knew with clarity and brilliance exactly why he was crying. for his own ruined life, for the lives of millions of others like him, whom no one had heard of or thought about. for all the sick wretchedness of a world that no one could, or tried to, understand. for all who passed their stupid little lives in the middle of a huge myth and delusion. at the end of the opera michael patrick felt and reeled his way down the five flights of stairs. he leaned bemused and lost in the portico of the san carlo till the shrill crowds had gone away. the moon was out above vesuvius. the bay shimmered out toward torre annunziata and salerno. the night still had the hot heavi­ ness of the daylight hours. naples was a murmur of sound, the river-rushing of people fleeing and seeking and pretending and betraying. then he noticed a girl with a birthmark standing close beside him. her hands were folded under her breasts. she seemed in­ tensely aware of him. there was a red flower in her hair, and she smiled at him as though she beckoned across some unbridgeable distance. he was too drunk to string ideas together, but it was perfectly clear what they must do, and each understood it in a kind of mute joy. he took her arm, warm and almost weightless in its cotton sleeve. he led her into the arcade and to that quiet fountain place where he'd slept this afternoon. he placed her against a wall out of tlje moonlight. he kissed her hands and her throat and the mauve birthmark on her cheek, pressing himself gently against her. his fingers went through her hair the way chil­ dren wander in a dark forest, numb and crying and lost. -oh i think i love you he said. their tears mingled; he felt she was nodding her head. (casablanca) first promenade i remember the smell of the air in casa, a potion of red clay and the dung of camels. that was the way the ayrabs stank too. a liberty ship in convoy brought me to casa from camp patrick henry, virginia. in the nineteen days of crossing the atlantic, i remember that something happened to me inside. i didn't know what adjustment to make for where i was going, but i think i died as an american. i'd climbed the gangplank with some of that feel­ ing of adventure with which all soldiers go overseas. all the pacifist propaganda of the twenties and thirties couldn't quite smother that dramatic mood of well-here-we-go-again-off-to-the-wars. i remember the endless foul nights below deck, with the hatches battened, and the clunk of the depth charges, and the merchant marine eating like kings and sneering at us and our spam-twice-a­ day. we gi's were like pigs in the hold, bunks five-high to the block, latrines swilling and overflowing, and vomit or crap games on the tarpaulin-sheathed floor where we huddled. the sergeant was on the bottom tier, one inch off the floor, with his nose jutting into the rear end of the joe sleeping above him. the pfc was on the top, trying to sleep with his face against a ventilator. and everywhere a litter of barracks bags and m-i's, with every man making up deficiencies in his equipment at the expense of his neighbors. it was the first time i'd seen american soldiers stealing from one another. there were three hundred of us in that hold, looking down one another's windpipes. we lived off one another like lice. i'd believed that americans liked to give one another elbow room, except in subways. i remember the enforced calisthenics on the deck of the liberty ship, the drill with the mae wests, the walking guard on deck 18 tw meoliliatf�l· ,�l me�aon!t , 't �uite imoilicr -w.mo4fl. itfi me natffi� ., tfie rnmnddt u pam·twirn· .. ·re·hi�n to tnl i or crar �m6 1 me ler�eant 'm fii' nole juttin! irn. the pic wal�n rcntilator. anij ," with everr man lh'e ex�me ol.n� 11 lojdiers !teallfii f us in that nol� off one anowff ire one anowff of the liberti guard on deck (casablanca) 19 lest neptune should arise from the waves and goose the ship with his trident, the crap game that ran night and day throughout the voyage, the listening to the ship's guns spit out practice tracers. there were nurses and red cross girls and state department secretaries on the boat deck, which was off limits to us. they took sun baths and dallied with the officers and screeched when the depth charges detonated. if a starboard wind blew it my way, i heard their laughter, stylized like a sound track for bobby-soxers. i remember the harbor of casa at 0700 hours. at first when i saw the cranes and the berths, i thought it was all a joke, and that we were really still at hampton roads. it took all day to disembark us replacements because the cargo security officer couldn't find a case of coca-cola and was worried about his date with a casablancaise that evening. he had the one-up-on-you wisdom of one who's already been overseas, and he peddled his wisdom to us gratis: -1 tell ya, french gals can teach the american ones a trick or two. we got two days' supply of c-rations, and we carried our m-i's and a-bags onto the soil of north africa. the smell i'd sniffed out in the channel was now strong, like the tart sweatiness under the wing of a dying chicken. and the ayrabs stood around our two-and-a-half-ton truck. they were wearing gi mattress covers. they held out their hands, smiling as cagily as poor relations. they had white teeth and red fezzes. we tried to buy some of those ayrab chapeaux. i remember the place de france and the boulevard de la gare and the billboards of publi-maroc. there was a secret yellow bell tower i'd seen as photomontage for humphrey bogart. and the long cool hotel de ville in the place lyautey, near palm trees, fountains, and an mp motor pool. however they might deal with the ayrabs, the french had hit on a colonial architecture that seemed to grow naturally out of the pink soil of morocco. there were stained stucco walls around the two medinas, all of which were off limits to us. why is it called casablanca? because for all the smell there's a ghostly linen brilliance about the buildings clustered on their terraced levels. this white city is best seen at noon or sunset. i knew that 1 couldn't be anyplace else but in africa. there's something festering here, something hermetically sealed. with the exception of the indigenous ayrabs, all caucasians here seem to be corpse intruders, animated by a squeaking desire to be somewhere 20 the gallery else. the restlessness of casablanca is of the damned. it's a place where all the tortures of the twentieth century meet and snicker at one another, like ayrab women under their veils marketing in the suk. -what i mean to say is, i'm going to start chasing some of this french stuff tonight. -and i'm plenty pissed off at miss lucy stout, who taught third-year french at coolidge high. ya need more than a bong­ swahr in this town. -jaime le jambon quand il est bon. i think it was at casablanca that the bottom dropped out of my personality. americans profess to a neatness of soul because their country is protestant, spacious, and leery of abstracts. now i'm an american uprooted. i'm in a foreign land where i must use a ration card, where there's no relation between the money in circula­ tion and the goods to buy with it. this was the only way i could explain to myself the looks i got from the french and the ayrabs. that housewife who protested she was born in lyon was thinkingabout the difference between my lunch and hers. that foxy old ayrab selling leather wallets knew i was almost as rich as the card. that splayfooted garcon who brought me biere la cigogne, tasting like straw soup, wondered whether he might have sniped at me in fedhala on november 8, 1942. for the first time i saw the cancer of the world outside of the united states, where we putnice sterile bandages over any open sores, and signs of men work­ ing by sewers. i remember that a truck carried us to a staging area outside casa. around this camp was barbed wire to keep us and the ayrabs on our respective sides. but such arrangements never work, because of the x factor of human curiosity. vas, ya're repple-depple boys now. ya'il get to know these sandy tents so well. beds made of planks and chicken wire. ten percent pass quota. rushes to the pro station. details we dream up just to keepya out of mischief.... and don't ya dare try to write ya mom about ya sorrows. that's what the army has censorship for ...•the slip of a lip may sink a ship, but the slip of ya pen may upsetthe congress of the united states. i remember the old man of our repple-depple. he was a major.once he'd been a lieutenant colonel. we heard that at salerno he got the idea of marching his battalion in parade formation up thebeach. the battalion didn't exist any more, and neither did his lieutenant-colonelcy. so now he toughened up infantry replace. ev with trouo hole! maio �oint at wire f name, !�ru ng some o!t� (casablanca) 21 ments. he used to walk all over camp waving his stock and wearing his campaign ribbons. he loved to make inspections. he always wore leggins. sometimes he carried a bull's pizzle to beat the ayrabs with. and at all hours his voice came over his personal public-address system, through the whirling sand and the flapping lonely tents: -men, i know what war is ... you don't ... yet.... evenings he might be seen at the automobile club in casa with a french wac officer built like danielle darieux. but he had trouble with the parachutists in our repple-depple. they'd shoot holes in their tents when they couldn't get out on pass. then our major would drive through the areas in a jeep, with a tommy gun pointed out of his sound truck. at midnight the parachutists would take off under the barbed wire for casa, for at reveille everybody answered to everybody else's name. in repple-depples the noncoms were only acting, with bras­ sards pinned sheepishly to their arms. even our first sergeants were only casuals themselves-privates. so they couldn't chew us out too much because we'd get them later at the bar montmartre or at the select or at pepita's, and we'd fix them up with marie the pig, who was malade. i remember that at casablanca it dawned on me that maybe i'd come overseas to die. thus i was put for the first time in my life against a wall which i couldn't explain away by the logic of main street or the weltanschauung of samuel goldwyn. i'd read of the sickness of europe and shrugged my shoulders-oh those furreners. it didn't occur to me that they were members of the human race. only americans were. and 1 remember finding myself potentially expendable accord­ ing to the rules of land warfare, trapped in a war which (i said) was none of my making. so i began to think of my life with the tenderness of a great artist. i clasped myself fondly to myself. i retreated into my own private world with the scream of a spinster when she sees a mouse. and i remember that i saw the precious­ ness of the gift of my life, a crystal of green lymph, fragile and ephemeral. that's all i am, but how no-accounting everything else is, in juxtaposition to the idea of me! what does anything else matter? the world ceases to exist when 1 go out of it, and i have no one's assurance but my own for the reality of anything. those who were machine-gunned in 1918-it's the same as though they had never been. i remember that i began to think these things in casablanca, 22 th e gallery � litt though i didn't utter them. therefore in a sense i went mad. those who brood on death in wartime find that every pattern of life shrivels up. decency becomes simply a window-shade game to fool the neighbors,. honor a tremolo stop on a hammond organ, and courage simply your last hypocrisy with yoursel£-a keeping up with the joneses, even in a foxhole. oh my sweet life, my lovely life, my youth-all destined for a bullet.... perhaps it were better if my mother hadn't borne me. i wondered whether my father really wanted children, or was feeling sorry for himself after a rough day at the office. i remember in casa going to the gare on mp duty from the repple-depple to see that some of our joes got loaded on the forty­ by-eights-forty hommes and eight chevaux. they were going to oran, then to algiers, then to italy. we'd heard that general pat­ ton had gi's walking about in the algiers summer in od's and neckties. even the french could tell what was cooking. -forty american men in a boxcar, like cattle. wish i had my camera. the american people ought to know about this. wish i could write my congressman. -they look like the french foreign legion. -are your canteens full, men? -the ayra bs sell vin rouge all along the route. -and buy the shirt offn your back. -this is an outrage to american manhood. -americans are dying in italy right now. the american people know that, don't they? -yes, but do they care as long as we preserve their standard of living for a few more years? d'ya think they give one healthy you-know-what when they get up in the morning? -see the chaplain. . . . o my life, my green ignorant dreaming life! i said so long to them as the forty-by-eights left the gare at casa. and when i remembered that soon it would be my turn to go to oran, i didn't go back to the repple-depple, even though my pass said i should. we kept on our mp brassards, and bigtimed it through casablanca in our leggins. the bars didn't open till 1700 hours. so we went to the vox theater, which the red cross was operating, and saw a movie in technicolor. it was all about the glory of the army air forces, those same ones who at the repple-depple bitched about the calisthenics and the sleeping on chicken wire. i remember waiting for it to get dark in casa because as an .american i'd all sorts of ideas about the romance of evening. i keepi -i anal -a lo�eth rno ilieir �wa)! france onema oe �u� ijterno but [lifd to �ow n �ouuh mr �all and di�m�o it ( open till 1)00 red cro� �� about the �lo� jepplejeprl� chicken wrr�, ecause as an f evening. i (casablanca) wanted a girl, but it was the american code to pick them up in twos, with your buddy. from high school on i'd doubledated. going steady and gettin a little lovin weren't private affairs, because they were done in parked cars. i couldn't understand how a french sailor, and cold sober too, could walk up to a girl by herself, talk to her, and take her arm. no sense of shame at all. french love and all that. i thought that love, till you got married, was a business of foursomes. otherwise it seemed something rather sneaky. you were expected to kid back and forth at some bathing beach or roller­ drome. eventually you reached over somewhat sheepishly and the foursome broke up into two twosomes. -nossir, no thin in the world like american wimmin. maybe a little independent, but then ya can't spend all ya time in bed. -i never did understand those lysol ads and all that talk about keepin yaself dainty. -i knew a polish beast once. she loved it. -french girls do things that no decent american woman would. -a chaplain once explained to me the difference between love and lust. but i can't remember exactly what he told me. -all i know is, boy, when you're in love, everything you do together seems beautiful. ... those casablancaises-it wasn't hard to get myself invited to their homes if i came armed with half my px rations. maman always claimed she wasn't born in north africa, but of course france after june, 1940, wasn't fit to live in. her girls went to the cinema and to bicycle club and to dancing school. they loved to be taught american songs by rote. that was one way to kill an afternoon. they liked to be called jackie. but i remember that the surer bets were in the bars. there the widows of french officers sipped creme de menthe. not a one that didn't claim mon mari had been killed in tunisie; not a one whose rank had ever been lower than commandant. -je suis seule ce soir avec mes reves.... i remember how the fetid fragrance of casablanca let up in the evenings. the oleanders' came out with the bats. there was a hum and clatter from the new and old medinas. little ayrabs ceased their operating and promoting. the sound of donkeys wheezing and snorting and stalling died with their clopclopping in the streets, then i knew that i was far, far from the states, and that nothing i had brought wi th me of my own personal universe would make casa anything other than casablanca, a hinterland of secrecy, 23 24 the gallery where german submarine captains came ashore in civvies and drank {by my elbow in bars. i remember that i first knew loneliness in casablanca, the i loneliness that engenders quietism. i was stripped of distractions and competitions since i no longer was a citizen of my own hermetical country, with ideas on progress, better homes, and'� sanitation. these thoughts often assailed me on the benches in the pare lyautey after sunset. my loneliness was that of a drunken old man sitting in a grotto and looking out on an icy sea at world's end. then, sinking away under a weight of time, j'd be con­ strained to draw down the head of her on the bench beside me. i'd kiss her in an attempt to focus all my longing and my uneasiness. -demain sans doute il fera beau, et apres-demain, et la semaine prochaine. -l'ombre s'enfuit.... through her hair i counted the spines of barbed wire in the enclosure of the tank park. there the french kept old tanks lined up for a surprise review by general de gaulle. along with the barren names of cazes and mogador and mazagani remember birdlike ones, henriette and marie and suzanne and a chorus of others who rode their bicycles by me on saturday afternoons and made me teach them to jitterbug. they were almost like pretty boys, those casablancaises. they had the pinched bril­ liance of old paupers' garments, lovingly mended and darned. -darling, they said, il faut gernir quand nous faisons l'amour. et. la prochaine fois je te prie de rn'apporter "un peu de cbewing gmn. i remember casa. . .• "\\\\\11 � �ne' lower arart (ime wa! �o mlte!t toe 0 to wea notlo tried t laue toroug mmed. nearoh tile rno �ome of work in ana tne second portrait louella her permanent was always a wreck in naples. it was hard to retain either her dignity or her crispness in the simple act of walking along via roma. she'd arise every morning with just a soup�on of hangover and lower herself tenderly into the fat green fascist bathtub in her apartment. there she'd float among the perfumed suds till her head cleared and she could think lovely thoughts of all the good she was going to do that day. (first she'd put on her blue uniform of sveltest cut, stroking the red cross patch on her left shoulder. the other girls allowed themselves to get wilted during the day, to wear junky jewelry and divisional patches on their lapels. but not louella. she was proud of her volunteer status, and she always tried to conduct herself the wayan american officer should.) louella lay in her bathtub. a line of emily dickinson's sang through her head: success is counted sweetest by those who least succeed.... actually it hadn't much to do with the sultriness of a neapolitan morning, but it gave her a lift. in her work, keeping up the morale of american gi's and officers, she had to be vital. some of the other girls weren't. they'd done too much settlement work in hartford slums; they'd come overseas with too starry eyes; and they'd collapse into vassar cynicism when some lonely lieu­ tenant colonel tried to make them in a jeep. louella maintained that her sort were like the pioneer women in covered wagons who followed their men into the west. names like naney hanks, ann rutledge, and jane addams came to her mind. thus at thirty­ nine she'd learned a secret most american women were in danger of forgetting: war strips everyone down to their (his or her) essen­ tials. louella was fighting her own private war in naples-just being a woman. perhaps she'd never be a great one because she 25 26 the gallery had too much heart and let people walk all over her. but naples was her battlefield, and her american red cross uniform made her a modern jeanne d'arc with a smile and a coo for all comers. louella's apartment had belonged to a fascist lawyer before amg stuck him in the internee camp at padula. he must have been very vain, like all italian men, because he'd fastened a mirror over the bathtub. louella looked up from her ablutions and smiled at herself. she'd been told she looked like billie burke in 1900. it was true. the dark gold hair she spent so much time keeping crisp,the too generous mouth, the slightly querulous chin. the circles under her pale blue eyes were deeper this morning. louella wanted so much to go on the wagon, but then that would diminish her effectiveness as a morale factor. after all, when some poor flier came up from foggia to see her, she couldn't very well ask him to see the town on lemonade. and she knew perfectly well that those little half-moons under her eyes were because she couldn't sleep, worrying about the state of the world. she'd made airplane drivers her especial province. they were so pitifully young and lost, lemon-haired kids of twenty-four. and they seemed to be grateful for the stabilizing influence of a maturer woman. younger girls would have abandoned themselves to mad fun on equal terms with fliers,' but louella instead played the part of one of those eighteenth-century women (just past the first flush) who held brilliant salons and had a profoundly moral influence on the young men who sat at their feet. she knew, with pardon­ able pride, that she was fulfilling a function unique in the red cross. an american woman is a symbol in the mind of any ameri­ can soldier in italy, but an american woman divorced of all selfish aims was unique in naples of august, 1944. when she first came to naples, she'd tried to interest herself in the gi's because she felt it was her duty to do so. she'd read that they were the underprivileged, the proletariat of a democratic army. but somehow she couldn't quite get to the gi's. all they wanted was to hold hands and talk about nothing. so gradually a conviction was born in louella (which she never whispered to her dearest friends) that, though they were good kids and all that, the gi's were just a little ... vulgar. perhaps god had intended her for something, well, on a little higher level. and then the officers were much lonelier because their commissions had put them into unnaturally exalted positions. wasn't she perhaps helping those who were the worst off? gi's have buddies and signorinas all over the place, but most american officers are isolated and sensitive. [om ti reo� tnirtlwnol cn�in �nor� ever i mini! atho unuml o[ the '001te1curren flow en were f ovme wnich intoth !newal th�e 0 the iv war in without in� out at the dor!sil were dr wonderl �tn pi louella 27 which reminded her of that ineffable line: 1£ i can stop one heart from breaking.... the war had been the consummation of louella's life. like most people who are a teensy bit out of the ordinary, she'd waited thirty-nine years for something into which she could throw herself wholly. she liked to compare her life up to now to a high-powered engine wasted in lifting matches. and now (changing the meta­ phor) she was living in the most sorrowful time the world had ever seen, a time to sink her teeth into. she'd started her public ministry by having officers to her lovely home in cambridge, giv­ ing them those little snacks they couldn't get at fort devens. the way they'd smiled at her during her candlelight suppers had given her a priestesslike ecstasy of sacrifice and service. she was forgetting herself in the sorrows of others, than which there is no more cathartic annihilation of self. but gradually the type of officer who came to her sunday evenings at home began to give her qualms. she'd always been a woman of unusual sensibilities, and she smelled something phony. instead of the gallant second lieutenants who used to come around for her lobster salad, who had high ideas and talked vital things till electric currents chased up and down her spine, she'd observed that she was now entertaining rather smug older officers with big rear ends. they were forever talking about how they'd give their eyeteeth to get overseas, but they never seemed to go. they cursed the pentagon, which (they said) had emasculated old warhorses like themselves into the chairborne infantry. now louella, whatever her faults (and she was by no means perfect), wasn't exactly slow. she decided that these officers were cowards who were making a good thing out of the war. they had all the protected prestige of the uniform and none of its trials. in fact, they were having the time of their lives in the foxholes of the i st service command, drawing per diem, eating c-rations at the copley plaza. and all the while they cursed draft dodgers and strikers and criticized the slow conduct of the war in north africa. she got so that she couldn't look at them without that nausea that visits women of scruple. they were noth­ ing but thugs got up like an arrow collar ad. she'd close her eyes at the head of her buffet, clutch her napkin, and think that the boys she could serve weren't in the united states any more. they were dying in africa and looking at the dirty arab women and wondering if everybody had forgotten them. louella felt faint with pity. 28 the gallery so she'd joined the red cross as a volunteer, with the stipulationthat they send her overseas immediately. louella got out of her tub, dried herself, and stepped into her immaculate uniform. dry cleaning in naples was unpredictable,but they loved her so at the qm laundry that she got priorities on all her garments. she'd pointed out to the officer in charge that, whereas a negro truck driver didn't have to bother about his ap­ pearance, it was her stock in trade. he'd agreed with her feelinglybecause he came from alabama. she decided to look in on her roommate ginny, a pitiful little thing from detroit. it was ginny's job in the red cross to serve coffee and doughnuts to all airplanes landing wounded at capo­dichino. the shutters weren't down in ginny's room. the implacable light of naples streamed in. sandfiies made a dancing nimbus before, the open window. louella guessed that ginny had probably got drunk when she'd come off duty at the airport, had pouredherself into bed, and was now in the troubled sleep of a hangover. ginny lay under her mosquito netting, her hair over her face. tears lay in the pools under her eyes. that was just like ginny, to go out and get tight, give herself to some gi she felt sorry for, then come home and cry her silly little eyes out. for a long time louella had wanted to have a good taking down of hair with her roommate, but ginny'd always shied away from woman-to-woman confidences. perhaps she'd been scared by a big nigger while doing settlement work. louella stood at the head of ginny's bed, aware of how trim and spruce she herself looked, while that dizzy little thing lay there with her tears leaving gashes in what rouge she hadn't washed off. -morning, stinky, ginny said, reaching for the handkerchief beside her cigarettes on the night table. -rullo, darling. did you pour coffee for your basket cases at the airport last night? then did you meet some strapping staff sergeant and go off and get tight with him? -i wasn't drunk, ginny said. she lit a cigarette and offered louella one, which was gracefullydeclined. louella never wanted her roommate to feel she had to be nice to her. after all, she'd made the first overtures, which ginnyhad repulsed in the most peasant manner. but ginny began to cry in earnest now, puffing on her cigarette and sobbing in a manner that reminded louella of italian opera. -i'm about due for a section eight, ginny said. 1£ i can get one th' th ana s mild men it ju r1ane on so jmt they ther' ana t not a alter tnere -t seems !uffer those oon't oored iliani cross, -w firstt with a -n in her �tepped into � 'as unpredicta�1 he, got prion� cer in char�� � h�r about db t \\lth her!�l� louella 29 one from the red cross. stinky, i can't stand it much longer . those poor little bastards. flown in from the evac hospitals . they've got legs off . . . arms off . . . wounds all over them. . . . and they just lie there on the stretchers and grin at you. . . . i've never seen such eyes.... i try to pour the coffee, but my hands get shaky, like i had d.t.'s ... and i haven't. i don't drink as much as you do, stinky. -some girls can hold it better than others, louella said softly. she was of the opinion that a reproof can be delivered in the mildest tone. that was part of the tradition of a great lady. but then anything subtle would be wasted on ginny. -god, i'm not soft, ginny said, her sobs strangling off. but it just knocks hell out of me, stinky, what i see on those hospital planes. i'd settle for an assignment in rome, giving instructions on shopping tours from behind a counter.... this is something i just don't understand. they're so good, those kids. what harm did they ever do? and they lie there, terribly, terribly hurt. and if they're able to talk, all they want is to discuss upst.ate new york and the crops and their mothers and their girls. such sweet faces . . . not at all bitter ... american men are so good-looking. -american men, louella said, have understood very little about the world in which they live. they're new to anguish. europeans have already lived with it. europeans are concerned simply with existing. americans have always had enough and to spare..... naturally americans are baffled by combat. it doesn't have much to do with the stock market ticker and that dash for the eight-ten after kissing your wife. . . . but they'll get over it after a time. there have been wars before, and men have recovered from them. -that's not my point, stinky, ginny said. the whole business. seems so wrong ... so fiendish. no human beings should have to. suffer the way those kids do. life itself is so natural and so good. those kids love life as much as you and i . . . more maybe . . . i don't know why you came overseas, stinky. i did because i was bored in the states. well, i'm not bored any more. i bit off more than i could chew. now i understand how jesus christ felt on the cross ... -watch that talk, louella said, tapping her foot clinically. first thing you know, you'll be in the nut ward of the forty-fifth with a messiah complex. -no danger, ginny said, squashing out her cigarette and tucking in her mosquito netting. i'm a toug-h nut, stinky. i don't cry much. 30 the gallery admir the �he p the h difficull !he put air fore alon�, !he'd 10 neapoli louella' me itali befor cro��ing 00 in m of aug finally dartime �he'd al aao�s ili there and i don't know what it is to feel sorry for myself.... but i'm trou bled . . . terribly troubled. -you probably gab and think too much while you're serving your coffee and doughnuts. wounded men like quiet. just smile, squeeze their hands, and pass on. and are you quite sure you don't permit greater familiarities? -if it would help them any, ginny said, raising her voice, i'd let them put their hands inside my blouse. some of them try to, you know. and if anyone who isn't out cold wants to kiss me, why, i let him. wouldn't you? -dear, it's possible to excite wounded soldiers more than you help them. ginny sank back on her pillow and looked through the netting at the ceiling. she'd stopped crying now, and her sleepless little face looked like rice pudding fallen on a dirty floor. -go away, stinky. we don't see eye to eye. what the hell do you think you're doing in naples, anyhow? -each has her own ideas of service, darling, louella said, turn­ ing. and at the last judgment we'll all get a chance to state our cases. . . . don't presume to judge other human beings, dear. i myself have frequently been mistaken. get some sleep. with a sigh she went around the room picking up ginny's slipand bra and uniform that seemed to have been stripped off her by a cyclone. she put them neatly on a chair and shut down the blinds. at her approach the sandflies broke apart from their cloud. the hum of naples reigned in the now shadowed room. ginnyturned over on her face and entombed her cheek in the crook of her arm. she had a wispy little body and skinny shoulders. she ap­ pealed to the gi's the way a signorina does on via roma-a certain one-night-stand air about her, a certain shrillness in her voice that chimed in with the stridency of wartime naples in august, 1944. louella was big enough to pity ginny. others would have slapped her face and told her to go back to where she be­ longed. but louella'd learned something of frailty and charity. ittook all kinds, even though the saying was a desperate cliche.the vein in her left temple was throbbing when she let herself out of her apartment. ginny's selfish tirade had got her worked upa little. that was one of louella's major faults, that she was more sensitive to situations than they demanded. she always tried todescend to other people's levels instead of insisting that they meether on her own. it was an exhausting philosophy of life, but she had an inkling that, after she'd left them, people gave vent to an !he �aw of the ie little max tne two �i ana mardi crom cony nan fright turope, �n fmingthe �he ente !ne woul� knew how winter, b ne!!, re annex, e �he eli her voice, l'� o[ them trv to to kill me, ;i'fl): more tnan/ou �(e to itate out l:t;nsi, dear. i . p. u� ginn)") ilil rirredoffhel �ut down (nl milieirdoua re rent to � louella 31 admiration and a veneration they never dared show to her face. the italian elevator carried her dubiously down into the cortile. she pulled down her blouse and marched out into piazza carita. the heat at nine in the morning was like a club in her face; she had difficulty breathing. in spite of her feeling of incipient suffocation she put on her bravest smile. it was this smile which some of the air force had called a violet floating in a tornado. louella strode along. she carried her head and its blue overseas cap like a filly she'd loved and ridden as a child. there was a spring in her step. neapolitan women turned and looked at her. this had been one of louella's few gratifications in naples, that homage paid her by the italian women. before crossing piazza carita louella had to wait a moment. crossing a street was about the most dramatic thing a woman can do in modern life. louella felt that to traverse a street in naples of august, 1944, was almost as heroic as crossing the volturno. finally she spotted an open space in the truck convoy that made daytime in naples one long roar. she took a long and dainty run. she'd always been fleet-footed, but this time she simply skittered across the street. there was a screech of brakes. louella thought her last moment had come. a tech five leaned out over the windshield of his jeep; there was a panicky grin on his face, and he was steadying himself against the wheel. -ya almost went to join my late aunt minnie, baby, he said. louella braced herself for a gentle but forceful reply. but then she saw the name stenciled below the windshield of the jeep. most of the legends painted on jeeps amused her-names of girls and little maxims in english, french, or italian. but this jeep bore the two simple words wet dream. so she hunched up her shoulders and marched into piazza carita. she now knew what she'd long felt from conviction-that many american men, especially the gi's, had frightful manners. she hoped they'd learn something from europe. she saw finally that she was intellectually justified in pre­ ferring the company of officers. she entered the cool corridor of the red cross annex. one thing she would say for italian architecture was that they certainly knew how to build-and to last. the palazzi were iceboxes in winter, but in summer they had solidity, coolness, and spacious­ ness. red cross girls working in naples were billeted in this annex. except louella. she climbed the stairs and entered the snack bar, which was 32 the gallery just opening its screen doors. here she always started her day with coffee and buns. she pulled down her blouse and pushed the screen ru yo door to. the room was dark and calm. at the ticket desk adriana, he the neapolitan who sold chits, sat with her usual squaw frown. her ii she was a dark hunched little thing with a soup�on of a mustache. desiri -buon giorno, adriana, louella said cheerily. coate i louella'd learned six or seven words of italian, which she truste sprinkled into her conversation like paprika. she didn't really care her, tl for the language, w'rich made her think of gooey kisses pressed and si by some greaser on the neck of his sweating mistress. and she saw she pr no good reason to learn it because the italians were a conquered the ta people. the sooner they learned the clean intricacies of english, rou cothe better for them. there was also something sinister about she italian, in which they could spit out ten words to your one and talk you down by sheer breathing power. louella had nothing against italian culture; that was fine in its place, but she didn't need to learn the language to appreciate rigoletto and look at a painting by botticelli. yet somehow it seemed to her a gracious ges­ ture to fling out a few words in his own language to every italian she met. it would remind him that noblesse oblige wasn't quite llve, itadead in the world, even if the neapolitans didn't wash regularly aulaand had far far too many children. od gi -i said buon giorno, adriana. what til the girl looked up from pressing her brown forehead. moner-good morning, mees, she said. karl m' louella smiled and walked to a near-by table. all the neapolitan universwaiters loved her. she had only to sit down and one of them would would bring her coffee and a bun. she never had to stand in line the way the officers and nurses did. and now pinuccio brought her a potsherd cup of coffee and a dry raisin bun. he'd told her he was a student at the university of naples, but of course she hadn't believed a word of it. italians were always telling her in broken umell english of what they had been and of what their army might have with shodone. she didn't see why they had to lie to her that way. pinuccio narles,had one of those long olive faces that seem already dead of weariiliwarted ness and grief. this lack of spunk was what louella loathed in italian men, especially the good-looking ones. they were much too effeminate. and they had the kind of cringing good manners of a negro, when he's afraid you'll push him off the sidewalk-which you won't if he knows his place. louella guessed the reason whyitaly'd lost the war. too much inbreeding and not the virility to support their culture. ami mi�nt�l\t lh 11l3\,riouiqi) dr deja 01 �1m u iij joatn10il li'eremucntoo mannw �[i jdell'alhnic the reason wi, ( the virijitf tl ',�, louella 33 -grazie, louella said. and cheer up, pinuccio. it's not as bad as you think it is. he left her with a look that she knew how to interpret only from her long reading of the classics. she suspected pinuccio of secretly desiring her. he had a passionate mouth and slender hands lightly coated with hair. louella knew that italian men weren't to be trusted sexually. his cankered look told her that he'd like to possess her, then put a knife between her shoulders. she shivered slightly and sipped her coffee. she wasn't at home in the arcana of love; she preferred the way american men had of laying their cards on the table. they got drunk and threw themselves all over you, and you could say either yes or no. she drank her coffee slowly, with a sense that energy for her day's catalogue of good works was beginning to flow back into her body. she watched the neapolitans mopping up the floor. they wore small mustaches, by which they attempted to ape matinee idols of twenty years ago, some in their green fatigue coveralls that they'd begged or stolen from the americans. she'd never think of the word parasite in the future without modifying it by the adjec­ tive, italian. she hardly ever saw a neapolitan on the streets with­ out american shoes. and those who weren't fully dressed had an od gi undershirt. louella laughed a little bitterly and wondered what the american taxpayers would think if they knew where their money was going. not on the backs of american soldiers. how karl marx would have loved naples in august, 1944! practically a universal distribution of the world's goods-and upon people who would bite the hand that fed them. louella sighed. she saw bearing down upon her, like a corvette with shortness of steam, the american red cross field director for naples. bessie mccloskey symbolized to louella the sort of thwarted old maid who sublimates all her repressed love urges into a passion for organization, a delight in seeing other people made miserable by bureaucracy. bessie plumped her jittering body into the chair opposite louella, adjusted her pince-nez, and began her old act of finger shaking. louella put on her most patient smile and thought to herself that bessie deserved a lecture fellowship in the cathedral of saint john the divine. -dh here you are, bessie panted. how in god's name does a 34 the gallery like la the the her and pm roo pic 51 bed. the body get hold of you? do 1 have to make an appointment with your receptionist? why don't you go to capri if you want to take a vacation? -having trouble with your asthma, darling? louella said. -asthma, hell. ... now you listen to me, louella.... your club at aversa is a shambles, a perfect shambles. if you don't want to work for the red cross, why don't you pack up and go home? -i believe you called my club a shambles? louella said with tender hauteur. perhaps you'll explain. there are lots who claim it's the prettiest little club in italy ... -through no fault of yours, my fine lady. you've got goodassistants and italians who aren't afraid of working up a sweat. ... but you don't seem to realize that red cross clubs run on pro­ grams. you can't expect american officers to entertain themselves. they're not that far civilized. you must schedule events and keep scheduling 'em till you're blue in the face. otherwise you're going to find all the air corps joes shooting crap on the front terrace, as i found them last night. -oh, spying? louella said, looking out from under her lashes. nothing was easier than to lash mccloskey into mania by need­ ling. -it's my job to spy.... and now this spy will tell you a mouthful since you're asking for it with your nonsense. you're the worst red cross worker in italy. you're using the red cross, which god knows receives criticism enough, simply for your own joy ride.you think you're running a house party here and that you caninvite your own guests.... i'm just an old hen with no illusions, but i tell you that it's immoral of you to use the red cross to play lady bountiful. as a program director it's your business and your duty to have something doing all the time at your club, specifically stated on your bulletin board, even if it's only tiddly­winks in the lounge. if you're not resourceful enough to do that, by god i'll take steps to have orders cut shipping you out of this theater. now how about it? you've really put me on the spot, i can tell you. -louder, please, louella said, pushing back her cup and rising.you've missed your vocation, darling. you'd have done better in a nunnery, shoving around a lot of tittering novices. then youcould wear a swastika on your veil and an ss brassard on yoursleeve ... -i want your answer tomorrow, mccloskey shrilled, still shakingher finger. train sleep. come' took moaes or aru was t wh alterne suosia wn,as there ana a nev thank uglln had t ft cup ana rilifi,!' e done better i� rices. then !�� tassard on row -louella 35 louella left the snack bar at a speed greater than she'd have liked. adriana at the desk looked up from counting her chits, and louella fancied that a spiteful smile crossed that muddy face-just the way italy had stabbed france in the back. louella descended the stairs around the glass elevator shaft. she felt something inside her crying, the way french poets say it does. yet she'd suffered before and probably would again. it was the lot of every extraordinary person to be misunderstood and harassed by the ordinary. the more you were capable of giving to the world, the more the world picked at you. she went back to her apartment and laid herself down on her bed. the heat of naples pressed like a vise round her head, and the coffee was making her heart pound till she could feel it in her temples. she got up, went to the bathroom, and took a dose of phenobarbital. a stout graying little major at the fifth gen­ eral dispensary had given it to her for her sleeplessness when she first came to naples. with the phenobarbital louella poured herself a glass of ver­ mouth because she never trusted neapolitan drinking water, even when it came out of the udder of a lyster bag. she knew that the sedative would soothe and relax her the way love and music did others. returning to her bed, she lay down on it fully dressed. she wished she could cry the way the other girls did, but she was incapable of feeling sorry for herself. soon she fell asleep. like most intelligent people, louella rarely dreamed. since her training in psychiatry in college no symbols ever visited her in sleep. she slept the sleep of a little girl who has nothing on her conscience. people had told her that while she was asleep her face took on an expression of incredible rapture. and louella had modestly replied with her theory that when people were asleep or drunk their souls came to sit like shy wrens on their faces. this was the only flight into fancy she'd ever permitted herself. when she awoke, her watch said three o'clock. the torpor of afternoon naples was at its peak; the hum in the city below had subsided because the latin population gets off the streets from the sun, as they did from bombardments. louella's body was drenched. there was still a slight aftertaste of the vermouth she'd swallowed, and a muted jangling in her nerves from the opiate. nevertheless the bitterness of her morning had died, and she thanked god for some vitality in her that allowed her to cast off ugliness. otherwise she'd have long ago been dead. she guessed she had that magnanimity of mind that shakespeare must have pos.. 36 the gallery sessed-the ability to come through any situation, understand it,but retain intact the integrity of her soul. what had she learned overseas? to forgive. she lifted her arms with a soft smile and lit a cigarette. she bounded out of bed, washed her face, and redid it. in naplesshe was allowing herself a brighter shade of crimson on her lipsthan she'd thought permissible at home. when in rome ... and naples wasn't so far south.... ginny had gone out, her room had been straightened up by the signorina. louella never could find out where' ginny went after sleeping, before it was time to return to the airport and serve coffee and doughnuts to the hospital planes. possibly ginny tied a ban­ danna round her head, put on sandals, and went out and leaned carelessly on via roma, pretending to be an italian girl. perhapsit was a trifle unkind, but louella had too broad a knowledge ofthe world not to see that those women who affected an unbounded love of humanity were simply disgusing an indiscriminate and in­ satiable sexual appetite. this could be the only explanation of why ginny had so many gi friends from every state in the union and from quite a few parts of the united kingdom. she'd even brought a french soldier to the apartment. it rather looked like the vast humanitarianism of mary magdalene. the signorina housemaid was still loitering around. louella knew all her tricks: she'd pretend she wanted to clean up the room. actually what she did was to help herself to louella's cigarettes,bathe in louella's bathtub with fragrant american bath salts. and possibly the signorina spied on all louella's activities, of which reports were then sent to the germans in north italy. seeing that the signorina was watching her golden pencil of lip­stick, louella took pains to hide it. then she went out. she knew full well that ten minutes after she'd locked her apartment door the signorina would be entertaining some fisherman from the bay of naples on the couch. they'd jabber at each other in dialect, laugh at the allies, hang mr. roosevelt's picture upside down, and have one another till supper time. the crowds on via roma made it seem like pushing your wayinto a haystack coming at you full tilt. louella knew that the harbor was full of lei's, that three american divisions were in rest areas around naples. everybody said that there was to be an invasion of southern france, though for military security they neverdiscussed this, except with their best friends. naples was always a ne wi �it' hal an� 1 el ing �tal bo apr yr exh the litt!, out a b cour! or ili for bloto miss i �titch fifth �h her men, ther world. about oainti �he the b with louella 37 u hin" }'our wi) new that tnf . \� ions were il rf if8s to be i! ,i(r they neva was alwarl! tense hot city, but in the past week louella'd been aware of a lull like that before a twister. though she loved the carnival movement of via roma, she never walked on it unescorted after dark because all the allied soldiery were drunk from sundown to curfew time. you got propo­ sitioned twenty times in one block or were in danger of being hauled up an alley, and the cid found your body a week later and said it was the work of black market operators. but louella preserved her entity on via roma, walking like saint elizabeth of hungary, looking neither to right nor left, but scatter­ ing hypothetical roses. she was whistled at, but she smiled under­ standingly-after all she was an american woman, and these boys were lonely. it indicated that if bessie mccloskey didn't appreciate her, there were lots who did. yet an olympian pose of via roma in august, 1944, would have exhausted katherine cornell, and louella found herself wilting by the time she'd reached the galleria umberto. she turned in at the little concrete posts and trod the pavement of the arcade. she'd always like the galleria. even if all the glass had been bombed out of it, there was something sort of darling about the place, like a baroque subway station. she'd often done the shops, though of course she'd never bought any of the crude oils of mount vesuvius or the junky jewelry that gi's bought at twenty times its value for their girls in montana. louella just doted on the horrible blotchy pillows and ottomans lettered with mother (sometimes misspelled by the neapolitan seamstress) or great vulgar samplers stitched with the red bull of the 34th division or the mosque of the fifth army. she sat down in an outdoor cafe and ordered a vermouth. near her were some gi's in combat boots, their shirts open, wearing, against their sweat, neckerchiefs studded with their divisional in­ signia. they all had their feet up on the cane chairs and were cursing and railing. they deliberately tried to look like bill mauldin cartoons. louella'd tried to understand combat infantry men, but she found them unnecessarily bitter and unappreciative. they seemed to think that they were the only ones suffering in this world. once she'd tried to talk to a second lieutenant of the 45th about the world and the times, but after groping all over her daintiness he'd subsided into his gin and passed out . she saw the seamy side of life in the galleria umberto. it was the burning glass of naples. louella sat and drank her vermouth with an adventurous little thrill, thanking her stars she'd been put 38 the gallery on earth in 1944, with cultural background to appraise all this. life, life was what she got in the galleria umberto. stimulated by the sun and the crowds around her, she ordered another vermouth and went into a sort of ecstasy. it was a delight known to oriental mystics, at which one arrives after all fear is conquered and one resigns oneself to the idea of being just a dropof human consciousness. one's heightened perceptions give one a superior detachment, and one watches the other drops with a clinical scrutiny, knowing that all this has been before and will be time and again. louella snapped out of her raptus. by her table au italian child was standing with the shy yet intense presence of one who asks alms. it was scarcely more than a baby. it was wearing what looked like a potato sack, had a wilted flower in its gummy hair, and its tiny dirty feet had already been spread from pressing the scorching pavements of naples. in its smeared fingers it extended a placard: this girl is an orphan because of allied bombardments. will you help her? now louella had social consciousness. she wasn't one of those boston old ladies who refuse to go to movies or read books which show the world as it is. she hated people who shove their noses into the sand of illusion and say that the war is none of their affair. but one had to make distinctions in one's charity. nine out of ten beggars are panhandlers. louella found it an excellent rule of thumb that the really needy are too proud ever to do what this little girl was doing. so she summoned up her sweetest smile for the little girl, returned her stare, and said: -poor, poor moppet. you see, dear, you're not old enough torealize that the allies had to bomb naples. the germans were here, and naples is a very important port. some day when you grow up, you'll see how cruel and complicated the world is, dear ... the little girl approached her placard to louella's face and began to wrench at her uniform. something like tears formed in the huge black eyes, but louella wasn't taken in by this act. not a bit. but rationalization wasn't much use. louella always ended by being guided by her heart, no matter how intellectual she tried to be. she clicked her tongue sympathetically several times, dived into her shoulder bag, and took out one lira. still the little girl remained, holding out her hand and examiningthe one-lira note speculatively. it always embarrassed louella when th wa� lu �ec stu for ch 1m itolad been with afe and �he coffee berin' one a in he !ack wich, k·rati leatter at the bright icanm -h -q �he (0 her nomic du!ines a mon (oing ameri �ta\�� all thl!, '(j, er, she ordereo it was a dell�nl after all fear b i�(t just,aurol 10m �veon1 , drop) wiili! before ana w� u ella 's fa(� w� e lear formea ill br rh� ad, �ol lla' always enaro llectual she triro 31 rimes, div�� louella the recipients of her mercy hung around. she hoped the little girl wasn't going to make a scene and start kissing her skirt or anything lurid like that. louella liked to do good works and keep them a secret between god and herself. -gimme sigaretta, said the little girl suddenly. -now, dear, really! don't try to pull that on me. you're already stunted and wizened enough as it is.... and isn't that the italians for you? they haven't got enough food, but they're scrounging chewing gum. they have no cigarettes, but every last one of them has an american lighter.... now my dear, i advise you to go back to the good nuns at the orphanage. tell them the nice american lady said to give you a good bath and put you to bed ... buona sera . . . run along now, dear. when the waif had gone, louella treated herself to another ver­ mouth. her family used to talk about how the other half lived. in naples everybody was the other half. her sympathies had been stretched like an elastic band, and she'd return to the states with a depth of understanding and a compassion that might startle a few of her friends, who were still fighting for nylon hosiery and getting up concerts for shipwrecked merchant seamen. she observed a feverish activity in the bar, behind the metal coffee machines. a cluster of neapolitans were bartering and gib­ bering and making with their hands and exchanging lire with some­ one at the center of their circle. louella stood up with her glass in her hand and saw that it was an american gi. out of his haver­ sack he took bars of palmolive, cigarettes, chewing gum, flints and wicks, lighter fluid, a fountain pen, a watch, and two boxes of k-ration. all these he sold covertly and swiftly to the italians, who scattered when his small store was exhausted. then he had a drink at the bar, counted his receipts, and left. he was a typical joe in bright combat boots, with that smooth easy way she liked in amer .. ican men. -how much'd you make? louella hailed him. -quiet for chrissakesi twelve thousand lire. she sat down with the gay laugh of a conspirator, applied herself to her vermouth, and fanned herself. yes, here in naples the eco­ nomic unbalance of the world was being evened out, and by the business acumen of the gi. this private was getting sixty dollars a month, a pitiful pittance for facing gunfire and for buying any­ thing at the frightful italian prices. and yet he had a typically american kindness: he'd seen the stark need of the italians for 39 .40 the gallery things he could buy at his px for next to nothing. it was thisspeculative free enterprise that had made america great. she madea mental note to write her wall street friends how finally she'd reecome to understand economics better than it's taught in the coltheleges. now she could be reasonably sure that there were two greatlaws at work in this world-the moral law, and the law of supply rooand demand. on hava plump neapolitan woman came sweeping around the tables gesjwith a broom such as witches ride. she wore a dress of frayedblack cotton, which by the afternoon sunlight silhouetted her preg·nancy. in her pierced ears she wore rings, and a chain with a crosshung around her doughy neck. occasionally she would spit on thepavement of the galleria to lay the dust. her shoes were clogsof roped cord which kept slipping off her ankles. she workedslowly and haphazardly; otherwise louella would have been upsetat a woman so far gone exerting herself in the brutal august sun­light. louella didn't think it very hygienic the way the woman, forall her condition, would sink grunting to her knees and pluck upthe cigarette butts under the tables. these she would consign to herpockets and continue sweeping. louella wondered if she smokedthem or sold them. she knew of the fantastic neapolitan practice meof breaking down thousands of cigarette butts into a can and sell new�ing the result as pipe tobacco. but this sweeper with the brown face and1and the knotted hair had one touching compensation in herdrudgery. as she worked she sang unembarrassedly one of those ttender neapolitan songs that are weighted with poverty and love. to ttllouella knew that great art comes out of sorrow. on this score andshe worried for america. we must guard ourselves in america, themlouella knew: when we banish poverty and disease, we must take skullpains not to banish genius too. this idea struck her as so original jumpthat she ordered another vermouth. bellsit was getting toward sunset. and in louella's drinking there stenciwas something almost persian. the poet hafiz teis us that whobombever can't drink can't love. if perhaps overseas louella drank a little chairs,too much, alcohol brought to her an outlet and an expression that usedwere perhaps the only things her nature lacked. in conversation but iishe was eloquent, and her fruition had. been reached in the very childrhuman act of being surrounded by a small coterie, exchanging technistimulating ideas with them over full glasses in which the ice the aichimed a punctuation to her conversation pieces. that was of airlouella's world, and she knew that out of such worlds of people task, a '. drjnijn� t�cre el us that w!� ull1lj drank a lit�1 n e,\pre5sion wit . in con\'enau�� ched in the rl� ie. exchan�nj li'hich the 1(1 c', that l\'� or/dj of peopl� louella 41 getting together and drinking and talking every worth-while thing had been born. she hadn't much patience with the lonely and recondite spirits who pretend to rare gifts in order to camouflage their essential inability to get along with the rest of the human race. two figures bore down on louella, slicing across the orange motes that make sunset in the galleria a flood of orange dust. one was an old violinist with only sockets where his eyes should have been. his body was sheathed in unclean pitted flesh, sug­ gesting that his youth hadn't been circumspect, or that he belonged on molokai. he was guided by a boy in shorts and sandals. the son had a mysterious dark beauty that made louella uneasy, since she felt that no man had the right to look that way. beauty in men is only embarrassing. the music of the blind violinist was frightful to louella's ear. children who stretch a catgut string across a cigar box get better results. louella found gross fraud in anyone's attempting to fob such dreadful sounds off on the public, preying on its sympathies because he couldn't see. she tried to keep from shuddering as the scrawny scarecrow leered at her from out of its empty caverns, and as a special tribute scratched out stardust. she felt herself in the presence of something obscene, at the revels of a kobold and a pixie. her stomach turned, and she was about to rise from the wicker table and leave her vermouth when two newcomers slumped at her table. they waved away the blind fiddler and his son, who started to pass a plate. they threw fifty lire into it. -via! the musician padded off led by his boy, and louella turned to thank her new companions. they were both airplane drivers, and they smiled at her a little drunkenly because the setting sun hit them square in the eyes. they wore their caps on the backs of their skulls, sloppy squashed caps that looked as though they'd been jumped up and down on. both were captains. little silver capri bells jingled on their leather field jackets. on their backs was stenciled a nude girl in color who hew through the air dropping bombs. on their feet, which they'd trussed up on neighboring chairs, were boots of softest leather, such as cowboys wear. ginny used to say that airplane drivers never looked like human beings, but like goggled men from mars. louella knew better. uninhibited children on the ground, at their controls they became serious technicians controlling colossal steel birds that dragoned through the air and dropped death on jerry factories. she loved the faces of airplane drivers, so fresh and smiling, unsoured by their grim task. they were never bitter like the infantrymen, and they were 42 the gallery never over twenty-four, even if they were full colonels. they werethe sort of kids you saw in drugstores who drank cokes, listened to jukeboxes, and whistled at the girls. they were good. they'dbeen thrust out of high school fraternities into a war. they werethe sort of towheaded fellows who are the backbone of american manhood. thinking was a pussy disease of modern life, but the fliers of the united states army air force hadn't caught the con­ tagion. louella felt so old and mellow and wise and she leaned forward over her vermouth and smiled at them. -roger, the first captain said, and called for three vermouths. -flak, flak, flak, his buddy said, and reached over and pattedlouella on her wrist. she didn't flinch or go prissy because she knew she was in the presence of that sacred and awful thing, american loneliness, akin to the face of abraham lincoln. she knew that americans were the saddest people in the world in time of war because they weremagnificent provincials. that was why every american soldier whowasn't queer had to have his buddy, with whom he shared a stream of consciousness in itself meaningless, but which added up to allthe nobility and isolation of a young and idealistic people throwninto death and destruction. -wileo, roger. airplane drivers had a language all their own, a patois com­pounded of machine vocabulary, of the tension and relaxation al­ ternating in those spells in which each tried to work off his nervous­ ness between missions. louella understood it with the reverenceof a scholar. but this was a living language with a syntax of agony.she beamed at them both as though to say she wanted them to feel right at home with her, consider her their big sister.the first captain was pretty high. he slumped into his chair andinhaled one vermouth after another, mumbling flak and rogerlike an incantation. he was obviously the more poetic and sensi­tive of the two, and the more passive, since equals rarely mate infriendship or in love. but he was also at a plane of self-communionand negation into which louella was too perceptive and reverentof human isolation to thrust herself. there was nothing she coulddo for him tonight. so she applied herself to the second captain,who was looking at her appreciatively. noticing the gold band onhis finger, she asked him about his wife. -oh that bitch, that lovely little bitch, he said. she hasn'twritten for three months. and i'm over here in this arsehole of the earth turnin� thing, twice a ",i'll ii rou -lo �he she'd 10 thing -lo have s , , ,ju �vay hel lcecrea months, -sh his leat, to her, i -thl �aduati to map find she' on her the capr he was s uation c the edges �eateh 0 islarfrorn the cheap mind of the minx cartain's saw the ra�ne an it was via ro louella 43 earth eating myself out and wondering what she's doing. is she turning into a victory girl? i'll kill the slut if i ever find out any­ thing.... three months she hasn't written, and she used to write twice a day.... one v-mail and one air mail. ... i'm going crazy . . . . i'll turn myself in for pilot fatigue and get myself sent home...• if you could see her, baby. -louella, she corrected gently. she was working herself into a sweat of empathy. all day long she'd longed for an airplane driver for whom she could do some­ thing unselfish. -louella, she worked in the px at luke field.... if you could have seen her, the way she used to stand behind the cash register . . . . just like a cute mouse. and when the jukebox came on, the way her eyes'd sparkle.... all she wanted was to dance and eat ice cream sodas.... but what a bitch not to write to me in three months. -she's true to you. i know it, louella said, laying her hand on his leather sleeve; he put his own over it and moved a little closer to her. i swear she's true by all that's fine in american womanhood. -three months, the captain said. i married her quick. i was graduating from flight training, and i didn't want somebody else to snap her up.... three months she hasn't written.... but if i find she's using my allotment checks for something else than that little house ... -she couldn't, she wouldn't, louella cried in a passion of righteousness. the captain buried his face in one hand and tightened his clutch on her with the other. his sleeves were half-rolled to the elbows; the capri bells on his jacket jingled mockingly. louella knew that he was s-obbing inside. he was a handsome lithe man. and the sit­ uation came clear in her mind, and her pity for him moistened the edges of the whole sorry portrait. and louella decided that the greatest of war crimes is the bitchery of a wife when her husband is far from her. louella imagined stunning scenes in which she gave the cheap painted little wife a piece of her mind, a piece of the mind of all the decent american women in the world. right now the minx was probably out in an arizona roadhouse, spending the captain's money on some new oc out for an evening's kicks. she saw them laughing through the din of the band, drinking cham­ pagne and kissing.... it was dark now, and all three of them walked unsteadily along via roma with their arms about one another's necks. they were 44 the gal l e r y. all crying and wondering who started this war anyhow. louella was the steadiest of the three. she steered them through the crowds. both kissed her good night at the door of her apartment in piazza carita. they wanted to come up and have a party, but louella didn't want ginny to start thinking things. in her bedroom, after draping her mosquito netting with an in­ souciant hiccough, she poured herself a nightcap of vermouth and shook a phenobarbital capsule into it. she lay quite motionless in her bed and felt two tears scamper down her cheeks. there was a roaring in the merciless neapolitan night, and she saw the red and green lights of a transport plane track through the sullen air out vesuvius way. -roger, she said, and hiccoughed again. i;of � and �t tangle have d but w ofmr oodies while! remem the is of thl phere li ilie thie alter su nose iv! congeal olanketi tress cov olordin and bitt tfie org aoout al ered un cnarged static a knows near second promenade (fedhala) i remember that there's an american cemetery at sain'i jean de fedhala, twenty-seven kilometers up the coast north of casa. the graves are plotted in neat rows. i saw how close and still bodies can be laid together in the earth. over each rec­ tangle a white cross spreads its rafter arms. most of the crosses have dogtags affixed to them, giving each its relief from anonymity. but walking lightly among the crosses and looking for the names of my friends, i found some unmarked. underneath must be the bodies of those who were blown apart by artillery or drowned while still wading ashore, or who didn't wear their dogtags. i remember that the body of a priest lies next to a pfc. the sky at fedhala is the color of slate, and the air of fedhala is of that musky heaviness i knew only in north africa. the atmos­ phere lies like a shroud over the continent. perhaps from this comes the thick lost mystery of africa, which teased my mind, particularly after sunset. it's a strange air to lie in for all the time when your nose was used to the damp of new england or to the winds that congeal the loop. with x-ray eyes i pierced the layer of loam blanketing the bodies and saw them lying there, each in his mat­ tress cover, staring up at me. they didn't have the finished peace of ordinary dead, embalmed in funeral homes. there was a rigidity and bitterness about them as though a cop had surprised them in the orgasm of life. there was something of unfinished business about all of these fedhala american dead. to their spirits, smoth­ ered underground, the air there, as in all military cemeteries, was charged with question marks. i knew that the air could never be static above saint jean de fedhala. a military cemetery never knows peace. near the american section the provincial french of fedhala have 45 46 the gallery buried their dead-daughters who died of the whooping cough at eight, old women who came from france for expansion and trade after marechal lyautey's landing in 1907, wives named suzanne who didn't survive childbirth. little rouget lies in the same gravewith odette. over the french graves i remember the marble angels in little niches perpetually green with flowers, crucifixes with marble christs bent over them. for the french like the senti­ mental statuary of death just as much as the irish. and the french of fedhala bring flowers for the graves of their dear ones. but i remember no flowers on the american graves, clean and bare as the tombs of old misers who died unwept. for who would deck these american graves? the hands that would itch to are on the other side of the atlantic. they have never seen the still cemetery ofsaint jean de fedhala. and even if they came, bearing flowers, they'd have to dry their tears long enough to give two american cigarettes as an admission tip to the gardener of the cemetery.i remember fedhala because it had the faires t bathing beach inthe casablanca area, a crescent without popcorn stands or roller coasters. there was only a ring of fresh sand (the recent american blood was not to be seen on it) and a high sea wall that looked toward the sunset. farther down i remember the docks and cranes that the provincial french charged us for the use of during our landing operations-that is, after the landing was an accomplishedfact. i remember that the casino which made fedhala an african lido had been a little scarred from the shelling, but we americans made it first a hospital and then a service club. along the sea i remember villas and copses of palm trees where the rich french shut themselves in and brooded. then you came to that square white pearl, the hotel miramar, out of which american officers peered at the sea after dark. in 1943 the miramar had been requisitioned by the americans, but actually it was in the hands of a combine of french and ayrabs, who soaked the americans for cognac and meknes champagne, and sold our spam out of the mess cellar to their friends. i remember making friends with the madame and her husband, who were resident in the hotel, repre­ senting the proprietors. the husband was a casablanca corporalwho worked in the shell building. and madame used to pace themiramar sun porches all day long in her high woolen socks, wring­ ing her hands in the moroccan sunlight: -helas, mon cher, vous autres americains, vous etes zous trop riches! the other french in fedhala told me that madame, born in imh were the ston som nam larg tor, m the gigg' so coul specu bloc dhala ne�e, 'i pm but tne no! nandle or tne -bo un rna (fedhala) 47 lorraine, hadn't always been a great lady. she'd been a chamber­ maid in fez. one night she'd made monsieur ie caporale into a bed. -qu'est-ce qui se passe, madame? -rien, rien, mon enfant. c'est seulement rna douleur. i remember the center of the beach town of fedhala. it was a lush and classic park with geometrical walks and squares. there were palms set out like chessmen, begging the eye to go on along the squares to the sea or to the hills back of casablanca. there were stone benches in the alcoves of this park, where after dark we sometimes chased the ayrab maidens who did our washing. their names were hadouche and busheltits. and there was also the largest woman in captivity, the french secretary to fedhala's doc­ tor. we called her blockbuster. each payday there was a ratrace in fedhala park, a shag lineup coming out of the bushes or under the sea wall in the bathhouses, and busheltits' snortings and gigglings: -me professeur de ziggyzag.... sometimes we suspected that busheltits was malade, but nobody could ever prove anything on her. her ayrab tendency toward speculation in her prices was offset by the behemoth dignity of blockbuster, who pranced by daylight through the streets of fe­ dhala with her parasol and the doctor's baby in a perambulator. she carried her hundred and ninety pounds with the offishness of a caucasian among mahomet's followers. she insisted on deferential treatment to discriminate her from the ayrab wenches, who were far more natural and amenable to reason. i remember the church in fedhala, that white half of a tin can lying on its side and stuccoed over with creamy plaster. in the sun it rolled and sparkled, visible from halfway to casablanca. its pastor, a white father, often walked in the courtyard in beard and cassock. they said he had taken to the hills when the americans landed. and back of his church was the school relai de la jeu­ nesse. general patton had used it for a hospital, but now they read pjw mail there. but i remember best the hotel de france. madame jean was the hostess there, of quick step and quicker tongue. she could handle us and she could handle the french sailors off the richelieu or the jean bart when their pompoms got out of hand. -bonsoir, mes petits americainsl pour ce soir je vous offre un magnifique menu-marche noire mais vous mangerezi . . • 48 the gallery pommes de terre en robe de chambre, un biftek merveilleux ... et ... si vous etes tres mais tres mais tres gentils, il y'aura du homard. madame jean counted her delicacies on her fingers, screamingthem at us with flashing eyes. all day long she worked the black markets of casa, and every night there was a meal at the hotel de france such as we couldn't get in any army mess. and she'd a little bar in the bowels of the dining room, waited on by a glisteningayrab who looked like a. negro. in this small room we met all the adherents of la boule joyeuse, who bowled their sundays away on the terrace and drank anise at night, and all the septieme regiment de tirailleurs algeriens, and the workers in the cork factories. they bummed everything off us, but after the vin rougeand the grand marc around 2300 hours we looked at them through a mist of affection: -apres tout nous sommes de bons allies. before madame jean threw us out for the evening, she allowedher husband to sing just one song. we thought that he must have worked as a female impersonator in paris before 1940. he did soubrette songs with gestures that gave me the idea he was sing­ing about things we'd like to try: -ll fit ce que je voudrais [aire si j'osais [aire le soixante-neuf ••• most of all i remember a small bordeaux sailor who came on cer­ tain nights to the hotel de france. he never had any money forthe vin rouge that he loved. he used to sit at. the end of my table, shy and alert till i' d bought him some. he had the huge eyes of a girl with a bedroom look and a mouth such as frenchmen don't legally wear. and i'd buy him one drink after another till his pompon began to slip over his ear, and he'd seek out my shoulder till it was time to go back to his batterie. in his cups he used to thunder like clemenceau: tu vois, mon cher, c'est tres simple ... les anglais, les italiens, les allemands, les japonais.... c'est plus que simple, la guerre.and i remember that he'd clutch my arm and weep as i walkedhim back to his batterie. he'd be beaten, he said, by his capitaine.i used to watch his shining tears under the stars of fedhala, and then i knew i was surely in africa. he wasn't in bordeaux and i wasn't in the states. he'd forget me till next time he wanted some vin rouge, for he spent his sundays off from the batterie in the arms of an espagnole who was secretary to the comito de la lipean the path 1 thl offer i whe aha and in te in w} ffiem� ffij!el i! gr vapor almo told realize or in t -0 �aid v i hope -t ar.aiaij,16ii:• . "pie, ja�i�: ·etp as i ��: id bl his ca�il� of fedhaja, � in bordeaux a�i me he irantea!ol the balterie in � comite de la [ (fedhala) beration. she gave him for love what she peddled for her living. but here now in the moroccan moonlight jean worked on me to give the impression that he was alone in this world, that i was his only friend: -ah, que tu es sympathique ... ton nez, tes yeux, ton sourire...• i remember that this was the first time i'd come upon the euro­ pean idea of being sympathetic, an idea which doesn't exist in the american language. it came to mean much to me-sym­ pathique, simpatico--anything, so long as that sympathy existed. i thought it must mean that the emotions and the deepest feelings were involved, even though they were being bought and sold and bartered for in american money and px rations. it was the be)ginning of my initiation into the economics of the world, a grada,tedgraph of moonlight and romance on one peak and the struggle toexist on the other. they weren't intermingled here, as they were in the states. and perhaps the discovery of this cleavage was fatal to me. i remember that i drank more and more because i was trapped in the problem that confronted me. it was this coming to know people who spoke another language, whom the war had already pressed flat. naturally they preyed on me, though at first i thought i was going to see life without paying for it. in north africa i thought i could keep a wall between me and the people. but the monkeys in the cage reach out and grab the spectator who offers them a banana. i remember that there's nothing like a north african hangover. when i was used to canadian club and a stop after midnight for a hamburg and milk at the white tower, the liters of vin rouge and vermouth and cognac that i poured into myself took a toll. in the morning i'd awaken to a nervous and palpitating world in which myself seemed to have died. the night before was re­ membered like the negative of a photograph; i'd overreached myself in attempting to step into the picture. ah misery, thy name is grenache or moroccan marsala! so i was never free of the vapors till noon. i used to black out on the red and white wines of morocco. but though i couldn't remember what i'd done, they told me that my body went right on functioning. i began to realize facets of my personality i hadn't plumbed on main street or in the first baptist church. -00000, what you did lasnight! ya walked right up to her an said voolayvoo cooshay aveck mwah? ya're a bad baaad boy, and i hope ya tell ya mother in ya next v-mail. -the human body is a wonderful thing. you walked around 49 50 the gallery wit to abr th just as if you were walking in your sleep, took off your shoes, and put yourself to bed. you answered all our questions, just like you'd been hypnotized. i said to myself: that's my boy, and i'm proud of him.... i remember how the dawn begins in fedhala: the murmur of the sea drops like chained wolves. (why is the sea louder and more insistent in the night?) and out of the heavy uterine dark a violet light begins to swirl like a soft turbine. the color mottles into gold, the sea dies still more, and something seems to swish through the air like yellow torpedoes. there's a reveille braying from all the fedhala donkeys, as if, fearful of the sunrise and the workadayworld ahead of them with its blows and kicks, they tore off a last chunk of donkey love. when the sun is up, the medina opens its walls and out stream the ayrabs who work in the cord and sardine factories. it's a stretched-out file of a thousand persons walking inthe streets and on both sidewalks. they converse together like turkeys gobbling. they play tricks on each other. they use the french telephone poles with considerable liquid spite. the ayrab men wear battered caps and jackets that perhaps they took off the beach on 8 november 1942. others have mattress covers and cotton breeches. but they don't look like a background of extras for marlene dietrich in technicolor. the faces of some of the men are as hawklike and refined and supercilious as a ballet dancer's; they have a feminine walk and a way of holding themselves aloof from the others. some of the women have mashed noses and wide­ set eyes like nubians. a few show blue slits above their noses where the facepiece meets the veil. but there are a few ayrab girls of sharp hurt beauty, flowers manured in a rich and poignant soil. these too walk apart from the others like the beautiful slight men. the handsome ones of the ayrabs link hands as though from some lore inside the medina they had learned of an aristocracy of body and face given to few in their generation. the calling out and the horseplay are always from the uglier and coarser ayrabs, as though to distract attention from their own thinking. the ayrabs of delicacy and wistfulness commune only with themselves or their likes and walk with downcast eyes, aware of their spell. for they've sucked up ou t of filth and squalor the wisdom of the suk -that to be born is the greatest misfortune that can befall any­ one. ayrab beauties make their whole life a lament that all but escapes us americans. the handsome ayrab men and women never beg; and when i catch their eyes i know that they feel a mistake ow an an (au iihi� val the pa�� dhal err j � almo1 a�a fren depe wad preea i too bette elcapi glbr i'd ii little ma when boug iruit black thi! i had a (fedhala) sl has been made in their caste: it is i who should be begging from them. the procession passes from the medina to the cork factories with a swiftness as though the ayrabs had a secret determination to get off the streets before the americans and the french are abroad. i note busheltits and hadouche in the streaming files. they smile at me, thinking themselves already set apart from their own people by the favors they've conferred on the americans. and last in the parade is oombah and his wife, locked to him with an invisible manacle. for he has married well in the medina be­ cause of his profits on vin rouge to the americans. he's wearing his encrusted omar khayyam slippers and a turban such as rudolph valentino introduced to the movies when ayrabs were romantic. the clucking of the ayrabs and their spoiled smell fade as they pass to the sardine and cork factories or to the brick kilns of fe­ dhala. they've gone beyond the huge windows of the brasserie du pare. oombah goes in and starts setting the tables. but first he locks mrs. oombah in the ladies' latrine, where she will sit and cry all day long till he takes her out in the evening. i remember the varieties of breakfasting around fedhala. i had almost never to eat in my own mess, where the kp was done by ayrabs, and later by italian pjw. sometimes i was invited by a french family with whose daughter we took turns in shacking, depending on the results of last night's crap game. the breakfast was frugal and accompanied by french provincial homilies and im­ precations against the times. madame watched every sip of coffee i took, as though the guillotine were too good for the world's men. better fare was provided by martin the spanish barber, who'd escaped (by various versions of his own) through tangier and gibraltar. he'd make coffee on a hot plate he'd begged of me, and i'd sit on his bed while he cut dark bread and moaned of his little daughter and the falangists: -en el fondo del mar nacio una perla ... martin had rimmed mad eyes, and his hands always shook except when they held a razor. but the best fedhala breakfast was to be bought in the brasserie du pare, where the flies spiraled over the fruit and the wine bottles. i remember that i used to buy a long black loaf cut in two and stuffed with spicy granulated pork. with this i would drink white wine so cold and bitter (the brasserie had a frigidaire) that i stumbled out from my breakfast more than 52 the gallery awa and tells who whi mid whi look pap all �out queri ir mor scape� bodiel to on mothe derto a little crocked and with a churning in my belly as though thepork and flies were wrestling on the mat of my stomach. theni'd go back to bed, for often i'd stayed up rolling them all nightlong. my eyes would be stinging from the sun and the wine, for fedhala at 0900 hours has the hard brilliance of a spanish land­ scape at noon. or maybe i'd go out to the fedhala golf course over a rustic bridge. sometimes i could buy american beer thereand bat the breeze with a corporal from texas who'd been a proand didn't want to be anything else. he had his special racketbecause colonels and brigadier generals would come out from cazes airport and from casa to take putting lessons. this corporaltherefore had that liberal immunity about him, a large looseness of spirit found in great gamblers and in the bodyguards of presidents.sometimes he'd let me use a colonel's clubs for a few holes of the course. and i would correct his french and look at him over mycold beer with a geewhiz delight. so far from america, from sara­ toga, from balmoral, and here was golf and that air of controlled opulence that hangs like cigar smoke around bunkers and countryclubs. i remember the long afternoons by the beach wall of fedhala. was that the atlantic ocean? yes, and three thousand miles on the other side was virginia. along the sea wall the french had gun emplacements and barbed-wire entanglements. and the sailors were always oiling these pieces as though they weren't quite satis­fied with the way they'd functioned on 8 november 1942. these were the sailors who came to madame jean's bar in the hotel de france. by daylight they looked seamy in their pompoms and dungarees, outside the dull glow of picardan wine and the moth­ eaten gentility of the salle a manger. tonight they and i would meet on a different plane, and we would fly to one another like estranged lovers. the f edhala beach season begins at noon. the provost marshalof casablanca fined us for going in swimming without a lifeguard,without our dogtags, or at other than stated hours. i lie in the sand and watch the rich french and spanish families come out like lizards from their cabanas. they are as eager to offer me hos­ pitality as they were gracious to the german armistice commis­ sion caught in their pajamas at the villa miramar. the wives in their sleek bathing suits are all studied and wise, their daughtersare all fifteen and studying with the nuns of casa. the spanishwives of the cork magnates are especially luscious and cordial. (fedhala) 53 one of them loves one of us, and he uses her love for her benedic­ tine and her fruitcakes. she looks like dolores del rio. he hasn't told her that he's married and has a kid. after all, that was back in charleston. she waits for him on evenings when her husband is away in rabat, leaves her patio gate open for him, and sits hushed and cool in her silken wrapper. she's an accomplished mistress, he tells me. but he enjoyed even more seducing her daughter, to whom he taught the secrets that her mother taught him, and which are not dispensed at the convent school in casablanca. at midnight sometimes (he says) mother and daughter sit up with him while he chews chicken and swills chablis. mother and daughter look at one another slyly, conspirators with one another against papa. they don't know that they are against one another. he takes all that they give. after all, he's on vacation from charleston, /south carolina. they are foreigners, aren't they; and who con\ quered this desert oasis of fedhala? i remember the afternoons on the beach at fedhala in french morocco. it wasn't crowded like coney island. it seemed the sea­ scape of a dream, where bronzed french and spanish and american bodies cut into the water and splashed and laughed and called out to one another. there was the jingle of dogtags on our chests or mothers warning their children in french to beware of the un­ dertow.... hal ha third portrait his life,i his p presid and s in ti horiza lenceslmen, weas halli -a awa1 at all he busr handi insign officer hal under commd washll the ci the e all, ev and as he' this se with h was dri all his thrown tized p taken, -h hal said, fastening the gold bar to the collar of his shirt: -nothing can hurt you now, dear ... he looked at his face in the mirror of the latrine. it was that same latrine in which he'd scrubbed toilet seats with bon ami for saturday morning inspections. last night he'd clipped theofficer candidate badge from the pocket of his blouse. now he was 3. second lieutenant in the army of the united states. perhaps this was the moment in which he was to come into his kingdom.hal thought that something had been omitted from his nature -some gland, some gonad, some force possessed by all the other men and women in the world. he knew it when his viennese mother used to look at him by candlelight as she played derrosenkavalier waltzes on her piano in greenwich village. heknew it in his first scrap at public school 13. he knew it in the bayonne office of the standard oil company. hal's secret was a great emptiness within himself. he believed in nothing, often doubting his own existence and that of the ma­ terial world about him. some evenings when he was drunk in greenwich village, he'd stretch out his hands and say: -yes? that's what all the girls tell me down at the office .. everybody was his friend. he was six two and had such magicof face and body that people looked at him when he came into rooms. he was held to be a wit because the vacuum inside him made him envelop like a bell jar every personality he met. every­ one said he was a genius, but hal thought himself a zombi, one of the undead. consequently everything in life was quite clear tohim, as it is to one who lives for ninety years and then allows him­ self to be buried alive because he can't put up with human beings any longer. 54 hal he came iu' (uum imiae!0 ii be mel ertl if a lomoi) �& quite cleart, then allowl fiiar h human bein� hal his commission had put him into the first stable spot of his life. it was the first time that he knew exactly where he stood. his pinning the gold bar to his collar had the same effect as if the president of the united states had chopped off his head, pickled it, and set it for display inside a gilt frame, as whiskys are advertised in the new yorker magazine. for hal it was a relief to have the]horizons of his mind planed down, with certain conventional fences erected in their stead. he would be saluted by all enlisted' men, and henceforth his mind must move along neat little tracks, greased by order of the secretary of war. it was the first breather hal had ever had from coping with things. -and you'll be overseas soon, dear, he said to himself, turning away from the mirror. perhaps you never belonged in america at all. he walked out of the latrine and into the squad room. they were busy putting straight their bars, because after the general had handed you your commission at graduation, you put on your insignia any old way and rushed out to give one dollar to the first officer candidate who saluted you. hal had been popular at ocs. he'd agreed with everyone and understood them all. for one week he'd been acting company commander. on week ends, like the rest of them, he'd tear into washington, take a room at the statler, and get drunk with all the cliques. there was the brilliant crowd, the swishy crowd, the empire builders, and the drugstore cowboys. hal knew them all, even those fringers who didn't belong to cliques. and now he was leaving them with the same smiling casualness as he'd come into the company twelve weeks ago. he'd always had this sense of isolation: he loved his viennese mother when he was with her in the bayonne apartment; he loved people when he was drinking with them. but when he was alone, it was as though all his life wi th others had never been. they were all shadows thrown on the wall of his brain. hal was just a raw piece of sensi­ tized paper. and no one would ever develop the pictures he'd taken.... -hal, said a new second lieutenant, grabbing his hand. look me up in new york. and stay out of the astor bar, hear? -they're making hal security officer at fort hamilton, another said. then the germans will never know what is sailing out of the harbor.... they all milled around from their packing and looked at him with sentimental old-school eyes. their new bars glistened like 55 56 the gallery onlr door anot �ounc men \ fort i monun in an thou� �trapp' proble penm ameri 1���, 1 for the �r, v from e wouln there people officer� thi� wa wal ( jewels on paupers. hal knew that it would be months, if ever, before their uniforms, for which the people of the united states had given them each two hundred and fifty dollars, would look natural. at heart they were all still corporals or sergeants. hal towered over them all as he shook hands. he'd been close to everyone of them. each had expressed his personality in hal's company with the license of a spinster before a mirror. but not one had ever made to him the gesture of surrender. they were simply happy that he'd understood them and accepted them. they had loved him for the reflection he gave them back of themselves, for he knew how to make people shine in their own eyes. he went out of the barracks and took the bus for washing­ ton. the undergraduates were getting out of their classes, and his arm got stiff from the unaccustomed saluting he had to return rather than initiate. and the undergraduates saluted him in trib­ ute to the commission that they themselves were still sweating out. they'd be gigged if they didn't salute. the adjutant general's school was almost like the movies in its conception of the army of the united states. its new second lieutenants were the cream of something or other. hal smiled to himself as he thought that he was the most pasteurized of them all. he got on the long bus, pulling in his legs, which never fitted anywhere. he leaned back in a dreamy way, deceptive of relaxa­ tion. two wac's across the aisle nudged one another. hal knew. they were telling each other he looked like gary cooper. the bus began to groan off, and he slitted his eyes, feigning sleep. -gee, sir, congratulations, you graduated today. it was a little officer candidate behind him, from class twenty­ one. all the way into washington he talked hal's ear off, of how in another month he too would be a second lieutenant. at the adjutant general's school there was a relation between students and already commissioned officers that tickled hal. the barrier between them wasn't quite that of officers and enlisted men, but the incestuous byplay between the upper and lower forms of a large private school. the officers called the enlisted men gentlemen with the sniggering deference of a dowager toward a pantrymaid who is about to come into a fortune. but hal said nothing of this. he wished the little man well and got out of the bus. w!he i !elf wi! around hurt th had on nn�m macula throu�� in�ton, rere�d ii�or el!ie !aid, a� -yo where o'clock -bu it was the washington of june, 1943· there was a hysteria here that ran underground from the pentagon to the statler, may­flower, and willard hotels. the sun was as tyrannical as it can be hal 57 only in washington, but everything was air-conditioned. every­ body drank a good deal and everybody talked about bureaucracy and the windup of the tunisian campaign. brigadier generals flounced along the street like democratic abbesses. all the enlisted men who weren't sweating out a commission at fort belvoir or fort washington wore the shoulder patch of the washington monument. near the navy buildings soft-cheeked waves strolled in an innocent pride. wac's tore efficiently through the streets. thousands of sailors and marines were on the loose with cameras strapped to their shoulders. civilians groaned about the housing problem, but everybody beamed at everybody else, particularly on pennsylvania avenue after dark. to hal it seemed as though america had grown sharp and young again after the years 19291939. they all thought of themselves as part of an adventure, so for the first time in a decade they were united, proud, and rather gay. washington was a garden party listening to communiques from europe. then the shining frocks and the seersucker suits would have another drink, and the talk would bubble up again. there was plenty of shrimp at o'donnell's sea grill. the only people who looked at all uneasy were a few british and french officers who'd come over for infantry training at fort benning. for this was washington of june, 1943. walking through washington' steeped hal in a schwarmerei he'd inherited from his viennese mother, who'd wept all through his childhood in greenwich village. last week they'd had words, so she hadn't come to his graduation from ocs. hal thought him­ self wiser than she. every time she tried to put the silver cord around him, he'd cut it with a tender rueful smile. their relation hurt them both. but hal had read too much at ccny and had had one bout too many with smawt young psychiatrists. their fingers were all over his soul, the way the flesh of a salmon is maculate from the angler's fingers. so in schwarrnerei hal floated through the world as today he walked through the streets of wash­ ington. he smiled and was oh so gentle with all. and he read and reread the new testament and harry emerson fosdick and mon­ signor sheen and rabindranath tagore and omar khayyam and elsie robinson and clare boothe luce. and this was why hal said, as people hung over him at midnight: -you must understand yourself, kid. then you'll get to a point where you're as solid and limpid as good hot jazz in a dive at four 0'clock in the morning. -but you help us understand ourselves, they said, putting a 58 the gallery careless arm round hal's shoulders. we talk to you, and everythingseems clearer. then we go away, and everything is as snafu asit ever was. tell us your secret. -they always ask me for my cake recipe down at the office,hal said. luinuconfronted with the peripheries of his own personality, he bein.rame frightened. it was like walking down a long corridor, every wait!door of which bore his name. yet he was an alien in all those collanrooms. he could open door after door, but in each he was as ill -1at ease as he'd been in the last. thus he often wondered what it wl!tfwas he had, that everyone came and talked to him and assured himof a wisdom that he never sensed. to himself he was a magnificent a luacand brilliant zero. yet he'd have had everything if god had given tnhim a single creative impulse. instead he'd been put on earth corrisimply as five hair-trigger senses in a gorgeous shell of flesh. he ohowas incapable of taking anything and molding something out -iof it. • • • hom hahal entered the lobby of the hotel statler. it was twenty deandgrees cooler than the streets outside. a rush of sweat came under ki!!edhis gabardine shirt stretched taut over his wide tanned back. he moutlgrabbed off his cap, feeling faint and giddy in the icy damp air. band.he tucked his cap under his belt; the gold bar on it swung like had fia neon firefly from the lope of his long legs and his tight neat l�le ihips. as usual people lounging in chairs gave him the lookover and ever�looked once again. a naval flier winked at him. and a wilted perimmother swooning in the midst of two quarrelsome little girls fanned chillherself harder as hal passed. he went into the men's bar and drank -fthree rum cokes with the quick precision that had made him fanew �mous in the bars of the village. herit wasn't possible for hal to be five minutes in a bar withoutbeing invited to join someone. he saw the usual overtures begincamening from a table across the room, where sat a catlike man in an -\ open shirt, looking like a state department secretary on his after-bnoon off. so hal settled for his drinks and went out into the wn�selevator. he'd been one of the great drinkers of the village, even helewhen he was at ccny. alcohol made him colder and more coma largepassionate and more penetrating than ever. when he arrived at �he ciathe state which in others would be drunkenness, the last veil of them tillusion was torn from him. at such moments he saw nothing to pas!ionlife but a grisly round of eating and sleeping and talking to others -hauntil your heart stopped beating. his huge physical charm height-le 59 lou, and eve � •• thing , r�t_ned under alcohol. he'd hold himself up like a locket before the is as sn��lazzled eyes of whomever he was with. and then he'd excuse himdo ' .elf and go away to sleep. he never had hangovers because the al\'in at tb��c:ohol never gave him any plus for which to exact a corresponding � l' ninus. : ona�tn in the elevator hal lit a cigarette and looked at the operator, al' (o�lq�r':waiting for him to speak first. the boy's head rose out of the high t4�n in�tollar of his statler livery.. . .nfll�' -today you're a new lootenant, ain't ya? the boy said with 4-f , onaer��:wistfulness . . ljanaa5lur� -mother, mother, pin a rose on me, hal said. for today i yam ,rasama� maaan. �.' g0(jna�! the boy laughed and slid open the door. hal walked along the rut �ntorridor. he passed himself in mirrors. he knocked at the door ell of ��:of 2023 and leaned his head against the jamb. the door opened. !&me� -ho-neyi she said. take off your rubbers and come into this house.... he's in the shower ... hal took her by the elbows and tried to hold her off from him , �41 �'tr;�and look into her face. instead she edged across the barrier and 'eat(4id1 kissed him, her breath sweet with rum. her lips skidded across his l4llilnooamouth. sometimes she even kissed him in the presence of her hus­ e:god2::band. it made hal sick and sad because he knew she loved him and itl�]� had flaunted the mistake of her marriage from the first night that • ft.fliili��: lyle had introduced them. she used to come down from new york =lool�l� every week end that lyle was free from ocs. then she would ex­ ,�j n periment in getting hal drunk till she found that his essential :�f�rd� chill became ice by midnight. �w�t first of all, she said after the kiss, you're going to share our ..:e new york apartment. lyle won't hear of anything else. he released himself softly and walked to the window. she poured , in a 'ii him a drink and sat on the bed to watch him. from the shower lortnijt5:i came the hiss of the spray. -why don't you act like a native of oklahoma, helen? -because if i did, i'd go around in indian costume and sing songs by charles wakefield cadman. helen was crisp by nature and helena rubenstein. she worked at a large department store, drawing hard stylized mannequins for ads. she claimed to no illusions, but hal believed that she was fuller of them than most new yorkers. actually she had a nature simple and passionate, secretly dreaming in terms of the idylls of the king. -ho-ney, she said, you're still yearning for the blessed virgin. -let me alone, helen, and straighten up your own attic. 60 the gallery -why do you pretend to be a saint? she said, kicking off a shoe.you're a bitch on wheels. -let's get away from personalities, he said. i'm sick of them . • _ . everybody's playing on me like a harp. and you're not happytill you've pulled off all my strings. -all jazzed up, aren't you? you've enough energy to put thelights on again all over the world. a screaming sort of singing came from the bathroom, and theyboth knew that lyle was toweling himself. presently he came outin his shorts. he was a little fat, and hairless as an eskimo. hetalked constantly about the theater in a high strident voice andwas miserable outside new york. -he's here he's here he's here he's here, lyle shrieked and swung hal three times by the hips. stand by the mirror, child....helen, i just see it, i visualize it. . . . better than danny kaye.put him on the stage in gold foil, and have gertie lawrence sing.ing to him in a violet light. -you've both been stabbed to death by new york, hal said,walking again to the window. -listen to the likes of that! lyle shrieked. he covers the waterfront and he's eating in chophouses and he's doing pennsylvaniastation at five in the morning and he's biting the hand that feedshim. he has pernicious anemia every time he gets out of new york.the old song and dance, hal thought. they were all three likehamburg chopped fine from new york. they all professed to loveher, yet new york had pressed them down with her rhinestone steam roller ... too much speed, too much automat, too close proximity, too many manufactured values, and no humanity inthe anthill. every new yorker a doll with hashing eyes and ex­pensive gestures. they all drank too much and smoked too much,and no one really enjoyed himself in anything he did. they readthe new yorker and went to all the first nights. they had highblood pressure of the soul and petrification of the heart. machinesfor sex and money and furs. that was all. hal sat down on thechaise longue and put his hand to his head. the other, holding hisglass, went slack. -oh that body, helen said to her husband. the kind youcherish in settlement. house boys. she worked on the theory that to oxidize her desire for hal atall times when they were together was the surest method not togive offense to her husband. thus (she figured) no dam of vic­torian inhibition would build up inside her and break, to every­body's embarrassment. roorn were helpe !maw wars, about atten seh a th, hotel back glass si�ns a feve talked ballet busine he wa in the fioora sun se sandwi ni�ht.l laid 0 ��uaw' hal and re -yo her 1�t g�uu\ hal 61 u'tlt'tln%()fiall--------------------------, -that body, lyle said, should be up against a ballet bar every 'd. i'm sick ol� morning at ten o'clock. d)()u'renot� -to hell with the new york stage, hal said. i look enough like a chorus boy as it is. i don't dare go to the beach at fire island. tner� to � -that's his li'l abner pose, lyle screeched and laughed his harpy whinny. furoo�� at moments hal found a desert of horror in lyle, shrieking for nf� irrigation from the heavens. no rain ever fell on that parched an fuu face. lyle's eyes protruded when he talked. nearly everything he '�tnt\o� yelled forth in his monologues had a quality of dry pumice in itiq -shrouds like the linen on night club tables, smiles like italian l:e nnl' waiters on roof terraces above central park. there was a thirst •• or �� in lyle madder than a morning after. the whore and the mystic n n: �: were at odds in lyle's heart, and writing copy for perfumes hadn't . i. tnn�1 helped him any. yet he came close to believing in anything that was u�tln� • smawt. though sometimes, when the dawn came up over the sub'. y �& ways, lyle would be visited with an epileptic ague, and he'd babble about a little farm in vermont. �. -hal, said helen after a pause, is in the position of jesus christ .cm��. attending radio city music hall.� 1lj11, -the most tragic remark of the year, hal said, and poured himself another drink. they drank all afternoon and evening in that air-conditioned hotel room. helen switched on the philharmonic concert and lay back on the bed with her shoes off, one arm under her head, a glass in her hand, and stared at the ceiling. she said that the de­ signs in mozart's music brought her back to sanity, yet there was a fever in her eyes as she pretended to listen to the jupiter. lyle talked over and through all music, shouting like the mistress of a ballet troupe counting out the time. he talked of the advertising business after the war, of how-now that he was commissioned­ he was going to talk his way into army pro and sit out the war in the pentagon. the music made hal as nervous too. he sat on the floor and wondered if the room would close in on him. when the sun set outside over washington, they rang for lobster salad and sandwiches and melons. then they continued to drink till mid­ night. lyle passed out reminiscing of maria ouspenskaya and was laid on his bed. his face was as pasty and wrinkled as an old squaw's. hal turned to go to his own room. by the door helen caught him and reached up to his shoulders. -you know we might be together tonight, she said. her body shook, for lyle had never given her anything pro62 the gallery �een ! cent he hi� 0 thing the ther �end encoll drink �o ou everr war ha in �r' o'cloc armr baker o ola �ea� , purp] wmet on th make their i mont the u pi�eo chure the �o he mi�ht !act� ! vienn found or warm. the veneer cracked on her mouth. he saw that she was as lonely and outlandish and simple as a cactus. her kisses, to which he couldn't respond, searched all over his face. -please, helen, he said. his monosyllable tinkled like ice dropped into an empty tumbler. -but you need a woman, hal, she said. you need love because you're afraid of life.... you think you're subscribing to ideals of nobility and selfishness. they don't exist any more ... if they ever did. people have become petty and horrid ... if they ever were anything else.... this is the age of toothbrushes and war bonds and depilatories. shakespeare and dostoievsky are dead . . . spir­ ituality was something to console people when they couldn't buymedicine and life insurance.... if you don't stop chasing shadows, you'll go nuts. you're far enough out of this world as it is. very few can still get to you. i can ... imagine that i love you. -i know you do, he said, turning away his face. -all right then, i do, she said. do you think of yourself as some redeemer? if one were to show up in this day and age, he'd be crucified by more horrible methods than pontius pilate ever dreamed of.... let go of yourself, for god's sake.... you're in a bad way. he pulled himself from helen's arms and shut the door in her face. in his own room. he looked again at himself in the mirror­ the bright bar, the striped shield on his left collar. all he needed was an eagle to perch on his head. he took off his clothes slowly and lay down naked on his bed. his body stretched along under the sheets like a lank and flexible flagpole. then there came upon him the old vertigo of his childhood. noises sounded ominous in his ears. the very air became a mael­ strom of fear to suck him down. even the whispering of his hair on the pillow promised a menace and a shudder too dark to con­ template. the final stage in the attack was that the darkened room shot backwards in his vision to one-quarter its size, as though he were looking through reversed binoculars. the chair by his bed was a piece of furniture for a doll's house. hal lay and trembled and tried to pray in the soft dialect of his mother. while waiting for orders to sail from the new york port of em­ barkation, he worked at brooklyn army base. but the eight hoursof toil inside the area guarded by glistening mp's was only a hiatus to his nights. he simply did what he had been taught to do at oes anti waited till 1630 hours, when he would slip by the white-leghal 63 gined sentinels and take the subway from brooklyn to times square. sundown was for him a time of passionate questing. after dark new york opened up like a sticky lily. he courted every stamen and pistil of this flower; he knew it with the loving horror of d. naturalist who has succeeded in evolving a frightful fern which he keeps and fondles by moonlight. so after dark hal could be seen slipping through avenues and squares of new york city from central park to greenwich village. he was seeking something missing in himself, something like his own double, which would confront him with the image of some­ thing positive. he was always alone. he would listen to people at the astor, at one fifth avenue, at little beer joints off the bowery. they all had much to say, as most people have, and hal would bend over them listening and smiling his shy brilliant smile and encouraging them to pour out everything that was in them. he'd drink two to their everyone. then he'd slide away from them and go out into the summer night. for it was the old story of his life: everyone discovered that hal understood him and was elated, the way a man is when he buys a perfect mirror at an auction. hal usually wound up drinking beer and sucking pickled eggs in flyblown bars of the village. then he'd walk about from four o'clock in the morning until it was time to return to brooklyn army base. just before dawn in brooklyn the air was sweetish with baker's buns and the sweet brown smell of roasting coffee. one day in july, 1943, hal received ten mimeographed copies of a movement order by which he was assigned to permanent over­ seas station by order of the secretary of war. he looked at the purple dittoes of the adjutant general's seal and signature, and something cool slithered in his spinal column. so he made his will on the quiet blank form, increased his insurance, and decided to make up his differences with his mother. it was a month now, this their latest spell of ignoring each other. she would have spent that month in her flat at bayonne, sending out her mind in panic over the universe, and having it return to her lap like a whimpering pigeon. two months earlier she'd been toying with the catholic church. this month she'd be convinced that basic english was the solution to the world's problems-and hers. he left pennsylvania station for bayonne. at first he thought he might go carrying his new carbine so that his mother could see the facts for herself when she opened her door. but then, she had a viennese instinct for disaster, by her unaided imagination. he 64 the gallery knew his father would still be at the office. so he went directly tothe apartment, having armed himself with a bunch of jonquilsand sweet peas at a corner florist's. he rang the bell, let out a sigh, and drew himself up to his six feet two. vol his mother was wearing her housecoat as she answered the door. she'd always wanted him to call her eugenie, but her name some­ how never reached his lips--only her function. she'd once been beautiful but the weight of his father's body and of his father's personality gave her the appearance now of a lily snapped in a press. eugenie was so tiny that hal wondered how anyone as big as himself could have come out of her. he kissed her cheek and then her hands, which she most often wore folded on her breast. he this gave her an attitude of a piety counterfeiting her inner resigy,nation, because no other pose availed her anything. he knew she bro hadn't nursed a hope since he'd left her breast. -mother, hal said, i'm going overseas. you know we aren't wltl allowed to tell exactly when. pie'-and i had a feeling you would come today, she said. traces of her viennese dialect still remained. she relieved him shyly of his flowers and led him into the parlor.she had a jacobean piano covered with shawls, and pictures of and\himself at all ages on the shawls. she never opened the piano when boolshe played grieg songs and strauss waltzes, so her music whimperedlike her voice. by the tea caddy he observed a pot and two cups.-are you expecting someone, mother? he asked. con -you know who, she answered and seated herself to pour him fea tea. int�her eyes floated before him like flowers in oriental rice paint. to 11ings. she tucked up her little feet under her housecoat and pulled reme on the cigarette he offered her. the loose bracelets by her wrists throtinkled to her elbow. �n-i'd like a shot with my tea, hal said turning to his father's ger cupboard. how's dad? -it's his ulcers again. and he has eight new deals ..• is that the word? ... and talks with his mouth full at table. hal stirred whisky into his tea. there was a secret odor of his that father's tobacco through the flat. he remembered that same whiff thin�when he used to reach up to his father's knees and cry; that same beenbittersweet pungency that seeped under the door of his parents' to atroom when they lay awake after midnight and shouted at one arneanother about the rent and the difficulties .of the english language. hhal's father's tobacco was hal's father, gross and mordant. even her hal 65 now he saw the saliva bubbling about his father's mouth as he smoked his after-dinner cigar. he saw the jut of his father's stom­ ach under those rich pencil-striped vests; he heard that grating voice scolding in his ears: -dummkopf, was nun? . . . -he talks much about you lately, eugenie was saying, surrmg her tea with a waferlike spoon. oh how proud he was of your commission! the other night he had some people in to supper...• he said that the reason why his son was not here was because you couldn't leave fort hamilton. -he never thought he'd have a second lieutenant in the family. he thinks this is his reward for making me play basketball at the y. he's made an american man of me finally ... one that a stock­ broker needn't be ashamed of. -if you could leave a picture of yourself in your uniform ... with your visored cap and green blouse ... i think it would please him. -i'll have one taken, he said, swallowing the tea and whisky. -habe dank, she replied. the whisky gave him an almost instantaneous lift. he got up and walked to the bookcases. eugenie belonged to all the monthly book clubs and got limp boxed shakespeare and classics with ornate covers and illustrations. his father read only the papers. his mother had even taken a subscription to the sunday afternoon concerts at carnegie hall. she'd been seen entering the auditorium fearfully in her pince-nez and studying her program notes in the intermission. she was always alone. he'd heard too that she used to jump out of her seat at the beethoven sforzandi. and hal remembered her too when they still lived in the village, sliding through the streets with her shopping reticule, out of reach of the gangs playing baseball up the aileys. in those days she still spoke german, and she seemed to hold for support to the tenement walls as she walked along. sometimes she would take aside a crying italian child and slip it a piece of candy.... after hal had walked around the room once, it seemed to him that his father was following him, telling him not to break any­ thing because it cost dear. his father's conversations had always been inventories of prices, admonitions of what boys not to speak to at school, and lectures about young men who'd got ahead in america. they'd never once talked to one another. hal sat down beside his mother on the couch and reached for her hand. a smile came to her lips as though there were some 66 the gallery ha stricture in her left breast that made her catch her breath. and he remembered that when his father had first started to make money, she'd taken himself for little treats to the movies-uptown. and coming home in a wild enthusiasm she'd sometimes suggested that they splurge and take a taxi. settling back in the seat with her eyes dosed, she'd nearly always reached over for his hand. she used to run her fingers along the hair on his wris ts. so this was the first time hal had ever actively caressed his mother, other than in greeting or in parting.... -i have a feeling, he said smiling and forcing a bubble into his voice, that i'll see vienna before the war is over.... what would you like from there, mother? -you must just write and tell me how the city is ... a long long letter on how the people are dressed. you can write such good letters. -i'll write every day when i'm overseas, he said ponderously. -and so will i, she said, closing her eyes. if he felt an agony of emptiness when he walked about the out­ side world, looking handsome and omniscient, hal knew only a flatulence in his own home. he'd rarely come there since he'd left ccny and had gone to work for standard oil in bayonne. and every time he entered this apartment, he seemed to run square into the big stomach of his father. his father's hats always bulked on the rack. and once having fought through his father's abdomen, he'd meet another image bumbling around the walls by that candle­ light that eugenie always preferred to electricity. it was a moth with a woman's face. it flew around his head in tenderness and terror, beating its own antennae with its wings. often it would swoop at him and he would recoil in childish horror, to discover then that the moth was at the other side of the room, thrashing against the wallpaper...• his mother held tightly to his hand. her fingers went tentatively a little way up his wrist. -i have never seen you look so hiibsch, she said. there's some­ thing in your face that's improved by the severity of the uniform. -the melancholy appeal of the warrior leaving for the wars? he felt sorry he'd said it and took away his hand as softly as he knew how and went and poured himself some more of his father's whisky. -you'll stay to dinner? she asked. when something told me you were coming, 1 went wild with all my red points. mr. liedermann is very good to me at the market. -1 here, th ther tfierl wewj a�in, -1 plano �he join him, lalla and i� he co� tugl, i the s buore this s when pressio mind he twine the cu rears much didn't future the ar world but a make tomee .... :".,: .... ",' .. , ��-:-----. -, / � i:, .<� , hal -i shouldn't even have left fort hamilton, he said, to come here. we're what they call alerted.... i can't stay, mother. the cruelty that was forever rising between them strangled him. they were constantly groping toward one another. but everything they could say had a smothered overtone of: oh, what's the use? we were together for nine months, and we never can be that close again...• -i understand, she said, putting down her teacup to go to the piano. she began to play. -mausie., schiin warst du heute nacht, ha, ha, ha, hal ... hal watched her from the doorway. it was the last musical comedy she'd seen before leaving vienna. eugenie's back was toward him. and remembering that her eyes were shut while she played, hal decided that he'd go now. he knew that was the way she expected it to be. leaving new york harbor and easing out to sea in blackout to join the convoy, hal had a sense of something being lifted from him, as though his umbilical cord were cut anew. he seemed at last a free agent, responsible to no one. he put out his cigarette and went up on deck. the east river had a slow humming in it. he could smell the oil on the water and hear the fumbling of the tugs. he looked up at the stars and leaned his head against a davit. the ship trembled under him, but he couldn't see the water that buoyed her up. atavistically he felt that he must have experienced this same security and warmth when he lay on his mother's lap, when thinking was only a registering on his brain of the first im­ pressions of his five senses. now this concept of ocean made his mind go faint and blank in annihilation, the concept of the mother. he felt his long thick thighs against the railing of the ship, twined about the metal in loving support. and he thought about the current of his life, which had not yet been quickened thirty years earlier. he thought, this world and this sea aren't so very much bigger than i. they're all inside this head of mine. they didn't exist thirty years ago when i was not. and some time in the future they'll all go out again for me, like a moving picture when the arc lamp fails.... i can have a profounder influence on my world than i have hitherto had. since the whole thing is nothing but a shadow in my brain, there must be some secret how i can make the reflections dance the way i want them to.... i should like to meet the man with the flashlight.... 67 68 the gallery he spent the endless days in the convoy reading and taking sun­baths on the officers' deck. his body got to be the smoky hue ofcoffee except for the small white circles around his eyes where he wore his sunglasses. hourly changing the position of his body ashe sprawled on his gi blanket stenciled with his name and serial number, hal read and read the new testament, especially thegospel of saint john. from this evangelist he got the taste of a bright sweet fruit such as he'd never experienced from allowinganybody to make love to him. and at nights he began to dream of alove not to be found in the bodies of men or women, but a love going forth from his own mind to all the human beings in theworld, since actually they existed only in himself. for him to re­fuse to love them would be as cruel as if god were to shut off the sun and sit back to watch the results. to hal in his sleep therecame often a line that would cause him to start up from thebed in his stateroom, tingling with sweat as when he was fourteen: i am the resurrection and the life.... one sunday in the middle of the atlantic the transport chaplaintook to his bunk with a bout of seasickness. the merchant marine master of the ship canvassed all the officers aboard for a volunteer to conduct church service. hal heard his own voice lifted. so on a foredeck while the gun crew looked down from their nest hal addressed several hundred gi's and officers who had nothing elseto do but come to church. they sat around him on the tarpaulinsin a big half-circle with their hands clasping their ankles. he was nervous and exalted as he talked. he put his handsbehind his back and paced about in a tiny ring. often he had tolift his voice because a starboard wind kept blowing his words outinto the atlantic. everyone was keyed up because the convoy hadbeen tacking all night long. the escort destroyers had been zig­zagging, and the depth charges had been thudding below them. they hadn't slept without their life preservers. hal spoke to themof the power of prayer and of the mind of god, in which everythingis beautifully ordered (even if it wasn't to them), and the delicatediscriminations god made between a sparrow's falling in the airand an airplane's diving to the ground. he told them that each had a little of god in them, and how some, by using that inkling ofsomething beyond them as a firefly to guide them, got closer togod than others did. finally he spoke of the mystery of death, ofhow we were all afraid of it instead of being resigned to it.-imagine, hal said, and he found that his voice was choked,that you're all just drops of rain. i know you all think you're pretty wate stood a� m cali it sun. teet too' -, fight] of tnj rou whe chris ;', :" .. ,' .... "1.-'" � � <� � -�-. . -. -/ � ii ii � hal 69 wonderful. but a drop of water isn't much, is it? but maybe a drop of water has its thoughts too. the important thing (and he waved his hand toward the plunging bow of the ship) is the sea itself. it's just as easy to die as to be born.... after his sermon he left them quickly, for he'd moved himself farther than he'd intended. he couldn't bear to face anyone. he walked swiftly to the open space below the bridge and watched the water swell and scud under the bow. presently someone came and stood beside him. -thank you, suh, for that sweet message from the spirit. just as movin as any ah ever got at revival meetins in shelby, south calina. it was a small freckled pfc, wearing his helmet liner against the sun. he kept peering at hal and running his tongue over his goat­ teeth, a rich mocha from chewing tobacco. -pahdon, suh, said the pfc, but ah you a minister of the gospel? -no, hal said. i'm not. and in south calina they'd say i drink too much. -well now, that's sin, the boy said winking and seeming to be fighting a temptation to nudge an officer. you git you there some of that mountain dew and then you git you a nigger gal, and fore you know it, you have to confess jesus christ as your savior.... when ah'm thirty ah too am gonna git saved by confessin jesus christ as mah savior. jest now ah figure ah'm a lost sinner. but ah read a piece in mah bahble every night. -try the new testament instead of the old, hal said, and walked away. the boy snapped out of his dream of equality between their ranks and saluted him. something told hal that he should have stayed with this boy. just a little longer. after noon chow he found the bulkhead to the engine room open and went down the flights of stairs cutting through the runways. on the sides of the amphitheater compartment in the center of the ship. when he reached the diesel engines, he leaned on the railing to watch the walking beams pump and the pistons slash through the air with their slow murderous fists. they were oiled and burnished. the heat of the engine room was fierce. hal wondered if great american industrialists went to a hell like this. through the tube under his feet passed the thick axle that turned the ship's screw in the water outside. he felt faint from the temperature and began to wonder if the engines that man had made caused god any jealousy. a finger made a hole in his back, so he turned to face the engineer 70 the gallery kno ofh on of mod for officer wearing oil-spotted blue dungarees. he was young and affected a certain brusqueness, perhaps to offset the ·lush nude tattooed on his chest. -what a character to be talking about god, the engineer said. you make me laugh. if i looked like you, my polish pig at newport news wouldn't be ditching me every time she gets drunk. i buy her furs and i buy her flowers. i buy sateen-covered chairs for her dive. and what for? so she can hold open house while i'm at sea and give away for nothing what i'm paying for.... perhaps you can tell me what i ought to do, mr. anthony. this engineer had cold swedish eyes that pierced nonsense. he played the game his own way. he showed hal the engines and the salt water purifiers and the boilers, touching each fondly with his red arms. and hal thought that the sea gave men a certain imme­ diacy to reality and an insight. this was the reason for the wisdom all sailors had. they were more and less than other human beings. they could laugh at the woman in whose arms they were lying,and they laughed at all earth-rooted men secretly, but with great good humor, pitying them a little, the way one pities those who've never been able to learn to walk. -engines, hal said, wondering if it would get a laugh, give me more of a feeling of power than i get from the men who made them. -you talk like i do when i get rummed up.... you're slightlyoff the beam, but i like you. and i can size up my man, don't think i can't. ... say, why don't you come up and live with me for the trip? i got an empty bunk. and you know goddam well that the merchant marine lives better than you poor doughfeet below deck. you wouldn't have to eat spam three times a day. and i got beaucoup rye.... whaddya say? -i've never learned to live with anyone, hal said. i'd be a dis­ appointment to you. i have my moods. i get ornery. -well, so do i, the engineer said, taking hold of hal's arm. there was a kindness and a disinterestedness in his squeeze. when we get ornery, we could bat the hell outa one another. do us both good.... whaddya say? -maybe it would be better if we met on deck at night and talked once in a while. you see, i keep telling myself i need one close friend. but i know i never can have one. -anything you say, bud, the engineer said, walking away. my error. for the second time hal knew he should have listened more. alrc !hl� !ee nen mu drol ogy bro out whe, afe he\� anot] viclj with and o drin pre!e the!, a! po ;,. '<;'. :" _'., �;;�'---", \ hal one midnight he stood on the officers' boat deck and watched small lightnings play on the horizon. every fifteen minutes he'd duck inside the blackout curtain and have a cigarette. the thunder had a dull unsatisfied rumble. and certain things had come dear in his mind after thinking all afternoon. he had a tempo different from anyone else's in this world-whether faster or slower he didn't know. and all his current was imprisoned in himself in insulation of his own making. he'd never be able to make contact with people on their own grounds because he couldn't accept those conventions of timing and pacing that made conversations possible. only in moments did his spirit reach out to others' like a flash of lightning. for the rest he was destined to be alone, like a twin whose double has died at birth.... the antiaircraft guns on the turrets opened up with a spit of tracers, sending ribbons out into the sky. a rain began to fall. lightnings soft and cozy began to play about the ship's funnels. it occurred to him that maybe no one else on earth heard this thunderstorm except himself. in the flashes between the tracer anti­ aircraft and the streaks of summer lightning he could see the other ships in the convoy rolling over the horizon. nevertheless they seemed sure of their own reeling fates, like drunken people on a .nerry-go-round. and then hal had an intuition that in these muddy heavens a bolt was being prepared especially for him. he dropped to his knees by the railing, frightened and alone. in the gummy city of oran he was visited with something that in the old days at ccny would have sent him to a smawt psychol­ ogy student. it began as a malaise, a feeling that his heart had been broken crossing the atlantic. he'd thought to carry his soul intact out of the states, but he seemed to have dropped a piece some­ where, possibly in the ocean. he would wake in the mornings with \ a feeling of the most intense displacement. he didn't know where i he was or why he was here. something in him seemed to be chasing \ another part. often this hunt between sections of himself became so vicious that he had to put his head between his hands, as a man with a hangover expects his heart to stop in the very next moment, and prays for even the distraction of a bowel movement. or at the beach of ain ei turk, lying in the sun on his days off, drinking grand marc, hal would look anxiously at the sky with the presentiment that some vulture was up there wheeling over him. these anxieties he sought to escape by being with his men as much as possible and seeking to trace his own uneasiness in his gi's. but 71 72 the gallery they only laughed among themselves and got drunk and went awol and picked up diseases from the women of oran. hot one day in an attempt to uncoil himself from his paralysis, halasked to be made officer of the day. there was to be a formal guard mount in the place. it was the first time in the history of the american army that a second lieutenant had requested a detail as heofficer of the day. a french band played two national anthems. kneel hal, standing in the oran sunset by the flagpole, wondered if his cho\ leggins were tight, whether the bar of paper from an old gold putpackage he'd pasted on his helmet liner had slipped off. he did a wen smart about-face and walked to the opened ranks to inspect their ordepieces. he had a pressing feeling in his head and his heart beat so that he thought he was going to fall on his face in the loose sand of the parade ground. the guard for the evening was composedof oran mp's, tough and cynical, because they'd been wounded intunisia. but instead of being sent home they found themselves �tan patrolling the streets of oran and arresting gi's with loose buttons. the in between these functions the mp's operated and promoted with nextthe bars and the ladies of the evening, arresting them or possessing �ap �them as the mood struck them. this was hal's guard. yet in formato hition they were magnificent, nazi-looking. their eyes glittered snake­like under their varnished liners. their brass and weapons and cartridge belts were impeccable. hal stepped up to the flawless files, knowing that though they kept their eyes front they were appraising him and sniggering tothemselves. he hadn't been in tunisia or in the landing on gela.he was just a base section chickenshit second looie. he heard the breathing of each man as he inspected him up and down, crackingthe rifle as he snatched it from each. by the second file he all but slipped in the sand as he did his right face. but he got through thewhole guard without a hitch. as he was grabbing for the rifle of the last sentinel, he dropped it. he had to stoop over and pick it up.he tilted it and peeped down the bore. -your piece is filthy, he said to the sentinel. -wasn't before you dropped it, sir, the man answered, never flicking his eyes from attention. somehow hal got through with the guard mount, the closing ofthe ranks, the lowering of the flag. while the bugler blew retreatand hal stood at parade rest, he felt their eyes and the setting oransun gouging at his back. he posted his first relief and reported tothe adjutant, asking to be relieved as od because he wasn't well.he was shaking so that he had to wedge his knees together as hestood at attention before the adjutant. " ---.::_---'"-i 'h =" .. ' .. . ... ii, .. • �....,.-,-_--:�-. • -. // till � hal 73 unt, the doli� b oler blell' rt� d tbesettingor. e ari reportto! . he wasn't li'� co�elher al � o -lieutenant, said the adjutant, it isn't good policy to drink in hot weather, especially just before you have a guard mount. -i haven't had a drink since last night, hal said. -then use your mosquito netting and take your atabrine, hear? ... you're relieved as officer of the day. hal saluted and did an about-face. his heart was going like his knees. the adjutant must have heard it. he didn't bother with chow. but when he'd removed his side arms and leggins and had put on fresh suntans because the leggins had creased the others, he went at once to the officers' club, stood at the end of the bar, and ordered one brandy and soda after another. already in the lounge were majors with nurses or with french 'vac's of the corps feminin auxiliaire de l'air. for some time now hal had been noting in himself symptoms unknown to himself in the bars of new york, where he used to stand for hours alone, listening and appraising and throwing down the drinks. it had always been the same with him in bars: the joe next to him struck up a conversation. but in the bars of oran some gap had arisen between him and all other human beings. it seemed to him that anything anybody else had to say was too prosaic, too factual, or too obvious to the situation. like a bad exposition at the beginning of a play. it amazed and horrified him how people could talk for ten minutes on such subjects as how they couldn't get the cigarette brand they wanted at the px; what they said to their first sergeant; or the oranaise who wouldn't. hal's mind had become like an idling motor; he could foretell what they'd say ten minutes before they said it. in everything they wished to corn­ municate there was something like a stale joke. and hal found it difficult, after a few drinks, to look them straight in the eye. there was some vast and deadly scheme in which they were all working; only they didn't know it. hal himself had an inkling of what was upsetting him. casting about for a rational explanation of why he felt so odd in oran, he decided it was because the war was beginning to seep into his bones. this war was the fault of everybody, himself included. therefore he couldn't bear to hear them jabbering at him, opaque to another reality more bitter than their own. they were enmeshed in their own tyranny of fact, insensitive to the dreadfulness of their own natures and to the position in which they happened to be-squirrels of fate in a slimy north african town, having the time of their lives. and hal wondered if all the americans rolling in the mate­ rialism of the base sections were living like bloodsuckers off the deaths of those at the front, which were their only excuse for being 74 the gallery here at all. and gradually, pondering on his new inability to come to grips with people in their domain of px rations, office hours, and no mail from home, hal found himself swimming in a wild and lonesome lake of semantic irrelevance. nothing made any more sense to him. there was nothing anybody could say to him to lift the weight of unreality that was crushing him. he felt like a sleepwalker among all these grimacing marionettes. he wondered if overseas in wartime there might be some dark vortex of death that sucked back from salerno even to the city of oran. his desire was to tear himself away from all who tried to monopolize his ear. something in him kept saying, come away, dear. your place isn't here.... but where? by evening, with no dinner in his stomach, hal was still at the end of the bar. he was slightly stupefied. the brandy of north africa didn't give him the compassionate calm that he got from the rye of the states. it was only a poison that anesthetized whatever censor was in his mind. in the mist of the fumes of grand marc things crawled up through a trap door in his brain. they were nameless little incubi with no bodies or faces, but they scuttled around inside his head squeaking in furry voices of doubt and doom. they played with one another like a litter' of kittens, but it was the calculated play of children putting on a show for their parents. hal knew that actually. they were playing with him-that each of these vague animals was himself in pieces. the bar filled up with officers and nurses and red cross girls. they wedged themselves into their niches and attempted to im­ pinge their private worlds on one another. by now hal knew also all the solitary drinkers of oran. but if they looked his way or motioned to him to join them (he'd been father confessor to them all), he'd study his glass or look at the wall. others would immerse themselves sufficiently to float what they imagined were their troubles, then they'd forage about the club for someone to talk to, carrying their individual obsessions in their arms like abortions being hustled to a sewer. only hal had no particular release. alcohol simply shut tighter the gates of his prison, spraying the air of his jail with something deathly sweet. he saw himself beating about in the fumes and fanning, trying to create air where none was. a figure slipped into the empty place at the bar on his left. he didn't look, as he used once to turn welcomingly to newcomers in new york, as though they were keeping an appointment with him. he merely ordered another drink. but straightway he was aware of a seepage between himself and whoever stood next to him. it was as gree had !leevi,ur h!iant arch -i ti kick the 0 loo i beau h' an e -1 gree� bat's great, to ad a sem srstem aoout matur poetq sold b other none ( listen ameril r •• _: .... " """'1,"" ---� � -, -_-. ., /> � � hal 75 though they'd already entered into conversation. the elbow touch­ ing his own on the bar was eloquent though motionless. at last hal couldn't stand the atmosphere any longer. he narrowed his eyes and slowly turned his head to look out over the club terrace. at his left was a parachute captain who seemed to be looking through him. apparently he too had been waiting till the psychic charges he'd been hurling at hal would energize him into turning, as the sun eggs on a sunflower. the captain was shorter than hal and slighter. he had a tension as exquisite as the fake repose of greek athletes in marble. his jet hair was so tightly curled that it had an energy all its own. he was dressed in combat fashion. his sleeves were halfway up his elbows. he wore no tie. the hair grew up his throat and on his neat tight arms. his eyes were set at a slant, and his teeth were white and daggerlike. he seemed a mon .. arch of some race of cats. -look at them, will you? he said to hal, as though they were resuming. a conversation. -whom? the parachute captain put one of his boots on the brass rail and kicked it. then with a lazy tension he made a gesture including all the other people leaning on the bar: -this race of straphangers and human adding machines. . .. look at the faces of those nurses. sleek inanity sleepwalking in a beauty parlor. look at the paunches on those majors.... his vituperation came out slowly, with the detailed passion of an expert at murder. -you don't like americans? hal said. he was fascinated by the green eyes and by the parachute insignia, wings suspended like a bat's at dusk. -who does, except themselves? automatons from the world's greatest factory.... they have no souls, you see ... only the ability to add up to one million. did you ever hear them try to carryon a sensible conversation? . . . oh, they've got quite an ingenious system of government, i grain you. but none of them gives a damn about it except when it gets them into a war.... they've got less maturity or individuality than any other people in the world. poetry and music to them-why they're deaf to anything that isn't sold by an advertising agency.... they don't know how to treat other human beings. with all their screaming about democracy, none of them has the remotest conception of human dignity ..•• listen to the sounds that negro band is making. that's their american music. sexual moans and thumps.•.. thev don't know 76 the gallery how to make love to a woman, and all their hatreds are between football teams or states of the same union or for people they don't understand. victims of the mob spirit and regimentation. . .. they've never really suffered. but when they get the first twinge of toothache of the soul, they start feeling sorry for themselves instead of learning any wisdom from pain. -you're talking treason, hal said. it was almost his old manner of listening and advising in the bars of new york. -truth is always treasonous, the captain said, clicking his glass with a soft ferocity on the bar. and now these poor dears are in­ volved in a war. this war is simply the largest mass murder in history. theirs is the only country that has enough food and gasoline and raw materials. so they're expending these like mad to wipe out the others in the world who'd like a cut of their riches. in order to preserve their standard of living for a few more years, they've dreamed up ideologies. or their big business has. so they're at war with nearly everybody else in the world. the rest of the world hates americans because they're so crude and stupid and unimaginative.... they will win this war. they'll reduce europe to a state of fifteen hundred years ago. then their businessmen and their alphabetical bureaucracies will go into the shambles of milan, berlin, and tokyo and open up new plants. . .. inter­ national carpetbaggers.... millions of human beings will be dead, and most of the human feelings will be dead forever.... hurray for our side.... we're destroying all the new ideas and all the little men of the world to make way for our mass production and our mass thinking and our mass entertainment. then we can go back to our united states, that green little island in the midst of a smoking world. then we can kill all the negroes and the jews. then we'll start on russia. -not pessimistic, are you? hal asked feebly, watching the glowing green eyes. -me? the captain said. i'm the most optimistic man in the world. i see what is happening to the human race. it gets worse all the time.... what an obscene comedy. the parachute captain had an almost .effet� way. of speaking, like poets in the village. this contrasted with his agile body and the violence of his passion. -when shall i see you again? hal said, disengaging himself softly. ." . . -i am buried near 'taormina on the island of sicily. i wish i � in a \vol'! rna ni� be! out fati. h he anc nevi !ecr, brllfren �he'� the�e ban1 !pok� every nera te!!e" -( hal he mnrl! couch hi!ii( time!: t ��\.\.h\ hal " iied� ateb�n --"------------------------. 'q�\e tb�1� had a few flowers on my grave. • • • when i was alive, i loved ,mentatiqq flowers. m\t �i· �v�; afterwards hal often thought of the parachute captain. his life � in oran became a round in which he did his work, enclosed in himself. he made no further a ttempt to enter into the lives of '\amll: others. nor did he visit any army psychiatrists. he knew he'd arrived already at a point where no one schooled in freud or jung • :� i could help him, any more than a bespectacled young psychiatrist ..."'"j, ".}.� froin ccny could have helped jesus christ in the garden by ':. psychoanalyzing the bloody sweat. �" nevertheless hal went at the problem with a simplicity finer �.':: than any with which he'd ever attacked the enigma of his life here­ ,�.�"o •• ,.""".',,. tofore. he went on the wagon from january to july of 1944. stop. . ping his drinking had no particular effect on him for better or for .' worse. he smoked a little less, and the evenings dragged more. x: that heightened awareness of his was still with him. after a deep ;. night's sleep, sweltering under his mosquito netting, he could never '. be sure whether he'd really slept at all. he seemed merely to blank .. ....�· .. ,.o .... _" out for eight hours. awaking, he was neither better rested nor less fatigued than when he went to bed. he knew no french, for some block arose in his mind whenever he tried to learn a romance language. yet he made the acquaint_ ........... '-0,. ance of an oranaise who worked in the officers' px. this girl never forced an issue. she was as cool as a mannequin. from some secret source of supply she had a jeep-she'd been loved by a brigadier general in the atc, by an american ensign, and by a ,i french colonel from sidi-bel-abbes. when hal's work was finished, she'd meet him with her jeep and relinquish the wheel to him. on 0these outings she wore polaroid glasses, wedgies, and a blue silk bandanna about her hair. unlike iiy'st french girls she seldom � spoke; and when she used her french on him, she pantomimed everything without a trace of nervousness. evenings, he'd stay at her apartment and sit drinking fruit juice while she played "tris­ ... tesse" on her piano. -c'est ton destin, she said once, d'aller au bout de toi-meme, !(i hal understood what she meant . . : � he often slept on the couch in her apartment. sometimes at sunrise she'd come to his side in her blue kimono. she'd sit on his �j3iogt couch and watch while he passed without a jar from the depths of his sleep into full wakefulness. then she'd take his hand. some­ times she kissed his wrists or the lobes of his ears. 78 the gallery -je t'aime pour ton angoisse indefinie. he understood what she meant by that too. in a sense he was happier with jeanne than he'd ever been. she had all his sensibilities plus a fortitude he didn't own. she was the first with whom he had the certainty that anything he needed would be found in her, and with an abundance that would stop flowing only with her death. jeanne was like a tube reaching into eternity that sucked up a grace of oxygen to one asphyxiating. she never seemed much moved by anything except when he took her hand or when she read aloud to him from the jour de colere of pierre emanuel. hal caught very little of this poem. but often he thought that his only salvation would be to marry jeanne. for she had that awareness and resignation of spirit that has sipped everything lovely in life, letting such values be her guide through some mortal experience that has purged her. the focus of her compassion was in her breasts, geometric as cones. her nipples seemed to see. in june, 1944, when jeanne had brought him to a tranquillitylike a magnetic field pointing all one way, she left him to visit her mother in casablanca for a month. when he drove her to the station in oran, he knew and she knew that they'd never see each other again. it was terminating in the silvery casualness with which it had begun. as she mounted the battered wagon-lit, she turned back and kissed him on the forehead, saying: -et je dis, en quittant tes charmes, sans larmes: adieu! ... the cadence of her voice told him what they were both thinking. for three days her spirit remained with him intact. he continued to sleep at her empty apartment, to which she'd left him the key. but on the fourth day his old sickness seized him with redoubled violence, as though jeanne's nursing had only caused its virus to become dormant. hal now couldn't bear the company of other americans at all, particularly of his brother officers. it was difficult for him to sit still in one place without chain-smoking to distract himself from a compulsion to keep in constant motion. he couldn't look anybody in the face. while giving orders to his gi's, he'd walk up and down his office wringing his hands and feigning to concentrate. sometimes it took every gram of control to keep from telling his first sergeant to please go away and let him alone. and he decided he'd have to fall off the wagon because at least having coy, th� had hit spr of � ad] i!i at had on t plar �tat� �o mess( more boo� street on mess, wine, the� him, , hal a glass of something numbing in his hand gave him an excuse for remaining stationary in one spot. when these fits were at their height, hal had a feeling as though he'd like to dash the whole twenty-five thousand miles encircling the world. then he'd come back to his point of departure and find himself standing there leering and saying, welcome home, old goon.... he meditated putting in for a transfer to casablanca to be near jeanne. but he knew and she knew that she'd done everything in her power for him, that her therapy was only a breathing spell in the denouement. even now at the hotel anfa or at villa moss she'd be allowing someone else to possess her cool body, the while she covered her eyes and thought of hal and shook her head sadly. there'd been nothing cloying in her pity for him. but what jeanne had given him was a sip of life, for which he had no thirst. he'd read enough romances to know that he'd already entered, through no fault or desire of his own, into league with those who are on the other side of the looking glass. he got a five days' leave forced on him, for his co had noticed " his removed emotional state and had chalked it up to overseas blues. he booked passage on a plane to cairo and stopped off in algiers, both to see the city and to renew the acquaintance of some of his friends from ocs. he left the plane at maison blanche and hitchhiked into algiers. it lay before him in the july afternoon, sprawled on its hillside like the segment of an amphitheater. dozens of barrage balloons floated above the harbor like silver sausages on a blue plate. in the offices of afhq hal sat on his friends' desks and cocked a critical eye to see whether possibly some new insight or mercy had been born in them as a result of being overseas and brooding . on the war. they cursed the ayrabs and said that the french were playing us for all they could get. all their meannesses, latent in the states, had only been crystallized by a year in africa. so hal declined their offers to dinner at a dozen sumptuous messes and went out to walk along the rue d'isly. there were . more british than americans in evidence, clumping along in their boots and gaiters and shorts. and at 1800 these british all left the streets for a few minutes to put on their long trousers. on a ramp near the hotel aletti hal found a transient officers' mess. the mea] was good. discovering that he could buy a bottle of wine, he fell off the wagon. along with the brown pork chops and the greenery on his plate the strong white wine began to work upon him. he knew what was coming-the old desolating anxiety and 79 80 the gallery -, heartache stirred in his bowels. he knew he oughtn't to finish the whole bottle, but he did and lit a cigarette. the p/w lieutenant in charge of the mess had been leaning against a column and looking at hal with a luminous interest. this italian resembled a little the parachute captain, but there was also in his brown triangular face a print of the wildness of reggio calabria. he treated his waiters with a gentleness, unlike the domineering of the italian officers over their soldati in the p/wenclosures around oran. this italian lieutenant knew some secret of relaxation, for he nestled his thick hair indolently against the column and crossed his bare legs. he was wearing his old italian khaki shorts, but his shirt was american suntan p/w issue, with stars attached to the tabs of his open collar. finally hal lit another cigarette and held one out to the p/wlieutenant. the italian bounded toward him as though he'd been preparing this movement for the past five minutes. the flare from hal's cigarette lighter threw into relief the brown eyes and thesleek head. the italian took a puff and came to attention. -grazie tanto.... lei mi sembra cos! gentile.•.. se tutti fossero come lei. -but i don't know a word of italian, hal said. the italian kept at rigid attention by hal's table. now it was hard enough for hal to keep up any intercourse with people whose language he could understand. therefore a huge tension reared inside him when he knew he couldn't get a word across to the p/wlieutenant. hal wasn't one of those extroverts who could shout in english at someone ignorant of the language, and use violent gestures, hoping thereby to force some semantic rapport. neverthe­ less he motioned the italian to sit down opposite him. the lieuten­ ant in his turn motioned one of the waiters to bring another dish of ice cream. hal had to eat it. the ice cream didn't belong to the italian, but there was a miraculous graciousness in his bounty as he smiled his melting smile and talked a soft stream of complimentsof which hal didn't understand a word. yet it wasn't so difficult as he'd feared. he didn't have to cope with the italian. when an american started to talk, hal always felt like asking him to pleaseshut hp. but there was nothing offensive about this elegant little man. perhaps he was lonely after thirteen months of imprisonment.perhaps italians, being gregarious and rhetorical, became even more melancholy than british and americans. -mi permetta, signor tenente. mi chiarno scipione. e lei non puo immaginare quanto mi piacerebbe avere un arnico sincero. beh ... aerre a �ea d'ai� -� h� ha oners nato -1 nor thq ri ing i bro,� on since mark a�ao dined said t olal! own s verted britis �ratit leh t with begi clu� went he d imro old t hal -if i were going to be in algiers long, hal said, i could distract myself by teaching you english. i'd like to do something for someone. -quindi, the p/w lieutenant said. he spread his hands in a deprecating shrug as though to say that their friendship was already a sealed testament. ho una bellissima stanza qui in un albergo d'algeri.... sono tanto, tanto bravi con me gli americani. -all you need is a girl now, hal said. -sono quattordici mesi che non tocco una donna, scipione said. ho quasi perso il ricordo. ma ... cosa vuole? e il nostro destino. hal was aware of the officia! stand on fraternization with pris­ oners of war. but he waved for another bottle of wine. -caro tenente, mi dispiace. ma la lunga prigionia mi ha rovi­ nato 10 stomaco. 11 vino non 10 posso pili bere. -in short, hal said, you won't drink with me. lucky people. no rough edges in your relations with others to be lubricated with '" the grape. i envy you. rising abruptly from the table, he shook hands with the gleam­ ing little officer. a look of sodden dismay and regret flooded the brown graceful face. -0 dio mio, l'ho ofieso? ... mi dica, la prego, che fastidio le ho dato? -it's nothing, nothing, said hal. though something told him not to act this way, he turned away with a surgical smile and went out into the city of algiers. it was 1.1, beginning to grow dark. he went and drank at the center district club, where italian p/w dispensed a potent rum. at midnight he went walking along the mediterranean and picked up a girl. but he discovered that the rum or his own mind had finally made him impotent. he lay beside her weeping and thinking through the old tale of narcissus. on july 26, 1944, hal left africa. he carried with him its silt, since no one can be on that continent long without forever being marked with something shadowy, brooding, and evanescent as the ayrabs. he sailed on a british steamer onto which had been sar­ dined the last remnants of allied force headquarters. everyone said that as soon as the ship sailed the french would clip the hair of all algerian grisettes and machine-gun the ayrabs to boost their own sagging prestige. they sailed on an old cruise steamer con­ verted into a troopship. there were sumptuous meals, and the british were most obsequious, as though from some policy of gratitude for lend-lease. the passengers were a garish lot. they'd 81 82 the gallery fi�ul ove tho thel wor !we achi wor been swept out by the last broom to clean afhq: french captains involved in some misty liaison, american signal corps officers still carrying telephone wire and switchboards, and unidentified desert rats who'd been waiting transportation to the italian front since the fall of tunisia. every night the ship blacked out, for who knew but what jerry might fly down from southern france and bomb the daylights out of them? reconnaissance planes had been over algiers every night in july, 1944. if he bombed this troopship, some of the stoutest old lumber of the allied armies would go to the bottom. after hal had swung his bedding roll into the hold, where he bunked in the five-high arrangement, he stood on deck and watched the lights of algiers shimmer away from him. the barrage balloons still swung aloft in the moonlight. he was leaving africa forever. there he'd spent almost a year of his life. some of the aridity ofthe desert had been blown into him. there his personality hadlearned of limitless horizons and the sickening mirage of eternity.there he'd been sliced by the french perfection of detail, but soundlessly, as glass under water can be sheared by a scissors. he tried to sleep a lot on the trip to italy, but the hold was an inferno in the daytime. and at night the ventilators sounded as though his head were being held under water. so he spent thehours of light hiding under funnels on the deck. to read there were only improving books put in the ship's library by british pietistic societies seeking to turn the traveler's mind to his salvation. most often hal read the gospel of saint john. he knew he was going to italy, though security forbade his know­ ing where. the dopesters we�e all certain they'd land in naples.and hal, just after a rich english breakfast, when with coffee and a cigarette his spirits would rise to what would be normal in most men-numbness and resignation-used to wonder what he'd find in italy. perhaps his african sojourn had been a time of testing, a dark night of the soul. perhaps in italy he'd finally blossom out. but in his midnights he knew that italy would be just one more new place to adjust himself to. and his powers of elasticity were now about as good as a rubber band's that has lain in a sunny attic. in those midnights when he couldn't smoke on deck because of the blackout, hal used to lean over the rail and glare at the phos­ phorescence of the mediterranean. he'd seen it from oran and algiers. now he was on it. the romans rode on it, shelley wasdrowned in it, mussolini thought it was his sea. by sunlight it was an aching blue. at midnight it was just another body of water onwhich a ship could float. sometimes, in the dark, anonymous !unl esca ni� abr� toj oc in i !rl lot b b it h into oft spr ilie neve flow att vem were dau�) du�� snip, �crid ; .. ": ', --�, ---. ., // i' � hal 83 figures in shorts came and stood beside him and shared his glances over the black water glowing in the wake of the ship. but even though they stood at his elbow, hal made no attempt to enter their worlds, as he might once have tried to. once, accosted by a word of greeting, he left the rail and descended swiftly into the sweltering hold. anything was better than to be talked to. it was his achievement that in crossing the mediterranean he never said a word to anyone except the gentle cockney table waiters. he saw the cape of bizerte shrouded in its ghostly triangle of sunset. he saw the island of sicily jutting like a palace. over those escarpments the spirit of the parachute captain flew. perhaps at night his spry hairy figure sucked the blood of sicilian children abroad late in the streets of palermo. with the dawn of the third morning he arose heavy and sweaty to find birds flapping alongside the ship and a hammerlike mass of ocher rock lifting out of the sea. he saw the eyeless sockets of caves in its sides and many pretty villas perched over crevasses. -that's capri, someone said to someone else, accenting the last syllable. we'll go and see the grottoes. the airplane drivers do a lot of their shacking there. by noon they were sliding into the harbor of a city. -that's naples, said the voice that accompanies all travelers. i'd know it from the postcards and the pitchers in the barbershops. look, that's vesuvius.... yessir, the old anthill's smokin. ain't got over the shock of anzio yet. ... and see that big thing that looks like a country club at the top of the city? that's castel sant'elmo . . . . i been readin my guidebooks. hal thought, see naples and die, wondering if he really might. it had the same open-fan formation, spread on the hills and sliding into the harbor, as algiers. but it was vaster, naples. hal thought of the million lives squirming in that crowded dihedral; of the spray of dialect, of the typhus and ddt, of the flash of colors in the streets where boys slept on their bellies. an odor such as he'd never whiffed before was in the air, a stink and a perfume of dead flowers and human matter and the voice of saint thomas aquinas at the university of naples and enrico caruso dying at somma vesuviana and all the spaghetti in the universe. already the tugs were slithering them into their berth like patient worried little daughters leading a blind old mother. and tiny fishing skiffs water­ bugged it over the bay and careened alongside the british troop­ ship. the fishermen showed their teeth and called out in an inde­ scribable dialect. 'llr ij / � --��________._/ i' •• , � • 1', l .. �' r, �... • ,,:j w ;; the gallery84 hal.....--j uke hi an a�ro -ere ther are the with a heard e he'd hal were lei would r he o� two-and neapoli em�tr 0 fmlon hornet� �tole a hn �heltm he lum �ee nap' pm�ing in th, to the nearly all the berths in naples harbor were twisted like the machinery in a petroleum yard after an explosion. blasted and bombed cranes clawed wildly at the sky. a few ships still lay on their rusty sides. they looked like fat women who'd committed suicide in water too shallow to drown them. the acres of devasta­ tion along the water front were something hal had never imagined, except in the rubbled castles of his own brain. for a mile along the port area the houses lay in their gray dust. here and there a room stuck out of a second story where a bomb had split a house in half. some were like doll houses, in which a side can be hinged away for a cross section of all the rooms. here was half a staircase leading nowhere, a flapping shred of blue wallpaper. in one blasted room the pictures still hung askew on the wall, waiting for some house­ wife to come and straighten them. the dock area and beyond it were mostly blocks of rubble and segments of balcony and girders thrusting out in pointless punctuation marks. in these ex-houses people had been born and loved and begotten and died. eggs dropped from the sky had blown them apart. hal leaned his head against the railing. now he understood the difference between being and not-being, there in the silence and the heat and the mess of naples at high noon. the lovely, the cruel, and the opportunist were all entombed here in this shambles around the bay of naples. himself, trembling and weary and reduced to a zero before the horror of it, saw the aftermath. he saw clearly what he'd been feeling dimly for twenty-nine years­ that to human life and striving there's no point whatever. that we are all of us bugs writhing under the eye of god, begging to be squashed. that as evidence of our mortality all we leave behind us is the green whey of a fly that is swatted to death. there was a dispute over the order of debarkation. finally the british infantry were marched off first. they were going straight to the front, so there was no need of their idling on deck. they dunked down the gangplank with their rifles. -ees doon bloody well ere. blimey, whot eel do to oos or oos to im! some of the americans got bored watching the stream of limeys debarking, so without authority they scaled the rope ladders, grab­ bing their barracks bags and bedding rolls and tearing across the hinged bridge to land. they pre-empted little neapolitans to totetheir luggage. �hese �ere dir�ier and more vociferous than anythinghal had seen iii africa. he d expected a neapolitan would look need in tinr do arcade a it was iiithe dom -thi! naples ( hal 10 like all roofed 0 galleria sweeping tattered as thoug -the,1 hal 85 like a chef in a second avenue restaurant, standing on the pier in an apron and mixing a dish of spaghetti and garlic. -eyeties, said the voice of the eternal tourist. ginsoes. there they are. the ayrabs of europe. the barracks bags and the bedding rolls were put into piles with armed guards. nobody trusted the little neapolitans. hal heard explanations' that one would be three miles away by the time he'd hoisted your baggage to his shoulder. he heard that if a jeep were left unattended in the streets of naples, the neapolitans would pick it clean to the chassis. he obeyed -all the landing instructions and found himself in a two-and-a-half-ton truck with all his baggage inviolate. the small neapolitans swarmed all over the truck, not at all fazed by having empty or loaded carbines pointed at their heads. over all the con­ fusion at the port their dialect twittered and buzzed like a hive of hornets. hal sensed that for all their dirt and thievery they also stole a zest and a passion for life. he was driven through the port area, past tetrahedron air-raid shelters, past files of crumbled buildings, to his billet on via diaz. he lumped all his junk in the center of the floor and went out to see naples. it was 1600 hours; the sun was like a white-hot thumb pressing on castel sant'elmo. in the first words he'd spoken in four days he inquired the way to the main drag. on via roma he found moving in both directions on both sidewalks of the narrow street a crowd thicker than any­ thing in times square. the allied soldiery all had a sour look. the i talians were selling cameos. they catered also to every bodily need in shrill idiomatic english. pimping was the province of very tiny boys. hal walked for five minutes and came at last to a spacious arcade opening off via roma. the crowd just pushed him there. it was like walking into a city within a city. there was no glass in the domed skylight. he asked an idling gi for information. -this is the galleria umberto, lootenant, sir. everybody in naples comes here. hal looked around the galleria as he walked through it. it was like all outdoors going on inside. he liked the feeling of being roofed over without any coffin sensation of claustrophobia. the galleria was jammed with allied soldiers and sailors, women sweeping, bars, art shops, small booths selling jewelry, columns, tattered flags and standards, lights suspended from the vaulted roof as though this were some vast basketball court. -the.�e people, he said to himself, are all in search of love. the the gallery86 hal �iyou th thin� awar ii tha but he -lo -th love of god, of death, or of another human being. they're all lost. that's why they walk so aimlessly. they all feel here that the world isn't big enough to hold them. and look at the design of this place. like a huge cross laid on the ground, after the corpus is taken off the nails. hal walked around the galleria. he stuck his hands into his pockets, swaggered a little, and tried to smile at everyone. often his smiles were returned. but he didn't follow them up. his was the disinterested smile of god the father surveying the world after the sixth day. and hal had never seen so many soldiers whose free time hung like a weight on their backs, as their packs had hung in combat. they sat at the outside tables of the bars and drank vera mouth. they wore shoulder patches of three divisions. their faces were seamy or gentle or questioning or settled or blank. no other people in the galleria umberto had so many nuances on their lips as the americans hal saw there. after looking in all the shop windows and all the posters and traversing both sides of the x-shaped pavement that bisected the galleria, hal sat down at one of the tables. he knew that he was in the tiniest yet the greatest city of the world. but it hadn't the fixed pattern of a small town. it was a commune of august, 1944, and its population changed every day. these people who came to the galleria to stand and drink and shop and look and question were set apart from the rest of the modern world. they were out­ side the formula of mothers and wives and creeds. the galleria umberto was like that city in the middle of the sea that rises every hundred years to dry itself in the sun. an old neapolitan in a greasy apron was standing beside his table. hal ordered a drink, giving the old man two cigarettes and the fee for a double vermouth, which tasted like fruity alum. and then, looking again through the galleria, which had enraptured him as a circus does a child, hal saw a figure bearing down on him. and he knew that he had been waiting, had been summoned to the galleria for this. the figure came through the mob with the surety of a small boat picking its way through shoals. the parachute captain took one of the wicker chairs and sat down beside him without saying a word. hal felt the bright bitter eyes going over his face. the neapolitan brought another vera mouth. then hal spoke with the studied casualness of one who seeks to show that his thoughts are elsewhere: -how's your grave? -blow all that, the parachute captain said. you've always stalled who do !hr an which ther !t except ". if it ente and cr tions d wartim� ���it 01 its ]ll!t except a -am of his 01 whatar in vnio: thing. the el ing high had the! hal 87 1j.1\\��'te a�' tte\'" h', with me. that's caused your ruin. you're a dishonest man, chum. ,natt � � • f . a d i() t fu' ' you think of yourself as the center 0 the umverse. . .. n any(orno, ��. thing that doesn't fit into your scheme of things gets rationalizedpus 1) takt: away like a piece of rock found on the wrong geologic stratum. ; �' that vague sword was already beginning to pierce hal's heart, i ,an m:: but he paid no attention and said:e t�ont\ -look at these people around us ... the same as you and i. . u� � -the same? the captain threw back his head and laughed. • e�o1l1 your pity goes too far, boy. or not far enough. you've never , ��k learned the difference between seeing humanity and getting h'�l smothered by it. the more you feel you must love humanity, the anuq;( more you indicate a certain deficiency in yourself.... jesus christ '.tt� must have been a misanthrope deep down inside, who tried to .clj. offset his truer characteristics. love is the most natural thing in c' this world, you see. a lover never feels he must love, because he does. only the half-arsed poets invented love as a force that has nothing to do with anything, because they had to cook up some� , thing to write about, as propagandists cook up causes to die for . . . . i'm talking of the sorrow of those who think, rather than those who do.... in wartime the greatest heroes are the sensitive and shy and gentle. they're great because they have to live in a world which is dedicated in wartime to an annihilation of everything they stand for. they're the unsung. no one will ever sing to them. except us, the dead. their theme's too secret, like masturba tion. . . . if a man all his life has oxidized his every mood the moment ... : it entered his glands, if he insulted and slugged his way along, it's not a much greater effort for him to go into battle. the gentle die in battle. your crude extrovert comes out of his ordeal more brutal and crass and cocky than when he went in. that's the way civiliza­ . tions die, gradually. a premium is put on physical courage in wartime which kills off the gentle, because they're too noble to . admit of cowardice. so they die.... death to them is terrible. and it's just another of those things to people who aren't aware of life, except as a current of vitality that carries them along. -and yet, hal said, leaning forward and hearing the thumping of his own heart, you fought and died in sicily a few months ago. what are you so bitter about? your ghost should mount a soapbox in union square. perhaps you could finally teach the world some­ thing. the elegant and mocking figure looked at him and laid its shin­ ing high boots across an adjoining chair. this parachute captain had the scorn of a demon, who knows that he can very well afford 88 the gallery to thumb his nose at god because he will burn through all eternity no matter what he does. -my death in sicily, the captain said, sending a graceful hairy claw through the air, was merely a compensation for my life. my life was a mess. i was a broadway chorus boy. do you think 1 liked swishing my way through the american theater? do you think i enjoyed the fascism of great stars and booking agents and elegants who thought they were writers? jesus, no! but in my jump training i was able to exorcise all this nonsense. in the crazy camaraderie of silk and geronimo i achieved reality to my life.... oh, there was nothing solemn or dignified in the way i took my exit. it was a bullet in my face, just after i'd landed, and was looking around for my men, to urge them on in the way that cameramen like. my death was the expiation of that ridiculous society for which i danced, painted and epicene behind a proscenium arch. i was a very jerky marionette on the stage and a very still one as a corpse . . . . but let me tell you one thing, joe: the ecstasy of death is a greater one than i found in love or the dance with a capital d .... i pity you for all your struggling and whining to yourself. for i'm free, free! ... out forever from under all this pitiful shit of human life! -how you hate, hal said, covering his face with his vermouth glass. -your imaginary troubles, the captain said, crooking a finger and smiling almost tenderly, are far more serious than mine ever were. at least i was able to lump all mine in one ball. hal looked away into the sunny galleria. the captain's words clattered in on him. and there was that old sinking sensation of having a world on his shoulders without asking for it. -the wisdom of death, he said, trying to strike a tone of banter. but his teeth showed like a skull's. -the french, the captain said, striking a tone of preciosity, speak of the experience mortelle. we've both had it . . . but it seems to have paralyzed you, boy. you must either live or die. you're trying to do both.... i died.... but my spirit is congealed into one knot of fury. i left this life angry, but not hurt; whole, even though mangled. . . . i see through you. you're trying to conceal that your soul is a perfumed jellyfish. you've tried to wrestle with the larger issues when you're not sure whether you can read and write.... wise up to yourself, buddy. it's not too late. hal arose and knocked over the wicker table. -i don't care to drink with you any more. and please, please ____, don't viievil in t somethin world we -ah, riling. t like the certainly arrl)'ing goa airee !mall piee time, )'ou -let's imnan,t -prart he was t for the in�, for fir a continual it!eemed t of the �rea !!retch out anaeveryt to heir. , , tuen the hosrital, \i' aelulions 0 russian'je -gee, s' reork,. , ne'sjems newgs", , :rci�it" , ", �ud , 'ne 01 wi , , j. (on�e4it; bur!: ifdok i e ti)jn� tv 'ed 1oii'151i1 au can w� i too late, i please, ple�f hal 89 don't visit me again. let me alone. you're the essence of all that's evil in the world. you're the evilest person i've ever known. there's something about your mouth, the way it works, as though this world were just your orange, to be sucked dry.... -ah, mysticism and metaphor, the captain said softly, aiso rising. there's no place for that crap any more, chuck. it's outworn, like the middle ages trying to smoke out syphilis with incense. certainly there are faith and spirituality, but this time there's no applying the old creeds and schemes. you have no right to seek god directly. you must do it through other people. they're all small pieces of him. if you know and love all the people of your time, you know god. -let's go down on our knees together, hal said-and pray because we're both so proud and cold and heartless. -less proud and cold and heartless than most. ... i prayed as i was dying. and i died at twenty-two but my death was part of the scheme and the deception, that's all you don't want to learn anything, do you kid? -pray to our lord and savior jesus christ, hal said. he was terrified at the rabid insistence in his voice. for the next five days he lay in his billet and looked at the ceil­ ing. for five nights he couldn't close his eyes. in his head he heard a continual crashing, as of buildings falling down irreparably. often it seemed to him that he was capable of everything, but especially of the great and the good things of life. it seemed he had only to stretch out his hand and the sorrowing world would be remade and every tear dried in every eye. he wanted so to help, to help, to help .. ' .. then they took him in an ambulance to the forty-fifth general hospital, where he was given a knockout drug for paranoia and delusions of persecution. a nurse there was a first lieutenant, a russian "j ewess named luba. she said to the psychiatrist, a major: -gee, sir, nuts are all so individual. they're not ordinary people.... now you take that tall good-looking one who thinks he's jesus christ. ... why, damn it, if he grew a beard, i'd believe he was.•.• , ii / ' ..---" �� 'i' .!. . ' )0 .. ,.. ....:"... • � -� • third promenade (casablanca-algiers) i remember the sixth general hospital in casablanca. it was stuck, as they seem to stick all hospitals, in a school with large windows and many floors. its doctors and its nurses were mostly from new england, so that the place had an air of efficiency and cold kindness that struck me strange in casa. the nurses lived in a high apartment like a silo. the gi's had a tent area near pare lyautey. on one side was a clearing of french tanks drawn up in rows, the way military force is deceptive and orderly-on review. between the tanks and the tents there was a cement road where the french used to walk arm in arm in the evenings. ward boys and dental technicians leaned over their barbed-wire enclosure on nights when they weren't on duty. they called out to all and sundry, as though they felt it necessary to reaffirm their being in a strange land. their tents were pyramidal. in the daytime the flaps were tucked up, and i could see the mosquito netting looped up over the frames of the cots in a tight ball. i remember that the nurses at the sixth general hospital were plumper and saltier than most anc's. they talked wistfully of boston and taunton and waltham and cambridge and worcester, army general hospitals are incestuous. they're like a little town in which everyone spies on everyone else, and everyone dates everyone else. the surgical captain has his favorite nurse, while the anesthe­ tist looks on and gnashes his teeth. the patients are well cared for, but they're outside the charmed circle; they're like guests at a summer hotel in the adirondacks. they never get to see the inside. they lie in their beds and watch the life of the general hospit.al. they're not a part of it at all, unless some nurse takes a fancy to them on her ward, or some doctor bucking for his majority takes a special interest in their rare disease. 90 (ca � the world, t the beds have laid mr bed ij mrmess time sche mr bellr' me in an dea, cure live, two �iae to sid (qmin� 0 geor�ia w nums, th necked jar naatoma i rem em �ne was fr when she wiae breas wa! minist on the sta' ,ner himsel thirtrrears sleer that �tate!, we now had so dea bet tha were ash a �he'a been thewmber a �ood war casablanca iliree beds lake out a ana drink lalt of the i reme "", :". '.' � . , .. , "i,' . , --. ., / �iii i � , (c a sa b l an c a-a l g i er s) 91 the main ward at the sixth general was the biggest in the whole world. they'd taken over a lumber shed and a printing plant, and the beds just went on and on. in those acres of beds they could have laid all the sick and wounded of the war. i remember lying in my bed in this ward. i had the gi's because i'd neglected to scald my mess gear with one soapy and two clear. my illness gave me a time schedule all my own. i'd feel the dry spasms of peristalsis in my belly and i'd go tearing to the latrine. everything came out of me in an agony over which i had no control. then i'd go back to bed, cured of everything, including my energy and the will to live. two hours later it would happen all over again. i turned from side to side under my mosquito netting and watched the goings and comings on the big ward, the visits, the flirtations. i envied the georgia ward boys for the easy way they had with the doctors and nurses, the kidding, the rushes with the bedpan, and the goose­ necked jars of amber. and because i was an ambulatory patient, i had to make my own bed every morning. i remember best one of the nurses. she told us to call her butch. she was from dorchester and she was the biggest gal i'd ever seen. when she bent over to take my temperature, i thought from her wide breasts and bulging belly that a witty and motherly cow was ministering to me. we loved the lieutenant for her laugh that was cynical and rich. she specialized in making the appendix patients laugh until they all but burst their stitches. there was a smell of cologne and soap about her. one night she had a baby on the stairs of the nurses' quarters. the colonel had to deliver >-her himself; it was the first time he'd practiced obstetrics in thirty years. he was so mad at her for waking him out of a sound sleep that he shipped her and her baby back from casa to the states. we smiled in our beds, for after she'd cared for us all, she now had something all her own to love. a parachutist in a near-by bed bet that an ayrab was the father, but none of us laughed. we were ashamed of the parachutist and devoted to the lieutenant. she'd been the nurse of the sixth general who'd mitigated for us the somber impersonal excellence of army medical care. she'd had a good word for each of us. often when we. couldn't sleep in the casablanca nights, she'd given us that pink pill. a truck driver three beds over said that if he ever got back to boston alive, he'd take out our lieutenant and her baby and set them up to supper and drinks. he added that women like the lieutenant are the salt of the earth. i remember also the nut ward of the sixth general in casa. not 92 the gallery that i was ever in there, except for a visit. it was called the parker house after the nice old psychiatrist in charge of it. lieutenant colonel parker never knew why so many people smiled at him on the streets of casablanca. he kept the nuts in a separate building, locked and grated and barred and remote from the other buildings of the sixth general. beaucoup gi's and officers ended up in the parker house. from there they usually went home on a boat, under guard. the officers and gi's were together on one ward. i guessed that when you went off your trolley, you didn't care much whether your insignia was a bar or a stripe. i remember going to the parker house to visit a buddy who blew up after a week's sitting and staring at the wall of his tent. he took his tommy gun and fired it at the canvas. then he lay, after he'd fired his bursts, in a slit trench of his own making until our major came: -what you tryin to do, perkins, k-k-k-kill us all? and perkins was taken to the parker house. it was his theory that his heart was going to stop in the very next minute. old colonel parker told him there was nothing the matter with his heart. still he moaned and stared at the wall for hours on end. he wasn't the same, i remember, when i went to see him the last night before they shipped him back to the states. he sat on a bench with his head in his hands. he was wearing gi pajamas and a red bath­ robe with 6th gen hasp stenciled on the back. they'd taken away the belt of his bathrobe so he couldn't strangle himself. but when he saw me outside the grating, all his apathy dropped, and he came over and hung on the bars, smiling and cavorting, like a monkey praying to be ted. -they're zi-ing me. it's one way to get out of all this crap. he told me about the new truth drug they gave him, and he wondered what he'd talked about under its influence. -just like you do when you get crocked, i said reassuringly. -well, anyway, i'm getting out of all this crap, he said over and over. after a while the mp told me i must go. the mp's at the parker house were a strange gang, gentle and gangling and tender. they used to kid the nuts, and they told me on my way out that many people outside in the army were crazier than some locked up in here. i remember that outside on the streets of casa i wondered which of us would go next to the parker house. i got lower and lower because i knew perkins wasn't just pretending. so finally i went (ca ____, into the and blu and the the pigs itill i'd biliat even all aliver when t ilirough t a�imta it wa� the to and 100 mr back i removing to laugh i will cut 0 although irilking a -jeche and kno mr force� inadowl. i remember -i want -oh h you're still 1remem we sat by swatting hi counting n canteem. -this is -ah, bl (c a sa b la n c a-a l g ie rs) 93 into the select bar and started throwing them down. i got bluer and bluer in spite of the phonograph playing "l'ombre s' enfuit" and the luscious casablancaise hanging over her cash register and the pigs sitting buxomly on the green leather chairs and waiting till i'd buy them a drink. it was a new sort of drunkenness i hit that evening. i seemed to be a ghost in a roomful of yelling people, all aliver than i. when they threw me out of the select at closing time, i lurched through the streets of casa and got lost. 1'd go a few blocks, lean against a doorway, black out, come to, and then blunder on again. it was the only time i'd ever wanted to meet an mp. once i came to and looked up to see the stars of casa flickering. i was lying on my back in the rue, and an ayrab was bending over me. he was removing my cigarettes and franc notes from my pockets. i began to laugh in my stupor as i thought of the gi legend that the ayrabs will cut off your balls and sew them in your mouth. i laughed although the cognac had paralyzed me. the ayrab stopped his frisking and kissed me on the forehead: -je cherche ce soir un copain du genre feminine and knowing i was about to black out again, i gathered up all my forces and yelled. the ayrab fled laughing into the blue shadows. i remember being trussed into the mp wagon. and i remember waking in an immaculate bed at the sixth general. -i want lieutenant duffy to give me a pink pill. -oh hush your mouth, the nurse said, reversing my ice pack. you're still as drunk as a skunk. i remember when it came our turn to go in the forty-by-eights. we sat by the long stubby train in the freight yards of casa, swatting flies. the officer in charge of the movement bustled about counting noses. we lay on our barracks bags swigging from our canteens. -this is it. we're going to italy to fight. -ah, blow it.... i figure we're going to oran or algiers for more of this base section life. i remember that our officers had two cars of their own up front. we were put with all our equipment into the open latticed horse­ cars. guard details were posted in each car. through the slats the ayrabs could stick their fingers and remove anything, for we heard that the train went through morocco at a speed less than a man could run. we made our beds on the floor, where there were still leavings of hay. 'q / a _--0 0 ��� oj • 1 jr.! .. ' "'.:" ". • ;..: tt .. 1" ..._' )' r:' ,.. " 10 � .. " 94 the gallery i remember how strange and autonomous it was to scud slowly through morocco in a boxcar. at one end we had a pile of c-rations and a gasoline can of water. on the floor were our packs and blankets. we slept like a litter of kittens. the brown cleft hills swam slowly past; i sat on a ledge with my legs swinging. the crap games started up. the train would stop in the middle of desert spaces where there was nothing to halt for. and ayrab kids would come out of the nowhere as though they'd inched up from the sand. with them, since we'd been red-lined for months, we did a thriving trade in mattress covers, shirts, and trousers. they brought us vin rouge in leather bottles. at night, lying on the floor, it was hard to sleep. in the moonlight the sandy hummocks drifted past as though i watched them from a magic carpet. or sometimes i remember that the duty officer would come to our car when the train was taking on water. he wore fatigues and carried his carbine slung on his shoulder. after six months in casa he figured that these were genuine combat conditions. who knew but what the ayrabs would ambush us all by the full of the moon when we were stalled out in the middle of nowhere? -remember it's a court-martial offense to sell anything to the ayrabs, men. yessir, we said in chorus. in his barracks bag the mess sergeant had beau coup vin that he'd laid in before we left casa. he had also a small spirit lamp, a present from his last shackjob. he was a polack hunky and knew all the angles. he knew how to lick around officers with a bold obsequiousness that made them think he was treating them as a rough and ready equal. with us he was like an ss man in the movies. when drunk, which was always, he'd knock our heads together and let loose on us a stream of obscenities. he said that these phrases excited a shackjob more than loving words. then when we were black and blue, he'd fall into a sort of motherliness toward us and make coffee. he was in his element in that forty-by­ eight. made us bring him his breakfast box of k-ration as he lay yawning in his sack. his buddy the second cook j acobowski was growing a mustache on the trip. i remember the sorrows of our officers in their two wagons-lit up front. the french locomotive sooted all over the cars so that they had to sit all day with their windows closed while they read their cases or did crosswoi d puzzles. our officers fell into types. the sporting set had their musette bags full of rum and didn't come out of their haze till we hit algiers. the girls had pneumatic (ca ____., mattres� �econd i put thei ing like dut mar outsid !iaing ne were all i la!cilt but lortr-broei officer that -frater �one. wh dor! in a -ther he wal -isar, he alwa -you f -�ure, duaar jac a�in. wha in the e,et -polack, iremem tne mp gu citrwith t !rite that anrthing 0 kom camp -christ! tnetre ge -the g -tho!e like pi� in �oqaam w we walk f i�o wago� he (at) 50 tn�i �jle the}' m� fell into t)'��' i m and dimi fjd pneurnati( (casa b lan ca-alg ie r 5) 95 mattresses which they inflated every evening at sundown. on the second day out of casa the officers ordered the french engineer to put their cars at the end of the train. said they were tired of look­ ing like niggers. but french engineers take orders from no one but marechal petain, outside of oran at mostaganem i remember we stopped on a siding near prisoner of war enclosure 131. shipping to algiers were all italian officer pjw who'd decided that they were no longer fascist but wanted to collaborate with us allies. we got out of our forty-by-eights and stretched our legs. we were warned by the duty officer that we mustn't fraternize with the pjw. -fraternize, my arse, the mess sergeant said after the officer had gone. who wants to fraternize with an eyetie? they fired on our boys in africa, didn't they? and they're doin it now in italy. -they did it because they were told to, the pfc said. he was a liberal and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. -i say, put the bastards against a wall, the mess sergeant said. he always shouted his opinions. -you forget the geneva convention, the pfc said gently. -sure, we treat em white! the mess sergeant said, looking at his buddy j acobowski. so in twenty years they can declare war on us again. what have they got to lose? they'll live better'n they did in the eyetalian army.... friggin wops ... dagos.... -polack, the pfc said, almost inaudibly. i remember how the italian officers approached their cars with the mp guards. i thought of the guineas of brooklyn and joisey city with their pimpled faces and their oiled hair and the aggressive spite that made them boxers and corner toughs. for i'd never seen anything of the italian army except the explosive tiny sicilians from camp 101 who used to wait in the officers' messes of casa. -christl screamed the mess sergeant, waving his lumpy fists. they're gettin parlor cars! -the geneva convention, the pfe prompted under his breath. -those ginso bastards are gettin parlor cars while we sleep like pigs in a forty-by-eight! will someone please tell me what this goddam war is about? we walked a little closer to have a look at the italian officers, waiting to mount the train with their gear. -gosh, they are good-looking men, the company clerk said. he read the pomes in stars and stripes. i remember that the italians struck me with marveling. they looked neither like movie gangsters nor like the sad barbers of brooklyn. these carried themselves with a certain soft proudness, ingexci though i remember arrogant ones among them. a few were blond. mo�t ha but nearly :111 "lore a delicacy of feature and a dignity i'd never over the seen before. their noses and their mouths had a different look than -addl americans'. the bersaglieri officers had sugarloaf caps with feathers the m, in them. the alpini officers wore shorts that showed their fine the cars 0 long legs, like the limbs on wrestlers in old statues. and all had -if ya sewed, below the left shoulder, a metal boot. ragodda -well, musso did all right in his men, the company clerk said. -they -wait till we see the wimmin, the mess sergeant promised. (anuded t i'm keepin my c-ration till we get to italy. those ginso signorinas i remem will do anything for food. fi�ht, i mu -damn good-looking guys, a corporal said. but i s'pose they'd ltwer �plot put a knife in your back as quick as they'd look at you. ronvinced i remember that one of our officers talked italian. his old man mult bno had left naples and had made a mint in the meat-packing business tntr'd dec!in chicago. this was the moment lieutenant figarotta'd been roungmensweating out for years, a chance to crap all over the folks from the �onlp)old country. he stepped forward and offered a cigarette to an otnind the officer of the alpini. when the officer reached out with a smile and otcided to i a bow, lieutenant figarotta tittered and twitched the cigarette out tningabroaof reach. the italian officer flushed and stood at rigid attention. buless this scene angered some of us. -if you ask me, the pfc with glasses said, they make some of our officers look sick. but no one had asked him. -pretty boys, ain't they? the mess sergeant ranted to his follow­ ing, but not too loudly. how'd ya like to have ya sisters goin out on dates with them? because that's exactly what them pjw are doin back in the states. and our wimmin are fassenated with that dago stuff. and i remember that, as he was getting into his car, a captain of the bersaglieri dropped his portfolio at my feet. i hesitated an instant, then i bent and picked it up and handed it to him. -grazie infinite, he said. there was something old and warm in his voice such as i'd never heard before. i felt that beyond all pretense he liked me, that he was lonely and lost. on his lips was a neat mustache. he had clear gray eyes behind lashes longer than any i'd ever seen, except those that girls buy in the five and ten. his breath was sweet. he wavered an instant before me then vaulted into his car. the italian officers hung out of the windows of their cars, talk96 the gallery (ca ____, .... : ... _ ... ,_.", .. '. '��f�·--. .. / fill i � : (ca sa b lan ca-alg ie rs) ing excitedly to one another like vacationists on an excursion train. most had blue-gray caps like mussolini's, with the earflaps tied up over their heads. some waved cordially to the mp's. -addio al reticolato, a quel benedetto recinto! one called. the mess sergeant was beside himself with fury. he raved at all the cars of i talian officers: -if ya hadn't declared war on us, i wouldn't be here lookin at ya goddam sissy faces. -they had no more to do with the war than you did, the pfc confided to his spectacles. i remember that as i lay down again in my sack in the forty-by­ eight, i mused on the faces of those italians. they had fewer lines, fewer splotches than the young men of america. i wasn't quite convinced that their sorrow came because they were defeated. it must be some agony that we as yet knew nothing of.... but then they'd declared war on us. they were our enemies. yet in those young men of italy i'd seen something centuries old. an american is only as old as his years. a long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those italians. and then and there i decided to learn something of the modern world. there was some­ thing abroad which we americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. but unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't american, and that not everything american is good, we'd all perish together, and in this twentieth century.... my mind kept reverting to the captain of the bersaglieri. and under different circumstances he'd have ordered me to my death. . .. something stirred in me that touched me more profoundly than ever before, even in love. and i fell asleep. . . . leir cars, tal�' 97 ·1, ii / • --'. �"'_�..._-___... ", ' ,\. " -, i •••• • � ",,_. / _ .. _ • fourth portrait father donovan and chaplain bascom in august, 1944, the galleria umberto echoed like a bowling alley to the noise of the truck convoys going north to the front. father donovan and chaplain bascom used to stroll afternoons through the din and the heat. sometimes while window-shopping they'd take off their khaki caps and mop their brows. chaplain bascom wore a gold oak leaf, but father donovan was still that same first lieutenant who'd left a south philadelphia parish with the blessing of his bishop and the military ordinariate. chaplain bascom was commenting on the heat. he was a stout man, used to the sun over his turnip patch in spartanburg, south carolina. -hope we never git closer to hell than this, padre. -beware of sins against the holy ghost, chaplain, said father donovan. for two years now he'd been indoctrinating his friend with catholicism. he did it gently, for he was a mild sort of priest who replied you're welcome when a telephone operator thanked him for his nurnber. the two chaplains often walked arm in arm. they were the only officers in the .)4th division who did so, sober. they were reason­ ably fond of each other. and their friendship was high propaganda for the chief of chaplains, showing how all faiths worked together in the army. chaplain bascom withdrew his arm to light a briar pipe, his only vice. -these neapolitans, he boomed jovially, could do with a shoutin baptism by immersion. 98 tfle !emina fatner d at tne lord �racio witfi tfie h -h'm'm, cfiarlain unaemtim nea !een w �ition rom netkercnief looked like' �en!o mu a/in� unde mlaier. and fat tnoughts, ( tnought oi nnd this i voice, ho� instead 01 father d "." : .. " . . . ...• ,., ... ' -. -. / �ill 1 � , i briar pijx>w � d do witn i father donovan and chaplain bascom 99 -but they've already been baptized once, said father donovan. though not in the baptist church, chaplain. -well, i've written to charleston, chaplain bascom went on doggedly. i told them that naples is an unplowed field for baptist missionaries with a will to work.... bibles instead of cameos on via roma. prohibition to cut out all this devil's drink of vino. and good friendly barathea clubs on wednesday evenings to keep these signorinas off the streets. this was the focus of their differences. the division chaplain had introduced them in the staging area, and they'd been friends ever since. to missus bascom and lavinia, chaplain bascom reiterated by v-mail that padre donovan was almost a white man. and father donovan had offered up many a mass and rosary for the conversion of chaplain bascom and his south carolina flock. both were popular chaplains in the 34th. men who had knocked up a signorina came to father donovan for confession. those desiring advice on their life insurance came to chaplain bascom. they complemented one another. chaplain bascom at the end of a meetin yelled for every man to get away from the sides of the tent and come up and be saved. father donovan was still as shy and efficient and button-eyed as when he played quarterback at the seminary. father donovan looked up at the glassless dome of the galleria, at the lordly angels sounding their trumpets from the cornices. -spacious as the vatican, he mused. i'll get you to an audience with the holy father next time we're in rome. -hlm'm, padre. a body has to draw the line at some things. chaplain bascom stumped along, huffing on his briar pipe. he'd underestimated the papist till the division went on the line. then he'd seen why even protestant colonels of regiments tried to requi­ sition romish chaplains. for along with his combat boots and neckerchief, father donovan wore a purple heart. he might have looked like a mouse, but the italian-born mice at cassino hadn't been so much in evidence as father donovan ministering to the dying under a helmet that made him look like a child playing soldier. and father donovan also whisked along thinking his own thoughts. often he looked slyly at chaplain bascom. how much he thought on chaplain bascom while reading his breviary! "what a find this man would be for holy mother church! that swollen voice, how eloquent it could be pouring out in praise of mary, instead of inveighing against dancing and cardplaying and likker! father donovan would have given his purple heart for the con100 the gallery version of chaplain bascom. for this grace he importuned every saint in heaven, including his dead mother, who'd scrubbed floors all her life. father donovan bent down and fastened a buckle on his combat boot. he paused to mop his thin pale face. he spied some gi's sitting at tables on the terrace of an outside bar. -in the mood for a cool drink, chaplain? -none of this vino for me, padre. you should take the pledge yourself. -and what would i do at morning mass? father donovan laughed plaintively. they sat at one of the wicker tables under the dome of the galleria umberto. all about him father donovan spotted gi's of the 34th who waved to him and went back to their sprawling. he ordered a glass of vermouth for himself and a tumbler of flavored gaseous water for chaplain bascom. -our boys mustn't think i'm guzzling, chaptain bascom said, holding up his orangeade to show everyone in the galleria that he was taking the neapolitan equivalent of an ice-cream soda. -it would only increase their esteem for you, father donovan said primly. now father donovan didn't smoke. he always said that the fumes of chaplain bascom's pipe were enough for two. in spite of his wispy body he was in fine condition, and combat had made him like a grasshopper. chaplain bascom's steaky belly had gone down during these two years of africa and sicily and italy when he wasn't getting missus bascom's corn bread for supper. father donovan used to spend sunday afternoons in south philadelphia playing touch football with the kids of his choir-after he'd peeled off his roman collar and rolled up his cassock till it was a black towel around his waist. father donovan loved baseball, candy, and the movies-after he'd assured himself that they'd been certified by the legion of decency. -there's one favor you could do me, chaplain, said father donovan, leaning softly over his vermouth. n ever in his life had he raised his voice except to call for the murder of the umpire. -anything, anything, the chaplain said, clearing his throat of orangeade with a lordly gargle. -why won't you call me father? i'm a priest. padre sounds like teddy roosevelt.... oh i know it's regular army and all that ... -army regulations, said chaplain bascom, assuming the rapt rose � chaplan lain, , -but father, 1 01 the p -alw �thering itone, -just which he chapla' �rdne e gi to go �alina ra who kne,� ilie other all ilie pr to de first (olonel, at with com nilmelf tn ieerwuls qrin�, an laithorst rolarror n� car an in h� ex �e rromot qe�rved it and en corner of creer dow who held world die -look an oily la!!ock a a water lor alms, of the g !'-_:"--'-"� "., '/�� /... (1 his throat �i dre oungj lui d all that,,, ing the ra�t fat her don ova nan 0 c h a pla i n sa sc om 101 pose with which he ended his prayer meetings, provide that all chaplains, regardless of denomination, shall be addressed as chap­ lain ... -but they also state that there's no objection to calling a priest father. don't tell me that at this stage of the game you're jealous of the prestige and affection in the word father? -always a slight chip on your shoulder, chaplain bascom said, gathering his weight up behind his orangeade. he smelled brim.. stone. -just thought i'd ask, father donovan said in his meekest tone which he always lapsed into when piqued, chaplain bascom glowered around the galleria. his veinous porcine eyes stared, as though he were looking for some shrinking gi to go to work on with the magic words: all here from south calina raise their hands.... he relit his pipe. father donovan, who knew all his moods, waited but said nothing. he looked at the other chaplain's cap with its gold oak leaf and wondered why all the priests in the army except the chief in washington seemed to be first lieutenants. soon chaplain bascom would be a lieutenant colonel, at which point he'd begin to consider himself a staff officer, with command functions. in vain did father donovan keep telling himself that he was a priest, commissioned in the army only to keep souls in the way they should go, to give the last rites to the dying, and to return the living to their dioceses without loss of faith or stain of mortal sin. for sometimes when he was saying his rosary or reading his holy office, he'd find his fingers straying to his cap and feeling that lone silver bar. it was a sin of vanity. but in his examinations of conscience he admitted to himself that to be promoted to captain would delight and appease him.... he deserved it. he'd done just as much work as chaplain bascom...• and chaplain bascom, watching his mild friend out of one corner of an eye throbbing with rage, thought: they're all alike deep down inside. the same who started the inquisition, the same who held back all scientific progress, the same who still wield a world dictatorship. -look there now, said chaplain bascom. most interesting.... an oily italian priest came cruising into the galleria in black cassock and brushed round hat. he zoomed among the gi's like a water bug, wheedling, panhandling, trembling with holy zeal for alms. he had a card in english which he thrust under the faces of the gi's. 102 the gallery -almost a different church here, father donovan said under his breath. the italian priest arrived over an isolated gi who'd passed out in his chair. he looked quickly around the galleria, then bent over the hunched form. -most interesting, chaplain bascom said gleefully. as father donovan watched, saying a hail mary under his breath, the greasy italian friar began to pry at a wad of lire and a pack of luckies protruding from the unbuttoned breast pocket of the gi. father donovan leaped from his chair, crossed the gal­ leria, and barged up to the thieving brother. he didn't know any italian, but he used the latin that came into his mind: -hoc est enim corpus meum. then as a sort of exorcism he shook the silver cross of his collar insignia. the hustling friar, unshaven and smelling of his last meal, whirled about in his cape, gathered it about him with grimy fingers, and went streaking away into the crowds of the galleria umberto. father donovan woke the sleeping gi gently and returned across the arcade, wondering what in this world or the next he could find to say to chaplain bascom in excuse for this most unpleasant incident. through his mind flashed all the dialectical training of the seminary, long since all but forgotten now that his sermons had become a matter of the monthly collection and choir rehearsal. father donovan prayed madly for the gift of tongues, for jesuitical casuistry to fence off the questions his baptist friend was preparing for him. though he seldom did it, except when pounding the chest of a section sergeant who'd forgotten to make his easter duty, father donovan rallied all his shyness and determined to take the aggressive. after alj j the church was facing a greater opponent than she'd had at anzio. -shocking, said father donovan, seating himself. probably not even a priest. naples is full of them. impostors ... -oh, i don't know, chaplain bascom said silkily. looks kinda like the good samaritan rolling the man who lay by the side of the road, don't it? or christ asking mary magdalene for a hand­ out.... you have a very rich church, padre. money rolls into rome from all over the world.... i think i begin to understand the capitalism of the roman church. i'm only a hard-shelled baptist, but i guess i realize that a big political machine don't pay its expenses on hay.... no sireee. father donovan felt a white flame of rage rising in him. then he saw something and said in a choked voice: lillie wor -but naluralti �nurch'! mel!ed m aamit tha lime reli �vin� (he len�e, go fooaat �narlain i rea; thi 1xamine t �nurch 0 wednesda lwar fro �a!com t �arolina'ichurch � i. ihj i im� bi the liot � ne for a aan�' 0115 into ronji unc�lrslana tnf ..belled bartiit, don't par i� in him. taln father donovan and chaplain bascom 103 -look.... two nuns were entering the galleria in that way they have of seeming not to walk. no gi yelled at them. each nun had by the hand two little girls in the chaste black dresses of neapolitan orphans. the children laughed to one another and to the gi's. they had the glowing faces of southern italian babies. the nuns beamed down on them, keeping a firm grip on their small hands. then father donovan thanked our lady for answering his prayer. you must consider i this side of the question too, he said, relieved. -ah yes, said chaplain bascom airily, mother love.... how nice to find it even in naples. it's the one great constant of our mean little world. -but you miss the point, chaplain.... those nuns have no natural tie to those orphans. they function in accordance with the church's exalted idea of parenthood, which goes back to our blessed mother.... and you protestants seem almost ashamed to admit that christ had a mother. you make fun of our devotion to her, as though you were uneasy at the function of the love between man and god ... -it's a scorcher today, padre, chaplain bascom said. he finished his orangeade, fanned himself, and loosened the shirt about his thick neck. chaplain bascom brooded sulkily to himself. it was quite clear to him why the roman church had failed in the modern world. in a time when men wanted something positive to cling to, she offered them only the lacy traceries of an old theology. the twentieth century was too rapid for arguments on the navel of adam. especially americans ... they wanted that good solid old­ time religion, which was precisely what the baptist church was giving them. plenty of tangible things for americans with common sense. good shoutin of hymns, fear of hell, and tables heavy with food at church suppers-that was religion. deep down inside chaplain bascom suspected that christ was more than a little of a red; this was why he'd been done to death. no american need examine too deeply the nature of christ. this was what the baptist church offered them: a renewal of the spirit on sundays and wednesdays, excellent business contacts, and keeping the young away from sinful habits. it was all so down to earth. chaplain bascom thought of thomas aquinas visiting spartanburg, south carolina, and had t.o slap his chunky thigh.... no, the roman church was europe and the past and a dirty slice of history to 104 the gallery t stood -, cha of rasj 'dt,anl to glgg -w -1' raare, women -yo �he s toe wa �a�(om hi! left. -it �a!(om, -it 1 father -are -as �ascom, boot. he'd seen enough to know how uneasily romanism sat on americans. whereas your good southern baptist was his religion walking and in act. so was his good comfortable wife, who cooked for church socials and taught sunday school. so was his immaculate prim daughter. practical christianity. . .. over the kettledrumming of the truck convoys moving to the front, the crowds in the galleria u mberto were like all the crowds of the 'world, drifting and inert except under stimulus. but this crowd had an uncrowdlike tendency to break up into its individual components. their only common bond as a crowd was that they were all in naples in august, 1944. their focus shifted. since most of these people came to the galleria to lose themselves and therefore to find themselves, their flavor was more strongly marked than that of a crowd assembled for a specific purpose. the chaplains noticed isolated elements more easily than they might have at a race track or on a city street. and both chaplains thought to them selves that this crowd, perhaps more than any other on earth, showed the agony of the individual and of society, that some peculiar problem of the age was here mirrored. presently, in the crushing brilliance of the august sun and the buzzing of the convoys the chaplains found themselves dozing. a burr of laughter brought them sharply to in their chairs. for the laughter that they heard was intended to pierce even an uncon­ scious man. two italian girls skipped arm in arm through the galleria. there was an intimacy in their leaning on one another more flagrant and saucy than the friendship between school chums. the girls spied the two chaplains, but they danced easily through the galleria, in io hurry, exclaiming over the shop prices, casting swimming eyes over the lounging gi's. and they sang. both chaplains knew that they were singing not out of high spirits but as a call to all interested to come and buy, as a fruit vendor hawks melons in the street. they sang in english. it was an american song learned by rote from many darkened rooms with rumpled beds and empty vino bottles: -you'll nevair know just ow motch i mees you, you'll nevair know just ow motch i caaaare ... -those girls are wearing crosses on their necks, said chaplain bascom, clucking with his tongue. -aren't they entitled to pray? father donovan asked, setting down his vermouth. y1tinout !nereac aelcende �eaded -you -but lire ira to a bla (,' , said cnapldi� jiked, 5etti�� father donovan and chaplain bascom 105 the neapolitan girls paused by the two chaplains' table and stood there swaying enticingly, arms around each other's waists. -why, allo, major! buy me a drink? chaplain bascom for the first time in his army career, instead of flashing the gold oak leaf on his right collar, took hold of his left and wriggled his silver cross at them. father donovan began to gigg1e. -what would you have done if you'd been a rabbi? -i'm thinking of my wife, roared chaplain bascom. believe me, padre, i've reached such a maturity of married love that those two women seem to me vile jezebels. -you are a cute one, lieutenant, the other girl said. she sat genially down in the chair at father donovan's right. the waiter brought two vermouths without being asked. chaplain bascom reddened as the other girl sank into the wicker chair at his left. -i think we should leave at once, with dignity, said chaplain bascom. -it would be the first issue i ever knew you to avoid. father donovan said to the girl on his right: -are you hungry? -as hungry as the devil for christian souls, cried chaplain bascom. padre, let's end this comedy and get out of here. you can't touch pitch and not be defiled.... i think my wife's ears are burning back in spartanburg, south carolina ... padre, think of what you represent. -that's exactly what i'm doing, father donovan said. you and i were in tighter spots than this at cassino, chaplain. he looked at the girl, who was now nervously stroking her vermouth glass and shivering a little, though it was august. then she reached out to lay her hand on his arm. but before her fingers descended, she seemed to reconsider and dropped her hand to the beaded bag that lay in her lap. -you don't like me? she said, making a face. whassamatta, joe? -but i do like you, father donovan said, taking a thousand lire from his ayrab wallet. now listen to me. you take this and go to a black market restaurant and buy all you want to eat. then go to confession, hear? then go home and get a good sleep. you look very tired.... promise me? ... sacerdos sum.... both girls went quickly away, covering with one hand the jeweled crosses on their necks. they went out of the galleria into via roma. 106 the gallery -they should be horsewhipped by their families, chaplain bascom said testily, mopping his beety brow. -no, father donovan said, replacing his wallet. 'their sin is partly the world's. -the world, chaplain bascom said, blowing his nose with an olive-drab handkerchief. women go on the streets because they're just plain ornery and refuse to settle down ... and i talian women are much more immoral than our own. one minute they're cross)0 far a ing themselves in church, and the next they're on via roma. the 111rhaps only way the world is concerned in this filthy business is that public '" chd opinion doesn't have the power in naples that it has in our own in the country. here nobody cares what those women do, because all the �nmenti italians are that way. fathe father donovan thoughtfully spread his ringless hands and -you ordered another vermouth. he didn't try to answer chaplain -not bascom directly. he spoke more shyly than usual: anna -we must be cautious in judging impurity because it's such a failierd natural sin. not everyone murders. not everyone robs. but impurity witllll'hi springs from the natural impulses of our own bodies. a deed which niwim� under one set of circumstances brings a child into the world we war] becomes under others a mortal sin. impuri ty comes from an dlan�en impulse that we all possess. -j wa -then we must wrestle with that impulse, chaplain bascom -whi cried in triumph, slapping the table so that the glasses jumped to -chri attention. we must marry if we don't want to burn, as the apostle then) paul says.... i don't mind telling you, padre, that as a young iockafte�preacher i wrestled mightily with the lusts of the flesh. mffiouthl-then you should be more charitable towards those who are �artihalstill wrestling, said father donovan gently. aooi\\,hlchaplain bascom always got riled up in his arguments with -tha father donovan. secretly he feared that the priests of popery got �lackmail a more subtle and cunning training in propaganda than they gave )o�r�out you at the baptist seminary. he saw why people feared the roman charlai church. you could easily dismiss the run-of-the-mill catholic as a lace like ( superstitious fool living in the past, but father donovan not only -'i'hy had faith but could explain why he had it.. chaplain bascom exlau�hing,' plained it to himself this way: catholicism was a secret society -the whose aim was just barely eluding him. he was sure it was up to �a�com s; no good. this aim was known only to the pope and to a few of the -i'm 1 inner circle. even the average priest didn't know it. «hand a chaplain bascom was also honest with himself. he knew he !twas wasn't christlike. yet that name was always in his mouth because the arc, father donovan and chaplain bascom 107 �rr),' r.a� jt\�\f r d l1e romj� i catholic l!j o\an nolonl1 in balcom 11' sfcrftloci1tl e ir lias ur w (0 a few of t�1 it was the open-sesame of his profession. it was a name which had a strange hold over people, possibly because they thought it should. the name jesus christ could open more hearts than a skeleton key. nor was chaplain bascom quite at ease with the personality of jesus christ. his mind was teased by the concept of a carpenter who allowed himself to be crucified and was remembered and invoked for the next two thousand years. chaplain bascom sometimes went so far as to ask himself whether he'd honestly have liked christ. perhaps he was just a little ... effeminate. all this talk about love . . . . chaplain bascom acknowledged no other love than one took in the arms of a good woman. any other love seemed to savor of unmentionable vice.... father donovan broke the silence: -you're thinking hard, chaplain. isn't it a painful sensation? -not at all, not at all, my boy.... and at this moment chaplain bascom realized that for two years father donovan had been playing with him, in that savage affection with which a cat tortures a mouse. he felt the blood rising under his crimson skin. and he knew at last that there are other forces in the world than the fists of a red-blooded american man. so he changed the subject. i was thinking of the future of the church. -which church? father donovan asked coyly. -christianity, of course, chaplain bascom growled. then something inside his burly soul swung outward like a rusty lock after it's oiled. he called to the waiter to bring them each a vermouth. father donovan looked at the vermouth in front of the baptist and began to laugh in the high-pitched relieved manner of a boy who has passed an examination he expected to flunk. -thank god i've lived to see this, chaplain! vermouth! the blackmail i could collect from you if i had a camera! what would your south carolina congregation say? chaplain bascom took a huge swig of the vermouth. he made a face like a maddened bull and called for another. -why, i like you so much this way, father donovan said still laughing. and there've been times when you depressed me no end. -the fruit of the vine isn't altogether strange to me, chaplain bascom said in a mellow voice. in my youth ... -i'm not hearing your confession, father donovan said, raising a hand and smiling. it was getting on to the time of sunset in the galleria umberto. the arcade was swelling up with people.he knelv nf ouch becau� 108 the gallery -i'm worried, said chaplain bascom resuming, for the future of the church. you and i both know, padre, that there are atheists in foxholes. and many of these fellows will go back to the states and attempt to sweep away the heritage of the ages. they'll call all faith simply dead lumber which has survived because people were stupid and afraid. -and i'm of the opinion, said father donovan, that good things, like the poor, will always be with us. it's an article of faith with me that my own church will last till the end of time. as for the others, unless they have something to offer the returning veteran that is free of bigotry and sectionalism, those other churches will go down in defeat. -just what do you mean by that? cried chaplain bascom. -just this. when an american has seen naples and death and the wretchedness of the whole world, he may try to forget it when he goes back to the farm in illinois. but he won't forget it com­ pletely. malaria and sorrow temper the blood. and do you think that such a man will be satisfied again with a religion which says he may not smoke or drink, which offers strife for peace, which bases its commandments on little stupidities he has outgrown? ... after this war we're going to see either an age of complete barbar­ ism or a gradual return to the simplicities and felicities of our lord's life, adapted of course to the time in which we live.... and i, chaplain, have faith in human nature, which isn't intrinsically evil. there are many things in human life that you and i have almost forgotten since we put on these uniforms. it's natural to lose sight of these things in a war so vast and horrible as this one. and there are reckonings to come for all this slaughter. ... but as surely as i know there's sin in the world, i know also that there's that in us which makes us desire to bring up our children in love and peace, which makes us shield our wives and daughters, and which occasionally makes us capable of the noblest sacrifice.... you can't tell me tha t these virtues will ever u tterl y disappear. . . . you remember how far the striking of a match carried in those black nights on the line? so tiny but so bright? well, just like that match, whatever is good will survive till the end of the world. otherwise human life becomes the cruelest joke and the figure of christ on the cross the hollowest gesture that anyone ever made. -let's have chow, chaplain bascom said, wiping his eye. they arose together and replaced their chairs as though they'd been at a formal dinner. chaplain bascom took father donovan's arm. together they walked through the galleria umberto. father donovan took pride in his uniform as he had pride in his mass iwake oorna k11rin� ili1!e p innocen tlrtile!, -ne �rin� s -th thes in �out i wish father donovan and chaplain bascom 109 vestments, so he looked down to see if his trousers were neatly belled out over his combat boots. in this same spirit he called chaplain bascom's attention to his protruding shirttail. the galleria was filtered with air currents. at the transept cross­ ing from the san carlo theater to via santa brigida a column of cool air swam on the heat. -say, i feel that vermouth, chaplain bascom said heavily. -there are worse things to feel, father donovan said brightly. he loved the galleria because it was always full of neapolitan children-children begging, children selling, children looking, children shuffling barefoot. what caught at him most were the little children pimping. they'd learned a perfect and saxon english for the pleasures they offered for sale, and their obscene phrases smote father donovan more brutally than the worst sins he'd heard in the confessional, where at least he could be impersonal. but when a neapolitan child played the bawd, the ugly sentences shrieked out as though a parrot spoke them, and they seemed all the fouler because the child understood their import. father donovan won­ dered about americans who were capable of teaching such things to little neapolitans of seven and eight. sometimes when he lay awake at night, he thought of the tragedy of the children of europe, born and passing their formative years under a rain of bombs, keeping alive by catering to the desires of soldiers. what would these poor children be like in maturity, who had never known the innocence of childhood? if these children grew into cold bitter reptiles, then the world would really have lost the war.... -next week, said chaplain bascom, if we're still here, i mean to bring some soap and wash these children's mouths out. -there are better uses for soap in naples than that. these children, father donovan thought, are the same as those in south philadelphia. they're the same as kids all over the world. i wish i had them all to teach them baseball and buy them pop­ corn. -italian children, he said aloud, are the saddest spectacle of the war. -but we have slums in the states too. -oh i know that, i know that. but these children have no escape at all ... not even a settlement house. the chaplains went down the steps of the galleria that lead to via verdi. -what a place that arcade is, said chaplain bascom. a great novel could be made of it. i suppose the market place in jerusalem was like this arcade. except that christ isn't here. ba com. and death an� (or()et it wntn foj'1iel it com· do \ou thin! 'on ,;'hich �:i r peace, wnirn outtrrown1 .. , mplete oar��, elicitie" 01 o� e lile.... ,1n� 110 the gallery -oh, i disagree with you, father donovan said. i think he is .. · very much so. they waited for a truck convoy to pass them with a roaring and a streaking. across via verdi was a transient mess for american officers. in august, 1944, it was busier than a childs. in shifts officers ate a soup, a plate of warmed-up c-ration, and a saucer of canned pears. it seemed as though every officer (except airplane drivers) out of combat took his meals there. it had a screen door that swung and clattered. on this door always hung one of two signs-open or closed. when this mess ran out of c-ration, the closed sign went up like a storm flag. winding out of the entrance was a queue of officers, a depressed little concentration of nurses clutching their shoulder bags, and civilian secretaries of the state department and the war shipping administration. officers paid ten lire a meal, civilians thirty-five. ducking the bobbing screen door was a hag in a torn black dress who sold stars and stripes, yank, and time. she saluted all officers who bought a paper and beamed on them with jagged gums. one rumor had it that she was born during the vesuvius eruption of 79 a.d., another that she was the sybil come in from cumae because business was better in naples, another that she was eleanor roosevelt in disguise, gather­ ing material for her column. father donovan and chaplain bascom went to the tail of the line and mopped their faces and their necks in the neapolitan after­ noon. as four people came out of the mess, the line would inch up four places. the tables in the mess were like those beds where people sleep in shifts. an old neapolitan was wiping the untidy table top, stacking plates, and talking threateningly to himself. chaplain bascom seated himself and beat on the table jovially so that all the glassware vaulted. -mangiare, joe. and be presto about it too. the old neapolitan retreated and was seen no more. father donovan turned his quick timid smile on a young neapolitan in a drenched white coat who brought them two plates of soup. -ruona sera, joe. come state? -ehhhh! the young neapolitan said, relaxing and smiling. non c'e male. ma c'e troppo lavoro.... -dago-iover, said chaplain bascom. these people are good foj nothing but to sing operas and work in barbershops. father donovan didn't answer. he was making the sign of the cross prefatory to saying grace before meals. con wa! �ota -j -i -y �a!co -0 �odda n a roaring anij lor amerlcaij hi\d�, in ini!� and a saum�1 \cxcept alr�hijr (\ a men qoc! u\\cr one 01 t�u o c·ralion,ili! of tde entfd�(: :ratiun 01 nu�� 'es 01 ine �u:' . officetl rr� bobdin� icrti: rs and �irir.: ..t a pa�r�: ittnallneli inallne!. i ie are good fu '�e sign of wi father donovan and chaplain bascom 111 -you know that embarrasses me in public, chaplain bascom continued. -i thank god even for c-ration, father donovan said when he'd finished his brief prayer. chaplain bascom plowed into his soup. he continued to watch suspiciously the slight brown hands making their second sign of the cross in front of the purple heart ribbon on the priest's left breast. father donovan then applied himself to his soup. he ate demurely, never looking at what he was eating. -in the seminary, he said, they used to read aloud from pious writings while we were at our meals. so naturally i expect nothing but edifying thoughts from you until dessert. the chaplains looked distrustfully at the second course, which was what they knew it would be: diced pork with beans, dehydrated potatoes, spinach, and a leaf of lettuce. -i keep thinking of missus bascom's fried chicken. -but just taste this iced tea, father donovan cried gaily. you're having qualms because you drank three glasses of vermouth. don't. saint thomas says we may drink till we feel hilarious. they both arose as two nurses prepared to sit at their table. -ya don't mind, boys? -not at all, not at all, girls. with women chaplain bascom was almost feudal. in the slight glow of the vermouth he was still enraged that he hadn't scored one this afternoon on father donovan. -oh, padres, one nurse giggled. we could use a little salvation, tessie. the nurses were older than most anc's. they had an air of edgy misanthropy of women overseas too long. they had also a certain pride in their captaincies, since every nurse above the rank of second lieutenant considers that she has jumped the rubicon. -and where are you girls from? chaplain bascom purred. it was a theory of his that people could be put at their ease by any of a dozen key phrases. -oh lands, said the nurse named elsie, let's not go into that. the only thing we're sure of is that this is naples, italy, and that we wanna go home and can't. -you girls have the most christian mission in this war, chaplain bascom said. -oh we know that, tessie said. but since salerno it's been goddam ... beg your pardon ... wearing. they smoked while eating, holding their cigarettes in painted 112 the gallery (nee kw 1 fli�h in� � i ftallr �ana wou� i!in b we d weill -e �ur in -n aw tviaen �earol (on�u -no in� ou r!�e, -go wile tomak, ri!ne nextta -ita -at worialr, -we �lwro illlp i�rcon -wil �nk. -i he �trt to i�ilin f mwe'li -we' �n hi� a in the �� "'ro� fingernails which nevertheless betrayed how often those hands had been in hot water. -there's nothing pleasant about overseas assignments, father donovan said, slicing his preserved pear. -you can say that again, father! as soon as i looked at you, i knew you was a priest. ... remember me in your prayers so i can stay outa the booby hatch. -i promise, father donovan said. the chaplains finished their meal and said good night to the nurses. -if they didn't smoke like stoves, chaplain bascom said on the way out of the mess, they wouldn't be so nervous. -well, i expect they're lonely and very very tired. on the sidewalk outside the transient officers' mess they put on their caps and peered at one another in the sunset that streamed down through the dome of the galleria. father donovan yawned in the hot light. -shall we go back to our tent in the dust bowl? -look, said chaplain bascom. what's that? between the two stairways of the galleria that cascaded into via verdi there was an entrance they'd not noticed before. over the doorway hung a sign in yellow and red: arizona for allied officers now father donovan couldn't imagine what arizona was doing in naples. but since he was fond of western movies, he thought this might be worth looking into. chaplain bascom said: -since you put me on the path to perdition with vermouth, we might as well look in. maybe they have cactus plants and saddle horses. the corridor of the arizona was leaden with smoke. a girl sat in a checkroom the size of a telephone booth. she reached out as they passed and flipped their caps out of their belts. -but we won't be staying long, girlie, chaplain bascom said, reaching for his cap. -hundred lireee, pleeese, she shrieked and put their caps on an inaccessible hook. -must be a clip joint, father donovan said out of his movie vocabulary. inside there was nothing but a small room swimming in smoke. tables were crammed about a cleared square no bigger than a coked at iou) i pta)e� so l� lain ]llsroro�1 i iheirca�ool lui of hil romil ming in smok1, blgger than 4 father donovan and chaplain bascom 113 checkerboard. officers hunched over these tables, a few french, a few british. but most were american airplane drivers with their high soft boots ensconced also on the tables. everybody was drink­ ing steadily. but somehow the chaplains sensed that nothing had really begun yet. on a dais smothered in greenery a small italian band was playing dance music. they did it self-consciously, as though they were imitating phonograph records. steered by chap. lain bascom, father donovan sat down at a table on the edge of the cleared space. trying to feel at ease, he tapped his boot to the music. -everybody's looking at us queerly, chaplain bascom whispered. our insignia must stick out like a neon sign. -no one's looking at us. a waiter shambled up and regarded them with menacing timidity. evidently something went on at the arizona which made the neapolitan personnel regard the allies as an honest-to-goodness conquering army. -now this will be on me, father donovan said grandly, bring­ ing out his ayrab wallet. will you bring us a bottle of ... cham­ pagne, please? -good lord, chaplain bascom said. when the wine came father donovan blanched at the price, but to make good his gesture he paid up without a murmur. an air­ plane driver with swollen eyes leaned over chummily from the next table: -it ain't the champagne ya payin for here, kids. -atmosphere, i presume? father donovan said, feeling quite worldly. he'd learned much from the movies. -well, ya can call it that, the airplane driver said. he was on the wrong side of the chaplains to see the crosses on their collars. i keep comin here night after night. i call myself a beast, but i keep comin. . .. roger. -what's he talking about? chaplain bascom whispered. he's drunk. no wonder they have so many casualties in the air force. -i heard that, the airplane driver cried. lissen, jack, i come here to fergit my troubles, not for fights with doughfeet. but if ya spoil in for a bruise, wait till my buddy gets back from the bobo, an we'll mop up the floor with the botha yez.... roger. -we're not in the infantry, father donovan said, laying a hand on his arm. we've just worked with it a little. and since we're both in the same army, there's not much sense in a fight, is there? -roger, the airplane driver said. 114 the gallery � ii i' he settled back mollified and beamed on father donovan's purple heart. he pointed to his own, to his wings, and to the twelfth air force patch on his left shoulder. it had been crocheted in rhinestones by some neapolitan. he winked at father donovan and reached over to put an arm about his shoulders. -yare all right, lootenant. but who's that ole beagle with ya? shoulda left him home. with a warm swell of good feeling father donovan set the two glasses precisely in the middle of the table and poured out the champagne. it bubbled so cool and golden that even chaplain bascom assumed his something special air. they clinked glasses. father donovan was a host for the first time in his life. being curate under a bitter brooding pastor in south philadelphia had some­ what pinched his naturally hospitable nature. all he'd ever been able to do for anyone was to teach kids baseball. only in saying mass had he ever been in a position to do something grand for other people. -delicious, said chaplain bascom, smacking his lips. i see the point of solomon's warning against wine. look how it giveth its color in the cup. -that guy talks like a chaplain, the airplane driver muttered, emerging from a funk in which he'd laid his head on his chest. -i am a chaplain, chaplain bascom said loftily. -then what are ya doin in this place, father? i am not a priest. -well, ya should be. father donovan blushed. there was a cyst of delicacy in him that made him itch and sweat when things didn't run smoothly. -some of our champagne? he said to the airplane driver. the flier had been regarding them with a confused affection and hostility, like a dog making up its mind. he tottered to their table and seated himself with the help of father donovan. -thank ya. my buddy musta died in the bobo. since last month at cerignola, all ya have to do is yell flak, an we all start shittin ... chaplain bascom twitched. an now my missions is all done, roger. i'm goin back to the states. -well, i advise you to watch your language when you get there, said chaplain bascom. there are ladies in america. -if you wasn't a major, i might be tempted to tellya to blow it. in fact, i think i will anyway. -i'd hate to pull my rank on you, chaplain bascom said. fa� tram a tne me in� &ive fa tnou�� --lo a� inala �lace!,' !11med �ncan --t !neaan --it inat l� o\an set tnf tl� poured out lli l mn cnarir " clinked �iqit lile. bein�(un: lphia had wlli an he'd ever k' i. onlv inlllil thin� wana'r: nee lalt m��l: all tart initti�" i uoin back to�c hen �'ou get tn� ca. , 'iellya to blowl: 'com said. father donovan and chaplain bascom 115 -that's all you protestant chaplains is good for is to pull rank. ya get gi after leavin a little piddlin church in georgia that pays ya five bucks a sunday ... -we're all friends here, boy, father donovan said. the flier gave a windy sigh, said roger, and went to sleep on father donovan's shoulder. he removed the dead weight softly from himself and settled the head on another table. at this moment some glasses and bottles went whizzing through the air and crackled against the orchestra stand. a fight began in the farthest corner between three airplane drivers and two combat engineers. the noise rose in level as though an invisible hand had turned up the volume control on a radio. what was going on the chaplains couldn't see clearly for the billowing smoke and the crowds pushing in from their tables. the disturbers of the peace were lured ou t the door by the italian manager into the arms of waiting mp's. -nice place, said chaplain bascom, sipping his champagne. then girls appeared and sat down invited or not at various tables. the din rose. this was what everyone had been waiting for. -why, chaplain bascom said, this place is a taxi dance hall. the airplane driver came to and straightened up. he identified the girls for father donovan: -that's lola with the green handkerchief.... that's gina with the earrins.... that one there signalin the waiter is bruna.... that number in red is bianca stella.... most of em is married to officers in the italian army that are prisoners of war. all these cheesecakes have bambini. but a gal has to make a livin.... mamma mia, what a covey of quail. ... they all got a union rate of two thousand lire a night an don't tell me that us airplane drivers have inflated the prices but 0 roger, roger.... father donovan and chaplain bascom turned on one another as though they'd just met and were sizing one another up. -look, chaplain bascom moaned hoarsely. a girl had come out in front of the orchestra. she got an ovation. in a low rasp she sang ''i'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places." a carnation was stuck in her hair. she wore a dress that seemed to have been sewn from pieces of lace and silk rooted out of ashcans. -that's lydia, the airplane driver said, his eyes bloodshot. an she don't gimme the time of day. -it seems, whispered father donovan, rising from the table, that lydia is about to take off her clothes. 116 the gallery the two chaplains retreated through the maze of tables where the officers leaned forward toward lydia through the iron-gray smoke. some had girls on their knees who incited them to drink deeply, to forget everything but this moment now. through the fumes eyes looked out at lydia with weariness and desire and fever. there was an air of daze and bestial futility cut by the mechanical-saw voice of lydia. the chaplains got their caps. the mp at the door leered at their insignia. outside it was dark. evening had come to naples, but the heat stayed on as loving and deadly as a pillow over a sleeper's face. down the steps of the galleria u mberto came buzzing evidence of trafficking going on up there in the blackout. chaplain bascom was sweating and panting as he put his cap on his head and set it determinedly at a forty-five-degree angle. father donovan said nothing but bent down and tucked his trousers over his combat boots. then he noticed a little girl sitting on the curb. she had blond hair, so rare in neapolitan babies. she seemed so tiny and alone. she was peeling a stick of american chewing gum, her mouth already open in anticipation. and her eyes glowed like a kitten's at dusk. father donovan walked over to talk to her. he had another stick of gum in his pocket to give her. but she, fearful of her treasure, darted out into the street. he laughed and ran after her. around the corner from the san carlo an english lorry turned in. it slid like a huge coffin behind the blackout lenses on its head­ lights. these cast a sick pencil of glow on the little girl's bobbing hair, on the pursuing legs of father donovan. chaplain bascom saw what was happening. he shouted and leaped into the street after them. the lorry bore down. his ears exploded with the scream of brakes and the crunch of bodies, as collies are mashed under heavy turning wheels. on the opposite curb the tiny neapolitan girl watched the truck back off. the two bodies lay there quietly, one with a bit of purple silk ribbon over his heart. she put her gum into her mouth. americani. for it wasn't the first time she'd seen the dead lying in the streets of naples. t tables wn1� the iron'�41 them to uri� ,'. throu�n� and de\ir� � i\it� cut or � their ca�!.l� fourth promenade (algiers) ,bhlomtllff. on 'i�oo: i irl'! oo��� .. ·nlain b�[� into ili� illti �ul(fft !1jjn�� ll�l: i remember learning all over again how to walk. my gait was something between a sailor's and a mountaineer's. for rue michelet winds and grinds to the top of the city. walking in algiers means going either uphill or down. consequently i was forever leaning forward or backward. i got to be uneasy on a level stretch, the way a drunk's nerves twitch till the bars open. i remember that algiers was more european than casa. in the summer of 1944 there was a quality of reaching out. it was the old paris trying to find itself. most of the people in algiers were refugees from paris and were waiting to get back there. they rejoiced over the normandy invasion because it was the beginning of an attrition they'd thirsted for since june, 1940. sometimes i thought it was we americans who were getting paris back for them, but i didn't say so. i remember that in algiers many french soldiers wore our uni­ form. it was easy to tell that they weren't americans-something narrower about their eyes, something contracted and concentrated in everything they did. nevertheless they wore our uniforms, and the mediterranean base section decided that a discrimination must be made-possibly to keep us out of the kasbah and out of certain bars and areas smelling of bed sheets and st.range foods. so we had to affix to our caps the little brass circlet us. then it was clear to us and to the mp's who was a french gi and who an american. it was the first time i saw british soldiers. till july of 1944 allied force headquarters was at algiers. in the afhq offices there was an englishman to counterbalance every american. thus the streets of algiers clomped with british hobnails. the british wore shorts till 1800 hours. through the leafy heat their legs bobbed like brown pistons. they wore canvas gaiters and short sleeves and berets 117 118 the gallery (a ....--. designed after the queen's own tam. on rue michelet and rue i r , j:aerd'isly i remember the signs in the windows: wo's & sgt s clubs. ujil the or's had theirs too. but the british said that we yanks were move better off than they. they'd been a long time away from blighty, inea as long ago as tobruk, and they resented our rations and our lerraei cigarettes and our' theaters. ensa was never like this, they said. �orle they scratched their bare legs, bitten by the anopheles mosquito. �ilno i remember my first pass in algiers. i knew just where i wanted ��llr to go. i walked out into the twilight where the barrage balloons me a] shimmered over algiers harbor like silver kidneys. the port was mnh teeming with hospital ships, the air buzzed with planes fiying into lime! maison blanche. i walked down rue michelet, leaning backward. wnom along my way were green public gardens, but their iron gates were loeb locked at sundown. nema -why, myte? because you bloody yanks used to myke a shamire bles of them after nightfall. �ulaoo through the heat of algiers i looked inside the scrolled gratings. loo�eai could see the fountains playing and the statues with inscriptions i��orin french. what, no walks there after dark? at noon french girls ili�i�, walked there on their lunch hour from the office. they were crisper ror�! 0and cooler than the casablancaises. oouf! -closer to french love all the time. the wimmin in casablanca ��ierve have seen too many ayrabs. moven i remember how few ayrabs there were in the city itself, as inewin though the french had put guards at the entrances. i saw ayrabs �rrto only when i was out in trucks, along the roads to maison carree or maison blanche or spying on the tamaris hotel at ain-taya. that too made algiers seem less an african city. it was also the french everywhere spoken. i stopped many times as i strolled along, trying not to seem a country cousin just in from casa: -00 sir troove i'hotel aletti? -ii n'est pas trop loin, monsieur. the hotel aletti. only colonels and generals and foreign corre­ spondents lived in it. but everybody flocked to its gardens and terrace, and not to look at the colonels and the generals and the war correspondents. nearly every gi in the city of algiers converged afternoons on the hotel aletti, like the rays of the sun in heraldic designs. i'd go to the place d'isly and turn right toward the harbor. i'd passthe street of the peppermint columns of the bar pigalle, where people in white linen drank vermouth and talked of paris. then i'd turn left on a ramp and go downhill again, leaning backwards. -that there's the aletti, kids. the passion pit of algiers..•• afternoom�ll idic designl, ]'� harbor, l'd r�� i pirrajie, wnm ( paris, then n �ackwards, of algiers, , ,i (algiers) 119 i remember that in front of the hotel there was a terrace of different levels with metal tables and umbrellas. there was constant movement here of people with glasses in their hands, swarming on the different planes like drunks at a garden party. it was almost a terrace restaurant where people idle and look for and at other people. in the aletti garden there was an excitement seemingly withou t reason. occasionally a brigadier general would issue mar­ tially from inside the hotel, picking his way among the tables and the ayrab shoeshine boys. gi's would lower their eyes to their drinks. but the ladies would appraise the general's mistress. some­ times it was a red cross girl. but oftener it was an algerienne whom he kept in lipstick and an apartment near the saint georges. the bg's lady sometimes flew to italy with him in his plane when he made inspections. . i remember that persons with a purpose never stayed long in the outdoor garden of the aletti. they'd go into the lobby, which looked as though it should be cool. but it never was. it was like the lobby of anew york flop joint, with hundreds of rotting leather chairs. on these gi's lolled. past their relaxed bodies flitted the corps of mademoiselles, about fifty in number. they had union hours and union prices. the rules of courtship weren't strictly observed. the gi's just lay in their chairs drinking, while the girls moved from one cluster to the next, making their sales talk. they knew instinctively where to do their promoting, working from the bar to the farthest recesses of the lounge. they spoke to as many as two hundred gi's in the two hours that the bar stayed open. i remember their french social sense. even if i wasn't interested, they'd make a social call on me lasting five minutes in return for a drink, a cigarette, and a stick of gum. for ten francs the bar offered white wine with a block of ice in it. it was a strong and melancholy drink. i remember the duchess, who always sat alone in a pink straw hat, drinking and smoking and thinking. she never made the ad­ vances, having high ideals of her profession. she knew french poetry, the opera, and the gossip of the haut monde. if i bought her a drink, she accepted it so that i understood the great favor she was doing me. nor did she ever entertain a proposal till closing time, since goodly fellowship was more important to her than her career. she viewed her lovers with a mellow cynicism. i knew she was out of her century. but i didn't tell her, for the duchess knew it herself. -helas, she said, picking up her gloves at closing time, qu'ai-je fait de rna jeunesse? 120 the gallery i remember the most sought-after, emilie the tigress. she was an exhausting girl. she'd fling herself on me in a rage of delight, chewing her gum madly, her eyes spewing forth little sparks of coldest fire. she nudged me, prodded me, kicked me, pulled my hair, nipped at my ears. she'd get hold of my waist and squeeze and tickle and maul: -ah, cheri, que tu es timidei crache-moi dans la bouche et dis­ moi que tu m'aimes! then she'd get bored with me and egg the other girls on to fights. i remember discovering that this was an epileptic fit that she sus­ tained for two hours because she was, as it were, on the stage in the aletti. i remember that the prettiest of them all was claudette, who'd come in with her suitcase from tunis for the pickings. because she was as fresh and straightforward as an american girl, she was the most popular. claudette talked a rolling salty english. she made it quite clear that with her stipends from the allied troops in algiers she could retire a rich woman in another year. -and i won't be a beatup old bag, either! claudette said. she never allowed herself to be sampled in public, which was part of the selling propaganda of the other girls. at the bar of the aletti stood a circle of misanthropes, officers, and people who wanted to look at the circus without standing in the ring. they drank their white wine and listened and gazed at the ground. what conversation they made to one another or to me heightened my sense of the mania and irrelevance of the war. nothing they said registered with me at all. it was as though a comedian were to describe death to an audience in a burlesque theater. they all simply lectured when they talked. in the things they said there wasn't an attempt to establish contact with another human being. they raved like people coming out of anesthetic. they'd built their walls around them for the duration. i remember that the only person who dared intrude on these solitary drinkers was some girl who wasn't doing too well for her­ self in the aletti lobby. but she too soon saw how these anonymities had been frightened, how they came to the aletti bar merely in order not to lose their hold on humanity. it was that vague escape from misanthropy in which one frequents crowds in order to assure oneself one hasn't lost the way. i remember that sometimes i'd grow weary of drinking and of being pushed around by the aletti victory girls. so i too would stand at the bar with the zombies. i'd take a token white wine and wedge myself in with the rest of the dying pack. when the wine time� numa �ia t �iae �ut 01 lr hotel �on� �rpe !war i wal pi to lace mr!elf �int � l�r a p lre &ink e i waten oltnd wllnten wanner. �m the alan in one e oommun waited � l�ealett :oleel h� mlo the (algiers) 121 lion, intrude on w6 too ii'elllarla :ill e anon)1di�c i bar merd)'� ip.a! \ague eiq� in order to �ll�i i drinking ana � i too wo�l� � li'hite wine ��� l\1jen the wi�1 nibbled at me, i sometimes caught psychic currents i couldn't explain. i'd look up with a sudden uneasiness and see someone at the other end of the bar communicating with me by signals that seemed to have been already agreed on between us. and then i sensed that i could talk out of this world, as one sometimes does with total strangers on railway trains and in confessionals. some­ times i was close to believing that old crud about the wigwags human beings send out to others when they're lonely, as insects are said to talk with the scraping of their wings. and i too began to slide around in the dihedrals of time and space, slipping in and out of being like a ball bearing in a maze. 1 remember that sometimes my life in that sweating bar of the hotel aletti looked like a separate and removed bubble inching along a thread. then my mind would start gyrating like a corn popper and i'd have to quiet myself by reasoning that i'd been away from the states a long time, that i was drunk, and my mind was playing me dirty tricks. it was trying to be god and come face to face with itself. but why? why? why? at these moments i'd see myself rocketing out into space, seeing this world from the view­ point of eternity. how tiny we all were, how like fleas dolled up for a pageant. i remember that a second lieutenant of the engineers used to drink every afternoon at the bar of the hotel aletti. for a week i watched him. he fled the girls and leaned in the farthest corner of the bar, holding onto his drink as gods clutch at their membra in orgies. i wondered why he never had a buddy. he had hair as white as the snow that algiers never sees, and a thin sunburned face. he looked like the social young men in life magazine's dances, but he didn't act like them. if anyone spoke to him, he'd reply in just as many words as they'd used on him, smile as though to tell them they didn't see the farce of it all, and return to his wine. if after this an attempt was still made to continue the conversation, he'd smile again and softly change his place at the bar. his en­ counters with emilie and lucie and bettine used to make me wonder. i think they were afraid of him. he'd disengage himself from their arms and their nipping teeth with the slippery coolness of an invisible fish. one evening, i remember, when the white wine had taken a communicative turn in me, i slipped into the place next him and waited shyly, tingling a little. i ordered another white wine with the aletti ice cube bobbing in it and looked at my boots. it was odd to feel him close by me. it seemed as though all air had been sucked into the place where he stood so aloof and silent. he smelled of ll' i" 122 the gallery (al .......-. lifebuoy soap and shaving lotion, as though he strove to be im­ personal. i know my army officers pretty well, having observed them for years from the perspective of a pebble looking up and squinting at the white bellies of the fish nosing above it. americans usually go mad when by direction of the president of the united states they put a piece of metal on their collars. they don't know whether they're the lone ranger, jesus christ, or ivanhoe. few americans i ever knew could sustain the masquerade of an officer. their grease paint kept peeling in unexpected places. i heard that in combat the good officers simply knew their men well and did them one better in daring. but to be a good officer out of combat demands a sort of shadowboxing between truth and posing. europeans know the secret. but few americans can play the nobleman without con­ descension or chicken. american officers fall into three easy slots of the doughnut ma­ chine. the feminine ones, i mean those who register life and are acted upon by it, become motherly, fussy, and on the receiving end from the gi's under them. if they rule at all, it's by power of their gentleness, which can fasten a gi in tight bonds once his will consents and admires. second, there are the violent and the aggres­ sive, who as commissioned officers -assume a male and fatherly part ranging from drunken pas who whale their sons on saturday nights to the male and nursing tenderness of an athletic coach. yet these most masculine men aren't always the best officers in a crisis or showdown. third, there are those commissioned nonentities who as civilians were male stenographers, file clerks, and x-ray tech­ nicians. they are neither masculine nor feminine. they move through the army in polyp groups of their own sort. they're never alone. i can be in the same room with such officers without feeling the presence of anything or anyone. touching their personalities is like poking at a dish of lemon jello. they smile and assume another shape. i remember standing beside the white-haired second lieutenant of the engineers. i thought that if he didn't speak soon, i'd scream, as the saying goes. i didn't know into which of my three slots he fell. he seemed a coin with the milling rubbed off. -don't be so goddam condescending, corporal. -pardon, sir? i said. i jumped at the sound of his voice. i realized that his mind had been tracking mine for the past five minutes. this lieutenant had a voice that began at his navel and got muted in his sinuses. as he leaned toward me, his breath was mixed with wine and peppermint. -yo -a -ah wdl, n�iersr !iiver -on, fiim one -you retreati an rur� mmr1e inwmba lju!tlie wmale !taname in� too �rtimi!ti -the �iutin� n �ral,an i�a the tl ifiink,tha id1 when ii'! lawni� mme here i�1ver wan �l u!, �halll �me time, "urou well,!'ll g ..well,: .. except l�u've aeer ��re [rom ,1ri�ht to i ii�r listen "'you'v( ...moth( removed a �verseas i' (j �llh� ----.:.. \.io'e to b� tt (algiers) 123 yet\ed th�m, 'd?d squlntln!: i \cans ulu�l\ i tntted �utel'� , i tnow wntlli oe. few arnerl� j,thelr� t in (omo�t: one�tle, eman� a lor. -you've been watching me for the past week, corporal, he said. -a gi looks up to his officers, sir. or wants to.... -ah ... you hoped to prove to yourself that i'm a sad sack. well, i am. completely lost.... how do you know you're in algiers? or for that matter what proof can you give me that you're alive? -one at a time, sir, i said, gulping my wine so that i could buy him one and establish some ground between him and myself. -your curiosity will be the death of you, corporal. play safe and retreat into some sort of role.... it's wonderful how in a war you can purge yourself and become nothing or everything. . . . i for example have lost my touch with life. i'm like those basket cases in combat. a man still alive but limbless and deaf, dumb, and blind. i just lie in a great white bed, my brain still functioning, but able to make no impression on the world outside me.... do you under­ stand me? you have the face of a ferret or a weasel. ... but know­ ing too much will sicken you. just go back to being convenient and optimistic and slick and conventional. -the lieutenant speaks a fine english, i said, gulping. -don't address me in the third person. you're like the ayrabs saluting me when they want a bonbon. you're an american cor­ poral, and you have confused ideas of democracy and independence and the four freedoms. you loathe saluting me on the street. you think, that sonofabitch shavetail. ... so don't think you're kidding me when you address me in the third person. it's not respectful. it's fawning.... so for god's sake just cut out that crap.... you came here to talk, and i'm giving you what you asked for. you'll never want to talk to me again, which will be healthier for both of us. -shall i go away now, sir? i said, bridling and trembling at the same time. -if you like. but you won't.... i'm your experience for today. well, i'll give you a dose of me. -well, i try to give everybody an even break, i stuttered. -except me, corporal, except me. for one solid week now you've been staring at me when you weren't allowing yourself a free grope from these putains.... did it ever occur to you that i have a right to privacy? is your own life so small that you must enlarge it by listening in on my party lines? -you've got me all wrong, sir ... -mother of shit, the lieutenant said, his voice as cool and removed as ever, how i envy you mediocre people! since i came overseas i've been in a position where nothing has squared with 124 the gallery the education i got. i have a good mind. and it's disciplined. i know shakespeare and mozart and calculus and how to hold my moxie. but nothing i learned at yale has given me any preparation for the mad world in which i find myself.... do you all think you're playing a game with high stakes? are you happy to be a joiner? are you happy moving in herds and thinking as the news. papers and the radio commercials tell you to? what sweet con­ solation to be able to say to yourself: i'm an american, therefore better than anyone else in the world! . . . you see, corporal, the human race is getting worse all the time. each year we know less than we did in the preceding. we're more no-account now than we were five hundred years ago. five hundred years from now i doubt that there'll be any of us left on earth. just thousands of wrecked planes and burned-out tanks from the south pole to the steppes of russia.... we get smugger all the time. we call forces of destruction and speed, the march of progress.... -born in the states, sir? i said feebly after a pause. -born there, corporal, but probably sha'n't die there. i had ideas of aristocracy without class, of brotherhood without famil­ iarity and sentimentality. and i studied and i read and i admired nature and art. and i said what a piece of work is man, and i believed it. but it looks as though individuality is going out for­ ever. yet the propaganda assures me that a new age is at hand. -it's the turning point in history, sir, for the little man.... i murmured this, for it was something i'd read that morning in stars and stripes, mediterranean. -the fallacy of the machine and the mob, corporal. if the murder gets over, everything will then be geared to the lowest common denominator, as it is in the american public schools. the queer, the beautiful, the gentle, and the wondering will all go down before a race of healthy baboons with football letters on their sweaters.... i was a letter man at yale.... and the end of the world will come as a tittering anticlimax, because we're going to shut ourselves out from the stream of truth, and drown in pettiness and small talk. -you fear the little man, sir? -the term little man is a phrase of self-pity. faugh, corporal .... i remember that i excused myself from the second lieutenant of the engineers and went out of the aletti into the streets of algiers. i looked back at him as i turned out the door, bumping into a colonel. i remember thinking with an ache of pity and laughter that this was the last time the young lieutenant would speak. for no one man can put his hands up to stop a locomotive.... m mink h neroe tha ered 0 !ieeo iv i (quid a �ne ate ana pati (quldn't �ut !he' iliemer �! l17iti a�nna, a! th �ea, �he america iliedeal, oladars �ut now (lucked �eapolit �a!ped oitterness love in n beneat two tape �ne tha ---.. � ui�ciplineq �ow to holq rr anr preparatw a )'ou all t� ham to � ing as the n� �\iflat �weet m erican, thm!� see, corpor�, � tar we know � ((aunt now � ears [rom n�w u·t thoulanru � uth pole wt .wecalllol( fifth portrait momma cotjx)raj. ii � to ilie jo�! � ic ichoojl, n • �j�j�o�o' 'etm on � ilieenaolm . lie're �oin!: to�] in �ttino momma always lay a while in her bed when she awoke. poppa was up four hours earlier and went out into the streets of naples for a walk, to buy risorgimento and to drink his caffe espresso. he said it made him nervous to lie beside her because she cooed to herself as she slept. that love which poppa no longer desired of her momma show­ ered on the clientele of her bar. one reason she cooed in her sleep was that she was one of the richest women in naples. she could afford to buy black market food at two thousand lire a day. she ate better than the americans. she had furs and lovely dresses and patent leather pumps which even the countesses in the vomero couldn't afford. momma had come from a poor family in milan, but she'd made herself into one of the great ladies of naples. and the merchants of naples, when they sent her monthly bills, instead of writing signora before her name, wrote n.d., standing for nobil donna. as the churches of naples struck noon, momma got out of her bed. she was wearing a lace nightie brought her from cairo by an american flier. momma knew that the flier had made money on the deal, but no other woman in naples had one like it. in the old days she'd have driven poppa mad with this lace nightie. but now he simply crawled in beside her, felt the sheer stuff, and ducked his tongue in disapproval. poppa was first and last a neapolitan. even in the early days of their marriage he'd never grasped the fineness of momma's grain. but she was beyond such bitterness now. she loved the world, and the world returned her love in her bar in the galleria u mberto. beneath a colored picture of the madonna of pompei, flanked by two tapers and a pot of pinks, momma said her morning prayers. she thanked the virgin for saving her during the bombard125rire.... iii, 126 th e gallery 1,1 ments of naples. but the virgin hadn't spared that lovely apparta­ mento in piazza garibaldi. and momma prayed for all the sweet boys who came to her bar, that they might soon be returned to their families-but not too soon, for momma loved their com.. pany. and she prayed also for the future of poor italy, that the line up by florence might soon be smashed by the american fifth army. and she prayed that ii duce and his mistress claretta petacci might see the error of their ways. finally momma prayed that all the world might be as prosperous and happy as she her.. self was. with the bombing of her apartment in piazza garibaldi in march, 1943, momma'd been able to salvage only her frigidaire. everything else had been destroyed-the lovely linens she'd brought pappa with her dowry from milan, her fragile plate, her genteel furniture. only the frigidaire was to be found among the rubble, pert and smiling as a bomb shelter. momma'd wept the whole day; then she and pappa had moved into a dreary set of rooms on the :bird floor of the galleria umberto. momma'd got the rooms .leaned, set the frigidaire in the kitchen, and bought secondhand furniture by cautious shopping in piazza dante. but her heart as a homemaker had died in the ruins of that appartamento to which poppa had brought her as a bride. she lived now only for her bar and for the allied soldiers who came there every night except sunday. in fact momma was only treading water all day long until 1630 hours, at which time the provost marshal of naples allowed her to open her bar. at 1930 mp's came to make sure it was closed. three hours. yet in those three hours momma lived more than most folks do in twenty-four. she'd opened her bar the night after naples fell to the allies, in october, 1943. some american of the 34th division had chris­ tened her momma, and the name stuck. and because momma had an instinctive knack for entertaining people, her bar was the most celebrated in naples. indeed a kiwi had once told her that it was famous all over the world, that everyone in the allied armies told everyone else about it. momma rejoiced. her only selfish desire was to be renowned as a great hostess. she was happy that she made money in her bar, but that wasn't her be-and-end-all. she knew that she was going down in history with lili marlene and the mademoiselle of armcnticres=-though for a different reason. title, nind !ne'd !ta�e, roomi inne andtlor l� rattn -� wap �oppa m, �o on a and ne liilier. �he nat on nerdra one ha itockin� lillala crom h tnelue frllents final! walna around fri�iaair !fle invi for this i�ne wi 1lllrtr 01 was airec loitered momma brushed her teeth with american dentrifice while the water ran into her tub. she studied her hair in the mirror. for k twentd�, oilie:� \ ' n �aa� 'sf moidjl)j� �al ilie[� ro'd her tnatitl, � lied anni� t� orj\ seldin ac i i� ( . happr wit, be-and-ena·all.; lill )iarlenlt a diherent re�: i nlrifice whilet '2 the mirror,f momma 127 ten years she'd been hennaing it. but she was too honest to go on kidding the world. she was forty-six. in the face of that sacred title, momma, it seemed to her sacrilegious to sit every night be­ hind her cash register with crimson hair glowing in the lights. so she'd stopped using the rinse. now her hair was in that transitional stage, with gray and white and henna streaked through it. but the momentary ugliness of her hair was worth her title. at. closing time in her bar, some of her boys, a bit brilli, would cry on her shoulder and tell her that she looked just like some elderly lady in arkansas or lyon or north wales or the transvaal or sydney. then she'd pat their hands and say: -ah, mio carol se fosse qui la sua mammal ... she'd never been able to learn english, though she understood nearly everything that was said to her in it. momma climbed into the tub after she'd sprinkled in some salts a merchant seaman had brought her from new york. her body was getting a little chunky, but she tried her best to keep it trim, the way a momma's should be. at first she'd worn a pince-nez until poppa had told her she looked like a sicilian carthorse with blind­ ers. so she had reverted to her gold-rimmed spectacles. she doted on american black market steaks, her pasta asciutta, her risotti, and her peperoni. she knew that a momma mustn't be skinny either. she dressed herself in black silk and laid out a quaint straw hat on which a stuffed bird sprawled eating cherries. she opened her drawerful of silk stockings. you could count on the fingers of one hand the women in naples of august, 1944, who owned silk stockings-were they prostitutes on the toledo or marchese in villas at bagnoli. but momma had em; she averaged a pair a week from her american admirers. momma considered herself one of the luckiest ladies in the world. she knew that no woman gets presents for nothing. finally dressed and fragrant and cool in spite of the furnace that was naples in august, 1944, momma took up her purse and looked around the apartment before locking it. she checked the ice in the frigidaire. sometimes, after she was compelled to close her bar, she invited her favorite boys up for extra drinks. she didn't charge for this hospitality. she walked through the galleria umberto. at this hour it was empty of neapolitans because of the heat. but the allied soldiery was already out in full force. the bars weren't open, so they just loitered against the walls reading their stars and stripes or 128 the gallery ii 1 whistling at the signorine. a few waved to momma, and she bowed to them. then she went onto the toledo, which ii duce had vulgarized into via roma. here she clutched her bag more tightly. like anybody else born in milan, she had no use for neapolitans or sicilians. they thought the world owed them a living, so they preyed on one another with a malicious vitality, like monkeys re­ moving one another's fleas. and now that the allies were in naples, the neapolitans were united in milking them. momma knew' that the neapolitans hated her because she was rich and because she refused to speak their dialect. she walked through them all with her head in the air, clutching her purse. some who knew her called out vulgar names in dialect and cracks about napoli milionaria, but she paid them no attention. she and poppa usually lunched together at a black market restaurant on via chiaia, patronized by americans and those few italians who could afford the price of a meal there. today poppa was out campaigning for public office at the municipio, so momma ate alone at her special table. sometimes she suspected that poppa had a mistress. but then he wouldn't stand a chance at snapping up anything really good, what with all the allies in naples. the treatment momma got at this restaurant was in a class by itself. naturally the americans got fawned on, but then they didn't know what the waiters said about them in the kitchen. whereas momma, as an italian who'd made a success in the hardiest times naples had ever known, always got a welcome as though she were queen margherita. there were flowers on her table and special wines rustled up from the cellar, although the allies got watered vino ordinario. and when momma entered, the orchestra stopped playing american jazz, picked up their violins, and did her favor­ ite tune, "mazzolin di fiori." momma tapped her chin with her white glove and hummed appreciatively. while she picked at her whitefish and sipped her white wine and peeped around the restaurant from under the shadow of the red bird that forever ate cherries on her hat, momma observed an american sergeant wrestling with an american black market steak. he was quite drunk, and to momma, who knew all the symptoms so well, he seemed ready to cry. she debated inviting him to her table and treating him to his lunch. but he gave her the i-hate­ italians scowl, so she thought better of it. he wasn't the sort who came to her bar anyhow. momma was basically shy, except with people she thought needed affection. then she'd open up like all the great hostesses of the world. however, she did take out of her (dved wrette never rolitic· lincet tne ga �he walked qumpr oira chi !ne'd b ouilt ur geoated !ne'd!ee into n ro�m ilimw ileryaf killing t �inema �ne fo rut on made in u!eatot ding. t nerfeet ner girdl �a((r out li�nt� ca �ople c momma' �ut to i , ��i.lm � anu �he bow� :h 1\ duce k. )alj more ti�nt\ [or �eapoli� � li\'in�j 10 ili1 . e monkey!)! : allies we;e; them,11offill e \ias ti�� , , .. ; ed tluo�: p !)t. �me,� cra(� lk momma purse a little pasteboard card advertising her bar. she sent it by a waiter over to the sergeant, plus a bottle of chianti. he scowled at her again, and momma decided basta, she'd gone more than halfway. then he tore up her card and began to guzzle her wine. she finished her lunch and smoked a cigarette. there seemed to be a rope about her neck pulled taut by all the evil fingers of the world. she wanted to go somewhere and have a good cry. she needed a friend. poppa had never been close to her since, in the first year of their marriage, he discovered that she wasn't going to be fertile, like all the other women of italy. momma had con­ ceived just once. in her fallopian tubes. after the medico had curetted her out and she'd all but died, he'd told her she could never have a child of her own. and poppa in disgust had taken to politics and reading the papers. momma'd only begun to love again since the night in october, 1943, when she'd opened her bar in the galleria umberto.... she arose from table and drew on her white gloves. as she walked to the door, she saw herself pass by in the gilded mirror, a dumpy figure holding in its chin, a scudding straw hat under a bird chewing cherries. she knew that if she didn't get outside soon, she'd bawl right there in front of the waiters, and the drama she'd built up of a great lady would collapse forever. on via chiaia she debated what movie she'd go to. since she went every afternoon, she'd seen them all. a few american films were beginning to dribble into naples, and momrna'd enjoyed greer garson or ginger rogers with an italian sound track. yet movies bored her unless there was lots of music and color. the truth was that she went every afternoon because she'd nothing else to do; she was just killing time till the hour to open her bar. she decided on the cinema regina elena off via santa brigida. she found a seat three-quarters of the way back from the screen, put on her glasses, and watched the show. it was an italian film made in rome on a budget of a few thousand lire. momma was used to the ternpo of american movies, so she found herself nod­ ding. there wasn't even anything worth crying over. she eased her feet out of their patent leather pumps, cursed the pinching of her girdle, and settled down. sometimes she drew a peppermint patty out of her bag and sucked it thoughtfully. every half-hour the lights came up for an intervallo; the windows were opened, and people came in or out or changed their seats for various reasons. momma'd have liked an allied soldier to be sitting beside her. but to these the cinemas of naples were off limits because of the 129 130 the gallery " danger of typhus and because of certain nuisances they'd committed in the dark just after the city fell. during the intervalli momma stayed in her seat and smoked a cigarette. she wasn't going to force her feet back into her pumps. the italian film went on and on; momma fell asleep and dreamed in the moldy dark. her dreams were always the same, of the boys who came to her bar. there was a heterogeneous quality about them. they had an air of being tremendously wise, older than the human race. they understood one another, as though from france and new zealand and america they all had membership cards in some occult freemasonry. and they had a refinement of manner, an intuitive appreciation of her as a woman. their conversation was flashing, bitter, and lucid. more than other men they laughed much together, laughing at life itself perhaps. momma'd never seen anything like her boys. some were extraordinarily handsome, but not as other men were handsome. they had an acuteness in their eyes and a predatory richness of the mouth as though they'd bitten into a pomegranate. momma dreamed that she was queen of some gay exclusive club. she awoke and glanced at her watch. it was time to go. she'd seen almost nothing of the film. but she didn't care. she felt more rested than she did by poppa's side. a silver hammer in her heart kept tapping out that in fifteen minutes more her life for the day would begin. she had the yearning hectic panic of a child going to a show. she shot her feet into her pumps. as the lights came up for the secondo tempo momma left the theater. she looked a little disdainfully at the audience, contrasting it. with what she'd shortly be seeing. peaked neapolitan girls on the afternoon of their giorno di festa, holding tightly to the arms of their fidanzati wearing gi undershirts; sailors of the regia marina and the squadra n avale in their patched blue and whites; housewives from the vichi and the off-limits areas who'd come in with a houseful of children to peer at the screen and lose themselves in its shadowy life. her patent leather pumps hurt momma's feet, but she sprinted up santa brigida. she turned left at via giuseppe verdi. once in the galleria momma all but flew. she wondered if she looked spruce, if her hat was chic. the galleria was milling and humming, for all the bars opened within a few seconds of one another: just as clocks stagger their striking the hour throughout a great city. momma had a presentiment that today was going to be especially glamorous. the 1630 shift of troie were coming into the arcade with the was iuou irot! nim nerie �ias! �ne �b� ! �ne anna retur could� lorml a pric orand were veilen a! tnemi �at. m, aa�e!s nil ere� momml fri�dai tnough lewmo necalle "'att "'per nettle i�and : g�ller� � �' u committ� ler'ialll momml �'t going to !otu �eep and dremj� lame, o! the oou ,'5 qu�itr aoo;1 �l older ilian lli' ahfromrmq btt)hir carilii� ent 01 manne momma promptness of factory girls. from now until curfew time the gal­ leria would be a concentrated fever of bargaining and merchandis­ ing peculiar to naples in august, 1944. the rolling steel shutters of momma's bar were already up. gaetano was polishing the mirrors. he greeted momma and went back to thinking a bou t his wife and thirteen children and how it wasn't fair that a man who'd never signed the fascist tessera should live like a dog under the allies. vincenzo was wearing a spotted apron, so momma lashed him with her tongue and forced him into the gabinetto to put on a fresh one. she stitched them up herself out of american potato bags. momma also inspected the glassware, the taps on the wine casks, the alignment of the bottles. she was kilometers ahead of the sanitation standards set by the pbs surgeon and the provost marshal. she seated herself behind the cassa, unlocked the cash drawer, and counted her soldi. at this moment the old feeling of ecstasy returned. for momma loved her bar: the mirrors in which everyone could watch everyone else, the shining carrara marble, the urns for making caffe espresso. behind her on the mirror she'd fastened a price list. she offered excellent white wine, vermouth, and cherry brandy. she hoped soon to be licensed to sell gin and cognac, which were what the allies really wanted. when stronger liquors were available, the tone of her place would go sky-high, along with the moods of her clientele. no one had yet turned up. momma knew with racecourse cer­ tainty the exact order in which her habitues came. her patrons were of three types: some came only to look, some with a thinly veiled purpose of meeting someone else, some just happened in. a shadow cut the fierce light of the galleria bouncing around the mirrors. it was poppa treading warily and carrying his straw hat. momma flinched. she had no desire to see poppa now. if he addressed her in dialect, she'd refuse to answer. he had rings under his eyes, and through his brown teeth came the perfume of onions. momma told him that there was half a chicken waiting in the frigidaire. but he seemed to want to talk. momma got as peeved as though someone tried to explain a movie to her. so poppa, after a few more attempts to talk, put on his straw hat and went out. but he called back to her from the entrance: -attenzione, cara. . . . =-perche? momma cried, but he was gone. nettled and distracted, she settled herself behind the cash regis­ ter and folded her hands. where were they? all behind schedule to.. 131 132 the gallery m -. m night. she began to wonder if some of the other bar owners had sabotaged her by passing around the rumor that she was selling methyl alcohol such as would cause blindness. the husky figure of a major entered the bar. momma smelled a rat because this major was wearing the crossed pistols of an mp officer. on his left shoulder he wore the inverted chamber pot with the inset blue star, symbolizing the peninsular base section. the major set his jaw like one asking for trouble. he ran his hands through some of the wineglasses and blew on the wine spigots for dust. -ees dean the glass, the wine, everything! momma cried cheer­ ily. bar molto buono, molto pulito.... the major advanced upon her. she was beginning to tremble behind her desk. he walked with the burly tread of one accustomed to cuff and kick. momma remembered that some of the germans, when they'd been in naples, had walked like that. -lissen to me, signorina, the major said, dropping a porky hand on her desk. -signora, scusi, said momma with dignity. -i don't give a damn one way or the other, the major said. but don't try an play dumb with me, see, paesan? -ees molto buono my bar, momma twittered, offering the major a cigarette. vincenzo and gaetano were watching the proceedings like cats. -molto buono, my eye. you're gettin away with murder in this joint.... now you can just take your choice. either you get rid of most of the people who come here, or we'll put you off limits. and you know we damn well can, don't you? momma quailed as she lit the major's cigarette. the words "off limits" were understood by any neapolitan who wanted to keep his shop open. nothing could withstand the mp's closing a place, unless you were friendly with some colonel of pbs. -you know as well as i do, said the major. an old doll like your­ self ain't as dumb as she looks. we don't want any more eyeties comin in here to mix with the soldiers. do i make myself clear? and you gotta refuse to serve some of the other characters.... don't come whinin around that you ain't been warned. momma motioned to vincenzo and gaetano to bring out a glass of that fine cognac from which she gave her favorites shots after closing time. it was set at the major's elbow. he drank it off, glar­ ing at her the while, set down the glass with a click, and left. -capeesh? he cried as he belched like a balloon out into the sunlight of the galleria. men, illo�e illata in i aham ana b take h wrne in� !r oerenl (ilt hi� wnere, fliffiw the !nort·!1 01 hi! louin 1 milih'1 �iten, momm rromth oorwo ltlaxati mom de!ert ' went !o mont�, -ee� -oh it was �w him inilierr '"he w� usu; momma 133 momma couldn't decide what grudge the mp's had against her. there had been occasional fights in her bar, yet the other bars of naples had even more of them. her soldiers were gentle. all she was trying to do was run a clean bar where people could gather with other congenial people. her crowd had something that other groups hadn't. momma's boys had an awareness of having been born alone and sequestered by some deep difference from other men. for this she loved them. and momma knew something ot those four freedoms the allies were forever preaching. she believed that a minority should be let alone.... in came the desert rat. he took off his black beret and pushed a hand through his rich inky hair. he said good evening to momma and bought his quota of six chits for double white wines. it would take him three hours to drink these. he was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. he never spoke to a soul. he was the handsomest and silentest boy momma'd ever seen. why did he come at all? his manners were so perfect and soft that at a greet.. ing from another, he'd reply and recede into himself. momma won­ dered if at tobruk or el alamein someone in the desert night had cut his soul to pieces. he'd loved once-perfectly-someone, some­ where. momma would cheerfully have slain whoever had hurt him so. the face of the desert rat was an oval of light brown. his short-sleeved shirt showed the cleft in his neck just above the hair of his chest. he wore the tightest and shortest pair of shorts he could get into, and he leaned lost and dreaming against the bar with his ankles scraping one another in their low socks and canvas gaiters. those legs were part of the poetry of the desert rat for momma-the long firm legs of germans, but tanned and covered from thigh to calf with thick soft hair. for three hours this english boy would stand in momma's bar, doped and dozing in maddening relaxation and grace from the white wine. momma tore six chits out of the cash register and gave the desert rat four lire back out of his one hundred. tonight she went so far as to pat his wrist, a thing she'd been longing to do for months. -ees warm tonight, no? -oh very, madam, the desert rat said. it was the first time she'd seen his smile. and momma suddenly saw him in someone's arms by moonlight in the egyptian desert, in the midst of that love which had sliced the boy's heart in two . . . . he left her and went to the bar. in the next three hours it was usually at him that momma'd look when she wasn't making 134 the gallery tnalca olfficult wl!hea �ut !ta ,i \ change. she saw him from all perspectives in the mirrors, all the loveliness of his majestic body. next to arrive was a negro second lieutenant of the american quartermaster corps. momma smiled to herself as the negro made an entrance. he seemed to have the idea he was stepping onto some lighted stage. he moved his hips ever so slightly and car­ ried his pink-insided hands tightly against his thighs. for some dramatic reason he wore combat boots, though momma knew he'd never been farther north than the docks of naples. -hulllllo, darling, he said to momma, kissing her fingers. he had a suave overeducated voice. you look simpppply wonderful tonight. who does your hats? queen mary? ... uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.... then he stationed himself at the bar quite close to the desert rat. they looked at each other for a swift appraising instant. then the negro lieutenant began to talk a blue streak at the desert rat. -it's going to be brilliant here tonight, absolutely brrrrilliant. i feel it way down inside.... my aunt, you know, is a social worker in richmond, virginia. but do you think i'm ever going back there? no, indeed, baby. i found a home in italy, where the human plant can't help but thrive. i like the italians, you know. they're like me, refined animals, which of course doesn't bar the utmost in subtlety and human development.... they talk about french love. . .. well, the italians know all the french do, and have a tenderness besides.... my god, why doesn't everybody just live for love? that's all there is, baby. and out of bed you have to be simply brillllllliant. . . . momma sometimes pondered to herself the reason for the wild rhetoric talk by some of the people who came to her bar. it wasn't like italian rhetoric, which makes good italian conversation a sort of shimmering badminton. at momma's most of her customers talked like literate salesmen who cunningly invited you out to dinner-all the time you knew that they were selling something, but their propaganda was sparkling and insidious. at momma's there were people who talked constantly for the whole three hours. there were others who simply listened to the talkers, smiling and accepting, as though they'd tacitly agreed to play audience. and momma could tell the precise time in her bar by the level of the noise, by the speed with which the words shot through the air like molten needles, by the ever mounting bubbles of laughter and derision. under this conversation momma sensed a vacuum of ��ant! inilie -e!t not �ett mn, �h ana t -wei a! we've 11i!, !1m mnint r1ril,ma 4n� orea �ut il 00 it'! in )'0 to it like ithr kio ",we nate ours at ii ili1wac ��, no 0 it the fa idaoe it worried a (l�!e! an momma pain, as though her guests jabbered at one another to get their minds off themselves, to convince themselves of the reality of some­ thing or other. there now arrived the only two momma didn't rejoice to see, two british sergeants wearing shorts draped like an old maid's flannels. they were almost twins, had peaked noses and spectacles that caused them to peer at everyone as though they were having difficulty in threading a needle from their rocking chairs. momma wished they wouldn't stand so close to her desk, blocking her view. but stand there they did until the bar closed. their conversation was a series of laments and groans and criticisms of everyone else present. they called this dishing the joint. momma thought that they came to her bar because they couldn't stay away. they were disdainful and envious and balefully curious all at the same time. they reminded her of old women who take out their false teeth and contemplate their photograph of forty years ago. these ser­ geants bought some chits, took off their berets, and primped a little in the mirror behind momma. -esther, my coiffure! used to be so thick and lustrous.... we're not getting any younger, are we? we'll have to start paying for it soon. shall we live together and take in tatting? and the other sergeant said, giving himself a fingerwave: -well, i've read that the end of all this is exhaustion and ennui. as we've agreed steen times before, magda, the problem is bottom­ less, simply bottomless. no one but ourselves understands it, or is even interested. you put your hand into a cleft tree to your own peril, magda. when you take out the wedge, the tree snaps together and breaks your hand and you cry your eyes out at night, but it doesn't do any good it keeps coming back on you because it's in you. even though you don't get any satisfaction, you go back to it like a dog to his vomit.... that's what it is, magda, vomit. why kid ourselves and talk of love? love is a constructive force. . . . we only want to destroy ourselves in others because we hate ourselves.... at 1700 hours rhoda appeared after she'd had evening chow at the wac-ery. rhoda was the only woman who came to momma's bar. no one ever spoke to rhoda, who did her drinking standing at the far end of the counter, reading a thick book. she always made it a point to show momma what she was reading. rhoda worried about the state of the world. she studied theories of leisure classes and patterns behind governments. 135 ii' "i ,i i 1 136 the gallery p" , i i, i , i -i'm not good for much of anything, rhoda once said, except to talk up a storm. to momma's italian ear rhoda had a voice like a baritone; everything she said carried about a kilometer. -what am i? rhoda said once. the reincarnation of l'aiglon. it seemed to momma that rhoda was happy in her wac uni­ form-the neat tie, the coat, the stripes on the sleeve, the skirt that didn't call attention to the fact tha.t it was a skirt. under her over­ seas cap rhoda wore an exceptional hairdo. it was something like the pageboy bob of twenty years ago cut still more boyishly. and under this cropped poll were rhoda's stark face, thin lips, weasel eyes. rhoda looked as though she were lying in ambush for some­ thing. she bought a slew of tickets from momma and went to her accustomed place, reading and drinking. she turned the pages by moistening her forefinger and looking quickly at the other persons in the bar. rhoda was the only american girl whom momma knew well, but she was a symbol. momma had a theory that romantic love was on the wane in america because if all the women were like rhoda, american girls were mighty emancipated and intellectual. since rhoda was so cool and unfeminine, momma foresaw a day in the united states when all the old graceful concepts of love would have perished. the women would have brought it on themselves by in­ sisting on equality with the men. to momma, thinking of her girl­ hood in milan, this wasn't an inviting picture.... -why don't signorine come here? rhoda asked authoritatively of momma. intellectual italian women, i mean. i'd spread the gos­ pel to them. i'm the best little proselytizer in the world. i'd make them socially conscious. we'd read the nation and john dos passos. i might even pass out copies of consumers' research to help italian girls buy wisely. momma smiled. she knew quite well that if signorine started coming to her bar, most of her patrons would go away. it was an easy matter to get a signorina anywhere else in the galleria urn­ berto or on the toledo. momma had indeed been ill at ease when rhoda had first appeared, but the boys had accepted rhoda while ignoring her. and so long as there was harmony, momma didn't care who came to her bar.... --dh this place of yours, rhoda boomed with a thick shiver. it's positively electric here, momma. i get so much thinking and reading done in this stimulating atmosphere.... just like a salon. the two british sergeants eyed rhoda. momma'd been expect�eant (omplel �ood la rou an oarling, wlitaj1 -i'm �ri�tlin ' tnatvio knitting, i !nould -ma, mitaole -don nei�nt 0 riece!,t in� drun omicn f -well momm �r ner ca� rnkin� at -« �ia triu o1art.ifr ot wnat �n!ation, narpr in funa!ma �iing, r --it'! n n1r open �uean!, --pleas in her 0 ot three h �uie!cence momma ing them to accost one another for the past week. and tonight the bubble was going to burst. -we've been asking one another why you come here, the ser­ geant called esther said. you must have a saint francis of assisi complex. or else you're a messalina.... if you want to give us a good laugh, why don't you bring one of your warm sisters with you and make a gruesome twosome? you shouldn't come here alone, darling. momma's bar is like nature, which abhors vacuums and solitary people. -i'm not answerable to the likes of you, rhoda roared back, bristling with delight. but i will say i've always sought out milieux that vibrate in tune with me.... so you two just get back to your knitting. just because you two are jaded and joaded, that's no sign i should be too. -magda, she's a tigress, the other british sergeant said, but a veritable tigress. we must have her to our next caserta party. -don't think i don't know those parties, rhoda rumbled. the height of sterility. everybody sits around tearing everybody else to pieces, thinking, my god, ain't we brilliant. everybody gets stink­ ing drunk. then somebody makes an entrance down the stairs in ostrich feathers and a boa.... no thank you, my pretty chicks. -well, get you, mabel, the first british sergeant tittered. momma cleared her throat. she hated the turn things were taking by her cash desk. it was as though the three were armed with talons, raking at one another's faces. -we understand one another all too well, don't we? rhoda said triumphantly. i pity you two from the bottom of my swelling heart. if you had a little more of what i have, or i had a little more of what you have, what beautiful music we could make • • . a trio.•.• -darling, i see you in london, the second sergeant said. a sensation. but you aren't quite bankhead, darling. but you are happy in the wac's, aren't you, dear? your postwar plans are to run a smart little night club ... wearing a white tuxedo ... but darling, you just haven't the figger for it. -it's no use trying to scratch my eyes out, rhoda rumbled in her open diapason. i have a perfect armorplating against elderly queans. -pleasa, momma murmured, clearing her throat again, pleasa. ..• in her bar things moved by fits and starts. incidents in the course of three hours followed some secret natural rhythm of fission and quiescence, like earthquakes and vesuvio. each time the climaxes 137 138 the gallery rre!ent retire to there tfiealii mollingla[ternoo tnld th !fiirt! of �ack lhi !llowed i mere he field mem, h in� orera erelaart min� in mana, h 1ilorofli " grew fuller. this first was only a ripple to what she knew would happen later. rhoda and the two british sergeants glared at one another. she reopened her thick book and retreated into it like an elephant hulking off into the jungle. the two sergeants put arms about each other's waists and executed a little congratulatory dance. after the first incident the desert rat raised his fine dark head, looked into the mirror, and ordered another white wine. the negro second lieutenant stopped his monologue and called out: -everyone's still wearing their veil ... but wait.... an italian contingent always came to momma's on schedule. they entered with the furtive gaiety of those who know they aren't wanted, but have set their hearts on coming anyhow. they wore shorts and sandals and whimsical little coats which they carried like wraps around their shoulders, neglecting to put their arms into the sleeves. momma knew that her allied clientele didn't care for them. and besides they never drank more than two glasses apiece, if they drank that much. they just sat around and mimicked one another and sniggered and looked hard at the allied soldiery. each evening they had a fresh set of photos and letters to show one another. momma thought of nothing so much as a bevy of milan shopgirls having a reunion after the day's work. she knew them all so well. the italians treated momma with a skeptical deference, as though to say, well, here we are again, dearie; your bar is in the public domain; so what are you going to do with us if we don't make a nuisance of ourselves? there was armando, who worked in a drygoods store. he was led in by his shepherd dog on a leather thong. this dog was armando's lure for introduction to many people. he had tight curls like a greek statue's, a long brown face, and an air of distinction learned from the films. he wore powder-blue shorts. it was armando who translated all his little friends' english letters for them. there was vittorio, with the blue eyes of a doll and gorgeous clothes such as momma'd seen on young ingegneri in the old days in milan. vittorio worked as a typist at navy house on via carac­ ciolo. he worked so well and conscientiously that the british gave him soap and food rations. sunday afternoons he walked by the aquarium with an english ensign who murmured in his ear. vit­ torio had arrogance and bitterness. he was the leader of the others. all evening long at momma's he lectured on literature and life and the sad fate of handsome young neapolitans in naples of august, 1944. in momma's hearing he said that he'd continue his re!rectea, �nlr al gi �omero, �e rre!cnt !rmon t (ollar ana remote noi�unk a ii �e�eetea �ilea!e, he ilie otner i� rear of tne leaneaover .. mar i hi! engli �r over nrn "�peak \ mite, .. do rou tne dese ... 1 had �nnan offi momma 139 present career till he was thirty. . then he'd marry a contessa and retire to her villa at amalfi. there was enzo, who'd been a carabiniere directing traffic until the allies had liberated naples. now enzo led the life of a gaga, strolling the town in a t-shirt, inviting his friends to coffee in the afternoon, and singing at dusk in dark corners. momma thought enzo the apogee of brutal refinement. over his shorts he wore shirts of scented silk or pongee. under these the muscles of his back shimmered like salmon. the nostrils in his almost black face showed like pits, flaring with his breathing. there was also a tiny sergente maggiore of the italian army. he held himself off from the rest, though he always came in with them. he used them as air-umbrella protection for his own debark­ ing operations. the name of this sergente maggiore was giulio. his eyes darted warily about, and once in a while he'd call out some­ thing in a barking voice, to show that he was accustomed to com­ mand. he insisted on wearing his smart fascist peaked cap, the visor of which he would nervously tug when he got an unexpected answer. the last italian to arrive at momma's was the only one she respected. he was a count, but he permitted himself to be known only as gianni. besides his title he had a spacious apartment in the vomero. momma respected his rank, and she hoped some day to be presented to his mother the countess. momma liked gianni as a person too. he was always dressed in black, with a white stiff collar and a black knitted tie. his black eyes smoldered with a remote nostalgia. for some months now he'd come to momma's drunk a little, and gone away. but tonight he seemed purposeful. he greeted momma with a tender wretchedness. momma knew his disease. he was a neapolitan conte, dying of love. gianni avoided the other italians, who had perched themselves on a counter at the rear of the bar, and went straight up to the desert rat. momma leaned over her cash desk and watched with popping eyes. -may i speak to you, sir? gianni said to the desert. rat. his english was as slow and exquisite as that melancholy that layover him like a cloud. -speak up, chum, the desert rat said in his almost inaudible voice. -do you like me a little, sir? the desert rat didn't answer, but his tall body stiffened. -i had a friend once, gianni said, almost crying. he was a german officer. he taught me german, you see. he was kind to me. 140 the gallery and i think i was kind to him. i think i am a good person, sir. i am a rich count, but of course to you that does not import. ... i seek nothing from you, sir . . . like the others. . . . you look so much like the german officer. i was happy with him. he said he was happy with me.... would you like sometimes to come to my house in the vomero, sir? the two british sergeants set up a screaming like parrots. gianni fled. momma put her hand to her heart, which had given one vast jump. the desert rat quietly put down his wineglass. he took the two british sergeants and knocked their heads together. then he ran out through the bar. momma watched him stand outside, peer­ ing up and down the galleria and shielding his eyes against the sun. after a while he returned to his place and fell into his old reverie. he seemed as stirred and angry as a true and passionate boy. the two british sergeants were shrieking and sobbing and look­ ing at their reddened faces in the mirror. then they repaired to the gabinetto. momma could hear them inside splashing water on their faces and gibbering like chickens being bathed by a hen. rhoda looked over her book at the silent desert rat. the second incident rolled through the bar like the aftertones of a bell. momma just held onto her cash register and prayed, for she knew that this was going to be an evening. the negro second lieutenant began to sing something about "strange fruit." the italians footnoted the incident to one another. momma's bar wasn't nearly full yet, but it was buzzing like a bomb. presently the two british sergeants swept out of the gabinetto, their faces swollen and their eyes flushed from weeping. they looked like hawks for someone to prey on. enzo stepped easily up to them, placed a hand on his hip, and extended his powerful jeweled hand: -buona sera, ragazze. -you go straight to hell! the first british sergeant screeched. why do you come here at all, you sordid little tramps in your dirty old finery? do you think we feel sorry for you? go on via roma and peddle your stuff and stop trying to act like trade.... we see through you, two-shilling belles. all of you get out, do you hear? nobody here wants anything you've got. the allies are quite self­ sufficient, thank you. we did all right before naples fell.... why the nerve of you wop queans! glamor!? why you've all got as much allure as gracie fields in drag.... go find some drunken yank along the port.... but get the hell out of here! own in w�re m for the htner' 11r nad iliing in aamired wiu r1ar, t ma�iore !11rred -wh wnat ca ar1 hein a�air,w olaaunti -and normone nal1 tne j'll!eew ara!! an dorout -e!ilie own time ana we d lat1 victo anrnoiv, our routh lot1 none !oanatte �!1!, each !i(k to dea m� been �oollitr sti ...then �ked wist he cast 1'111. "'millioltantalizes � !'. . , • • . • :::------;rr----.-. -. / !ii i' �' i t g�ller� � ood person, !rr, ool import, , '" , , , you loob il him, he lain' to came tot momma 141 the italians replied to the sally of the british sergeants in their own indirect but effective way. momma decided that the italians were more deeply rooted in life, that they accepted themselves. for the italian contingent merely sent up a merry carol of laughter. if they'd had fans, they'd have retreated behind them. this laugh­ ter hadn't a hollow ring. it was based on the assumption that any­ thing in life can be laughed out of existence. momma had never admired the italian element in her bar. now she did. they shook with the silveriest laughter, lolling over one another like cats at play. their limbs gleamed in their shorts. even the tiny sergente maggiore joined in the badinage. and the two british sergeants stepped back by momma's cash desk and resumed their jeremiad. -what will become of us, esther? when we were young, we could laugh off the whole business. you and i both know that's what camping is. it's a greek mask to hide the fact that our souls are being castrated and drawn and quartered with each fresh affair. what started as a seduction at twelve goes on till we're senile old aunties, doing it just as a reflex action . -and we're at the menopause now, magda 0 god, if some hormone would just shrivel up in me and leave me in peace! i hate the thought of making a fool of myself when i turn forty. i'll see something gorgeous walking down piccadilly and i'll make a pass and all england will read of my trial at the old bailey.... do you think we would have been happier in athens, magda? -esther, let's face facts. you can't argue yourself out of your own time and dimension. you and i don't look like the greeks and we don't think like them. we were born in england under a late victorian morality, and so we'll die.... the end is the same anyhow, greek or english. don't you see, esther? we've spent our youth looking for something that doesn't really exist. there­ fore none of us is ever at peace with herself. all bitchery adds up to an attempt to get away from yourself by playing a variety of poses, each one more gruesome and leering than the last.... i'm sick to death of it, esther. i can think of more reasons for not hav­ ing been born than i can for iiving.... is there perhaps some nobility stirring in my bones? -then is there no solution, magda? the second british sergeant asked wistfully. he cast his eyes about the bar like a novice about to take the veil. -millions, esther. but rarely in the thing itself. that's what tantalizes us all. we play with the thing till it makes of us what 142 the gallery " , ;" we swear we'll never become, cold-blooded sex machines, dead to love. there are so many ways of sublimating, esther.... but are they truly satisfying either? for some hours i've known, though they'll never come again, i'd cheerfully pass all eternity in hell. -and i too, magda. that's the hell of it. we all have known moments, days, weeks that were perfect. -all part of the baggage of deceit, esther. god lets us have those moments the way you'd give poisoned candy to a child. and we look back on those wonderful nights with far fiercer resentment than an old lady counting the medals of her dead son. -but we've had them, magda; we've had them. no one can take them away from us. the two british sergeants lapsed into silence, for which momma was grateful. their conversation was a long swish of hissing s's and flying eyebrows. they began to scratch their chevrons in a troubled and preoccupied way, and their faces fell into the same sort of in­ trospective emptiness that momma'd observed on old actresses sitting alone in a cafe. there was a lost air about them that made her prefer not to look at them, as though the devil had put her a riddle admitting of no solution, and a forfeit any way she answered it. vincenz tnen w let up rarachut -oh toil ricked t ialin� an �na tend (nuti�t� lwirling ilikhned -jew� -i hat -coo, !er�eantl aii�ada -the �ri(i!h ie lon� run, from a (tllted br of(neeve (0 ei�ht d !kirrln� ti � clreu! wi fifltca loned �o amnk, he madding "()h ill !�e'll try a ..ella's illnt, a glazed �e aussie collecting .... don't!wilile buymeeks, ie it was 1830 hours in momma's bar, the time of the breathing spell. she was quite aware that, gathered under her roof and drinking her white wine and vermouth, there was a great deal of energy that didn't qui te know how to spend itself. and since there's some rhythm in life, in bars, and in war, everybody at once stopped talking and ordered fresh drinks. she could see them all looking at their wrist watches and telling themselves: i have another hour to go-what will it bring me? momma's sixth sense told her there was trouble brewing. a group of soldiers and sailors entered her bar. from the way they shot around their half-closed eyes she knew that this wasn't the place for them. they had an easiness and a superiority about them as though they were looking for trouble with infinite condescension. cigars lolled from their mouths. -gracious, the negro second lieutenant said, men! -look, esther, said the first of the british sergeants, look at .ne essence of our sorrow.... what we seek and can never have. ... and each side hates the other. the twain never meet except in case of necessity. and they part with tension on both sides. for there were two american parachutists who lounged inso­ lently, taking up more cubic space than they should have. and t gallhr � chines, d�aq, : ler"" butt i � nown, tno� ; , e it), in n1[ a 1 have h� momma 143 with them were two drunken american sailors, singing and hold­ ing one another up. momma now wished that poppa were here to order this foursome out summarily, under threat of the mp's. vincenzo and gaetano were no help at all in such circumstances. then what she feared happened. someone of her regular clientele let up a soft scream like a pigeon being strangled. at once a parachutist stiffened, flipped a wrist, and bawled: -oh saaaay, nellie! this was the moment the italians had been waiting for. they picked themselves off the flat-topped counter where they'd been idling and padded toward the four newcomers. they were cajoling and tender and satiric and gay. they lit cigarettes for the para­ chutists and the sailors, and took some themselves. it became a swirling ballet of hands and light and rippling voices and the thickened accents of the sailors and the parachutists. -jesus, baby, those bedroom eyes! someone said to vittorio. -i hateya and i loveya, ya beast, one of the sailors said. -coo, it teases me right out of my mind, one of the british sergeants said. so simple and complex. masculine and feminine. all gradations and all degrees and all nuances. -the basis of life and love and cruelty and death, said the other british sergeant, looking as though he would faint. and in the long run, magda, who is master and who mistress? from a tension that was surely building up, momma was dis­ tracted by the appearance of an assorted horde. in the final hour of the evening her bar filled until there were forty wedged in, six to eight deep from the mirrors to the bar. her eyes had a mad skipping time to follow all that went on. it was like trying to watch a circus with a thousand shows simultaneous in as many rings. first came an aussie in a fedora hat, to which his invention had added flowers and feathers. tonight he was more than usually drunk. he slunk in with the slow detachment of a mannequin modeling clothes. he waved a lace handkerchief at all: -oh my pets, my pets! your mother's awfully late tonight, but she'll try and make it up to you! -ella's out of this world, some one said. she's brilliant, bril­ liant. a glazed look came over the sailors' eyes like snakes asleep. ella the aussie kissed their hands and bustled off while they were still collecting themselves. -don't call me your sister! ella shrieked, waving at his public while buying chits from momma. he kissed momma on both her cheeks, leaving a stench of alcohol and perfume. "i i 144 the gallery there was a rich hollow thud. momma at first feared that some­ one had planted a fist on someone else's chin. but it was only rhoda, the wac corporal, closing her book. that evening she read no further. it was getting too crowded in there even to turn pages. next to appear at momma's was a british marine, sullen in his red and black, with a hulking beret. momma knew he was a boxer, but not the sort who made trouble. he'd a red slim face, pock. marked and dour; the muscles in his calves stood out like knots. while drinking he teetered up and down on his toes and was a master at engineering newcomers into conversation. he observed everyone with a cool devotion. often he'd invited momma to his bouts at the teatro delle palme, but she hadn't gone because she coudri't bear to see him beating and being beaten in the ring. this british marine was on the most basic and genial terms with him­ self and the world. next came a plump south african lance corporal with red pips, and a grenadier guardsman, tall and reserved and mustached. the south african lance corporal was a favorite of momma's be­ cause he made so much of her. she knew he didn't mean a word of it, but the whole ceremony was so much fun to her. -old girl, i've finally got married, said the plump lance cor­ poral, presenting her to the grenadier guardsman, who looked terrified and bulwarky at the same time. this is bert. you'll love bert. he save my life in tunisia. and he understands me. so he's not as stupid as he looks. and his devotion, darling! coo! just like a saint bernard bert is. he knows how to cook, you know.... bert's essence is in his mustaches. the traditionalism, the stolidity, and the stupidity of the british people produced those mustaches of bert's. momma was in such a whirl of happiness that she gave the guardsman a chit for a drink on the house. meanwhile the south african lance corporal whirled about the bar, burbling to every­ one and formally announcing his marriage to bert. momma was beginning to believe that she wasn't going to have any trouble from the parachutists and the sailors. they and the italians were lazily drinking and mooing at one another. momma tried to spell out for herself some theory of good and evil, but the older she got and the more she saw, the less clear cut the boundaries became to her. she could only conclude that these boys who drank at her bar were exceptional human beings. the masculine and the feminine weren't nicely divided in momma's mind as they are to arna w� par we bar derta a�1make a lati�e� weir k imed t gl's we nature a tdere we war tnere, ed ..bene, !ooie rnnhist � throu marring 11�,hew ��ires ta then t iulturefa !ij�rre!sio like a !up i l�r the pq nil jaw a� ; ..... --... �" --. ,�" ' t ��llh� -:----::::_ leared that !o� but it was ot that evenin�!: tre even to t� momma 145 a biologist. they overlapped and blurred in life. this trait was what kept life and momma's bar from being black and white. if everything were so clear cut, there'd be nothing to learn after the age of six and arithmetic. among the later comers to momma's were certain persons from the port battalion that sweated loading and unloading ships in the bay of naples. they turned up in her bar in the galleria um­ berto as soon as the afternoon shift got off, just as the truck drivers make a beeline for coffee and doughnuts. they usually came with fatigues damp with their sweat, with green-visored caps askew on their knotted hair. because they were out of uniform momma feared trouble with the mp's. but some of these port battalion gi's were momma's favorites since they brought her many odds and ends they'd taken from the holds of liberty ships: tidbits destined for generals' villas and the like. they knew momma's nature as a curio collector of things and people. there was eddie, an american corporal. momma loved eddie the way she'd love a child of her own who was born not quite all there. eddie'd been a garage mechanic in vermont. he squirmed with that twisted tenderness often acquired by people who spend their lives lying under motors and having axle grease drip on them. eddie had misty lonely eyes; his mouth was that of one who has never made the transition out of babyhood. his red hair yielded to no comb, and there was always a thick mechanical residue under his fingernails, which momma sometimes cleaned herself. eddie was drunk on duty and off. as he bought his chits, he leaned over momma and patted her clumsily on her hair. -come stai, figlio mio? momma asked. -bene, bene, momma, he replied. eddie would caress people in a soft frightened way and then run his tongue over his lips. after he'd got good and tight, he'd go through the crowded bar playing games, pulling neckties, snapping belt buckles, and thrusting his knee between people's legs. he was like a little dog that has got mixed up in society and desires to find a master. then there was a supply sergeant of the port battalion, with his vulture face. his every movement seemed to momma a raucous suppression of some deeper inferiority sense. he talked constantly like a supply catalogue, reeling off lists of things in his warehouse for the potent music of their names. then he would shoot out his jaw and the blood would capillate into his eyes. momma got ii ii' 146 the gallery him rooms around naples with spinster acquaintances of hers. he stayed in these rooms on his one night off a week. this sergeant loved to sally into off-limits areas and wet-smelling vichi. -color and glamour, the sergeant said, all there is to life, baby.... eddie meanwhile had drunk three glasses of vermouth and came and stood by momma, slipping cakes of soap into her hand behind the cash desk. -jees, i tink i got da scabies, momma ... the last delegate from the port battalion was one of its tech sergeants named wilbur. he treated momma like a serving girl and spent his time going over everyone with his eyes. wilbur should have been born a lynx, for he draped his length over any available area with a slow rehearsed lewdness. tonight he was growing a mustache, but it didn't camouflage his violet eyes that glowed like amethysts in his face. momma could never get him to look her in the eyes. he simply drawled at everyone, and all the things he said lay around in gluey pools like melted lavender sherbet. -bonsoir, ducks, wilbur said to the two british sergeants. when is all this blah going to end? because it is blah, and nobody knows it better than you.... done anyone nice lately? what a town to cruise this is. all the belles in the states would give their eye­ teeth to be in naples tonight. and when they sawall there is here, they'd be so confused they wouldn't know what to do with it.... can you imagine the smell of their breaths? ... blah, that's all it is. two of momma's more distinguished patrons now entered from the galleria. they did it every evening, but every evening a little hush fell over the drinkers. they came in a little flushed, as though they'd been surprised in a closet. perhaps the momentary pall proceeded from a certain awe at their rank, or at their temerity in coming at all. for by now the party was well under way, susceptible to that hiatus in levels of euphoria when people come late to a group that is already from alcohol in a state of dubious social cohesion. one was a pasty-faced major of the american medical corps who gave momma a free physical examination every month and got his dentist friends to clean her teeth gratis. the major's breath" always boiled in an asthmatic fashion, as though he were in the last stages of love-making. with him was his crony, a not so young second lieutenant who'd been commissioned for valor in combat at cassino. the major and the lieutenant both wore gold wedding lands on their fingers. momma gathered that they pre· ferred iliousa -po -id lor his fill on anrhowl mom crary a oattle-i di!low 01 an it ricturef -eel �lo!lr prilhe coy nitel and rdlowan -neve, rocket. momm� toerentel oaon'tco� in!�ciouitime ignor t1tonnoitel �ee! for i �aco(k's t; a�arette 51 �ound, wfl trel of evi oowlswiml next the toe sailon �� two fn little braid (oaki shirt ! • : '. 'i • --. .. / ill : � momma 147 ferred not to discuss their wives, since these little women were four thousand miles away.. -poor pickins tonight, said the major to the lieutenant. -1 don't waste any time any more, the lieutenant grunted, paying for his chits. 1 just say do you and pushem into a dark corner.... piss on all introductions and flourishes.... who started this way anyhow? not me, buddy.... momma looked at the half-bald head of the lieutenant under the crazy angle of his cap. she knew that he'd been most heroic in battle-that was how he'd got his commission. there was strife in his low grating voice. once he'd told her of last winter in battle, of an italian boy sewing by moonlight in the arch of a bombed house near formia: -1 was drinking vino with my gi's and he just sits there looking at me. fifteen, he said he was white skin. i remember his eyes over his needle.... 1 wonder where he is now. as the lieutenant fumbled to pay her for their chits, a woman's picture fell on momma's counter out of his pocket: -ees your wife in stati vniti? momma said, trying to tum the glossy print over. he covered it from her gaze with a hand pocked with sandfly bites and umber with cigarette stains. his eyes were dose to hers, yellow and protruding. -never mind that, momma, he said, restoring the picture to his pocket. momma knew that the bravest and coolest entered her bar alone. they entered with a curt functionalism that informed everyone that hadn't come just to drink or to watch or to brood. still others came in specious twosomes, talked together a little, and spent most of the time ignoring one another and looking into the mirrors in a sort of reconnoitering restlessness. and a few came in groups of twos and threes for protection. when momma's bar was full, it was like a peacock's tail because she could see nothing but eyes through the cigarette smoke. restless and unsocketed eyes that wheeled all around, wholly taken up in the business of looking and calculating, eyes of every color. momma's bar when crowded was a goldfish bowl swimming with retinas and irises in motion. next there came two french lieutenants and two french sailors. the sailors were ubriachi and the lieutenants were icily sobers in the two french officers momma'd always noted an excellence in the little braided pips through their shoulder loops, their american khaki shirts, and their tailored shorts. their conversation played i i ---•. ,:-_--":_�------=-""/ • • \ �i r � i • .., i "', '" ..._ � � / .. _ :-.;;-.:.; i i 148 mothe gallery over the heads of their sailors with a silvery irony. momma under­ stood their tongue decently enough, that perfect language which gave all their remarks a literary quality beyond even the intelligence of the speakers. -ainsi je noie toute mon angoisse, said the first french officer. -c'est rna femme qui m'incite a de telles folies, said the other. -tilimbom, the drunken sailors said, clapping the pompons on their caps. the french officers had a jeep which they parked at the steps of the galleria. when momma dosed her bar, she knew that they whisked into this jeep an assorted and sparkling company and drove to the top of naples to admire the august moonlight. momma wondered if the ripple of their epigrams and refinements ceased even when they were making love. -c'est une manie, pierre. -bon appetit, andre. �na per tnat'� t a�!ire to ilv� for t omen a �rfectio knowwli in� tra�c !ttin� co mark on -j! th �ma, wi -in t d�r�ndin oack in tl ilie!eeru wflollr u are revolt wfllch lee ar� the !a �u�en vi� ine whole �vare, e aearlr the mlfered t� !�cl! !ati!f,!ion of th� not !love! ...what' �eant. ...thanl morality n oliliefew lion may 1 nomic ana intermingl �d enligb momma had less than half an hour till closing time. her bar, into which people now must wedge themselves, was swimming in smoke and a terrific tempo of talk and innuendo. under its surface there was a force of madness and a laughter of gods about to burst. momma put her hand to her throat and swallowed hard in the strangling ecstasy of one dropping down an elevator shaft. for this was the time she loved best of her three hours: a presentiment of infinite possibilities, of hectic enchantments, of the fleeting moment that never could be again because it was too preposterous and frantic and keyed up. the desert rat was finishing his fifth white wine in his prison of detachment and musing. ella the aussie was being removed by gaetano and vincenzo from the top of the bar, where he was executing a cancan. rhoda was booming out a quotation from spengler. the negro second lieutenant was examining his nail polish. eddie had put his arms around one of the french officers, talking about parlayvoo-fransay. and the two british sergeants reared up like savonarolas. -i'm asking you, esther, to take a good look at all these mad people. for they are mad. and consider the subtle thread that brings them all together here. not so subtle as that either, esther, since their personalities are so deeply rooted in it. what an odd force to unite so many varied personalities! something they all want ... and when they've had it, their reactions will be different. some will feel themselves defiled. others will want another try at ""_.��"'.. ��.illl i -, momma at a;] wf'i� hue tbrea� � r,ll. reitber,ll': j 'ina! an � i ethino'tor1' , iji be ru�a� i another �i it. others will feel that they haven't found what they were looking for and will be back here tomorrow night. -does either of us know what these people are looking for, magda? the second sergeant asked with thickened tongue. -don't be dull, esther. they're all looking for perfection .•• and perfection is a love of death, if you face the issue squarely. that's the reason why these people live so hysterically. since the desire to live, in its truest sense of reproducing, isn't in them, they live for the moment more passionately than most. that makes them brazen and shortsighted.... in this life, esther, when you find perfection, you either die on the spot in orgasm, or else you don't know what to do with it. ... these people are the embodiment of the tragic principle of life. they contain tragedy as surely as a taut string contains a musical note. they're the race's own question mark on its value to survive. -is there any hope for them, magda? the second sergeant whim­ pered, wiping a mist from his glasses. -in the exact measure that they believe in themselves, esther. depending on how they control their centripetal desires. some hold back in their minds and distrust what they're doing. in them are the seeds of schizophrenia and destruction. others give themselves wholly up to their impulses with a dizziness and a comic sense that are revolting to the more serious ones.... lastly there's a group which sees that they can profit by everything in this world. these are the sane. the orientals are wiser in these matters than we or queen victoria. no phase of human life is evil in itself, provided the whole doesn't grow static or subservient to the part.... but beware, esther, of the bright psychiatrists who try to demarcate clearly the normal from the abnormal. in the middle ages people suffered themselves to be burnt as witches because it gave them such satisfaction to keep up their act. it was just a harmless expres­ sion of their ego. and children allow themselves to be pinked by hot stoves just to get a little sympathy out of their parents. -what does god think of all this, magda? mourned the second sergeant. -thank him, if he exists, that we don't know. . . . a new morality may come into existence in our time, esther. that's one of the few facts that thrills me, old bitch that i am. some distinc­ tion may be made between public and private sins, between eco­ nomic and ethical issues. in 1944 you find the most incredible intermingling, a porridge of the old and the new, of superstition and enlightenment. how can we speak of sin when thousands are 149 c' 150 the gallery cremated in �erman furnaces, when it isn't wrong to make a million pounds, but a crime to steal a loaf of bread? perhaps some new code may come out of all this ... i hope so. -and if not? -why then, the first british sergeant said in drunken triumph, we shall have a chaos far worse than in momma's bar this evening. this is merely a polite kind of anarchy, esther. these people are expressing a desire disapproved of by society. but in relation to the world of 1944, this is just a bunch of gay people letting down their back hair ... we mustn't go mad over details, esther. big issues are much more important. it is they which should drive us insane if we must be driven at all.... all i say is, some compromise must and will be reached.... esther, i'm stinko. momma watched the two british sergeants embrace each other with an acid tenderness. then they slid to the floor unconscious, in a welter of battle dress and chevrons and spectacles. they lay with their eyes closed in the quiet bliss of two spinsters who have fought out their differences at whist, falling asleep over the rubber. and it was typical of momma's at this time of the evening that no one paid any attention to the collapse, just pushed and wedged in closer to give the corpses room. the talk was now at its full tide of animation, like a river ravenous to reach the sea, yet a little apprehensive to lose its identity in that amorphous mass which ends everything. momma knew the secret of an evening's drinking, that life grows sweeter as the sun sets and one gets tighter. if only drinkers knew how to hold their sights on that yellow target bobbing on their horizons! for momma understood the drunkenness of the nordic better than most italians did. they drank out of impatience with details, with personalities that were centrifugal, with a certain feminine desire to have a crutch for the spirit, with a certain sluggishness of their metabolism. momma thought it weak of them to drink, but it was a weakness as amiable as modesty, courtesy, or the desire to live at all when the odds were against them. in a delirium momma leaned over her cash desk and strained her ear at the hurtling shafts of talk: -how can you possibly like actors? every goddam one of them is constantly playing a part. off the stage too ... -i am essentially an aristocrat. people must come to me. but i'm by no means passive ... -my aunt, a refined colored woman, brought me up most dr!!dartest -firs -�o i ide did, -do 1 l�acners( =i'c�ul -ciao, -inili �ome i mean .. -there film .. , -let's -don't ilara'sslip -forc -ther "'",am �iln their ...and ... �ussu i��", ...whr "'",sim !�aker at 11111.., ...inas -i:iao, ...1 look asudde ffi1ntof 1�actlr wh momma 151 da:j one 0 �t cumspectly. 1 come from a long line of missionaries. so don't think 1 don't spread the good word among the gentiles ... -i don't know why our sort is always in the best jobs and the smartest ... -first time for me, ya see. i'm not the lowered-eyelash kind ... -so 1 told this nellie to go peddle her fish somewhere else. and she did ... -do you remember loathing your father and doting on your teachers? .. you didn't? .. ... not responsible for anything 1 do tonight ... -ii n'y a rien au monde comme deux personnes qui s'aiment ... -every time i think this is the real thing, the bottom falls right out from under me. here 1 go again ... ... un vero appassionato di quelle cose misteriose ... -i could be faithful all night long ... -ciao, cara ... -in the pincio gardens all i saw was flesh flesh flesh ... -sometime we'll read the phaedo together. then you'll see what 1 mean ... there's somethin in ya eyes. i dunno, i just know when i'm happy ... -let's you and me stop beating around the bush ... -don't feel you have to be elegant with me, bella, cause your tiara's slippin over one ear ... -for chrissakes, what in hell do ya take me for? .. -they're all suckin for a bruise ... or somethin else ... ... am frankly revolted with the spectacle of human beings with their bobbie pins flying all over the place ... -and when they expect you to pay them for it ... -pussunally i tink da eyetalians is a hunnert years behind da times ... -why do i wear a tie? just to be different, that's why ... ... simply no idea of the effect of mozart coming over a loudspeaker at the edge of the desert. the krauts simply lovedddd itttl ... -in a society predominantly militaristic ... -ciao, cara ... -i looked at you earlier ... but i didn't dare think ..• a sudden silence descended on momma's bar. there was a move­ ment of many bodies giving way to make space. she now knew exactly what time it was and who had come. it was captain joei e up m�!� ii i _---.. '-��--• \ � f • i .... • ��" aiiiii .. _._.;.0 .....• m-,;;", _.,... .it.. 152 the gallery and the young florentine. this was the climax of every evening. captain joe stalked cool and somber in his tank boots, a green bandanna tucked round his neck in the negligence of magnificence. he had gold hair which caught the light like bees shuttling at high noon. he had a hard intense sunburned face that smoldered like a monk in a spanish painting. momma knew that he was a perfect law unto himself, though gentle and courteous with all. he came only in the company of the young florentine, whose eyes never "eft his face. the captain smiled with amusement and understand'ng at all, but he spoke only to his friend. their faces complemented one another as a spoon shapes what it holds. the florentine had dark thoughtful eyes and olive skin. he seemed wholly selfless. he and captain joe shared a delight and a comprehension that couldn't be heard. but they gave out a peace, a wild tranquillity. -buona sera a lei, said captain joe to momma. you keep a great circus at naples, signora. and the miraculous thing about you is that you don't need the whip of a ringmaster.... you and i and orlando are the last of a vanishing tribe. we live in the sun­ shine of our own nobility. a perilous charge in these days. i wonder if our time will ever come again. we give because we have to. and others try to draw us into their own common mold, reading their own defects into our virtues. momma signaled to vincenzo and gaetano to shut down the rolling steel shutter. it was closing time. captain joe lit her ciga­ rette. -happiness, captain joe said, is a compromise, signora, between being what you are and not hurting others.... we smile, orlando and i. . . . genius knows its own weaknesses and hammers them into jewels. all our triumphs come from within. we've never learned to weep ... a shout, a thud, and screams tore the air. -ya will, willya! a drunken voice roared, hoarse with murder. fists began to fly and people retreated against the walls. there was kicking and petitioning and cursing. the desert rat roused from his torpor and leaped in to defend the fallen. in the narrow bar persons swirled back and forth in a millrace. there were bloody noses and snapping joints. and when momma saw the mp's break in from the galleria, flailing their night sticks, she knew that the time had come for her to faint. so almost effortlessly she fell out and across her cash desk. she'd been practicing mentally all eve­ ning long. f i i remei wall. i intoili of the ho iurf! that rnoto!ma li�nt !lic (amera 0 wa! f!pec' iailors wi 1vilmi!t, tnm i k tioni!m of cruellightliremem round the mallenginjom the cnos�ital sh itoodon th iii along tt mofth! neal'em, ti �ment ana -{hoom irememl now ther'd tner ever g �n the grl] ; .... � -. . / / � rj' -----r .. � , / fifth promenade (algiers) i remember that along the harbor of algiers there's a sea wall. it dams the city up on the side of the hill lest it slide into the sea. in daylight i used to walk along this wall back of the hotel aletti. there were ayrab cameramen who took pic.. tures that came out in reverse on gray sensitized paper. these photos made me look as though i'd happened before 1865, in a sad light such as surrounded mr. lincoln. and alongside the box camera on clothespins there were suspended pictures the ayrab was especially proud of: a french family on sunday afternoon, sailors with their arms around girls, and gi's peering out of an evil mist, with their shirts open and flowers in their buttonholes. then i knew that they were drunk, with that same sharp exhibi­ tionism of convict photos or those taken in penny arcades under cruel lighting, so that all subjects look depraved and pimply. i remember how men overseas in alger in 1944 tended to gather round the water front, as though by going near water they were challenging the barrier that kept them from home. they'd hang over the concrete balustrade and glare at the water and at the hospital ships and at the barrage balloons. they were people who stood on the edge of the moon, looking longingly at the earth. and all along this sea wall were sentry posts of antiaircraft installations. back of these, thousands of soldiers peered out to sea or into the heavens. the british in their shorts rubbed themselves against the cement and murmured to one another: -choom, i'm browned off. are you? i remember how they talked of africa and africa and africa, of how they'd been in the bloody place for four years, and would they ever get back to blighty. nor were the americans any the less on the griping, except that it was more focused-against officers 153 154 the gallery and against food and against what the folks in america were doing. the americans and the british rarely liked one another. the limeys thought we had too many px's and cinemas where they couldn't go, and too good rations and all the wimmin. and we thought that their battle dress smelled musty, and that what with the radio there was no excuse for so many accents and dialects as they spoke. neither understood the other, or tried to. but we shared places with them along the mediterranean at alger. their shorts hitched high as they leaned over the wall, pointing out things in the harbor. and our pants tightened over our buttocks as we pressed ourselves against the concrete, observing the shipping rid­ ing at anchor. there's a torture in ports when one is landbound. along this gauntlet of men reaching out to sea and wishing they weren't there the french families of alger used to take their sunday walks. 1 thought it wasn't fair for them to be so natural and at home in a foreign land. also there used to be ladies who got whistled at, and french officers on leave, and little ayrabs trying to turn a franc. for the money in north africa was like tinted toilet paper with murals on it. it was so dirty i couldn't be con­ vinced of its value. it was printed in philadelphia, however. 1 remember that in the evening the press around the harbor gut thicker. then the wall was lined with uniformed men standing elbow to elbow, as though they were in a firing squad. the moon showed their faces or their backs. there was a ripple of talk like the afterswish of a wave. but most just stared. their eyes were points like a battalion of waiting cats in single file. there was a mute panic in them. at one cry they'd have pushed down the wall and tumbled into the mediterranean. -1 should thrill to be in algiers, 1 suppose. but in wartime nothing gives you any satisfaction, does it? you do all sorts of things and find that it's like sucking dried fruit. you thought you wanted it from the outside, but inside there's nothing but ashes. -the mp's let me into the kasbah this afternoon. i went to a house and persuaded the fatima to let me take pictures of her, bollocky. such exposures too. i'm squeezing this and i'm squeezing that of her anatomy. she just loved to be photographed ... for a price. so now i have my own french pictures. but much clearer than those they peddle on the streets back home. i'm having copies struck off for all my boys. by moonlight too i remember the mustaches of the old french gentlemen who use to talk to me and bum cigarettes. i'd lift them up on the wall beside me. in their quavering voices they'd speak min �oaaa you m ilieirl di�o with ( �af( fro�, ire dlfoug !tair� i jeviue en�li!n decau�e iva! thi rni�ion! !talrca!e fanning in� rece ��er wi wall, fo olea in -jeez -wh� came to lome con -and around (i -..dfo �ara!itica -and out five fl mr!eif in �on't spil or ire ". �--." --. � �' . . . . / / � n -t�, t gallhl � i 'ca \l;ere q�� e another, n '+fne�� , min, .�q at �'nat \�, , anailial1(ei i butwe�� , ,thtrr !�r, '. out �n�' )' �ttoc� �. �'�r�� e" anqoo� (algiers) 155 of petain and de gaulle and paris before 1940. they hated the germans as a father hates the man who has ravished his daughter. shaking palsied hands in the moonlight, they'd vow that france would rise again. only my country wasn't helping her enough. -what in god's name do you want, monsewer? we have our own war to win, you know. -frogs, frogs, frogs. first and last and always frogs. they kicked us in the pants in 1919 and they'll do it again. mark my words. that goddam little teakettle still thinks she's in the eighteenth century. you may talk of the perfection of their culture and the polish of their language. but you must consider too their penury and their bigotry for anything that isn't france. and her squat little men with the braided caps were caught snoring in 1940. france had graft and filth within her ... and that disease has sapped all the frogs. i remember how some nights i'd walk up from the sea wall through a little park into the place de i'opera. i'd climb a flight of stairs into that intimate theater. i heard tosca and the barber of seville in french. there was also the desert song with asides in english to please the americans. i heard opera in a warm frenzy because i could drink white wine between the acts. the orchestra was thirty. the singers looked better than they sang. in the inter­ missions the white wine tempted me to slide down the lon chaney staircase and mistily eye the people there: chic women of alger fanning themselves in the heat, french naval officers, british hold­ ing receptions in bad french. i soon discovered that the opera of alger was a great meeting place, classier than the parks or the sea wall. for to the opera came coiffured ladies whose husbands had died in france or in tunisia. -jeez, what a dainty little auditorium! like liederkranz hall. -what the hell is all this movement that goes in theaters? i came to see the show even if they didn't. why don't they have some consideration for others? i didn't come to be stared at. -and those ushers that make ya stand in line till they get around to showin ya to ya seat. they just want my tip. -of course, of course, butch. you're beginning to see into the parasitical life of europe. -and while we're on the subject, it burns me to haveta shell out five francs to some old doll every time i take a notion to relieve myself in the little boys' room. what's she there for, ta see that i don't spill it all over myself? or i remember how some nights i used to climb the interminable 156 the gallery stairs to the salle pierre bordes for concerts. there the orchestre symphonique gave a concert of modern english music. all the french walked out when they heard vaughn williams and arnold bax and delius. and there too lelia gousseau used to play the piano. i'd sit and watch the somber trance in which she floated onto the stage of the salle pierre bordes. she played ravel with a rush of silver. lelia gousseau never seemed to me to be fully awake. but she was something miraculous and noble. she leaned over the keyboard and stopped breathing while she played. -ya see how that babe plays the pianer? ya know what she needs, don't ya? -ah, can it. every time 1 try to get kultchah, ya open ya trap and talk like ya was at a stag party. at one of her concerts a negro corporal started a ballet on the stage behind her. she simply lifted her hands off the keys and laughed without a sound till the drunk had been removed by two french janitors. then 1 was sure that lelia gousseau was a great artist. r i, nand, �o -it �l �rorle � oon't �a ilieworl romrlete -you -you' (0 �a\vlo �rur ad ili�wvere mmlelf, , we �tart �llook e dna the g�ine!! f w�atever �i,imtea i remember that in algiers, because 1 had too much time to think and because the mediterranean lay in front of me like a soft yet cynical mirror of time, 1 began to ponder on variety and dif­ ference. i lost something, because i became other people by think­ ing about them. for better or for worse 1 think 1 annihilated myself at this time. -just wait, said the pfc with the horn-rimmed glasses, everything we know is going to be swept under. -but sex is here to stay, the mess sergeant said, chewing on a toothpick. -i didn't say it wasn't, the pfc said. but so many things are coming into your life that you can't imagine. imagine a world in which there's a flatter plane of possible experience, in which the levels of poetry and prose come closer together than they ever have before. there's too much difference between the people of the world, yet surprisingly little variety ... what sort of world do you want, anyway? a world in which no one speaks to anyone else, like the people in anew york apartment? -if ya'd take off ya glasses, the mess sergeant said, and look at the world insteada books ... -well, that's my tragedy, the pfc said. i'm steeped in the past. i'm not yet convinced that the break with the past is going to be complete. . . . i hope not, anyhow. ;"-.... �' '. /�'\ (algiers) 157 i remember the tiny dark ayrab kids with brilliant eyes who shined shoes in front of the red cross. what was the difference between them and me, except that they were ayrabs? they were so much smarter than i, but they hadn't been born in detroit. they had the same mouths as i; they loved american chewing gum. but they lived in a world where people didn't even pretend to have ideals. consequently they lived in a world realer than my own. and i wondered who was equal to the world in 1944, who was capable of seeing and understanding everything. why wasn't i a prostitute? or a french child begging? or a foreign legionnaire with scars instead of milky skin? why was i alive at all? how had i possibly managed to live? -you won't go mad, the pfc said laughing. you're attempting to be great in the old patterns. you have the disease of empathy. you try to enter into the minds of others. perhaps you do. -when i see an ayrab child watching the chocolate bar in my hand, something tears at me. -it should. you're arriving at the focus of the modern world. people are killing one another right and left. the newspapers don't say why. it's very simple. there's an unfair distribution of the world's goods.... we're heading either for world socialism or complete destruction. -you mean i'm not crazy when i feel like crying all the time? -you're hopelessly sane. most people have to go to the movies to bawl. a few do it over the life they see around them.... the only advancement made by the human race is because some guy discovered pity. he found out that everyone was really quite like himself, with unimportant differences. we all must die alone. and we start dying with our birth. and a thousand years from now we'll all look equally silly: the movie star, the ayrab whore, the financier, and the hustler.... if only we could publicly acknowledge our silliness for the few years that we are alive, we could then pool whatever dignity we possess. then life would be worth living for all, instead of for the few. i remember that in alger, through too much thinking, i did something i never used to do in the states. i'd leave the boys and go into the city by myself. perhaps it was because i was getting to know them too well. when you live only with men, something in you revolts after a while. men by themselves are sterile; they tend to become brutal and onetrack. night after night the same jokes keep popping up, the same crap games, the same vocabulary.. ii, �' i i " 158 the gallery itnatui �!ebland talked i around oorn in -par hi! n ol! nigh rlene!, h eoairwn �e!tufe! waetner �ood al (i�arette iflcnant tnatal! the same weary comedy. so everyone in a group of men grows to hate the others with affection, as people do after a long marriage in which they've had no children to distract them from themselves. to this day i don't know what i was looking for in the dark streets of algiers. but i was alone; i heard my blood softly boiling. my brain was going like a stove. i started again to justify my own life. why had i been born? was there some scheme from which i wasn't distracting, some harmony that i was smashing? in those evenings whatever god i believed in receded from me like a comet. i found myself walking in a world in which i was an alien. i'd just come out of the womb, but there was no mother to take me by the hand. often around midnight in a glacial fever of horror and loneliness i thought i hated everyone in the world, which had thrust me into exile. and all the cordialities that men pay to one another seemed to me only a polite uproar to drown the rattle of death. all men, i came near deciding, were secretly enemies. i'd wonder what would happen to three men who found themselves alone at the end of the world. would they kill one another? was society there­ fore simply a charade to ease the torture of life? were we all more divided than we were united? at such times i'd lay my head on the concrete wall along the mediterranean. i wanted to cry, but noth­ ing came except some dry hiccoughs. you're a monster and a mis­ anthrope, i'd tell myself. . . . i remember that one night in june, 1944, i was walking in the garden leading from the place de l'opera to the port of alger. it was near midnight. the lights flickered yellowly through the trees. sometimes an ayrab working at the port would stumble past and cadge a cigarette. little old men muttering to themselves made their way home. i thought of my tent at maison blanche. i wasn't sorry for myself, but i felt passionately displaced, a body already buried alive. i chattered in my bones with a paroxysm of anguish. i put my hands tightly against the suntans on my back and called out to the leaves and the moon and the sky: -0 my god, my god! ... i was still sane enough to laugh after my outcry because some­ thing in a safe corner of my brain said i was acting like a shake­ spearean ham. but all the same i was alone, and for the moment out of my mind. i heard a noise behind me and turned to look, with my cry still dribbling on my lips. behind me was a frenchman of algiers, not a man, not a boy. under the twittering uncertain french bulbs his face was like a ;""--.�.--. /�� (algiers) 159 hawk's in repose. he was wearing shorts and a torn faded blue shirt that was open in the june heat. under his arm he had a sheaf of typewri tten papers. -qu'est-ce que tu as, yank? nous autres francais, nous connais­ sons bien la melancholie. i felt compelled, like a little child, to give him my arm. he took it naturally. je suis ecrivain, he said, flourishing his manuscripts with a smile bi tter and consoling. and i knew he'd been farther down than 1'd ever yet known. he talked of rimbaud and verlaine and debussy. his voice was all around me in a stream of cool elegance. he told me he'd been born in rio, but had sought out paris: -parce que c'est la, tu vois, rna patrie spirituelle.... his room smelled of the linen on his cot and a dish of fruit on his night table and the leather of his books. these were his only riches. he poured me a glass of sweet yellow wine. i sat in his one chair while he read me verses out his few books. he made shooting gestures of delight with his hands, often looking at me to see whether i was following him. evidently he desired to know how good a.l audience i was. sometimes he reached over and took a cigarette out of my breast pocket. he knew some magic of dis­ enchantment and exorcism. he told me that i was still young, and that all was vanity. but not yet. he said that men had wept before i was ever born.••• sixth portrait was tea a the p fora herm � in the relati or !iiael hi! iv the leaf inl of the !mall !elf or lina, � j�wel�) at ho ainner, nvere �try. lucl (offee, �ravel� -i! \�oki 1m1r�en invaaed (qntine� now w� ilirou�hj utterlr, -or] lau�hin� �ince t �n� him navetol men fron ri�e! on fel, he'd tnat com o�nizat something kept telling him that the war of 1918 hadn't been the last. he'd enough of the virginia gentleman in him to know that men always have fought and always will fight over women or more abstract ideals. and he'd a degree from a southern university which had inculcated on him a certain esprit de corps. he decided to get himself a reserve commission. so he wrote to the adjutant general in washington, went to camp each summer, and before he knew it he was a second lieutenant. he wore his uniform on state occasions: at the rotary club, at the elks', at the masons'. at their luncheons they called him captain or colonel with a certain manly affection. they spoke of him as a young man with an eye to the future of his country and of him­ self. he spent his time in his laboratory at roanoke. he was a petroleum engineer. by nature he was a dreamer. he thought of himself as a catalyst of the aristocracy of the old south who'd somehow made the conversion to the world of 1930. he never spoke of the civil war because he liked to assert huffily that he lived very much in the present. and he'd married a dreamer too. she was a belle of roanoke, belonged to the dar and the metho­ dist church. she wrote poetry with the rapt efficiency in which most women cook. and when no editor took her verses, which fluttered and sighed like herself, she published them herself. though she had no children, each year she brought out a slim lavender or ocher or mauve book containing her thoughts on love, flowers, and life. she said that she loved life with a fierceness known only to the elect. she'd married him because great loves, unlike butterflies, can be pinned down. yet they saw little of each other in their roanoke apartment. she wrote her poems and read them at women's clubs, where she 160 r -._""_ :�� eol the leaf 161 was applauded by wrenlike elderly ladies who then drank iced tea and champed on shortcake. he in his laboratory brooded on the possibilities of gasoline. sometimes he forgot to take any food for a whole day, and she was too preoccupied with what she called her muse to bring him anything. -ours is the ideal love, she'd say with a towel round her head in the steaming virginia summers. few men or women have had a relationship as spiritual as ours. or sometimes when a visiting business associate was about to slide under the table from bourbon, he'd read him excerpts from his wife's poetry. -has she any children? the business associate would say. in 1941 his hour struck. he was already a captain in the reserve of the army of the united states. this, he told himself, was no small potatoes. with the passage of selective service he found him­ self ordered to active duty to a new infantry camp in south caro­ lina. so he had all his uniforms dry-cleaned. and he polished his jewels, as he called his brass, with a blitzcloth. on his final night at home they gave the nigress the evening off and went out to dinner. it was the first time they'd appeared together in public in five years. they'd had few friends. lucinda'd been busy with her poetry. and he-well, a petroleum engineer is like a priest. lucinda sat across from him over her lobster salad and iced coffee. her eyes were crinkling, for she had a splitting headache. bravely she rolled her gentian eyes in torment: -i should have stood in bed tonight. i'm doing it for you, lovey. who knows how often we'll see each other during this frightful emergency? as i wrote today in blank verse, europe has again invaded us we americans try to lead decent lives on our own continent, and those europeans always manage to suck us in. i see now why our ancestors left europe. she's rotten through and through.... perhaps it would be better if she were destroyed utterly. -or perhaps we should send the goddam nigras there, he said laughing. since tomorrow he was going on active duty, he was now permit­ ting himself a modicum of profantity. after all, he was going to have to emerge from the cloister of his laboratory and deal with men from every state in the union. he looked down at the crossed rifles on his dinner jacket, seeing himself shouting at his company. yes, he'd have a company, his very own. he thought long about that company. he'd already planned the precision of his whole organization. he saw an order emanating from himself and passing tl" if'" , ii t ir" ,"'i i ,'''', , "� i q i 162 the gallery i: down through channels and being put into effect with clarity of detail and economy of effort. he was silent over the strawberry shortcake. he and lucinda never spoke much except about her poetry. that was the excellence of their marriage, that neither needed to say much. since they both had the temperaments of dreamers, the essential thing was that they shouldn't get in each other's hair, or dreams. now a sheet of silence hung between them like plate glass. he broke it. -if you like, i could take an apartment for you near camp. it's not fair that you should hang around roanoke like a goddam grass widow. lucinda held up her little cramped hand on which the solitaire glittered like a hag's eye: -lovey, don't. you'll make my migraine worse. it's caused by your leaving me. please don't make me suffer any more than i'm doing, lovey..•. i'd go mad in the red sand of south carolina. i need green grass and the fluting of the birds of virginia..•. besides there's my "ode on thomas jefferson." outside this state, i'd lose all feeling for the mood. . . . i'm an honest artist, lovey. i write only what i see and what i feel, not what the public wants. that's why my books are so sad and solitary...• and in south carolina i couldn't recapture what i feel right now in virginia..•. perhaps around christmas i might be down. but right now there's something in me that says no.... lovey, don't urge me. you know what my soul is like . . . a bird at. dusk. . . . so he put out his hand and stroked her wrist. he'd never been much of a caresser; possibly his mind was a trifle chilly. he remem­ bered how in college the boys would run after spirits and nigresses, while he'd sit in his room and read. lucinda withdrew her hand and poked at the swilled whipped cream on her plate. -oh lovey, she said, i thank you for our love. there's something perfect between us. because it's not ... passionate ••• it can never burn itself out. -lucinda, he said, your name is you.••• it was the wildest transport of fantasy he'd ever permitted him­ self. and after a while she said she was cold and her headache worse. he got her wraps. at the house before going to her room she kissed him on the corner of his mouth. -you'll be gone when i get up in the morning, she said. and i wonder if you know how sometimes i wish i could be the sort of wifey who could get up and cook your breakfast and do all those little things that wifeys do.... but i can't, lovey. when a woman !e� 0 hi�hd -0 ticketlao til -1 the di roll d roll a� wh� thetoj he rei &wn in !noulas �ut ilien cartai he came i'ery well ru�erent. nlaesire �fl!e�ue wire gelt wire still ))in am��ives to � t gallh� � : wiili c1ari��1 he and lucin� i'ilieexcellenq il :�ce ilie� oo� 'n� was ili!t � �ow a !heet � j eit. o� near (4fn� e e a �oomm the leaf 163 sets out to write poetry, she sacrifices most of herself ... for a higher good. sappho knew it. so did elizabeth barrett browning. -goddam it, hush, he said gallantly. i'd rather you gave me a ticket to immortality than slave over a hot stove. any wife can do that. -i swore, she said, making a gesture of weary renunciation in the dim hallway among the antiques, that i'd never marry. but you dissuaded me, lovey. and i've never regretted it. for i've had you and my art too. . . . when he left in the morning he found a manuscript lying on the top of his visored cap. it was dedicated to his initials: for you, my love, through all the bridegroom spontaneity, through all your e'er-retreating suave compassion, a thrill immutable sustains me like a wing of eider. and i know that i shall never faint or feel forlorn as long as you, my love, return to me like snow, like spring, like birds. the seasons' secret turns in me as the earth remembers time, remembering and wanting and desiring: these are the solitary sins of wives, and i am scarlet with them, vermilion with my love for you, my love. he read this lovely thing through in the chill dead light of the dawn in the streets of roanoke. he had a vague impulse that he should seek lucinda out in her bed and smother her with kisses. but then he reconsidered and went to his train. captain motes arrived at the infantry camp in south carolina. he came with just a smidgin of fanfare. he knew that it was all very well to slip into your place like a late guest. but this was different. he was a captain in the army of the united states, and he desired to make his position plain, without goading anybody. consequently he demanded a little more attention than civilians were getting. and he got it on the train because officers' uniforms were still virtually unknown. his tactical intuition told him that soon america was going to war. americans must accustom them­ selves to the idea of the army officer. consequently he sat haughtily i,,'" , . , � i 164 the gallery in his parlor car and answered in considerable detail the questions of anxious old ladies. he made dark prophecies of what their grandchildren might have to go through in the next few years. at the station he was slightly autocratic with the nigra porters. arriving at five-thirty in the morning, he spent half an hour calling goddam over the telephone wires till he got some action. rancid from their sleep, a group of drowsy nigras turned up in dungarees. they fumbled around with his baggage, heavy with his impedi­ menta and lucinda's poems. -goddam it, get a move on, captain motes called. are you still wai ting for john brown? yassuh, the nigras said in chorus. at the gate of the camp a sentinel stopped his taxi and saluted. it was the first time he'd been saluted outside of summer camp. he knew that soon, all over america, young men would be saluting him on every street in every town. he'd got in early. soon he'd be major motes, and then lieutenant colonel motes and then.... the dawn in south carolina is a red and sullen thing. first the trees stand out like corpses with splayed arms. then the captain saw the rocks resting on the hillsides, the hardness of the sky, and the burnish of the air. while waiting for headquarters to open, he took his breakfast at the px. he hadn't a stomach for coffee, but he did take some tomato juice, several glasses of milk, and a piece of toast. -guess it's not often that you see an officer here, eh? he said cheerily to the waitress. -no suh, she squeaked. an dey ain't supposed to come here at all at all. ah hates officers. tinks dere rears doesn't stink like other folkeses' does. when dese american men gits a piece of brass on dere shoulders, dey tinks dey's mussolini. no suh, ah done want no truck widdem, ah don't. -well, there are officers and officers, captain motes said, laugh­ ing indulgently. -dere shouldn't be any officers at all, the nigra waitress said, furrowing her mouth and mopping the other tables. when you gits an army, you gits to killin fore ya knows it. an killin makes trouble to americans. dey ain't used to it, cept on a small scale like in lynchins. an when you makes some better dan udders, you is askin for a bruise. -wishful thinking, captain motes answered, leaving her a nickel tip. there have always been wars and there always will be wars. and there will always be officers and enlisted men. arid, men, at a�lns 01 our lineol on the -yo yermo for nunared cycle, he !ame 01 ooxof !er�eant cycle he ment in !nacked, ...the i���l�!no�ldn'tlaollate ; .. :.:': �.' .... ,�� t gallhr � lallthe quehi�: 01 what tnt) ,t !ew)ean, e nl�a �n� i [an hour ca�� , action, rqn� i r in dun�� i hl� im� the leaf 165 -dere's wars, said the nigress, retreating and waving an umber arm, cause a few men wants em. an ah sees yo is one of dose men.... goomawnin to yo, capting. at post headquarters he went through the formality of saluting the adjutant, even though this officer was only a first lieutenant. captain motes enjoyed the games of the army. after his salute he stood alertly at attention in the ideal position of the officer, accord­ ing to the officers' guide. the adjutant had a vermont twang and the businesslike air of one whose inner life is at loose ends. -captain motes, we are somewhat embarrassed.... you're a virginia man. . . . may i ask whether you have all the prejudices and double standards of virginia men? i have never yet met one who realized he was living after the year 1861, either in respect to the great rebellion or in his relations with women. -goddam it, sir, cried captain motes, keeping his hands tight against the seam of his trousers, we're all together in the service of our country. i was ordered to active duty, sir, not to fight mr. lincoln's war all over again. you think that all we southerners are on the aggressive against you ... ·-you reassure me, captain, the adjutant said, uncramping his vermont fingers. the fact is, a captain is a difficult rank to fit into an infantry replacement training center.... you're neither a second nor a first lieutenant, with whom we could do something. . . . thus i must inform you that the verbal orders of the command­ ing general are for you to command d company of the 50th battalion. this is an all-negro outfit. report to regimental head­ quarters for your billet. good morning, captain motes. for more than a year he was company commander to one hundred and fifty nigras. since they had a thirteen-week training cycle, he saw the same black faces for three months. he saw the same black mess sergeant who kept thick steaks for him in the ice­ box of the mess. cycle after cycle he saw the same black first sergeant who'd gone to harvard and wrote sonnets. cycle after cycle he saw the same black supply sergeant who whisked gi equip­ ment into town and sold it through the nigress with whom he shacked. -these goddam nigras will drive me mad, captain motes said to himself as he played solitaire in the bachelor officers' quarters. gradually therefore he evolved a policy whereby the nigras shouldn't drive him mad. he knew that the war department vacillated on the nigra issue. on one hand every privilege was given " :,11 . 166 th e gallery them, but on the other their segregation was complete. captain motes, from under his campaign hat with the oak leaves, standing rigid and tense in his leggins, watched his nigras fire on the range, run the obstacle course, take their shortarm inspections. he shook his head over mp reports on their saturday nights in town. he cut out all passes. he smelled the musk of their bodies as they forgot to stand at attention before his desk in the orderly room. their venereal rate was the highest in camp. he tried court-martialing for every case of venereal disease until the commanding general heard of it. finally he no longer dealt with his men personally. from his orderly room, himself unseen, came a vise of control and dis­ cipline. on sunday afternoons he had his men, wearing full field packs, out washing their barracks windows. pearl harbor came and went. every month captain motes put in for a transfer away from his nigras. he was always refused. his invisible regimentation froze his nigras and their officers. they became machines. captain motes said that, now america had de­ clared war, this was the way it should be. he'd sacrified friends and the good will of his men for results. he was always by himself, playing solitaire or charting graphs of training cycles. in the louisiana maneuvers captain motes's nigras were captured to the last man while storming hill fifty-eight, -captain, a brigadier general said, you have done a beautiful job in killing all combat initiative in your men. i hereby hand you the booby prize as an infantry company officer. in the summer of 1942 captain motes was relieved of his nigras. summoned by the adjutant, he found the vermonter, still a first lieutenant, crinkling typewritten onionskin in his hands. --captain, the twang clattered, the war department wants you. remember us when you go to washington. think of us poor foot soldiers. yours is the fate of all those too good for the infantry...• you're going into military intelligence. you seem to have some recherche talent that the rest of us lack. or perhaps you know your congressman too well? ... at any rate here are your orders, and godspeed to you..•. i have a feeling you won't die in this war, captain. -goddam it, sir, captain motes said, we can do no more than obey our orders, can we? -some orders, said the lieutenant, returning the salute, are easier to take than others. captain motes was sent to camp ritchie to learn prisoner-of-war interrogation. on the way up he wondered how he'd ever learn in!� �rac �ui �et u, in ih hi!! alri rir� he'd �iooe tack! itru�o �em me fro it wa cluo! -if luan -i mr lif -do lo\'er, iliin�, ouroi her itandin fainted trarwi in 01 ment, 1 the leaf german. but then any kraut knew german. so for days at ritchie he fought from dummy house to dummy house. when those play­ ing the part of prisoners allowed themselves to be interrogated, he'd listen to the hiss and sputter of their german, and his face would ease into an understanding smile. at every ja he'd nod his head. colonels often came to ritchie from washington to look at the school, for it was a pet of the war department. then captain motes would take it upon himself to explain what was going on to these visiting dignitaries. he kept on the lookout to buttonhole inspecting parties. the other student officers were all too busy practicing hiccoughing in german at one another. such and other things he told lucinda. occasionally he could get up to see her in roanoke. spreading his hands on the oilcloth in their antique kitchen, he'd hint of task forces, of combat teams. his strategic sense told him that there must be an invasion of north africa to start taking the mediterranean away from the axis. ripples of horror spread over lucinda's face. it was the first time he'd ever really been eloquent with her. he bought an illuminated globe for their library and a supply of colored ribbons and thumb­ tacks so that she could plot every phase of the coming american struggle in europe. she began reading war and peace and wrote a poem beginning: men who run forth to die from the mississippi, from iowa, from nohwata oklahoma .•. it was published in a roanoke evening newspaper. the ladies' clubs said that she would be the winifred m. letts of this war. -if i should die someplace in europe, captain motes said. lucinda covered her temples with her hands. -goddam it, darling, he resumed, how strange life is ••. all my life i've had something unsatisfied in the back of my brain. -don't, she breathed, looking at him through her fingers, don't, lovey. we play with greatness to our own peril. it's such a perilous thing. we mature so slowly, keeping within ourselves the kernel of our own time sense. and suddenly it bursts on the world.... her fecundity in these days was such that she wrote and wrote, standing at her black walnut antique writing desk. she would have fainted if hattie the nigress hadn't occasional1y brought her a tray with sandwiches and fruit juice. in october, 1942, captain motes was alerted for overseas move­ ment. "washington was whirling softly and pregnantly. people 167 -1" i 168 the gallery ducked in and out of the mayflower and the willard. briefcases tossed through the streets like flat somber japanese lanterns. and captain motes got a company of one hundred men. daily he went with them on the range, insisting on their firing all the weapons in the training manuals. there kept recurring in his vocabulary phrases such as d-day and cut to pieces. he scurried around tight-lipped and absent, forgetting to speak to old acquaint­ ances. one night, though they were alerted for staging, he slipped under the barbed wire and met lucinda at hampton roads. it was for­ bidden to hold any communication from the port of embarkation, but captain motes knew that as an intelligence officer he could trust himself. lucinda wept when he told her they were sailing the fol­ lowing morning. he told too the number of ships in the convoy. he guessed also that they'd land on the northwest coast of africa. -we must rig up a code, lovey, she said panting, so i'll always know just where you are. and all the other pieces of information a wifey needs for her peace of mind. -not necessary, he answered smiling and patting her hand. he looked around the restaurant with a hideous penetration, then took something with a wooden handle on it out of his pocket. -mercy, lovey! what's that, a grenade? -a base censor stamp. with this on the envelope i can write you every goddam thing that happens.... and ... if i shouldn't come back, remember me as i am tonight ... and if i have ever hurt you ... she laid her head on the tablecloth and streaked it with the rivers from her eyes. captain motes kissed her on the hair and raced out into the night. that was the way he desired to remember lucinda in the pelting of bullets and the screaming and battle fury of mad­ dened and dying men. on 7 november 1942, the great armada bobbed uncertainly. word passed that they were off the coast of africa. -this is it, kids, was the word that flicked from mouth to mouth like a tight bit. captain motes spent all his time with his men, though it was difficult to brake himself down to their tempo, which seemed mad­ deningly inert. they chewed gum and shot craps. he encouraged them and cracked jokes at them. he called up his store of warlike stories, even going back to julius caesar. -one of the great moments in the history of the world! god­ dam it, men, look at me! whereas the other officers on his ship seemed idiotically calm, wnvoy toe s onca5 dis leg was the but snoutin snore b voicero -pui wilat t� one slveral unloade �ar a tantalizi 1xrected �uite 50 �oatin� french 5 hi nm� ana �er hi hear alter the li'iili the jra divi motes 5 nary gun ...fine itcning fq 01 it a s� on 16 t gmlh� ----.:..:: __ ! i\\ard. brie[c� i lamerm. cd men. dlw i • nring all w; nin� in t helcurtii: i � old ac�u�rll the leaf 169 like men playing in the shadow of doom. this was the way it had been at pearl harbor, captain motes told himself, pitying them their complacency. -captain, one officer drawled, you're purple. how's your blood pressure? -fine, fine, goddam it to hell! he screamed and raced about the deck with his field glasses. before dawn on 8 november 1942, a fearful roaring set up. the convoy began to move in toward the murky outlines of africa. the sky vibrated with lights and tracers. the navy opened up on casablanca and fedhala. captain motes, sleeping clothed and in his leggins, rushed to hearten and exhort his troops. poor lads, this was the last of life for many of them. but nothing happened. captain motes raced over the decks shouting that someone had blundered, that they should all be on shore by this time. then through the hell of firing and smoke a voice roared through the speakers on the bridge: -put on ya helmet or go below. we ain't landin for a week yet. what the hell do ya think ya are, assault troops? one week after the casablanca landings, after lying offshore several miles, captain motes's ship entered the harbor and leisurely unloaded. but that week he spent tossing in the slow swells of the gray atlantic and listening to the firing ashore was the most tantalizing the captain had spent in his life. he began to accuse his company of malingering and cowardice when he detected signs of relief that they hadn't been in on the landing operations. he heard news from the shore that casualties had been heavier than expected because the french and the french navy hadn't been quite so co-operative as everyone had counted on. he heard of legs floating off oran. he heard of american dead at fedhala, of french sniping from the windows in the place de france in casa. he heard how ayrabs went from side to side selling information and perpetrating ghoulish atrocities on dead american engineers. he heard of general patton making his bed in the villa miramar after the german armistice delegation had fled into the torchy night with their mistresses and their nightshirts. he heard how the entire 3rd division was bivouacked on the fedhala golf course. captain motes scrambled fretfully about the vessel, shuttling between the navy gun crews and american officers waiting to go ashore: -fine scrap, fine scrap ... and we would have to miss it. i was, itching for the real thing..•. well, they goddam won't do me out. of it a second time. on 16 november 1942)1 he entered casa with his company. 170 the gallery th idrb ana! jiving mrica a! ilda�e ca they marched tranquilly off the ship. there was little to show that only eight days ago americans had been killed here-a little wreckage in the harbor. the ayrabs were already well versed in the americanese of cigarettes, bonbons, and chewing gum. the french on the streets were lean and leering, just as he'd expected them to be from books. captain motes knew at sight that he'd never trust the french. and as for learning their language, that would be like apprenticing himself as a quisling to the vichy government. his eyes narrowed under his helmet as he marched along, tearing at the strap of his carbine. under his armpit a tiny revolver nestled. he was ready for anything. the privilege of entering casa on d-day had been denied him. but he'd make up for it. the atlantic base section was already in operation. its function was supply. choice hotels and villas had been requisitioned from casablanca to fez. there were already messes and clubs throughout french morocco. some officers of the base section had already chosen their mistresses and had settled down to the luxurious drudgery of rear area life, where they expected to vegetate for years. captain motes got a room at the hotel majestique. it had a floor of moroccan tile with cabalistic symbols, a chamber pot, and a closet. the bed smelled like the ayrabs. to clean his room he'd a fatima with blue stars on her cheeks. she giggled and filliped her small breasts. she wore an american mattress cover and clinking jewelry. he gave her cigarettes to stay out of his room while he was in it, for she stank like goat's milk. after he'd unpacked his bed­ ding roll and hung up his carbine and helmet in a military and sinister manner, he sat down to write a letter to lucinda. somewhere in north africa 9 november 1942 wal th aiaew -do he'!!t! my darling, the headlines will have told you exactly where i am. i'm lying under my shelterhalf as i write this. in the distance i can still hear the firing. it sounds like fat popping in a frying pan. darling, i've been through an indescribable twenty-four hours. with your lovely poet's mind you can intuit the horror of it all. i'll spare you the details. suffice it to say that they gave us hell. i haven't suffered so much myself. i'm still in one piece. what got me was to see those lovely fellows in my company fall bubbling into the ocean or drop soundlessly in their tracks as i led them up the beach. i'm writing to you first, my darling. after that i have a long string of letters to get off to the families of my poor devils. lucinda, i know what death means now. i noticed some white hairs in railing h tnen �e inne mouth w toattenti -for four han� ilier flew ��alw /', .:': �..... /�'\. • ga��tr� � i \it\eto!nrr, i.til here-alill 'e i ,ersedint i m.1hefrec: : �edili�m i • �'d neverm viould �g the leaf 171 my beard as i was shaving out of my helmet this morning. but this is war, and i hope the american people will wise up to the fact-but fast. i'm living in a grove where the rain never stops falling. the mud of north africa is like melted chocolate ice cream. a sentinel has just passed. perhaps he too is thinking of his wife. the image of you is constantly before me. keep sweet..•• captain motes read his letter over several times. then he filled his washbowl and put the sheet of paper into it. he swooshed his letter quickly around in the water, then let the blurred letters dry. he sealed it in its envelope. on the lower left-hand corner he affixed the base censor's stamp he'd brought overseas with him. he didn't know whether a base censorship detachment had yet been set up in casa; but if it had, that stamp would let his letter go through unopened. next morning captain motes, wearing leggins and side arms, reported to the shell building on boulevard de la gare. it was the headquarters of the atlantic base section. he went at once to a certain office, the location of which he'd demanded of the mp. this was the most ornate and inaccessible of all the offices. at the desk was the captain who was aide to the commanding general. this aide sounded off, out of an easy familiarity with the great: -don't be a goon, captain. you simply can not see the general. he's still setting up abs. the fighting stopped in casablanca only last week. he's a very busy man, the general ... -i'm afraid you don't understand, sir, said captain motes with a mellow laugh. i am ... keep this under your hat ••. an intel­ ligence officer . . . -a dime a dozen, captain, the aide beamed, picking up a phone. there were scads of em running around and asking stupid ques­ tions on the beach under fire.... he hates em. now they're com­ ing out of their holes and askin for cushy jobs. come back in a month, captain . . . -i advise you to let me see the general, captain motes said, raising his voice to underline his intentions. then a short fierce man with a star on his collar stormed out of the inner sanctum. his white eyebrows met over his nose. his mouth was a cold dash of red on his face. captain motes snapped to attention. -for chrissake step inside, the general bawled. stop rubbing your hands together and talk to me as man to man. . . . i suppose they flew you over from washington. that's the way the hellish thing always operates. no replacements or no prophylactics or glare ii' i , tf i . 172 the gallery goggles, but they're forever flying in intelligence officers and the cid to check up on me.... i knew they'd put the hooks to me be­ cause i haven't had time yet to take care of the security angle. what for chrissakes do they think a war is in washington? cutting up letters? the little old man ran round his desk like a terrier trying to remember where he's buried a bone. back of his desk was an amer­ ican flag drooping from an ebony pole, the perch of a golden eagle. captain motes hesitated, prodding his dubbined toe into the rich nap of the rug. -i won't lie to the general, he said softly, returning to the posi­ tion of attention. washington is ... well, disappointed at the in­ telligence setup here. no bcd. no traveler censorship at the air­ port. as they understand it, and the general does too, a base section must do all the brainwork for our fighting men ... -close your yap, the general screamed, running in the opposite direction. i suppose this means i'll never get my second star . -there was talk in washington, captain motes said, discreetly lowering his voice, of the fine work the general is doing here.... one man can't think of everything, sir. -very well! ... shut up and listen to me and stop rubbing your hands. i'm giving you a direct order. vocg. the stencils will be cut this afternoon.... it is my desire that you take charge of all censorship in the atlantic base section.... are you listening? i don't want to be bothered ever again with any of this damn g-2 nonsense, do you hear, captain? i delegate it all to you. read all the letters you please. but i don't ever want to see your face again unless i send for you. now get the hell out of my office. captain motes saluted and wheeled into the streets of casa­ blanca. tnat (0 co nead lecon exactl !endin, he dis 101 he na!nin wollin, -ca to rea attnes lour ho -th tne but nole!ffi 01 the r -are o�ides overtryi !nacljob writingi1 :;�utl ranil -ln � -if yo! alternoon captain lor week.� (1a!e at 01 �!oline t jauntsl h re�onal j so as the north african theater of operations became the ominous and murky name natousa, captain motes became postal censor of this area, which some thought was an ayrab city which they sought in vain on the maps of morocco and algeria. the importance of the work of censorship made captain motes secretive and distrustful. he was jealous of the weight of his own mission. he thought of himself as uneasy and as friendless as a king. after office hours he tended to spend all his time in his hotel room, dreaming up ways to extend his censorship empire. eventually, as the war came onto the continent of europe, he saw himself as chief theater censor with offices in each new fallen city. r • :. --. _. '.. /' �' , t gallh� � q 'js ana ili! '. boo to me �, i • ano\e, \\n� : cuttln��1 the leaf 173 and as hollywood magnates acquire the feeling that they control the emotions of the world, so did captain motes grow aware that he wielded a baton over the thoughts of all the soldiers and officers in north africa. he became more nervous. his walk developed a sidelong twitch that was almost a wish. he smoked more because he couldn't take to cognac and casablancaises the way all the others seemed to. his head was too full of military secrets and classified material for him to trust himself to relax. if he drank or made love, he'd babble of recondite things. his hair was growing gray. he never told lucinda exactly what he was doing, even though he had the privilege of sending his letters out of the theater with his special stamp affixed. he discouraged his officers' leaving the city where they worked, for he had a dread of intelligence officers' getting together and hashing over what they knew. finally he decreed that all officers working together should mess and live together in the same billets. -captain, said one of his examiners, isn't it hell enough to have to read mail all day long side by side with sixty other officers at the same table? do i have to look at their ugly faces for twenty· four hours on end? -this is war, captain motes answered, lighting a cigarette from the butt of the last. people in tunisia are living in the same fox­ holes month after month. goddam it, you're better off than most of the people in the states. -are you threatening me with the front? it would be heaven besides sitting on my arse for eight hours a day and going blind over trying to decipher what an illiterate negro writes to his ex­ shackjob back in georgia.... smiles.... ha-ha, baby.... letter writing is no longer a fine art, captain.•.• i'm bucking for a section eight. -you were commissioned in military intelligence, captain motes replied, toying with lucinda's picture. do you wish to resign your rank? -i'm going rapidly mad, the lieutenant said. -if you think you are, it's a sure sign you're not.... take the afternoon off and go to the movies. captain motes heard that his officers were using the unit's trucks for week-end trips to fez and rabat. he ordered the practice to cease at once. what would the taxpayers say if they knew that the gasoline they were doing without was being used for pleasure jaunts? he took none himself. he even begrudged himself his personal jeep. he looked with a bloodshot eye on the time his 174 the gallery tn�rl lieu �rin� ult,ioioi r��lme nartn hamin in�j one �1 �acn fl1ente �ut rer �ilwer! mitteu al w�re resl m�nt 0] lieutena mnr; tn muen lit �ometi n1arin� t m�anin� i1ttm tn ��ry ni� work and ina�creetl !unt nan officers spent with the girls of casablanca, talking french, which he couldn't understand. god only knew what military secrets they might be revealing to these girls. one day he made a speech to all his command as they sat under the rows of strung lights at the long tables laden with mail. they peered at him from under their eyeshades: -we must not forget, men, that a short time ago these french were entertaining the germans. they shot at our boys when theylanded here.... i'm putting this to you as american commissioned officers. do you think it ... prudent to ... fraternize with these french? . . . i am not forbidding it, gentlemen. i merely suggest that you think it over. on whose side are you fighting? these north african french are simply milking you for all they can get. -but the captain knows no french, a voice spoke up. a lot of us do, and enjoy talking the language. -that's beside the point. neither do i know japanese. i simply would think twice about handing over my px rations and my health to some woman who doesn't even pay me the compliment of learning my language. god only knows what's going on in the back of a frog's head. -i resent that! another voice cried. the french are our allies. -well, think it over, gentlemen, captain motes said. think it over.... remember that you're in africa to help win a war. after this uneasy session captain motes rarely addressed his com­ mands directly. he knew their hostility. he arranged that the base post office should send him all his officers' mail. he read it and censored it in his hotel room each evening. a leader must know how far he can trust his subordinates. many evenings at his desk his cheeks scorched at what was said about him in v-mails. but now he had an exact index of whom he could trust of his officers and how far. from the letters of a plump sturdy lieutenant he chose his executive officer. lieutenant frank was a cavalry sergeant of the regular army, paunchy, bluff, and, he said, straightshooting. he'd come up the hard way, so he had no use for an army of conscripts and pale civilians commissioned after ninety days at officer candidate school. lieutenant frank entered rooms like a steam roller, never knocking, but kicking doors open. oaths dropped liberally from his lips. he said that men must be sworn at to get things done. -them goddam letter openers, he would cry. a buncha ninnies. commissioned schoolteachers.... ya too kind withem, captain. i�rroverted iltll iliink �"" �drtain �!letter, �ef! that �were �tth, but ; •... ,._. _._ ".' " v: � // 01 " t g�lltr� � � trench, wni(� • :�ctetltnt\ � a i�e(n � . no \i�nt � [romunl! the leaf 175 i treat em like an old first sergeant, and they think morea me., throw the book at em when they step outa line. it's the only language they'll understand . -but they're commissioned officers in the united states army. -ah, crud. they'll do as they're tole. they're in the army, ain't they? they'll take their orders just like you an me. lieutenant frank sometimes nudged his commanding officer to bring home the point of his remarks. captain motes smiled fastidiously. but under the influence of lieutenant frank a new regimen was adopted in all the base censorship detachments of north africa. the ten-minute break for each hour was abolished. examiners were permitted one fifteen-minute interval in the morn­ ing, one in the afternoon. a time clock was set up at the entrance of each examination room. each officer must punch his ticket as he entered and left work. there was no going to the latrine with­ out permission of the front office. in order to step up the number of letters that each officer read, no talking or whispering was per­ mitted at the examination tables. officers late to their office hours were restricted to quarters for the week end and given a punish­ ment ode captain motes told his officers through the mouth of lieutenant frank that they must not forget they were still in the army; there was danger of hemorrhoids and potbellies from too much sitting. sometimes, sitting till after midnight in his hotel room and hearing the buzz of casablanca fade out till there was only the moaning of the sea, captain motes found it necessary to condemn letters that his officers had written home. he read them all now every night. for they bitched to their wives and friends about the work and about himself. he was hurt and astonished to see how indiscreetly intelligence officers wrote. he suspected that the con­ stant handling of classified matter had blunted their sensitivity to securi ty measures. one officer wrote to his girl: a commissioned officer in the united states army! why, with this introverted bastard who's our co, i had more prestige and privilege as a pfe! i think that nothing worse can happen in this outfit, and it always does...• captain motes didn't speak directly to the officer who wrote this letter. he simply had him transferred to the oran office, with orders that he be employed on the table where all day long pack­ ages were opened, censored, and tied up again. work for grocery clerks" but done by men with bars. 176 the gallery rh often in the mornings he'd stand in front of the plate-glass screen that shut off the front office from the room where the mail was examined. he'd observe the examiners at their work, how many were reading stars and stripes or magazines on the govern­ ment's time, how many were writing v-mails, how many were star­ ing into space. as a result of this reconnoitering a new order came out, signed by lieutenant frank as executive officer. this order stated that each officer must read two hundred ordinary letters or five hundred v-mails in one working day. those who fell below their quota would report for evening duty. but because captain motes had observed how pale and weary his examiners had grown under the screaming nitrogen reading lamps, he prescribed one hour of close-order drill for all officers after work was done in the afternoon, to be taken in the open sunlight. the order ended rationally and sweetly: -we are all officers and owe it to ourselves and our country to keep in a-i physical condition. as he was about to leave the front office that evening, captain motes had a visit from one of his letter openers, the redheaded lieutenant almeranti, who'd been yanked out of the armored force into censorship. captain motes knew him only from the beetling and whining letters he wrote home. lieutenant almeranti's red eyebrows were bouncing like springs. he leaned with both hands on captain motes's desk. -don't you believe in standing at attention before your com­ manding officer? -i'm not an enlisted man. and i'm tired of playing soldier around here.... you're demoralizing all of us by treating us like prisoners of war. you've made a sweatshop of this detachment and then you turn around and pretend you're gi. you're not. you're the warden of a reform school. ... captain, i want a transfer.... are you trying to drive us all crazy? have you ever sat and tried to read mail for eight hours? after a while your head starts to whirl and all you can think about is the war and your home and your wife ... -it is a difficult task, captain motes said smoothly. as your commanding officer, no one is more aware of your complaints than i. ... as i wrote my wife only last night, there are many unsung heroes in the rear echelons. at the front they face danger. here we die of boredom.... did i ever tell you about my wife? she's something of a writer. this is her latest book of verse, lieuten­ ant ... ? want armol work, !'liri war -il ci�arel don't wnat -t lion'! -ti -\ itl" row l' i �uildin -th hna when !ffioked �none, � lateinl wlitaire, french s wloneli -colo lon�tim dna a m oottom 0 �f ),our ti then me tap� wnolvis� dna unwq �rermitl ��tage tl w�s doing was a job r '0 ". __ • _. .: '.',/ � the leaf 177 -can't you even remember my name? ... listen, captain. i want to pull out of this censorship shit. i was trained for the armored force. i'm willing to go into combat it's this negative work, day after day after day, that gets me i want some action. i'll risk my life rather than my reason but i won't sit out the war on my tail snipping casablanca off the dateline of letters. -don't undervalue yourself, captain motes said, lighting another cigarette. you're an expert, and censorship is a very restrictive field. don't imagine that every officer in the army is capable of doing what you're doing. -that's all very fine, lieutenant almeranti said, tossing his lion's mane, but i still wish to get transferred out of your outfit. -then have the sergeant major type you up a transfer. -what good will that do if you only write disapproved on it? ... listen, captain. i know g-2 policy inside out. they hold onto their personnel like bulldogs so they can have big commands and get promotions ... by our sweat.... i want your permission to go over your head for this transfer. -you have it, captain motes said with weary sweetness. tomor­ row i'm giving you an hour off from work to go to the shell building and see the a c of s g-2 yourself. -this is almost too good to be true, lieutenant almeranti said. he saluted and left the front office. when the lieutenant had gone, .captain motes thought and smoked three cigarettes. then he put out his hand for his field phone. he knew that the assistant chief of staff g-2 for abs stayed late in his office in the shell building. there he drank, played solitaire', wrote poetry for stars and stripes, and made love to his french secretary. so captain motes dialed, hoping to find this colonel in. he was. -colonel? evening.... motes speaking, sir.... how are tricks? long time no see.... well, fancy that, sir.... sir, i have a problem, and a man of your experience should be able to see right to the bottom of it. are you listening, colonel? i'll only take a moment of your time, sir.... then over the phone, dropping his voice as though the wires were tapped, captain motes told the tale of a certain officer of his who wished to leave his outfit. of how the man was incompetent and unworthy of his commission. of how this officer should not be permitted to go to another outfit, where he might irreparably sabotage the war effort of the united states. of how at present he was doing a minimum of harm by reading letters, which after all was a lob for a deadhead. how captain motes hoped by his in178 the gallery fluence to rehabilitate this officer and make him again into a real man. of how this officer was often drunk and scandalous in public. of how this officer in question would probably come in to see the colonel tomorrow with a pack of alarmist lies. . . . in� cal·when he'd finished telephoning, captain motes sighed over the lna!1perfidy of the world, donned his field jacket, and went out into inna the sunset on the boulevard de la gare. he messed at the roi de la -g biere. as he sat down to his soup of c-ration, a young lieutenant in arn,n the seat opposite rose until he'd taken his chair. this pleased (didin captain motes. deference to rank was rarely observed in officers' li��i' messes outside the united states. then he realized he'd seen the jult!a� young lieutenant that very morning, one of five fresh replacements r�tatfl to his own detachment of censors. as he dabbed at his mouth with -tn his napkin, he looked the young lieutenant over: the brown face, �nr, the thick oiled mustache, the huge eyes of beasties peering out of �o copses (lucinda' s phrase). iflrard -just call me stuki, the lieutenant said. !tinkerl, his teeth seemed of vanilla. -perl -well, of course there are certain formalities to be observed, �lrtainsaid captain motes amiably. unless i'm mistaken, i'm your new al tn commanding officer. nm 1n -1 know it.... pleased ta meetcha, i'm sure.... and can i (lrarto say some thin, captain? 1 felt sorta bad this mornin when ya didn't tonim, come over an shake me by the hand.... a fella sorta likes to meet in lrite up with his co when he reports to a new assignment. ni�note -of course; of course. . . . 1 was very busy . . . but 1 made a note on my desk calendar to call you in first thing tomorrow witn morning. o�m and -the boys tole me, stuki said, sailing languorously into his rmrtninmeat loaf, that ya never have anything to do with em.... that's innoom,what they said.... but when 1 sawya in ya office, 1 said to myself, wnrn !rr'that's a soldier. regular army maybe. the kind of guy that knows �itle�wee he has a job to do an no nonsense. that's the kinda guy 1 like to maliltentake orders from. also (he leaned forward, twitching his mustache lluli'! bo daintily) 1 thought to myself that guys that talk that way about lija�oantheir own co must be yella rats. �ijnet! 0 -they are difficult men to deal with, captain motes conceded. 1�lolving-i hope ya don't mind me talking to ya in this frank manner, �ee,!stuki said, a warm glaze crinkling his eyes. but 1 like ta put my 1'm �onnacards on the table, captain. 1 came inta this man's army to do a doort mejob and take orders.... willya shake hands with me, captain? taptaincaptain motes was ignited from within by a strange flaring of llu�i, the , .. _. .... -' � � the leaf '�bed ovtt� 'ent out i�t 'ilieroiu11 "'l!eutenl( '. th� �ittt edino� .. e'dletn': rt�b(tlll" . :·mouilii: e dro�n u: hope and joy. he'd been lonely. yet he must be on his guard. he'd got so used to living in himself, to trusting no one, that any kind little remark lit him up inside. but he put out his hand across the catsup bottles and pressed stuki's. into his own slid a warm and slightly moist hand like a bird into her nest. stuki held on to the captain's hand with varying pressures and affections. -gee, thanks, stuki said, his mustache in repose like a setting hen. now i feel better.... ya'll never know how i felt this mornin comin inta ya outfit. seemed like nobody wanted me. treated me like i had men tal bo. . .. an i take a bath every night. . . . they just sat an looked at me and kept sayin, you'll be sorry! ... the resta the time they tore you apart . -they hate me. i try to be impartial and end by pleasing no one. -so there ya are, stuki sighed. that's life for ya.... but when i heard the way they talked about ya, i knew they was a bunch of stinkers. -perhaps you can help me to understand them better, said captain motes. as the meal advanced, so did their intimacy. they seemed to have known one another a long time. by the pineapple, it was clear to captain motes that stuki had conceived a doglike devotion to him. a rocket of inspiration went off in captain motes's head. in spite of the difference in their ranks, he invited stuki to share his hotel room. with stuki he began a new sort of life, centered around a free .. dom and devotion he'd never before known. stuki took care of everything: sending out laundry, tipping the fatima who cleaned the room, even writing the captain's letters for him. by may, 1943, when spring came to casa with a smell of jasmine and dung in bittersweet layers, stuki would lie nude under his mosquito netting and listen while captain motes read aloud from lucinda's poetry. stuki's body was black and sheathed in glossy fur. he'd squirm and groan with pleasure at lucinda's love poems. or during her sonnets on renunciation stuki would lie motionless, his cigarette a glowing dot of red, his mustache placid as a half-moon. -gee, she sends me. ya wife's a great poet. one of these days i'm gonna meet her. da ya think she'll like me? da ya think she'll adopt me inta the family? captain motes got so he couldn't bear to spend time away from stuki, the relationship between them was perfect: stuki never 179 180 the gallery overstepped the boundary between their ranks; there was a subtle deference in everything he said to captain motes, though he called him simply you when they weren't in public. eventually, to have his lieutenant always with him, captain motes ordered that stuki be taken off the examination table. another desk was put in the captain's glass front office, and the position of supply officer was created for him. that night in their room stuki got drunk on casablanca rum and began to cry: -gee, thanks for takin me off that table of letter openers.... ya know what they call me? ... brown-nose.... they said that no second lieutenant should be the roommate of his commanding officer ... if it's gonna cause ya so much embarrassment, i'll move out. -goddam it, captain motes cried nobly, i won't hear of it. in the spring of 1943 his nerves were stringy. stuki could deal with that too. the captain would lie belly down on his bed, and stuki would massage his spinal column. his body would go slack all over as those powerful moist fingers tugged at his nerves, and he'd fall into a swoonlike sleep. he'd awake at dawn next morning to find that stuki'd undressed him and had put up his mosquito netting. and by the rising sun captain motes would look over into the other bed and see that dark face snoring soundlessly up at the ceiling, the mustache furled like wings over the half-open mouth. and captain motes's letters to his wife were full of stuki. one day lucinda wrote back in a v-mail: -and who, pray, is this stuki? i suspect you have an arab mistress.... on week ends he and stuki would take the jeep and drive out to fedhala for golf, or to rabat to a black market restaurant for spicy lobsters and wine. or they'd go swimming by villa moss. stuki would lie in the sun till his skin got like teak. stuki went to the sixth general hospital for a three days' ream­ ing because he got piles from too much desk work. captain motes felt lost in his office and in his room. each night he visited his roommate in the sixth general, bringing fruit and flowers. -ya shouldn't do all this for me. ya mustn't put yaself out this way. ya too good. meanwhile captain motes did some manipulating and some furious talking to the assistant chief of staff g-2. so when stuki limped out of the hospital, the captain was waiting for him in the jeep, looking secretive. he drove stuki out to look at the sea at frana !ilver -0 �l ilie aite 1�lved nrw!i rune �e na, ilikk !oout j�o in �ut of orialed �uure '-fr ni�ntl tile ijffi(m li�n�, r rneu e rimetl une�ual �erin� �nml �ut ilie� men and -fre!� oon't(lla1ilime nmfii!]in� tfie q �e !ttee� lmo tfie �lle, it 1 ij'e ami �!aminatil mationta manum1 �r to let i ...jnce!t t�en l t g�llhl � .:e '+.'as a !u�' ough h��; ah, wru .ed iliat �'l iai �ut in i ,l,offit1rl, • oturun!1 the leaf 181 fedhala. he took the gold bar off stuki's collar and pinned on a silver one. stuki looked down; his chest began to quiver: -oh ya shouldn'ta, ya shouldn'ta, chief. ... now they'll hate me all the more.... i have ta live among them vultures and hyenas. after stuki's promotion the situation in the front office got in­ volved. lieutenant frank sat at his desk and glowered at stuki's new silver bar. lieutenant frank's paunch was growing heavier; his rear end had a spread like an ashcan dropped from a top story. he had a casablancaise mistress and smoked two px rations of thick dark cigars. but he wasn't happy. he mumbled to himself about the length of time he'd been in grade, and how doing your job in the army really didn't payoff. he glared at captain motes out of the fat around his little eyes, and he stared at stuki, who bridled a dozen times a morning, flickered his mustache like a squirrel, and twittered: -fressssssshl whaddya lookin at? didja bang yaself silly all las night? the strain in the front office was palpable even to the files of officers sitting out in the examination room under the harsh lights, reading their mail or talking up their whispering campaign. their eyes in their black glasses or horn-rimmed spectacles would pierce the glass partition, where they could see the uneven and unequal triangle of captain motes, stuki, and lieutenant frank peering at one another. captain motes at first thought it might be necessary to transfer his executive officer to oran or algiers. but then, who but lieutenant frank was capable of talking to the men and striking the fear of god into them? -fresssssh! stuki said again. nervous in the service? why don'tcha go out for a nice long walk? lieutenant frank strode into the examination room. they could hear his voice and see his broad rear in pink pants. he was lectur­ ing the officers on mili tary courtesy. someone had passed him in the streets of casa without saluting. there was a swish and a hiss. into the open door of the front office hurled a censor's exacto knife. it gibbered in the cork wall behind captain motes's head like a movie dagger. simultaneously there was bedlam in the examination room. stuki and captain motes ran out to the exam­ ination tables. the officers had left their work and were standing in a numb knot around lieutenant almeranti, who was winding up to let fly another exacto knife. he was chuckling to himself: -incest, kids, incest.... then lieutenant almeranti took a pile of unread v-mails and 182 the gallery tore them to pieces. he was ripping to shreds letters written by officers and c'i's of the army in africa. the pupils of his eyes were popping like eggs, his forehead was glistening with sweat. -stop him, someone, captain motes hollered. this is a court­ martial offense. he took several steps forward, and lieutenant almeranti smashed the rest of the stack of mail into his face. the censors peered at the scene with dull absorption, like moronic children. -censorship! lieutenant almeranti chortled. i'll censor you all! i'll g-2 you! ... there ain't no promotions this side of the ocean. -put down that knife, ya fool! stuki shrieked. lieutenant almeranti bore down again on captain motes. his arms were swinging, his eyes bloody and spinning. -and this, kids, is our chief base censor ... stuki leaped through the air. captain motes saw the blur of his rush and stuki's mustache grim and taut. there was a smell of cologne. lieutenant almeranti went down under stuki in a litter of torn v-mails and ruptured envelopes. he went rigid, his eyeballs rolled up, he had a quick sighing paroxysm, and passed out. now lieutenant frank became the man of action. he champed on his cigar, called out orders in his beefy voice, and stamped to the phone for a psychiatrist and ambulance from the sixth general hospital. -go right on with ya readin, boys, stuki said, picking himself off the floor and mopping his face with a fragrant yellow hand­ kerchief. but there was little work done that morning. the examiners sat at their tables and smoked and muttered. it seemed that lieutenant almeranti had gone nuttier than a fruitcake and would be sent back to the states. lieutenant frank made two speeches, telling them they could all hope to end up like almeranti if they didn't settle down: -why don'tcha act like officers insteada the wimmin's garment union? --send em all back to their billets for the day, huh, chief? stuki said. ·-1 won't coddle them! captain motes shouted, pacing the front office. we have our quota of mail for each day. they'll read it, godrlam it, they'll read it. . ...he'd decided however to fly to algiers that evenmg to investigate censorship procedures at allied force headquarters. he told stuki to pack two bags and meet him at cazes airport. they heard the leaf 183 the voice of lieutenant frank still haranguing the frightened examiners: -oh ya don't believe me? i can court-martial each an everyone a yez an have ya returned to the zi in the permanent grade of private.... ya don't believe me? on their second day in algiers they had a phone call from lieu­ tenant frank, shouting over the wires as though he desired to make himself heard all the way from casablanca: -ya, ya heard me right. the inspector general's here givin ya entire outfit the shakedown no, it ain't a routine inspection. all ya goddam officers petitioned for him to come here.... ya, that's right. right now he's sittin at the desk in ya office. every officer and gi of ya command is standing in line, waiting his turn to cry on the ig's shoulder.... some of them has written out complaints a mile long. half the officers tole me ta my face that the least you could expect after the ig gets through with ya is leavenworth.... that evening in his algiers billet, thinking of what the inspector general must be doing in his office in casa, captain motes had one of his nervous fits. as the moonlight tittered in, he lay under his mosquito netting. his teeth began to dick and his eyes to roll. he gave out small moans and gasps like a woman in love. cramps gathered in the calves of his legs. he felt his fists clenching at his sides. it seemed to him he'd never known such indefinable terror, with all the frightful things of this world and the next gathering in the dusk to spring upon him. stuki jumped out of his bed and was at his side in a flowered kimono. -whassamatta, chief? -my god, they're crucifyingme in casa, the captain mur.. mured, cushioning his forehead. -they're filthy sneakin dogs. don't pay no heed to em.•.. ya'il come out on top. and stuki's moist hard hands commenced working at the captain's spine. and stuk.i's voice dropped to the liquid caressing whimper that it adopted on such occasions: -ya hear me, chief? ya much too good for the whole dam lot of em.... lissen ta me, chief. ya all right? .•• we'll lick em together, you an me. . after a while the spasms faded and the horrors paled. captam motes fell asleep. the last thing he remembered was hands, kind hands that knew him as well as a mold informs a piece of clay to its own image. lilt' tt, i� '" . ( , i " i 184 the gallery rh e track�. 1 arrroac ' wllich he wllich th -majo a long ti �a!ablan ,.' but ilian the ii'a! fren (wwrlhip, it il, ha·h major li�nting, \ in irom 0 !�ow and man, �tuk nil name major mo ilimwa! �riti!h bri [am a b mote!'! ne, -his m major mot tnat ev it oe�an 0 a�went!w mthelo\ witnhima -tnil, anunared ana �tuk i� tni! colo iliat �tuki k iner were: �rnr, code ilielaltwat �r crack a i major m �trwas mter all, it on the following morning he and stuki called on the chief of staff, g-2, afhq, in the saint george hotel. he was a cheery colonel who before the war had owned a grocery store in chicago. n ow with a brigadier general and a british and american staff he ran most of the intelligence operations in the north african theater. his shirt breast was plaqued with ribbons. on his collar was the star of the general staff corps. he had the red and seamyface of one accustomed to attend midnight sessions of plotters and planners. he shook hands with captain motes and stuki, who surprised him doing a crossword puzzle. -well, well, well! surprise, surprise, surprise! ... didn't know you were in algiers.... we call you our country cousins from casa. how's every little thing? just step in to my inner office.... got a little treat for you. the colonel's inner office was four walls covered with enameled maps. all the maps were stamped secret in red block letters at top and bottom. they were planted with hedges of thumbtacks from which streamed ribbons of pastel silk. on the colonel's desk was a herd of camels of graduated sizes walking along the glass insafari file . -this office, said the colonel clearing his throat, well, you might almost call it the brain of all natousa. -gee, sir, stuki said, fingering a map stamped most secret equals british secret, sorta makes a guy stop and think, don't it? -i'd advise you not to try to take secret photographs of those maps, lieutenant, the colonel said loudly. -he's my most trusted officer, captain motes said timidly. -i know, 1 know, the colonel said, leading them away from the maps and slapping their backs. but we in military intelligence can't even afford to trust one another, can we, ha-ha.... you know how it is, boys.... my god, when 1 think of how much i know, i'm almost afraid to chugalug a drink or go out with a pretty little french girl, ha-ha.... sometimes 1 wake up at night with a cold shiver and think of how much there is in this old skull of mine, ha-ha. -ya wouldn't be wearin that eagle if ya weren't capable of ya job, sir, stuk.i said. -web, thank you, ha-ha, thank you, the colonel boomed, bend­ ing over his desk drawer. and now, captain motes, if you'll be so good as to take off your insignia . . . captain motes felt his heart dive from some trapeze. but he reached up and fumbled with his collar, tearing loose his silver ""_o"_-":_'-o ��.;f � i!l i '" i t gahh� � on the chl�! �i ho '"as a ch1t; i ute in chlt� erican itaf: . lorth .�nq on hll mt red ana �� (i[ piolt�n� d tuu, � the leaf tracks. the colonel took something out of his desk drawer and approached him. he opened his palm to display a chaste gold leaf, which he then with his own hands fastened to the collar tab from which the former insignia had been tremulously torn away . -major motes i military intelligence takes care of its own. for a long time our office has been watching your operations down casablanca way. we lamented that we couldn't do more for you. . . . but like all great and honest men, you can now reap more than the inner reward, satisfying as that may be, ha-ha. . .. if i was french i'd kiss you on both cheeks.... you are the father of censorship in north africa. and what a bouncing healthy baby it is, ha-ha. . . . congratulations, major motes. major motes saw the whole vaulted office, its maps and indirect lighting, whirling like a pinwhcl before his eyes. people streamed in from other offices to shake his hand. bri tish colonels in their shorts and pipes and scarves pressed his hand and called him old man. stuki stood beside the new major like a hostess, murmuring his name to the queue of officers. stuki even linked his arm with major motes's, who was so moved he could scarcely stand. then there was a shrill yap of attention. there entered goutily an elderly british brigadier, carrying in both hands a small medal hanging from a broad violet ribbon. 'fhis he suspended round major motes's neck, all the while burring away like a sewing machine: -his majesty the king of england is pleased to acknowledge major motes's services to military censorship.... stout fellow.... that evening allied force g-2 gave a party for major motes. it began on the beach at ain-taya. colonels, majors, and captains all went swimming in the mellow surf of the mediterranean. stuki's was the lowest rank there, but the major kept his assistant always with him and presented him to all, beaming: -this, gentlemen, is the backbone of censorship in casa. i have a hundred other officers like him. but he's the cream. and stuki, shy at first, gradually sallied forth with a good word to this colonel or that major. major motes was surprised to find that stuki knew all their names, and in exactly what branch of g-2 they were: maps, photo reconnaissance, documents, liaison, topog­ raphy, code and cipher. stuki's mustache was foam-flecked from the salt water. after a few drinks he'd chase a major on the beach or crack a joke with a captain from the i and e office. major motes was slightly worried when he saw how alcoholic the party was going to be. tonight he'd have to let himself go a bit. after all, it was his promotion party. he'd dispatch stuki to pour 185 :1(1 1 / '\ ---" ���-_/ • • .. � f ..' • •• �, � -� --� ... .. .. � .. i" iu iii i 1 186 the gallery th e stuk oarten out. so otello t oeclarin oetting tnin� 01 oawlas md the at their -cal �uiveri� the 0 every other glass out in the sand. in the clubhouse at ain-taya a keg of american beer was broached. it burst its staves, and one of the british majors lay down in the foamy flood on the tile floor and did the breast stroke. -oh that type! the british chortled. -character ! howled the american officers. the dinner was a relay affair, with one course served at each colonel's villa around the hills of algiers. the party would pile into jeeps and staff cars and screech through the streets from one villa to the next. they'd have soup in maison carree and steak in maison blanche. major motes was a little envious, for he now knew that casa was pretty small potatoes compared to the way the boys lived at afhq. all officers of field grade had villas. in each the major noted the presence of a lovely algerienne as hostess. the last course of dinner ended at 2200 hours. all the officers were in high spirits. they decided to round out the evening at the center district club of the mediterranean base section, three blocks from the aletti hotel, near algiers harbor. jeeps and staff and command cars tore through the blacked-out streets of algiers, screaming at the french to get the hell off the roads. captains and majors and colonels yelled good fellowship at one another like kids on an outing. occasionally (just for sport) two jeeps would drive parallel till they were abreast. then they'd lock wheels. just kids at heart. -i think i'm going to be sick, major motes said into stuki's ear. -now just ya hold on, chief. it's all in ya imagination.... an say, ain't this fun? ... we gotta leave that stinky casa, huh? we gotta move here an get in with these bigtime operators. the center district club was low and cool, hung with green and ocher chintzes. service was by italian prisoners of war in white linen coats. these stood behind the bar leaning on their elbows, their eyes misty with nostalgia. seeing the pjw, major motes re­ vived from his rum dizziness and said impressively to a small circle: -goddam it now, boys. look at those goddam dagos. feeling sorry for themselves, as usual. ... don't they like american rations? a few months ago they were killing our boys in tunisia ... a negro band blared up. an elderly lieutenant colonel of the party lurched to his feet and cried whoopee. he grabbed the pret­ tiest and youngest of the pjw waiters and pushed him into a tango over the floor among sparring junior officers and nurses and the girls of algiers. from the club's doorway came an mp to break up the clinch of the colonel and the italian, who had begun to cry. aorunke inirnbles c 1ven thes overai� all the 0 01 ilie foa rulvert. -bes t mouth a ijjve bomo but no major 1 atc bus 01 the mor �i the city --.__' '." , ' / /' �111 � the leaf 187 stuki left major motes's side and went to talk with the italian bartenders. his mustache quivered with joy as his italian poured out. soon he came back to tell the major that their names were otello and enzo and gabriele, and how he'd upbraided them for declaring war on us, how he'd taunted them for mussolini and for betting on the wrong horse. in short stuki'd told those wops a thing or two. presently the prisoners of war began to blubber and bawl as they drew the beer and rum. this brought out the sergeant and the officer in charge of the club, who yelled and waved threats at their help. -call a strike, ginsoes! stuki railed at them, his mustaches quivering with passion. i dare yal call a strike. the g-2 section roosted on the edge of the dance floor, british and american mingled. drinks kept coming and coming, the strong­ est sweetest rum, schooners of beer, tall emerald tom collinses. major motes's stomach was squeezing like an accordion. so he sat where he could pour most of these libations into the base of the potted palm behind him. toward midnight the negro band got hotter and hotter. the girls of algiers in the scented gloom of the dance floor lay across officers' laps and submitted to long laughing embraces while their escorts' hands tore at the straps of their gowns. ya livin, kids! stuki screamed over the brass and drums. then a captain arose from his cane-bottomed chair and bounced it off the chintz-arrased wall. -christ, but this place is dullt i want action. so the party repaired to their jeeps and staff cars. they formed a drunken convoy and tore through the town of algiers, where only thimbles of light showed through the trees on rue michelet. then even these tiny landmarks flickered out. sirens began to shriek all over algiers. the convoy screeched to a stop. two jeeps telescoped. all the officers wove or were carried out of their vehicles to the side of the road, where they threw themselves down on their faces in a culvert. -bes thing in an air raid is a woman! someone shouted with his mouth against the dirt. where is she? beaucoup women, beaucoup dive bombers! but no planes came over algiers that night. malor motes and stuki landed at cazes airfield and took the atc "bus into casablanca. they had hangovers. it was the middle of the morning. the domes and finger-slim white apartment houses of the city glowed like solid geometry alive. 188 the gallery the en on the n�w titles ilii! one s another p th th where capta order. rlared (qurt· ri!!ing manru me del iliroug unmre. majo rerom officers tnat s officm rolicie! aetachm her 01 his n ig repo he read even to tnela!t wmman noisilr, -cen grrtr lin �ut in pr he co olarpla �ttohis -majo -let's lliving fo -le 0 -va got a ordeal aheada ya, chief, stuki mumbled. lieutenant frank was waiting at the office with a clipped­ together file of typewritten paper. he chomped on his cigar and twisted at the embossed belt about his paunch. his pink pants had a stain over his left cheek. in the examination room major motes saw that the examiners were bent over their stars and stripes. there was peace with them. nevertheless he called out a bright good morning. they glanced up and, noting the new gold leaf on his collar, blanched and blinked. he heard them whispering chaotically to one another as he took the document from lieutenant frank's mottled hand and went behind the glass partition of the front office to scan it. he had to keep from trembling at his desk, for he knew that every eye was upon him. for the first time he cursed the glass wall of the front office that made him as vulnerable as a floodlighted thief. the report of the inspector general was a lengthy and detailed document. before he settled down to reading it, he leafed through it for a skimming, lighting a cigarette with shaking all-thumbs and moistening the tip of his forefinger. he observed that nearly every officer and gi of his detachment had registered a complaint against him. it was all there in stenographic fullness. he had the sixth carbon. major motes took an hour to read the report. he pored over it in a concentration of horror, just as a hypochondriac notes the symptoms of a disease in an encyclopedia and compares them with his own. his officers had complained to the ig that they enjoyed none of the prestige or authority of their commissions. some mentioned having been humiliated by lieutenant frank in the presence of enlisted men. all agreed that the process of censoring mail had been reduced to a frightful and unnecessary drudgery. one used the expression that they were worse off than slaveys at sewing machines in a sweatshop. in the depositions of the officers there recurred the phrase unholy three, meaning major motes, stuki, and lieuten­ ant frank. they were also called the inner circle. others averred that the outfit was run in a style befitting a reform school for girls, with flagrant abuses occurring under a facade of being gi. there were protests against the freezing of transportation, whereas the unholy three used jeeps and trucks at their own sweet pleasure. officers swore that they weren't allowed to entertain ladies in their billets, but that lieutenant frank violated the order continually and with impunity. the leaf 189 the gi's of the outfit had told the ig that they never knew where they stood with the officers. the sergeant major said that captain motes never looked him in the eyes when he gave him an order. other gi's said that some officers had drunk with them and played golf with them at fedhala, while other officers would press court-martial charges without provocation. but the focus of all the pissing and moaning was that captain motes was a spineless com­ manding officer, that the disunity and confusion and cruelty of the detachment all stemmed from him, that he gave his orders through his mouthpiece, as though he himself were afraid and unsure. major motes began to exude an icy sweat when he got to the recommendations of the inspector general. there were three. that officers should not be forced to live so close together when off duty. that stricter demarcation he made between the treatment of officers and enlisted men. that captain motes establish sound policies of leadership or else be removed from command of his detachments. he rose from his desk, made a giant effort to master the quaking of his nerves, and rushed out into the examination room with the ig report in his hand. there he summarily had an officers' call. he read to all his examiners the report of the inspector general even to the recommendations, not sparing himself. when he'd read the last sentence, with its implication of his being removed from command for incompetence, he laid his face in his hands and wept noisily. -gentlemen, forgive me.... all i can say is that if we have had dirty linen in this detachment, we should have aired it together ... but in privacy. he continued to sob snortingly for a full minute. then a round of applause rippled through the examination room, and one officer got to his feet and called: -major, you're a man's man. we'll stand by you. =-let's wipe the slate clean and start anew, major motes sniffled, diving for his handkerchief. -let bygones be bygones! a roar went up through the room. the entire detachment entrained for algiers. on the three-day train ride major motes busied himself creating new titles for almost all his officers. this one would be mess officer, this one soldier voting officer, another in charge of special service, another px officer, another war bond officer. major motes rushed "ii / .....\ i i ---" '��'----\ . '" . , .. '. rt�, . .......... a ... . .• • " .. 190 the gallery t. 1.,1 �'i from car to car, personally distributing special orders and designa­ tions and citations he'd had the sergeant major type up. thus with all the officers become something in their own eyes, the trip was made in a gala and phoenix spirit. he spoke much of the advance detail of specially trusted officers he'd dispatched in trucks to algiers to set up housekeeping. yet when they detrained at maison blanche at the depot where they were to live, it was discovered that the advance detail hadn't yet arrived. but lieutenant frank did some shouting and cigar chew­ ing, and at last the dirty weary frayed detachment was permitted to partake of spam in an abandoned mess after a nigra band had finished its chow. for himself and stuki he chose a pyramidal tent at the head of a blocked row close to the latrines. on the sand in front of it was an attempt at a lawn, colored pebbles and flowers plotted out by the italian p/w who were their orderlies. next morning major motes was awakened at 1000 hours by a full colonel standing over him and prodding him. -stand at attention. who the hell are you? major motes scrambled out of his cot in his flowered pajamas. -you're in charge of that censorship gang that moved in yesterday? in the future you and all your detachment will stand reveille, like everyone else in this depot. we're all in the army here. -but we're a separate intelligence outfit. we're simply billeted here for the convenience of afhq ... -you heard me, the colonel yelled. i am in command of this depot. as long as you and your letter openers live in these tents, you'll abide by my orders.... major motes spent much of his time at afhq offices in algiers. he carried in his briefcase samples of comment sheets, which are extracts of violations found in troop mail. he was like a peddler going from door to door. he had a theory that military censorship still hadn't the importance it deserved. by persistence he soon made his organization well known. shortly afterwards, at his own request, there was transferred to his detachment one of the bright young men of afhq. this young officer told major motes that he could never forgive the war for interrupting his doctor's dissertation in erse philology. lieutenant mayberry sought out major motes every night. he was a short boyish second lieu tcnan t wi th thin blond hair and an incisive baritone. he always carried with him fowler's modern eng.. rh e -----. lish us marber known, !at war ne��like �ook, -i'm �ood en writin, -do jaia,is i inrourn rrealure, -hem -take (now well !ir, ao fo qd�er, th inin�1 pe lom war !(orin� ev )�ur com ,��ers, fe �nain tal !u�er in t �e a spec�'�than�dan'tmd i spe , -_ .. _-' . -"; �t gatlhr � . and deli�l' i ��, th\q�i� �e tri� �1! the leaf 191 lish usage. before long major motes said to himself that lieutenant mayberry was t.he most cultivated and disciplined mind he'd ever known. each night he'd root out the major and stuki where they sat working late in their office, entering the boyle hut after a busi­ nesslike knock. he'd take off his field jacket and set down his blue book. -i'm afraid, lieutenant, said stuki languidly, that we ain't good enough for ya here. we don't know much about readin and writin. -do you mind leaving us alone? 1 have some business with your commanding officer. lieutenant mayberry had a way with stuki as though he weren't even in the room. -who tha hell ya talkin to? stuki shrilled. 1 know more about postal censorship than you do.... so ya better be nice to me.... besides i think ya pretty fresssssssh bargin in here this way. nobody asked for your advice. -1 appeal to you, sir, lieutenant mayberry cried to major motes with a shakespearean gesture of outraged sensibility. this is a confidential matter i wish to discuss with you. so stuki left the boyle hut, his mustache working and his brown �yes sparking. -that fellow should change his hair oil, lieutenant mayberry said, 1 speak of him so frankly with you, sir, because i know that in your heart of hearts you size him up the way i do ... he's a creature. -he means well, major motes said quickly. -takes more than good intentions to win a war, as you and i know well, sir.... that fellow is what i'd call a greaser.... frankly, sir, do you trust italo-americans of the first generation? cloak and dagger, that's all they are.... but why am i telling you these things? perhaps i lecture a little bit too much.... i've just come lorn working with inferior minds. i've got into the habit of under­ scoring everything i say.... sir, i was delighted to be transferred to your command. i was getting sick of the intellectual stagnation of algiers. fed up with it.... sir, i desire to place at your disposal certain talents which have so far been wasted.... special skills suffer in the army, don't they? you, sir, should know •.• for you are a specialist. -thank you, major motes said. -don't thank me for facts, sir. i don't underestimate myself. and i speak thus frankly to you because i've known you and heard �ii / _a ---" ���--, \ • �� f .' • •• t� ". j �., 0, i' i ' 192 � lookin' ing wh rour p1all the gallery of you as a man who lives by plain dealing.... i don't pay oily compliments, sir. my semantic training has taught me the value of language. oh sir, the waste that goes on in meanings in this modern world! ... with your permission.. ' . lieutenant mayberry brought a folding metal chair to the desk and seated himself next the major under the green-hooded white light. major motes studied the thinning yellow hair, the tuft of yellow mustache, the slashed line of the mouth. the forehead was etched out in pool-like hollows, the pale blue eyes were hooded with thought. lieutenant mayberry opened a folder full of dia­ grams and figures. -major, sir, in justice i must tell you that i know all about your unfortunate ... incident in casablanca.... i read all the files. and i said to myself, there's a man being done to death. a modern acteon. . . . my heart bled for you, sir. -the ... incident ... has all blown over, major motes said, making a vague pass at the air. -thank god justice has been done, lieutenant mayberry mur­ mured, devoutly lifting his eyes into the dark beyond the shaded light. his white hand moved over the figured sheets, which were full of lines and arrows and labeled boxes. there were also sheets of graph paper and canals in particolored crayon. -now sir, work of your kind is enormously important to the allied war effort.... but because censorship is essentially negative in action and results, it needs advertising and pictorial aids to keep it before the eyes and in the consciousness of the bigwigs in algiers. pardon the vulgarism.... otherwise your valuable work gets lost in the shuffle of more voluble intelligence agencies. -i see what you mean, major motes said, warming, and eying the patchwork quilt of graphs. -of course you do, sir; of course you do.... now, do you get out a mimeographed monthly report? are you making the fullest possible use of charts and figures as visual aids? . . . think for example of the stunning effect on some stuffy brigadier general of a huge colored sketch on oilcloth, showing the ratio of v-mail read in relation to the number of ordinary letters, with legends and percentiles of the types of censorship violations.... then you will of course forward carbons of your comment sheets to all user agen­ cies. . . . do you have punch headlines to attract the weary and wandering eye? ... do you make appropriate use of underscoring and italics in order to-shall we say-slant the material? do you quote only sections that are pertinent? ... and have you arrestinglieuten opn i �tuki sa �r ion lieuten authorit one da� betaka, in� alou fmendat -you macaula it took cnan�li tnf enlisl wfnt to l�wm to ffiu!tache liant sha !aring th tnfnf![ tultural louti�h by ili�r took two weeks out tho it�poem) to thee force that in alllite�imrth lo� . -__-_ -. -/�'\ the leaf " .. ,ao lnij� .' tddill� : trunlll ;',' �n1�� , \"ld�i�: ',' 1�00l�i , , ", t enroij\', " 0 all u�r!ic the �'��ry�; of unaefl(o� atcriall do;: ie au arrei� looking buckslips to be returned from the offices concerned, show­ ing what action has been taken, or whether they've simply thrown your precious submissions into the wastebaskets? ... as lieutenant mayberry talked, vistas fell open to major motes's eyes. he saw that to this hour he hadn't even tapped the poten­ tialities of censorship. it was one of the most vital of all america's secret weapons. the two men shook hands after a three-hour dis­ cussion. major motes was exhausted and thrilled by the controlled violence of lieutenant mayberry's mind, by the clarity and ruthless­ ness of his new young officer's thinking. the following morning a desk was set up in the front office for lieutenant mayberry. over his head was suspended a sign, lettered by an italian pj"vv: reports, returns, and statistical division. stuki sat at his own field desk and glared and purred rawly. and all day long every error in stuki's grammar was pounced on by lieutenant mayberry, with fowler's book open to be cited as the authority. to all this major motes listened with pride and avidity. one day he gave lieutenant mayberry authority to wear his phi beta kappa key on his watch chain. he'd got into the habit of read­ ing aloud his v-mails to his new section chief, who'd make slight emendations in their style. -you write a fine prose, sir. . . . but do read a little more macaulay. it took less than a week for lieutenant mayberry to work drastic' changes in the front office. he undertook first the rehabilitation of the enlisted clerks of the detachment. in his evenings (he never went to algiers for amusement or distraction) he gave french lessons to several corporals from baltimore, bending his blond mustache over them as they squirmed and parsed under the bril­ liant shaded lights. then he made them read francois villon, saying that it would help them with their algerian loves. nor did the first sergeant or the sergeant major escape him. he waged a cultural war on them. first he made them feel ridiculous and loutish by working up a comedy campaign against them every time they took out their comic books from under their typewriters. in two weeks he'd reduced them to such despair that they were spelling out thomas mann and puzzling over lieutenant mayberry's favor­ ite poem, a line of which was always on his lips: i have been faithful to thee, cynara, in my fashion.... he told the whole gi office­ force that than this poem there was nothing more magic or golden in all literature; it was better than joyce kilmer or henry wads­ worth longfellow. 193 iii/_"", �u i, / ���---\----.. , . ., ."'. '��""'''-''-' ,-..'!..l ..• -. t�' , 194 the gallery rhi lieutenant mayberry said that the modern american language was falling apart from lack of discipline or surface tension. there­ fore as an antidote he insisted on a victorian tautness and perio­ dicity in all the prose emanating from his office. he organized a glee club for the officers and enlisted men of the detachment. major motes, observing that, while they sang, his command had the first unity of its army career, made attendance at glee club rehearsals compulsory to all. on nights when lieutenant mayberry bullied his choir through nigra spirituals in an aban­ doned mess hall, nobody got a pass to algiers. but the noblest achievements were wrought at month's end in the monthly censorship report that went to afhq. when this was in the mill, starting with the twenty-seventh of each month, lieutenant mayberry would shut himself in the office till midnight and be unapproachable. it was miraculous what he could do with the detachment's figures, which, unvarnished, were simply a list of the number of v-mails and ordinary letters read each month, violations of military security, and recommendations of new ground rules for postal censorship. what went to g-2 in algiers was a ten­ page mimeographed brochure accompanied by graphs, charts, ar­ rows, slots of different altitudes and colors. and the history of the censorship detachment for each thirty days was set forth in gor­ geous army-ese, with paragraphs commencing with such stately tidbits as: -attention is directed to a chain of malfeasances by ... -it is felt that such directives would irreparably condone ... major motes had never been so happy or important or aware of his contribution to the war effort. he had frequent meetings with his officers in which he lashed them on to new heights of work and achievement. officers who read fewer than five hundred letters a day were excoriated in mayberry prose on the bulletin boards. the examination of mail reached such velocity that a wit remarked that the turning over of letters on the examination tables created a breeze which blew planes backwards at maison blanche airport. in his executive ecstasy major motes created still more posts for his officers. nothing now was too good for them. he gave lieuten­ ant mayberry a jeep all his own, which that officer christened under its windshield cynara in letters of caslon style six inches high. major mot.es designated a club officer to open a little bar in an empty tent. he named an assistant recreational officer to preview all films to be shown to the detachment. there was only one fly now in the ointment: it was still difficult to get promotions for hi" ni! ex� ma!ted tore at mueh t nee, an tnere � enangln -ahj rour kn rou ca narde!t ilie unl in m lelt thai andenh ao out andrea ninted, replace hadn't t on the p. �nch!b in� gene iliewar tionalre �realiz when wmcw executive �et along work�, , there war� li ...... /� -r i--. . � il� � ...... the leaf officers in relation to their just deserts. reading their mail in the evenings, he noticed a rising tendency to bitch about promotions. requests for transfer again mounted and had to cool off in his top desk drawer. one day major motes asked the a c of s g-2 to come and address his examiners. the colonel turned up and talked for an hour in a masterful yet cajoling way. he scolded and railed and wept and tore at his iron-gray hair, saying how he himself would like very much to be a brigadier general, but how he too was making a sacri­ fice. and in a roaring peroration the colonel told the officers that there were richer rewards in the army than the outward one of changing the brass on their collars. he concluded: -ah, gentlemen, gentlemen! when your babies cluster around your knee and ask, daddy, what did you do to help win the war? you can bow your heads without shame and say, son, i had the hardest job of all. i was in the intelligence service of the army of the united states.... ... , !luml lith : ,trow: .5 a�trol ai?l� re��f� h reufui� • !tdro un�b . inclla ru�� ::.!e oar in � r to �ff\i� . ooh onfi!� . , , oliomlorhli in may, 1944, pressure was put on afhq by washington. it was felt that there were in north africa altogether too many officers and enlisted men hanging around the base sections with nothing to do but keep meaningless office hours, put their feet on their desks! and read stars and stripes. many of these malingerers, washington hinted, could very well be sent to the italian front as infantry replacements. the general officers of afhq went into a panic. hadn't they figured on huge commands simply to take up the slack, on the principle that a team must have many substitutes on the bench? but the reckoning came to afhq, in the persons of inspect­ ing generals flown to algiers from the pentagon. they represented the war manpower commission, and they came with the convic­ tion already implanted in them that work in the algiers area could be realized with a cut of one-third of the personnel. when major motes got a phone call that a brigadier general of wmc would visit his detachment that afternoon, he held a confer­ ence in the front office. present were stuki, lieutenant frank, and lieutenant mayberry. -goddam it, what am i going to do? major motes screamed in executive anguish. they'll cut half the detachment. i simply can't get along on a skeleton office force. you all know how vital our work is.... there was some hasty whispering and planning. shortly after­ wards lieutenant frank stalked out into the examination room, 195 , 'ii i _..---'. ���' , , �,f -, i •• • • ,.:;;. ... ,i i�' i 196 the gallery bit his cigar, called for the officers' attention, and said in a curdling voice: -news item: they're hard up in italy for infantry replacements. if they don't find those replacements damn quick, they're gonna start pickin em outa the hat. here for instance. . . . those of ya who wish to volunteer for combat kindly step into the front office after this meetin is over ya'il get six weeks training an then be sent to tha eyetalian front. after all we gotta take rome, ain't we? . . . an i know that some a ya feel ya could make a more important contribution than ya been makin. . . . like leadin a platoon inta a chatterin machine-gun nest.... almost immediately a fat looie tottered into the front office. he dragged major motes into one of the shed latrines. he gibbered and sobbed: -major, iissen ... i never caused ya no trouble, did i, now? ... an there's sonsabitches out in that room ud cut ya throat single guys. now i gotta wife an two kids i ain't never seen i wanna go back to em in one piece, see? ... ya wouldn't, ya couldn't ... -i understand, i understand, goddam it, major motes said hoarsely, wringing the officer's hand. and after noon chow there turned up a brigadier general from the war manpower commission in an olive-drab staff car, with a pretty wac sergeant for a secretary and a covey of aides with clipboards. meanwhile lieutenant mayberry and stuki were busy in the examination room. they dumped all the mailbags on the reading tables, so that each examiner, when he returned from lunch, would find himself surrounded with sufficient mail to censor for the next month. they piled the mail on three sides of each examiner's field desk. when they'd finished, each desk looked like a machine-gun emplacement. while this was going according to instructions, the general was standing in the front office, haranguing major motes and lieuten­ ant frank, who'd offered him a fine chunky cigar. -we're convinced back in the pentagon, said the general, nib­ bling at the tip of the cigar, that something funny is going on over here. we believe that many overseas headquarters are something of a war crime in themselves. they tend to get bigger and bigger, like a snowball.... while on the italian front there's a critical shortage of infantrymen. we suspect that allied force headquarters is ridiculously overstaffed. -well, sir, i know only my own outfit, major motes said meekly. the a good washin� -t� or, the -wil �elturi trrewri� �oor jo week., , i've got overworl -let lellows, -quit wasningt law who justasw tile br majorm rmonally examiners -but d �arrened wanted to wac's., , major � rnoned at a�st lieut �awer li� iliemon hi ---. "_, j � ,_ the leaf 197 a good commanding officer must stay at home and tend to his own washing. -there must be some of your personnel you feel you can get rid of, the general roared. -will the general look at my poor clerks? the major moaned, gesturing at rows of corporals who were beating the life out of their typewriters. sir, a good officer thinks of his gi's first.... and these poor joes, sir, i haven't been able to give them an algiers pass this week.... they have to work nights ... beg to, poor devils.... and i've got three officers in the hospital, sir ... nervous breakdowns ... overwork. -let me see the room where the mail isread.said the general. -let me impress upon the general that everything he's about to see is strictly confidential. ... examination of personal mail is the privilege and the responsibility of the cream of american commis­ sioned officers. the general blew out a tuberose of cigar smoke. the major stepped aside to let him pass into the examination room. here there was the silence of a library. the head of each examiner could barely be seen over the top of the litter of letters that stuki and lieutenant mayberry had piled on the field desks. it looked like christmas eve in a post office. -0 my god! the general said softly. don't envy those poor fellows. read read read is this a normal day for them, major? -quite normal, sir perhaps when the general goes hack to washington, he may remember to mention in his report officers he saw who never make the headlines or the purple heart, but who just as surely were giving their eyes in the service of their country. the brigadier general later left, muttering apologetically that major motes did indeed need a larger staff, and that himself would personally see what could be done. lieutenant frank told the examiners that they might take the rest of the afternoon off: -but don't go tattlin to ya little friends in algiers about what happened here this afternoon ... if ya wise.... that general wanted to send ya all to the eyetalian front and replace ya with wac's.... not that they couldn't do a better job.... major motes's triumph of the day was complete when algiers phoned at 1600 hours to state that lieutenant mayberry was now a first lieutenant and lieutenant frank a captain. out of his secret drawer lieutenant frank fished a set of silver tracks and pinned them on himself. , il / --" \�'----" � .' -. "'.' •••• • ��_ • w. • ,,( '.' " f' 198 the gallery th -seventeen months of sweatini he bellowed. an i got gold leaves bought too. -1 have no silver bars, lieutenant mayberry murmured pite­ ously to himself. i didn't come overseas expecting to be promoted. -well, i ain't got no extras to giveya, stuki said, yellow under his tan. like a bridegroom bull captain frank hurtled around the front office: -so they called me a permanent first, hey? he then ripped the old silver bars off his cap and off his field jacket and threw them like deadly little brooches with the pins open at lieutenant mayberry, who caught them humbly, his eyes shining thankfulness, his blond mustache rampant. -take em take em take em.... ya can shove em up if ya like.... major motes wasn't a great one for wasting the pay of the army. but his virginia sense told him that tonight was the unavoidable occasion for a party. promotion parties are simply de rigueur to old soldiers. so he invited stuki, first lieutenant mayberry, and captain frank to be his guests for the evening. they got into his jeep with festive solemnity and headed for algiers. even as he drove, major motes was aware that stuki was brooding because he hadn't been promoted too. -a few more months yet, he said cheerily in stuki's ear, laying his hand consolingly on his roommate's arm. -few more months, balls, stuki said with feeling. at first major motes wondered whether he could get away with taking them all to the tam mess, paying five francs for each, and throwing in two bottles of white wine. but as they descended into algiers where in the blue water the hospital ships were falling and heaving under the barrage balloons, he knew he couldn't get away with that for a promotion party. so he took them to a black market restaurant off rue d'isly, where for two thousand francs they got a peasant soup, eggs, a thin steak, a salad, pastry baked without sugar, and wine. -kinda expensive, these promotion parties, stuki leered. betcha glad they don't come around too often, huh, chief? then they picked up in the jeep captain frank's algiers mis­ tress, a huge and vociferous french girl with hair under her arms. when she saw her lover's new insignia, she screamed and ran her tongue over his thick purple lips. the final touch in major motes's hospitality was an invitation to the center district club for drinks. he himself got nervous and broody as usual with alcohol. but. he on � citr of imell 0 -m rut hi !eif, he oack to fate ur, -tha tweaking tneir ole monume cartai itreet!, -�oi �(hoice when w� a ste rrojecl --. " '} �. '1'iwm� . nderder� • . j and ran �!.lo i � )fajor mot�! • club forori� �coho], but� the leaf pretended for the occasion's sake that he was having mad fun, even to nudging the mistress once, for which she goosed him feelingly and invited him up some evening when her capitaine couldn't come. then all except major motes got drunk on pjw gin. captain frank believed himself napoleon, putting his cap on sidewise and sticking a hand inside his meaty chest. lieutenant mayberry lec­ tured on the english language as distinct from americanese. and stuki just drank and drank till the tears dribbled off his mustache into his gin. at midnight he announced he was going out into the streets of algiers to cruise up a little heavy lovin. on saturday morning 31 july 1944, major motes first saw the city of naples checkered in the sunlight. over the bay rode the smell of all the world's garbage. -my ole man started out from this burg, stuki said. his ole man put him on a boat when he was eleven. told him to shift for him­ self, he didn't never wanna see his puss again.... now i'm comin back to napoli. i'll show em they couldn't treat my ole man the way they did. -all your relatives' houses will be off limits anyhow, lieutenant mayberry said. so you'll be spared the trouble of a courtesy call on them.... i smell that pasta and hair oil already. it took six hours to unload the ship. it was late afternoon when they and their baggage rattled out of the barbed wire round the port. major motes appraised the ruin around naples harbor. -goddam it, he cried exulting. see what happens to people who declare war on uncle sam? lieutenant mayberry wondered aloud: -i wonder how many greasers are still lying under that rubble? ... well, italy always was overpopulated. musso sends the birth rate up, so we choose our own means of bringing it down. -that's what they get for kickin my ole man out, stuki said, tweaking his mustache in approbation. so now i'll stamp all over their ole ruins.... my ole man says italy always did have too many monuments. captain frank looked at the carts picking through the narrower streets. -so i left my baby doll in algiers for this.... well, guess there'll be choicer pickins here, though . when major motes first saw it at the end of july, 1944, naples was a steaming and shattered anthill committed to some furious project. besides the neapolitans, the streets were mad with allied 199 , �i,i / _ .. ----.. ���--, , � r i • t •• .. • .. �. 1,1 200 the gallery th e ooors inside long gr -car or -was soldiers. he felt already faint from the heat. they drove to the palazzo where their offices were to be set up. it was a huge block of stone and balconies that had once housed offices and german companies. on its four floors room after room yearned out emptily, echoing rooms with painted plaster and nothing else but rubble in them. he and his party climbed to the roof of the palazzo, which was a fla.t square of gravel girdled with a railing. they could see the shrill blue of the bay of naples. to their rear was a column and a heap of plaster shag from which flowers were already poking out their heads like war orphans. to their right was a church where the bombs had ripped away half the wall; they saw the statues and the benches and the organpipes and the tattered winy draperies that once sheathed the arches. to their left was the turn of an alley from which rose the steam of urine vaporizing in the sun. here stood a queue of gi's waiting at the entrance to a house. girls peeped out from its tiny balconies on the second floor; screaming children were hawking the charms to be bought upstairs. in and out of this house the gi's were in constant motion. they'd posted watches against the coming of mp's. captain frank watched this shifting line with interest. finally he leaned his paunch in its pink trousers over the railing of the roof terrace and hooted paternally at the gi's: -oooh you vd i lieutenant mayberry looked out over the housetops, heavy with his sense of history and of time: -that's the italy of the guidebooks and paintings for you: a cat house next door to a church. -it stinks, stuki said, holding his nose over his mustache. i see why my ole man never came back to it. -i feel, the major said, that our organization is going into a new and brilliant phase here in naples.... i want you all to share my triumphs. early in august, 1944, major motes's palazzo opened for busi­ ness. he'd made it the headquarters for most of the censorship in meridian italy. he'd screened out hordes of italian civilians who desired to work for the allies at twenty-one hundred lire a week: refugees from trieste, penniless students of the university of naples, pale jews who'd hidden from pillar to post in italy. and major motes got them all seated at long examination tables in hushed rooms under hard iights. he locked the massive wooden wries 0 tioned f tnerwe -tho -the saio, is -the motes sa but si unner th, to trr fo ne'd nev war on t 01 euror (ensoring aottoria next it, snould di snould ne staircase would sta �iteaming iii arm ot �rellas, unoergro �ot to feel o\'erofas ,br trips with secti� oerrr pro� �et too s� " --. "_-' . ."; �-_ t gmltry-__ drove to ili1 • a bu�e ol� and genn� o t em�lilll but fuodi! the leaf 2.01 doors on them and labeled the entrances with secret designations . inside these inquisitorial rooms the furren examiners unfolded the long green sheets of the provost marshal general and read: -carissima mamma, io sto bene, e cosl spero di te e dell'intera £amiglia ••• or -was ich auch von dir hoffe � those twenty-four lines which italian and german p/w wrote their families each week by permission of the geneva convention. these furren examiners brought their lunches to work wrapped in old copies of risorgimento: black bread and cheese. soon they peti­ tioned for american rations to be served as the noon meal, since they were now in the employ of the united states army. -those ginsoes expect us to serve em a lunch! stuki cried. -the only logical position fer a greaser, lieutenant mayberry said, is under a wolf, sucking her teats like romulus and remus. -they're like nigras and must be kept in their place, major motes said. but since so many of the italians fainted away at their work under the hard lights in the airless examination rooms, he promised to try for a gi food issue. to himself, however, he declared that he'd never lift a finger to help feed a people which had declared war on the united states and which had been the turncoat traitors of europe throughout their history. more italians fainted while censoring the mail, and more were hired to take their places: dottori and professori and geometri and ragionieri and studenti. next it was arranged that the italians and the american officers should dine and be released at different hours in order that they should never meet to make friends or compare notes on the winding staircase of the palazzo. and often in the afternoons major motes would stand in the cortile of the palazzo to watch his workers streaming out when the bell set them free. the italians walked arm in arm or skidded along in sandals and shorts carrying their um­ brellas. the american officers looked like moles coming from underground and rubbing the itching of their eyes. major motes got to feel like henry ford watching his plants empty at the change­ over of a shift. by trips to caserta and crying on colonel's desks and pleading with section chiefs, major motes got stuki and lieutenant may­ berry promoted to captaincies. mayberry said his own cap would get too small if the major didn't stop being so kind. and stuki in ____ •• ,���__ a' • f • , •••• �\�ojl"�.�mtr!'f;�y:,��..:;� • �t oj � j" " 11, i ; . i' • 1 i i • 202 the gallery th e his shining double bars presided over rooms of gray brooding i talians reading pjw mail. one examination room opened into the next. from his high rostrum stuki looked like a master in study hall tyrannizing over the bowed heads, the thick lenses of the spectacles, the shabby dandruffed shoulders. he sat all day long on this dais screaming exhortations at his slaves, lecturing on italy's political perfidy, or tapping with the eraser of his pencil while he scribbled v-mails to his mom informing her that he'd at last got to be a pezzo grosso in the city they kicked pop out of. stuki loved to fire neapolitans for the slightest laxness in their duties. if they asked for half an hour off to go to the questura to bailout their sisters on charges of prostitution, he fired them for goldbricking. if they fainted from hunger at their work, he gave them the sack for shirking their duty to the united states, which had liberated them. -perche avete buttato fuori mio papa, eh? he would cry. considering the huge office force under his control, major motes rejoiced that there were so few incidents. one afternoon on the second floor some austrian refugees beat up an italian jew who was reading pjw mail in german. major motes arrived on the scene with his interpreter, the sergeant major, and two mp's from the questura. all the offenders were fired and jailed for investiga­ tion and trial by amg in the 'provincia building. -more screening, that's the answer, major motes told higher headquarters at afhq in caserta. -what a comedy, captain mayberry said, looking up from his charts and reports. a year ago the italians were at war with us. now they're reading the mail of their own prisoners of war. . . . what an obscene comedy. -the whole war is obscene, goddam it, major motes said. all europe and its parasitic population are obscene ... like the nigras.... on the ground floor of the palazzo major motes established a mess hall for the american personnel, a barbershop, and a glassed-in booth where an armed guard sat and frisked all the furren help when they came to work in the morning and left in the evening. at noon the neapolitans pressed their noses against the screen door of the mess and watched everything the americans lifted to their mouths. some of them wept when they saw half-eaten dishes dumped into gi cans. -set up garbage pails in the cortile! stuki railed. let em dive for the food we waste! that oughta nourish the bastards! realized i a� on theater h divi!lon, dockwor he �pent officer!' c� the �ecurjtanceled 1anahh 0 captai� -mjwl -you t nelped bu; -jt'sno nair, but 1 mrweaq there in so -godd� !tricken m out at cal colonel ye . -_ .. -_ .. }'�" . the leaf 203 when he wasn't necking the panties off the signorina in his office, captain frank amused himself with a game against the neapolitans on the sidewalk below his window. he'd stand smoking his cigar and holding a pail of water. every neapolitan who re­ lieved himself against the wall below this window got a bucket of water dumped on his head. major motes wrote lucinda that ha-ha, they were teaching the neapolitans a little practical sanitation. major motes was the first at the door of the palazzo in the morn­ ing. some evenings he stayed till midnight. there wasn't a place in the palazzo where his quick step mightn't be heard at any moment. he'd peer with pride at his jeeps and trucks in their rows in the inner cortile, at the mailbags ferried in and out of the great double-gated portone. and he observed the stream of italians and american officers swarming up and down the staircase, which he called jacob's ladder in a v-mail to lucinda. in the daylight hours there was always in his palazzo a combination hum and silence, a clatter of typewriters and that air of concentration and mystery befitting the intelligence service of the united states. he pardoned himself his pride. all this had been his dream. he alone had realized it. as one of the leading censorship officers in the mediterranean theater he was invited to visit the front, attached to the 34th division. it would mean a month's absence from naples and his clockwork command, but he left stuki and captain frank in charge. he spent a week rubbing dubbin into his combat boots and having officers' calls in which he told them how lucky they were to be in the security of naples. but at the last moment his orders were canceled because caserta said that the arno front was far too risky and his own life too precious for a german bullet. captain mayberry said one morning: -my work here is almost done. -you belong to this outfit, major motes replied tenderly. you helped build it up.... surely you don't want to leave me? -it's not that, sir, captain mayberry said, stroking his thin blond hair. but i thought i might ask for a transfer to caserta.... i am very weary.... i thought perhaps they might hide me away out there in some obscure little job in documents. -goddam it, what are you up to? major motes cried like a stricken mother. don't think you'll get your majority any easier out at caserta. besides, they haven't even made me a lieutenant colonel yet. \ _ �ii i / a -" ��'-----\ -, ".' .... . ,,���.;�d 204 the gallery th e .....---1 women � making rfiallic. mirror 1 un!teady dull of ti �ing to over the olaer an godda inoulder, -�ir, i major ine moon �la!!less f �orred a� bul for al icy and e ana tfie n !ocket.hi! -you know i don't think in terms of promotion, captain may­ berry said. but my ancestors were pioneers. i want something new. -well, just don't try to pull any fine italian deals to get out of this outfit. in the next few days captain mayberry drove often to caserta in his jeep. he said afhq was no longer satisfied with the reports over which he slaved. would major motes please transfer him to a quieter and easier job? he was terribly weary, he said. -you're up to something, major motes said accusingly. -besides, sir, have you looked at your hair? it's almost white. when i knew you, it was still brown ... you have a terrible twitch too, sir you're eligible for rotation to the united states ... �'our wife . major motes felt his scalp prickle: -goddam it, how can anyone think of going home when this frightful war is still on? -we must all be selfish, even in our unselfishnesses, captain mayberry replied. that very week major motes's heart broke. an order came down from caserta returning him to the united states for rotation. he was relieved of all his command in italy. captain mayberry and captain frank were transferred to caserta. stuki was to take over major motes's own duties. -sorry to see ya go, chief, stuki said, taking his erm carelessly. -sure you can keep things running here? major motes begged, stuttering more than ever. -oh boy, can if ... let me say now that ya've been just a little too easy around here. i got a few new policies i'm gonna tryon those ginsoes after ya leave us after all, chief, ya didn't know the languages ya was workin with maybe that's why they gave ya the air. he wrote lucinda that he was coming home to her for a little rest. nervous exhaustion. he spoke of the perfidies of stuki, of captains frank and mayberry, to all of whom he'd given their start, out of pure benevolence. but then the army was full of opportunists and fingermen. on his last night in naples before sailing, major motes walked alone in the galleria umberto. it was after sunset, the first time he'd been alone with himself since that hotel room in casa almost two years ago. the galleria was full of neapolitans, of americans on leave from the hospitals at bagnoli. the bars were full, even to the chairs on the pavements. everywhere there were girls and old mlong eivi one anoth t g�tth� � , captain �b\ i methin�nfl i s to ��\�, the leaf 205 women screeching and selling and sweeping. little boys tore around making deals with gi's, buying their cigarettes and selling them phallic charms and silver horseshoes. major motes saw himself in a mirror in one of the bars-white-haired, quite stooped, his walk unsteady, a tic under his left eye. on his left shoulder was the red bull of the 34th division he'd sewed on when he thought he was going to inspect the front. he kept telling himself that men all over the world had died in this war, whereas he himself was only older and wiser and full of a bottomless grief. goddam it, he said, fraternally clapping a lounging gi on the shoulder, who started this war anyway? -sir, if i was a major like you, i wouldn't even care. major motes walked and walked in the galleria umberto till the moon rose over vesuvius and a pale light rippled through the glassless frames of the domed roof. people came and went, drunks flopped against the archways, girls were chased into black alcoves. but for all the heat that remained over naples in the dark, he felt icy and empty and alone. he lit a cigarette. his hand trembled and the nervousness under his left eye set up a crackling along the socket. his heart was broken. -guess i'm out of my time, he said to himself. i'm a gentleman from virginia. such must suffer in naples of august, 1944. this thought comforted major motes. when he got home, he'd go to the pentagon and sell them the idea of setting up censorship among civilians in the united states. americans couldn't trust even one another in wartime. illl / -. ---.. ���--� \·f ••••••• �_'" • sixth promenade (naples) i remember that italy in august, 1944, lay off our port like a golden porpoise lapped in dawn. she had eggs and lumps on her outline which the sun and the light mist grossened into wens. from nearer 1 made them out to be the island of capri and the volcano vesuvius. i peered with more interest than i had at africa, for i had precise and confused ideas of what italy'd be like. i remember how in my head and in my heart the city of naples had always nestled like a sleeping question mark, as an entity gay and sad and full of what they call life. 1 knew it would be a port town, but a port town over which lay a color and a weight peculiarly naples' own, a short girl with dark eyes and rich skin and body hair. motherhood. huge and inscrutable as the feminine idea. in august, 1944, the port of naples was a flytrap of bustle and efficiency and robbery in the midst of ruin and panic. images of disaster lay about the harbor: ships sunk at their berths, shattered unloading machinery, pumiced tenements along the docks. and back of this lunette the island of capri sheered out of the bay, a sunny yellow bulkhead. vesuvius smoked softly and solemnly, the way a philosophic plumber does at a wake. the bay of naples was crammed with liberty ships and boats with red crosses on their sides and decks. out bagnoli way among the laurels and the myrtles landing craft infantry thumped up and down in the water. -1 don't like to look at bombed buildings, the pfc said, putting polaroid lenses over his spectacles. not that this will shut out the view. -ten months ago, the mess sergeant said, these greasy bastards were still hearin sirens and gettin pasted. i remember how the blue of the mediterranean shaded into gray 206 (na creamy 0 li�! of c oecause i to�ether nalf·deat the hills' trembles midday, a !rmbol, tender in -i don terrinc to make! me dtr, like ail' above -ah, bl over them i reme !trolled in iliat ruffle women. it �m, talki tfie !habbi leats of a breh of t (naples) 207 or rainbowed oil around the berths. everything floated near the piers: watermelons, condoms, chunks of fissured wood, strips 01 faded cloth. -europe drains into the bay of naples, the pfc said. and i remember the jeeps along via caracciolo near the section of santa lucia, and how zi' teresa's restaurant jutting on a small float was then a french officers' mess, and the tunnel to bagnoli. i remember whizzing past the statues of the aquarium, the war monuments (napoli ai suoi caduti) that stared out to sea in the sunlight as stiff and superannuated as warriors on the porch of an old-soldiers' home. the sunlight gives naples a hardness and a mercilessness. it pokes its realistic fingers into the bombed build­ ings by navy house. in the half shot houses what plaster yet re­ mains in the eaves is as living and suppurating as human skin. and just over naples stand the hills where the vomero sits on its snaky terraces and flights of stairs like an old lady precarious on a trapeze. the houses of naples as they swarm up the hillside are yellow or creamy or brown; they get lost in the verdure that mustaches the lips of castel sant'elmo. i couldn't place naples in any century because it had a taste at once modern and medieval, all grown together in weariness and urgency and disgust. yet even in her half-death naples is alive and furious with herself and with life. the hillside on which she lies, legs open like a drunken trollop, trembles when she turns on her fan bed. i remember too that at midday, when she was sleepiest of all in the lurid heat, she was a symbol of life itself, resentful and spiteful and cursing, yet very tender in her ruin. -i don't care what anybody says, the corporal said, this is a terrific town. absolutely terrific. there's something here that makes me restless and drowsy at the same time. naples ain't just a city, like st. louis or omaha. there's something moving in the ail' above naples.... poison gas? perfume? -ah, blow it, the mess sergeant said. look at them skirts jigglin over them rears. i remember that along via caracciolo thousands of people strolled in the late afternon. there came a hot wind off the bay that ruffled the buttocks and the marvelous breasts of the italian women. it mussed their black thick hair. everyone walked arm in arm, talking, laughing, crying, shouting, gesticulating. i remember the shabbiness of neapolitan suits, different from the shine on the seats of american pants. i remember the mourning bands on the lapels of the neapolitan men. i remember neapolitan shoesi , iii l, i too 'i � i i 208 the gallery (n� rhony radron nar1es sheets madon the bale and do �rocerie! families and dan roma ii them wa and the -i'm like a flo i reme heard in afteraf, italian (� it sounds thehuma the endin 01 convel lan�uage motion bl with one lan�uage, jui! as w nothing to arealwa�s static, and italian pa -�e io iremem silken wed when i \va tions, the i �i! tongue, �i�n langu lis capable i �e:sonality 10lce runs' �assion wit when there were any-cracked or sprouting or leaking, of sick flashy leather like the cheeks of the feverish. i remember the lipstick and powder that the women used-when they could get any­ of the tint of fevered blood. i remember the dark pallidity of those girls who could get none. i remember the glistening damp under­ arm hair when the neapolitan women put up a hand to their heads, and their legs, which seemed often to be skinned in dewy feathers. i remember the walls along piazza municipio, stuck with movie posters and the yellow playbills of the san carlo and the italian review febbre azzurra, or "prossimamente greer garson in prigio­ nieri del passato," and charlie chaplin in il grande dittatore, and napoli milionaria, and soffia so'. and the shops with their windows half-empty, with their scant goods cutely spread out to fake a display: -prezzi sbalordativi. ... -riduzioni del 20% •••• or the bookstores where louisa may alcott became piccole donne, where paper-bound ocher books lay in carts like cheeses on their sides, where benedetto croce was bedfellow with old copies of life and that bitching roman periodical marjorio, with nude girls prancing on the cover. and in every street and vieo the little rafts on wheels selling shoelaces, and combs that shattered when they touched my scalp. and how bottles were sawed down to make glasses and vases, and how chestnuts and oranges and tomatoes and spinaci stood wilting in the food stores. -oggi si vendee . . . -si distribuisce sale. . . . -non si riparano gomme per mancanza di materiale.... -lo spaccio, la tessera. . . . i remember the san carlo opera house on the corner by the traffic island, across the street from a pro station-its 1743 a.d. arches, its lines sweating out opera and ballet at thirty-five lire. near it the palazzo where the limeys took their tea and the british officers got drunk on their roof terrace and poured gin on pedes­ trians passing into the galleria umberto. and i remember that every vico and salita had a different smell. along via roma there was the color of movement: the od's of the combat troops, the rusty shorts of the uk, the melting splotches of the neapolitan housewives' house dresses, the patter of sandals, the click of hob­ nails, the squunch of children's brown bare soles as they begged, pimped, screamed, tugged, cried, and offered. on via roma there was a smell, i remember, of fake coffee roasting, of ice cream with -..... .: .... f�"" .. (naples) 209 phony flavors and colors, of musty dry goods gloated over by the padrone behind his bars against thieves. out of every alley in naples the whiff of a thousand years of life and death and bed sheets and urination. the glass over the colored picture of the madonna of torre annunziata. the clinking of the gratings on the balconies. and especially that small basket being hauled up and down many stories on its string, pulling up newspapers and groceries and the baby. each alley had a different stench from many families with their own residua of body excretion, sweat, halitosis, and dandruff. and i remember alley after alley winding off via roma like a bowel, each with its off-limits sign. all i could see of them was the entrance, a flash of cobblestones, a turn of sunlight, and the scarred face of a wall shutting off all further exploration. -i'm lost in naples, said the pfc. life has struck me in the face like a flounder. cold, hot, ghastly, and lovely. i remember making acquaintance with italian. at first all i heard in naples was asssshpett and capeeesh and payyysannn. but after a few days it broke down into something more articulate. italian (not neapolitan dialect) can soon be understood because it sounds like what it's saying. italian is a language as natural as the human breath. italian is a feminine and flowing tongue in which the endings fill up the pauses, covering those gaps and gaucheries of conversation that embarrass americans and british. it's a language whose inertia has remained on the plus side. it keeps in motion by its own inherent drive. the italians are never silent with one another. it isn't necessary even to think in this lovely language, for your breath comes and goes anyhow, and you might just as well use it to talk with. and good loving talk! if you've nothing to say, ehhh and scnz'altro and per forza and per questo are always tumbling from your lips to prevent the flow from getting static. and then there were dico and dice, and the tumble of the italian past subjunctive, like smoke turning on itself: -se io andassi 0 se tu potessi. i remember that italian used to amuse me till it caught me in its silken web. i remember how kind the neapolitans were to me when i was learning it, the sweetness of their grammatical correc­ tions, the look of joy on an italian's face when you address him in his tongue, however poorly. italian is the most sociable and chris­ tian language in this world. it's full of a bubble like laughter. yet it's capable of power and bitterness. it has nouns that tick off a personality as neatly as a wisecrack. it's a language in which the voice runs to all levels. you all but sing, and you work off your passion 'with your hands. ,tj, / --" ��'-----/ ',{ • ' •••• . �).._��rt. • �'4iii .. .i/!' ; t ' 'i r • 210 the gallery iliewome and wo� combed a tner had de�ign or mangling mothers' come in � dentes�ej tner wer me with t odii�ue w and hjpo italian wo! neapolitan a few, ver� in� indep tarough th 11�! a little waile i sa l�ci!ts and ilim and fo jull in na� ilierr canes were those i�ak italial american 0 force sergea �ew "star woras bette but i rem naples is t� -10 andare a casa tua per mangiare e per fare amore ... finito capiro amato andato venduto.... capeeesh? ... molto buono, no buono, acqua fresca.... i remember that sometimes i used to wonder if so tender and human a language might disappear from the world because of the pattern of conquest. italian is an atavistic language. all the rest have been visited by some torture or trickery or introspection. italian alone is the language of the moment, cunning yet unpre­ meditated. i learned italian in order to make love. and i found italian feminine and secret and grave and puzzled and laughing, like a woman. perhaps it came from the tit of signora eve in the garden. for italian is like milk and butter, sauced with some pepper lest it cloy you with its sweetness. once italian got into my palate, i remember, it never again left me. so i learned italian in naples. i remember also the dialect of the city of naples, which is italian chewed to shreds in the mouth of a hungry man. it varies even within the city. the fishermen in the bay talk differently from the rich in the vomero. every six blocks in the squashed. together city there's a new dialect. but the dialect is naples and naples is the dialect. it's as raw as tenement living, as mercurial as a thief to your face, as tender as the flesh on the breast. some­ times in one sentence it's all three. the stateliness of tuscan italian is missing in neapolitan. but there's no false stateliness in naples either, except in some alien fountain presented by a duchess of lombardy. neapolitan dialect isn't ornamental. its endings have been amputated just as neapolitan living pares to the heart and hardness of life. wild sandwiches occur in the middle of words, doublings of z's, cramming of m's and n's. when they say some­ thing, the neapolitans scream and moan and stab and hug and vituperate. all at once. and 0 god, their gestures! the hand before the groin, the finger under the chin, the cluckings, the head­ shakings. in each sentence they seem to recapitulate all the emo­ tions that human beings know. they die and live and faint and desire and despair. i remember the dialect of naples. it was the most moving language i ever listened to. it came out of the fierce sun over the bleached and smelly roofs, the heavy night, childbirth, starvation, and death. i remember too the tongues that spoke neapolitan to me: the humorous, the sly, the gentle, the anguished, the merciful, and the murderous. those tongues that spoke it were like lizards warm in the sun, jiggling their tails because they were alive. (naples) -i have hoid, said the mess sergeant, teasing a neapolitan child with a chocolate bar, that da wimmin are purtier in nort italy. but ya can't trump da build on da neapolitan goils. nuttin but rear ends bouncin like jelio and milk factories under dere dresses. i'm goin crazy for it. i remember how the women and girls of naples stood for all the women and girls of the world. there were girls like the kresge and woolworth pigs of joisey city, with their hair not quite combed and dark and too long. under this fluffy frowzy rat's-nest they had earrings too heavy for their ears, with some cabalistic design or jewel. and there were the girls of the vornero, of the strangling middle class, who were rushed along via roma on their mothers' arms, girls who were locked up after nightfall when they'd come in from their classes at the university. now they were stu­ dentesse, but soon they'd be dottoresse: un libro di latino per un giovinottino ... they were like pretty mice in cotton dresses as they whisked by me with their chaperones. sometimes i caught their eyes on the oblique when mamma was looking the other way, eyes demure and hypocritical, eyes shooting feudal disdain for the poorer italian women, eyes masking jealousy and curiosity of those lower neapolitan women who went with gli alleati. and there were also a few, very few neapolitan women who reminded me of the blar­ ing independence of american girls, who promenaded slowly through the street, well made up, their hair a little lighter, their legs a little daintier, their dresses fresh and trim. and once in a while i saw a marchesa or a contessa who'd played ball with the fascists and was now doing likewise with gli alleati, these were slim and forty and chic. they could be seen all over europe, not just in naples. and there were also the widows of naples with their canes and sober bags. but most ubiquitous on via roma were those signurrine who chewed gum and had forgotten how to speak italian. these walked always in pairs, and they screeched american obscenities at one another, taught them by some armored force sergeant in heat. they called every american joe, and they knew "stardust" and "chattanooga choo-choo." they knew the words better than i did. but i remember best of all the children of naples. the scugnizz', naples is the greatest baby plant in the world. once they come 211 i i --" '�':.�./ • r • • •••• • ....'\1' = ai""'/ i i i ' i � i 212 the gallery (nap. _..--j -i su mussolin badoglio and mila -yago -las outa the or twelve. �tart em -well, !aid, that -if the it too, off the assembly line, they lose no time getting onto the streets. they learn to walk and talk in the gutters. many of them seem to live there. as the curfew was progressively lifted to a later and later hour, the children of naples spent the evenings on the side­ walks. 1£ i had to keep in my memory just one picture of the neapolitan kaleidoscope, it would be of a brother and sister, never over ten years of age, sleeping on a curbstone in the sunlight with a piece of chewed dark bread beside them. sometimes i thought that in naples the order of bees and human beings was upside down, that the children supported and brought up their parents. once i remember attempting to count the number of shoeshine boys between via diaz and the galleria umberto. i never could, for new shoeshine stands opened behind my back by the time i'd walked ten feet. those incredible scugnizz'l they weren't children at all, the scugnizz', but sorrowful wise mocking gremlins. they sold yank and stars and stripes. they lurked outside the px to buy my rations. they pimped for their sisters, who stood looking out at me from behind the balcony of a primo piano tenement. they sold charms and divisional insignia in the streets. they hawked dough that looked like doughnuts or fritters, but tasted like grilled papier-mache. they stole everything with a brilliance and furtiveness and constancy that made me think of old ayrab fairy tales. they shrilled and railed at me in perfect and scouring american, as though they'd learned it from some sailor lying in a gutter and hollering holy hell to ease his heart. the children of naples were determined not to die, with the determination in which corpuscles mass to fight a virus that has invaded them. they owned the vitality of the damned. and they laughed at me, them­ selves, the whole world. often i thought that we, the conquering army, were weaker and siller than they. i loved the scugnizz' be­ cause i had no illusions about them. -wanna eat, joe? -wanna souvenir of naples? -wanna drink, joe? -wanna nice signorina? wanna piecea arse? -the kids are so dirty, the corporal said. but they have such fine teeth and eyes and skin ... like coffee with a little milk in it.... an they're smart as whips. look at the way they've learned american just so they can buy an sell to us.... an, christ, what can ya do when the poor little tykes stand outside ya mess and watch ya dumpin out gi food that somebody's wasted? the mp's won't let ya feed em. why? why? 1 reme tfie vome tne top of everjbody rou skied tween two everyone's of darkness rocket. in -di,pi or ire tile funicu! �lieved th� tame a prou narles was.bel!. god !i�ntl it me� ld�my step one and a ha �u�e, and �llarof sffi( tame the 501 !larped and ��ta. somet q�!cent a liq lilhl'c!osedc !�ctrum. e' --. . /' -; --_ (naples) -i suppose, said the pfc, that these children are responsible for mussol�ni? that the babies of naples supported farinacci and badoglio and the house of savoy and the vested interests of turin and milan? ya go crazy if ya study on it too much, said the corporal. -las night, the mess sergeant said, i seen two marines come outa the docks. an they met up with two signorinas of about eleven or twelve. ya can't tell. they become wimmin so young here.... start em young, i always say. -well, i guess the good must suffer with the bad, the corporal said. that's what the bible says. -if the bible says that, said the pfc, hitler should have burnt it too. i remember the levels and terraces of naples, slipping rrom the vomero into the bay. i'd go from the bottom of the town to the top of the funiculars, which slide under the hillside on cables. everybody fought their way into the cars in the stations. then you skied along the wire. sometimes you came into the light be­ tween two palazzi. sometimes you scudded through a brief tunnel. everyone's shoulder was against everyone else's gut. in the spells of darkness i'd reassure myself that my ayrab wallet was still in my pocket. in the dark the storm of neapolitan dialect went on: -di, pino, hai portato tua moglie pina? or i remember sometimes being stranded in the vomero. for the funiculars stopped running at 2100 hours. the neapolitans believed that the force of gravity ceased at sundown. then it be­ came a problem of descent down stairs that i couldn't even see, for naples was blacked out. there must have been forty flights and levels. god help me when i got caught at the top without a flash­ light! it meant groping along the dank walls of the houses, of gaug­ ing my step on stairs set at a pitch i couldn't walk or run: about one and a half times the normal stride. each stairway had a different gauge, and each angle was different. it was like walking into a cellar of smells and secret life, for out of the houses over my head came the sound of gi's haggling for vino after hours, of women slapped and cursed by their husbands, of children eating their pasta. sometimes i remember how across the path of my uncertain descent a light would fall athwart the mossy chipped stairs from an ill-closed door. or a woman and her child would appear in the spectrum. even as i stumbled down, i wondered what they were 213 i i / --'. '�� ".' , .. , , :;-."'�<����.-'��_/ ,214 the gallery thinking. a piece of their lives had fallen across my way in an ax of radiation. sometimes around midnight i remember that a peace would hit naples. the heat 'shifted gears for the hour of dawn. only then did any silence come to the wrestling odorous city. there were stars over vesuvius. the lei's in the bay rocked and bubbled like ducks. the lights of the mp's kiosks and the glow from the pro stations rode in the hot dark like beacons. then i'd twist under my mosquito netting. -napoli? ... i've had it ... or it's having me.... �'" in the ri " i �lane mol tneir heal the e fifteen h ciulia an rl ilou!e, in tile parap� -�e ci ci uccidon tney'd ing but ie ing a! frie du!ion tha all, they i totting up office gossi] leah in na of piedigro after the u� handful �ring to pa toe old ma ". --. ,,_. -'" "'r' .-_ '" . .-_ ..-: 111 " seventh portrait giulia in 1943 the allied bombers hit naples incessantly. they came in the afternoons with a noise like mad cicadas. but giulia and her brother gennaro rarely took to the shelters. it smelled foul down there. and giulia and gennaro had had enough of the stench of families living night after night at lap's length. they'd had enough of the screams of women giving birth to their babies in the ricoveri, those screams which could pierce the hum of the plane motors and the crunch of the bombs hitting the streets above their heads. the english bombers made sorties almost daily from noon to fifteen hours. while families scurried screaming underground, giulia and gennaro would take to the top of their apartment house. in the sunlight on the roof they'd lean like connoisseurs on the parapet railing and watch the aircraft diving on the port. -se ci uccidono, giulia said, clutching gennaro's cool hand, ci uccidono e basta, no? they'd boo fine hi ts. often the american planes dropped noth­ ing but leaflets, telling the neapolitans that the allies were com­ ing as friends. giulia and gennaro had long arrived at the con­ elusion that it mightn't be such a bad thing to be liberated after all. they knew the score. their papa was a ragioniere, endlessly totting up figures in the employ of the state. he told them all the office gossip of the questura. hence they knew that fascism, at least in naples, was as bloated as those balloons sold at the feast of piedigrotta, which exploded when their rubber saw the sun. after the pamphlet bombings giulia and gennaro would gather up handfuls of the leaflets that fell on their roof. these they'd bring to papa. they'd all sit around the dining room table while the old man put on his spectacles and deciphered them. he read 215 1,1 • 216 the gallery every ti moment� gennaro heart atl papa w tedeschi if they e only gi at the dg stood in ever laid however (always u up in the to bagno giulia' influence coat, she i or greasy but every with her best whe �lasslamp passion, t his eres. as her ow ming, br which he 1 gown by too unsta knew whe �appho. b under his of a nea� mamma slowly and avidly under the stained-glass light. so papa too came to the conclusion that it mightn't be such a bad idea for the allies to take naples. he didn't tell this to his children, but they read his thoughts. giulia was nineteen. she had a pale little face under brown ringlets that hung over her forehead like spun sugar. everythingabout her was tiny: her mouth, her throat, her breasts, her waist, her ankles. her expression was always of contented repose, even when she was talking most animatedly with her chum elvira, whom she'd chosen as her foil because elvira was a dowd. giulia dressed in gay cotton or linen dresses, with a tiny belt about her minute waist, tiny white sport pumps with heels that were almost too high. after every bombing she'd pick her way with elvira or gen­ naro through the streets of naples. she avoided the rubble and the corpses. the sun danced on a segment of her honeyed skin and made a halo on her small beribboned straw hat. she knew she didn't look much like a neapolitan girl. possibly because her mother rina had been a florentine before papa had induced her to settle with him in naples. but giulia was politician enough to speak neapolitan dialect when she was with her chums. she'd had a better education than most girls of her class. she had almost as much book learning as gennaro, who was in his second year at the university of naples. when she was at the liceo, guilia by some premonition had taken all the english courses she could get. now she was teaching gennaro english in the evenings after the dishes were done. from her maestra giulia had an oxford accent. she and her brother used to laugh over these lessons, his brown high brow crinkling over the difference between louse lice and spouse spouses. two years ago giulia'd allowed her family to engage her hand for marriage. to a neapolitan sottotenente with mustaches, spec­ tacles, and serious intentions. but pasquale became a prisoner of war. from his barbed-wire enclosure in oran he wrote giulia weekly a twenty-four line letter on green american stationery, with the return address in italian, german, and japanese. he told her of his loneliness, of the american spam he was eating. he hoped that the war would soon end so that she and he could settle down with his family on via chiaia, and he could go on with his career as an engineer. in her mind giulia had already written him off as a liability. she wrote carissimo fidanzato to him once a week. and like all good italian girls she led the life of a respectablefidanzata. she visited pasquale's family once a month and mourned for him as though he were dead. she passed her time as a ragazza ' .... "_" . ��' ._--. . / 'i:� i • ",,-", / 11 " gallhl � papa tooq' : [or ili�,u i tthe)m( giulia 217 per bene, shut up in the house with mamma or going to the cinema with her brother gennaro or her chum elvira, that simpatica dowd. giulia lived in that vacuum and parenthesis that was naples from july to october, 1943. yet in her small breast she nurtured a hope. the only excitement in giulia's life (she'd never batted an eye­ lash at the bombings) was the periodic concealing of her brother every time the germans came around to conscript him. in such moments coolness and resourcefulness shone forth all over giulia. gennaro would go 'white under his tan. mamma would have a heart attack and lie moaning on the tasseled couch, praying that papa wouldn't show up from his office, lose his temper with the tedeschi, and get shot. gennaro was also in danger of a fucilazione if they ever caught him. such crises happened every other week. only giulia was capable of holding the entire wehrmacht at bay at the door of their apartment. the tedeschi respected her as she stood in the doorway, shaking her brown ringlets at them. none ever laid a finger on her, from gefreiter to hauptmann. elvira however licked her chops over frightful stories of neapolitan girls (always unidentified) whose nude bodies were said to have bobbed up in the bay of naples or been stuffed up a culvert on the road to bagnoli. giulia's brother gennaro was seventeen. she knew she had more influence on him than either mamma or papa. she doted on gen­ naro. as she watched him comb his black hair over his white linen coat, she often told herself that gennaro was bello: he wasn't dark or greasy like many neapolitans. she wished he was a little taller, but everything in gennaro's body was in fine harmony as he walked with her and elvira, taking both their arms. giulia loved him best when he was groaning over his english under the stained­ glass lamp at the dinner table, his delicate face puckered into a cold passion, the rich undulations of his hair escaping down almost into his eyes. she noted that he'd a quick brain, though not so agile as her own. gennaro kept his body to a whiplike temper by swim­ ming, by fencing with other young camicie nere, and by dancing, which he loved dearly. and he was wise enough not to tic himself down by going steady with a neapolitan girl. the times were too unstable. occasionally he'd disappear with a friend. giulia knew where they went those evenings. to the casino of madam sappho. but then gennaro was seventeen, and the heart that beat under his short-sleeved shirts and crisp summer jacket was the heart of a neapolitan, which must make love. mamma had gained many chili since paoa'd brought her in 1924 �i / --���--' . ',i. ' •••. • � _"' ... ' i . 218 the gallery gi as a bride from florence. once she'd been as slim as giulia, accord­ ing to her photos. now she sat huge and bloated in her dark deep chair, listening to forbidden english radio broadcasts. her heart wasn't good. mamma was happiest when she heard jazz from london or when she ate a pizza prepared by giulia to trick her appetite or when her cronies dropped up for co£fee-a thing that didn't happen too often in these days of constant air-raid sirens. every evening after supper she lectured her children on the vices of the world and reminisced on their one trip back to florence to visit her relatives. mamma hated naples. she told the same stories over and over, but the children gave her her allotted hour every evening, sitting at her feet and listening to the hoarse gasping voice coming out of her chins and the mole on her lip. giulia sat with her small feet tucked up under her buttocks, and gennaro in the dim apartment smoked a nazionale and nodded his head dreamily, saying: -eh si, cara mamma.... and giulia, in the thousandth repetinon of the warning that naples would be dangerous for a ragazza after the allies took it (as they eventually must) would study gennaro's nose in the moon­ light and feel a compulsion to tweak it. she wondered if at madam sappho's too the women loved 'and understood her brother. every afternoon at fifteen hours papa banged up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. he came directly from his office in the questura, where he spent the day playing poker and adding up columns of lire and centesimi. he was always furious and splenetic till he'd had three cups of scalding caffe espresso. then his spirits would rise and he'd bawl and mime in dialect for the rest of the afternoon. his gray mustaches and gray hair and small paunch quivered with apprehension. this apprehension was founded on the insecurity of all employees of the fascist state. till now they were doing all right. they were the middle class with comfortable fixed stipends. but after the allies came (as they surely would) the stipend would remain unchanged and the lira would go down down down. papa could always awake mamma from her doze by the radio by telling her that as soon as naples fell, she'd lose all her avoirdupois because there wouldn't be anything to eat in the house. he also described with gestures his daughter earning her living on the streets and his son withdrawing from the university to work as a truck driver for the allies, and at a wage that wouldn't keep him in shoelaces. at this point mamma would awake with a jump, scream, say her rosary, caress her children, and say that italia was [0 hearin other. sians t� in hil than m eted th played papa w future g under ti and int offascis well ena instead wartw unifiedt ragioniel -ho and w ceased to against tl a speedy the hous in their tinually. on j mamma chain of � sounds of were far tedeschi rers on t lived to s of them. s of going t made giul tne swirli coming, sh to all the from the i ��hhl ----:_ ciulia,at(� her dark� i:'i, hell ard jau rr 'a to ��j -a��: : ir'nin!:: tilit' gl.(. giulia was rovinata and they would all be rovesciati. giulia and gennaro, hearing of these predicted horrors, would merely smile at each other. for they knew they'd get along somehow, even if the rus­ sians took over naples. in his youth papa had been more progressive and socially minded than most of the employees of the fascist state, who simply pock.. eted their stipends and their bribes, did as they were told, and played mad politics with the questore at the questura, in 1919 papa was returning from under arms, sad and confused for the future of italy. then he had met benito mussolini and had fallen under the spell. u ntii the ethiopian war papa had been a vigorous and intelligent fascist. papa knew so well the good and the evil of fascism. why hadn't the combines of torino and milano let well enough alone? why hadn't they built up campania and puglie instead of distracting the public's attention with the ethiopian war? why a dream of empire when italy had only begun to be unified? so from 1935 on papa had been as tepid a fascist as a ragioniere employed by the state dared to be. -ho smarrito la fede nel sognato destino, he said. and with the outbreak of the second world war papa in despair ceased to go to mass on sundays. in his home he wept and railed against the farabutti who had brought this on italy. he predicted a speedy end to europe. he cursed the italian middle class and the house of savoy. his curses were in his throatiest neapolitan. in their hearts his children agreed with him. mamma wept con­ tinually. her heart condition got worse. on 3 october 1943, naples fell to the fifth army. for a week mamma kept her entire family about her in the house. she had a chain of cardiac attacks. the house was without light or gas. the sounds of the liberators in movement that came up from the streets were far more ominous than during the air raids or when the tedeschi were in naples. mamma, with her feet in sheepskin slip­ pers on the divan, was tended by all. she lamented that she'd ever lived to see this day. she said it was the end of the world for all of them. she lambasted papa for not having consummated his plan of going to america twenty years ago. and every five minutes she made giulia or gennaro peer out of the apartment window into the swirling toggy streets to see if there were any new zealanders coming. she remembered what ii duce had said the kiwis would do to all the women of italy. she had giulia fetch the carving knife from the cupboard. she promised that this knife would finish in rl i • 220 the gallery giulia's heart if ever a new zealand tread were heard on their stairs. then mamma would turn the knife, smoking from her daughter's blood, on herself: for who knew that even a matron of her age would be safe from ravishing new zealand soldiery? but peer and descry as they could, giulia and gennaro saw noth­ ing but truck convoys tearing through the streets below. no new zealanders came to their apartment to violate them. over the nightly english lesson giulia whispered to gennaro that, while mamma was keeping them all shut up like canaries, all the other neapolitans were out hunting up choice jobs with the allies. a week later mamma allowed papa to return to his office in the questura. she also allowed giulia and gennaro to go out and try to buy some food. in their week of immurement they'd eaten up everything in the house. so giulia, gennaro, and elvira sallied out to buy food. gennaro carried the carving knife under his arm­ pit, also a little biretta that papa kept in a secret place. elvira had also been kept locked up by her family. her mousy face was unwashed, her hair all mad and atwirl. giulia in her neat frock and little cloth coat with the fur collar thought privately that her chum looked a fright. when a girl isn't by nature attractive, she becomes a monster when she lets herself go. in early october, 1943, naples was a city of chaos, of movement with no purpose, of charnel smells, of rain, of army truck headlights coming out of the mist like eyes without lids. the shoe was on the other foot now: the germans had taken over bombing the town as soon as they'd vacated the premises in favor of the fifth army. after the sun set through the fall rains, the few who dared go abroad stumbled their way over sidewalks in a close dreadful blackness. there wasn't a light, except from the truck convoys. corpses were let lie where they fell, creasing and bloating from the rain. living neapolitans stripped the clothing from them: the living needed the cloth. the city's sewage had all backed up in a spasm of vomiting, like stomachs nauseated with war. what stench didn't renege from the bay wafted through the ruptured mains in the streets. there were red whispers of typhus, and prayers that it was true that the americans' had a new disinfectant. and in the daytime the poor sun squeaking through the rains showed a spectacle more ghoulish than you imagined by darkness. clots of returning neapolitans trekked in from their hiding places outside the city. household furniture was pushed through the streets. wagons and carts swamped the roads through which the army trucks were trying to pass. horses and van owners were a! rno r�, o tno �ne wnl tfie �1 ana arrildla! lla!!1 t1m� ll�w! war wor1laia giuli t1vir: tiom were �ne t( oinil ...v �ne o!wu genm giulia 221 dubbed and kicked and screamed at by american mp's. they writhed and wrestled with the traffic like laocoons in a haze. -la nostra citta e morta, gennaro said, his voice sickened and phlegmy. -non credo, giulia said, but she too was ashgreen with terror as they felt their way through the vichi, where rubbish and foul moisture trembled on the walls like rotten emeralds. then she noticed that elvira was chewing gum. giulia whirled on her friend and demanded to know, her eyes narrowing into sparks, where that american gum came from. elvira began to splutter and said that an american soldier had given it to her brother yesterday. -ebbene? giulia said savagely, elbowing her bosom friend agains t an archway. -no, no, no, no, elvira said, bursting into tears. non ci pensareo ••• giulia felt relieved, even though she despised herself for the thought that had popped into her head.... these were times... e she'd always sensed a weakness in elvira, but not of that kind which would send her amica out onto the sidewalks to proposition the allied soldiers. by a series of leaps across streets, slinking along the narrowest and remotest alleys, they were approaching the questura. they arrived at a church slit in two by bombs. there remained the blasted portico with its picture of the madonna under shattered glass, its candelabra twisted like a frostbitten branch. under the tempera of the walls lay a cadaver in overalls. its dead eyes turned upward and outward like buttons fearful of a buttonhook. a little way off, on another pile of slag, was the hat that the head had worn when alive. elvira let out one cluck and fainted. gennaro laid his head against the shattered wall and vomited soundlessly. giulia desired to hold his head, but instead she knelt down by elvira and chafed her hands. after a time of murmuring incanta­ tions and encouragements, the way her mother had when they were babies, giulia got her party restored and walking on again. she told gennaro to use his silk handkerchief to wipe the corners of his mouth, from which dribbled a thread of slime. -vergogna, giulia scolded. she heard her small clear voice like a flute over the tympanum of sound that was naples that morning. the pallor sank under gennaro's olive skin, he resumed his spry gentle gait. elvira pulled rl i if • 222 the gallery her shapeless hat over her eyes and marched on in a blind stupor like a pig to the slaughter. at the main entrance to the questura, where her father worked, giulia and her party came upon a long queue of screaming and buzzing neapolitans, talking with hands and throats. at the side door cordons of mp's were hustling others under arrest to cells. the american mp's girdled the creamy stone walls of the entire questura building. in the glassed vestibule hung the sign: qui gli alleati impiegano civili competenti al lavoro so giulia told her brother and her friend to take heart; there were good jobs waiting for them inside with the americans. she stood on via medina on the outskirts of the mob, trying to for­ mulate some plan of action. but the yowling of the neapolitans and the shouted orders of the mp's drove everything out of her head. she felt again that long-ago sensation when, as a tiny girl with sparkling ringlets, she'd take refuge in her mother's skirts if strangers spoke to her. but then she looked at her brother's sad proud face, at elvira, who was beginning to jitter again. so she pulled her furpiece about her, took both their arms, and prepared herself to rush the line in the best neapolitan tradition on trolleys. -where's this pretty baby goin so fast, huh? an american mp blocked her path. his sudden appearance, al­ most out of the ground, stopped them dead in their tracks. it was the first american soldier the three had seen at close range. ei. vira burst into silly sobbing. gennaro came to attention and gave the fascist salute. giulia stood her ground and simply looked at the mp. she was as tall as to his chest. under his helmet she saw his yellowish face, pitted with the craters of his adolescence. his eyes were like oranges in blood. his mouth was a line of purple. he was in a tight olive-drab uniform and leggins. over one shoulder and by his waist hung a burnished leather holster and a pistol. the blue and white mp brassard on his arm was pinned below the single chevron. he looked at her and she returned his glare until his eyes softened and netted into wrinkles. all her english flew out of her brain, then seeped back in. and giulia spoke with her oxford accent: -please, sir, please . . . -ah, molto buono, said the mp, tu parlare americano? -i know english discreetly well, giulia said. and sir, we three desire a post with the liberating army.... we are good decent ilion more gonl giu ameri � (fua �llo k:01aoi toe] murnn ina ih i ltupi toatan rmor �er he ilan ob on i law ani �tnerel giulia americanal and sir, we� are good af((: italians.... my father is not an active fascist.••• we will do anything that good people ought to do to live ... -a sharp mouse, a sharp mouse, the mp said, clapping his holster in a dour delight. he put out his gauntleted hand and with a finger lighter than she'd have imagined stroked the soft line below her ear to her chin. giulia's impulse was to step smartly back out of his reach, but she stayed herself. back of her she heard gennaro's breath go into a snort. she hoped her brother would control himself. -please sir, giulia said, i am an honest young italian girl. this is my husband behind me.... we are recently married ... -0 scusate, the american mp said, himself stepping back. i didn't know ya was married.... well, baby, come around in a few more days and ask for gibson. i might be able to help ya. but don't walk in that door now unless ya fixin to take a blood test an maybe end up in poggioreale jail. ... but if ya wanta come back in a day or so, there might be somethin cookin.... frankly, i like ya, baby.... ya the first ginso girl i could imagine myself goin for.... why don't ya come to america? ya smart enough to do all right for yaself. -thank you, sir, giulia said. she gathered her brood and hustled them around the corner of the questura to via diaz. yet once again she looked back at the mp. he was still standing with his hands on his sam browne belt and gazing after her. -an stay off these streets, baby, he yelled at her. giulia didn't tell her brother or her friend, but she liked the american mp for all his seamy looks. he had a brusqueness and a crudity that wouldn't be acceptable in an italian man. but giulia also knew from some core of insight that he would be incapable of doing her any treachery. they walked up via diaz. gennaro was lost within himself, murmuring something about the soldiering in the italian army and the fine manners of their ex-carabinieri. elvira was sunk in a stupid terror; she'd retracted her head like a tortoise into her coat and was trusting only to giulia's arm to guide her. from the rear of the questura, where the cells were under the ground floor, they heard the screaming of incarcerated ladies calling out neapol­ itan obscenities and protesting that they'd never heard of syphilis. on the facade of the nco-something provincia building giulia saw another advertisement for italian help. at this portal wen" gathered petitioners of a different feather. she asked one of the 223 i • • i 224 asa citj' now hve nad the gallery hangers-on whose offices were here and was told that allied mili­ tary government was setting up its control of naples. in the tense postulant faces giulia saw most of the south italian nobility. contesse had risen early from their beds to get themselves a job as social secretary to a colonel; marchesi were ready to put their ischia or capri villas at the disposal of the americans and the british. all the elite of campania were waiting here to prove that they'd never been fascist, but had been just biding their time till they could give cocktail parties for the allies. -razza di cani, gennaro said and spat on the ground. giulia led him and elvira away. she saw that there was no hope from amgot. she couldn't compete with really big operators­ yet. in a market of naples where she'd always traded giulia found reality of a closer sort. there was almost no food on the shelves and no meat in the windows except a few chines of red runny flesh looking like no beef or pork she'd ever seen before. and what li ttle there was of anything was selling for from four to ten times its price of two weeks ago. giulia felt herself going sick and frightened under her gay dress and trim coat. she heard her voice shake on the brink of a sob as she asked mr. gargiulo if this weren't just a temporary shortage, if the allies wouldn't soon be rushing food into naples. thereupon mr. gargiulo, who'd always been so kind to her, seemed to blow up under his bloody apron. he delivered himself of five minutes' blistering neapolitan rhetoric, of pleading and sobbing and suicide threats. he told giulia that she was a cretin, then apologized to her; he called elvira a ninny from calabria, and he asked gennaro in a burst of irony what good all that fine latin and greek were going to do him now. then before giulia's eyes, which were beginning to seep the tears she'd been suppressing all morning, mr. gargiulo waved a freshly printed one-lira note. he told them that this was the new currency of the allies, and that it wasn't worth enough to buy a chicken with, no, not a whole bale of it. he told them that from now on napoli was liberated -liberated from life itself, because henceforth money would mean nothing in the markets, nothing. he told them that the allies had also liberated the lira of any value. so all four of them cried there in the bu tcher shop wi th the rainy october air looking in on them. then mr. gargiulo threw into giu1 ia's shopping basket some suspicious pasta, a few old greens, and a chunk of wormy meat. he said that he didn't want her money !(ran thn and) ther to d, as tn all 0 allie! irom qrea�oomh mu!tl01 he mm c (quid nis ha th( slate i naple wiresl wastl (qntin re�ave giulia 225 because it was the last time they'd see one another alive. they wept some more and cursed. only giulia stood a little apart from her own anguish and thought and puzzled inside her small studious head. when they got home and told mamma what naples was like, she had a really good heart attack. for a week it was thought that mamma wouldn't live. from that time on giulia and her family entered a desert of hopelessness. since they'd kept alive all during the german occu­ pation of naples and the bombings, they looked back on those days as a rather gay paradise compared to their existence now after the city's fall. then they hadn't minded living from day to day. but now it was a minute to minute struggle, in which any problem five minutes hence seemed a lifetime removed. every evening they had bleak sessions under the stained-glass lamp on the dining room table. they admitted that they hadn't been liberated from anything at all, that the war was just beginning for them. giulia felt like the man who survives pneumonia only to discover that his heart has been weakened forever. worst of all she found that misery doesn't necessarily make strange bedfellows-or any bedfellows at all. those other ladies in the apartment to whom mamma, when they were ill, lent coffee and fruit and fresh meat now withdrew into chilly hostility when they discovered that the bounty was ended. hence giulia began to doubt whether privation and suffering unite people so much as they divide them. each family went into a sniping war against all others. everyone in naples agreed only in saying that the allies were worse liars than the fascists. everyone was divided from everyone else. whereas the neapolitans had known a certain dreary camaraderie when they all faced the war together in the bomb shelters, they now became one another's enemies, since each must go out and forage for food. and giulia watched the comedy of her father's weekly stipend. each week he collected the same sum of lire that he'd been receiving for ten years. but with it he could buy a day's ration of bread. it was like a child putting up his hands to stop a tidal wave. the first weeks they managed only with the thought that this state of affairs couldn't last. for papa was known and loved in naples. he worked every angle and every connection, pulled every wire so that his family could buy in secret shops. his only luxury was that he smoked much. for a while his cherished cigarettes continued to dribble in: three from the vomero, two from tor­ regaveta, four from caserta. � i -_. -. -�� . / ",i., -.. . 226 �re!! giul brazi brazl a vmo �avel oft napl oar! giu]' a�err in he vira'! enao �u� theca here; noons, ihe!u lalkinl (qa� ( chin, !olaier lor th� �llj thl the gallery act leva mas vira raa' ifsi ei the and out in the third week typhus burst out all over naples the way a rash seeps through after presages of itching. mamma said sta bene, it would carry her off quickly, then she wouldn't have to bother about her heart any longer, and there'd be one less mouth to feed. she rose from her sofa more than she should and spent time in the kitchen beside giulia, trying to cook something into or out of the gray heavy pasta and the vegetables that seemed to have lain in the sahara. she howled for the white bread the allies had prom­ ised in their propaganda leaflets. then began the foul rectification of a foul situation. everyone knew that you could buy in naples any amount of american meat and medical supplies. if you had the price. papa knew where these things were sold, for most of his friends had gone into the black market. the only catch was that the prices were ten to twenty times the normal level. two weeks after its fall there was anything you wanted to buy in naples. for two thousand lire a day a small family could live quite well. but giulia knew no small neapolitan families with an income of two thousand lire a day. she didn" know any millionaires. one evening after a supper of dark bread, beans, and a potato soup papa announced that they might as well bid farewell to hon­ esty. he said that only two classes were destined to survive in n apies-the very rich and the very poor. the rich could afford to live through the parenthesis by selling all they had, to buy on the black market. and the poor stole more than they ever had because with the allies here there was more to steal. papa's mus­ taches were as stiff as iron. he described himself as a man tied to a plank and ordered to stand on his feet. giulia listened. she wished she had more of the italian woman's gift of tears. in her throat she felt only a pain as though there were a hot cauter there. after a while she went into the gabinetto. her stomach wouldn't keep down what she'd just eaten for it was as delicious as grass and as palatable as cardboard. she stood over the bowi holding her hot dry forehead and feeling her stomach twitch oysterlike and deathly. then she put on her coat and went out to find elvira for a walk. elvira's family had already entered the bracket of the war rich. papa brazzi had closed his barbershop and had taken a position as head waiter in an american officers' mess. from the kitchen door of this installation there streamed a small but precious rivulet of american meats, coffee, sugar, and white bread. enough of this contraband appeared on papa brazzi's table to keep his family as well nourished as they'd always been. the rest he sold or bartered. giulia 227 actually elvira and her family were living on a slightly higher level than the prewar "one fot their class, but in comparison to most other neapolitans in october, 1943, they were princes. el­ vira's posture was better, her eyes prouder, her complexion almost radiant. she was now in a position to make a brilliant marriage, if she chose. elvira greeted giulia with condescension. she led her friend into the brazzi kitchen, remarking happily that poor giulia looked pale and faint. she set before giulia a plate of american spiced meat out of a can, two slices of white bread, and a cup of chocolate which she bragged came from american powder. giulia ate every morsel, trying to conceal how hungry she was. -ah, poveretta, elvira squealed, watching giulia as though she were a canary breakfasting in a cage. and giulia, dizzy and enervated from her vomiting, knew coolly that this was the moment elvira'd been waiting for all her sup­ pressed days-the chance to play the queen at her own expense. giulia tried not to listen to elvira's itemized boasting over papa brazzi's commerce in the borsa nera, of the goods that lay in the brazzi cellar. arm in arm she and her new patroness walked in the galleria umberto. the arcade was moist and dark after the rains. on the pavement still lay the splinters of glass that had been bombed out of the skylight. a few bars were open. there was no electricity in naples, but lighted candles stood in their own wax on the marble bar tops. by this wan light allied soldiers drank vermouth. and giulia noticed that they were being whistled at in a casual sav­ agery that made a pain press on her eyeballs. it was the first time in her life she'd been treated so. she tightened her grasp on el­ vira's arm and forced her into a swifter pace toward the via verdi end of the galleria. suddenly there came to her mind in the midst of the murk and the candlelight and the slippery pavement those walks she'd taken here as a little girl with her mamma and papa on sunday after­ noons. there was glass then in the dome of the galleria umberto; the sun dropped like a gay flag, the murmur of the neapolitans talking was bright and sure. in those days giulia wore small green coats and green ankle socks and a small straw hat fastened to her chin with a green ribbon. in those same bars where the allied soldiers were now drinking, she used to reach up her little hand for the sunday ice-cream cone. she was picked up and kissed by all, though mamma didn't like compliments paid in her presence .. �-----j� / -. -------------=-� ., . , ." . . � ,// i i� , i i 228 the gallery rev( troo g !till up i and iva! i rigid lieulj out!1 ��� cryl� te dodrlama � !oldai jddi� �ti' �ne onto !udde �a�e �ne t andt, !nru� uom !oreh fifteen years ago! out of the haze and the feeling of sleepwalking in a dank cellar, giulia heard those voices praising her baby beauty: -ah, la piccina! eh, che piccola regina! com'e carina, signora, e ben educata pure. but this memory broke off and mangled, for it was october, 1943, and giulia and elvira were walking through a changed galleria. she observed-at first she thought it her imagination­ that elvira was gawking at the allied soldiers, obviously turning her head as they passed concentrations of them chewing gum or passing around a cognac bottle. giulia queried softly, was it elvira's plan to marry an american? elvira replied with a coy casting down of her eyes, well, she'd considered the matter. then giulia said with the tinkle of an icicle that the americans were different from us and might easily break the hearts of us italian girls. and elvira gave a too loud laugh and stated that sentimen­ tality was out of date; it didn't pay. -ah, ti prego, said giulia, di non dirmi piu simili sciocchezze. to which elvira replied with heavy scorn that it was all very well for giulia to talk big ideals when she hadn't enough to eat. for the first time in her tranquil life giulia had the impulse to slap someone. but she merely tightened her hold on elvira's arm. in the exact center of the galleria giulia saw a sight that was new. it scored her wi th the fascina tion of a pimple on the back of one's neck. she saw many girls alone and in pairs, girls she'd never noticed on the streets of naples before. their attire, even in the dark, shone with a determined if shabby brilliance. they laughed constantly in a sound like crows jeering. they urged themselves boldly on the soldiers, who waited or pulled on their bottles. through the night air tumbled estimates in lire such as one would hear on the stock exchange in piazza della borsa. giulia'd never heard italian women talking money so much before. the price of four thousand lire was much bandied between the soldiers and the girls. then elvira nudged her. an american soldier was leaning against the slate-hued wall of the galleria. he wore a fur-collared jacket and muddy leggins. in his hands were two tin cans which he pushed and retracted from the girl in front of him, who put out her tongue and wriggled the tip of her nose. her dress was ragged. she was in a hysteria of several moods. she seemed hungry and frightened and lewd all at once. finally she seized the soldier's arm, pulled him along with a searing laugh, and they both ran out of the galleria. elvira tittered and giulia 229 late·dueo ��: 'udd,1ewru,: retracteo from� \tri�leo wi� 'jteria of !el� ;'i'd all at o�� ,qwitha!ea� ira tittered � revealed that in those tin cans was the food served to american troops at the front. her papa called it c-ration. giulia put two and two together. she began to quiver, standing still in the galleria. lightning raked across her eyes. there stormed up in her small breast a bitterness and a fury that frightened her and tore at her. she thought her heart was going to stop, that she was going blind with rage. and she heard her voice clang over her rigid lips like knives. she cried, not to elvira or to anyone in par­ ticular, that a soldier who gave food to a hungry girl for love was outside the human race. elvira tittered some more, said that this was war, and that italian women could make riffraff of themselves if they chose. but then she stopped, for she saw that giulia was crying. tears plopped down giulia's cheeks. sobs came from her small body in a series of waves, dry waves like sheaves of paper ripped by a mad hand. -siamo vinti.... in questa guerra sono morti non soltanto i soldati ... rna l'anima, le donne, e l'onore di tutti quanti.... che iddio ci aiuti.... still sobbing, she forced elvira to quit the galleria with her. she knew that if elvira so much as giggled once more, she'd hurl her onto the wet sidewalk, though she was smaller than elvira. elvira suddenly took her leave and went into her own house. giulia passed a church which the sacristan was just locking for the night. she told the sacristan that it was a gracious idea to lock christ in and the people out of the churches when the sun set. the sacristan shrugged and stepped aside to let her pass in. giulia took water from the holy-water font and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. she was glad that elvira had gone on home. she was still trembling, as a leaf remembers the wind. after the black rainy air of naples the church was glowing with vigil lights. these streaked out the offerings in the glass showcases, the cups of gold, the jewels, the token offerings for miraculous cures. because of these treasures the church was locked at sundown. at a side altar a plump old priest was saying his rosary. because she made some noise in entering, he looked at her testily and clucked. giulia knelt before the statue of the madonna, which every year was borne through the streets on august 15 covered with flowers and smoked over with torches and incense. and giulia prayed to our lady. she'd never really prayed before in her life. she told holy mary mother of god that she was a neapolitan \/' / �� i _-_. � . ., .' . . . -�� // 230 the gallery as � be� all. af no pr dri1 rou her en� a girl of nineteen. that she had her selfishnesses. that perhaps she was a little too proud for her station in life.... but (giulia begged mary) what are women put into this world for? aren't they to make good wives to men ... at least in italy.... every good italian girl wishes to be a wife and mother.... a woman doesn't fear suffering as much as a man does.... having children isn't pleasant ... but at least it's natural. ... mother of god, a woman can't cope with unnatural things like war, because a woman was put here to bring life into this world ... women aren't interested in killing.... giulia asked the madonna to help her. her lips formed most pas sionately around that word, help. then she left the church. it was only two minutes now to the door of the apartment. she rounded an alley and came upon a tableau. an american soldier was lying unconscious on a doorstep. in her reflex of flinching back giulia saw that this drunk was being relieved of his lire and his packs of cigarettes. at her step the thief jumped up from bending over the unconscious figure. it was giulia's brother gennaro, all pale and with a murderous grief in his eyes. her brother gennaro. �, giulia discovered the consequences of sharing a secret which must never again be referred to, even with its imparter. this weight forced her deeper into herself and removed her completely from this life. hitherto her adjustment to living had been a sweet modleve eration: neither mad for society nor shunning it. she'd lived well !aid in herself, but not with that intensity or misanthropy which marks pro the queer or the gifted. now all was changed. the sight of her pra! nrother bending over the drunken american soldier and rifling his angi pockets had burnt giulia's eyes, as though she'd looked straight at arne the sun. often at night she saw this vision, asleep or awake, as a tepa light remains on our retina after we turn away into the dark. with orin this there came to her moral and ethical nature a rift which relhin fused to heal, which caused her night after night to cry into her �he'l pillow. mel she knew that gennaro had done what she saw him doing not ilie through meanness or tendency to burglary in himself. he'd done hi! what he'd done not for himself but because his family had to eat hi!!i and because he could sell a pack of american cigarettes for three g hundred lire. he had only to steal a few packs a week, and his iamdille] ily would revert to their former tranquil prosperity. all this giulia in hl knew, but the explanation didn't help any. and she knew too that woul in these times neapolitans of the middle class could starve slowly, from -perha�ll� 'ulla ��� n't tn�l � �ooa it�i;' aqe\n't ie 'm't �i�� n can'tm1 put n�rn 'n killin�", ea molt �ecret willi r.mw1i� pletel1uu: a iweetmoo e'd liven �l . whien m�1 licrnt o! �1 and ri�in�m :ed �rrai�nt:' r awake, �i e dark. \l'i� riltll'nicnrt, o err into n� jm doin� �� f. he'noo[: ih' had toti' ettel!ortnc andni![� i�jl thi) gium knew too� starve !lo�11 giulia 231 as effectively as if they'd willfully gone on a hunger strike. no, it wasn't that gennaro had st olen that brought agony to giulia's soul; it was that he had had to steal, that there was no way out of doing what he'd done. thus the worshiped figure of her brother became a symbol of that scabrous destiny which was debasing them all. he was no more her gennaro, but a marionete whipped on by a fury and a fate beyond him. it wasn't fair. it was filthy. he was now much more and much less her brother. he'd become the projection of all that was diseased in naples of 1943. to her dying day giulia could never forget that figure crouched in the murky vico, that look of horror and fascination outstarting from her brother's eyes, that brown hand she'd so often spanked in their english lessons going like a shuttle through the pockets of the american soldier. both their hearts broke at that instant-gen­ naro's and giulia's. they'd understood one another perfectly from the days when the little sister used to take the baby brother's hand there could never again be between them that ripeness and gentle­ ness, never, never. it was as though in a moment of madness they'd committed incest together, and had arisen defiled from the act, resolving never to see one another again. for their love had been close. they'd collided and passed through and beyond one another, like shadows embracing in hell. mamma, noting that the family's diet had returned to its old level of abundance and variety, nodded sagely from her couch. she said, see, they'd done wrong to curse the allies, for they'd kept their promises. italians were overhasty in praise and in blame. she praised the american spam and found that american coffee did her angina good. she hoped gennaro'd make the acquaintance of an american and bring him home for dinner. in this way they might repay some of their debt to the allies for liberating naples and bringing fine american rations into the house. giulia, when these things were said at table, would feel a knife go through her brain. she'd excuse herself from the meal and go to her room, for she knew that remaining at table would mean screaming. her brother, the sad bent tool of injustice, simply sat in his place and stared at his plate. his dark hair seemed to have turned into sleek snakes hissing along his forehead. gennaro's own sorrow forced him into a kind of flagrance of bitterness, as those with skin diseases appear brazenly in public. in his room he kept cartons of american cigarettes. these giulia would find as she did her morning dusting while mamma chattered from the couch in the parlor. then giulia, in an ecstasy of horrid 232 the gallery gi fascination, would pick up the shining cellophane packages with the reo target in the center. she'd count them with loathing, letting each tall back into the drawer through her fingers. each morning she would play with these american cigarettes till she had to sit on gennaro's bed and weep. mamma in the salortino would get peevish and restless and call out that giulia was getting lazy in her housekeeping, and would make no man a good wife. giulia knew that papa, anything but stupid, guessed what his son was up to after a few days' lying. so, living off the american food a ud the american cigarettes which he so passionately loved, papa's mustache grew white. giulia watched a metaphysical corset twine round papa's plump chest that was strangling off his breath. one evening in november papa walked with giulia to the door of her bedroom. all evening long he'd been ostensibly in high spirits, jesting of his fascist youth, of mussolini's violin playing, of edda ciano's legs. he was as gay as one coming out of an anesthetic. but giulia, inured to agony, saw his mirth for what it was, the abandon of a clown with a dying son. at her door giulia's father kissed her good night so hard that she tasted the small onions he'd eaten with such bravura, the tart red wine he'd drunk with dinner, the stinging afterbreath of american cigarettes. and papa's chest shook as he drew her head over his heart. -ah, cara mia, che bellezza! abbiamo un figlio ed un fratello iadro.... and as she lay in her bed she sounded the depths of her father's bitterness. or sometimes ciulia tried to exchange a few words with gen­ naro, those teasing sisterly sallies she'd always made. but their hollowness was obvious to her and, she knew, to him. any conver­ sation on their old level was as intolerable to both as a house hit by an incendiary bomb: only walls stood in the void where once were lovely rooms. nim, to his vital it aeme took rmhe eat. f nerce nr!tti o'cloc tnere,rlume o[na� oialect nan to olnool !eeing in december, 1943, ciulia sat under the stained-glass lamp over miped the dining room table. she was reading risorgimento, which she oeautr, hadn't had time to glance over all day. it was full of news of the fori countless neapolitan political parties and their diatribes against �tet one another. giulia thought of the line of steel and death to the irom e north of her. the germans were making italy a shambles by rain teo retreating slowly to the north, destroying as they went. she wonamino dered what other girls of nineteen were thinking tonight in rome, conyers in firenze, in milano. then her eye hit upon an ad. it said that tremon ; �. • • .' ��_-_-__ '.r---'-__ --. -. �rl-i' �. ii\t -, giulia .rrll"' lamr�': ij 10, wni(n � i of �ewlolr diatiibela� md deatn !o� 3 shambkl � li'ent. �he w�; niaht in ro� id. it said � shortly a club for american officers would open in the bank of naples. they were going to hire neapolitan ladies and gentle­ men as cashiers and wai terse giulia arose from her chair, smoothing her somber dress and her hair. she was wearing also her cloth coat with the fur collar because the house was damp and cold. nowhere in naples could you buy wood or coal, even on the mercato nero. giulia considered again. then she went to her brother's room. she knew how she'd find him. and he was. bent over their old english grammar. he lurched to his feet as she switched on the ceiling light. his passionate vitality at once wove an armor about him. she felt it opaque and dense as a wall, but she kept walking till she stood beside him and took his hand. she put her index finger on the advertisement and pushed it to him to read as though she were forcing an invalid to eat. for a minute they stood there looking at one another with a fierceness that gathered and stiffened them both. because it was the first time she'd brought herself to look upon gennaro in months, giulia saw how beautiful was his face, like the face of one with a wasting disease, where all the life and reserve passion pounds into the cheeks and sits there in a wildness of decisi:on and husbandry, saying, kill me if you dare. for a second she thought she was going to die. but some cyclone blew them into one another's arms, where they wept loudly for some while. in the cold brightness of naples in december giulia and gennaro and elvira walked through the galleria u m berto. it was nine o'clock in the morning. the night had brought the usual air raid. there were american ambulances in the streets, and neapolitan plumed hearses were carrying those who'd died earlier. the winter of naples has its own peculiar sting like the cursing in neapolitan dialect. giulia shivered and drew her fur about her neck" since she had to wear it in the house too to keep warm, it mocked her out of doors. but she was soon distracted from her own discomfort by seeing the seat of gennaro's trousers. he was wearing a gray pencil­ striped business suit. a year ago it had been a quiet vessel for his beauty. now the seat was shiny and the elbows the same. for herself and her brother, however, elvira more than compen­ sated. the brazzis were now rich. elvira was getting a double chin from eating so opulently. she did her nails in various colors and painted her face till it was a mixed vegetable plate. she'd developed a mince in her walk that once was clumsy and nervous. into her conversation, which had always been dreary, full of hot flashes and tremors and palpitations, elvira now injected american words of 233 :;1 i / ___ . ....-: =--...z,e_-----.:»_ " .' '" . //. fl 234 the gallery whose meaning she wasn't precisely sure. gennaro, who in his deal­ ings knew a practical and earthy english, would correct her hastily and beg her not to use such expressions. then elvira would titter furiously and say, my stars, she was getting as wicked as countess ciano, wasn't she? elvira wanted to see society, especially american. she'd developed a thirst for night life. and no matter how rich papa brazzi got from the black market, he'd still lock elvira in every night at curfew time unless she got a respectable job. elvira was attempting to get this job to get away from her family. with a job in the officers' club at the bank of naples, she hoped to snare herself a handsome american officer. all this giulia guessed. neapolitans said that the gray modern slate-colored bank of naples had escaped bombing because north italian bankers had bought off the pilots of american and british bombers. it was the only clean and solid building on via roma. its whole front was bricked and buttressed off from the street, against having its brass and glass doors shattered from detonations. the rear entrance was through a crypt with a subterranean car park. inside this cave were many neapolitans, wearing a suitable manner to be hired as waitress or cashier. they were all murmuring to one another, but they became demure and formal when they expected the officer in charge of the club to appear at the head of the stairs. would they be fed three times a day by the americans? what were the wages? the americans could afford anything. they ought to get together like a trade union and force the americans to accede to their demands. giulia noticed among the feminine applicants girls who swaggered on via roma. the males were nearly all neapolitans with spectacles and greased hair and a classic air of exasperation as though they'd been whipped by their families out of the library of the university of naples in the middle of their doctor's dissertation. gennaro and giulia and elvira took their place in the queue and waited in silent listening. a queue is an unnatural formation for neapolitans, who like to swarm and catch as catch can. late, very late, perhaps to show the neapolitans that they were a conquered people and not patients at a charity dispensary, a glass door opened in the wall of gray granite. the hundreds of petitioners fell into reverent silence and arranged their clothes and hair. there appeared two american officers in short monkey [ackets of green cloth. their breasts were barred with colored ribbons. there was a major built like a duck, his beard like gravel alan high carr itomilt look] pasl soun bursl the j hear i listen sen ie ane ouah heah .,.1 neah . to u now.. friendl hal 01 the and sh littles walls, milled oronzx once �oor i a ligh ;". ... � -_ =-_ . . -_ _ .·1 �1---1� giulla 235 along the jowls resting on his collar. a cheery stomach butted the high waist of his jacket. with him was a sad young lieutenant carrying a clipboard. the lieutenant's glasses drooped over his nose. to giulia he seemed an unhappy grandmother commissioned by mistake in the united states army. beside these two an interpreter looking like an osprey took up his position. the major made a pass in the air past his paunch with his jeweled hand. there sounded in the half-cellar a voice as rich and persuasive as a ph. bursting with suet. the major stopped after every sentence, ��1hich the interpreter then translated to the crowd. giulia had never heard anything quite like the english that the major used. she listened only to him, paying no attention to the sentence by sentence rendition of the interpreter: -mah deah n eahpolitan friends ... for you ah mah friends, each an everyone of yo.... we ah openin this here little club to give ouah pooah american officers a place to relax in. . . . but this heah club is also a friendly gesture to you, ouah neapolitan friends.... those of yo whom we find competent we ah goin to hiah as waiters or cashiers.... for when ouah uncle sam liberates italy, he also takes thought of her suffrin people.... theah'll be no partiali ty shown in the hirin or in the firin. . . . we know yoah reputation for bein lazy, my deah friends, an we ain't standin for none of yoah nonsense heah.... but ah just want to ask yo to play the game with me, and ah'll play ball with yo.... ah come from a state in the union that is as bighearted as she is big.... now yoah wages will be ninety lire a day, an you can take home what sandwiches and pastry they is left at the close of the workin day ... if they's any.... all't ah'll say heah is, if theah is inybody heah who won't work for ninety lire, why they is just plain ingrates to uncle sam, that's all. ... they can go to theah homes right now.... we don't want no truck with them.... now my deah friends, just form an orderly line and wait yoah turn for interview. half of the neapolitans broke away from the mass and went out of the rear of the bank of naples. under their breaths they mewed and spat and cursed. those who'd decided to stay pushed up the little stairway past the custode and turned left along the cool dark walls, cloudy with the veins and strata of the stone. then they milled through another corridor where the doors were tall and bronzy. then they mounted a stairway with sweep and curve where once fascist bankers climbed with their briefcases. on the second floor more brass doors gave into a room where a faun played over a lighted fountain. then came the vastest room giulia'd ever seen 236 gi -. tn after cross,!the pi enclo! the gallery outside of the movies, and lastly a narrower apartment where benches had been linked on a trestle to make a long bar. the windows were all arched and hung with valances of cream and green. this led through a small reception room with a pink piano to a door tha t said office-off limits. they were oddly silent for neapolitans as they sat down in the deep green leather divans and looked at one another with that mutual suspicion of outer offices. giulia and gennaro and elvira found a seat close to the office door on a long sofa, in which they seemed to drop into a well of cushions. then a girl ran in with a shriek and collapsed beside them. she was pursued by a brilliant-eyed man in the belted jacket and the loud trousers of italian racing drivers. they introduced themselves as wilma and gino. giulia measured wilma with interest and sympathy. wilma wasn't young any more, but she balanced the equation by a mockery of everything, herself included. she began at once talking to giulia. she told giulia that gino wasn't so rich as lovers she'd had in trieste and tripoli, but that he was shrewder. wilma chain-smoked, thieving cigarette after cigarette from gino's waistcoat and stabbing at her lipsticked charred butts with violet fingernails. her laughter was low and one inch this side of spiteful. and gino talked over her voice, saying that wilma was a vecchia strega, how he'd been an interpreter for the americans since salerno, how they were really quite nice to work for; and when they saw that you did a little feathering of your own nest, they took it all in the spirit of business competition. in the affection between "vilma and gino giulia noticed something as bitter and close as mint under grass. wilma kept grabbing giulia's hands and caressing them as she reminisced of high life in trieste and tripoli. gino got into a conversation with gennaro on fencing and swimming and calcio. in track, alas, gino had hardened his arteries before his time. wilma's mouth, except when she laughed, was a long generous sphincter of carmine. during all this badinage elvira just sat lean­ ing her chins on her bosom and gasping with delight that she was at last getting a taste of high society. but wilma, whatever she was or had been, was a wise woman. love and tricks and shrewd­ ness and irony dropped from her lips into giulia's ear as most women burble platitudes. she told giulia that no woman need ever condescend in this life; no, not even if she worked in a casino. giulia never forgot what wilma told her that morning. time, tir!t made ciulla made the 0 of a mulle at the to the ie!! fu tone thewh taking mor� that c1 toere two n� what a of radl dollar, ni!!]ee til] he tnrico demet� and lu oragge giulia 237 de tn�lil� cket analli d tneffil1!1: interell �: balanc�a � d, �ne �l �\'aln'l �rr. wallnme e homgiru � wiln 1i�:: ide 01 iriltl� \l'alam� the officers' club of the peninsular base section opened on an afternoon in late december, 1943. the light of winter naples crossed via roma, cut the standards on the balconies, and grazed the parquet of the dance floor. wilma and elvira sat behind high enclosed cash desks and sold books of chits for drinks. giulia's post was a small throne behind a long directorial table with a silver salver of spamwiches and chocolate eclairs. for seven hours it was her function and her duty to lift up these refreshments on a silver spatula and put them into the wax paper in the hand of the pur­ chaser. she could look across the dance floor and watch wilma at her cash desk. wilma's pose was to lean sapphically on her hand and lazily to accept cigarettes from officers. the major had ordered all his girls out of their pretty dresses and into mother hubbards of the hue of discolored wallpaper. he did this, he said, because he knew the desires of men in war­ time. his aim was to make his girls as mouselike as possible. at first wilma and giulia raged because the faded mother hubbards made them look like graduates of the pompei orphanage. but giulia soon found out that at closing time at the bar it would have made no difference if she'd been wearing a washed-out pea pod. the officers came around anyway. of all the major's employees only elvira was sad. she moped and mulled behind her cash desk. nobody came to her to buy chits. so at the end of two weeks the major fired her, advising her to go up to the anzio beachhead, where it was darker and the men were less fussy about what they looked at. elvira returned to her family, to be locked up every night at curfew time. she said she'd hated the whole vulgar job from the start, and had only been talked into taking it because she was too goodhearted. more men than women worked at pbs club. the major said that giulia and wilma were simply the dash of sugar in the staff. there was a corps of waiters, tricked out in white ties and tails. two bars functioned simultaneously, for the major roared out that what american officers wanted for relaxation was a combination of radio ci ty music hall, minsky's, jack dempsey's, and the silver dollar. what he meant by this giulia never learned. and the major, his sleeves rolled up, personally schooled the neapolitan bartenders till he said they could get a job anywhere in new york. they were enrico, always melancholy and almost sweetly pock-marked; and demetrio, that acute little rat who couldn't stop having children; and luigi, who rolled his eyes on either side of his huge nose and br agged or his friendships with german officers and sang "firenze ilieu� :no �ol inw: 'flu ana �i�; [orcnilli[i lon� �eneni 3 jull lal!1� tthallnel1 li'hatel'ertl lan01flrf!; s ear � m� woman n�; li'ofkea i�: at mornin!, 238 grthe gallery stanotte"; and handsome sergio, who'd somehow got trapped in naples from torino and never talked to anybody, but kept a diary and lived in the vibrant and closed sweetness of his own nostalgia. then there were the waiters who shot across the polished floor with their coattails clanging like gossips' tongues, banging their trays on the bar and calling for eight jeeen e j ooos over the orchestra. of these there was first of all giulia's brother gennaro, who kept himself aloof from the rest. she never discovered where he got his tails. gennaro had taken to brilliantining his hair, which glistened like phosphorus. he now spoke perfect american, bragged much with the american officers, called his sister keed or mouse or butch. giulia watched the american nurses gasping for gennaro. and there was furio, the tiny communist who was once a tenente di vascello in the regia marina and spent his fridays off at party meetings in the vornero. and there was alfredo and his mustaches, who'd made what he hoped was his pile in a brooklyn barbershop and had come back to naples to die in peace. but a bomb had got the house and the family for which alfredo'd slaved in the brooklyn barbershop. alfredo said grazie too many times for a tip of ciga­ rettes. his bows to majors and colonels made his chin almost touch the floor and his coattails lash up his spine. there was also a troop of neapolitan ladies and gentlemen who did odd jobs about pbs officers' club. they didn't belong to the white-collar crowd. giulia soon got bored with seven hours' sitting behind her sandwiches and looking like a madonna, as the rnajor had instructed her to do. so she watched everything. she observed gaetano the electrician climb ladders in his sandals and replace burnt-out bulbs in the chandeliers. from her table she might also observe the sales talks and outraged nobility of signora anna negri, who stood beside her showcase on her aching feet and sold miniatures of capri or cameos especially tailored to the mothers of americans. the major's retinue reported to work at 1630 hours each after­ noon. they trailed chilled and peeved up the sharp noble stairs to the second floor of the banco di napoli, each carrying his or her supper: mozzarella and black bread and tomatoes and an egg wrapped in last night's newspaper. giulia used to listen to them talk as she held her own black market supper tight against her small sharp breasts and marched up the staircase. how they talked! they couldn't live on the ninety lire a day the major was paying, nor on the leftover smelly old cheese sandwiches, nor on the old chocoillue �i'thewg alive! reputat born to it ail 1 behind till her relembl �ioux f both (alh de be�an t lou�ht �elture enterpd on the ciulia, majors witna ciulia treated !nelea mockin wilma's elo�uenl timel trumpet men loy taln de oetween tnemaj, turtle·ne towil witn as ner face lad for j whe � i • ---. . .., /--i =t� otuu x 239 linea ��:, �ln� tne: i over t� r genn�� ereawoe: hair,\\oili n, dra�l�: rmou)1r,: r genn�l, e a tenm!i offatrm multa(06 bar�nnf;: mbhaq�: e broohl)l late eclairs which they were allowed to carry out of the club when the cream became like pus. as giulia mounted that staircase every afternoon, all of naples in the winter of 1943-44 was around her ears: babies freezing because there wasn't any firewood, american­ issue pasta that turned to gray entrails when you put it in the pot, the sugar at wild prices, whose office boss (god love himl) was buried alive in last night's bombing, what girl had finally gih:n up her reputation and gone with the allies, the rate of negro children born to sicilian women. giulia knew only that she was numb from it all. then she would put on her mother hubbard and sit down behind her sandwiches and play tittattoe with an american captain till her eyes sang with pain, or listen to an american colonel who resembled her papa tell her why he hadn't won the mayoralty of sioux falls, wherever that was. both giulia and wilma had their own following. around her cash desk wilma attracted young airplane drivers whose tongues began to drip after their eighth martini. for wilma's benefit they fought all over again the bombing sorties out of foggia. they gestured and goaded one another into new heights of theatrical enterprise in their tales, as little boys vie to entertain a little girl on the sidewalk. and wilma also had a patronage that intrigued giulia. these were bright and disillusioned parachute captains, majors from rich baltimore families, lieutenants who wrote verses. with all these characters wilma held court. she was magnificent, giulia thought. wilma knew what was in god's mind when he created woman. when wilma entertained her boys at her cash desk, she leaned slightly back from them in tender hauteur, her eyes mocking and affectionate from inside their azure mascara shadows. wilma's mouth was too big, but it was in such constant motion of eloquence that giulia was never sure how large it was. and some­ times wilma's laugh of protest came through the dance band, a trumpet all her own. giulia saw that wilma loved men. therefore men loved wilma. or when no men were clustered about wilma's cash desk, gino would visit her from his office. he was liaison between all the neapolitans and the mournful lieutenant who was the major's assistant. by privilege of his caste gino wore only a turtle-necked sweater and tweed trousers. he'd talk long and low to wilma, their faces scarcely apart. often he'd make love to her with a speed and surety and intimacy which caused giulia to turn her face away. the spectacle of this light bandit love made her sad for hours. when giulia first took her job at pbs club, mamma had all sorts tlemenwt: e1on� to � our)' �lttl�: i the maj�: 'he odlm� anorer1a[i e ml�ntt. 'q11ora anm j ! eet ana i�!. emotnm�! ieacllaftrl' bleltairlw � hil orne ana an � ten to tn� oit her ima� [aikeo! 105 pa�in�1 n� ie old cnoro til /' /"'�. -_. � • i .' ", , a • ,"�� • ",. // " if. i 240 the gallery gi had tc a mas cross. guesse( ing gir waftel andlal it to h� chaplai child, 1 officers �redato -ha ing up -oh whips al -it night i the i wllloat -giu bohon i '" err. mea to �he la of cautions to her daughter, reminding her that italian girls were trained to handle men. perhaps giulia, to be on the safe side, ought always to carry a small dagger? giulia laughed painedly and wilma shrieked at the idea as they sat sipping coffee by mamma's couch. for indeed giulia did carry about her an armor deceptive as a cobweb. officers used to lean over her by the hour. they asked her what was the italian word for love. they told her that she was as lovely as their sister elaine. sometimes at closing time when they were tight giulia noticed something painful and cruel in their eyes, but it faded when they looked at the down on her cheeks. she knew what they wanted of her, but no one ever framed it to her. and giulia came to learn much of the world's men simply by observing them. she doubted that she'd marry pasquale when he came back from his imprisonment in oran. one evening in august, 1944, she was sitting on her small enclosed throne, the cash desk of the bar at pbs officers' club. the boys were jammed four deep at the bar; the air was silky gray with cigarette smoke. the officers kept up a roaring and a laughing over their drinks, a curtain which was in its turn pierced by the public-address system piping in the orchestra from the dance floor. for the major was determined that in no place in the club should there be any silence. he told the sad lieutenant who was his office boy (and the lieutenant told giulia) that they were endeavoring to avoid that stuffiness which always endangers a men's club. by now giulia was used to american noises and to the american idea of living loudly and in public. the dais on which she sat was so walled that in her six-hour shift she could cross or uncross her legs without anybody's seeing the results. at her right hand she had a stack of chit books and a lined roster to be signed by all who bought her tickets. at her left was an english dictionary and a copy of uncle tom's cabin. she'd make her sale with an automatic swift smile, then reimmerse her­ self in her novel. the tumult of the bar would die in her ears, and she could forget that she was the only woman in a vaulted roomful of drinking men. she was halfway through uncle tom. next she'd lined up gone with the wind� which she possessed in both english and italian. by collating both copies she figured that in another month her english would have arrived at perfection. long ago she'd dropped the oxford accent she'd learned from her maestra at the liceo. on this august night the officers hadn't bothered her. in eight months at pbs club she'd polished up the brushoff tactics 'wilma ana turn -goo -goo� �he wa wilh the jnea he rnat was for the a remembe !i�hed an ililj wit lne shut giulia 241 walnll[ endeavor, n'l em" mericant had taught her. but just now opposite her leaning on the bar was a most simpatico person. on one tab of his collar he had a silver cross. by a little questioning giulia proved to herself what she'd guessed when she first saw him-that he was a priest. he was drink­ ing gin and juice. he minded his own business, except that every so often he gave her a kind smile. he spoke to her in both english and latin. when she got stuck on a word in her novel, he'd explain it to her, poising his brown finger on the pages of her book. this chaplain's hair was cropped to the bone. his face had the glow of a child. to giulia he was a contrast with all the other american officers at the bar, whose faces were angry or soiled or lined or predatory. -have you many simon legrees in america? giulia asked, look.. ing up from her book. her forehead was resting on her hand. -oh lots, the priest said laughing. but we've taken their horse­ whips away from them. -i take this book home with me every night, said giulia. last night i read where little eva dies, and i cried myself to sleep. the priest laughed again and rocked back and forth on his combat boots. -giulia, you're great. i wish some of the bobby-soxers in my boston parish could see you. they wouldn't believe you existed. . . . crying yourself to sleep over a book i . . . american women used to do that fifty years ago ... but not now. she laid her novel face down and searched his face. the bar was weighted with the stifling august air. she felt the tiny ringlets fan over her moist brow. -am i so different, father? she asked earnestly. -well, frankly, giulia, you're out of this world.... then his face rushed a wild crimson, and he set down his glass and turned away. -good night, giulia, and god bless you. -good night, father, and thank you. she watched him leave the bar through its lurid smoke. he was with the 3rd division, which was crowding the streets of naples. she'd heard that soon there'd be an invasion of southern france. that was why in august, 1944, you couldn't turn around in naples for the americani. there were more of them here now than she remembered when the city fell in october of last year. giulia sighed and resumed her novel. she found that her thoughts were still with the priest, not with signora harriet beecher stowe. � she shut her book and thrust it under her dictionary. ner �ix'��. 00d"11�:: ljoobanl " atnerl: cavin, )� iffimer�k nere�ii�' ulted roorof, 'n, �ext)� ootn in�l� r in ano� n. lon� � her mar!: her. in 1i:: aeries i\'1� i' / __ . ",,-�=-j� __ :. ., .' . . � .. -»� _ ... / 242 the gallery gi -j giuli th other! giull: onlr on d� thl via �giulil office]ned!tan! tiler i own t of the rero!� wa!d oreak (i�are awar nar!] amerila!luffi four·o! tnat!! -b real! i -y -� nn�er nau�n nau�n he �ut al tnou� tne p� li\'in� in� an ana th and ritner then there came to the only open space at the bar a florid major clasping the waist of an american nurse. giulia'd never got used to seeing women in officers' greens and wearing lieutenant's bars. most of the american nurses had been gracious to her, saying that she was a dream. but this major and this nurse exuded an ugly reckless giddiness of alcohol. the nurse snuggled into the major and chuckled. she was a stout blonde, her cap set madly on her dyed hair. she had also a double chin. she began to size up giulia, going all over her dreary mother hubbard with eyes like a parrot's. -sell me some chits, baby, the major said. don't just sit there and look like a doll. -please sign the paper, giulia said, pushing it and a pen toward him. -well, just who does she think she is? the nurse said, blowing cigarette smoke into giulia's face. giulia's eyes watered, but she said nothing. -a mighty pretty piece of quail, the major said to the nurse, indicating giulia with a whistle. -herbert, the nurse said, don't g� ve me any of that crap that she reminds you of your daughter. i've heard that crap out of you before. the nurse leaned her head on the major's shoulder and closed her eyes. her double chin bobbled while she swallowed her drink. then she leaned close to giulia. -why don't you use lipstick, girlie? -1 have naturally good color, giulia said. and lipstick is hard to get in naples this year. and if 1 put too much on, my mother would have me wash it off ... -well, listen to that now, said the nurse. don't get on your high horse with me, girlie. 1 have to take enough crap on the ward in the daytime. 1 didn't come here to have the likes of you insult me.... i'm a commissioned officer in the american army in case you don't realize it, girlie. i've a good mind to report you to the military manager.... 1 could have you thrown out on via roma with the rest of them ... -oh dry up, mary, the major said. why don't you buy her some ii pstick from your own px? -i'd croak first, the nurse said, her double chin jiggling. let's get the hell out of this flea joint.... get the jeep and drive me back to aversa.... i'm all sweaty. 1 can't beat this damn heat. giulia -and just mind your p's and q's with me, girlie, she added to giulia. i'd hate to tell you what i think of you ginso women. the nurse and her major went out of the bar nudging one an­ other, the major protesting that he hadn't made eyes at giulia. giulia watched their exit. then she laid her head in her hands. only for an instant, for the major insisted that his girls look sharp on duty. through the open windows of the bank of naples looking out on via rome the sultry music of the neapolitan night came up to giulia, an undertone discernible even through the rumble of the officer's bar. she could all but distinguish the press of the women's heels on the pavements beneath her, could almost see the neapoli­ tans lounging in doorways and the scugnizz' peddling things till they must leave the streets at curfew hour. this murmur of her own town had a certain meaning for giulia. the simulated gaiety of the americans in their bar had none. she was weary. the very repose of sitting and selling chits or sandwiches for eight months was beginning to fatigue her. wilma and the other girls could break the monotonly by ducking down behind the cassa for a quick cigarette. lately she noticed that she'd a headache when she walked away from the club around midnight. perhaps it was the war. per­ haps it was naples in august, 1944. perhaps she was what the americani called fed up. but it did seem to her that her life was assuming the quality of a grinning automaton who worked on the four-o'clock shift. she knew that she was giving nothing of herself, that she was turning into a slightly stale vase of flowers.... -buck up, giulia, said an officer, buying some chits. life is real, life is earnest. -yes, giulia said, lowering her eyes. -so ye won't talk to me tonight? the officer said, waggling a finger. okay, don't. i'll go and shoot the breeze with wilma. she's naughty.•.• i like em naughty. why don'tcha wise up and get naughty too? he left her in. an irritation. giulia sold more books of chits, but all the time her mind was running in its own groove. she thought of her fidanzato pasquale. every week his letters came from the pjw enclosure in oran. they were flatulent and lamenting, living over the years 1940 and 1941. they were full of noble whin­ ing and quotations from leopardi. he kept telling her that italy and the italians were done for. and giulia thought of the neapolitan girls she'd grown up with. either they'd gone giggling over to the allies for what they could n jjgglin�, � � and dnv�) � damn b�� 243 � i : �"'� -_. . ".' '. .�,' � --_./ .. 244 the gallery gi to wh cold, giu tearss -w riange �he ameri �he pee talking the te heanfi returnel-me �ia, her j maae g ituriillr olinalr -yo rrienasl -no know ro totilis in's oe -yes, tfiedlitalian) le� colla -yes, rletelr h �e love romes, , irrained 1 ",mere this} looked uj like a we �e smilel iroke,it � hideo1 �irr tah get, or else their mothers had locked them up for the duration. she knew that the lives of all neapolitans had been cut in two. they might all be said to have died; yet she doubted if they'd had a rebirth, though their bodies went right on living. only herself seemed unchanged, moving in some orbit of her own that had no relation to any reality. on this night in august, 1944, giulia was lonely. she was the only neapolitan girl who was hewing to her own destiny, as though the war had never been. thus now in her breast she felt a pulse of fierceness and resentment when she looked at the naples of august, 1944. there was nothing here now that offered her any consolation or the old quiet delight she once took from life: the sip of a glass of new wine, the walks with her girl friends (she'd none now, though she visited many), and that old pleasure she used to get from combing out her hair before going to bed. all these simple processes and habits had become routine and zestless to her. she felt like a starving person who has lost the taste for food. she wondered if she were dying of staleness. -0 dio mio, she said fiercely to herself, su, sul coraggiol ... she wondered to what a pretty pass she'd come that often now she carried on dialogues with herself. and it was all very simple, for she saw clean through the rhetoric of italian. she wished to be loved. this craving had crystallized in giulia during her eight months at pbs club. but she wished to be loved according to the old standards of honor passed down through generations of italian mothers. she wasn't interested in something mad and fragrant for a few nights, such as she sawall about her in naples of august, 1944. before the fall of naples she'd been on the right path to be loved according to her lights. she saw the purpose of her training, to be an italian girl of softness and dignity. nearly all italian women had these traits. but many had abandoned them in the catastrophe that was rending italy. giulia had abandoned nothing. now as a result of still living as she'd been taught to live, she found herself like an island, off by herself. she wondered if she were mad. she feared she'd schooled her soul for something that could never again materialize in italy. she was objective enough to know that in a normal time she'd have had a quietly happy life. she'd have been a good wife and a good mother. that was what women did best. but how were these things to be now? sometimes she got such a perspective on herself that she seemed a quiet feast set on a table giulia 245 to which no man would ever come. now the food was growing cold, and all the loving pains of the cook were wasted.... giulia couldn't resist laying her face in her hands. she felt her tears squeezing through her tightly locked fingers. -why you're crying, a voice spoke to her. ma lei non deve piangere cos! amaramente.... perche? she looked up and made a grab for the handkerchief that an american captain whom she'd never seen was holding out to her. she peered swiftly up and down the bar. everyone was drunk and talking wildly. no one had noticed her disgraceful giving-way. the tears in her eyes stopped quite suddenly. she turned away her head from the american captain and blew her nose. reality returned to her in wave upon wave of mortification. -metterei volentieri mille fazzoletti sua disposizione, the captain said. her joy at being addressed in formal italian by an american made giulia weak. she gripped both sides of her cash desk, smiled stupidly, and returned his handkerchief to him. she reached blindly for her green bag to take out her own. -you mustn't speak italian to me, she said. among my american friends i speak american. -now who taught you that pretty speech? the captain said. i know you're too sharp a girl to think that the people who come to this club are your friends. so don't begin with a hypocrisy ..• let's be honest with one another from the start, shall we? -yes, said giulia, i do so want someone to be honest with. the brazen sound of this speech in english (she still thought in italian) stunned her. she felt her color coming up over the shape­ less collar of her mother hubbard. -yes, the captain said, setting down his glass, let us be com.. pletely honest with one another.... i'll be honest with you. you're the loveliest girl i've ever laid eyes on. and your loveliness comes ... from being ... just there.... i walked into this smelly strained room, expecting to find nothing. and i find you ... just ... there ... how wonderful. ... and i'm not drunk either. this american captain was the ugliest man giulia had ever looked upon. his face was square. in his combat boots he looked like a wooden robot. his hair was gray at the temples. yet when he smiled or gestured with his long gentle hands, or when he spoke, it seemed to her that granite dissolved into music. he was so hideous that he made her want to laugh, as at a gnome in a fairy tale. yet her laughter at him turned back on herself. in his tanoa�: oili�n, � {�w ru!�l , bdol�� naccoll an jt�[ nan t�a ne tnat �i are!ulti eli il�ez �ne {wi: nev�r a� iv tnat i�i nave� ,en ilia� � got !ud,i t on a u� l i -_. �� • 1 .' • '-..... ;.r ...... '" ... • 246 the gallery g first contact with her this captain had beckoned her into a peace eng! in which he himself moved. this peace wasn't specious. giulia wa�] sensed it was a solid block which only his death could shatter. that, within five minutes she thought that this captain had always been le�ta, resident some place inside her, had chosen this moment to step she out and introduce himself. for he had a way of allaying her doubts citr h before she uttered them. he knew her, and she knew him, as though afro all their lives they'd instinctively been preparing for one another. lived -you're smiling now, the captain said. that's better. tell me thea' that you never smiled at anyone that way before. along -no, said ciulia, hardly daring to look at him, i never have. carroj for the rest of the evening till the bar closed giulia and the the h american captain talked together. quietly, when the spirit moved !tand� them to say something; casually, without effort. he leaned opposite 01 pro her on the bar. never too near or too familiar, because the externals rort u weren't necessary. something else in them was touching. and there daleo was respect for each other's privacy, like two civilized people bow­ ing in a maelstrom. the bar ceased to exist for them. giulia con­ tinued to sell chits. even when she took her eyes from him to count chits or change or to speak to the officer purchasing, she knew that this captain was with her. from this moment on he wouldn't leave her. some force had come up under her and was buoying her up as she'd never swum before. and she'd look into that face with no redeeming trait of beauty to make a man desir­ able. then a laugh of the wildest joy would seem to smother her. he responded to everything she thought or said as though, well, wil that was exactly what he'd expected her to think or say. diaz,:-we're not mad, the captain said. sanity is so marvelous. �b�ciyet giulia in her bed that night was sure she was mad. she itom t laughed and cried till the sun came up over naples. looking at wuple her sorry face in the morning, she laughed again and fell back on �rted her bed. cynical -si, sana pazza, she said. non potrei essere cosl felice. . . . thi! i that afternoon giulia knew she'd gone mad, but in a precise taking 1 and scheming way. she put on and took off nearly all her dresses. railing; she experimented with her hair, ending by doing it the old way ginoj! r with the delta of ringlets around her brow. mamma from her �a!!iom couch kept calling out whatever on earth was the matter with wnite fi: giulia? and giulia only smiled from before her mirror, her mouth in the' full of hairpins. finally she put on her green frock, her green the wh shoes, her green meravigliosa hat with the green bow. then she iva! low tucked under her arm the copy of uncle tom's cabin and the ner feal giulia english dictionary. mamma, inspecting her, pointed out that today was neither sunday nor a giorno di festa. to which giulia replied that, given the right frame of mind, every day was a giorno di festa. she went down into the streets of naples. in august, 1944, the city had a smell of baking stone shot through with the spicy tang of mandarini sold in the corner wagons. in that salita where giulia lived the corrugated iron walls of the public urinal impregnated the air 'with an acrid fume poignant as history. she walked quickly along humming to herself that tune "polvere di stelle" by hoagy carmichael. she swung her green bag so gaily that shoeshine boys in the public garden of piazza municipio turned round at their stands and called out to her invitations that had an american tone of provocation. she had also to pass the palazzo where an american port battalion was quartered; the of's were hanging out of their balcony windows in their undershirts, chewing gum and swapping with one another observations on current events and neapolitan girls with whom they were shacking. giulia's passage provoked a madrigal of whistles. the sentinel at the barbed wire, a gi of more feudal heritage, presented arms to her. ordinarily she'd have cast down her eyes and felt her body go taut, but today she smiled and looked him straight in the face. -come stare? tu molto buono, the sentinel said, shifting his carbine back to its shoulder sling. -grazie assai, giulia said. wilma and gino were living together in two rooms on via diaz. they were quite comfortable by pooling their salaries from pbs club and by drawing american rations that gino'd promoted from the quartermaster. they were easily the happiest unwed couple in all naples. their prosperity and their love were sup­ ported by the americans, whom they both cherished with the cynical devotion of people below stairs. this afternoon giulia found them where she'd hoped she would, taking the sun from their second-story balcony, leaning on the railing and holding hands. they talked incessantly to each other, gino's mouth against wilma's hidden ear, whispering ironies and passions. gino was wearing his turtle-necked sweater and a pair of white flannels. his brilliantined curls wriggled like garter snakes in the neapolitan sunlight. wilma had on a blue silk kimono. the white globes of her breasts twinkled in the sun. her blue hair was low over her forehead; her rouged and mascaraed face made her features sharp and clear to giuiia, who was standing thirty 247 ii' , / -_. �� • • i .' • rrti't • _: -�=_... ,. --�-"r 248 the gallery gi feet below the doting couple. wilma sent up her scream of welcome. -ho bisogno di te, giulia called up to the balcony, beckoning urgently up to wilma. -giulietta, aspetta un po'! wilma cried and vanished from the balcony, roguishly tucking her kimono about her creamy shoulders. -ciao, giulietta, gino said, leaning out over giulia. -ciao, gino, said giulia. after a while wilma appeared on the sidewalk and took giulia's arm. they waved good-by to gino on his balcony and whisked off along via medina at a businesslike clip. wilma'd put on a dramatic hat with a veil and had applied more paint so that her generous flamboyant face glistened like porcelain under the veil. with her breezy tact she didn't even inquire what giulia wanted of her. obviously she remembered her ancient promise to be giulia's chaperone in any emergency. =-come mai sei cosi cambiata in una notte? 'vilma said chuckling. by this one sentence giulia knew that this wise girl was in on her secret. wilma smoked a cigarette through the mesh of her veil, giving her the appearance of a network on fire. they turned up via diaz, arriving at the intendenza di finanza building. in august, 1944, this was the headquarters of the peninsular base section. without any difficulty they got by the mp and into the cool foyer, for wilma had a pass. as they seated themselves on the bench by the information booth, giulia suddenly asked what would wilma think if she married an american? wilma gave out a jolly cackle, patted her hand, and said that giulia for quite some time had been spoiling for an american. they didn't say much while they waited. giulia's body went into her usual meek relaxation. inside however she felt like a faggot of dynamite. wilma smoked two cigarettes. at all officers who passed by she gave a benign look. for by now wilma and giulia knew every american officer in naples who drank at pbs club. some stopped and kissed wilma's hand and exchanged veiled obscenities with her. and they bowed and said hi to giulia. wilma held a little salon in the cortile. at seventeen hours the court filled up with officers and gl's coming down from the offices above. the gi's went shooting out into the streets of naples for their mess and the long questing neapolitan evening. the officers carried themselves more stuffily. they moved in tight groups, talking shop and vengeance and pro­ motions. for the pbs officers were quite different from the combat officer giuji� was ii then i -n �he afte feeling whethe a�ainsl -eo wiln mannel her khaki � his han ana wei si�h a�1-ma dr this, giuli introau it was tenaing rmon unger �artain wilma, witn �o own pe -ma for a giulia's men�, one face ilieady eacn otl italian lion of was by n te�ect g wilma ;. . .. "j _ '�___, --'---. �. •. , giulia 249 officers who descended on naples for their leaves from the front. giulia watched them all go by from under her green bonnet. it was like counting sheep. she peered quickly at the faces of each, then lowered her eyes to the green bows of her tiny slippers. -dov'c, dov'e? wilma whispered nervously. she was taking it almost as hard as giulia herself. after a stretch of watching faces and confessing to a sinking feeling that maybe he wasn't coming after all, and wondering whether she'd gone too far, giulia suddenly planted her elbow against wilma's fruity hank. -eccolo che viene, giulia said. wilma gave a sigh and gathered herself up in her noblest manner. her captain came gravely toward them. he'd been planting his khaki cap over his right ear. catching sight of them, he dropped his hands to his sides, then squared out in a gesture of surprise and welcome. his ugly face fired into a smile. giulia heard wilma sigh again, gustily. -ma! ... said wilma, and giulia had no idea what she meant by this. giulia made her captain a curtsy of humility and joy. she introduced him to wilma, who broke out into praise and effusions. it was one of those things that wilma did gorgeously well, pre­ tending that she was merely renewing the acquaintance of the person presented to her. but all the while (giulia knew) from under the veil wilma's merciless witty eyes were giving her captain an appraisal like the last judgment. nothing escaped wilma. it was for this reason giulia'd brought her along: to comply with south italian standards of decorum, and also to check on her own perceptions. -ma parla cosl bene italianol wilma squealed graciously . for a few minutes they all three spoke in italian. wilma and giulia's captain outdid one another in gallantries and compli.. ments. giulia just watched and listened, her gray eyes going from one face to the other. inside she felt proud and gay, for it was already clear that wilma and her captain liked and respected each other. buon indizio. both excelled in a mellow worldly italian chatter of the formalest sort. both realized that conversa­ tion of this civilized order was a means to an end. giulia herself was by no means so glib. she was accustomed to sit in a corner and reflect gravely to herself. yet she derived a delight in watching wilma and her captain hit it off :\i'uidli ':l'i�11 !nf [cll'l� .al�oc oll'\\'liml! dranlll � nd fx(��: hi to0i� cerlanaf lhoolin� , long �u�� more �w[ ance anal' n the com: i i 11 i -_. ��� • r .' • 250 the gallery gl then her captain took giulia's arm ever so lightly, as though tn a feather had insinuated itself into the crook of her elbow. and the g he observed to wilma in english: mam -i've been thinking of my girl all day long. the 0 -you are making no mistake, said wilma, whose english was a disl slow and stately. was h there was a pause, seemingly contrived by wilma, in which capta giulia and her captain looked at each other. their eyes intertnes� laced in hunger and questioning, and giulia's small doubts were and sl again put at rest. there came to her again that odd mad peace, that lne w sense of being pulled out of the tempest and the dark, of flying (noug upward into the sun. giulia felt giddy, and she heard wilma laugh out n at her captain: ner e) -carina la nostra bimba, eh? -1 -ma sl, said the captain. ma s1. un tesoro. . . . -� -ciao, giulia, the captain said. -� -ciao, capitano, giulia answered. the words came from deep tner'v within her. -1 invite you both to tea, the captain said. -i he placed himself in the middle, took both their arms, and they rou tl walked out into naples. for giulia the sun had never been so warm, -b the browns and grays of napoli so rich. she looked at the thousanas amen of neapolitans scurrying on via roma, screaming and gesticulating �heland worrying; and she found herself blessing them all: the weary with widows, the frenetic scugnizz', the anxious studenti and studentesse -�iburbling about their examinations and the spleen of their profesao tnsori. all the while during their walk her captain and wilma tn� chattered of tiny nothings and amenities. giulia didn't feel as 1taliajithough she were left out of the conversation, but rather that with �ualittheir words they were making a garland for her. they were both !roke aware of her. tnen the three entered the galleria umberto and made for a cafe. lhft�the bars were just opening. in the center of the galleria, the focus �ame of the cross that was its floor plan, a neapolitan in the middle of -n a crowd talked against russia and ii comunismo. a trio of italian giu. soldiers hissed and made scissors motions toward the hair of a girl �een in conference with american gi's. children scooted along the ealeal walls selling cameos and carrying trays of fried fish and dough. to wis and through the galleria ran a rumble as though they were all alone underground. for the first time in a year giulia could look at all tnat a these human faces and feel that maybe there weren't too many on th( people in the world after all. \vond( i'. •.•• • �_� __ ....._� :.._ _ --. �1---,�'---, •• iii -, giulia they sat down at the wicker table of a cafe on the pavement of the galleria. giulia had never appeared in public before without mamma or papa. her captain helped her shed her green coat over the back of her chair. for wilma and herself he ordered a torta, a dish of ice cream, and an orangeade. wilma lit into whatever was put in front of her, gossiping without pause. she and giulia's captain discussed badoglio, hitler, and american movies. it wasn't the sort of discussion in which giulia was at home. but she listened and smiled and shifted her eyes from one to the other as though she were a spectator at a tennis match. in former times she'd have thought herself a nitwit not to be able to engage in their repartee, but now she knew it wasn't really necessary. she felt like closing her eyes and just listening. -this is a conversation piece, her captain told her. -a what? giulia asked, reaching for her dictionary. -a way for ladies and gentlemen to pass their time when they've nothing better to do. -must i learn how to do it? giulia asked worriedly. -i wish you wouldn't, the captain said gravely.-i don't want you to be a bluestocking. -blue stockings? said giulia, looking down at her own. do american girls wear those? she suddenly felt frightened. both of them might be playing with her. -you just be giulia, the captain said. no american girl could do that, you see. then wilma changed her rhythm and got off into a long italianate speech of set pattern, in which she enumerated giulia's qualities, as though she were preaching a funeral sermon. she spoke feelingly of giulia's reserve, piety, industry, and frugality. then she finished off with a conundrum twist, that she doubted whether giulia would marry an american. they weren't fine­ grained enough for giulia, wilma thought. -no? said the captain, lighting wilma's cigarette. giulia saw herself as a statue in green hat, green dress, and green shoes, perched on an auction block. she began to feel ill at ease and wished that wilma would stop talking. she began almost to wish that her captain weren't there either, that she could be alone in her room and brood for a little while. it seemed to her that an issue was being forced and shaped by conventions, when on the face of it it was so easy and so natural. then she began to wonder if there weren't something more than a little mad about .a�iiru!' all: i�n: ana itu�f of idlir � 'nanal[ aian'lff: ilieriliali ne)' \\'1[1 � 251 r i / --'. �-� . , .' . . � _. �-::", . 252 the gallery gi chanl some cigarf he w2 at the giuli� gen�jit 'i lorestl tfie b broth� countl captailat on, genn� !ion �i -0 -ti laid, -a wifel -i tain necess tw ciulia lowed immin ciulia oltne brou� 01 dey learlul icama �ot ou lo�ot inolal !ervice fuenze !trong eclairs on shvr herself, too secret and private and egoistic. but at this very moment her captain reached over, took the tips of her fingers, and squeezed them lightly. -giulietta is not of this world, wilma said laughing. -she's not worldly, the captain corrected. and they walked in their threesome back along via roma. it was time for giulia and wilma to climb the stairs of the bank of naples, slip into their chaste mother hubbards, and go on duty for the evening. but at the entrance to the club wilma suddenly said grazie and arrivederla to the captain and dashed upstairs, leaving them alone together. giulia was dazed and embarrassed. she prepared to say arrivederla to her captain and follow wilma. but her captain laid his long hands on her shoulders. she saw a convulsion cross his dark hard features. then he kissed her fingers. -my darling, he said, it mustn't frighten you that i love you. giulia turned slowly away in hot tears. she groped her way up the stairs like a blind girl. reversing the principles of italian courtship, giulia took the initiative because her captain was a straniero. she suddenly found herself so strong and resourceful that she feared she might be wearing the figurative pants, like those american women who appeared on the streets of naples with slacks emphasizing their buttocks. in this period of giulia's love wilma was her second, embodying all the traditional functions of duenna, cicisbeo, and arbiter. it was a role that wilma loved because her nature gloried in all duplicities. at thirty-one wilma had a heart as rich and scheming as a dowager or matriarch of eighty. if giulia in her poised timidity made the balls, it was wilma who aimed them and fired them to their mark. the process was simply this: gradually to lead her captain by threads of silk into giulia's house, where his intentions would be sounded out. if he passed all the neapolitan tests, he'd then be secured to the household with chains of steel. her captain, know­ ing italian and the italians, saw clearly what was going on behind the scenes and grinned wi thin himself. he suffered himself to be led to the slaughter, as cheerful as a sacrificial heifer. he never made any of the breaks or gaucheries perpetrated by most ameri­ cans when they enter the european marital labyrinth. giulia's brother gennaro was the first hurdle to leap, a prickly one in his position as younger brother. gennaro still worked evenings as a waiter at pbs club. in one year giulia'd seen hill! i ' • • •••• •• _ •••• " -e-, � i ;> . . ���:---." -, •• 1 grulla 253 change from something adored and gilded into a bitter and hand­ some neapolitan, out for number one. he dealt in american cigarettes and food. he was now quite rich. giulia believed that he was the lover of an american wac captain. he kept his job at the club only to maintain some respectability in mamma's eyes. giulia of course (and papa to a lesser extent) had no illusions about gennaro. it was wilma, the great fixer, who delivered the first coup and forestalled any nonsense from gennaro. in the major's office at the bank of naples she presented giulia's captain to giulia's brother. five minutes later she reported to giulia that the en­ counter had been as economical and efficacious as lightning. the captain had offered gennaro a cigarette and lit it. they'd looked at one another like boxers in their corners. then, wilma said, gennaro had folded his hands on his breast in neapolitan exhorta­ tion and had said in his brand-new business americanese: -captain, you know my sister is strictly a ragazza per ilene? -that fact has always been uppermost in my mind, the captain said. -and are you going to take her to america with you as your wife? -i don't look upon your sister as a week-end vacation, the cap­ tain had said, bristling at the directness, yet aware that it was necessary. two days later things got going like a clockwork juggernaut. giulia's mamma invited giulia's captain to coffee. the affair fol­ lowed the rules for the first formal encounter of all parties to the imminent transaction. there were present papa, mamma, gennaro, giulia, wilma, gino, and elvira the dowd. to mark the austerity of the occasion giulia's ninety-year-old paternal grandmother was brought in from caserta. this old lady was there to play the role of devil's advocate, lecturing on the risks of marriage and citing fearful examples of neapolitan girls who'd been betrayed by amer­ icans and negroes. in honor to the occasion, angina or no, mamma got out of her sheepskin slippers and rose from her couch. she forgot about her heart condition and rustled about the apartmem in black silk, giving instructions on the disposition of the coffee service and reminiscing on how such matters were carried off in firenze when she was a girl. wilma brewed the coffee (american) strong and black. she'd also stolen from pbs club several dozen eclairs and sandwiches made of spam. these were all set formally on silver trays of mamma's dowry. f i i ii i -_. ��� -� .. • ! .' • 254 githe gallery when giulia's captain, precisely at sixteen hours, knocked on the apartment door, he was admitted by gennaro to a scene as stylized as a chinese play. on the couch sat mamma, her double tan tn chin and moles propped over her black silk gown, her fingers having queenly with rings. she didn't look at the captain till he was precentage sented to her. at mamma's right hunched the grandmother in !elve� mauve lace, muttering to herself the part she was to play and peermarria� ing about with bleary cassandra eyes. papa paced up and down joined the salotto with a thick bitten cigar in his hand. he wore his gold out!ide watch chain. giulia sat demurely by herself on a leather ottoman. le�l pl she must pretend that she had nothing at all to do with the cerennishe monies, that she was a timid and nubile slave girl about to be sold �oodh to the highest bidder. she'd known this role since she was a tiny till the girl. but she'd never imagined that some day it would come her made t turn to play it. -m the introductory sallies and pleasantries took five minutes. papa eve� in his excitement was lordly and dictatorial. once he wept. the entire trope was conducted in italian, everyone using the lei form, which is sometimes thorny for neapolitans of the middle class. the paternal grandmother kept lapsing into dialect. gennaro occasion­ ally lapsed into choice americanese. papa, as a kind of marital toastmaster, made his introductory remarks, keyed to naples in august, 1944. he spoke of the collapse of fascism, of the liberating allies. then he became eloquent on prices and the black market. this second section of his prepared discourse was punctuated by comments and illustrative examples from gennaro and gino. now next it was mamma's turn. she folded her delicate hands in her [ree of great lap. in her wheezy voice she confessed that giulia had been worst n engaged to a neapolitan sottotenente called pasquale. but that walks, person was to be considered dead because he was an unrepentant an�inafascist and a prisoner of war at oran. pasquale's family had reri�ole! leased giulia from her bond. then mamma launched into giulia alone n and giulia's upbringing. she gave a picture of ciulia's faults and bri�idavirtues. but since giulia was a ragazza seria, her virtues outweighed wflere her faults. the captain was invited to form the opinion that erone. whoever wed giulia was getting a treasure. dub foi to all this giulia's captain smiled and nodded whenever wapnmamma gasped for breath: �rden -ehhhhh, sl, gentile signora. · . • li�ht a�then there was the third and grim act before the refreshments flour ah could be served. the paternal grandmother talked for twenty caracci( minutes, with gestures, on vice among young women. after its roint 01 giulla initial hoarseness her voice was as great as duse's, falling in periods and strophes through the dingy apartment. she sniffed at neapoli­ tan trash that walked via roma, but discounted these girls as having always been cattive. then she mentioned a higher per­ centage of girls who had once been good, but now prostituted them­ selves to the allies per qualche scopo. she whispered of a lurid marriage in which a neapolitan girl had imagined herself legally joined to an american mp, only to discover that they'd been wed outside the church, and now had a child on the way without any legal proof of who was the father. but the paternal grandmother finished in radiance and optimism, picturing a tiny percentage of good italian girls who'd shut themselves up in their houses waiting till the right man came along. and to all of this giulia's captain made the proper comment: -ma si figuri un po', che strazi, che sofferenze.... everybody relaxed after the speeches were over. giulia from her ottoman smiled on her captain. the captain and papa and gino and gennaro had some men's talk, weighty and discerning. giulia and wilma withdrew to the kitchen and whisked out the coffee and the sweets. mamma allowed the captain to kiss her cheek, under a mole. everybody praised everybody else. the air twittered with italian delight. the world was good after all. and the paternal grandmother, in reaching greedily for her ninth eclair, fell into the hammered silver tray and got chocolate icing all over her lavender lace. now that she'd complied with all the formalities, giulia was free of certain restrictions, though she was bound by others. the worst machinations were over. she might now, for example, take walks with her captain if wilma came along. once even mamma, �ntwi angina and all, turned up as the captain's guest in a box for nag ii, rigoletto at the san carlo. but 0 dio mio, giulia could go neither gilll� alone nor in company to her captain's apartment on via santa brigida. in point of fact she shouldn't be alone with him any­ where anytime. but wilma was an indulgent and winking chap­ erone. often she contrived to relieve giulia of her cash desk at the club for one hour at a time. then giulia would slip out the back way and meet her captain in piazza municipio, in the public garden full of rustling figures aimlessly wandering, full of moon­ light and queues before the urinals. then giulia had one full hour alone with her captain. they'd walk hand in hand along via caracciolo. the bay was cobalt under the august moonlight. he'd point out to her the shipping that teemed on the water, the land255 r �� -_. . �--�-� ��----......-.. ' • 'ii� � � • th e gallery256 g ing craft for infantry, sharp metal wedges that rode low on the tide, :l the sulking hospital ships. ;�o� it was on via caracciolo that giulia got her first kiss. -i think often at night, she said, that i must lose you. i'm too thinm happy. . . . -1 they were leaning by a little altar to neptune in a niche with prollc sculpted conch shells. below them the fishermen had beached their rou s, boats on a mole, wooden-bellied crescents of tar piled along one -d another like dead whales. sometimes the light of a motorboat slashed their faces. in an interlude of darkness he tilted up her chin and covered her mouth with his. he drew in her lower lip like a little fig. giulia was inundated by a new sensation. concentric circles flowed out from her heart till her whole small body shook. her hand went around his neck, and they swayed together in the hot darkness. his fingers slipped up from her waist. she felt she was being invaded with a warmth terrible and sweet, a presenti­ ment of dying with delight. her breath choked up in her throat; she felt that she was being crushed. something red and beaconlike with a flickered in her mind, crying not yet, not yet. with a violence, looked not of revulsion, but to keep her mind intact, she released herself. -�e -puritan, he said. by god, you'll be both wife and mistress, hn giulia. -ye -we must be getting back, she said in joy and terror. i put i oackt, in the next days her captain seemed to have sloughed off most i'm go of his marvelous peace. he chafed at the politics and meanness of oelonglbase section life. he said he hadn't been happy since he left his withth tank outfit. each day he told her of friends killed a few hundred �om� kilometers to the north of them. then he began to lecture her on nadn't i ! her adjustment to american life. he told her sadly that to be happy nersh,i as his wife in america she must convert her personality. he said -yolshe was too utterly dependent on him. that an american wife was ling he something quite different from an italian wife, shut up in the -is i house with her children. his words hurt her, though she never told -do him so. they -and it's this paradox that saddens me, he said. i fell in love peak!, with you, giulia, because you're something apart from all cheap-gil ness. you're everything that women have always insisted that they to tell 1 were, yet rarely succeeded in being. i wonder if in america you �he f could stay that way. -i tl -you think i'm not real? she said hotly. you think me in-l t capable of being myself anywhere? tonight -i know, i know ... but the noblest italian life doesn't belong died \ai -,. -. -, �-.----:----. -. _ /.0;'�----i' ... / r ii ' "" giulia 257 l'm� in the twentieth century at all. . .. there seems to be no mor e room for flowers in this world. -i may be a flower, said ciulia, puzzled and piqued, but i think i have roots ... and ... what you call in american ... guts. -it's the guts of woman, he said moodily, that ability to be prone' without insulting, to stand childbirth and sacrifice.... but you scare me because i can't find a trace of bitchiness in you. -do you want there to be? -god no, my darling, he said, sighing and pulling her against him. and giulia saw with a comic relief that she was stronger than he. that was the way it was decreed to be. she looked detachedly at her superiority with an odd wistfulness. it might be something given her to serve her in the long years ahead. one night he came to their meeting with an air restless and sheepish. it didn't become him. hand in hand they walked for fifteen minutes along via caracciolo. she waited, listening to him with a new ear that had been born in her. at last they stopped and looked out at the bay from the railing. -sei nervoso, she said reproachfully. hai qualche segreto ..• he took her hand and rubbed her fingers. -yes, giulia, i have.... tomorrow i'm leaving for the front. i put myself in for it. i thought it over for a long time. i'm going back to the tanks.... it's not fair to you, but it's the way i feel. i'm going up there with all the others.... for that's where i belong.... i'm sick to death of all the americans in naples, with their villas and their jeeps and their mistresses. something snapped in giulia's heart. she gushed with a woe she hadn't dreamed possible in this world. she felt that god had tricked her shabbily. -you must do what you think is right, she said gently, controlling herself. -is that your heart or your brain talking? -don't be cruel to me ... it's both. they had a long silence. vesuvius glowed weakly on both its peaks. -giulia ... you must stay with me tonight. ... get wilma to tell your mother you're visiting your grandmother in caserta. she felt her nails gouge into her palms. -i thought you were different from the rest, she said. -i thought so too. but i've got to make love to you, giulia, and tonight. ... suppose ... up there .•. they got me ... and i died without ever having had you? !r / �i i -_. �� _. • i .' •• � '" �---� 258 i �i �u;!l war �r il nap! me �lum (who the gallery -then that's the way it would have to be, she said. -you must be made of ice, he said. -i'm not made of ice, she answered, feeling her cheeks scalding. when you touch me i know i'm not made of ice. . . . i want your love ... all your love ... just as much as you want mine. i mean some day to give myself wholly to you ... and not to any other man ... -you and your codes of respectability, he cried. in wartime they don't mean a damn..•• all that matters is that we love one another. -i am what i am, giulia said. i love you. do you doubt that? this is the first and last time i'll love. i'm made that way. . .. but i won't stay with you tonight. not ... brutal as it sounds ..• if you were to be killed next week ... -thank you, my dear, he said roughly. -oh i know it's all a game, she said. but i'm so made that i must play that game ... call it what you will ... stuffiness ..• respectability ... -you're a fool, he said. -i'm anything but a fool, she said and began to cry. i know all the arguments and all the answers. all women do.... we have to hold you off till we get a ring on our fingers. . . . my mother and her mother before her played that game.... and i shall do so too. . . . don't you see, my darling? the world is built on such games. most of those games are invented by women for their own protection ... for their children's protection.... in every woman there are two things all mixed up. . . her heart and her head . . . but that's what makes her a woman.... and you, my darling, will never know me in love till i'm your wife. he said nothing further. they walked back along via caracciolo by the statue of pompey in the little garden with the white railing. gi ulia was in agony, yet she smiled to herself. she'd gladly pass with him one night in which all their love was rolled up into one knot. but against this, something merciless and logical in her saw the possibility of a lifetime of bitterness and loneliness and aridity. it was a gamble she was willing to make. on such odds her whole life had been predicated. they entered the galleria umberto, where the life and the motion had died. there remained only the black heat of naples in august, 1944. their loitering footfalls were prescient and austere. -my god, giulia, her captain said, you're a fiend. -why, every woman is, she answered. for she knew he'd be coming back to her. nate �rta duma rou h, attack! iliat i olu1 seventh promenade (naples) i remember that my heart finally broke in naples. not over a girl or a thing, but over an idea. when i was little, they'd told me i should be proud to be an american. and i suppose i was, though i saw no reason i should applaud every time i saw the flag in a newsreel. but i did believe that the american way of life was an idea holy in itself, an idea of freedom bestowed by intelligent citizens on one another. yet after a little while in naples i found out that america was a country just like any other, except that she had more material wealth and more advanced plumbing. and i found that outside of the propaganda writers (who were making a handsome living from the deal) americans were very poor spiritually. their ideals were something to make dollars on. they had bankrupt souls. perhaps this is true of most of the people of the twentieth century. therefore my heart broke. i remember that this conceit came home to me in crudest black and white. in naples of 1944 we americans had everything. the italians, having lost their war, had nothing. and what was this war really about? i decided that it was because most of the people of the world didn't have the cigarettes, the gasoline, and the food that we americans had. i remember my mother's teaching me out of her wisdom that the possession of things implies a responsibility for their use, that they shouldn't be wasted, that having things should never domi­ nate my living. when this happens, things become more im­ portant than people. comfort then becomes the be-and-end-all of human life. and when other people threaten your material comfort, you have no recourse but to fight them. it makes no difference who attacks whom first. the result is the same, a killing and a chaos that the world of 1944 wasn't big enough to stand. our propaganda did everything but tell us americans the 259 i i, 260 the gallery truth: that we had most of the riches of the modern world, but very little of its soul. we were nice enough guys in our own country, most of us; but when we got overseas, we couldn't resist the tempta­ tion to turn a dollar or two at the expense of people who wert already down. i can speak only of italy, for i didn't see france or germany. but with our hollywood ethics and our radio network reasoning we didn't take the trouble to think out the fact that the war was supposed to be against fascism-not against every man, woman, and child in italy.... but then a modern war is total. armies on the battlefield are simply a remnant from the old kind of war. in the 1944 war everyone's hand ended by being against everyone else's. civilization was already dead, but nobody bothered to admi t this to himself. i remember the crimes we committed against the italians, as i watched them in naples. in the broadest sense we promised the italians security and democracy if they came over to our side. all we actually did was to knock the hell out of their system and give them nothing to put in its place. and one of the most tragic spectacles in all history was the italians' faith in us-for a little while, until we disabused them of it. it seemed to me like the 'swindle of all humanity, and i wondered if perhaps we weren't all lost together. collective and social decency didn't exist in naples in august, 1944. and i used to laugh at our attempts at relief and control there, for we undid with one hand what we did with the other. what we should have done was to set up a strict and square rationing for all goods that came into italy. we should have given the neapolitans co-operative stores. i remember watching the american acquisitive sense in action. we didn't realize, or we didn't want to realize, that we were in a poor country, now reduced to minus zero by war. nearly every gi and officer went out and bought everything he could lay hands on, no matter how worthless it was; and he didn't care how much he paid for it. they'd buy all the bamboo canes in a little nea­ politan shop, junk jewelry, worthless art-all for the joy of spend­ ing. everywhere we americans went, the prices of everything sky­ rocketed until the lira was valueless. and the italians couldn't afford to pay these prices, especially for things they needed just to live on. for all the food we sent into italy for relief, we should have set up some honest american control by honorable and in­ corruptible americans. instead we entrusted it to italians who, nine times ou t of ten, were grafters of the regime we claimed to be destroying. aim bee blaolgin then wei �es it to ast i a�ail nve rro rar the, -ou to! tho i oud 01 en tune mr, !eeo tn who iliat rul t� duma iliat �iit evil! who' heart aavan �a �if iergea (naples) 261 i remember too that an honest american in august, 1944, was almost as hard to find as a neapolitan who owned up to having been a fascist. i don't know why, but most americans had a blanket hatred of all italians. they figured it this way: these ginsoes have made war on us; so it doesn't matter what we do to them, boost their prices, shatter their economy, and shack up with their women. i imagine there's some fallacy in my reasoning here. i guess i was asking for the impossible. this was war, and i wanted it to be conducted with honor. i suppose that's as phony reasoning as talking about an honest murder or a respectable rape. i remember that the commonest, and the pettiest, crime we did against the neapolitans was selling them our px rations. we paid five lire a package for cigarettes, which was a privilege extended to us by the people of the united states. to a neapolitan we could sell each package for three hundred lire. really big business. a profit of 6,000 percent. of course the neapolitans were mad to pay this price for them, but i don't see that it made our selling any the righter. i don't believe that these cigarettes were legally ours -ours, that is, to sell at a profit. they were only ours if we wanted to smoke them. if we didn't smoke, we had no right to buy them though there was no harm in giving these cigarettes away. i remember that we went the next step in vulturism and sold our gi clothes to the neapolitans. then we could sign a statement of charges and get new ones, having made meanwhile a small for­ tune out of the deal. this was inexcusable on any grounds what­ ever. there are loopholes in my cigarette syllogism, but none that i see on the clothes question. then i remember that there were not a few really big criminals who stole stuff off the ships unloading in naples harbor, stuff that didn't belong to them by any stretch of the imagination. for all this that i saw i could only attribute a deficient moral and humane sense to americans as a nation and as a people. i saw that we could mouth democratic catchwords and yet give the nea­ politans a huge black market. i saw that we could prate of the evils of fascism, yet be just as ruthless as fascists with people who'd already been pushed into the ground. that was why my heart broke in naples in august, 1944. the arguments that we advanced to cover our delinquencies were as childishly ingenious as american advertising. -if a signorina comes to the door of my mess hall, the mess sergeant said, making a salad, an she says she's hungry, why, i give 11! / -_. �� • r .' •• :..it ,,-... ---� � ..... -�--=""' . . � 262 the gallery j her a meal. ... but first i make it clear to her eyetie mind that i'm interested in some thin she's got.... if she says ixnay i tell her to get the hell out. -of course the only reason i sell my cigarettes, the corporal said, is because we're gettin creamed on the rate of exchange for the lira.... what can i buy in naples on the seventy bucks a month i'm pullin down? -you've got enough to eat and a place to sleep, said the pfe with the glasses. that's better than most of the world is doing in 1944. -i didn't ask for this war, the sergeant major said. i didn't ask to be sent overseas. guess i've got a right to turn a buck when i see the chance, ain't i? -you must make the distinction, said the pfc, between so-called honest business tactics and making money out of human misery. but he was only a jewish communist; so no one paid any atten­ tion to him. yes, i remember that being at war with the italians was taken as a license for americans to defecate all over them. even though most of us in the base section at naples had never closed with an italian in combat. our argument was that we should treat the n eapoli­ tans as the neapolitans would have treated our cities presumably if they'd won the war. i watched old ladies of naples pushed off the sidewalks by drunken gi's and officers. every italian girl was fair prey to propositions we wouldn't have made tc a streetwalker back home. those who spoke italian used the tu on everyone they met. and i remember seeing american mp's beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on via roma. i don't think the germans could have done any better in their concentration camps. i thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever. -these eyeties, the mess sergeant said, ain't human beins. they're just gooks, that's all. -all i know, the corporal said doggedly and worriedly, is that they ain't americans.... they don't see things the way we do. -they'd steal anything, the mess sergeant said, stuffing a turkey, his mouth crammed with giblet leavings. i remember that other arguments against the neapolitans, besides the cardinal one, that they'd declared war on us, were that they stole and were filthydirty. i only know that no neapolitan ever stole anything from me, for i took pains to see that no temptation was put in their way. though once my wallet was lifted in a new york subway. and for those neapolitans to whom i sometimes gave an the�ha'jf i sui 1l0� ani won bot wp �a i ilt �ar lau� one i and ithei lo�iti i hay a neal hea ti tam varie 1i'ito lew i ne�� woo' orag� ican� toat (naples) an extra bar of soap, i noticed that they used this soap joyfully on themselves, their children, their clothes. i've buried my face in the hair of neapolitan girls. it was just as sweet as an american girl's if the napoletana had the wherewithal to wash it. i remember that in naples after my heart broke i decided that a strictly american point of view in itself offered no peace or solu­ tion for the world. so i began to make friends with the neapolitans. and it didn't surprise me to find that, like everyone else in the world, they had their good and their bad and their admixtures of both. to know them, i'd been working on my italian. that lovely supple language was kind to my tongue. the neapolitans were gracious in helping me with it. i met agile dapper thieves who'd steal the apple out of my eye if they could sell it on the black market. but this tribute i must �ay even to the crooks: when i answered them in italian, they'd �augh and shake my hand and say they were going to try some­ one else who didn't know their language quite so well. i met studenti and young soldiers just fled from the army, baffled and bitter, with nothing but a black bottomless pit of despair for their future. perhaps i'd have been like them if i'd been on the losing side? i met neapolitan whores who charged a rate a countess couldn't have earned from her favors in the old days. and i met ragazze and mamme so warm and laughing that in neapolitan dining rooms i thought i was back in my own house, hearing the talk of my mother with my sisters. this forced me to the not original conclusion that the neapoli­ tans were like everybody else in the world, and in an infinite variety. because i was an americano the neapolitans treated me with a strange pudding of respect, dismay, and bewilderment. a few loathed me. but from most italians i got a decency and a kind­ ness that they'd have showered on any other american in naples who'd made up his mind to treat them like human beings. i'm not bragging. i'm not unique. i'm not christlike. many other amer­ icans in naples made friends they'll never forget. thus i remember that in naples, though my heart had broken from one idea, it mended again when i saw how good most human beings are if they have enough to eat and are free from imminent annihilation. i remember that i came to love the courtesy and the laughter and the simplicity of italian life. the compliment i pay to most italians who haven't too much of this world's goods is that they 263 l i --. ���-----. . .. --.;---� -. 264 the gallery (n __, love life and love. i don't know what else there is, after all. even in their frankness the i talians were so seldom offensive. an italian mother told a friend of mine that he could never marry her daughter because he had the face of a whoremaster. and we all laughed. no one was hurt. i remember the passion and the understanding of italian love. there's no barrier between the lovers. everything is oxidized at the moment, without rancor or reservation. -fammi male, amore mio.... fammi godere da movire... and i remember the storms and quarrels of italian love, mostly rhetorical. the going to bed is all the sweeter for the reconciliation for i thought that to this people, broken and saddened and dis­ mayed, there yet remained much of that something which had made italy flower-though not as a nation of warriors. to this day i'm convinced of italy's greatness in the world of the spirit. in war she's a tragic farce. in love and sunlight and music and humanity she has something that humanity sorely needs. it's still there. some­ thing of this distillation of noble and gentle grandeur seeps down through most of italy's population, from contessa to contadina. i don't think i'm romanticizing or kidding myself. in the middle of the war, in august, 1944, with my heart broken for an ideal, i touched the beach of heaven in naples. at moments. couldnj and thl mo,vies'l�ulte taoubts \�sned witn al movies and to 01 tnin tne take m remol �ner mioole orotnel\ wolld � stooolo �uritr ) lorm pi were fe1 tnere v witn tn( our per �int 0 tilis w; limits, � �ut if 1 marrrin then -n em, yol test. i remember how the children of naples pointed my dim concep­ tion of american waste. they'd stand about our mess hall quiet or noisy, watching the glutted riches from our mess kits being dumped into the garbage cans. i remember the surprise and terror in their faces. we were forbidden to feed them, though i heard that combat soldiers, gentler and more determined than we, took the law into their hands and were much kinder to italian children than we were allowed to be. when i watched the bitten steaks, the nibbled lettuce, the half-eaten bread go sliding into the swill cans in a spectrum of waste and bad planning, i realized at last the prob­ lem of the modern world, simple yet huge. i saw then what was behind the war. i'll never forget those neapolitan children whom we were forbidden to feed. after a while many of us couldn't stand it any longer. we'd brush past the guard with our mess kit full of supper and share it with adalgisa and sergio and pasqualino. they were only the scugnizz' of napoli, but they had mouths and stomachs just like us. i remember the wild hungry faces of those kids diving into cold spam. but our orders were that since america was in no position to feed all the italians, we were not to feed any. just dump your waste in the gi cans, men. (naples) 265 but i remember even then thinking and fearing that we'd come to a day when we too, we rich rich rich americans, would pay for this mortal sin of waste. we've always thought that there was no end to our plenty, that the horn would never dry up. already i seem to hear the menacing rumblings, like a long-starved stomach. but in naples in august, 1944, we were on the crest of the wave. we? we were americans, from the best little old country on god's green earth. and if you don't believe me, mister, i'll knock your teeth in.... and i remember well our first facing of the problem that we couldn't live in naples as though there were a wall between us and the neapolitans. there were american clubs and american movies, but only a blind man can carry his life around with him quite that much. perhaps in washington the generals had their doubts about the perfect probity of the american way of life and wished to make sure that overseas we wouldn't come in contact with any other. consequently we were flooded with american movies and with coca-cola to distract our wandering attention and to insure that we shouldn't fall into dangerous furren ways iof thinking. but some of us wondered none the. less. the main leak, i remember, was in sex. it just isn't possible to take millions of american men and shut them off from love for years on end-no, not with a thousand other american distractions. sooner or later every man's thoughts start centering around his middle. the cold and scientific solution would have been to have brothels attached to all our armies overseas, as other nations of the world have always done. but the american people wouldn't have stood for that. i mean the american people back home. too many purity lobbies from old ladies who have nothing else to do but form pressure groups to guard other people's morals. and there were few women in our army as compared to our own percentage. there were wac's, to be sure, but in such a tiny ratio to us. and with the nurses we couldn't go out because they were officers. thus our perfect chastity was theoretically assured. from the hygienic point of view there were pro stations on every corner of naples. this was a nice paradox in that every interesting alley was off limits. the army took the point of view: you absolutely must not but if by chance you do.... finally they had a restriction on marrying overseas. then we started casting our eyes on the neapolitan girls. -these cook wimmin, the mess sergeant said. it's so easy with em. you just walk down via roma an some signorina does all the rest. 1/: / -_. '��--.! .' • f:r'''' ...._ .... : ... ,,_... "-�-::",,,,----,,.......-266 the gallery -but, the corporal said, dreamy in his shorts, i don't wanna girls hafta pay for it. i just wanna little girl all my own to love. -there's something very nice about italian women, the pfc with the) spectacles said. no funny ideas about fur coats and higher income out j brackets and silk stockings, like american girls. and they don't rem! feel they have to discuss books with you that they haven't read ... not that women shouldn't be emancipated to a certain degree, finge as companion to man and as his helpmate but the neapolitan -] women are so down to earth. first they cook you a spaghet.ti. dinner. !he's ... then... real i remember that we gi's were used to women in a different tradition. american women, with their emancipation, had imposed ther', their own standards on us. in america most nice girls would. . . kno\� if you knew them well enough. neariy all college girls would, and ra ha waitresses too, if they thought there was a reasonable chance of your eventually getting spliced. and as for the separate career inter women of america, with their apartments-well, they'd abrogated honel to themselves all the freedom of single men. a career girl would -� keep you, or you kept her, depending on the financial status of one italr, or both. and in america there were lots of rich middle-aged ladies never who liked their young chauffeurs or gardeners, but didn't dare ire marry them for fear of what cousin hattie would say. �rlsl but to us gi's the girls of southern italy fell into two ti.;ht ,t'.lasses jobs only. 'that's where we got stymied. there were the girls of via camo! roma, whom the neapolitans, mincing no words, called puttane. nice� these girls asked fixed prices in either lire or px rations. they tne �� satisfied for a while as long as we had money, but their fee was �ooa steep for a gi unless he were a big operator in the black market. (abba and then too something in a man's vanity craves something other tn than a girl who's shacking with tom, dick, and harry. american auell) men are so sentimental that they refuse to have a whore for their (nem girl-if they can help it. that's the schizophrenia of our civilization, lias," with its sharp distinction between the good girl and the bad girl. knows consequently after a few tries, with the fear of vd always susneanl pended over our heads, we began to look at the good women of ana naples. and here entered the problem of the gi italian bride. i can be remember that italian girls began to look sweet to us early. perhaps but because their virginity was put on such a pedestal. there were few liaes, of us who didn't have access to some neapolitan home, where we ana were welcomed, once our entree was definite and our purposes be ha aboveboard. we usually got in through a neapolitan brother. then made we discovered that there were girls in the family, carefully kept ire and cherished as novices in a nunnery. it was obvious that these t!le t (naples) girls were interested in us ... if we proposed marriage to them. -1 don't get a minute alone with rosetta, the corporal said. they treat me swell at her casa, but mamma doesn't trust rosetta out her sight for one minnit. an after midnight papa's always remindin me what time it is ... as if 1 didn't have a wrist watch. -ah, i keep to via roma, the mess sergeant said. ya can't lay a finger on the others. -but north of rome, said the pfc with the spectacles, a girl once she's engaged will do anything to satisfy her fiance ... short of the real mccoy. i don't get these fine distinctions in tribal ethics. -these ginso girls, the sergeant major said, never forget that they're women. that's their strongest and weakest point. they know how to get in ya hair and under ya skin with wantin em till ya have ta slide that gold ring on their finger. -onelia told me quite frankly, the corporal said, that she was interested in a passport to the states as my wife.... i liked that honesty in her. 1 guess she likes me too. -us gi's is so hot, the mess sergeant said, that once we leave italy, these signorinas will never be satisfied with the eytie men ... never again .... i remember that we americans brought heartbreak to neapolitan girls in many instances. there were negroes who told their shack­ jobs that they weren't really black, just stained that way for camouflage and night fighting. there were mess sergeants who told nice neapolitan girls that they owned chains of restaurants back in the states. i've often wondered at the face of some of those girls of good faith, arriving in the states to discover they'd live in one cabbage-smelling room over the stairs. there were, i remember, american gi's and officers who most cruelly betrayed and seduced neapolitan girls, concealing from them and their families that back in the states they'd a wife and kids. these girls weren't in the positic.i of an american girl, who knows the language and can make her own investigations. for the heartless deceit of such as these i sometimes felt shame that i was an american because the life of a pure woman is like a mirror, and can be smashed but once. but i also remember instances of love and good faith on both sides. gi's and officers met neapolitan girls, fell in love with them, and married them. i see no reason why such marriages shouldn't be happy and lasting, once the girls have learned english and made the not easy adjustment to american wifehood. i remember lydia, the gay shy mouse who sang in the chorus of the tcatro reale di san carlo. she was courted and won by our 267 268 the gallery a hil col and st but week h and f, medic. i remember their wedding at sorrento and their honeymoon at taormina in sicilia. unless the world falls apart, i think that little lydia and her capitano medico will be as happy in their lives together as human beings ever are outside of fairy tales. i remember laura, to whom a gi killed at cassino made two presents. he gave her a baby and a white spirochete. when i see flowers lying crushed in a muddy street, i think of laura. i remember plump and smiling emilia, who thought she'd married an mp. the mp disappeared forever after the wedding, and emilia just sat in the kitchen night after night and wept so bitterly that her heart would have broken if it hadn't already been in tiny pieces. her mother kept cursing her and asking where were all those allotment checks from america? and her brother yelled that he'd put a razor into the first americano he met on a dark night. and i remember wanda, stately and blonde, who used to sit by the stove and feel the life stirring within her. we all said she was too big to be having just one. and sure enough she came out with twins whom she christened mario and maria. they were brilliant gay babies, the way italian children know how to be. wanda hoped they'd grow up strong in st. louis. she got me to point out that city for her on the map of america. i remember that in naples in august, 1944, for all the red tape and the army regulations and the blood tests and the warning talks by chaplains, there was still a great deal of human love. and this rejoiced me. for all the ruin and economic asphyxiation we'd brought the neapolitans, we also in some cases gave them a new hope. they'd been like jews standing against a wall and waiting to be shot for something they'd never done. and i began to think that perhaps something good might emerge or be salvaged from the abattoir of the world. though in the main all national decency and sense of duty might be dead, i saw much individual goodness and loveliness that reassured me in my agony. i saw it in some neapolitans. i saw it in some americans. and i wondered if per­ haps the world must eventually be governed by individuality con­ secrated and unselfish, rather than by any collectivism of the propagandists, the students, and the politicians. in naples in august, 1944, i drowned in mass ideologies, but was fished out by separate thinking and will. i remember watching the mad hordes in the streets of naples and wondering what it all meant. but there was a certain unity in the bay, in the august moon over vesuvius. then humanity fell away from me like the rind of an orange, and i was something much more and much less than myself.... ret co !ooero] naked i n� 100 i examin e!t.he mor� vo withsw back he he re�ardi -go -yui -go his awaken eighth portrait queen penicillin i\wakening these mornings in naples, he'd turn on his canvas cot, shove aside his mosquito netting, light a ciga­ rette, and look out at the bell tower of maria egiziaca. his consciousness was clear, the way he used to come to as a child and start thinking of what he'd do today. but the deliciousness of those awakenings had gone. up till last week he'd known them with marisa. but now she'd gone to rome. and for days there'd been something in his mind, something crouching that he could escape only when he slept. all day long it sat on his shoulder whispering the red doubts and fears into his ear. he was free only in those first instants of awaking. but with the first few puffs on his cigarette the idea came back. this morn­ ing it was especially pressing. today he'd know. he got up and groped down to the latrine. the sunlight hadn't yet come into this corridor, but he knew the passageway drunk or sober. in the latrine he voided his bladder and stood looking at his naked body in the mirror. by the early august sunlight of naples he looked like a moor. marisa'd loved this color of his skin. he examined his flesh, peering over himself with a wild hushed inter­ est. he knew every inch of himself. then the idea broke over him more viciously than in the past four days. his dark skin globuled with sweat. back in the room he dressed himself quickly. he was shaking. he heard his heart say yes yes yes. and from the other cot roy was regarding him with sleepy compassion. -gain to find out this mornin? -yup. -good luck, boy. ya been sweatin this one out. his boots clattered on the stairs of the palazzo. naples too was awakening in the august morning. by the windows the sandflies 269 , : ii : / ___ . �-----1 _ <-_ _-... _# .e_4'ro<�"-h__ .. • u r. -_ 270 the gallery qu i�along 1 pass ol had bu: he cuss path, therlasleep 1 pavemel weatherl their tn vermilio their rollthe areathe peel aoove hi eyeless s� of light) oodies i� annihilal nis dark august &ock, hel -vie think'i roma, � fiim wha irarrowy iliemselve �ealers as loops and in the pin ruooerst, he turl ilie side, iliatread maniple 0 he was ii like a spa titer theil inake, tn !tiffened hung poised in their clouds. and he heard the clatter of the carts in the street and the prickly whispering of the women's brooms as they swept the sidewalks. he walked through the screen door of the mess hall, taking more than his usual pains not to let it slam. the mess sergeant sat at a wooden table littered with lettuce. he looked up with an iron petulance. -now what, jo-jo? ya feelin hung over? -nope. got any black coffee? one of the neapolitan kitchen help poured him a mess cup full of scalding java and passed it to him. -grazie, joe, he said. -niente, joe, the neapolitan said. the metal lip of the canteen cup singed his lips and his tongue, but the coffee flooded down his throat. again the sweat seeped out through his shirt. he felt the cup teetering against his teeth from the trembling of his wrist. -va ain't feelin good, jo-jo? the mess sergeant said. ya ain't been on the beam since ya quit ya shackin ... -nope, he said, setting down his cup, 1 ain't feelin well. -knock her up or somethin? -nope. me an marisa just broke up. -well, they's plenty more where she came from, the mess sergeant said, shoving a mound of lettuce wearily away from him. plenty more. -1 don't want no more. now in a lewd sweat from the steaming coffee and the reeking neapolitan morning, he plowed along, his cap on the back of his head and his hands in his pockets. seeing vesuvius and the barbed wire round the port enclosures, he decided to smoke a cigarette. as he was lighting his butt with fingers that wobbled, an officer passed. he lowered his eyes. -say, soldier, the lieutenant said, don't ya salute officers any more? -this ain't a salutin area, sir ... -shut up an salute me, the lieutenant said. 1 don't know why i don't take ya name an serial number.... wearin ya dogtags? -yessir. -well, get on ya way. next time watch ya step. not all officers is as square as me. he saluted again and walked on, replacing his hands in his pockets. he put his cigarette in the farthest angle of his mouth. -, � ii i �----• -. / � :fl, i' -, �t i i queen penicillin 271 he felt that his shoulders were sagging. he didn't care. he dragged along with his eyes on the ground. for he wished that he could pass out quietly some place, that the march eruption of vesuvius had buried both naples and himself under lava as stiff as molasses. he cussed and spat against a tree that grew from the sidewalk in his path. there was no one in the galleria umberto except some children asleep like sweaty kittens, and little old men who went over the pavement searching for cigarette butts. from the cornices the weather-eaten angels looked snottily down at him from behind their trumpets. he saw the canvases in the art shops -as daubs of vermilion and ocher and cobalt. the bars were all shut behind their rolling corrugated blinds. the new sun filled every nook of the arcade, microscopically adumbrating the smears on the walls, the peeling posters, the chipped mosaics in the pavement. and above him the empty skylight crisscrossed the sky like veins in an eyeless socket. he remembered the galleria in past evenings: blots of light leaking from under the bars till curfew time, the smell of bodies in movement, the shrill laughter, and the voices promising annihilation from the heat and the pain. and like a flashlight into his dark hot misery he saw the figure of marisa swaying in the august darkness, the cleft of her breasts in her gray figured cotton frock, her tiny brown feet. he heard her voice: -vieni, amor mio ... fammi tua per sempre.... thinking of the past, he walked across the galleria into via roma. a neapolitan kid asked him if he wanted to eat; so he told him what he could do with himself. on via roma there was the sparrowy life of neapolitans hurrying to work, old ladies fanning themselves with their morning paper, the screams of the cameo dealers as they set up their displays in the porticos of abandoned shops and ruined tenements. british and american convoys rumbled in the pinched street. in the gutters lay squashed oranges and spent rubbers that had been hurled from the windows above. he turned, crossed via diaz, and entered pbs building from the side. for a while he stood before the red and white canvas sign that read fifth general dispensary. he laid his hand on the bronze maniple of the door. it was as hot as a molten ingot to his palm. he was listening too to his heart throbbing, opening and closing like a spastic fist. it had beat lik� that when he lay. in marisa's �rms after their lovemaking.... mansa.... he felt his knees begm to shake. there seemed to be a pool of ice water in his belly. but he stiffened his legs and pulled the door of the dispensary open. 272 the gallery it was cool in there. the floor was a pepper-colored parquet. the gi's who worked there stood behind glass wickets like bank tellers. and in the coolness there was a reek of phenol and anti­ septic. as they set up their cages for the day, the gi's called out to one another their piss in and their moanin. they yelled back and forth criticisms of the breakfast they'd just eaten. -i've had naples! 0 mr. roosevelt, can't i please go home? to stop the trembling of his knees and the turbine in his chest, he sat down on a bench near the door. he wondered were his eyes bloodshot. he felt like an ulcerous scarecrow sitting alone in the middle of that cool noisy dispensary, with the click and hum of the dental clinic just beyond. the other gi's were unconcerned and gay. finally he got up, clutching his cap, and walked to a window that said admissions. he ran his tongue over his iips and looked at the floor. -ya too early for sick call, sarge, the corporal back of the plate glass said. go outside an wait a while ... -but i took a blood test ... five days ago, he murmured. -oh ya did? imagine that! blood tests is sop in napoli ... -will ya please do me a favor an look? he said, giving his name. -okay, okay, sarge, the corporal said. i hate to see a guy sweat. out of a pigeonhole the corporal took a sheaf of small pink slips and leisurely ruffled through them. with tormenting indifference. -i don't seem to find ya name, sarge oh wait, here it is.... outa alphabetical order ... damn that lab . through a swimming mist he saw the pink slip thrust at him along the counter. a kettledrum was beating in his ears, thudding out yes yes yes and non 0 no in acceleration. he saw the mani­ cured fingers of the corporal holding the upper edges of the slip. he read down till he saw the brash rubber stamp and the red crayon r� al ; 1 nal :1 coo j dr� 000 mu comment: ]oui wassermann-pos kahn-pos everything inside him seemed to whirl up and go down in r crash. besides the drumming there now came a ringing in his ears. his knees buckled. he gripped the marble counter to keep from dropping to the floor. -tough luck, sarge, the corporal said. -what do i do now? he said, his vision clearing. for his previous weakness there was now substituted an icy cnlv lao queen penicillin 273 a winw d ioo!n: surety of horror that carried him out to a pinpoint in space. and he saw marisa's face, her mouth open, her eyes closed, murmuring: -0 come sai bene amarmi, tesoro mio. . . . -just step into number four, the corporal said briskly and professionally. he stumbled along by the cages,. clutching the pink slip in his palm, which seemed to be gushing hot butter. he steered through a railing and into a long corridor with clinics and rooms opening off it. he knocked on the door of number four. at a call he opened to find a medical captain washing his hands in a sink and chewing gum in rhythm with the oscillation of his forearms. -mind waiting outside, sergeant? the doctor called sharply. so he all bu t lay down on a bench, the slip dangling from his hand. he tried to close his eyes and swallow the searing sensation in his eyes and throat. finally the sound of running water stopped and the doctor beckoned him in. he thrust the pink slip into the cool moist hand. -well, got the dreadfuldreadful at last, hey? you're one of the bright joes who thinks that the signs and the films are for every­ body in the army except himself.... and you won't be sergeant much longer, boy. yessir, he said. -well, we'll start treatment at once.... we don't mess with this. -is there ... any hope, sir? he said hoarsely. -i'm no great believer in this new treatment. ... take down your pants. then began the questionnaire, which the captain wrote down. -take a pro after your last exposure? -nossir. -italian girl, i suppose.... give me her name and address. -don't know, sir. -don't try to protect her through any mistaken notions of chivalry. she gave you a nice burning, and she'll do it to others. i advise you to give me her name and address. -i told ya, i don't know, sir.... he went outside the dispensary and hung around the several waiting ambulances, holding in his hand an admission slip to the hospital. one of the ambulance drivers, a tech five, had one of his boots through a window of the ambulance cab. -what hospital ya goin to, sarge? -twenty-third general. -then hop in. ya can ride in front with me. just like an officer. hom�1 n hi!(� erehilfl; lon� in c humo!q gown i�' � in fii!la1 o keer u� utea an ( 274 the gallery i� i� he climbed into the front, to the right of the driver's seat. on the line he'd never had to ride in an ambulance. now in the rear area of naples, here he was going to the hospital in style, but not for a wound or for trenchfoot. the tech five pulled his boot inside the window and started his vehicle. -what are ya goin to the twenty-third for, sarge? hepatitis? vd? -nope, neither ... just a general checkup. they drove along via caracciolo toward bagnoli tunnel. and. seeing the bay of naples in the august sun, seeing the fishermen already far out in their skiffs toward ischia and capri, he thought of how he and marisa used to walk and dally here in the bright open moonlight. they'd lean on the parapet by the docks of santa lucia and watch the british sailors coming over the ramp on liberty.... but now he was riding in an ambulance with a tech five who talked all the time, having lit a cigar. the tech five made him listen to all the details of his last night's shacking. -i get me one gal an i stick to her, the tech five said. then i don't stand no chance of pickin up nothin nasty. see my point, sarge? -ya never can tell about them things, he answered vaguely. he wished marisa would quit his thoughts. he pressed down on his thighs and peered through the ambulance windshield. he knew that marisa was very much with him. she was even in his veins. they pummeled through the dark dripping gloom of the bagnoli tunnel. the overhead inset lights barely pierced the dusty gloom kicked up by the truck convoys. marisa and her family used to sleep in this tunnel during the air raids.... and at bagnoli they turned by the old tenements with the washing on the balconies, the arrows to direct traffic and show the way to the staging areas. then he got his first look at the medical center. long low modern buildings with friezes and dominant stairs, like wpa american high schools. unexpected gardens and trellises, phallic arches, and parapets skirmishing like roller coasters out of the pine trees. excavated rifts piercing white and unfinished out of the hillsides. the tech five explained that musso had built these grounds for a world's fair or something, that now the americans were using them for a concentration of hospitals. they passed plaster statues of ripple-thighed naked young men in fascist atti­ tudes of victory. a couple of swimming pools. the whole medical center had an air like an exhibition: sheets of windows, inscriptions everywhere. q·ueen penicillin 275 lelaia,tht ,�e mr�r the tech five stopped his ambulance on an avenue near an mp gate. -that's the twenty-third right over there, sarge. just walk straight up to that barbed-wire enclosure ... -barbed wire? he said. but i ain't no prisoner. -just wait, the tech five said, wisely chewing off the tip of a fresh cigar. he got out of the ambulance and walked up a flight of stairs to the barbed wire, over which hung the leaves of low trees and vines. inside was a great press of people moving around. he thought of the courtyard of a jail during exercise period. -no visitors here, joe, the mp said, raising his carbine to port arms. -i ain't no visitor, he said, presenting his admission slip. -then welcome, the mp said. this the place where shackees repent their shackin.... there was a series of arrows showing new patients where to go. it was as methodical and cold as his induction into the army. he entered first a long low hut where pfc's sat at typewriters. in a window a major sat with bored but catty stare. to this medical officer he presented his admission slip. the major scanned it quickly, with the air of a movie usher seeing a picture for the hundredth time. -so you got burned? the major said. and you'll be losing those three stripes too. -yessir. -i don't say: welcome to our hospital. you're not going to have a good time here. our whole setup is guaranteed to make you hate everything about us. we don't want men coming back here, do you see? there's no excuse for getting vd. no excuse whatever. we give you treatment here, but we do it in such a way that you won't care to come back as a repeater. yet i see the same faces again and again. well, it's their skin.... take down your pants.... -pretty sight, aren't you? the major said after the examination. just as pretty as you saw it in the movies. i'll bet you said: that'll never be me. -nossir. after the major had got through with him, lashing softly and insistently with his tongue, he was sent over by a wall where t�ere were chairs with armrests, rubber compresses, and a lot of little glass vials with red stuff in them. -roll up your sleeve, the pfc attendant said. eava�dl' rel\ed do��' ioiela, hem in oill'1� of toe �1� e allltr �l�: farni1r ul1�' at ba�oli� toe oalro�: ita�in�ami (er, lon� r irl,iikel11 ellilel, r�ill ell out of � iheaoutof! d duilt � the arn1fi(� , ther r�(' in fal(ilt!( whole m�i� �s, imcrirti� 276 the gallery �but i already had a blood 'test, he said. -roll up your sleeve. you'll be takin blood tests from now on like you would a bath.... an you can't give none of your blood to the red cross an get ten dollars for it, neither.... make a fist. he did as he was told. he felt the rubber hose go about his upper arm and the pressure mount as though an anaconda were squeezing. his blood began to bang in his arm. looking down, he saw that a blue vein was bulging from his elbow. the pfc took a needle and inserted it into the obvious blood vessel. he felt the cold point go in, and he watched his crimson blood seep into the syringe as its handle was drawn back. -at this point, the pfc said, the jigaboos usually faint.... now go an draw ya clothes. he got up from the chair, crooking his elbow against the patch of cotton to stop the slow ooze of his blood into the elbow joint. the gi took the vial of his blood and pasted his name to it on a piece of adhesive tape. this he put into the rack along with the other vials. -looks just as pretty as new wine, the pfc said, indicating the file of vials. only no wine has got what these tubes have. next he filed past a counter where another gi leaned on his belly cushioning it and picking his teeth. he had that spleen of al1 supply sergeants. -take off ya clothes, boy. he undressed himself there in the half-light of that corridor. outside swarms of men milled in what looked like a desolate and unweeded garden pricked with pyramidal tents. all his clothes went into a little barracks bag tagged with his name. in return he got a set of frayed but freshly laundered green fatigues, shirt and trousers. on the back of the jacket and on the trouser legs were painted these large smeary letters: tn iiv ram u� ilie� in� m look vd -guess this is about the last time ya'll be wearing ya stripes, the supply sergeant said.-there ain't no rank here in them green fatigues. ya'il sit down next to a major an never know it ... -take it easy, take it easy, he said, buttoning up the fatigues, which were a casual fit and chafed his crotch. -va shoulda taken it easy yaself, the supply sergeant replied. -where do i go now? queen penicillin 277 nom no'! ot �our�. , , i i m� -ya'll hafta see about accommodations, i guess. we're full right up in this hotel. an ya never wired us for a reservation. so he walked down, stumbling a little in his fresh fatigues, to another window, where a pfc in harlequin spectacles was reading his stars and stripes. -what can we do for you? have you got number one or number two? -i got the worst ya can possibly get, he said. -well, lawsy. that entitles you to our very best accommodations. the kids with clap get stuck in tents all over hell. but our guests with syph are put in the bridal suite. you'll get the very finest attention. every three hours, rain or shine, for a hundred and eighty hours.... you'll find the bridal suite in the first door on your right off the court. he went out into the hot light of the courtyard. now he under­ stood clearly the confused and mobbed movement he'd seen through the barbed wire. among the tent pegs walked hundreds of men in green fatigues like his own. it seemed a holiday crowd promenading at a carnival. but those who had their backs turned showed vd signs on their jackets and pants in letters high enough to be read half a mile away. they were like a chain gang without chains. he entered the indicated door into a long shed, half-ruined and rambling as a cattle barn. canvas cots with mosquito netting tied up over their racks stretched as far as his eyes could see. on these cots more men in green fatigues stretched reading or play­ ing cards or shooting craps in small knots. he knew that they were set apart from all the other men in the world, though they looked perfectly healthy. when he crossed the threshold, a shout went up. nearly all who weren't asleep turned to look at him and yell: -you'll be sor-ry! only a hundred and eighty hours more! he flushed, cast his eyes to the ground, and walked between the cots looking for an empty bed. he found one between a negro who lay looking at the ceiling and an ayrab in a red fez. -they ain't no pick on the sacks, the negro said, rolling his eyes slowly around. ya cain't never get moren three hours sleep at one time anyhow, boy. -what's that ayrab doin here? he asked in a whisper. -mohammed? oh all the allied gi's gits their shots here ... we got goums and eyeties too.... lend-lease... · he sank down on his cot and looked at his shoelaces. he was casting about in his mind for some way to enter into conversation aboutn�t ingja!rri� re in w1ffi; knowit." g up th� la� :geant re�li� 278 the gallery with the negro and get answered some of the questions that flopped like flounders in his brain. the negro may have been waiting, but he merely looked at the low ceiling of the shed with his deep eyes. ilii� -is it ... rough ... here? he asked, untying his shoelaces and frigging with the buckles on his boots. -well, it ain't no rest cure, the negro said. but it done me a 1 good turn in takin me away from mah woman. ah'd a shot her. !ii1dshe gimme bad blood, bad blood. . . me-what i mean is, do they ... cure you fast here? he pressed. he was conscious of a fluttering fright now that the panic and � fever of first discovery had ebbed. ow_�-they claims they does. but man, them needles ... every three hours. ah feel like mah aunt delilah's pincushion. . . nil -needles? h -sho, boy. what does yo think they does to yo here? they sticks ine yo an then they sticks yo again. every three hours. sixty times in !oll all.... but it ain't doin me no good. ah cain't do thout mah lovin. wer so ah'll go right out an do it agin.... yessir ... but them needles sure does go over big with us colored boys. keel he had a dozen more questions to put. but he was confronted by a sharp sergeant standing by his cot. 100 -you. didja just come in? mor �a. � then get down to the lab for ya first dark field. a w -an that ain't no grope, the negro said, rolling his eyes up to �ol the ceiling. he went past the double file of canvas cots out into the sunlight. �ar he passed through the crowds of men in fatigues who walked alone woa or together, brooding or laughing aloud. he crossed the clearing !iow of the pyramidal tents to the swinging sign that said lab. inside was another long room with desks where microscopes stood in their metal frames like scrubwomen resting on their brooms. eatr. -you've come for your first dark field? a sergeant asked him. -i guess that's what they call it, he said. n�h he had visions of being smothered in black gauze, of pain and probings. roat -then down with your pants, the sergeant said. the sergeant's face assumed the expression of one who handles the entrails of a sick rabbit. he put down his cigarette and drew on �elit a pair of rubber gloves. into his shiny false fingers he took a large he toothpick wadded with cotton on its tip. then he bent over and �ou went to work. a�rar queen penicillin 279 he rrel.lt� theranit. -whaddya doin? ... hey ... you're openin it up ... -that's what i mean to do ••• and if you think i enjoy doing this ... -but ya hurtin like fire .•• -i'm swabbing.... okay, up with your pants. the sergeant straightened up, brushed the swab against a glass slide and dribbled on the square of glass some drops of staining chemical. this he slipped under a microscope near him. -now, he said, i want you to see what death looks like. the sergeant stepped aside blandly, allowing him to apply his own eye to the lens of the microscope. -focus it to your taste, the sergeant said languidly, picking up his cigarette. he finagled around with the brass screw till he saw the field of the slide clarify and harden like setting jello. he was looking at a shifting orange horizon that seemed to be clouds at sunset. there were strata that buckled and changed their densities. -that, the sergeant's voice said, is your own polluted blood. keep looking. then he saw something swim into the pink blobs. at first he thought it was a sunfish. he maneuvered the focusing screw some more and found that it was a tadpole. it passed across his field of vision, delicately rowing, and disappeared gaily from his sight with a flip of its tail. he wondered if it hadn't winked at him like a goldfish on the make. -and that, the sergeant's voice continued like a lecturer's in a darkened room, is sophie spirochete. just one of the girls, but what she can do to you! ... better than a bomb, though somewhat slower. -have i got many of those? he asked. -millions. they're multiplying all the time. and brother, they'll eat you up alive! -tell me what i must do, he implored, running his tongue along his lips. -every last one of them, the sergeant said, has got to be killed. that was just one dear little specimen i took off you. -well, thankya anyhow ... -oh don't thank me, the sergeant said coquettishly. you didn't get it from me, you know. he'd just got outside the lab when an electric bell went off. all through that dense field of roaming men a mobilization became apparent, as in a factory after lunch hour. soon there wasn't anyere1tn1jl , �ixtr tim: houtm�t u thlrnnt 'el� �e wno m:, �tte ano illil be took o� � bent ov� 280 the gallery lik the jus body left in the tent area. he decided that he too must be con­ cerned in this; so he followed the last straggler round a corner. on a long lading platform hundreds of men in green fatigues were arranging themselves into two files, one much longer than the other. at the end of the platform, by the screen door to what seemed a dispensary a tech sergeant stood with rosters in his hands, adjusted his glasses, and read aloud in a shout: -hardfieldl jonesl miozzal mccauliffe! mahomet ben ali! get the hell up here for ya shots! don'tcha wanna be cured? the two lines quickly evened out till the longer reached back to the end of the platform. he wasn't quite sure what the lines were for, and which was which. so he stepped cautiously up to a fellow with glasses: -maybe ya can tell me what cooks here ... -je ne comprends pas.... pardon..•• he tried again and this time got an answer from a pimply fat boy: -this here's the clap line. we get stuck first. those with syph come after us. he thanked the joe and walked quickly away, placing himself at the tail end of the shorter line. the tech sergeant appeared again at the door of the dispensary with his rosters and hollered through the entire area: -shots! shots! for chrissakes come an get em! ya'd be late to ya own funerals! an i ain't goin through the whole area to rout you lazy bastards outa ya tents! tentatively he touched the shoulder of the man in front of him, handsome and blond and shy: -say, bud, am i in the right line? -depends on what ya got, the blond boy replied, appraising him languidly. -same thing you got, i guess. -well, the blond boy said, this ya first shot? ya get only fiftynine more after this one. one every three hours. i don't envy ya much. ya got a week an a day ta go christ, ya'll never sweat out anything like ya will these shots three hours ... three hours ... forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty they even wake ya up in the middle of the night.... an if ya miss one, they make ya start all over again.... i'm gettin out tamorrah. hope a hope a hope. -where do ya take these shots? -in both shoulders an in both cheeks a ya butt. ya get ta feelin ren and oi! onl man rlu !�uil were i�iaia, i inroi none -( linel he �r�el !ieeve iron! i�t. ...y �ia, , queen penicillin 281 ! ya'� �e' earea(owt: like a sampler. ya get so ya can't sleep on any part a ya. an still them damn shots go on. like a pile driver but ya lucky. they just started this new treatment last week . -new treatment? -ya. pencil somethin. before that they gave ya shots for six months. useta make fellers puke all over the place. now they give ya sixty shotsa this new pencil stuff, an it usually cures ya. the clap boys get only four. they get out in a day. -i'll never come back here again, he said piously. -that's what they all say, the blond boy said. but they get repeaters here just like in reformatories. buddy a mine's been in here four times. he gets all cleaned up, then he goes out and picks hisself up another dose. . .. the first and longer line began to press forward with rapidity. he thought to himself it was just like all the other lines he'd sweated out in the army-for movies, for px, for passes. soon the second line, his, began to urge up on the screen door. inside the dispensary there was a wild cry. -either he's fainted or it's his last shot, the blond boy explained. finally it came his turn at the end of the file to enter the dis­ pensary. inside the screen door the line had forked into two prongs and was being funneled past two. gi's, each with a hypodermic in his hand. along the walls of the room were electric iceboxes. and on the tables glittering with hypodermics and blunted needles were many little glass ampoules of an amber fluid. into these the gi's plunged their hypodermics, filled them like fountain pens, and squinted at escaping bubbles of the yellow liquid. ahead of him were men with either arm bared or with their buttocks offered like steak to the needle. -they give ya a choice on where ya want ya shot, the blond boy said. if ya take it in the arse, they'll use a longer needle ta get through the fat. my advice is ta take ya shots round the clock. then none of ya four parts gets too sore. ya'il be hurtin anyhow ... -come here, a voice called to him. i haven't seen your face in line before, boy. he disengaged himself from the line and went over to where a sergeant with gentian-blue eyes sat at a field desk. this sergean�'s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. rosters were spread out iii front of him. he gave the sergeant his name, which was last on the list. -you're too nice-looking a guy to get this crap, the sergeant said. why don't you stay away from women, like i do? et b�n ni� rea) rta(nen �� ilielinq' ryurtolli placin� hlitl� lar�ar1n: no�m�� n in [ont �i: ya get orur i gon't ��r p'll ne\'a� hout! iii� ren wake� e, ther m� hope a�if: ra get talt 282 the gallery -i'm takin my medicine without any sermons from you, he said doggedly, looking down at his boots. he wanted to be cured, not played with. -sure, sure, kid.... look, every time you come in here, be sure to stop by and see that 1 check your name.... otherwise if you miss a shot ... -ya, 1 know all that, he said impatiently, rolling up the right sleeve of his green fatigues and preparing to advance into the line for the needle. then the sergeant thrust out his fair delicate hand and flipped the miraculous medal that nestled with his dogtags among the hair on his chest. -this didn't help you much, did it? the sergeant said. you're a mockery of purity. -1 promised my mother to always wear it, he said, again avoid­ ing the cool blue eyes. -you've got nice brown skin too, the sergeant continued. too bad to think of soiling it with crap like you've got.... tell me, did you love that signorina? -shut up an let me alone, he said and walked into the line. -you'll see me sixty times, the sergeant called after him. he offered his brown right upper arm to a gl who stood waiting with a hypodermic. he felt the antiseptic go all over his flesh like slippery ice. and then a swift stab as the needle went in. -we ain't interested in making these shots painless, the gi told him. he felt the needle's charge going into him in a compressed enema of spite. then he knew a stinging worse than he remembered from tetanus shots. the needle was pulled out and his arm wiped again. on his skin he saw many lemon drops shimmering, raised out against the brown. -what's that stuff? he asked, lowering his sleeve. -penicillin ... and more precious than gold, boy. being the last to get his shot, he was the last to leave the other door of the dispensary. barring his way stood the gentian-eyed sergeant, hands folded on his chest. that open neck reminded him, with a jump of memory, of marisa's throat, glistening and tight in its cords after he'd kissed it. -look, he said to the sergeant, i just wanna be alone. i just wanna take my shots an be left in peace, see? -1 was wondering, the sergeant said, recrossing his arms, whether you got it from a one-night stand or from love. because you seem wal wal mol lreci ro�bu lfire\! -j even il'll � olal! he �rain lt wa other! �\.\.h� ---....; 10u, h�� queen penicillin 283 so bitter.... yes, you must have been in love with her. and now you look like a lamb that can't understand why it's being led to the slaughter. why don't you want to talk with me? ya got some ax ta grind with me, he said pushing through the screen door. the sergeant followed him: -you know that i'm in a position to do you dirt. i might forget to check your name on the roster. then you'd have to take all your shots over again . . . -i wouldn't advise ya to mess with me, he answered. outside the dispensary there was another corridor leading back to the tent area. it had lighted doors leading off it, with the names of medical officers and their rank printed in curly letters. along the other wall were tin sinks in which gi's were washing their parts. under these sinks were tin cans stuffed with bloody gauze. the running water and the septic smell and the pungency of dried blood made him dizzy, so he went out into the open air. the tent area had filled up again with men walking or talking or reading. now he knew the rhythm of the place. they'd walk or talk or read for the next three hours. then the bell would ring­ again. then ... he felt already the stinging in his other shoulder. all his life telescoped down to three-hour periods and a hypodermic needle with yellow drops dribbling out of it. what was it called? pencilin? penisssilin? pencillllin? here,�; envileu' (ontinu�' 1.",11; alonf,i, in the shed the syphilitics had resumed their poses. they didn't walk in the courtyard among the tents with the others, for theirs was the scabrous aristocracy of venereal disease. between shots most lay on their canvas cots dozing. one boy with horn-rimmed spectacles was reading plato. and his own negro neighbor still rolled.iris eyes slowly at the ceiling. -ah was a numbers man in harlem, the negro began. but in order not to encourage the negro's reminiscences, he threw himself on his own cot and closed his eyes. -it's bad in the moanin, the negro's slow voice dribbled through, even past his shut lids. ya know how a man wakes up. �ell, now it'll hurt. an at night the thoughts yo has! ya feel lak crym. least of all ah does . . . he emitted a soft feigned snore and the negro shut up. his brain kept turning over the sibilant secret n�me of his. dise�se. it was a word that he'd always thought of iii connection with others, like leper. he was trying to get used to the idea of having emwroc e �enti��{ eminarot incrano:b nm, w�ft me rou� 284 the gallery it himself. it was as strange now, in the peace of aftershock, as imagining yourself dead. he kept trying to figure out what there was in the name of this disease, its very sound, that was so frighten­ ing. it had a whistling slide when you pronounced it, like a tooth­ less old woman dragging her skirts in a black corridor. or it re­ minded him of girl's names like phyllis. only with this girl he saw the skull showing. he thought also of his mother and his sisters in pittsburgh; their bathroom with the embroidered cover on the toilet seat, the hems on their towels, the white soap in the rack by the wash­ stand. he remembered how his mother got panicky when she found a speck of dust anywhere. then he peeped through his eyelids at his own brown body, tense under its shameful green fatigues. and under his flesh he seemed to see microscopic rats running in his blood, squeaking and nibbling as they did their work of demoli­ tion. till finally the house fell apart with a screaming clatter. he thought also of the army posters against yd. he imagined himself addressing a v-mail to pittsburgh: dear mother, you'll be surprised to know that i'm writing you from the syphilis ward of the twenty-third general hospital ••• -i've got a new secondary, a bright lecturing voice said from somewhere down the shed. not very nice. just a rash on the inside of my arms and legs. and a few little blisters containing a rather nasty kind of pus . . . -me and my buddy sweated out the clap for five days, another voice said. were our faces red when we found out what we really had! ... -why it takes twenty years to kill you, another voice said. lastly he thought of marisa. he remembered yet the brown still fragrance of her body, the round sucking bite of her lips against his shoulder. she'd told him to give himself to her, as she was giving to him, without reserve or fear. she'd said that gli americani made the act of love as sani tary as brushing their teeth or gargling with mouthwash. -ma perche mi tratti cosi? hai forse paura ch'io sia malata? godi, godi, e non torturarti con certi pensieri. ... it had been the first time he'd fallen in love. he remembered how he'd wait for her evenings in the galleria, longing and hot, yet in a peace that was tender, and how he'd been gentle with her. each evening he'd brought her candy or cigarettes or a handkerell !p ne w d t �a ov at wi wa� ou no 01 -j -j in� fl ratinl -i queen penicillin 285 \'oic� �q: bili1� tainin� iw chief such as she loved. and he remembered how, after they'd spent their love, they'd lie together talking and laughing. it had never been so with him before. with all the others, after his fever was cooled, he'd only wanted to pay them and kick them out the door. but with marisa he'd known a sense of joy and well-being. thus he'd given her his heart like a piece of fudge in his open palm. he couldn't yet associate this disease with her name. only over her face there now hung a veil that blotted her features. yes, he was sick. it didn't feel like much of anything now. but this sickness was like being told definitely just how long he had to live. there was something mocking and foul in his disease, because it was a legacy to him from the happiest moments in his life. he remembered the idiots he'd seen in county jails, leaning out from behind their bars, lolling their tongues and screaming. he re­ membered old men helping themselves along the sides of walls with their canes, so that every step took half an hour to accom­ plish. all this had nothing to do with marisa. yet it had.... someone was tapping the sole of his boot. he opened his eyes. at the end of his cot stood a red-cheeked chaplain, arms loaded with tracts and colored leaflets. so he sat up respectfully. -well, son, the chaplain said, i guess now we see what the wages of sin are, don't we? -what sin? he said, turning his eyes to the other row of cots. -my boy, my boy. we mustn't be unregenerate in our hearts. our disease is the punishment of god for fleshly sin. -i happened to be in love, he said, standing up from his cot, putting his hands into his pockets, and whistling a little. -love! the chaplain said with shining eyes, lifting his plump pink hands. love brings little children into the world. not death. we should have saved ourselves for some fine clean american girl. these i talians are all sinful and diseased . . . -then they should all get some of these here pencil shots, he said sullenly. -my boy, if there were no disease in the world, there would be no decency. the fear of god. our illness is a sign of the disapproval of god for what we did ... -i was unlucky, that's all ... -and the army doesn't approve either, the chaplain said, searching for further backing. after we leave this hospital, we'll lose our rating, if we have one. -i know that too. in plt��� llietoil11; , b1tnn: \\henilids h 001i1h �n !au���, runnin� m 'ofk of�' lnbolltt ,hf� ie aa)�, m�. ��at w1w r\'oia� jet w1w ite oloer. to ncr,�, �aja wli 'ng ilierr� '0 �ia rot remerok , ji ftlng anu, �tle with � a han� 286 the gallery -well, i'll just leave some of these pamphlets, son. let's all think of our mothers . . . -1 have. -i'd like to shake hands, son, the chaplain said, withdrawing. but god has made certain diseases highly infectious.... the chaplain went on to other cots. he lay down again and cov­ ered his face with his hands. he still saw marisa's face, but he heard too a crowing laughter. even her voice now seeemed clotted with slime. jull h �� ln� in�i he soon got used to the simple reality of life in a syphilis ward. three hours was the boundary of all his consciousness. he lived only for his next puncture. every needle meant another x on the roster opposite his name, and three hours nearer to his release. forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty. night or day had no longer any distinct meaning, for he couldn't count on uninter­ rupted sleep for more than three hours. then the fleering jangle of the electric bell. at 0300 hours in the morning, having just got to sleep after his midnight injection, he'd hear that silvery rattle­ snake in the court outside. all the tents would come to life, with men groping into their fatigues and tottering out sleepy and curs­ ing to where the threads of light poked out from the dispensary. the sergeant in charge of shots yelling for order. the beams of flashlights thumbing through the dark. the uproar lasting about twenty minutes. the files forming and going through like an assembly belt. then the voices of a sergeant speeding up slackers who might be still in their cots. he didn't understand how people could take their time about their shots. here they had death in their blood, yet they were leisurely and dilatory about receiving from the needle's point those yellow drops that meant life to them, life truer than the amber drops of gasoline or bubbles of molten gold. he got into the habit of waking by reflex a few seconds before the electric bell exploded. he'd lie under his mosquito netting with an arm under his head, thinking: now what did 1 wake up for? oh, number twenty-two. and as soon as he heard the tingling dissonance he'd be bounding off his cot, buttoning his fatigues and sliding his feet into his boots, which he never bothered to lace or buckle. and he'd go rushing down the line of cots with their shadowy dressing figures. he usually managed to get to the dis­ pensary among the first. not that it made any difference. the gonorrhea boys always went through first. they took their own queen penicillin 287 sweet time in forming their line. the syph patients were more eager beavers and would stand with their file already in order, cheering and booing the stragglers. for nobody got pincushioned till both lines were formed. needles around the zodiac of his brown body. at first he tried taking them in alternate arms. but soon the flesh of both shoulders was so raw that he couldn't sleep on either side. by the twentieth shot he was ready and eager to have them jab him in the buttocks. this called for a longer and heavier needle which bit him like a hornet. after a while both of his tight brown cheeks were so sore that he couldn't sleep on his back any more. he asked if he could be shot in the bulging calves of his legs, but they told him it would hurt worse than a cramp. so he finally evolved the least agonizing of many torments, which would carry him through half a day: a shot in the right shoulder, a shot in the left, a shot in his right buttock, a shot in his left. this meant that every twelve hours his compass was boxed. the stings felt worse all the time in his mincemeated flesh; he'd stand watching the penicillin ooze down his skin like the yoke of an egg. and always in the dispensary the ampoules of penicillin stood in a pretty druggist's window display of bottlets, and the trash barrels outside the dispensary were over­ flowing with the dead ones, like small jars that had contained a lemon preserve put up every fall by his mother. -i wonder how much the government is forking out for my sixty shots? someone asked. -when ya see it in a refrigerator, another said, the stuff looks just like sherry wine on ice. they hafta keep it cool. ... he had to go for his second dark field. again he met the sergeant with the rubber gloves who scraped some fluid off him and put the film on the slide under the microscope. the sergeant indicated he should look again through the lens. he saw his salmon­ colored blood; but try as he might, he didn't see a solitary tadpole wriggling. one floated by in the field, but it looked curled up and lifeless. -your spirochetes are pretty well done for, the sergeant said dryly. -ya mean i'm cured? he asked, raising his eyes, dazzled. -you'll take your full sixty shots, just like everyone else. but he walked on air back to the shedlike ward and told every­ one within range that the tadpoles in his blood were kaput. the negro in the next cot just lay and looked at the ceiling, for the doctor had told him to expect a circumcision tomorrow. the 'leconilioc iton1ltm!1 i wake �f d the tili: his hi; tijereow• ots wiili8 ret to tn�; ifference, ! �k their(' 288 the gallery negro had been saying all day in his dreamy voice that no army doctor was going to circumcise him. hadn't he still his razor with him? the last shot of t.he night vigil was given just as the dawn came up over mussolini's fairgrounds at bagnoli. nobody slept much between the three o'clock shot and the six o'clock. the sun wouk leak up with a lemon and creeping pace. he'd totter out into the yellow and gray light, his eyes foggy, pulling his fatigues about him. the lines would form and the needles would start pricking. this was the time when the night shift of butchers went off duty to be ! replaced by the day shift. their tempers were frayed and they did itheir jabbing with a vindictive spite, hating all who were so stupid ci as to catch diseases which would keep them out of their beds all co night long on a hypodermic line. the six o'clock shots were char!lacterized by blunt needles which tore his flesh jaggedly. then 0there was the pulsing orgasm of the penicillin pumping into him w like a piston. th then he'd limp back to his ward, flexing his stinging arm. by his cot on the mosquito netting bar with his towel and soap hung his mess kit. he'd gather up this metal gear and head for the chow ra line. it was now fully light. tal he'd made a friend in the ward, a shy guy who said he was a staff sergeant in ordnance. they waited together in the chow line. r10allhis new buddy talked about this nurse, and how he never sus­pected she would have passed it on to him. they dipped their mess li� ki ts in the gi can of boiling water. loa -i wonder if they sterilize these things with each new batch of no patients? rno -nah, what with the scaldin water an that pencil stuff, ya can't catch a damn thing here. they even have ginso barbers to �n� shave ya if ya want it. mal he got three meals a day of hot c-ration ladled into his mess kit. tim, back of the steam tables stood neapolitans who leered knowingly i�� at them as they dished out the steaming powdered eggs, the scaldili1 ing coffee, and the chunks of bread. they jested with the patients: !n1 whassamatta, joe? signorina malata? nito -ah, fungoo and ya signorinas, the patients answered, helping wall themselves to marmalade and sugar. mal he and his buddy sat down at the long planked tables, which filled up in order as the joes came off the chow line. occasionally !lrn he saw a guy dressed in od's instead of fatigues. that was a sign ai! his shots were finished and he was going into the world outside queen penicillin the barbed wire. opposite them was a little redheaded man morosely eating his powdered eggs and bacon. he had a burst of friendship for this sad little man. after all they were all members of the freemasonry of penicillin. -doin all right? he nodded at the little redhead. the little man didn't answer but moved himself and his mess kit to the other end of the table. -they say that's a first looie, his buddy whispered to him. -oh they get it too, huh? he said, poking some bread into his face. nobody talked much in the mess hall, except to agree that peni­ cillin was a wonderful thing. dried you up in no time. or they compared their symptoms or told one another how many more shots they had to go. a few bragged that they were repeaters in this dump. some came back constantly in order to keep out of combat, where they'd only get killed. but most held up their hands over their coffee: -no sir! i ain't never comin back to this concentration camp! -wait till ya get outside the barbed wire, the minority said. an ya meet another signorina an she shakes it at ya. that's all it takes..•. you'll be back. over their coffee he and his buddy lit cigarettes and looked at each other. all the meals were the same here. three a day. then you waited for your next shot. they went outside into the sun­ light and dunked their mess gear into the gi cans of scalding soapy and clear water. the tent flaps were up all over the area. now; the new sunlight made weird curlicues of the monuments, mosaics, and shafts of mussolini's fair grounds at bagnoli. after breakfast he made up his cot, rolled up his mosquito net­ ting, and waited for his turn for the broom to come by him. bed­ making was easy, for he had two gi blankets, nothing more; some­ times it got chilly in the early mornings at bagnoli in august, 1944. then he'd sweep the kittens of dust from under his cot into the aisle and would pass the broom to the negro on his right. he knew now who were the officers in the ward, in spite of the incog­ nito of their green fatigues, because when the morning sweeping was in progress they leaned against the wall and tried to look nonchalant. -hey, sirrrr, the pfc wardboy called to one, there's no rank in a syph ward. after the policing he'd lie on his cot and wait for �he do�tor to come. each morning they showed themselves to this medical 'ed t80111,1 ineo occali�: that wal! � world o�: 289 !i/i i / � 'u.. i -. "'--=------� " ., , . ; _;;� .��-=...::._/ 290 the gallery officer, who discharged those who were going out that day. for others he prescribed circumcisions or made little notes in their syphilis registers. each had his own little scrapbook in which the progress of his disease was recorded. this doctor felt their glands or said: -rash fading nicely, isn't she? he was a fat little captain with a face like a doughnut. his eyes had frozen into a perpetual revulsion from looking at men's genitals and thinking in terms of spirochetes and gonococci. he was forever tearing off his rubber gloves, washing his hands, and peeling on the gloves again. each morning he made a set speech to those who were going out upon completion of their sixtieth shot: -ninety percent of you men will be permanently cured ... if you don't get another case.... and if you do have a relapse, there's always that nice long-term treatment with mapharsen and arsenic . . . . in three months come back for your spinal. it was always the mention of the spinal tap that sent a shiver and a whispering through the rest of the ward, who always listened to the doctor's baccalaureate sermons even when they weren't in­ cluded in them. the negroes, at that word spinal, would roll their eyes and gibber at one another: -no, boy, ah ain't takin no spahnal ... no suh ... if dey ties me to dis cot, ah still won't take no spahnal. dat needle sometimes slips and dere you is, paaaaahlahzed for de rest 0 yo natcherl life. no spahnal fo me.... hearing this as he lay on his cot waiting for the captain to call out his name for the morning checkup, he'd imagine the needle at the base of his spine, the slip as the target was missed, and all his nerves jolting into paralysis. or sometimes to relieve the tedium of his morning examinations, the probing of groins and armpits, the questioning about the state of the chancre, the medical captain would bring specialists into the ward with him, colonels who peered at the patients as though they were guinea pigs. -look, colonel, sir, he had a rare kind of rash. i had him photo­ graphed. with a mask, of course.... -this man insists he never had a primary lesion. . . • there was everyone on that ward: negroes, ayrabs, italians fighting for the allies, one hawaiian japanese. they waited three hours, took their shot, then waited again. they all wore the green fatigues with vd painted on the back. they all lived eight days inside the barbed wire. they all sat on the long planks in the mess. after the medical irispection he was free till ogoo hours. the queen penicillin 291 time of the next injection. he'd take his towel, razor, and tooth­ brush and go out into the sunlit courtyard where the patients walked. he crossed the area of the tents of the common ordinary twenty-four-hour patients who were here for only four shots. he passed also the barbed wire within the barbed wire where prisoners with vd were treated under the eyes of their individual mp's. these real prisoners slept on the ground under the pup tents, issuing forth every three hours with their armed guard to get nipped by the penicillin needle. then he'd arrive at the latrines, these too in sheds. then began his one joy of the day. he'd brush his teeth and shave. then he'd strip away the hateful green fatigues with the advertising on the back and step under the shower. he'd smear his long dark body with soap and let the tepid water gush over his flesh. at such moments he still thought of marisa's arms that had given him this death. he'd lift his hoarse voice and sing an italian song she'd taught him. for between the soapsuds and the penicillin something was being washed away from and out of him. close to 1500 hours he was lying on his cot reading a comic book. his thighs were crossed and his boots were upon the rack for his mosquito netting. he was sleepy, but it was almost time for the next needle. in the cots near him were people different from those who'd been here when he came a week ago. in this ward life went on by relays, constant as to the disease, but different in respect to personalities. he laid down his comic book, aware that someone was coming toward him. it was the gentian-eyed sergeant of the rosters. he sighed. the sergeant was carrying a parcel wrapped in wax paper. -you again? -you weren't very glad to see me, the sergeant said, sitting on the edge of the cot and undoing a package. -a roast-beef sandwich.... are ya gonna eat it right here in front of me? -it's for you. we get good chow in the detachment mess. you must be tired of that c-ration they give you three times a day. i got the mess sergeant to make this up for me special. i didn't tell him i was giving it to a friend. n.. i • -well, thanks. . . • yrao!, i� he sank his teeth into the hot red flesh. the soft bread rose ey waite�� round his gums in a contrast of textures and tastes. li'oretne� -ya shouldn't bother with me, he said. i'm just another syphrred ei�ntt ilitic. ksinthe[ -you're not, the sergeant said. 00 houf!, '/ f -. "'-==---;!-� � 292 the gallery he edged over on his cot to make room for the sergeant. he buried his face in the roast-beef sandwich to finish it, but he knew that those strange blue eyes were on his face. it made him squeam­ ish to be watched while he was eating. -ya got some ax to grind with me, he said again, putting the crusts into the wax paper. -why? the sergeant asked brightly. you don't know me ... yet. -well, it don't add up somehow, he said, shaking his head and placing his boots again on the rack for mosquito netting. ya must meet thousands of vd's comin through here for their shots. i'm just another one with the dirty bug . . . -i've watched half the fifth army taking shots, the sergeant said. but when i saw you, i knew you were different. -i snafu'd just like the rest of them, he said warily. besides reminding him of marisa, something in this sergeant's blue eyes touched him, the way a lame bird would. -you should come out to dinner with me once in a while, the sergeant said. i know a black market restaurant on via chiaia. do you like pasta asciutta? the word thrilled him with a pang of remembrance. he seemed to be with marisa in a cramped kitchen in sezione san ferdi­ nando, she with an apron on standing over the stove. in those days he'd come up behind her and slip his hands over her loins. and she'd turn her face to be kissed.... -ya don't wanta be bothered with me, he said, wrenching him­ self from this memory. i'm no good. can't even take care of my­ self. accordin to the posters the army puts out, i can never get married now nor have kids. i'm just a old piece a meat gatherin flies in the streets. -you'll get cured, the sergeant said. just don't think you are till you know you are, that's all. ... but you are different.... i need a friend, you see. being a dancer has given me an unreal view of life. i'm so fed up with the arty boys. i want to know just one real person. you're good and you're decent. ... i'm so bored with sitting around in diques and drinking and talking poetry and scandal. ... do you like to swim? we could go to torregaveta and mondragone for sun baths ... -i don't get much time off, he said. -i need a friend who's real, the sergeant continued softly. someone who lives quietly and thoroughly without pointing out that he's doing it. i'm fed up with the idea of sex without love and ideas without deeds.... you shouldn't run with these neapolitan ilie (an out cal queen penicillin 293 gi�ls .... the ones, �n via roma, i �ean. �hey don't offer you any­ thing without a price. there are ruce italian girls, but you won't stand a chance of meeting any . . . -when a guy needs a woman, he said, he needs a woman ... -that's the great old myth of the american male, the sergeant said wearily, picking up the wax paper from the cot. and you see what you've got out of it.... look at yourself in the mirror some­ times. that fine coffee-colored skin you've got and your black eye· brows and your straight nose. you're a very good-looking man ... too swell to end up with syphilis from some bitch who didn't give a shit for you.... when i first saw you, it was like looking at a statue covered with mud .•• -i was crazy about marisa, he said, surprised that he wasn't sore at this sergeant. -i suppose you thought you were, the sergeant said. that's all part of the mystery and the pain of life to me ... -say, he said, sitting up suddenly, don't you like women? -when i don't see through them, the sergeant said, rising from the cot. will you come to dinner with me next week? then we can go to the ballet at the san carlo. the italians can't dance! but they call it ballet anyhow.... will you come? -i don't stand to lose nothin, he replied, trying not to sound calculating. i won't be lookin at no women for some time now ..• -you're crazy if you do, the sergeant said hotly. and do you think it would be fair to take any chances? right now you're not infectious, but you can never be sure until you've had your spinal. it can come back on you at any time. would you want to pass it on to somebody else? -1 been thinkin of that, he said. i ain't so low that i'd do to another girl what marisa done for me. -she's doing it for others right now. -n0, he said, closing his eyes. i don't believe that. -did you give her name on the questionnaire? -get out. the sergeant with his bright hair and blue eyes and delicate figure stood irresolutely at the foot of the cot. he seemed to want to stay and to go. he looked almost as if marisa had dressed herself in gi suntans and a blond tight wig. -willya do somethin for me? he asked, already knowing the answer. he didn't believe in putting friends to the test, but he had an overpowering compulsion to do this. bring me some of that penicillin) 294 the gallery -what for? the sergeant asked in a quick whisper. do you want to sell it? do you know what an ampoule of penicillin is worth on the black market? what do you want it for? -i ain't gonna sell it, he answered stiffly. i just want it for my­ self ... like people keep their appendixes and tonsils in a jar. the sergeant shot a swift look along the ward, where as usual the patients were snoring on their cots or playing cards. he darted off. shortly he was back carrying something in the same wax paper. -you realize, the sergeant said, passing the wax paper into his hand, that if anybody finds out about this, they'll throw the book and the dtc at me ... -i ain't never done no one dirt in all my life, he replied, re­ turning the sergeant's stare. the ampoule with its amber fluid was still icy and misted from the refrigerator. he thrust it into the chamois bag containing his toilet articles. -what a world, the sergeant said. the mold of yeast turns out to be more precious than gold.... i've got to go, boy. it's almost time for the bell.... meet you day after tomorrow at 1900 hours in the portico of the san carlo. -okay, he . answered. a little later the electric bell began to split the air. he went out to stand in the second line. he had two more shots to go. fifty­ nine, sixty. next morning when the 0600 bell pealed for shots and the shad­ owy men in the first orange of dawn groped from under their mosquito netting into their fatigues, he remembered and smiled to himself and turned over on his other shoulder. his butt and arms still felt like hamburg, but it didn't matter any more now. -hey, joe, the guy from the next bed was prodding him, get out of that fartsack and take your needle. -ah, go way, he murmured, i had my sixtieth. he fell back into a delicious sleep during which he sensed an electric excitement in his belly. he awoke again when the others came trooping back from breakfast with their dripping mess kits. -powdered eggs? he asked dreamily. after a while without hurrying he got out from under his blankets, made his cot, and swept beneath it. he had a sense of victory over all the others, bending over their housekeeping with the painted letters vd on their backs rippling as the muscles in their shoulders moved. he felt particularly affectionate toward a tiny negro two cots over who'd just come in. an w of !1d queen penicillin 295 -boy, ah's scared. does them needles hurt much? -ya'u faint sixty times, he answered, sweeping under the tiny negro's cot. -0 lawd, the negro said, fainting on his blankets. when he'd revived his small friend, he took his chamois bag and went down to the latrines. here italian prisoners of war were swabbing the wooden frames and the corrugated urinal with chlorine. he rejoiced in its clean acridity. before he seated himself, he reverted to his old fastidiousness of placing clots of toilet paper all around the wooden hole. it was a practice he'd dropped during his treatment here. now he was beginning it all over again. cleanli­ ness was no longer a mockery. one italian pjw called to the other as they mopped: -sa che cos'e la sifilide? un'ora con venere e dopo sei mesi con mercurio. shortly he arose in great satisfaction, brushed his teeth, and shaved. he'd observed that the brown skin along his thighs was paler for the eight days he'd spent out of the sun. then he took a shower, soaping himself with gusto and dodging the italians as they turned on the other sprays to damp down the floor planking. and his body was once again immaculate. he passed both hands along his loins in a wringing motion to force off the tire of soap. he dressed himself for the last time in the tight green fatigues and walked up among the pyramidal tents. the gonorrhea patients were still making their beds. they had no floor to sweep, for it was of clay pounded down hard. they were rolling up the flaps of their tents to let in the neapolitan sunlight: ayrab soldiers under the red fezzes they insisted on coupling with their ignominious fatigues, french soldiers and officers from alger and oran, italian sergenti maggiori who worked for the allies, and that greater percentage of americans. occasionally one would run out to the lyster bag and swallow his sulfa tablets. in the great clearinggirdled with barbed wire he paused to look at the bulletin board. on typewritten sheets were thumbtacked the list of dispositions for that day. he found his own name in alp�a­ betical order under american personnel. at first he had a feeling that perhaps they might never let him out of this place, that he'd stay here till the end of the war in italy, being jabbed with �illions of units of penicillin. but there was his name. he was gettlllg o.ut today. after each patient to be discharged wa� the �ank and serial number, followed in the last column by the diagnosis. these read: syphilis. old, secondary, relapse; or gonorrhea, new, acute. he h, hicb n1lm� 'n 1i'0en ilit� 'ppin� m&1 from un�: e haa a� ousekeerin1 i5 the m�: rionate (01; iii / � it. i __ . "==--....f� • .. � 4 -......... f'!!!ii'!i1!!ii� 296 the gallery g � h� noticed also that some people he'd met (he'd never guessed from their fatigues) were first lieutenants or majors. but most were gi's of all the allied armies. he returned with his toilet kit into the shed. they were lining up for inspection by the nauseated-looking medical captain. he unbuttoned his own green fatigues and waited his turn in the queue. -you�re going out today, the captain said, looking at his re­ vealed middle and sounding his lymph glands. take a blood test every month. and come back for your spinal in from three to six months. come even if we don't send for you.... and behave your­ self, understand? yessir, he said slowly, then swallowed. an i wanna thank ya for all ya've done for me. the rubbery face contorted into another knot. -don't thank me. thank penicillin. thank dr. fleming. the medical captain then wrote out in an acid hand a discharge slip from the twenty-third general hospital. then he consigned to him the little bound syphilis register with his name on the cover, like a diary, and two copies of a letter to his commanding officer making it quite clear why he'd been in the hospital-not in the line of duty. -and don't try to tear up that letter, the doctor told him. be­ cause we mail a carbon to your co anyway. then he went out into the sunlight among the pyramidal tents where the men in their green fatigues were milling and talking and waiting for the next electric bell. he went first to the supply sergeant to draw his own clothes. it was the first time in eight days he'd had them on; they were rumpled and a little mildewed from lying in the barracks bag. then he had an inspiration. he took his razor from his toilet kit and sliced both sets of sergeant's stripes from his sleeves. his chevrons fell to the floor, trailing thread, twisting like crinkled tin foil. -might just as well bust myself right now, he said to the supply sergeant, handing across the counter the green fatigues with those huge letters painted across the back of jacket and trousers. n ext he went into the large office with the typists and the vials and the chairs with armrests. he sat down against the wall and let a tech five leech more blood from his arm. -of course this proves nothing, the technician said, emptying the dark blood into a test tube taped with his name. penicillin turns ya blood negative anyhow. do� had �\.lhi --�e�edlro )�t we�� queen penicillin 297 rmmia�' b� �nalu tlomnij; . e in ei!�i! e�lot�nm :ion, he 1001, se�e�nl'!!tr; traliin� � lastly he went to the barrier in the barbed wire and presented his pass to the mp. -see ya. back here in ab�ut an�ther week, the mp said, looking down at his sleeve, at the light triangular patch where his stripes had been. -not me, boy, he answered. he walked slowly down the macadam drive of the medical center at bagnoli. once he turned in his tracks and looked back at the barbed wire behind which the hundreds of marionettes in green fatigues paced like lifers. he saw also the kiosks, the glittering facades, the nude muscled statues under their helmets, and the swimming pools that mussolini had laid out for his world's fair. he couldn't forget that here he'd passed eight days of his life in three-hour intervals with a hypodermic needle waiting to prick him a t the end of each period. on the bagnoli-naples road a pfc in a weapons carrier picked him up. they rumpled through the bagnoli tunnel. in the august morning the town of naples stretched golden on its hillside. ischia and capri stuck like honey-colored thumbs out of the mediter­ ranean. he had an urge to talk. -say, that penicillin sure is marvelous stuff, he confided. i was nearly dead from pneumonia an it pulled me out of it. -ah, it may have worked for you, the pfc said, biting on his cigar. me, i always say that penicillin is still to be put to the test. it's probably the latest racket of the medical profession. they say it cures vd too. me, i think it just conceals the symptoms and arrests the disease for a while. but we don't know no thin about its future reactions on the human body. ten years from now you'll probably find cripples and people dropping dead all over the united states. victims of the great penicillin swindle. -nah, it works, he answered in a dreamy sort of happiness. it's great stuff, boy.... cured my pneumonia.... in naples he dismounted from the weapons carrier at the end of via rome. he entered the galleria umberto, where the girls were walking and the children screaming and bargaining in the august sunlight. he walked to that corner of the galleria tha� he rem�m­ bered best. though it was noon he seemed to see marisa standm? there with her arms out to him. so he took the ampoule of pem­ cillin out of his pocket and hurled it against. th� wall �here .her ghost flickered. the glass smashed; the yellow iiquid ran like bnght molasses to the pavement. :� were� � c4�t��: ls turn m, �\n� atm' leadi�: om�ttro' �ni\ef id to welijf: 'uuel wim trou�en, andtnll e wall a�� aid, ernrl:, e, peni� (naples) eighth promenade " i i remember that in naples of august, 1944, i came again to realities i'd all but forgotten. there are three of them: tears, art, and love. most people in the world live their lives with at least two of these realities. but between casablanca and naples i'd lost all three by watching what was going on around me. so when they came back to me, i felt like one whose heart begins to beat again when he was despaired of. naples, i remember, is a good city for relearning the reality of tears. americans assume that tears are wet and that life should be dry. consequently crying in america is done usually by women and babies. life as we americans have made it is presumed to be a gay affair. even when it wasn't gay, a man mustn't cry. but the old maxims tell me to take the bitter with the sweet. so i reasoned that life isn't so gay as the advertisements pretend it can be-if i'll only use their product. and where is the place of tears in the scheme? when may even a man cry? -ah, the mess sergeant said. they spend half a their time bawlin. it's all part of the act. but i see through these eyeties. -once every hour, the corporal said, twisting his gi handker­ chief, the neapolitans cry. they cry when they're happy an they cry when they're sad. don't make sense. -but it does, the pfc with the spectacles said under his mos­ quito netting. look at a face laughing. then look at the same face crying.... which do you think is the truer mask? i remember thinking of this point. in tears there's something very old and very young. in between is the vacuum that laughs or smiles. i decided that americans cried less because they lived mostly in that vacuum. they weren't close enough to birth or close enough to death. after some time in naples i saw that by the mediter­ ranean it's more human to weep than to laugh. more reasons to. 298 (naples) 299 eart�ru i got to love the italians because they were still able to do some of both. i wasn't satisfied with the easy song and dance that italians are just volatile. if people cry easily, perhaps they're gentler. p�rhaps they acknowledge the truth of life more honestly. croco­ di�e t�ars aside, of course. so often when i was alone in naples at midnight and saw the moon on the bay, and capri like hope turned to stone, i saw that too much laughter was a mockery of our own precarious state, a spiting of god, as though to show him that he couldn't pull these incongruities over our eyes. -i had a signorina las night, the mess sergeant said. she bust out bawlin after it was all over. but i know she oney did it to screw me for a hundred lire more. . • • i saw the women of naples cry. but i'd seen women cry before. the neapolitan women wept for strong reasons. they couldn't get food at black market prices. their two rooms had been blasted by a bomb. or their man would never come back to them, for the germans had shot him in north italy. i saw neapolitan mothers pass me on the street and suddenly begin to cry. i saw a neapolitan girl great with child rolling on a doorstep where till recently an american had been billeted. i saw a girl from the vomero shoot a british captain on via roma and fall weeping on his body. then i began to understand the reasons for tears. i remember i wept once myself, in algiers. because i couldn't figure out the mess i and other americans were in. that crying of mine was like a boy kicking his bicycle or tearing up a crossword puzzle he's too stupid to solve. mine was selfish weeping because my pride was baffled. thus i learned the difference between crying over a broken heart and crying over a principle. on this difference depends whether tears lift or debase. tears can flow from the heart or merely from the eyes. in the first case they're like blood. in the second, just so much salt water. i remember the farmers out caserta way standing in their fields and crying over the drought. in 1944 italy needed food. but the war had dried up even the heavens; the fields even down to bari and puglie were scorched. i remember a scugnizz' on via roma crying in the august noon because the american major confiscated his can of shoe polish, say­ ing that he stole it from the americani. when this kid cried, i thought his heart was spilling out of his dirty thin body. i remember aida, arrested on the streets where she was walking and not bothering anybody. they jailed her in the questura till ilie re�ll� at life !�il. h, d) w�s reluidro i� 't cry, �m. �im.�: it can�' ! tear!i� [ naerni!ffi1 ilie�md! metnin�\r g)json�: 'ea mdliii' dole en��: the me�i! 'erealoru: �t. i -_. � • .' • .. ? .. _._ _ -*' 1"� 300 the gallery her blood test turned out negative. today in naples aida must still remember how the americani treated her. i saw her in her pink cotton dress and sandals, rolling up her sleeve for the needle. her tears fell on her brown chest. we americans stood around laugh­ ing and asking aida how much she charged. i remember the family russo: papa and mamma and valerio and salvatore, looking at the place where they and their blood had lived for two hundred years. in that palazzo mercadante wrote his songs. after a bomb it looked like a pile of chalk. i remember how the mother put her face on the father's shoulder, how both of them rocked together, how valerio and salvatore simply sat down on the dust of the place where they'd been born. i remember gerarda of the hair that never stayed in place, of the smell of lace and oranges, of the hands that were folded in front of her-but not in resignation. -una volta, gerarda said, ero un' ottima pianista, al conserva­ torio. anche la maes tra me 10 diceva.... gerarda wept sometimes out of fury and a refusal to a�cept her own destiny. her tears taught me that the individual is never so responsible as the moralists hold, that by august, 1944, the italian personality had long been stymied by collective hell. and i remember an american uso actress weeping because the qm laundry hadn't ironed the pleats into her skirt. or myself moaning because our cigarette ration got cut from seven packs a week to five. -these ginsoes are softenin me up, the mess sergeant said. they do so much turnin on of the water works that i'm meltin away myself. -when rosetta left me to spend a week in rome, the corporal said, she puts her arms around my neck and she busts out bawl in. ••. so i did too. just dig that.••• they better get us gi's outa italy before we all go to pieces. and i remember seeing wounded soldiers in the 300th general cry when they thought no one was around. except for them i don't believe most of us americans in naples of august, 1944, had much real reason to cry. but we did when we'd got a skinful of vino. we were feeling sorry for ourselves. but we were doing all right, compared to the neapolitans. then i saw that those who weep honestly had simply come to a point where they must cease acting or break. ho iii n it ill ic' ca i� 10 10 occi wo i tn �iio iliat tion i remember that in naples i began to observe a dread­ ful harmony among the sorrow, (he hunger, and the filth. i heard �� mi�� a�. ana qow� oltenl mil craft! bui nor i �tner {now haw �f a n ana kl inilie trun� (naples) ve a ar� ilth. i nl� how neapolitan music was this common denominator. it was music, not to amuse or to distract, but to comment on the life of naples. this music was more than sounds coming out of the air. it was a voice focused from the horror and squalor that i saw in the streets. it didn't need program notes. i knew it for a con­ sciousness of the neapolitans. i found out where this awareness came from, for i saw poets and painters and musicians by them­ selves, watching the city of naples from a distance. they weren't followed by publicity agents who took down everything they said, for release to the world the following morning. they just stood and looked and thought. they were sponges sucking in whatever there was in the air in august, ig44. i was seeing the isolation of the artist. his mind runs along in its own time, and no one can tell him for sure whether he has anything to say. he can only watch and listen and himself become transparent. everything he sets down is at the focus of the crosscurrents. he feels the fret and push of currents and forces, but he cannot express them except in his own medium. this negating and expanding of himself lets him know that he's great and infinitesimal all at once. he's so occupied with life that he's incapable of living it himself, for that would ruin the barometer in him. i remember that italian artists are different from american ones. the americans always announced that they're artists. they were glib about their techniques and their souls. they told me also that they were making money-not that i should pay much atten­ tion to that. they told me a man could be either very rich or very poor from his art. look at shakespeare; look at mozart. but i might as well know that in the twentieth century a good artist had a go-percent chance of making scads of money. they told me so. and they assured me that the most successful artists neither wrote down to their publics nor retreated into meaninglessness. they often blithely referred to such phrases as it sells, and giving the public what it wants. so i decided that these american artists were craftsmen in the plumbing of the soul. chromium and plastic. but the neapolitans never informed me that they were artists. nor had they a press agent to tell me so. they looked like any other italian when they came into a room. only when i'd �ot to know them did i learn that they'd written or composed or painted. i saw no romantic hunger in their eyes. but i was aware in them of a reserve and a delicacy, as though they were playing with fire, and knew it. often they were inaccessibly melancholy. and except in the cafes (where there was no coffee) they talked of many other things than the problems of the artist. they told me that they 301 302 the gallery worked from their hearts, after they'd tested those hearts. they said that every human heart contained a key to other hearts. but the artist's gaze must be within, after a long time of looking about outside. these neapolitan artists told me that a man knows if he ever puts down the truth. it hurts as it's being torn out of the heart. but once set down, undeformed and whole, it will lie on the paper forever-more or less. it should never be warped into what the artist thinks mayor should be the truth. these neapol­ itans told me that a bad artist cooks up what people want to be­ lieve. they told me that in august, 1944, i must listen hard to pick up the least murmur of truth. i remember that the american artists had no such counsel to give me. they spoke of fitting oneself into movements. they talked of periods and tendencies and lucky shots and literary agents. they wouldn't read anything i'd written, but they liked to have me around as audience: -got a minute? here's an amusing little thing i just dashed off.... the neapolitan artists taught me by knowing them. they said that the artist is also a teacher. the striving must be done with his material. and the highest and hardest striving of all with him­ self. no one, they said, could help him in this secret battle. no one but himself for that first carving and that last polishing. they told me that if the artist didn't believe in some worth in life, there wasn't any point in trying to be an artist. for art was an act of life and love, with some of the violence inherent in each. there was no excuse for titillating or frustrating. just let pen and paper and brush alone for a better man. good art had been accomplished before and probably would be again. -these italian buildins, the corporal said, like they grew from the ground without even tryin. -ah, said the mess sergeant, watching a signorina watch him, when these ole mousetraps was new, they looked as shiny as rocke­ feller center does now. -i wonder, the pfc said. -yuh, naples is too fulla monuments, the corporal said. oughta tear em down. all slums. -my boy, the pfc said over his spectacles, you must make the distinction between old lumber and old jewels.... i remember wondering what there was in italian music and italian painting and italian architecture different from anything we americans had given to the world. and i decided that the best we me tor i � art � toi 1 chajde ::1 :l art ne of lov kilt, lfiil ana i na� , fuli ire lion 1 rlace lime (naples) 303 cou1ll11: en�, 1[ no lit1�' ilier 1�: were complete projections of incomplete human life into a dead medium. in them all i found a regret, a sense of something transi­ tory caught on the wing, a humility and a pride inextricably mixed. i saw that, the better succeeding ages had judged these pieces of art, the more fully did they partake of a discipline that man wishes he possessed, of a sweetness such as he rarely has the strength to sustain. but most of all these tunes, these statues, and these poems had an air as though everyone had felt them but had been too lazy to write them down. there's something in these memorials of the human spirit that cheers and terrifies at the same time. death is coming, but it can't be so awful because everyone goes through with it. and out of death this art speaks to the living. it smiles. with the smile of a mother who knows what her child has to look forward to. but she never speaks of it. this is the crystallized wisdom of art. no­ body heeds it, yet everyone admires it on one plane of taste or another. i remember that in naples of august, 1944, i found that art achieves what man hopes for and what religions promise. t mak(�: and i remember that something in the air of naples or in the neapolitans brought me and other americans back to the strength of human love. in the middle of a war it's easy to forget how to love, either another's body, or just humanity. war throws out of kilter that part of us which delights in a kiss, the feel of skin, a smile. our emphasis falls on sheer physical release taken hurriedly and brutally. i wondered why americans must be taught how to love. per­ haps it's because in our country there is felt to be something shame­ ful in two human beings taking their pleasure together. in america i remember a tension between the sexes. human love is a disease for the isolation ward, not at all nice. thus love in america is often divided into the classifications of having sex and getting mar­ ried. neither has much to do with love. it was the having sex which began to strike us in naples as being so cold-blooded. what caused this? the italian scenery? the neapolitan women? but after a while i and many other americans ceased to be satisfied with passion without affection. i'd known americans who'd lost their virginity without ever kissing or making love in the old sense of the word. so we came to look upon this having sex, this ejacula­ tion without tenderness as the orgasm of a frigidaire. there was no place for it in the scheme of human love. it wasn't so much bestial �s meaningless. for having sex meant that the two bodies involved mu!i( !�i � anrtni� lat tn�� !ii / �l i -� .... ' � '_"'_�oqi!"'.tjiii'w"-� / . ..� 304 the gallery ana !doi are loot t ex�all, dill! on'inen love anr neo inerlldan conflline never really knew one another. they just rolled and arose strangers, each loathing the other. for 1 remember that many of us americans couldn't fit love into our lives. before marriage we knew the double date, that negation of intimacy and privacy. two men and two girls go out for an eve­ ning. the men talk between themselves, the girls between them­ selves. alter four hours everyone is so bored that the only escape is a physical one, as a book is torn to bits by a reader who can't understand it. there were no overtures, no epilogues. i watched americans when i was on double dates with them. they hadn't much sense of how to lead up to the act by conversation, of how to stir the woman's mind before their fingers touched her body. their kisses, if they kissed at all, were rough and fumbling. they did outrage to the gentleness of women. i wondered why many amer­ icans kept their love of women in a tight compartment. and the women in their turn thought the men graceless bulls. -i was standin in the park, the mess sergeant said. an she starts to cry an scratch my face when i wouldn't kiss her. -rosetta tole me i necked like a butcher, the corporal said. but i caught on fast, with the lessons she gimme. these babes know somethin.... she taught me to kiss slow, to take my time. i useta close my eyes an just jab, hoping for the best.... rosetta kisses sleepylike. sometimes she puts her tongue in my ear. or just brushes her lips along my throat. gee ... -neapolitan women know how to hold their men, the pfc said, wiping his spectacles. they've had centuries of training. you don't need divorce when you can cook and make love. love's a lot simpler than some people make it out to be. quite natural, you know ... -damned if 1 do know, the tech sergeant said. wouldn't it sorta embarrass ya to be married to a gal that responded too well? wouldn't ya feel she knew a little bit too much to be ya wife? ... if ya had a mouse in ya house that really knew how to love ya up, ya might feel like handin her five bucks before ya went to sleep. -you'd get used to it, the pfc said. and you wouldn't be nervous or dissatisfied half the time. for though we americans were a conquering army, when history is written it will show that the neapolitans conquered many of us. they beat us down with love. they loved love. there were italian boys and girls who slashed their wrists for us, whether we de­ served it or not. the italians regarded romantic love as what it really is: a viru­ ient disease. and we only jested about it. they taught us the -i an)'! ir, \\�e anr h 01 �iv iliatt qn 01 �ita� ire mlran �i!al moi i'a ah� ,llnm -irel looking mean!j .lno the �ople (naples) 305 anatomy of this extraordinary madness. they showed us that it should be en joyed and feared, that the rules and science of love are at least as worthy of consideration as the laws of hygiene, football, and business ethics. the neapolitans taught us that love's as necessary as eating and excreting. it's a game in which music and cruelty and peace are all at stake. people are only admirable in ratio to their suscepti­ bility to love. laughter and good manners and wit are all trappings of love. even when they aren't in love, the italians ape the man­ nerisms of the lover. thus they can be joyous at eighty. italian love is both articulate and silent. the lovers quickly knock down any barrier between them. it's the only time in a man's life when he can forget that people are really alone in life, that actually there's no way to bridge the chasm between hearts. those physical manifestations of love, the touches and glances and kisses and confessions, are all deceits that we invent to hide our own lone­ liness. -when ya walk down via roma, the corporal said, ya can tell by their eyes whether they will or won't. they make no bones about it over here.... christ, what eyes they giveya. -back home, the pfc said, they'd call it unbridled sensuality. -i can have any ginso i want, the mess sergeant said. any age, any sex. they all love it. it's the one good thing i'll say for em. i remember that love in naples was both wild and disciplined. when two people enter into this madness, they can't stop short at any point, saying: there, i've loved you enough. yet this madness of giving and pleasing and reciprocating is governed by strict rules that the lovers seem instinctively to understand. the only evil you can do to love is to thwart it by purely intellectual rules or by betraying what your own heart tells you to do. i remember how easy and fluid the beginning is. that first entrance into a room, that easy lounging on a street corner, that first sally of eyes, those first words that awakened a suspicion or an echo in my cellar. i couldn't believe it was happening to me. yet i'd always dreamed this was the way it would be when it came. at first i tried to hold off and watch my own mind. but i ended by tumbling into the stream i was charily testing with my toe. i remember the next stage of my disease. something i've been looking for is here for the asking. everything we say to each other means more than our words denote. for love is understanding. and the solace! for a night, for a week, for a month, for a year two people are able to forget the riddle of being alive in the greaterlir il: all :ught vi, __ . �l-l_ -�------�� -. . the gallery306 (n ,........, delight and torment of being lifted out of themselves and married on some island where nothing else in the world may come. -dimmi che cosa pensi, john. -same thing you are, of course. i remember that then i found the difference between love and having sex. there's none of the blind preoccupation with my own body and its satisfaction. the first aim is to please my love. and i end by being pleased too. -no, penso ate. voglio sentirti contento fra le mie braccia. -don't you feel that i am? if i could keep my lips in your hair forever.... for the act of love is only the continuation and the resolution of a desire and a mystery already set up in two minds. the blue­ print becomes the working model, the raw stone the statue. i remember lying there, lost and wondering. i put my hand out to encounter another hand, already reaching for mine. my mouth went out exploring, only to meet another mouth working toward mine in the darkness. in that kiss i felt as though my tongue had at last articulated a word i'd been striving to pronounce all my life long. in those long kisses there was nothing brutal, nothing rapa· cious, as mad love is said to be, so that the lovers lacerate one another's lips. i think we were both a little sad when we kissed. in those kisses we tried to heal each other's souls. and i remember the sweet slowness of undressing one another, the longing and the languor. the clothes dropping whispering to the floor, the shadowy bodies gradually revealed, the secrets even more secret and removed that they lay under our hands. it seemed that in our lethargic and compassionate caresses we were trying to console each other for every hurt the world had ever inflicted: i am with you to comfort me, and i will comfort you. for i love you. and i remember how exquisite was our leisure with one another. if there was passion-and indeed there must have been much-it only carried us slowly and steadily up to that place where there is understanding. higher and higher. we didn't say much, only one another's names in a rising intensity of pain and delight. and for one instant we were in a place where there was no difference between us. we melted into all those who've ever loved and lived at all. but then the hand that had buoyed us to these places slowly set us down again on earth. for no one can live very long up there. and after a while of nothing to say out of the huge peace, it's time for sleep. sleep's a part of love. no man should rise from the looaor �1wh� !m1ive�1ireme 1iu�ion, l��inin i�, or a �1tner i �wer oui t� ttick� �afin :jffian be lit love! �ijitr i� ( i� de�ij � the i( :iije!t, je (naples) bed after loving, button his pants, and run to catch a train. for that's a denial of the peace that love brings. i remember how we turned to each another, to sleep all night long with our arms about each another: -buona notte e sogni d'oro.... dormi, john.... thus in naples i and other americans loved. in a war one has to love, if only to reassert that he's very much alive in the face of destruction. whoever has loved in wartime takes part in a passion­ ate reaffirmation of his life. such love has all the aspects of terror and surprise. i am bitter when my love seems cold. nothing can equal the malice with which i plot to pay back every slight, real or imagined. and nothing can match the tears and vows with which we are reconciled for the second or the hundredth time. all my conduct is analyzed scruple by scruple with an ethical nicety which i can never carry into my daily living. if men could live all their lives as virtuously and introspectively as when they're in love, we'd all be gods, and there'd be no need of promises of heaven or of hell. -i deliberately insult rosetta, the corporal said. an when i've said my piece to her an see the expression on her face, i'd give a month's pay to take back my words.... yet i won't apologize to her. why's that? -those minutes of waitin, the mess sergeant said, wonderin will she show up tonight. -in love, said the pfc with spectacles, laughing for the first time overseas, is the only time when the human race is amusing or good or anything else but scheming beetles ... and it's the only time when we get a true perspective on ourselves, for we can't stand ourselves.... i remember that in naples i learned that everything in life is a delusion, that all happiness is simply a desire for, and unhappiness a repining of, love. nothing else matters. all of life is a preparation for, or a retrospection on, those brief hours when two people are together and perfect in each other. then we're the slaves of a power outside ourselves, that brings us together for its own ends and tricks us into a joy and an equality. and finally i remember that the neapolitans, because they were human beings and concerned with being nothing else but, carri<:d their loves into their relations with others. i suppose that chris­ tianity is only a code to expand your personal love to all the world. your desire and your potency are supposed to touch all people. on the lowest scale this means simply good manners. on the highest, jesus christ. i wondered sometimes why the italians struck 307 308 the gallery me as kinder and gentler than many americans. perhaps it was because their lives were' more fixed economically, because they knew they could never make a million dollars or be president of the united states. therefore their energies turned inward: to the enjoyment of life as it could be lived within their own possibilities, to the acquirement of those graces and kindnesses which make life different from the whirring of a machine. --she brought me to her house, the mess sergeant said. i didn't wanna go, but i went because i thought there was a chance of her ending the night shackin with me an jacobowski. christ, what a welcome i gotl ya'd think i was a visitin fireman.... well, those ginsoes treated me so white that me an jacobow5ki decided not to shack with her after all.... say, maybe that was in the back a their heads all the time. -maybe, the pfc said. or maybe they just liked you as a human being. that's not impossible, you know. -nah, the mess sergeant said. they wanted somethin outa me. just what they wanted i ain't yet figured out. but i will. -maybe they didn't want anything at all from you, the pfc said. but no one ever listened to him. and sometimes i wondered why the neapolitans, with some exceptions, seemed so good to me. their motives were so unmixed; their gladness so bright, their grief so terrible. i decided that it was because they were living for their bare existence. they'd never had much, and in august, 1944, they'd given up every nonessential and quite a few of the essentials. we americans were still thinking in terms of nylons and chromium and that raise from fifty to sixty dollars a week. the neapolitans weren't always sure they'd be eating 'that evening. but instead of inducing a squalor and envy in them, in most cases this bleak reality brought forth in them a helpless gaiety, a simplicity, and a resignation that touched me and many other americans. this even though they'd lost their war. the fact remained that these people must and would live, the only important fact after the nonsense and cruelty of the moment have been wiped away. there'll be neapolitans alive in 1960. i say, more power to them. they deserve to live out the end of their days because they caught on sooner than we to how simple human life can be, uncomplicated by advertising and puritanism and those loathsome values of a civilization in which everything is measured in terms of commercial success. what difference does it make if a man has bo from honest work if he can't buy soap? and does a (naples) 309 rne�n�: i��, \ou,iliq wife care for the hair on her legs if her children aren't eating regularly? i remember that this generalized love of the italians for life and other human beings brought them to a functionalism that we americans have so far realized only in our machinery. i don't speak as a romanticist. what complicates human life unbearably is the unequal distribution of goods and favoritism. but the last is far more human and understandable than the first. people aren't born equal intellectually. but that's a truism. all have a right to work, to eat, to sleep, to make love, and to dress, if they choose. every­ thing else in life has been introduced into it by the so-called ruling and intellectual classes, who in 1944 were too aware of themselves and too little cognizant of their responsibilities. by august, 1944, they'd failed completely. it was time for a new order and straight thinking. the alternative was obvious. i remember that i knew and i saw that the italians were a more cohesive social group than the americans. then that is all to their credit. have we americans, for all our preaching, done much to assimilate our minorities, to control vested interests, to distinguish between talent and ballyhoo, to understand the world in which we live? in the future there'll be no satisfaction in saying: i am an american, as the italians used to tell me, with the pride of an inferiority complex: i am an italian. so what? perhaps we must soon all come to the point where we're proud only to say: i am a human being, a citizen of the world. for in naples i and other americans learned by a simple application of synecdoche that no one, in himself and by himself, is much better or much worse than anybody else. and we americans were only fortunate. our good fortune should be shared, or we'd lose it and ourselves and our humanity. in naples i and other americans were reduced by watching the effects of the war to that cipher which is the beginning of wisdom and love. who am i? why, only a more or less sensitive piece of chemicals and reactions. i shall live for part of a century. and it's to my own interest and to the interest of my children that others in the world shall know that life can be as good as i have found it to be. this is utter idealism. it is also utter practicality, such as americans like to talk about. and i remember that in naples i relearned that man is m?re than a physical being. the religions of the world have been saymg this for several thousand years. but the world has never settled ?n a dogma to define the spiritual nature of man. no one ever will, except for himself. that belongs to liberty of choice. it's at any d!ani,\ith 'erf�ije roaeo�t; ce, th1)'�: ml"in���' �'m'lu�t crom hl�� ) rore ��, �u��r� dom i� � t toumoo�1 a i�t iliffi u]qlil'e,� the roomful; in j�,i endolilie pie dum: ni!ffi an�: ing i! mr� oe� it ma! �p( ana 00 \. :��� '. . ��"' ._ ..... ... --.. �.. -310 the gallery rate a question that can be settled without murder. all that matters in the twentieth century is that millions of people must never again be thrust out of life through no fault of their own. it seemed, against american rules of a good fight and fair play, that the italians should hate us and that we should hate them. then in twenty years we can all have a return engagement on the home field. in naples i saw that this need not necessarily be so. -dovete aiutarci, the neapolitans said. this meant that we ought to help them. why not? i don't remember noticing that most europeans were content to sit back for the rest of their lives and receive american food and medical supplies. this is the newest form of vicious propaganda. some, of course, were. but then there are also ameri­ cans who'd be only too happy with a dole. in august, 1944, i remember that there were many americans in naples. they learned from italian life. they learned the things that were good and bad in both american and italian life. i remember the italian women, brought to situations that even the men couldn't cope with. i remember that they still laughed and loved their men and their babies. i remember the wonderful beauty of italian women, outside and inside. and even the whores had a certain beauty of logic in them. these italian women were often gentle without weakness, gay without giddiness, and loving without gumdrops. these principles of conduct seemed to be rules for life which held even when life was at rock bottom. they were learned thousands of years ago. yet we forget them through too much comfort and through bad art. i remember also the italian men. there were thieves and liars and misanthropes among them, of course. there are everywhere. but i remember italian men who moved in a sober brilliance of purpose-that nothing like this would ever happen again. they studied things outside italy, endeavoring to discover what good had been done in the world since 1922, in what respects the outside world has surpassed italy in science and humanism and govern­ ment. i remember how much they gave me when they thought they had nothing left to give: a sense of tragedy, a sweetness, and an easiness toward little problems. all this for a few cigarettes or an occasional meal. or for nothing. i remember their dark faces when anyone was kind to them. the gentle and noble italians (and there are many) never envied me. �all!1 ---....._ ii thal� le mull: town, (naples) 311 --caro john, ti consiglio di dire a tutti quel che hai visto in italia . . . perche, sai, gl'italiani non vi odiano, non vi odiano, voi altri americani. . . . thus i walked often in the galleria umberto primo, that arcade in the center of the city of naples. most of the modern world could be seen in ruins there in august, 1944. i remember that galleria as something in me remembers my mother's womb. i walked backwards and forwards in it. i must have spent at least nine months of my life there, watching and wondering. for i got lost in the war in naples in august, 1944. often from what i saw i lost the power of speech. it seemed to me that everything happening there could be happening to me. a kind of madness, i suppose. but in the twenty-eighth year of my life i learned that i too must die. until that time the only thing evil that could be done to me would be to hurry me out of the world before my time. or to thwart my natural capacities. if this truth held for me, it must be valid for everybody else in the world. this is the reason why i remember the gallery in naples. italy.... moe j ninth portrait one gin no!� i\though he was a second lieutenant, there was both indolence and nervousness in the way he leaned against the wall of the px on via diaz. he had a toothpick in a corner of his mouth, and he was watching the people going in and out of the px. in brown paper packages was all their wealth for one week: seven packs of cigarettes, a cake of soap, five razor blades, and some candy bars. and they carried their packages fearfully cradled in their elbows, as though they were smuggling something. in the gutter stood neapolitan kids who bid for the contents of these paper bags. an mp sometimes came up and chased the kids away. but just around the corner from the px the americans and the neapolitans would get together again to engage in trade or barter. a gi with an armored force shoulder patch came sideways up and saluted him. he spat out his toothpick, straightened up, and returned the greeting. this gi wore the purple heart on his shirt, which didn't prejudice the second lieutenant one way or another. -lieutenant, sir, the gi said. -one or the other, he said. but not both. -ya givin me a hard time, sir. i got mine at salerno ... -so did i, he said, and i don't wear anything to show it.... and for the gi to see he spread out his right hand, which he'd been keeping in his pocket. he let the gi see how one finger had been bent on itself, how the flesh on the back of the hand was mottled and taut like melted rubber. -and i liked to bang out a tune or two on the piano, he added, when i wasn't driving my taxi. -well, that's not all, the gi said. last week i got nicked at poggibonsi. i'm just gettin outa the hospital ... 312 moe 313 -so am i, boy, so am i, he said, changing the cant of his legs. but i can't show you my other wound. not here in public on the streets of napoli anyhow. -ya givin me a hard time, sir, the gi said. i thought ya was one of these pbs commandos. -tell me what you want, he said, wiping his forehead. -i need some shirts' ... an 1 didn't sell my others either. the ginsoes hocked em. or some kike sold em while i was in the hospital ... -i'm a k ike, the second lieutenant said. nevertheless, telling the gi to wait outside, he went into the px. it was hot and crowded inside the glass doors. some officers were fighting over the last wicks and flints left on a counter. others were knocking one another down to get at the shoe counter, where three pairs of low oxfords waited for the victor. others sat at card tables spread with brown paper, drinking cokes and coffee or eating sugar doughnuts. he looked at them all for a minute. then he went upstairs to the officers' clothing store. it hurt him a little to climb. his combat boots scraped on the marble stairs. the neapolitan girl behind the clothing counter was pressing her temples and squeezing tears out of her eyes. she looked at him as though he were the newest rat come to gnaw at her. -say, maybe you need an aspirin, he said. what did they do to you? -0 dio, she said. it's this rush rush rush ... the americans are always in a hurry ... they yell at me ... maria, maria, maria • . . i'm their servan t . . . and they are driving me crazy. . . . he took his right hand out of his pocket and laid it on the counter as he leaned toward her. she saw his proud flesh and his twisted fingers. then she took a handkerchief from between her breasts and started to dry her eyes. -your servant, lieutenant. -have you got a size fifteen suntan shirt? she got hrm one from a dwindling pile on the almost empty shelves. while she was wrapping it, he signed the old business on the yellow sales ticket: -1 certify that this clothing was bought by me for my personal use; moses shulman, and lt, in£. ... and while she was making change from his thousand-lira note, he went downstairs and bought a wax-paper cup of coffee and two sugar doughnuts. these he carried back to the girl maria. -they never let us buy these, you know, she said. 314 the gallery then she stepped into a recess and drank the coffee and ate the two doughnuts. he watched her shiny black smock, which all the neapolitan px girls wore over their print dresses. he saw the glint of the earrings under her profuse hair. he watched her throat swallowing. then she came back to the counter, wiping her mouth and looking at him dubiously. -i want you to smile for me, moe said, picking up his package. i got a feeling there's something you haven't showed me of yourself. -i have no reason to smile, she said, staring at the brown paper on the counter. -neither do i. so she wiped her lips once more. her mouth widened. he saw her teeth and the tongue behind them like a frightened polyp. -but that's no smile, moe said. and suddenly he tweaked her lightly in the ribs. again her lips parted and she laughed. and he felt his heart sicken and flower all at once. -maria what? -maria rocco, she said, of naples, italy. di una razza vinta e inferiore. -ah, said moe, and what conquered and inferior race do you think i come from? -but you're an american, she said, glancing at his frightful right hand. you should be the happiest man on earth. the world is at your feet . . . -do you think so? he said, putting his hand back into his pocket. look, maria rocco, will you meet me tonight at eight? at the via roma side of the galleria umberto? -well, why not? you're the first man today who treated me like a human being. -take a look at my nose and my dark skin, moe said. i might almost be a neapolitan. -at eight at the galleria, then, maria rocco said. he looked at her for a second, then with his package under his arm he went downstairs and out of the px. the august sun in naples was broiling. the gi was waiting for him and took a roll of lire from his pocket. -gee, lieutenant, thanks. ya gimme a hard time there at first. how much? -i won't be needing money for quite some time, moe said. the gi saluted him and took off down via diaz toward the q_uestura. moe looked after him, put a toothpick in his teeth, and slowly turned onto via roma. 11ri rr1 hlm tn� doti moe 315 he turned into the galleria umberto. in the heat of august, 1944, he. felt the ca'!terized lips of his new wound murmuring like the gratmgs of a thirsty mouth. a tremor ran up his side along his ribs. he thought maybe the medic had left a wick inside him. he walked till he was in the very center of the galleria, under the dome. slowly he spun round in his boots as though he were the needle of a compass orienting itself on the grid lines of a map. thus he was the very center of that afternoon crowd in the gal­ leria. he was the nub of hundreds of persons, american, british, french, polish, moroccan, and neapolitan. he smiled and said to himself that this was the first and last time he'd be the center of the world. as he stood poised, a young italian in a white linen suit came up. he limped on a cane. out of his handsome head stuck an unlighted cigarette. -please, the italian said. i'm not asking for a cigarette, you notice. just a little fire for my own . -why certainly, joe. he put out his zippo lighter so suddenly that the italian ducked and fell to the pavement of the galleria. in helping him up moe saw that one white linen trouser, disordered by the fall, bared an aluminum leg. -you're too used to getting hit, moe said. -in ethiopia i was a tenente pilota. i used to strafe the ethiopians in the fields. according to orders, you understand. one day my plane was forced down. the neri started to cut me up. you see what they did to my leg ... -that's enough, moe said. walk along with me. the handsome italian took his arm and they cut diagonally into the galleria, away from its center under the dome. moe had to walk at half his usual pace. the italian helped himself puntingly along on his cane. one white linen shoulder hunched up and down. -i have always wanted to know an american. how did you know my name is joe? it is; giuseppe brasi from taranto.... for one week now i have been standing by myself .every afternoon in the galleria, waiting for an american to whom i would feel costretto to speak. one whole week i waited, with the excuse of the unlit cigarette in my lips. and then today i saw you.... i don't want anything of you; cigarettes, black market. i am rich, as italians go nowadays. but i wanted to talk to an american. the right amer­ ican.... what is there in your face that i find so simpatico? -damned if i know, moe said, feeling the italian's weight rising and falling on his arm. but hitler probably would. -well, the italian said, you americans have some secret we italians have missed. so you will pardon me if i make you my friend. at once. -not at all, moe said. let's sit down at this table and have a vermouth. -first, the italian said, laying a hand on moe's arm. i must do something for you. i cannot stop giving presents to those i like.... do you love women? i know an actress from gorizia here in napoli. i never kiss her on the mouth. but i buy her food when she meets me on the street and says, ehhh, pinuccio, i am hungry, cousin.... or can i take you to the casini? i go often there for pleasure. the girls give me special attention because of my leg. they cannot tire me out. ... at fifteen i was mad for ballerine. i went every night to the rivista to look at one wanda. in those days i didn't have much money from my father, so i bored wanda. over her i used to cry myself to sleep. at fifteen.... now i am in napoli from taranto on business. marriage business. i am affiancing myself to a dottoressa of a good family. a serious girl. we fight every day. i leave her in tears and walk into the streets of napoli. i amuse myself.... mi piace tutto.... for you i will do anything. -thank you, moe said, ordering two vermouths. thank you very much, joe. -but, the handsome italian said, laying his cane across his lap, you must tell me what you know that i do not. i must learn your secret. is it just that you are an american? ... i think not. i find many of them offensive.... look, caro, i have an apartment on via dei mille. you must come and live with me for a week. as my guest. we will have cene and pranzi such as you have never eaten. we will have women in the moonlight. i will fight with my fidanzata for one solid week in order that i may be always with you. -but this time tomorrow night, moe said, i'll be north of napoli. i'll be seeing the houses of the farmers up in tuscany. walls spattered with holes, i'll be running with my carbine..•• think of me up there if the sun is as bright as it is this after­ noon.... you see why i can't accept your hospitality. beh, caro mio, the handsome italian said, shrugging a shoulder as though he were still limping, you mean you are going back to fight? -i'm only an infantry platoon leader, moe said. lean and mean ... maybe you'd like to fly me up in your plane? -but the duce told us, the italian said, ordering two more ilii 316 the gallery ma moe 317 eanak vermouths, that jews did no fighting in the american army ..• then he checked himself and added: -of course you will agree with me that your roosevelt started this war? -look, joe, moe said. let's talk like two friends, huh? it's too late in my life for arguing.... i argued for twenty-five years. i saw that somebody had to be the grist for the mill instead of just talking about it.... so here i am ... i have a hand that looks like a claw, and a rip in my chest. i'm no good t.o anyone any longer. all those fine dreams i once had are gone.... the world will never be what i thought it could be. i used to dream at the wheel of my taxi while i waited for a stop light to change. i listened to what people were talking about in back of my meter. . . . nothing they said made any sense to me.... so here i am in naples, italy, in august, 1944. it makes a little more sense to me than a drunken dowager in an evening gown.... anyway i'm almost happy and almost calm ... i'm seeing the world, like you do in that last look around before you go blind. what more can i ask? -mi dica un po', the handsome italian asked. are you such a strange man because you are a jew or in spite of it? -i've hungered and i've thirsted after something, moe said. and it took a war to show me what that something is.... i've lived all my life in insecurity. i feared it and i fought it. i saw what it did to my father. i saw how it embittered my sisters audrey and rebecca and elaine, even as they sat at their typewriters. i saw how only the sweetness of my mother was able to hold out against it.... but now that i accept insecurity i find a weight has been lifted from me ... it means that in this year i must die. -you are a perfectly just man, the handsome italian said, and tears came into his eyes. you are a good man in 1944 ... -no, not good, moe said; and he smiled to counteract the italian's tears. but i see that it's nothing to give up my life. it's easier to do than be slowly smothered. -spend the rest of today with me, the italian said, wiping his eyes and smoothing his white lapels. i shall give you a night in which no pleasure will be lacking. -no thanks, joe. it would be forcing the issue. i've never b�en able to do that. and everything now is so natural to me. like one of those dreams in which you want something and it hap. pens ... without any effort on your part. the handsome italian put the toe of his cane on the pavement of the galleria. he stood up and wiped his eyes again. 'eaowm, ... uitloo " i iliim: aid. lfa�1 anel ing two � 318 the gallery -ah, he said, i too have a good heart, even though i strafed the ethiopian contadini. under orders of the duce, of course. . . . i had also an amante, a libyan black girl. i had two children by her. it broke my heart to leave my cugina di guerra and my bambini.... but i feel that i shall see you again. otherwise .•• morirei di dolore.. to • -well, take care, joe, moe said, putting out his hand. he watched the italian go along the galleria on his cane. he limped through the crowds, one white shoulder rising and falling as his weight hit his aluminum leg. then moe took out two sheets of v-mail stationery and a pencil and began to think what he would write to his friend irving, driving his taxi in brooklyn. he bit on the pencil. the sun was dropping outside the galleria umberto. a ray of it smote his chest, and he seemed no longer to be in august, 1944, and the italian campaign called rome-arno like a soccer match. there was just himself close to the mediter­ ranean sea. something specific in himself had come from this sea long ago. he didn't quite know why he felt so at home. somewhere in italy 14 aug. 1944 hullo irv, this is that matzoth man talking to you again-i'm writing to you because i could always tell you nearly any ole gunk that came into my head-you just happen to be it, that's all-right now i'm sitting on my fanny in a city in southern italy and you know dam well i'm not allowed to tell you what the name of it--doesn't matter anyhow-i got out of the horsepital this morning and tomorrow i'm going back to the line-i have been away too long from my boys-i keep wondering what they are doing up north of me and how many of them are still with us-­ right now i'm drinking vermouth-it's late afternoon-anyhoo i'm glad you aren't sitting across from me at hymie hamilburg's because then i couldn't tell you what's on my mind-you'd keep butting in with your corny humor (?) like you always do-everybody says this life is unreal -the executive officer of our battalion told me that in the middle of a war everybody contracted a bad case of irrelevance-did i spell that right?-i dunno and i don't much care-what i started out to tell you is that this life, i mean me being a platoon leader in the infantry, is as close to anything real as anybody ever gets-you suddenly see how simple and terrible everything is-and beautiful like a bolt of iightning(this v-mail is continued on another sheet-i hope they photograph the two together hope a hope a hope) #2 i have got it figured ou t this way-the americans, including us taxidrivers (smile), have been living in a vacuum that they thought was moe 319 paradise-but it wasn't really anything except chromium plating and drunkenness and hunks of sex like a thanksgiving dinner-it bored us even when we were in the middle of it-and that's the reason millions of us have got to pay-through the nose-i think i'm going to be one of these millions-i feel it like you know you're going to have a tooth­ ache-somebody has to pay the piper and if everybody takes the attitude "it won't be me" it will end by being everybody--don't get me wrong boy-i don't think of me as a burnt offering-but in the world there's a surgical operation going on-a lot is going to be cut out-i wonder if the world will be a better place when it comes out of the ether­ think about. what our battalion executive officer said-a bad case of irrelevance-if we had to have this war, it kind of looks as though everything we stood for meant nothing-or maybe you can tell me why i can shoot a jerry without feeling anything, but a dirty deal or a starving kid makes my stomach flop-it must be the vermouth-irv, keep yours where it belongs and gib ein kuss for me to mamma, sadie, audrey, rebecca, elaine, anna, and lilian that works at cantor's­ and tell mr. feingold that there's no ghetto here-the whole city is onebe good­ moe moe didn't feel like drinking any more vermouth in the gal­ leria umberto. he wasn't much of a bibber anyhow. alcohol mounted to his brain in a spiral of screams and complaints, like charwomen panting into an attic. alcohol divided something in his head against the other half. after a few drinks he always felt as though he ought to rise to the defense of something. he didn't quite know what. so he pulled at his belt and went out into via roma and the heavy sunlight of the neapolitan afternoon. he strolled into the piazza by the san carlo opera house, crossed it, and walked along the palace where in the niches stood brown statues of carlo d'angio and the kings of naples and sicily leaning on shields and looking like idealized politicians in armor. after the palazzo he came into a little railed park on an escarpment. he could see over the bay, golden in the sunset and thumping with lei's and hospital ships. he saw the sulphur on the sides of vesu­ vius and the dotted stretch down to amalfi and sorrento. this after­ noon he could see almost to salerno, where he'd come ashore eleven months ago. naples wasn't so far from salerno. so little progress in eleven months. inching up this sunny sad peninsula. tomorrow he'd be farther north, in tuscany. hearing that cracking and crunching and clumping and roaring, feeling that floating uncer­ tainty, seeing the running dots of men who fired and ducked and 320 the gallery sometimes didn't get up again. and occasionally the arch of a church, with a jerry rifle peeping like a periscope around the pastelled cornice. himself running running running or looking back as he ran to see where his boys were.... moe loved the city of naples. it must be like jerusalem, in con­ trast to tel aviv. those corners that gave onto nowhere, the sun­ light slanting on a pile of rubble, those faces looking out laughing or weeping at him-all reminded him that his heart was a hinge, not a valve. and most of all he loved the titter or hum or roar of naples, saying to him things older than 1944, things that reached back into a time when men were more united in their chaos, willing to be put against a wall for something they believed. it seemed to moe that in naples there had somehow survived the passion and coherence of an old faith. all this he only felt, but the city of naples comforted him. there was a poultice in its dirt, a natural humanity in its screaming. holding onto the low balustrade, he walked along the path above the street. it was beyond the palm trees on the edge of the escarp­ ment. there were shoeshine boys along his way. sailors-british, american, french, and italian-leaned on the balustrade and looked over at vesuvius. moe walked till the path turned back on itself round a statue of pompey and the railing was ornate with low white pot-bellied pilasters. here to his right via caracciolo began and went on for miles around the bend of the bay. and here moe stopped, for an american officer of the field artillery was sitting on the railing, back to the bay, lighting one cigarette from the stump of another. moe and he recognized each other with the must of minorities. this captain had a beaked nose, a heavy close­ shaven beard, a narrow chest, and hairy slender wrists. he nodded rapaciously yet shyly and offered moe a cigarette. -and only dis mornink i vas sayink to marcus dat a soitin frient of ours iss too bright to be a christian.... moe refused the cigarette but stood next to the artillery captain. he waited politely, looking at the huge nose and the resentful eyes. -oh it's silence then he's eskin, the captain said, gesturing pathetically at the bay of naples. zo maybe i should be shuttink the mouth? i got vound up in my garment business and the big mouth i haven't shut since. -if you want to come out here and talk, moe said, that's all right too. it's your privilege. -it's a great country ve got, the captain said, dat both of us coicumciscd persons should be officers in its army. if ve vas livink 1 in poland. . . �� ii ��j r-s-, arcn �i ounot or look -i know, 1 know, moe said, and he leaned on his elbows and belly to watch the sunlight on capri. then the captain brandished a copy of the new republic in moe's face. even with his chain-smoking he couldn't sit still on the wall. he blinked as he talked. there was an agony of the pursued about him. -and dis i'm readink, the captain said, to improve my english. den my gi's von't be leffink at me. dey are fine kids, but sometimes dev're leffink yen 1 tuk. -you mean they make an issue of . . . ? -dis 1 don't say. but sometimes 1 see funny looks. den dey're sayink, he's a yid and he's got two silver bars and he can't tuk american. so who is this yid to be commanding us? let him go back to his pawnshop . . . -i don't think that's a general attitude, moe said. i've never had any trouble with my boys ... -ah but you vouldn't, you vouldn't. you're tukking a perfect american and in da dark, pardon, you could be pessink yourself off as a yenkee. -it's quite obvious that i'm not, moe said. -ah, but pardon, you vasn't born in vienna like i vas, the artillery captain said. -when did you leave vienna? moe asked softly, looking back to the bay. -in january, 1938. -then you weren't in on the worst of it, moe said. you've got no cause to complain. the country took you in. as you said yourself, it even gave you a commission in its army. no other country in the world except the united states ... -lissen a vile. pardon, but you're tukkin almost as much as me or marcus.... only dis mornink i'm tellink marcus dere's no vun like us ven it comes to tukkink. dot's how ve sell.... zo i'm come from vienna in 1938. and me just a student. ach, vat a time to learn american. and i'm not spikking it perfect.... but lissen. i arrive vid reichsmarks in my pocket. i take a job as dishwasher. i go to columbia. a kind jewish lady takes an interest in me. she hears i have degrees from a gymnasium in vienna. zo translations from rainer maria rilke i'm makink for her at three in da morning in place of sleepink.... zo kind she vas to me.... but lissen. dey kilt my fader before ve leafe vienna ..• -i'm very sorry to hear that, moe said. the artillery captain slid down from the wall. he took hold of moe's ann, forcing him to look him full in the face. his skinny moe 321 322 the gallery figure towered upward; his eyes flashed; he shook his finger under the hot soft neapolitan sky. a bloodstone leered on his index finger. his nasal voice peaked up into a scream: -he's sorry! ... lissen a vile.... i'm goink back to vienna.•.. dis year or da next ... ven falls the stadt to our army because i spik good deutsch, i have a high position.... lissen i pay back those viennese for everytink dey do to me and my fader...• i cut them up in liddel pieces if i can. you hear me? ... dey pay. vait and see. dey pay. i pay back does doity bestards. i spit in deir faces, i'm mekking dem eat deir vord jude ... -that wouldn't be wise, moe said, offering the captain a stick of gum. -vise? vise! ... zo much he's sayink wid a liddel vord. lissen to him tukkink. -don't you think, moe asked, raising his voice a little, that there's already enough hatred in the world without you settling a private grudge? . . . we must wipe the slate clean and start all over again. the artillery captain stopped buttonholing moe long enough to light another cigarette from the stub of his latest. then he screamed: -he's tukkink! da most dangerous man in da vorld! everybody, every think he's sellink down da river ... his own race.... zo i'm goink avay before i'm losing da temper. -you've already lost more than the temper, moe said, and firmly he turned away from the captain to look on the bay of naples. the captain took one more frenzied puff on his cigarette and tore away up the promenade. he shook his head and muttered to him­ self. once he turned back and looked at moe and shook his head. even from the distance his eyes glittered like a vulture's. moe paced slowly back in the direction he'd come. near the palace were stairs going down to a urinal. at the entrance to this subway an italian boy of eighteen in dark blue shorts and a monk's-cloth shirt open at the neck was lounging. for a swift instant he looked steadfastly at moe, then dropped his eyes. his face had the removed contemplative beauty of women beyond the moment of their spasm of love. --let us not waste any time, the italian boy said, looking past moe out into the bay. will you give me a cigarette or will you not? -i don't care for your salesmanship, moe said, unbuttoning cis breast pocket. but you can have this whole pack. i don't smoke nyself. moe he put another toothpick between his lips and watched how the boy took the pack into his fingers and stroked the cellophane. the boy's lips moved but nothing came out. then his eyes veered from the bay over moe's shoulder to moe's face. they were black italian eyes, calm yet full of a passion of ink when it falls into words. -you know of course, the boy said, that neapolitan boys would do anything for this pack of cigarettes. i would or i would not, depending on how i felt toward you. i am a lucchese, you see. -if you think that cuts any ice with me, moe began. then he saw no point in heightening the wall between the boy and himself. it had been flung up by the boy himself, a hasty reflex masonry of sorrow and pride and fear. who taught you to speak such perfect english? -you americans. . . . you americans taught me everything i know of evil and hate. last month you shelled our house at viareggio. and you killed my mother, who would not leave the house because she loved it and you americans have taught me things i never dreamed of best of all, you taught me that hate is stronger and lasts longer than love. for all the things you amer­ icans have done to me and wish to do to me and with me are hateful. every time i see you or touch you, i hate you more •.. -and you hate yourself too, moe said. we didn't teach you that ... -i don't care any longer, the boy said, accepting the flame from moe's lighter. none of us italians does. we've been bent this way and that.... so all we want to do now is live, just exist, however shamefully and ambiguously. we will live off you americans. off your food. off your drunken spending. and we will yield to your desires, no matter how beastly they may be ... for a price, you understand.... but you should hear how we talk about you among ourselves. we sear you and we scald you. because we hate you. to hear italians talk about you when they are together, you would think we were discussing a pen of pigs and vipers. because we hate you. and no matter how you degrade or possess or kill us, there is always our laughter at your vileness. laughter so scathing your cheeks would burn up and your bowels explode to hear.... there is nothing in the world sweeter than italian love. and nothing fiercer than italian hate.... don't you sense it everywhere about you? ... but i make no pretenses. i am a lucchese from viareggio. i do not smile and fawn on you like the neapolitans. i tell you frankly that i hate all americans, and americans desire me even 323 324 the gallery in my hate. that's the depth to which you all have sunk.... razza di porci, di finocchi e di mostri ... -your mother should hear you now, moe said, turning away. and i guess she must have been a very beautiful lady. -wait, please, the boy called, crushing out his cigarette and running after moe. i have some photos of her. when may i show them to you ... signor ... mister ... lieutenant? -after the war, moe said, increasing his pace. -but may i see you tonight? the boy begged, the coolness of his voice breaking into a whimper. -i'm afraid not, moe said. but enjoy the cigarettes.... tomor­ row night i may be near viareggio. i'll think of you and your mother.... for i'm sorry, very very sorry ... believe me.... turning back at the san carlo, he saw that the beautiful italian boy of eighteen was standing with his face in his fingers, weeping like no one who hates. after his chow moe circled around the galleria umberto in the growing dusk. it was still hot, but a sly change had crept over the city of naples. the roar had dropped to a whispering, but it was still asking subtly for the same thing it had been growling for all day long under the sun. moe had eaten spam for supper. he'd taken a slice of it from his plate and laid it between two pieces of bread. with this sandwich in his hand he walked down via santa brigida. the flies of naples followed the arc of his sandwich. he couldn't bear to hand this food out to a whole crowd of children, to see them dismember it and one another. he was seeking a lonely soul and a lonely stomach. he walked toward the gates of the port till he saw a little girl standing with her hands behind her back, regarding the mp at the gate. moe called out to her till she came slowly. her admiration had already been fixed on the mp. moe held his sandwich behind his back. -tu come chiamare? moe asked her. -perche? the little girl said, backing off. vuoi mettermi in galera, come tutti gli altri americani? gently he spread his boots apart, leaned back a little, and ex­ tended the spamwich to the little girl. she had black matted hair and a pink stuck coyly in her ear. her feet were nude, scuffed and stained with the dung and the fruit juices of the pavements. -mi chiamo adalgisa, she said in a voice tinier than herself, putting out her hand to the bread and meat and drawing it back again. -adalgisa's always hangin around here, the mp said. we stuck moe 325 (0 i� � her mother in jail at the questura. an her pop got his in eritrea. that's her story anyway, lieutenant ... she's always around here. -she'll continue to hang around, moe said, as long as she's alive. of course we'll do our best to get rid of her. it would be more convenient for us if adalgisa had never been born. -well, i got enough to worry about, lieutenant, the mp said, unslinging his carbine. i got a wife and kid in sacramento. i figure it don't pay ya to look too deep into all this crap that's goin on in the world. -no, moe said, you're right ... it don't pay ... not one cent. he took adalgisa by the hand and walked along with her while she tore at her.spamwich. her left hand lay in his like a warm robin while her right fed the food to her mouth inexorably as a machine-gun belt. -i didn't know i was going to meet you, adalgisa, i'd have brought two. -uno, due, tre, quattro, she said with her mouth full. they sat down on a bench in piazza municipio. the courtyard arch of the city hall palace yawned in the rising moon. behind them were the laurel trees. the urinals sent out their shrill acid. in and out of these men moved, plucking at their buttons as they emerged from or entered the iron screens. and adalgisa, after she'd finished eating, licked her teeth and her lips and sat placidly beside him, looking at the moon. sometimes he felt her eyes tick­ ling his face like a eat's whisker. they were round and unblinking, as though she wondered what he would do next. finally she climbed into his lap and began to explore the colored divisional bandanna about his neck, the buttons of his opened collar. her small skinny body smelled like a new olive. -sei triste stasera, she said, looking up into his eyes. -sad? moe said. i'm always sad.... i was sad when i was pushing up the lever on my meter so it wouldn't register during waits. i was sad when i saw fat old ladies in furs going into the astor. i was sad when i saw the snow in brooklyn, smutted over in the alleys.... you're sad too, adalgisa ... but you don't know there can be anything else. she was a tiny child for one who, he guessed, must be about eleven. he didn't know whether it was because she was under­ nourished or mediterranean. she got off his lap and walked once around the bench where he was sitting. her feet whispered in the grass behind him. her ragged dress crinkled as she walked. then she seated herself beside him again. -what are you thinking about, adalgisa? ... cosa pensare? 'lntlll , tmr. ana j� , we!� 326 the gallery -ehhh, she said, un bel piatto di pasta asciutta ... che bellezzal -sure, sure, he said, taking her hand. your world would be full if only you weren't hungry me, i want to live i'd like to have some kids of my own three or four maybe i wonder if i could teach them anything ... how not to hurt others ... how to understand them.... i've been wondering if there's some method of hurting kids when they're a couple of months old, so that their meannesses would be burnt out of them early in life.... i guess not though.... -ho ancora fame, sai, adalgisa said, pressing his hand more tightly. -i know, i know. without taking his eyes off the climbing moon, he undid his breast pocket and gave her his two remaining sticks of gum. then he stood slowly up from the bench and pulled the bottoms of his pants down over the saddles and buckles of his boots. -good-by, adalgisa, he said. remember me when you grow up.... because i know you will grow up ... somehow.... you'll live to be eighty.... don't sit by the fireplace with your hands folded and tell your grandchildren about the americani, how hor.. rible they were.... try to remember that there were many of us who looked at you and loved you in your helplessness and despair. and we said: my god, how cruel. . . . if i live, i'll do something about all this ... something.... then he walked quickly away from the little girl toward the municipio. he was trembling. his loins vibrated with something fiercer and more durable than the excitement of love. for moe saw that he hadn't so much time left, that the sweetness was dribbling away from him as from a broken jelly jar. moe went to the red cross motor pool off piazza carita. there were jeeps and command cars behind the barbed wire. through the area walked italian soldiers in american issue uniforms dyed green and green helmet liners with mig on their visors. even their leggins were a washed-out emerald in the moonlight. they were sweating softly but they saluted him. he went in at the gate and was saluted also by the american gi in charge. -listen, joe, i've got to have a jeep for an hour or two. -no can do, lieutenant. these are red cross ve-hicles ... -listen, moe said, my brother's grave is near caserta and tonight's my last chance to visit it.... that's a lie, of course ... but moe don't get chicken on me, joe ... you hate chicken as much as i do.... then the mp saw moe's ruined hand, extended in supplication. he thought a little more and then he scribbled out a trip ticket and waved at a jeep at the end of one of the parked rows. -okay. willya promise me to have it back by 2300 hours, lieutenant? that jeep belongs to genevieve, who i happen ta know is at capri tonight with a colonel. ... but 2300 hours for sure, lieutenant. -thanks, moe said, sticking the trip ticket in a pants pocket. he unlocked the steering wheel of the jeep, started it, and drove into piazza carita after another wave at the mp. he saw his own hands guiding the wheel of the jeep, one with the thumb delicately dangling as it used to in his taxi, the other yellow and macerated in the moonlight. he cut sharp left into via roma. it was now dark, but on either sidewalk of that straight street crowds were pushing along in the blackout and the heat. over his turned-down windshield moe saw those thousands of faces, stuck on bodies being pushed along by the momentum of more people behind them. in the moonlight they looked like flowers and stalks being carried down to some sea, flowers dumped down from the balconies above them. there was much talking, shouting, whistling, and jerky singing. there were still in the gutters old women vendors and kids selling peanuts or love. thus the whole august night murmured on via roma as the faces pushed aimlessly yet steadily in the current. moe drove slowly till he came to the galleria umber to. there in the moonlight, a little detached from the crowds on the left-hand sidewalk, maria rocco stood. her head turned this way and that, and she glanced at her american wrist watch, sometimes shaking it or laying it to her ear. he called out softly to her and waved that she should cross via roma. she got in beside him without his bringing the jeep to a full halt. she was wearing a black silk dress that buttoned from her throat to the hem of her skirt. she wore no stockings. from under her rich hair escaped the pendants of silver earrings that tinkled to her shoulders. -if you did not come, she said, i had resolved never to go with the allies again . . . except at an enormous profit. . . . gia mi dicono venale. -1 wasn't sure whether you were beautiful or not this afternoon, he said. now i know.... why do they make you put on that other smile in the px? anam: unru� l , m,th oill! �i two, 327 328 the gallery -why? maria rocco asked. because the world is now so terrible that people have to be ordered to smile. they pretend to kindness. it is something that brings in more lire. -you don't have to say those things to me, moe said. and you're natural with me ... 1 think.... -i shall not be natural much longer.... have you got a stick of gum for me? -i did have, but 1 gave the last to adalgisa. -adalgisa? maria rocco's eyes began to glitter. vergogna. adalgisa! . . . and i spent an hour making myself pretty for you. although my sister bruna said that no american was worth it ... moe reached over, lifted her left earring, and let it fall to her shoulder. -adalgisa is the name of a hungry child .•• -i'm sorry, maria rocco said. i'm sorry. and she tilted back in the stiff seat of the jeep and raised her chin to the moon. he drove dreamily along via carocciolo. the august moon was one-quarter way up now; the bay of naples was slit with streaks of light that broke where the islands reached up from the water. moe and maria in their jeep passed the aquarium. then he turned by soldiers' park and steered up towards the vomero. the jeep twisted and turned. moe chose streets that were steepest because he liked the way her head jerked back when they began to climb. -i think 1 know most americans, maria rocco said. they are for the moment.... what moment? ... i worked for them at the qm. they ordered me to be cheerful, so i smiled as 1 counted out smelly drawers of officers' laundry. and 1 smiled as i handed out dry cleaning to your gi's.... then i went to work at the red cross. with an ice-cream scoop in my hand. here too i was ordered to smile. . . . i shall go on smiling for the americans till my teeth drop out.... the americans like smiling people. why? a smile is hideous unless it means something.... for five years now none of my smiles has had any meaning..•• when they'd got to the top of the city of naples, moe found a little park backboarded with mimosa and scrub pine and a few olive trees. it was really a small balcony between two palazzi, and it looked down over the moonlit city, which stretched beneath them like a dihedral angle filled with towers and terraces. after he'd run the jeep up to the railing of the balcony, he parked and they sat for a while in their stiff metal seats looking at the town below them and the black or silvery bay. then he put his hand :j� moe into his pocket, took out a little hinged box, and gave it to maria rocco. she opened it to find a cameo pendant on a gold chain. he fastened it around her neck. as he clasped it, her hair fell on his hands, both the whole one and the scorched one. maria rocco's eyes became moist; she ran her fingers down the chain of the pendant and held the medallion of the cameo up to the moonlight and looked at it. -it was my mother's, moe said. she said i should give it to some nice jewish girl i was going to marry. don't waste it on just anyone, she said. -and now you're wasting it on me, maria rocco said. i wonder what your mother would think of me. -oh, he said, finally snapping the clasp of the locket, you serve your purpose just as well as that nice jewish girl my mother had in mind. -what purpose? she asked, drying her eyes. -being something ... very ... necessary to her son.... maria rocco took up moe's right hand, the mangled one, and laid her mouth against it. then he, by maneuvering his boots and his position on the seat of the jeep, laid his head down in her lap. looking up at her, he saw the flange of her chin, her nostrils, her eyelashes, and the dangling ornaments of her earrings. it seemed to him that lying in her lap he lay at the roots of a living tree. he sighed and rolled his head about so that the buttons on her dress dented his hot cheeks. he smelled the dark warmth of her lap, of earth and silk and flesh. -did you ever look up into somebody's face from below? he asked. then all the things you like about people's faces are upside down. she laughed and chafed his hair. -you are stronger than i, even though now you lie in the position of a little boy who runs to his mother's lap when he is afraid ... for comfort from the world that has frightened him..•• what comfort can i give you? ... tell you that everything in this world seems mean and ugly to me, except you? ... for there is a shadow over all the earth, with no promise that it will ever lift by the cloud's passing away from the sun.... only from you have i ever sensed what hope could mean. and soon you too must leave me.... it has always been so.... when i was a little girl, i used to watch the others being merry. and i would run off and cry...• now i know why.... the iight on the bay of naples ... the laughter that i heard in the streets at night ... the mandoline and 329 330 the gallery serenate ... all seemed to me such a mockery, as though people were deluding themselves that they were happy, that anything could last. -you were just waiting for something, holding yourself in readiness, moe said, smiling up at her. -"vaiting, maria rocco said. what is a woman waiting for? listening and hoping.... why must a man like you die? why can't they just take the rotten italians and the rotten americans and the rotten of the world and take them out and shoot them? ... then the decent ones could make another start and try to make a go of it.... aren't you afraid? -not very much, moe said, taking her hand, that lay upon his chest. but i have been afraid.... i was afraid when i was a kid and ma said to go down to the delicatessen and see if there were any leftover sausages.... and i was afraid when i first started to drive a taxi. ... and i was afraid that first day on the line.... you never really get over being afraid, until you're not alive, and then you've found out there isn't much to be afraid over.... now i know that a lot of all this doesn't matter. what does matter is my ma in brooklyn and my friend irving and a girl like you.•.• it all seems so sweet, even if it has to end like an ice-cream soda at the end of a straw. -n0, it all seems so ghastly, maria rocco said; and she shook her head with such vehemence that his head bounced in her lap. there's nothing fair or decent from the beginning to the end.... if you have too little, you pass your life in envy and aspiration. all your energies go up in smoke, simply trying to convince your neighbors that you exist.. , . or if you have too much, you become like a crazy squirrel laying away nuts for a future that will never materialize.... 0 dio mio, we have all lost the way. one loves too much and breaks his heart. one loves too little and lives in his own petty world, respected for what he has and dying unwept. and each is a fool. ... we have all lost the way. -i don't think i've lost the way, moe said. just being alive now is good to me.... and you're not lost either. and most of the people in the world are like us. we just have to find what not to put our faith in. most of the people who try to tell us what to do are wrong. . . . look, you and i are together tonight. we're happier than most of the others. because we know one another. we've confessed to one another that we're frightened and puzzled. but the point is, we have confessed. we don't pretend to know the answers. moe 331 maria rocco began to cry again. her tears fell on his up-turned face. he put out his spoiled fingers to catch a few of the drops. -i am a whore, she said. you are not the first man 1 have been with. . . . your mother would hate me. . .. thank god she is five thousand miles away and cannot see you with me. -why, you don't know yourself, moe said, taking both her hands in his and imprisoning them, for they were fluttering above him. you're kind ... and sweet.... 1 don't know what else there is to be.... to me you're like a light in a dark noisy passageway . i've seen plenty of faces of dead americans and dead krauts . their eyes were wanting something. in death they looked surprised and hurt. ... but when i watch your eyes, i see the difference. she ran one of her fingers across his lips as he lay looking up at her. when she bent over him in their cramped quarters on the seats of the jeep, the cameo swung out into the air above his face. he threaded the path of buttons, hummocking out over her breasts. -don't you go north tomorrow, maria rocco said quietly but eagerly. i know a place where i can hide you. i'll bring food to you. · .. don't worry. i will save you. this war must soon be over.... let them kill off the others. but men like you must not die in it. stay with me. rather than give you up, i would shoot all the mp's in naples who came looking for you. i would fight for you and humanity, if it still exists, will end by being grateful to me . women have preserved great and good men before. moe laughed softly in her lap. the moon was laced through her hair. -thank you, my darling.... but the funny thing is, i wouldn't be happy in our hideaway. can you understand why? ... my place is up north of here. fighting.... it doesn't matter what the war means or who wins it. but i'm tied up in a set of crcumstances i've got to follow through.... i'm going back to the line tomorrow. i don't have any ideas that the world will be any better for me living or dying.... it's just the way things have panned out for me. there's been a logic in my life. a crazy logic. and this is part of the logic.... people spent most of their lives saying: this can't be happening to me. even on their deathbeds they say it. they're surprised to find themselves dying on account of they could never quite accept the fact that they were aliv�.... i accept. e�erything. · .. this is me lying here and above me is. you this i� napl�s. · .. this is august 14, 1944.•.. my name is moe your is mana. · . . and 1 love you. -maria does not understand moe at all, she said. 332 the gallery she bent down and laid her mouth against his temple, passing down to his lips. there was no pressure in her kiss, but it sealed a wild peace he'd been feeling with her all evening. her kiss made him hers more than any passionate one ever could have. her hair fell into his closed eyes. he raised his arms and twined them about her shoulders, where the black silk soothed his fingers-the good ones and the bad ones. -you understand me very well, moe said against her cheek. -something keeps looking over our shoulders at us.... we have so little time and we need so much of it. -okay, he said. he raised himself out of her lap, keeping one arm round her neck. he looked out over the bay of naples. by ischia he saw a motorboat turning on the water. he looked at her body rising and falling on the seat beside him. then he began to unbutton her dress, beginning at her neck. she wore nothing underneath the tight black silk; so as it was released by the parting fabric, her skin gushed to his hand like a living sponge. at last her dress was open from neck to skirt. she lay with her eyes closed. her breathing was inaudible. in the open shell of black silk, her naked beauty seemed to have burst from a ruptured pea pod. she seized his hands and brought them down on her breasts, beehives in the moonlight. -baciami ... abbracciami, amorel maria rocco cried. at her cry he trembled with recognition. it was something he'd been listening for all his life. there'd been no firing since dawn. moe and his platoon were crawling along a country road in tuscany. they were looking for some protected trees where they could sit down and eat their k-ration. this countryside was hilly and brown. ahead of them on a cliff a castle with spires looked down into the valley. nobody knew where they were. the cultivated terraces all looked alike, alternating bands of green and umber. with it the platoon had three krauts, captured at dawn. one had chest and arm wounds and never stopped groaning. the platoon wanted to do away with this kurt. he, staggered along in bandages and doped wi h sulfa, saying over and over again that roosevelt was a jude. the other two krauts walked with him, but didn't help kurt or pay him any attention. moe never took his eyes off his platoon this morning. they were more than lean and mean riflemen. they were ugly. he watched especially his medical aid pfc, dimplepuss, who occasionally prodded the moaning kraut named kurt. moe 333 -dimplepuss, listen to me, moe said. all you're here for is tt. get that kraut to battalion aid ... if we ever find it. -i ain't supposed to do anything for the bastard, dimplepuss said. -oh shut up! moe yelled. you're goddam triggerhappy for a medic. tonight i'm turning you in for an np. thus they drooped and stumbled along in the dust till noon. throughout the uneven and smoking landscape there wasn't a sign of regiment or battalion or company or any other platoon. they passed an overturned kraut tank under a laurel tree. and in some bushes a mortar and three krauts, kaput beside it. moe's section sergeant edged up from his place in the demoralized march. -listen, lieutenant. you can see they're pretty pissed off. not at you. they better eat chow. but fast. -wait till the next turn of this road, moe said. we're really lost. so they plowed on farther in the heat and the yellow smoke that arose from the vegetation and from their own boots. around a bend in the road they came upon a tiny village. every house but one had at least a wall and roof off. a cat poked around in the one street, the main one. -that's what the artillery done las night, one of the men said. all that poppin too.... git off the pot, mister dupont. the jagged glass windows of a store still sustained a swinging hinged sign: vino. onto the pavement in front of the shop was a settled pool of red around a blasted wine cask. -vino with our chow, moe said. that cat has been licking it up all morning. the platoon carried out of the shop bottles of red and white vino, some flasks of cognac. then most sat down under the bowl of a stone foun tain in the piazza. it gave a shade for their heads. others possessed themselves of the church at the other end of the tiny square. the bell tower and three walls were standing. they threw off their packs and disposed themselves round the splintered baptismal font or at the feet of a fresco of christ feeding the multi­ tude with loaves and fishes. this fresco too was cracked and missing sections, like a ruined billboard advertising tires. as the platoon opened their k-rations, two of the krauts began to whimper. the one named kurt started yelling roosevelt and jude in a splitting howl. -shut your lousy mouths! a corporal bawled, clanking his helmet and carbine down. ya interferin with my digestion. -0 my aching back, the section sergeant said, grinding out of tnln� �\ , 334 the gallery his pack and sitting down next to moe. lieutenant, it would be so goddam simple to dispose of those three supermen ... -ah, forget it, moe said. the divisional cages must be some­ where around here. those krauts have got to be questioned. they won't bother us much longer. but moe stood up again and walked over to where the three germans were blubbering by a watering trough. kurt, the wounded one, lay face down on the pavement near the spilled wine, moaning and jabbering roosevelt. his chest wound had now put a wheeze into his noise. moe took another carton of k-ration out of his musette bag and set it down near the three. then he walked back across the piazza to his noncom, without watching to see what the kriegies would do. he ate his canned ham and egg and his biscuits and washed them down with water. all around the stone fountain and in the battered church the rest of the platoon were silently finishing off the liberated vino and cognac. moe watched their throats as they swallowed one bottle after another. from his k­ ration carton moe gave the three cigarettes to his section sergeant, who lit one, stowing away his own. and moe settled back and stuck a toothpick between his lips. -lieutenant, the section sergeant said, accepting a light for his cigarette, ya look beatup since ya got back from the hospital in naples. ya ain't ate out nobody's arse except dimplepuss. ya ain't give none of us a bad time. didya get all the shackin ya wanted? -only once, moe said. and it wasn't really shacking. it was in the open air. in the moonlight in a jeep. looking down at the bay.... the section sergeant sighed. he blew out a puff from a lesser­ known brand of cigarette, such as came in k-rations. he looked at the dust of the road, at the checkered hillsides of tuscany, at the platoon, which was still drinking or lying down in the piazza with their heads resting on their packs. their m-l's were beside them like dwarf stiff bedfellows. -when we git to florence, the section sergeant said, i'm gonna git me a signorina an i'm gonna sweep her off her feet. i hear that :wl the signorinas in florence are different from the ones in naples. :1( who knows, i might marry her? . . . �u moe took the little cans that now were empty, stuffed them into :lo the rent carton, and shied the whole package over the fountain. �l it flew into the doorway of the battered vino shop. then he spied "a a public urinal just off the piazza. ii�g -i'm taking a little walk, he said to his sergeant. keep your eye .. n ..n moe 335 on dimplepuss and the three j erries. it's just like you said. i don't like my boys much today. with his thumbs in his pistol belt he walked slowly through his sprawling platoon. his boots clacked on the stone flags. dimplepuss was nursing a cognac bottle and watching the krauts tear into the box of k-ration. kurt, the wounded one, had turned on his side, groaning roosevelt. -characters like you should only drink on pass, moe said. dim­ plepuss looked at him around the bottle, which had its neck in his mouth. he winked at moe like a cat. -i ain't feedin these bastards. -i don't expect you to. moe walked leisurely out of the piazza and around the corner. it was hemmed with low slant-roofed tuscan houses. all the win­ dows had been blown out by the barrage. washing was still hanging in one courtyard. in one house he saw a dinner sitting cold on the table. through a window he saw a mussed bed and a colored picture of a blond girl. all the inhabitants, moe knew, were in the hills. he wondered if they'd start coming back this afternoon, now that all was so quiet. he expected to meet a child someplace in this shambles. it had always been so-at formia, at cisterna, at velletri. in empty italian villages they'd always come upon at least one child, playing unconcernedly as though it had been born out of the rubble. but here there was no life except the cat that had got drunk from licking spilled red wine. moe went to the urinal. from under its porcelain bowl were heraldic streaks like the corona of the sun, violet and yellow; the stains of generations who'd here done their business after leaving the vino shop at midnight. moe reflected on the relation between your personality and the color of your urine. thoughtfully he began to button his trousers. then he heard his men shouting and the crack of a m-i. and he heard the words nein, nein! he took off on the run, still buttoning his fly. he got his revolver into his fist. back in the piazza all his platoon were on their feet, in a cluster. some were holding the arms of the two kriegies. dim­ plepuss was standing straddle over kurt, the wounded one. moe saw him fire another round into the belly of the outstretched pjw, who kicked up his legs in an answering spasm. -are ya dead yet? dimplepuss asked calmly. tot? tot? tot? •.. say ja and be damned! -nein, nein, the german choked. nein.... gottl gottl -not yet, huh? dimplepuss said in a cold scream. 336 th e gallery and he fired again from the rifle he'd got somewhere. the kraut's legs kicked again and he spun over on his belly. he was still lying between dimplepuss' legs. his wounded arm flailed like the wing of a thrush, and he lay still. as moe came racing in, cocking his revolver, the rest of the platoon shambled back to their places with their eyes down and sat again on their packs. -you're all gone! moe cried sobbingly. and i hoped and prayed you weren't! jesus christ almightyl -this bastard was groanin an i lost my appetite, dimplepuss said calmly to moe. he moved the muzzle of the m-i away from the kraut's belly. moe hit him three times in the face, and dimplepuss went down on the corpse, whose blood welled leisurely forth from three holes in his coveralls. -you can go back to the states as an np! moe screamed. you're under arrest. ... and when you get to new york start shooting off your face to reporters about the sorrows of combat infantrymen! dimplepuss laughed like ripping steel. two of his buddies lifted him off the body and took charge of him. the three sat together in the nave of the ruined church. his guards lit a cigarette for dimplepuss, made him put on his helmet to ward off the sun of tuscany. -lie down and shut up! moe yelled again at his platoon. see if you can remember that you're still alive and human beings! ... twenty more minutes and then we take off. he went back and sat beside his section sergeant, who was scratching the stubble on his chin. -that's the way it is, lieutenant, the sergeant said. -is? moe said. are you sure all this is? and he noticed that his chest was heaving stabbingly, as though he'd run miles. it was panting from some windedness outside him­ self. four of the platoon made up a burying party and proceeded to shovel the dead kraut under in a sandy space off the piazza. the other two germans sat glumly down and ate the k-ration. they murmured to one another. then there was the sound of the en­ trenching tools clawing up the brown sand. one of the platoon took two two-by-fours out of the lumber debris of a smashed kiosk with a fallen sign that read corriere della sera. out of these planks he fashioned a cross which he thrust into the hummock of the new grave. moe watched for a while. they knew what to do and were .;�� galui --...:: rhere, on n�m; indtd 4lml moe doing it like dolls wound up. then he took a wrinkled and dirty v-mail form and a bitten pencil from his pocket. he proceeded to write a letter to his friend irving in brooklyn. it was automatic writing:" ili� ttli � it �.� ij�ll. somewhere in italy 27 august, 1944 hullo, boy: your little chum is in that state like in nightmares where you're sur­ prised to find yourself doing things-and yet you do-you think that nothing more terrible can happen to you but it always does-but you don't mind because you know that pretty soon you'll wake up--i know the censors will never let you get this letter-but i'm writing it anyhow­ gotta talk to somebody who's outside all this-does that other world exist?­ i can't remember the time when i was a part of it-what i just saw now seems sorta natural-so i'm scared that i'm accepting it-i wonder if i really exist at all-last night the colonel of our battalion turned an eyetie family out of their farmhouse-he hadda use it for an op-but the family didn't take to the hills like sensible ginsoes--they just moved into the chicken house-the woman was far gone and she gave birth to her kid at midnight out there among the manure and feed-the kid died and the woman did the same three hours later-then the ginso father blew his top and spat on our colonel's feet, which is what i've always wanted to do myself-then he ran away into the night crying and cursing-but there was still tha t dead g inso woman and her dead kid in the chicken house-: nil �bt�:: :l!nan ��� then moe found another sheet of v-mail stationery in his musette bag and continued to write the second sheet. the letters formed under his tigh t fingers wi thou t his thinking: #2 because i'm crazy i can make a distinction in my mind between killing krauts, of which i've done plenty, and doing a lot of the other things that go on in a war-l can't see this crap about war criminals-we do all right at the game too once we get started-the only thing that's safe from us is the women-because they play safe and take to the hills as soon as their town becomes a combat zone-so what do we do?-we loot­ we call it liberating material-irv, i'm so sick of signing my john hancock on the lower left-hand corner of packages that are being mailed home--our officers and gi's take anything they've a mind to out of the houses and mail it home as a souvenir to their folks-pictures-jewelry­ money-blankets-anything they can lay their hands on-how in the name of god are these eyeties supposed to live after we liberators have passed through?-have we no mercy whatever on these people?-last week we captured a kraut dump-we looted that too-millions of dollars' worth of stuff-liigers-silk stockings--cameras-radio5--t:ognac-they took all that 337 338 the gallery -and the higher the officer's rank, the bigger his cut-is the world so rich that we can take everything, even though it's our enemies'?-and my gi's expected me to sign my name in the lower left-hand corner of the package -meaning that i'd censored it and it was ok to mail back to the states­ we've all lost our souls-we're just like everybody else in the world-worse, because we have everything we need-how can we ever get our hands clean again?-how can we ever look anybody in the eye and brag about being americans?-there's a rifleman in my platoon that reads and writes poetry -he says: to the pit with us. to the pit with us all-we're there already­ you may get this letter after the war. moe in the late afternoon moe and his platoon were still walking through the countryside of tuscany. ahead of them the shelling had resumed. they walked with their heads down, in single files on both shoulders of the road. they could see umbrellas of brown spray opening on the horizon ahead of them. the two remaining kriegies trudged by themselves. dimplepuss shuffled along laughing between his guards. they'd passed another of the castles on a hillside like those moe remembered in the sunny background of italian paintings. ahead of them on another hill was another castle. the august sunlight cast some of its towers into shadow. moe looked at it, then lowered his eyes to the dust his boots were kicking up. he shifted his carbine to the other shoulder. he looked down at his mottled right hand nestling in the carbine sling. his life now appeared to him as a stagger through one tuscan valley after another, with sunny castles looking down at him from their hilltops with the pity of history. in this same tuscany there had been beauty and laughter. once. moe felt someone in the rear file edging up on him. so he turned with a wariness he hadn't always had. he found one of his corporals dose behind his shoulder staring at him with the penetration that people use when they will someone to turn and look at them. this corporal was a blond kid from wisconsin who used to work in a cheese factory. moe dropped back so that he was walking to the right of the corporal, both of them on the left side of the road. -maybe ya can explain somethin to me, lieutenant i ... keep thinkin of myself like i'm a was ... not a is see what i mean, lieutenant? ... i think about myself an i say: he did this or he thought this way. . . . right now in fact 1 can see myself walkin alongside a you like we was both in a movie.... see what i mean? why is that? -i guess ... the present doesn't exist for us, moe said. his tongue moe was pricked by the toothpick in his lips. or we don't want to think about it. -well, that would be all right too, the corporal said. except i can't think of the future either.... it's all past. past tense like in grammar in school. like an old man. an i'm just twenty one.... christ, lieutenant, i don't wanna have any memories yet ... or be one. -and i, moe said slowly, keep thinking of when i was in n apoli two weeks ago. . .. i see it all so clear cut and finished-as though i was reading ancient history. -gee, maybe this is the end for us, lieutenant? the corporal asked almost hopefully. maybe the war is over and we don't know it yet? -i guess we're just bogged down in today, moe said. you know how it is, boy.... the moment just seems there, that's all.... you don't feel you ever lived at any other time but now ... not yester.. day ... not tomorrow.... -well, i don't understand ya, lieutenant. but i see what ya mean . . . . say, lieutenant, i keep havin cravins ... cravins for simple things. but if i could satisfy em, i'd think i was in heaven.... just a bite of a cold apple again ... or to take an cut a piece a yeller cheese with a sharp knife an watch the peelins ... or to see my steady lookin at me after i've kissed her. -i think i understand, moe said. and i think i see what you mean.... moe peered over his shoulder at his platoon and the two kriegies. he signaled them all to slow down. for they were approaching another curve in the yellow and green tuscan road. they spread out and scattered and he went on ahead with the section sergeant following at his heels. ahead was a hamlet of six houses, a demure concentration such as they'd seen a thousand times in italy from salerno on up. smoke was snaking from a chimney in one of the yellow farmhouses. moe and his sergeant dropped behind a tree. -pretty damn peaceful, the sergeant said. like indiana.... after half an hour of noiseless observation of these six houses, moe sent a scout ahead, who loped and dropped from tree to tree. the way he held his m-1 as he alterna tely trotted and took cover made him look like a scissors. later he came back, calmly walking upright. -hell, lieutenant, they's nothin but ginso farmers there. all cookin supper. -too perfect, moe said. i don't believe a word of it. and i'm not calling you a liar. wait here. 339 340 the gallery podere di anacleto spadini himself approached the six houses, running and dropping, as the scou t had gone the first time. there were seven trees between the turn of the road and the nearest dwelling. overits door was the sign: with his carbine across his chest in both his hands, moe stood for a long time before the low oak door. his shadow fell across its threshold. finally he kicked with his boot three times at the lintel. he heard a voice inside cry out, avanti. then the door swung inward. all he saw of the house was the wide main room and fireplace. in front of this sat an old woman sewing. she stared straight at him with unblinking eyes. -buona sera, signora, moe said politely, himself and his carbine bowing. 10 tenente americano ... avere molti soldati ... un po' di vino? -si, sl, sl, the old lady said, laying down her work and rising slowly. noi abbiamo molto vino per americani liberatori. -ma ... niente tedeschi? moe asked cautiously after a pause, peering abou t the shadowy room. for there were places where the afternoon sunlight didn't hit. chairs in shade. a curtained closet. a door leading somewhere. the old lady spread her hands out calmly and supplely and smiled again. -no, signor tenente ... abbia fiducia ... niente tedeschi. but still her eyes looked through him. her glance was the well­ wishing of the dead toward the living. moe, still holding his carbine across his chest, walked silently and quickly up to her. he passed his hand over her face. those gray gentle eyes didn't blink. -oh, he said in a gush of relief and pity, you're blind.... you know, you look something like my mother in brooklyn. . . . oh excuse me ... la mia mamma ... she's a jewish lady and you're italian ... same difference, i guess. he laughed. he put his hand on her shoulder and gently made her sit down in her place. there was no terror in her eyes, only a shining kindness as though she wished she might focus her blind.. ness on him. but again she bounded up with something of a hospitable bustle. she put out her hands and made to go out of the room. then she turned and made moe a low curtsy. -ora vi porto il vi no, she said. quanti soldati avete, signor tenente? -there are thirty-seven of us, he said. trenta e sette, . . . but don't hurry, ma'am. :]11111 to :i�!�li :eyrua. ��!�un :�nrer jftni! i :ine dowi��ejj of ·�ery r1e �m ne ijrrtnan��e41tnj al� n� or � willi jlea now! ,'! �arrel. �ru!! � mamoe .�n of 51 icriul me �1 r1uck{ !ewuld 1 �a rocc( �1 10 ion me germ moe 341 then she turned from the door and came toward moe without hesitation, as though she smelled or felt where he stood in front of the settle. she put her arms about his shoulders and kissed him lightly. her cheek smelled of eggs and linen dried in the tuscan sun. -figlio mio, she said. figlio mio...• -why, i'd just as soon be your son, he said, sitting in the other chair by the fireplace. then she left him and went into the next room, which, he saw as the door opened under her sure pressure, was the kitchen. he watched her cut the light of the kitchen window, which opened onto a little garden of her own. he watched her take down from a shelf a decanter of ruby wine. he began to relax in his chair and smile to himself; for somehow he felt that he was at home here. he looked down at the dust on his boots, coating even the buckles. at this moment there was a burst of firing all around the house. he recognized the splitting bark of american m-i's. and another sound. in the kitchen as he leaped to his feet he saw the old tuscan lady fall to the stone floor. the decanter of red wine she was still holding splintered in her hand and hit the pavement before her body did. moe spun around. a kraut lieutenant was standing behind him in the fireplace. there was a luger in his hand. under his low helmet his lips drew back into a smile of something like welcome. and he bowed to moe as though he desired to continue the gra­ ciousness of the old italian lady. moe returned the bow. -very pleased to meet you, moe said. then he knew he was lying on the floor by the fireplace, hit harder than he'd ever been hit before. he looked into the ashes on the hearth, and he looked at the boots of the kraut officer, towering up by his broken right hand. the german was still looking down at him with that smile, not bitter, not sweet. the luger now pointed down along the jerry's thigh, a twirl of smoke coming out of its barrel. -gruss gott, the german said. heil hitler.... and moe realized that he was fading fast, as one does on the margin of sleep. himself was ebbing away from himself with a powerful melancholy, with no hope of recall. for a moment an agony plucked at his brain. he sensed a longing and a regret such as he could never have imagined. but then he saw his mother and maria rocco, and he knew he'd come a long long way. it wasn't really so long. but it was farther than most. so moe smiled back at the german, and he felt his face dropping toward the floor. exit there's an arcade in naples that they call the galleria umberto. it's in the center of the city. in august, 1944, every­ one in naples sooner or later found his way into this place and became like a picture on the wall of a museum. the neapolitans came to the galleria to watch the americans, to pity them, and to prey upon them. the americans came there to get drunk or to pick up something or to wrestle with the riddle. everyone was aware of this riddle. it was the riddle of war, of human dignity, of love, of life itself. some came closer than others to solving it. but all the people in the galleria were human beings in the middle of a war. they struck attitudes. some loved. some tried to love. but they were all in the galleria umberto in august, 1944. they were all in naples, where something in them got shaken up. they'd never be the same again--either dead or changed somehow. and these people who became living portraits in this gallery were synecdoches for most of the people anywhere in the world. outside the galleria umberto is the city of naples. and naples is on the bay, in the tyrrhenian sea, on the mediterranean. this sea is a center of human life and thought. wonderful and sad things have come out of italy. and they came back there in august, 1944. for they were dots in a circle that never stops. naples caserta florence leghorn milan boston, massachusetts windsor, connecticut 18 june 1945-23 april 1946 harper colophon books cn/l the art of loving by erich fromm $1.25 cn/2 out of our past by carl n. degler $2.45 cn/3 excellenge by john w. gardner $1.35 cn/4 in hazard by richard hughes $1.50 cn/5 the new politics by edmund stillman and william pfaff $1.35 cn/6 history of england by e. l. woodward $1.35 cn/7 the doors of perception and( heaven and hell by aldous huxley $1.35 cn/8 from vienna to versailles by l. c. b. seaman $1.35 cn/9 the gallery by john horne burns $1.75 cn/i0 the proper study of mankind by stuart chase $1.85 cn/ll protracted conflict by robert strausz-hup« et al. $1.50 cn/12 the spanish civil war by hugh thomas $2.95 romm l: hurll} i (jm�n i. burn! 1 hec inde &xjlid. i je dame \ \11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\\ 11\\1 11111 11111 1111111111 11111111111111111111111 a 0000 022 063 101 gravity's_rainbow libraries libraries lsr .../fj� raries 'l.ifl� llbrari,es ';f�:�:�t;t;r�!i:;;�=-::"�::�",1t.,����:·.;�.�. ii.�_ •. '���'j;'��� -' � -=��;�._�-. <�,.. ._ -. . . ---� __ also by v, tile cryin ';��l;����;i;��:.·:l:;�:;.;!.;.��:�...::.;�;�:: .��,u .. !"���, •• ��'''�j. . __ _. _�. .! ".' ---. • • _� j --also by thomas pynchon v. the crying of lot 49 thomas pynchon the vikirefj press new york ---,--• -. j1i /.. '.it''_:�.:�i:ifijl��t�:if�_!!:-&�!l�;',,,�?: ., .... �"':"'.:�._';.��/--:.-�':!". �. for richard farina d d d d d d d copyright © 1973 by thomas pynchon all rights reserved first published in 1973 in a hardbound and paperbound edition by the viking press, inc" 625 madison avenue new york, ny. 10022 published simultaneously in canada by the macmillan company of canada limited sbn 670-34832-5 (hardbound) 670-00374-3 (paperbound) library of congress catalog card number: 72-83804 printed in u.s,a, by the colonial press inc, acknowledgments harvard university press: reprinted by permission of the publishers and the trustees of amherst college from thomas h. johnson, editor, the poems of emily dickinson, cambridge, mass.: the belknap press of harvard university press, copyright 195], 1955, by the president and fellows of harvard college. little, brown and company: from "because i could not stop for death" from the complete poems of emily dickinson edited by thomas h. johnson. w, w. norton & company, inc., and insel verlag: from duino elegies and sonnets to orpheus by rainer maria rilke. beyond the zero nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transfor­ mation. everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. -wernher von braun --tt." ..::.;�·t�� _ ....jij�1\t;r�;ti",·ust�;t!t�'-..!;t�t��s.;�:� ... :::"::':"':':":��..!.�lf<,·�r" �. a)creami noiliing to !tis too arena iigh old as an ir ll�llt of dax i�-soon­ in�down i olecrashinr inside t een darkn ruo and co to anyone, tolalvatio half')llvere bered behi they hal outoldo� oillie cityldare) ask, i merllromlsecretentr de�ass , , overhead, i 1 of naphtha coral·hke ac out the ion rust, devell cially at d: events to a inous seen ilie waus i hght. the o 0 dod 0 0 a screaming comes across the sky. it has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. it is too late. the evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. there are no lights inside the cars. no light anywhere. above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. but it's night. he's afraid of the way the glass will fall-soon-it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. but com­ ing down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisi­ ble crashing. inside the carriage, which is built on several levels, he sits in velvet­ een darkness, with nothing to smoke, feeling metal nearer and farther rub and connect, steam escaping in puffs, a vibration in the carriage's frame, a poising, an uneasiness, all the others pressed in around, feeble ones, second sheep, all out of luck and time: drunks, old veterans still in shock from ordnance 20 years obsolete, hustlers in city clothes, dere­ licts, exhausted women with more children than it seems could belong to anyone, stacked about among the rest of the things to be carried out to salvation. only the nearer faces are visible at all, and at that only as half-silvered images in a view finder, green-stained vip faces remem­ bered behind bulletproof windows speeding through the city. . . . they have begun to move. they pass in line, out of the main station, out of downtown, and begin pushing into older and more desolate parts of the city. is this the way out? faces turn to the windows, but no one dares ask, not out loud. rain comes down. no, this is not a disentangle­ ment from, but a progressive knotting into-they go in under archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that only looked like loops of an un­ derpass . . . certain trestles of blackened wood have moved slowly by overhead, and the smells begun of coal from days far to the past, smells of naphtha winters, of sundays when no traffic came through, of the coral-like and mysteriously vital growth, around the blind curves and out the lonely spurs, a sour smell of rolling-stock absence, of maturing rust, developing through those emptying days brilliant and deep, espe­ cially at dawn, with blue shadows to seal its passage, to try to bring. events to absolute zero ... and it is poorer the deeper they go ruinous secret cities of poor, places whose names he has never heard . the walls break down, the roofs get fewer and so do the chances for light. the road, which ought to be opening out into a broader highway, 3 --_ ----_--ji / ���i'fmf�.����lf.fi'liii���-�t!"�,�:t:s���:':'-":'.:'.:.::.�-{�-:;;;'-'/ ·1·�r:· #instead has been getting narrower, more broken, cornering tighter and tighter until all at once, much too soon, they are under the final arch: brakes grab and spring terribly. it is a judgment from which there is no appeal. the caravan has halted. it is the end of the line. all the evacuees are ordered out. they move slowly, but without resistance. those mar­ shaling them wear cockades the color of lead, and do not speak. it is some vast, very old and dark hotel, an iron extension of the track and switchery by which they have come here. . . . globular lights, painted a dark green, hang from under the fancy iron eaves, unlit for centuries . . . the crowd moves without murmurs or coughing down corridors straight and functional as warehouse aisles ... velvet black surfaces contain the movement: the smell is of old wood, of remote wings empty all this time just reopened to accommodate the rush of souls, of cold plaster where all the rats have died, only their ghosts, still as cave­ painting, fixed stubborn and luminous in the walls . . . the evacuees are taken in lots, by elevator-a moving wood scaffold open on all sides, hoisted by old tarry ropes and cast-iron pulleys whose spokes are shaped like ss. at each brown floor, passengers move on and off ... thousands of these hushed rooms without light. . . . some wait alone, some share their invisible rooms with others. invisi­ ble, yes, what do the furnishings matter, at this stage of things? under­ foot crunches the oldest of city dirt, last crystallizations of all the city had denied, threatened, lied to its children. each has been hearing a voice, one he thought was talking only to him, say, "you didn't really believe you'd be saved. come, we all know who we are by now. no one was ever going to take the trouble to save you, old fellow.... " there is no way out. lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. screamingholds across the sky. when it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? will the light come before or after? but it is already light. how long has it been light? all this while, lighthas come percolating in, along with the cold morning air flowing now across his nipples: it has begun to reveal an assortment of drunken wastrels, some in uniform and some not, clutching empty or near-emptybottles, here draped over a chair, there huddled into a cold fireplace, or sprawled on various divans, un-hoovered rugs and chaise longues down the different levels of the enormous room, snoring and wheezing at many rhythms, in self-renewing chorus, as london light, winter and elastic light, grows between the faces of the mullioned windows, grows among the strata of last night's smoke still hung, fading, from the waxed beams of the ceiling. all these horizontal here, these comrades in arms, look ju resurre his n tnick bla of metal just a ofthemi somebod] ebony b opening, an empt nowby no olink abo cloth rip, sponses, bloat's d' strum of pirate, b pirate's b bloat i century, acquaint� vatepha has latel curean­ sons, to an�thing spair by on the r fort-la forage sian by pirate throng w right ho 4 tighter ane e final arc1, 'n thereisnt e evacuees atl 'e. tbose m� ot peak]!, [ the track aji( t llcrht i �ain\� r�t for centuri� down corriqo� bhckllirfacf look just as rosy as a bunch of dutch peasants dreaming of their certain resurrection in the next few minutes. his name is capt. geoffrey ("pirate") prentice. he is wrapped in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. his skull feels made of metal. just above him, twelve feet overhead, teddy bloat is about to fall out of the minstrels' gallery, having chosen to collapse just at the spot where somebody in a grandiose fit, weeks before, had kicked out two of the ebony balusters. now, in his stupor, bloat has been inching through the q opening, head, arms, and torso, until all that's keeping him up there is i (j an empty champagne split in his hip pocket, that's got hooked some(t howi'l_ by now pirate has managed to sit up on his narrow bachelor bed, and { ? blink about. how awful. how bloody awful . . . above him, he hears ,,, cloth rip. the special operations executive has trained him to fast re0-" sponses. he leaps off of the cot and kicks it rolling on its casters in (t bloat's direction. bloat, plummeting, hits square amidships with a great (1 strum of bedsprings. one of the legs collapses. "good morning," notes i k pirate. bloat smiles briefly and goes back to sleep, snuggling well into '1 pirate's blanket. lo bloat is one of the co-tenants of the place, a maisonette erected last 2( century, not far from the chelsea embankment, by corydon throsp, an 2l acquaintance of the rossettis' who wore hair smocks and liked to culti2.3 vate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof (a tradition young osbie feel z'1 has lately revived), a few of them hardy enough to survive fogs and 21' frosts, but most returning, as fragments of peculiar alkaloids, to rooftop 2.<­ earth, along with manure from a trio of prize wessex saddleback sows �7 quartered there by throsp's successor, and dead leaves off many deco2,r rative trees transplanted to the roof by later tenants, and the odd un<--1 stomachable meal thrown or vomited there by this or that sensitive epi30 curean-all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the sea3 ( sons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which s� anything could grow, not the least being bananas. pirate, driven to den spair by the wartime banana shortage, decided to build a glass hothouse 3>" on the roof, and persuade a friend who flew the rio-to-ascension-tos3 fort-lamy run to pinch him a sapling banana tree or two, in exchange 3� for a german camera, should pirate happen across one on his next mis'] 7 sion by parachute. s� pirate has become famous for his banana breakfasts. messmates 3� �6 '-r)throng here from all over england, even some who are allergic or out­ right hostile to bananas, just to watch-for the politics of bacteria, the 5 ____ ---o _ ._-=-_o __ '-jli /••• ",,: �rll.f�i!u�i{fi��'*�:f.ilt�m'u�i��tjt��!��ii�� '.\� :'_-;;''.:.r::':':;:'' ..._.:�.;;:..;-:�/ f .��ty. �. soil's stringing of rings and chains in nets only god can tell the meshes of, have seen the fruit thrive often to lengths of a foot and a half, yes amazing but true. pirate in the lavatory stands pissing, without a thought in his head. then he threads himself into a wool robe he wears inside out so as to keep his cigarette pocket hidden, not that this works too well, and cir­ cling the warm bodies of friends makes his way to french windows, slides outside into the cold, groans as it hits the fillings in his teeth, climbs a spiral ladder ringing to the roof garden and stands for a bit, watching the river. the sun is still below the horizon. the day feels like rain, but for now the air is uncommonly clear. the great power station, and the gasworks beyond, stand precisely: crystals grown in morning's beaker, stacks, vents, towers, plumbing, gnarled emissions of steam and smoke.... "hhahh," pirate in a voiceless roar watching his breath slip away over the parapets, "hhaahhh!" rooftops dance in the morning. his giant bananas cluster, radiant yellow, humid green. his companions below dream drooling of a banana breakfast. this well-scrubbed day ought to be no worse than anywill it? far to the east, down in the pink sky, something has just sparked, very brightly. a new star, nothing less noticeable. he leans on the parapet to watch. the brilliant point has already become a short vertical white line. it must be somewhere out over the north sea . . . at least that far . . . icefields below and a cold smear of sun. . . . what is it? nothing like this ever happens. but pirate knows it, after all. he has seen it in a film, just in the last fortnight . . . it's a vapor trail. already a finger's width higher now. but not from an airplane. air­ planes are not launched vertically. this is the new, and still most se­ cret, german rocket bomb. "incoming mail." did he whisper that, or only think it? he tightens the ragged belt of his robe. well, the range of these things is supposed to be over zoo miles. you can't see a vapor trail zoo miles, now, can you. oh. oh, yes: around the curve of the earth, farther east, the sun over there, just risen over in holland, is striking the rocket's exhaust, drops and crystals, making them blaze clear across the sea. . . . the white line, abruptly, has stopped its climb. that would be fuel cutoff, end of burning, what's their word ... brennschluss. we don't have one. or else it's classified. the bottom of the line, the original star, has already begun to vanish in red daybreak. but the rocket will be here before pirate sees the sun rise. the trail, smudged, slightly torn in two or three directions, hangs in 6 ilie sk) visiblel ougl at stan ally, l down t ilie pia others? pick he feels up on � now, ' truss down, age this open in pirate pricklin! wet he holding count 0 among outil pirate's he ta come in of it is coming wha to feel � �kull, , pirate �crew i across iname game, now, , • 1 ---.��'.:�:.; .. ��,..�:��".�"" ". __ .. ,;",_.",,_ �_:.,, .� ••••. ;., :.oj:' • . _' c�-��_ ----� '.4 �"i�.. "'. --. . . �-,,---� --e meshes balf, yes the sky. already the rocket, gone pure ballistic, has risen higher. but in­ visible now. oughtn't he to be doing something . . . get on to the operations room at stanmore, they must have it on the channel radars-no: no time, re­ ally. less than five minutes hague to here (the time it takes to walk down to the teashop on the corner . . . for light from the sun to reach the planet of love ... no time at all). run out in the street? warn the others? pick bananas. he trudges through black compost in to the hothouse. he feels he's about to shit. the missile, sixty miles high, must be coming up on the peak of its trajectory by now . . . beginning its fall . . . now.... trusswork is pierced by daylight, milky panes beam beneficently down. how could there be a winter-even this one-gray enough to age this iron that can sing in the wind, or cloud these windows that open into another season, however falsely preserved? pirate looks at his watch. nothing registers. the pores of his face are prickling. emptying his mind-a commando trick-he steps into the wet heat of his bananery, sets about picking the ripest and the best, holding up the skirt of his robe to drop them in. allowing himself to count only bananas, moving barelegged among the pendulous bunches, among these yellow chandeliers, this tropical twilight .... out into the winter again. the contrail is gone entirely from the sky. pirate's sweat lies on his skin almost as cold as ice. he takes some time lighting a cigarette. he won't hear the thing come in. it travels faster than the speed of sound. the first news you get of it is the blast. then, if you're still around, you hear the sound of it coming in. what if it should hit exactly-ahh, no--for a split second you'd have to feel the very point, with the terrible mass above, strike the top of the skull.... pirate hunches his shoulders, bearing his bananas down the cork­ screw ladder. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 across a blue tile patio, in through a door to the kitchen. routine: plug in american blending machine won from yank last summer, some poker game, table stakes, b.o.q. somewhere in the north, never remember now. . . . chop several bananas into pieces. make coffee in urn. get 7 --_--'-_ '-.1:1 /��·fi�·jj.i.�;&.;·:,:.:�'-"'i;:...a.'ni':m�l;1!.n.. '��tf��· ... t�"'.,��.\!.-. "�"�.' �.' '�"'--. '�--. / �·r"· cpo(uij��-�:�� �-:f� ... !"'t��fvllllfifl.;.�,;.rinfi".. :liir�...��� .. �'."":�.. -.,�-;<...-....4>��� .... ·� .��;o=",oji� .. i . can of milk from cooler. puree 'nanas in milk. lovely. i uxnild coat all the booze-corroded stomachs of england. . . . bit of marge, still smells all right, melt in skillet. peel more bananas, slice lengthwise. marge siz­ zling, in go long slices. light oven whoomp blow us all up someday oh, ha, ha, yes. peeled whole bananas to go on broiler grill soon as it heats. find marshmallows.... in staggers teddy bloat with pirate's blanket over his head, slips on a banana peel and falls on his ass. "kill myself," he mumbles. "the germans will do it for you. guess what i saw from the roof." "that v-2 on the way?" «a4, yes." "i watched it out the window. about ten minutes ago. looked queer, didn't it. haven't heard a thing since, have you. it must have fallen short. out to sea or something." "ten minutes?" trying to read the time on his watch. "at least." bloat is sitting on the floor, working the banana peel into a pajama lapel for a boutonniere. pirate goes to the phone and rings up stanmore after all. has to go through the usual long, long routine, but knows he's already stopped be­ lieving in the rocket he saw. god has plucked it for him, out of its airless sky, like a steel banana. "prentice here, did you have anything like a pip from holland a moment ago. aha. aha. yes, we saw it." this could ruin a man's taste for sunrises. he rings off. "they lost it over the coast. they're calling it premature brennschluss." "cheer up," teddy crawling back toward the busted cot. "there'll be more." good old bloat, always the positive word. pirate for a few seconds there, waiting to talk to stanmore, was thinking, danger's over, banana breakfast is saved. but it's only a reprieve. isn't it. there will indeed be others, each just as likely to land on top of him. noone either side of the front knows exactly how many more. will we have to stop watching the sky? osbie feel stands in the minstrels' gallery, holding one of the biggestof pirate's bananas so that it protrudes out the fly of his striped pajama bottoms-stroking with his other hand the great jaundiced curve in tri­ plets against 4/4 toward the ceiling, he acknowledges dawn with the following: time to gather your arse up off the floor, (have a bana-na) brush your teeth and go toddling off to war. 8 the osbie stout u ("saxo: marshn soon be ingly tl which, nervou batter winter orously quentl the bal deco the ju painsta large t with r mirror hairl s coat all \\ smells m the roof," wave your hand to sleepy land, kiss those dreams away, tell miss grable you're not able, not till v-e day, oh, ev'rything'll be grand in civvie street (have a bana-na) bubbly wine and girls wiv lips so sweet­ but there's still the german or two to fight, so show us a smile that's shiny bright.' and then, as we may have suggested once before­ gather yer blooming arse up off the floor! there's a second verse, but before he can get quite into it, prancing osbie is leaped upon and thoroughly pummeled, in part with his own stout banana, by bartley gobbitch, decoverley pox, and maurice ("saxophone") reed, among others. in the kitchen, black-market marshmallows slide languid into syrup atop pirate's double boiler, and soon begin thickly to bubble. coffee brews. on a wooden pub sign dar­ ingly taken, one daylight raid, by a drunken bartley gobbitch, across which still survives in intaglio the legend snipe and shaft, teddy bloat is mincing bananas with a great isosceles knife, from beneath whose nervous blade pirate with one hand shovels the blonde mash into waffle batter resilient with fresh hens' eggs, for which osbie feel has ex­ changed an equal number of golf balls, these being even rarer this winter than real eggs, other hand blending the fruit in, not overvig­ orously, with a wire whisk, whilst surly osbie himself, sucking fre­ quently at a half-pint milk bottle filled with vat 69 and water, tends to the bananas in the skillet and broiler. near the exit to the blue patio, decoverley pox and joaquin stick stand by a concrete scale model of the jungfrau, which some enthusiast back during the twenties spent a painstaking year modeling and casting before finding out it was too large to get out of any door, socking the slopes of the famous mountain with red rubber hot-water bags full of ice cubes, the idea being to pul­ verize the ice for pirate's banana frappes. with their nights' growths of beard, matted hair, bloodshot eyes, miasmata of foul breath, decover­ ley and joaquin are wasted gods urging on a tardy glacier. elsewhere in the maisonette, other drinking companions disentangle from blankets (one spilling wind from his, dreaming of a parachute), piss into bathroom sinks, look at themselves with dismay in concave shaving mirrors, slap water with no clear plan in mind onto heads of thinning hair, strllggle into sam brownes, dub shoes against rain later in the day 9 �--._ :.: .. .' ��';4"tlij��i�.l..�"'!"'�!"!::i}':"["'�":1.,.:t.1�",1t.)t�"'''h';'', ...;•••.. 4. -, • �'.. , .,�t._ • ,/: ,.,.. ,..!i:·m_" ..... �¥��.�:-:'.�u"..... �j;i:"\ .. �� ')!�"'-"':"#!;�""a""'�·-�����l'''''.'_'' ."'.""ta .. �. .* with hand muscles already weary of it, sing snatches of popular songs whose tunes they don't always know, lie, believing themselves warmed, in what patches of the new sunlight come between the mullions, begin tentatively to talk shop as a way of easing into whatever it is they'll have to be doing in less than an hour, lather necks and faces, yawn, pick their noses, search cabinets or bookcases for the hair of the dog that not with­ out provocation and much prior conditioning bit them last night. now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night's old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror's secret by which-though it is not often death is told so clearly to fuck off-the living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to pre­ serve some human face down ten or twenty generations ... so the same assertion-through-structure allows this war morning's banana fra­ grance to meander, repossess, prevail. is there any reason not to open every window, and let the kind scent blanket all chelsea? as a spell, against falling objects. . . . with a clattering of chairs, upended shell cases, benches, and otto­ mans, pirate's mob gather at the shores of the great refectory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill corydon throsp's mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut uplands with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casse­ roles, mashed bananas molded in the shape of a british lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for french toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words c'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre (attrib­ uted to a french observer during the charge of the light brigade) which pirate has appropriated as his motto ... tall cruets of pale ba­ nana syrup to pour oozing over banana wafhes, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead . . . banana croissants and ba­ nana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio trans­ mitter ... the phone call, when it comes, rips easily across the room, the hangi overs, the grabassing, the clatter of dishes, the shoptalk, the bitter chuckles, like a rude metal double-tart, and pirate knows it's got to be , l 10 for him. fashionab valving d swallows. "your e "it's no ups yet." the voi hands and tells pirate wich. "iteam do come whack, co rocket lana he gazes others, wal hunger 10 himself. a meshes of touch, as n watching he's dri lagonda 0 colder the of america nearby,5i �o, the lasi, of col him-they the� know heh, here least expe , « -'q!�� .• :�.",a.�,,-;., '''i''''''''-�'�'''--''-'''''''�.�'' .. ��., •.• ,.;., " •. ;'"j�<�t; '-�." •• �' -,,�.. • ---. .. , -:::;:;-�------:--for him. bloat, who's nearest, takes it, forkful of bananes glacees poised fashionably in the air. pirate takes up a last dipper of mead, feels it go valving down his throat as if it's time, time in its summer tranquility, he swallows. "your employer." "it's not fair," pirate moans, "i haven't even done me morning push­ ups yet." the voice, which he's heard only once before-last year at a briefing, hands and face blackened, anonymous among a dozen other listeners­ tells pirate now there's a message addressed to him, waiting at green­ wich. "it came over in a rather delightful way," the voice high-pitched and . sullen, "none of my friends are that clever. all my mail arrives by post. do come collect it, won't you, prentice." receiver hits cradle a violent whack, connection breaks, and now pirate knows where this morning's rocket landed, and why there was no explosion. incoming mail, indeed. he gazes through sunlight's buttresses, back down the refectory at the others, wallowing in their plenitude of bananas, thick palatals of their hunger lost somewhere in the stretch of morning between them and himself. a hundred miles of it, so suddenly. solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively. pirate's again some other side of a window, watching strangers eat breakfast. he's driven out, away, east over vauxhall bridge in a dented green lagonda by his batman, a corporal wayne. the morning seems to grow colder the higher the sun rises. clouds begin to gather after all. a crew of american sappers spills into the road, on route to clear some ruin nearby, singing: it's colder than the nipple on a witch's tit! colder than a bucket of penguin shit! colder than the hairs of a polar bear's ass! colder than the frost on a champagne glass! no, they are making believe to be narodnik, but i know, they are of iasi, of codreanu, his men, men of the league, they . . . they kill for him-they have oath! they try to kill me . . . transylvanian magyars, they know spells . . . at night they whisper. . . . well, hrrump, heh, heh, here comes pirate's condition creeping over him again, when he's least expecting it as usual-might as well mention here that much of 1 1 ,t what the dossiers call pirate prentice is a strange talent for-well, for getting inside the fantasies of others: being able, actually, to take over the burden of managing them, in this case those of an exiled rumanian royalist who may prove needed in the very near future. it is a gift the firm has found uncommonly useful: at this time mentally healthy lead­ ers and other historical figures are indispensable. what better way to cup and bleed them of excess anxiety than to get someone to take over the running of their exhausting little daydreams for them . . . to live in the tame green lights of their tropical refuges, in the breezes through their cabanas, to drink their tall drinks, changing your seat to face the entrances of their public places, not letting their innocence suffer any more than it already has . . . to get their erections for them, at the oncome of thoughts the doctors feel are inappropriate . . . fear all, all that they cannot afford to fear ... remembering the words of p. m. s. blackett, "you can't run a war on gusts of emotion." just hum the nitwit little tune they taught you, and try not to fuck up: now, no words, rno usual list o� someindoo) that well 'jwill call ait took c timewouldl wllomitm1 eu�ene su1 zation of d�in 1935 � -it was d� could see � no deer foi would be m lore oroken meoicinein creasy �osi heard, , , eyea, in the repetition 01 playing on velop for p: went, th aid point that cert through a knew, bli owner of park, aver scaped rim soft to slee] and drooh and watch fountain, of white c tle buttock laughed an extraordina will be the yes-i'm-thefellow that's hav-ing other peop-le's fan-tasies, suffering what they ought to be themselves­ no matter if cirly's on my kneeif kruppingham-jones is late to tea, i don't even get to ask for whom the bell's [now over a lotta tubas and close-harmony trombones] it never does seem to mat-ter if there's daaaanger, for danger's a roof i fell from long agoi'll be out-one-day and never come back, forget the bitter you owe me, jack, just piss on m' grave and car-ry on the show! he will then actually skip to and fro, with his knees high and twirling a walking stick with w. c. fields' head, nose, top hat, and all, for its knob, and surely capable of magic, while the band plays a second cho­ rus. accompanying will be a phantasmagoria, a real one, rushing toward the screen, in over the heads of the audiences, on little tracks of an ele­ gant victorian cross section resembling the profile of a chess knight con­ ceived fancifully but not vulgarly so-then rushing back out again, in and out, the images often changing scale so quickly, so unpredictably that you're apt now and then to get a bit of lime-green in with your rose, as they say. the scenes are highlights from pirate's career as a fan­ tasist-surrogate, and go back to when he was carrying, everywhere he 12 well) fo take ow l\\1manllli \ a giht1 ea\tbyh etter \va)'1 e to takeolt , , ,tolilt ec'l.e thro�, at to face 1 went, the mark of youthful folly growing in an unmistakable mongol­ oid point, right out of the middle of his head. he had known for a while that certain episodes he dreamed could not be his own. this wasn't through any rigorous daytime analysis of content, but just because he knew. but then came the day when he met, for the first time, the real owner of a dream he, pirate, had had: it was by a drinking fountain in a park, a very long, neat row of benches, a feeling of sea just over a land­ scaped rim of small cypresses, gray crushed stone on the walks looking soft to sleep on as the brim of a fedora, and here comes this buttonless and drooling derelict, the one you are afraid of ever meeting, to pause and watch two girl guides trying to adjust the water pressure of the fountain. they bent over, unaware, the saucy darlings, of the fatal strips of white cotton knickers thus displayed, the undercurves of baby-fat lit­ tle buttocks a blow to the genital brain, however pixilated. the tramp laughed and pointed, he looked back at pirate then and said something extraordinary: "eh? girl guides start pumping water ... your sound will be the sizzling night . . . eh?" staring directly at no one but pirate now, no more pretense.... well, pirate had dreamed these very words, morning before last, just before waking, they'd been part of the usual list of prizes in a competition grown crowded and perilous, out of some indoor intervention of charcoal streets ... he couldn't remember that well ... scared out of his wits by now, he replied, "go away, or i will call a policeman." it took care of the immediate problem for him. but sooner or later the time would come when someone else would find out his gift, someone to whom it mattered-he had a long-running fantasy of his own, rather a eugene sue melodrama, in which he would be abducted by an organi­ zation of dacoits or sicilians, and used for unspeakable purposes. in 1935 he had his first episode outside any condition of known sleep -it was during his kipling period, beastly fuzzy-wuzzies far as eye could see, dracunculiasis and oriental sore rampant among the troops, no beer for a month, wireless being jammed by other powers who would be masters of these horrid blacks, god knows why, and all folk­ lore broken down, no cary grant larking in and out slipping elephant medicine in the punchbowls out here ... not even an arab with a big greasy nose to perform on, as in that wistful classic every tommy's heard ... small wonder that one fly-blown four in the afternoon, open­ eyed, in the smell of rotting melon rinds, to the seventy-seven-millionth repetition of the outpost's only gramophone record, sandy macpherson playing on his organ "the changing of the guard," what should de­ velop for pirate here but a sumptuous oriental episode: vaulting lazily 13 and �ell over the fence and sneaking in to town, to the forbidden quarter. there to stumble into an orgy held by a messiah no one has quite recognized yet, and to know, as your eyes meet, that you are his john the baptist, his nathan of gaza, that it is you who must convince him of his godhead, proclaim him to others, love him both profanely and in the name of what he is ... it could be no one's fantasy but h. a. loaf's. there is at least one loaf in every outfit, it is loaf who keeps forgetting that those of the moslem faith are not keen on having choru snaps taken of them in the street . . . it is loaf who borrows one's shirt and jac runs out of cigarettes finds the illicit one in your pocket and lights up in blather the canteen at high noon, where presently he is reeling about with a nold, so loose smile, addressing the sergeant commanding the red-cap section by wardla his christian name. so of course when pirate makes the mistake of versquare ifying the fantasy with loaf, it's not very long at all before higher eche01 the j ions know about it too. into the dossier it goes, and eventually the firm, ing up j in their tireless search for negotiable skills, will summon him under it's cho whitehall, to observe him in his trances across the blue baize fields and tlon, a the terrible paper gaming, his eyes rolled back into his head reading old, office' glyptic old graffiti on his own sockets. . . . knows the first few times nothing clicked. the fantasies were o.k. but bedon, bl longed to nobody important. but the firm is patient, committed to the bridges long run as they are. at last, one proper sherlock holmes london stead h evening, the unmistakable smell of gas came to pirate from a dark street "any so lamp, and out of the fog ahead materialized a giant, organlike form. dousno carefully, black-shod step by step, pirate approached the thing. it no, , , began to slide forward to meet him, over the cobblestones slow as a the tra snail, leaving behind some slime brightness of street-wake that could teams not have been from fog. in the space between them was a crossover wlthhu point, which pirate, being a bit faster, reached first. he reeled back, in olgaughorror, back past the point-but such recognitions are not reversible. it full of was a giant adenoid. at least as big as st. paul's, and growing hour byhour. london, perhaps all england, was in mortal peril! this lymphatic monster had once blocked the distinguished pharnyxof lord blatherard osmo, who at the time occupied the n ovi pazar desk at the foreign office, an obscure penance for the previous centuryof british policy on the eastern question, for on this obscure sanjak had once hinged the entire fate of europe: nobody knows-where, it is-on-the-map, who'd ever think-it, could start-such-a-flap? each montenegran, and serbian too, 14 forbidde, no one ha t you are h i',hed pharn,r r \ovi paz� "rjolls centu� ire anjak ha� waitin' for some-thing, right outa the blue-oh honey pack up my glad-stone, 'n' brush off my suit, and then light me up my bigfat, cigarif ya want my address, it's that o-ri-ent express, to the san-jak of no-vi pa-zar! chorus line of quite nubile young women naughtily attired in busbies and jackboots dance around for a bit here while in another quarter lord blatherard osmo proceeds to get assimilated by his own growing ade­ noid, some horrible transformation of cell plasma it is quite beyond ed­ wardian medicine to explain . . . before long, tophats are littering the squares of mayfair, cheap perfume hanging ownerless in the pub lights of the east end as the adenoid continues on its rampage, not swallow­ ing up its victims at random, no, the fiendish adenoid has a master plan, it's choosing only certain personalities useful to it-there is a new elec­ tion, a new preterition abroad in england here that throws the home office into hysterical and painful episodes of indecision . . . no one knows what to do ... a halfhearted attempt is made to evacuate lon­ don, black phaetons clatter in massive ant-cortege over the trusswork bridges, observer balloons are stationed in the sky, "got it in hamp­ stead heath, just sitting breathing, like . . . going in, and out . . ." "any sort of sound down there?" "yes, it's horrible . . . like a stupen­ dous nose sucking in snot . . . wait, now it's . . . beginning to . . . oh, no ... oh, god, i can't describe it, it's so beast-" the wire is snapped, the transmission ends, the balloon rises into the teal-blue daybreak. teams come down from the cavendish laboratory, to string the heath with huge magnets, electric-arc terminals, black iron control panels full of gauges and cranks, the army shows up in full battle gear with bombs full of the latest deadly gas-the adenoid is blasted, electric-shocked, poisoned, changes color and shape here and there, yellow fat-nodes ap­ pear high over the trees ... before the flash-powder cameras of the press, a hideous green pseudopod crawls toward the cordon of troops and suddenly sshhlop! wipes out an entire observation post with a del­ uge of some disgusting orange mucus in which the unfortunate men are digested-not screaming but actually laughing, enjoying them­ selves.... pirate /osmo's mission is to establish liaison with the adenoid. the situation is now stable, the adenoid occupies all of st. james's, the his­ toric buildings are no more, government offices have been relocated, but so dispersed that communication among them is highly uncertain15 postmen are being snatched off of their rounds by stiff-pimpled adenoid tentacles of fluorescent beige, telegraph wires are apt to go down at any whim of the adenoid. each morning lord blatherard osmo must put on his bowler, and take his briefcase out to the adenoid to make his daily demarche. it is taking up so much of his time he's begun to neglect novi pazar, and f.o. is worried. in the thirties balance-of-power think­ ing was still quite strong, the diplomats were all down with balkanosis, spies with foreign hybrid names lurked in all the stations of the otto­ man rump, code messages in a dozen slavic tongues were being tat­ tooed on bare upper lips over which the operatives then grew mus­ taches, to be shaved off only by authorized crypto officers and skin then grafted over the messages by the firms' plastic surgeons' . . . their lips were palimpsests of secret flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each other. novi pazar, anyhow, was still a croix mystique on the palm of eu­ rope, and f.o. finally decided to go to the firm for help. the firm knew just the man. every day, for 2% years, pirate went out to visit the st. james ade­ noid. it nearly drove him crazy. though he was able to develop a pidgin by which he and the adenoid could communicate, unfortunately he wasn't nasally equipped to make the sounds too well, and it got to be an awful chore. as the two of them snuffled back and forth, alienists in black seven-button suits, admirers of dr. freud the adenoid dearly had no use for, stood on stepladders up against its loathsome grayish flank shoveling the new wonderdrug cocaine-bringing hods full of the white substance, in relays, up the ladders to smear on the throbbing gland­ creature, and into the germ toxins bubbling nastily inside its crypts, with no visible effects at all (though who knows how that adenoid felt, eh?). but lord blatherard osmo was able at last to devote all of his time to novi pazar. early in 1939, he was discovered mysteriously suffocated in a bathtub full of tapioca pudding, at the home of a certain viscountess. some have seen in this the hand of the firm. months passed, world war ii started, years passed, nothing was heard from n ovi pazar. pirate prentice had saved europe from the balkan armageddon the old men dreamed of, giddy in their beds with its grandeur-though not from world war ii, of course. but by then, the firm was allowmg pirate only tiny homeopathic doses of peace, just enough to keep his defenses up, but not enough for it to poison him. 16 tedd �aroo midgel capsic gener the fla him al his neithe just 0 routes pause can bo street, the girl flag starve crats alabout which isandba gods' 0 throug� will, yo girljwaves w.c,s, he's a they, tf the acht1 many,l its blac are no looks ii ("tant d d d d d d d teddy bloat's on his lunch hour, but lunch today'll be, ack, a soggy ba­ nana sandwich in wax paper, which he's packing inside his stylish kan­ garoohide musette bag and threaded around the odd necessities­ midget spy-camera, jar of mustache wax, tin of licorice, menthol and capsicum meloids for a mellow voice, gold-rim prescription sunglasses general macarthur style, twin silver hairbrushes each in the shape of the flaming shaef sword, which mother had garrard's make up for him and which he considers exquisite. his objective this dripping winter noon is a gray stone town house, neither large nor historic enough to figure in any guidebook, set back just out of sight of grosvenor square, somewhat off the official war­ routes and corridors about the capital. when the typewriters happen to pause (8:20 and other mythical hours), and there are no flights of ameri­ can bombers in the sky, and the motor traffic's not too heavy in oxford street, you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls have put up. flagstones are slippery with mist. it is the dark, hard, tobacco­ starved, headachy, sour-stomach middle of the day, a million bureau­ crats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it, many about now are already into the second or third pint or highball glass, which produces a certain desperate aura here. but bloat, going in the sandbagged entrance (provisional pyramids erected to gratify curious gods' offspring indeed), can't feel a bit of it: he's too busy running through plausible excuses should he happen to get caught, not that he will, you know. . . . girl at the main desk, gumpopping, good-natured bespectacled ats, waves him on upstairs. damp woolen aides on the way to staff meetings, w.c.s, an hour or two of earnest drinking, nod, not really seeing him, he's a well-known face, what's'isnames mate, oxford chums aren't they, that lieutenant works down the hall at achtung. . . . the old house has been subdivided by the slummakers of war. achtung is allied clearing house, technical units, northern ger­ many. it's a stale-smoke paper warren, at the moment nearly deserted, its black typewriters tall as grave markers. the floor is filthy lino, there are no windows: the electric light is yellow, cheap, merciless. bloat looks into the office assigned to his old jesus college friend, lt. oliver c'tantivy") mucker-maffick. no one's about. tantivy and the yank are 1 7 --��������+·"'::i�;·��j,;,��b��p.hfiw#ijj�f�ft1',,:��.:'"!:!,·_·.\��. ..;.":.,, :--::. >:.�: ,)"�.,...,,j.< �.... �. both at lunch. good. out wiv the old camera then, on with the goose­ neck lamp, now aim the reflector just so . . . there must be cubicles like this all over the eto: only the three dingy scuffed-cream fiberboard walls and no ceiling of its own. tantivy shares it with an american colleague, lt. tyrone slothrop. their desks are at right angles, so there's no eye contact but by squeaking around some 90°. tantivy's desk is neat, slothrop's is a godawful mess. it hasn't been cleaned down to the original wood surface since 1942. things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of bureaucratic smegma that sifts steadily to the bottom, made up of millions of tiny red and brown curls of rubber eraser, pencil shavings, dried tea or coffee stains, traces of sugar and household milk, much cigarette ash, very fine black debris picked and flung from typewriter ribbons, decomposing library paste, broken aspirins ground to powder. then comes a scatter of paperclips, zippo flints, rubber bands, staples, cigarette butts and crumpled packs, stray matches, pins, nubs of pens, stubs of pencils of all colors including the hard-to-get heliotrope and raw umber, wooden coffee spoons, thayer's slippery elm throat lozenges sent by slothrop's mother, nal­ line, all the way from massachusetts, bits of tape, string, chalk . . . above that a layer of forgotten memoranda, empty buff ration books, phone numbers, unanswered letters, tattered sheets of carbon paper, the scribbled ukulele chords to a dozen songs including "johnny doughboy found a rose in ireland" ("he does have some rather snappy arrangements," tantivy reports, "he's a sort of american george formby, if you can imagine such a thing," but bloat's decided he'd rather not), an empty kreml hair tonic bottle, lost pieces to dif­ ferent jigsaw puzzles showing parts of the amber left eye of a weimar­ aner, the green velvet folds of a gown, slate-blue veining in a distant cloud, the orange nimbus of an explosion (perhaps a sunset), rivets in the skin of a flying fortress, the pink inner thigh of a pouting pin-up girl . . . a few old weekly intelligence summaries from g-2, a busted corkscrewing ukulele string, boxes of gummed paper stars in many col­ ors, pieces of a flashlight, top to a nugget shoe polish can in which slo­ throp now and then studies his blurry brass reflection, any number of reference books out of the achtung library back down the hall-a dictionary of technical german, an f.o. special handbook or town plan-and usually, unless it's been pinched or thrown away, a news of the world somewhere too-slothrop's a faithful reader. tacked to the wall next to slothrop's desk is a map of london, which bloat is now busy photographing with his tiny camera. the musette bag is open, and the cubicle begins to fill with the smell of ripe bananas. 18 know s click, simply telltale too � lllm,bi no one l available constell strays al through garden, bleyand multicolj annes, s but p are not know he onlyabl about tn achtu death, t� paper st, to be fo and tha� ofharml track of upon go constabl involvin, preston providen bloat rei well perhaps1for a cothe \yea bloat u nais d e goosebananas. should he light a fag to cover this? air doesn't exactly stir in here, they'll know someone's been in. it takes him four exposures, click zippety click, my how very efficient at this he's become-anyone nips in one simply drops camera into bag where banana-sandwich cushions fall, telltale sound and harmful g-ioads alike. too bad whoever's funding this little caper won't spring for color film. bloat wonders if it mightn't make a difference, though he knows of no one he can ask. the stars pasted up on slothrop's map cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver (labeled "darlene") sharing a constellation with gladys, green, and katharine, gold, and as the eye strays alice, delores, shirley, a couple of sallys-mostly red and blue through here-a cluster near tower hill, a violet density about covent garden, a nebular streaming on into mayfair, soho, and out to wem­ bley and up to hampstead heath-in every direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament, carolines, marias, annes, susans, elizabeths. but perhaps the colors are only random, uncoded. perhaps the girls are not even real. from tantivy, over weeks of casual questions (we know he's your schoolmate but it's too risky bringing him in), bloat's only able to report that slothrop began work on this map last autumn, about the time he started going out to look at rocket-bomb disasters for achtung-having evidently the time, in his travels among places of death, to devote to girl-chasing. if there's a reason for putting up the paper stars every few days the man hasn't explained it-it doesn't seem to be for publicity, tantivy's the only one who even glances at the map and that's more in the spirit of an amiable anthropologist-"some sort of harmless yank hobby," he tells his friend bloat. "perhaps it's to keep track of them all. he does lead rather a complicated social life," there­ upon going into the story of lorraine and judy, charles the homosexual constable and the piano in the pantechnicon, or the bizarre masquerade involving gloria and her nubile mother, a quid wager on the blackpool­ preston north end game, a naughty version of "silent night," and a providential fog. but none of these yarns, for the purposes of those bloat reports to, are really very illuminating .... well. he's done now. bag zipped, lamp off and moved back in place. perhaps there's time to catch tantivy over at the snipe and shaft, time for a comradely pint. he moves back down the beaverboard maze, in the weak yellow light, against a tide of incoming girls in galoshes, aloof bloat unsmiling, no time for slap-and-tickle here you see, he still has his day's delivery to make .... 19 -_. . -_ -.lli /;...... ::,:! -. �;.��.. -ll'-� .... ;��-t.;;;�t:if�mtl.:;:f.wu.u:!�,jt".�.....�.�.,;.�:<:;�_:.:"'��-_:_:·;_;!.; .• ;·;�i"�-_._� . �.w. �,. wind has shifted around to the southwest, and the barometer's falling. the early afternoon is already dark as evening, under the massing rain­ clouds. tyrone slothrop is gonna be caught out in it, too. today it's been a long, idiot chase out to zero longitude, with the usual nothing to show. this one was supposed to be another premature airburst, the lumps of burning rocket showering down for miles around, most of it into the river, only one piece in any kind of shape and that well sur­ rounded, by the time slothrop arrived, with the tightest security he's seen yet, and the least friendly. soft, faded berets against the slate clouds, mark iii stens set on automatic, mustaches mouthwide covering enormous upper lips, humorless-no chance for any american lieuten­ ant to get a look, not today. achtung, anyhow, is the poor relative of allied intelligence. at least this time slothrop's not alone, he's had the cold comfort of seeing his opposite number from t.!., and shortly after that even the man's section chief, come fussing onto the scene in a '37 wolseley wasp, both turned back too. hal neither of them returning slothrop's amiable nod. tough shit, fellas. but shrewd tyrone hangs around, distributing lucky strikes, long enough to find at least what's up with this unlucky strike, here. what it is is a graphite cylinder, about six inches long and two in di­ ameter, all but a few flakes of its army-green paint charred away. only piece that survived the burst. evidently it was meant to. there seem to be papers stashed inside. sergeant-major burned his hand picking it up and was heard to holler oh fuck, causing laughter among the lower pay­ grades. everybody was waiting around for a captain prentice from s.o.e. (those prickly bastards take their time about everything), who does presently show up. slothrop gets a glimpse-windburned face, big mean mother. prentice takes the cylinder, drives away, and that's that. in which case, slothrop reckons, achtung can, a bit wearily, sub­ mit its fifty-millionth interbranch request to that s.o.e., asking for some report on the cylinder's contents, and, as usual, be ignored. it's o.k., he's not bitter. s.o.e. ignores everybody, and everybody ignores achtung. a-and what does it matter, anyhow? it's his last rocket for a while. hopefully for good. this morning in his in basket were orders sending him tdy some hospital out in the east end. no explanation beyond an attached carbon d d d d d d d 20 copy a the p, executj shit, no which i once way,a) the first aropped buzzbolll aenly he on, risin else'swo its dive, �ot 10 sfj after a or two, next dod but tn you cou surprise� sleeping 'sucker.j"i sayi"nerv "well "two the iieu� day dee�ana tan� their tab] atlantl the one \ ago, barl evening ( them bot of decal ram a ci aismayin, tantivy ( when it'� tel' \allin� tdy some ed carbon copy of a note to achtung requesting his reassignment "as part of the p.w.e. testing programme." testing? p.w.e. is political warfare executive, he looked that up. some more of that minnesota multiphasic shit, no doubt. but it will be a change from this rocket-hunting routine, which is beginning to get a little old. once upon a time slothrop cared. no kidding. he thinks he did, any­ way. a lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now. he can remember the first blitz only as a long spell of good luck. nothing that luftwaffe dropped came near him. but this last summer they started in with those buzzbombs. you'd be walking on the street, in bed just dozing off sud­ denly here comes this farting sound over the rooftops-if it just keeps on, rising to a peak and passing over why that's fine, then it's somebody else's worry ... but if the engine cuts off, look out jackson-it's begun its dive, sloshing the fuel aft, away from the engine burner, and you've got 10 seconds to get under something. well, it wasn't really too bad. after a while you adjusted-found yourself making small bets, a shilling or two, with tantivy mucker-maffick at the next desk, about where the next doodle would hit. . . . but then last september the rockets came. them fucking rockets. you couldn't adjust to the bastards. no way. for the first time, he was surprised to find that he was really scared. began drinking heavier, sleeping less, chain-smoking, feeling in some way he'd been taken for a ·'sucker. christ, it wasn't supposed to keep on like this.... "1 say slothrop, you've already got one in your mouth-" "nervous," slothrop lighting up anyway. "well not mine," tantivy pleads. "two at a time, see?" making them point down like comicbook fangs. the lieutenants stare at each other through the beery shadows, with the day deepening outside the high cold windows of the snipe and shaft, and tantivy about to laugh or snort oh god across the wood atlantic of their table. atlantics aplenty there've been these three years, often rougher than the one william, the first transatlantic slothrop, crossed many ancestors ago. barbarities of dress and speech, lapses in behavior-one horrible evening drunken slothrop, tantivy's guest at the junior athenaeum, got them both 86' d feinting with the beak of a stuffed owl after the jugular of decoverley pox whilst pox, at bay on a billiard table, attempted to ram a cue ball down slothrop's throat. this sort of thing goes on dismayingly often: yet kindness is a sturdy enough ship for these oceans, tantivy always there blushing or smiling and slothrop surprised at how, when it's really counted, tantivy hasn't ever let him down. 21 he knows he can �pill what's on his mind. it hasn't much to do with no one today's amorous report on norma (dimply cedar rapids subdeb legs), to talk marjorie (tall, elegant, a build out of the chorus line at the windmill) still and the strange events saturday night at the frick frack club in soho, best, it i a haunt of low reputation with moving spotlights of many pastel hues, demolit off limits and no jitterbug dancing signs laid on to satisfy the many borings sorts of police, military and civilian, whatever "civilian" means nowahere or �idays, who look in from time to time, and where against all chance, feeling 0 through some horrible secret plot, slothrop, who was to meet one, walks bit in a in sees who but both, lined up in a row, the angle deliberately just for of, ' , him, over the blue wool shoulder of an engineman 3rd class, under the adrene, bare lovely armpit of a lindy-hopping girl swung and posed, skin stained ions one lavender by the shifting light just there, and then, paranoia flooding up, brtheli the two faces beginning to turn his way. . . . �irl voice both young ladies happen to be silver stars on slothrop's map. he needle 0 must've been feeling silvery both times-shiny, jingling. the stars he blackout pastes up are colored only to go with how he feels that day, blue on up ci�arette to golden. never to rank a single one-how can he? nobody sees the tmikabi map but tantivy, and christ they're all beautiful ... in leaf or flower "wha around his wintering city, in teashops, in the queues babushkaed and when th coatwrapped, sighing, sneezing, all lisle legs on the curbstones, hitchhik�oing on ing, typing or filing with pompadours sprouting yellow pencils, he finds ering, in them-dames, tomatoes, sweater girls-yes it is a little obsessive maybe throp-" but ... "i know there is wilde love and joy enough in the world," "i don preached thomas hooker, "as there are wilde thyme, and other in�, he �herbes, but we would have garden love, and garden joy, of gods owne sleeves, � planting." how slothrop's garden grows. teems with virgin's-bower, presen with forget-me-nots, with rue-and all over the place, purple and yelwhen the low as hickeys, a prevalence of love-in-idleness. tanti� he likes to tell them about fireflies. english girls don't know about a bit. i fireflies, which is about all slothrop knows for sure about english girls. "of co the map does puzzle tantivy. it cannot be put dow!' to the usual "yesbjloud-mouthed american ass-banditry, except as a fraternity-boy reflex shivering,in a vacuum, a reflex slothrop can't help, barking on into an empty lab, ma�be ylinto a wormholing of echoing hallways, long after the need has vanished plode firs and the brothers gone to ww ii and their chances for death. slothrop dead, yol really doesn't like to talk about his girls: tantivy has to steer him diplo"�ame matically, even now. at first slothrop, quaintly gentlemanly, didn't talk �etsyou,at all, till he found out how shy tantivy was. it dawned on him then "uh, bthat tantivy was looking to be fixed up. at about the same time, tan"thinl tivy began to see the extent of slothrop's isolation. he seemed to have "jesus 22 .�.:��:; �� ',"'< =: .���' =�-' ' : "':_:: .. _"' � .. � .. ,. .. _-.. � n'l 'noli aoor u [1l�llln �r� ii .0 ilie\l� mll-bor felt 1) liiemptyljf i has 1'3nisflr: .ith,slothrof r him dipj� , didn'ttajt no one else in london, beyond a multitude of girls he seldom saw again, to talk to about anything. still slothrop keeps his map up daily, boobishly conscientious. at its best, it does celebrate a flow, a passing from which-among the sudden demolitions from the sky, mysterious orders arriving out of the dark la­ borings of nights that for himself are only idle-he can save a moment here or there, the days again growing colder, frost in the morning, the feeling of jennifer's breasts inside cold sweater's wool held to warm a bit in a coal-smoke hallway he'll never know the daytime despondency of . . . cup of bovril a fraction down from boiling searing his bare knee as irene, naked as he is in a block of glass sunlight, holds up precious ny­ lons one by one to find a pair that hasn't laddered, each struck flashing by the light through the winter trellis outside ... nasal hep american­ girl voices singing out of the grooves of some disc up through the thorn needle of allison's mother's radiogram . . . snuggling for warmth, blackout curtains over all the windows, no light but the coal of their last cigarette, an english firefly, bobbing at her whim in cursive writing that trails a bit behind, words he can't read.... "what happened?" silence from slothrop. "your two wrens . . . when they saw you ... " then he notices that slothrop, instead of going on with his story, has given himself up to shivering. has been shiv­ ering, in fact, for some time. it's cold in here, but not that cold. "slo­ throp-" "i don't know. jesus." it's interesting, though. it's the weirdest feel­ ing. he can't stop. he turns his ike jacket collar up, tucks hands inside sleeves, and sits that way for a while. presently, after a pause, cigarette in motion, "you can't hear them when they come in." tantivy knows which "they." his eyes shift away. there is silence for a bit. "of course you can't, they go faster than sound." "yes but-that's not it," words are bursting out between the pulses of shivering-"the other kind, those v-is, you can hear them. right? maybe you have a chance to get out of the way. but these things ex­ plode first, a-and then you hear them coming in. except that, if you're dead, you don't hear them." "same in the infantry. you know that. you never hear the one that gets you." "uh, but-" "think of it as a very large bullet, slothrop. with fins." "jesus," teeth chattering, "you're such a comfort." 23 tantivy, leaning anxiously through the smell of hops and the brown damn i gloom, more worried now about slothrop's shaking than any specter of years 0 his own, has nothing but established channels he happens to know of to truce w try and conjure it away. "why not see if we can get you out to where are eac some of them have hit. . . ." fragme "what for? come on, tantivy, they're completely destroyed. aren't �lothroh they?" ner and "i don't know. i doubt even the germans know. but it's the best heha chance we'll have to one-up that lot over in t.!. isn't it." ten on it· which is how slothrop got into investigating v-bomb "incidents." bilitiesf aftermaths. each morning-at first-someone in civil defence routed them a tl achtung a list of yesterday's hits. it would come round to slothrop "yes, last, he'd detach its pencil-smeared buck slip, go draw the same aging it, especl humber from the motor pool, and make his rounds, a saint george after useful. the fact, going out to poke about for droppings of the beast, fragments "whol'of german hardware that wouldn't exist, writing empty summaries into through his notebooks-work-therapy. as inputs to achtung got faster, often but, , , he'd show up in time to help the search crews-following restless-rnustime, the cled raf dogs into the plaster smell, the gas leaking, the leaning long nothing splinters and sagging mesh, the prone and noseless caryatids, rust alit's no ready at nails and naked threadsurfaces, the powdery wipe of nothing's upon the hand across wallpaper awhisper with peacocks spreading their fans ing into down deep lawns to georgian houses long ago, to safe groves of holm beyond � oak . . . among the calls for silence following to where some exposed promisinj hand or brightness of skin waited them, survivor or casualty. when he down all couldn't help he stayed clear, praying, at first, conventionally to god, , , , not first time since the other blitz, for life to win out. but too many were it was dying, and presently, seeing no point, he stopped. bond sir, yesterday happened to be a good day. they found a child, alive, a lithis two \1tle girl, half-suffocated under a morrison shelter. waitipg for the fromlea� stretcher, slothrop held her small hand, gone purple with the cold. suddenly dogs barked in the street. when she opened her eyes and saw him her mori a s�first words were, "any gum, chum?" trapped there for two days, gumlike a cia less-all he had for her was a thayer's slippery elm. he felt like an frontofh idiot. before they took her off she brought his hand over to kiss anyway, eted, �ol her mouth and cheek in the flare lamps cold as frost, the city around puzzled, them at once a big desolate icebox, stale-smelling and no surprises in"�ome side ever again. at which point she smiled, very faintly, and he knew day,elbo that's what he'd been waiting for, wow, a shirley temple smile, as if "no it this exactly canceled all they'd found her down in the middle of. what a cnecked 24 :i':r� .• ; .. , >.�.-::;�•••••__ ." •.• '::� , � •• "';:,::,;;.:: [1 = i; -, ",. ---. . ���.--\t'. the � damn fool thing. he hangs at the bottom of his blood's avalanche, 300 years of western swamp-yankees, and can't manage but some nervous truce with their providence. a detente. ruins he goes daily to look in are each a sermon on vanity. that he finds, as weeks wear on, no least fragment of any rocket, preaches how indivisible is the act of death . . . slothrop's progress: london the secular city instructs him: turn any cor­ ner and he can find himself inside a parable. he has become obsessed with the idea of a rocket with his name writ­ ten on it-if they're really set on getting him ("they" embracing possi­ bilities far far beyond nazi germany) that's the surest way, doesn't cost them a thing to paint his name on everyone, right? "yes, well, that can be useful," tantivy watching him funny, "can't it, especially in combat to, you know, pretend something like that. jolly useful. call it 'operational paranoia' or something. but-" "who's pretending?" lighting a cigarette, shaking his forelock through the smoke, "jeepers, tantivy, listen, i don't want to upset you but ... i mean i'm four years overdue's what it is, it could happen any time, the next second, right, just suddenly . . . shit . . . just zero, just nothing . . . and . . ." it's nothing he can see or lay hands on-sudden gases, a violence upon the air and no trace afterward ... a word, spoken with no warn­ ing into your ear, and then silence forever. beyond its invisibility, beyond hammerfall and doomcrack, here is its real horror, mocking, promising him death with german and precise confidence, laughing down all of tantivy's quiet decencies . . . no, no bullet with fins, ace . . . not the word, the one word that rips apart the day. . . . it was friday evening, last september, just off work, heading for the bond street underground station, his mind on the weekend ahead and his two wrens, that norma and that marjorie, whom he must each keep from learning about the other, just as he was reaching to pick his nose, suddenly in the sky, miles behind his back and up the river memento­ mori a sharp crack and a heavy explosion, rolling right behind, almost like a clap of thunder. but not quite. seconds later, this time from in front of him, it happened again: loud and clear, all over the city. brack­ eted. not a buzzbomb, not that luftwaffe. "not thunder either," he puzzled, out loud. "some bloody gas main," a lady with a lunchbox, puffy-eyed from the day, elbowing him in the back as she passed. "no it's the germans," her friend with rolled blonde fringes under a checked kerchief doing some monster routine here, raising her hands at oyed, .\refl' 'lio\vot\( �t to wneli smile, asr of lvhatl 25 -_. . t ����::�':�""···";��·�·�·��:;'�ilttil;r�i��j:rf�tu;::. '.�"'�"��';.�:;.:;�,t '�"':ic·_-_ • -.r a/' .: ...' slothrop, "coming to get him, they especially love fat, plump ameri­ cans-" in a minute she'll be reaching out to pinch his cheek and wob­ ble it back and forth. "hi, glamorpuss," slothrop said. her name was cynthia. he managed to get a telephone number before she was waving ta-ta, borne again into the rush-hour crowds. it was one of those great iron afternoons in london: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. this smoke is more than the day's breath, more than dark strength-it is an imperial presence that lives and moves. people were crossing the streets and squares, going everywhere. busses were grinding off, hundreds of them, down the long concrete viaducts smeared with years' pitiless use and no pleasure, into haze-gray, grease­ black, red lead and pale aluminum, between scrap heaps that towered high as blocks of flats, down side-shoving curves into roads clogged with army convoys, other tall busses and canvas lorries, bicycles and cars, everyone here with different destinations and beginnings, all flowing, hitching now and then, over it all the enormous gas ruin of the sun among the smokestacks, the barrage balloons, power lines and chimneys brown as aging indoor wood, brown growing deeper, approaching black through an instant-perhaps the true turn of the sunset-that is wine to you, wine and comfort. the moment was 6:43: 16 british double summer time: the sky, beaten like death's drum, still humming, and slothrop's cock-say what? yes lookit inside his gi undershorts here's a sneaky hardon stir­ ring, ready to jump-well great god where'd that come from? there is in his history, and likely, god help him, in his dossier, a pe­ culiar sensitivity to what is revealed in the sky. (but a hardon?) on the old schist of a tombstone in the congregational churchyard back home in mingeborough, massachusetts, the hand of god emerges from a cloud, the edges of the figure here and there eroded by 200 years of seasons' fire and ice chisels at work, and the inscription reading: eachoneir the next lin ers,salters lectmen, b around goj breaths, th where act( wa� out t consta! out of the unbearabl blue berk siothrop b blin� back nrst,lying and willow of rot,leacl faced ang death's he and broken eyes peeki nin�from bouncy sta iah siothro] adie whfj till i m� marl andl wh� and to the curl calsarcas� out a credij in memory of conftant slothrop, who died march y 4� 1 766, in y 2 9� year of his age. death is a debt to nature due, which i have paid, and fo muft you. .:�':r: ...... �, .. -;�� .. ,. .. _ .. � __ . _�....�.� . '�"'.'"'' ' .... ...:__ � -::::. [�:.; ./ "". ---. . ��)..oo,--_--:--\) amen· ana w � constant saw, and not only with his heart, that stone hand pointing o out of the secular clouds, pointing directly at him, its edges traced in unbearable light, above the whispering of his river and slopes of his long e manaot bl kshi " , .�. ue ber shires, as would his son vanable slothrop, mdeed all of the e agalnl!i'. slothrop blood one way or another, the nine or ten generations tum'\ bling back, branching inward: everyone, except for william the very � :eloh first, lying under fallen leaves, mint and purple loosestrife, chilly elm \nmounwt d 'ii h d h " � r an wi ow s a ows over t e swamp-edge graveyard m a long gradient 'n, mo!1� of rot, leaching, assimilation with the earth, the stones showing round­ mo\e1.r�+ faced angels with the long noses of dogs, toothy and deep-socketed . bus)5wc death's heads, masonic emblems, flowery urns, feathery willows upright i e llaaq, and broken, exhausted hourglasses, sunfaces about to rise or set with ,au1ei1 eyes peeking kilroy-style over their horizon, and memorial verse run­ iliattolltll ning from straight-on and foursquare, as for constant slothrop, through c10':l�f(h: bouncy star spangled banner meter for mrs. elizabeth, wife of lt. isa­ � i aflatl iah slothrop (d. 1812): , �i �o\\l adieu my dear friends, i have come to this grave where insatiate death in his reaping hath brought me. till christ rise again all his children to save, i must lie, as his word in the scriptures hath taught me. mark, reader, my cry! bend thy thoughts on the sky, and in midst of prosperity, know thou may'st die. while the great loom of god works in darkness above, and our trials here below are but threads of his love. to the current slothrop's grandfather frederick (d. 1933), who in typi­ cal sarcasm and guile bagged his epitaph from emily dickinson, with­ out a credit line: because i could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me each one in turn paying his debt to nature due and leaving the excess to the next link in the name's chain. they began as fur traders, cordwain­ ers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became se­ lectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble. country for miles around gone to necropolis, gray with marble dust, dust that was the breaths, the ghosts, of all those fake-athenian monuments going up else­ where across the republic. always elsewhere. the money seeping its way out through stock portfolios more intricate than any genealogy: 27 ruin is formal, devil's work, consecutive and slowfail in an instant no man did, slipping is crash's law, what stayed at home in berkshire went into timberland whose dimin­ ishing green reaches were converted acres at a clip into paper-toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint-a medium or ground for shit, money, and the word. they were not aristocrats, no slothrop ever made it into the social register or the somerset club-they carried on their enterprise in silence, assimilated in life to the dynamic that sur­ rounded them thoroughly as in death they would be to churchyard earth. shit, money, and the word, the three american truths, powering the american mobility, claimed the slothrops, clasped them for good to the country's fate. but they did not prosper ... about all they did was persist-though it all began to go sour for them around the time emily dickinson, never far away, was writing ond or t of big an cause so 0 or hogan, into the co they sc to swing o� to show hi but this ange, the si neighbors falling do said, "lik were the 0 kids doze still they would keep on. the tradition, for others, was clear, everyone knew-mine it out, work it, take all you can till it's gone then move on west, there's plenty more. but out of some reasoned inertia the slo­ throps stayed east in berkshire, perverse-close to the flooded quarries and logged-off hillsides they'd left like signed confessions across all that thatchy-brown, moldering witch-country. the profits slackening, the family ever multiplying. interest from various numbered trusts was still turned, by family banks down in boston every second or third genera­ tion, back into yet another trust, in long rallentando, in infinite series just perceptibly, term by term, dying . . . but never quite to the zero.... the depression, by the time it came, ratified what'd been under way. slothrop grew up in a hilltop desolation of businesses going under, hedges around the estates of the vastly rich, half-mythical cottagers from new york lapsing back now to green wilderness or straw death, all the crystal windows every single one smashed, harrimans and whitneys gone, lawns growing to hay, and the autumns no longer a time for fox­ trots in the distances, limousines and lamps, but only the accustomed crickets again, apples again, early frosts to send the hummingbirds away, east wind, october rain: only winter certainties. in 1931, the year of the great aspinwall hotel fire, young tyrone was visiting his aunt and uncle in lenox. it was in april, but for a secabout to � ever proch these aut� countdow�washing tit does it cloud, , , on the wa laminar an tury called orince, fad above, a g chan�es in leave, eacl chance, tl your whit, ()se dim "ond or two as he was commg awake m the strange room and the racket a.�er-tol . j [ of big and little cousins' feet down the stairs, he thought of winter, beno lor � f' ... �otnr cause so 0 ten he d been wakened like this, at this hour of sleep, by pop, o� tl or hogan, bundled outside still blinking through an overlay of dream ��. ." l mto the cold to watch the northern lights. annc tllat t l they scared the shit out of him. were the radiant curtains just about o cliultfll . ? wh ld h h tb to swmg open. at wou t e g osts of the north, in their finery, have ru s, �i\t' to show him? n'rnlolu, �' but this was a spring night, and the sky was gusting red, warm-orange, the sirens howling in the valleys from pittsfield, lenox, and lee­ neighbors stood out on their porches to stare up at the shower of sparks falling down on the mountainside ... "like a meteor shower," they said, "like cinders from the fourth of july ... " it was 1931, and those were the comparisons. the embers fell on and on for five hours while kids dozed and grownups got to drink coffee and tell fire stories from other years. but what lights were these? what ghosts in command? and suppose, in the next moment, all of it, the complete night, were to go out of con­ trol and curtains part to show us a winter no one has guessed at. . . . 6:43: 16 bdst-in the sky right now here is the same unfolding, just about to break through, his face deepening with its light, everything about to rush away and he to lose himself, just as his countryside has ever proclaimed . . . slender church steeples poised up and down all these autumn hillsides, white rockets about to fire, only seconds of countdown away, rose windows taking in sunday light, elevating and washing the faces above the pulpits defining grace, swearing this is how it does happen-yes the great bright hand reaching out of the cloud.... o 0 0 0 0 0 0 on the wall, in an ornate fixture of darkening bronze, a gas jet burns, laminar and gently singing-adjusted to what scientists of the last cen­ tury called a "sensitive flame": invisible at the base, as it issues from its orifice, fading upward into smooth blue light that hovers several inches above, a glimmering small cone that can respond to the most delicate changes in the room's air pressure. it registers visitors as they enter and leave, each curious and civil as if the round table held some game of chance. the circle of sitters is not at all distracted or hindered. none of your white hands or luminous trumpets here. 29 --; ��. �.. �....�,. .. ·-·· ... �-·�·:· .. ·�����4.:'1�·t.n�n����y ....• ·�"-�"�h;'·��·t.:;·. �.:_ :"-_' <" • , ��/. !'.' .' 30 imagine ably fro suddenl] she lea jessic� idlrplu top verte her li�ht and bre seems he to have outsi rocket 0 dives fo ward the a�ain, dim roo ten yea it see hair swj lapel. a milton � sponde1 the � anybod) like anylbasic, fa land fel (themej haustion rangem� sighs a� book, sh presel not sure shy, isn' "rog� graph tl dart inc' "au\( camerons officers in parade trews, blue puttees, dress kilts drift in conversing with enlisted americans ... there are clergymen, home guard or fire service just off duty, folds of wool clothing heavy with smoke smell, everyone grudging an hour's sleep and looking it . . . an­ cient edwardian ladies in crepe de chine, west indians softly plaiting vowels round less flexible chains of russian-jewish consonants. . .. most skate tangent to the holy circle, some stay, some are off again to other rooms, all without breaking in on the slender medium who sits nearest the sensitive flame with his back to the wall, reddish-brown curls tightening close as a skullcap, high forehead unwrinkled, dark lips moving now effortless, now in pain: "once transected into the realm of dominus blicero, roland found that all the signs had turned against him.... lights he had studied so well as one of you, position and movement, now gathered there at the opposite end, all in dance ... irrelevant dance. none of blicero's tradi­ tional progress, no something new . . . alien. . . . roland too became conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him. discov­ ered it so . . . so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it. the wind had been blowing all year long, year after year, but roland had felt only the secular wind . . . he means, only his personal wind. yet . . . selena, the wind, the wind's everywhere. . . ." here the medium breaks off, is silent awhile . . . one groan . . . a quiet, desperate moment. "selena. selena. have you gone, then?" "no, my dear," her cheeks mottled with previous tears, "i'm listen­ ing." "it's control. all these things arise from one difficulty: control. for the first time it was inside, do you see. the control is put inside. no more need to suffer passively under 'outside forces'-to veer into any wind. as if ... "a market needed no longer be run by the invisible hand, but now could create itself-its own logic, momentum, style, from inside. putting the control inside was ratifying what de facto had happened­ that you had dispensed with god. but you had taken on a greater, and more harmful, illusion. the illusion of control. that a could do b. but that was false. completely. no one can do. things only happen, a and b are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable .... " "more ouspenskian nonsense," whispers a lady brushing by on the arm of a dock worker. odors of diesel fuel and sous ie vent mingle as they pass. jessica swanlake, a young rosy girl in the uniform of an ats private, noticing the prewar perfume, looks up, hmm, the frock she n on a grea!e1. � coljd ad r: ii happen,.\. 't'parable, ' hing by on: vent mingjr rm of an ai the frock g imagines is about 15 guineas and who knows how many coupons, prob­ ably from harrods and would do more for me, she's also sure. the lady, suddenly looking back over her shoulder, smiles oh, yes? my gosh, did she hear? around this place almost certainly. jessica's been standing near the seance table with a handful of darts idly plucked from the board on the wall, her head bent, pale nape and top vertebra visible above the brown wool collar and through some of her lighter brown hair, fallen either side along her cheeks. brass throats and breasts warm to her blood, quake in the hollow of her hand. she seems herself, gentling their feathered crosses, brushing with fingertips, to have slid into a shallow trance. . . . outside, rolling from the east, comes the muffled rip of another rocket bomb. the windows rattle, the floor shakes. the sensitive flame dives for shelter, shadows across the table sent adance, darkening to­ ward the other room-then it leaps high, the shadows drawing inward again, fully two feet, and disappears completely. gas hisses on in the dim room. milton gloaming, who achieved perfect tripos at cambridge ten years ago, abandons his shorthand to rise and go shut the gas off. it seems the right moment now for jessica to throw a dart: one dart. hair swinging, breasts bobbing marvelously beneath each heavy wool lapel. a hiss of air, whack: into the sticky fibers, into the dead center. milton gloaming cocks an eyebrow. his mind, always gathering corre­ spondences, thinks it has found a new one. the medium, irritable now, has begun to drift back out of his trance. anybody's guess what's happening over on the other side. this sitting, like any, needs not only its congenial circle here and secular, but also a basic, four-way entente which oughtn't, any link of it, be broken: ro­ land feldspath (the spirit), peter sachsa (the control), carroll eventyr (the medium), selena (the wife and survivor). somewhere, through ex­ haustion, redirection, gusts of white noise out in the aether, this ar­ rangement has begun now to dissolve. relaxation, chairs squeaking, sighs and throatclearings . . . milton gloaming fusses with his note­ book, shuts it abruptly. presently jessica comes wandering over. no sign of roger and she's not sure he wants her to come looking for him, and gloaming, though shy, isn't as horrid as some of roger's other friends.... "roger says that now you'll count up all those words you copied and graph them or something," brightly to head off any comment on the dart incident, which she'd rather avoid. "do you do it only for seances?" "automatic texts," girl-nervous gloaming frowns, nods, "one or two 31 --. �•• .-_•• � .� .... :�'''''".�,......r...., ••• ,,'''••':'_ �:;��;�.... ::.�:. .:. • , a / ; .. , _' 32 what n at first, deed. "majo "we 'i' premises "then ouija-board episodes, yes yes ... we-we're trying to develop a vocabu­ lary of curves-certain pathologies, certain characteristic shapes you see-" ''i'm not sure that 1-" "well. recall zipf's principle of least effort: if we plot the fre­ quency of a word p sub n against its rank-order n on logarithmic axes," babbling into her silence, even her bewilderment graceful, "we should of course get something like a straight line . . . however we've data that suggest the curves for certain-conditions, well they're actually quite different-schizophrenics for example tend to run a bit flatter in the upper part then progressively steeper-a sort of bow shape ... i think with this chap, this roland, that we're on to a classical paranoiac-" "ha." that's a word she knows. "thought i saw you brighten up there when he said 'turned against.' " " 'against,' 'opposite,' yes you'd be amazed at the frequency with this one." "what's the most frequent word?" asks jessica. "your number one." "the same as it's always been at these affairs," replies the statistician, as if everyone knew: "death." an elderly air-raid warden, starchy and frail as organdy, stands on tiptoe to relight the sensitive flame. "incidentally, ah, where's your mad young gentleman gone off to?" "roger's with captain prentice." waving vaguely. "the usual myste­ rious microfilm drill." being transacted in some distant room, across a crown-and-anchor game with which chance has very little to do, billows of smoke and chatter, falkman and his apache band subdued over the bbc, chunky pints and slender sherry glasses, winter rain at the win­ dows. time for closeting, gas logs, shawls against the cold night, snug with your young lady or old dutch or, at here at snoxall's, in good com­ pany. here's a shelter-perhaps a real node of tranquillity among sev­ eral scattered throughout this long wartime, where they're gathering for purposes not entirely in the martial interest. pirate prentice feels something of this, obliquely, by way of class ner­ vousness really: he bears his grin among these people here like a pha­lanx. he learned it at the films-it is the exact mischievous irish grin your dennis morgan chap goes about cocking down at the black smoke vomiting from each and every little bucktooth yellow rat he shoots down. it's as useful to him as he is to the firm-who, it is well known, will use anyone, traitors, murderers, perverts, negroes, even women, to get sake, ne "hitle "hitle ber. .. aher i rate tape ifortablederstand rattling i ioll� �ool pirate their ro bookish science, ma�be than a s� "it'sl mind, n relic of a we are event�r with �o ing in t) scrubs the-spin where-h living � rot ... "care science "ass. doorr it � a vocal what they want. they may not've been that sure of pirate's usefulness sn.apes \ at first, but later, as it developed, they were to grow very sure, indeed. "major-general, you can't actually give your support to this." "we're watching him around the dock. he certainly isn't leaving the premises physically." "then he has a confederate. somehow-hypnosis, drugs, i don't know-they're getting to his man and tranquilizing him. for god's sake, next you'll be consulting horoscopes." . "hitler does." "hitler is an inspired man. but you and i are employees, rernem­ �anoial. ber.... " \ �in�httu after that first surge of interest, the number of clients assigned to pi­ rate tapered off some. at the moment he carries what he feels is a com­ fortable case load. but it's not what he really wants. they will not un­ derstand, the gently bred maniacs of s.o.e. ah very good, captain rattling sitreps, shuffling boots, echoes off of government eyeglasses jolly good and why not do it actually for us sometime at the club. . . . pirate wants their trust, the good-whisky-and-cured-latakia scent of their rough love. he wants understanding from his own lot, not these bookish sods and rationalized freaks here at snoxall's, so dedicated to science, so awfully tolerant that this (he regrets it with all his heart) may be the only place in the reach of war's empire that he does feel less than a stranger. . . . "it's not at all clear," roger mexico's been saying, "what they have in mind, not at all, the witchcraft act's more than 200 years old, it's a relic of an entirely different age, another way of thinking. suddenly here we are 1944 being hit with convictions right and left. our mr. eventyr," motioning at the medium who's across the room chatting with young gavin trefoil, "could be fallen upon at any moment-pour­ ing in the windows, hauling dangerous tough eventyr away to the scrubs on pretending-to-exercise-or-use-a-kind-of-conjuration-to-cause­ the _ spirits of deceased persons to be present in fact at the place­ where_he_then_was-and-that-those-spirits-were-communicating-with­ living _ persons then and there present my god what imbecile fascist rot ... " "careful, mexico, you're losing the old objectivity again-a man of science shouldn't want to do that, should he. hardly scientific, is it." "ass. you're on their side. couldn't you feel it tonight, coming in the door? it's a great swamp of paranoia." wdlofclallu here like a 1� el'ou jriid; e black sill rat he 511� known, iii »nen, to gr 33 ---,.--:.� _-�_ .... r�+""."�"::-'�''';� •• �j'<''''""\'_�'_'''''''''''''''.' •••. � ..... �.:�:�:�:._'./ '. ��_._,.�� ' .. z: .. /{.. / •• ' • "that's my talent, all right," pirate as he speaks knowing it's too abrupt, tries to file off the flash with: "i don't know that i'm really up to the multiple sort of thing. . . ." "ah. prentice." not an eyebrow or lip out of place. tolerance. ah. "you ought to come down this time and have our dr. groast check it out on his eeg." "oh, if i'm in town," vaguely. there's a security problem here. loose talk sinks ships and he can't be sure, even about mexico. there are too many circles to the current operation, inner and outer. distribution lists growing narrower as we move ring by ring toward the bull's eye, in­ structions to destroy gradually encompassing every scrap, idle memo, typewriter ribbon. his best guess is that mexico only now and then supports the firm's latest mania, known as operation black wing, in a statistical way-ana­ lyzing what foreign-morale data may come in, for instance-but some­ place out at the fringes of the enterprise, as indeed pirate finds himself here tonight, acting as go-between for mexico and his own roommate teddy bloat. he knows that bloat goes somewhere and microfilms something, then transfers it, via pirate, to young mexico. and thence, he gathers, down to "the white visitation," which houses a catchall agency known as pisces-psychological intelligence schemes for expediting surrender. whose surrender is not made clear. pirate wonders if mexico isn't into yet another of the thousand dodgy intra-allied surveillance schemes that have sprung up about london since the americans, and a dozen governments in exile, moved in. in which the german curiously fades into irrelevance. everyone watching over his shoulder, free french plotting revenge on vichy traitors, lub­ lin communists drawing beads on varsovian shadow-ministers, elas greeks stalking royalists, unrepatriable dreamers of all languages hoping through will, fists, prayer to bring back kings, republics, pretenders, summer anarchisms that perished before the first crops were in ... some dying wretchedly, nameless, under ice-and-snow surfaces of bomb craters out in the east end not to be found till spring, some chronically drunk or opiated for getting through the day's reverses, most somehow losing, losing what souls they had, less and less able to trust, seized in the game's unending chatter, its daily self-criticism, its demands for total attention . . . and what foreigner is it, exactly, that pirate has in mind if it isn't that stateless lascar across his own mirror-glass, that poorest of exiles. . . . well: he guesses they have euchred mexico into some such byzan)ia)m gro addiction. being used what c wa�,)ecu eryofop face tonig of the roo knowing � up �oung i ever phot there's atel�, the )eeing aur mous .. worn in a m�ed aa cups. he i simple lo� he'll alwa know, "fol in 1936 colder tim speed� sta an expert i pirate, the �de in ci1 he'd gl drinbng c of crude 0 -98% ve preservini the engli� (masturba all ilie tim that life \1 incredi g it's i! tine exercise, probably to do with the americans. perhaps the russians. ea\\yu�1 "the white visitation," being devoted to psychological warfare, har� bors a few of each, a behaviorist here, a pavlovian there. it's none of pierance,.\ rate's business. but he notes that with each film delivery, roger's enthu­ oastchetl siasm grows. unhealthy, unhealthy: he has the sense of witnessing an addiction. he feels that his friend, his provisional wartime friend, is in here,� being used for something not quite decent . . thereartl what can he do? if mexico wanted to talk about it he could find a \tribulion� way, security or not. his reluctance is not pirate's own over the machin­ hull' e:t, ery of operation black wing. it looks more like shame. wasn't mexico's p. idlemt: face tonight, as he took the envelope, averted? eyes boxing the corners of the room at top speed, a pornography customer's reflex ... hmm. rt tnef� knowing bloat, perhaps that's what it is, young lady gamming well-set­ cal\\'a�'-� up young man, several poses-more wholesome than anything this war's ce-dutw� ever photographed ... life, at least.... enndlrum there's mexico's girl, just entering the room. he spots her immediately, the clarity around her, the absence of smoke and noise ... is he seeing auras now? she catches sight of roger and smiles, her eyes enor­ mous . . . dark-lashed, no make-up or none pirate can see, her hair worn in a roll down to the shoulders-what the hell's she doing in a mixed aa battery? she ought to be in a naafi canteen, filling coffee cups. he is suddenly, dodderer and ass, taken by an ache in his skin, a simple love for them both that asks nothing but their safety, and that he'll always manage to describe as something else-"concern," you know, "fondness.... " in 1936, pirate ("a t. s. eliot april" she called it, though it was a colder time of year) was in love with an executive's wife. she was a thin, speedy stalk of a girl named scorpia mossmoon. her husband clive was an expert in plastics, working out of cambridge for imperial chemicals. pirate, the career soldier, was having a year or two's relapse or fling outside in civilian life. he'd got the feeling, stationed east of suez, places like bahrein, drinking beer watered with his own falling sweat in the perpetual stink of crude oil across from muharraq, restricted to quarters after sundown -98% venereal rate anyway-one sunburned, scroungy unit of force preserving the sheik and the oil money against any threat from east of the english channel, horny, mad with the itching of lice and heat rash (masturbating under these conditions is exquisite torture), bitter-drunk all the time-even so there had leaked through to pirate a dim suspicion that life was passing him by. incredible black-and-white scorpia confirmed not a few piratical fan\rerein, lrfaceofdot mecnronid 110 t some� 1st, seiz� demands i rirate has i ir-glass, wi ich eyzan 35 --• t��"��_:"""":_'_4�".-'-.-'�-::�'�"'.'''_'''''�''_i'"._''''':-......1"� •• p�� ••"�'���_'�_���""'.::':::,:.::..::' .l/://' e' " tasies about the glamorous silken-calved english realworld he'd felt so shut away from. they got together while clive was away on a trouble­ shooting mission for ici in, of all places, bahrein. the symmetry of this helped pirate relax about it some. they would attend parties as strangers, though she never learned to arm herself against unexpected sight of him across a room (trying to belong, as if he were not someone's employee). she found him touching in his ignorance of everything-par­ tying, love, money-felt worldly and desperately caring for this moment of boyhood among his ways imperialized and set (he was 33), his pre­ austerity, in which scorpia figured as his last fling-though herself too young to know that, to know, like pirate, what the lyrics to "dancing in the dark" are really about. . . . he will be scrupulous about never telling her. but there are times when it's agony not to go to her feet, knowing she won't leave clive, crying you're my last chance ... if it can't be you then there's no more time. . . . doesn't he wish, against all hope, that he could let the poor, western-man's timetable go ... but how does a man ... where does he even begin, at age 33. . . . "but that's just it," she'd have laughed, not so much annoyed (she would have laughed) as tickled by the un­ reality of the problem-herself too lost at the manic edge of him, always at engage, so taking, 'cleaving her (for more than when jerking off into an army flannel in the persian gulf was some collar of love's nettles now at him, at his cock), too unappeasable for her not to give in to the insanity of, but too insane really even to think of as any betrayal of clive .... convenient as hell for her, anyway. roger mexico is now going through much the same thing with jessica, the other chap in this case being known as beaver. pirate has looked on but never talked about it to mexico. yes he is waiting, to see if it will end for roger the same way, part of him, never so cheery as at the spectacle of another's misfortune, rooting for beaver and all that he, like clive, stands for, to win out. but another part-an alternate self?-one that he mustn't be quick to call "decent"-does seem to want for roger what pirate himself lost. . .. "you are a pirate," she'd whispered the last day-neither of them knew it was the last day-"you've come and taken me off on your pirate ship. a girl of good family and the usual repressions. you've raped me.and i'm the red bitch of the high seas.... " a lovely game. pirate wished she'd thought it up sooner. fucking the last (already the last) day's light away down afternoon to dusk, hours of fucking, too in love with it to uncouple, they noticed how the borrowed room rocked gently, the ceiling obligingly came down a foot, lamps swayed from 36 weir fit over th but 0 were on and the· willsettl their lo� round, fa tables, c helef roper's i nesburg, little fro hon, gob tos, �co theire i dracula­ lets still therwa ward ton high-clas when the gooo? rerla ness, anolthe rainhe's an "we man 00 what a difficult they' properl ingmat their fittings, some fraction of the thameside traffic provided salty cries over the water, and nautical bells. . . . but back over their lowering sky-sea behind, government hounds were on the track-drawing closer, the cutters are coming, the cutters and the sleek hermaphrodites of the law, agents who, being old hands, will settle for her safe return, won't insist on his execution or capture. their logic is sound: give him a bad enough wound and he'll come round, round to the ways of this hard-boiled old egg of world and time­ tables, cycling night to compromise night. . . . he left her at waterloo station. a gala crowd was there, to see fred roper's company of wonder midgets off to an imperial fair in johan­ nesburg, south africa. midgets in their dark winter clothes, exquisite little frocks and nip-waisted overcoats, were running all over the sta­ tion, gobbling their bonvoyage chocolates and lining up for news pho­ tos. scorpia's talc-white face, through the last window, across the last gate, was a blow to his heart. a flurry of giggles and best wishes arose from the wonder midgets and their admirers. well, thought pirate, guess i'll go back in the army.... d d d d d d d they're bound eastward now, roger peering over the wheel, hunched dracula-style inside his burberry, jessica with bright millions of drop­ lets still clinging in soft net to her shoulders and sleeves of drab wool. co il noll' 1 they want to be together, in bed, at rest, in love, and instead it's east­ chap in t� ward tonight and south of the thames to rendezvous with a certain rtalkedaoo high-class vivisectionist before the clock of st. felix chimes one. and l'r�elame when the mice run down, who knows tonight but what they've run for er'-misfort good? her face against the breath-fogged window has become another dim­ ness, another light-trick of the winter. beyond her, the white fracture of the rain passes. "why does he go out and pinch all his dogs in person? he's an administrator, isn't he? wouldn't he hire a boy or something?" "we call them 'staff,' " roger replies, "and i don't know why points­ man does anything he does, he's a pavlovian, love. he's a royal fellow. what am i supposed to know about any of those people? they're as difficult as the lot back in snoxall's." they're both of them peevish tonight, whippy as sheets of glass im­ properly annealed, ready to go smash at any indefinite touch in a whin­ ing matrix of stresses37 ----' . //fflfl�� .ill / �� -.-.. ..,.;',..•• "...; •• '.,-. , •• �.,,;; �'::�".' : -.,i; ;,,:,,; -' • -·7'..• ' . i "hu "poor roger, poor lamb, he's having an awful war." "all right," his head shaking, a fuming b or p that refuses to explode, "ahh, you're so clever aren't you," raving roger, hands off the wheel to help the words out, windscreen wipers clicking right along, "you've been able to shoot back now and then at the odd flying buzz bomb, you and the boy friend dear old nutria-" "beaver. " "quite right, and all that magnificent esprit you lot are so justly fa­ mous for, but you haven't brought down many rockets lately have you, haha!" gurning his most spiteful pursed smile up against wrinkled nose and eyes, "any more than i, any more than pointsman, well who's that make purer than whom these days, eh mylove?" bouncing up and down in the leather seat. by now her hand's reaching out, about to touch his shoulder. she rests her cheek on her own arm, hair spilling, drowsy, watching him. can't get a decent argument going with her. how he's tried. she uses her silences like stroking hands to divert him and hush their corners of rooms, bedcovers, tabletops-accidental spaces.... even at the cin­ ema watching that awful going my way, the day they met, he saw every white straying of her ungauntleted hands, could feel in his skin each saccade of her olive, her amber, her coffee-colored eyes. he's wasted gallons of paint thinner striking his faithful zippo, its charred wick, virility giving way to thrift, rationed down to a little stub, the blue flame sparking about the edges in the dark, the many kinds of dark, just to see what's happening with her face. each new flame, a new face. and therc've been the moments, more of them lately too-times when face-to-face there has been no way to tell which of them is which. both at the same time feeling the same eerie confusion . . . something like looking in a mirror by surprise but ... more than that, the feeling of actually being joined . . . when after-who knows? two minutes, a week? they realize, separate again, what's been going on, that roger and [essica were merged into a joint creature unaware of itself.... in a life he has cursed, again and again, for its need to believe so much in the trans-observable, here is the first, the very first real magic: data he can't argue away. it was what hollywood likes to call a "cute meet," out in the neat r sth-century heart of downtown tunbridge wells, roger motoring inthe vintage jaguar up to london, jessica at the roadside struggling pret­ tily with a busted bicycle, murky wool ats skirt hiked up on a handle bar, most nonregulation black slip and clear pearl thighs above the khaki stockings, well38 "hi wind] she bit roo into p "we his apr ''1' ilie wa "bu "on sha out lik "myj the do "th' runnin "co where speaka at roll,fq send h swoopl other � under he � faster agains, the cal someh dering ''i'm rrrn,s and the v micato explo e wbet: ng, '\ol 2 bo�n, "here love," brakes on in a high squeak, "it's not backstage at the old windmill or something, you know." she knew. "hmm," a curl dropping down to tickle her nose and put a bit more than the usual acid in her reply, "are they letting little boys into places like that, i didn't know." "well nobody's," having learned by now to live with remarks about his appearance, "called up the girl guides yet either, have they." "i'm twenty." "hurrah, that qualifies you for a ride, in this jaguar here you see, all the way to london." "but i'm going the other way. nearly to battle." "oh, round trip of course." shaking hair back out of her face, "does your mother know you're out like this." "my mother is the war," declares roger mexico, leaning over to open the door. "that's a queer thing to say," one muddy little shoe pondering on the running board. "come along, love, you're holding up the mission, leave the machine where it is, mind your skirt getting in, i wouldn't want to commit an un­ speakable act out here in the streets of tunbridge wells-" at which moment the rocket falls. cute, cute. a thud, a hollow drum­ roll. far enough toward the city to be safe, but close and loud enough to send her the hundred miles between herself and the stranger: long­ swooping, balletic, her marvelous round bottom turning to settle in the other seat, hair in a moment's fan, hand sweeping army-colored skirt under graceful as a wing, all with the blast still reverberating. he thinks he can see a solemn gnarled something, deeper or changing faster than clouds, rising to the north. will she snuggle now cutely against him, ask him to protect her? he didn't even believe she'd get in the car, rocket or no rocket, accordingly now puts pointsman's jaguar somehow into reverse instead of low, yes, backs over the bicycle, ren­ dering it in a great crunch useless for anything but scrap. "i'rn in your power," she cries. "utterly." "hmm," roger at .length finding his gear, dancing among the pedals rrrn, snarl, off to london. but jessica's not in his power. and the war, well, she is roger's mother, she's leached at all the soft, the vulnerable inclusions of hope and praise scattered, beneath the mica-dazzle, through roger's mineral, grave-marker self, washed it all moaning away on her gray tide. six years now, always just in sight, just where he can see her. he's forgotten his first corpse, or when he first resojulij te\�' hal'il i\rinll�� �e� who'l: ij u�anog anewlaa ell too-t themilwl , . ome� hat. iliefei tll"o minute on. iliat �c telf,,,,1 o mucni�: " data nell 39 _--,it �::::��"':::;_'''''''''+'''''''�':''''h�.•. e _ _ s. '.,. '.'-i'� _".�\�:����? .'.: ":'��7--'��/ .::,// . ','''' . saw someone living die. that's how long it's been going on. most of his life, it seems. the city he visits nowadays is death's antechamber: where all the paperwork's done, the contracts signed, the days num­ bered. nothing of the grand, garden, adventurous capital his childhood knew. he's become the dour young man of "the white visitation," the spider hitching together his web of numbers. it's an open secret that he doesn't get on with the rest of his section. how can he? they're all wild talents-clairvoyants and mad magicians, telekinetics, astral travel­ ers, gatherers of light. roger's only a statistician. never had a prophetic dream, never sent or got a telepathic message, never touched the other world directly. if anything's there it will show in the experimental data won't it, in the numbers ... but that's as close or clear as he'll ever get. any wonder he's a bit short with psi section, all the definitely 3-sigma lot up and down his basement corridor? jesus christ, wouldn't you be? that one clear need of theirs, so patent, exasperates him. . . . his need too, all right. but how are you ever going to put anything "psychi­ cal" on a scientific basis with your mortality always goading, just outside the chi-square calculations, in between the flips of the zener cards and the silences among the medium's thick, straining utterances? in his mel­ lower moments he thinks that continuing to try makes him brave. but most of the time he's cursing himself for not working in fire control, or graphing standardized kill rates per ton for the bomber groups ... anything but this thankless meddling into the affairs of invulnerable death.... they have drawn near a glow over the rooftops. fire service vehicles come roaring by them, heading the same direction. it is an oppressive region of brick streets and silent walls. roger brakes for a crowd of sappers, firefighters, neighbors in dark coats over white nightclothes, old ladies who have a special place in their night-thoughts for the fire service no please you're not going to use that great hose on me . . . oh no . . . aren't you even going to take off those horrid rubber boots ... yesyes that'ssoldiers stand every few yards, a loose cordon, unmoving, a bit super­ natural. the battle of britain was hardly so formal. but these new robot bombs bring with them chances for public terror no one has sounded. jessica notes a coal-black packard up a side street, filled with dark­ suited civilians. their white collars rigid in the shadows. "who're they?" he shrugs: "they" is good enough. "not a friendly lot." "look who's talking." but their smile is old, habitual. there was a time when his job had her a bit mental: lovely little scrapbooks on the flyid' out 5 he into lent heav sendi nrele yorksion of the morni beam one h of ru sonal soone favor tn ballol lated legal sica knic i to ne st ofhil 'bamberre was a 5 on the flying bombs, how sweet. . . . and his irritated sigh: jess don't make me out some cold fanatical man of science. . . . heat beats at their faces, eye-searing yellow when the streams shoot into the fire. a ladder hooked to the edge of the roof sways in the vio­ lent drafts. up top, against the sky, figures in slickers brace, wave arms, move together to pass orders. half a block down, flare lamps illuminate the rescue work in the charry wet wreckage. from trailer pumps and heavy units, canvas hoses run fat with pressure, hastily threaded unions sending out stars of cold spray, bitter cold, that flash yellow when the fire leaps. somewhere over a radio comes a woman's voice, a quiet yorkshire girl, dispatching other units to other parts of the city. once roger and jessica might have stopped. but they're both alumni of the battle of britain, both have been drafted into the early black mornings and the crying for mercy, the dumb inertia of cobbles and beams, the profound shortage of mercy in those days. . . . by the time one has pulled one's nth victim or part of a victim free of one's nth pile of rubble, he told her once, angry, weary, it has ceased to be that per­ sonal ... the value of n may be different for each of us, but i'm sorry: sooner or later . . . and past the exhaustion with it there is also this. if they have not quite seceded from war's state, at least they've found the beginnings of gentle withdrawal . . . there's never been the space or time to talk about it, and perhaps no need-but both know, clearly, it's better to­ gether, snuggled in, than back out in the paper, fires, khaki, steel of the home front. that, indeed, the home front is something of a fiction and lie, designed, not too subtly, to draw them apart, to subvert love in favor of work, abstraction, required pain, bitter death. they have found a house in the stay-away zone, under the barrage balloons south of london. the town, evacuated in '40, is still "regu­ lated"-still on the ministry's list. roger and jessica occupy the place il­ legally, in a defiance they can never measure unless they're caught. jes­ sica has brought an old doll, seashells, her aunt's grip filled with lace knickers and silk stockings. roger's managed to scare up a few chickens to nest in the empty garage. whenever they meet here, one always re­ members to bring a fresh flower or two. the nights are filled with explo­ sion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. there's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles to­ gether, curses for parting. it is marginal, hungry, chilly-most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire-but it's something they want to keep, 41 --�-.. -�=::::.. �.r"""'''-·�':.'':�''''.''' __ �'�.'''''_''''';'''''.''f'''' ,.01 ••• ,·�4 ••• �._._.;, •• _,_.__• ---;/::// •• -, •iii � .;�..;;_.-ac.., �.,..."" .,. _.".. , so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. they are in love. fuck the war. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 tonight's quarry, whose name will be vladimir (or ilya, sergei, nikolai, depending on the doctor's whim), slinks carefully toward the cellar en­ trance. this jagged opening ought to lead to something deep and safe. he has the memory, or reflex, of escaping into similar darkness from an irish setter who smells of coal smoke and will attack on sight . . . once from a pack of children, recently from a sudden blast of noiselight, a fall of masonry that caught him on the left hindquarter (still raw, still needs licking). but tonight's threat is something new: not so violent, instead a systematic stealth he isn't used to. life out here is more direct. it's raining. the wind hardly flickers. it brings a scent he finds strange, never having been near a laboratory in his life. the smell is ether, it emanates from mr. edward w. a. pointsman, f.r.c.s. as the dog vanishes around the broken remnant of a wall, just as the tip of his tail flicks away, the doctor steps into the white waiting throat of a toilet bowl he has not, so intent on his prey, seen. he bends over, awkwardly, tugging loose the bowl from its surrounding debris, muttering oaths against all the careless, meaning not himself, particu­ larly, but the owners of this ruined flat (if they weren't killed in the blast) or whoever failed to salvage this bowl, which seems, actually, to be wedged on rather tight. . . . mr. pointsman drags his leg over to a shattered staircase, swings it quietly, so as not to alarm the dog, against the lower half of a fumed-oak newel post. the bowl only clanks back, the wood shudders. mocking him-all right. he sits on stairsteps ascending to open sky and attempts to pull the damned thing loose of his foot. it will not come. he hears the invisible dog, toenails softly clicking, gain the sanctuary of the cellar. he can't reach inside the toilet bowl even to untie his fucking boot.... settling the window of his balaclava helmet snug and tickling justunder his nose, resolved not to give way to panic, mr. pointsman stands up, has to wait for blood to drain, resurge, bounce up and down its mil­ lion branches in the drizzly night, percolate to balance-then limping, clanking, he heads back toward the car to get a hand from young mex­ ico, who did remember, he hopes, to bring the electric lantern.... roger and jessica found him a bit earlier, lurking at the end of a )treet 0 took do there is matted 0 a�ainst t lfheand )eestwo clava heh whatcr� hie waits work of of plaste, woman's to this w winb; an lion ofla( . ti�o )he 0 would to iliecar 01 vas sack, tnat tne more earn in tne ni� it ... the ni� to've beel somep\ac pipe) and statisticial "cudd) as ever � thinkl lree\eg, and pee vaselin street of row houses. the v-bomb whose mutilation he was prowling took down four dwellings the other day, four exactly, neat as surgery. there is the soft smell of house-wood down before its time, of ashes matted down by the rain. ropes are strung, a sentry lounges silent against the doorway of an intact house next to where the rubble begins. if he and the doctor have chatted at all, neither gives a sign now. jessica sees two eyes of no particular color glaring out the window of a bala­ clava helmet, and is reminded of a mediaeval knight wearing a casque. what creature is he possibly here tonight to fight for his king? the rub­ ble waits him, sloping up to broken rear walls in a clogging, an open­ work of laths pointlessly chevroning-flooring, furniture, glass, chunks of plaster, long tatters of wallpaper, split and shattered joists: some woman's long-gathered nest, taken back to separate straws, flung again to this wind and this darkness. back in the wreckage a brass bedpost winks; and twined there someone's brassiere, a white, prewar confec­ tion of lace and satin, simply left tangled. . . . for an instant, in a ver­ tigo she can't control, all the pity laid up in her heart flies to it, as it would to a small animal stranded and forgotten. roger has the boot of the car open. the two men are rummaging, coming up with large can­ vas sack, flask of ether, net, dog whistle. she knows she must not cry: that the vague eyes in the knitted window won't seek their beast any more earnestly for her tears. but the poor lost flimsy thing . . . waiting in the night and rain for its owner, for its room to reassemble round it ... the night, full of fine rain, smells like a wet dog. pointsman seems to've been away for a bit. "i've lost my mind. i ought to be cuddling someplace with beaver this very minute, watching him light up his pipe, and here instead i'm with this gillie or something, this spiritualist, statistician, what are you anyway-" "cuddling?" roger has a tendency to scream. "cuddling?" "mexico." it's the doctor, sighing, toilet bowl on his foot and knitted helmet askew. "hello, doesn't that make it difficult for you to walk? should think it would ... up here, first get it in the door, this way, and, ah, good," then closing the door again around pointsman's ankle, the bowl now oc­ cupying roger's seat, roger half-resting on jessica's lap, "tug now, hard as ever you can." thinking young prig and mocking ass the doctor rocks back on his free leg, grunting, the bowl wallowing to and fro. roger holds the door and peers attentively into where the foot vanished. "if we had a bit of vaseline, we could-something slippery. wait! stay there, pointsman, jcj:ling juli nan stanru rn itsmij· limpingl ung mex· i. .•. 'nd of a 43 ----,.f --:-:� �.::::: : . .:: � -"'.� -"< .. "'�.� '�-i-��·�.. :::'·.�·�·'"':""�-'-��n-c ��7/·/ ., don't move, we'll have this resolved .... " under the car, impulsive lad, in search of the crankcase plug by the time pointsman can say, "there isn't time mexico, he'll escape, he'll escape." "quite right." up again fumbling a flashlight from his jacket pocket. "til flush him out, you wait with the net. sure you can get about all right? nasty if you fell or something just as he made his break for the open." "for pity's sake," pointsman thumping after him back into the wreckage. "don't frighten him mexico, this isn't kenya or something, we need him as close to normative, you know, as possible." normative? normative? "roger," calls roger, giving him short-iong-short with the flash. "jessica," murmurs jessica, tiptoeing behind them. "here, fellow," coaxes roger. "nice bottle of ether here for you," opening the flask, waving it in the cellar entrance, then switching on his beam. dog looks up out of an old rusted pram, bobbing black shadows, tongue hanging, utter skepticism on his face. "why it's mrs. nuss­ baum!',' roger cries, the same way he's heard fred allen do, wednes­ day nights over the bbc. "you vere ekshpecting maybe lessie?" replies the dog. roger can smell ether fumes quite strongly as he starts his cautious descent. "come on mate, it'll be over before you know it. pointsman just wants to count the old drops of saliva, that's all. wants to make a wee incision in your cheek, nice glass tube, nothing to bother about, right? ring a bell now and then. exciting world of the laboratory, you'll love it." ether seems to be getting to him. he tries to stopper the flask: takes a step, foot plunges into a hole. lurching sideways, he gropes for something to steady himself. the stopper falls back out of the flask and in forever among the debris at the bottom of the smashed house. over­ head pointsman cries, "the sponge, mexico, you forgot the sponge!"down comes a round pale collection of holes, bouncing in and out of the light of the flash. "frisky chap," roger making a two-handed grab for it, splashing ether liberally about. he locates the sponge at last in his flash­ light beam, the dog looking on from the pram in some confusion. "hah!" pouring ether to drench the sponge and go wisping cold off his hands till the flask's empty. taking the wet sponge between two fingershe staggers toward the dog, shining the light up from under his chin to highlight the vampire face he thinks he's making. "moment-of truth!" he lunges. the dog leaps off at an angle, streaking past roger towardthe entrance while roger keeps going with his sponge, headfirst into the 44 "hurr fant's vel not unath "mexi "ri�ht, woere he outspread makewitl �aws plan standing, watcoin�. "here,' of wall, te "do yoj "he's� "for move upsi arms that craw neal wito quicl steadrsla as rogfj cuitofhim -ilieligll b� pain ar about to i "spon� has taken pointsma mentum ro�er, sn spinning ro�era g net now i tumble, "get unner th 'we'r hack int� pram, which collapses under his weight. dimly he hears the doctor above whimper, "he's getting away. mexico, do hurry." "hurry." roger, clutching the sponge, extricates himself from the in­ fant's vehicle, taking it off as if it were a shirt, with what seems to him not unathletic skill. "mexico-c-o," plaintive. "right," roger blundering up the cellar's rubble to the outside again, where he beholds the doctor closing in on the dog, net held aloft and outspread. rain falls persistently over this tableau. roger circles so as to make with pointsman a pincer upon the animal, who now stands with paws planted and teeth showing near one of the pieces of rear wall still standing. jessica waits halfway into it, hands in her pockets, smoking, watching. "here," hollers the sentry, "you. you idiots. keep away from that bit of wall, there's nothing to hold it up." "do you have any cigarettes?" asks jessica. "he's going to bolt," roger screams. "for god's sake, mexico, slowly now." testing each footstep, they move upslope over the ruin's delicate balance. it's a system of lever arms that can plunge them into deadly collapse at any moment. they draw near their quarry, who scrutinizes now the doctor, now roger, with quick shifts of his head. he growls tentatively, tail keeping up a steady slap against the two sides of the corner they've backed him into. as roger, who carries the light, moves rearward, the dog, some cir­ cuit of him, recalls the other light that came from behind in recent days -the light that followed the great blast so seethed through afterward by pain and cold. light from the rear signals death i men with nets about to leap can be avoided"sponge," screams the doctor. roger flings himself at the dog, who has taken off in pointsman's direction and away toward the street whilst pointsman, groaning, swings his toiletbowl foot desperately, misses, mo­ mentum carrying him around a full turn, net up like a radar antenna. roger, snoot full of ether, can't check his lunge-as the doctor comes spinning round again roger careens on into him, toilet bowl hitting roger a painful thump in the leg. the two men fall over, tangled in the net now covering them. broken beams creak, chunks of rain-wet plaster tumble. above them the unsupported wall begins to sway. "get out of there," hollers the sentry. but the efforts of the pair under the net to move away only rock the wall more violently. "we're for it," the doctor shivers. roger seeks his eyes to see if he 45 --f' �"'it""'�"':::=_''''''m'-'' •• '�':-.�:�''' ••'''_.'''.''''_'''''-.' ; ," ,_ro., .. '. ///. • '" :__ w � .:-_:: �" -:.". �"':.!: r:�-:;x-;4"'" means it, but the window of the balaclava helmet now contains only a white ear and fringe of hair. "roll," roger suggests. they contrive to roll a few yards down to­ ward the street, by which time part of the wall has collapsed, in the other direction. they manage to get back to jessica without causing any more damage. "he's run down the street," she mentions, helping them out of the net. "it's all right," the doctor sighs. "it doesn't make any difference." "ah but the evening's young," from roger. "no, no. forget it." "what will you do for a dog, then." they are under way again, roger at the wheel, jessica between them, toilet bowl out a half-open door, before the answer. "perhaps it's a sign. perhaps i should be branching out." roger gives him a quick look. silence, mexico. try not to think about what that means. he's not one's superior after all, both report to the old brigadier at "the white visitation" on, so far as he knows, equal foot­ ing. but sometimes-roger glances again across jessica's dark wool bosom at the knitted head, the naked nose and eyes-he thinks the doc­ tor wants more than his good will, his collaboration. but wants him. as one wants a fine specimen of dog. _ . . why's he here, then, assisting at yet another dognapping? what stranger does he shelter in him so mad"will you be going back down tonight, doctor? the young lady needs a ride." "i shan't, i'll be staying in. but you might take the car back. i must talk with dr. spectre." they are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in gothic cathedrals-but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical god, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the god's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direc­ tion, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless war­ rens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. the grimed brick sprawl is known as the hospital of st. veronica of the true image for colonic and respiratory diseases, and 01 pavlo spe askm myste ro�er i ers, in i itation' pering pumps tance, i it �oin ro�e melts,! readab� they! raketh drifts t screen and tim inside � ward, ti steel ba then be passth allrres out bed a f will tal dark, ti around iliing) , glad te terssh br ro� dow, "ye 2.ifisoru and one of its residents is a dr. kevin spectro, neurologist and casual pavlovian. spectro is one of the original seven owners of the book, and if you ask mr. pointsman what book, you'll only get smirked at. it rotates, the mysterious book, among its co-owners on a weekly basis, and this, roger gathers, is spectre's week to get dropped in on at all hours. oth­ ers, in pointsman's weeks, have come the same way to "the white vis­ itation" in the night, roger has heard their earnest, conspirators' whis­ pering in the corridors, the smart rattle of all their shoes, like dancing pumps on marble, destroying one's repose, refusing ever to die with dis­ tance, pointsman's voice and stride always distinct from the rest. how's it going to sound now with a toilet bowl? roger and jessica leave the doctor at a side entrance, into which he melts, leaving nothing but rain dripping from slopes and serifs of an un­ readable legend on the lintel. they turn southward. lights on the dash glow warmly. searchlights rake the raining sky. the slender machine shivers over the roads. jessica drifts toward sleep, the leather seat creaking as she curls about. wind­ screen wipers brush the rain in a rhythmic bright warp. it is past two, and time for home. emoutru d&erenl\ d d d d d d d ouna laq\'� � , inside st. veronica's hospital they sit together, just off the war-neurosis ward, these habitual evenings. the autoclave simmers its fine clutter of steel bones. steam drifts into the glare of the gooseneck lamp, now and then becoming very bright, and the shadows of the men's gestures may pass through it, knife-edged, swooping very fast. but both faces are usu­ ally reserved, kept well back, in the annulus of night. out of the blackness of the ward, a half-open file drawer of pain each bed a folder, come cries, struck cries, as from cold metal. kevin spectro will take his syringe and spike away a dozen times tonight, into the dark, to sedate fox (his generic term for any patient-run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure any­ thing). pointsman will sit each time waiting for their talking to resume, glad to rest these moments in the half-darkness, the worn gold-leaf let­ ters shining from the spines of books, the fragrant coffee mess besieged by roaches, the winter rain in the downspout just outside the window.... "yau 're not looking any better." ,if bac�, i � ion.a\,iel' ailiedrili­ nb ilirou�fl . but mortl or. in offit momentl � e builaer) haterer & dowjess\\ and pant chances! hospital y djsea� 47 --.-._ ·_.u // '''·�-'-'''''':.'.4r-''.''' ,;,.",", _ •. � -j••....... \# ••• '��.:,.��":::'� _ _. _ •• :;_...;:..�":"?;:" • "ah, it's the old bastard again, he's got me down. this fighting, spec­ tro, every day, i don't ... " pouting downward at his eyeglasses that he's wiping on his shirt, "there's more to damned pudding than i can see, he's always springing his . . . senile little surprises. . . ." "it's his age. really." "oh, that i can deal with. but he's so damned-such a bastard, he never sleeps, he plots-" "not senility, no, i meant the position he's working from. pointsman? you don't have the priorities he does quite yet, do you? you can't take the chances he can. you've treated them that age, surely you know that strange . . . smugness. . . ." pointsrnan's own fox waits, out in the city, a prize of war. in here the tiny office space is the cave of an oracle: steam drifting, sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness . . . abreactions of the lord of the night. ... "i don't like it, pointsman. since you did ask." "why not." silence. "unethical?" "for pity's sake, is this ethical?" raising an arm then toward the exit into the ward, almost a fascist salute. "no, i'm only trying to think of ways to justify it, experimentally. i can't. it's only one man." "it's slothrop. you know what he is. even mexico thinks . . . oh, the usual. precognition. psychokinesis. they have their own problems, that lot. . . . but suppose you had the chance to study a truly classical case of ... some pathology, a perfect mechanism.... " one night spectro asked: "if he hadn't been one of laszlo jamf's subjects, would you be all this keen on him?" "of course i would." "hmm." imagine a missile one hears approaching only after it explodes. the reversal! a piece of time neatly snipped out . . . a few feet of film run backwards . . . the blast of the rocket, fallen faster than sound-then growing out of it the roar of its own fall, catching up to what's already death and burning ... a ghost in the sky.... pavlov was fascinated with "ideas of the opposite." call it a cluster of cells, somewhere on the cortex of the brain. helping to distinguish pleasure from pain, light from dark, dominance from submission. . . . but when, somehow-starve them, traumatize, shock, castrate them, send them over into one of the transmarginal phases, past borders of their waking selves, past "equivalent" and "paradoxical" phases-you weaken this idea of the opposite, and here all at once is the paranoid pa­ tient who would be master, yet now feels himself a slave ... who days in i'ri�htn tlimp "bu� "w �ometn but no was firs ally. i cially il stand, � cue we nimtra "�o, suppos1 you see order oj corner, uenly . �i1en rocketb upon t� orlatej city .. •• waru, 1 neath c when i dfsmol 01 arte kiss ne rette p rowse room, would be loved, but suffers his world's indifference, and, "i think," pav­ lov writing to janet, "it is precisely the ultraparadoxical phase which is the base of the weakening of the idea of the opposite in our patients." our madmen, our paranoid, maniac, schizoid, morally imbecilespectro shakes 'his head. "you're putting response before stimulus.'l"not at all. think of it. he's out there, and he can feel them coming,days in advance. but it's a reflex. a reflex to something that's in the airright now. something we're too coarsely put together to sense-but 5lo-throp can." ..... "but that makes it extrasensory." "why not say 'a sensory cue we just aren't paying attention to.' something that's been there all along, something we could be looking at but no one is. often, in our experiments . . . 1 believe m. k. petrova was first to observe it . . . one of the women, quite early in the game re­ ally ... the act merely of bringing the dog into the laboratory-espe­ cially in our experimental neurosis work ... the first sight of the test stand, of the technician, a stray shadow, the touch of a draft of air, some cue we might never pin down would be enough to send him over, send him transmarginal. "so, slothrop. conceivably. out in the city, the ambience alone­ suppose we considered the war itself as a laboratory? when the v-2 hits, you see, first the blast, then the sound of its falling . . . the normal order of the stimuli reversed that way . . . so he might turn a particular corner, enter a certain street, and for no clear reason feel sud­ denly ... " silence comes in, sculptured by spoken dreams, by pain-voices of the rocketbombed next door, lord of the night's children, voices hung upon the ward's stagnant medicinal air. praying to their master: sooner or later an abreaction, each one, all over this frost and harrowed city ... . . . as once again the floor is a giant lift propelling you with no warning toward your ceiling-replaying now as the walls are blown out­ ward, bricks and mortar showering down, your sudden paralysis as death comes to wrap and stun i don't know guv i must'ce blacked out when i come to she was gone it was burning all around me head was full of smoke . . . and the sight of your blood spurting from the flaccid stub of artery, the snowy roofslates fallen across half your bed, the cinema kiss never completed, you were pinned and stared at a crumpled ciga­ rette pack for two hours in pain, you could hear them crying from the rows either side but couldn't move ... the sudden light filling up the room, the awful silence, brighter than any morning through blankets �ses-yoij anoid pa' .. who 49 "-�""----_"�--.. , t�'!,,!""_""'�==;.'_"."'"'_�.�•••:�"'."" __ , ••• , ", ' ".:(.;:i�'...:_.-��-.,...., :2;:// . ','.' turned to gauze no shadows at all, only unutterable two-o'clock dawn froc ... and. . . mei . . . this transmarginalleap, this surrender. where ideas of the oppoforth site have come together, and lost their oppositeness. (and is it really the to she rocket explosion that slothrop's keying on, or is it exactly this depolarizbe ing, this neurotic "confusion" that fills the wards tonight?) how many slowl times before it's washed away, these iterations that pour out, reliving paint the blast, afraid to let go because the letting go is so final how do i know well b doctor that i'll ever come back? and the answer trust us, after the in me rocket, is so hollow, only mummery-trust you?-and both know it. or a . . . spectro feels so like a fraud but carries on . .. . only because the one b pain continues to be real. . . . oisapp and those who do let go at last: out of each catharsis rise new chil-: in� hi! dren, painless, egoless for one pulse of the between . . . tablet erased, llke so new writing about to begin, hand and chalk poised in winter gloom over comin these poor human palimpsests shivering under their government blanrour b kets, drugged, drowning in tears and snot of grief so real, torn from so �oloie deep that it surprises, seems more than their own. . . . to be how pointsman lusts after them, pretty children. those drab underoran�e shorts of his are full to bursting with need humorlessly, worldly to use rours their innocence, to write on them new words of himself, his own brown can ro realpolitik dreams, some psychic prostate ever in aching love promised, less,oe . ah hinted but till now . . . how seductively they lie ranked in their iron ni�ht, u bedsteads, their virginal sheets, the darlings so artlessly erotic. . . . spermy st. veronica's downtown bus station, their crossroads (newly arrived coffee on this fake parquetry, chewing-gum scuffed charcoal black, slicks of in some nighttime vomit, pale yellow, clear as the fluids of gods, waste newspa�ueue. pers or propaganda leaflets no one has read in torn scythe-shaped accioen pieces, old nose-pickings, black grime that blows weakly in when the yetfg doors open . . . ). pus-yyou have waited in these places into the early mornings, synced in to never 5 the on-whitening of the interior, you know the arrivals schedule by re�isjeheart, by hollow heart. and where these children have run away from, nisbala and that, in this city, there is no one to meet them. you impress them larup awith your gentleness. you've never quite decided if they can see olansh, through to your vacuum. they won't yet look in your eyes, their slender a1rea legs are never still, knitted stockings droop (all elastic has gone to war), olastula but charmingly: little heels kick restless against the canvas bags, the one fraying valises under the wood bench. speakers in the ceiling report dewas, "i partures and arrivals in english, then in the other, exile languages. toabout. night's child has had a long trip here, hasn't slept. her eyes are red, her "you 50 dawn frock wrinkled. her coat has been a pillow. you feel her exhaustion, feel the impossible vastness of all the sleeping countryside at her back, and for the moment you really are selfless, sexless . . . considering only how to shelter her, you are the traveler's aid. behind you, long, night-long queues of men in uniform move away slowly, kicking awol bags along, mostly silent, toward exit doors painted beige, but with edges smudged browner in bell-curves of fare­ well by the generation of hands. doors that only now and then open let in the cold air, take out a certain draft of men, and close again. a driver, or a clerk, stands by the door checking tickets, passes, furlough chits. one by one men step out into this perfectly black rectangle of night and disappear. gone, the war taking them, the man behind already present­ ing his ticket. outside motors are roaring: but less like transport than like some kind of stationary machine, very low earthquake frequencies coming in mixed with the cold-somehow intimating that out there your blindness, after this bright indoors, will be like a sudden blow.... soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen. one by one, gone. those who happen to be smoking might last an instant longer, weak little coal swinging in orange arc once, twice-no more. you sit, half-turned to watch them, your soiled sleepy darling beginning to complain, and it's no use-how can your lusts fit inside this same white frame with so much, such end­ less, departure? a thousand children are shuffling out these doors to­ night, but only rare nights will even one come in, home to your sprung, spermy bed, the wind over the gasworks, closer smells of mold on wet coffee grounds, cat shit, pale sweaters with the pits heaped in a corner, in some accidental gesture, slink or embrace. this wordless ratcheting queue . . . thousands going away . . . only the stray freak particle, by accident, drifting against the major flow. . . . yet for all his agonizing all pointsman will score, presently, is an octo­ pus-yes a gigantic, horror-movie devilfish name of grigori: gray, slimy, never still, shivering slow-motion in his makeshift pen down by the ick regis jetty ... a terrible wind that day off the channel, pointsman in his balaclava helmet, eyes freezing, dr. porkyevitch with greatcoat col­ lar up and fur hat down around his ears, their breaths foul with hours­ old fish, and what the hell can pointsman do with this animal? already, by itself, the answer is growing, one moment a featureless blastulablob , the next folding, beginning to differentiate. . . . one of the things spectro said that night-surely it was that night­ was, "i only wonder if you'd feel the same way without all those dogs about. if your subjects all along had been human." "you ought to be offering me one or two, then, instead of-are you e oppo. ally th1 epo/an:. rn from� rab uno1r· idl)' to lli1 i\n broil] promileil n �eiruo� c.", r1\'arri\'� k. llchof llced in to hedule 0) wa)·from. press �em \ can)ee 'iislenoer e to war), ags, the �port de· 1ges, to· red, her 51 ------:--�!•• ."..': �••.•. _ ..•.•.••..•.• •.• �••;'l ....•...............,.. .:' <, ••7....:.::.:.._-,-(/ .;., i � i i i i i (tl serious?-giant octopi." the doctors are watching each other closely. "i wonder what you'll do." "so do i." "take the octopus." does he mean "forget slothrop"? a charged mo­ ment. but then pointsman laughs the well-known laugh that's done him yeoman service in a profession where too often it's hedge or hang. "i'm always being told to take animals." he means that years ago a col­ league-gone now-told him he'd be more human, warmer, if he kept a dog of his own, outside the lab. pointsman tried-god knows he did-it . was a springer spaniel named gloucester, pleasant enough animal, he supposed, but the try lasted less than a month. what finally irritatedhim out of all tolerance was that the dog didn't know how to reverse its behavior. it could open doors to the rain and the spring insects, but not close them . . . knock over garbage, vomit on the floor, but not clean it up-how could anyone live with such a creature? "octopi," spectra wheedles, "are docile under surgery. they can sur­ vive massive removals of brain tissue. their unconditioned response to prey is very reliable-show them a crab, wham! out wiv the old tenta­ cle, home to poisoning and supper. and, pointsman, they don't bark." "oh, but. no. . . tanks, pumps, filtering, special food . . . that maybe fine up in cambridge, that lot, but everyone here's so' damned tightfisted, it's the damned rundstedt offensive, has to be.... p.w.e. won't fund anything now unless it pays off tactically, immediately-lastweek you know, if not sooner. no an octopus is much too elaborate, not even pudding would buy it, no not even old delusions-of-grandeur him­self." "no limit to the things you can teach them." "spectra, you're not the devil." looking closer, "are you? you knowwe're set for sound stimuli, the whole thrust of this slothrop scheme has to be auditory, the reversal is auditory. . . . i've seen an octopus brain or two in my time, mate, and don't think 1 haven't noticed those greatblooming optic lobes. eh? you're trying to palm off a visual creature on me. what's there to see when the damned things come down?" "the glow." "eh?" "a fiery red ball. falling like a meteor." "rot." "cwenhidwy saw one the other night, over deptford." "what 1 want," pointsman leaning now into the central radiance of the lamp, his white face more vulnerable than his voice, whispering aeros i real dam �ometl �irls, liteirdj and do min� i inside in tim auster ters so �he �iush g let bioi where under tensiou , burro ti�ht fl her the fir squint! hangin curtair the sn� but no whose leery 0 ago, al north i east to co carner. jessica it does about, done � hano,''j'. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 dose\)' across the burning spire of a hypodermic set upright on the desk, "what i really need, is not a dog, not an octopus, but one of your fine foxes. damn it. one, little, fox!" argedmr creahlrem rn�" something's stalking through the city of smoke-gathering up slender girls, fair and smooth as dolls, by the handful. their piteous cries . . . their dollful and piteous cries ... the face of one is suddenly very close, and down! over the staring eyes come cream lids with stiff lashes, slam­ ming loudly shut, the long reverberating of lead counterweights tumble inside her head as jessica's own lids now come flying open. she surfaces in time to hear the last echoes blowinz away on the heels of the blast, austere and keen, a winter sound. . . . roger wakes up briefly too, mut­ ters something like "fucking madness," and nods back to sleep. she reaches out, blind little hand grazing the ticking clock, the worn­ plush stomach of her panda michael, an empty milk bottle holding scar­ let blossoms from a spurge in a garden a mile down the road: reaches to where her cigarettes ought to be but aren't. halfway out now from under the covers, she hangs, between the two worlds, a white, athletic tension in this cold room. oh, well . . . she leaves him in their warm burrow, moves shivering vuhvuhvuh in grainy darkness over winter­ tight floorboards, slick as ice to her bare soles. her cigarettes are on the parlor floor, left among pillows in front of the fire. roger's clothing is scattered all about. puffing on a cigarette, squinting with one eye for the smoke, she tidies up, folding his trousers, hanging up his shirt. then wanders to the window, lifts the blackout curtain, tries to see out through frost gathering on the panes, out into the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long-lost dogs, and winter birds but no humans. empty canals of snow thread away into trees and town whose name they still don't know. she cups the cigarettes in her palm, leery of showing a light though blackout was lifted weeks and weeks ago, already part of another time and world. late lorry motors rush north and south in the night, and airplanes fill the sky then drain away east to some kind of quiet. could they have settled for hotels, ar-e forms, being frisked for cameras and binoculars? this house, town, crossed arcs of roger and jessica are so vulnerable, to german weapons and to british bylaws . . . it doesn't feel like danger here, but she does wish there were others about, and that it could really be a village, her village. the searchlights 53 iiance 01 lisperijl� --_ !_:-: ' ••� :�:-.:.,�,.... " .... .: .. :.. �." ",_" .... ,," ", "" . ";, "'::_�:_' -"�f., •• ' �/ .',' could stay, to light the night, and barrage balloons to populate fat and friendly the daybreak-everything, even the explosions in the distances might stay as long as they were to no purpose ... as long as no onehad to die ... couldn't it be that way? only excitement, sound and light, a storm approaching in the summer (to live in a world where that would be the day's excitement . . . ), only kind thunder? jessica has floated out of herself, up to watch herself watching the night, to hover in widelegged, shoulderpadded white, satin-polished on her nightward surfaces. until something falls here, close enough to mat­ ter, they do have their safety: their thickets of silverblue stalks reaching after dark to touch or sweep clouds, the green-brown masses in uniform, at the ends of afternoons, stone, eyes on the distances, bound in convoy for fronts, for high destinies that have, strangely, so little to do with the two of them here ... don't you know there's a war on, moron? yes but -here's jessica in her sister's hand-me-down pajamas, and roger asleep in nothing at all, but where is the war? until it touch them. until something falls. a doodle will give time to get to safety, a rocket will hit before they can hear it coming. biblical, maybe, spooky as an old northern fairy tale, but not the war, not the great struggle of good and evil the wireless reports everyday. and no reason not just to, well, to keep on. . . . roger has tried to explain to her the v-bomb statistics: the difference between distribution, in angers-eye view, over the map of england, and their own chances, as seen from down here. she's almost got it: nearly understands his poisson equation, yet can't quite put the two together­ put her own enforced calm day-to-day alongside the pure numbers, and keep them both in sight. pieces keep slipping in and out. "why is your equation only for angels, roger? why can't we do something, down here? couldn't there be an equation for us too, some­ thing to help us find a safer place?" "why am i surrounded," his usual understanding self today, "by sta­ tistical illiterates? there's no way, love, not as long as the mean density of strikes is constant. pointsman doesn't even understand that." the rockets are distributing about london just as poisson's equation in the textbooks predicts. as the data keep coming in, roger looks more and more like a prophet. psi section people stare after him in the hall­ ways. it's not precognition, he wants to make an announcement in the cafeteria or something . . . have i ever pretended to be anything i'mnot? all i'm doing is plugging numbers into a well-known equation, you can look it up in the book and do it yourself. into stre squ the sen, on, a knoi and whe and thin laid ilie bey in� but bj man fort and ofz the twe oftl 54 his little bureau is dominated now by a glimmering map, a window into another landscape than winter sussex, written names and spidering streets, an ink ghost of london, ruled off into 576 squares, a quarter square kilometer each. rocket strikes are represented by red circles. the poisson equation will tell, for a number of total hits arbitrarily cho­ sen, how many squares will get none, how many one, two, three, and so on. an erlenmeyer flask bubbles on the ring. blue light goes rattling, re­ knotting through the seedflow inside the glass. ancient tatty textbooks and mathematical papers lie scattered about on desk and floor. some­ where a snapshot of jessica peeks from beneath roger's old whittaker and watson. the graying pavlovian, on route with his tautened gait, thin as a needle, in the mornings to his lab, where dogs wait with cheeks laid open, winter-silver drops welling from each neat raw fistula to fill the wax cup or graduated tube, pauses by mexico's open door. the air beyond is blue from cigarettes smoked and as fag-ends later in the freez­ ing black morning shifts resmoked, a stale and loathsome atmosphere. but he must go in, must face the habitual morning cup. both know how strange their liaison must look. if ever the antipoints­ man existed, roger mexico is the man. not so much, the doctor admits, for the psychical research. the young statistician is devoted to number and to method, not table-rapping or wishful thinking. but in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something, pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. he cannot, like mexico, survive anyplace in be­ tween. like his master i. p. pavlov before him, he imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny onloff elements. some are always in bright excitation, others darkly inhibited. the contours, bright and dark, keep changing. but each point is allowed only the two states: waking or sleep. one or zero. "summation," "transition," "irradiation," "concen­ tration," "reciprocal induction"-all pavlovian brain-mechanics-as­ sumes the presence of these bi-stable points. but to mexico belongs the domain between zero and one-the middle pointsman has excluded from his persuasion-the probabilities. a chance of 0.37 that, by the time he stops his count, a given square on his map will have suffered only one hit, 0.17 that it will suffer two. . . . "can't you ... tell," pointsman offering mexico one of his kyprinos orients, which he guards in secret fag fobs sewn inside all his lab coats, "from your map here, which places would be safest to go into, safest from attack?" "no." 55 ----_-11".••.• -:-.,." .. �:.� � : .• !l ".. . .., "::�".' ,�c ,,/ ,.,."but surely-" "every square is just as likely to get hit again. the hits aren't clus­ tering. mean density is constant." nothing on the map to the contrary. only a classical poisson distribu­ tion, quietly neatly sifting among the squares exactly as it should growing to its predicted shape.... "but squares that have already had several hits, i mean-" "i'm sorry. that's the monte carlo fallacy. no matter how manyhave fallen inside a particular square, the odds remain the same as they always were. each hit is independent of all the others. bombs are not dogs. no link. no memory. no conditioning." nice thing to tell a pavlovian. is it mexico's usual priggish insensitiv­ ity, or does he know what he's saying? if there is nothing to link the rocket strikes-no reflex arc, no law of negative induction ... then . . . he goes in to mexico each morning as to painful surgery. spooked more and more by the choirboy look, the college pleasantries. but it's a visit he must make. how can mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright? innocent as a child, perhaps un­ aware-perhaps-that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms of his­ tory, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself. what if mexico's whole generation have turned out like this? will postwar be nothing but "events," newly created one moment to the next? no links? is it the end of history? "the romans," roger and the reverend dr. paul de la nuit were drunk together one night, or the vicar was, "the ancient roman priestslaid a sieve in the road, and then waited to see which stalks of grasswould come up through the holes." roger saw the connection immediately. "i wonder," reaching for pocket after pocket, why are there never any damned-ah here, "if it would follow a poisson . . . let's see . . ." "mexico." leaning forward, definitely hostile. "they used the stalksthat grew through the holes to cure the sick. the sieve was a very sa­cred item to them. what will you do with the sieve you've laid overlondon? how will you use the things that grow in your network ofdeath?" "i don't follow you." it's just an equation.... roger really wants other people to know what he's talking about. iva jessica understands that. when they don't, his face often grows chalky lviilland clouded, as behind the smudged glass of a railway carriage window i)\e as vaguely silvered barriers come down, spaces slide in to separate him seedthat much more, thinning further his loneliness. she knew their very for 56 hrst nev ten "] ilii mou "i mas wa win or dan rea1 nevi ii, pre cou all," can. iva first day, he leaning across to open the jaguar door and so sure she'd never get in. she saw his loneliness: in his face, between his red nail-bit­ ten hands.... "well, it isn't fair." "it's eminently fair," roger now cynical, looking very young, she thinks. "everyone's equal. same chances of getting hit. equal in the eyes of the rocket." to which she gives him her fay wray look, eyes round as can be, red mouth about to open in a scream, till he has to laugh. "oh, stop." "sometimes . . ." but what does she want to say? that he must al­ ways be lovable, in need of her and never, as now, the hovering statisti­ cal cherub who's never quite been to hell but speaks as if he's one of the most fallen. . . . "cheap nihilism" is captain prentice's name for that. it was one day by the frozen pond near "the white visitation," roger off sucking ici­ cles, lying flat and waving his arms to make angels in the snow, larking. "do you mean that he hasn't paid ... ," looking up, up, pirate's wind-burned face seeming to end in the sky, her own hair finally in the way of his gray, reserved eyes. he was roger's friend, he wasn't playing or undermining, didn't know the first thing, she guessed, about such dancing-shoe wars-and anyway didn't have to, because she was al­ ready, terrible flirt ... well, nothing serious, but those eyes she could never quite see into were so swoony, so utterly terrif, really. . .. "the more v-2s over there waiting to be fired over here," captain prentice said, "obviously, the better his chances of catching one. of course you can't say he's not paying a minimum dues. but aren't we all." "well," roger nodding when she told him later, eyes out of focus, considering this, "it's the damned calvinist insanity again. payment. why must they always put it in terms of exchange? what's prentice want, another kind of beveridge proposal or something? assign every­ one. a bitterness quotient! lovely-up before the evaluation board, so many points earned for being jewish, in a concentration camp, missing limbs or vital organs, losing a wife, a lover, a close friend-" "i knew you'd be angry," she murmured. "i'm not angry. no. he's right. it is cheap. all right, but what does he want then-" stalking now this stuffed, dim little parlor, hung about with rigid portraits of favorite gun dogs at point in fields that never ex­ isted save in certain fantasies about death, leas more golden as their lin­ seed oil ages, even more autumnal, necropolitical, than prewar hopes­ for an end to all change, for a long static afternoon and the grouse forren't elm " reacnin� � ah nere, "� sed iliel!� 1131 3 i'e�l u'relaidoll r netll'orl' king adom ows chail; ge windqii :wate him their very' 57 �------i�_'./ : .:. .: ..': .. :'l ,... . ., ",'" ' .. �. '�.. . ,,/ .. ever in blurred takeoff, the sights taking their lead aslant purple hills to pallid sky, the good dog alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion over his head always just about to come-these hopes so patently, defense­ lessly there that roger even at his most cheaply nihilistic couldn't quite bring himself to take the pictures down, turn them to the wallpaper­ "what do you all expect, from me, working day in day out among raving lunatics," jessica sighing oh gosh, curling her pretty legs up into the chair, "they believe in survival after death, communication mind-to­ mind, prophesying, clairvoyance, teleportation-they believe, jess! and -and-" something is blocking his speech. she forgets her annoyance, comes up out of the fat paisley chair to hold him, and how does she know, warm-skirted thighs and mons pushing close to heat and rouse his cock, losing the last of her lipstick across his shirt, muscles, touches, skins confused, high, blooded-know so exactly what roger meant to say? mind-to-mind, tonight up late at the window while he sleeps, lightinganother precious cigarette from the coal of the last, filling with a need to cry because she can see so plainly her limits, knows she can never pro­ tect him as much as she must-from what may come out of the sky, from what he couldn't confess that day (creakingsnow lanes, arcades of the ice-bearded and bowing trees ... the wind shook down crystals of snow: purple and orange creatures blooming on her long lashes), and from mr. pointsman, and from pointsman's . . . his . . . a bleakness whenever she meets him. scientist-neutrality. hands that-she shivers. there are chances now for enemy shapes out of the snow and stillness. she drops the blackout curtain. hands that could as well torture people as dogs and never feel their pain . . . a skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs are tonight's traffic whispering in the yards and lanes. a motorcycle out on the trunk road, snarling cocky as a fighter plane, bypasses the village, heading up to london. the greatballoons drift in the sky, pearl-grown, and the air is so still that this morning's brief snow still clings to the steel cables, white goes twisting peppermint-stick down thousands of feet of night. and the people who might have been asleep in the empty houses here, people blown away, some already forever ... are they dreaming of cities that shine all over with lamps at night, of christmases seen again from the vantage of chil­dren and not of sheep huddled so vulnerable on their bare hillside, so bleached by the star's awful radiance? or of songs so funny, so lovely or true, that they can't be remembered on waking ... dreams of peace­time.... "what was it like? before the war?" she knows she was alive then, a child, ations bottle "� reacht it de� wellin itring "d rle1c in an oren, brow brilli� "ai in� h "i! "ju oon'tga leet, 58 time, \ erl�, them, "ai inagj ihecl alhe ment again th: in pai th, �l1�i,ll�fj� \\iilian�' cannel'1fi: ulofili1j child, but it's not what she means. wireless, staticky frank bridge vari­ ations a hairbrush for the tangled brain over the bbe home service, bottle of montrachet, a gift from pirate, cooling at the kitchen window. "well, now," in his cracked old curmudgeon's voice, palsied hand reaching out to squeeze her breast in the nastiest way he knows, "girly, it depends which war you mean," and here it comes, ugh, ugh, drool welling at the corner of his lower lip and over and down in a silver string, he's so clever, he's practiced all these disgusting little"don't be ridic, i'm serious, roger. i don't remember." watches dim­ ples come up either side of his mouth as he considers this, smiling at her in an odd way. it'll be like this when i'm thirty ... flash of several chil­ dren, a garden, a window, voices mummy, what's ... cucumbers and brown onions on a chopping board, wild carrot blossoms sprinkling with brilliant yellow a reach of deep, very green lawn and his voice"all i remember is that it was silly. just overwhelmingly silly. noth­ ing happened. oh, edward viii abdicated. he fell in love with-" "i know that, i can read magazines. but what was it like?" "just ... just damned silly, that's all. worrying about things that don't-jess, can't you really remember?" games, pinafores, girl friends, a black alley kitten with white little feet, holidays all the family by the sea, brine, frying fish, donkey rides, peach taffeta, a boy named robin . . . "nothing that's really gone, that i can't ever find again." "oh. whereas my memories-" "yes?" they both smile. "one took lots of aspirin. one was drinking or drunk much of the time. one was concerned about getting one's lounge suits to fit prop­ erly. one despised the upper classes but tried desperately to behave like them.... " "and one cried wee, wee, wee, all the way-" jessica breaking down in a giggle as he reaches for the spot along her sweatered flank he knows she can't bear to be tickled in. she hunches, squirming, out of the way as he rolls past, bouncing off the back of the sofa but making a nice re­ covery, and by now she's ticklish all over, he can grab an ankle, elbowbut a rocket has suddenly struck. a terrific blast quite close beyond the village: the entire fabric of the air, the time, is changed-the case­ ment window blown inward, rebounding with a wood squeak to slam again as all the house still shudders. their hearts pound. eardrums brushed taut by the overpressure ring in pain. the invisible train rushes away close over the rooftop.... they sit still as the painted dogs now, silent, oddly unable to touch. 59 �e hilh\ ()sionol't y, delefll �\dn't�m �vallpa�i' -ne�k \ an� 1lllid� torture�1 i\ruljltnn� narlin� coo oon. thew(i tilliliallli goe !llii e�o�le\\l blownawa 5hine�o\� tageofca hillsiae,i 50 lovelr� 15 of pea� ive then,! --1.-. i�'!"''' .. :::. .• � rs , , • ':��' ���'.f__ : .. =-..: ""'���!j..tai.�.;' /// • death has come in the pantry door: stands watching them, iron and pa­ tient, with a look that says try to tickle me. (j) mi�ht 1 1 lible�upe inltanto 0 dod 0 0 (j,l) i for one the kenosha kid general delivery kenosha, wisconsin, u.s.a. dear sir: did i ever bother you, ever, for anything, in your life? yours truly, lt. tyrone slothrop tdy abreaction ward st. veronica's hospital bonechapel gate, e1 london, england winter, 1944 (4) ai twac anouli celebr iliekio thes cup�inj overhel paini jo%so general delivery kenosha, wise., u.s.a. (�) m jo�et.1 (0) (] fats se oiailie in� noi �lothro few days later tyrone slothrop, esq. tdy abreaction ward st. veronica's hospital bonechapel gate, e 1 london, england dear mr. slothrop: you never did. the kenosha kid (2) smartass youth: aw, i did all them old-fashioned dances, i did the "charleston," a-and the "big apple," too! old vete�an hoofer: bet you never did the "kenosha," kid! (2.1) s.y.: shucks, i did all them dances, i did the "castle walk," and i did the "lindy," too! o.y.h.: bet you never did the "kenosha kid." 60 �l (3) minor employee: well, he has been avoiding me, and i thought it might be because of the slothrop affair. if he somehow held me respon­ siblesuperior (haughtily): you! never did the kenosha kid think for one instant that you . . . (3.1) superior (incredulously): you? never! did the kenosha kid think for one instant that you . . . ? (4) and at the end of the mighty day in which he gave us in fiery let­ ters across the sky all the words we'd ever need, words we today enjoy, and fill our dictionaries with, the meek voice of little tyrone slothrop, celebrated ever after in tradition and song, ventured to filter upward to the kid's attention: "you never did 'the,' kenosha kid!" these changes on the text "you never did the kenosha kid" are oc­ cupying slothrop's awareness as the doctor leans in out of the white overhead to wake him and begin the session. the needle slips without pain into the vein just outboard of the hollow in the crook of his elbow: 10% sodium amytal, one cc at a time, as needed. (5) maybe you did fool the philadelphia, rag the rochester, josh the joliet. but you never did the kenosha kid. (6) (the day of the ascent and sacrifice. a nation-wide observance. fats searing, blood dripping and burning to a salty brown . . . ) you did the charlottesville shoat, check, the forest hills foal, check. (fad­ ing now ... ) the laredo lamb. check. oh-oh. wait. what's this, slothrop? you never did the kenosha kid. snap to, slothrop. nce), i m� got a hardon in my fist, don't be pissed, re-enlistsnap-to, slothrop! jackson, i don't give a fuck, just give me my "ruptured duck!" snap-to, slothrop! noone here can love or comprehend me, they just look for someplace else to send .. me . . . tap my head and mike my brain, kid! � walk,"� 61 stick that needle in my vein, slothrop, snap to! rhy-thm's got me, oh baby dat swing, swing, swing! yeah de rhythm got me just a-thinkin' that whole-wide-world-can-sing, well i never ever heard-it, sound-so-sweet, even down around the corner-on, ba-sin street, as now dat de rhythm's got me, chillun let's swing, swing, swing, come on . . . chillun, let's . . . swing! reverts erywhe t upst kneelin� chef's s mints, a radcliffj eres, pi aiateli some v� alon� tl ni�ht. . �ockets starch i enou�h rememb (ainin� metal v) streakeo oack.e1 follow. follo seat. th comes oass, th harvarc �la�n� , �oundel end to; time to york, d 139lli ar usellie mclody man he (demise out of i kinds 0 mative mister pisces: we want to talk some more about boston today, slothrop.you recall that we were talking last time about the negroes, in roxbury.now we know it's not all that comfortable for you, but do try, won't you. now-where are you, slothrop? can you see anything? slothrop: well no, not see exactly ... roaring in by elevated subway, only in boston, steel and a carbon shroud over the ancient bricksblack faces, white tablecloth, gleaming very sharp knives lined up bythe saucers ... tobacco and "gage" smoke richly blended, eye-redden­ ing and tart as wine, yowzah gwine smoke a little ob dis hyah sheeit gibde wrinkles in mah brain a process! straighten 'em all raht out, sho nuf! pisces: that was "sho nuf,". slothrop? slothrop: come on you guys ... don't make it too ... white college boys, hollering requests to the "combo" up on thestand. eastern prep-school voices, pronouncing asshole with a certain sphinctering of the lips so it comes out ehisshehwle ... they reel, theyroister. aspidistras, giant philodendrons, green broad leaves and junglepalms go hanging into the dimness . . . two bartenders, a very fair westindian, slight, with a mustache, and his running-mate black as a hand in an evening glove, are moving endlessly in front of the deep, the oceanicmirror that swallows most of the room into metal shadows . . . the hun­ dred bottles hold their light only briefly before it flows away into themirror ... even when someone bends to light a cigarette, the flamereflects back in there only as dark, sunset orange. slothrop can't even see his own white face. a woman turns to look at him from a table. her eyes tell him, in the instant, what he is. the mouth harp in his pocket 62 reverts to brass inertia. a weight. a jive accessory. but he packs it ev­ erywhere he goes. upstairs in the men's room at the roseland ballroom he swoons kneeling over a toilet bowl, vomiting beer, hamburgers, homefries, chef's salad with french dressing, half a bottle of moxie, after-dinner mints, a clark bar, a pound of salted peanuts, and the cherry from some radcliffe girl's old-fashioned. with no warning, as tears stream out his eyes, plop goes the harp into the, aagghh, the loathsome toilet! imme­ diate little bubbles slide up its bright flanks, up brown wood surfaces, some varnished some lip-worn, these fine silver seeds stripping loose along the harp's descent toward stone-white cervix and into lower night.... someday the u.s. army will provide him with shirts whose pockets he can button. but in these prewar days he can rely only on the starch in his snow-white arrow to hold the pocket stuck together enough to keep objects from . . . but no, no, fool, the harp has fallen, remember? the low reeds singing an instant on striking porcelain (it's raining against a window somewhere, and outside on top of a sheet­ metal vent on the roof: cold boston rain) then quenched in the water streaked with the last bile-brown coils of his vomit. there's no calling it back. either he lets the harp go, his silver chances of song, or he has to follow. follow? red, the negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather seat. the negroes all over wasted roxbury wait. follow? "cherokee" comes wailing up from the dance floor below, over the hi-hat, the string bass, the thousand sets of feet where moving rose lights suggest not pale harvard boys and their dates, but a lotta dolled-up redskins. the song playing is one more lie about white crimes. but more musicians have floundered in the channel to "cherokee" than have got through from end to end. all those long, long notes . . . what're they up to, all that time to do something inside of? is it an indian spirit plot? down in new york, drive fast maybe get there for the last set-on 7th ave., between 139th and 14oth, tonight, "yardbird" parker is finding out how he can use the notes at the higher ends of these very chords to break up the melody into have mercy what is it a fucking machine gun or something man he must be out of his mind 3znd notes demisemiquavers say it very (demisemiquaver) fast in a munchkin voice if you can dig that coming out of dan wall's chili house and down the street-shit, out in all kinds of streets (his trip, by '39, well begun: down inside his most affir­ mative solos honks already the idle, amused dum-de-dumming of old mister fucking death he self) out over the airwaves, into the society 63 y, slolli in rol�, o try,w, ana a� u� o�: iiliaclrl e:'reel' esanajill. 'ervfair\\: , a� a naoo . ilie oc1� . . ilie � rav into � e, 'ilie �� r can't eli a table, �i his pod! -----i�'•• --;. '._" -''" ..•.•....•••..•.. :.::. .• �••...•.• •.•... " .. c... . . t , ;�''''''' _ _ __" � •• �/ • gigs, someday as far as what seeps out hidden speakers in the city elevaand is tors and in all the markets, his bird's singing, to gainsay the man's lulfolks labies, to subvert the groggy wash of the endlessly, gutlessly over­ dubbed strings. . . . so that prophecy, even up here on rainy massachusetts avenue, is beginning these days to work itself out in "cherokee," the saxes downstairs getting now into some, oh really weird shit.... if slothrop follows that harp down the toilet it'll have to be headfirst, water i which is not so good, cause it leaves his ass up in the air helpless, and tnick with negroes around that's just what a fella doesn't want, his face down �tick�1 in some fetid unknown darkness and brown fingers, strong and sure, all continu at once undoing his belt, unbuttoning his fly, strong hands holding his kee" s legs apart-and he feels the cold lysol air on his thighs as down come can ide the boxer shorts too, now, with the colorful bass lures and trout flies on harvar them. he struggles to work himself farther into the toilet hole as dimly, ne�ro up through the smelly water, comes the sound of a whole dark gang of muley( awful negroes come yelling happily into the white men's room, concause �verging on poor wriggling slothrop, jiving around the way they do singtnat wi ing, "slip the talcum to me, malcolm!" and the voice that replies is who �na�ebut that red, the shoeshine boy who's slicked up slothrop's black patnere'sl ents a dozen times down on his knees jes poppin' dat rag to beat the olacbl band ... now red the very tall, skinny, extravagantly conked redhead lnitsbl negro shoeshine boy who's just been "red" to all the harvard fellasit� own "say red, any of those sheiks in the drawer?" "how 'bout another lucknie� im changin' phone number there, red?"-this negro whose true name ferenti� now halfway down the toilet comes at last to slothrop's hearing-as a motherthick finger with a gob of very slippery jelly or cream comes sliding taoleindown the crack now toward his asshole, chevroning the hairs along like i alan al topo lines up a river valley-the true name is malcolm, and all the black malco cocks know him, malcolm, have known him all along-red malcolm touthe unthinkable nihilist sez, "good golly he sure is all asshole ain't he?" cone a jeepers slothrop, what a position for you to be in! even though he has �ioiliro succeeded in getting far enough down now so that only his legs prolack ktrude and his buttocks heave and wallow just under the level of the toni�h!water like pallid domes of ice. water splashes, cold as the rain outside, cocld, up the walls of the white bowl. "grab him 'fo' he gits away!" and an"yowzah!" distant hands clutch after his calves and ankles, snap his about garters and tug at the argyle sox mom knitted for him to go to harvard in�, vicin, but these insulate so well, or he has progressed so far down the toilet odorsby now, that he can hardly feel the hands at all. . . . breakethen he has shaken them off, left the last negro touch back up there rla�ed 64 cityelt man') less\� �. e on ii itseli � and is free, slick as a fish, with his virgin asshole preserved. now some folks might say whew, thank god for that, and others moaning a little, aw shucks, but slothrop doesn't say much of anything cause he didn't feel much of anything. a-and there's still no sign of his lost harp. the light down here is dark gray and rather faint. for some time he has been aware of shit, elaborately crusted along the sides of this ceramic (or by now, iron) tunnel he's in: shit nothing can flush away, mixed with hard­ water minerals into a deliberate brown barnacling of his route, patterns thick with meaning, burma-shave signs of the toilet world, icky and sticky, cryptic and glyptic, these shapes loom and pass smoothly as he continues on down the long cloudy waste line, the sounds of "chero­ kee" still pulsing very dimly above, playing him to the sea. he finds he can identify certain traces of shit as belonging definitely to this or that harvard fellow of his acquaintances. some of it too of course must be negro shit, but that all looks alike. hey, here's that "gobbler" biddle, must've been the night we all ate chop suey at fu's folly in cambridge cause there's bean sprouts around here someplace and even a hint of that wild plum sauce . . . say, certain senses then do seem to grow sharper . . . wow . . . fu's folly, weepers, that was months ago. a-and here's dumpster villard, he was constipated that night, wasn't he-it's black shit mean as resin that will someday clarify forever to dark amber. in its blunt, reluctant touches along the wall (which speak the reverse of its own cohesion) he can, uncannily shit-sensitized now, read old ago­ nies inside poor dumpster, who'd tried suicide last semester: the dif­ ferential equations that would not weave for him into any elegance, the mother with the low-slung hat and silk knees leaning across slothrop's table in sidney's great yellow grille to finish for him his bottle of cana­ dian ale, the radcliffe girls who evaded him, the black professionals malcolm touted him on to who dealt him erotic cruelty by the dollar, up to as much as he could take. or if mother's check was late, only afford. gone away upstream, bas-relief dumpster lost in the gray light as now slothrop is going past the sign of will stonybloke, of j. peter pitt, of jack kennedy, the ambassador's son-say, where the heck is that lack tonight, anyway? if anybody could've saved that harp, betcha jack could. slothrop admires him from a distance-he's athletic, and kind, and one of the most well-liked fellows in slothrop's class. sure is daffy about that history, though. jack . . . might jack have kept it from fall­ ing, violated gravity somehow? here, in this passage to the atlantic, odors of salt, weed, decay washing to him faintly like the sound of breakers, yes it seems jack might have. for the sake of tunes to be played, millions of possible blues lines, notes to be bent from the official 65 nearin�-, comelili: �rs alo�; a all ili1� rea �jilli ole ain't � iliou�� or nis le�q levelofr �-------' '. /. / ti.'" � _ � -r,"';'" • 'i_ � ,��� . .>_ _ � � ".?'y' • frequencies, bends slothrop hasn't really the breath to do ... not yet but someday . . . well at least if (when . . . ) he finds the instrument it'll be well soaked in, a lot easier to play. a hopeful thought to carry with you down the toilet. wee . �lace toiletlee or invisibl wick � anofal 11l100t� itubbo 01000, nisow on an canfe iliem, some i �aral so" no kinoh a�ain \vater· iiliem ilirou� eleven 0150 �eopl shine down the toilet, lookit me, what a silly thing ta do! hope nobody takes a pee, yippy dippy dippy doo . . at which precise point there comes this godawful surge from up the line, noise growing like a tidal wave, a jam-packed wavefront of shit, vomit, toilet paper and dingleberries in mind-boggling mosaic, rushingdown on panicky slothrop like an mta subway train on its own hapless victim. nowhere to run. paralyzed, he stares back over his shoulder. a looming wall stringing long tendrils of shitpaper behind, the shockwave is on him-gaahhh! he tries a feeble frog kick at the very last mo­ ment but already the cylinder of waste has wiped him out, dark as cold beef gelatin along his upper backbone, the paper snapping up, wrap­ ping across his lips, his nostrils, everything gone and shit-stinking now as he has to keep batting micro-turds out of his eyelashes, it's worse than being torpedoed by j aps! the brown liquid tearing along, carrying him helpless . . . seems he's been tumbling ass over teakettle-thoughthere's no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references ... from time to time he will brush against shrubbery, or perhaps small feathery trees. it occurs to him he hasn't felt the touch of a hard wall since he started to tumble, if that indeed is what he's doing. at some point the brown dusk around him has begun to lighten. likethe dawn. bit by bit his vertigo leaves him. the last wisps of shitpaper,halfway back to slurry, go . . . sad, dissolving, away. an eerie light grows on him, a watery and marbled light he hopes won't last for longbecause of what it seems to promise to show. but "contacts" are livingin these waste regions. people he knows. inside shells of old, what seem to be fine-packed masonry ruins-weathered cell after cell, many ofthem roofless. wood fires burn in black fireplaces, water simmers in rusty institutional-size lima-bean cans, and the steam goes up the leakychimneys. and they sit about the worn flagstones, transacting some . . .he can't place it exactly ... something vaguely religious.... bed­ rooms are fully furnished, with lights that turn and glow, velvet hungfrom walls and ceiling. down to the last ignored blue bead clogged withdust under the capehart, the last dried spider and complex ruffling of 66 one, i onev! electig and in terrib] iliatll · noll nstru� t to t� the carpet's nap, the intricacy of these dwellings amazes him. it is a place of sheltering from disaster. not necessarily the flushings of the toilet-these occur here only as a sort of inferred disturbance, behind this ancient sky, in its corroded evenness of tone-but something else has been terribly at this country, something poor soggy slothrop cannot see or hear . . . as if there is a pearl harbor every morning, smashing invisibly from the sky. . . . he has toilet paper in his hair and a fuzzy thick dingleberry lodged up inside his right nostril. ugh, ugh. decline and fall works silently on this landscape. no sun, no moon, only a long smooth sinewaving of the light. it is a negro dingleberry, he can tell­ stubborn as a wintertime booger as he probes for it. his fingernails draw blood. he stands outside all the communal rooms and spaces, outside in his own high-desert morning, a reddish-brown hawk, two, hanging up on an air current to watch the horizon. it's cold. the wind blows. he can feel only his isolation. they want him inside there but he can't join them. something prevents him: once inside, it would be like taking some kind of blood oath. they would never release him. there are no guarantees he might not be asked to do something ... something so ... now every loose stone, every piece of tinfoil, billet of wood, scrap of kindling or cloth is moving up and down: rising ten feet then dropping again to hit the pavement with a sharp clap. the light is thick and water-green. all down the streets, debris rises and falls in unison, as if at the mercy of some deep, regular wave. it's difficult to see any distance through the vertical dance. the drumming on the pavement goes for eleven beats, skips a twelfth, begins the cycle over . . . it is the rhythm of some traditional american tune.... the streets are all empty of people. it's either dawn or twilight. parts of the debris that are metal shine with a hard, nearly blue persistence. ugnten,l oflni�? neenr[ lastforlr "arellii i wnatl.'t now don't you remember red malcolm up there, that kid with the red devil lye in his hair . . . here now is crutchfield or crouchfield, the westwardman. not "ar­ chetypical" westwardman, but the only. understand, there was only one. there was only one indian who ever fought him. only one fight, one victory, one loss. and only one president, and one assassin, and one election. true. one of each of everything. you had thought of solipsism, and imagined the structure to be populated-on your level-by only, terribly, one. no count on any other levels. but it proves to be not quite that lonely. sparse, yes, but a good deal better than solitary. one of 67 --_ -_. . /� / . r.!:' �-;, .. � -.� ,;." . ',: . �:� "-'--7�. �. � • each of everything's not so bad. half an ark's better than none. this crutchfield here is browned by sun, wind and dirt-against the deep brown slats of the barn or stable wall he is wood of a different grain and finish. he is good-humored, solid-set against the purple mountainslope, and looking half into the sun. his shadow is carried strained coarsely back through the network of wood inside the stable-beams, lodgepoles, stall uprights, trough-trestlework, rafters, wood ceiling-slats the sun comes through: blinding empyrean even at this failing hour of the day. there is somebody playing a mouth harp behind an outbuild­ ing-some musical glutton, mouth-sucking giant five-note chords be­ hind the tune of one little hustler in san berdoo, one little chink run away from the railroad with his ass just as yellow as fu manchu! one with the clap and one with a goiter, one with the terminal lepro-see, cripple on the right foot, cripple on the left foot, crippled up both feet 'n' that makes three! well one little fairy, even one bull dyke, one little nigger, one little kike, one red indian with one buffalo, and a buffalo hunter from new mexico and � ilie te rnals there' iliat moutl tlep fetish �weat old to wearilin ea in� t� wha (cmt home andti this i such wha is qui from "� "yi cau!i\ stripe comb conti blon� watcl comil caus� pard! c injun shoot will � fiim, it up meat coat: ofth( red river valley down this toilet they say you are flushin'­ won'tchew light up and set fer a spell? cause the toilet it ain't going nowhar, and the shit hereabouts shore is swell. oh, it's the red river all right, if you don't believe it just ask that "red," wherever he may be (tell you what red means, fdr's little ass­ hole buddies, they want to take it all away, women all have hair on their legs, give it all to them or they'll blow it up round black iron in the mid­ dle of the night bleeding over polacks in gray caps okies niggers yeh niggers especially . . .) well, back here, crutchfield's little pard has just come out of the barn. his little pard of the moment, anyway. crutchfield has left a string of broken-hearted little pards across this vast alkali plain. one lit­ tle feeb in south dakota, i i i j (\ 68 mi•... _".""" "'�"""�: ,_ :._.... . .. .... . .� �c,_. _ � = _ : ' <, and on, and on, one of each of everything, he's the white cocksman of the terre mauvais, this crouchfield, doing it with both sexes and all ani­ mals except for rattlesnakes (properly speaking, "rattlesnake," since there's only one), but lately seems he's been havin' these fantasies about that rattlesnake, too! fangs just tickling the foreskin the pale mouth open wide, and the horrible joy in the crescent eyes his little pard of the moment is whappo, a norwegian mulatto lad, who has a fetish for horsy paraphernalia, likes to be quirt-whipped inside the sweat-and-leather tackrooms of their wandering, which is three weeks old today, pretty long time for a little pard to've lasted. whappo is wearing chaps of imported gazelle hide that crutchfield bought for him in eagle pass from a faro dealer with a laudanum habit who was cross­ ing the great rio forever, into the blank furnace of the wild mexico. whappo also sports a bandanna of the regulation magenta and green (crutchfield is supposed to have a closetful of these silken scarves back home at "rancho peligroso" and never rides out into the rock-country and riverbed trails without a dozen or two stashed in his saddlebags. this must mean that the one-of-each rule applies only to forms of life, such as little pards, and not to objects, such as bandannas). and whappo tops off with a high shiny opera hat of japanese silk. whappo is quite the dandy this afternoon in fact, as he comes sauntering out from the barn. "ah, crutchfield," flipping a hand, "how nice of you to show up." "you knew i'd show up, you little rascal," shit that whappo is such a caution. always baiting his master in hopes of getting a leather-keen stripe or two across those dusky afro-scandinavian buttocks, which combine the callipygian rondure observed among the races of the dark continent with the taut and noble musculature of sturdy olaf, our blond northern cousin. but this time crutchfield only turns back to watching the distant mountains. whappo sulks. his top hat reflects the coming holocaust. what the white man does not have to utter, however causally, is anything like "toro hojo's gonna be riding in tonight." both pardners know about that. the wind, bringing them down that raw injun smell, ought to be enough for anybody. oh god it's gonna be a shootout and bloody as hell. the wind will be blowing so hard blood will glaze on the north sides of the trees. the redskin'll have a dog with him, the only indian dog in these whole ashen plains-the cur will mix it up with little whappo and end hung on the meathook of an open meat stall in the dirt plaza back in los madres, eyes wide open, mangy coat still intact, black fleas hopping against the sunlit mortar and stone of the church wall across the square, blood darkened and crusting at the 69 eoulrn 10 nalit" lain,�1 i • i i lesion in his neck where whappo's teeth severed his jugular (and maybe co some tendons, for the head dangles to one side). the hook enters in the in back, between two vertebrae. mexican ladies poke at the dead dog, and it sways reluctantly in the forenoon market-smell of platanos for frying, rac sweet baby carrots from the red river valley, trampled raw greens of ne many kinds, cilantro smelling like animal musk, strong white onions, do pineapples fermenting in the sun, about to blow up, great mottled shelves of mountain mushroom. slothrop moves among the bins and hung cloths, invisible, among horses and dogs, pigs, brown-uniformed i l'militia, indian women with babies slung in shawls, servants from the pastel houses farther up the hillside-the plaza is seething with life, and slothrop is puzzled. isn't there supposed to be only one of each? a. yes. q. then one indian girl . . . a. one pure indian. one mestiza. one criolla. then: one yaqui. one navaho. one apache, q. wait a minute, there was only one indian to begin with. the one' that crutchfield killed. a. yes. look on it as an optimization problem. the country can best support only one of each. q. then what about all the others? boston. london. the ones who live in cities. are those people real, or what? a. some are real, and some aren't. q. well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary? a. it depends what you have in mind. q. shit, i don't have anything in mind. a. we do. for a moment, ten thousand stiffs humped under. the snow in the ar­ dennes take on the sunny disneyfied look of numbered babies under white wool blankets, waiting to be sent to blessed parents in places like newton upper falls. it only lasts a moment. then for another moment it seems that all the christmas bells in the creation are about to join in chorus-that all their random pealing will be, this one time, coordi­ nated, in harmony, present with tidings of explicit comfort, feasible joy. but segway into the roxbury hillside. snow packs into the arches, the crosshatchings of his black rubber soles. his ar'tics clink when he moves his feet. the snow in this slum darkness has the appearance of soot in a negative . _. . it flows in and out of the night. . . . the brick surfaces by daylight (he only sees them in very early dawn, aching in-side his overshoes, looking for cabs up and down the hill) are flaming 70 th ce w rin ne corrosion, dense, deep, fallen upon by frosts again and again: historied in a way he hasn't noticed in beacon street.... in the shadows, black and white holding in a panda-pattern across his face, each of the regions a growth or mass of scar tissue, waits the con­ nection he's traveled all this way to see. the face is as weak as a house­ dog's, and its owner shrugs a lot. slothrop: where is he? why didn't he show? who are you? voice: the kid got busted. and you know me, slothrop. remember? i'm never. slothrop (peering): you, never? (a pause.) did the kenosha kid? greem ite oru� at mo� e bifll� 'unl101ijt tl rrom� iili hl�,� eacn� o 0 0 0 0 0 0 eoflelll! "kryptosam" is a proprietary form of stabilized tyrosine, devel­ oped by ig farben as part of a research contract with okw. an activating agent is included which, in the presence of some component of the seminal fluid to date [1934] unidentified, pro­ motes conversion of the tyrosine into melanin, or skin pigment. in the absence of seminal fluid, the "kryptosam" remains invisi­ ble. no other known reagent, among those available to opera­ tives in the field, will alter "kryptosam" to visible melanin. it is suggested, in cryptographic applications, that a proper stimulus be included with the message which will reliably produce tu­ mescence and ejaculation. a thorough knowledge of the ad­ dressee's psychosexual profile would seem of invaluable aid. -prof. dr. laszlo jamf, "kryptosam" (advertising brochure), agfa, berlin, 1934 winilid abie) ud1 place)i the drawing, on heavy cream paper under the black-letter inscription geheime kommandosache, is in pen and ink, very finely textured, some­ what after the style of von bayros or beardsley. the woman is a dead ringer for scorpia mossmoon. the room is one they talked about but never saw, a room they would have liked to live in one day, with a sunken pool, a silken tent draped from the ceiling-a de mille set re­ ally, slender and oiled girls in attendance, a suggestion of midday light coming through from overhead, scorpia sprawled among fat pillows wearing exactly the corselette of belgian lace, the dark stockings and shoes he daydreamed about often enough but neverno, of course he never told her. he never told anyone. like everyachingw' e hamin! �-------' . /, /_-".!.� .. ,_:•.•...... _ � .. .-." . .: '��:r��;;. �� • • i \ i i i i i \ �' young man growing up in england, he was conditioned to get a hardon in the presence of certain fetishes, and then conditioned to feel shame about his new reflexes. could there be, somewhere, a dossier, could they (they?) somehow have managed to monitor everything he saw and read since puberty . . . how else would they know? "hush," she whispers. her fingers stroke lightly her long olive thighs, bare breasts swell from the top of her garment. her face is toward the ceiling, but her eyes are looking into pirate's own, long, narrow with lust, two points of light glittering through the thick lashes ... "i'll leave him. we'll come here and live. we'll never stop making love. i be­ long to you, i've known that for a long time.... " her tongue licks out over her little sharpened teeth. her furry quim is at the center of all the light, and there is a taste in his mouth he would feel again. . . . well, pirate nearly doesn't make it, barely gets his cock out of his trousers before he's spurting all over the place. enough sperm saved, though, to rub over the blank scrap enclosed with the picture. slowly then, a revelation through the nacreous film of his seed, in negro­ brown, comes his message: put in a simple nihilist transposition whose keywords he can almost guess. most of it he does in his head. there is a time given, a place, a request for help. he burns the message, fallen on him from higher than earth's atmosphere, salvaged from earth's prime meridian, keeps the picture, hmm, and washes his hands. his prostate is aching. there is more to this than he can see. he has no recourse, no ap­ peal: he has to go over there and bring the operative out again. the message is tantamount to an order from the highest levels. far away, through the rain, comes the crack-blast of another german rocket. the third today. they hunt the sky like wuotan and his mad army. pirate's own robot hands begin to search drawers and folders for nec­ essary vouchers and forms. no sleep tonight. probably no chance even to catch a cup or cigarette on route. why? d d d d d d d in germany, as the end draws upon us, the incessant walls read was tust du fur die front, fur den siec? was hast du heute fur deutschland cetan? at "the white visitation" the walls read ice. graffiti of ice the sunless day, glazing the darkening blood brick and terra cotta as if the house is to be preserved weatherless in some skin of clear museum plastic, an architectural document, an old-fashioned ap72 a� li ta re th al vi at th iw gl an 10 gr inlie ivi e� s� j u� sel ie paratus whose use is forgotten. ice of varying thickness, wavy, blurred, a legend to be deciphered by lords of the winter, glacists of the region, and argued over in their journals. uphill, toward the sea, snow gathers like light at all windward edges of the ancient abbey, its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of henry viii, its walls left to stand and miti­ gate with saintless window-hollows the salt wind, blowing as the seasons replay the grass floor in great cowlicks, green to blonde, to snow. from the palladian house down in its resentful and twilit hollow this is the only view: the abbey or else gentle, broadly mottled swoops of upland. view of the sea denied, though certain days and tides you can smell it, all your vile ancestry. in 1925 reg le froyd, an inmate at "the white visitation," escaped-rushed through the upper town to stand teetering at the edge of the cliff, hair and hospital garment flickering in the wind, the swaying miles of south coast, pallid chalk, jetties and promenades fading right and left into brine haze. after him came a constable stug­ gles, at the head of a curious crowd. "don't jump!" cries the constable. "i never thought of that," le froyd continuing to stare out to sea. "then what are you doing here. eh?" "wanted to look at the sea," le froyd explains. "i've never seen it. i am, you know, related, by blood, to the sea." "oh aye," sly stuggles edging up on him all the while, "visiting your relatives are you, how nice." "i can hear the lord of the sea," cries le froyd, in wonder. "dear me, and what's his name?" both of them wetfaced, shouting for the wind. "oh, i don't know," yells le froyd, "what would be a good name?" "bert," suggests the constable, trying to remember if it's right hand grasps left arm above elbow or left hand grasps . . . le froyd turns, and for the first time sees the man, and the crowd. his eyes grow round and mild. "bert is fine," he says, and steps back into the void. that's all the townsfolk of ick regis had from "the white visitation" in the way of relief-from summers of staring at the pink or sun-freck­ led overflow from brighton, flotsam and jetsam casting each day of wireless history into song, sunsets on the promenade, lens openings for­ ever changing for the sea light, blown now brisk, now sedate about the sky, aspirins for sleep-only le froyd's leap, that single entertainment, up till the outbreak of this war. at the defeat of poland, ministerial motorcades were suddenly ob­ served at all hours of the night, putting in at "the white visitation," si­ lent as sloops, exhausts well mufhed-chromeless black machinery that r forn�· anceew reao \i'� fete ril ireao ice, irick an� e skin of illed w 73 -�-----' . / .f.'.! l''''!''' ........ , .. .••••.••.• -.-.;.� ••. � ••• "'.•.•... �,.,.;.. , . .;� .. �.:��&';"= .... � • /. it� . . i shone if there were starlight, and otherwise enjoyed the camouflage of a face about to be remembered, but through the act of memory fading too far. ... then at the fall of paris, a radio transmitting station was set up on the cliff, antennas aimed at the continent, themselves heavily guarded and their landlines back mysteriously over the downs to the house patrolled night and day by dogs specially betrayed, belted, starved into reflex leaps to kill, at any human approach. had one of the very high gone higher-that is, dotty? was our side seeking to demor­ alize the german beast by broadcasting to him random thoughts of the mad, naming for him, also in the tradition of constable stuggles that fa­ mous day, the deep, the scarcely seen? the answer is yes, all of the above, and more. ask them at "the white visitation" about the master plan of the bbc's eloquent myron grunton, whose melted-toffee voice has been finding its way for years out the fraying rust boucle of the wireless speakers and into english dreams, foggy old heads, children at the edges of attention. . . . he's had to keep putting his plan off, at first only a voice alone, lacking the data he really needed, no support, trying to get at the german soul from whatever came to hand, p /w interrogations, foreign office handbooks, the brothers grimm, tourist memories of his own (young sleepless dawes-era flashes, vineyards sunlit very green bearding the south valley-slopes of the rhine, at night in the smoke and worsted cabarets of the capital long frilled suspenders like rows of car­ nations, silk stockings highlighted each in one long fine crosshatching of light . . . ). but at last the americans came in, and the arrangement known as shaef, and an amazing amount of money. the scheme is called operation black wing. my what a careful con­ struction, five years in the making. no one could claim it all as his own, not even grunton. it was general eisenhower who laid down the con­ trolling guideline, the "strategy of truth" idea. something "real," ike in­ sisted on: a hook on the war's pocked execution-wall to hang the storyfrom. pirate prentice of the s.o.e. came back with the first hard intelli­ gence that there were indeed in germany real africans, hereros, ex-co­ lonials from south-west africa, somehow active in the secret-weapons program. myron grunton, inspired, produced on the air one night com­ pletely ad lib the passage that found its way into the first black wing di­ rective: "germany once treated its africans like a stern but loving step­father, chastising them when necessary, often with death. remember? but that was far away in siidwest, and since then a generation has gone by. now the herero lives in his stepfather's house. perhaps you, listen­ ing, have seen him. now he stays up past the curfews, and watches his itepfa i own c i what mack 10 �o countl e1� �nd i� i ruinl in� it� wala ilallon mrro, woo ilieirl uvene th, "the ulin� ilie n nim,] de, a � ciul iliat,( fundil milsil men!' (are i variet i dr. pj me, numb ent1r ana rock ilie�e were new stepfather while he sleeps, invisible, protected by the night which is his own colour. what are they all thinking? where are the hereros tonight? what are they doing, this instant, your dark, secret children?" and black wing has even found an american, a lieutenant slothrop, willing to go under light narcosis to help illuminate racial problems in his own country. an invaluable extra dimension. toward the end, as more for­ eign morale data began to come back-yank pollsters with clipboards and squeaky new shoe-pacs or galoshes visiting snow-softened liberated ruins to root out the trufhes of truth created, as ancients surmised, dur­ ing storm, in the instant of lightning blast-a contact in american pwd was able to bootleg copies and make them available to "the white vis­ itation." no one is sure who suggested the name "schwarzkomrnando." myron crunton had favored "wiitende heer," that company of spirits who ride the heaths of the sky in furious hunt, with great wuotan at their head-but myron agreed that was more a northern myth. effec­ tiveness in bavaria might be less than optimum. they all talk effectiveness, an american heresy, perhaps overmuch at "the white visitation." loudest of all, usually, is mr. pointsman, often using for ammo statistics provided him by roger mexico. by the time of the normandy landing, pointsman's season of despair was well upon him. he came to understand that the great continental pincers was to be, after all, a success. that this war, this state he'd come to feel himself a citizen of, was to be adjourned and reconstituted as a peace-and that, professionally speaking, he'd hardly got a thing out of it. with funding available for all manner of radars, magic torpedoes, aircraft and missiles, where was pointsman in the scheme of things? he'd had a mo­ ment's stewardship, that was all: his abreaction research facility (arf), early on snaring himself a dozen underlings, dog trainer from the variety stage, veterinary student or two, even a major prize, the refugee dr. porkyevitch, who worked with pavlov himself at the koltushy insti­ tute, back before the purge trials. together the arf team receive, number, weigh, classify by hippocratic temperament, cage, and pres­ ently experiment on as many as a dozen fresh dogs a week. and there are one's colleagues, co-owners of the book, all now-all those left of the original seven-working in hospitals handling the battle-fatigued and shell-shocked back from across the channel, and the bombor rocket-happy this side. they get to watch more abreactions, during these days of heavy v-bombardment, than doctors of an earlier day were apt to see in several lifetimes, and they are able to suggest ever new lines of inquiry. p.w.e. allows a stingy dribble of money, desperate paper whispering down the corporate lattice, enough to get by on, eful co�' n�o\m ilie co�' \ \i ike i�. ilie )to� a inte�· 75 ------' . / i�": ' '.,.,. ,.: ; � c... . "io:_.' _ .. / • enough that arf remains a colony to the metropolitan war, but not enough for nationhood. . . . mexico's statisticians chart for it drops of saliva, body weights, voltages, sound levels, metronome frequencies, bromide dosages, number of afferent nerves cut, percentages of brain tissue removed, dates and hours of numbing, deafening, blinding, cas­ tration. support even comes from psi section, a colony degage and doc­ ile, with no secular aspirations at all. old brigadier pudding can live with this spiritualist gang well enough, he's tendencies himself in that direction. but ned pointsman, with his constant scheming after more money-pudding can only stare back at the man, try to be civil. not as tall as his father, certainly not as wholesome looking. father was m.o. in thunder prodd's regiment, caught a bit of shrapnel in the thigh at polygon wood, lay silent for seven hours before they, without a word before, in that mud, that terri­ ble smell, in, yes polygon wood ... or was that-who was the ginger­ haired chap who slept with his hat on? ahhh, come back. now polygon wood ... but it's fluttering away. fallen trees, dead, smooth gray, swirlinggrainoftreelikefrozensmoke . . . ginger . . . thunder . . . no use, no bleeding use, it's gone, another gone, another, oh dear ... the old brigadier's age is uncertain, though he must be pushing 80reactivated in 1940, set down in a new space not only of battlefield­ where the front each day or hour changes like a noose, like the gold-lit borders of consciousness (perhaps, though it oughtn't to get too sinister here, exactly like them ... better, then, "like a noose")-but also of the war-state itself, its very structure. pudding finds himself wondering, at times aloud and in the presence of subordinates, what enemy disliked him enough to assign him to political warfare. one is supposed to be operating in concert-yet too often in amazing dissonance-with other named areas of the war, colonies of that mother city mapped wherever the enterprise is systematic death: p.w.e. laps over onto the ministry of information, the bbc european service, the special operations execu­ tive, the ministry of economic warfare, and the f.o. political intelli­ gence department at fitzmaurice house. among others. when the americans came in, their oss, owl, and army psychological warfare department had also to be coordinated with. presently there arose the joint, shaef psychological warfare division (pwd), reporting direct to eisenhower, and to hold it all together a london propaganda coordi­ nating council, which has no real power at all. who can find his way about this lush maze of initials, arrows solid and dotted, boxes big and small, names printed and memorized? not �ent, aeep aroull 01 an none dina ratthi it i �we aline mam' �e�l were rultin � �rl�� icell \\illl kno\ inlte eno� talne! om� war )eil, �ri�a iliat , bu\, 't dro� equeij� soli: ernest pudding-that's for the new chaps with their little green anten­ nas out for the usable emanations of power, versed in american politics (knowing the difference between the new dealers of owl and the east­ ern and moneyed republicans behind oss), keeping brain-dossiers on latencies, weaknesses, tea-taking habits, erogenous zones of all, all who might someday be useful. ernest pudding was brought up to believe in a literal chain of com­ mand, as clergymen of earlier centuries believed in the chain of being. the newer geometries confuse him. his greatest triumph on the bat­ tlefield came in 1917, in the gassy, armageddonite filth of the ypres sa­ lient, where he conquered a bight of no man's land some 40 yards at its deepest, with a wastage of only 70% of his unit. he was pensioned off around the beginning of the great depression-went to sit in the study of an empty house in devon, surrounded by photos of old comrades, none of whose gazes quite met one's own, there to go at a spot of com­ binatorial analysis, that favorite pastime of retired army officers, with a rattling intense devotion. it occurred to him to focus his hobby on the european balance of power, because of whose long pathology he had once labored, deeply, all hope of waking lost, in the nightmare of flanders. he started in on a mammoth work entitled things that can happen in european politics. begin, of course, with england. "first," he wrote, "bereshith, as it were: ramsay macdonald can die." by the time he went through re­ sulting party alignments and possible permutations of cabinet posts, ramsay macdonald had died. "never make it," he found himself mut­ tering at the beginning of each day's work-"it's changing out from under me. oh, dodgy-very dodgy." when it had changed as far as german bombs falling on england, brigadier pudding gave up his obsession and again volunteered his serv­ ices to his country. had he known at the time it would mean "the white visitation" . . . not that he'd expected a combat assignment you know, but wasn't there something mentioned about intelligence work? instead he found a disused hospital for the mad, a few token lunatics, an enormous pack of stolen dogs, cliques of spiritualists, vaudeville enter­ tainers, wireless technicians, coueists, ouspenskians, skinnerites, lobot­ omy enthusiasts, dale carnegie zealots, all exiled by the outbreak of war from pet schemes and manias damned, had the peace prolonged it­ self, to differing degrees of failure-but their hopes now focusing on brigadier pudding and possibilities for funding: more hope than prewar, that underdeveloped province, ever offered. pudding could only re-romw, )rizeo� \ 77 spond by adopting rather an old testament style with everyone, includ­ ing the dogs, and remaining secretly baffled and hurt by what he imag­ined as treachery high inside staff. snowlight comes in through tall, many-paned windows, a dark day, a light burning only here and there among the brown offices. subalterns encrypt, blindfolded subjects call zener-deck guesses to hidden micro­ phones: "waves ... waves ... cross ... star ... " while some­ one from psi section records them from a speaker down in the cold basement. secretaries in woolen shawls and rubber galoshes shiver with the winter cold being inhaled through the madhouse's many crevices, their typewriter keys chattery as their pearlies. maud chilkes, who looks from the rear rather like cecil beaton's photograph of margot as­ quith, sits dreaming of a bun and a cup of tea. in the arf wing, the stolen dogs sleep, scratch, recall shadowy smellsof humans who may have loved them, listen undrooling to ned points­ man's oscillators and metronomes. the drawn shades allow only mild passages of light from outdoors. technicians are moving behind the thick observation window, but their robes, greenish and submarine through the glass, hutter more slowly, less brightly.... a numbness has taken over, or a felt darkening. the metronome at 80 per secondbreaks out in wooden echoes, and dog vanya, bound atop the test stand, begins to salivate. all other sounds are damped severely: thebeams underpinning the lab smothered in sand-filled rooms, sandbags, straw, uniforms of dead men occupying the spaces between the win­ dowless walls . . . where the country bedlamites sat around, scowling,sniffing nitrous oxide, giggling, weeping at an e-major chord modulatingto a g-sharp minor, now are cubical deserts, sand-rooms, keeping themetronome sovereign here in the lab, behind the iron doors, closed her­ metically. the duct of dog vanya's submaxillary gland was long ago carried outthe bottom of his chin through an incision and sutured in place, leadingsaliva outside to the collecting funnel, fixed there with the traditional orange pavlovian cement of rosin, iron oxide and beeswax. vacuum brings the secretion along through shining tubework to displace a col­ umn of light red oil, moving to the right along a scale marked off in "drops"-an arbitrary unit, probably not the same as the actually fallendrops of 1905, of st. petersburg. but the number of drops, for this laband dog vanya and the metronome at 80, is each time predictable.now that he has moved into "equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases, a membrane, hardly noticeable, stretches be­ tween dog vanya and the outside. inside and outside remain just as 78 co fa� \�l \�i �ro b' i w� ce they were, but the interface-the cortex of dog vanya's brain-is changing, in any number of ways, and that is the really peculiar thing about these transmarginal events. it no longer matters now how loudly the metronome ticks. a stronger stimulus no longer gets a stronger re­ sponse. the same number of drops flow or fall. the man comes and re­ moves the metronome to the farthest corner of this muffled room. it is placed inside a box, beneath a pillow with the machine-sewn legend memories of brighton, but the drops do not fall off . . . then played into a microphone and amplifier so that each tick fills the room up like a shout, but the drops do not increase. every time, the clear saliva pushes the red line over only to the same mark, the same number of drops.... webley silvernail and rollo groast go sneaky-peteing away down the corridors, nipping into people's offices to see if there are any smokable fag-ends to be looted. most offices right now are empty: all personnel with the patience or masochism for it are going through a bit of ritual with the doddering brigadier. "that old-ma� has, no-shame," ceza rozsavolgyi, another refugee (and violently anti-soviet, which creates a certain strain with arf) flicking his hands up brigadier puddingward in gay despair, the lilting hungarian gypsy-whisper bashing like tambourines all around the room, provoking, in one way or another, everyone here except for the aged brigadier himself, who just goes rambling on from the pulpit of what was a private chapel once, back there on the maniac side of the t.sth century, and is now a launching platform for "the weekly briefings," a most amazing volley of senile observations, office paranoia, gossip about the war which might or might not include violations of security, remi­ niscences of flanders . . . the coal boxes in the sky coming straight down on you with a roar . . . the drumfire so milky and luminous on his birthday night ... the wet surfaces in the shell craters for miles giving back one bleak autumn sky . . . what haig, in the richness of his wit, once said at mess about lieutenant sassoon's refusal to fight . . . the gunners in springtime, in their flowing green robes . . . roadsides of poor rotting horses just before apricot sunrise . . . the twelve spokes of a stranded artillery piece-a mud clock, a mud zodiac, clogged and crusted as it stood in the sun its many shades of brown. the mud of flanders gathered into the curd-clumped, mildly jellied textures of human shit, piled, duckboarded, trenched and shell-pocked leagues of shit in all directions, not even the poor blackened stump of a tree-and the old blithering gab-artist tries to shake the cherrywood pulpit here, as if that had been the worst part of the whole passchendaele horror, ocarn� lace,l�: e traill�!. ax, varu. 79 that absence of vertical interest. . . . on he goes, gabbing, gabbing, rec­ ipes for preparing beets in a hundred tasty ways, or such cucurbitaceous improbabilities as ernest pudding's gourd surprise-yes, there is some­ thing sadistic about recipes with "surprise" in the title, chap who's hungry wants to just eat you know, not be surprised really, just wants to w�bite into the (sigh) the old potato, and be reasonably sure there's nothve. ing inside but potato you see, certainly not some clever nutmeg "sur. ii prise!", some mashed pulp all magenta with pomegranates or something no . . . well but this is just the doubtful sort of joke that brigadier pud�n( ding loves to play: how he's chuckled, as unsuspecting dinner-guests goknifing into his notorious toad-in-the-hole, through the honest york�cl shire batter into-ugh! what is it? a beet rissole? a stuffed beet rissole? lo� or perhaps today some lovely pureed samphire, reeking of the sea ca (which he obtains once a week from the same fat fishmonger's son �nwheeling his bicycle, puffing, up the chalkwhite cliff)-none of these �1 odd, odd vegetable rissoles do resemble any ordinary "toad," but rather the depraved, half-sentient creatures that young chaps from kings 1road have affairs with in limericks-pudding has thousands of these lie recipes and no shame about sharing any of them with the lot at pisces, nojalong with, later in the weekly soliloquy, a line or two, eight bars, from uel"would you rather be a colonel with an eagle on your shoulder, or a re�private with a chicken on your knee?" then perhaps a lengthy recita-tion of all his funding difficulties, all, dating back to long before the fie: emergence of even the electra house group . . . letter-feuds he has in carried on in the times with critics of haig. . . . �ee and they all sit there, in front of the very high, blacked, lead-crossed windows, allowing him his folly, the dog people skulking over in one corner, passing notes and leaning to whisper (they plot, they plot, sleep-ing or afoot they never let up), the psi section lot clear over the other iside of the room-as if we have a parliament of some kind here . . . ev�coeryone for years has occupied his own unique pew-seat and angle in to �ethe ravings of reddish and liver-spotted brigadier pudding-with theother persuasions-in-exile spread between these two wings: the balance �loof power, if any power existed at "the white visitation." fordr. hozsavolgyi feels that there well might, if the fellows "play their i��cards right." the only issue now is survival-on through the awful inun!terface of v-e day, on into the bright new postwar with senses and jecmemories intact. pisces must not be allowed to go down under the 1 in�hammer with the rest of the bawling herd. there must arise, and ell/'damned soon, able to draw them into a phalanx, a concentrated point of orolight, some leader or program powerful enough to last them across who �e� 80 knows how many years of postwar. dr. rozsavolgyi tends to favor a powerful program over a powerful leader. maybe because this is 1945· it was widely believed in those days that behind the war-all the death, savagery, and destruction-lay the fuhrer-principle. but if per­ sonalities could be replaced by abstractions of power, if techniques de­ veloped by the corporations could be brought to bear, might not nations live rationally? one of the dearest postwar hopes: that there should be no room for a terrible disease like charisma ... that its rationalization should proceed while we had the time and resources. . . . isn't that what's really at stake for dr. bozsavolgyi here in this latest scheme, centered on the figure of lieutenant slothrop? all the psycho­ logical tests in the subject's dossier, clear back to his college days, indi­ cate a diseased personality. "rosie" slaps the file with his hand for em­ phasis. the staff table shudders. "for exam-pie: his minneso-ta, mul-tipha-sic personality inventory is tremen-dously lopsi-ded, always in fa-vor of, the psycho-pathic, and, the unwhole-some." but the reverend dr. paul de la nuit is not fond of the mmpi. "rosie, are there scales for measuring interpersonal traits?" hawk's nose probing, probing, eyes lowered in politic meekness, "human val­ ues? trust, honesty, love? is there-forgive me the special pleading-a religious scale, by any chance?" no way, padre: the mmpi was developed about 1943. in the very heart of the war. allport and vernon's study of values, the bernreuter inventory as revised by flanagan in '35-tests from before the war­ seem to paul de la nuit more humane. all the mmpi appears to test for is whether a man will be a good or bad soldier. "soldiers are much in demand these days, reverend doctor," murmurs mr. pointsman. "i only hope that we won't put too much emphasis on his mmpi scores. it seems to me very narrow. it omits large areas of the human personality." "precise-ly why," leaps rozsavolgyi, "we are now proposing, to give, sloth-rop a complete-iy dif-ferent sort, of test. we are now design-ing for him, a so-called, 'projec-tive' test. the most famil-iar exam-pie of the type, is the rorschach ink-blot. the ba-sic theory, is, that when given an unstruc-tured stimulus, some shape-less blob of exper-ience, the sub­ ject, will seek to impose, struc-ture on it. how, he goes a-bout struc-tur­ ing this blob, will reflect his needs, his hopes-will provide, us with clues, to his dreams, fan-tasies, the deepest re-gions of his mind." eye­ brows going a mile a minute, extraordinarily fluid and graceful hand gestures, resembling-most likely it is deliberate, and who can blame 81 'pla!�(. a\\'�1 nlel�· unaer� inse, � j point� ross \\'� ------�----' . // i��' •• " .. ,.._ •••••• -r ••••• ._ • �l ••• " , rosie for trying to cash in-those of his most famous compatriot, thoughtherc're the inevitable bad side-effects: staff who swear they've seen him crawling headfirst down the north facade of "the "white visita­ tion," for example. "so we are re-ally, quite, in agree-ment, reverend doctor. a test, like the mmpi, is, in this respect, not adequate. it is, a struc-tured stimulus. the sub-ject can fal-sify, consciously, or repress, un-consciously. but with the projec-tive technique, nothing he can do, con-scious or otherwise, can pre-vent us, from fin-ding what we wish, to know. we, are in control. he, cannot help, himself." "must say it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, pointsman," smiles dr. aaron throwster. "your stimuli are more the structured sort, aren't they?" "let's say i find a certain shameful fascination." "let's not. don't tell me you're going to keep your fine pavlovian hand completely out of this." "well, not completely, throwster, no. since you've brought it up.we also happen to have in mind a very structured stimulus. same one, in fact, that got us interested to begin with. we want to expose slothropto the german rocket. . . ." overhead, on the molded plaster ceiling, methodist versions of christ's kingdom swarm: lions cuddle with lambs, fruit spills lushly andwithout pause into the arms and about the feet of gentlemen and ladies, swains and milkmaids. no one's expression is quite right. the wee crea­ tures leer, the fiercer beasts have a drugged or sedated look, and none of the humans have any eye-contact at all. the ceilings of "the white vis­ itation" aren't the only erratic thing about the place, either. it is a classic "folly," all right. the buttery was designed as an arabian harem in miniature, for reasons we can only guess at today, full of silks, fret­ work and peepholes. one of the libraries served, for a time, as a wallow, the floor dropped three feet and replaced with mud up to the thresholdsfor giant gloucestershire old spots to frolic, oink, and cool their sum­ mers in, to stare at the shelves of buckram books and wonder if they'dbe good eating. -whig eccentricity is carried in this house to most un­ healthy extremes. the rooms are triangular, spherical, walled up into mazes. portraits, studies in genetic curiosity, gape and smirk at you from every vantage. the w.c.s contain frescoes of clive and his elephants stomping the french at plassy, fountains that depict salome with the head of john (water gushing out ears, nose, and mouth), floor mosaics in which are tessellated together different versions of homo monstrosus, an interesting preoccupation of the time-cyclops, humanoid giraffe,centaur repeated in all directions. everywhere are archways, grottoes, 82 rlast bale fan�! mill rire! ilat � , cotta �ul from �cit wee une , dot meta nelo �rt· ao�l entl) oili b mel �nal b b �eel plaster floral arrangements, walls hung in threadbare velvet or brocade. balconies give out at unlikely places, overhung with gargoyles whose fangs have fetched not a few newcomers nasty cuts on the head. even in the worst rains, the monsters only just manage to drool-the rain­ pipes feeding them are centuries out of repair, running crazed over slates and beneath eaves, past cracked pilasters, dangling cupids, terra­ cotta facing on every floor, along with belvederes, rusticated joints, pseudo-italian columns, looming minarets, leaning crooked chimneys­ from a distance no two observers, no matter how close they stand, see quite the same building in that orgy of self-expression, added to by each succeeding owner, until the present war's requisitioning. topiary trees line the drive for a distance before giving way to larch and elm: ducks, bottles, snails, angels, and steeplechase riders they dwindle down the metaled road into their fallow silence, into the shadows under the tun­ nel of sighing trees. the sentry, a dark figure in white webbing, stands port-arms in your masked headlamps, and you must halt for him. the dogs, engineered and lethal, are watching you from the woods. pres­ ently, as evening comes on, a few bitter hakes of snow begin to fall. avlmu d d d d d d d better behave yourself or we'll send you back to dr. jamf! when jamf conditioned him, he threw away the stimulus. looks like dr. jamfs been by to see your little thing today, hasn't he? -neil nosepicket's book of 50,000 insults, §6.72, "awful offspring," the nayland smith press, cambridge (mass.), 1933 pudding: but isn't this­ pointsman: sir? pudding: isn't it all rather shabby, pointsman? meddling with an­ other man's mind this way? pointsman: brigadier, we're only following in a long line of experi­ ment and questioning. harvard university, the u.s. army? hardly sai�a shabby institutions. strom pudding: we can't, pointsman, it's beastly. �r�f pointsman: but the americans have already been at him! don't you ottoei see? it's not as if we're corrupting a virgin or something--�----' . //'j-�"""'!. . .. 0 •• _:........ • •••• • •••••• "::l pudding: do we have to do it because the americans do it? must we allow them to corrupt us? back around 1920, dr. laszlo j amf opined that if watson and raynercould successfully condition their "infant albert" into a reflex horror of everything furry, even of his own mother in a fur boa, then jamf couldcertainly do the same thing for his infant tyrone, and the baby's sexualreflex. jamf was at harvard that year, visiting from darmstadt. it was in the early part of his career, before he phased into organic chemistry (tobe as fateful a change of field as kekule's own famous switch into chem­ istry from architecture, a century before). for the experiment he had aslender grant from the national research council (under a continuingnrc program of psychological study which had begun during theworld war, when methods were needed for selecting officers and classi­ fying draftees). shoestring funding may have been why jamf, for his tar­ get reflex, chose an infant hardon. measuring secretions, as pavlov did,would have meant surgery. measuring "fear," the reflex watson chose,would have brought in too much subjectivity (what's fear? how much is"a lot"? who decides, when it's on-the-spot-in-the-field, and there isn'ttime to go through the long slow process of referring it up to the fearboard?). instrumentation just wasn't available in those days. the besthe might've done was the larson-keeler three-variable "lie detector,"but at the time it was still only experimental. but a hardon, that's either there, or it isn't. binary, elegant. the jobof observing it can even be done by a student. unconditioned stimulus = stroking penis with antiseptic cottonswab. unconditioned response = hardon. conditioned stimulus = x. conditioned response = hardon whenever x is present, stroking is nolonger necessary, all you need is that x. uh, x? well, what's x? why, it's the famous "mystery stimulus" that'sfascinated generations of behavioral-psychology students, is what it is.the average campus humor magazine carries 1.05 column inches peryear on the subject, which ironically is the exact mean length j amf re­ported for infant t.' s erection. now ordinarily, according to tradition in these matters, the littlesucker would have been de-conditioned. jamf would have, in pavlovian terms, "extinguished" the hardon reflex he'd built up, before he let thebaby go. most likely he did. but as ivan petrovich himself said, "notonly must we speak of partial or of complete extinction of a conditionedreflex, but we must also realize that extinction can proceed beyond the )'ea zero �et­ it, \� iliat! w tion' , t�a ered r( uonl oriv1 in� c zero00[( rc ii'ner oeno time even bq tnin� minq ea\\r e\ee� ooin! nee& ill) room iea, it' n� • �trike b napp' tnat point of reducing a reflex to zero. we cannot therefore judge the degree of extinction only by the magnitude of the reflex or its absence, since there can still be a silent extinction beyond the zero." italics are mr. pointsman's. can a conditioned reflex survive in a man, dormant, over 20 or 30 years? did dr. jamf extinguish only to zero-wait till the infant showed zero hardons in the presence of stimulus x, and then stop? did he for­ get-or ignore-the "silent extinction beyond the zero"? if he ignored it, why? did the national research council have anything to say about that? when slothrop was discovered, late in 1944, by "the white visita­ tion"-though many there have always known him as the famous infant tyrone-like the new world, different people thought they'd discov­ ered different things. roger mexico thinks it's a statistical oddity. but he feels the founda­ tions of that discipline trembling a bit now, deeper than oddity ought to drive. odd, odd, odd-think of the word: such white finality in its clos­ ing clap of tongue. it implies moving past the tongue-stop-bey�md the zero-and into the other realm. of course you don't move past. but you do realize, intellectually, that's how you ought to be moving. rollo groast thinks it's precognition. "slothrop is able to predict when a rocket will fall at a particular place. his survival to date is evi­ dence he's acted on advance information, and avoided the area at the time the rocket was supposed to fall." dr. groast is not sure how, or even if, sex comes into it. but edwin treacle, that most freudian of psychical researchers, thinks slothrop's gift is psychokinesis. slothrop is, with the force of his mind, causing the rockets to drop where they do. he may not be physi­ cally highballing them about the sky: but maybe he is fooling with the electrical signals inside the rocket's guidance system. however he's doing it, sex does come into dr. treacle's theory. "he subconsciously needs to abolish all trace of the sexual other, whom he symbolizes on his map, most significantly, as a star, that anal-sadistic emblem of class­ room success which so permeates elementary education in america. . . ." it's the map that spooks them all, the map slothrop's been keeping on his girls. the stars fall in a poisson distribution, just like the rocket strikes on roger mexico's map of the robot blitz. but, well, it's a bit more than the distribution. the two patterns also happen to be identical. they match up square for square. the slides that teddy bloat's been taking of slothrop's map have been projected 85 cor: ----=.-::=----u_ ---' . / ��'j""" :_ & ;;... �_ � .,�", /.�l onto roger's, and the two images, girl-stars and rocket-strike circles, demonstrated to coincide. helpfully, slothrop has dated most of his stars. a star always comes before its corresponding rocket strike. the strike can come as quickly as two days, or as slowly as ten. the mean lag is about 4 yz days. suppose, pointsman argues, that strobe's stimulus x was some loud noise, as it was in the watson-rayner experiment. suppose that, in slo­ throp's case, the hardon reflex wasn't completely extinguished. in that case he ought to be getting one on at any loud noise that's preceded bythe same kind of ominous buildup he would've found in jamf's lab-as dogs to this day find in pointsman's own lab. that points to the v-1: anydoodle close enough to make him jump ought to be giving him an erec­ tion: the sound of the motor razzing louder and louder, then the cutoff and silence, suspense building up-then the explosion. boing, a hardon. but oh, no. slothrop instead only gets erections when this sequence happens in reverse. explosion first, then the sound of approach: the v-2. but the stimulus, somehow, must be the rocket, some precursor wraith, some rocket's double present for slothrop in the percentage ofsmiles on a bus, menstrual cycles being operated upon in some mysteri­ ous way-what does make the little doxies do it for free? are there fluctuations in the sexual market, in pornography or prostitutes, perhaps tying in to prices on the stock exchange itself, that we clean-living lot know nothing about? does news from the front affect the itch between their pretty thighs, does desire grow directly or inversely as the real chance of sudden death-damn it, what cue, right in front of our eyes,that we haven't the subtlety of heart to see? . . . but if it's in the air, right here, right now, then the rockets follow from it, 100% of the time. no exceptions. when we find it, we'll have shown again the stone determinacy of everything, of every soul. there will be precious little room for any hope at all. you can see how impor­ tant a discovery like that would be. they walk down past the snow-drifted kennel runs, pointsman in glastonburys and fawn-colored british warm, mexico wearing a scarf jessica's lately knitted him whipping landward a scarlet dragon's tongue-this day the coldest so far of the winter, 39 degrees of frost.down to the cliffs, faces freezing, down to the deserted beach. waves run up, slide away to leave great crescents of ice fine as skin and daz­ zling in the weak sunlight. the boots of the two men crunch through tosand or shingle. the very bottom of the year. they can hear the guns inflanders today, all the way across the channel on the wind. the ab­ bey's ruin stands gray and crystal up on the cliff. de fio na �r ca 01 to na a lli 86 ;£11.,.,. : .,_. .. �' '.".. ,. ., ->-. �: � < ' <; circl� last night, in the house at the edge of the stay-away town, jessica, snuggling, afloat, just before sleep was to take them, whispered, "roger ... what about the girls?" that was all she said. but it brought roger wide awake. and bone-tired as he was, he lay staring for another hour, wondering about the girls. now, knowing he ought to let it go, "pointsrnan, what if edwin trea­ cle is right? that it's pk. what if slothrop's-not even consciously­ making them fall where they do?" "well. you lot'd have something then, wouldn't you." "but . . . why should he. if they are falling wherever he's been-" "perhaps he hates women." "i'm serious." "mexico. are you actually worried?" "i don't know. perhaps i wondered if it might tie in, in any way, with your ultraparadoxical phase. perhaps ... i want to know what you're really looking for." above them now throb a flight of b-17s, bound somewhere uncom­ mon today, well out of the usual corridors of flight. behind these for­ tresses the undersides of the cold clouds are blue, and their smooth bil­ lows are veined in blue-elsewhere touched with grayed-out pink or purple.... wings and stabilizers are shadowed underneath in dark gray. the shadows softly feather lighter up around curves of fuselage or nacelle. spinners emerge from hooded dark inside the cowlings, spin­ ning props invisible, the light of the sky catching all vulnerable surfaces a uniform bleak gray. the planes drone along, stately, up in the zero sky, shedding frost as it builds, sowing the sky behind in white ice-fur­ rows, their own color matching certain degrees of cloud, all the tiny windows and openings in soft blackness, the perspex nose shining back forever warped and streaming cloud and sun. inside it is black obsidian. pointsman has been talking about paranoia and the "idea of the oppo­ site." he has scribbled in the book exclamation points and how trues all about the margins of pavlov's open letter to janet concerning the sentiments d'emprise, and of chapter lv, "an attempt at a physiologi­ cal interpretation of obsessions and of paranoia" -he can't help this bit of rudeness, although the agreement among the seven owners was not to mark up the book-it was too valuable for that sort of thing, they'd had to put in a guinea apiece. it was sold him on the sly, in the dark, during a luftwaffe raid (most existing copies had been destroyed in their warehouse early in the battle of britain). pointsman never even saw the seller's face, the man vanishing into the hoarse auditory dawn of the all-clear, leaving the doctor and the book, the dumb sheaf already 87 -------�---� ••,,.-.• � : •••••••••••••••••••••.•...••. c. . «�: _ . _. //. ,.f;� heating up, moistening in his tight hand . . . yes it might have been a rare work of erotica, certainly that coarse hand-set look to the type ... the crudities in phrasing, as if dr. horsley gantt's odd translation were in cipher: the plaintext listing shameful delights, criminal transports. . . . and how much of the pretty victim straining against her bonds does ned pointsman see in each dog that visits his test stands ... and aren't scalpel and probe as decorative, as fine extensions as whip andcane? surely the volume preceding the book-the first forty-one lectures -came to him at age 28 like a mandate from the submontane venus he could not resist: to abandon harley street for a journey more and more deviant, deliciously on, into a labyrinth of conditioned-reflex work in which only now, thirteen years along the clew, he's beginning to circle back, trip across old evidence of having come that path before, here and there to confront consequences of his younger, total embrace. . . . but she did warn him-did she not? was he ever listening?-of the deferred payment, in its full amount. venus and ariadne! she seemed worth any price, the labyrinth looking, in those days, too intricate for them-the twilit pimps who made the arrangement between a version of himself, a cryptopointsman, and his fate . . . too varied, he thought then, ever tofind him in. but he knows now. too far in, preferring not to face it just yet, he knows that they only wait, stone and sure-these agents of the syndicate she must also pay-wait in the central chamber, as he draws closer. . . . they own everything: ariadne, the minotaur, even, points­ man fears, himself. he gets flashes of them these days, naked, athletes poised and breathing about the chamber, terrible penises up mineral astheir eyes, which glisten with frost or flakes of mica, but not with lust, or for him. it's only a job they have. . . . "pierre janet-sometimes the man talked like an oriental mystic. hehad no real grasp of the opposites. 'the act of injuring and the act of being injured are joined in the behavior of the whole injury.' speakerand spoken-of, master and slave, virgin and seducer, each pair mostconveniently coupled and inseparablethe last refuge of the incorrigi­bly lazy, mexico, is just this sort of yang-yin rubbish. one avoids all manner of unpleasant lab work that way, but what has one said?" "i don't want to get into a religious argument with you," absence ofsleep has mexico more cranky today than usual, "but i wonder if youpeople aren't a bit too-well, strong, on the virtues of analysis. i mean, once you've taken it all apart, fine, i'll be first to applaud your industry.but other than a lot of bits and pieces lying about, what have you said?"it isn't the sort of argument pointsman relishes either. but he glances 88 . iliar ilielta\ or! in ta\ trall 'ot\ b d' • 10� 1 iii lou 1101m� i an \v i ill j " am sharply at this young anarchist in his red scarf. "pavlov believed that the ideal, the end we all struggle toward in science, is the true mechani­ cal explanation. he was realistic enough not to expect it in his lifetime. or in several lifetimes more. but his hope was for a long chain of better and better approximations. his faith ultimately lay in a pure physiologi­ cal basis for the life of the psyche. no effect without cause, and a clear train of linkages." "it's not my forte, of course," mexico honestly wishing not to offend the man, but really, "but there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may have been taken as far as it will go. that for science to carryon at all, it must look for a less narrow, a less . . . sterile set of assumptions. the next great breakthrough may come when we have the courage to junk cause-and-effect entirely, and strike off at some other angle." "no-not 'strike off.' regress. you're 30 years old, man. there are no 'other angles.' there is only forward-into it-or backward." mexico watches the wind tugging at the skirts of pointsman's coat. a gull goes screaming away sidewise along the frozen berm. the chalk cliffs rear up above, cold and serene as death. early barbarians of eu­ rope who ventured close enough to this coast saw these white barriers through the mist, and knew then where their dead had been taken to. pointsman has turned now, and . . . oh, god. he is smiling. there is something so ancient in its assumption of brotherhood that-not now, but a few months from now, with spring prevailing and the war in eu­ rope ended-roger will remember the smile-it will haunt him-as the most evil look he has ever had from a human face. they've paused in their walking. roger stares back at the man. the antimexico. "ideas of the opposite" themselves, but on what cortex, what winter hemisphere? what ruinous mosaic, facing outward into the waste . . . outward from the sheltering city . . . readable only to those who journey outside ... eyes in the distance ... barbarians ... riders.... "we both have slothrop," is what pointsman has just said. "pointsman-what are you expecting out of this? besides glory, i mean." "no more than pavlov. a physiological basis for what seems very odd behavior. i don't care which of your p.r.s. categories it may fit into­ oddly enough none of you's even suggested telepathy: perhaps he's tuned in to someone over there, someone who knows the german firing schedule ahead of time. eh? and i don't care if it's some terrible freud­ ian revenge against his mother for trying to castrate him or something. i am not grandiose, mexico. i am modest, methodical-" 89 "humble." "i have set myself limitations in this. 1 have only the reversal of rocket sounds to go on . . . his clinical history of sexual conditioning,perhaps to auditory stimuli, and what appears to be a reversal of cause­ and-effect. i'm not as ready as you to junk cause-and-effect, but if it does need modifying-so be it." "but what are you after?" "you've seen his mmpi. his f scale? falsifications, distorted thought processes. . . . the scores show it clearly: he's psychopathically de­viant, obsessive, a latent paranoiac-well, pavlov believed that obses­ sions and paranoid delusions were a result of certain-call them cells, neurons, on the mosaic of the brain, being excited to the level where, through reciprocal induction, all the area around becomes inhibited. one bright, burning point, surrounded by darkness. darkness it has, in a way, called up. cut off, this bright point, perhaps to the end of the pa­tient's life, from all other ideas, sensations, self-criticisms that mighttemper its flame, restore it to normalcy. he called it a 'point of patho­logical inertia.' we're working right now with a dog ... he's been through the 'equivalent' phase, where any stimulus, strong or weak,calls up exactly the same number of saliva drops . . . and on throughthe 'paradoxical' phase-strong stimuli getting weak responses and vice versa. yesterday we got him to go ultraparadoxical. beyond. when weturn on the metronome that used to stand for food-that once made dog vanya drool like a fountain-now he turns away. when we shut offthe metronome, oh then he'll turn to it, sniff, try to lick it, bite it-seek,in the silence, for the stimulus that is not there. pavlov thought that allthe diseases of the mind could be explained, eventually, by the ultrapar­adoxical phase, the pathologically inert points on the cortex, the confu­ sion of ideas of the opposite. he died at the very threshold of puttingthese things on an experimental basis. but 1 live. 1 have the funding, andthe time, and the will. slothrop is a strong imperturbable. it won't be easy to send him into any of the three phases. we may finally have tostarve, terrorize, 1 don't know ... it needn't come to that. but 1 will find his spots of inertia, 1 will find what they are if 1 have to open up hisdamned skull, and how they are isolated, and perhaps solve the mysteryof why the rockets are falling as they do-though 1 admit that was moreof a sop to get your support." "why?" a bit uneasy, there, mexico? "why do you need me?""i don't know. but 1 do." "you're obsessed." "mexico." standing very still, seaward half of his face seeming to go have aged fifty years in the instant, watching the tide three full times leave behind its sterile film of ice. "help me." i can't help anyone, roger thinks. why is he so tempted? it's danger­ ous and perverse. he does want to help, he feels the same unnatural fear of slothrop that jessica does. what about the girls? it may be his loneliness in psi section, in a persuasion he can't in his heart share, nor quite abandon . . . their faith, even smileless gloaming's, that there must be more, beyond the senses, beyond death, beyond the probabili­ ties that are all roger has to believe in.... oh jessie, his face against her bare, sleeping, intricately boned and tendoned back, i'm out of my depth in this. . . . halfway between the water and the coarse sea-grass, a long stretch of pipe and barbed wire rings in the wind. the black latticework is propped up by longer slanting braces, lances pointing out to sea. an abandoned and mathematical look: stripped to the force-vectors hold­ ing it where it is, doubled up in places one row behind another, moving as pointsman and mexico begin to move again, backward in thick moire, repeated uprights in parallax against repeated diagonals, and the snarls of wire below interfering more at random. far away, where it curves into the haze, the openwork wall goes gray. after last night's snowfall, each line of the black scrawl was etched in white. but today wind and sand have blown the dark iron bare again, salted, revealing, in places, brief streaks of rust . . . in others, ice and sunlight turn the con­ struction to electric-white lines of energy. farther up, past buried land mines and antitank posts of corroding concrete, up in a pillbox covered with netting and sod, halfway up the cliff, young dr. bleagh and his nurse ivy are relaxing after a difficult lo­ botomy. his scrubbed and routinized fingers dart in beneath her sus­ pender straps, pull outward, release in a sudden great smack and ho-ho­ ho from bleagh as she jumps and laughs too, trying not too hard to squirm away. they lie on a bed of faded old nautical charts, mainte­ nance manuals, burst sandbags and spilled sand, burned matchsticks and unraveled cork-tips from cigarettes long decomposed that com­ forted through the nights of '41 and the sudden rush of heart at any glimpse of a light at sea. "you're mad," she whispers. ''i'm randy," he smiles, and snaps her garter again, boy-and-slingshot. in the uplands a line of cylindrical blocks to cripple the silent king tigers that now will never roll the land chains away like so many white muffins across the dun pasture, among the low patches of snow and the pale lime outcrops. out on a little pond the black man is down from london, ice-skating, improbable as a zouave, riding his blades tall, dig91 nified, as if born to them and ice not desert. small townschildren scatter before him, close enough to have their cheeks stung by curved wakes of powdered ice whenever he turns. until he smile they dare not speak,only follow, tag, flirt, wanting the smile, fearing it, wanting it.... hehas a magic face, a face they know. from the shore, myron gruntonand edwin treacle, both chain-smoking, brooding over operationblack wing and the credibility of the schwarzkommando, watch their magic negro, their prototype, neither caring to risk the ice, loping fen or any style, in front of these children. the winter's in suspense-all the sky a bleak, luminous gel. down onthe beach, pointsman fishes a roll of toilet paper, each sheet stenciled property of h.m. government, from a pocket to blow his nose. rogernow and then pushes hair back under his cap. neither speaks. so, thetwo of them: trudging, hands in and out of pockets, their figures dwin­dling, fawn and gray and a lick of scarlet, very sharp-edged, their foot­ prints behind them a long freezing progress of exhausted stars, the over­ cast reflecting from the glazed beach nearly white. . . . we have lost them. noone listened to those early conversations-not even an idle snapshot survives. they walked till that winter hid them and it seemed the cruel channel itself would freeze over, and no one, none of us,could ever completely find them again. their footprints filled with ice,and a little later were taken out to sea. o 0 0 0 dod in silence, hidden from her, the camera follows as she moves deliber­ ately nowhere longlegged about the rooms, an adolescent wideness and hunching to the shoulders, her hair not bluntly dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown, yesterday'snew perm leaving her very blonde hair frozen on top in a hundred vorti­ ces, shining through the dark filigree. widest lens-opening this after­ noon, extra tungsten light laid on, this rainiest day in recent memory,rocket explosions far away to south and east now and then visiting themaisonette, rattling not the streaming windows but only the doors, inslow threeand fourfold shudderings, like poor spirits, desperate for company, asking to be let in, only a moment, a touch . . . she's alone in the house, except for the secret cameraman and osbie feel, who's out in the kitchen, doing something mysterious with a har­vest of mushrooms from up on the roof. they have shiny red-orange cups with raised patches of whitish-gray veil. now and then the geome92 try of her restlessness brings her to glance in a doorway at his boyish fussing with the amanita muscaria (for it is this peculiar relative of the poisonous destroying angel that claims osbie's attention, or what passes with him for attention)-flash him a smile she means to be friendly but which to osbie seems terribly worldly, sophisticated, wicked. she being the first dutch girl he's ever spoken to, he's surprised at finding high heels instead of wooden shoes, struck in fact a bit witless by her so groomed and (he imagines) continental style, the intellect be­ hind the fair-lashed eyes or dark glasses she affects out on the street, be­ hind the traces of baby fat, the dimples countersunk each side of her mouth. (in close-up her skin, though nearly perfect, is seen to be lightly powdered and rouged, the eyelashes a touch darkened, brows reshaped a matter of two or three empty follicles. . . .) what can young osbie possibly have in mind? he is carefully scrap­ ing out the inside of each persimmon-colored mushroom cup and shred­ ding the rest. dispossessed elves run around up on the roof, gibbering. he now has a growing heap of orange-gray fungus, which he proceeds to add in fistfuls to a pot of steaming water. a previous batch also sim­ mers atop the stove, reduced to a thick gruel covered with yellow scum, which osbie now removes and purees further in pirate's blending ma­ chine. then he spreads the fungoid mush over a tin cookie sheet. he opens the oven, removes with asbestos potholders another sheet cov­ ered with dark caked dust, and replaces it with the one he has just pre­ pared. with a mortar and pestle he pulverizes the substance and dumps it into an old huntley & palmers biscuit tin, reserving only enough to roll deftly up in a rizla liquorice cigarette paper, light, and inhale the smoke of. but she happens to've glanced in just at the instant osbie opened the echoing oven. the camera records no change in her face, but why does she stand now so immobile at the door? as if the frame were to be stopped and prolonged into just such a lengthwise moment of gold fresh and tarnished, innocence microscopically masked, her elbow slightly bent, hand resting against the wall, fingers fanned on the pale orange paper as if she touches her own skin, a pensive touch. . . . outside, the long rain in silicon and freezing descent smacks, desolate, slowly corro­ sive against the mediaeval windows, curtaining like smoke the river's far shore. this city, in all its bomb-pierced miles: this inexhaustibly knotted victim . . . skin of glistening roofslates, sooted brick flooded high about each window dark or lit, each of a million openings vulnerable to the gloom of this winter day. the rain washes, drenches, fills the gutters singing, the city receives it, lifting, in a perpetual shrug .... with a d�il 93 squeak and metal slam the oven is closed again, but for katje it will never close. she has posed before the mirrors too often today, knows her hair and make-up are perfect, admires the frock they have brought her from harvey nicholls, a sheer crepe that flows in from padded shoul­ ders down to a deep point between her breasts, a rich cocoa shade known as "nigger" in this country, yards and yards of this delicious silk spun and thrown, tied loosely at the waist, soft pleats falling to her knees. the cameraman is pleased at the unexpected effect of so much flowing crepe, particularly when katje passes before a window and the rainlight coming through changes it for a few brief unshutterings to murky glass, charcoal-saturated, antique and weather-worn, frock, face, hair, hands, slender calves all gone to glass and glazing, for the celluloid instant poised-the translucent guardian of a rainfall shaken through all day by rocket blasts near and far, downward, dark and ruinous behind her the ground which, for the frames' passage, defines her. at the images she sees in the mirror katje also feels a cameraman's pleasure, but knows what he cannot: that inside herself, enclosed in the soignee surface of dear fabric and dead cells, she is corruption and ashes, she belongs in a way none of them can guess cruelly to the oven ... to der kinderofen ... remembering now his teeth, long, terrible, veined with bright brown rot as he speaks these words, the yellow teeth of captain blicero, the network of stained cracks, and back in his night­ breath, in the dark oven of himself, always the coiled whispers of decay. . . . she recalls his teeth before any other feature, teeth were to benefit most directly from the oven: from what is planned for her, and for gottfried. he never uttered it clearly as threat, nor ever addressed to ei­ ther of them directly, but rather across her trained satin thighs to the evening's guests, or down the length of gottfried's docile spine ("theromeberlin axis" he called it the night the italian came and they wereall on the round bed, captain blicero plugged into gottfried's upendedasshole and the italian at the same time into his pretty mouth) katje only passive, bound and gagged and false-eyelashed, serving tonight ashuman pillow for the italian's whitening perfumed curls (roses and fat just at the edge of turning rancid) . . . each utterance a closed flower, capable of exfoliation and infinite revealing (she thinks of a mathemati­ cal function that will expand for her bloom-like into a power series with no general term, endlessly, darkly, though never completely by surprise) . . . his phrase padre ignacio unfolding into spanish inquisitor, blackrobes, brown arching nose, the suffocating smell of incense + confes­ sor / executioner + katje and gottfried both kneeling, side by side indark confessional + children out of old marchen kneeling, knees cold 94 and aching, before the oven, whispering to it secrets they can tell no one else + captain blicero's witch-paranoia, suspecting them both, katje despite her nsb credentials + the oven as listener/avenger + katje kneeling before blicero in highest drag, black velvet and cuban heels, his penis squashed invisible under a flesh-colored leather jockstrap, over which he wears a false cunt and merkin of sable both handcrafted in berlin by the notorious mme. ophir, the mock labia and bright purple clitoris molded of-madame had been abject, pleading shortages-synthetic rubber and mipolam, the new polyvinyl chloride ... tiny blades of stainless steel bristle from lifelike pink humidity, hundreds of them, against which katje, kneeling, is obliged to cut her lips and tongue, and then kiss blood-abstracts across the golden unges­ soed back of her "brother" gottfried. brother in play, in slavery ... she had never seen him before coming to the requisitioned house near the firing sites, hidden in the woods and parkland of this settled tongue of small farms and estates that reaches eastward from the royal city, be­ tween two expanses of polder, toward wassenaar-yet his face, for that first time, seen in autumn sunlight through the great west window of the drawing-room, kneeling naked except for a studded dog collar, mastur­ bating metronomic, at shouted commands from captain blicero, all his fair skin stained by afternoon a luminous synthetic orange she has never before associated with skin, his penis a blood monolith, its thickly gasp­ ing mouth audible in the carpeted silence, his face raised to none of them, but as if to something on the ceiling, or in the sky which ceilings may in his vision stand for, eyes-down as he seems most of the time to be-his face, ascending, tightening, coming, is so close to what she's been seeing all her life in mirrors, her own studied mannequin's stare, that she catches her breath, feels for a moment the speeded percussion of her heart, before turning just such a stare toward blicero. he is de­ lighted. "perhaps," he tells her, "i will cut your hair." he smiles at gottfried. "perhaps i'll have him grow his." the humiliation would be good for the boy each morning at quarters, ranked with his battery near schubstelle 3, where horses thundered once before the frantic, the los­ ing railbirds of the old peace-failing inspections time after time yet protected by his captain from army discipline. instead, between firings, day or night, short of sleep, odd hours, suffering the captain's own "hexeszuchtigung." but did blicero also cut her hair? she can't re­ member now. she knows she wore gottfried's uniforms once or twice (pushing her hair, yes, up under his forage cap), looking easily his dou­ ble, spending these nights "in the cage," as blicero has set the rules, while gottfried must wear her silk stockings, her lace apron and cap, all nee)['(l: 95 her satin and her ribboned organdy. but afterward he must always go back again to the cage. that's how it is. their captain allows no doubt as to which, brother or sister, really is maidservant, and which fattening goose. how seriously is she playing? in a conquered country, one's own oc­ cupied country, it's better, she believes, to enter into some formal, ra­ tionalized version of what, outside, proceeds without form or decent limit day and night, the summary executions, the roustings, beatings, subterfuge, paranoia, shame . . . though it is never discussed amongthem openly, it would seem katje, gottfried, and captain blicero have agreed that this northern and ancient form, one they all know and are comfortable with-the strayed children, the wood-wife in the edible house, the captivity, the fattening, the oven-shall be their preserving routine, their shelter, against what outside none of them can bear-the war, the absolute rule of chance, their own pitiable contingency here, in its midst. . . . it isn't safe, even inside, in the house . . . nearly every day a rocket misfires. late in october, not far from this estate, one fell back and ex­ ploded, killing 12 of the ground crew, breaking windows for hundreds of meters all around, including the west window of the drawing-room where katje first saw her golden game-brother. the official rumor stated that only fuel and oxidizer had gone off. but captain blicero, with a trembling-she must say nihilistic-pleasure, said that the amatol charge in the warhead had also exploded, making them as much target as launch site. . . . that they were all condemned. the house lies west of the duindigt racecourse, quite the other direction from london, but no bearing is exempt-often the rockets, crazed, turn at random, whinnying terribly in the sky, turn about and fall according each to its madness so unreachable and, it is feared, incurable. when there's time to, their owners destroy them, by radio, in mid-convulsion. between rocket launches there are the english raids. spitfires come roaring inlow over the dark sea at suppertime, the searchlights in the city stag­ gering on, the after-hum of sirens hangs in the sky high above the wet iron seats in the parks, the aa guns chug, searching, and the bombs fall in woodland, in polder, among flats thought to be billeting rocket troops. it adds an overtone to the game, which changes the timbre slightly. itis she who, at some indefinite future moment, must push the witch into the oven intended for gottfried. so the captain must allow for the real chance she's a british spy, or member of the dutch underground. de­ spite all german efforts, intelligence inputs still flow from holland back 96 to raf bomber command in a steady torrent, telling of deployments, supply routes, of which dark-green crumble of trees may hide an a4 emplacement-data changing hour-to-hour, so mobile are the rockets and their support equipment. but the spitfires will settle for a power station, a liquid-oxygen supply, a battery commander's billet ... that's the intriguing question. will katje feel her obligation canceled by some­ day calling down english fighter-bombers on this very house, her game's prison, though it mean death? captain blicero can't be sure. up to a point he finds the agony delightful. certainly her record with mussert's people is faultless, she's credited with smelling out at least three crypto­ jewish families, she attends meetings faithfully, she works at a luft­ waffe resort near scheveningen, where her superiors find her efficient and cheerful, no shirker. nor, like so many of them, using party fanati­ cism to cover a lack of ability. perhaps there's the only shadow of warn­ ing: her commitment is not emotional. she appears to have reasons for being in the party. a woman with some background in mathematics, and with reasons.... "want the change," rilke said, "0 be inspired by the flame!" to laurel, to nightingale, to wind ... wanting it, to be taken, to embrace, to fall toward the flame growing to fill all the senses and . . . not to love because it was no longer possible to act . . . but to be helplessly in a condition of love. . . . but not katje: no mothlike plunge. he must conclude that secretly she fears the change, choosing instead only trivially to revise what mat­ ters least, ornament and clothing, going no further than politic transves­ tism, not only in gottfried's clothing, but even in traditional masochist uniform, the french-maid outfit so inappropriate to her tall, longlegged stride, her blondeness, her questing shoulders like wings-she plays at this only . . . plays at playing. he can do nothing. among dying reich, orders lapsing to paper im­ potence he needs her so, needs gottfried, the straps and whips leathern, real in his hands which still feel, her cries, the red welts across the boy's buttocks, their mouths, his penis, fingers and toes-in all the winter these are sure, can be depended on-he can give you no reason but in his heart he trusts, perhaps only, by now, in the form, this out of all marchen und sagen, trusts that this charmed house in the forest will be preserved, that no bombs could ever fall here by accident, only be­ trayal, only if katje really were a spotter for the english and bade them -and he knows she cannot: that through some magic, below the bone resonance of any words, a british raid is the one prohibited shape of all possible pushes from behind, into the oven's iron and final summer. it will come, it will, his destiny . . . not that way-but it will come. . � dill fo� 1[0, i\j� 97 und nicht einmal sein schritt klingt aus dem tonlosen los. . . . of all hilke's poetry it's this tenth elegy he most loves, can feel the bitter lager of yearning begin to prickle behind eyes and sinuses at remem­ bering any passage of ... the newly-dead youth, embracing his la­ ment, his last link, leaving now even her marginally human touch for­ ever, climbing all alone, terminally alone, up and up into the mountains of primal pain, with the wildly alien constellations overhead. . . . and not once does his step ring from the soundless destiny.... it's he, bli­ cero, who climbs the mountain, has been so climbing for nearly 20 years, since long before he embraced the reich's flame, since siidwest ... alone. no matter what flesh was there to appease the witch, canni­ bal, and sorcerer, flourishing implements of pain-alone, alone. he doesn't even know the witch, can't understand the hunger that defines him/her, is only, in times of weakness, bewildered that it should coexist in the same body as himself. an athlete and his skill, separate aware­ nesses. . . . young rauhandel at least had said so . . . how many years back into the peace . . . blicero had watched his young friend (even then already so blatantly, so pathetically doomed to some form of east­ ern front) inside a bar, out in the street, wearing whatever tight or awk­ ward suit, whatever fragile shoes, react in all grace to the football which jokers would recognizing him toss out of nowhere-the deathless per­ formances! that one impromptu boot so impossibly high, so perfectly parabolic, the ball soaring miles to pass exactly between the two tall, phallic electric columns of the ufa-theatre on the friedrichstrasse ... the head-control he could keep up for city blocks, for hours, the feet ar­ ticulate as poetry.... yet he could only shake his head, wanting to be a good fellow when they asked, but unable really to say-"it's . . . it happens . . . the muscles do it-" then recalling an old trainer's words -"it's muscular," smiling beautifully and already, by the act, con­ scripted, already cannon fodder, the pale bar-light across the grating ofhis close-shaved skull-"it's reflexes, you see. . . . not me. . . . justthereflexes." when did it begin to change for blicero, among those days,from lust to simple sorrow, dumb as rauhandel's amazement with his own talent? he has seen so many of these rauhandels, especially since'39, harboring the same mysterious guests, strangers, often no more bi­ zarre than a gift for being always where shells were not ... do any ofthem, this raw material, "want the change"? do they even know? he doubts it. . . . their reflexes are only being used, hundreds of thousands at a time, by others-by royal moths the flame has inspired. blicero has lost, years ago, all his innocence on this question. so his destiny is theoven: while the strayed children, who never knew, who change nothing 98 but uniforms and cards of identity, will survive and prosper long beyond his gases and cinders, his chimney departure. so, so. a wandervogel in the mountains of pain. it's been going on for much too long, he has cho­ sen the game for nothing if not the kind of end it will bring him, nicht wahr? too old these days, grippes taking longer to pass, stomach too often in day-long agony, eyes measurably blinder with each examina­ tion, too "realistic" to prefer a hero's death or even a soldier's. he only wants now to be out of the winter, inside the oven's warmth, darkness, steel shelter, the door behind him in a narrowing rectangle of kitchen­ light gonging shut, forever. the rest is foreplay. yet he cares, more than he should and puzzled that he does, about the children-about their motives. he gathers it is their freedom they look for, yearningly as he for the oven, and such perversity haunts and depresses him . . . he returns again and again to the waste and senseless image of what was a house in the forest, reduced now to crumbs and sugar-smears, the black indomitable oven all that remains, and the two children, the peak of sweet energy behind them, hunger beginning again, wandering away into a green blankness of trees. . . . where will they go, where shelter the nights? the improvidence of children . . . and the civil paradox of this their little state, whose base is the same oven which must destroy it. . . . but every true god must be both organizer and destroyer. brought up into a christian ambience, this was difficult for him to see until his jour­ ney to siidwest: until his own african conquest. among the abrading fires of the kalahari, under the broadly-sheeted coastal sky, fire and water, he learned. the herero boy, long tormented by missionaries into a fear of christian sins, jackal-ghosts, potent european strand-wolves, pursuing him, seeking to feed on his soul, the precious worm that lived along his backbone, now tried to cage his old gods, snare them in words, give them away, savage, paralyzed, to this scholarly white who seemed so in love with language. carrying in his kit a copy of the duino elegies, just off the presses when he embarked for siidwest, a gift from mother at the boat, the odor of new ink dizzying his nights as the old freighter plunged tropic after tropic . . . until the constellations, like the new stars of pain-land, had become all unfamiliar and the earth's seasons re­ versed . . . and he came ashore in a high-prowed wooden boat that had 20 years earlier brought blue-trousered troops in from the iron road­ stead to crush the great herero rising. to find, back in the hinterland, up in an outstretch of broken mountains between the namib and the kalahari, his own faithful native, his night-flower. an impassable waste of rock blasted at by the sun . . . miles of canaeaw('ii: n, )o�nr niliehlj' 'cn)tr� �i t1ef� i lvanfu�1 -"ifl" trainer'h ilieart iliewa� " "j� n� ili011! ment\\iffi peci�j� , blicero: estinr�! geno� 99 yons twisting nowhere, drifted at the bottoms with white sand turning a cold, queenly blue as the afternoons lengthened. . . . we make ndiambi karunga now, omuhona ... a whisper, across the burning thorn branches where the german conjures away energies present out­ side the firelight with his slender book. he looks up in alarm. the boy wants to fuck, but he is using the herero name of god. an extraordi­ nary chill comes over the white man. he believes, like the rhenish mis­ sionary society who corrupted this boy, in blasphemy. especially out here in the desert, where dangers he can't bring himself to name even in cities, even in daylight, gather about, wings folded, buttocks touchingthe cold sand, waiting. . . . tonight he feels the potency of every word: words are only an eye-twitch away from the things they stand for. the peril of buggering the boy under the resonance of the sacred name fills him insanely with lust, lust in the face-the mask-of instant talion from outside the fire ... but to the boy ndjambi karunga is what hap­ pens when they couple, that's all: god is creator and destroyer, sun and darkness, all sets of opposites brought together, including black and white, male and female . . . and he becomes, in his innocence, ndjambi karunga's child (as are all his preterite clan, relentlessly, beyond their own history) here underneath the european's sweat, ribs, gut-muscles,cock (the boy's own muscles staying fiercely tight for what seems hours, as if he intends to kill, but not a word, only the long, clonic, thick slices of night that pass over their bodies). what did i make of him? captain blicero knows that the african at this moment is halfway across germany, deep in the harz, and that, should the oven this winter close behind him, why they have alreadysaid auf wiedersehen for the last time. he sits, stomach crawling,glands stuffed with malaise, bowed over the console, inside the swarm­ painted launch-control car. the sergeants at motor and steering panels are out taking a cigarette break-he's alone at the controls. outside, through the dirty periscope, gnarled fog unloosens from the bright zoneof frost that belly-bands the reared and shadowy rocket, where the liq­uid-oxygen tank's being topped off. trees press close: overhead you seebarely enough sky for the rocket's ascent. the bodenplatte-concreteplate laid over strips of steel-is set inside a space defined by three trees, blazed so as to triangulate the exact bearing, 2600, to london.the symbol used is a rude mandala, a red circle with a thick black cross inside, recognizable as the ancient sun-wheel from which tradition saysthe swastika was broken by the early christians, to disguise their outlaw symbol. two nails are driven into the tree at the center of the cross. next to one of the painted blaze-marks, the most westerly, someone has i . i 100 is iv��i[ scratched in the bark with the point of a bayonet the words in hoc signo vinces. no one in the battery will admit to this act. perhaps it is the work of the underground. but it has not been ordered removed. pale yellow stump-tops wink around the bodenplatte, fresh chips and sawdust mix with older fallen leaves. the smell, childlike, deep, is con­ fused by petrol and alcohol. rain threatens, perhaps, today, snow. the crews move nervously gray-green. shiny black india-rubber cables snake away into the forest to connect the ground equipment with the dutch grid's 380 volts. erwartung. . . . for some reason he finds it harder these days to remember. what is framed, dirt-blurry, in the prisms, the ritual, the daily iteration inside these newly cleared triangles in the forests, has taken over what used to be memory's random walk, its innocent image-gathering. his time away, with katje and gottfried, has become shorter and more precious as the tempo of firings quickens. though the boy is in blicero's unit, the cap­ tain hardly sees him when they're on duty-a flash of gold helping the surveyors chain the kilometers out to the transmitting station, the gut­ tering brightness of his hair in the wind, vanishing among trees. . . . how strangely opposite to the african-a color-negative, yellow and blue. the captain, in some sentimental overflow, some precognition, gave his african boy the name "enzian," after hilke's mountainside gentian of nordic colors, brought down like a pure word to the valleys: bringt doch der wanderer auch vom hange des bergrands nicht eine hand voll erde ins tal, die aile unsagliche, sondern ein erworbenes wort, reines, den gelben und blaun enzian. "omuhona. . . . look at me. i'm red, and brown . . . black, omu­ hona.... " "liebchen, this is the other half of the earth. in germany you would be yellow and blue." mirror-metaphysics. self-enchanted by what he imagined elegance, his bookish symmetries. . . . and yet why speak so purposeless to the arid mountain, the heat of the day, the savage flower from whom he drank, so endlessly . . . why lose those words into the mirage, the yellow sun and freezing blue shadows in the ravines, unless it was prophesying, beyond all predisaster syndrome, beyond the terror of contemplating his middle age however glancingly, however impossi­ ble the chance of any "providing"-beyond was something heaving, stirring, forever below, forever before his words, something then that could see a time coming terrible, at least as terrible as this winter and 101 the shape to which the war has now grown, a shape making unavoid­ able the shape of one last jigsaw piece: this oven-game with the yel­ lowhaired and blue eyed youth and silent doubleganger katje (who was her opposite number in siidwest? what black girl he never saw, hidden ' \ always in the blinding sun, the hoarse and cindered passage of the trains at night, a constellation of dark stars no one, no anti-rilke, had named ...)-but 1944 was much too late for any of it to matter. those symmetries were all prewar luxury. nothing's left him to prophesy. least of all her sudden withdrawal from the game. the one variation he didn't provide for, perhaps indeed because he never saw the black girl either. perhaps the black girl is a genius of meta-solutions-knock­ ing over the chessboard, shooting the referee. but after the act of wounding, breaking, what's to become of the little oven-state? can't it be fixed? perhaps a new form, one more appropriate . . . the archer and his son, and the shooting of the apple . . . yes and the war itself as ty­ rant king . . . it can still be salvaged can't it, patched up, roles re­ assigned, no need to rush outside where . . . gottfried, in the cage, watches her slip her bonds and go. fair and slender, the hair on his legs only visible in sunlight and then as a fine, imponderable net of gold, his eyelids already wrinkling in oddly young/ old signatures, flourishes, the eyes a seldom-encountered blue that on certain days, in sync with the weather, is too much for these al­ mond fringes and brims over, seeps, bleeds out to illuminate the boy'sentire face, virgin-blue, drowned-man blue, blue drawn so insatiablyinto the chalky walls of mediterranean streets we quietly cycledthrough in noontimes of the old peace.... he can't stop her. if the captain asks, he'll tell what he saw. gottfried has seen her sneak out be­ fore, and there are rumors-she's with the underground, she's in lovewith a stuka pilot she met in scheveningen. . . . but she must love captain blicero too. gottfried styles himself a passive observer. he has waited for his present age, and the conscription notice, to catch him,with an impudent terror like watching the inrush of a curve you meanto take for the first time in a controlled skid, take me, gathering speedtill the last possible moment, take me his good-nights' one prayer. the 1danger he thinks he needs is still fictional for him: in what he flirts and ,� teases with, death is not a real outcome, the hero always walks out of ithe heart of the explosion, sooty-faced but grinning-the blast is noise tand change, and diving for cover. gottfried hasn't yet seen a stiff, not up close. he hears now and then from home that friends have died, he'swatched long, flabby canvas sacks being handled in the distances into 102 the poisoned gray of the trucks, and the headlamps cutting the mist . . . but when the rockets fail, and try to topple back on you who fired them, and a dozen of you press down, bodies jammed together in the slit trenches waiting all sweat-stunk wool and tense with laughter held in, you only think-what a story to tell at mess, to write to mutti. . . . these rockets are his pet animals, barely domesticated, often troublesome, even apt to revert. he loves them in the way he would have loved horses, or tiger tanks, had he pulled duty somewhere else. here he feels taken, at true ease. without the war what could he have hoped for? but to be part of this adventure . . . if you cannot sing siegfried at least you can carry a spear. on what mountainslope, from what tanning and adored face did he hear that? all he remembers is the white sweep upward, the quilted meadows mobbed with cloud. . . . now he's learning a trade, tending the rockets, and when the war ends he'll study to be an engineer. he understands that blicero will die or go away, and that he will leave the cage. but he connects this with the end of the war, not with the oven. he knows, like everyone, that captive children are always freed in the moment of maximum danger. the fuck­ ing, the salt length of the captain's weary, often impotent penis pushing into his meek mouth, the stinging chastisements, his face reflected in the act of kissing the captain's boots, their shine mottled, corroded by bear­ ing grease, oil, alcohol spilled in fueling, darkening his face to the one he can't recognize-these are necessary, they make specific his captiv­ ity, which otherwise would hardly be different from army stifling, army repression. he's ashamed that he enjoys them so much-the word bitch, spoken now in a certain tone of voice, will give him an erection he can­ not will down-afraid that, if not actually judged and damned, he's gone insane. the whole battery knows of the arrangement: though they still obey the captain it's there, in their faces, felt trembling out along the steel tape-measures, splashing onto his tray at mess, elbowed into his right sleeve with each dressing of his squad. he dreams often these days of a very pale woman who wants him, who never speaks-but the absolute confidence in her eyes . . . his awful certainty that she, a ce­ lebrity everyone recognizes on sight, knows him and has no reason to speak to him beyond the beckoning that's in her face, sends him vi­ brating awake in the nights, the captain's exhausted face inches away across the silk of wrinkled silver, weak eyes staring as his own, whiskers he suddenly must scrape his cheek against, sobbing, trying to tell how she was, how she looked at him. . . . the captain's seen her, of course. who hasn't? his idea of comfort is 103 ces ffil� to tell the child, "she's real. you have no say in this. you must under­ stand that she means to have you. no use screaming awake, bothering me this way." "but if she comes back-" "submit, gottfried. give it all up. see where she takes you. think of the first time i fucked you. how tight you were. until you knew i meant to come inside. your little rosebud bloomed. you had nothing, not even by then your mouth's innocence, to lose. . . ." but the boy continues to cry. katje won't help him. perhaps she's asleep. he never knows. he wants to be her friend, but they hardly ever speak. she's cold, mysterious, he's jealous of her sometimes and at oth­ ers-usually when he wants to fuck her and through some ingenuity ofthe captain's cannot-at such times he thinks he loves her desperately.unlike the captain, he has never seen her as the loyal sister who'll free him from the cage. he dreams that release, but as a dark exterior proc­ ess that will happen, no matter what any of them may want. whether she goes or stays. so, when katje quits the game for good, he is silent. blicero curses her. he flings a boot-tree at a precious terborch. bombs fall to the west in the haagsche bosch. the wind blows, rufflingthe ornamental ponds outside. staff cars snarl away, down the longdrive lined with beeches. the half-moon shines among hazy clouds, its dark half the color of aged meat. blicero orders everyone down into the shelter, a cellarful of gin in brown crocks, open-slat crates of anemone bulbs. the slut has put his battery in the british crosshairs, the raid can come at any moment! everybody sits around drinking oude genever and peeling cheeses. telling stories, mostly funny ones, from before the war. by dawn, they're all drunk and sleeping. scraps of wax litter the floor like leaves. no spitfires come. but later that morning schubstelle 3 is moved, and the requisitioned house is abandoned. and she is gone.crossed over the english lines, at the salient where the great airborneadventure lies bogged for the winter, wearing gottfried's boots and an old dress, black moire, calf-length, a size too large, dowdy. her last dis­ guise. from here on she will be katje. the only debt outstanding is to captain prentice. the others=-ptet, wim, the drummer, the indian­ have all dropped her. left her for dead. or else this is her warningthat"sorry, no, we need the bullet," wim's face in shadows her eye can't compensate for, bitterly whispering underneath the scheveningen pier,ragged crowd-footfalls on the wood overhead, "every fucking bullet we can get. we need the silence. we couldn't spare a man to get rid of the body. i've wasted five minutes with you already ... " so he will take 104 up their last meeting with technical matters she can no longer share. when she looks around, he's gone, guerrilla-silent, and she has no way to bring this together with how he felt last year for a while under the cool chenille, in the days before he got so many muscles, and the scars on shoulder and thigh-a late bloomer, a neutral man goaded finally past his threshold, but she'd loved him before that . . . she must have.... she's worth nothing to them now. they were after schubstelle 3. she gave them everything else, but kept finding reasons not to pinpoint the captain's rocket site, and there is too much doubt by now as to how good the reasons were. true, the site was often moved about. but she could've been placed no closer to the decision-making: it was her own expressionless servant's face that leaned in over their schnapps and ci­ gars, the charts coffee-ringed across the low tables, the cream papers stamped purple as bruised flesh. wim and the others have invested time and lives-three [ewish families sent east-though wait now, she's more than balanced it, hasn't she, in the months out at scheveningen? they were kids, neurotic, lonely, pilots and crews they all loved to talk, and she's fed back who knows how many reams' worth of most secret flimsies across the north sea, hasn't she, squadron numbers, fueling stops, spin-recovery techniques and turning radii, power settings, radio channels, sectors, traffic patterns-hasn't she? what more do they want? she asks this seriously, as if there's a real conversion factor be­ tween information and lives. well, strange to say, there is. written down in the manual, on file at the war department. don't forget the real business of the war is buying and selling. the murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. the mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. it serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the war. it provides raw material to be recorded into history, so that children may be taught history as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more pre­ pared for the adult world. best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just or­ dinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that pie while they're still here to gobble it up. the true war is a celebration of mar­ kets. organic markets, carefully styled "black" by the professionals, spring up everywhere. scrip, sterling, reichsmarks continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. but out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. so, jews are negotiable. every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or hershey bars. jews also carry an element of guilt, of future blackmail, which operates, natch, in favor of the professionals. so katje 105 veri are �r 'tter� �te�ej j� �onf, irnome ana� lastm' etwf ofilie wtake here is hollering into a silence, a north sea of hopes, and pirate pren­ tice, who knows her from hurried meetings-in city squares that man­ age to be barracksfaced and claustrophobic, under dark, soft-wood smells of staircases steep as ladders, on a gaffrigger by an oily quai and a eat's amber eyes staring down, in a block of old flats with rain in the roi courtyard and a bulky, ancient schwarzlose stripped to toggle links and oil pump littered about the dusty room-who has each time seen her as a face belonging with others he knows better, at the margin of each en­ terprise, now, confronted with this face out of context, an enormous skyall sea-clouds in full march, tall and plum, behind her, detects danger inher loneliness, realizes he's never heard her name, not till the meeting by the windmill known as "the angel." . . . she tells him why she's alone-more or less-why she can't ever goback, and her face is somewhere else, painted on canvas, hung with other survivals back in the house near duindigt, only witnessing the w oven-game-centuries passing like the empurpled clouds, darkening an . �i infinitesimal layer of varnish between herself and pirate, granting her fu the shield of serenity she needs, of classic irrelevance. . . . "but where will you go?" both of them hands in pockets, scarves tightly wrapped, stones the water has left behind shining black wait like writing in a dream, about to make sense printed here along the beach, each fragment so amazingly clear yet . . . 1 ili "i don't know. where would be a good place?" ili" 'the white visitation,' " pirate suggested. i ��"'the white visitation' is fine," she said, and stepped into thevoid. . . . ill "osbie, have 1 gone mad?" a snowy night, five rocket bombs since noon, shivering in the kitchen, late and candlelit, osbie feel the house idiot-savant so far into an encounter with nutmeg this evening that the . � inquiry seems quite proper, the pale cement jungfrau asquat, phlegillmatic and one gathers nettled in a dim corner. "of course, of course," sez osbie, with a fluid passage of fingers andwrist based on the way bela lugosi handed a certain glass of dopedwine to some fool of a juvenile lead in white zombie, the first movie osbie ever saw and in a sense the last, ranking on his all-time list along with son of frankenstein, freaks, flying down to rio and perhapsdumbo, which he went to see in oxford street last night but midwaythrough noticed, instead of a magic feather, the humorless green and magenta face of mr. ernest bevin wrapped in the chubby trunk of the longlashed baby elephant, and decided it would be prudent to excuse 106 himself. "no," since pirate meantime has misunderstood whatever it �as osbie sai,�' "not 'of course you've gone mad, prentice,' that wasn't it at all. . . . "what then," pirate asks, after osbie's lapse has passed the minute mark. "ah?" sez osbie. pirate is having second thoughts, is what it is. he keeps recalling that katje now avoids all mention of the house in the forest. she has glanced into it, and out, but the truth's crystal sheets have diffracted all her au­ dible words-often to tears-and he can't quite make sense of what's spoken, much less infer to the radiant crystal itself. indeed, why did she leave schubstelle 3? we are never told why. but now and then, players in a game will, lull or crisis, be reminded how it is, after all, really play -and be unable then to continue in the same spirit.... nor need it be anything sudden, spectacular-it may come in gentle-and regardless of the score, the number of watchers, their collective wish, penalties they or the leagues may impose, the player will, waking deliberately, perhaps with katje's own tough, young isolate's shrug and stride, say fuck it and quit the game, quit it cold. . . . "all right," he continues alone, osbie lost in a mooning doper's smile, tracking the mature female snow-skin of the alp in the corner, he and the frozen peak above and the blue night . . . "it's a lapse of character then, a crotchet. like carrying the bloody mendoza." everyone else in the firm packs a sten you know. the mendoza weighs three times as much, no one's even seen any 7 mm mexican mauser bullets lately, even in portobello road: it hasn't the grand garage simplicity or the rate of fire and still he loves it (yes, most likely it's love these days) "you see, it's a matter of trade-off, i'n't i'," the nostalgia of its lewis-style straight pull, and being able to lift the barrel off in a second (ever tried to take the barrel off of a sten?), and having a double-ended striker in case one breaks.... "am i going to let the extra weight make a difference? it's my crotchet, i'm indifferent to weight, or i wouldn't have brought the girl back out, would i." "i am not your responsibility." a statue in wine-colored [aconne vel­ vet from neck to wrists and insteps, and how long, gentlemen, has she been watching from the shadows? "oh," pirate turning sheepish, "you are, you know." "the happy couple!" osbie roars suddenly, taking another pinch of nutmeg like snuff, eyeballs rolling white as the miniature mountain. sneezing now loudly about the kitchen, it strikes him as incredible that iv7 into � he has both these people inside the same field of vision. pirate's face darkening with embarrassment, katje's unchanging, half struck by light from the next room, half in slate shadows. "should i have left you, then?" and when she only compresses her mouth, impatient, "or do you think someone over here owed it to you to bring you out?" "no. " that reached her. pirate only asked because he's begun to sus­ pect, darkly, any number of someones over here. but to katje a debt is for wiping out. her old, intractable vice-she wants to cross seas, to connect countries between whom there is no possible rate of exchange.her ancestors sang, in middle dutch, tlulu ic heb u liever dan en everswin, al waert van finen goude ghewracht, love incommensurate with gold, golden calf, even in this case golden swine. but by the middle of the 17th century there were no more pigs of gold, only of flesh mortal as that of frans van der croov, another ances­ tor, who went off to mauritius with a boatload of these live hogs and lost thirteen years toting his haakbus through the ebony forests, wander­ ing the swamps and lava flows, systematically killing off the native dodoes for reasons he could not explain. the dutch pigs took care of eggs and younger birds. frans carefully drew beads on the parents at 10 or 20 meters, the piece propped on its hook, slowly squeezing the trigger, eye focused on the molting ugliness while closer in the slow­ match, soaked in wine, held in the jaws of the serpentine, came bloom­ ing redly downward, its heat on his cheek like my own small luminary,he wrote home to hendrik the older brother, the ruler of my sign . . . uncovering the priming-powder he'd been keeping shielded with his other hand-sudden flash in the pan, through the touchhole, and the loud report echoing off the steep rocks, recoil smashing the butt up along his shoulder (the skin there at first raw, blistered, then callused over, after the first summer). and the stupid, awkward bird, never in­ tended to fly or run at any speed-what were they good for?-unable now even to locate his murderer, ruptured, splashing blood, raucously dying.... at home, the brother skimmed the letters, some crisp, some sea­stained or faded, spanning years, delivered all at once-understanding very little of it, only anxious to spend the day, as usual, in the gardensand greenhouse with his tulips (a reigning madness of the time), espe­cially one new variety named for his current mistress: blood-red, finely 108 oro , ill� !o rno to h ili tattooed in purple. . . . "recent arrivals all carrying the new snaphaan . . . but i stick to my clumsy old matchlock . . . don't i deserve a clumsy weapon for such a clumsy prey?" but frans got no closer to tell­ ing what kept him out among the winter cyclones, stuffing pieces of old uniform down after the lead balls, sunburned, bearded and filthy­ unless it rained or he was in the uplands where the craters of old volca­ noes cupped rainfall blue as the sky in upward offering. he left the dodoes to rot, he couldn't endure to eat their flesh. usu­ ally, he hunted alone. but often, after months of it, the isolation would begin to change him, change his very perceptions-the jagged moun­ tains in full daylight flaring as he watched into freak saffrons, streaming indigos, the sky his glass house, all the island his tulipomania. the voices-he insomniac, southern stars too thick for constellations teem­ ing in faces and creatures of fable less likely than the dodo-spoke the words of sleepers, singly, coupled, in chorus. the rhythms and timbres were dutch, but made no waking sense. except that he thought they were warning him . . . scolding, angry that he couldn't understand. once he sat all day staring at a single white dodo's egg in a grass hum­ mock. the place was too remote for any foraging pig to've found. he waited for scratching, a first crack reaching to net the chalk surface: an emergence. hemp gripped in the teeth of the steel snake, ready to be lit, ready to descend, sun to black-powder sea, and destroy the infant, egg of light into egg of darkness, within its first minute of amazed vision, of wet down stirred cool by these southeast trades. . . . each hour he sighted down the barrel. it was then, if ever, he might have seen how the weapon made an axis potent as earth's own between himself and this victim, still one, inside the egg, with the ancestral chain, not to be broken out for more than its blink of world's light. there they were, the silent egg and the crazy dutchman, and the hookgun that linked them forever, framed, brilliantly motionless as any vermeer. only the sun moved: from zenith down at last behind the snaggleteeth of mountains to indian ocean, to tarry night. the egg, without a quiver, still un­ hatched. he should have blasted it then where it lay: he understood that the bird would hatch before dawn. but a cycle was finished. he got to his feet, knee and hip joints in agony, head gonging with instructions from his sleeptalkers droning by, overlapping, urgent, and only limped away, piece at right shoulder arms. when loneliness began to drive him into situations like this, he often returned to a settlement and joined a hunting party. a drunken, univer­ sity hysteria would take hold of them all, out on night-rampages where they'd be presently firing at anything, treetops, clouds, leather demon 109 bats screaming up beyond hearing. tradewinds moving upslope to chill their nights' sweating, sky lit half crimson by a volcano, rumblingsunder their feet as deep as the bats' voices were high, all these men were caught in the spectrum between, trapped among frequencies of their own voices and words. this furious host were losers, impersonating a race chosen by god. the colony, the venture, was dying-like the ebony trees they were stripping from the island, like the poor species they were removing to­ tally from the earth. by 1681, didus ineptus would be gone, by 1710 so would every last settler from mauritius. the enterprise here would have lasted about a human lifetime. to some, it made sense. they saw the stumbling birds ill-made to the point of satanic intervention, so ugly as to embody argument against a godly creation. was mauritius some first poison trickle through the sheltering dikes of earth? christians must stem it here, or perish in a second flood, loosed this time not by god but by the enemy. the act of ramming home the charges into their musketry became for these men a devotional act, one whose symbolism they understood. but if they were chosen to come to mauritius, why had they also been chosen to fail, and leave? is that a choosing, or is it a passing-over? are they elect, or are they preterite, and doomed as dodoes? frans could not know that except for a few others on the island of reunion, these were the only dodoes in the creation, and that he was helping exterminate a race. but at times the scale and frenzy of the hunting did come through to trouble his heart. "if the species were notsuch a perversion," he wrote, "it might be profitably husbanded to feed our generations. i cannot hate them quite so violently as do some here. but what now can mitigate this slaughter? it is too late.... perhaps a more comely beak, fuller feathering, a capacity for flight, however brief ... details of design. or, had we but found savages on this island, the bird's appearance might have then seemed to us no stranger than that ofthe wild turkey of north america. alas, their tragedy is to be the domi­ nant form of life on mauritius, but incapable of speech."that was it, right there. no language meant no chance of co-optingthem in to what their round and flaxen invaders were calling salvation.but frans, in the course of morning lights lonelier than most, could not keep from finally witnessing a miracle: a gift of speech . . . a conver­ sion of the dodoes. ranked in thousands on the shore, with a luminous profile of reef on the water behind them, its roar the only sound on the morning, volcanoes at rest, the wind suspended, an autumn sunrise dis­ pensing light glassy and deep over them all . . . they have come from 110 their nests and rookeries, from beside the streams bursting out the mouths of lava tunnels, from the minor islands awash like debris off the north coast, from sudden waterfalls and the wasted rain-forests where the axeblades are rusting and the rough flumes rot and topple in the wind, from their wet mornings under the shadows of mountain-stubs they have waddled in awkward pilgrimage to this assembly: to be sanc­ tified, taken in.... for as much as they are the creatures of god, and molw: have the gift of rational discourse, acknowledging that only in his word on;; is eternal life to be found . . . and there are tears of happiness in the \\'olli�l eyes of the dodoes. they are all brothers now, they and the humans who used to hunt them, brothers in christ, the little baby they dream now of sitting near, roosting in his stable, feathers at peace, watching over him and his dear face all night long. . . . it is the purest form of european adventuring. what's it all been for, the murdering seas, the gangrene winters and starving springs, our bone pursuit of the unfaithful, midnights of wrestling with the beast, our sweat become ice and our tears pale flakes of snow, if not for such mo­ ments as this: the little converts flowing out of eye's field, so meek, so trusting-how shall any craw clench in fear, any recreant cry be offered in the presence of our blade, our necessary blade? sanctified now they will feed us, sanctified their remains and droppings fertilize our crops. did we tell them "salvation"? did we mean a dwelling forever in the city? everlasting life? an earthly paradise restored, their island as it used to be given them back? probably. thinking all the time of the little brothers numbered among our own blessings. indeed, if they save us �eatof! from hunger in this world, then beyond, in christ's kingdom, our salvaioll1&' tions must be, in like measure, inextricable. otherwise the dodoes p1rn�� would be only what they appear as in the world's illusory light-only 'erern' our prey. god could not be that cruel. illanu� frans can look at both versions, the miracle and the hunt of more �an�1 years than he can remember now, as real, equal possibilities. in both, ilie�o[ eventually, the dodoes die. but as for faith . . . he can believe only in the one steel reality of the firearm he carries. "he knew that a snaphaan co-o�� would weigh less, its cock, flint, and steel give him surer ignition-but �ruva�:: he felt a nostalgia about the haakbus ... he didn't mind the extra coul�� weight, it was his crotchet. . . ." pirate and osbie feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpent, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinu­ ous river thames a drastic stain of burnt orange to remind a visitor of 111 an !� his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floorboards-an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the gov­ ernment cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlingsof london, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. they flow in rings, concentric r:ngs, on the radar screens. the operators call them "angels." "he's haunting you," osbie puffing on an amanita cigarette. "yes," pirate ranging the edges of the roof-garden, irritable in the sunset, "but it's the last thing i want to believe. the other's been bad enough.... " "what d'you think of her, then." "someone can use her, i think," having decided this yesterday at charing cross station when she left for "the white visitation." "an unforeseen dividend, for somebody." "do you know what they have in mind, down there?" only that they're brewing up something that involves a giant octopus.but no one up here in london knows with any precision. even at "the white visitation" there's this sudden great coming and going, and a swampy ambiguity as to why. myron grunton is noted casting less than comradely looks at roger mexico. the zouave has gone back to his unit in north africa, back under the cross of lorraine, all that the german might find sinister in his blackness recorded on film, sweet-talked or co­ erced out of him by none less than gerhardt von coll, once an intimate and still the equal of lang, pabst, lubitsch, more lately meshed in with the affairs of any number of exile governments, fluctuations in curren­ cies, the establishment and disestablishment of an astonishing networkof market operations winking on, winking off across the embattled con­ tinent, even as the firefights whistle steel up and down the streets and the firestorms sweep oxygen up in the sky and the customers fall smoth­ ered like bugs in the presence of flit . . . but commerce has not taken away von coll's touch: these days it has grown more sensitive than ever. in these first rushes the black man moves about in ss uniform, ij]l' \va �v 112 among the lath and canvas mockups of rocket and meillerwagen (al­ ways shot through pines, through snow, from distant angles that don't give away the english location), the others in plausible blackface, re­ cruited for the day, the whole crew on a lark, mr. pointsman, mexico, edwin treacle, and rollo groast, arf's resident neurosurgeon aaron throwster, all playing the black rocketeers of the fictional schwarzkom­ mando-even myron grunton in a nonspeaking role, a blurry extra like the rest of them. running time of the film is three minutes, 25 seconds and there are twelve shots. it will be antiqued, given a bit of fungus and ferrotyping, and transported to holland, to become part of the "re­ mains" of a counterfeit rocket-firing site in the rijkswijksche bosch. the dutch resistance will then "raid" this site, making a lot of commo­ tion, faking in tire-tracks and detailing the litter of hasty departure. the inside of an army lorry will be gutted by molotov cocktails: among ashes, charred clothing, blackened and slightly melted gin bottles, will be found fragments of carefully forged schwarzkommando documents, and of a reel of film, only three minutes and 25 seconds of which will be view­ able. von coll, with a straight face, proclaims it to be his greatest work. "indeed, as things were to develop," writes noted film critic mitchell prettyplace, "one cannot argue much with his estimate, though for vastly different reasons than von coll might have given or even from his peculiar vantage foreseen." at "the white visitation," because of erratic funding, there is only one film projector. each day, about noon, after the operation black wing people have watched their fraudulent african rocket troops, webley silvernail comes to carry the projector back down the chilly scuffed-wood corridors again to the arf wing, in to the inner room where octopus grigori oozes sullenly in his tank. in other rooms the dogs whine, bark shrilly in pain, whimper for a stimulus that does not, will never come, and the snow goes whirling, invisible tattooing needles against the nerveless window glass behind the green shades. the reel is threaded, the lights are switched off, grigori's attention is directed to the screen, where an image already walks. the camera follows as she moves deliberately nowhere longlegged about the rooms, an adolescent wideness and hunching to the shoulders, her hair not bluntly dutch at all, but secured in a modish upsweep with an old, tarnished silver crown.... o 0 0 0 dod it was very early morning. he stumbled out alone into a wet brick street. southward the barrage balloons, surfriders on the combers of morning, were glowing, pink and pearl, in the sunrise. they've cut slothrop loose again, he's back on the street, shit, last chance for a section 8 'n' he blew it. . . . why didn't they keep him on at that nut ward for as long as they said they would-wasn't it supposed to be a few weeks? no explanation­ just "cheerio!" and the onionskin sending him back to that achtung. the kenosha kid, and that crouchfield the westwardman and his sidekick whappo have been all his world for these recent days . . . there were still problems to be worked out, adventures not yet completed, coercions and vast deals to be made on the order of the old woman's arrangement for getting her pig home over the stile. but now, rudely, here's that london again. but something's different . . . something's . . . been changed . . . don't mean to bitch, folks, but-well for instance he could almost swear he's being followed, or watched anyway. some of the tails are pretty slick, but others he can spot, all right. xmas shopping yesterday at that woolworth's, he caught a certain pair of beady eyes in the toy section, past a heap of balsa-wood fighter planes and little-kid-size enfields. a hint of constancy to what shows up in the rearview mirror of his hum­ ber, no color or model he can pin down but something always presentinside the tiny frame, has led him to start checking out other cars when he goes off on a morning's work. things on his desk at achtung seem not to be where they were. girls have found excuses not to keep ap­ pointments. he feels he's being gently separated from the life he lived before going into st. veronica's. even in movies there's always someonebehind him being careful not to talk, rattle paper, laugh too loud: slo­ throp's been to enough movies that he can pick up an anomaly like that right away. the cubicle near grosvenor square begins to feel more and more like a trap. he spends his time, often whole days, ranging the east end, breathing the rank air of thameside, seeking places the followers might not follow. one day, just as he's entering a narrow street all ancient brick walls and lined with costermongers, he hears his name called-and hubba hubba what's this then, here she comes all right, blonde hair hying intelltales, white wedgies clattering on cobblestones, an adorable tomato in a nurse uniform, and her name's, uh, well, oh-darlene. golly, it's 114 darlene. she works at st. veronica's hospital, lives nearby at the home of a mrs. quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases-greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy. so, out in search of limes for her landlady, the fruit beginning to jog and spill from her straw basket and roll yellowgreen back down the street, young dar­ lene comes running in her nurse's cap, her breasts soft fenders for this meeting on the gray city sea. "you came back! ah tyrone, you're back," a tear or two, both of them down picking up citrus, the starch khaki dress rattling, even the odd sniffle from slothrop's not unsentimental nose. "it's me love . . ." tire tracks in the slush have turned to pearl, mellow pearl. gulls cruise slowly against the high windowless brick walls of the dis­ trict. mrs. quoad's is up three dark flights, with the dome of faraway st. paul's out its kitchen window visible in the smoke of certain afternoons, and the lady herself tiny in a rose plush chair in the sitting-room by the wireless, listening to primo scala's accordion band. she looks healthy enough. on the table, though, is her crumpled chiffon handkerchief: feathered blots of blood in and out the convolutions like a floral pat­ tern. "you were here when i had that horrid quotidian ague," she recalls slothrop, "the day we brewed the wormwood tea," sure enough, the very taste now, rising through his shoe-soles, taking him along. they're reassembling . . . it must be outside his memory . . . cool clean inte­ rior, girl and woman, independent of his shorthand of stars . . . so many fading-faced girls, windy canalsides, bed-sitters, bus-stop good-bys, how can he be expected to remember? but this room has gone on clarifying: part of whoever he was inside it has kindly remained, stored quiescent these months outside of his head, distributed through the grainy shad­ ows, the grease-hazy jars of herbs, candies, spices, all the compton mackenzie novels on the shelf, glassy ambrotypes of her late husband austin night-dusted inside gilded frames up on the mantel where last time michaelmas daisies greeted and razzled from a little sevres vase she and austin found together one saturday long ago in a wardour street shop. . . . "he was my good health," she often says. "since he passed away i've had to become all but an outright witch, in pure self-defense." from the kitchen comes the smell of limes freshly cut and squeezed. darlene's in and out of the room, looking for different botanicals, asking where the 115 �-�----' / f!�:it#:-i"-'''''''''.'.'·.-'''''.'''''.'.''''''''.'.'.'''' •.•... � ;.;c', '. ./ n! cheesecloth's got to, "tyrone help me just reach down that-no next to it, the tall jar, thank you love"-back into the kitchen in a creak of starch, a flash of pink. "i'm the only one with a memory around here," mrs. quoad sighs. "we help each other, you see." she brings out from behind its cretonne camouflage a great bowl of candies. "now," beam­ ing at slothrop. "here: wine jellies. they're prewar." "now i remember you-the one with the graft at the ministry of supply!" but he knows, from last time, that no gallantry can help him now. after that visit he wrote home to nalline: "the english are kind of weird when it comes to the way things taste, mom. they aren't like us. it might be the climate. they go for things we would never dream of. sometimes it is enough to turn your stomach, boy. the other day i had had one of these things they call 'wine jellies.' that's their idea of candy, mom! figure out a way to feed some to that hitler 'n' i betcha the war'd be over tomorrow!" now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at mrs. quoad. they have the names of different wines written on them in bas­ relief. "just a touch of menthol too," mrs. quoad popping one into her mouth. "delicious." slothrop finally chooses one that says lafitte rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "oh yeah. yeah. mmm. it's great." "if you really want something peculiar try the bernkastler doktor. oh! aren't you the one who brought me those lovely american slimy elm things, maple-tasting with a touch of sassafras-" "slippery elm. jeepers i'm sorry, i ran out yesterday." darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. "what's that?" slothrop a little quickly, here. "you don't really want to know, tyrone." "quite right," after the first sip, wishing she'd used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. these people are really insane. no sugar, natch. he reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. it looks safe. but just as he's biting in, darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, "oh, i thought we got rid of all those-" a blithe, gilbert & sullivan in­ genue's thewse-"years ago," at which point slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels. "you've taken the last of my marmalade surprises!" cries mrs. quoad, having now with conjuror's speed produced an egg-shaped con116 tee ]0 , for �ro ne �ia mli �fj; � ..• , , .. l-�."'.w.'•• "':'_ _ �j,�=o.,;.-,---. -_ . ,..� fection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. "just for that i shan't let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams." into her mouth it goes, the whole thing. "serves me right," slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy-oops but that's a mistake, right, here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. darlene, pure nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry . . . mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can't begin to take away that bitter­ ness. impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he's been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of jeez it must be pure nitric acid, "oh mercy that's really sour," hardly able to get the words out he's so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing hop harrigan used to pull to get tank tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who's supposed to be one of our allies, shit he can't even see it's up his nose and whatever it is won't dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. mrs. quoad is meantime busy savor­ ing, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. she beams at the young people across the candy bowl. slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. there is no graceful way out of this now. darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of choco­ late to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. he fingernails a piece of this out from be­ tween his teeth and stares at it for a while. it is purple in color. "now you're getting the idea!" mrs. quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. why are americans so impulsive?" "well," mumbling, "usually we don't get any more complicated than hershey bars, see.... " "oh, try this," hollers darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him. "gosh, it must really be something," doubtfully taking this nasty­ looking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic can­ dies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, 117 in� 5 m� �d con· peering into the jar, a .455 webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka. "go on then," darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth. "was just, you know, looking at it, the way mrs. quoad suggested." "and no fair squeezing it, tyrone." under its tamarind glaze, the mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. it is unspeakably awful. slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. cubeb? he used to smoke that stuff. "poi­ soned . . ." he is able to croak. "show a little backbone," advises mrs. quoad. "yes," darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "don't you know there's a war on? here now love, open your mouth." through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear mrs. quoad across the table going "yum, yum, yum," and darlene giggling. it is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow-unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain-it tastes like gin. "wha's 'is," he inquires thickly. "a gin marshmallow," sez mrs. quoad. "awww ... " "oh that's nothing, have one of these-" his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves. "more tea?" darlene suggests. slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling. "nasty cough," mrs. quoad offering a tin of that least believable of english coughdrops, the meggezone. "darlene, the tea is lovely, i can feel my scurvy going away, really i can." the meggezone is like being belted in the head with a swiss alp. menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of slothrop's mouth. polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alve­ olar clusters in his lungs. it hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab t-shirt. benzoin vapors seep into his brain. his head floats in a halo of ice. even an hour later, the meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. slothrop lies with darlene, the disgusting english candy drill a 118 �er i�n� faun len ana • ino� eve mer fue wno (afil , we �n mtru wne cree una • h i� aol� rat! mou rou , hn� 1�1 � aoe! �rio wfiil �irs, n thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. the one candy he did not get to taste-one mrs. quoad withheld-was the fire of paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste­ "salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another ... "sugared vio­ lets" ... "worcestershire sauce" ... "spiced treacle" ... any num­ ber of like descriptions, positive, terse-never exceeding two words in length-resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet-and-sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. the fire of paradise today is operationally extinct, and in 1945 can hardly be found: certainly nowhere among the sunlit shops and polished windows of bond street or waste belgravia. but every now and then one will surface, in places which deal usually other merchandise than sweets: at rest, back inside big glass jars clouded by the days, along with objects like itself, sometimes only one candy to a whole jar, nearly hidden in the ambient tourmalines in german gold, carved ebony finger-stalls from the last century, pegs, valve-pieces, threaded hardware from obscure musical instruments, electronic com­ ponents of resin and copper that the war, in its glutton, ever-nibbling intake, has not yet found and licked back into its darkness.... places where the motors never come close enough to be loud, and there are trees outside along the street. inner rooms and older faces developing under light falling through a skylight, yellower, later in the year.... hunting across the zero between waking and sleep, his halfway limp cock still inside her, their strengthless legs bent the same angle . . . the bedroom deepens into water and coolness. somewhere the sun is going down. just enough light to see the darker freckles on her back. in the parlor mrs. quoad is dreaming she's back in the gardens at bourne­ mouth, among the rhododendrons, and a sudden rain, austin crying touch-her throat, majesty. touch! and yrj6-a pretender but the true king, for a very doubtful branch of the family usurped the throne in 1878 during the intrigues over bessarabia=-yrjo in an old-fashioned frock coat with golden galloons shining at the sleeves, bending toward her in the rain to cure her forever of king's evil, looking exactly as he does in the rotogravure, his lovely hrisoula a step or two behind kindly, seriously waiting, around them the rain thundering down, the king's white ungloved hand bending like a butterfly to touch the hollow of mrs. quoad's throat, the miracle touch, gently . . . touch . . . the lightningand slothrop is yawning "what time is it?" and darlene is swimming up from sleep. when, with no warning, the room is full of noon, blind­ ing white, every hair flowing up from her nape clear as day, as the con119 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 cussion drives in on them, rattling the building to its poor bones, beating in the windowshade, gone all to white and black lattice of mourning­ cards. overhead, catching up, the rocket's rush comes swelling, ele­ vated express down, away into ringing silence. outside glass has been breaking, long, dissonant cymbals up the street. the floor has twitched like a shaken carpet, and the bed with it. slothrop's penis has sprung erect, aching. to darlene, suddenly awake, heart pounding very fast, palms and fingers in fear's pain, this hardon has seemed reasonably part of the white light, the loud blast. by the time the explosion has died to red strong flickering on the shade, she's begun to wonder . . . about the two together ... but they're fucking now, and what does it matter, but god's sake why shouldn't this stupid blitz be good for something? and who's that, through the crack in the orange shade, breathing carefully? watching? and where, keepers of maps, specialists at surveil­ lance, would you say the next one will fall? the very first touch: he'd been saying something mean, a bit of the usual mexico self-reproach-ah you don't know me i'm really a bastard sort of thing-"no," she went to put her fingers to his lips, "don't say that. . . ." as she reached, without thinking he grabbed her wrist, moved her hand away, pure defense-but kept holding her, by the wrist. they were eyes-to-eyes, and neither would look away. roger brought her hand to his lips and kissed it then, still watching her eyes. a pause, his heart in sharp knocks against the front of his chest ... "ohh ... " the sound rushing out of her, and she came in to hug him, completely let-go, open, shivering as they held each other. she told him later that as soon as he took her wrist that night, she came. and the first time he touched her cunt, squeezed jessica's soft cunt through her knickers, the trembling began again high in her thighs, growing, taking her over. she came twice before cock was ever officially put inside cunt, and this is important to both of them though neither has figured out why, exactly. whenever it happens, though, the light always gets very red for them. once they met at a teashop: she was wearing a red sweater with short sleeves, and her bare arms glowed red by her sides. she hadn't any make-up on, the first time he'd seen her so. walking to the car, she takes his hand and puts it, for a moment, lightly between her moving legs. roger's heart grows erect, and comes. that's really how it feels. up 120 sharply to skin level in a v around his centerline, washing over his nip­ ples . . . it is love, it is amazing. even when she isn't there, after a dream, at a face in the street that might against chance be jessica's, roger can never control it, he's in its grasp. about beaver, or jeremy, as he is known to his mother, roger tries not to think any more than he has to. of course he agonizes over techni­ cal matters. she cannot possibly-can she?-be doing the same things with jeremy. does jeremy ever kiss her cunt, for example? could that prig actually-does she reach around as they're fucking a-and slide a mischievous finger, his english rose, into jeremy's asshole? stop, stop this (but does she suck his cock? has he ever had his habitu­ ally insolent face between her lovely buttocks?) no use, it's youthful folly time here and you're better off up at the tivoli watching maria montez and jon hall, or looking for leopards or peccaries in regents park zoo, and wondering if it'll rain before 4:30. the time roger and jessica have spent together, totaled up, still only comes to hours. and all their spoken words to less than one average shaef memorandum. and there is no way, first time in his career, that the statistician can make these figures mean anything. together they are a long skin interface, flowing sweat, close as mus­ cles and bones can press, hardly a word beyond her name, or his. apart is for all their flip film-dialogue, scenarios they make up to play alone for themselves in the nights with the bofors door-knocking against her sky, with his wind humming among the loops of barbed wire down along the beach. the mayfair hotel. "we are quite the jet-propelled one aren't we, only half an hour late." "well," wrens and naafi girls, jeweled young widows side­ glancing on by, "i'm sure you've put the time to good use." "time enough for several assignations," he replies, looking elabo­ rately at his watch, worn ww ii style on the inside of his wrist, "and by now, i should say, a confirmed pregnancy or two, if not indeed-" "ah," she blithely jumps (but upward, not on), "that reminds me ... " "yaaahhh!" roger reeling back to a potted plant, among the lilting saxophones of roland peachey and his orchestra playing "there, i said it again," and cowering. "so, that's on your mind. if mind is the word i want." they confuse everyone. they look so innocent. people immediately want to protect them: censoring themselves away from talk of death, business, duplicity when roger and jessica are there. it's all shortages, songs and boy friends, films and blouses . . . of� 121 with her hair pulled back of her ears, her soft chin in profile, she looks only 9 or 10, alone by windows, blinking into the sun, turning her head on the light counterpane, coming in tears, child's reddening wrin­ kling face about to cry, going oh, oh . . . one night in the dark quilt-and-cold refuge of their bed, drowsing to and fro himself, he licked jessica to sleep. when she felt his first warm breaths touch her labia, she shivered and cried like a cat. two or three notes, it seemed, that sounded together, hoarse, haunted, blowing with snowflakes remembered from around nightfall. trees outside sifting the wind, out of her sight the lorries forever rushing down the streets and roads, behind houses, across canals or river, beyond the simple park. oh and the dogs and cats who went padding in the fine snow.... " ... pictures, well scenes, keep flashing in, roger. by themselves, i mean i'm not making them.... " a bright swarm of them is passing by, against the low isotonic glimmer of the ceiling. he and she lie and breathe mouth-up. his soft cock drools down around his thigh, the downhill one, closest to jessica. the night room heaves a sigh, yes heaves, a sigh-old-fashioned comical room, oh me i'm hopeless, born a joker never change, flirting away through the mirrorframe in some­ thing green-striped, pantalooned, and rufhed-meantime though, it is quaint, most rooms today hum you know, have been known also to "breathe," yes even wait in hushed expectancy and that ought to be the rather sinister tradition here, long slender creatures, heavy perfume and capes in rooms assailed by midnight, pierced with spiral stairways, blue­ petaled pergolas, an ambience in which no one, however provoked or out of touch, my dear young lady, ever, heaves, a sigh. it is not done. but here. oh, this young lady. checked gingham. ragged eyebrows, grown wild. red velvet. on a dare once, she took off her blouse, motor­ ing up on the trunk road near lower beeding. "my god she's gone insane, what is this, why do they all come to me?" "well, ha, ha," jessica twirling the necktie of her army blouse like a stripper, "you uh, said i was afraid to. di'n't you. called me 'cowardly, cowardly custard' or something, 's i recall-" no brassiere of course, she never wears one. "look here," glaring sideways, "do you know you can get arrested? never mind you," just occurring to him, here, "i'll get arrested!" "they'll blame it all on you, la, la." lower teeth edging out in a mean-girl's smile. "i'm just an innocent lamb and this-" flinging a little 122 throu, ��, an uck �iqclou then,: ��'-� it im�cy n . ���], , thein "out ')le� fue tlolt i �fl-' .• �••••. �.��.:.,,,,,,-:.�,, •• -_-�._ -'---0 _ .. _"._�� � _� �=�-___::_� ..��,--arm out, striking light from the fair hairs on her forearm, her small breasts bouncing free, "this roger-the-rake! here, this awful beast! makes me perform, these degrading . . ." meantime, the most gigantic lorry roger has ever seen in his life has manoeuvred steel-shuddering nearby, and now not only the driver, but also several-well, what appear to be horrid . . . midgets, in strange op­ eretta uniforms actually, some sort of central european government-in­ exile, all of them crammed somehow into the high-set cab, all are star­ ing down, scufhing like piglets on a sow for position, eyes popping, swarthy, mouths leaking spit, to take in the spectacle of his jessica swanlake scandalously bare-breasted and himself desperately looking to slow down and drop behind the lorry-except that now, behind roger, pressing him on, in fact, at a speed identical with the lorry's, has ap­ peared, oh shit it is, a military police car. he can't slow down, and if he speeds up, they'll really get suspicious. . . . "uh, jessie, please get dressed, um, would you love?" making a show of looking for his comb which is, as usual, lost, suspect is known as a no­ torious ctenophile . . . the driver of the huge, loud lorry now tries to get roger's attention, the other midgets crowding at the windows calling, "hey! hey!" and emitting oily, guttural laughs. their leader speaks english with some liquid, unspeakably nasty european accent. lot of winking and nudging up there now, too: "meester! ay, zhu! wet a meeneh', eh?" more laughter. roger in the rearview mirror sees english cop-faces pink with rectitude, red insignia leaning, bobbing, consulting, turning sharply now and then to stare ahead at the couple in the jaguar who're acting so­ "what are they doing, prigsbury, can you make it out?" "appears to be a man and a woman, sir." q�� "ass." and it's out with the black binoculars. m� through rain . . . then through dreaming glass, green with the eve­ ning. and herself in a chair, old-fashioned bonneted, looking west over the deck of earth, inferno red at its edges, and further in the brown and gold clouds. . . . then, suddenly, night: the empty rocking chair lit staring chalk blue by-is it the moon, or some other light from the sky? just the hard chair, empty now, in the very clear night, and this cold light coming down.... the images go, flowering, in and out, some lovely, some just awful ... but she's snuggled in here with her lamb, her roger, and how she loves the line of his neck all at once so-why there it is right there, the back of his bumpy head like a boy of ten's. she kisses him up and down 123 �t� the sour salt reach of skin that's taken her so, taken her nightlit along this high tendoning, kisses him as if kisses were flowing breath itself, and never ending. 124 one morning-he had not seen her for about a fortnight-he woke in his hermit's cell at "the white visitation" with a hardon, scratchy eye­ lids and a long pale brown hair tangled in his mouth. it wasn't one of his own hairs. it wasn't anybody's he could think of but jessica's. but it couldn't be-he hadn't seen her. he sniffled a couple of times, then sneezed. morning developed out the window. his right canine ached. he unreeled the long hair, beaded with saliva, tooth-tartar, mouth­ breather's morning fur, and stared at it. how'd it get here? eerie, dearie. a bit of the je ne sais quoi de sin istre, all right. he had to piss. shuffling to the lavatory, his graying government flannel tucked limply inside the cord of his pajamas, it came to him: what if it's some mauve turn-of-the-century tale of ghostly revenge and this hair here's some first step ... oh, paranoia? you should've seen him going through all the combinations as he moved around doing lavatory things among the stumbling, farting, razor-scraping, hacking, sneezing and snot-crusted inmates of psi section. only later in this did he even begin to think of jessica-of her safety. thoughtful roger. what if, if she'd died in the night, an accident at the magazines . . . with this hair the only good-by her ghostly love had been able to push back through to this side, to the only one who'd ever mattered. . . . some spider-statistician: his eyes had actually filled with tears before the next idea-oh. gboy. turn off that faucet, dorset, and get hep to this. he stood, half-stooped, over the washbasin, paralyzed, putting his worry for jessica on hold for a bit, wanting very much to look back over his shoulder, even into the, the old mirror, you know, see what they're up to, but too frozen to risk even that ... now ... oh yes a most superb possibility has found seedbed in his brain, and here it is. what if they are all, all these psi section freaks here, ganged up on him in secret? o.k.? yes: suppose they can see into your mind! a-and how about-what if it's hypnotism? eh? jesus: then a whole number of other occult things such as: astral projection, brain control (nothing occult about that), secret curses for impotence, boils, madness, yaaahhh-potions! (as he straightens at last and back in his mind's eyes to his office now glances, very gingerly, at the coffee mess, oh god . . . ), psychic-unity-with-the-controlling-agency such that roger would be he and he roger, yes yes a number of these notions rambling through his mind here, none of them really pleasant, either­ especially inside this staff latrine, with gavin trefoil's face this morning �:.-; , �.�-.--••••• �., ': �i� "'_ ,-. .".�------�. --� '" -, � ��� ....._ ..._ --..... • ••tm... •• '125 colored bright magenta, a clover blossom flashing in the wind, ronald cherrycoke hawking fine-marbled amber phlegm into the basin­ what's all this, who are all these people.... freaks! freeeeaks! he's surrounded! they've been out there night and day all the war long tap­ ping his brain, telepaths, witches, satanic operators of all descriptions tuning in on everything-even when he and jessica are in bed fuck­ ingtry to hold it down old man, panic if you must but later, not here. . . . faint washroom light bulbs deepen the thousands of old clustered water and soap spots on the mirrors to an interfeathering of clouds, of skin and smoke as he swings his head past, lemon and beige, oilsmoke black and twilight brown in here, very loosely crumbled, that's the texture.... lovely morning, world war two. all he can keep in front of his mind are the words i want a transfer, kind of humming tunelessly at the mirror, yes sir got to put in a chit right away. i'll volunteer for duty in germany's what i'll do. dum de dum, de dum. right, there was an ad only wednesday in the classified section of nazis in the news, sand­ wiched between a merseyside labour branch that was looking for a publicist, and a london advertising agency with positions open immedi­ ately on demob, they said. this ad in the middle was placed by some arm of the g-5-to-be, trying to round up a few "re-education" experts. vital, vital stuff. teach the german beast about the magna carta, sportsmanship, that sort of thing, eh? out inside the 'works of some neu­ rotic bavarian cuckoo clock of a village, were-elves streaking in out of the forests at night to leave subversive handbills at door and window­ "anything!" roger groping back to his narrow quarters, "anything at all's better than this. . . ." that's how bad it was. he knew he'd feel more at home in mad ger­ many with the enemy than here in psi section. the time of year makes it even worse. christmas. bwweeeaaaagghh, clutching to his stomach. jessica was all that made it human or tolerable. jessica ... he was taken over then, for half a minute, shivering and yawning in his long underwear, soft, nearly invisible in the december-dawn enclo­ sure, among so many sharp edges of books, sheafs and himsies, charts and maps (and the chief one, red pockmarks on the pure white skin of lady london, watching over all. . . wait. . . disease on skin. . . does she carry the fatal infection inside herself? are the sites predestined, and does the flight of the rocket actually follow from the fated eruption la­ tent in the city . . . but he can't hold it, no more than he understands pointsman's obsession with the reversal of sound stimuli and please, [eemr lucnt e no��: ,eiw11' ,illof[jl she trips fussing about the dormitory, bothering other girls for puffs off of stale woodbines, nylon-repair kits, sparrow-bright war-wisecracks passing for sympathy. tonight she'll be with jeremy, her lieutenant, but she wants to be with roger. except that, really, she doesn't. does she? she can't remember ever being so confused. when she's with roger it's all love, but at any distance-any at all, jack-she finds that he depres­ ses and even frightens her. why? on top of him in the wild nights riding up and down his cock her axis, trying herself to stay rigid enough not to turn to cream taper-wax and fall away melting to the coverlet coming there's only room for roger, roger, oh love to the end of breath. but out of bed, walking talking, his bitterness, his darkness, run deeper than the war, the winter: he hates england so, hates "the system," gripes end­ lessly, says he'll emigrate when the war's over, stays inside his paper cynic's cave hating himself . . . and does she want to bring him out, re­ ally? isn't it safer with jeremy? she tries not to allow this question in too often, but it's there. three years with jeremy. they might as well be married. three years ought to count for something. daily, small stitches and easings. she's worn old beaver's bathrobes, brewed his tea and coffee, sought his eye across lorry-parks, day rooms and rainy mud fields 126 please can't we just drop it for a bit ... ), visited, not knowing till it passed how clearly he was seeing the honest half of his life that [essica was now, how fanatically his mother the war must disapprove of her beauty, her cheeky indifference to death-institutions he'd not so long ago believed in-her unflappable hope (though she hated to make plans), her exile from childhood (though she refused ever to hold on to memories) .... his life had been tied to the past. he'd seen himself a point on a mov­ ing wavefront, propagating through sterile history-a known past, a projectable future. but jessica was the breaking of the wave. suddenly there was a beach, the unpredictable . . . new life. past and future stopped at the beach: that was how he'd set it out. but he wanted to be­ lieve it too, the same way he loved her, past all words-believe that no matter how bad the time, nothing was fixed, everything could be changed and she could always deny the dark sea at his back, love it away. and (selfishly) that from a somber youth, squarely founded on death-along for death's ride-he might, with her, find his way to life and to joy. he'd never told her, he avoided telling himself, but that was the measure of his faith, as this seventh christmas of the war came wheeling in another charge at his skinny, shivering flank. . . . ;;;"! •., .. �.� � ,;�--��.-.-._ �. �., -� .... --. . ..�--��_--_�-��r----� �� -\:..;;; ._.. _ _--, '127 folio when all the day's mean, dismal losses could be rescued in the one look -familiar, full of trust, in a season when the word is invoked for quaint­ ness or a minor laugh. and to rip it all out? three years? for this erratic, self-centered-boy, really. weepers, he's supposed to be past thirty, he's years older than she. he ought to've learned something, surely? a man of experience? the worst of it's that she has no one to talk to. the politics of this mixed battery, the professional incest, the unwholesome obsessions with who said what to whom in the spring of 1942 for god's sake, outside of grafty green, kent, or someplace, and who ought to have answered what but didn't but told someone else instead thus provoking hatreds that have thrived wonderfully down to the present day-six years of slander, ambition and hysteria make confiding anything to anyone around here an act of pure masochism. "girl in distress, jess?" maggie dunkirk on the way by, smoothing her gauntlets. on the tannoy a bbc swing band is blaring hotly' synco­ pated christmas music. "got a fag, mag?" pretty automatic by now, you guess, jess? well"thought it looked somewhat like a bloody garbo film around here, not at all the usual nicotine starvation, sorry wrong again, ta-ta.... " oh be on your way. "thinking about me xmas shopping." "what're you getting the beaver then." concentrating on gartering her nylons, the older pair, up-in-front­ down-in-back mnemonically stirring in wafts among her fingers, laun­ dry-white puckered elastic being stretched fine and tangent now to the gentle front curve of her thigh, suspender-clips glittering silver under or behind her lacquered red fingernails, passing like distant fountains be­ hind red topiary trees, jessica replies, "oh, mm. a pipe, i sup­ pose.... " near her battery one night, driving somewhere in kent, roger and jessica came upon a church, a hummock in the dark upland, lamplit, growing out of the earth. it was sunday evening, and shortly before ves­ pers. men in greatcoats, in oilskins, in dark berets they slipped off at the entrance, american hiers in leather lined with sheep's wool, a few women in clinking boots and wide-shouldered swagger coats, but no children, not a child in sight, just grownups, trudging in from their bomber fields, balloon-bivouacs, pillboxes over the beach, through the norman doorway shaggy with wintering vines. jessica said, "oh, i re.-_ . ---_. / �'h"�i.�-""""_'.""'.'.'" .•• e"."_ •• ••••• r'!�'t ,,, ./ " member ... " but didn't go on. she was remembering other advents, and hedges snowy as sheep from her window, and the star ready to be pasted up on the sky again. roger pulled over, and they watched the scuffed and dun military going in to evensong. the wind smelled of fresh snow. "we ought to be home," she said, after a bit, "it's late." "we could just pop in here for a moment." well, that surprised her, but def, after weeks of his snide comments? his unbeliever's annoyance with the others in psi section he thought were out to drive him dotty as they were, and his scroogery growing as shopping days till xmas dwindled-"you' re not supposed to be the sort," she told him. but she did want to go in, nostalgia was heavy in to­ night's snow-sky, her own voice ready to betray her and run to join the waits whose carols we're so apt to hear now in the distances, these days of advent dropping one by one, voices piping across frozen downs where the sown mines crowd thick as plums in a pudding . . . often above sounds of melting snow, winds that must blow not through christmas air but through the substance of time would bring her those child-voices, singing for sixpences, and if her heart wasn't ready to take on quite all the stresses of her mortality and theirs, at least there was the fear that she was beginning to lose them-that one winter she would go running to look, out to the gate to find them, run as far as the trees but in vain, their voices fading. . . . they walked through the tracks of all the others in the snow, she gravely on his arm, wind blowing her hair to snarls, heels slipping once on ice. "to hear the music," he explained. tonight's scratch choir was all male, epauletted shoulders visible under the wide necks of the white robes, and many faces nearly as white with the exhaustion of soaked and muddy fields, midwatches, ca­ bles strummed by the nervous balloons sunfishing in the clouds, tents whose lights inside shone nuclear at twilight, soullike, through the cross­ hatched walls, turning canvas to fine gauze, while the wind drummed there. yet there was one black face, the counter-tenor, a jamaican cor­ poral, taken from his warm island to this-from singing his childhood along the rum-smoky saloons of high holborn street where the sailors throw mammoth red firecrackers, quarter of a stick of dynamite man, over the swinging doors and run across the street giggling, or come walking out with high-skirted girls, girls of the island, chinese and french girls . . . lemon peels crushed in the gutters of the streets scented the early mornings where he used to sing, 0 have you seen my darlin' lola, with a shape like a bottle of coca-cola, sailors running up 128 � � ,�-:-� ._ ••_ ..._-_.. • ...m..·' 'in dulci jubilo nun singet und seid froh! unsers herzens wonne leit in praesipio, leuchtet vor die sonne matris in gremio. alpha es 'et 0. m and down in the brown shadows of alleys, flapping at neckerchief and 0r pants-leg, and the girls whispering together and laughing . . . each morning he counted out half a pocket full of coins of all nations. from palmy kingston, the intricate needs of the anglo-american empire (1939-1945) had brought him to this cold fieldmouse church, nearly in earshot of a northern sea he'd hardly glimpsed in crossing, to a compline service, a program tonight of plainsong in english, forays now and then m� into polyphony: thomas tallis, henry purcell, even a german macronic from the fifteenth century, attributed to heinrich suso: with the high voice of the black man riding above the others, no head falsetto here but complete, out of the honest breast, a baritone voice brought over years of woodshedding up to this range ... he was bring­ ing brown girls to sashay among these nervous protestants, down the ancient paths the music had set, big and little anita, stiletto may, plongette who loves it between her tits and will do it that way for free -not to mention the latin, the german? in an english church? these are not heresies so much as imperial outcomes, necessary as the black man's presence, from acts of minor surrealism-which, taken in the mass, are an act of suicide, but which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing. . . . so the pure counter-tenor voice was soaring, finding its way in to buoy jessica's heart and even roger's, she guessed, risking glances at his face sideways and up through brown ghosts of her hair, during recitatives or releases. he wasn't looking nihilistic, not even cheaply so. he was ... no, jessica's never seen his face exactly like this, in the light of a few hanging oil lamps, the flames unguttering and very yellow, on the near­ est the verger's two long fingerprints in fine, pollen v-for-victory up around the belly of the glass, roger's skin more child-pink, his eyes more glowing than the lamplight alone can account for-isn't it? or is that how she wants it to be? the church is as cold as the night outside. there's the smell of damp wool, of bitter on the breaths of these profes129 ,-. ----_. / � .. : .."i·--�·-•.-'._•.... · ...• " .•.•.... ...•.. . .... ....•... . . , ' 130 sionals, of candle smoke and melting wax, of smothered farting, of hair tonic, of the burning oil itself, folding the other odors in a maternal way, more closely belonging to earth, to deep strata, other times, and listen ... listen: this is the war's evensong, the war's canonical hour, and the night is real. black greatcoats crowd together, empty hoods full of dense, church-interior shadows. over on the coast the wrens work late, down inside cold and gutted shells, their blue torches are newborn stars in the tidal evening. hullplates swing in the sky, like great iron leaves, on cables that creak in splinters of sound. at ease, on standby, the flames of the torches, softened, fill the round glass faces of the gauges with apricot light. in the pipefitters' sheds, icicled, rattling when the gales are in the straits, here's thousands of old used toothpaste tubes, heaped often to the ceilings, thousands of somber man-mornings made tolerable, transformed to mint fumes and bleak song that left white spots across the quicksilver mirrors from harrow to gravesend, thou­ sands of children who pestled foam up out of soft mortars of mouths, who lost easily a thousand times as many words among the chalky bub­ bles-bed-going complaints, timid announcements of love, news of fat or translucent, fuzzy or gentle beings from the country under the coun­ terpane-uncounted soapy-liquorice moments spat and flushed down to sewers and the slow-scumming gray estuary, the morning mouths grow­ ing with the day tobacco and fish-furred, dry with fear, foul with idle­ ness, flooded at thoughts of impossible meals, settling instead for the week's offal in gland pies, household milk, broken biscuits at half the usual points, and isn't menthol a marvelous invention to take just enough of it away each morning, down to become dusty oversize bub­ bles tessellating tough and stagnant among the tar shorelines, the intri­ cate draftsmanship of outlets feeding, multiplying out to sea, as one by one these old toothpaste tubes are emptied and returned to the war, heaps of dimly fragrant metal, phantoms of peppermint in the winter shacks, each tube wrinkled or embossed by the unconscious hands of london, written over in interference-patterns, hand against hand, wait­ ing now-it is true return-to be melted for solder, for plate, alloyed for castings, bearings, gasketry, hidden smokeshriek linings the children of that other domestic incarnation will never see. yet the continuity, flesh to kindred metals, home to hedgeless sea, has persisted. it is not death that separates these incarnations, but paper: paper specialties, paper routines. the war, the empire, will expedite such barriers between our lives. the war needs to divide this way, and to subdivide, though its propaganda will always stress unity, alliance, pulling together. the war does not appear to want a folk-consciousness, not even of the sort the -. � � -.0___ ._ ..---, '. germans have engineered, ein volk ein fuhrer-it wants a machine of many separate parts, not oneness, but a complexity. . . . yet who can presume to say what the war wants, so vast and aloof is it . . . so absen­ tee. perhaps the war isn't even an awareness-not a life at all, really. there may only be some cruel, accidental resemblance to life. at "the white visitation" there's a long-time schiz, you know, who believes that he is world war ii. he gets no newspapers, refuses to listen to the wire­ less, but still, the day of the normandy invasion somehow his tempera­ ture shot up to 1040• now, as the pincers east and west continue their slow reflex contraction, he speaks of darkness invading his mind, of an attrition of self. . . . the rundstedt offensive perked him up though, gave him a new lease on life-"a beautiful christmas gift," he con­ fessed to the resident on his ward, "it's the season of birth, of fresh be­ ginnings." whenever the rockets fall-those which are audible-he smiles, turns out to pace the ward, tears about to splash from the cor­ ners of his merry eyes, caught up in a ruddy high tonicity that can't help cheering his fellow patients. his days are numbered. he's to die on v-e day. if he's not in fact the war then he's its child-surrogate, living high for a certain term but come the ceremonial day, look out. the true king only dies a mock death. remember. any number of young men may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on. will he show up under the star, slyly genuflecting with the other kings as this winter solstice draws on us? bring to the serai gifts of tungsten, cordite, high-octane? will the child gaze up from his ground of golden straw then, gaze into the eyes of the old king who bends long and un­ furling overhead, leans to proffer his gift, will the eyes meet, and what message, what possible greeting or entente will flow between the king and the infant prince? is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? which do you want it to be? advent blows from the sea, which at sunset tonight shone green and smooth as iron-rich glass: blows daily upon us, all the sky above preg­ nant with saints and slender heralds' trumpets. another year of wedding dresses abandoned in the heart of winter, never called for, hanging in quiet satin ranks now, their white-crumpled veils begun to yellow, rip­ pling slightly only at your passing, spectator . . . visitor to the city at all the dead ends.... glimpsing in the gowns your own reflection once or twice, halfway from shadow, only blurred flesh-colors across the peau de soie, urging you in to where you can smell the mildew's first horrible touch, which was really the idea-covering all trace of her own smell, middleclass bride-to-be perspiring, genteel soap and powder. but virgin in her heart, in her hopes. none of your bright-swiss or crystalline sea131 .---�-----. / .�'h"�;.-' ,_..• ._............................ . . / ./ .�j son here, but darkly billowed in the day with cloud and the snow falling like gowns in the country, gowns of the winter, gentle at night, a nearly windless breathing around you. in the stations of the city the prisoners are back from indo-china, wandering their poor visible bones, light as dreamers or men on the moon, among chrome-sprung prams of black hide resonant as drumheads, blonde wood high-chairs pink and blue with scraped and mush-spattered floral decals, folding-cots and bears with red felt tongues, baby-blankets making bright pastel clouds in the coal and steam smells, the metal spaces, among the queued, the drifting, the warily asleep, come by their hundreds in for the holidays, despite the warnings, the gravity of mr. morrison, the tube under the river a german rocket may pierce now, even now as the words are set down, the absences that may be waiting them, the city addresses that surely can no longer exist. the eyes from burma, from tonkin, watch these women at their hundred perseverances-stare out of blued orbits, through headaches no alasils can ease. italian p /ws curse underneath the mail sacks that are puffing, echo-clanking in now each hour, in sea­ sonal swell, clogging the snowy trainloads like mushrooms, as if the trains have been all night underground, passing through the country of the dead. if these eyeties sing now and then you can bet it's not "ciovi­ nezza" but something probably from rigoletto or la boheme-indeed the post office is considering issuing a list of n onacceptable songs, with ukulele chords as an aid to ready identification. their cheer and songful­ ness, this lot, is genuine up to a point-but as the days pile up, as this orgy of christmas greeting grows daily beyond healthy limits, with no containment in sight before boxing day, they settle, themselves, for being more professionally italian, rolling the odd eye at the lady evac­ uees, finding techniques of balancing the sack with one hand whilst the other goes playing "dead"-cioe, conditionally alive-where the crowds thicken most feminine, directionless . . . well, most promising. life has to go on. both kinds of prisoner recognize that, but there's no mana morto for the englishmen back from cbi, no leap from dead to living at mere permission from a likely haunch or thigh-no play, for god's sake, about life-and-death! they want no more adventures: only the old dutch fussing over the old stove or warming the old bed, cricketers in the wintertime, they want the semi-detached sunday dead-leaf somno­ lence of a dried garden. if the brave new world should also come about, a kind of windfall, why there'll be time to adjust certainly to that. . .. but they want the nearly postwar luxury this week of buying an electric train set for the kid, trying that way each to light his own set of sleek lit­ tle faces here, calibrating his strangeness, well-known photographs all, 132 �rou �r iliem �ol � brought to life now, oohs and aahs but not yet, not here in the station, any of the moves most necessary: the war has shunted them, earthed them, those heedless destroying signalings of love. the children have unfolded last year's toys and found reincarnated spam tins, they're hep this may be the other and, who knows, unavoidable side to the christ­ mas game. in the months between-country springs and summers­ they played with real spam tins-tanks, tank-destroyers, pillboxes, dreadnoughts deploying meat-pink, yellow and blue about the dusty floors of lumber-rooms or butteries, under the cots or couches of their exile. now it's time again. the plaster baby, the oxen frosted with gold leaf and the human-eyed sheep are turning real again, paint quickens to flesh. to believe is not a price they pay-it happens all by itself. he is the new baby. on the magic night before, the animals will talk, and the sky will be milk. the grandparents, who've waited each week for the radio doctor asking, what are piles? what is emphysema? what is a heart attack? will wait up beyond insomnia, watching again for the yearly impossible not to occur, but with some mean residue-this is the hillside, the sky can show us a light-like a thrill, a good time you wanted too much, not a complete loss but still too far short of a miracle ... keeping their sweatered and shawled vigils, theatrically bitter, but with the residue inside going through a new winter fermentation every year, each time a bit less, but always good for a revival at this season. . . . all but naked now, the shiny suits and gowns of their pubcrawling primes long torn to strips for lagging the hot-water pipes and heaters of landlords, strangers, for holding the houses' identities against the winter. the war needs coal. they have taken the next-to-last steps, at­ tended the radio doctor's certifications of what they knew in their bod­ ies, and at christmas they are naked as geese under this woolen, murky, cheap old-people's swaddling. their electric clocks run fast, even big ben will be fast now until the new spring's run in, all fast, and no one else seems to understand or to care. the war needs electricity. it's a lively game, electric monopoly, among the power companies, the cen­ tral electricity board, and other war agencies, to keep grid time syn­ chronized with greenwich mean time. in the night, the deepest con­ crete wells of night, dynamos whose locations are classified spin faster, and so, responding, the clock-hands next to all the old, sleepless eyes­ gathering in their minutes whining, pitching higher toward the vertigo of a siren. it is the night's mad carnival. there is merriment under the shadows of the minute-hands. hysteria in the pale faces between the numerals. the power companies speak of loads, war-drains so vast the clocks will slow again unless this nighttime march is stolen, but the 133 ,-----/ �:f.ii�i.�.,.-.-.-.:� ,!_: '. ' , ,/ loads expected daily do not occur, and the grid runs inching ever faster, and the old faces turn to the clock faces, thinking plot, and the numbers go whirling toward the nativity, a violence, a nova of heart that will turn us all, change us forever to the very forgotten roots of who we are. but over the sea the fog tonight still is quietly scalloped pearl. up in the city the arc-lamps crackle, furious, in smothered blaze up the cen­ terlines of the streets, too ice-colored for candles, too chill-dropleted for holocaust ... the tall red busses sway, all the headlamps by regulation newly unmasked now parry, cross, traverse and blind, torn great fistfuls of wetness blow by, desolate as the beaches beneath the nacre fog, whose barbed wire that never knew the inward sting of current, that only lay passive, oxidizing in the night, now weaves like underwater grass, looped, bitter cold, sharp as the scorpion, all the printless sand miles past cruisers abandoned in the last summers of peacetime that once holidayed the old world away, wine and olive-grove and pipe­ smoke evenings away the other side of the war, stripped now to rust axles and brackets and smelling inside of the same brine as this beach you cannot really walk, because of the war. up across the downs, past the spotlights where the migrant birds in autumn choked the beams night after night, fatally held till they dropped exhausted out of the sky, a shower of dead birds, the compline worshipers sit in the unheated church, shivering, voiceless as the choir asks: where are the joys? where else but there where the angels sing new songs and the bells ring out in the court of the king. eia-strange thousand-year sigh-eia, warn wir da! were we but there. . . . the tired men and their black bellwether reaching as far as they can, as far from their sheeps' clothing as the year will let them stray. come then. leave your war awhile, paper or iron war, petrol or flesh, come in with your love, your fear of losing, your ex­ haustion with it. all day it's been at you, coercing, jiving, claiming your belief in so much that isn't true. is that who you are, that vaguely crimi­ nal face on your id card, its soul snatched by the government camera as the guillotine shutter fell-or maybe just left behind with your heart, at the stage door canteen, where they're counting the night's take, the n aafi girls, the girls named eileen, carefully sorting into refrigerated compartments the rubbery maroon organs with their yellow garnishes of fat-oh linda come here feel this one, put your finger down in the ven­ tricle here, isn't it swoony, it's still going. . . . everybody you don't sus­ pect is in on this, everybody but you: the chaplain, the doctor, your mother hoping to hang that gold star, the vapid soprano last night on the home service programme, let's not forget mr. noel coward so styl­ ish and cute about death and the afterlife, packing them into the duel �ow dull1 una �ano oone mar �oo 134 i �onl � i � �� _r .� ._ •• _ , 'duchess for the fourth year running, the lads in hollywood telling us how grand it all is over here, how much fun, walt disney causing dumbo the elephant to clutch to that feather like how many carcasses under the snow tonight among the white-painted tanks, how many hands each frozen around a miraculous medal, lucky piece of worn bone, half-dollar with the grinning sun peering up under liberty's wispy gown, clutching, dumb, when the 88 fell-what do you think, it's a children's story? there aren't any. the children are away dreaming, but the empire has no place for dreams and it's adults only in here to­ night, here in this refuge with the lamps burning deep, in pre-cambrian exhalation, savory as food cooking, heavy as soot. and 60 miles up the rockets hanging the measureless instant over the black north sea before the fall, ever faster, to orange heat, christmas star, in helpless plunge to earth. lower in the sky the flying bombs are out too, roaring like the adversary, seeking whom they may devour. it's a long walk home to­ night. listen to this mock-angel singing, let your communion be at least in listening, even if they are not spokesmen for your exact hopes, your exact, darkest terror, listen. there must have been evensong here long before the news of christ. surely for as long as there have been nights bad as this one-something to raise the possibility of another night that could actually, with love and cockcrows, light the path home, banish the adversary, destroy the boundaries between our lands, our bodies, our stories, all false, about who we are: for the one night, leaving only the clear way home and the memory of the infant you saw, almost too frail, there's too much shit in these streets, camels and other beasts stir heavily outside, each hoof a chance to wipe him out, make him only an­ other messiah, and sure somebody's around already taking bets on that one, while here in this town the jewish collaborators are selling useful gossip to imperial intelligence, and the local hookers are keeping the foreskinned invaders happy, charging whatever the traffic will bear, just like the innkeepers who're naturally delighted with this registration thing, and up in the capital they're wondering should they, maybe, give everybody a number, yeah, something to help spqr record-keeping ... and herod or hitler, fellas (the chaplains out in the bulge are manly, haggard, hard drinkers), what kind of a world is it ("you forgot roosevelt, padre," come the voices from the back, the good father can never see them, they harass him, these tempters, even into his dreams: "wendell willkie!" "how about churchill?" "'arry pollitt!") for a baby to come in tippin' those toledos at 7 pounds 8 ounces thinkin' he's gonna redeem it, why, he oughta have his head examined. . . . but on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held 135 him a bit. just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hol­ low of your shoulder, full of sleep. as if it were you who could, some­ how, save him. for the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. for the moment anyway, no longer who the caesars say you are. o [esu parvule, nach dir ist mir so weh so this pickup group, these exiles and horny kids, sullen civilians called up in their middle age, men fattening despite their hunger, flatu­ lent because of it, pre-ulcerous, hoarse, runny-nosed, red-eyed, sore­ throated, piss-swollen men suffering from acute lower backs and all-day hangovers, wishing death on officers they truly hate, men you have seen on foot and smileless in the cities but forgot, men who don't remember you either, knowing they ought to be grabbing a little sleep, not out here performing for strangers, give you this evensong, climaxing now with its rising fragment of some ancient scale, voices overlapping three­ and fourfold, up, echoing, filling the entire hollow of the church-no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the kingdom, not even a try at warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy obliga­ tory little cry, our maximum reach outward-praise be to godl-for you to take back to your war-address, your war-identity, across the snow's footprints and tire tracks finally to the path you must create by yourself, alone in the dark. whether you want it or not, whatever seas you have crossed, the way home. . . . d d d d d d d paradoxical phase, when weak stimuli get strong responses. . . . when did it happen? a certain early stage of sleep: you had not heard the mosquitoes and lancasters tonight on route to germany, their engines battering apart the sky, shaking and ripping it, for a full hour, a few puffs of winter cloud drifting below the steel-riveted underside of the night, vibrating with the constancy, the terror, of so many bombers out­ ward bound. your own form immobile, mouth-breathing, alone face-up on the narrow cot next to the wall so pictureless, chartless, mapless: so habitually blank. . . . your feet pointed toward a high slit window at the far end of the room. starlight, the steady sound of the bombers' de­ parture, icy air seeping in. the table littered with broken-spined books, 136 :;;it:.": .. : ., .. .,.�-�-.l-.� ,. •• � _, _ •.•.. _., � -, .r��--_-_----�. ----� � .. ,"-........----••. ...-.n••, '137 scribbled columns headed time / stimulus / secretion (30 sec) / re­ marks, teacups, saucers, pencils, pens. you slept, you dreamed: thou­ sands of feet above your face the steel bombers passed, wave after wave. it was indoors, some great place of assembly. many people were gathered. in recent days, at certain hours, a round white light, quite in­ tense, has gone sliding along and down in a straight line through the air. here, suddenly, it appears again, its course linear as always, right to left. but this time it isn't constant-instead it lights up brilliantly in short bursts or jangles. the apparition, this time, is taken by those present as a warning-something wrong, drastically wrong, with the day.... no one knew what the round light signified. a commission had been ap­ pointed, an investigation under way, the answer tantalizingly close­ but now the light's behavior has changed. . . . the assembly adjourns. on seeing the light jangling this way, you begin to wait for something terrible-not exactly an air raid but something close to that. you look quickly over at a clock. it's six on the dot, hands perfectly straight up and down, and you understand that six is the hour of the appearance of the light. you walk out into the evening. it's the street before your childhood home: stony, rutted and cracked, water shining in puddles. you set out to the left. (usually in these dreams of home you prefer the landscape to the right-broad night-lawns, towered over by ancient walnut trees, a hill, a wooden fence, hollow-eyed horses in a field, a cemetery. . . . your task, in these dreams, is often to cross-under the trees, through the shadows-before something happens. often you go into the fallow field just below the graveyard, full of autumn brambles and rabbits, where the gypsies live. sometimes you fly. but you can never rise above a certain height. you may feel yourself being slowed, coming inexorably to a halt: not the keen terror of falling, only an inter­ diction, from which there is no appeal . . . and as the landscape begins to dim out . . . you know . . . that . . .) but this evening, this six o'clock of the round light, you have set out leftward instead. with you is a girl identified as your wife, though you were never married, have never seen her before yet have known her for years. she doesn't speak. it's just after a rain. everything glimmers, edges are extremely clear, il­ lumination is low and very pure. small clusters of white flowers peep out wherever you look. everything blooms. you catch another glimpse of the round light, following its downward slant, a brief blink on and off. despite the apparent freshness, recent rain, flower-life, the scene dis­ turbs you. you try to pick up some fresh odor to correspond to what you see, but cannot. everything is silent, odorless. because of the light's be­ havior something is going to happen, and you can only wait. the landscape shines. wetness on the pavement. settling a warm kind of hood ffi h around the back of your neck and shoulders, you are about to remark to mi your wife, "this is the most sinister time of evening." but there's a betory ter word than "sinister." you search for it. it is someone's name. it waits tra� behind the twilight, the clarity, the white flowers. there comes a light �er tapping at the door. lev you sat bolt upright in bed, your heart pounding in fright. you waited fiia for it to repeat, and became aware of the many bombers in the sky. ande other knock. it was thomas gwenhidwy, come down all the way from rai london, with the news about poor spectro. you slept through the loud ner squadrons roaring without letup, but cwenhidwy's small, reluctant tap ron woke you. something like what happens on the cortex of dog during mil the "paradoxical" phase. be now ghosts crowd beneath the eaves. stretched among snowy soot rea chimneys, booming over air-shafts, too tenuous themselves for sound, dry now forever in this wet gusting, stretched and never breaking, �e whipped in glassy french-curved chase across the rooftops, along the re i silver downs, skimming where the sea combs freezing in to shore. they om gather, thicker as the days pass, english ghosts, so many jostling in the ili� nights, memories unloosening into the winter, seeds that will never take r� hold, so lost, now only an every-so-often word, a clue for the livingmrl "foxes," calls spectro, across astral spaces, the word intended for mr. ll�pointsman who is not present, who won't be told because the few psi it'! section who're there to hear it get cryptic debris of this sort every sitita ting-if recorded at all it finds its way into milton gloaming's wordtoj counting project-"foxes," a buzzing echo on the afternoon, carroll w� eventyr, "the white visitation" 's resident medium, curls thickly tightevi ened across his head, speaking the word "foxes," out of very red, thin d� lips . . . half of st. veronica's hospital in the morning smashed roofless y� as the old ick regis abbey, powdered as the snow, and poor spectro til picked off, lighted cubbyhole and dark ward subsumed in the blast and �� he never hearing the approach, the sound too late, after the blast, the �\\ rocket's ghost calling to ghosts it newly made. then silence. another m "event" for roger mexico, a round-headed pin to be stuck in his map, a m: square graduating from two up to three hits, helping fill out the threes �a prediction, which lately's being lagged behind. . . . � a pin? not even that, a pinhole in paper that someday will be taken 01 down, when the rockets have stopped their falling, or when the young i�1 statistician chooses to end his count, paper to be hauled away by the charwomen, torn up, burned. . . . pointsman alone, sneezing helplessly 138 ',� � ...;-:-� ...._..._--_....",....'. 'in his dimming bureau, the barking from the kennels flat now and di­ minished by the cold, shaking his head no . . . inside me, in my mem­ ory . . . more than an "event" . . . our common mortality . . . these tragic days. . . . but by now he is shivering, allowing himself to stare across his office space at the book, to remind himself that of an original seven there are now only two owners left, himself and thomas gwen­ hidwy tending his poor out past stepney. the five ghosts are strung in clear escalation: pumm in a jeep accident, easterling taken early in a raid by the luftwaffe, dromond by german artillery on shellfire cor­ ner, lamplighter by a flying bomb, and now kevin spectro . . . auto, bomb, gun, v-i, and now v-2, and pointsman has no sense but terror's, all his skin aching, for the mounting sophistication of this, for the dialec­ tic it seems to imply. . . . "ah, yes indeed. the mummy's curse, you idiot. christ, christ, i'm ready for d wing." now d wing is "the white visitation" 's cover, still housing a few genuine patients. few of the pisces people go near it. the skeleton of regular hospital staff have their own canteen, w.c.s, sleeping quarters, offices, carrying on as under the old peace, suffering the other lot in their midst. just as, for their part, pisces staff suffer the garden or peacetime madness of d wing, only rarely finding opportunity to swap information on therapies or symptoms. yes, one would expect more of a link. hysteria is, after all, is it not, hysteria. well, no, come to find out, it's not. how does one feel legitimist and easy for very long about the transition? from conspiracies so mild, so domestic, from the serpent coiled in the teacup, the hand's paralysis or eye's withdrawal at words, words that could frighten that much, to the sort of thing spectro found every day in his ward, extinguished now . . . to what pointsman finds in dogs piotr, natasha, nikolai, sergei, katinka-or pavel sergevich, var­ vara nikolaevna, and then their children, andwhen it can be read so clearly in the faces of the physicians . . . gwenhidwy inside his fluffy beard never as impassive as he might have wished, spectro hurrying away with a syringe for his fox, when nothing can really stop the abreaction of the lord of the night unless the blitz stops, rockets dis­ mantle, the entire film runs backward: faired skin back to sheet steel back to pigs to white incandescence to ore, to earth. but the reality is not reversible. each firebloom, followed by blast then by sound of arrival, is a mockery (how can it not be deliberate?) of the revers­ ible process: with each one the lord further legitimizes his state, and we who cannot find him, even to see, come to think of death no more often, really, than before . . . and, with no warning when they 139 . ----_. / a·�·''':;·····''''-·",;··-·,·····"······-·····.·,,·,, � '0' •. �. • .r' will come, and no way to bring them down, pretend to carryon as in blitzless times. when it does happen, we are content to call it "chance." or we have been persuaded. there do exist levels where chance is hardly recognized at all. but to the likes of employees such as roger mexico it is music, not without its majesty, this power ( m? m3 mr:' )series ne-m 1 + m + + + ... + ' terms num-2! 3! (n i)! bered according to rocketfalls per square, the poisson dispensation ruling not only these annihilations no man can run from, but also cavalry accidents, blood counts, radioactive decay, number of wars per year. ... pointsman stands by a window, his own vaguely reflected face blown through with the driven snow outside in the darkening day. far across the downs cries a train whistle, grainy as late fog: a cock­ crow. . --, a long whistle, another crow, fire at trackside, a rocket, another rocket, in the woods or valley . . . well ... why not renounce the book then ned, give it up that's all, the obsolescent data, the master's isolated moments of poetry, it's paper that's all, you don't need it, the book and its terrible curse ... before it's too late.... yes, recant, grovel, oh fabulous-but before whom? who's listening? but he has crossed back to the desk and actually laid hands on it.... "ass. superstitious ass." wandering, empty-headed ... these epi­ sodes are coming more often now. his decline, creeping on him like the cold. pumm, easterling, dromond, lamplighter, spectro . . . what should he've done then, gone down to psi section, asked eventyr to get up a seance, try to get on to one of them at least . . . perhaps . . . yes ... what holds him back? "have i," he whispers against the glass, the aspirate, the later plosives clouding the cold pane in fans of breath, warm and disconsolate breath, "so much pride?" one cannot, he cannot walk down that particular corridor, cannot even suggest, no not even to mexico, how he misses them . . . though he hardly knew dromond, or easterling . . . but . . . misses allen lamplighter, who would bet on anything, you know, on dogs, thunderstorms, tram numbers, on street­ corner wind and a likely skirt, on how far a given doodle would get, per­ haps . . . oh god . . . even the one that fell on him. . . . pumm's ar­ ranger-style piano and drunken baritone, his adventuring among the nurses.... spectro ... why can't he ask? when there are a hundred ways to put it. . . . i should ... should have.... there are, in his history, so many of 140 iw trat fie' iii! �n �vo ;it :a:�# �-.\.. " � _a •••• r'o •••••• ��"--. . . "",��.---.----.---. ' '" � � ._ .._ _--_ , 'these unmade moves, so many "should haves""':_should have married her, let her father steer him, should have stayed in harley street, been kinder, smiled more at strangers, even smiled back this afternoon at maudie chilkes ... why couldn't he? a silly bleeding smile, why not, what inhibits, what snarl of the mosaic? pretty, amber eyes behind those government spectacles . . . women avoid him. he knows in a general way what it is: he's creepy. he's even aware, usually, of the times when he's being creepy-it's a certain set to his face-muscles, a tendency to sweat . . . but he can't seem to do anything about it, can't ever concen­ trate for long enough, they distract him so--and next thing he knows he's back to radiating the old creepiness again . . . and their response to it is predictable, they run uttering screams only they, and he, can hear. oh but how he'd like someday to give them something really to scream about.... here's an erection stirring, he'll masturbate himself to sleep again to­ night. a joyless constant, an institution in his life. but goading him, just before the bright peak, what images will come whirling in? why, the turrets and blue waters, the sails and churchtops of stockholm-the yel­ low telegram, the face of a tall, cognizant, and beautiful woman turned to watch him as he passes in the ceremonial limousine, a woman who will later, hardly by chance, visit him in his suite at the grand hotel . . . it's not all ruby nipples and black lace cami-knickers, you know. there are hushed entrances into rooms that smell of paper, satellite votes on this committee or that, the chairs, the prizes . . . what could compare! later, when you're older, you'll know, they said. yes and it grows upon him, each war year equal to a dozen of peacetime, oh my, how right they were. as his luck has always known, his subcortical, brute luck, his gift of survival while other and better men are snatched away into death, here's the door, one he's imagined so often in lonely thesean brushings down his polished corridors of years: an exit out of the orthodox-pavlov­ ian, showing him vistas of norrmalm, s6dermalm, deer park and old city.... one by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living . . . and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been now losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry.... kevin spectro did not differentiate as much as he between outside and inside. he saw the cortex as an interface organ, mediating between the two, but part of them both. "when you've looked at how it really is," he asked once, "how can we, any of us, be separate?" he is my pierre janet, pointsman thought. . . . soon, by the dialectic of the book, pointsman will be alone, in a black field lapsing to isotropy, to the zero, waiting to be last to go. . . . will there be time? he has to survive ... to try for the prize, not for his own glory, no-but to keep a promise, to the human field of seven he once was, the ones who didn't make it. . . . here's a medium shot, him­ self backlit, alone at the high window in the grand hotel, whisky glass tipped at the bright subarctic sky and here's to you then, chaps, it'll be all of us up there onstage tomorrow, ned pointsman only happened to survive that's all ... to stockholm his banner and cry, and after stockholm a blur, a long golden twilight. . . . oh yes once you know, he did believe in a minotaur waiting for him: used to dream himself rushing into the last room, burnished sword at the ready, screaming like a commando, letting it all out at last-some true marvelous peaking of life inside him for the first and last time, as the face turned his way, ancient, weary, seeing none of pointsman's hu­ manity, ready only to assume him in another long-routinized nudge of horn, flip of hoof (but this time there would be struggle, minotaur blood the fucking beast, cries from far inside himself whose manliness and vio­ lence surprise him).... this was the dream. the settings, the face changed, little of it past the structure survived the first cup of coffee and flat beige benzedrine pill. it might be a vast lorry-park just at dawn, the pavement newly hosed, mottled in grease-browns, the hooded olive trucks standing each with a secret, each waiting ... but he knows that inside one of these . . . and at last, sifting among them, finds it, the identifying code beyond voicing, climbs up into the back, under the canvas, waits in the dust and brown light, until through the cloudy oblong of the cab window a face, a face he knows begins to turn . . . but the underlying structure is the turning face, the meeting of eyes . . . stalking reichssieger von thanatz alpdrucken, that most elusive of nazi hounds, champion weimaraner for 1941, bearing studbook num­ ber 416832 tattooed inside his ear along through a londonized ger­ many, his liver-gray shape receding, loping at twilit canalsides strewn with debris of war, rocket blasts each time missing them, their chase preserved, a plate etched in firebursts, the map of a sacrificial city, of a cortex human and canine, the dog's ear-leather mildly aswing, top of hisskull brightly reflecting the winter clouds, into a shelter lying steel-clad miles below the city, an opera of balkan intrigue, in whose hermetic safety, among whose clusters of blue dissonance unperiodically stressed 142 an or till � ev :,;;ii.�."'#."""#�.""""'�_4.""''''_''':'.. a_ ••••••• , •••••• ': ,#j,�""�"""�.....:-='" � .. '" -,--. . ..,r=---....---.--�. ---. � �� -# ' •• .._ •• _ _ --_ , ',. i fori he's unable to escape completely because of how always the reichs­ sieger persists, leading, serene, uncancelable, and to the literal pursuit of whom he thus returns, must return time and again in a fever-rondo, until at last they are on some hillside at the end of a long afternoon of dispatches from armageddon, among scarlet banks of bougainvillea, golden pathways where dust is rising, pillars of smoke far away over the spidery city they've crossed, voices in the air telling of south america burned to cinders, the sky over new york glowing purple with the new all-sovereign death-ray, and here at last is where the gray dog can turn and the amber eyes gaze into ned pointsman's own.... each time, each turning, his own blood and heart are stroked, beaten, brought jubilantly high, and triggered to the icy noctiluca, to flare and fusing thermite as he begins to expand, an uncontainable light, as the walls of the chamber turn a blood glow, orange, then white and begin to slip, to flow like wax, what there is of labyrinth collapsing in rings out­ ward, hero and horror, engineer and ariadne consumed, molten inside the light of himself, the mad exploding of himself. . . . years ago. dreams he hardly remembers. the intermediaries come long since between himself and his final beast. they would deny him even the little perversity of being in love with his death. . . . but now with slothrop in it-sudden angel, thermodynamic surprise, whatever he is . . . will it change now? might pointsman get to have a go at the minotaur after all? slothrop ought to be on the riviera by now, warm, fed, well-fucked. but out in this late english winter the dogs, thrown over, are still rang­ ing the back-streets and mews, sniffing the dustbins, skidding on carpets of snow, fighting, fleeing, shivering in their wet pools of prussian blue . . . seeking to avoid what cannot be smelled or seen, what announces itself with the roar of a predator so absolute they sink to the snow whin­ ing and roll over to give it their soft and open bellies. . . . has pointsman renounced them in favor of one untried human sub­ ject? don't think he hasn't doubts as to the validity of this scheme, at least. let vicar de la nuit worry about its "rightness," he's the staff chaplain. but . . . what about the dogs? pointsman knows them. he's deftly picked the locks of their awareness. they have no secrets. he can drive them mad, and with bromides in adequate doses he can bring them back. but slothrop ... so the pavlovian dithers about his office, feeling restless and old. he should sleep but he can't. it has to be more than the simple conditioning of a child, once upon a time. how can he've been a doctor this long and not developed reflexes for certain conditions? he knows better: he 143 �--�-�--/--' / fj��'�if"'!"i."';"'.''''''':.'.'''''''''.'.' ••''''' ••• ''''. . •... • •.••... � ,. knows it is more. spectro is dead, and slothrop (sentiments d'emprise, old man, softly now) was with his darlene, only a few blocks from st. veronica's, two days before. when one event happens after another with this awful regularity, of course you don't automatically assume that it's cause-and-effect. but you do look for some mechanism to make sense of it. you probe, you de­ sign a modest experiment. . . . he owes spectro that much. even if the american's not legally a murderer, he is sick. the etiology ought to be traced, the treatment found. there is to this enterprise, pointsman knows, a danger of seduction. because of the symmetry. . . . he's been led before, you know, down the garden path by symmetry: in certain test results . . . in assumingthat a mechanism must imply its mirror image-"irradiation," for exam­ ple, and "reciprocal induction" . . . and who'd ever said that either had to exist? perhaps it will be so this time, too. but how it haunts him, the symmetry of these two secret weapons, outside, out in the blitz, the sounds of v-1 and v -2, one the reverse of the other. . . . pavlov showed how mirror-images inside could be confused. ideas of the opposite. but what new pathology lies outside now? what sickness to events-to his­ tory itself-can create symmetrical opposites like these robot weapons? sign and symptoms. was spectro right? could outside and inside be part of the same field? if only in fairness . . . in fairness . . . pointsman ought to be seeking the answer at the interface . . . oughtn't he ... on the cortex of lieutenant slothrop. the man will suffer-perhaps, in some clinical way, be destroyed-but how many others tonight are suffering in his name? for pity's sake, every day in whitehall they're weighing and taking risks that make his, in this, seem almost trivial. al­ most. there's something here, too transparent and swift to get a hold on-psi section might speak of ectoplasms-but he knows that the time has never been better, and that the exact experimental subject is in hishands. he must seize now, or be doomed to the same stone hallways,whose termination he knows. but he must remain open-even to the possibility that the psi people are right. "we may all be right," he putsin his journal tonight, "so may be all we have speculated, and more.whatever we may find, there can be no doubt that he is, physiologi­cally, historically, a monster. we must never lose control. the thought ofhim lost in the world of men, after the war, fills me with a deep dread i cannot extinguish. . . ." ilie ore mfi ev rno l evt 144 i cal iv ili i nec i � :.#•••••••• � ,_.!_•• ",.w -.:._-,.. � _"--. . ..,,�-_----r-, � . �f�� �� , , � d d d d d d d more and more, these days of angelic visit and communique, carroll eventyr feels a victim of his freak talent. as nora dodson-truck once called it, his "splendid weakness." it showed late in life: he was 35 when out of the other world, one morning on the embankment, be­ tween strokes of a pavement artist's two pastels, salmon darkening to fawn, and a score of lank human figures, rag-sorrowful in the distances interlacing with ironwork and river smoke, all at once someone was speaking through eventyr, so quietly that nora caught hardly any of it, not even the identity of the soul that took and used him. not then. some of it was in german, some of the words she remembered. she would ask her husband, whom she was to meet that afternoon out in surrey-ar­ riving late though, all the shadows, men and women, dogs, chimneys, very long and black across the enormous lawn, and she with a dusting of . ocher, barely noticeable in the late sun, making a fan shape near the edge of her veil-it was that color she'd snatched from the screever's wood box and swiftly, turning smoothly, touching only at shoe tip and the creamy block of yellow crumbling onto the surface, never leaving it, drew a great five-pointed star on the pavement, just upriver from an un­ friendly likeness of lloyd george in heliotrope and sea-green: pulling eventyr by the hand to stand inside the central pentagon, seagulls in a wailing diadem overhead, then stepping in herself, an instinctive, a motherly way, her way with anyone she loved. she'd drawn her penta­ gram not even half in play. one couldn't be too safe, there was always evil. ... had he felt her, even then, beginning to recede ... called up the control from across the wall as a way of holding on? she was deepening from his waking, his social eye like light at the edge of the evening when, for perhaps a perilous ten minutes, nothing helps: put on your glasses and light lamps, sit by the west window and still it keeps going away, you keep losing the light and perhaps it is forever this time ... a good time of day for learning surrender, learning to diminish like the light, or like certain music. this surrender is his only gift. afterward he can recall nothing. sometimes, rarely, there may be tantalizing-not words, but halos of meaning around words his mouth evidently spoke, that only stay behind-if they do-for a moment, like dreams, can't be held or developed, and, presently, go away. he's been under rollo groast's eeg countless times since first he came to "the white visita145 tion," and all's normal-adult except for, oh once or twice perhaps a stray 50-millivolt spike off a temporal lobe, now left now right, really no pattern to it-indeed a kind of canals-of-mars controversy has been in ioui progress for these years among the different observers-aaron throwcoo ster swears he's seen slow delta-wave shapes out of the left frontal and suspects a tumor, last summer edwin treacle noted a "subdued petit­ mal spike-and-wave alternation, curiously much slower than the usual three per second"-though admittedly treacle was up in london all the night before debauching with allen lamplighter and his gambling crowd. less than a week later the buzzbomb gave lamplighter his chance: to find eventyr from the other side and prove him to be what others had said: an interface between the worlds, a sensitive. lamplighter had offered 5-to-2 odds. but so far he's been silent: nothing in an the soft acetate/metal discs or typed transcripts that mightn't be any of nol a dozen other souls. . . . ga they've come, in their time, from as far away as the institute at brisof tol to gape at, to measure and systematically doubt the freaks of psi secdr� tion. here's ronald cherrycoke, the noted psychometrist, eyes lightly fluttering, hands a steady inch away framing the brown-wrapped box in � which are securely hidden certain early-war mementos, a dark-maroon fur cravat, a broken schaeffer fountain pen, a tarnished pince-nez of white tra gold, all belonging to a group captain "basher" st. blaise, stationed far tr away north of london ... as this cherrycoke, a normal-looking lad, ire perhaps a bit overweight, begins now to recite in his lathe-humming midland accents an intimate resume of the group captain, his anxieties about his falling hair, his enthusiasm over the donald duck cinema cara toons, an incident during the lubeck raid which only he and his wingno man, now passed on, shared and agreed not to report-nothing that vio­ lated security: confirmed later, in fact, by st. blaise himself smiling a bit openmouthed well the joke's certainly on me and now tell me how'd you do it? indeed, how does cherrycoke do it? how do any of them? how does margaret quartertone produce voices on discs and wire recorders miles distant without speaking or physically touching the equipax ment? and what speakers are now beginning to assemble? where are the five-digit groups coming from which the reverend dr. paul de la nuit, chaplain and staff automatist, has been writing for weeks now, and which, it is felt ominously, no one up in london quite knows how to decrypt? what do edwin treacle's recent dreams of flight mean, especially as time-correlated with nora dodson-truck' s dreams of falling? what gathers among them all, that each in his own freak way can testify to but not in language, not even the lingua franca of the offices? turbu146 ;;,ii'i.••-,.f.,.' ";'!-� ---.;._'.6_ •.•.. � ••....... : ••��--"....---_--, � " --. . ��---�--lences in the aether, uncertainties out in the winds of karma. those souls across the interface, those we call the dead, are increasingly anx­ ious and evasive. even carroll eventyr's own control, the habitually cool and sarcastic peter sachsa, the one who found him that day long ago on the embankment and thereafter-whenever there are messages to be passed across-even sachsa's become nervous. . . . lately, as if all tuned in to the same aethereal xth programme, new varieties of freak have been showing up at "the white visitation," all hours of the day and night, silent, staring, expecting to be taken care of, carrying machines of black metal and glass gingerbread, off on waxy trances, hyperkinetically waiting only the right trigger-question to start blithering 200 words a minute about their special, terrible endowments. an assault. what are we to make of gavin trefoil, for whose gift there's not even a name yet? (rollo groast wants to call it autochrornatism.) gavin, the youngest here, only 17, can somehow metabolize at will one of his amino acids, tyrosine. this will produce melanin, which is the brown-black pigment responsible for human skin color. gavin can also inhibit this metabolizing by-it appears-varying the level of his blood phenylalanine. so he can change his color from most ghastly albino up through a smooth spectrum to very deep, purplish, black. if he concen­ trates he can keep this up, at any level, for weeks. usually he is dis­ tracted, or forgets, and gradually drifts back to his rest state, a pale freckled redhead's complexion. but you can imagine how useful he was to gerhardt von coll during the shooting of the schwarzkommando footage: he helped save literally hours of make-up and lighting work, acting as a variable reflector. the best theory of how is rollo's, but it's hopelessly vague-we do know that the dermal cells which produce melanin-the melanocytes-were once, in each of us, at an early stage of embryonic growth, part of the central nervous system. but as the em­ bryo grows, as tissue goes on differentiating, some of these nerve cells move away from what will be the cns, and migrate out to the skin, to become melanocytes. they keep their original tree-branch shapes, the axon and dendrites of the typical nerve cell. but the dendrites are used now to carry not electric signals but skin pigment. rollo groast believes in some link, so far undiscovered-some surviving cell-memory that will, retrocolonial, still respond to messages from the metropolitan brain. messages that young trefoil may not consciously know of. "it is part," rollo writes home to the elder dr. groast in lancashire, in elabo­ rate revenge for childhood tales of jenny greenteeth waiting out in the fens to drown him, "part of an old and clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as a set of very allusive, often cryptic pro147 gramme-notes-it's as if the body we can measure is a scrap of this pro­ gramme found outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we cannot enter. the convolutions of language denied us! the great stage, even darker than mr tyrone guthrie's accustomed murk. . . . gilt and mirroring, red velvet, tier on tier of box seats all in shadows too, as somewhere down in that deep proscenium, deeper than geometries we know of, the voices utter secrets we are never told. . . ." -everything that comes out from cns we have to file here, you see. it gets to be a damned nuisance after a while. most of it's utterly use­ less. but you never know when they'll want something. middle of the night, or during the worst part of an ultraviolet bombardment you know, it makes no difference to them back there. -do you ever get out much to . . . well, up to the outer level? (a long pause in which the older operative stares quite openly, as sev­ eral changes flow across her features-amusement, pity, concern-until the younger one speaks again.) i-i'm sorry, i didn't mean to be­ -(abruptly) i'm supposed to tell you, eventually, as part of the briefing. -tell me what? -just as i was told once. we hand it on, one generation to the next. (there is no piece of business plausible enough for her to find refuge in. we sense that this has not yet become routine for her. out of decency now, she tries to speak quietly, if not gently.) we all go up to the outer level, young man. some immediately, others not for a while. but sooner or later everyone out here has to go epidermal. no exceptions. -has to-i'm sorry. -but isn't it . . . i thought it was only a-well, a level. a place you'dvisit. isn't it . . . ? -outlandish scenery, oh yes so did i-unusual formations, a peepinto the outer radiance. but it's all of us, you see. millions of us, changed to interface, to horn, and no feeling, and silence. -oh, god. (a pause in which he tries to take it in-then, in panic, pushes it back:) no-how can you say that-you can't feel the memory?the tug ... we're in exile, we do have a home! (silence from the other.)back there! not up at the interface. back in the cns! -(quietly) it's been a prevalent notion. fallen sparks. fragments ofvessels broken at the creation. and someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. a messenger from the kingdom, arriving atthe last moment. but i tell you there is no such message, no such home 148 -01 �re sl rub cen [on acid rate into �ee ilie and let, itre 10� it to ninl a�r co toe ;ii. � ,_.!_ .:._ .. ,"_e .••••• , ..••• _ '. .,,;;,. ---' -----; _--'"--. . ..�-��.-.--_-.. ----==1---only the millions of last moments . . . no more. our history is an ag­ gregate of last moments. she crosses the complex room dense with its supple hides, lemon­ rubbed teak, rising snarls of incense, bright optical hardware, faded central asian rugs in gold and scarlet, hanging open-ribbed wrought­ ironwork, a long, long downstage cross, eating an orange, section by acid section, as she goes, the faille gown flowing beautifully, its elabo­ rate sleeves falling from very broadened shoulders till tightly gathered into long button-strung cuffs all in some nameless earth tone-a hedge­ green, a clay-brown, a touch of oxidation, a breath of the autumnal­ the light from the street lamps comes in through philodendron stalks and fingered leaves arrested in a grasp at the last straining away of sun­ set, falls a tranquil yellow across the cut-steel buckles at her insteps and streaks on along the flanks and down the tall heels of her patent shoes, so polished as to seem of no color at all past such mild citrus light where it touches them, and they refuse it, as if it were a masochist's kiss. be­ hind her steps the carpet relaxes ceilingward, sole and heel-shapes dis­ appearing visibly slow out of the wool pile. a single rocket explosion comes thudding across the city, from far east of here, east by southeast. the light along her shoes flows and checks like afternoon traffic. she pauses, reminded of something: the military frock trembling, silk filling­ yarns shivering by crowded thousands as the chilly light slides over and off and touching again their unprotected backs. the smells of burning musk and sandalwood, of leather and spilled whisky, thicken in the room. and he-passive as trance, allowing her beauty: to enter him or avoid him, whatever's to be her pleasure. how shall he be other than mild re­ ceiver, filler of silences? all the radii of the room are hers, watery cello­ phane, crackling tangential as she turns on her heel-axis, lancing as she begins to retrace her path. can he have loved her for nearly a decade? it's incredible. this connoisseuse of "splendid weaknesses," run not by any lust or even velleity but by vacuum: by the absence of human hope. she is frightening. someone called her an erotic nihilist . . . each of them, cherrycoke, paul de la nuit, even, he would imagine, young tre­ foil, even-so he's heard-margaret quartertone, each of them used for the ideology of the zero . . . to make nora's great rejection that much more awesome. for . . . if she does love him: if all her words, this dec­ ade of rooms and conversations meant anything . . . if she loves him and still will deny him, on the short end of 5-to-2 deny his gift, deny what's distributed in his every cell . . . then . . . 11'1 ell, 0(1' lef oef u'� do, nl me 149 if she loves him. he's too passive, he hasn't the nerve to reach in, as cherrycoke has tried to. . . . of course cherrycoke is odd. he laughs too often. not aimlessly either, but directed at something he thinks ev­ eryone else can see too. all of us watching some wry newsreel, the beam from the projector falling milky-white, thickening with smoke from bri­ ers and cheroots, abdullas and woodbines . . . the lit profiles of mili­ tary personnel and young ladies are the edges of clouds: the manly crepe of an overseas cap knifing forward into the darkened cinema, the shiny rounding of a silk leg tossed lazily toe-in between two seats in the row ahead, the keen-shadowed turbans of velvet and feathering eye­ lashes beneath. among these nights' faint and lusting couples, ronald cherrycoke's laughing and bearing his loneliness, brittle, easily crazed, oozing gum from the cracks, a strange mac of most unstable plastic. . . . of all her splendid weaklings, it is he who undertakes the most perilous trips into her void, looking for a heart whose rhythms he will call. it must astonish her, nora-so-heartless, cherrycoke kneeling, stirring her silks, between his hands old history flowing in eddy-currents-scarves of lime, aqua, lavender passing, pins, brooches, opalescent scorpions (her birth sign) inside gold mountings in triskelion, shoe-buckles, broken nacre fans and theatre programs, suspender-tabs, dark, lank, pre-auster­ ity stockings . . . on his unaccustomed knees, hands swimming, turning, seeking out her past in molecular traces so precarious among the flow of objects, the progress through his hands, she delighted to issue her deni­ als, covering up his hits (close, often dead on) skillfully as if it were drawing-room comedy.... it's a dangerous game cherrycoke's playing here. often he thinks the sheer volume of information pouring in through his fingers will saturate, burn him out . . . she seems determined to overwhelm him with her history and its pain, and the edge of it, always fresh from the stone, cut­ ting at his hopes, at all their hopes. he does respect her: he knows that very little of this is female theatricals, really. she has turned her face, more than once, to the outer radiance and simply seen nothing there.and so each time has taken a little more of the zero into herself. it comes down to courage, at worst an amount of self-deluding that's van­ ishingly small: he has to admire it, even if he can't accept her glassy wastes, her appeals to a day not of wrath but of final indifference. . . . any more than she can accept the truth he knows about himself. he does receive emanations, impressions . . . the cry inside the stone . . . excremental kisses stitched unseen across the yoke of an old shirt . . . a betrayal, an informer whose guilt will sicken one day to throat cancer, chiming like daylight through the fourchettes and quirks of a tattered 150 down �a1t1c an�e1: llou)ly for h �t.1 wi �t. no after! dackt �we dereo !)neo \�nol down dron! lowe (airin �arti hlou cllmo gr n!)o �no\� nao1 �ee� )�iae ha� dou i ana ilie i ca� cert c nab the (act �•• 'i.'-'."'.'�� ••".'_'1__ 4.v •• -.�-';'.,� .. �-=_-",,-�.--.� ��---. . . ��-----.�'-----italian glove . . . basher st. blaise's angel, miles beyond designating, rising over lubeck that palm sunday with the poison-green domes un­ derneath its feet, an obsessive crossflow of red tiles rushing up and down a thousand peaked roofs as the bombers banked and dived, the baltic already lost in a pall of incendiary smoke behind, here was the angel: ice crystals swept hissing away from the back edges of wings per­ ilously deep, opening as they were moved into new white abyss. for half a minute radio silence broke apart. the traffic being: st. blaise: freakshow two, did you see that, over. wingman: this is freakshow two-affirmative. st. blaise: good. no one else on the mission seemed to've had radio communication. after the raid, st. blaise checked over the equipment of those who got back to base and found nothing wrong: all the crystals on frequency, the power supplies rippleless as could be expected-but others remem­ bered how, for the few moments the visitation lasted, even static van­ ished from the earphones. some may have heard a high singing, like wind among masts, shrouds, bedspring or dish antennas of winter fleets down in the dockyards . . . but only basher and his wingman saw it, droning across in front of the fiery leagues of face, the eyes, which went towering for miles, shifting to follow their flight, the irises red as embers fairing through yellow to white, as they jettisoned all their bombs in no particular pattern, the fussy norden device, sweat drops in the air all around its rolling eyepiece, bewildered at their unannounced need to climb, to give up a strike at earth for a strike at heaven. . . . group captain st. blaise did not include an account of this angel in his official debriefing, the w.a.a.f. officer who interrogated him being known around the base as the worst sort of literal-minded dragon (she had reported blowitt to psychiatric for his rainbowed valkyrie over peenemiinde, and creepham for the bright blue gremlins scattering like spiders off of his typhoon's wings and falling gently to the woods of the hague in little parachutes of the same color). but damn it, this was not a cloud. unofficially, in the fortnight between the fire-raising at lubeck and hitler's order for "terror attacks of a retaliatory nature"-meaning the v-weapons-word of the angel got around. although the group captain seemed reluctant, ronald cherrycoke was allowed to probe certain objects along on the flight. thus the angel was revealed. carroll eventyr attempted then to reach across to terence over­ baby, st. blaise's wingman. jumped by a skyful of mes and no way out. the inputs were confusing. peter sachsa intimated that there were in fact many versions of the angel which might apply. overbaby's was not 151 eo ---� --/---. ; i �� ......,••• , •••••_........ •••••• •••••••• •••••• • ...... •• ,... • � as available as certain others. there are problems with levels, and with judgment, in the tarot sense.... this is part of the storm that sweeps now among them all, both sides of death. it is unpleasant. on his side, eventyr tends to feel wholly victimized, even a bit resentful. peter sachsa, on his, falls amazingly out of character and into nostalgia for life, the old peace, the weimar decadence that kept him fed and mov­ ing. taken forcibly over in 1930 by a blow from a police truncheon dur­ ing a street action in neukolln, he recalls now, sentimentally, evenings of rubbed darkwood, cigar smoke, ladies in chiseled jade, panne, attar of damask roses, the latest angular pastel paintings on the walls, the latest drugs inside the many little table drawers. more than any mere "kreis," on most nights full mandalas came to bloom: all degrees of society, all quarters of the capital, palms down on that famous blood veneer, touching only at little fingers. sachsa's table was like a deep pool in the forest. beneath the surface things were rolling, slipping, beginning to rise. . . . walter asch ("taurus") was visited one night by something so unusual it took three "hieropons" (250 mg.) to bring him back, and even so he seemed reluctant to sleep. they all stood watching him, in ragged rows resembling athletic formations, wimpe the ig-man who happened to be holding the hieropon keying on sargner, a civilian at­ tached to general staff, flanked by lieutent weissmann, recently back from south-west africa, and the herero aide he'd brought with him, staring, staring at them all, at everything . . . while behind them ladies moved in a sibilant weave, sequins and high-albedo stockings aflash, black-and-white make-up in daintily nasal alarm, eyes wide going oh . . . . each face that watched walter asch was a puppet stage: each a separate routine. · . . shows good hands yes droop and wrists as far up as muscle re­ laxant respiratory depression . . . · .. same ... same ... my own face white in mirror three threethirty four march of the hours clock ticking room no can't go in no not enough light not enough no aaahhh· . . theatre nothing but walter really look at head phony angle wants to catch light good fill-light throw a yellow gel . . . (a pneumatic toy frog jumps up onto a lily pad trembling: beneaththe surface lies a terror . . . a late captivity . . . but he floats now over the head of what would take him back ... his eyes cannot beread....) · . . mba rara m' eroto ondyoze . . . mbe mu munine m' oruroto ayo u n'omuinyo . . . (further back than this is a twisting of yarns or cord­ age, a giant web, a wrenching of hide, of muscles in the hard grip of 152 , , �meth �n�e, �e no� �u�ht thede .j.i. ••_,.i " 't-.'!-••• � •• --�-.. -.--_ •. --4if'---� .------� " , --. . 4ip�.----�=--;something that comes to wrestle when the night is deep . . . and a sense, too, of visitation by the dead, afterward a sick feeling that they are not as friendly as they seemed to be . . . he has wakened, cried, sought explanation, but no one ever told him anything he could believe. the dead have talked with him, come and sat, shared his milk, told sto­ ries of ancestors, or of spirits from other parts of the veld-for time and space on their side have no meaning, all is together). "there are sociologies," edwin treacle, his hair going all directions, attempts to light a pipeful of wretched leftovers-autumn leaves, bits of string, fag-ends, "that we haven't even begun to look into. the sociol­ ogy of our own lot, for example. psi section, the s.p.r., the old ladies in altrincham trying to summon up the devil, all of us on this side, you see, are still only half the story." "careful with that 'we,' " roger mexico distracted today by a hun­ dred things, chi-square fittings that refuse to jibe, textbooks lost, jessi­ ca's absence. . . . "it makes no sense unless we also consider those who've passed over to the other side. we do transact with them, don't we? through special­ ists like eventyr and their controls over there. but all together we form a single subculture, a psychical community, if you will." "i won't," mexico says dryly, "but yes i suppose someone ought to be looking into it." "there are peoples-these hereros for example-who carryon busi­ ness every day with their ancestors. the dead are as real as the living. how can you understand them without treating both sides of the wall of death with the same scientific approach?" and yet for eventyr it's not the social transaction treacle hopes it is. there's no memory on his side: no personal record. he has to read about it in the notes of others, listen to discs. which means he has to trust the others. that's a complicated social setup. he must base the major part of his life on the probity of men charged with acting as inter­ face between what he is supposed to be and himself. eventyr knows how close he is to sachsa on the other side, but he doesn't remember, and he's been brought up a christian, a western european, believing in the primacy of the "conscious" self and its memories, regarding all the rest as abnormal or trivial, and so he is troubled, deeply. . . . the transcripts are a document on peter sachsa as much as on the souls he puts in touch. they tell, in some detail, of his obsessive love for leni pokler, who was married to a young chemical engineer and also ac­ tive with the k.p.d., shuttling between the rzth district and sachsa's sittings. each night she came he wanted to cry at the sight of her captivtit: 1m alli ar� ra· of 153 ity. in her smudged eyes was clear hatred of a life she would not leave: a husband she didn't love, a child she had not learned to escape feeling guilty for not loving enough. the husband franz had a connection, too vague for sachsa to pass across, with army ordnance, and so there were also ideological barriers that neither one found energy enough to climb. she attended street ac­ tions, franz reported to the rocket facility at reinickendorf after swal­ lowing his tea in an early-morning room full of women he thought were sullen and waiting for him to leave: bringing their bundles of leaflets, their knapsacks stuffed with books or political newspapers, filtering through the slum courtyards of berlin at sunrise. . . . �w to j��n t ruo!, d d d d d d d �o�, no :ro-tho '��e01bul irue·in·re \\'eimar :mdur�, a.hrm jilier� dilioror idoiliel thqare !oout,e "it' � t lomo�al mo·ni�·� �a�h! ill ilie�e �roache) �\iieto "'ad irrnfuel ��\e� "two �ou�� lliere�� llaituro� �,�o� ''nn they are shivering and hungry. in the studentenheim there's no heat, not much light, millions of roaches. a smell of cabbage, old second reich, grandmothers' cabbage, of lard smoke that has found, over the years, some detente with the air that seeks to break it down, smells of long illness and terminal occupation stir off the crumbling walls. one of the walls is stained yellow with waste from the broken lines upstairs. leni sits on the floor with four or five others, passing a dark chunk of bread. in a damp nest of die faust hoch, back issues no one will read, her daughter ilse sleeps, breathing so shallow it can hardly be seen. her eyelashes make enormous shadows on the upper curves of her cheeks. they have left for good this time. this room will be all right for an­ other day, even two ... after that leni doesn't know. she took one va­ lise for both of them. does he know what it means for a woman born under the crab, a mother, to have all her home in a valise? she has a few marks with her, franz has his toy rockets to the moon. it is really over. as she used to dream it, she'd go directly to peter sachsa. if he didn't take her in, he'd at least help her to find a job. but now that she's really broken away from franz ... there's something, some nasty earth-sign belligerence that will rise up in peter now and then. . . . lately she isn't sure about his moods. he's under pressure from levels she guesses to be higher than usual, and he isn't handling it well. . . . but peter's worst infantile rages are still better than the most tranquil evenings of her piscean husband, swimming his seas of fantasy, death­ wish, rocket-mysticism-franz is just the type they want. they know 154 �".-""'.".'�".''''._!_''.c'''' •• _.''_�'_ ._0_ ..... _., ..... '. ..,-;;" .. _ __; _'",--. . .,�.how to use that. they know how to use nearly everybody. what will happen to the ones they can't use? rudi, vanya, rebecca, here we are a slice of berlin life, another ufa masterpiece, token la boheme student, token slav, token jewess, look at us: the revolution. of course there is no revolution, not even in the kinos, no german october, not under this "republic." the revolution died-though leni was only a young girl and not political-with rosa luxemburg. the best there is to believe in right now is a revolution-in­ exile-in-residence, a continuity, surviving at the bleak edge over these weimar years, waiting its moment and its reincarnated lux­ emburg.... an army of lovers can be beaten. these things appear on the walls of the red districts in the course of the night. nobody can track down author or painter for any of them, leading you to suspect they're one and the same. enough to make you believe in a folk-consciousness. they are not slogans so much as texts, revealed in order to be thought about, expanded on, translated into action by the people. . . . "it's true," vanya now, "look at the forms of capitalist expression. pornographies: pornographies of love, erotic love, christian love, boy­ and-his-dog, pornographies of sunsets, pornographies of killing, and por­ nographies of deduction-ahh, that sigh when we guess the murderer­ all these novels, these films and songs they lull us with, they're ap­ proaches, more comfortable and less so, to that absolute comfort." a pause to allow rudi a quick and sour grin. "the self-induced orgasm." " 'absolute'?" rebecca coming forward on her bare knees to hand him the bread, damp, melting from the touch of her wet mouth, "two people are-" "two people is what you are told," rudi does not quite smirk. through her attention, sadly and not for the first time around here, there passes the phrase male supremacy . . . why do they cherish their masturbating so? "but in nature it is almost unknown. most of it's soli­ tary. you know that." "i know there's coming together," is all she says. though they have never made love she means it as a reproach. but he turns away as we do from those who have just made some embarrassing appeal to faith there's no way to go into any further. leni, from inside her wasted time with franz, knows enough about coming alone. at first his passivity kept her from coming at all. then she understood that she could make up anything at all to fill the freedom he allowed her. it got more comfortable: she could dream such tender155 nesses between them (presently she was dreaming also of other men)­ but it became more solitary. yet her lines will not deepen fast enough, her mouth not learn hardening past a face she keeps surprising herself with, a daydreaming child's face, betraying her to anyone who'll look, exactly the sort of fat-softened, unfocused weakness that causes men to read her as dependent little girl-even in peter sachsa she's seen the look-and the dream is the same one she went to find while franz groaned inside his own dark pain-wishes, a dream of gentleness, light, her criminal heart redeemed, no more need to run, to struggle, a man arriving tranquil as she and strong, the street becoming a distant mem­ ory: exactly the one dream 'that out here she can least allow herself. she knows what she has to impersonate. especially with ilse watching her more. ilse is not going to be used. rebecca's been carrying on an argument with vanya, half flirting, vanya trying to keep it all in intellectual code, but the jewess reverting, time and again, to the bodily ... so sensual: the insides of her thighs, just above the knee, smooth as oil, the tenseness of all her muscles, the alert face, the judenschnautze feinting, pushing, the flashes of tongue against thick lips . . . what would it be like, to be taken to bed by her? to do it not just with another woman, but with a [euiess.... their ani­ mal darkness ... sweating hindquarters, pushing aggressively toward her face, black hairs darkening in fine crescent around each buttock from the crevice . . . the face turned over a shoulder smiling in coarse delight . . . all by surprise, really, during a moment's refuge in a pale yellow room, while the men wandered the halls outside with drugged smiles ... "no, not that hard. be gentle. i'll tell you when to do it harder. . . ." leni's fair skin, her look of innocence, and the jewess' s darker coloring, her rawness, contrasting with leni's delicacy of struc­ ture and skin, pelvic bones stretching cobwebs smoothly down groins and around belly, the two women sliding, snarling, gasping ... i know there's coming together . . . and leni waking alone-the jewess out al­ ready in some other room of the place-never having known the instant at which she fell into her true infant sleep, a soft change of state that just didn't happen with franz. . . . so she brushed and batted with fingertips her hair to show something of how she felt about the night's clientele and strolled down to the baths, stripped without caring what eyes were on her and slid into the body-warmth, the conventional per­ fume of it. . . . all at once, through a shouting and humidity that might have made it hard to concentrate, she saw, there, up on one of the ledges, looking down at her . . . yes he was richard hirsch, from the mausigstrasse, so many years ago . . . she knew immediately that her 156 }�i, ' ' ill arolm�nolo� l�·bckil l.llllncen �iliehal �lnow :��, , , �r�old "�ou're �ijt full, ' �� ltare� "notev �le:)he �l �)o ali m!trune �f tan't h �uulul in len' �f chilo ooly]ilie m�leo 00 i�wn rog ,,)oel w!r� \�ili �ow �r,nar� id�)r muej �ue,a! '�lanq �\f,� i�", mug face had never looked more vulnerable-she could see it in his eyes.... all around them the others splashed, made love, carried on comic monologues, perhaps they were friends of his-yes wasn't that siggi frog-kicking by, we called him "the troll," he hasn't grown a centime­ ter since then . . . since we ran home along the canal, tripped and fell on the hardest cobblestones in the world, and woke in the mornings to see snow on the spokes of the wagon wheels, steam out the old horse's nose.... "leni. leni." richard's hair pushed all the way back, his body golden, leaning to lift her from the cloudy bath, to sit beside him. "you're supposed to be ... " she's flustered, doesn't know how to put this. "someone told me you hadn't come back from france.... " she stares at her knees. "not even the french girls could have kept me in france." he's still there: she feels him trying to look in her eyes: and he speaks so simply, he's so alive, sure that french girls must be more coercive than english machine guns . . . she knows, filled with crying for his innocence, that he can't have been with anyone there, that french girls still are to him beautiful and remote agents of love. . . . in leni, now, nothing of her long employment shows, nothing. she is the child he looked at across park pathways, or met trudging home down the gassen in the crust-brown light, her face, rather broad then, angled down, fair eyebrows troubled, bookpack on her back, hands in apron pockets . . . some of the stones in the walls were white as paste . . . she may have seen him coming the other way, but he was older, al­ ways with friends.... now they all grow less raucous around them, more deferent, even shy, happy for richard and leni. "better late than never!" pipes siggi in his speeded-up midget's voice, reaching on tiptoe to pour may wine in all their glasses. leni goes to get her hair restyled and lightened a shade, and rebecca comes with her. they talk, for the first time, of plans and futures. without touching, richard and she have fallen in love, as they should have then. it's understood he'll take her away with him.... old gymnasium friends have been showing up in recent days, bring­ ing exotic food and wine, new drugs, much ease and honesty in sexual matters. noone bothers to dress. they show one another their naked bodies. no one feels anxious, or threatened about the size of her breasts or his penis. . . . it is all beautifully relaxing for everyone. leni prac­ tices her new name, "leni hirsch," even sometimes when she's sitting with richard at a cafe table in the morning: "leni hirsch," and he ac157 tually smiles, embarrassed, tries to look away but can't escape her eyes and finally he turns full into her own look, laughs out loud, a laugh of pure joy, and reaches his hand, the palm of his dear hand, to hold her face.... on a multi-leveled early evening of balconies, terraces, audiences grouped at the different levels, all looking downward, in toward a com­ mon center, galleries of young women with green leaves at their waists, tall evergreen trees, lawns, flowing water and national solemnity, the president, in the middle of asking the bundestag, with his familiar clogged and nasal voice, for a giant war appropriation, breaks down suddenly: "oh, fuck it . . ." fickt es, the soon-to-be-immortal phrase, rings in the sky, rings over the land, la, fickt es! "i'm sending all the sol­ diers home. we'll close down the weapon factories, we'll dump all the weapons in the sea. i'm sick of war. i'm sick of waking up every morn­ ing afraid i'm going to die." it is suddenly impossible to hate him any more: he's as human, as mortal now, as any of the people. there will be new elections. the left will run a woman whose name is never given, but everyone understands it is rosa luxemburg. the other candidates will be chosen so inept or colorless that no one will vote for them. there will be a chance for the revolution. the president has promised. incredible joy at the baths, among the friends. true joy: events in a dialectical process cannot bring this explosion of the heart. everyone is in love.... an army of lovers can be beaten. rudi and vanya have fallen to arguing street tactics. somewhere water is dripping. the street reaches in, makes itself felt everywhere. leni knows it, hates it. the impossibility of any rest . . . needing to trust strangers who may be working for the police, if not right now then a little later, when the street has grown for them more desolate than they can bear . . . she wishes she knew of ways to keep it from her child, but already that may be too late. franz-franz was never much in the street. always some excuse. worried about security, being caught on a stray frame by one of the leather-coated photographers, who will be always at the fringes of the action. or it was, "what'll we do with ilse? what if there's violence?" if there's violence, what'il we do with franz? she tried to explain to him about the level you reach, with both feet in, when you lose your fear, you lose it all, you've penetrated the mo­ ment, slipping perfectly into its grooves, metal-gray but soft as latex, and now the figures are dancing, each pre-choreographed exactly where it is, the flash of knees under pearl-colored frock as the girl in the ba158 �ka sto 'ullin sle ,moto ko jl'dei�e bn� bacl ��)nuea '\�ilibilit ineeven rranzas �1�ro\vin lrflilvel imfl", �ut ne sn 'ilin� a fun tn," . �fnall n .f1wivorg ��ln ilie� '1�lun�en ijtilie bill jmlnoa� :ltriea, � '\� were � hasi 11rtrl tel� jloel1raj �m�el oui "�ot�r� (lnotlen .oormnatelnm�to a�ut he s thersav �iiqat t !ilies�e( ;�lli�nt llvement �oula al :!illllnaa i ���t nay .fttme 01 i bushka stoops to pick up a cobble, the man in the black suitcoat and brown sleeveless sweater grabbed by policemen one on either arm, trying to keep his head up, showing his teeth, the older liberal in the dirty beige overcoat, stepping back to avoid a careening demonstrator, looking back across his lapel how-dare-you or look-out-not-me, his eye­ glasses filled with the glare of the winter sky. there is the moment, and its possibilities. she even tried, from what little calculus she'd picked up, to explain it to franz as .6.t approaching zero, eternally approaching, the slices of time growing thinner and thinner, a succession of rooms each with walls more silver, transparent, as the pure light of the zero comes nearer.... but he shook his head. "not the same, leni. the important thing is taking a function to its limit . .6.t is just a convenience, so that it can hap­ pen." he has, had, this way of removing all the excitement from things with a few words. not even well-chosen words: he's that way by instinct. when they went to movies he would fall asleep. he fell asleep during nibelungen. he missed attila the hun roaring in from the east to wipe out the burgundians. franz loved films but this was how he watched them, nodding in and out of sleep. "you're the cause-and-effect man," she cried. how did he connect together the fragments he saw while his eyes were open? he was the cause-and-effect man: he kept at her astrology without mercy, telling her what she was supposed to believe, then denying it. "tides, radio interference, damned little else. there is no way for changes out there to produce changes here." "not produce," she tried, "not cause. it all goes along together. paral­ lel, not series. metaphor. signs and symptoms. mapping on to different coordinate systems, i don't know ... " she didn't know, all she was trying to do was reach. but he said: "try to design anything that way and have it work." they saw die frau im mond. franz was amused, condescending. he picked at technical points. he knew some of the people who'd worked on the special effects. leni saw a dream of flight. one of many possible. real flight and dreams of flight go together. both are part of the same movement. not a before b, but all together.... could anything with him ever have lasted? if the jewish wolf pflaum­ baum had not set the torch to his own paint factory by the canal, franz might have labored out their days dedicated to the jew's impossible scheme of developing patterned paint, dissolving crystal after patient 159 �----/---. , ��...... ri·· • "-'_ ••••••.• ••••.• ••••••.• ••.•.• . •. . • .. ,.... � • crystal, controlling the temperatures with obsessive care so that on cooling the amorphous swirl might, this time might, suddenly shift, lock into stripes, polka-dots, plaid, stars of david-instead of finding one early morning a blackened waste, paint cans exploded in great bursts of crimson and bottle-green, smells of charred wood and naphtha, pflaum­ baum wringing his hands oy, oy, oy, the sneaking hypocrite. all for the insurance. so franz and leni were very hungry for a time, with ilse growing in her belly each day. what jobs came along were menial and paid hardly enough to matter. it was breaking him. then he met his old friend from the t.h. munich one night out in the swampy suburbs. he'd been out all day, the proletarian husband, out pasting up bills to advertise some happy max schlepzig film fantasy, while leni lay preg­ nant, forced to turn when the pain in her back got too bad, inside their furnished dustbin in the last of the tenement's hinterhofe, it was well after dark and bitter cold by the time his paste bucket was empty and the ads all put up to be pissed on, torn down, .swastikaed over. (it may have been a quota film. there may have been a misprint. but when he arrived at the theatre on the date printed on the bill, he found the place dark, chips of plaster littering the floor of the lobby, and a terrible smashing far back inside the theatre, the sound of a demolition crew ex­ cept that there were no voices, nor even any light that he could see back there . . . he called, but the wrecking only went on, a loud creak­ ing in the bowels behind the electric marquee, which he noticed now was blank. ... ) he had wandered, bone-tired, miles northward into reinickendorf, a quarter of small factories, rusted sheeting on the roofs, brothels, sheds, expansions of brick into night and disuse, repair shops where the water in the vats for cooling the work lay stagnant and scummed over. only a sprinkling of lights. vacancy, weeds in the lots, no one in the streets: a neighborhood where glass breaks every night. it must have been the wind that was carrying him down a dirt road, pastthe old army garrison the local police had taken over, among the shacks and tool cribs to a wire fence with a gate. he found the gate open, and pushed through. he'd become aware of a sound, somewhere ahead. one summer before the world war, he'd gone to schaffhausen on holidaywith his parents, and they'd taken the electric tram to the rhine falls. they went down a stairway and out on to a little wood pavilion with a pointed roof-all around them were clouds, rainbows, drops of fire. and the roar of the waterfall. he held on to both their hands, suspended inthe cold spray-cloud with mutti and papi, barely able to see above to the trees that clung to the fall's brim in a green wet smudge, or the little 160 -. � �� ,...;-.•_._... ...•" ....... ',. ti': tour boats below that came up nearly to where the cataract crashed into the rhine. but now, in the winter heart of reinickendorf, he was alone, hands empty, stumbling over frozen mud through an old ammunition dump grown over with birch and willow, swelling in the darkness to hills, sinking to swamp. concrete barracks and earthworks 40 feet high towered in the middle distance as the sound beyond them, the sound of a waterfall, grew louder, calling from his memory. these were the kinds of revenants that found franz, not persons but forms of energy, abstrac­ tions.... through a gap in the breastwork he saw then a tiny silver egg, with a flame, pure and steady, issuing from beneath, lighting the forms of men in suits, sweaters, overcoats, watching from bunkers or trenches. it was a rocket, in its stand: a static test. the sound began to change, to break now and then. it didn't sound ominous to franz in his wonder, only different. but the light grew brighter, and the watching figures suddenly started dropping for cover as the rocket now gave a sputtering roar, a long burst, voices screaming get down and he hit the dirt just as the silver thing blew apart, a terrific blast, metal whining through the air where he'd stood, franz hugging the ground, ears ringing, no feeling even for the cold, no way for the moment of knowing if he was still inside his body. . . . feet approached running. he looked up and saw kurt mondaugen. the wind all night, perhaps all year, had brought them together. this is what he came to believe, that it was the wind. most of the schoolboy fat was replaced now by muscle, his hair was thinning, his complexion darker than anything franz had seen in the street that winter, dark even in the concrete folds of shadow and the hames from the scattered rocket fuel, but it was mondaugen sure enough, seven or eight years gone but they knew each other in the instant. they'd lived in the same drafty mansarde in the liebigstrasse in munich. (franz had seen the ad­ dress then as a lucky omen, for justus von liebig had been one of his heroes, a hero of chemistry. later, as confirmation, his course in poly­ mer theory was taught by professor-doctor laszlo jamf, who was latest in the true succession, liebig to august wilhelm von hofmann, to her­ bert canister to laszlo jamf, a direct chain, cause-and-effect.) they'd ridden the same rattling schnellbahnwagen with its three contact arms frail as insect legs squeaking along the wires overhead to the t .h.: mondaugen had been in electrical engineering. on graduating he'd gone off to south-west africa, on some kind of radio research project. they had written for a while, then stopped. their reunion went on till very late, in a reinickendorf beer hall, un161 dergraduate hollering among the working-class drinkers, a jubilant and grandiose post-mortem on the rocket test-scrawling on soggy paper napkins, all talking at once around the glass-cluttered table, arguing through the smoke and noise heat flux, specific impulse, propellant flow.... "it was a failure," franz weaving under their electric bulb at three or four in the morning, a loose grin on his face, "it failed, leni, but they talk only of success! twenty kilograms of thrust and only for a few sec­ onds, but no one's ever done it before. i couldn't believe it leni i saw something that, that no one ever did before.... " he meant to accuse her, she imagined, of conditioning him to despair. but she only wanted him to grow up. what kind of wandervogel idiocy is it to run around all night in a marsh calling yourselves the society for space navigation? leni grew up in lubeck, in a row of kleinbiirger houses beside the trave. smooth trees, spaced evenly all along the riverward edge of her cobbled street, arched their long boughs over the water. from her bed­ room window she could see the twin spires of the dom rising above the housetops. her fetid back-court existence in berlin was only a decom­ pression lock-must be. her way out of that fussy biedermeier strangu­ lation, her dues payable against better times, after the revolution. franz, in play, often called her "lenin." there was never doubt about who was active, who passive-still she had hoped he'd grow beyond it. she has talked to psychiatrists, she knows about the german male at puberty. on their backs in the meadows and mountains, watch­ ing the sky, masturbating, yearning. destiny waits, a darkness latent in the texture of the summer wind. destiny will betray you, crush your ideals, deliver you into the same detestable biirgcrhchkeit as your fa­ ther, sucking at his pipe on sunday strolls after church past the row houses by the river-dress you in the gray uniform of another family man, and without a whimper you will serve out your time, fly from pain to duty, from joy to work, from commitment to neutrality. destiny does all this to you. franz loved her neurotically, masochistically, he belonged to her and believed that she would carry him on her back, away to a place where destiny couldn't reach. as if it were gravity. he had half-awakened one night burrowing his face into her armpit mumbling, "your wings . . . oh, leni, your wings . . ." but her wings can only carry her own weight, and she hopes ilse's, for a while. franz is a dead weight. let him look for flight out at the raket162 -. '. .'" ' �� .._ .. ..._---...,...... , 'enflugplatz, where he goes to be used by the military and the cartels. let him fly to the dead moon if he wants to. . . . use is awake, and crying. no food all day. they ought to try peter's after all. he'll have milk. rebecca holds out what's left of the end crust she's been eating. "would she like this?" not much of the jew in her. why are half the leftists she knows jew­ ish? she immediately reminds herself that marx was one. a racial affinity for the books, the theory, a rabbinical love of loud argument . . . she gives the crust to her child, picks her up. "if he comes here, tell him you haven't seen me." they arrive at peter sachsa's well after dark. she finds a seance just about to begin. she is immediately aware of her drab coat and cotton dress (hemline too high), her scuffed and city-dusted shoes, her lack of jewelry. more middle-class reflexes . . . vestiges, she hopes. but most of the women are old. the others are too dazzling. hmm. the men look more affluent than usual. leni spots a silver lapel-swastika here and there. wines on the tables are the great '20s and '21s. schloss vollrads, zeltinger, piesporter-it is an occasion. the objective tonight is to get in touch with the late foreign minister walter rathenau. at the gymnasium, leni sang with the other children the charming anti-semitic street refrain of the time: knallt ab den juden rathenau, die gottverdammte judensau . after he was assassinated she sang nothing for weeks, certain that, if the singing hadn't brought it about, at least it had been a prophecy, a spell.... there are specific messages tonight. questions for the former minis­ ter. a gentle sorting-out process is under way. reasons of security. only certain guests are allowed to go on into peter's sitting room. the preter­ ite stay outside, gossiping, showing their gums out of tension, moving their hands. . . . the big scandal around i g farben this week is the un­ lucky subsidiary spottbilligfilm ag, whose entire management are about to be purged for sending to okw weapons procurement a design proposal for a new airborne ray which could turn whole populations, in­ side a ten-kilometer radius, stone blind. an ig review board caught the scheme in time. poor spottbilligfilm. it had slipped their collective mind what such a weapon would do to the dye market after the next war. the gotterdammerung mentality again. the weapon had been known as l163 5227, l standing for light, another comical german euphemism, like the a in rocket designations which stands for aggregate, or ig itself, inter­ essengemeinschaft, a fellowship of interests ... and what about the case of catalyst poisoning in prague-was it true that the vi b group staffs at the chemical instrumentality for the abnormal have been flown east on emergency status, and that it's a complex poisoning, both selenium and tellurium . . . the names of the poisons sober the conver­ sation, like a mention of cancer. . . . the elite who will sit tonight are from the corporate nazi crowd, among whom leni recognizes who but generaldirektor smaragd, of an ig branch that was interested, for a time, in her husband. but then abruptly there'd been no more contact. it would have been mysterious, a little sinister, except that everything iu those days could reasonably be blamed on the economy.... in the crowd her eyes meet peter's. "i've left him," she whispers, nodding, as he shakes hands. "you can put ilse to sleep in one of the bedrooms. can we talk later?" there is to his eyes tonight a definite faunish slant. will he ac­ cept that she is not his, any more than she belonged to franz? "yes, of course. what's going on?" he snorts, meaning they haven't told me. they are using him-have been, various theys, for ten years. but he never knows how, except by rare accident, an allusion, an interception of smiles. a distorting and forever clouded mirror, the smiles of clients. . . . why do they want rathenau tonight? what did caesar really whis­ per to his protege as he fell? et tu, brute, the official lie, is about what you'd expect to get from them-it says exactly nothing. the moment of assassination is the moment when power and the ignorance of power come together, with death as validator. when one speaks to the other then it is not to pass the time of day with et-tu-brutes. what passes is a truth so terrible that history-at best a conspiracy, not always among gentlemen, to defraud-will never admit it. the truth will be repressed or in ages of particular elegance be disguised as something else. what will rathenau, past the moment, years into a new otherside existence, have to say about the old dispensation? probably nothing as incredible as what he might have said just as the shock flashed his mortal nerves, as the angel swooped in. . . . but they will see. rathenau-according to the histories-was prophet and architect of the cartelized state. from what began as a tiny bureau at the war office in berlin, he had coordinated germany's economy during the world war, controlling supplies, quotas and prices, cutting 164 ilfoss a fiteonr roun! bl cmilr �nr, b irnlios �ro�ress oommun ��nessj oots�l \l'orlo -, '\ . � < ;-�.. __ •• -ft.---...,...... p. 'across and demolishing the barriers of secrecy and property that sepa­ rated firm from firm-a corporate bismarck, before whose power no ac­ count book was too privileged, no agreement too clandestine. his father emil rathenau had founded aeg, the german general electric com­ pany, but young walter was more than another industrial heir-he was a philosopher with a vision of the postwar state. he saw the war in progress as a world revolution, out of which would rise neither red communism nor an unhindered right, but a rational structure in which business would be the true, the rightful authority-a structure based, not surprisingly, on the one he'd engineered in germany for fighting the world war. thus the official version. grandiose enough. but generaldirektor smaragd and colleagues are not here to be told what even the masses believe. it might almost-if one were paranoid enough-seem to be a collaboration here, between both sides of the wall, matter and spirit. what is it they know that the powerless do not? what terrible structure behind the appearances of diversity and enterprise? gallows humor. a damned parlor game. smaragd cannot really be­ lieve in any of this, smaragd the technician and manager. he may only want signs, omens, confirmations of what's already in being, something to giggle over among the herrenklub-"we even have the jew's blessing!" whatever comes through the medium tonight they will warp, they will edit, into a blessing. it is contempt of a rare order. leni finds a couch in a quiet corner of a room full of chinese ivory and silk hangings, lies on it, one calf dangling, and tries to relax. franz now will be home from the rocket-field, blinking under the bulb as frau silberschlag next door delivers leni's last message. messages tonight, borne on the lights of berlin . . . neon, incandescent, stellar . . . mes­ sages weave into a net of information that no one can escape. . . . "the path is clear," a voice moving sachsa's lips and rigid white throat. "you are constrained, over there, to follow it in time, one step after another. but here it's possible to see the whole shape at once-not for me, i'm not that far along-but many know it as a clear presence . . . 'shape' isn't really the right word. . . . let me be honest with you. i'm finding it harder to put myself in your shoes. problems you may be having, even those of global implication, seem to many of us here only trivial side-trips. you are off on a winding and difficult road, which you conceive to be wide and straight, an autobahn you can travel at your ease. is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real is illusion? i don't know whether you'll listen, or ignore it. you only want to know about your path, your autobahn. \\� "all right. mauve: that's in the pattern. the invention of mauve, the coming to your level of the color mauve. are you listening, ceneraldi­ rektor?" "i am listening, herr rathenau," replies smaragd of ic farben. "tyrian purple, alizarin and indigo, other coal-tar dyes are here, but the important one is mauve. william perkin discovered it in england, but he was trained by hofmann, who was trained by liebig. there is a succession involved. if it is karmic it's only in a very limited sense . . . another englishman, herbert canister, and the generation of chemists he trained. . . . then the discovery of oneirine. ask your man wimpe. he is the expert on cyclized benzylisoquinilines. look into the clinical effects of the drug. i don't know. it seems that you might look in that di­ rection. it converges with the mauve-perkin-canister line. but all i have is the molecule, the sketch . . . methoneirine, as the sulfate. not in germany, but in the united states. there is a link to the united states. a link to russia. why do you think von maltzan and i saw the rapallo treaty through? it was necessary to move to the east. wimpe can tell you. wimpe, the v-mann, was always there. why do you think we wanted krupp to sell them agricultural machinery so badly? it was also part of the process. at the time i didn't understand it as clearly as i do now. but i knew what i had to do. "consider coal and steel. there is a place where they meet. the in­ terface between coal and steel is coal-tar. imagine coal, down in the earth, dead black, no light, the very substance of death. death ancient, prehistoric, species we will never see again. crowing older, blacker, deeper, in layers of perpetual night. above ground, the steel rolls out fiery, bright. but to make steel, the coal tars, darker and heavier, must be taken from the original coal. earth's excrement, purged out for the ennoblement of shining steel. passed over. "we thought of this as an industrial process. it was more. we passed over the coal-tars. a thousand different molecules waited in the preter­ ite dung. this is the sign of revealing. of unfolding. this is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on earth, leaping to earth's light from its grave miles and aeons below. there is the other meaning . . . the suc­ cession ... i can't see that far yet.... "but this is all the impersonation of life. the real movement is not from death to any rebirth. it is from death to death-transfigured. the best you can do is to polymerize a few dead molecules. but polymeriz­ ing is not resurrection. i mean your ic, ceneraldirektor." "our ig, i should have thought," replies smaragd with more than the usual ice and stiffness. 166 -, "" . jiio;;:.... -. �.. '!::' ••_._..._--.,.,.,•• , 'd d d d d d d "that's for you to work out. if you prefer to call this a liaison, do. i am here for as long as you need me. you don't have to listen. you think you'd rather hear about what you call 'life': the growing, organic kar­ tell. but it's only another illusion. a very clever robot. the more dy­ namic it seems to you, the more deep and dead, in reality, it grows. look at the smokestacks, how they proliferate, fanning the wastes of original waste over greater and greater masses of city. structurally, they are strongest in compression. a smokestack can survive any explosion­ even the shock wave from one of the new cosmic bombs"-a bit of a murmur around the table at this-" as you all must know. the persist­ ence' then, of structures favoring death. death converted into more death. perfecting its reign, just as the buried coal grows denser, and overlaid with more strata-epoch on top of epoch, city on top of ruined city. this is the sign of death the impersonator. "these signs are real. they are also symptoms of a process. the proc­ ess follows the same form, the same structure. to apprehend it you will follow the signs. all talk of cause and effect is secular history, and secu­ lar history is a diversionary tactic. useful to you, gentlemen, but no longer so to us here. if you want the truth-i know i presume-you must look into the technology of these matters. even into the hearts of certain molecules-it is they after all which dictate temperatures, pres­ sures, rates of flow, costs, profits, the shapes of towers.... "you must ask two questions. first, what is the real nature of synthe­ sis? and then: what is the real nature of control? "you think you know, you cling to your beliefs. but sooner or later you will have to let them go.... " a silence, which prolongs itself. there is some shifting in the seats around the table, but the sets of little fingers stay in touch. "herr rathenau? could you tell me one thing?" it is heinz rippen­ stoss, the irrepressible nazi wag and gadabout. the sitters begin to gig­ gle, and peter sachsa to return to his room. "is god really jewish?" pumm, easterling, dromond, lamplighter, spectro are stars on the doc­ tor's holiday tree. shining down on this holiest of nights. each is a cold rm announcement of dead ends, suns that will refuse to stand, but flee south, ever south, leaving us to north-without-end. but kevin spectro is �w brightest, most distant of all. and the crowds they swarm in knights­ bridge, and the wireless carols drone, and the underground's a mob167 scene, but pointsman's all alone. but he's got his xmas present, fa la la, he won't have to settle for any spam-tin dog this year mates, he's got his own miracle and human child, grown to manhood but carrying, some­ place on the slothropian cortex now a bit of psychology's own child­ hood, yes pure history, inert, encysted, unmoved by jazz, depression, war-a survival, if you will, of a piece of the late dr. jamf himself, past death, past the reckoning of the, the old central chamber you know.... he has no one to ask, no one to tell. my heart, he feels, my heart floods now with such virility and hope. . . . news from the riviera is splendid. experiments here begin to run smoothly for a change. from some dark overlap, a general appropriation or sinking fund someplace, brigadier pudding has even improved the funding for arf. does he feel pointsman's power too? is he buying some insurance? at odd moments of the day pointsman, fascinated, discovers himself with an erect penis. he begins making jokes, english pavlovian jokes, nearly all of which depend on one unhappy accident: the latin cortex translates into english as "bark," not to mention the well-known and humorous relation between dogs and trees (these are bad enough, and most pisces folk have the good sense to avoid them, but they are daz­ zling witticisms compared with jokes out of the mainstream, such as the extraordinary "what did the cockney exclaim to the cowboy from san antonio?"). sometime during the annual pisces christmas party, pointsman is led by maudie chilkes to a closet full of belladonna, gauze, thistle tubes, and the scent of surgical rubber, where in a flash she's down on her red knees, unbuttoning his trousers, as he, confused, good god, strokes her hair, clumsily shaking much of it loose from its wine­ colored ribbon-here what's this, an actual, slick and crimson, hot, squeak-stockinged slavegirl "gam" yes right among these winter-pale clinical halls, with the distant gramophone playing rumba music, basses, woodblocks, wearied blown sheets of tropic string cadences audible as everyone dances back there on the uncarpeted floors, and the old palla­ dian shell, conch of a thousand rooms, gives, resonates, shifting stresses along walls and joists . . . bold maud, this is incredible, taking the pink pavlovian cock in as far as it will go, chin to collarbone vertical as a sword-swallower, releasing him each time with some small ladylike choking sound, fumes of expensive scotch rising flowerlike, and her hands up grabbing the loose wool seat of his pants, pleating, unpleating -it's happening so fast that pointsman only sways, blinks a bit drunk­ enly you know, wondering if he's dreaming or has found the perfect mixture, try to remember, amphetamine sulphate, 5 mg q 6 h, last night 168 -, '-, ---!iii>� "� tt-�� • • ....._ ... ...••" ....... ,. 'amobarbital sodium 0.2 gm. at bedtime, this morning assorted breakfast vitamin capsules, alcohol an ounce, say, per hour, over the past ... how many cc.s is that and oh, jesus i'm coming. am i? yes . . . well ... and maud, dear maudie, swallowing, wastes not a drop ... smil­ ing quietly, unplugged at last, she returns the unstiffening hawk to its cold bachelor nest but kneels still a bit longer in the closet of this mo­ ment, the drafty, white-lit moment, some piece by ernesto lecuona, "siboney" perhaps, now reaching them down corridors long as the sea­ lanes back to the green shoals, slime stone battlements, and palm eve­ nings of cuba . . . a victorian pose, her cheek against his leg, his high­ veined hand against her face. but no one saw them, then or ever, and in the winter ahead, here and there, her look will cross his and she'll begin to blush red as her knees, she'll come to his room off the lab once or twice perhaps, but somehow they're never to have this again, this sud­ den tropics in the held breath of war and english december, this mo­ ment of perfect peace. . . . no one to tell. maud knows something's up all right, the finances of pisces pass through her hands, nothing escapes her. but he can't tell her ... or not everything, not the exact terms of his hope, he's never, even to himself . . . it lies ahead in the dark, defined inversely, by hor­ ror, by ways all hopes might yet be defeated and he find only his death, that dumb, empty joke, at the end of this pavlovian's progress. now thomas gwenhidwy too senses change fibrillating in the face and step of his colleague. fat, prematurely white santa claus beard, a listing, rumpled showman, performing every instant, trying to speak a double language, both welsh comic-provincial and hard diamond gone­ a-begging truth, hear what you will. his singing voice is incredible, in his spare time he strolls out past the wire-mesh fighter runways looking for bigger planes-for he loves to practice the bass part to "diadem" as the flying fortresses take off at full power, and even so you can hear him, bone-vibrating and pure above the bombers, all the way to stoke poges, you see. once a lady even wrote in to the times from luton hoo, bedfordshire, asking who was the man with the lovely deep voice singing "diadem." a mrs. snade. gwenhidwy likes to drink a lot, grain alcohol mostly, mixed in great strange mad-scientist concoctions with beef tea, grenadine, cough syrup, bitter belch-gathering infusions of blue scullcap, valerian root, motherwort and lady's-slipper, whatever's to hand really. his is the hale alcoholic style celebrated in national leg­ end and song. he is descended directly from the welshman in henry v who ran around forcing people to eat his leek. none of your sedentary drinkers though. pointsman has never seen gwenhidwy off of his feet or 169 standing still-he fusses endlessly pitch-and-roll avast you scum down the long rows of sick or dying faces, and even pointsman has noted rough love in the minor gestures, changes of breathing and voice. they are blacks, indians, ashkenazic jews speaking dialects you never heard in harley street: they have been bombed out, frozen, starved, meanly sheltered, and their faces, even the children's, all possess some ancient intimacy with pain and reverse that amazes pointsman, who is more po­ larized upon west end catalogues of genteel signs and symptoms, head­ born anorexias and constipations the welshman could have little pa­ tience with. on cwenhidwy's wards some bmrs run low as 35, 40. the white lines go thickening across the x-ray ghosts of bones, gray scrapings from underneath tongues bloom beneath his old wrinkle-black microscope into clouds of vincentesque invaders, nasty little fangs achop and looking to ulcerate the vitamin-poor tissue they came from. a quite different domain altogether, you see. "i don't know, man-no, i don't," flinging a fat slow-motion arm out of his hedgehog-colored cape, back at the hospital, as they walk in the falling snow-to pointsman a clear separation, monks here and cathe­ dral there, soldiers and garrison-but not so to gwenhidwy, part of whom remains behind, hostage. the streets are empty, it's christmas day, they are tramping uphill to cwenhidwy's rooms as the quiet snow curtains fall on and on between themselves and the pierced walls of the institution marching in stone parallax away into a white gloom. "how they persist. the poor, the black. and the jews! the welsh, the welsh once upon a time were jewish too? one of the lost tribes of israel, a black tribe, who wandered overland, centuries? oh an incredible jour­ ney. until at last they reached wales, you see." "wales ... " "stayed on, and became the cymri. what if we're all jews, you see? all scattered like seeds? still flying outward from the primal fist so long ago. man, i believe that." "of course you do, gwenhidwy." "aren't we then? what about you?" "i don't know. i don't feel [ewish today." "i meant flying outward?" he means alone and forever separate: pointsman knows what he means. so, by surprise, something in him is touched. he feels the christmas snow now at crevices of his boots, the bitter cold trying to get in. the brown wool flank of gwenhidwy moves at the edge of his sight, a pocket of color, a holdout against this whiten­ ing day. flying outward. flying ... gwenhidwy, a million ice-points falling at a slant across his caped immensity, looking so improbable of 1 70 -, '\.. . '10... " . -_ ••_ ...----••�......" .. ,. '.3 extinction that now, from where it's been lying, the same yawing-drunk chattering fear returns, the curse of the book, and here is someone he wants, truly, with all his mean heart, to see preserved ... though he's been too shy, or proud, ever to've smiled at gwenhidwy without some kind of speech to explain and cancel out the smile. . . . dogs run barking at their approach. they get the professional eye from pointsman. gwenhidwy is humming "aberystwyth." out comes the doorkeeper's daughter estelle with a shivering kid or two underfoot and a christmas bottle of something acrid but very warming inside the breast after about the first minute it's down. smells of coal smoke, piss, garbage, last night's bubble-and-squeak, fill the hallways. gwenhidwy is drinking from the bottle, carrying on a running slap-and-tickle with es­ telle and getting in a fast game of where'd-he-go-there-he-is with arch her youngest around the broad mouton hipline of his mother who keeps trying to smack him but he's too fast. gwenhidwy breathes upon a gas meter which is frozen all through, too tight to accept coins. terrible weather. he surrounds it, curses it, bending like a screen lover, wings of his cape reaching to enfold­ gwenhidwy, radiating like a sun. . . . out the windows of the sitting-room are a row of bare army-colored poplars, a canal, a snowy trainyard, and beyond it a long sawtooth pile of scrap coal, still smoldering from a v-bomb yesterday. ragged smoke is carried askew, curling, broken and back to earth by the falling snow. "it's the closest yet," gwenhidwy at the kettle, the sour smell of a sulfur match in the air. after a moment, still on watch over the gas ring, "pointsman, do you want to hear something really paranoid?" "you too?" "have you consulted a map of london lately? all this great me-te­ oric plague of v-weapons, is being dumped out here, you see. not back on whitehall, where it's supposed to be, but on me, and i think it is beast-ly?" "what a damned unpatriotic thing to say." "oh," hawking and spitting into the washbowl, "you don't want to believe it. why should you? harley street lot, my good jesus christ." it's an old game with gwenhidwy, royal fellow-baiting. some unac­ customed wind or thermocline along the sky is bringing them down the deep choral hum of american bombers: death's white gymanfa ganu. a switching-locomotive creeps silently across the web of tracks below. "they're falling in a poisson distribution," says pointsman in a small voice, as if it was open to challenge. "no doubt man, no doubt-an excellent point. but all over the fuck1 71 dr� tr�· iod e �i ing east end, you see." arch, or someone, has drawn a brown, orange, and blue gwenhidwy carrying a doctor's bag along a flat horizon-line past a green gasworks. the bag's full of gin bottles, gwenhidwy is smil­ ing, a robin is peeking out from its nest in his beard, and the sky is blue and the sun yellow. "but have you ever thought of why? here is the city paranoiac. all these long centuries, growing over the country-side? like an intelligent creature. an actor, a fantastic mimic, pointsman! count-erfeiting all the correct forces? the eco-nomic, the demographic? oh yes even the ran-dom, you see." "what do you mean 'i see'? i don't see." against the window, backlit by the white afternoon, pointsman's face is invisible except for a tiny bright crescent glowing off each eyeball. should he fumble behind him for the window catch? is the woolly welshman gone raving mad, then? "you don't see them," steam in tight brocade starting to issue from the steel-blotched swan's mouth, "the blacks and jews, in their dark­ ness. you can't. you don't hear their silence. you became so used to talking, and to light." "to barking, anyway." "nothing comes through my hos-pital but fail-ure, you see." staring with a fixed, fool-alcoholic smile. "what can i cure? i can only send them back, outside again? back to that? it might as well be europe here, com-bat, splint-ing and drug-ging them all into some mini-mum condition to get on with the kill-ing?" "here, don't you know there's a war on?" thus pointsman receives, with his cup, a terrible scowl. in truth, he is hoping with nitwit irrele­ vancies to discourage gwenhidwy from going on about his city para­ noiac. pointsman would rather talk about the rocket victims admitted today to the hospital down there. but this is exorcism man, it is the poet singing back the silence, adjuring the white riders, and gwenhidwy knows, as pointsman cannot, that it's part of the plan of the day to sit inside this mean room and cry into just such a deafness: that mr. points­ man is to play exactly himself-stylized, irritable, uncomprehend­ ing.... "in some cities the rich live upon the heights, and the poor are found below. in others the rich occupy the shoreline, while the poor must live inland. now in london, here is a gra-dient of wretchedness? increasing as the river widens to the sea. i am only ask-ing, why? is it because of the ship-ping? is it in the pat-terns of land use, especially those relating to the industrial age? is it a case of an-cient tribal tabu, surviving down all the eng-lish generations? no. the true reason is the threat from the east, you see. and the south: from the mass of eu-rope, certainly. 172 roe peo fu��e in �e thre ooiacar -, " . .�'" ... _.-_ .•_ ••• _--_ &"'., 'the people out here were meant to go down first. we're expendable: those in the west end, and north of the river are not. oh, i don't mean the threat has this or that specific shape. political, no. if the city para­ noiac dreams, it's not accessible to us. perhaps the ci-ty dreamed of an­ other, en-emy city, float-ing across the sea to invade the es-tuary . . . or of waves of darkness ... waves of fire.... perhaps of being swal­ lowed again, by the immense, the si-lent mother con-tinent? it's none of my business, city dreams. . . . but what if the ci-ty were a growing neo-plasm, across the centuries, always chang-ing, to meet exactly the chang-ing shape of its very worst, se-cret fears? the raggedy pawns, the disgraced bish-op and cowardly knight, all we condemned, we irreversi­ bly lost, are left out here, exposed and wait-ing. it was known, don't deny it-known, pointsman! that the front in eu-rope someday must develop like this? move away east, make the rock-ets necessary, and known how, and where, the rockets would fall short. ask your friend mexico? look at the densities on his map? east, east, and south of the river too, where all the bugs live, that's who's getting it thick-est, my friend." "you're right, gwenhidwy," judicious, sipping his tea, "that is very paranoid. " "it's true." he is out with the festive bottle of vat 69 now, and about to pour them a toast. "to the babies." grinning, completely mad. "babies, gwenhidwy?" "ah, i've been keep-ing my own map? plot-ting da-ta from the mater­ nity wards. the ba-bies born during this blitz are al-so fol-iowing a pois­ son distribution, you see." "well-to the oddness of it, then. poor little bastards." later, toward dusk, several enormous water bugs, a very dark reddish brown, emerge like elves from the wainscoting, and go lumbering to­ ward the larder-pregnant mother bugs too, with baby translucent out­ rider bugs flowing along like a convoy escort. at night, in the very late silences between bombers, ack-ack fire and falling rockets, they can be heard, loud as mice, munching through cwenhidwy's paper sacks, leaving streaks and footprints of shit the color of themselves behind. they don't seem to go in much for soft things, fruits, vegetables, and such, it's more the solid lentils and beans they're into, stuff they can gnaw at, paper and plaster barriers, hard interfaces to be pierced, for they are agents of unification, you see. christmas bugs. they were deep in the straw of the manger at bethelehem, they stumbled, climbed, fell glistening red among a golden lattice of straw that must have seemed to 173 -_ /-----� frj�..••• -.j _._.......................... . •. . • •.•• • • / .i' n � extend miles up and downward-an edible tenement-world, now and then gnawed through to disrupt some mysterious sheaf of vectors that would send neighbor bugs tumbling ass-over-antennas down past you as you held on with all legs in that constant tremble of golden stalks. a tranquil world: the temperature and humidity staying nearly steady, the day's cycle damped to only a soft easy sway of light, gold to antique­ gold to shadows, and back again. the crying of the infant reached you, perhaps, as bursts of energy from the invisible distance, nearly un­ sensed, often ignored. your savior, you see. . . . d d d d d d d inside the bowl, the two goldfish are making a pisces sign, head-to-tail and very still. penelope sits and peers into their world. there is a little sunken galleon, a china diver in a diving suit, pretty stones and shells she and her sisters have brought back from the sea. aunt jessica and uncle roger are out in the kitchen, hugging and kissing. elizabeth is teasing claire in the hallway. their mother is in the w.c. sooty the cat sleeps in a chair, a black thundercloud on the way to something else, who happens right now to look like a cat. it's boxing day. the evening's very still. the last rocket bomb was an hour ago, somewhere south. claire got a golliwog, penelope a sweater, elizabeth a frock that penelope will grow into. the pantomime roger took them all to see this afternoon was hansel and gretel. claire immediately took off under the seats where others were moving about by secret paths, a flash of braid or of white collar now and then among the tall attentive uncles in uniform, the coat­ draped backs of seats. on stage hansel, who was supposed to be a boy but was really a tall girl in tights and smock, cowered inside the cage. the funny old witch foamed at the mouth and climbed the scenery. and pretty gretel waited by the oven for her chance. . . . then the germans dropped a rocket just down the street from the theatre. a few of the little babies started crying. they were scared. gre­ tel, who was just winding up with her broom to hit the witch right in the bum, stopped: put the broom down, in the gathering silence stepped to the footlights, and sang: oh, don't let it get you, it will if they let you, but there's something i'll bet you can't see174 -, " . --...;;_� ---. . ....._ ..•__..._ ••ylp.....'., til':. 1 75 it's big and it's nasty and it's right over there, it's waiting to get its sticky claws in your hair! oh, the greengrocer's wishing on a rainbow today, and the dustman is tying his tie . . . and it all goes along to the same jolly song, with a peppermint face in the sky! "now sing along," she smiled, and actually got the audience, even roger, to sing: with a peppermint face in the sky-y, and a withered old dream in your heart, you'll get hit with a piece of the pie-ie, with the pantomime ready to start! oh, the tommy is sleeping in a snowbank tonight, and the jerries are learning to flywe can fly to the moon, we'll be higher than noon, in our polythene home in the sky. . . pretty polythene home in the sky, pretty platinum pins in your handoh your mother's a big fat machine gun, and your father's a dreary young man. . (whispered and staccato): oh, the, man-a-ger's suck-ing on a corn-cob, pipe, and the bank-ers are, eat-ing their, wives, all the world's in a daze, while the orchestra plays, so turn your pockets and get your surpriseturn your pockets and get-your surpri-ise, there was nobody there af-ter all! and the lamps up the stairway are dying, it's the season just after the ball . . . oh the palm-trees whisper on the beach somewhere, and the lifesaver's heaving a sigh, and those voices you hear, boy and girl of the year, are of children who are learning to die. . . . penelope's father's chair, in the corner, next to the table with the lamp, is empty. it faces her now. she can see the crocheted shawl over the back, many knots of gray, tan, black, and brown, with amazing clar­ ity. in the pattern, or in front of it, something is stirring: at first no more -_ / --_. ./ �� � ...�., .'_.ii\";.···••• _._ _. . _ � . � "4 than refraction, as if there were a source of heat directly in front of the empty chair. "no," she whispers out loud. "i don't want to. you're not him. i don't know who you are but you're not my father. go away." its arms and legs are silent and rigid. she stares into it. i only want to visit you. "you want to possess me." demonic possessions in this house are not unknown. is this really keith, her father? taken when she was half her present age, and re­ turned now as not the man she knew, but only the shell-with the soft meaty slug of soul that smiles and loves, that feels its mortality, either rotted away or been picked at by the needle mouths of death-by-gov­ ernment-a process by which living souls unwillingly become the de­ mons known to the main sequence of western magic as the qlippoth, shells of the dead. . . . it is also what the present dispensation often does to decent men and women entirely on this side of the grave. in nei­ ther process is there any dignity, or any mercy. mothers and fathers are conditioned into deliberately dying in certain preferred ways: giving themselves cancer and heart attacks, getting into motor accidents, going off to fight in the war-c-leaving their children alone in the forest. they'll always tell you fathers are "taken," but fathers only leave­ that's what it really is. the fathers are all covering for each other, that's all. perhaps it's even better to have this presence, rubbing the room dry as glass, slipping in and out of an old chair, than a father who still hasn't died yet, a man you love and have to watch it happening to. . . . in the kitchen, the water in the kettle shakes, creaks toward boiling, and outside the wind blows. somewhere, in another street, a roofslate slides and falls. roger has taken jessica's cold hands in to warm against his breast, feeling them, icy, through his sweater and shirt, folded in against him. yet she stands apart, trembling. he wants to warm all of her, not just comic extremities, wants beyond reasonable hope. his heart shakes like the boiling kettle. it has begun to reveal itself: how easily she might go. for the first time he understands why this is the same as mortality, and why he will cry when she leaves. he is learning to recognize the times when nothing really holds her but his skinny, zo-pushup arms.... if she leaves, then it ceases to matter how the rockets fall. but the coincidence of maps, girls, and rocketfalls has entered him silently, silent as ice, and quisling molecules have shifted in latticelike ways to freeze him. if he could be with her more . . . if it happened when they were together-in another time that might have sounded romantic, but in a culture of death, cer176 wn situ irart so . lithe r ilrljerem ��ue-tha �1�m �er lecon �illloi ill, !lrem, will rome·alon� oorlacein mell1l1ta i rfllajunio �lneqi �iooo, nell �mtect� ni! iaenilnan �lme\viln �me true, mrrror,!or 1�,!orn\ �ou �o � illa��, " i)��er �ure muwnicn u1wnow, i�i� act l10nilie m�e,lurl lann�, �le ��motne 100m. jesi romin� a !warfroi . iita'� sol '" "0} rou're 11e� it a -, " . --� _ _ � _ -" � .....-_..._--...•• _. ...!'.... ,. ri"': hark, the herald angels sing: mrs. simpson's pinched our king tain situations are just more hep to the jive than others-but they're apart so much. . . . if the rockets don't get her there's still her lieutenant. damned bea­ ver/jeremy is the war, he is every assertion the fucking war has ever made-that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day. . . . damn them, they are wrong. they are insane. jeremy will take her like the angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. she will take her husband's orders, she will become a domestic bureau­ crat, a junior partner, and remember roger, if at all, as a mistake thank god she didn't make.... oh, he feels a raving fit coming on-how the bloody hell can he survive without her? she is the british warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds in­ side his hands. she is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love. you go from dream to dream inside me. you have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you've found life. i'm no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are "yours" and which are "mine." it's past sorting out. we're both being someone new now, someone incredible. . . . his act of faith. in the street the children are singing: up on the mantelpiece sooty's son kim, an alarmingly fat crosseyed sia­ mese, lurks waiting to do the only thing he enjoys these days. beyond eating, sleeping or fucking his chief obsession is to jump, or topple, on his mother, and lie there laughing while she runs screaming around the room. jessica's sister nancy comes out of the 100 to break up what's be­ coming a full-scale row between elizabeth and claire. jessica steps away from roger to blow her nose. the sound is as familiar to him as a bird's song, ip-ip-ip-ip ngunngg as the handkerchief comes away ... "oh sooper dooper," she says, "think i'm catching a cold." you're catching the war. it's infecting you and i don't know how to keep it away. oh, jess. jessica. don't leave me.... 177 -, ,..:c� = __ _ '_�� •. �__ • -:"",&•• , � un perm' au casino hermann goering you will have the tallest, darkest leading man in hollywood. -merian c. cooper to fay wray ..... / /,j; � _ -===;;_'--::. , • i;f.�� <, " . ---� );�, -� ....••• --.----••",,",at'. til'; o 0 0 0 0 0 0 this morning's streets are already clattering, near and far, with wood­ soled civilian feet. up in the wind is a scavenging of gulls, sliding, easy, side to side, wings hung out still, now and then a small shrug, only to gather lift for this weaving, unweaving, white and slow faro shufhe off invisible thumbs. . . . yesterday's first glance, coming along the espla­ nade in the afternoon, was somber: the sea in shades of gray under gray clouds, the casino hermann goering flat white and the palms in black sawtooth, hardly moving. . . . but this morning the trees in the sun now are back to green. leftward, far away, the ancient aqueduct loops crumbling, dry yellow, out along the cap, the houses and villas there baked to warm rusts, gentle corrosions all through earth's colors, pale raw to deeply burnished. the sun, not very high yet, will catch a bird by the ends of his wings, turning the feathers brightly there to curls of shaved ice. slothrop rattles his teeth at the crowd of birds aloft, shivering down on his own miniature balcony, electric fire deep in the room barely touching the backs of his legs. they have filed him high on the white sea-facade, in a room to himself. tantivy mucker-maffick and his friend teddy bloat are sharing one down the hall. he takes back his hands into ribbed cuffs of a sweatshirt, crosses his arms, watches the amazing foreign morning, the ghosts of his breathing into it, feeling first sunwarmth, wanting a first cigarette-and perversely he waits for a sudden noise to begin his day, a first rocket. aware all the time he's in the wake of a great war gone north, and that the only explosions around here will have to be champagne corks, motors of sleek hispano-suizas, the odd amorous slap, hopefully.... no london? no blitz? can he get used to it? sure, and by then it'll be just time to head back. "well, he's awake." bloat in uniform, sidling into the room gnawing on a smoldering pipe, tantivy behind in a pin-striped lounge suit. "up at the crack, reconnoitering the beach for the unattached mamzelle or two, no doubt . . ." "couldn't sleep," slothrop yawning back down into the room, birds in the sunlight kiting behind him. "nor we," from tantivy. "it must take years to adjust." "god," bloat really pushing the forced enthusiasm this morning, pointing theatrically at the enormous bed, collapsing onto it, bouncing 181 .-i .... "' _ _''_�'_''''ct' ���=�, f/�'{vigorously. «they must have had advance word about you, slothrop! luxury! they gave us some disused closet, you know." «hey, what are you telling him?" slothrop forages around for ciga­ rettes. "i'm some kind of a van johnson or something?" «only that, in the matter of," tantivy from the balcony tossing his green pack of cravens, «girls, you know-" «englishmen being rather reserved," bloat explains, bouncing for em­ phasis. "oh, raving maniacs," slothrop mumbles, heading for his private lav­ atory, «been invaded by a gang of those section 8s, all right.... " stands pleased, pissing no-hands, lighting up, but wondering a little about that bloat. supposed to be oldtime pals with tantivy. he snaps the match into the toilet, a quick hiss: yet something about the way he talks to slothrop, patronizing? maybe nervous . . . «you're expecting me to fix you guys up?" he yells over the crash of the toilet flushing, «i thought the minute you guys get across that chan­ nel, set foot on that france, you all turn into valentinos." «i hear there was some prewar tradition," tantivy hanging plaintive now in the doorway, «but bloat and i are members of the new genera­ tion, we have to depend on yank expertise. . . ." whereupon bloat leaps from the bed and seeks to enlighten slothrop with a song: "w llnce the englishman's very shy (fox-trot) �een tloili ��t· 't� (bloat): the englishman's very shy, he's none of your ca-sa-no-va, at bowling the ladies o-ver, a-mericans lead the pack(tantivy): -you see, your englishman tends to lack that recklessness transatlantic, that women find so romantic though frankly i can't see why (bloat): the polygamous yank with his girls galore gives your brit-ish rake or carouser fits, (tantivy): though he's secretly held in re-ve-rent awe as a sort of e-rot-ic clausewitz. (together): if only one could al-ly a-merican bedroom know-how -, " . --_ � ':"<'�� " •...................._......'.a.'" ri'; with british good looks, then oh how those lovelies would swoon and sigh, though you and i know the englishman's very shy. em· "well you've sure come to the right place," nods slothrop, con­ vinced. "only don't expect me to put it in for you." "just the initial approach," bloat says. "moi," tantivy has meanwhile been screaming down from the bal­ cony, "moi tantivy, you know. tantivy." "tantivy," replies a dim girl-chorus from outside and below. ''j'ai deux amis, aussi, by an odd coincidence. par un bizarre coinci­ dence, or something, oui?" slothrop, at this point shaving, wanders out with the foamy badger brush in his fist to see what's happening, and collides with bloat, who's dashing to peer down over his compatriot's left epaulet at three pretty girls' faces, upturned, straw-haloed each by a giant sun-hat, smiles all dazzling, eyes mysterious as the sea behind them. "i say ou," inquires bloat, "ou, you know, dejeuner?" "glad i could help you out," slothrop mutters, lathering tantivy be­ tween the shoulderblades. "but come with us," the girls are calling above the waves, two of them holding up an enormous wicker basket out of which lean sleek green wine bottles and rough-crusted loaves still from under their white cloth steaming in little wisps feathering off of chestnut glazes and paler split-streaks, "come-sur la plage . . ." "i'll just," bloat half out the door, "keep them company, until you ... " "sur la plage," tantivy a bit dreamy, blinking in the sun, smiling down at their good-morning's wishes come true, "oh, it sounds like a painting. something by an impressionist. a fauve. full of light. . . ." slothrop goes flicking witch hazel off his hands. the smell in the room brings back a moment of berkshire saturdays-bottles of plum and amber tonics, fly-studded paper twists swayed by the overhead fan, twinges of pain from blunt scissors. . . . struggling out of his sweatshirt, lit cigarette in his mouth, smoke coming out the neck like a volcano, "hey could i bum one of your-" "you've already got the pack," cries tantivy-"god almighty, what is that supposed to be?" "what's what?" slothrop's face nothing but innocent as he slips into and begins to button the object in question. i�\', . ... /' __..,..-.. --...->----�,;._...;::....=i ;/�'{� "you're joking, of course. the young ladies are waiting, slothrop, do put on something civilized, there's a good chap-" "all set," slothrop on the way past the mirror combing his hair into the usual sporty bing crosby pompadour. "you can't expect us to be seen with-" "my brother hogan sent it to me," slothrop lets him know, "for my birthday, all the way from the pacific. see on the back? under the fel­ lows in that outrigger canoe there, to the left of those hibiscus blossoms, it sez souvenir of honolulu? this is the authentic item, mucker­ maffick, not some cheap imitation." "dear god," moans tantivy, trailing him forlornly out of the room, shading his eyes from the shirt, which glows slightly in the dimness of the corridor. "at least tuck it in and cover it with something. here, i'll even lend you this norfolk jacket.... " sacrifice indeed: the coat is from a savile row establishment whose fitting rooms are actually deco­ rated with portraits of all the venerable sheep-some nobly posed up on crags, others in pensive, soft close-ups-from whom the original fog-sil­ vered wool was sheared. "must be woven out of that barbed wire," is slothrop's opinion, "what girl'd want to get near anything like that?" "ah, but, but would any woman in her right mind want to be within ten miles of that-that ghastly shirt, eh?" "wait!" from someplace slothrop now produces a gaudy yellow, green and orange display handkerchief, and over tantivy's groans of horror arranges it in his friend's jacket pocket so as to stick out in three points. "there!" beaming, "that's what you call real sharp!" they emerge into sunlight. gulls begin to wail, the garment on slo­ throp blazes into a refulgent life of its own. tantivy squeezes his eyes shut. when he opens them, the girls are all attached to slothrop, strok­ ing the shirt, nibbling at its collar-points, cooing in french. "of course." tantivy picks up the basket. "right." the girls are dancers. the manager of the casino hermann goering, one cesar fleb6tomo, brought in a whole chorus-line soon as the libera­ tors arrived, though he hasn't yet found time to change the place's occu­ pation name. nobody seems to mind it up there, a pleasant mosaic of tiny and perfect seashells, thousands of them set in plaster, purple, pink and brown, replacing a huge section of roof (the old tiles still lie in a heap beside the casino), put up two years ago as recreational therapy by a messerschmitt squadron on furlough, in german typeface expan­ sive enough to be seen from the air, which is what they had in mind. the sun now is still too low to touch the words into any more than some 184 -, " . ---""'';;_� _ /'" ��-;�i •••••••--.... ---••"'",t..,,,, '.� mt bare separation from their ground, so that they hang suppressed, no re­ lation any more to the men, the pain in their hands, the blisters that grew black under the sun with infection and blood-only receding as the party now walk down past sheets and pillowcases of the hotel, spread to dry on the slope of the beach, fine wrinkles edged in blue that will flow away as the sun climbs, six pairs of feet stirring debris never combed for, an old gambling chip half bleached by the sun, translucent bones of gulls, a drab singlet, wehrmacht issue, torn and blotted with bearing grease. . . . . they move along the beach, slothrop's amazing shirt, tantivy's hand­ kerchief, girls' frocks, green bottles all dancing, everyone talking at once, boy-and-girl lingua franca, the girls confiding quite a lot to each other with side glances for their escorts. this ought to be good for a bit of the, heh, heh, early paranoia here, a sort of pick-me-up to help face what's sure to come later in the day. but it isn't. much too good a morn­ ing for that. little waves are rolling in, breaking piecrustwise along a curve of dark shingle, farther off foaming among the black rocks that poke up along the cap. out at sea wink twin slivers of a boat's sails being sucked along in the sun and distance, over toward antibes, the craft tacking gradual, cockle-frail among low swells whose touch and rowdy hiss along the chines slothrop can feel this morning, reminded of prewar comets and hamptons sighted from the beach at cape cod, among land odors, drying seaweed, summer-old cooking oil, the feel of sand on sunburn, the sharp-pointed dune grass under bare feet.... closer to shore a pedalo full of soldiers and girls moves along-they dangle, splash, sprawl in green and white striped lounge chairs back aft. at the edge of the water small kids are chasing, screaming, laughing in that hoarse, helplessly tickled little-kid way. up on the esplanade an old couple sit on a bench, blue and white and a cream-colored parasol, a morning habit, an anchor for the day.... they go as far as the first rocks, finding there an inlet partly secluded from the rest of the beach, and from the looming casino. breakfast is wine, bread, smiling, sun diffracting through the fine gratings of long dancers' hair, swung, flipped, never still, a dazzle of violet, sorrel, saffron, emerald. . . . for a moment you can let the world go, solid forms gone a-fracturing, warm inside of bread waiting at your fingertips, flowery wine in long, easy passage streaming downward around the root of your tongue.... bloat cuts in. "i say slothrop, is she a friend of yours too?" hmm? what's happening ... she, what? here sits bloat, smug, ges­ turing over at the rocks and a tide pool nearby. . . . �\\, "you're getting 'the eye,' old man." well . . . she must have come out of the sea. at this distance, some 20 meters, she is only a dim figure in a black bombazine frock that reaches to her knees, her bare legs long and straight, a short hood of bright blonde hair keeping her face in shadow, coming up in guiches to touch her cheeks. she's looking at slothrop, all right. he smiles, sort of waves. she only continues to stand, the breeze pushing at her sleeves. he turns back to draw the cork from a wine bottle, and its pop arrives as a grace note for a scream from one of the dancers. tantivy's already halfway to his feet, bloat gaping out in the girl's direction, the dan­ seuses snapshot in defense reflexes, hair flying, frocks twisted, thighs flashingholy shit it's moving-an octopus? yes it is the biggest fucking octo­ pus slothrop has ever seen outside of the movies, jackson, and it has just risen up out of the water and squirmed halfway onto one of the black rocks. now, cocking a malignant eye at the girl, it reaches out, wraps one long sucker-studded tentacle around her neck as everyone watches, another around her waist and begins to drag her, struggling, back under the sea. slothrop's up, bottle in hand, running down past tantivy who's doing a hesitant dance step, hands patting lounge-suit pockets for weapons that aren't there, more and more of the octopus revealed the closer he comes and wow it's a big one, holycow-skids to a halt alongside, one foot in the tide pool, and commences belting the octopus in the head with the wine bottle. hermit crabs slide in death-struggle around his foot. the girl, already half in the water, is trying to cry out, but the ten­ tacle, flowing and chilly, barely allows her windway enough to breathe. she reaches out a hand, a soft-knuckled child's hand with a man's steel id bracelet on the wrist, and clutches at slothrop's hawaiian shirt, be­ gins tightening her own grip there, and who was to know that among her last things would be vulgar-faced hula girls, ukuleles, and surfriders all in comic-book colors . . . oh god god please, the bottle thudding again and again wetly into octupus flesh, no fucking use, the octopus gazes at slothrop, triumphant, while he, in the presence of certain death, can't quit staring at her hand, cloth furrowing in tangents to her terror, a shirt button straining at a single last thread-he sees the name on the bracelet, scratched silver letters each one clear but making no sense to him before the slimy gray stranglehold that goes tightening, liq­ uid, stronger than he and she together, framing the poor hand its cruel tetanus is separating from earth"slothrop!" here's bloat ten feet away offering him a large crab. 186 -, " . -� /-;'�:;;-,;,j ••• , _--••".�-.�. '"what th' fuck ... " maybe if he broke the bottle on the rock, stabbed the bastard between the eyes"it's hungry, it'll go for the crab. don't kill it, slothrop. here, for god's sake-" and here it comes spinning through the air, legs cocked centrifugally outward: dithering slothrop drops the bottle just before the crab smacks against his other palm. neat catch. immediately, through her fingers and his shirt, he can feel the reflex to food. "o.k." shaking slothrop waves the crab at the octopus. "chow time, fella." another tentacle moves in. its corrugated ooze touches his wrist. slothrop tosses the crab a few feet along the beach, and what do you know, that octopus goes for it all right: dragging along the girl and slo­ throp staggering for a bit, then letting her go. slothrop quickly snatches up the crab again, dangling it so the octopus can see, and begins to dance the creature away, down the beach, drool streaming from its beak, eyes held by the crab. in their brief time together slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where's his basis for com­ paring? but there is a mad exuberance, as with inanimate objects which fall off of tables when we are sensitive to noise and our own clumsiness and don't want them to fall, a sort of wham! ha-ha you hear that? here it is again, wham! in the cephalopod's every movement, which slothrop is glad to get away from as he finally scales the crab like a discus, with all his strength, out to sea, and the octopus, with an eager splash and gurgle, strikes out in pursuit, and is presently gone. the frail girl lies on the beach, taking in great breaths of air, sur­ rounded now by the others. one of the dancers is holding her in her arms and speaking, r's and nasals still french, in a language slothrop, moseying back into earshot, can't quite place. tantivy smiles and flips a small salute. "good show!" cheers teddy bloat. "i wouldn't have wanted to try that myself!" "why not? you had that crab. saaay-where'd you get that crab?" "found it," replies bloat with a straight face. slothrop stares at this bird but can't get eye contact. what th' luck's going on? "i better have some of that wine," slothrop reckons. he drinks out of the bottle. air goes splashing upward in lopsided spheres inside the green glass. the girl watches him. he stops for breath and smiles. 100 "thank you, lieutenant." not a tremor in the voice, and the accent is ll�' teutonic. he can see her face now, soft nose of a doe, eyes behind � blonde lashes full of acid green. one of those thin-lipped european mouths. "i had almost stopped breathing." "uh=-you'rc not german." "' .... � . :r..>---�----,� �, !/�'� / ij· ; _............................ . .. . . .' · /' shaking her head no emphatically, "dutch." "and have you been here-" her eyes go elsewhere, she reaches, takes the bottle from his hand. she is looking out to sea, after the octopus. "they are very optical, aren't they. i hadn't known. it saw me. me. i don't look like a crab." "i guess not. you're a swell-looking young lady." in the background, delighted bloat nudges tantivy. that recklessness transatlantic. slo­ throp takes her wrist, finds no problem now reading that id bracelet. sez katje borgesius. he can feel her pulse booming. does she know him from someplace? strange. a mixture of recognition and sudden shrewdnes in her face . . . so it is here, grouped on the beach with strangers, that voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate . . . it's a puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in. pale lines of force whir in the sea air ... pacts sworn to in rooms since shelled back to their plan views, not quite by accident of war, suggest themselves. oh, that was no "found" crab, ace-no ran­ dom octopus or girl, uh-uh. structure and detail come later, but the conniving around him now he feels instantly, in his heart. they all stay a bit longer on the beach, finishing breakfast. but the simple day, birds and sunlight, girls and wine, has sneaked away from slothrop. tantivy is getting drunk, more relaxed and funnier as the bot­ tles empty. he's staked out not only the girl he first had his eye on, but also the one slothrop would be no doubt sweet-talking right now if that octopus hadn't shown up. he is a messenger from slothrop's innocent, pre-octopus past. bloat, on the other hand, sits perfectly sober, mus­ tache unruffled, regulation uniform, watching slothrop closely. his com­ panion ghislaine, tiny and slender, pin-up girl legs, long hair brushed behind her ears falling all the way down her back, shifts her round bot­ tom in the sand, writing marginal commentaries around the text of bloat. slothrop, who believes that women, like martians, have antennas men do not, keeps an eye on her. she looks over only once, and her eyes grow wide and cryptic. he'd swear she knows something. on the way back to the casino, toting their empties, and the basket full of the de­ bris of the morning, he manages a word with her. "some picnic, nessay-pah?" dimples appear next to her mouth. "did you know all the time about the octopus? i thought so because it was so like a dance-all of you." "no. honestly, i didn't. you mean you thought it was just a practical joke or something?" 188 '" -, """� �-� .... -.--...-�_:-=��-�" �i d d d d d d d "little tyrone," she whispers suddenly, taking his arm with a big phony smile for the others. little? he's twice her size. "please-be very careful. . . ." that's all. he has katje by the other hand, two imps, contrary, either side. the beach is empty now except for fifty gray gulls sitting watching the water. white heaps of cumulus pose out at sea, hard-surfaced, cherub-blown-palm leaves stir, all down the esplanade. ghislaine drops away, back down the beach, to pick up prim bloat. katje squeezes slothrop's arm and tells him just what he wants to hear about now: "perhaps, after all, we were meant to meet. . . ." 001· from out at sea, the casino at this hour is a blazing bijou at the horizon: its foil of palms already shadows in the dwindling light. deepening go the yellowbrown of these small serrated mountains, sea colored the soft inside of a black olive, white villas, perched chateaux whole and ruined, autumn greens of copses and solitary pines, all deepening to the night­ scape latent across them all day. fires are lit on the beach. a faint bab­ ble of english voices, and even occasional songs, reaches across the water to where dr. porkyevitch stands on deck. below, octopus gri­ gori, having stuffed himself with crab meat, frisks happily in his special enclosure. the reaching radius of the lighthouse on the headland sweeps by, as tiny fishing craft head out to sea. grischa, little friend, you have performed your last trick for a while. . . . is there any hope for further support from pointsman, now that porkyevitch and his fabu­ lous octopus have done their part? he gave up questioning orders long ago-even questioning his exile. the evidence linking him to the bukharin conspiracy, whose particulars he has never heard, might somehow be true-the trotskyite bloc might have known of him, by reputation, used him in ways forever secret . . . forever secret: there are forms of innocence, he knows, that cannot con­ ceive of what that means, much less accept it as he has. for it might, after all, be only another episode in some huge pathological dream of stalin's. at least he had physiology, something outside the party ... those who had nothing but the party, who had built their whole lives upon it, only to be purged, must go through something very like death . . . and never to know anything for certain, never to have the precision of the laboratory . . . it's been his own sanity, god knows, for twenty years. at least they can never189 ". .... ��--,,--\, i/�fl� / t� � .. · .. _,_ _........ . .. . . "" . . . � /c: no, no they wouldn't, there's never been a case . . . unless it's been hushed up, you'd never read it in the journals of course­ would pointsmanhe might. yes. grischa, grischa! it's come true. on us so quickly: foreign cities, co­ medians in broken hats, cancan girls, fountains of fire, a noisy pit band ... grischa, with the flags of all the nations curled in your arms ... fresh shellfish, a warm pirozhok, hot glasses of tea in the evenings, be­ tween performances . . . learn to forget russia, to take comfort from what mean, falsified bits of her we wander across. . . . now, the sky stretches to admit a single first star. but porkyevitch makes no wish. policy. signs of arrival do not interest him, nor even signs of departure. . . . as the boat's engine goes full ahead, their own wake goes lifting, pink with sunset, to obscure the white casino on shore. electricity is on tonight, the casino back in france's power grid. chandeliers shaggy with crystal needles flare overhead, and softer lamps shine among the gardens outside. going in to dinner with tantivy and the dancers, slothrop is brought to a round-eyed halt by the sight of katje borgesius, hair in one of those emerald tiaras, the rest of her rigged out in a long medici gown of sea-green velvet. her escort's a two-star general and a brigadier. "rhip," sings tantivy, shuffling off sarcastic buffaloes along the car­ pet, "oh, rhip indeed." "you're trying to get my goat," slothrop smiles, "but it's not work­ ing." "i can tell." his own smile freezes. "oh, no, slothrop, please, no, we're going in to dinner-" "well, i know we're going in to dinner-" "no, this is very embarrassing, you've got to take it off." "you like that? she's genuine hand-painted! look! nice tits, huh?" "it's the wormwood scrubs school tie." in the main dining room they merge into a great coming and going of waiters, officers and ladies. slothrop, young dancer by the hand, caught up in the eddying, manages at last to slide with her into a pair of seats just vacated: to find who but katje his left-hand partner. he puffs out his cheeks, crosses his eyes, brushes his hair industriously with his hands by which time the soup has showed up, which he goes at as if disarming a bomb. katje is ignoring him, talking earnestly instead across her gen­ eral with some bird colonel about his prewar profession, managing a golf course in cornwall. holes and hazards. gave one a feel for terrain. 190 -. " . --� .-..�"''';;-; _ "" ,. ri"'; the ballad of tantivy mucker-maffick but he did like most to be there at night, when the badgers came out of their sets to play.... by the time the fish has come and gone, something funny is happen­ ing. katje's knee seems to be rubbing slothrop's, velvet-warm, under the table. weeell, opines slothrop, watch this: i will employ some of that sub­ terfuge, i mean i'm in that europe, aren't i? he raises his wineglass and announces, " 'the ballad of tantivy mucker-maffick.' " cheers go up, bashful tantivy tries not to smile. it's a song everyone knows: one of the scotsmen goes dashing down the room to the grand piano, cesar flebo­ torno, twirling his slick mustache in a saber-point, nips behind a palm in a tub to turn the lights up a notch, sticks his head back out winking, and hisses for his maitre d'h6tel. wine is gargled, throats are cleared and a good number of the company commence singing oh italian gin is a mother's curse, and the beer of france is septic, drinking bourbon in spain is the lonely domain of the saint and the epileptic. white lightning has fueled up many a hearse in the mountains where ridge-runners dwell­ it's a brew begot in a poison pot, and mulled with the hammers of hell! (refrain): oh-tantivy' s been drunk in many a place, from here to the uttermost isle, and if he should refuse any chance at the booze, may i die with an hoary-eyed smile! he's been ossified in oceans of grog, in the haunts of the wobbly whalehl: there are what sound like a hundred-but most likely only two­ welshmen singing, tenor from the south and bass from the north of the country, you see, so that all conversation sub rosa or not is effectively drowned out. exactly what slothrop wants. he leans in katje's direc­ tion. "meet me in my room," she whispers, "306, after midnight." "cotcha." and slothrop is upright in time to join in again right on bar one: " .... ' l-=--::::.......---=:...-� � . !/�':' / i�. · .....1.·.... _._............................ . •. . • .•.••..• • • l,' he's been half-seas over from durban to dover, wiv four shaky sheets to the gale. for in london fog or sahara's sun, or the icebound steeps of zermatt, loaded up for a lark to 'is plimsoll mark he's been game to go off on a bat! yes, tantivy's been drunk in many a place . . . &c. after dinner slothrop gives tantivy the high-sign. their dancers go off arm in arm to the marble lounges where the toilet stalls are equipped with a network of brass voice-tubes, all acoustic, to make stall-to-stall conversation easier. slothrop and tantivy head for the nearest bar. "listen," slothrop talking into his highball glass, bouncing words off of ice cubes so they'll have a proper chill, "either i'm coming down with a little psychosis here, or something funny is going on, right?" tantivy, who is feigning a relaxed air, breaks off humming "you can do a lot of things at the sea-side that you can't do in town" to in­ quire, "ah, yes, do you really think so?" "come on, that octopus." "the devilfish is found quite commonly on mediterranean shores. though usually not so large-is it the size that bothers you? don't americans like-" "tantivy, it was no accident. did you hear that bloat? 'don't kill it!' he had a crab with him, m-maybe inside that musette bag, all set to lure that critter away with. and where'd he go tonight, anyhow?" "i think he's out on the beach. there's a lot of drinking." "he drinks a lot?" "no." "look, you're his friend-" tantivy moans. "god, slothrop, i don't know. i'm your friend too, but there's always, you know, an element of slothropian paranoia to contend with. . . ." "paranoia's ass. something's up, a-and you know it!" tantivy chews ice, sights along a glass stirring rod, rips up a small napkin into a snowstorm, all sorts of bar business, he's an old hand. but at last, in a soft voice, "well, he's receiving messages in code." "ha!" "i saw one in his kit this afternoon. just a glimpse. i didn't try to look closer. he is with supreme headquarters, after all-1 suppose that could be it." 192 '" " . -��. ",....._-.... _-."._ ...,,�.... ,. , "no, that's not it. now what about this-" and slothrop tells about his midnight date with katje. for a moment they might almost be back in the bureau at achtung, and the rockets falling, and tea in paper cups, and everything right again. . . . "are you going?" "shouldn't i? you think she's dangerous?" "i think she's delightful. if i hadn't francoise, not to mention yvonne to worry about, i'd be racing you to her door." "but?" but the clock over the bar only clicks once, then presently again, ratcheting time minutewise into their past. "either what you've got is contagious," tantivy begins, "or else they've an eye on me too." they look at each other. slothrop remembers that except for tantivy he's all alone here. "tell me." , "i wish i could. he's changed-but i couldn't give you a single bit of evidence. it's been since ... i don't know. autumn. he doesn't talk politics any more. god, we used to get into thesehe won't discuss his plans after he's demobbed either, it's something he used to do all the time. i thought the blitz might have got him rattled . . . but after yes­ terday, i think it must be more. damn it, it makes me sad." "what happened?" "oh. a sort of-not a threat. or not a serious one. i mentioned, only joking, that i was keen on your katje. and bloat became very cold, and said, td stay clear of that one if i were you.' tried to cover it with a laugh, as if he had his eye on her too. but that wasn't it. i-i don't have his confidence any more. i'mi feel i'm only useful to him in a way i can't see. being tolerated for as long as he can use me. the old univer­ sity connection. i don't know if you ever felt it at harvard ... from time to time back in oxford, i came to sense a peculiar structure that no one admitted to-that extended far beyond turl street, past corn­ market into covenants, procuring, accounts due ... one never knew who it would be, or when, or how they'd try to collect it . . . but i thought it only idle, only at the fringes of what i was really up there for, you know.... " "sure. in that america, it's the first thing they tell you. harvard's there for other reasons. the 'educating' part of it is just sort of a front." "we're so very innocent here, you see." "some of you, maybe. i'm sorry about bloat." "i still hope it's something else." "i guess so. but what do we do right now?" 193 "<oi' ��.., � __ o.j-----�� . i/�;� / �j'.:" ,,,.,, _._................................ . .. . . ,� l "oh i'd say-keep your date, be careful. keep me posted. perhaps tomorrow i'll have an adventure or two to tell you about, for a change. and if you need help," teeth flashing, face reddening a bit, "well, i'll help you." 'thanks, tantivy." jesus, a british ally. yvonne and francoise peek in, beckoning them outside. on to the himmler-spielsaal and chemin­ de-fer till midnight. slothrop breaks even, tantivy loses, and the girls win. no sign of bloat, though dozens of officers go drifting in and out, brown and distant as rotogravure, through the evening. nor any sight of his girl ghislaine. slothrop asks. yvonne shrugs: '(out with your friend? who knows?" chislaine's long hair and tanned arms, her six-year-old face in a smile. . . . if it turns out she does know something, is she safe? at 11:59 slothrop turns to tantivy, nods at the two girls, tries to chuckle lewdly, and gives his friend a quick, affectionate punch in the shoulder. once, back in prep school, just before sending him into a game, young slothrop's football coach socked him the same way, giving him confidence for at least fifty seconds, till being trampled flat on his ass by a number of red-dogging choate boys, each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino. "good luck," says tantivy, meaning it, hand already reaching for yvonne's sweet chiffon bottom. minutes of doubt, yes yes ... slothrop ascending flights of red-carpeted stairway (welcome mister slothrop welcome to our structure w« hope you will enjoy your visit here), malachite nymphs and satyrs paralyzed in chase, evergreen, at the silent landings, upward toward a single staring bulb at the top. . . . at her door he pauses long enough to comb his hair. now she wears a white pelisse, with sequins all over, padded shoulders, jagged white os­ trich plumes at the neckline and wrists. the tiara is gone: in the elec­ tricity her hair is new snowfall. but inside a single scented candle burns, and the suite is washed in moonlight. she pours brandy in old flint snif­ ters, and as he reaches, their fingers touch. "didn't know you were so daffy about that golf!" suave, romantic slothrop. "he was pleasant. i was being pleasant to him," one eye kind of squinched up, forehead wrinkled. slothrop wonders if his fly's open. "and ignore me. why?" clever pounce there, slothrop--but she only evaporates before the question, re-forms in another part of the room.... "am i ignoring you?" she's at her window, the sea below and behind her, the midnight sea, its individual waveflows impossible at this dis­ tance to follow, all integrated into the hung stillness of an old painting seen across the deserted gallery where you wait in the shadow, for194 " . -� ��� .. _ .. ,-_ ........ --_......" ...,......... ,. . getting why you are here, frightened by the level of illumination, which is from the same blanched scar of moon that wipes the sea tonight. "i don't know. but you're fooling around a lot." "perhaps i'm supposed to be." "as 'perhaps we were meant to meet'?" "oh, you think i'm more than i am," gliding to a couch, tucking one leg under. "i know. you're only a dutch milkmaid or something. closet full 0' those starched aprons a-and wooden shoes, right?" "go and look." spice odors from the candle reach like nerves through the room. "o.k., i will!" he opens her closet, and in moonlight reflected from the mirror finds a crowded maze of satins, taffetas, lawn, and pongee, dark fur collars and trimming, buttons, sashes, passementerie, soft, con­ fusing, womanly tunnel-systems that must stretch back for miles-he could be lost inside of half a minute . . . lace glimmers, eyelets wink, a crepe scarf brushes his face . . . aha! wait a minute, the operational scent in here is carbon tet, jackson, and this wardrobe here's mostly props. "well. pretty snazzy." "if that's a compliment, thank you." let them thank me, babe. "an americanism." "you're the first american i've met." "hmm, you must've got out by way of that amhem, then, right?" "my, you're quick," her tone warning him not to go after it. he sighs, ringing the snifter with his fingernail. in the dark room, with the para­ lyzed and silent sea at his back, he tries singing: 195 too soon to know (fox-trot) it's still too soon, it's not as if we'd kissed and kindled, or chased the moon through midnight's hush, as dancing dwindled into quiet dawns, over secret lawns too soon to know if all that breathless conversation a sigh ago was more than casual flirtation ....... �� . f7�'�� -� / i::�' ;.. · .. _._ . .. . . . . · '" doomed to drift away into misty gray . . how can we tell, what can we see? love works its spells in hiding, quite past our own deciding . so who's to say if joyful love is just beginning, or if its day just turned to night, as earth went spinning? darling, maybe solt's too soon to know. m�unte il'eratl itreadj i1re:w' :lrfac mro�, fot) lareof il11r,l� he\� ��n'\. b i\mq, 1�el1rtma il1er, ��u�n mttlell imtti kltjel "�o "hm ''i'm w�\in� �o ij1, la� @,"n "mo ler. �n ihlq � mind i rne ttrelll le�ex he knowing what is expected of her, she waits with a vapid look till he's done, mellow close-harmony reeds humming a moment in the air, then reaches out a hand, melting toward him as he topples in slow-motion to­ ward her mouth, feathers sliding, sleeves furling, ascending bare arms finely moongrained slipping around and up his back, her tacky tongue nervous as a moth, his hands rasping over sequins . . . then her breasts flatten against him as her forearms and hands go away folding up behind her to find a zipper, bring it snarling down her spineline.... katje's skin is whiter than the white garment she rises from. born again . . . out the window he can almost see the spot where the dev­ ilfish crawled in from the rocks. she walks like a ballerina on her toes, thighs long and curving, slothrop undoing belt, buttons, shoelaces hop­ ping one foot at a time, oboy oboy, but the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is still a dark side, her ventral side, her face, that he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the entire eye space till whites are gone and there's only the red animal reflection when the light comes to strike no telling when the lightshe has sunk to the deep bed, pulling him along, into down, satin, se­ raphic and floral embroidery, turning immediately to take his erection into her stretched fork, into a single vibration on which the night is tun­ ing . . . as they fuck she quakes, body strobing miles beneath him in cream and night-blue, all sound suppressed, eyes in crescents behind the gold lashes, jet earrings, long, octahedral, flying without a sound, beating against her cheeks, black sleet, his face above her unmoved, full of careful technique-is it for her? or wired into the slothropian run­ together they briefed her on-she will move him, she will not be 196 -, " . ---_ �... �:ji'<ij to .. .. • • ••,..tt ,." rfi"'; mounted by a plastic shell . . . her breathing has grown more hoarse, over a threshold into sound . . . thinking she might be close to coming he reaches a hand into her hair, tries to still her head, needing to see her face: this is suddenly a struggle, vicious and real-she will not surrender her face-and out of nowhere she does begin to come, and so does slo­ throp. for some reason now, she who never laughs has become the top sur­ face of a deep, rising balloon of laughter. later as she's about to go to sleep, she will also whisper, "laughing," laughing again. he will want to say, "oh, they let you," but then again maybe they don't. but the katje he's talking to is already gone, and presently his own eyes have closed. like a rocket whose valves, under remote control, open and close at prearranged moments, slothrop, at a certain level of his re-entry into sleep, stops breathing through his nose and commences breathing through his mouth. this soon grows to snores that have been known to rattle storm windows, set shutters to swinging and chandeliers into vio­ lent tintinnabulation, yes indee-eed. . . . at the first of these tonight, katje wakes up belts him in the head with a pillow. "none of that." 197 "hmm." "i'm a light sleeper. every time you snore, you get hit with this," waving the pillow. no kidding, either. the routine of snore, get belted with pillow, wake up, say hmm, fall back to sleep, goes on well into the morning. "come on," finally, "cut it out." "mouth-breather!" she yells. he grabs his own pillow and swings it at her. she ducks, rolls, hits the deck feinting with her pillow, backing to­ ward the sideboard where the booze is. he doesn't see what she has in mind till she throws her pillow and picks up the seltzer bottle. the what, the seltzer bottle? what shit is this, now? what other in­ teresting props have they thought to plant, and what other american reflexes are they after? where's those banana cream pies, eh? he dangles two pillows and watches her. "one more step," she gig­ gles. slothrop dives in goes to hit her across the ass whereupon she lets him have it with the seltzer bottle, natch. the pillow bursts against one marble hip, moonlight in the room is choked with feathers and down and soon with hanging spray from jets of seltzer. slothrop keeps trying to grab the bottle. slippery girl squirms away, gets behind a chair. slo­ throp takes the brandy decanter off of the sideboard, unstoppers it, and flings a clear, amber, pseudopodded glob across the room twice in and "11" _-.3'<'_ -�----� \ i:(-�'� / -£ �'•• "'''.;_ • • •••• • • i"' out of moonlight to splash around her neck, between her black-tipped breasts, down her flanks. "bastard," hitting him with the seltzer again. settling feathers cling to their skins as they chase around the bedroom, her dappled body always retreating, often in this light, even at close range, impossible to see. slothrop keeps falling over the furniture. "boy, when i get my hands on you!" at which point she opens the door to the sitting room, skips through, slams it again so slothrop runs right into it, bounces off, sez shit, opens the door to find her waving a big red damask tablecloth at him. "what's this," inquires slothrop. "magic!" she cries, and tosses the tablecloth over him, precisely wrin­ kling folds propagating swift as crystal faults, redly through the air. "watch closely, while i make one american lieutenant disappear." "quit fooling," slothrop flailing around trying to reach the outside again. "how can i watch closely when i'm in here." he can't find an edge anyplace and feels a little panicky. 'that's the idea," suddenly inside, next to him, lips at his nipples, hands fluttering among the hairs at the back of his neck, pulling him slowly to deep carpeting, "my little chickadee." "where'd you see that one, hey? remember when he gets in bed w-with that goat? "oh, don't ask ... " this time it is a good-natured coordinated quickie, both kind of drowsy, covered with sticky feathers . . . after coming they lie close together, too liquefied to move, mm, damask and pile, it's so cozy and just as red as a womb in here. . . . curled holding her feet in his, cock nestled in the warm cusp between her buttocks, slothrop trying earnestly to breathe through his nose, they drop off to sleep. slothrop wakes to morning sunlight off of that mediterranean, filtered through a palm outside the window, then red through the tablecloth, birds, water running upstairs. for a minute he lies coming awake, no hangover, still belonging slothropless to some teeming cycle of depar­ ture and return. katje lies, quick and warm, s'd against the s of himself, beginning to stir. from the next room he hears the unmistakable sound of an army belt buckle. "somebody," he observes, catching on quickly, "must be rob­ bing my pants." feet patter by on the carpet, close to his head. slothrop can hear his own small change jingling in his pockets. "thief!" he yells,which wakes up katje, turning to put her arms around him. slothrop, managing now to locate the hem he couldn't find last night, scoots from under the tablecloth just in time to see a large foot in a two-tone shoe, 198 -, " . -. � ---.-----_..�,,� '. "= coffee and indigo, vanish out the door. he runs into the bedroom, finds everything else he had on is gone too, down to shoes and skivvies. "my clothes!" running back out past katje now emerging from the damask and making a grab for his feet. slothrop flings open the door, runs out in the hall, recollects that he is naked here, spots a laundry cart and grabs a purple satin bedsheet off of it, drapes it around him in a sort of toga. from the stairway comes a snicker and the pad-pad of crepe soles. "aha!" cries slothrop charging down the hall. the slippery sheet will not stay on. it flaps, slides off, gets underfoot. up the stairs two at a time, only to find at the top another corridor, just as empty. where is everybody? from way down the hall, a tiny head appears around a corner, a tiny hand comes out and gives slothrop the tiny finger. unpleasant laughter reaches him a split second later, by which time he's sprinting toward it. at the stairs, he hears footsteps heading down. the great purple kite races cursing down three flights, out a door and onto a little terrace, just in time to see somebody hop over a stone balustrade and vanish into the upper half of a thick tree, growing up from somewhere below. "treed at last!" cries slothrop. first you have to get into the tree, then you can climb it easy as a lad­ der. once inside, surrounded by pungent leaflight, slothrop can't see farther than a couple of limbs. the tree is shaking though, so he reckons that that thief is in here someplace. industriously he climbs on, sheet catching and tearing, skin stuck by needles, scraped by bark. his feet hurt. he's soon out of breath. gradually the cone of green light narrows, grows brighter. close to the top, slothrop notes a saw-cut or something partway through the trunk, but doesn't stop to ponder what it might mean till he's reached the very top of the tree and clings swaying, enjoy­ ing the fine view of the harbor and headland, paint-blue sea, whitecaps, storm gathering off at the horizon, the tops of people's heads moving around far below. gee. down the trunk he hears the sound of wood be­ ginning to crack, and feels vibration here in his slender perch. "aw, hey ... " that sneak. he climbed down the tree, not up! he's down there now, watching! they knew slothrop would choose up, not down-they were counting on that damned american reflex all right, bad guy in a chase always heads up-why up? and they sawed the trunk nearly through, a-and nowthey? they? "well," opines slothrop, "i had better, uh ... " about then the point of the tree cracks through, and with a great rustle and whoosh, a whirl of dark branches and needles breaking him up into a few thousand 199 "' ... "" �----..;.-"----'i:�-------� (;/ 1� r� / �', .• ".,.. i •.•.•• _._ �....... . •. . • ..•. .. " ,. �l' sharp falling pieces, down topples slothrop, bouncing from limb to limb, trying to hold the purple sheet over his head for a parachute. oof. nnhh. about halfway to the ground, terrace-level or so, he happens to 10 k down, and there observes many senior officers in uniform and plump ladies in white batiste frocks and flowered hats. they are playing croquet. it appears slothrop will land somewhere in their midst. he closes his eyes and tries to imagine a tropical island, a secure room, where this cannot be happening. he opens them about the time he hits the ground. in the silence, before he can even register pain, comes the loud thock of wood hitting wood. a bright-yellow striped ball comes rolling past an inch from slothrop's nose and on out of sight, followed a second later by a burst of congratulations, ladies enthusiastic, footfalls heading his way. seems he's, unnhh, wrenched his back a little, but doesn't much feel like moving anyhow. presently the sky is obscured by faces of some general and teddy bloat, gazing curiously down. "it's slothrop," sez bloat, "and he's wearing a purple sheet." "what's this my lad," inquires the general, "costume theatricals, eh?" he is joined by a pair of ladies beaming at, or perhaps through, slothrop. "whom are you talking to, general?" "that blighter in the toga," replies the general, "who is lying be­ tween me and my next wicket." "why how extraordinary, rowena," turning to her companion, "do you see a 'blighter in a toga'?" "goodness no, jewel," replies blithe rowena. "1 believe the general has been drinking." the ladies begin to giggle. "if the general made all his decisions in this state," jewel gasping for breath, "why there'd, there'd be sauerkraut in the strand!" the two of them shriek, very loudly, for an unpleasant length of time. "and your name would be brunhilde," the two faces now a strangled rose, "instead of-of jewel!" they are clutching each other for dear life. slothrop glares up at this spectacle, augmented now by a cast of dozens. "we-e-c-ell, you see, somebody swiped all my clothes, and i was just on my way to complain to the management-" "but decided to put on a purple bedsheet and climb a tree instead," nods the general. "well-i dare say we can fix you up with something. bloat, you're nearly this man's size, aren't you?" "oh," croquet mallet over his shoulder, posed like an advertising dis­ play for kilgour or curtis, smirking down at slothrop, "i've a spare uni­ form somewhere. come along, slothrop, you're all right, aren't you. didn't break anything." 200 "ya moivi, "firl teoln inern �f ore "it'll "�ni �rocee "�a mf' 'tv; �ut nolan ili� r �orro� �otj "he �one � in�'rel"yo �rlt tj \\inat tn8 noiliin lnara �rali �iece �iol treali! wai�t. he tolonl -, " . �' .. -._� ,.,.� ,. � "yaagghh." wrapped in his tattered sheet, helped to his feet by solic­ itous croqueteers, slothrop goes limping after bloat, off the turf and into the casino. they stop first at slothrop's room. he finds it newly cleaned, perfectly empty, ready for new guests. "hey ... " yanking out drawers empty as drums: every stitch of clothing he owns is gone, including his hawaiian shirt. what the fuck. groaning, he rummages in the desk. empty. closets empty. leave papers, id, everything, taken. his back muscles throb with pain. "what is this, ace?" going to check out the number on the door again, everything now for form's sake. he knows. hogan's shirt bothers him most of all. "first put on something respectable," bloat's tone full of headmas­ terish revulsion. two subalterns come crashing in carrying their valises. they halt goggling at slothrop. "here mate, you're in the wrong theatre of operations," cries one. "show a bit of respect," the other haw-haws, "it's lawrence of arabia!" "shit," sez slothrop. can't even lift his arm, much less swing it. they proceed to bloat's room, where they put together a uniform. "say," it occurs to slothrop, "whore's that mucker-maffick this morn­ . ?"mg. "i've no idea, really. off with his girl. or girls. where've you been?" but slothrop's looking around, tightening rectal fear belatedly taking hold now, neck and face beading in a surge of sweat, trying to find in this room tantivy shares with bloat some trace of his friend. bristly norfolk jacket, pinstripe suit, anything. . . . nothing. "did that tantivy move out, or what?" "he may have moved in, with francoise or what's-her-name. even gone back to london early, i don't keep a file on him, i'm not the miss­ ing-persons bureau." "you' re his friend. . . ." bloat, with an insolent shrug, for the very first time since they met, now looks slothrop in the eyes. "aren't you? what are you?" the answer's in bloat's stare, the dim room become rationalized, nothing to it of holiday, only savile row uniforms, silver hairbrushes and razor arranged at right angles, a shiny spike on an octagonal base impaling half an inch of pastel himsies, all edges neatly squared . . . a piece of whitehall on the riviera. slothrop drops his eyes away. "see if i can find him," he mumbles, re­ treating out the door, uniform ballooning at the ass and too tight at the waist. live wi' the way it feels mate, you'll be in it for a while. . . . he begins at the bar they talked in last night. it is empty except for a colonel with a great twisted mustache, with his hat on, sitting stiffly in 201 ...... -----, i/�� front of something large, fizzing, opaque, and garnished with a white chrysanthemum. "didn't they teach you at sandhurst to salute?" this officer screams. slothrop, hesitating only a moment, salutes. "damned o.c.t.d. must be full of nazis." no bartender in sight. can't remember what"well?" "actually, what i am is, uh, is an american, i only borrowed the uni­ form, and well i was looking for a lieutenant, or actually leftenant, muckermaffick. . . ." "you're a what?" roars the colonel, pulling leaves from the chrysan­ themum with his teeth. "what kind of nazi foolishness is that, eh?" "well, thank you," slothrop backing out of the room, saluting again. "this is incredible!" the echo following him down the corridors to the himmler-spielsaal. "it's nazi!" deserted in noon's lull, here are resonant reaches of mahogany, green baize, hanging loops of maroon. velvet. long-handled wood money rakes lie fanned out on the tables. little silver bells with ebony handles are turned mouth-down on the russet veneer. around the tables, empire chairs are lined up precise and playerless. but soine are taller than the rest. these are no longer quite outward and visible signs of a game of chance. there is another enterprise here, more real than that, less mer­ ciful, and systematically hidden from the likes of slothrop. who sits in the taller chairs? do they have names? what lies on their smooth baize surfaces? brass-colored light seeps in from overhead. murals line the great room: pneumatic gods and goddesses, pastel swains and shepherdesses, misty foliage, fluttering scarves. . . . everywhere curlicued gilt fes­ toonery drips-from moldings, chandeliers, pillars, window frames . . . scarred parquetry gleams under the skylight ... from the ceiling, to within a few feet of the tabletops, hang long chains, with hooks at the ends. what hangs from these hooks? for a minute here, slothrop, in his english uniform, is alone with the paraphernalia of an order whose presence among the ordinary debris of waking he has only lately begun to suspect. there may, for a moment, have been some golden, vaguely rootlike or manlike figure beginning to form among the brown and bright cream shadows and light here. but slothrop isn't to be let off quite so easy. shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that everything in this room is really being used for something different. meaning things to them it has never meant to us. never. two orders of being, looking identical . but, but 202 f were \ �re�e ou in� iv] bwa·� lonnl now fuer. gh �illt -. " . -� -, o£ � ' _ � •••,-!'�,...p,. ri""': bite thl� neo a�ain, , tollie ,�reen i'r�� mer· li�in imooili oh, the world over there, it's so hard to explain! just-like, a dream's-got, lost in yer brain! dancin' like a fool through that forbid-den wing, waitin' fer th' light to start shiver-ing-well, who ev-ver said ya couldn't move that way, who ev-ver said ya couldn't try? if-ya find-there's-a-lit-tle-pain, ya can al-ways-go-back-a-gain, cause ya don't-ev-er-real-ly-say, good-by! why here? why should the rainbow edges of what is almost on him be rippling most intense here in this amply coded room? say why should walking in here be almost the same as entering the forbidden itself­ here are the same long rooms, rooms of old paralysis and evil distillery, of condensations and residues you are afraid to smell from forgotten corruptions, rooms full of upright gray-feathered statues with wings spread, indistinct faces in dust-rooms full of dust that will cloud the shapes of inhabitants around the corners or deeper inside, that will set­ tle on their black formal lapels, that will soften to sugar the white faces, white shirt fronts, gems and gowns, white hands that move too quickly to be seen ... what game do they deal? what passes are these, so blurred, so old and perfect? "fuck you," whispers slothrop. it's the only spell he knows, and a pretty good all-purpose one at that. his whisper is baffled by the thou­ sands of tiny rococo surfaces. maybe he'll sneak in tonight-no not at night-but sometime, with a bucket and brush, paint fuck you in a bal­ loon coming out the mouth of one of those little pink shepherdesses there.... he steps back out, backward out the door, as if half, his ventral half, were being struck in kingly radiance: retreating from yet facing the presence feared and wanted. outside, he heads down toward the quay, among funseekers, swoop­ ing white birds, an incessant splat of seagull shit. as i walk along the bwa-deboolong with an independent air . . . saluting everybody in uni­ form, getting it to a reflex, don't ask for extra trouble, try for invisible ... bringing his arm each time a bit more stupidly to his side. clouds now are coming up fast, out of the sea. no sign of tantivy out here, ei­ ther. ghosts of fishermen, glassworkers, fur traders, renegade preachers, hilltop patriarchs and valley politicians go avalanching back from slo203 f' , . \ ---------! / �.,� ----. // �,",.,i"'_............... . •. . • ...•... . lli».. throp here, back to 1630 when governor winthrop came over to amer­ ica on the arbella, flagship of a great puritan flotilla that year, on which the first american slothrop had been a mess cook or something-there go that arbella and its whole fleet, sailing backward in formation, the wind sucking them east again, the creatures leaning from the margins of the unknown sucking in their cheeks, growing crosseyed with the effort, in to black deep hollows at the mercy of teeth no longer the milky mo­ lars of cherubs, as the old ships zoom out of boston harbor, back across an atlantic whose currents and swells go flowing and heaving in reverse . . . a redemption of every mess cook who ever slipped and fell when the deck made an unexpected move, the night's stew collecting itself up out of the planks and off the indignant shoes of the more elect, slitheringin a fountain back into the pewter kettle as the servant himself staggers upright again and the vomit he slipped on goes gushing back into the mouth that spilled it ... presto change-ol tyrone slothrop's english againl but it doesn't seem to be redemption exactly that this they have in mind.... he's on a broad cobbled esplanade, lined with palms shifting now to coarse-grained black as clouds begin to come over the sun. tantivy isn't out on the beach, either-nor are any of the girls. slothrop sits on a low wall, feet swinging, watching the front, slate, muddy purple, advancingfrom the sea in sheets, in drifts. around him the air is cooling. he shiv­ ers. what are they doing? he gets back to the casino just as big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks on the pavement, inviting him to look down at the bottom of the text of the day, where footnotes will explain all. he isn't about to look. nobody ever said a day has to be jug­ gled into any kind of sense at day's end. he just runs. rain grows in wetcrescendo. his footfalls send up fine flowers of water, each hanging asecond behind his flight. it is flight. he comes in speckled, pied with rain, begins a frantic search through the great inert casino, starting again with the same smoky, hooch-fumed bar, proceeding through thelittle theatre, where tonight will play an abbreviated version of l 'lnutil precauzione (that imaginary opera with which rosina seeks to delude her guardian in the barber of seville), into its green room where girls, asilkenness of girls, but not the three slothrop wants most to see, tease hair, arrange garters, glue on eyelashes, smile at slothrop. no one has seen ghislaine, francoise, yvonne. from another room the orchestra re­ hearses a lively rossini tarantella. the reeds are all something like a half tone flat. at once slothrop understands that he is surrounded by womenwho have lived a good fraction of their lives at war and under occupa204 hon, 2 lnr \vretco he ltairl ltner lined , e�na ilolffi' i he on1r � i ite�i' i oee� good , '" " . --�... -�� .... -.--..._-.... __",,,..... ,,,. ri": o amel. nwrurl helt hon, �i ar��ru the e[�n mi�'wr) ackat� inrev1lx fe�\\k �m� .iuilie� ullarrrrt; ex in!� ttl p'l en�� the)'rur; wi ill \\ti nan�in!j pi� \\j� 0, �arttn� rou�h llil of l'iml� to delij�1 ere�r�" lee,!e� o one h� heltrare· likean� ywomen occur�' tion, and for whom people have been dropping out of sight every day ... yes, in one or two pairs of eyes he finds an old and european pity, a look he will get to know, well before he loses his innocence and be­ comes one of them. . . . so he drifts, through the bright and milling gaming rooms, the dining hall and its smaller private satellites, busting up tete-a-totes, colliding with waiters, finding only strangers wherever he looks. and if you need help, well, i'll help you. . . . voices, music, the shuffling of cards all grow louder, more oppressive, till he stands looking into the himmler­ spielsaal again, crowded now, jewels flashing, leather gleaming, roulette spokes whirling blurring-it's here that saturation hits him, it's all this playing games, too much of it, too many games: the nasal, obsessive voice of a croupier he can't see-messieurs, mesdames, les jeux sont faits-is suddenly speaking out of the forbidden wing directly to him, and about what slothrop has been playing against the invisible house, perhaps after all for his soul, all day-terrified he turns, turns out into the rain again where the electric lights of the casino, in full holocaust, are glaring off the glazed cobbles. collar up, bloat's hat down over his ears, saying shit every few minutes, shivering, his back aching from that fall out of that tree, he goes stumbling along in the rain. he thinks he might begin to cry. how did this all turn against him so fast? his friends old and new, every last bit of paper and clothing connecting him to what he's been, have just, fucking, vanished. how can he meet this with any kind of grace? only much later, worn out, snuffling, cold and wretched in his prison of soggy army wool, does he think of katje. he gets back to the casino near midnight, her hour, tramping up­ stairs leaving wet footprints behind, loud as a washing machine-stops at her door, rain pattering onto the carpet, afraid even to knock. has she been taken too? who's waiting behind the door and what machin­ ery have they brought with them? but she's heard him, and opens with a dimpled, chiding smile for being so wet. "tyrone, i missed you." he shrugs, convulsive, helpless, showering both of them. "it's the only place i knew to come." her smile slowly unpurses. gingerly he steps across the sill then, not sure if it's door or high window, into her deep room. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 good mornings of good old lust, early shutters open to the sea, winds 205 , . \ ------(;/ �',;� /--. / �, .• ,.'-'! � ,....... . .. . . �. .•z�' coming in with the heavy brushing of palm leaves, the wheezing break to surface and sun of porpoises out in the harbor. "oh," katje groans, somewhere under a pile of their batistes and bro­ cade, "slothrop, you pig." "oink, oink, oink," sez slothrop cheerfully. seaglare dances up on the ceiling, smoke curls from black-market cigarettes. given the precisions of light these mornings, there are forms of grace to be found in the ris­ ing of the smoke, meander, furl, delicate fade to clarity.... at certain hours the harbor blue will be reflected up on the white­ washed sea-facade, and the tall windows will be shuttered again. wave images will flicker there in a luminous net. by then slothrop will be up, in british uniform, gobbling down croissants and coffee, already busy at a refresher course in technical german, or trying to dope out the theory of arrow-stable trajectories, or tracing nearly with the end of his nose some german circuit schematic whose resistors look like coils, and the coils like resistors-"what bizarre shit," once he got hep to it, "why would they go and switch it around like that? trying to camouflage it, or what?" "recall your ancient german runes," suggests sir stephen dodson­ truck, who is from the foreign office p.i.d. and speaks 33 languages including english with a strong oxonian blither to it. "my what?" "oh," lips compressing, some kind of brain nausea here, "that coil symbol there happens to be very like the old norse rune for's,' sol, which means 'sun.' the old high german name for it is sigil." "funny way to draw that sun," it seems to slothrop. "indeed. the goths, much earlier, had used a circle with a dot in the center. this broken line evidently dates from a time of discontinuities, tribal fragmenting perhaps, alienation-whatever's analogous, in a so­ cial sense, to the development of an independent ego by the very young child, you see. . . ." well, no, slothrop doesn't see, not exactly. he hears this sort of thing from dodson-truck nearly every time they get together. the man just materialized one day, out on the beach in a black suit, shoulders starred with dandruff from thinning carrot hair, coming into view against the white face of the casino, which trembled over him as he approached. slothrop was reading a plasticman comic. katje was dozing in the sun, face-up. but when his footpads reached her hearing, she turned on one elbow to wave hello. the peer flung himself at full length, attitude 8.11, torpor, undergraduate. "so this is lieutenant slothrop." four-color plasticman goes oozing out of a keyhole, around a corner 206 and lab, �las s· coml "i �ou "� "1 "i oet� wno i feeu <, " . �" � _ �' ... .. .•_ .........• � .... .,., ....,.&.... , 'g breal and or� rtoltill� manj� f))tarroo ainstw1 proacn�, ilie)ll!, a corn�l and up through piping that leads to a sink in the mad nazi scientist's lab, out of whose faucet plas's head now, blank carapaced eyes and un­ plastic jaw, is just emerging. "yeah. who're you, ace?" sir stephen introduces himself, freckles roused by the sun, eying the comic book curiously. "i gather this isn't a study period." "is he cleared?" "he's cleared," katje smiling/shrugging at dodson-truck. "taking a break from that telefunken radio control. that 'hawaii i.' you know anything about that?" "only enough to wonder where they got the name from." "the name?" "there's a poetry to it, engineer's poetry ... it suggests haverie­ average, you know-certainly you have the two lobes, don't you, sym­ metrical about the rocket's intended azimuth . . . hauen, too-smash­ ing someone with a hoe or a club . . ." off on a voyage of his own here, smiling at no one in particular, bringing in the popular wartime expres­ sion ab-hauen, quarterstaff technique, peasant humor, phallic comedy dating back to the ancient greeks. . . . slothrop's first impulse is to get back to what that plas is into, but something about the man, despite ob­ vious membership in the plot, keeps him listening ... an innocence, maybe a try at being friendly in the only way he has available, sharing what engages and runs him, a love for the word. "well, it might be just axis propaganda. something to do with that pearl harbor." sir stephen considers this, seeming pleased. did they choose him be­ cause of all those word-smitten puritans dangling off of slothrop's fam­ ily tree? were they trying to seduce his brain now, his reading eye too? there are times when slothrop actually can find a clutch mechanism between him and their iron-cased engine far away up a power train whose shape and design he has to guess at, a clutch he can disengage, feeling then all his inertia of motion, his real helplessness . . . it is not exactly unpleasant, either. odd thing. he is almost sure that whatever they want, it won't mean risking his life, or even too much of his com­ fort. but he can't fit any of it into a pattern, there's no way to connect somebody like dodson-truck with somebody like katje. . . . seductress-and-patsy, all right, that's not so bad a game. there's very little pretending. he doesn't blame her: the real enemy's somewhere back in that london, and this is her job. she can be versatile, gay, and kind, and he'd rather be warm here with her than freezing back under the blitz. but now and then ... too insubstantial to get a fix on, there'll be in her face a look, something not in her control, that depresses him, 207 c �-----_ \ i//�i-"'<",-/,{' 111, -c-, -, that he's even dreamed about and so found amplified there to honest fright: the terrible chance that she might have been conned too. as much a victim as he is-an unlucky, an unaccountably futureless look. ... one gray afternoon in where but the himmler-spielsaal, where else, he surprises her alone by a roulette wheel. she's standing, head bent, gracefully hipshot, playing croupier. an employee of the house. she wears a white peasant blouse and a rainbow-striped dirndl skirt of satin, which shimmers underneath the skylight. the ball's tattoo, against the moving spokes, gathers a long, scratchy resonance here in the muraled space. she doesn't turn till slothrop is beside her. to her breathing there is a grave slow-beating tremor: she nudges at the shutters of his heart, opening to him brief flashes of an autumn country he has only suspected, only feared, outside him, inside her.... "hey katje . . ." making a long arm, hooking a finger on a spoke to stop the wheel. the ball drops in a compartment whose number they never see. seeing the number is supposed to be the point. but in the game behind the game, it is not the point. she shakes her head. he understands that it's something back in hol­ land, before arnhem-an impedance permanently wired into the cir­ cuit of themselves. how many ears smelling of palmolive and camay has he crooned songs into, outside-the-bowling-alley songs, behind-the­ moxie-billboard songs, saturday-night open-me-another-quart songs, all saying, honey, it don't matter where you've been, let's not live in the past, right now's all there is. . . . fine for back there. but not in here, tapping on her bare shoulder, peering in at her european darkness, bewildered with it, himself with his straight hair barely combable and shaven face without a wrinkle such a chaste intrusion in the himmler-spielsaal all crowded with ger­ man-baroque perplexities of shape (a sacrament of hands in every last turn each hand must produce, because of what the hand was, had to be­ come, to make it all come out exactly this way . . . all the cold, the trauma, the departing flesh that has ever touched it. . . .) in the twisted gilt playing-room his secret motions clarify for him, some. the odds they played here belonged to the past, the past only. their odds were never probabilities, but frequencies already observed. it's the past that makes demands here. it whispers, and reaches after, and, sneering disagreeably, gooses its victims. when they chose numbers, red, black, odd, even, what did they mean by it? what wheel did they set in motion? back in a room, early in slothrop's life, a room forbidden to him now, 208 �o i dee c� nef ni�l ! in� ro lwi na or kn� tn lie ili i en i 0\ i ilie �'.::.:.::_�"':-=: :-:4.� -�.� �.-.-.�_;-'-''"-'">=-_-�_�__ � � �--_---;-. " . -� '" �� .. . ••_ ·.rifl' ·, .. bone�t too, ai hae/e!1 in h�i· ilie c�· cam�\ ino·ilit· on�ll� 'einilir nouiarr, u \\lw \i'ri�r' 'iili glr· 'ery i�t otok oio,ilir inilir e,thr iroom llie �alt neerin� d tile)' rnow, is something very bad. something was done to him, and it may be that katje knows what. hasn't he, in her "futureless look," found some link to his own past, something that connects them closely as lovers? he sees her standing at the end of a passage in her life, without any next step to take-all her bets are in, she has only the tedium now of being knocked from one room to the next, a sequence of numbered rooms whose num­ bers do not matter, till inertia brings her to the last. that's all. naive slothrop never thought anybody's life could end like that. nothing so bleak. but by now it's grown much less strange to him-he's been snuggling up, masturbatorily scared-elated, to the disagreeable chance that exactly such control might already have been put over him. the forbidden wing. oh, the hand of a terrible croupier is that touch on the sleeves of his dreams: all in his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered to've been under some control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel-where only destinations are impor­ tant, attention is to long-term statistics, not individuals: and where the house always does, of course, keep turning a profit.... "you were in london," she will presently whisper, turning back to her wheel and spinning it again, face averted, womanly twisting the night-streaked yarn of her past, "while they were coming down. i was in 's gravenhage"-fricatives sighing, the name spoken with exile's linger­ ing-"while they were going up. between you and me is not only a rocket trajectory, but also a life. you will come to understand that be­ tween the two points, in the five minutes, .it lives an entire life. you haven't even learned the data on our side of the flight profile, the visible or trackable. beyond them there's so much more, so much none of us know.... " but it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. it is the parabola. they must have guessed, once or twice-guessed and refused to be­ lieve-that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chances, no return. yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children. . . . as the war's front moves away from them, and the casino becomes more and more a rear area, as the water grows more polluted and the prices rise, so the personnel coming down on leave get noisier and more dedicated to pure assholery-none of tantivy's style about them, his habit of soft-shoe dancing when drunk, his make-believe foppishness and shy, decent impulses to conspire, however marginally, whenever possible, against power and indifference. . . . there hasn't been a word 209 ·i �---"'�--r • :/ ------""'---;:::---1-s '-l' • "u -c, about him. slothrop misses him, not just as an ally, but as a presence, a kindness. he continues to believe, here on his french leave, and at his ease, that the interference is temporary and paper, a matter of messages routed and orders cut, an annoyance that will end when the war ends, so well have they busted the sod prairies of his brain, tilled and sown there, and subsidized him not to grow anything of his own. . . . no letters from london, not even news of achtung. all gone. teddy bloat one day just vanished: other conspirators, like a chorus line, will show up off and on behind katje and sir stephen, dancing in, all with identical corporate smiles, the multiplication of whose glitter­ ing choppers is to dazzle him, they think, distract him from what they're taking away, his id, his service dossier, his past. well, fuck ... you know. he lets it happen. he's more interested, and sometimes a little anxious, about what they seem to be adding on. at some point, appar­ ently on a whim, though how can a fellow be sure, slothrop decides to raise a mustache. last mustache he had was at age 13, he sent away to that johnson smith for a whole mustache kit, 20 different shapes from fu manchu to groucho marx. they were made 'of black cardboard, with hooks that fit into your nose. after a while snot would soak into these hooks, and they'd grow limp, and the mustache would fall off. "what kind?" katje wants to know, soon as this one is visible. "bad-guy," sez slothrop. meaning, he explains, trimmed, narrow, and villainous. "no, that'll give you a negative attitude. why not raise a good-guy mustache instead?" "but good guys don't have-" "oh no? what about wyatt earp?" to which one might've advanced the objection that wyatt wasn't all that good. but this is still back in the stuart lake era here, before the revisionists moved in, and slothrop believes in that wyatt, all right. one day a general wivern, of shaef technical staff, comes in and sees it. "the ends droop down," he observes. "so did that wyatt's," explains slothrop. "so did john wilkes booth's," replies the general. "eh?" slothrop ponders. "he was a bad guy." "precisely. why don't you twist the ends up?" "you mean english style. well, i tried that. it must be the weather or something, the old duster just keeps droopin' down again, a-and i need to bite those ends off. it's really annoying." "it's disgusting," sez wivern. "next time i come round i shall bring yaj en , � ilie1 ion ae fu all 4 ev 210 i ' •..�_.� . ,:.:c _�._._ .. _ ': . / .�__ . -'--====:��� :----, � . -).._ , � ",.,.,;'� ... _ c'\ .....,�..... -.• .....,............. -.� • ••'ri�'" ri"': !ailieror ine� ii brin� you some wax for it. they make it with a bitter taste to discourage, ah, end-chewers, you know." so as the mustache waxes, slothrop waxes the mustache. every day there's something new like this. katje's always there, slipped by them into his bed like nickels under the pillow for his deciduous american­ ism, innocent incisors 'n' momworshiping molars just left in a clattering trail back down these days at the casino. for some odd reason he finds himself with hardons right after study sessions. hm, that's peculiar. there is nothing specially erotic about reading manuals hastily trans­ lated from the german-brokenly mimeographed, even a few salvaged by the polish underground from the latrines at the training site at blizna, stained with genuine ss shit and piss . . . or memorizing con­ version factors, inches to centimeters, horsepower to pferdestarke, drawing from memory schematics and isometrics of the snarled maze of fuel, oxidizer, steam, peroxide and permanganate lines, valves, vents, chambers-what's sexy about that? still he emerges from each lesson with great hardon, tremendous pressure inside . . . some of that tempo­ rary insanity, he reckons, and goes looking for katje, hands to crabwalk his back and silk stockings squealing against his hipbones. . . . during the lessons he will often look over and catch ·sir stephen dod­ son-truck consulting a stopwatch and taking notes. jeepers. he won­ ders what that's all about. never occurs to him it might have to do with these mysterious erections. the man's personality was chosen--or de­ signed-to sidetrack suspicions before they have a chance to gather speed. winter sunlight hitting half his face like a migraine, trouser cuffs out of press, wet and sandy because he's up every morning at six to walk along the strand, sir stephen makes perfectly accessible his disguise, if not his function in the conspiracy. for all slothrop knows he's an agron­ omist, a brain surgeon, a concert oboist-in that london you sawall levels of command seething with these multidimensional geniuses. but as with katje, there hangs about dodson-truck' s well-informed zeal an unmistakable aura of the employee and loser. . . . one day slothrop gets a chance to check this out. seems dodson­ truck is a chess fanatic. down in the bar one afternoon he gets around to asking slothrop if he plays. "nope," lying, "not even checkers." "damn. i've hardly had time till now for a good game." "i do know a game," has something of tantivy been sheltering inside all this time? "a drinking game, it's called prince, maybe the english even invented it, cause you have those princes, right? and we don't, not 211 ... /� -------. �-=-(/ 1h-� that that's wrong understand, but everybody takes a number, a-and you start off the prince of wales has lost his tails, no offense now, the num­ bers going clockwise around the table, and number two has found them, clockwise from that prince, or whatever number he wants to call out ac­ tually, he, that's the prince, six or anything, see, you pick a prince first, he starts it off, then that number two, or whoever that prince called, sez, but first he goes, the prince does, wales, tails, two sir, after sayingthat about how that prince of wales has lost his tails, and number two answers, not i, sir-" "yes yes but-" giving slothrop a most odd look, "i mean i'm not quite sure i really see, you know, the point to it all. how does one win?" ha! how does one win, indeed. "one doesn't win," easing into it, thinking of tantivy, one small impromptu counter-conspiracy here,"one loses. one by one. whoever's left is the winner." "it sounds rather negative." "careen." drinks here are always on the house for slothrop-they are springing for it, he imagines. "some of that champagne! wantcha to just keep it coming, and any time we run out, go get more, compren­dez?" any number of slack-jawed subalterns, hearing the magic word,drift over and take seats while slothrop explains the rules. ''i'm not sure-" dodson-truck begins. "baloney. come on, do you good to get outa that chess rut." "right, right," agree the others. dodson-truck stays in his seat, a bit tense. "bigger glasses," slothrop hollers at the waiter. "how about those beer mugs over there! yeah! they'd be just fine." the waiter unblasts a jeroboam of veuve clicquot brut, and fills everybody up. "well, the prince 0' wales," slothrop commences, "has lost his tails,and number three has found them. wales, tails, three sir!" "not i, sir," replies dodson-truck, kind of defensive about it. "who, sir?" "five, sir." "say what?" inquires five, a highlander in parade trews, with a slylook. "you fucked up," commands princely slothrop, "so you got to drink up. all the way now, 'n' no stopping to breathe or anything."on it goes. slothrop loses prince position to four, and all the num­ bers change. the scot is first to drop, making mistakes at first deliberate but soon inevitable. jeroboams come and go, fat, green, tattered grayfoil at the necks giving back the bar's electric radiance. corks growstraighter, less mushroomy, dates of degorgement move further into the 212 i �reat now itack ilieo lllur \vuol .' ilier luoe rotal frln oleli ilier �l tall� cell �rab ion fue fj\� : -�.� .. -.-... , ': . / ---.""",,,-. -----'''-,--. . �,��--" . --" "... -:. ............. "1 '. • ............• � ..... -� ....,....... '" '-1 war years as the company gets drunker. the scot has rolled chuckling from his chair, remaining ambulatory for some ten feet, where he goes to sleep against a potted palm. at once another junior officer slides beaming into his place. the word has osmosed out into the casino, and there is presently a throng of kibitzers gathered around the table, wait­ ing for casualties. ice is being hauled in by the giant block, fern-faulted inside, breathing white off of its faces, to be sledged and chipped into a great wet tub for the procession of bottles being run up from the cellar now in relays. it soon becomes necessary for the harassed waiters to stack empty tankards in pyramids and pour fountain-style from the top, the bubble-shot cascades provoking cheers from the crowd. some joker is sure to reach in and grab one of the mugs on the bottom, sending the whole arrangement swaying, everybody else jumping to salvage what they can before it all comes down, crashing, soaking uniforms and shoes-so that it can be set up all over again. the game has switched to rotating prince, where each number called out immediately becomes prince, and all the numbers shift accordingly. by this time it is impossi­ ble to tell who's making mistakes and who isn't. arguments arise. half the room are singing a vulgar song: vulgar song last night i poked the queen of transylvan-ia, tonight i'll poke the queen of burgundee­ i'm bordering on the state of schizophren-ia, but queenie is so very nice to me. . . . it's pink champagne and caviar for break-fast, a spot of chateaubriand wiv me teaten-shilling panatelas now are all that i can smoke, i laugh so much you'd think the world was just a silly joke, so call me what you will, m' lads, but make way for the bloke that's poked the love-ly lit-tle queen of transyl-vaayn-yaa! slothrop's head is a balloon, which rises not vertically but horizon­ tally, constantly across the room, whilst staying in one place. each brain cell has become a bubble: he's been transmuted to black epernay grapes, cool shadows, noble cuvees, he looks across at sir stephen dod­ son-truck, who is still miraculously upright though with a glaze about the eyes. aha, right, s'posed to be counter-conspiring here, yes yes uh, 213 ..... �=� . �� f / 1""" -1\--� ----. ../ �, "'-1i-!o_._., •.•••• _ . •. . • •.•• . . _. now . . . he gets involved watching another pyramidal fountain, this time of sweet taittinger with no date on the label. waiters and off-duty dealers sit like birds along the bar, staring. noise in the place is incredi­ ble. a welshman with an accordion stands on a table playing "lady of spain," in c, just zooming up and down that wheezebox like a maniac. smoke hangs thick and swirling. pipes glow in the murk. at least three fist-fights are in progress. the prince game is difficult to locate any more. girls crowd at the door, giggling and poin�ing. the light in the room has gone bear-brown with swarming uniforms. slothrop, clutching his tankard, struggles to his feet, spins around once, falls with a crash into a floating crown-and-anchor game. grace, he warns himself: grace. . . . roisterers pick him up by the armpits and back pockets, and fling him in the direction of sir stephen dodson-truck. he makes his way on under a table, a lieutenant or two falling over him on route, through the odd pond of spilled bubbly, the odd slough of vomit, till he finds what he imagines to be dodson-truck's sand-filled cuffs. "hey," getting himself threaded among the legs of a chair, angling his head up to locate dodson-truck's face, haloed by a hanging fringe­ shaded lamp. "can you walk?" carefully swinging his eyes down on slothrop, "not sure, actually, that i can stand.... " they spend some time at the business of untan­ gling slothrop from the chair, then standing up, which is not without its complications-locating the door, aiming for it. . . . staggering, prop­ ping each other up, they push through a bottle-wielding, walleyed, un­ buttoned, roaring, white-faced and stomach-clutching mob, in among the lithe and perfumed audience of girls at the exit, all sweetly high, a decompression lock for the outside. "holy shit." this is the kind of sunset you hardly see any more, a 19th-century wilderness sunset, a few of which got set down, approxi­ mated, on canvas, landscapes of the american west by artists nobody ever heard of, when the land was still free and the eye innocent, and the presence of the creator much more direct. here it thunders now over the mediterranean, high and lonely, this anachronism in primal red, in yellow purer than can be found anywhere today, a purity begging to be polluted . . . of course empire took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin sunsets to penetrate and to foul? but out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing . . . these robed figures-perhaps, at this dis­ tance, hundreds of miles tall-their faces, serene, unattached, like the buddha's, bending over the sea, impassive, indeed, as the angel that stood over lubeck during the palm sunday raid, come that day neither 214 lode ilio�e '.llon \run lrew iner �erin �eca � �nlr knee i�rur �ven iliee "0 �u\t ,ine i trow iliej "0 ilia! dog! � -_ �_:.-.� -.••-.,.--'. ' /�=. �.--::", " ""'"_. . _......_ �1--� -, � . -� '\&, �"'_"_"_i ••••• " , , ri"': , th� ·dury creru· d�of ctuill�, un!a�· outi� �ro� eo, un· amo� ru�n, � ore,! pprori· noboo)' anaili1 wover rea,ll �!o� erwa)' to destroy nor to protect, but to bear witness to a game of seduction. it was the next-to-last step london took before her submission, before that liaison that would bring her at length to the eruption and scarring of the wasting pox noted on roger mexico's map, latent in this love she shares with the night-going rake lord death ... because sending the raf to make a terror raid against civilian lubeck was the unmistakable long look that said hurry up and fuck me, that brought the rockets hard and screaming, the ais, which were to've been fired anyway, a bit sooner instead.... what have the watchmen of world's edge come tonight to look for? deepening on now, monumental beings, stoical, on toward slag, toward ash the color the night will stabilize at, tonight . . . what is there gran­ diose enough to witness? only slothrop here, and sir stephen, blithering along, crossing shadow after long prison-bar shadow cast by the tall trunks of palms lining the esplanade. the spaces between the shadows are washed a very warm sunset-red now, across grainy chocolate beach. there seems to be nothing happening of any moment. no traffic whis­ pering in the circular driveways, no milliards of francs being wagered because of a woman or an entente of nations at any of the tables inside. only the somewhat formal weeping of sir stephen, down now on one knee in the sand still warm from the day: soft and strangled cries of de­ spair held in, so testifying to all the repression he ever underwent that even slothrop can feel, in his own throat, sympathetic flashes of pain for the effort it is clearly costing the man. . . . "oh yes, yes you know, i, i, i can't. no. i assumed that you knew­ but then why should they tell you? they all know. i'm an office joke. the people even know. nora's been the sweetheart of the psychic crowd for years and years. that's always good for some bit of copy in the news of the world-" "ohl yeah! nora-that's that dame that was caught that time with that kid who-who can change his color, right? wow! sure, that nora dodson-truck! i knew your name was familiar-" but sir stephen has gone on: ". . . had a son, yes we came complete with sensitive son, boy about your age. frank . . . i think they sent him to indo-china. they're very polite when i ask, very polite but, they won't let me find out where he is. . .. they're good chaps at fitzmau­ rice house, slothrop. they mean well. it's been, most of it's been my fault.... i did love nora. i did. but there were other things.... important things. i believed they were. i still do. i must. as she got along, you know . . . they do get that way. you know how they are, de­ manding, always trying to-to drag you into bed. i couldn't," shaking his 215 -i ' �-�-_ i '/�i�-1'.--"," i � -c, head, his hair now incandescent orange in this twilight, "i couldn't. i'd climbed too far. another branch. couldn't climb back down to her. she-she might even have been happy with a, even a touch now and then. . . . listen slothrop, your girl, your katje, sh-she's very lovely, you know." "i know." "th-they think i don't care, any more. 'you can observe without pas­ sion.' bastards ... no i didn't mean that.... slothrop, we're all such mechanical men. doing our jobs. that's all we are. listen-how do you think i feel? when you're off with her after every lesson. i'm an impo­ tent man-all i have to look forward to is a book, slothrop. a report to write ... " "hey, ace-" "don't get angry. i'm harmless. go ahead hit me, i'll only fall over and bounce right up again. watch." he demonstrates. "i care about you, both of you. i do care, believe me, slothrop." "o.k. tell me what's going on." "i care!" "fine, fine . . ." "my 'function' is to observe you. that's my function. you like my function? you like it? your 'function' . . . is, learn the rocket, inch by inch. i have . . . to send in a daily log of your progress. and that's all i know." but that's not all. he's holding something back, something deep, and fool slothrop is too drunk to get at it with any kind of style. "me and katje too? you looking through the keyhole?" sniffling, "what difference's it make? i'm the perfect man for it. per­ fect. i can't even masturbate half the time ... no nasty jissom gettingall over their reports, you know. wouldn't want that. just a neuter, just a recording eye.... they're so cruel. i don't think they even know, really they aren't even sadists.... there's just no passion atall ." slothrop puts a hand on his shoulder. the suit padding shifts and bunches over the warm bone beneath it. he doesn't know what to say,what to do: himself, he feels empty, and wants to sleep. . . . but sir ste­ phen is on his knees, just about, quaking at the edge of it, to tell slo­ throp a terrible secret, a fatal confidence concerning: the penis he thought was his own (lead tenor): 'twas the penis, he thought-was, his own­ just a big playful boy of a bone ... 216 ��en 10un � "h ure· "y noll orilln u� , �enl fue� emr lnu �lucl lido • ola lain �.�:� � •. � � •• u �.�-.� .. _.-._ .. _ ': . / _....._ .� _�_ � "'"", -, " . -�.. "" '". _ � _....•••,..& , tifi": 't.ra o her, \v an� !o�el�, (bass): with a stout purple head, sticking up from the bed, where the girlies all played telephone­ te-ie-phone.... 110\'11 aooijl but they came through the hole in the night, and they sweet-talked it clear out of sight­ out of sight . . . now he sighs all alone, with a heartbroken moan, for the pe-nis, he thought-was, his, owwwwn! (inner voices) : was, his, own! the figures out to sea have been attending, growing now even more windy and remote as the light goes cold and out. . . . they are so difficult to reach across to-difficult to grasp. carroll eventyr, trying to confirm the lubeck angel, learned how difficult-he and his control peter sachsa both, floundering in the swamp between the worlds. later on, in london, came the visit from that most ubiquitous of double agents, sammy hilbert-spaess, whom everyone had thought in stock­ holm, or was it paraguay? "here then," the kindly scombroid face scanning eventyr, quick as a fire-control dish antenna and even less mercy, "i thought i'd-" "you thought you'd just check in." "telepathic too, cod he's amazing i'n't he." but the fishy eyes will not let up. it is a rather bare room, the address behind callaho mews ordinarily reserved for cash transactions. they have summoned eventyr up from "the white visitation." they know in london how to draw pentacles too, and cry conjurations, how to bring in exactly the ones they want. . . . the tabletop is crowded with glasses, smudged, whitish, emptied or with residues of deep brown and red drinks, with ashtrays and with debris from artificial flowers which old sammy here has been plucking, unpeeling, twisting into mysterious curves and knots. train­ smoke blows in a partly opened window. one wall of the room, though blank, has been eroded at, over years, by shadows of operatives, as cer­ tain mirrors in public eating-places have been by the images of custom­ ers: a surface gathering character, like an old face. . . . "but then you don't actually talk to him," ah, sammy's so good at this, softly-softly, "i mean it's none of your telegraphers in the middle of the night having a bit of a chat sort of thing. . . ." "no. no." eventyr understanding now that they've been seeing tran­ scripts of everything that comes through from peter sachsa-that what (inner voices): (bass): (inner voices): (tenor): 217 � �----__'� � .. � ')-< � -�-� / ��'{-�. eventyr himself gets to read is already censored. and that it may have been this way for a while now.... so relax, grow passive, watch for a shape to develop out of sammy's talking, a shape that really eventyr knows already, as we do working out acrostics-he's called up to lon­ don, but they aren't asking to be put in touch with anyone, so it's sachsa himself they're interested in, and the purpose of this meeting is not to commission eventyr, but to warn him. to put a part of his own hidden life under interdiction. bits, tones of voice, choices of phrasing now come flying together: ". . . must've been quite a shock to find himself roncre over there . . . had a zaxa or two of me own to worry about . . . keep �ier a you out of the street at least ... see how you're holding up, old zaxa i�jlea too of course, need to filter out personalities you see from the data, easij@el, ier for us that way.... " ��1�, out of the street? everyone knows how sachsa died. but no one llieiiru knows why he was out there that day, what led up to it. and what wnere sammy is telling eventyr here is: don't ask. then will they try to get to nora too? if there are analogies here, if eventyr does, somehow, map on to peter sachsa, then does nora dod­ son-truck become the woman sachsa loved, leni pokler? will the interdiction extend to nora's smoky voice and steady hands, and is evdrellio entyr to be kept, for the duration, perhaps for his life, under some very trlfu� sophisticated form of house arrest, for crimes that will never be told i�iji 0 wm? � nora still carries on her adventure, her "ideology of the zero," firm ilte j among the stoneswept hair of the last white guardians at the last stepoff no�el into the black, into the radiant.... but where will leni be now? rroml where will she have wandered off to, carrying her child, and her littln� dreams that will not grow up? either we didn't mean to lose her-either 'm�1el it was an ellipsis in our care, in what some of us will even swear is our ilie �u love, or someone has taken her, deliberately, for reasons being kept se�qi cret, and sachsa's death is part of it too. she has swept with her wings l�mit another life-not husband franz, who dreamed of, prayed for exactly �!�� such a taking but instead is being kept for something quite differentinen peter sachsa, who was passive in a different way ... is there some mismi�nt take? do they never make mistakes, or ... why is he here rushing with "yo her toward her own end (as indeed eventyr has been sucked along in ner:" nora's furious wake) her body blocking from his sight everything that "t lies ahead, the slender girl strangely grown oaken, broad, maternal . . . willi all he has to go by is the debris of their time sweeping in behind from eiit�!nc ther side, looping away in long helices, into the dusty invisible where a ilia!'! last bit of sunlight lies on the stones of the road. . . . yes: however ri�cem 218 _ . .::.:_: .. :_: ....•.. -:-._._ , . . . -� ..: �--''''� '" " . ---, � --. ,-._ _ • ..,pt. , 'no o�1 a iimi diculously, he is acting out franz pokier's fantasy for him, here crouched on her back, very small, being taken: taken forward into an aether-wind whose smell ... no not that smell last encountered just be­ fore his birth ... the void long before he ought to be remembering ... which means, if it's here again . . . then . . . then . . . they are being pushed backward by a line of police. peter sachsa is jammed inside it, trying to keep his footing, no escape possible ... leni's face moving, restless, against the window of the hamburg flyer, concrete roads, pedestals, industrial towers of the mark flying away at over a hundred miles an hour the perfect background, brown, blurred, any least mistake, in the points, in the roadbed at this speed and they're done for . . . her skirt is pulled up in back, the bare bottoms of her thighs, marked red from the train seat, turn toward him . . . yes . . . in the imminence of disaster, yes, whoever's watching yes. . . . "leni, where are you?" she was at his elbow not ten seconds ago. they'd agreed beforehand to try and keep together. but there are two sorts of movement out here-as often as the chance displacements of strangers, across a clear skirmish-line from the force, will bring together people who'll remain that way for a time, in love that can even make the op­ pression seem a failure, so too love, here in the street, can be taken cen­ trifugally apart again: faces seen for the last time here, words spoken idly, over your shoulder, taking for granted she's there, already last words-"will walter be bringing wine tonight? i forgot to-" it's a pri­ vate joke, his forgetting, going around in some adolescent confusion, hopelessly in love too by now with the little girl, ilse. she is his refuge from society, parties, clients ... often she is his sanity. he's taken to sitting for a little while each night beside her bed, late at night, watch­ ing her sleep, with her bottom up in the air and face in the pillow . . . the purity, the rightness of it . . . but her mother, in her own sleep, grinds her teeth often these nights, frowns, talks in a tongue he cannot admit he might, some time or place, know and speak fluently. just in this past week . . . what does he know of politics? but he can see that she has crossed a threshold, found a branching of the time, where he might not be able to follow"you're her mother . . . what if they arrest you, what happens to her?" "that's what they-peter can't you see, they want a great swollen tit with some atrophied excuse for a human, bleating around somewhere in its shadows. how can i be human for her? not her mother. 'mother,' that's a civil-service category, mothers work for them! they're the po­ licemen of the soul ... " her face darkened, judaized by the words she 219 mevrn �to� .. " � ... _.:::....--� _ -i:" -> (�------�'i� speaks, not because it's out loud but because she means it, and she's right. against her faith, sachsa can see the shallows of his own life, the bathtub stagnancy of those soirees where for years not even the faces changed . . . too many tepid years. . . . "but i love you . . ." she brushes hair back from his sweating fore­ head, they lie beneath a window through which streetand advertising­ light blow constantly, lapping at their skins, at their roundings and shadows, with spectra colder than those of the astrologers' moon. . . . "you don't have to be anything you aren't, peter. i wouldn't be here if i didn't love who you are. . . ." did she goad him into the street, was she the death of him? in his view from the other side, no. in love, words can be taken too many ways, that's all. but he does feel he was sent across, for some particular reason.... and ilse, vamping him with her dark eyes. she can say his name, but often, to flirt with him, she won't, or she'll call him mama. "no-no, that's mama. i'm peter. remember? peter." "mama." leni only gazes, a smile held between her lips almost, he must say, smug, allowing the mix-up in names to fall, to set up male reverbera­ tions she can't be ignorant of. if she doesn't want him out in the street, why does she only keep her silence at such moments? "i was only glad she wasn't calling me mama," leni thought she'd ex­ plain. but that's too close to ideology, it's nothing he can be comfortable with yet. he doesn't know how to listen to talk like that as more than slogans strung together: hasn't learned to hear with the revolutionary heart, won't ever, in fact, be given enough time to gather a revolution­ ary heart from the bleak comradely love of the others, no, no time for it now, or for anything but one more breath, the rough breath of a man growing afraid in the street, not even enough time to lose his fear in the time-honored way, no, because here comes schutzmann joche, trun­ cheon already in backswing, the section of communist head moving into view for him stupidly, so unaware of him and his power . . . the schutzmann's first clear shot all day ... oh, his timing is perfect, he feels it in arm and out the club no longer flabby at his side but tensed back now around in a muscular curve, at the top of his swing, peak of potential energy . . . far below that gray vein in the man's temple, frail as parchment, standing out so clear, twitching already with its next to last pulsebeat . . . and, shit! oh-howhow beautiful! during the night, sir stephen vanishes from the casino. :i�ilirop ilnaows, iii at tn j�nain, l�wi :c\oout then, ��lar \ her fa �tcreru l'we�, �tl. lilt' i "�evel "\v!la ��lea , "dor helt� ii�ou h�e ''wha "\vlla itrnan it'lnak i il�fuo� ii�ure miliat �qi,i "a� • i�'i aol� (1fry,t itelat �m� imuin m�i, 0 ,i!llie fue oe lim, h' 220 .,. ....•••.•• -.-�-�-.-.-.•.•.• � . /_----'.:-----=-=-=--"' "--. • __ 't: _� ...�t�-" . --. -, '" _' �-. ' .. _._._.... .� .ij.,,,..... �, ri':, me, ��t but not before telling slothrop that his erections are of high interest to fitzmaurice house. then in the morning katje comes storming in madder than a wet hen, to tell slothrop that sir stephen's gone. suddenly everybody is telling slothrop things, and he's barely awake. rain rattles at the shutters and windows. monday mornings, upset stomachs, good-bys . . . he blinks out at the misted sea, the horizon mantled in gray, palms gleaming in the rain, heavy and wet and very green. it may be that the champagne is still with him-for ten extraordinary seconds there's nothing in his field but simple love for what he's seeing. then, perversely aware of it, he turns away, back into the room. time to play with katje, now. . . . her face is as pale as her hair. a rain-witch. her hat brim makes a chic creamy green halo around her face. "well, he's gone then." keenness of this order might work to provoke her. "it's too bad. then again-maybe it's good." "never mind him. how much do you know, slothrop?" "what's that mean, never mind him? what do you do, just throw people away?" "do you want to find out?" he stands twisting his mustache. "tell me about it." "you bastard. you've sabotaged the whole thing, with your clever little collegiate drinking game." "what whole thing, katje?" "what did he tell you?" she moves a step closer. slothrop watches her hands, thinking of army judo instructors he's seen. it occurs to him he's naked and also, hmm, seems to be getting a hardon here, look out, slothrop. and nobody here to note it, or speculate why.... "sure didn't tell me you knew any of that judo. must of taught you it in that holland, huh? sure-little things," singing in descending childish thirds, "give you away, you know.... " "aahh-" exasperated she rushes in, aims a chop at his head which he's able to dodge-goes diving in under her arm, lifts her in a fireman's carry, throws her against the bed and comes after her. she kicks a sharp heel at his cock, which is what she should've done in the first place. her timing, in fact, is drastically off all through this, else she would likely be handing slothrop's ass to him . . . it may be that she wants her foot to miss, only scraping slothrop along the leg as he swerves now, grabs her by the hair and twists an arm behind her, pushing her, face-down, on the bed. her skirt is up over her ass, her thighs squirming underneath him, his penis in terrific erection. 221 loexiw ., . �------------��-------�i/�'l� "listen, cunt, don't make me lose my temper with you, got no prob­ lems at all hitting women, i'm the cagney of the french riviera, so look out." ''i'll kill you-" "what-and sabotage the whole thing?" katje turns her head and sinks her teeth in his forearm, up near the elbow where the pentothal needles used to go in. "ow, shit-" he lets go the arm he's been twisting, pulls down underwear, takes her by one hip and penetrates her from behind, reaching under to pinch nipples, paw at her clitoris, rake his nails along inside her thighs, mister tech­ nique here, not that it matters, they're both ready to come-katje first, screaming into the pillow, slothrop a second or two later. he lies on top of her, sweating, taking great breaths, watching her face turned % away, not even a profile, but the terrible face that is no face, gone too ab­ stract, unreachable: the notch of eye socket, but never the labile eye, only the anonymous curve of cheek, convexity of mouth, a noseless mask of the other order of being, of katje's being-the lifeless non­ face that is the only face of hers he really knows, or will ever remember. "hey, katje," 's all he sez. "mm." but here's only her old residual bitterness again, and they are not, after all, to be lovers in parachutes of sunlit voile, lapsing gently, hand in hand, down to anything meadowed or calm. surprised? she has moved away, releasing his cock into the cold room. "what's it like in london, slothrop? when the rockets come down?" "what?" after fucking he usually likes to lie around, just smoke a cig­ arette, think about food, "uh, you don't know it's there till it's there. gee, till after it's there. if it doesn't hit you, then you're o.k. till the next one. if you hear the explosion, you know you must be alive." "that's how you know you're alive." "right." she sits up, pulling underpants back up and skirt back down, goes to the mirror, starts rearranging her hair. "let's hear the boundary-layer temperatures. while you're getting dressed." "boundary-layer temperature t sub e, what is this? rises expo­ nentially till brennschluss, around 70 miles range, a-and then there's a sharp cusp, 1200 degrees, then it drops a little, minimum of 1050, till you get out of the atmosphere, then there's another cusp at 1080 de­ grees. stays pretty steady till re-entry," blablabla. the bridge music here, bright with xylophones, is based on some old favorite that will comment, ironically but gently, on what is transpiring-a tune such as "school days, school days," or "come, josephine, in my flying manine," � $e you �'jilirop �ilie co :ilarf1el l�a�ainl �'1r crai :mnffi� ill (itneart:®oerlll :�mentl ' l1ilioui, "�oiv j ill�le," "katje, lhewal " )ne �' 1��orm, 1\m��trl )ltfi� i "whi ther �' �rt�fue�, �erroo tijreme oounilin� (ij1')co m� what' dark ij fueneal l4rq,h m�, , , . "hmr 222 .-�.�. . :_ <:': -----_ _ ___ -: / ------------. ""', ��1---. " . --_ '-,_ =:.qliol ••••• _._•••_-". rii":. �ro� so loot chine," or even "there'll be a hot time in the old town tonite!" take your pick-slowing and fading to a glassed-in porch downstairs, slothrop and katje tete-a-tete, alone except for a number of musicians in the corner groaning and shaking their heads, plotting how to get cesar fleb6tomo to pay them for a change. bad gig, bad gig. . . . rain bats against the glass, lemon and myrtle trees outside shake in the wind. over croissants, strawberry jam, real butter, real coffee, she has him running through the flight profile in terms of wall temperature and nus­ selt heart-transfer coefficients, computing in his head from reynolds numbers she flashes him . . . equations of motion, damping, restoring moments . . . methods of computing brennschluss by ig and radio methods . . . equations, transformations . . . "now jet expansion angles. i'll give you an altitude, you tell me the angle." "katje, why don't you tell me the angle?" she was pleased, once, to think of a peacock, courting, fanning his tail . . . she saw it in the colors that moved in the flame as it rose off the platform, scarlet, orange, iridescent green . . . there were germans, even ss troops, who called the rocket der pfau. 'pfau zwei.' ascending, programmed in a ritual of love . . . at brennschluss it is done-the rocket's purely feminine counterpart, the zero point at the center of its target, has submitted. all the rest will happen according to laws of bal­ listics. the rocket is helpless in it. something else has taken over. some­ thing beyond what was designed in. katje has understood the great airless arc as a clear allusion to certain secret lusts that drive the planet and herself, and those who use her­ over its peak and down, plunging, burning, toward a terminal orgasm ... which is certainly nothing she can tell slothrop. they sit listening to gusts of rain that's nearly sleet. winter gathers, breathes, deepens. a roulette ball goes rattling, somewhere back in an­ other room. she's running. why? has he come too close again? he tries to remember if she always needed to talk this way, in draw-shots, re­ bounding first before she could touch him. fine time to start asking. he's counter-conspiring in the dark, jimmying doors at random, no tell­ ing what'll come out. . . . dark basalt pushes up out of the sea. a vaporous scrim hangs across the headland and its chateaux, turning it all to a grainy antique post­ card. he touches her hand, moves his fingers up her bare arm, reach­ ing.... "hm?" 223 .... / . -------�-f /----rj') __ / .,�. " .. , , .. · .. _ ., ···.·.·.oa ...•... e. • • • • "come on upstairs," sez slothrop. she may have hesitated, but so briefly that he didn't notice: "what have we been talking about all this time?" "that a4 rocket." she looks at him for a long time. at first he thinks she's about to laugh at him. then it looks like she'll cry. he doesn't understand. "oh, slo­ throp. no. you don't want me. what they're after may, but you don't. no more than a4 wants london. but i don't think they know ... about other selves ... yours or the rocket's ... no. no more than you do. if you can't understand it now, at least remember. that's all i can do for you." they go back up to her room again: cock, cunt, the monday rain at the windows.... slothrop spends the rest of the morning and early aft­ ernoon studying professors schiller on regenerative cooling, wagner on combustion equations, pauer and beck on exhaust gases and burning efficiency. and a pornography of blueprints. at noon the rain stops. katje is off on chores of her own. slothrop passes a few hours downstairs in the bar, waiters who catch his eye smiling, holding up bottles of champagne, wiggling them invitingly-"no, merci, non.... " he's trying to memorize the organization charts at that peenemiinde. as light begins to spill from the overcast sky, he and katje are out taking a walk, an end-of-the-day stroll along the esplanade. her hand is gloveless and icy in his, her narrow black coat making her taller, her long silences helping to thin her for him nearly to fog. . . . they stop, lean against a railing, he watching the midwinter sea, she the blind and chilly casino poised behind them. colorless clouds slide by, endlessly, in the sky. "i was thinking of the time i came in on you. that afternoon." he can't quite bring himself to get specific out loud, but she knows he means the himmler-spielsaal. she has looked around sharply. "so was 1." their breaths are torn into phantoms out to sea. she has her hair combed high today in a pompadour, her fair eyebrows, plucked to wings, darkened, eyes rimmed in black, only the outboard few lashes missed and left blonde. cloudlight comes slanting down across her face, taking away color, leaving little more than a formal snapshot, the kind that might appear on a passport.... "a-and you were so far away then . . . i couldn't reach you.... " then. something like pity comes into her face and goes again. but her whisper is lethal and bright as sudden wire: "maybe you'll find out. maybe in one of their bombed-out cities, beside one of their rivers or jrests,6 l�him jjlce {oj ;�on't 5 jiliat se 'irlace's rnerar; '�r�m�ty jilin�wi :(00 oft illroolor1 :l' he re� i1ninnis loohoo\ id� ur to �tinnnel e. , waves ltnoutin @)ora�sl , �tnme rrnr1rlor �1r eresl mrnowout at �erale (llieoeacl �·tt nave �ooqma l:xjlcon late! fwo tal • rnange, �reathii 224 � '. -.. --._.----_... /---_--. "---. . � . ---�:---. " . � " ==-� ' •• -._ , , , �\ forests, even one day in the rain, it will come to you. you'll remember the himmler-spielsaal, and the skirt i was wearing ... memory will dance for you, and you can even make it my voice saying what i couldn't say then. or now." oh what is it she smiles here to him, only for that second? already gone. back to the mask of no luck, no future­ her face's rest state, preferred, easiest. . . . they are standing among black curly skeletons of iron benches, on the empty curve of this esplanade, banked much more steeply than the waking will ever need: vertiginous, trying to spill them into the sea and be rid of this. the day has grown colder. neither of them can stay bal­ anced for long, every few seconds one or the other must find a new foot­ ing. he reaches and turns up the collar of her coat, holds her cheeks then in his palms . . . is he trying to bring back the color of flesh? he looks down, trying to see into her eyes, and is puzzled to find tears com­ ing up to fill each one, soaking in among her lashes, mascara bleeding out in fine black swirls ... translucent stones, trembling in their sock­ ets.... waves crash and drag at the stones of the beach. the harbor has bro­ ken out in whitecaps, so brilliant they can't be gathering their light from this drab sky. here it is again, that identical-looking other world-is he gonna have this to worry about, now? what th' -lookit these trees-each long frond hanging, stung, dizzying, in laborious drypoint against the sky, each so perfectly placed.... she has moved her thighs and the points of her hips up to touch him, through her coat-it might still, after all, be to help bring him back­ her breath a white scarf, her tear-trails, winter-lit, ice. she feels warm. but it's not enough. never was-nope, he understands all right, she's been meaning to go for a long time. braced for the wind the whitecaps imply, or for the tilt of the pavement, they hold each other. he kisses her eyes, feels his cock again begin to swell with good old, bad old-old, anyhow-lust. out at sea a single clarinet begins to play, a droll melody joined in on after a few bars by guitars and mandolins. birds huddle bright-eyed on the beach. katje's heart lightens, a little, at the sound. slothrop doesn't yet have the european reflexes to clarinets, he still thinks of benny goodman and not of clowns or circuses-but wait ... aren't these ka­ zoos coming? yeah, a latta kazoos! a kazoo band! late that night, back in her room, she wears a red gown of heavy silk. two tall candles burn an indefinite distance behind her. he feels the change. after making love she lies propped on an elbow watching him, breathing deep, dark nipples riding with the swell, as buoys ride on the 225 ulnt! out erloi ·-c· � --�--------�i .:-----�'�white sea. but a patina has formed on her eyes: he can't even see her ac­ customed retreat, this last time, dimmed, graceful, to the corner of some inner room .... "katje." "sshh," raking dreamy fingernails down the morning, over the cote d'azur toward italy. slothrop wants to sing, decides to, but then can't think of anything that'd work. he reaches an arm, without wetting his fingers snuffs the candles. she kisses the pain. it hurts even more. he falls asleep in her arms. when he wakes she is gone, completely, most of her never-worn clothes still in the closet, blisters and a little wax on his fingers, and one cigarette, stubbed out before its time in an exasperated fishhook. ... she never wasted cigarettes. she must have sat, smoking, watching him while he slept ... until something, he'll never be asking her what, triggered her, made it impossible to stay till cigarette's end. he straightens it out, finishes it, no point wasting smokes is there, with a war on.... o 0 0 0 dod "ordinarily in our behavior, we react not singly, but complexly, to fit the ever present contents of our environment. in old people," pavlov was lecturing at the age of 83, "the matter is altogether different. con­ centrating on one stimulus we exclude by negative induction other col­ lateral and simultaneous stimuli because they often do not suit the cir­ cumstances, are not complementary reactions in the given setting." thus [pointsman never shows these excursions of his to anyone], reaching for some flower on my table, i know the cool mosaic of my room begin its slow, inhibitory dissolve around the bloom, the stimulus, the need that brighter burns, as brightness, quickly sucked from objects all around, now concentrates (yet less than blinding), focuses to flame. whilst there yet, in the room's hypnotic evening, the others lurk-the books, the instruments, the old man's clothes, an old gorodki stick, glazed now but with their presences. their spirits, or memories i kept of where they were, are canceled, for this moment, by the flame: 226 (t.�'.'.. .::':':'. ---.�---� <, ��;------, " . ."'_ "�, " . _.__... .� •••,�...". r#': the reach toward the frail and waiting flower and so, one of them-pen, or empty glassis knocked from where it was, perhaps to roll beyond the blank frontiers of memory . . . yet this, be clear, is no "senile distraction," but concentrating, such as younger men can easily and laughing dodge, their world presenting too much more than one mean loss­ and out here, eighty-three, the cortex slack, excitatory processes eased to cinders by inhibition's tweaking, callused fingers, each time my room begins its blur i feel i've looked in on some city's practice blackout (such as must come, should germany keep on that road of madness). each light, winking out except at last for one bright, stubborn bloom the wardens cannot quench. or not this time. 227 the weekly briefings at "the white visitation" are all but aban­ doned. hardly anyone sees the old brigadier about these days. there is evidence of a budgetary insecurity begun to filter in among the cherub­ crusted halls and nooks of the pisces facility. "the old man's funking," cries myron grunton, none too stable him­ self these days. the slothrop group are gathered for their regular meet­ ing in the arf wing. "he'll shoot down the whole scheme, all it'll take is one bad night. . . ." a degree of well-bred panic can be observed among those present. in the background, laboratory assistants move about cleaning up dog shit and calibrating instruments. rats and mice, white and black and a few shades of gray, run clattering on their wheels in a hundred cages. pointsman is the only one here maintaining his calm. he appears un­ ruffled and strong. his lab coats have even begun lately to take on a sa­ vile row serenity, suppressed waist, flaring vents, finer material, rather rakishly notched lapels. in this parched and fallow time, he gushes affluence. after the baying has quieted down at last, he speaks, sooth­ ing: "there's no danger." "no danger?" screams aaron throwster, and the lot of them are off again muttering and growling. "slothrop's knocked out dodson-truck and the girl in one day!" "the whole thing's falling apart, pointsman!" "since sir stephen came back, fitzmaurice house has dropped out of .• '41 ------..:---� ==::-(/�'i� � ---_ ---. r/ 1!�9 :, .�, , .. t ., -. • ••••• :.;�. ._. the scheme, and thereve been embarrassing inquiries down from dun­ can sandys-" "that's the p.m.'s son-in-law, pointsman, not good, not good!" "we've already begun to run into a deficit->-" "funding," if you can keep your head, "is available, and will be coming in before long ... certainly before we run into any serious trouble. sir stephen, far from being 'knocked out,' is quite happily at work in fitzmaurice house, and is at home there should any of you wish to confirm. miss borgesius is still active on the program, and mr. duncan sandys is having all his questions answered. but best of all, we are budgeted well into fiscal '46 before anything like a deficit begins to rear its head." "your interested parties again?" sez rollo groast. "ah, i noticed clive mossmoon from imperial chemicals closeted with you day before yesterday," edwin treacle mentions now. "clive and i took an organic chemistry course or two together back at man­ chester. is ici one of our, ah, sponsors, pointsman?" "no," smoothly, "mossmoon, actually, is working out of malet street these days. i'm afraid we were up to nothing more sinister than a bit of routine coordination over this schwarzkommando business." "the hell you were. i happen to know clive's at ici, managing some sort of polymer research." they stare at each other. one is lying, or bluffing, or both are, or all of the above. but whatever it is pointsman has a slight advantage. by facing squarely the extinction of his program, he has gained a great bit of wisdom: that if there is a life force operating in nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. nothing so mystical. it all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads. but survival depends on having strong enough desires-on knowing the system better than the other chap, and how to use it. it's work, that's all it is, and there's no room for any extrahuman anxieties-they only weaken, effeminize the will: a man either indulges them, or fights to win, und so weiter. "i do wish lei would finance part of this," pointsman smiles. "lame, lame," mutters the younger dr. groast. "what's it matter?" cries aaron throwster. "if the old man gets moody at the wrong time this whole show can prang." "brigadier pudding will not go back on any of his commitments," pointsman very steady, calm, "we have made arrangements with him. the details aren't important." they never are, in these meetings of his. treacle has been comforta228 , i�r wate lnlin if;\.......... ..--�.�--.--.. �.,.--� /�--,.. --�. . -� _ -=_--;---, " . -� '" �� .... -"'-".--...�•••'''''t't._'� �: bly sidetracked onto the mossmoon issue, rollo groast's carping asides never get as far as serious opposition, and are useful in presenting the appearance of open discussion, as are throwster's episodes of hysteria for distracting the others.... so the gathering breaks up, the conspira­ tors head off for coffee, wives, whisky, sleep, indifference. webley sil­ vernail stays behind to secure his audiovisual gear and loot the ashtrays. dog vanya, back for the moment in an ordinary state of mind if not of kidneys (which are vulnerable after a while to bromide therapy), has been allowed a short break from the test stand, and he goes sniffing now over to the cage of rat ilya. ilya puts his muzzle against the galvanized wire, and the two pause this way, nose to nose, life and life.... silver­ nail, puffing on a hook-shaped stub, lugging a 16 mm projector, leaves arf by way of a long row of cages, exercise wheels strobing under the fluorescent lights. careful youse guys, here comes da screw. aw he's o.k. looie, he's a regular guy. the others laugh. den what's he doin' in here, huh? the long white lights buzz overhead. gray-smocked as­ sistants chat, smoke, linger at various routines. look out, lefty, dey're comin' fer you dis time. watch dis, chuckles mouse alexei, when he picks me up i'm gonna shit, right'n his hand! better not hey, ya know what happened ta slug, don'tcha? dey fried him when he did dat, man, da foist time he fucked up runnin' dat maze. a hundrit volts. dey said it wuz a "accident." yeah ... sure it wuz! from overhead, from a german camera-angle, it occurs to webley silvernail, this lab here is also a maze, i'n't it now ... behaviorists run these aisles of tables and consoles just like rats 'n' mice. reinforcement for them is not a pellet of food, but a successful experiment. but who watches from above, who notes their responses? who hears the small animals in the cages as they mate, or nurse, or communicate through the gray quadrilles, or, as now, begin to sing ... come out of their enclo­ sures, in fact, grown to webley silvernail-size (though none of the lab people seem to be noticing) to dance him down the long aisles and metal apparatus, with conga drums and a peppy tropical orchestra tak­ ing up the very popular beat and melody of: 229 pavlovia (beguine) mlortj' it was spring in pavlovia-a-a, i was lost, in a maze . . . lysol breezes perfumed the air, i'd been searching for days. i found you, in a cul-de-sac, ,&.' ..-�-� i ��'i=---/ i-�' '_' �li.f. t........... ·•· .. 0....... .. " as bewildered as 1we touched noses, and suddenly my heart learned how to fly! so, together, we found our way, shared a pellet, or two . . . like an evening in some cafe, wanting nothing, but you . . . autumn's come, to pavlovia-a-a, once again, i'm alone­ finding sorrow by millivolts, back to neurons and bone. and i think of our moments then, n ever knowing your name­ nothing's left in pavlovia, but the maze, and the game. they dance in flowing skeins. the rats and mice form circles, curl their tails in and out to make chrysanthemum and sunburst patterns, eventually all form into the shape of a single giant mouse, at whose eye silvernail poses with a smile, arms up in a v, sustaining the last note of the song, along with the giant rodent-chorus and orchestra. one of pwd's classic propaganda leaflets these days urges the volksgrenadier: setzt v-2 ein!, with a footnote, explaining that "v-2" means to raise both arms in "honorable surrender"-more gallows-humor-and telling how to say, phonetically, "ei ssorrender." is webley's v here for vic­ tory, or ssorrender? they have had their moment of freedom. webley has only been a guest star. now it's back to the cages and the rationalized forms of death-death in the service of the one species cursed with the knowl­ edge that it will die. . . . "i would set you free, if i knew how. but it isn't free out here. all the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. i can't even give you hope that it will be different someday­that they'll come out, and forget death, and lose their technology's elaborate terror, and stop using every other form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level-and be like you in­ stead, simply here, simply alive. . . ." the guest star retires down the corridors. lights, all but a sprinkling, are out at "the white visitation." the 230 te� an) nel . i dr< mu i.fi. . ) --.-.-.. ---': / _. ---= """_. . _�... _t� -, " . -�g.... � ••.•••_ ••_ ... .....,�..ft"'" '. ,ruri sky tonight is deep blue, blue as a navy greatcoat, and the clouds in it are amazingly white. the wind is keen and cold. old brigadier pudding, trembling, slips from his quarters down the back stairs, by a route only he knows, through the vacant orangery in the starlight, along a gallery hung to lace dandies, horses, ladies with hard-boiled eggs for eyes, out a small entresol (point of maximum danger . . .) and into a lumber-room, whose stacks of junk and random blacknesses, even this far from his childhood, are good for a chill, out again and down a set of metal steps, singing, he hopes quietly, for courage: wash me in the water that you wash your dirty daughter, and i shall be whiter than the whitewash on the wall. at last to d wing, where the madmen of the '30s persist. the night at­ tendant is asleep under the daily herald. he is a coarse-looking fellow, and has been reading the leader. is it an indication of things to come, next election? oh, dear . . . but orders are to let the brigadier pass. the old man tiptoes by, breathing fast. mucus rattles back in his throat. he's at the age where mucus is a daily companion, a culture of mucus among the old, mucus in a thousand manifestations, appearing in clots by total surprise on a friend's tablecloth, rimming his breath-passages at night in hard venturi, enough to darken the outlines of dreams and send him awake, pleading.... a voice from some cell too distant for us to locate intones: "i am blessed metatron. i am keeper of the secret. i am guardian of the throne. . . ." in here, the more disturbing whig excesses have been chiseled away or painted over. no point disturbing the inmates. all is neutral tones, soft draperies, impressionist prints on the walls. only the marble floor has been left, and under the bulbs it gleams like water. old pudding must negotiate half a dozen offices or anterooms before reach­ ing his destination. it hasn't yet been a fortnight, but there is already something of ritual to this, of iteration. each room will hold a single un­ pleasantness for him: a test he must pass. he wonders if pointsman hasn't set these up too. of course, of course he must . . . how did the young bastard ever find out? have i been talking in rn' sleep? have they been slipping in at night with their truth serums to-and just at the clear emergence of the thought, here is his first test tonight. in the first room: a hypodermic outfit has been left lying on a table. very clear and shining, with the rest of the room slightly out of focus. yes mornings i 231 . .. � r----c�:;a;. ��_�""'.., ---� �-�_. (/�'i-� � felt terribly groggy, couldn't wake, after dreaming-were they dreams? i was talking. . . . but it's all he remembers, talking while someone else was there listening. . . . he is shivering with fear, and his face is whiter than whitewash. in the second antechamber is an empty red tin that held coffee. the brand name is savarino he understands that it means to say "severin." oh, the filthy, the mocking scoundrel. . . . but these are not malignant puns against an intended sufferer so much as a sympathetic magic, a repetition high and low of some prevailing form (as, for instance, no sane demolition man at his evening dishwater will wash a spoon be­ tween two cups, or even between a glass and a plate, for fear of the trembler it implies ... because it's a trembler-tongue he really holds, poised between its two fatal contacts, in fingers aching with having been so suddenly reminded) .... in the third, a file drawer is left ajar, a stack of case histories partly visible, and an open copy of krafft ebing. in the fourth, a human skull. his excitement grows. in the fifth, a ma­ lacca cane. i've been in more wars for england than i can remember ... haven't i paid enough? risked it all for them, time after time.... why must they torment an old man? in the sixth chamber, hanging from the overhead, is a tattered tommy up on white sheet ridge, field uniform burned in maxim holes black-rimmed as the eyes of cleo de merode, his own left eye shot away, the corpse beginning to stink ... no ... no! an overcoat, someone's old coat that's all, left on a hook in the wall . . . but couldn't he smell it? now mustard gas comes washing in, into his brain with a fatal buzz as dreams will when we don't want them, or when we are suffocating. a machine-gun on the german side sings dum diddy da da, an english weapon answers dum dum, and the night tightens coiling around his body, just before h-hour. . . . at the seventh cell, his knuckles feeble against the dark oak, he knocks. the lock, remotely, electrically commanded, slams open with an edge of echo trailing. he enters, and closes the door behind him. the cell is in semidarkness, with only a scented candle burning back in a corner that seems miles away. she waits for him in a tall adam chair, white body and black uniform-of-the-night. he drops to his knees. "domina nocturna ... shining mother and last love ... your serv­ ant ernest pudding, reporting as ordered." in these war years, the focus of a woman's face is her mouth. lip­ stick, among these tough and too often shallow girls, prevails like blood. eyes have been left to weather and to tears: these days, with so much death hidden in the sky, out under the sea, among the blobs and smears of recco photographs, most women's eyes are only functional. but pud232 �nlilia i min oe �e oel ola artl . �o� en� �n in :j no o jo ill, co � •••••••.• .,._ -_ _ •.••• � .: /�"'-'� . -_-_-_=-' '"-. . � .. _ �-; __-, , . -\ �'" ._ ._ .••, ,. ri": llie no ding comes out of a different time, and pointsman has considered this detail too. the brigadier's lady has spent an hour at her vanity mirror with mascara, liner, shadow, and pencil, lotions and rouges, brushes and tweezers, consulting from time to time a looseleaf album filled with photographs of the reigning beauties of thirty and forty years ago, so that her reign these nights may be authentic if not-it is for her state of mind as well as his-legitimate. her blonde hair is tucked and pinned beneath a thick black wig. when she sits with her head down, for­ getting the regal posture, the hair comes forward, over her shoulders, below her breasts. she is naked now, except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels. her only jewelry is a silver ring with an artificial ruby not cut to facets but still in the original boule, an arrogant gout of blood, extended now, waiting his kiss. his clipped mustache bristles, trembling, across her fingers. she has filed her nails to long points and polished them the same red as her ruby. their ruby. in this light the nails are almost black. "that's enough. get ready." she watches him undress, medals faintly jingling, starch shirt rattling. she wants a cigarette desperately, but her instructions are not to smoke. she tries to keep her hands still. "what are you thinking, pudding?" "of the night we first met." the mud stank. the archies were chug­ ging in the darkness. his men, his poor sheep, had taken gas that morn­ ing. he was alone. through the periscope, underneath a star shell that hung in the sky, he saw her ... and though he was hidden, she saw pudding. her face was pale, she was dressed all in black, she stood in no-man's land, the machine guns raked their patterns all around her, but she needed no protection. "they knew you, mistress. they were your own." "and so were you." "you called to me, you said, 'i shall never leave you. you belong to me. we shall be together, again and again, though it may be years be­ tween. and you will always be at my service.' " he is on his knees again, bare as a baby. his old man's flesh creeps coarse-grained in the light from the candle. old scars and new welts group here and there over his skin. his penis stands at present arms. she smiles. at her command, he crawls forward to kiss her boots. he smells wax and leather, and can feel her toes flexing beneath his tongue, through the black skin. from the corner of his eye, on a little table, he can see the remains of her early evening meal, the edge of a plate, the tops of two bottles, mineral water, french wine.... 233 .... l_ _ � �.._._ ;:._..:=_ ---------------� 1;/ 1 ._ r;--� "time for pain now, brigadier. you shall have twelve of the best, if your offering tonight pleases me." here is his worst moment. she has refused him before. his memories of the salient do not interest her. she doesn't seem to care for mass slaughter as much as for myth, and personal terror ... but please ... please let her accept. . . . "at badajoz," whispering humbly, "during the war in spain . . . a bandera of franco's legion advanced on the city, singing their regimen­ tal hymn. they sang of the bride they had taken. it was you, mistress: they-they were proclaiming you as their bride.... " she's silent for a bit, making him wait. at last, eyes holding his, she smiles, the component of evil in it she has found he needs taking care of itself as usual: "yes. . . . many of them did become my bridegrooms that day," she whispers, flexing the bright cane. there seems to be a winter wind in the room. her image threatens to shake apart into sepa­ rate flakes of snow. he loves to listen to her speak, hers is the voice that found him from the broken rooms of the flemish villages, he knows, he can tell from the accent, the girls who grew old in the low countries, whose voices went corrupted from young to old, gay to indifferent, as that war drew out, season into ever more bitter season.... "i took their brown spanish bodies to mine. they were the color of the dust, and the twilight, and of meats roasted to a perfect texture ... most of them were so very young. a summer day, a day of love: one of the most poignant 1 ever knew. thank you. you shall have your pain tonight."it's a part of her routine she can enjoy, at least. though she has never read any classic british pornography, she does feel herself, sure as a fish, well in the local mainstream. six on the buttocks, six more across the nipples. whack where's that gourd surprise now? eh? she likes the way the blood leaps to cross last night's welts. often it's all she can do to keep from moaning herself at each of his grunts of pain, two voices in a dissonance which would be much less accidental than it sounded. . . . some nights she's gagged him with a ceremonial sash, bound him with a gold-tasseled fourragerc or his own sam browne. but tonight he lies humped on the floor at her feet, his withered ass elevated for the cane, bound by nothing but his need for pain, for something real, something pure. they have taken him so far from his simple nerves. they havestuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet ... no it's not guilt here, not so much as amazement-that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his special­ized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of 234 lliil\v� i�un� ttlline! \nee� lliecre � �n�r �t�, �n it te �ecan �o ,�ca n�lel �en \ \ �ver mtoh , "" .. -�.�. �_.. ,' ._ ': / -"'�"",..� .. -"----::;--=---"'"_. . � .. _ =�----1---. � . -� -� •• • -.--._....---...� •••6.p ..... �.. �\ 235 ,a i his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him her communiques of vertigo, nausea and pain . . . . above all, pain. the clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth.... he struggles to his knees to kiss the instrument. she stands over him now, legs astride, pelvis cocked forward, fur cape held apart on her hips. he dares to gaze up at her cunt, that fearful vortex. her pubic hair has been dyed black for the occasion. he sighs, and lets escape a small shameful groan. "ah . . . yes, i know." she laughs. "poor mortal brigadier, i know. it is my last mystery," stroking with fingernails her labia, "you cannot ask a woman to reveal her last mystery, now, can you?" "please ... " "no. not tonight. kneel here and take what i give you." despite himself-already a reflex-he glances quickly over at the bottles on the table, the plates, soiled with juices of meat, hollandaise, bits of gristle and bone. . . . her shadow covers his face and upper torso, her leather boots creak softly as thigh and abdominal muscles move, and then in a rush she begins to piss. he opens his mouth to catch the stream, choking, trying to keep swallowing, feeling warm urine drib­ ble out the corners of his mouth and down his neck and shoulders, sub­ merged in the hissing storm. when she's done he licks the last few drops from his lips. more cling, golden clear, to the glossy hairs of her quim. her face, looming between her bare breasts, is smooth as steel. she turns. "hold up my fur." he obeys. "be careful. don't touch my skin." earlier in this game she was nervous, constipated, wondering if this was anything like male impotence. but thoughtful pointsman, antic­ ipating this, has been sending laxative pills with her meals. now her in­ testines whine softly, and she feels shit begin to slide down and out. he kneels with his arms up holding the rich cape. a dark turd appears out the crevice, out of the absolute darkness between her white buttocks. he spreads his knees, awkwardly, until he can feel the leather of her boots. he leans forward to surround the hot turd with his lips, sucking on it tenderly, licking along its lower side ... he is thinking, he's sorry, he can't help it, thinking of a negro's penis, yes he knows it abrogates part of the conditions set, but it will not be denied, the image of a brute african who will make him behave. . . . the stink of shit floods his nose, gathering him, surrounding. it is the smell of passchendaele, of the salient. mixed with the mud, and the putrefaction of corpses, it was the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem. the turd slides into his mouth, down to his gullet. he gags, but bravely clamps his teeth en· i): ill) ) 0)1 i." ver ... " ----� .. -==-=---f ;/--p----1,.; =. --/ i�, "",i-f· • ... • ..•.•. •.•.• •.•.•.•.•••.•.• . .. . . ..... �.: ..( .shut. bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters some­ where, unseen, untasted-risen now and baked in the bitter intestinal oven to bread we know, bread that's light as domestic comfort, secret as death in bed ... spasms in his throat continue. the pain is terrible. with his tongue he mashes shit against the roof of his mouth and begins to chew, thickly now, the only sound in the room.... there are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. he prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her ass­ hole. but she moves away. the fur evaporates from his hands. she or­ ders him to masturbate for her. she has watched captain blicero with gottfried, and has learned the proper style. the brigadier comes quickly. the rich smell of semen fills the room like smoke. "now go." he wants to cry. but he has pleaded before, offered her­ absurdly-his life. tears well and slide from his eyes. he can't look into hers. "you have shit all over your mouth now. perhaps i'll take a photo­ graph of you like that. in case you ever get tired of me." "no. no, i'm only tired of that," jerking his head back out of d wing to encompass the rest of "the white visitation." "so bloodytired.... " "get dressed. remember to wipe your mouth off. i'll send for youwhen i want you again." dismissed. back in uniform, he closes the cell door and retraces his way in. the night attendant is still asleep. cold air hits pudding like ablow. he sobs, bent, alone, cheek resting a moment against the rough stone walls of the palladian house. his regular quarters have become a place of exile, and his real home is with the mistress of the night, withher soft boots and hard foreign voice. he has nothing to look forward to but a late-night cup of broth, routine papers to sign, a dose of penicillinthat pointsman has ordered him to take, to combat the effects of e. coli. perhaps, though, tomorrow night . . . perhaps then. he can't see how he can hold out much longer. but perhaps, in the hours just beforedawn ... �veof 'ine , \�i� lvol ij\-ivu o 0 0 0 dod the great cusp-green equinox and turning, dreaming fishes to young ram, watersleep to firewaking, bears down on us. across the western 236 � .. " .�� •• , _ .. __ 0 : / �_ _ �7;" '"--. . �-�� _� ��1------. '\. . -----, � � . . ._..•_-, . ._.,,�..� "'=, front, up in the harz in bleicherodc, wernher von braun, lately wrecked arm in a plaster cast, prepares to celebrate his 33rd birthday. artillery thunders through the afternoon. russian tanks raise dust phan­ toms far away over the german leas. the storks are home, and the first violets have appeared. at "the white visitation," days along the chalk piece of seacoast now are fine and clear. the office girls are bundling into fewer sweaters, and breasts peaking through into visibility again. march has come in like a lamb. lloyd george is dying. stray visitors are observed now along the still-forbidden beach, sitting among obsolescent networks of steel rod and cable, trousers rolled to the knee or hair unsnooded, chilly gray toes stirring the shingle. just offshore, underwater, run miles of secret piping, oil ready at a valve-twist to be released and roast german invaders who belong back in dreams already old . . . fuel waiting hypergolic ignition that will not come unless now as some junior-bureaucratic rag or may uprising of the spirit, to bavarian tunesmith carl orff's lively eroom 237 0,0,0, to-tus flore-o! lam amore virginali totus ardeo . . . for}oo all this fortress coast alight, portsmouth to dungeness, blazing for the love of spring. plots to this effect hatch daily among the livelier heads at "the white visitation"-the winter of dogs, of black snowfalls of issue­ less words, is ending. soon it will be behind us. but once there, behind us-will it still go on emanating its hooded cold, however the fires burn at sea? at the casino hermann goering, a new regime has been taking over. general wivern's is now the only familiar face, though he seems to've been downgraded. slothrop's own image of the plot against him has grown. earlier the conspiracy was monolithic, all-potent, nothing he could ever touch. until that drinking game, and that scene with that katje, and both the sudden good-bys. but nowproverbs for paranoids, 1: you may never get to touch the master, but you can tickle his creatures. and then, well, he is lately beginning to find his way into one particu­ lar state of consciousness, not a dream certainly, perhaps what used to be called a "reverie," though one where the colors are more primaries than pastels . . . and at such times it seems he has touched, and stayed touching, for a while, a soul we know, a voice that has more than once :1-". _t"_' = _.� -----.... --==;.....__ �� i .: 1i'v'· � spoken through research-facility medium carroll eventyr: the late ro­ land feldspath again, long-co-opted expert on control systems, guid­ ance equations, feedback situations for this aeronautical establishment and that. seems that, for personal reasons, roland has remained hov­ ering over this slothropian space, through sunlight whose energy he barely feels and through storms that tickled his back with static electric­ ity has roland been whispering from eight kilometers, the savage height, stationed as he has been along one of the last parabolas-flight paths that must never be taken-working as one of the invisible inter­ dictors of the stratosphere now, bureaucratized hopelessly on that side as ever on this, he keeps his astral meathooks in as well as can be ex­ pected, curled in the "sky" so tense with all the frustrations of trying to reach across, with the impotence of certain dreamers who try to wake or talk and cannot, who struggle against weights and probes of cranial pain that it seems could not be borne waking, he waits, not necessarily for the aimless entrances of boobs like slothrop hereroland shivers. is this the one? this? to be figurehead for the latest passage? oh, dear. god have mercy: what storms, what monsters of the aether could this slothrop ever charm away for anyone? well, roland must make the best of it, that's all. if they get this far, he has to show them what he knows about control. that's one of his death's secret missions. his cryptic utterances that night at snoxall's about economic systems are merely the folksy everyday backgroundchatter over here, a given condition of being. ask the germans espe­ cially. oh, it is a real sad story, how shoddily their schwarmerei for control was used by the folks in power. paranoid systems of history (psh), a short-lived periodical of the 1920s whose plates have all myste­ riously vanished, natch, has even suggested, in more than one editorial, that the whole german inflation was created deliberately, simply todrive young enthusiasts of the cybernetic tradition into control work: after all, an economy inflating, upward bound as a balloon, its own definition of earth's surface drifting upward in value, uncontrolled, drifting with the days, the feedback system expected to maintain the value of the mark constant having, humiliatingly, failed. . . . unity gainaround the loop, unity gain, zero change, and hush, that way, forever,these were the secret rhymes of the childhood of the discipline of con­ trol-secret and terrible, as the scarlet histories say. diverging oscilla­ tions of any kind were nearly the worst threat. you could not pumpthe swings of these playgrounds higher than a certain angle from the vertical. fights broke up quickly, with a smoothness that had not been long in coming. rainy days never had much lightning or thunder to 238 ".� : _; __ ���---_. __ ._o " '. . / _ � � --� ��_-��7--"" , . -" /. � -,-"",,� ' ...•_ ••_ ..._--....., '.9�_f'. '-: te �� them, only a haughty glass grayness collecting in the lower parts, a mon�. ochrome overlook of valleys crammed with mossy deadfalls jabbing hm1[1 roots at heaven not entirely in malign playfulness (as some white sufn�r. prise for the elitists up there paying no mind, no ... ), valleys thick �' � with autumn, and in the rain a withering, spinsterish brown behind the ectn[. gold of it . . . very selectively blighted rainfall teasing you across the 1a\'�tl lots and into the back streets, which grow ever more mysterious and ru�: badly paved and more deeply platted, lot giving way to crooked lot inler. seven times and often more, around angles of hedge, across freaks of the i��� optical daytime until we have passed, fevered, silent, out of the region of streets itself and into the countryside, into the quilted dark fields and in�il the wood, the beginning of the true forest, where a bit of the ordeal w�t' ahead starts to show, and our hearts to feel afraid ... but just as no swing could ever be thrust above a certain height, so, beyond a certain radius, the forest could be penetrated no further. a limit was always there to be brought to. it was so easy to grow up under that dispensaidtn tion. all was just as wholesome as could be. edges were hardly ever of�f glimpsed, much less flirted at or with. destruction, oh, and demons­ yes, including maxwell's-were there, deep in the woods, with other beasts vaulting among the earthworks of your safety. . . . so was the rocket's terrible passage reduced, literally, to bourgeois terms, terms of an equation such as that elegant blend of philosophy and hardware, abstract change and hinged pivots of real metals which describes motion under the aspect of yaw control: preserving, possessing, steering between scylla and charybdis the whole way to brennschluss. if any of the young engineers saw corre­ spondence between the deep conservatism of feedback and the kinds of lives they were coming to lead in the very process of embracing it, it got lost, or disguised-none of them made the connection, at least not while alive: it took death to show it to roland feldspath, death with its very good chances for being too late, and a host of other souls feeling themselves, even now, rocketlike, driving out toward the stone-blue lights of the vacuum under a control they cannot quite name . . . the illumination out here is surprisingly mild, mild as heavenly robes, a feel­ ing of population and invisible force, fragments of "voices," glimpses into another order of being. . . . afterward, slothrop would be left not so much with any clear symbol 239 .�. / -.._ -_-_. '/�'�� or scheme to it as with some alkaline aftertaste of lament, an irreducible strangeness, a self-sufficiency nothing could get inside. . . . yes, sort of german, these episodes here. well, these days slothrop is even dreaming in the language. folks have been teaching him dialects, plattdeutsch for the zone the british plan to occupy, thuringian if the russians happen not to drive as far as nordhausen, where the central rocket works is located. along with the language teachers come experts in ordnance, electronics, and aerodynamics, and a fellow from shell in­ ternational petroleum named hilary bounce, who is going to teach him about propulsion. it seems that early in 1941, the british ministry of supply let a £10,000 research contract to shell-wanted shell to develop a rocket engine that would run on something besides cordite, which was being used in those days to blow up various sorts of people at the rate of oodles 'n' oodles of tons an hour, and couldn't be spared for rockets. a team ramrodded by one isaac lubbock set up a static-test facility at langhurst near horsham, and began to experiment with liquid oxygen and aviation fuel, running their first successful test in august of '42. en­ gineer lubbock was a double first at cambridge and the father of brit­ ish liquid oxygen research, and what he didn't know about the sour stuff wasn't worth knowing. his chief assistant these days is mr. geof­ frey gollin, and it is to gollin that hilary bounce reports. "well, i'm an esso man myself," slothrop thinks he ought to men­ tion. "myoid short was a gasgobbler all right, but a gourmet. any time it used that shell i had to drop a whole bottle of that bromo in the tank just to settle that poor fucking terraplane's plumbing down." "actually," the eyebrows of captain bounce, a 110% company man, going up and down earnestly to help him out, "we handled only the transport and storage end of things then. in those days, before the j aps and the nazis you know, production and refining were up to the dutch office, in the hague." slothrop, poor sap, is remembering katje, lost katje, saying the name of her city, whispering dutch love-words as they moved down sea­ mornings now another age, another dispensation. . . . wait a minute. "that's bataafsche petroleum maatschappij, n.v.?" "right." it's also the negative of a recco photograph of the city, darkbrown, festooned with water-spots, never enough time to let these dry out com­ pletely"are you blokes aware," they're trying to teach him english english too, heaven knows why, and it keeps coming out like cary grant, "that 240 to\ na 1 �i \ :;iii.��: .. -: .-_)--.� .. -:.--.. -.-.--': /�-��-�., --=-----: ' -, :.-=-�� �'t--'" " . -� �."'.,.�� �. . _....••, -� '-i ible i leta cht own, com· jerry-old jerry, you know-has been in that the hague there, shoot­ ing his bloody rockets at that london, a-and using, the ... royal dutch shell headquarters building, at the josef israelplein if i remem­ ber correctly, for a radio guidance transmitter? what bizarre shit is that, old man?" bounce stares at him, jingling his gastric jewelry, not knowing what to make of slothrop, exactly. "i mean," slothrop now working himself into a fuss over something that only disturbs him, dimly, nothing to kick up a row over, is it? "doesn't it strike you as just a bit odd, you shell chaps working on your liquid engine your side of the channel you know, and their chaps firing their bloody things at you with your own . . . blasted . . . shell trans­ mitter tower, you see." "no, i can't see that it makes-what are you getting at? surely they'd simply have picked the tallest building they could find that's in a direct line from their firing sites to london." "yes, and at the right distance too, don't forget that-exactly twelve kilometers from the firing site. hey? that's exactly what i mean." wait, oh wait. is that what he means? "well, i'd never thought of it that way." neither have i, jackson. oh, me neither folks. hilary bounce and his puzzled smile. another innocent, a low-key enthusiast like sir stephen dodson-truck. but: proverbs for paranoids, 2: the innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the master. "i hope i haven't said anything wrong." "whyzat?" "you look-" bounce aspirating what he means to be a warm little laugh, "worried." worried, all right. by the jaws and teeth of some creature, some presence so large that nobody else can see it-there! that's that monster i was telling you about. -that's no monster, stupid, that's clouds! -no, can't you see? it's his feetwell, slothrop can feel this beast in the sky: its visible claws and scales are being mistaken for clouds and other plausibilities . . . or else everyone has agreed to call them other names when slothrop is listening. . . . "it's only a 'wild coincidence,' slothrop." he will learn to hear quote marks in the speech of others. it is a book­ ish kind of reflex, maybe he's genetically predisposed-all those earlier slothrops packing bibles around the blue hilltops as part of their gear, memorizing chapter and verse the structures of arks, temples, vision,"c, _ _ __ ;�=__ =--=::c'--_17�'�� ----/ i� ,y."li-� " •.••. '.ary thrones-all the materials and dimensions. data behind which al­ ways, nearer or farther, was the numinous certainty of god. well, what more appropriate way for tyrone to get it one cold morning than this: it's a blueprint of a german parts list, reproduced so crummy he can hardly read the words-"vorrichtung fur die isolierung, 00115565/43," now what's this? he knows the number by heart, it's the orig­ inal contract number for the a4 rocket as a whole. what's an "insula­ tion device" doing with the aggregat's contract number? and a de rat­ ing too, the highest nazi priority there is? not good. either a clerk at okw fucked up, which is not unheard-of, or else he just didn't know the number, and put the rocket's in as the next best thing. claim, partand work numbers all have the same flagnote, which directs slothrop to a document sg-l. flagnote on the flagnote sez "geheime kommando­ sache! this is a state secret, in the meaning of § 35 r513b." "say," he greets general wivern nipping in through the door, "like to get ahold of a copy of that document sg-l." "haw, haw," replies the general. "so would our chaps, i imagine." "quit fooling." every piece of allied intelligence on the a4, however classified, gets stuffed into a secret funnel back in london and all comes out in slothrop's fancy cell at the casino. so far they've held back noth­ ing. "slothrop, there are no 'sg' documents." first impulse is to rattle the parts list in the man's face, but today he is the shrewd yankee foxing the redcoats. "oh. well, maybe i read it wrong," making believe look around the paper-littered room, "maybe it was a '56' or something, jeepers it was just here.... " the general goes away again. leaving slothrop with a puzzle, kindof a, well not an obsession really . . . not yet . . . opposite the parts listing, over in the materials column now, here's "imipolex g." oh re­ ally. insulation device made of imipolex g eh? he kicks around the room looking for his handbook of german trade names. nothing evenclose to it there . . . he locates next a master materials list for the a4and all its support equipment, and there's sure no imipolex g in that ei­ ther. scales and claws, and footfalls no one else seems to hear. ... "something wrong?" hilary bounce again, with his nose in the door­ way. "it's about this liquid oxygen, need some more of that specific im­ pulse data, there." "specific ... do you mean specific thrust?" ';/i.� : _, -�-.:�� ._� .. ---, . / -. =--: --=-� � � �1-----<, , . -. '" '. _ � __-.... -,__.. ----...�'p"".,· rfi': hal· . cola ecan 0011· know � o�!o ' ana� in�." 'ew' om� nolli· door· eim· "oops, thrust, thrust," english english to the rescue, bounce di­ verted: "for lox and alcohol it's about 200. what more do you need to know?" "but didn't you chaps use petrol at langhurst?" "among other things, yes." "well it's about those other things. don't you know there's a war on? you can't be proprietary about stuff like that." "but all our company reports are back in london. perhaps my next time out-" "shit, this red tape. i need it now, cap'n!" he goes around assuming they've assigned him a limitless need to know, and bounce confirms it: "i could send back by teletype, i suppose. . . ." "now yer talkin'!" teletype? yes, hilary bounce has his own, private, shell international network teletype rig or terminal, just what slo­ throp was hoping for, right in his hotel room, back in the closet behind a rack of alkit uniforms and stiff shirts. slothrop finesses his way in with the help of his friend michele, whom he's noticed bounce has an eye on. "howdy babe," up in a brown stocking-hung garret where the dancing girls sleep, "how'd you like to get fixed up with a big oilman tonight?" some language problem here, she's thinking of getting connected through metal fittings to a gross man dripping somehow with crude oil, a sex angle she's not sure she'd enjoy, but they get that one straightened out, and presently michele is raring to go sweet-talk the man away from his teletype long enough for slothrop to get on to london and ask about imipolex g. indeed, she has noted captain bounce now and then among her nightly admirers, noted in particular an item of belly-brass that slothrop's seen too: a gold benzene ring with a formee cross in the center-the ig farben award for meritorious contributions to syn­ thetics research. bounce got that one back in '32. the industrial liaison it suggests was indeed dozing at the bottom of slothrop's mind when the rocket guidance transmitter question arose. it has even, in a way, inspired the present teletype plot. who'd know better than an outfit like shell, with no real country, no side in any war, no specific face or heritage: tapping instead out of that global stratum, most deeply laid, from which all the appearances of corporate ownership really spring? okay. now there is a party tonight over on the cap, chez raoul de la perlimpinpin, young madcap heir of the limoges fireworks magnate georges ("poudre") de la perlimpinpin-if "party" is the word for something that's been going on nonstop ever since this piece of france 243 .... / ��-p: � -'" _. �--==--l;t 1n� was liberated. slothrop is allowed-under the usual surveillance-to drop in to raoul's whenever the mood strikes him. it's a giddy, shiftless crowd out there-they drift in from all corners of allied europe, linked by some network of family, venery and a history of other such parties whose complexity his head's never quite been able to fit around. here and there faces will go by, old american faces from harvard or from shaef, names he's lost-they are revenants, maybe accidental, maybe ... it is to this party that michele has seduced hilary bounce, and for which slothrop, soon as his reply from london has come nattering through, in clear, on bounce's machine, now proceeds to dude himself up for. he'll read the information through later. singing, with my face shined up-like a microphone and uh sta-comb on my hair, i'm just as suave-as, an ice-cream cone, say, i'm mis-ter debo-nair. . . . and turned out in a green french suit of wicked cut with a subtle pur­ ple check in it, broad flowered tie won at the trente-et-quarante table, brown and white wingtip shoes with golf cleats, and white socks, slo­ throp tops off now with a midnight-blue snap-brim fedora and is away, clickety clack out the foyer of the casino hermann goering, looking sharp. as he exits, a wiry civilian, disguised as the secret service's no­ tion of an apache, eases away from a niche in the porte-cochere, andfollows slothrop's cab out the winding dark road to raoul's party. o 0 dod 0 0 turns out that some merrymaker has earlier put a hundred grams ofhashish in the hollandaise. word of this has got around. there has been a big run on broccoli. roasts lie growing cold on the room-long buffettables. a third of the company are already asleep, mostly on the floor. it is necessary to thread one's way among bodies to get to where any­ thing's happening. what's happening is not clear. there are the usual tight little groupsout in the gardens, dealing. not much spectacle tonight. a homosexual triangle has fizzed over into pinches and recriminations, so as to block the door to the bathroom. young officers are outside vomiting amongthe zinnias. couples are wandering. girls abound, velvet-bowed, voile244 �_:::__•••••. : . _! .... 4 ... -�_•••• _ ••• .. _ •••••••••••••• '. /�-�. -�,� �, /� -r--" . --�'" ."':';=� " . ....._ ..._-... '.9'-=��'" '-: artie!" her1 irom enw.: sleeved, underfed, broad-shouldered and permed, talking in half a dozen languages, sometimes brown from the sun here, others pale as death's vicar from more eastern parts of the war. eager young chaps with patent-leather hair rush about trying to vamp the ladies, while older heads with no hair at all prefer to wait, putting out only minimal effort, eyes and mouths across the rooms, talking business in the mean­ time. one end of the salon is occupied by a dance band and an emaci­ ated crooner with wavy hair and very red eyes, who is singing: 245 julia (fox-trot) ju-lia, would you think me pe-cul-iar, if i should fool ya, in-to givin' me-just-a-little-kiss? jool-yaaahh, no one else could love you tru-lier, how i'd worship and bejewel ya, if you'd on-ly give-me just-a-little-kiss! ahh lool-yaaahhhhmy poor heart grows un-ru-lier, noone oolier or droolier, could i be longing for­ what's moreju-lia, i would shout hallelujah, to have my jool-yaaahh, in-my-arms forevermore. saxophony and park lane kind of tune, perfect for certain states of mind. slothrop sees hilary bounce, clearly a victim of the hallucino­ genic hollandaise, nodded out on a great pouf with michele, who's been fondling his ig farben trinket for the past two or three hours. slo­ throp waves, but neither one notices him. dopers and drinkers struggle together without shame at the buffet and in the kitchens, ransacking the closets, licking out the bottoms of casseroles. a nude bathing party passes through on the way down the sea-steps to the beach. our host, that raoul, is roaming around in a ten­ gallon hat, tom mix shirt and brace of sixguns with a percheron horse •• c � r�-=-::_=:__�=. �� '/1ri � by the bridle. the horse is leaving turds on the bokhara rug, also on the odd supine guest. it is all out of shape, no focus to it until a sarcastic flourish from the band, and here comes the meanest customer slothrophas seen outside of a frankenstein movie-wearing a white zoot suit with reet pleats and a long gold keychain that swings in flashing loops ashe crosses the room with a scowl for everybody, in something of a hurrybut taking the time to scan faces and bodies, head going side to side, methodical, a little ominous. he stops at last in front of slothrop, who's putting together a shirley temple for himself. "you." a finger the size of a corncob, an inch from slothrop's nose."you bet," slothrop dropping a maraschino cherry on the rug then squashing it as he takes a step backward, "i'm the man all right. sure.what is it? anything." "come on." they proceed outside to a eucalyptus grove, where jean­claude gongue, notorious white slaver of marseilles, is busy white-slav­ ing. "hey you," hollering into the trees, "you wanna be a white slave, huh?" "shit no," answers some invisible girl, "i wanna be a greenslave!" "magenta!" yells somebody from up in an olive tree. "vermil­ ion!" "think i'll take up dealing dope," sez jean-claude. "look," slothrop's friend producing a kraft-paper envelope that even in the gloom slothrop can tell is fat with american army yellow-seal scrip, "i want you to hold this for me, till i ask for it back. it looks like italo is going to get here before tamara, and i'm not sure which one-" "at this rate, tamara's gonna get here before tonight," slothrop in­ terjects in a groucho marx voice. "don't try to undermine my confidence in you," advises the largeone. "you're the man." "right," slothrop tucking envelope inside pocket. "say, where'd you get that zoot you're wearing, there?" "what's your size?" "42, medium." "you shall have one," and so saying he rumbles off back inside. "a-and a sharp keychain!" slothrop calls after. what th' heck's goingon? he wanders around asking a question or two. the fella turns out to be blodgett waxwing, well-known escapee from the caserne martier in paris, the worst stockade in the eto. waxwing's specialty is phonyingdocuments of various sorts-px ration cards, passports, soldbiicher­whilst dealing in army hardware also as a sideline. he has been awol off and on since the battle of the bulge, and with a death rap for that over his head he still goes into u.s. army bases at night to the canteens to watch the movies-provided they're westerns, he loves those shit246 "" " . �... '""";c� ' ••• _.__ ._•••__.._ .�,,��...t'. '-: on ilie castic lothro� ot suit loo�s� ahurry to sio�, p, wno'l 5 �oin� iou!!o kickers, the sound of hoofbeats through a metal speaker across a hun­ dred yards of oildrums and deuce 'n' a half ruts in the foreign earth makes his heart stir as if a breeze blew there, he's got some of his many contacts to run him off a master schedule of every movie playing in every occupation town in the theatre, and he's been known to hot-wire a general's jeep just to travel up to that poitiers for the evening to see a good old bob steele or johnny mack brown. his picture may hang prominently in all the guardrooms and be engraved in thousands of snowdrops' brains, but he has seen the return of lack slade twenty­ seven times. the story here tonight is a typical ww ii romantic intrigue, just an­ other evening at raoul's place, involving a future opium shipment's being used by tamara as security against a loan from italo, who in turn owes waxwing for a sherman tank his friend theophile is trying to smuggle into palestine but must raise a few thousand pounds for pur­ poses of bribing across the border, and so has put the tank up as collat­ eral to borrow from tamara, who is using part of her loan from italo to pay him. but meantime the opium deal doesn't look like it's going to come through, because the middleman hasn't been heard from in sev­ eral weeks, along with the money tamara fronted him, which she got from raoul de la perlimpinpin through waxwing, who is now being pressured by raoul for the money because italo, deciding the tank belongs to tamara now, showed up last night and took it away to an undisclosed location as payment on his loan, thus causing raoul to panic. something like that. slothrop's tail is being made indecent propositions by two of the ho­ mosexuals who've been fighting in the bathroom. bounce and michele are nowhere in sight, and neither's that waxwing. raoul is talking ear­ nestly to his horse. slothrop is just settling down next to a girl in a pre­ war worth frock and with a face like tenniel's alice, same forehead, nose, hair, when from outside comes this most godawful clanking, snarl­ ing, crunching of wood, girls come running terrified out of the eucalyp­ tus trees and into the house and right behind them what comes crashing now into the pallid lights of the garden but-why the sherman tank it­ self! headlights burning like the eyes of king kong, treads spewing grass and pieces of flagstone as it manoeuvres around and comes to a halt. its 75 mm cannon swivels until it's pointing through the french windows right down into the room. "antoine!" a young lady focusing in on the gi­ gantic muzzle, "for heaven's sake, not now.... " a hatch flies open and tamara-slothrop guesses: wasn't italo supposed to have the tank?-uh-emerges shrieking to denounce raoul, waxwing, italo, 247 ..... � -===---�-( /�p1<'.--theophile, and the middleman on the opium deal. "but now," she screams, "i have you all! one coup de foudre!" the hatch drops-oh, jesus-there's the sound of a 3-inch shell being loaded into its breech. girls start to scream and make for the exits. dopers are looking around, blinking, smiling, saying yes in a number of ways. raoul tries to mount his horse and make his escape, but misses the saddle and slides all the way over, falling into a tub of black-market jell-o, raspberry flavor, with whipped cream on top. "aw, no ... " slothrop having about decided to make a flanking run for the tank when yyyblaaannnggg! the cannon lets loose an enormous roar, flame shooting three feet into the room, shock wave driving eardrums in to middle of brain, blowing everybody against the far walls. a drape has caught fire. slothrop, tripping over partygoers, can't hear anything, knows his head hurts, keeps running through the smoke at the tank-leaps on, goes to undog the hatch and is nearly knocked off by tamara popping up to holler at everybody again. after a struggle which shouldn't be without its erotic moments, for tamara is a swell enough looking twist with some fine moves, slothrop manages to get her in a come-along and drag her down off of the tank. but loud noise and all, look-he doesn't seem to have an erection. hmm. this is a datum lon­ don never got, because nobody was looking. turns out the projectile, a dud, has only torn holes in several walls, and demolished a large allegorical painting of virtue and vice in an un­ natural act. virtue had one of those dim faraway smiles. vice was scratching his shaggy head, a little bewildered. the burning drape'sbeen put out with champagne. raoul is in tears, thankful for his life, wringing slothrop's hands and kissing his cheeks, leaving trails of [ell-owherever he touches. tamara is escorted away by raoul's bodyguards. slothrop has just disengaged himself and is wiping the jell-o off of his suit when there is a heavy touch on his shoulder. "you were right. you are the man." "that's nothing." errol flynn frisks his mustache. "i saved a dame from an octopus not so long ago, how about that?" "with one difference," sez blodgett waxwing. "this really happened tonight. but that octopus didn't." "how do you know?" "i know a lot. not everything, but a few things you don't. listen slo­ throp-you'll be needing a friend, and sooner than you think. don't come here to the ':'illa-it may be too hot by then-but if you can make it as far as nice-" he hands over a business card, embossed with a chess knight and an address on rue rossini. "i'll take the envelope 248 4t.�" : -.._�.-." .. "�.-" .. ".", .. ,,,,-., � '. / = . __ �--=-_=---=�=== � <, " . --�,� "-, ,,,.., :-� " .. _ .•_ ..._-.......''''!��.'' '," she back. here's your suit. thanks, brother." he's gone. his talent is just to 5-oh) fade when he wants to. the zoot suit is in a box tied with a purple ribreecho bon. keychain's there too. they both belonged to a kid who used to live in east los angeles, named ricky gutierrez. during the zoot suit riots mount of 1943, young gutierrez was set upon by a carload of anglo vigilantes sillilil from whittier, beaten up while the l.a. police watched and called out or) willi advice, then arrested for disturbing the peace. the judge was allowing decidl� zoot-suiters to choose between jail and the army. gutierrez joined up, cc! ili1 was wounded on saipan, developed gangrene, had to have his arm amintoili1 putated, is home now, married to a girl who works in the kitchen at a blo\\in� taco place in san gabriel, can't find any work himself, drinks a lot during the day. . . . but his old zoot, and those of thousands of others n'tne� busted that summer, hanging empty on the backs of all the mexican eatlli1 l.a. doors, got bought up and have found their way over here, into the off 01' market, no harm turning a little profit, is there, they'd only have hung there in the fat smoke and the baby smell, in the rooms with shades pulled down against the white sun beating, day after day, on the dried palm trees and muddy culverts, inside these fly-ridden and empty rooms.... imipolex g has proved to be nothing more-or less-sinister than a new plastic, an aromatic heterocyclic polymer, developed in 1939, years be­ fore its time, by one l. jamf for ig farben. it is stable at high tempera­ tures, like up to 900°c., it combines good strength with a low power­ loss factor. structurally, it's a stiffened chain of aromatic rings, hexagons like the gold one that slides and taps above hilary bounce's navel, alter­ nating here and there with what are known as heterocyclic rings. the origins of imipolex g are traceable back to early research done damt at du pont. plasticity has its grand tradition and main stream, which happens to flow by way of du pont and their famous employee caroth­ ers, known as the great synthesist. his classic study of large molecules spanned the decade of the twenties and brought us directly to nylon, which not only is a delight to the fetishist and a convenience to the armed insurgent, but was also, at the time and well within the system, an announcement of plasticity's central canon: that chemists were no longer to be at the mercy of nature. they could decide now what prop­ erties they wanted a molecule to have, and then go ahead and build it. at du pont, the next step after nylon was to introduce aromatic rings d d d d d d d 249 ..... r = �� ..�:-:_ -..._ �;i /--�-1-"1:'--'" ;7 ,�� ---�----i-;i·�:··,·�· . . . . ....."' . / . �' into the polyamide chain. pretty soon a whole family of "aromatic po­ lymers" had arisen: aromatic polyamides, polycarbonates, polyethers, polysulfanes. the target property most often seemed to be strength­ first among plasticity's virtuous triad of strength, stability and white­ ness (kraft, standfestigkeit, weifl e: how often these were taken for nazi graffiti, and indeed how indistinguishable they commonly were on the rain-brightened walls, as the busses clashed gears in the next street over, and the trams creaked of metal, and the people were mostly silent in the rain, with the early evening darkened to the texture of smoke from a pipe, and the arms of young passersby not in the sleeves of their coats but inside somewhere, as if sheltering midgets, or ecstatically drifted away from the timetable into a tactile affair with linings more se­ ductive even than the new nylon ... ). l. jamf, among others, then proposed, logically, dialectically, taking the parental polyamide sections of the new chain, and looping them around into rings too, giant "hetero­ cyclic" rings, to alternate with the aromatic rings. this principle was easily extended to other precursor molecules. a desired monomer of high molecular weight could be synthesized to order, bent into its heter­ ocyclic ring, clasped, and strung in a chain along with the more "natu­ ral" benzene or aromatic rings. such chains would be known as "aro­ matic heterocyclic polymers." one hypothetical chain that jamf came up with, just before the war, was later modified into imipolex g. j amf at the time was working for a swiss outfit called psychochemie ag, originally known as the crossli chemical corporation, a spinoff from sandoz (where, as every schoolchild knows, the legendary dr. hofmann made his important discovery). in the early '20s, sandoz, ciba, and geigy had got together in a swiss chemical cartel. shortly after, jamf's firm was also absorbed. apparently, most of crossli's con­ tracts had been with sandoz, anyway. as early as 1926 there were oral agreements between the swiss cartel and ig farben. when the ger­ mans set up their cover company in switzerland, ig chemie, two years later, a majority of the crossli stock was sold to them, and the company reconstituted as psychochemie ag. the patent for imipolex g was thus cross-filed for both the ig and for psychochemie. shell oil got into it through an agreement with imperial chemicals dated 1939. for some curious reason, slothrop will discover, no agreements between ici and the ig seem to be dated any later than'39. in this imipolex agreement, icy eye could market the new plastic inside the commonwealth in ex­ change for one pound and other good and valuable consideration. that's nice. psychochemie ag is still around, still doing business at the same old address in the schokoladestrasse, in that zurich, switzerland. ;ii._::_:_�.... : ... ��...... -�-�-. � .. '�.�'" .... , ..... '. / --==-=-------. -----j ��-�, ��----.---�-----'" , . -ij �"'_'''ii''��'''''__ _.,� .. �� � �"'=;l , ,. 'abc po. yethe�, en�ili_ \vlul�. aken for wereo� exlllr�l lllr1ueiji of lmoll lofilieu llalic�\ more�· efl}ilie! elecliom "nel�r� ciple w� nom�r 01 ill n�ler· re"naru· a) "m� mfcailll c. ocne�1 a �ino� oar)'lli, �an�ol, , �no�r )ii') co!· slothrop swings the long keychain of his zoot, in some agitation. a few things are immediately obvious. there is even more being zeroed in on him from out there than he'd thought, even in his most paranoid spells. imipolex g shows up on a mysterious "insulation device" on a rocket being fired with the help of a transmitter on the roof of the head­ quarters of dutch shell, who is co-licensee for marketing the imipolex -a rocket whose propulsion system bears an uncanny resemblance to one developed by british shell at around the same time . . . and oh, oh boy, it just occurs to slothrop now where all the rocket intelligence is being gathered-into the office of who but mr. duncan sandys, churchill's own son-in-law, who works out of the ministry of supply lo­ cated where but at shell mex house, for christ's sake. . . . here slothrop stages a brilliant commando raid, along with faithful companion blodgett waxwing, on shell mex house itself-right into the heart of the rocket's own branch office in london. mowing down platoons of heavy security with his little sten, kicking aside nubile and screaming wrac secretaries (how else is there to react, even in play?), savagely looting files, throwing molotov cocktails, the zootsuit zanies at last crashing into the final sanctum with their trousers up around their armpits, smelling of singed hair, spilled blood, to find not mr. duncan sandys cowering before their righteousness, nor open window, gypsy flight, scattered fortune cards, nor even a test of wills with the great consortium itself-but only a rather dull room, business machines ar­ rayed around the walls calmly blinking, files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces, frail as the last german walls standing without support after the bombs have been and now twisting high above, threatening to fold down out of the sky from the force of the wind that has blown the smoke away.... the smell of firearms is in the air, and there's not an office dame in sight. the machines chatter and ring to each other. it's time to snap down your brims, share a postviolence cigarette and think about escape . . . do you remember the way in, all the twists and turns? no. you weren't looking. any of these doors might open you to safety, but there may not be time. . . . but duncan sandys is only a name, a function in this, "how high does it go?" is not even the right kind of question to be asking, because the organization charts have all been set up by them, the titles and names filled in by them, because proverbs for paranoids, 3: if they can get you asking the wrong ques­ tions, they don't have to worry about answers. slothrop finds he has paused in front of the blue parts list that started all this. how high does it go . . . ahhhh. the treacherous question is not 251 ... _.,.----�----� i //�-;:---i�':-£' 'jmeant to apply to people after all, but to the hardware! squinting, mov­ ing a finger carefully down the columns, slothrop finds that vorrichtung fur die isolierung's next higher assembly. «s-gerat, 11/00000." if this number is the serial number of a rocket, as its form indicates, it must be a special model-slothrop hasn't even heard of any with four zeroes, let alone five ... nor an s-gerat either, there's an 1and a j­ cerat, they're in the guidance ... well, document sg-l, which isn't supposed to exist, must cover that. . . . out of the room: going noplace special, moving to a slow drumbeat in his stomach muscles see what happens, be ready. . . . in the casino res­ taurant, not the slightest impedance at all to getting in, no drop in tem­ perature perceptible to his skin, slothrop sits down at a table where somebody has left last tuesday's london times. hmmm. hasn't seen one of them in a while. . . . leafing through, dum, dum, de-doo, yeah,the war's still on, allies closing in east and west on berlin, powdered eggs still going one and three a dozen, «fallen officers," macgregor, mucker-maffick, white street, personal tributes ... meet me in st. louis showing at the empire cinema (recalls doing the penis-in-the­ popcorn-box routine there with one madelyn, who was less than-)tantivy . . . oh shit no, no wait«true charm ... humble-mindedness ... strength of character . . fundamental christian cleanness and goodness . . . we all loved oliver . . . his courage, kindness of heart and unfailing good humour were an inspiration to all of us ... died bravely in battle leading a gal­lant attempt to rescue members of his unit who were pinned down bygerman artillery . . ." and signed by his most devoted comrade in arms, theodore bloat. major theodore bloat nowstaring out the window, staring at nothing, gripping a table knife so hard maybe some bones of his hand will break. it 'happens sometimes to lepers. failure of feedback to the brain-no way to know how fiercelythey may be making a fist. you know these lepers. wellten minutes later, back up in his room, he's lying face-down on the bed, feeling empty. can't cry. can't do anything. they did it. took his friend out to some deathtrap, probably let himfake an «honourable" death . . . and then just closed up his file. . . .it will occur to him later that maybe the whole story was a lie. theycould've planted it easy enough in that london times, couldn't they?left the paper for slothrop to find? but by the time he figures that one out, there'll be no turning around. ,a i � . !.••• -.-�.-_ _ •.••••• , . • . / �--��=-��'''.,---. . � .._-_.-.----:---'" " . --""'", � .. . _. , •• '.1.9&"" ',mov· chtun� 'cate!,it iilifolll anna). icoi!n't �·in·ilir· an-)e! wm at noon hilary bounce comes in rubbing his eyes wearing a shit-eat­ ing grin. "how was your evening? mine was remarkable." "glad to hear it." slothrop is smiling. you're on my list too, pal. this smile asks from him more grace than anything in his languid american life ever has, up till now. grace he always imagined himself short on. but it's working. he's surprised, and so grateful that he almost starts crying then. the best part of all is not that bounce appears fooled by the smile, but that slothrop knows now that it will work for him again.... so he does make it to nice, after a fast escape down the corniche through the mountains fishtailing and rubber softly screeching at the sun-warmed abysses, tails all shaken back on the beach where he was thoughtful enough to lend his buddy claude the assistant chef, about the same height and build, his own brand-new pseudo-tahitian bathing trunks, and while they're all watching that claude, find a black citroen with the keys left in, nothing to it, folks-rolling into town in his white zoot, dark glasses, and a flopping sydney greenstreet panama hat. he's not exactly inconspicuous among the crowds of military and the mam­ zelles already shifted into summer dresses, but he ditches the car off place garibaldi, heads for a bistro on the old-nice side of la porte fausse and takes time to nab a roll and coffee before setting out to find the address waxwing gave him. it turns out to be an ancient four-story hotel with early drunks lying in the hallways, eyelids like tiny loaves brushed with a last glaze of setting sun, and summertime dust in stately evolutions through the taupe light, summertime ease to the streets out­ side, april summertime as the great vortex of redeployment from eu­ rope to asia hoots past leaving many souls each night to cling a bit longer to the tranquillities here, this close to the drain-hole of mar­ seilles, this next-to-last stop on the paper cyclone that sweeps them back from germany, down the river-valleys, beginning to drag some from antwerp and the northern ports too now as the vortex grows more sure, as preferential paths are set up. . . . just for the knife-edge, here in the rue rossini, there comes to slothrop the best feeling dusk in a foreign city can bring: just where the sky's light balances the electric lamplight in the street, just before the first star, some promise of events without cause, surprises, a direction at right angles to every direction his life has been able to find up till now. too impatient to wait for the first star, slothrop enters the hotel. the carpets are dusty, the place smells of alcohol and bleach. sailors and girls come ambling through, together and separate, as slothrop para253 ·i' -"'�--�:�-r» -----,..,._. -� ----------=-!;(1i\--�, noids from door to door looking for one that might have something totell him. radios play in the heavy wood rooms. the stairwell doesn't ap­ pear to be plumb, but tilted at some peculiar angle, and the light run­ ning down the walls is of only two colors: earth and leaf. up on the topfloor slothrop finally spots an old motherly femme de chambre on the way into a room carrying a change of linen, very white in the gloom. "why did you leave," the sad whisper ringing as if through a tele­ phone receiver from someplace far away, "they wanted to help you. they wouldn't have done anything bad.... " her hair is rolled up, george washington style, all the way around. she gazes at 450 to slo­ throp, a patient, parkbench chessplayer's gaze, very large, arching kindly nose and bright eyes: she is starch, sure-boned, the toes of her leather shoes turn up slightly, she's wearing red-and-white striped socks on enormous feet that give her the look of a helpful critter from one of the other worlds, the sort of elf who'd not only make shoes while you slept but also sweep up a little, have the pot on when you awoke, and maybe a fresh flower by the window"i beg your pardon?" "there's still time." "you don't understand. they've killed a friend of mine." but seeing itin the times that way, so public ... how could any of that be real, real enough to convince him tantivy won't just come popping in the door some day, howdyfoax and a bashful smile ... hey, tantivy. where were you? "where was i, slothrop? that's a good one." his smile lighting thetime again, and the world all free. . . . he flashes waxwing's card. the old woman breaks into an amazingsmile, the two teeth left in her head beam under the night's new bulbs.she thumbs him upstairs and then gives him either the v-for-victorysign or some spell from distant countryside against the evil eye that sours the milk. whichever it is, she is chuckling sarcastically. upstairs is a roof, a kind of penthouse in the middle. three youngmen with apache sideburns and a young woman packing a braidedleather sap are sitting in front of the entrance smoking a thin cigaretteof ambiguous odor. "you are lost, mon ami." "uh, well," out with waxwing's card again. "ah, bien.... " they roll aside, and he passes into a bickering of ca­nary-yellow borsalini, corksoled comicbook shoes with enormous round toes, lotta that saddle-stitching in contrasting colors (such as orange onblue, and the perennial favorite, green on magenta), workaday groans ofcomforted annoyance commonly heard in public toilets, telephone rtidi "i "i n 254 ��.�..•. : . _1.-�·--·-· _ .. ,-._ , . . / � .��-==�, ',. �'"'............... " .----...---....� .•���-p, �l 255 traffic inside clouds of cigar smoke. waxwing isn't in, but a colleague in­ terrupts some loud dealing soon as he sees the card. "what do you need?" "carte d'identite, passage to zurich, switzerland." "tomorrow. " "place to sleep." the man hands over a key to one of the rooms downstairs. "do you have any money?" "not much. 1 don't know when 1 could-" count, squint, riffle, "here." "uh ... " "it's all right, it's not a loan. it comes out of overhead. now, don't go outside, don't get drunk, stay away from the girls who work here." "aw ... " "see you tomorrow." back to business. slothrop's night passes uncomfortably. there is no position he can manage to sleep in for more than ten minutes. the bugs sally out onto his body in skirmish parties not uncoordinated with his level of wakeful­ ness. drunks come to the door, drunks and revenants. " 'rone, you've gotta let me in, it's dumpster, dumpster villard." "what's 'at-" "it's really bad tonight. i'm sorry. 1 shouldn't impose this way, i'm more trouble than i'm worth. . . listen. . . i'm cold . . . i've been a long way.... " a sharp knock. "dumpster-" "no, no, it's murray smile, 1 was next to you in basic, company 84, remember? our serial numbers are only two digits apart." "i had to let . . . let dumpster in . . . where'd he go? was 1 asleep?" "don't tell them 1 was here. 1 just came to tell you you don't have to go back." "really? did they say it was all right?" "it's all right." "yeah, but did they say it was?" silence. "hey? murray?" silence. the wind is blowing in the ironwork very strong, and down in the street a vegetable crate bounces end over end, wooden, empty, dark. it must be four in the morning. "got to get back, shit i'm late.... " "no." only a whisper. ... but it was her "no" that stayed with him. "whozat, jenny? that you, jenny?" "yes it's me. oh love i'm so glad 1 found you." "but 1 have to . . ." would they ever let her live with him at the casino ... ? ..... / -� ,,::.__--_.... -__ . �--=�'/' 11'.--� "no. i can't." but what's wrong with her voice? "jenny, i heard your block was hit, somebody told me, the day after new year's . . . a rocket . . . and i meant to go back and see if you were all right, but . . . i just didn't . . . and then they took me to that casino.... " "it's all right." "but not if i didn't-" "just don't go back to them." and somewhere, dark fish hiding past angles of refraction in the flow tonight, are katje and tantivy, the two visitors he wants most to see. he tries to bend the voices that come to the door, bend them like notes on a harmonica, but it won't work. what he wants lies too deep. . . . just before dawn knocking comes very loud, hard as steel. slothrophas the sense this time to keep quiet. "come on, open up." "mps, open up." american voices, country voices, high-pitched and without mercy.he lies freezing, wondering if the bedsprings will give him away. for possibly the first time he is hearing america as it must sound to a non­ american. later he will recall that what surprised him most was the fa­ naticism, the reliance not just on flat force but on the rightness of what they planned to do . . . he'd been told long ago to expect this sort of thing from nazis, and especially from j aps-we were the ones who al­ ways played fair-but this pair outside the door now are as demoral­ izing as a close-up of john wayne (the angle emphasizing how slantedhis eyes are, funny you never noticed before) screaming "banzai!""wait a minute ray, there he goes-" "hopper! you asshole, come back here-" "you'll never get me in a strait jacket agaaaaain. . . ." hopper'svoice goes fading around the corner as the mps take off in pursuit.it dawns on slothrop, literally, through the yellowbrown windowshade, that this is his first day outside. his first free morning. he doesn'thave to go back. free? what's free? he falls asleep at last. a little be­fore noon a young woman lets herself in with a passkey and leaves himthe papers. he is now an english war correspondent named ian scuffling. "this is the address of one of our people in zurich. waxwing wishes you good luck and asks what kept you so long." "you mean he wants an answer?" "he said you'd have to think about it." 256 :di "�i -, " . -""... � '. . .. , , .••,.� ti": a week later he's in zurich, after a long passage by train. while the metal creatures in their solitude, days of snug and stable fog, pass the hours at mime, at playing molecules, imitating industrial synthesis as they are broken up, put together, coupled and recoupled, he dozes in and out of a hallucination of alps, fogs, abysses, tunnels, bone-deep la­ borings up impossible grades, cowbells in the darkness, in the morning green banks, smells of wet pasture, always out the windows an un­ shaven work crew on the way to repair some stretch of track, long waits in marshaling-yards whose rails run like layers of an onion cut end to end, gray and desolate places, nights of whistles, coupling, crashes, sid­ ings, staring cows on the evening hillsides, army convoys waiting at the crossings as the train puffs by, never a clear sense of nationality any­ where, nor even of belligerent sides, only the war, a single damaged landscape, in which "neutral switzerland" is a rather stuffy convention, observed but with as much sarcasm as "liberated france" or "totalitar­ ian germany," "fascist spain," and others. . . . the war has been reconfiguring time and space into its own image. the track runs in different networks now. what appears to be destruc­ tion is really the shaping of railroad spaces to other purposes, intentions he can only, riding through it for the first time, begin to feel the leading edges of.... he checks in to the hotel nimbus, in an obscure street in the nieder­ dorf or cabaret section of zurich. the room's in an attic, and is reached by ladder. there's also a ladder outside the window, so he reckons it'll be o.k. when night comes down he goes out looking for the local wax­ wing rep, finds him farther up the limmatquai, under a bridge, in "sa-a-a-ay." it's just occurred to him. "why are all you folks helping me like this? for free and all?" "who knows? we have to play the patterns. there must be a pattern you're in, right now." "uh ... " but she's already left. slothrop looks around the place: in the daylight it's mean and anonymous. even the roaches must be uncomfortable here. . . . is he off so quickly, like katje on her wheel, off on a ratchet of rooms like this, to be in each one only long enough to gather wind or despair enough to move on to the next, but no way backward now, ever again? no time even to get to know the rue rossini, which faces holler from the windows, whore's a good place to eat, what's the name of the song everybody's whistling these premature summer days. . . . 257 ..... �--------� (;/ 1 _,. f;;-� --/ ,�', .• ,.,,-�. • ·.o.e· ••••• •••••.••• .• .. •.•. �'"" rooms full of swiss watches, clocks and altimeters. he's a russian named semyavin. outside boats hoot on the river and the lake. some­ body upstairs is practicing on a piano: stumbling, sweet lieder. semya­ vin pours gentian brandy into cups of tea he's just brewed. "first thing you have to understand is the way everything here is specialized. if it's watches, you go to one cafe. if it's women, you go to another. furs are subdivided into sable, ermine, mink, and others. same with dope: stimulants, depressants, psychomimetics.... what is it you're after?" "uh, information?" gee, this stuff tastes like moxie. . . . "oh. another one." giving slothrop a sour look. "life was simple be­ fore the first war. you wouldn't remember. drugs, sex, luxury items. currency in those days was no more than a sideline, and the term 'in­ dustrial espionage' was unknown. but i've seen it change-oh, how it's changed. the german inflation, that should've been my clue right there, zeros strung end to end from here to berlin. i would have stern talks with myself. 'semyavin, it's only a temporary lapse away from real­ ity. a small aberration, nothing to worry about. act as you always have -strength of character, good mental health. courage, semyavin! soon all will be back to normal.' but do you know what?" "let me guess." a tragic sigh. "information. what's wrong with dope and women? is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?" "i thought it was cigarettes." "you dream." he brings out a list of zurich cafes and gathering spots.under espionage, industrial, slothrop finds three. ultra, lichtspiel, and straggeli. they are on both banks of the limmat, and widely spaced."footwork," folding the list in an oversize zoot-suit pocket."it'll get easier. someday it'll all be done by machine. information machines. you are the wave of the future." begins a period of shuttling among the three cafes, sitting a few hours over coffee at each one, eating once a day, zurich baloney and rosti atthe people's kitchens . . . watching crowds of businessmen in blue suits, sun-black skiers who've spent the duration schussing miles of gla­cier and snow hearing nothing of campaigns or politics, reading nothingbut thermometers and weathervanes, finding their atrocities in ava­ lanches or toppling seracs, their victories in layers of good powder ...ragged foreigners in oil-stained leather jackets and tattered fatigues,south americans bundled in fur coats and shivering in the clear sun­ light, elderly hypochondriacs who were caught out lounging at some spawhen the war began and have been here since, women in long black 258 '" .. ' . ;' .---.--�--_. ---.. �.. . ': . / __,. ----""'"_. . _�-""_ -1-� -. '" . -'" _ _ ....•••••_ •• �-...' ••'i'�ft.". '.� dresses who don't smile, men in soiled overcoats who do . . . and the mad, down from their fancy asylums on weekend furlough-oh, the mental cases of switzerland: slothrop is known to them, all right, among all the somber street faces and colors only he is wearing white, shoes zoot 'n' hat, white as the cemetery mountains here.... he's also the new mark in town. it's difficult for him to sort out the first wave of corporate spies from the loonies on leave! (the chorus line is divided not into the conventional boys and girls but into keepers and nuts, without regard to sex, though all four possibilities are rep­ resented on stage. many are wearing sunglasses with black lenses and white rims, not so much to be fashionable as to suggest snow-blindness, the antisep­ tic white of the clinic, perhaps even the darkness of the mind. but all seems happy, relaxed, informal ... no sign of repression, not even a distinction in costume so that at first there is some problem telling nuts from keepers as they all burst in from the wings dancing and singing): here we come foax-ready or not! put your mask on, and plot your plot, we're just laughin' and droolin', all-over the sleigh, like a buncha happy midgets on a holiday! oh we're the loonies on leave, and we haven't a careour brains at the cleaners, our souls at the fair, just freaks on a fur-lough, away from the blues, as daffy and sharp as-the taps on our shoes! hey, we're passin' the hat for-your frowns and your tears, and the fears you thought'd never go 'wayah take it from a loony, life's so dear and swoony, so just hug it and kiss it to-day! la-da-da, ya-ta ya-ta ta-ta &c ... (they go on humming the tune behind what follows): first nut (or maybe keeper): got an amazing deal for you here, american? i thought so, always tell a face from home, saaay, like your suit there, go far enough up the glacier 'n' nobody'd be able to see ya! well yes now, i know how you feel about these street-vendors keep coming by, it's the old three­ card monte on the sidewalk [trucks across the stage for a while, back and forth, waving his finger in the air, singing "three-card monte on-the side, walk," over and over in the same obsessive monotone, for as many repetitions as he can get away with] and you can spot right away what's wrong, every 259 ,-c· -�"___"""'----���� -------===-(;/ 11'{ � ----/ � '.: ,.".". . . .. . . . one promises ya somethin' fer nothin', right? yes now oddly enough, that's the main objection engineers and scientists have always had to the idea of [lower­ ing his voice] perpetual motion or as we like to call it entropy management­ here, here's our card-well, sure, they've got a point. at least they had a point. up till now.... second nut or keeper: now you've heard about the two-hundred-mile-per­ gallon carburetor, the razor edge that never gets dull, the eternal bootsole, the mange pill that's good to your glands, engine that'll run on sand, omithop­ ters and robobopsters-you heard me, got a little goatee made out of steel wool-jivey, that's fine, but here's one for yo' mind! are you ready? it's light­ ning-latch, the door that opens you! slothrop: think i'll go take my nap now.... third n. or k.: transmogrify common air into diamonds through cataclysmic carbon dioxide reducti-o-o-o-o-n-n-n .... if he were sensitive about such things, it'd all be pretty insulting, this first wave. it passes, gesturing, accusative, pleading. slothrop manages to stay calm. there is a pause-then on come the real ones, slowly at first but gathering, gathering. synthetic rubber or gasoline, electronic calculators, aniline dyes, acrylics, perfumes (stolen essences in vials in sample cases), sexual habits of a hundred selected board members, layouts of plants, codebooks, connections and payoffs, ask for it, they can get it. at last, one day at the straggeli, slothrop eating on a bratwurst and hunk of bread he's been toting around all morning in a paper bag, sud­ denly from noplace appears one mario schweitar in a green frogged waistcoat, just popped out of the echoing cuckoo clock of dubya dubyatwo here, the endless dark corridors at his back, with a change of luckfor slothrop. "pssst, joe," he begins, "hey, mister." "not me," replies slothrop with his mouth full. "you interested in some l.s.d.?" "that stands for pounds, shillings, and pence. you got the wrongcafe, ace." "i think i've got the wrong country," schweitar a little mournful. ''i'm from sandoz." "aha, sandoz!" cries slothrop, and pulls out a chair for the fella. turns out schweitar is very tight indeed with psychochemie ag, being one of those free-floating trouble-shooters around the cartel, working for them on a per diem basis and spying on the side. "well," slothrop sez, "i'd sure like anything they got on l. jamf,a-and on that imipolex g." 260 � ••••••••• __ � _ �._ •••• _ ••••••••• " ••••••• • __ -' _/�.:;:.�5=_ -s� """,--. . � ��--"",. --�,.. , -� " .......�.--..... '.9'.�"''''· '-� , jam!, "gaaah-" "pardon me?" "that stuff. forget it. it's not even our line. you ever try to develop a polymer when there's nothing but indole people around? with our giant parent to the north sending in ultimatums every day? imipolex g is the company albatross, yank. they have vice-presidents whose only job is to observe the ritual of going out every sunday to spit on old jamf' s grave. you haven't spent much time with the indole crowd. they're very elitist. they see themselves at the end of a long european dialectic, generations of blighted grain, ergotism, witches on broomsticks, com­ munity orgies, cantons lost up there in folds of mountain that haven't known an unhallucinated day in the last 500 years-keepers of a tradi­ tion, aristocrats-" "wait a minute.... " jamf dead? "you say jamf's grave, now?" it ought to be making more of a difference to him, except that the man was never really alive so how can he be really"up in the mountains, toward the uetliberg." "you ever-" "what?" "did you ever meet him?" "before my time. but i know that there's a lot of data on him in the classified files at sandoz. it would be some job getting you what you want.... " "uh . . ." "five hundred." "five hundred what?" swiss francs. slothrop hasn't got 500 anything, unless it's worries. the money from nice is almost gone. he heads toward semyavin's, across the cemiise-briicke, deciding he'll walk everywhere from now on, chewing his white sausage and wondering when he'll see another. "first thing you want to do," semyavin advises him, "is go to a pawn­ shop and raise a few francs on that, ah," pointing at the suit. aw no, not the suit. semyavin goes rummaging in a back room, comes out with a bundle of workmen's clothes. "you should start thinking more about your visibility. come back tomorrow, i'll see what else i can find." white zoot in a bundle under his arm, a less visible ian scuffiing goes back outside, down into the mediaeval afternoon of the niederdorf, stone walls now developing like baking bread in the failing sun, oboy oboy he can see it now: gonna turn into another of them tamara/italo drills here, 'n' then he'll be in so deep he'll just never get out.... at the entrance to his street, in the wells of shadow, he notes a black 261 ��a, 'e a�, cartrl, .... ""��-_,_,-�_, ":t�-f /�':-�, --_ / �' , .. ,'-.. . � ...•.. . .. . . � rolls parked, motor idling, its glass tinted and afternoon so dark he can't see inside. nice car. first one he's seen in a while, should be no more than a curiosity, except for proverbs for paranoids, 4: you hide, they seek. zunnggg! diddilung, diddila-ta-ta-ta, ya-ta-ta-ta william tell overture here, back in the shadows, hope nobody was looking throughthat one-way glass-zoom, zoom, dodging around corners, scootingdown alleys, no sound of pursuit but then it's the quietest engine on the road except for the king tiger tank. . . . forget that hotel nimbus, he reckons. his feet are already starting to bother him. he gets to the luisenstrasse and the hockshop just before closing time, and manages to raise a little, baloney for a day or two maybe, on the zoot. so long zoot. this town sure closes up early. what does slothrop do tonight for a bed? he has a moment's relapse into optimism: ducks in a restaurant and rings up the desk at the hotel nimbus. "ah, yes," english english,"can you possibly tell me if the british chap who's been waiting in the foyer is still there, you know . . ." in a minute on comes a pleasant, awkward voice with an are-you­there. oh, so seraphic. slothrop funks, hangs up, stands looking at allthe people at dinner staring at him-blew it, blew it, now they knowhe's on to them. there is the usual chance his paranoia's just out ofhand again, but the coincidences are running too close. besides, he knows the sound of their calculated innocence by now, it's part oftheir style. . . . out again in the city: precision banks, churches, gothic doorwaysdrilling by ... he must avoid the hotel and the three cafes now, right,right. . . . the permanent ziirchers in early-evening blue stroll by. blue as the city twilight, deepening blue.... the spies and dealers have all gone indoors. semyavin's place is out, the waxwing circle have been kind, no point bringing any heat down on them. how much weight dothe visitors have in this town? can slothrop risk checking in to anotherhotel? probably not. it's getting cold. a wind is coming in now off thelake. he finds that he has drifted as far as the odeon, one of the greatworld cafes, whose specialty is not listed anywhere-indeed has neverbeen pinned down. lenin, trotsky, james joyce, dr. einstein all sat out at these tables. whatever it was they all had in common: whatever they'd come to this vantage to score . . . perhaps it had to do with the people somehow, with pedestrian mortality, restless crisscrossing ofneeds or desperations in one fateful piece of street . . . dialectics, mat262 ��\v, futre, , "yo "� lon� 1 �ext t ��i idell . ffilt n �un� oour aecid he al lee, , wait ,........... �'_.'._'� '_' ""''''''''''''.' / ---c:--=, ""_. . �----�-�---, " . -�?:'" . " .••_._..._--..... ·.",.l-"· '-.. . � te� rices, archetypes all need to connect, once in a while, back to some of that proletarian blood, to body odors and senseless screaming across a table, to cheating and last hopes, or else all is dusty dracularity, the west's ancient curse.... slothrop finds he has enough spare change for coffee. he goes sits in­ side, choosing a seat that'll face the entrance. fifteen minutes and he's getting the spy-sign from a swarthy, curly-headed alien in a green suit a couple tables away. another front-facer. on his table is an old newspa­ per that appears to be in spanish. it is open to a peculiar political car­ toon of a line of middle-aged men wearing dresses and wigs, inside the police station where a cop is holding a loaf of white ... no it's a baby, with a label on its diaper sez la revolucion . . . oh, they're all claim­ ing the infant revolution as their own, all these politicians bickering like a bunch of putative mothers, and somehow this cartoon here is sup­ posed to be some kind of a touchstone, this fella in the green suit, who turns out to be an argentine named francisco squalidozzi, is looking for a reaction . . . the key passage is at the very end of the line where the great argentine poet leopoldo lugones is saying, "now i'm going to tell you, in verse, how i conceived her free from the stain of original sin.... " it is the uriburu revolution of 1930. the paper is fifteen years old. there is no telling what squalidozzi is expecting from slo­ throp, but what he gets is pure ignorance. this seems to be acceptable, and presently the argentine has loosened up enough to confide that he and a dozen colleagues, among them the international eccentric gra­ ciela imago portales, hijacked an early-vintage german u-boat in mar de plata a few weeks ago, and have sailed it back across the atlantic now, to seek political asylum in germany, as soon as the war's over there.... "you say germany? you gone goofy? it's a mess there, jackson!" "not nearly the mess we left back home," the sad argentine replies. long lines have appeared next to his mouth, lines learned from living next to thousands of horses, watching too many doomed colts and sun­ sets south of rivadavia, where the true south begins. . . . "it's been a mess since the colonels took over. now, with peron on his way . . . our last hope was accion argentina," what's he talking about, jesus i'm hungry, ". . . suppressed it a month after the coup . . . now every­ body waits. attending the street actions out of habit. no real hope. we decided to move before peron got another portfolio. war, most likely. he already has the descamisados, this will give him the army too you see ... it's only a matter of time ... we could have gone to uruguay, waited him out-it's a tradition. but perhaps he will be in for a long 263 ne eno ...... .r=:': .. �-: __ �.. _ "ie... • i �/�';' � /.{.. i • time. montevideo is swarming with failed exiles, and failed hopes.... " "yeah, but germany-that's the last place you want to go." "pero che, no sos argentino. . . ." a long look away, down the en­ gineered scars of swiss avenues, looking for the south he left. not the same argentine, slothrop, that that bob eberle's seen toasts to tanger­ ine raised in ev-ry bar across, now.... squalidozzi wants to say: we ofall magical precipitates out of europe's groaning, clouded alembic, we are the thinnest, the most dangerous, the handiest to secular uses.... we tried to exterminate our indians, like you: we wanted the closed white version of reality we got-but even into the smokiest labyrinths,the furthest stacked density of midday balcony or courtyard and gate,the land has never let us forget.... but what he asks aloud is: "here­ you look hungry. have you eaten? i was about to go to supper. would you do me the honor?" in the kronenhalle they find a table upstairs. the evening rush is ta­ pering off. sausages and fondue: slothrop's starving. "in the days of the gauchos, my country was a blank piece of paper.the pampas stretched as far as men could imagine, inexhaustible, fence­ less. wherever the gaucho could ride, that place belonged to him. but buenos aires sought hegemony over the provinces. all the neuroses about property gathered strength, and began to infect the countryside.fences went up, and the gaucho became less free. it is our national tragedy. we are obsessed with building labyrinths, where before there was open plain and sky. to draw ever more complex patterns on theblank sheet. we cannot abide that openness: it is terror to us. look at borges. look at the suburbs of buenos aires. the tyrant rosas has been dead a century, but his cult flourishes. beneath the city streets, the war­ rens of rooms and corridors, the fences and the networks of steel track, the argentine heart, in its perversity and guilt, longs for a return to that first unscribbled serenity . . . that anarchic oneness of pampas andsky.... " "but-but bobwire," slothrop with his mouth full of that fondue, justgobblin' away, "that's progress-you, you can't have open range for­ ever, you can't just stand in the way of progress-" yes, he is actually going to go on for half an hour, quoting saturday-afternoon westernmovies dedicated to property if anything is, at this foreigner who's springing for his meal. squalidozzi, taking it for mild insanity instead of rudeness, only blinks once or twice. "in ordinary times," he wants to explain, "the center al­ ways wins. its power grows with time, and that can't be reversed, not ilie �ot in for ilie lie ala kin he furo nea -, " . -'.... _ ��o_ " •• _._._.�::-__..&� •••,,.!'�"'. '.� ilea een· t ili� n�er· weo! c, �� aw encl· jul by ordinary means. decentralizing, back toward anarchism, needs ex­ traordinary times ... this war-this incredible war-just for the mo­ ment has wiped out the proliferation of little states that's prevailed in germany for a thousand years. wiped it clean. opened it." "sure. for how long?" "it won't last. of course not. but for a few months . . . perhaps there'll be peace by the autumn-disculpeme, the spring, i still haven't got used to your hemisphere-for a moment of spring, perhaps.... " "yeah but-what're you gonna do, take over land and try to hold it? they'll run you right off, podner." "no. taking land is building more fences. we want to leave it open. we want it to grow, to change. in the openness of the german zone, our hope is limitless." then, as if struck on the forehead, a sudden fast glance, not at the door, but up at the ceiling"so is our danger." the u-boat right now is cruising around somewhere off of spain, staying submerged for much of the day, spending nights on the surface to charge batteries, sneaking in now and then to refuel. squalidozzi won't go into the fueling arrangements in much detail, but there are ap­ parently connections of many years' standing with the republican un­ derground-a community of grace, a gift of persistence.... squali­ dozzi is in zurich now contacting governments that might be willing, for any number of reasons, to assist his anarchism-in-exile. he must get a message to geneva by tomorrow: from there word is relayed to spain and the submarine. but there are peronist agents here in zurich. he is being watched. he can't risk betraying the contact in geneva. "i can help you out," slothrop licking off his fingers, "but i'm short of cash and-" squalidozzi names a sum that will payoff mario schweitar and keep slothrop fed for months to come. "half in front and i'm on the way." the argentine hands over message, addresses, money, and springs for the check. they arrange to meet at the kronenhalle in three days. "good luck." "you too." a last sad look from squalidozzi alone at his table. a toss of forelock, a fading of light. the plane is a battered dc-3, chosen for its affinity for moonlight, the kind expression on its windowed face, its darkness inside and outside. he wakes up curled among the cargo, metal darkness, engine vibration through his bones ... red light filtering very faint back through a bulk­ head from up forward. he crawls to a tiny window -and looks out. alps 265 ,�. �. l,.--,-----f7�'i --/ ,-;,;._ .".'i-!" ..• .•. •••.• ••••.• .• . in the moonlight. kind of small ones, though, not as spectacular as he figured on. oh, well.... he settles back down on a soft excelsior bed, lighting up one of squalidozzi's corktips thinking, j eepers, not bad, guys just jump in the airplane, go where they want . . . why stop at geneva? sure, what about-well, that spain? no wait, they're fascists. south sea islands! hmm. full of japs and gis. well africa's the dark continent, nothing there but natives, elephants, 'n' that spencer tracy. . . . "there's nowhere to go, slothrop, nowhere." the figure is huddled against a crate, and shivering. slothrop squints through the weak red light. it is the well-known frontispiece face of insouciant adventurer richard halliburton: but strangely altered. down both the man's cheeks runs a terrible rash, palimpsested over older pockmarks, in whose symmetry slothrop, had he a medical eye, could have read drug reaction. richard halliburton's jodhpurs are torn and soiled, his bright hair greasy now and hanging. he appears to be weeping silently, bend­ ing, a failed angel, over all these second-rate alps, over all the nightskiers far below, out on the slopes, crisscrossing industriously, purifyingand perfecting their fascist ideal of action, action, action, once his own shining reason for being. no more. no more. slothrop reaches, puts the cigarette out on the deck. how easy these angel-white wood shavings can go up. lie here in this rattling and wrenched airplane, lie still as you can, damn fool, yup they've conned you-conned you again. richard halliburton, lowell thomas, rover and motor boys, jaundiced stacks of national geographies up in ho­ gan's room must've all lied to him, and there was no one then, not even a colonial ghost in the attic, to tell him different. . . . bump, skid, slew, pancake landing, fucking washouts from kite-hyingschool, gray swiss dawn light through little windows and every joint,muscle, and bone in slothrop is sore. it's time to punch back in. he gets off of the plane without incident, mingling into a yawning, sour hock of early passengers, delivery agents, airfield workers. cointrin in the early morning. shocking green hills one side, brown city on theother. pavements are slick and wet. clouds blow slowly in the sky.mont blanc sez hi, lake sez howdy too, slothrop buys 20 cigarettes and a local paper, asks directions, gets in a tram that comes and with cold air through doors and windows to wake him up goes rolling into the city of peace. he's to meet his argentine contact at the cafe l'eclipse, well off the trolley lines, down a cobblestone street and into a tiny square sur­rounded by vegetable and fruit stalls under beige awnings, shops, othercafes, window-boxes, clean hosed sidewalks. dogs go running in and out 266 lu • oouot \i'alr �ow thea i, roun .. �one men� 10ulli �uaa� took � _��. �_ _ " _ , •••••• _ • • / ._..�j "'-,_. • �r. ---�-1----. " . -�'), >.. • • -._ ...._ ..._--_... ' ••'-=�"'�" '-\, ol'1f ho· of the alleys. slothrop sits with coffee, croissants, and newspaper. pres­ ently the overcast burns off. the sun throws shadows across the square nearly to where he's sitting with all antennas out. nobody seems to be watching. he waits. shadows retreat, sun climbs then begins to fall, at last his man shows up, exactly as described: suit of buenos aires day­ time black, mustache, goldrim glasses, and whistling an old tango by juan d'arienzo. slothrop makes a show of searching all his pockets, comes up with the foreign bill squalidozzi told him to use: frowns at it, gets up, goes over. como no, senor, no problem changing a 50-peso note-offering a seat, coming out with currency, notebooks, cards, pretty soon the tabletop's littered with pieces of paper that eventually get sorted back into pock­ ets so that the man has squalidozzi's message and slothrop has one to bring back to squalidozzi. and that's that. back to zurich on an afternoon train, sleeping most of the way. he gets off at schlieren, some ungodly dark hour, just in case they're watching the bahnhof in town, hitches a ride in as far as the st. pe­ terhofstatt. its great clock hangs over him and empty acres of streets in what he now reads as dumb malignity. it connects to ivy league quad­ rangles in his distant youth, clock-towers lit so dim the hour could never be read, and a temptation, never so strong though as now, to surrender to the darkening year, to embrace what he can of real terror to the hour without a name (unless it's ... no ... no ... ): it was vanity, vanity as his puritan forerunners had known it, bones and heart alert to noth­ ing, nothing underneath the college saxophones melding sweetly, white blazers lipsticked about the lapels, smoke from nervous fatimas, castile soap vaporizing off of shining hair, and mint kisses, and dewed carna­ tions. it was being come for just before dawn by pranksters younger than he, dragged from bed, blindfolded, hey reinhardt, led out into the autumnal cold, shadows and leaves underfoot, and the moment then of doubt, the real possibility that they are something else-that none of it was real before this moment: only elaborate theatre to fool you. but now the screen has gone dark, and there is absolutely no more time left. the agents are here for you at last. . . . what better place than zurich to find vanity again? it's reformation country, zwingli's town, the man at the end of the encyclopedia, and stone reminders are everywhere. spies and big business, in their ele­ ment, move tirelessly among the grave markers. be assured there are ex­ young men, here in this very city, faces slothrop used to pass in the quads, who got initiated at harvard into the puritan mysteries: who took oaths in dead earnest to respect and to act always in the name of llie� ana nn� em ,tne sur· ilier out .�i· r /��i"'"�'.--=-ii • �--/ i;�.' ,. · '" . .. : i vanitas, emptiness, their ruler ... who now according to life-plan such-and-such have come here to switzerland to work for allen dulles and his "intelligence" network, which operates these days under the title "office of strategic services." but to initiates oss is also a secret acronym: as a mantra for times of immediate crisis they have been taught to speak inwardly oss . . . oss, the late, corrupt, dark-age latin word for bone.... next day, when slothrop meets mario schweitar at the straggeli to front him half his fee, he asks also for the location of j amf' s grave. and that's where they arrange to close the deal, up in the mountains. squalidozzi doesn't show up at the kronenhalle, or the odeon, or anyplace slothrop will think to look in the days that follow. disappear­ ances, in zurich, are not unheard of. but slothrop will keep going back, just in case. the message is in spanish, he can't make out more than a word or two, but he'll hold on to it, there might be a chance to pass it on. and, well, the anarchist persuasion appeals to him a little. back when shays fought the federal troops across massachusetts, there were slothrop regulators patrolling berkshire for the rebels, wearing sprigsof hemlock in their hats so you could tell them from the government soldiers. federals stuck a tatter of white paper in theirs. slothrops in those days were not yet so much involved with paper, and the wholesale slaughtering of trees. they were still for the living green, against the dead white. later they lost, or traded away, knowledge of which side they'd been on. tyrone here has inherited most of their bland ignorance on the subject. back behind him now, wind blows through j amf' s crypt. slothrop'sbeen camped here these past few nights, nearly out of money, waitingfor word from schweitar. out of the wind, huddled inside a couple ofswiss army blankets he managed to promote, he's even been able to sleep. right on top of mister imipolex. the first night he was afraid to fall asleep, afraid of a visit from jamf, whose german-scientist mind would be battered by death to only the most brute reflexes, no way to appeal to the dumb and grinning evil of the shell that was left ... voices twittering with moonlight around his image, as step by step he,it, the repressed, approaches. . . . waitaminute up out of sleep, facenaked, turning to the foreign gravestones, the what? what was it . . . back again, almost to it, up again ... up, and back, that way, most ofthe early night. there's no visit. it seems j amf is only dead. slothrop woke next morn­ ing feeling, in spite of an empty stomach and a runny nose, better than 268 if$.. .-�. � ..• 4 .. ·�...... • •••••• • / �� •• �---r """',_. . � \' � ....�1---, , . -'\... =� ••••• _ ••_ ...._--... ••�,��-.'. '-� e·plan dcll�� er ili� �ecret ebeen �e�tm he had in months. seemed like he'd passed a test, not somebody else's test, but one of his own, for a change. the city below him, bathed now in a partial light, is a necropolis of church spires and weathercocks, white castle-keep towers, broad build­ ings with mansard roofs and windows glimmering by thousands. this forenoon the mountains are as translucent as ice. later in the day they will be blue heaps of wrinkled satin. the lake is mirror-smooth but mountains and houses reflected down there remain strangely blurred, with edges fine and combed as rain: a dream of atlantis, of the suggen­ thai. toy villages, desolate city of painted alabaster.... slothrop hun­ kers down here in the cold curve of a mountain trail, packing and lobbing idle snowballs, not much to do around here but smoke the last butt of what for all he knows is the last lucky strike in all switzer­ land.... footfalls down the trail. clinking galoshes. it is mario schweitar's de­ livery boy, with a big fat envelope. slothrop pays him, chisels a cigarette and some matches, and they part. back at the crypt slothrop relights a small pile of kindling and pine boughs, warms up his hands, and begins to thumb through the data. the absence of jamf surrounds him like an odor, one he knows but can't quite name, an aura that threatens to go epileptic any second. the information is here-not as much as he wanted (aw, how much was that?) but more than he hoped, being one of those practical yankees. in the weeks ahead, in those very few mo­ ments he'll be allowed to wallow in his past, he may even have time to wish he hadn't read any of it. . . . d d d d d d d oran(! mr. pointsman has decided to spend whitsun by the sea. feeling a bit megalo these days, nothing to worry about really, never gets worse than, oh perhaps the impression, whilst zooming along through the corridors of "the white visitation," that all the others seem to be frozen in atti­ tudes of unmistakable parkinsonism, with himself the only alert, un­ palsied one remaining. it is peacetime again now, no room for the pi­ geons in trafalgar square on v-e night, everyone at the facility that day mad drunk and hugging and kissing, except for the blavatskian wing of psi section, who were off on a white lotos day pilgrimage to 19 avenue road, st. john's wood. now there's time again for holidays. though pointsman does feel a 269 , .. c· �---�-��-...._ -_ �-:.-i/�':_ 0.. ---/ r��:··�·· · .. . '� certain obligation to go relax, there is also, of course, the crisis. a leader must show self-possession, up to and including a holiday mood, in the midst of crisis. there's now been no word of slothrop for nearly a month, since the fumbling asses in military intelligence lost him in zurich. pointsman is a bit browned-off with the firm. his clever strategy appears to've failed. in first discussions with clive mossmoon and the others, it seemed fool­ proof: to let slothrop escape from the casino hermann goering, and then rely on secret service to keep him under surveillance instead of pisces. an economy move. the surveillance bill is the most excruci­ ating thorn in the crown of funding problems he seems condemned to wear for the duration of this project. damned funding is going to be his downfall, if slothrop doesn't drive him insane first. pointsman has blundered. hasn't even the tennysonian comfort of saying "someone" has blundered. no, it was he and he alone who au­ thorized the anglo-american team of harvey speed and floyd perdoo to investigate a random sample of slothropian sex adventures. budget was available, and what harm could it do? they went off practically skipping, obsessive as munchkins, out into the erotic poisson. don gio­ vanni's map of europe-640 in italy, 231 in germany, 100 in france, 91 in turkey but, but, but-in spain! in spain, l003!-is slothrop's map of london, and the two gumshoes become so infected with the pre­ vailing fondness out here for mindless pleasures that they presently are passing whole afternoons sitting out in restaurant gardens dawdling over chrysanthemum salads and mutton casseroles, or larking at the fruit monger's-"hey speed, look, canteloupes! i haven't seen one of them since the third term-wow, smell this one, it's beautiful! say, how about a canteloupe, speed? huh? come on." "excellent idea, perdoo, excellent." "uh ... oh, well you pick out the one you want, okay?" "the one?" "yeah. this is the one," turning it to show him as the faces of threat­ ened girls are roughly turned by villains, "that i picked out, see?" "but but i thought we were both going to-" gesturing feebly towardwhat he still cannot quite accept as perdoo's melon, in whose intaglio net now, as among craters of the pale moon, a face is indeed emerging,the face of a captive woman with eyes cast downward, lids above as smooth as persian ceilings. . . . "well, no, i usually, uh-" this is embarrassing for perdoo, it's like being called on to, to justify eating an apple, or even popping a grapeinto your mouth-"just, well, sort of, eat them ... whole, you know," 270 illi maniao futm �ie j��el ootn 1�\\'1 t��n� �reec \ol �oin� xo �i far i �e\'er . lml m� a [eltt ii\ees � ,� .. _ ••••.• -.�._ •• � -. .• •••••• '_" -. • /-""'------=c --_. . ��"' �--� __ rtdl· chuckling in what he hopes is a friendly way, to indicate politely the so­ cial oddness of this discussion-but the chuckle is taken the wrong way by speed: taken as evi­ dence of mental instability in this slightly bucktoothed and angular american, who is dancing now from stoop to english stoop, lank as a street-puppet in the wind. shaking his head, he nevertheless selects his own whole canteloupe, realizes he's been left to pay the bill, which is exorbitant, and goes skipping off after perdoo, hippety hop both of them, tra-la-la-la slam right into another dead end: "jenny? no-no jenny here.... " "a jennifer, perhaps? genevieve?" "ginny" (it could've been misspelled), "virginia?" "if you gentlemen are looking for a good time-" her grin, her red, maniacally good-morning-and-i-mean-good! grin, is wide enough to hold them both right, shivering, smiling, here, and she's old enough to be their mother-their joint mother, combining the worst traits of mrs. perdoo and mrs. speed-in fact she is turning now into just that, even as they watch. these wrecked seas are full of temptresses-it's watery and wanton out here all right. as the two gawking soft-boiled shamuses are drawn along into her aura, winking right here in the street, brassy with henna-glare, with passion-flowers on rayon-just before the last stumbling surrender into the lunacy of her purple eyes, they allow themselves, for the sinful tickle of it, a last thought of the project they're supposed to be here on-slothropian episodic zone, weekly historical observations (sez who)-a thought that comes running out in the guise of a clown, a vulgar, loose-ends clown bespangled with wordless jokes about body juices, bald-headed, an amazing fall of nose-hair out both nostrils which he has put into braids and tied with acid-green bows-a scrabbling dash now out past sandbags and falling curtain, trying to get back his breath, to garble to them in a high unpleasant screech: "no jenny. no sally w. no cybele. no angela. no catherine. no lucy. no gretchen. when are you going to see it? when are you going to see it?" no "darlene" either. that came in yesterday. they traced the name as far as the residence of a mrs. quoad. but the flashy young divorcee never, she declared, even knew that english children were named "darlene." she was dreadfully sorry. mrs. quoad spent her days loung­ ing about a rather pedicured mayfair address, and both investigators felt relieved to be out of the neighborhood. . . . when are you going to see it? pointsman sees it immediately. but he "sees" it in the way you would walking into your bedroom to be jumped 271 .-.. �_i ;/�'i� --/ --/ �._ ·',·"·f· � �. '" .. � . � on, out of a bit of penumbra on your ceiling, by a gigantic moray eel, its teeth in full imbecile death-smile, breathing, in its fall onto your open face, a long human sound that you know, horribly, to be a sexual sigh .... that is to say, pointsman avoids the matter-as reflexively as he would any nightmare. should this one turn out not to be a fantasy but real, well . . . "the data, so far, are incomplete." this ought to be prominently stressed in all statements. "we admit that the early data seem to show," remember, act sincere, "a number of cases where the names on slo­ throp's map do not appear to have counterparts in the body of fact we've been able to establish along his time-line here in london. estab­ lish so far, that is. these are mostly all first names, you see, the, the xs without the ys so to speak, ranks without files. difficult to know how far into one 'far enough' really is. "and what if many-even if most-of the slothropian stars are proved, some distant day, to refer to sexual fantasies instead of real events? this would hardly invalidate our approach, any more than it did young sigmund freud's, back there in old vienna, facing a similar viola­ tion of probability-all those papi-has-raped-me stories, which might have been lies evidentially, but were certainly the truth clinically. you must realize: we are concerned, at pisces, with a rather strictly defined, clinical version of truth. we seek no wider agency in this." so far, it is pointsrnan's burden alone. the solitude of a fuhrer: he feels himself growing strong in the rays of this dark companion to his public star now on the rise ... but he doesn't want to share it, no not just yet .... meetings of the staff, his staff, grow worse and worse than useless. they bog down into endless arguments about trivia-whether or not to rename pisces now that the surrender has been expedited, what sort of letterhead, if any, to adopt. the representative from shell mex house, mr. dennis joint, wants to put the program under special pro­ jectiles operations group (spog), as an adjunct of the british rocket­ scavenging effort, operation backfire, which is based out of cuxhaven on the north sea. every other day brings a fresh attempt, from some quarter, to reconstitute or even dissolve pisces. pointsman is finding it much easier of late to slip into a l' etat c'est moi frame of mind-who else is doing anything? isn't he holding it all together, often with noth­ ing beyond his own raw will . . . ? shell mex house, naturally, is frantic about slothrop's disappearance. here's a man running loose who knows everything it's possible to know 272 ":_::_ .... . -' -. . . / .,,_ , " � ;--� ""-" . -�, -, . � � ,.,,!,,��'p'. rt"': pen 'ual -not only about the a4, but about what great britain knows about the a4· zurich teems with soviet agents. what if they've already got slo­ throp? they took peenemiinde in the spring, it appears now they will be given the central rocket works at nordhausen, another of the dealings at yalta.... at least three agencies, viam, tsagi, and niso, plus engi­ neers working out of other commissariats, are even now in soviet-occu­ pied germany with lists of personnel and equipment to be taken east. inside the shaef sphere of influence, american army ordnance, and a host of competing research teams, are all busy collecting everything in sight. they've already rounded up von braun and 500 others, and in­ terned them at garmisch. what if they get hold of slothrop? there have also been, aggravating the crisis, defections: rollo groast assumed back into the society for psychical research, treacle setting up a practice, myron grunton again a full-time wireless personality. mexico has begun to grow distant. the borgesius woman still performs her nocturnal duties, but with the brigadier ill now (has the old fool been forgetting his antibiotics? must pointsman do everything?) she's beginning to fret. of course ceza hozsavolgyi is still with the project. a fanatic. rozsavolgyi will never leave. so. a holiday by the sea. for political reasons, the party is made up of pointsman, mexico, mexico's girl, dennis joint, and katje borgesius. pointsman wears rope-soled shoes, his prewar bowler, and a rare smile. the weather is not ideal. an overcast, a wind that will be chilly by mid­ afternoon. a smell of ozone blows up from the dodgem cars out of the gray steel girderwork along the promenade, along with smells of shellfish on the barrows, and of salt sea. the pebbled beach is crowded with families: shoeless fathers in lounge suits and high white collars, mothers in blouses and skirts startled out of war-long camphor sleep, kids running all over in sunsuits, nappies, rompers, short pants, knee socks, eton hats. there are ice cream, sweets, cokes, cockles, oysters and shrimps with salt and sauce. the pinball machines writhe under the handling of fanatical servicemen and their girls, throwing body-english, cursing, groaning as the bright balls drum down the wood obstacle courses through ka-chungs, flashing lights, thudding flippers. the don­ keys hee-haw and shit, the children walk in it and their parents scream. men sag in striped canvas chairs talking business, sports, sex, but most usually politics. an organ grinder plays rossini's overture to la gazza ladra (which, as we shall see later, in berlin, marks a high point in music which everybody ignored, preferring beethoven, who never got further than statements of intention), and here without snaredrums or the sonority of brasses the piece is mellow, full of hope, promising lav273 .... ---.--.-......�--'--,,_'" ..., (y�'1{.". --/ �'.:' ,.,.. , ' ,. . _'. ender twilights, stainless steel pavilions and everyone elevated at last to aristocracy, and love without payment of any kind. . . . it was pointsman's plan today not to talk shop, but to let the conver­ sation flow more or less organically. wait for others to betray them­ selves. but there is shyness, or constraint, among them all. talk is mini­ mal. dennis joint is watching katje with a horny smile, with now and then a suspicious stare for roger mexico. mexico meantime has his troubles with jessica-more and more often these days-and at the mo­ ment the two aren't even looking at each other. katje borgesius has her eyes far out to sea, and there is no telling what is going on with this one. in some dim way, pointsman, though he can't see that she has any lever­ age at all, is still afraid of her. there is still a lot he doesn't know. per­ haps what's bothering him most right now is her connection, if any, with pirate prentice. prentice has been down to "the white visitation" sev­ eral times asking rather pointed questions about her. when pisces re­ cently opened its new branch office in london (which some wag, prob­ ably that young imbecile webley silvernail, has already dubbed "twelfth house") prentice began hanging heavily around up there, ro­ mancing secretaries, trying for a peep into this file or that. . . . what's up? what afterlife have the firm found, this side of v e day? what does prentice want . . . what's his price? is he in love with la borge­ sius here? is it possible for this woman to be in love? love? oh, it's enough to make you scream. what would her idea of love be.... "mexico," grabbing the young statistician's arm. "eh?" roger interrupted eying a lovely looks a bit like rita hayworth in a one-piece floral number with straps that x across her lean back. ... "mexico, i think i am hallucinating." "oh, really? you think you are? what are you seeing?" "mexico, i see . . . i see. . . . what do you mean, what am i seeing, you nit? it's what i'm hearing." "well, what are you hearing, then." a touch of peevishness to roger now. "right now i'm hearing you, saying, 'what are you hearing, then.' and i don't like it!" "why not." "because: unpleasant as this hallucination is, i find i still much prefer it to the sound of your voice." now this is odd behavior from anybody, but from usually correct mr. pointsman, it is enough to stop this mutually-paranoid party in their rrack. golls iii! 274 -� .. , ... ., ' -. / _--. �, -' "" -----=--�--� -, " . -m' ""." � �,.,. ��... . . -.---,..� .••, �t'. ri"': suo i \\j� tracks. nearby is a wheel of fortune, with lucky strike packs, kewpie dolls and candy bars stuffed among the spokes. "i say, what d'you think?" blond, hale-fellow dennis joint nudges katje with an elbow as broad as a knee. in his profession he has learned to make instant evaluations of those with whom he deals. he judges old katje here to be a jolly girl, out for a spot of fun. yes, leadership mate­ rial here, definitely. "hasn't he gone a bit mental suddenly?" trying to keep his voice down, grinning in athletic paranoia vaguely over in the peculiar pavlovian's direction-not right at him you understand, eye contact might be suicidal folly given his state of mind. . . . meantime, jessica has gone into her fay wray number. this is a kind of protective paralysis, akin to your own response when the moray eel jumps you from the ceiling. but this is for the fist of the ape, for the lights of electric new york white-waying into the room you thought was safe, could never be penetrated . . . for the coarse black hair, the ten­ dons of need, of tragic love. . . . "yeah well," as film critic mitchell prettyplace puts it in his definitive 18-volume study of king kong, "you know, he did love her, folks." pro­ ceeding from this thesis, it appears that prettyplace has left nothing out, every shot including out-takes raked through for every last bit of sym­ bolism, exhaustive biographies of everyone connected with the film, ex­ tras, grips, lab people . . . even interviews with king kong kultists, who to be eligible for membership must have seen the movie at least 100 times and be prepared to pass an 8-hour entrance exam.... and yet, and yet: there is murphy's law to consider, that brash irish prole­ tarian restatement of codel's theorem-when everything has been taken care of, when nothing can go wrong, or even surprise us . . . some­ thing will. so the permutations 'n' combinations of pudding's things that can happen in european politics for 1931, the year of codel's theorem, don't give hitler an outside chance. so, when laws of heredity are laid down, mutants will be born. even as determinist a piece of hardware as the a4 rocket will begin spontaneously generating items like the "s-cerat" slothrop thinks he's chasing like a grail. and so, too, the legend of the black scapeape we cast down like lucifer from the tallest erection in the world has come, in the fullness of time, to gener­ ate its own children, running around inside cermany even now-the schwarzkommando, whom mitchell prettyplace, even, could not antici­ pate. at pisces it is widely believed that the schwarzkommando have been summoned, in the way demons may be gathered in, called up to 275 ...c· �-----_ -. -----� (/' 1� -f � -_ -_---/ !iif-·-..····· . .. . . , ·� the light of day and earth by the now defunct operation black wing. you can bet psi section was giggling about this for a while. who could have guessed there'd be real black rocket troops? that a story made up to scare last year's enemy should prove to be literally true-and no way now to stuff them back in the bottle or even say the spell backward: no one ever knew the complete spell-different people knew different parts of it, that's what teamwork is.... by the time it occurs to them to look back through the most secret documentation surrounding oper­ ation black wing, to try and get some idea of how this all might've hap­ pened, they will find, curiously, that certain critical documents are ei­ ther missing or have been updated past the end of the operation, and that it is impossible at this late date to reconstruct the spell at all, though there will be the usual elegant and bad-poetic speculation. even earlier speculation will be lopped and tranquilized. nothing will re­ main, for example, of the tentative findings of freudian edwin treacle and his lot, who toward the end even found themselves at odds with their own minority, the psychoanalytic wing of psi section. it began as a search for some measurable basis for the common experience of being haunted by the dead. after a while colleagues began to put in chits re­ questing they be transferred out. unpleasantries such as "it's beginning to sound like the tavistock institute around here" began muttering up and down the basement halls. palace revolts, many of them conceived in ornamentally splendid flashes of paranoia, brought locksmiths and welders in by droves, led to mysterious shortages of office supplies, even of water and heat . . . none of which kept treacle and lot from carrying on in a freudian, not to mention jungian frame of mind. word of the schwarzkommandos real existence reached them a week before v-e day. individual events, who really said what to whom, have been lost in the frenzy of accusation, crying, nervous breakdowns, and areas of bad taste that followed. someone remembers gavin trefoil, face as blue as krishna, running through the topiary trees stark naked, and treacle chasing him with an ax, screaming "giant ape? i'll show you a giant ape all right!" indeed he would show the critter to many of us, though we would not look. in his innocence he saw no reason why co-workers on an office project should not practice self-criticism with the same rigor as revolu­ tionary cells do. he had not meant to offend sensibilities, only to show the others, decent fellows all, that their feelings about blackness were tied to feelings about shit, and feelings about shit to feelings about pu­ trefaction and death. it seemed to him so clear . . . why wouldn't theylisten? why wouldn't they admit that their repressions had, in a sense 276 iliat iwd i �ence �even �1n t�in i iral,!l lour forte i lih i jlen ere toe 1m! i,il ,.__::: ,. -----. .. . . / "�_--i�-'" '. �� .._ . � ..••_ " •••,.� "'. ti"'; 'i� om or� orr that europe in the last weary stages of its perversion of magic has lost, had incarnated real and living men, likely (according to the best intelli­ gence) in possession of real and living weapons, as the dead father who never slept with you, penelope, returns night after night to your bed, trying to snuggle in behind you . . . or as your unborn child wakes you, crying in the night and you feel its ghost-lips at your breast ... they are real, they are living, as you pretend to scream inside the fist of the ape . . . but looking over now at the much more likely candidate, cream­ skinned katje under the wheel of fortune, who is herself getting ready now to bolt down the beach and into the relative calm of the switch­ back railway. points man is hallucinating. he has lost control. pointsman is supposed to have absolute control over katje. where does this leave her? in a control that is out of control. not even back in the leather and pain of gemutlich captain blicero's world has she felt as terrified as now. roger mexico is taking it personally, oh-i-say, only trying to help.... what the somewhat disconnected mr. pointsman has been hearing all this time is a voice, strangely familiar, a voice he once imagined a face in a well-known news photograph from the war to have: "here is what you have to do. you need mexico now, more than ever. your winter anxieties about the end of history seem now all well com­ forted to rest, part of your biography now like any old bad dream. but like lord acton always sez, history is not woven by innocent hands. mexico's girl friend there is a threat to your whole enterprise. he will do anything to hold on. scowling and even cursing him she will never­ theless seduce him away, into a civilian fogbank in which you will lose him and never find him-not unless you act now, pointsman. operation backfire is sending ats girls out to the zone now. rocket girls: secreta­ rial and even minor technical duties at the cuxhaven test range. you have only to drop a word to spog, through dennis joint here, and jes­ sica swanlake is out of your way. mexico may complain for a while, but all the more reason for him, given the proper direction, to lose himself in his work, eh? remember the eloquent words of sir denis nayland smith to young alan sterling, whose fiancee is in the clutches of the in­ sidious yellow adversary: 'i have been through the sort of fires which are burning you now, sterling, and i have always found that work was the best ointment for the burns.' and we both know what nayland smith represents, mm? don't we." "1 do," sez pointsman, aloud, "but i can't really say that you do, can i, if i don't even know who you are, you see." 277 i·e· . ,.. ------������ i /' 'l" --r; -�_ / --�� , ,... . .. . . �.•. this strange outburst does not reassure pointsman's companions. they begin to edge away, in definite alarm. "we should find a doctor," murmurs dennis joint, winking at katje like a blond crewcut groucho marx. jessica, forgetting her sulk, takes roger's arm. "you see, you see," the voice starts up again, "she feels that she's pro­ tecting him, against you. how many chances does one get to be a syn­ thesis, pointsman? east and west, together in the same bloke? you can not only be nayland smith, giving a young lad in a funk wholesome ad­ vice about the virtues of work, but you also, at the same time, get to be fu manchu! eh? the one who has the young lady in his power! how's that? protagonist and antagonist in one. i'd jump at it, if i were you." pointsman is about to retort something like, "but you're not me," only he sees how the others all seem to be goggling at him. "oh, ha, ha," he sez instead. "talking to myself, here. little-sort of-eccentricity, heh, heh." "yang and yin," whispers the voice, "yang and yin.... " " ' '" " >." , ......_ •••_-....., ••,,',.�""� •• '.� in the zone toto, i have a feeling we're not in kansas any more. . . . -dorothy, arriving in oz "i-i ' . " -",_ ---�--�--�---��---�� , f;/ 1 "':',---� / --� �', .• ,·,,·f· · '" • ..•... ....• ...•.• .. . . '!' .� .. ' •••••• �.�._ •• " •• _e ••• e. __ 4e _ •. • �__ �. =; '"-. . _... _.-;--<, " . -� -, -.> -..•• " , t,. ri"': o 0 0 0 0 0 0 we are safely past the days of the eis-heiligen-st. pancratius, st. ser­ vatius, st. bonifacius, die kalte sophie . . . they hover in clouds above the vineyards, holy beings of ice, ready with a breath, an intention, to ruin the year with frost and cold. in certain years, especially war years, they are short on charity, peevish, smug in their power: not quite saintly or even christian. the prayers of growers, pickers and wine enthusiasts must reach them, but there's no telling how the ice-saints feel-coarse laughter, pagan annoyance, who understands this rear-guard who pre­ serve winter against the revolutionaries of may? they found the countryside, this year, at peace by a scant few days. already vines are beginning to grow back over dragon's teeth, fallen stukas, burned tanks. the sun warms the hillsides, the rivers fall bright as wine. the saints have refrained. nights have been mild. the frost didn't come. it is the spring of peace. the vintage, god granting at least a hundred days of sun, will be fine. nordhausen puts less credence in the ice-saints than do wine regions farther south, but even here the season looks promising. rain blows scattering out over the town as slothrop comes in in the early morning, bare feet, blistering and reblistering, cooled here in the wet grass. there's sunlight up on the mountains. his shoes got lifted by some dp with fingers lighter than dreams, on one of the many trains since the swiss border, someplace rolling across bavaria fast asleep. whoever it was left a red tulip between slothrop's toes. he has taken it for a sign. a reminder of katje. signs will find him here in the zone, and ancestors will reassert them­ selves. it's like going to that darkest africa to study the natives there, and finding their quaint superstitions taking you over. in fact, funny thing, slothrop just the other night ran into an african, the first one he ever met in his life. their discussion on top of the freight car in the moonlight lasted only a minute or two. small talk for the sudden back­ ground departure of major duane marvy over the side bounce-clatter down the cobbled fill into the valley-well, certainly nothing was said then of any heroro beliefs about ancestors. yet he feels his own, stronger now as borders fall away and the zone envelops him, his own wasps in buckled black, who heard god clamoring to them in every turn of a leaf or cow loose among apple orchards in autumn. . . . signs of katje, and doubles too. one night he sat in a children's play 281 1�' ���-� . i /�,,--� -_ / �-7i'-"" ,. . '" . .. . . . '" h' ' � house on an abandoned estate, feeding a fire from the hair of a blonde doll with lapis lazuli eyes. he kept those eyes. a few days later he traded them for a ride and half a boiled potato. dogs barked far away, summerwind blew in the birches. he was on one of the main arterials of the spring's last dissolution and retreat. somewhere nearby, one of major-general kammler's rocket units had together found corporate death, leaving in their crippled military rage pieces, modules, airframe sections, batteries rotting, paper secrets rained back into slurry. slo­ throp follows. any clue's good enough to hop a train for. . . . the doll's hair was human. the smell of it burning is horrible. slo­ throp hears movement from the other side of the fire. a ratcheting noise-he grabs his blanket, ready to vault away out the empty window frame, expecting a grenade. instead one of these little brightly painted german toys, an orangutan on wheels comes ki-ki-ki-ing into the fire­ light, spastic, head lolling, face in an idiot's grin, steel knuckles scraping the floor. it rolls nearly into the fire before the clockwork runs down, the wagging head coming to dead center to stare at slothrop. he feeds the fire another tuft of golden hair. "evening." laughter, somewhere. a child. but old laughter. "come on out, i'm harmless." the ape is followed by a tiny black crow with a red beak, also on wheels, hopping, cawing, flapping metal wings. "why are you burning my doll's hair?" "well, it's not her own hair, you know." "father said it belonged to a russian [ewess." "why don't you come in to the fire?" "hurts my eyes." winding again. nothing moves. but a music box begins to play. the tune is minor and precise. "dance with me." "i can't see you." "here." out of the fire's pale, a tiny frost-flower. he reaches and just manages to find her hand, to grasp her little waist. they begin their stately dance. he can't even tell if he's leading. he never saw her face. she felt like voile and organdy. "nice dress." "i wore it for my first communion." the fire died presently, leaving starlight and a faint glow over some town to the east, through windows whose panes were all gone. the music box still played, beyond the run­ ning time, it seemed, of an ordinary spring. their feet moved over clouded, crumbled old glass, torn silks, bones of dead rabbits and kit­ tens. the geometrical path took them among ballooning, ripped arrases, smelling of dust and an older bestiary than the one by the fire . . . uni282 "" � . -� '. . -. / ' ....-.-•.•.---.....� .�.,��""'. "= blonot corns, chimaeras ... and what had he seen festooning the child-sized ater 01 entranceway? garlic bulbs? wait-weren't they to keep away oamr awa)'. pires? a faint garlic smell reached him exactly then, an inbreaking of eria��f balkan blood on the air of his north, as he turned back to her to ask if one �f she really was katje, the lovely little queen of transylvania. but the �oratt music had run down. she had vaporized from his arms. irfram1 well here he is skidded out onto the zone like a planchette on a ry, �i� ouija board, and what shows up inside the empty circle in his brain might string together into a message, might not, he'll just have to see. ie, �i� but he can feel a sensitive's fingers, resting lightly but sure on his days, tcneo�; and he thinks of them as katje's. \\in��� he's still ian scuffiing, war (peace?) correspondent, though back in �aint� british uniform these days, with plenty of time on these trains to hash tnefut, over in his mind the information mario schweitar bootlegged for him crarll1 back there in zurich. there is a fat file on imipolex g, and it seems to omit point to nordhausen. the engineer on the customer end of the imipolex contract was one franz pokler, he came to nordhausen in early '44, as the rocket was going into mass production. he was billeted in the mit­ telwerke, an underground factory complex run largely by the ss. no word on where he went when the plant was evacuated in february and rul��1 march. but ian scuffiing, ace reporter, will be sure to find a clue down in the mittelwerke. slothrop sat in the swaying car with thirty other cold and tattered souls, eyes all pupil, lips cratered with sores. they were singing, some of them. a lot of them kids. it is a displaced person's song, and slothrop will hear it often around the zone, in the encampments, out on the lic� road, in a dozen variations: jea\1�! 'noo\\i em' dol1l nd �i· rralll, ,urn' if you see a train this evening, far away against the sky, lie down in your wooden blanket, sleep, and let the train go by. trains have called us, every midnight, from a thousand miles away, trains that pass through empty cities, trains that have no place to stay. no one drives the locomotive, noone tends the staring light, trains have never needed riders, trains belong to bitter night. ii � i-i' ,.a---?:-� �;�::--> • i /----��'�:-� � --/ --/."'�... . .. .. . railway stations stand deserted, rights-of-way lie clear and cold: what we left them, trains inherit, trains go on, and we grow old. let them cry like cheated lovers, let their cries find only wind. trains are meant for night and ruin. we are meant for song, and sin. pipes are passing around. smoke hangs from the damp wood slats, is whipped out cracks into the night slipstream. children wheeze in their sleep, the rachitic babies cry . . . now and then the mothers exchange aword. slothrop huddles inside his paper misfortune. the swiss firm's dossier on l. (for laszlo) j amf listed all his assets at the time he came to work in zurich. apparently he had sat-as token scientist-on the board of directors of the crossli chemical corpora­tion as late as 1924. among stock options and pieces of this firm andthat back in germany-pieces to be gathered in over the next year ortwo by the octopus i g-was the record of a transaction between j amfand mr. lyle bland, of boston, massachusetts. on the beam, jackson. lyle bland is a name he knows, all right. anda name that also shows up often in the private records j amf kept of hisown business deals. seems that bland, during the early twenties, washeavily involved with the hugo stinnes operation in germany. stinnes,while he lasted, was the wunderkind of european finance. based out ofthe ruhr, where his family had been coal barons for generations, youngstinnes built up a good-sized empire of steel, gas, electric and water power, streetcars and barge lines before he was 30. during the worldwar he worked closely with walter rathenau, who was ramrodding thewhole economy then. after the war stinnes managed to put the hori­zontal electrical trust of siemens-schuchert together with the coal andiron supplies of the rheinelbe union into a super-cartel that was bothhorizontal and vertical, and to buy into just about everything else­shipyards, steamship lines, hotels, restaurants, forests, pulp mills, news­ papers-meantime also speculating in currency, buying foreign moneywith marks borrowed from the reichsbank, driving the mark down andthen paying off the loans at a fraction of the original figure. more than anyone financier he was blamed for the inflation. those were the dayswhen you carried marks around in wheelbarrows to your daily shoppingand used them for toilet paper, assuming you had anything to shit. stinu i�re '" , . -,,_,-�. _ �"_. _�: _: " ..•......---... �...�.�"'t'. � nes's foreign connections went all over the world-brazil, the east in­ dies, the united states-businessmen like lyle bland found his growth rate irresistible. the theory going around at the time was that stinnes was conspiring with krupp, thyssen, and others to ruin the mark and so get germany out of paying her war debts. bland's connection was vague. jamfs records mention that he had negotiated contracts for supplying tons of private currency known as notgeld to stinnes and colleagues, as well as "mefo bills" to the wei­ mar republic-another of hjalmar schacht's many bookkeeping dodges to keep official records clear of any hint of weapons procurement banned under the terms of versailles. some of these banknote contracts were let to a certain massachusetts paper mill, on whose board lyle bland happened to sit. the name of this contractor was the slothrop paper company. he reads his name without that much surprise. it belongs here, as do the most minor details during deja vu. instead of any sudden incidence of light (even in the shape of a human being: golden and monitory light), as he stares at these eight ink marks, there passes a disagreeable stomach episode, a dread tangible as vomit beginning to assert itself­ the same vertigo that overtook him one day long ago in the himmler­ spielsaal. a gasbag surrounds his head, rubbery, vast, pushing in from all sides, that feeling we know, yes, but ... he is also getting a hardon, for no immediate reason. and there's that smell again, a smell from be­ fore his conscious memory begins, a soft and chemical smell, threaten­ ing, haunting, not a smell to be found out in the world-it is the breath of the forbidden wing . . . essence of all the still figures waiting for him inside, daring him to enter and find a secret he cannot survive. once something was done to him, in a room, while he lay help­ less.... his erection hums from a certain distance, like an instrument in­ stalled, wired by them into his body as a colonial outpost here in our raw and clamorous world, another office representing their white me­ tropolis far away. . . . a sad story, all right. slothrop, very nervous by now, reads on. lyle bland, eh? well, sure, that fits. he can recall dimly once or twice hav­ ing seen uncle lyle. the man used to come to visit his father, affable, fair-haired, a hustler in the regional jim fisk style. bland was always picking young tyrone up and swinging him around by his feet. that was o.k.-slothrop had no special commitment at the time to right side up. from what it sez here, bland either saw the stinnes crash coming betj�� olm i \\� tinn�, o�1 01 .-" ... � _w_�---->�_� ��--"} • � i #.��� � u" i ' -/ --" 'f:�' ..... ".!. ..... .••.•• •••.• •••••.•••••••.• .• ..•.•. . fore most of its other victims, or was just naturally nervous. early in '23 he began to sell off his interests in the stinnes operations. one of these sales was made through laszlo jamf to the crossli chemical corpora­ tion (later psychochemie ag). one of the assets transferred in this sale was "all interest in schwarzknabe enterprise. seller agrees to continue surveillance duties until such time as schwindel operative can be re­ lieved by purchaser equivalent, acceptability to be determined byseller." jamf's codebook happens to be in the dossier. part of the man's per­ sonality structure, after all. "schwindel" was his code name for hugostinnes. clever sense of humor, the old fart. across from "schwarz­ knabe," now, are the initials "t.s." well, holy cow, slothrop reckons, that must be me, huh. barring theoutside possibility of tough shit. listed as a "schwarzknabe" liability is the unpaid remainder of a bill to harvard university, about $5000 worth including the interest, "as per agreement (oral) with schwarzvater." "schwarzvater" is the code word for "b.s." which, barring the out­side possibility of bull shit, seems to be slothrop's own father, broder­ ick. blackfather slothrop. nice way to find out your father made a deal 20 years ago with some­ body to spring for your education. come to think of it, slothrop nevercould quite put the announcements, all through the depression, of im­minent family ruin, together with the comfort he enjoyed at harvard. well, now, what was the deal between his father and bland? i've been sold, jesus christ i've been sold to ig farben like a side of beef. sur­ veillance? stinnes, like every industrial emperor, had his own company spy system. so did the ig. does this mean slothrop has been under their observation-m-maybe since he was born? yaahhh . . . the fear balloons again inside his brain. it will not be kept down with a simple fuck you. . . . a smell, a forbidden room, at the bottom edgeof his memory. he can't see it, can't make it out. doesn't want to. it is allied with the worst thing. he knows what the smell has to be: though according to these papersit would have been too early for it, though he has never come across anyof the stuff among the daytime coordinates of his life, still, down here,back here in the warm dark, among early shapes where the clocks and calendars don't mean too much, he knows that what's haunting him now will prove to be the smell of imipolex g. then there's this recent dream he is afraid of having again. he was inhis old room, back home. a summer afternoon of lilacs and bees, and 286 #_:_ _. _._ ..:_ , � .. _ 4 � ••••• r'. / • .,...,-�--•. ��=. _-:. .. -<, �� �--_ _;;:_---r _--. " . -�'::� >; i' �_.,.. -., �� , , ,. ri": warm air through an open window. slothrop had found a very old dic­ tionary of technical german. it fell open to a certain page prickling with black-face type. reading down the page, he would come to jamf. the definition would read: i. he woke begging it no-but even after waking, he was sure, he would remain sure, that it could visit him again, any time it wanted. perhaps you know that dream too. perhaps it has warned you never to speak its name. if so, you know about how slo­ throp'll be feeling now. what he does is lurch to his feet, over to the door of the freight car, which is going up a grade. he drags open the door, slips out-action, action-and mounts a ladder to the roof. a foot from his face, this dou­ ble row of shiny bright teeth hangs in the air. just what he needs. it is major marvy of u.s. army ordnance, leader of marvy's mothers, the meanest-ass technical intelligence team in this whole fuckin' zone, mis­ ter. slothrop can call him duane, if he wants. "boogie, boogie, boogie! catch all 'em jungle bunnies back 'ere in 'at next car! sheee-oo!" "wait a minute," sez slothrop, "i think i've been asleep or some­ thing." his feet are cold. this marvy is really fat. pants bloused into shiny combat boots, roll of fat hanging over a web belt where he keeps his sunglasses and .45, hornrims, hair slicked back, eyes like safety valves that pop out at you whenever-as now-the pressure in his head gets too high. marvy hitched a lift on a p-47 from paris far as kassel, got coupled onto this train here west of heiligenstadt. he's headed for the mittel­ werke, like ian scuffling. needs to coordinate with some project hermes people from general electric. sure makes him nervous, those niggers next door. "hey, ought to be a good story for you people. warn the folks back home." "are they gis?" "shit no. kraut. south-west african. something. you mean you don't know about that? come on. aw. limey intelligence sure ain't too intel­ ligent, hahah, no offense understand. i thought the whole world knew." follows a lurid tale-which sounds like something shaef made up, coebbels's less than giddy imagination reaching no further than alpine redoubts and such-of hitler's scheme for setting up a nazi empire in black africa, which fell through after old blood 'n' guts handed rom­ mel's ass to him in the desert. " 'here's yer ass, general.' 'ach du lieber! mein arsch! yah-hahaha ... '" clutching comically at the seat of his own large trousers. well, the black cadres had no more future in af­ rica, stayed on in germany as governments-in-exile without even official recognition, drifted somehow into the ordnance branch of the german 287 "'1 .. c � -. __ ,� __ � �_ =1:;: :> i �-���'�� -/ --l 'f:�' .. ,.,i-i• '" _. ••• ••.•.• .• �;ji , army, and pretty soon learned how to be rocket technicians. now they were just running loose. wild. haven't been interned as p /ws, far as marvy knows they haven't even been disarmed. "not enough we have to worry about russkys, frogs, limeys-hey, beg pardon, buddy. now we got not just niggers you see, but kraut niggers. well, jesus. v-e day just about everyplace you had a rocket, you had you a nigger. never any all-boogie batteries, understand. even the krauts couldn't be that daffy! one battery, that's 81 men, plus all your support, your launch-control, power, propellants, your surveying-champ, that'd sure be one heap 0' niggers all in one place. but are they still all scattered out, like theywere? you find out, you got you a scoop, friend. cause if they're gettin' together now, oh dat's bi-i-i-g trouble! there's at least two dozen in that car-right down there, look. a-and they're headin' for nordhausen, pal!" a fat finger-poke in the chest with each word, "hah? whatcha think they have in mind? you know what i think? they have a plan. yeah. i think it's rockets. don't ask me how, it's just something i feel here, in m'heart, a-and you know, that's awful dangerous. you can't trust themwith rockets? they're a childlike race. brains are smaller." "but our patience," suggests a calm voice now out of the darkness, "our patience is enormous, though perhaps not unlimited." so saying, atall african with a full imperial beard steps up grabs the fat american, who has time to utter one short yell before being flung bodily over the side. slothrop and the african watch the major bounce down the em­ bankment behind them, arms and legs flying, out of sight. firs crowd the hills. a crescent moon has risen over one ragged crest. the man introduces himself in english, as oberst enzian, of the schwarzkommando. he apologizes for his show of temper, notes slo­ throp's armband, declines an interview before slothrop can get in aword. "there's no story. we're dps, like everybody else." "the major seemed worried that you're headed for nordhausen." "marvy is going to be an annoyance, i can tell. still, he doesn't pose as much of a problem as-" he peers at slothrop. "hmm. are you re­ ally a war correspondent?" "no." ((a free agent, i'd guess." "don't know about that (free,' oberst." "but you are free. we all are. you'll see. before long." he steps away �own the spine of �e freighuop, waving a beckoning german good-by.before long. . . . slothrop sits on the rooftop, rubbing his bare feet. a friend? a goodomen? black rocket troops? what bizarre shit? 288 -, '\. . " . .. -�. .. �.--_.•. _-:".�.,�. '. well good mornin' gang, let's start it off with a bang, so long to double-u double-u two-o-o-o! now the fightin's over and we're all in clover and i'm here ta bring sunshine to youhey there herman the german, stop yer fussin' and squirmin', don'tcha know you're goin' home ta stay­ no, there's never a frown, here in rocket, sock-it town, where ev'ry day's a beautiful day­ (quit kvetchin', gretchen!) go on and have a beautiful daa-aay! nordhausen in the morning: the lea is a green salad, crisp with rain­ drops. everything is fresh, washed. the harz hump up all around, dark slopes bearded to the tops with spruce, fir and larch. high-gabled houses, sheets of water reflecting the sky, muddy streets, american and russian gis pouring in and out the doors of the taverns and makeshift pxs, everybody packing a sidearm. meadows and logged-off wedges up on the mountainsides flow with mottled light as rainclouds blow away over thuringia. castles perch high over the town, sailing in and out of torn clouds. old horses with smudged knobby knees, short-legged and big-chested, pull wagonloads of barrels, necks straining at twin collars chained together, heavy horseshoes sending mudflowers at each wet clop, down from the vineyards to the taverns. slothrop wanders into a roofless part of town. old people in black are bat flittering among the walls. shops and dwellings here are all long­ looted by the slave laborers liberated from the dora camp. lotta those fags still around, with baskets and 175 badges out on display, staring moistly from doorways. from the glassless bay window of a dress shop, in the dimness behind a plaster dummy lying bald and sprawled, arms raised to sky, hands curved for bouquets or cocktail glasses they'll never hold again, slothrop hears a girl singing. accompanying herself on a bal­ alaika. one of those sad little parisian-soundina tunes in 3/4: love never goes away, never completely dies, always some souvenir takes us by sad surprise. ,,�. l_______ • ------------� �---=------" !;7 1 � r-� _ --/ --/. �', , •• , • •••• c you went away from me, one rose was left behind­ pressed in my book of hours, that is the rose i find. . . . though it's another year, though it's another me, under the rose is a drying tear, under my linden tree. . love never goes away, not if it's really true, it can return, by night, by day, tender and green and new as the leaves from a linden tree, love, that i left with you. her name turns out to be geli tripping, and the balalaika belongs to a soviet intelligence officer named tchitcherine. in a way, geli does too-part-time, anyhow. seems this tchitcherine maintains a harem, a girl in every rocket-town in the zone. yup, another rocket maniac. slo­ throp feels like a tourist. geli talks about her young man. they sit in her roofless room drinking a pale wine known hereabouts as nordhauser schattensaft. overhead, black birds with yellow beaks lace the sky, looping in the sunlight from their nests up in the mountain castles and down in the city ruins. far away, perhaps in the marketplace, a truck convoy is idling all its en­ gines, the smell of exhaust washing over the maze of walls, where moss creeps, water oozes, roaches seek purchase, walls that baffle the motor sound so that it seems to come in from all directions. she's thin, a bit awkward, very young. nowhere in her eyes is there any sign of corrosion-she might have spent all her war roofed and se­ cure, tranquil, playing with small forest animals in a rear area some­ place. her song, she admits, sighing, is mostly wishful thinking. "when he's away, he's away. when you came in i almost thought you were tchitcherine. " "nope. just a hard-working newshound, is all. no rockets, no ha­ rems." "it's an arrangement," she tells him. "it's so unorganized out here. there have to be arrangements. you'll find out." indeed he will-he'll find thousands of arrangements, for warmth, love, food, simple move­ ment along roads, tracks and canals. even g-5, living its fantasy of 290 �_:_:."' .. '.' � .. ..:.. �. � ' ",. . �-,:_". --_---'----_ , "�� .. �----; ---. , . -", -+� .. " " •• -., •••,,''p�ft,.� ri"'; being the only government in germany now, is just the arrangement for being victorious, is all. no more or less real than all these others so pri­ vate, silent, and lost to history. slothrop, though he doesn't know it yet, is as properly constituted a state as any other in the zone these days. not paranoia. just how it is. temporary alliances, knit and undone. he and geli reach their arrangement hidden from the occupied streets by remnants of walls, in an old fourposter bed facing a dark pier glass. out the roof that isn't there he can see a long tree-covered mountain ascend­ ing. wine on her breath, nests of down in the hollows of her arms, thighs with the spring of saplings in wind. he's barely inside her before she comes, a fantasy about tchitcherine in progress, clear and touch­ ingly, across her face. this irritates slothrop, but doesn't keep him from coming himself. the foolishness begins immediately on detumescence, amusing ques­ tions like, what kind of word has gone out to keep everybody away from geli but me? or, is it that something about me reminds her of tchitch­ erine, and if so, what? and, say, where's that tchitcherine right now? he dozes off, is roused by her lips, fingers, dewy legs sliding along his. the sun jumps across their section of sky, gets eclipsed by a breast, is reflected out of her child's eyes . . . then clouds, rain for which she puts up a green tarp with tassels she's sewn on, canopy style . . . rain sluices down off the tassels, cold and loud. night. she feeds him boiled cabbage with an old heirloom of a spoon with a crest on it. they drink more of that wine. shadows are soft verdigris. the rain has stopped. somewhere kids go booting an empty gas can over the cobblestones. something comes flapping in out of the sky: talons scrabble along the top of the canopy. "what's that?" half awake and she's got the covers again, c'mon celio ... "my owl," sez celio "wernher. there's a candy bar in the top drawer of the chiffonier, liebchen, would you mind feeding him?" liebchen indeed. staggering off the bed, vertical for the first time all day, slothrop removes a baby ruth from its wrapper, clears his throat, decides not to ask her how she came by it because he knows, and lobs the thing up on the canopy for that wernher. soon, lying together again, they hear peanuts crunching, and a clacking beak. "candy bars," slothrop grouches. "what's the matter with him? don't you know he's supposed to be out foraging, for live mice or some shit? you've turned him into a house owl." "you're pretty lazy yourself." baby fingers creeping down along his ribs. ii'ffi' ......... / . . ..._ .. ,,--=---��----� f/�"-� �--/ --/. .. �..• ,0.-4•... _ ..•.•.•.•.••••.•.••• '.'6 .• _ ._ . _ •.•.. i.. . "well-x-i bet-cut it out-i bet that tchitcherine doesn't have to get up and feed that owl." she cools, the hand stopping where it is. "he loves tchitcherine. he never comes to be fed, unless tchitcherine's here." slothrop's turn to cool. more correctly, freeze. "uh, but, you don't mean that tchitcherine is actually, uh " "he was supposed to be," sighing. "oh. when?" "this morning. he's late. it happens." slothrop's off the bed halfway across the room with a softoff, one sock on and the other in his teeth, head through one armhole of his under­ shirt, fly zipper jammed, yelling shit. "my brave englishman," she drawls. "why didn't you bring this up earlier, geli, huh?" "oh, come back. it's nighttime, he's with a woman someplace. he can't sleep alone." "i hope you can." "hush. come here. you can't go out with nothing on your feet. i'll give you a pair of his old boots and tell you all his secrets." "secrets?" look out, slothrop. "why should i want to know-" "you're not a war correspondent." "why does everybody keep saying that? nobody believes me. of course i'm a war correspondent." shaking the brassard at her. "can't you read? sez 'war correspondent.' i even have a mustache, here, don't i? just like that ernest hemingway." "oh. then i imagine you wouldn't be looking for rocket number 00000 after all. it was just a silly idea i had. i'm sorry." oh boy, am i gonna get out of here, sez slothrop to himself, this is a badger game if i ever saw one, man. who else would be interested in the one rocket out of 6000 that carried the imipolex g device? "and you couldn't care less about the schwarzgerat, either," she keeps on. she keeps on. "the what?" "they also called it s-gerat." next higher assembly, slothrop, remember? wernher, up on the can­ opy, is hooting. a signal to that tchitcherine, no doubt. paranoids are not paranoids (proverb 5) because they're paranoid,but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberatelyinto paranoid situations. "now how on earth," elaborately uncorking a fresh bottle of nord­ hauser schattensaft, thoppp, best cary grant imitation he can summon 292 "" .. ' -,.. � ' . . . . . ��_� -----_."_. . , :::---� � _ -t ----, , . -, ",., --'. . ...._ ... _--_&, '."'-'=��� �� to �e( e,re don't un�r oio, aiel! ora. rno� up with bowels so echoing tight, suavely refilling glasses, handing one to her, "would a sweet, young, thing, like you, know anything, about rocket, hahd-weah?" "i read vaslav's mail," as if it's a dumb question, which it is. "you shouldn't be blabbing to random strangers like this. if he finds out, he'll murder you." "i like you. i like intrigue. i like playing." "maybe you like to get people in trouble." "all right." out with the lower lip. "o.k., o.k., tell me about it. but i don't know if the guardian will even be interested. my editors are a rather stuffy lot, you know." goose bumps crowd her bare little breasts. "i posed once for a rocket insignia. perhaps you've seen it. a pretty young witch straddling an ai. carrying her obsolete broom over her shoulder. i was voted the sweet­ heart of 31 art. abt. (mot) 485." "are you a real witch?" "i think i have tendencies. have you been up to the brocken yet?" "just hit town, actually." "i've been up there every walpurgisnacht since i had my first period. i'll take you, if you like." "tell me about this, this 'schwarzgerat.' " "i thought you weren't interested." "how can i know if i'm interested or not if i don't even know what i'm supposed or not supposed to be interested in?" "you must be a correspondent. you have a way with words." tchitcherine comes roaring through the window, a nagant blazing in his fist. tchitcherine lands in a parachute and fells slothrop with one judo chop. tchitcherine drives a stalin tank right into the room, and blasts slothrop with a 76 mm shell. thanks for stalling him, liebchen, he was a spy, well, cheerio, i'm off to peenemiinde and a nubile polish wench with tits like vanilla ice cream, check you out later. "i have to go, i think," slothrop sez, "typewriter needs a new ribbon, gotta sharpen pencils, you know how it is-" "i told you, he won't be here tonight." "why? is he out after that schwarzgeriit, eh?" "no. he hasn't heard the latest. the message came in from stettin yesterday." "in clear, of course." "why not?" "couldn't be very important." "it's for sale." 293 �. '"i' �-��,-----=. -_ . � � 1;/ �"�:, --/ --/. • � .•••11_" �.. . .. . . ..•. . "the message?" �it "the s-gerat, you pill. a man in swinerniinde can get it. half a mil�als lion swiss francs, if you're in the market. he waits on the strand-prome�ree nade, every day till noon. he'll be wearing a white suit." oh yeah? "blodgett waxwing." "it didn't give the name. but i don't think it's waxwing. he sticks close to the mediterranean." "you get around." "waxwing is already a legend around the zone. so is tchitcherine. for all i know, so are you. what was your name?" "cary grant. ge-li, ge-li, ge-li.... listen, swinemiinde, that's in that soviet zone, ain't it." mo "you sound like a german. forget frontiers now. forget subdivisions. ronl there aren't any." hllcl "there are soldiers." iler "that's right." staring at him. "but that's different." m "oh." �i "you'll learn. it's all been suspended. vaslav calls it an 'interregnum.' iouyou only have to flow along with it." iliol"gonna flow outa here now, kid. thanx for the info, and a tip of the �onscuffling hat to ya-" lni�"please stay." curled on the bed, her eyes about to spill over with �eltears. aw, shit, slothrop you sucker ... but she's just a little kid. . . . iw"come here... ." �nqthe minute he puts it in, though, she goes wicked and a little crazy, wnslashing at his legs, shoulders, and ass with chewed-down fingernails 100sharp as a saw. considerate slothrop is trying to hold off coming till renshe's ready when all of a sudden something heavy, feathered, and many­pointed comes crashing down onto the small of his back, bounces off triggering him and as it turns out geli too zonnggg! eeeeee ... oh, gee whiz. wings flap and wernher-for it is he-ascends into the dark­ ness. "fucking bird," slothrop screams, "he tries that again i'll give him ababy ruth right up his ass, boy-" it's a plot it's a plot it's pavlovianconditioning! or something, "tchitcherine trained him to do that, right?" "wrong! i trained him to do that." she's smiling at him so four-year­old happy and not holding a thing back, that slothrop decides to believe everything she's been telling him. "you are a witch." paranoid that he is, he snuggles down under the counterpane with the long-legged sorceress, lights a cigarette, and de294 � .... ••••• • • , •• 1'" ••� •• •.•••. ' .••••.• • • .... . •••• '. . / -= --" _. . --�:. _-_;,;.----��------i -, " . ��" ��_ � /. .. _ .. ,_ _.., .•• 't!"� f". ri"': a mil. rom1· enot, '�iolli, urn, spite endless tchitcherines vaulting in over the roofless walls with arse­ nals of disaster all for him, even falls asleep, presently, in her bare and open arms. d d d d d d d it's a sunday-funnies dawn, very blue sky with gaudy pink clouds in it. mud across the cobblestones is so slick it reflects light, so that you walk not streets but these long streaky cuts of raw meat, hock of werewolf, gammon of beast. tchitcherine has big feet. geli had to stuff pieces of an old chemise in the toes of his boots so they'd fit slothrop. dodging constantly for jeeps, ten-ton lorries, russians on horseback, he finally hitches a ride from an 18-year-old american first lieutenant in a gray mercedes staff car with dents all over it. slothrop frisks mustaches, flashes his armband, feeling defensive. the sun's already warm. there's a smell of evergreens on the mountains. this rail driving, who's attached to the tank company guarding the mittelwerke, doesn't think slothrop should have any trouble getting inside. english spog have come and gone. right now american army ordnance people are busy crating and shipping out parts and tools for a hundred a4s. a big hassle. "trying to get it all out before the russians come to take over." interregnum. ci­ vilians and bureaucrats show up every day, high-level tourists, to stare and go wow. "guess nobody's seen 'em this big before. i don't know what it is. like a burlesque crowd. not gonna do anything, just here to look. most of them bring cameras. notice you didn't. we have them for rent at the main gate, if you're interested." one of many hustles. yellow james the cook has got him a swell little sandwich wagon, you can hear him in the tunnels calling, "come an' get 'em! hot 'n' cold and drippin' with greens!" and there'll be grease on the glasses of half these gobbling fools in another five minutes. nick de profundis, the company lounge lizard, has surprised everybody by changing, inside the phone booth of factory spaces here, to an energetic businessman, selling a4 souvenirs: small items that can be worked into keychains, money clips or a scatter-pin for that special gal back home, burner cups of brass off the combustion chambers, ball bearings from the servos, and this week the hep item seems to be sa 100 acorn diodes, cute little mixing valves looted out of the telefunken units, and the even rarer sa 102s, which of course fetch a higher price. and there's "micro" graham, who's let his sideburns grow and lurks in the stollen where the gullible visitors stray: "pssst." 295 "'-i' ����--�-� �;? -, . i 4--��'�'---� � --/ � -.. .,...... . _ . . . � ,/_ "pssst?" "forget it." "well now you've got me curious." "thought you looked like a sport. you taking the tour?" "1-1 only stepped away for a second. really, i'm going right back. ... " "finding it a little dull?" oily micro moves in on his mark. "ever wonder to yourself: 'what really went on in here?'?" the visitor who is willing to spend extravagant sums is rarely disap­ pointed. micro knows the secret doors to rock passages that lead through to dora, the prison camp next to the mittelwerke. each mem­ ber of the party is given his own electric lantern. there is hurried, basic instruction on what to do in case of any encounter with the dead. "re­ member they were always on the defensive here. when the americans liberated dora, the prisoners who were still alive went on a rampage after the material-they looted, they ate and drank themselves sick. for others, death came like the american army, and liberated them spir­ itually. so they're apt to be on a spiritual rampage now. guard your thoughts. use the natural balance of your mind against them. they'll be coming at you off-balance, remember." a popular attraction is the elegant raumwaffe spacesuit wardrobe, designed by famous military couturier heini of berlin. not only are there turnouts dazzling enough to thrill even the juvenile leads of a space-operetta, down to the oddly-colored television images flickering across their toenails, but heini has even thought of silks for the amusing little space-jockeys (raum-jockeier) with their electric whips, who will someday zoom about just outside the barrier-glow of the raketen-stadt, astride "horses" of polished meteorite all with the same stylized face (a high-contrast imago of the horse that follows you, emphasis on its de­ mented eyes, its teeth, the darkness under its hindquarters . . .), with the propulsive gases blowing like farts out their tail ends-the juvenileleads giggle together at this naughty bathroom moment, and slowly, inwhat's hardly more than a sigh of gravity here, go bobbing, each radiant in a display of fluorescent plastics, back in to the waltz, the strangelycommunal waltz of the future, a slightly, disquietingly grainy-disso­ nant chorale implied here in the whirling silence of faces, the bare shoulderblades slung so space-viennese, so jaded with tomorrow. . . . then come-the space helmets! at first you may be alarmed, on no­ ticing that they appear to be fashioned from skulls. at least the upperdome of this unpleasant headgear is certainly the skull of some manlike creature built to a larger scale. . . . perhaps titans lived under this 296 �•••••••_.. •• .: ,._ •••_.._ •••••• , ... _ ..... ro.... -. • /�2' • � .�----��-, -, ��--..::; _--, " . -�\ _ _ � _ ...,�---� � � .•••,,.� "'. ttl"'; 'ever no' ��er , ike lliil mountain, and their skulls got harvested like giant mushrooms. . . . the eye-sockets are fitted with quartz lenses. filters may be slipped in. nasal bone and upper teeth have been replaced by a metal breathing apparatus, full of slots and grating. corresponding to the jaw is a built­ up section, almost a facial codpiece, of iron and ebonite, perhaps hous­ ing a radio unit, thrusting forward in black fatality. for an extra few marks you are allowed to slip one of these helmets on. once inside these yellow caverns, looking out now through neutral-density orbits, the sound of your breath hissing up and around the bone spaces, what you thought was a balanced mind is little help. the compartment the schwarzkommando were quartered in is no longer an amusing travel­ ogue of native savages taking on ways of the z ist century. the milk cal­ abashes appear only to be made from some plastic. on the spot where tradition sez enzian had his illumination, in the course of a wet dream i where he coupled with a slender white rocket, there is the dark stain, miraculously still wet, and a smell you understand is meant to be that of . semen-but it is really closer to soap, or bleach. the wall-paintings lose their intended primitive crudeness and take on primitive spatiality, depth and brilliance-transform, indeed, to dioramas on the theme "the promise of space travel." lit sharply by carbide light which hisses and smells like the bad breath of someone quite familiar to you, the view commands your stare. after a few minutes it becomes possible to make out actual movement down there, even at the immense dis­ tances implied by the scale: yes, we're hanging now down the last limb of our trajectory in to the raketen-stadt, a difficult night of magnetic storm behind us, eddy currents still shimmering through all our steel like raindrops that cling to vehicle windows . . . yes, it is a city: vege­ table "ho-lyl"s and "isn't that something!"s go away echoing as we crowd about the bloom of window in this salt underground. . . . strangely, these are not the symmetries we were programmed to expect, not the fins, the streamlined corners, pylons, or simple solid geometries of the official vision at all-that's for the ribbon clerks back on the tour, in the numbered stollen. no, this rocket-city, so whitely lit against the calm dimness of space, is set up deliberately to avoid sym­ metry, allow complexity, introduce terror (from the preamble to the articles of immachination)-but tourists have to connect the look of it back to things they remember from their times and planet-back to the wine bottle smashed in the basin, the bristlecone pines outracing death for millennia, concrete roads abandoned years ago, hairdos of the late 1930s, indole molecules, especially polymerized indoles, as in imipolex g297 ... e.c :::: � ..,-".... -------. . . .. --�� • f � 1 � r;---� wait-which one of them was thinking that? monitors, get a fix on it, hurry upbut the target slips away. "they handle their own security down in­ side," the young rail is telling slothrop, "we're here for surface guard only. our responsibility ends at stollen number zero, power and light. it's really a pretty soft racket for us." life is good, and nobody's looking forward much to redeployment. there are frauleins for screwing, cook­ ing, and doing your laundry. he can put slothrop on to champagne, furs, cameras, cigarettes .... can't just be interested in rockets, can he, that's crazy. he's right. one of the sweetest fruits of victory, after sleep and looting, must be the chance to ignore no-parking signs. there are struck ps in circles upall over the place, nailed on trees, wired on girderwork, but the main tunnel entrances are pretty well blocked with vehicles by the time the dimpled mercedes arrives. "shit," hollers the young tanker, turns off his t�mre engine and leaves the german short at no particular angle on the broad rom�la muddy apron. leaving keys in the car too, slothrop's learning to notice �tnralitems like this. . . . �jilirothe entrance to the tunnel is shaped like a parabola. the albert :j�, , , speer touch. somebody during the thirties was big on parabolas any��ucer.how, and albert speer was in charge of the new german architecture mjmaothen, and later he went on to become minister of munitions, and nomi�idtomrl�nal chief customer for the ai. this parabola here happens to be the inilloiliro spiration of a speer disciple named etzel olsch. he had noted this pai,m,��asinlrabola shape around on autobahn overpasses, sports stadiums u.s.w., flant�and thought it was the most contemporary thing he'd ever seen. imag;oo�o\vouine his astonishment on finding that the parabola was also the shape of !i�t�torthe path intended for the rocket through space. (what he actually said i�mit�in was, "oh, that's nice.") it was his mother who'd named him after attila rnilitrliliethe hun, and nobody ever found out why. his parabola has a high loft ��dorato it, and the railroad tracks run in underneath, steel into shadows. batl�r�\vertened cloth camouflage furls back at the edges. the mountain goes slop:�tofilieing away above, rock cropping out here and there among the bushes !,ilielebreand the trees. liliotneslothrop presents his sooper dooper shaef pass, signed off by ike 'l�rated"and even more authentic, by the colonel heading up the american the basi"special mission v-z" out of paris. a waxwing specialty of the house. b )�hlancompany, 47th armored infantry, 5th armored division appears to be jij�ngtoup to something besides security for this place. slothrop is shrugged on lit. thesethrough. there is a lot of moseying, drawling, and country humor l�untain 2g8 '" . " -, �=, ....••__... ..., °a.'.i0_"· "= � 'l..�_ • he ai�rt bolas anr­ chitectur� andnomi· beiliein· ed iliil �a' ms us,iv" een, ima�· e shape of tualirsalo fterattila a hi�h lott owl, bat· �oes slo�· e bushes around here. somebody must've been picking his nose. a couple days later slothrop will find a dried piece of snot on the card, a crystal brown visa for nordhausen. in past the white-topped guard towers. transformers buzz through the spring morning. someplace chains rattle and a tailgate drops. be­ tween ruts, high places, ridges of mud are beginning to dry out in the sun, to lighten and crumble. nearby the loud wake-up yawn and stretch of a train whistle cuts loose. in past a heap of bright metal spheres in daylight, with a comical sign pleez no squeez-a da oxygen-a unit, eh? how long, how long you sfacim-a dis country. . . . in under parabola and parable, straight into the mountain, sunlight gone, into the cold, the dark, the long echoes of the mittelwerke. there is that not-so-rare personality disorder known as tannhauser­ ism. some of us love to be taken under mountains, and not always with horny expectations-venus, frau holda, her sexual delights-no, many come, actually, for the gnomes, the critters smaller than you, for the se­ pulchral way time stretches along your hooded strolls down here, qui­ etly through courtyards that go for miles, with no anxiety about getting lost . . . no one stares, no one is waiting to judge you . . . out of the public eye . . . even a minnesinger needs to be alone . . . long cloudy­ day indoor walks . . . the comfort of a closed place, where everyone is in complete agreement about death. slothrop knows this place. not so much from maps he had to study at the casino as knowing it in the way you know someone is there. . . . plant generators are still supplying power. rarely a bare bulb will hollow out a region of light. as darkness is mined and transported from place to place like marble, so the light bulb is the chisel that delivers it from its inertia, and has become one of the great secret ikons of the hu­ mility, the multitudes who are passed over by god and history. when the dora prisoners went on their rampage, the light bulbs in the rocket works were the first to go: before food, before the delights to be looted out of the medical lockers and the hospital pharmacy in stollen number 1, these breakable, socketless (in germany the word for electric socket is also the word for mother-so, motherless too) images were what the "liberated" had to take.... the basic layout of the plant was another inspiration of etzel olsch, a nazi inspiration like the parabola, but again also a symbol be­ longing to the rocket. picture the letters ss each stretched lengthwise a bit. these are the two main tunnels, driven well over a mile into the mountain. or picture a ladder with a slight s-shaped ripple in it, lying fix on it, down in­ lee guara lnd light. y's loohn� �ing, cook­ hampa�1, tlets,canne,ng, must�circles u� t iliemam etimeilie tumsoffm the broaa h by ike funerican house,b is to de ggedon humor 299 �,� 0 �-� -• f 7��� � -/ -/... � .. , ..-".. '" . . . _--flat: 44 runglike stollen or cross-tunnels, linking the two main ones. a couple hundred feet of rock mountain, at the deepest, press down over­ head. but the shape is more than an elongated ss. apprentice hupla comes running in one day to tell the architect. "master!" he's yelling, "mas­ ter!" olsch has taken up quarters in the mittelwerke, insulated from the factory down a few private drifts that don't appear on any map of the place. he's getting into a grandiose idea of what an architect's life should be down here, insisting now on the title "master" from all his helpers. that isn't his only eccentricity, either. last three designs he proposed to the fuhrer all were visually in the groove, beautifully new german, except that none of the buildings will stay up. they look nor­ mal enough, but they are designed to fall down, like fat men at the opera falling asleep into someone's lap, shortly after the last rivet is driven, the last forms removed from the newly set allegorical statue.this is bisch's "deathwish" problem here, as the little helpers call it: it rates a lot of gossip in the commissary at meals, and beside the coffee urns out on the gloomy stone loading docks.... it's well after sunset now, each desk in this vaulted, almost outdoor bay has its own incandes­ cent light on. the gnomes sit out here, at night, with only their bulbs shining conditionally, precariously . . . it all might go dark so easily, inthe next second. . . . each gnome works in front of his drawing board. they're working late. there's a deadline-it's not clear if they're work­ ing overtime to meet it, or if they have already failed and are here as punishment. back in his office, etzel blsch can be heard singing. taste­less, low beer-hall songs. now he is lighting a cigar. both he and the gnome apprentice hupla who's just run in know that this is an explod­ing cigar, put in his humidor as a revolutionary gesture by persons un­known but so without power that it doesn't matter-"wait, master,don't light it-master, put it out, please, it's an exploding cigar!""proceed, hupla, with the intelligence that prompted your ratherrude entrance." "but-" "rupla . . ." puffing masterful clouds of cigar smoke."it-it's about the shape of the tunnels here, master." "don't flinch like that. i based that design on the double lightning-stroke, hupla=-the ss emblem." "but it's also a double integral sign! did you know that?""ah. yes: summe, summe, as leibniz said. well, isn't that-" blam. all right. but etzel bisch's genius was to be fatally receptive to im300 -, � . -'" --�-� ' .. -.-.--.----.� ••"���p,, "=. ne�, a over· cornel "mal. omilil ofilil �!'! ule allnti ign! nl ly �'ew knor· aline 'velli larue, li(:il co�ee !un�1 noel', ow�1 ilj,id oaij, lvorl· ere� a!iilolne �loo· ' !ull" asler, aililr nin�' oim· agery associated with the rocket. in the static space of the architect, he might've used a double integral now and then, early in his career, to find volumes under surfaces whose equations were known-masses, mo­ ments, centers of gravity. but it's been years since he's had to do with anything that basic. most of his calculating these days is with marks and pfennigs, not functions of idealistic rand b, naive x and y. . . . but in the dynamic space of the living rocket, the double integral has a different meaning. to integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stilled. . . . "meters per second" will in­ tegrate to "meters." the moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. it was never launched. it will never fall. in the guidance, this is what happened: a little pendulum was kept centered by a magnetic field. during launch, pulling gs, the pendulum would swing aft, off center. it had a coil attached to it. when the coil moved through the magnetic field, electric current flowed in the coil. as the pendulum was pushed off center by the acceleration of launch, cur­ rent would flow-the more acceleration, the more flow. so the rocket, on its own side of the flight, sensed acceleration first. men, tracking it, sensed position or distance first. to get to distance from acceleration, the rocket had to integrate twice-needed a moving coil, transformers, electrolytic cell, bridge of diodes, one tetrode (an extra grid to screen away capacitive coupling inside the tube), an elaborate dance of design precautions to get to what human eyes saw first of all-the distance along the flight path. there was that backward symmetry again, one that pointsman missed, but katje didn't. "a life of its own," she said. slothrop remem­ bers her reluctant smile, the mediterranean afternoon, the peeling twist of a eucalyptus trunk, the same pink, in that weakening light, as the american officer's trousers slothrop wore once upon a time, and the acid, the pungent smell of the leaves. . . . the current, flowing in the coil, passed a wheatstone bridge and charged up a capacitor. the charge was the time integral of the current flowing in the coil and bridge. advanced versions of this so-called "ig" guidance integrated twice, so that the charge gathering on one side of the capacitor grew di­ rectly as the distance the rocket had traveled. before launch, the other side of the cell had been charged up to a level representing the distance to a particular point out in space. brennschluss exactly here would make the rocket go on to hit 1000 yards east of waterloo station. at the instant the charge (bil) accumulating in flight equaled the preset charge (ail) on the other side, the capacitor discharged. a switch closed, fuel cut off, burning ended. the rocket was on its own. 301 ·i� �--:«!�--�--.... � • i ;y���� �� i � --. / r��·,··#"'·'···· ,. ,r that is one meaning of the shape of the tunnels down here in the mit­ telwerke. another may be the ancient rune that stands for the yew tree, or death. the double integral stood in etzel olsch's subconscious for the method of finding hidden centers, inertias unknown, as if monoliths had been left for him in the twilight, left behind by some corrupted idea of "civilization," in which eagles cast in concrete stand ten meters high at the corners of the stadiums where the people, a corrupted idea of "the people" are gathering, in which birds do not fly, in which imagi­ nary centers far down inside the solid fatality of stone are thought of not as "heart," "plexus," "consciousness," (the voice speaking here grows more ironic, closer to tears which are not all theatre, as the list goes on . . .)" sanctuary," "dream of motion," "cyst of the eternal present," or "gravity's gray eminence among the councils of the living stone." no, as none of these, but instead a point in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning must end, never launched, never to fall. and what is the specific shape whose center of gravity is the brennschluss point? don't jump at an infinite number of possible shapes. there's only one. it is most likely an interface between one order of things and an­ other. there's a brennschluss point for every firing site. they still hang up there, all of them, a constellation waiting to have a 13th sign of thezodiac named for it ... but they lie so close to earth that from many places they can't be seen at all, and from different places inside the zone where they can be seen, they fall into completely different pat­terns.... double integral is also the shape of lovers curled asleep, which iswhere slothrop wishes he were now-all the way back with katje, evenlost as he might feel again, even more vulnerable than now-even (be­ cause he still honestly misses her), preserved by accident, in ways hecan't help seeing, accident whose own much colder honesty each loverhas only the other to protect him from. . . . could he live like that? would they ever agree to let him and katje live like that? he's had nothing to say to anyone about her. it's not the gentlemanly reflex thatmade him edit, switch names, insert fantasies into the yarns he spun fortantivy back in the achtung office, so much as the primitive fear ofhaving a soul captured by a likeness of image or by a name. . . . he wants to preserve what he can of her from their several entropies, fromtheir softsoaping and their money: maybe he thinks that if he can do it for her he can also do it for himself . . . although that's awful close to nobility for slothrop and the penis he thought was his own.in the sheet-metal ducting that snakes like a spine along the over­head, plant ventilation moans. now and then it sounds like voices. 302 n� �iven \ �ilieinsid �� �e tun i �elailie �ra§ squirt �noin� wh �llntersof t iliiliatfelt wlon�ilie � t�re in ilie � �ayou feell e, 'i oroil"il ij�ael,some tuman re�ec , relealeilietr taunted,full . iliir �iane-c runawa!'f0r illarimrle \li�nthm fujrren .• �)'hnic iii! "", '''--�-:-----=-�� .---..�/ .. ' ....� •• � ...'---.,.. ....-.... --'.r.!�!!'-��:.' traffic from somewhere remote. it's not as if they were discussing slo­ throp directly, understand. but he wishes he could hear it better. ... lakes of light, portages of darkness. the concrete facing of the tunnel has given way to whitewash over chunky fault-surfaces, phony-looking as the inside of an amusement-park cave. entrances to cross-tunnels slip by like tuned pipes with an airflow at their mouths ... once upon a time lathes did screech, playful machinists had shootouts with little brass squirt cans of cutting oil . . . knuckles were bloodied against grinding wheels, pores, creases and quicks were stabbed by the fine splinters of steel ... tubeworks of alloy and glass contracted tinkling in air that felt like the dead of winter, and amber light raced in phalanx among the small neon bulbs. once, all this did happen. it is hard down here in the mittelwerke to live in the present for very long. the nostal­ gia you feel is not your own, but it's potent. all the objects have grown still, drowned, enfeebled with evening, terminal evening. tough skins of oxides, some only a molecule thick, shroud the metal surfaces, fade out human reflection. straw-colored drive belts of polyvinyl alcohol sag and release their last traces of industrial odor. though found adrift and haunted, full of signs of recent human tenancy, this is not the legendary ship marie-celeste-it isn't bounded so neatly, these tracks underfoot run away fore and aft into all stilled europe, and our flesh doesn't sweat and pimple here for the domestic mysteries, the attic horror of what might have happened so much as for our knowledge of what likely did happen ... it was always easy, in open and lonely places, to be visited by panic wilderness fear, but these are the urban fantods here, that come to get you when you are lost or isolate inside the way time is pass­ ing, when there is no more history, no time-traveling capsule to find your way back to, only the lateness and the absence that fill a great rail­ way shed after the capital has been evacuated, and the goat-god's city cousins wait for you at the edges of the light, playing the tunes they al­ ways played, but more audible now, because everything else has gone away or fallen silent . . . barn-swallow souls, fashioned of brown twi­ light, rise toward the white ceilings ... they are unique to the zone, they answer to the new uncertainty. ghosts used to be either likenesses of the dead or wraiths of the living. but here in the zone categories have been blurred badly. the status of the name you miss, love, and search for now has grown ambiguous and remote, but this is even more than the bureaucracy of mass absence-some still live, some have died, but many, many have forgotten which they are. their likenesses will not serve. down here are only wrappings left in the light, in the dark: im­ ages of the uncertainty. . . . 303 .�--..,-:::�,:� :. ..' � .,.. " -: .,. ,::/ post-at humanity is moving, hammering, and shouting among the tunnels. slothrop will catch sight of badged civilians in khaki, helmet liners with ge stenciled on, sometimes getting a nod, eyeglasses flashing under a distant light bulb, most often ignored. military working parties go at route-step bitching in and out, carrying crates. slothrop is hungry and yellow james is nowhere in sight. but there is nobody down here even going to say howdy to, much less feed, the free lance ian scuffling. no, wait, by golly here comes a delegation of girls in tight pink lab coats reaching just to the tops of bare thighs, tripping up the tunnel on stylish gold wedgies "ah, so reizend ist!" too many to hug at once, "hiibsch, was?" now now ladies one at a time, they are giggling and reaching to drape around his neck lush garlands of silvery b nuts and flange fittings, scarlet resistors and bright-yellow capacitors strung like little sausages, scraps of gasketry, miles of aluminum shavings as curly-bouncy 'n' bright as shirley temple's head-hey hogan ya can keep yer hula girls -and where are they taking him here? into an empty stollen, where they all commence a fabulous orgy, which goes on for days and days, full of poppies, play, singing, and carrying on. moving into stollen 20 and up, traffic grows heavier. this was the a4 part of the factory, which the rocket shared with v-l and turboprop assemblies. out of these stollen, the 20s, 30s, and 40s, rocket compo­ nents were fed out crosswise into the two main assembly lines. as you walk deeper, you retrace the rocket's becoming: superchargers, center sections, nose assemblies, power units, controls, tail sections ... lotta these tail sections still around here, stacked alternately fins up/fins down, row on row identical, dimpled ripply metal surfaces. slothrop moseys along looking at his face in them, watching it warp and slide by, just a big underground fun house here folks. . . . empty dollies with small metal wheels chain away back down the tunnel: they carry four­ bladed arrowhead shapes that point at the ceiling-oh. right-the pointed holders must've fit inside the expansion nozzles of the thrust chambers, sure enough here comes a bunch of them, big fucking things tall as slothrop, capital as painted in white near the burner cups. . . . overhead the fat and sinuous white-lagged pipes are lurking, and the steel lamps give no light out of their scorched skullcap reflectors . . . down the tunnel's centerline run lally columns, slender, gray, the ex­ posed threads locked in rust of long standing . . . blue shadows wash through the spare-parts cages, set on planking and i beams hung from damp and chimney-sized columns of brick . . . glass-wool insulation lies beside the tracks, heaped like snow. . . . final assembly went on in stollen 41. the cross-tunnel is 50 feet _. . ,;--_ i aeep, to a voices disti (oncrete. p �na rubicun rit, ana rna � nu�e oak • hinaenbur(1 ��aa. ordn � tnetune imlorne re ; �ot�1 clippi rdorethe drunh , �11rlum �ffieupn r ) it �loilif) 01e\1 in i � deep, to accommodate the finished rocket. sounds of carousing, of voices distinctly unbalanced, come welling up, reverberating off of the concrete. personnel are weaving back up the main tunnel with a glassy and rubicund look to their faces. slothrop squints down into this long pit, and makes out a crowd of americans and russians gathered around a huge oak beer barrel. a gnome-size german civilian with a red von hindenburg mustache is dispensing steins of what looks to be mostly head. ordnance smoke-puffs flicker on nearly every sleeve. the ameri­ cans are singing rocket limericks there once was a thing called a v-2, to pilot which you did not need to­ you just pushed a button, and it would leave nuttin' but stiffs and big holes and debris, too. the tune is known universally among american fraternity boys. but for some reason it is being sung here in german storm trooper style: notes clipping off sharp at the end of each line, then a pulse of silence before the attack on the next line. [refrain:] ja, ja, ja, ja! in prussia they never eat pussy! there ain't hardly cats enough, there's garbage and that's enough, so waltz me around again, russky! drunks are hanging from steel ladders and draped over catwalks. beer fumes crawl in the long cavern, among pieces of olive-drab rocket, some upright, some lying on their sides. there was a young fellow named crockett, who had an affair with a rocket. if you saw them out there you'd be tempted to stare, but if you ain't tried it, don't knock it! slothrop is hungry and thirsty. despite the clear and present miasma of evil in stollen 41, he starts looking for some way to go down there 305 --��-�-...... :"",�:.�, .. ., . .. . .•.•.• . . ,#':� ,� and maybe score some of that lunch. turns out the only way down is by a cable, hooked to an overhead hoist. a fat cracker pfc. lounges at the controls, sucking on a bottle of wine. "go ahead, jackson, i'll give you a good ride. they taught me how to run these in the wpa." bracing his mustache in what he figures to be a stiff upper lip, ian scuffling climbs on, one foot through an eye-splice, the other hanging free. an electric motor whines, slothrop lets go the last steel railing and clutches on to the cable as 50 feet of twilit space appears underneath him. db . . . rolling out over stollen 41, heads milling far below, beer foam bob­ bing like torches in the shadows-suddenly the motor cuts off and he's falling like a rock. oh fuck, "too young!" he screams, voice pitched way too high so it comes out like a teenager on the radio, which ordinar­ ily would be embarrassing, but here's the concrete floor rushing up at him, he can see every shuttering mark, every dark crystal of thuringian sand he's going to be splashed over-not even a body nearby to get him off with only multiple fractures. . . . with about ten feet to go the pfc. puts on the brakes. maniacal laughter from above and behind. the cable, brought up taut, sings under slothrop's hand till he loses his grip on it, falls, and is carried gently upside down and hanging by the foot, in among funseekers around the beer keg who, used to this form of arrival by now, only continue their singing: there was a young fellow named hector, who was fond of a launcher-erector. but the squishes and pops of acute pressure drops wrecked hector's hydraulic connector. each young american in turn getting to his feet (optional), raising his tankard, and singing about different ways of doing it with the ai or its related hardware. slothrop does not know that they are singing to him, and neither do they. he eyes the inverted scene with a certain unease: with his brain approaching the frontiers of red-out, there comes to him the peculiar notion that it's lyle bland who has hold of his ankle here. so he is borne stately into the fringes of the party. "hey!" observes a crewcut youth, "l-it's tarzan or something! ha! ha!" half a dozen ord­ nance people, juiced and roaring happily, grab for slothrop. after a lot of twisting and shoving, the foot is freed from its wire loop. the hoist whines back the way it came, to its prankish operator and the next fool he can talk into riding it. 306 • • ;;.--i • toe rus i frowning, n woeilierili �mebody �ae), "gee )ock aroun j "\\�o's over �lothro l�mn, 00, u� for air, foam, o� m [om ilie ed �er!""hi t "what' �rjust lilt's �i �ea�lin uen; u ili ndrrecel "l\ w "awa\ "thou� "�ure, marl'\' 1 fuem�n " ��tenin(j , neliveta rle!l'eli i ' there once was a fellow named moorehead, who had an affair with a warhead. his wife moved away the very next dayshe was always kind of a sorehead. the russians are drinking relentlessly and in silence, shuffling boots, frowning, maybe trying to translate these limericks. it isn't clear whether the americans are here on russian sufferance or vice versa. somebody presses on slothrop a shell-case, ice cold, foaming down the sides. "gee, we weren't expecting the english too. some party, huh? stick around-he'll be along in a minute." "who's that." thousands of these luminous worms are wriggling all over slothrop's field of vision, and his foot is beginning to prickle awake again. oh, this beer here is cold, cold and hop-bitter, no point coming up for air, gulp, till it's all-hahhhh. his nose comes up drowned in foam, his mustache white and bubbly too. all at once comes shouting from the edges of the company. "here he is, here he is!" "give him a beer!" "hi there, major, babes, sir!" there was a technician named urban, who had an affair with a turbine. "it's much nicer," he said, "than a woman in bed, and it's sure as hell cheaper than bourbon!" "what's happening," inquires slothrop through the head of another beer just materialized in his hand. "it's major marvy. this is his going-away party." marvy's mothers are all singing "for he's a jolly good fellow," now. which nobody can deny if they know what's good for them, is the impression one cannot help receiving. . . . "uh, wherc's he going?" "away." "thought he was here to see that ge." "sure, who do ya think's pickin' up the tab f'r this?" marvy here by subterranean light is even less engaging than he was in the moonlight on top of that boxcar. the rolls of fat, bulging eyes and glistening teeth are grayer here, screened more coarsely. a strip of ad­ hesive tape plastered athletically over the bridge of his nose, and a pur­ ple, yellow, and green decoration around one eye testify to his rapid i ff 1-, r\ �. '/ ; -�. ���� --__ -� �",-:::-:-i:!" �. . , _._.. . . ' ,/ _ _ � � c,: journey down the railroad embankment the other night. he is shaking hands with his well-wishers, booming male endearments, paying special attention to the russians-"well, bet you've spiked that with a little vodka! hah?" moving on "vlad, fella, how's yer ass!" the russians do not appear to understand, which leaves them only the fanged smile, the easter-egg eyes, to make sense of. slothrop is just snorting foam out of his nose when marvy spots him, and those eyes bug out in earnest. "there he is," in a great roar, indicating slothrop with a trembling finger, "by god the limey sonofabitch go git him, boys!" go git him, boys? slothrop continuing to gaze a moment here at this finger, illumi­ nated in cute flourishes and curlicues of cherubic fat. "there, there, my man," begins ian scufhing, by which point hostile faces have begun to close in. hmm.... oh, that's right, escape-he sloshes beer at the head nearest, heaves the empty shell case at another, finds a gap in the crowd, slithers through and flees, across florid faces of drunks asleep, vaulting khaki paunches festooned with splashes of vomit, away down the deep cross-tunnel, among the pieces of rocket. "reveille you hammerheads," marvy's screaming, "don't let that 'sucker git away!" a sergeant with a boy's face and gray hair, dozing with a grease gun cradled against him, wakes up crying, "krauts!" lets loose a deafening burst from his weapon straight into the beer barrel, which destroys the bottom half and sends a great gush of wet amber and foam surging among the pursuing americans, half of whom promptly slip and go down on their ass. slothrop reaches the other end of the stollen with a good lead, and goes sprinting up a ladder there, taking rungs two at a time. shotsterrific blasts in this soundbox. either marvy's mothers are too drunk, or the darkness is saving him. he hits the top out of breath. in the other main tunnel now, slothrop falls into a jog down the long mile to the outside, trying not to wonder if he has the wind to make it. he hasn't gone 200 feet when the vanguard comes clambering up off of that ladder behind him. he dodges into what must be a paint shop, skids on a patch of wet wehrmacht green, and goes down, proceeding through big splashes of black, white, and red before coming to rest against the combat boots of an elderly man in a tweed suit, with white, water-buffalo mustaches. "gruss gott." "say, i think they're trying to kill me back there. is there some­ place-" the old man winks, motions slothrop through the stollen and on into the other main tunnel. slothrop notices a pair of coveralls streaked with paint, and thinks to grab them. past four more stollen, then a sharp 308 right. it's hngdown aluminum' to be good. "not til over�ize eu , to a tall b wmbs hi� i am in nele, ti� ili ",�clearm 0005 \l'e'� t f atunnel-b: m�acetim le�, "\\1atd "youwlll uve," �ioilirop • tn�ll5n ace "vpilih oonclete mil, ",\w,ijl illlapjleann fueoar tl" i no�fu�\' � �ioili;op fune iliey i i venti�tior i rromilie j right. it's a metal storage area. "watch this." the old man goes chuck­ ling down the long shop among blue racks of cold-rolled sheets, heaps of aluminum ingots, sheafs of 3712 bar stock, 1624,723 .... "this is going to be good." "not that way, man, that's the one they're coming down." but this oversize elf already has set about hitching cable from a hoist overhead to a tall bundle of monel bars. slothrop climbs into those coveralls, combs his pompadour down over his forehead, takes out a pocketknife and saws off pieces of mustache on both sides. "you look like hitler now. now they will really want to kill you!" german humor. he introduces himself as glimpf, professor of mathe­ matics of the technische hochschule, darmstadt, scientific advisor to the allied military government, which takes a while. "now-we bring them this way." 1 am in the hands of a raving maniac-"why not just hide out in here, till they forget it?" but here comes dim shouts up-tunnel now: "all clear in 37 and 38, chuckie babes!" "o.k., old hoss, you guys take odds we'll take evens." they are not going to forget it, they are making a tunnel-by-tunnel search instead. it's peacetime, they can't shoot you in peacetime ... but they're drunk ... oh boy. slothrop is scared shit­ less. "what do we do?" "you will be the expert in idiomatic english. say something provoca­ tive." slothrop sticks his head out in the long tunnel and hollers, in his most english accent, "major marvy sucks!" "dp this way!" sounds of galloping gi boots, nailheads smacking the concrete and a lot of other ominous metal too going snick snick ... "now," beams mischievous glimpf, setting the hoist in motion. a fresh thought occurs to slothrop. he puts his head back out and hollers "major marvy sucks niggers!" "i think we should hurry," sez glimpf. "aw, 1 just thought of a good one about his mother." slack has been disappearing inch by inch from the bight of cable between the hoist and the bar stock, which glimpf has rigged to topple across the doorway, hopefully about the time the americans show up. slothrop and glimpf light out through the opposite exit. about the time they reach the first curve in the tunnel, all the lights go out. the ventilation whines on. the phantom voices inside it gain confidence from the dark. 309 ���'l&__ _, �·.-::-4�"�f. " , ., 4 .•••••••••..• " ...• _ . , . '� _,::: the bundle of monel falls with a great crash. slothrop touches rock wall, and uses the wall then for guidance through this absolute black­ ness. glimpf is still someplace in the middle of the tunnel, on the tracks. he is not breathing hard, but he is chuckling to himself. behind are the hollow staggerings of the pursuit, but no light yet. there is a soft clang and sharp "himmel" from the old professor. sounds of yelling have grown louder and now here are the first flashlights, and it's time to get out of the bathtub"what's happening? for christ's sake ... " "come here:" glimpf has collided with some kind of miniature train, just visible now in outline-it was used once to show visitors from ber­ lin around the factory. they climb aboard the tractor in front, and glimpf fiddles with switches. well here we go, all aboard, lights must've been all that marvy cut, sparks are crackling out behind and there's even a little wind now. good to be rolling. ev'ry little nazi's shootin' pool or playin' potsy on the mittel-werk ex-press! all the funny fascists just a-twirlin' their mustaches where we goin'? can't you guess? headin' for the country just down the tracks, never heard 0' shortages or in-corne-tax, gonna be good-times, for minnie and-max, on the mittel-werk ex-press! glimpf has switched on a headlamp. from side-tunnels booming by, figures in khaki stare. whites of eyes give back the light for an instant before flicking past. a few people wave. shouts go dopplering hey­ eyyy-y-y-y like car horns at the crossings going home at night on the boston and maine. . . . the express is rolling at a fair clip. damp wind rushes by in a whistle. in the lamp's backscatter, silhouettes of warhead sections can be made out, stacked on the two little flatcars the engine's towing. local midgetry scuttle and cringe alongside the tracks, nearly out of the light. they think of the little train as their own, and feel hurt whenever the big people come to commandeer it. some sit on stacks of crates, dangling their legs. some practice handstands in the dark. their eyes glow green and red. some even swing from ropes secured to the overhead, in mock kamikaze attacks on glimpf and slothrop, scream310 _. . / --_ i' in�, iibanz tney're rea ri�ht be 4 "oh, �hjt "calll'ou "reckon i "o,-i.. "�tand b· i willi oni\ i �11ak1,�� , ,------.--------� ., .. '''.''.'4''''_ ••����'''�'.�!.!:-�!'' ing, "banzai, banzai," before vanishing with a giggle. it's all in play. they're really quite an amiableright behind, loud as megaphones, in massed chorale: there once was a fellow named slattery o get ' "oh, shit," sez slothrop. who was fond of the course-gyro battery. with that 50-volt shock, what was left of his cock was all slimy and sloppy and spattery. ja, ja, [a, ja, in prussia they never eat pussy, u.s.w. "can you get back and uncouple those cars?" glimpf wants to know. "reckon so.... " but he seems to fumble at it for hours. meantime: there was a young fellow named pope, who plugged into an oscilloscope. the cyclical trace of their carnal embrace had a damn nearly infinite slope. "engineers," glimpf mutters. slothrop gets the cars uncoupled and the engine speeds up. wind is tearing at all irish pennants, collarpoints, cuffs, buckles, and belts. back behind them there's a tremendous crash and clank, and a few shouts in the dark. "think that stopped 'em?" right up their ass, in four-part harmony: there was a young fellow named yuri, fucked the nozzle right up its venturi. he had woes without cease from his local police, and a hell of a time with the jury. "o.-k., jocko babes! got that old phosphorus flare?" "stand by, good buddy!" with only that warning, in blinding concussion the icy noctiluca breaks, floods through the white tunnel. for a minute or two nobody in 311 �..-�1io __ / r .-; --. / �',"''''i.!. ..• . .' " •.•.•. �� • __ • s/'" , here can see. there is only the hurtling on, through amazing perfect whiteness. whiteness without heat, and blind inertia: slothrop feels a terrible familiarity here, a center he has been skirting, avoiding as long as he can remember-never has he been as close as now to the true mo­ mentum of his time: faces and facts that have crowded his indenture to the rocket, camouflage and distraction fall away for the white moment, the vain and blind tugging at his sleeves it's important . . . please . . . look at us . . . but it's already too late, it's only wind, only g-loads, and the blood of his eyes has begun to touch the whiteness back to ivory, to brushings of gold and a network of edges to the broken rock . . . and the hand that lifted him away sets him back in the mittelwerke"whoo-weel there's 'at 'sucker now!" out of the flare, inside easy pistol range, emerges a lumbering diesel engine, pushing ahead of it the two cars slothrop uncoupled, itself stuffed with bloodshot, disheveled, bloated americans, and at an apex, perched lopsided on their shoulders, major marvy himself, wearing a giant white stetson, and clutching two .45 automatics. slothrop ducks down behind a cylindrical object at the rear of the tractor. marvy starts shooting, wildly, inspired by hideous laughter from the others. slothrop happens to notice now that what he's chosen to hide behind, actually, seems to be another warhead. if the amatol charges are still in-say, professor, could the shock wave from a .45 bul­ let at this range succeed in detonating this warhead here if it struck the casing? e-even if there was no fuze installed? well, tyrone, now that would depend on many things: muzzle velocity, wall thickness and compositioncounting at least on a pulled arm muscle and hernia, slothrop man­ ages to tip and heave the warhead off onto the track while marvy's bul­ lets go whanging and crashing all over the tunnel. it bounces and comes to rest tilted against one of the rails. good. the flare has begun to die. shadows are reoccupying the mouths of the stollen. the cars ahead of marvy hit the obstacle a solid whonk! doubling up in an inverted v-diesel brakes screech in panic yi-i-i-i-ke as the big engine derails, slews, begins to tip, americans grabbing franti­ cally for handholds, each other, empty air. then slothrop and glimpf are around the last curve of the integral sign, and there is another huge crash behind them, screaming that prolongs, echoing, as they see now the entrance ahead, growing parabola of green mountainslopes, and sunlight.... "did you have a car when you came?" inquires the twinkling glimpf. "what?" slothrop recalls the keys still in that mercedes. "oh, " 312 gumpf e aaru�ht, an ilieb com n�ot where out on ��n� willi j �utof moun ill�around c moom�ft a �e'ljltte�', e wu�d·up pe ��mln� arou t l�ffiakeih �u)it from a r�rkin� iaiol 'roll rast. h �tk'lrearti modlo�out • inelun� \ �ieodome ii i"nlteteardro \\'wenas h inerclimb l�warq ilie ca �reao left out "inllii wn "iuledto \. �--_....-:----�� ._--, _�/ ., ....,.··.·-,.. -· .. -..,.·---.,.· ......... ··.1�:���·· glimpf eases on the brakes as they coast out under the parabola into daylight, and roll to a smooth and respectable stop. they flip salutes at the b company sentries and proceed to hijack the mercedes, which is right where that rail left it. out on the road, glimpf gestures them north, watching slothrop's driving with a leery eye. they wind snarling up into the harz, in and out of mountain shadows, pine and fir odors enveloping them, screech­ ing around curves and sometimes nearly off of the road. slothrop has the inborn gift of selecting the wrong gear for all occasions, and anyhow he's jittery, eye in the mirror and out the back of his head aswarm with souped-up personnel carriers and squadrons of howling thunderbolts. coming around a blind corner, using the whole width of the pavement to make it-a sharp road-racing trick he happens to know-they nearly buy it from a descending american army deuce-and-a-half, the words fucking idiot clearly visible on the mouth of the driver as they barely scoot past, heartbeats slamming low in their throats, mud from the truck's rear tires slapping over them in a great wing that shakes the rig and blots out half the windshield. the sun is well past its zenith when they pull up, finally, below a for­ ested dome with a small dilapidated castle on top, hundreds of doves, white teardrops, dripping from its battlements. the green breath of the woods has sharpened, grown colder. they climb a switchbacking path strewn with rocks, among dark firs toward the castle in the sunlight, jagged and brown above as a chunk of bread left out for all its generations of birds. "this is where you're staying?" "i used to work here. 1 think zwitter might still be around." there wasn't enough room in the mittelwerke for many of the smaller assem­ bly jobs. control systems mainly. so they were put together in beerhalls, shops, schools, castles, farmhouses all around nordhausen here, any in­ door lab space the guidance people could find. glimpf's colleague zwit­ ter is from the t.h. in munich. "the usual bavarian approach to elec­ tronics." glimpf begins to frown. "he's bearable, 1 suppose." whatever mysterious injustices spring from a bavarian approach to electronics now remove glimpf's twinkle, and keep him occupied in surly intro­ spection the rest of the way up. mass liquid cooing, damped in white fluff, greets them as they slip in a side entrance to the castle. floors are dirty and littered with bottles and scraps of papers. some of the papers are stamped with the magenta geheime kommandosache. birds fly in and out of broken windows. thin beams of light come in from chinks and erosions. dust motes, 313 -�--� --_ .-_ ��,-:-:#-::'�'f' ..• . ., � .•.•.•.•.•. o. ' ••• 0.0 • ,r / \ _ _ _� .:.it� __ • $,""'f''' ... ,«< fanned by the doves' wings, never stop billowing here. walls are hung with dim portraits of nobles in big white frederick the great hairdos, ladies with smooth faces and oval eyes in low-necked dresses whose yards of silk spill out into the dust and wingbeats of the dark rooms. there is dove shit all over the place. by contrast, zwitter's laboratory upstairs is brightly lit, well-ordered, crammed with blown glass, work tables, lights of many colors, speckled boxes, green folders-a mad nazi scientist lab! plasticman, where are you? there's only zwitter: stocky, dark hair parted down the middle, eye­ glass lenses thick as the windows of a bathysphere, the fluorescent hy­ dras, eels, and rays of control equations swimming seas behind them.... but when they see slothrop, there is immediate clearing there, and glazed barriers come down. hmm, t.s., what's this? who are these peo­ ple? what's happened to the apples in old glimpf's cheeks? what's a nazi guidance expert doing this side of the fence at garmisch, with his lab intact? oh ... thur's ... nazis in the woodwork, fascists in the walls, little japs with bucktooth grins a-gonna grab yew bah th' balls. whin this war is over, how happy ah will be, gearin' up fer thim rooskies and go-round number three. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 in the days when the white engineers were disputing the at­ tributes of the feeder system that was to be, one of them came to enzian of bleicherode and said, "we cannot agree on the chamber pressure. our calculations show that a working pres­ sure of 40 atii would be the most desirable. but all the data we know of are grouped around a value of only some 10 atii." "then clearly," replied the nguarorerue, "you must listen to the data." "but that would not be the most perfect or efficient value," protested the german. "pro not dir we roc number ilierock v�ue," miliemount ®�oo mine roaeramilit to �� �eneratio �lntodrin� ®1�ola po, �toca �ltiliem inter o ��rvantl, d� l�j-l�,bu . thereare ii1irnerooe,. ��weinnonle, �1�reltol hltlffi anim� mmnlm, ne\' �1,considen �11)'tocome( i�,outolr �tre ilian iliat tt!feared-n ��e� ujx'ol ���lund �ut a you :�too up to "proud man," said the nguarorerue. "what are these data, if not direct revelation? where have they come from, if not from the rocket which is to be? how do you presume to compare a number you have only derived on paper with a number that is the rocket's own? avoid pride, and design to some compromise value." -from tales of the schwarzkommando, collected by steve edelman in the mountains around nordhausen and bleicherode, down in aban­ doned mine shafts, live the schwarzkommando. these days it's no longer a military title: they are a people now, zone-hereros, in exile for two generations from south-west africa. early rhenish missionaries began to bring them back to the metropolis, that great dull zoo, as spec­ imens of a possibly doomed race. they were gently experimented with: exposed to cathedrals, wagnerian soirees, jaeger underwear, trying to get them interested in their souls. others were taken back to germany as servants, by soldiers who went to put down the great herero rising of 1904-1906. but only after 1933 did most of the present-day leadership arrive, as part of a scheme-never openly admitted by the nazi party­ for setting up black juntas, shadow-states for the eventual takeover of british and french colonies in black africa, on the model of germany's plan for the maghreb. siidwest by then was a protectorate administered by the union of south africa, but the real power was still with the old german colonial families, and they cooperated. there are several underground communities now near nordhausenl bleicherode, around here they are known collectively as the erd­ schweinhohle. this is a herero joke, a bitter one. among the ovatjimba, the poorest of the hereros, with no cattle or villages of their own, the totem animal was the erdschwein or aardvark. they took their name from him, never ate his flesh, dug their food from the earth, just as he does. considered outcasts, they lived on the veld, in the open. you were likely to come across them at night, their fires flaring bravely against the wind, out of rifle range from the iron tracks: there seemed no other force than that to give them locus out in that emptiness. you knew what they feared-not what they wanted, or what moved them. and you had business upcountry, at the mines: so, presently, as the sputtering lights slipped behind, so did all further need to think of them .... but as you swung away, who was the woman alone in the earth, planted up to her shoulders in the aardvark hole, a gazing head rooted ��...... __ / i ._.... ���_-::-4�'r�f. . .. . .' • .... .... ••.••• ....... ..• .. • .... . . � � '/. " / r � to the desert plane, with an upsweep of mountains far behind her, darkly folded, far away in the evening? she can feel the incredible pres­ sure, miles of horizontal sand and clay, against her belly. down the trail wait the luminous ghosts of her four stillborn children, fat worms lying with no chances of comfort among the wild onions, one by one, crying for milk more sacred than what is tasted and blessed in the village cala­ bashes. in preterite line they have pointed her here, to be in touch with earth's gift for genesis. the woman feels power flood in through every gate: a river between her thighs, light leaping at the ends of fingers and toes. it is sure and nourishing as sleep. it is a warmth. the more the daylight fades, the further she submits-to the dark, to the descent of water from the air. she is a seed in the earth. the holy aardvark has dug her bed. back in siidwest, the erdschweinh6hle was a powerful symbol of fer­ tility and life. but here in the zone, its real status is not so clear. inside the schwarzkommando there are forces, at present, who have opted for sterility and death. the struggle is mostly in silence, in the night, in the nauseas and crampings of pregnancies or miscarriages. but it is political struggle. no one is more troubled with it than enzian. he is nguarorerue here. the word doesn't mean "leader" exactly, but "one who has been proven." enzian is also known, though not to his face, as otyikondo, the half­ breed. his father was a european. not that it makes him unique among the erdschweinhohlers here: there's german, slavic and gypsy blood mixed in by now too. over the couple of generations, moved by acceler­ ations unknown in the days before the empire, they have been growing an identity that few can see as ever taking final shape. the rocket will have a final shape, but not its people. eanda and oruzo have lost their force out here-the bloodlines of mother and father were left behind, in siidwest. many of the early emigrants had even gone over to the faith of the rhenish missionary society long before they left. in each village, as noon flared the shadows in tightly to their owners, in that moment of terror and refuge, the omuhona took from his sacred bag, soul after con­ verted soul, the leather cord kept there since the individual's birth, and untied the birth-knot. untied, it was another soul dead to the tribe. so today, in the erdschweinhohle, the empty ones each carry one knotless strip of leather: it is a bit of the old symbolism they have found useful. they call themselves otukungurua. yes, old africa hands, it ought to be "omakungurua," but they are always careful-perhaps it's less healthy than care-to point out that omaapplies only to the living and human. otuis' for the inanimate and the rising, and this is how they 316 �a�ne the wnal began ti \\�l a nega �inilie exle .\�eneralio �)�icof medi .��anxiousl, �fcattle, ho\ '�f iliil, rear \\�nejllne fu 00 more maid minin�-wail. ill��in� away �fdelieveit �n,no, colom �1turo�an t�jo! ilie imeli ��n�as loud � \\�1re oe can i :t�u�e uarkn �ijijen �enital'. �n,andnot �oll�nt and itafu, karl. de imagine themselves. revolutionaries of the zero, they mean to carryon what began among the old hereros after the 1904 rebellion failed. they want a negative birth rate. the program is racial suicide. they would finish the extermination the germans began in 1904. a generation earlier, the declining number of live herero births was a topic of medical interest throughout southern africa. the whites looked on as anxiously as they would have at an outbreak of rinderpest among the cattle. how provoking, to watch one's subject population dwindling like this, year after year. what's a colony without its dusky natives? where's the fun if they're all going to die off? just a big hunk of desert, no more maids, no field-hands, no laborers for the construction or the mining-wait, wait a minute there, yes it's karl marx, that sly old racist skipping away with his teeth together and his eyebrows up trying to make believe it's nothing but cheap labor and overseas markets. . . . oh, no. colonies are much, much more. colonies are the outhouses of the european soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit. where he can fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood with open joy. eh? where he can just wallow and rut and let himself go in a softness, a re­ ceptive darkness of limbs, of hair as woolly as the hair on his own for­ bidden genitals. where the poppy, and cannabis and coca grow full and green, and not to the colors and style of death, as do ergot and agaric, the blight and fungus native to europe. christian europe was always death, karl, death and repression. out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts.... no word ever gets back. the silences down here are vast enough to absorb all behavior, no matter how dirty, how animal it gets.... some of the more rational men of medicine attributed the herero birth decline to a deficiency of vitamin e in the diet-others to poor chances of fertilization given the peculiarly long and narrow uterus of the herero female. but underneath all this reasonable talk, this scien­ tific speculating, no white afrikaner could quite put down the way it felt. . . . something sinister was moving out in the veld: he was begin­ ning to look at their faces, especially those of the women, lined beyond the thorn fences, and he knew beyond logical proof: there was a tribal mind at work out here, and it had chosen to commit suicide. . . . puz­ zling. perhaps we weren't as fair as we might have been, perhaps we did take their cattle and their lands away and then the. work-camps of course, the barbed wire and the stockades perhaps they feel it is a 317 --�--�'a __ ., :""i4·,-::i�';"'. .. _ _ _ ....•.••.•.•...•••.•.•... _" . .... . . /,:�_ �. world they no longer want to live in. typical of them, though, giving up, crawling away to die ... why won't they even negotiate? we could work out a solution, some solution. . . . it was a simple choice for the hereros, between two kinds of death: tribal death, or christian death. tribal death made sense. christian death made none at all. it seemed an exercise they did not need. but to the europeans, conned by their own baby jesus con game, what they were witnessing among these hereros was a mystery potent as that of the elephant graveyard, or the lemmings rushing into the sea. though they don't admit it, the empty ones now exiled in the zone, europeanized in language and thought, split off from the old tribal unity, have found the why of it just as mysterious. but they've seized it, as a sick woman will seize a charm. they calculate no cycles, no returns, they are in love with the glamour of a whole people's suicide-the pose, the stoicism, and the bravery. these otukungurua are prophets of mas­ turbating, specialists in abortion and sterilization, pitchmen for acts oral and anal, pedal and digital, sodomistical and zoophiliac-their approach and their game is pleasure: they are spieling earnestly and well, and erdschweinhohlers are listening. the empty ones can guarantee a day when the last zone-herero will die, a final zero to a collective history fully lived. it has appeal. there is no outright struggle for power. it is all seduction and coun­ terseduction, advertising and pornography, and the history of the zone­ hereros is being decided in bed. vectors in the night underground, all trying to flee a center, a force, which appears to be the rocket: some immachination, whether of jour­ ney or of destiny, which is able to gather violent political opposites to­ gether in the erdschweinh6hle as it gathers fuel and oxidizer in its thrust chamber: metered, helmsmanlike, for the sake of its scheduled parabola. enzian sits this evening under his mountain, behind him another day of schemes, expediting, newly invented paperwork-forms he manages to destroy or fold, japanese style, before the day's end, into gazelles, or­ chids, hunter-hawks. as the rocket grows toward its working shape and fullness, so does he evolve, himself, into a new configuration. he feels it. it's something else to worry about. late last night, among the blue­ prints, christian and mieczislav looked up, abruptly smiled, and fell si­ lent. a transparent reverence. they study the drawings as if they were his own, and revelations. this is not flattering to him. what enzian wants to create will have no history. it will never need 318 ���: in � irrtaneasuy �1movemen rem'een ilie m lookin�/' 'id1re'i'" ·.wtit'lre li�ea�r," �weme a clu lll�never m "��! �othi li)u��lel ".illri�nt." ... n�jaw "ltemorac i�tanaemb ilm, , ,", �r�), , ,ii , \ :�bnafort} \, , :�ombind a design change. time, as time is known to the other nations, will wither away inside this new one. the erdschweinhohle will not be bound, like the rocket, to time. the people will find the center again, the center without time, the journey without hysteresis, where every departure is a return to the same place, the only place. . . . he has thus himself found a strange rapprochement with the empty ones: in particular with josef ombindi of hannover. the eternal cen­ ter can easily be seen as the final zero. names and methods vary, but the movement toward stillness is the same. it has led to strange passages between the two men. "you know," ombindi's eyes rolled the other way, looking up at a mirror-image of enzian that only he can see, "there's ... well, something you ordinarily wouldn't think of as erotic -but it's really the most erotic thing there is." "really," grins enzian, flirting. "i can't think of what that would be. give me a clue." "it's a non-repeatable act." "firing a rocket?" "no, because there's always another rocket. but there's nothingwell, never mind." "hal nothing to follow it with, that's what you were going to say." "suppose i give you another clue." "all right." but enzian has already guessed: it's there in the way he holds his jaw and is just about to laugh. . . . "it embraces all the deviations in one single act." enzian sighs, irri­ tated, but does not call him on this use of "deviations." bringing up the past is part of ombindi's game. "homosexuality, for example." no rise. "sadism and masochism. onanism? necrophilia.... " "all those in the same act?" all those, and more. both know by now that what's under discussion is the act of suicide, which also includes bestiality ("think how sweet," runs the pitch, "to show mercy, sexual mercy to that hurt and crying an­ imal"), pedophilia ("it is widely reported that just at the edge you grow glaringly younger"), lesbianism ("yes, for as the wind blows through all the emptying compartments the two shadow-women at last can creep out of their chambers in the dying shell, at the last ashen shoreline, to meet and embrace ... "), coprophilia and urolagnia ("the final convulsions "), fetishism ("a wide choice of death-fetishes, naturally "). naturally. the two of them sit there, passing a cigarette back and forth, till it's smoked down to a very small stub. is it idle talk, or is ombindi really trying to hustle enzian here? enzian's got to be sold on suicide �� infect �rre to 10 lljl'tnims �wt like a �[�e of a i�una ilie jijl,unaer ��iliems ��§, ltill ,�rneliel �k1�ol :t�,tidet itmto�la ��himala} sure before he moves. if he comes out sez, "this is a hustle, right?" and turns out it isn't, wellbut the alternative is so strange, that enzian is, in some way, being well i don't care-for, th' things i eat, can't stand that boogie-woogie beat­ but i'm sold, on, suicide! you can keep der bingle too, a­ and that darn "bu-bu-bu-boo," cause i'm sold on suicide! oh! i'm not too keen on ration stamps, or mothers who used to be baby vamps, but i'm sold, on, suicide! don't like either, the cards or browns, piss on the country and piss on the town, but i'm s.o.s., yes well actually this goes on, verse after verse, for quite some time. in its complete version it represents a pretty fair renunciation of the things of the world. the trouble with it is that by coders theorem there is bound to be some item around that one has omitted from the list, and such an item is not easy to think of off the top of one's head, so that what one does most likely is go back over the whole thing, meantime correcting mistakes and inevitable repetitions, and putting in new items that will surely have occurred to one, and­ well, it's easy to see that the "suicide" of the title might have to be post­ poned indefinitely! conversations between ombindi and enzian these days are thus a se­ ries of commercial messages, with enzian not so much mark as unwill­ ing shill, standing in for the rest of the tip, who may be listening and maybe not. "ahh, do i see your cock growing, nguarorerue? ... no, no, perhaps you are only thinking of someone you loved, somewhere, long ago . . . back in siidwest, eh?" to allow the tribal past to disperse, all memories ought to be public record, there's no point in preserving history with that final zero to look forward to.... cynically, though, ombindi has preached this in the name of the old tribal unity, and it's a weakness in his pitch all right-it looks bad, looks like ombindi's trying to make be­ lieve the christian sickness never touched us, when everyone knows it �id\iit we, ��tl drifted iffffirieu .�id woich �tmtto rernj �"dre�ll th1lrm � 10maqde i tra� clear! i�nillel jusl . oo�] h' :�crlila� ,,�ie, , 320 has infected us all, some to death. yes it is a little bit jive of ombindi here to look back toward an innocence he's really only heard about, can't himself believe in-the gathered purity of opposites, the village built like a mandala. . . . still he will profess and proclaim it, as an image of a grail slipping through the room, radiant, though the jokers around the table be sneaking whoopee cushions into the siege peril­ ous, under the very descending arse of the grailseeker , and though the grails themselves come in plastic these years, a dime a dozen, penny a gross, still ombindi, at times self-conned as any christian, praises and prophesies that era of innocence he just missed living in, one of the last pockets of pre-christian oneness left on the planet: "tibet is a special case. tibet was deliberately set aside by the empire as free and neutral territory, a switzerland for the spirit where there is no extradition, and alp-himalayas to draw the soul upward, and danger rare enough to tol­ erate. . . . switzerland and tibet are linked along one of the true me­ ridians of earth, true as the chinese have drawn meridians of the body. · .. we will have to learn such new maps of earth: and as travel in the interior becomes more common, as the maps grow another dimension, so must we.... " and he tells too of gondwanaland, before the conti­ nents drifted apart, when argentina lay snuggled up to siidwest ... the people listen, and filter back to cave and bed and family calabash from which the milk, unconsecrated, is swallowed in cold whiteness, cold as the north. . . . so, between these two, even routine greeting does not pass without some payload of meaningfulness and the hope of blitzing the other's mind. enzian knows that he is being used for his name. the name has some magic. but he has been so unable to touch, so neutral for so long · . . everything has flowed away but the name, enzian, a sound for chanting. he hopes it will be magic enough for one thing, one good thing when the time comes, however short of the center .... what are these persistences among a people, these traditions and offices, but traps? the sexual fetishes christianity knows how to flash, to lure us in, meant to remind us of earliest infant love. . . . can his name, can "en­ zian" break their power? can his name prevail? the erdschweinhohle is in one of the worst traps of all, a dialectic of word made flesh, flesh moving toward something else.... enzian sees the trap clearly, but not the way out. . . . sitting now between a pair of candles just lit, his gray field-jacket open at the neck, beard feather­ ing down his dark throat to shorter, sparser glossy black hairs that go running in a whirl, iron filings about the south pole of his adam's apple · .. pole ... axis ... axle-tree.... tree ... omumborombanga 321 -��_/ i � f:'"'�;';'_" '" _ _ .. .....• _ . 7� ... mukuru ... first ancestor ... adam ... still sweating, hands from the working day gone graceless and numb, he has a minute to drift and remember this time of day back in siidwest, above ground, partici­ pating in the sunset, out watching the mist gather, part fog, part dust from the cattle returning to the kraals to milking and sleep . . . his tribe believed long ago that each sunset is a battle. in the north, where the sun sets, live the one-armed warriors, the one-legged and one-eyed, who fight the sun each evening, who spear it to death until its blood runs out over the horizon and sky. but under the earth, in the night, the sun is born again, to come back each dawn, new and the same. but we, zone­ hereros, under the earth, how long will we wait in this north, this locus of death? is it to be reborn? or have we really been buried for the last time, buried facing north like all the rest of our dead, and like all the holy cattle ever sacrificed to the ancestors? north is death's region. there may be no gods, but there is a pattern: names by themselves may have no magic, but the act of naming, the physical utterance, obeys the pattern. nordhausen means dwellings in the north. the rocket had to be produced out of a place called nordhausen. the town adjoining was named bleicherode as a validation, a bit of redundancy so that the mes­ sage would not be lost. the history of the old hereros is one of lost mes­ sages. it began in mythical times, when the sly hare who nests in the moon brought death among men, instead of the moon's true message. the true message has never come. perhaps the rocket is meant to take us there someday, and then moon will tell us its truth at last. there are those down in the erdschweinhohle, younger ones who've only known white autumn-prone europe, who believe moon is their destiny. but older ones can remember that moon, like ndjambi karunga, is both the bringer of evil and its avenger. . . . and enzian's found the name bleicher6de close enough to "blicker," the nickname the early germans gave to death. they saw him white: bleaching and blankness. the name was later latinized to "dominus blicero." weissmann, enchanted, took it as his ss code name. enzian was in germany by then. weissmann brought the new name home to his pet, not showing it off so much as indicating to enzian yet another step to be taken toward the rocket, toward a destiny he still cannot see past this sinister cryptography of naming, a sparse pattern but one that harshly will not be denied, that cries and nags him on stumbling as badly as 20 years ago.... once he could not imagine a life without return. before his conscious memories began, something took him, in and out of his mother's circular village far out in the kakau veld, at the borders of the land of death, a 322 �rarture a ��r ne w �m �wako janadili :�anjtpro ��rtant ill :lffi�aown li'tr,ltlsa oopnce,he .�lhlmwl '�tw�cu�l dear' �ootonim\ m� not delle' �ngodl �\mrofa a �. , :1�anwno\ �away holt :�ijilefiili themanj� t it'l�nal( ��idne ilie) \ �------�'--------�� �" . -� ' ,.. -���:=.!"'!�:���1. 323 departure and a return. . . . he was told about it years later. shortly after he was born, his mother brought him back to her village, back from swakopmund. in ordinary times she would have been banished. she'd had the child out of wedlock, by a russian sailor whose name she couldn't pronounce. but under the german invasion, protocol was less important than helping one another. though the murderers in blue came down again and again, each time, somehow, enzian was passed over. it is a herod myth his admirers still like to bring up, to his an­ noyance. he had been walking only for a few months when his mother took him with her to join samuel maherero's great trek across the kala­ hari. of the stories told about these years, this is the most tragic. the ref­ ugees had been on the desert for days. khama, king of the bechuanas, sent guides, oxen, wagons and water to help them. those who arrived first were warned to take water only little by little. but by the time the � i stragglers arrived, everyone else was asleep. no one to warn them. an­ other lost message. they drank till they died, hundreds of souls. en­ zian's mother was among them. he had fallen asleep under a cowhide, exhausted from hunger and thirst. he woke among the dead. it is said that he was found there by a band of ovatjimba, taken and cared for. they left him back at the edge of his mother's village, to walk in alone. they were nomads, they could have taken any other direction in that waste country, but they brought him back to the place he'd left. he found hardly anyone remaining there. many had gone on the trek, some had been taken away to the coast and herded into kraals, or to work on the railroad the germans were building through the desert. many oth­ ers had died eating cattle dead of rinderpest. no return. sixty per cent of the herero people had been extermina­ ted. the rest were being used like animals. enzian grew up into a white-occupied world. captivity, sudden death, one-way departures were the ordinary things of every day. by the time the question oc­ curred to him, he could find no way to account for his own survival. he could not believe in any process of selection. ndjambi karunga and the christian god were too far away. there was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance. weissmann, the european whose protege he became, always believed he'd seduced en­ zian away from religion. but the gods had gone away themselves: the gods had left the people. . . . he let weissmann think what he wanted to. the man's thirst for guilt was insatiable as the desert's for water. it's been a long time now since the two men have seen each other. last time they spoke was during the move from peenemiinde down i $ 1-_ . /7 1/ '� �= __��. / i '� ------f�-::-.�.: , " ' . .._.. .. . 0. "�, �-c. .• � / \ here to the mittelwerke. weissmann is probably dead by now. even in siidwest, 20 years ago, before enzian could even speak his language, he'd seen that: a love for the last explosion-the lifting and the scream that peaks past fear. ... why should weissmann want to survive the war? surely he'd have found something splendid enough to match his thirst. it could not have ended for him rationalized and meek as his hun­ dred glass bureaus about the ss circuit-located in time and space al­ ways just to miss grandeur, only to be in its vacuum, to be tugged slightly along by its slipstream but finally left to lie still again in a few tarnished sequins of wake. biirgerlichkeit played to wagner, the brasses faint and mocking, the voices of the strings drifting in and out of phase.... at night down here, very often lately, enzian will wake for no reason. was it really him, pierced jesus, who came to lean over you? the white faggot's-dream body, the slender legs and soft gold european eyes ... did you catch a glimpse of olive cock under the ragged loincloth, did you want to reach to lick at the sweat of his rough, his wooden bond­ age? where is he, what part of our zone tonight, damn him to the knob of that nervous imperial staff. . . . there are few such islands of down and velvet for him to lie and dream on, not in these marble passages of power. enzian has grown cold: not so much a fire dying away as a positive coming on of cold, a bitter taste growing across the palate of love's first hopes. . . . it began when weissmann brought him to europe: a discovery that love, among these men, once past the simple feel and orgasming of it, had to do with masculine technologies, with contracts, with winning and losing. de­ manded, in his own case, that he enter the service of the rocket. . . . beyond simple steel erection, the rocket was an entire system won, away from the feminine darkness, held against the entropies of lovable but scatterbrained mother nature: that was the first thing he was ob­ liged by weissmann to learn, his first step toward citizenship in the zone. he was led to believe that by understanding the rocket, he would come to understand truly his manhood. . . . "i used to imagine, in some naive way i have lost now, that all the ex­ citement of those days was being put on for me, somehow, as a gift from weissmann. he had carried me over his threshold and into his house, and this was the life he meant to bring me to, these manly pursuits, devotion to the leader, political intrigue, secret re-arming in naughty defiance of the aging plutocracies all around us . . . they were growing impotent, but we were young and strong . . . to be that young and 324 �ong, at lror�oung 11n�iliene �iers, sll �omen see mra�s, wnin� ste 'wasne "ana rou rrwnalily "ullen[�uan:" ''\i'e� , , "diojou 1�11 de je -��t knell'. �iilieway ocmom �iaffiazem ¥�toj·ou ilmole of mdtom 'tned, , �ije�rided, a" "�tase,!' �r�eal �ureas 0 ;millnitleflr 'trneaa�no[ '�-ilieo xlet'ffiarua( 11� at lealt !�1, tran��aa\\n, strong, at such a time in the life of a nation! i could not believe so many fair young men, the way the sweat and dust lay on their bodies as they lengthened the autobahns day into ringing day: we drove among trum­ peters, silk banners impeccably tailored as suits of clothes . . . the women seemed to move all docile, without color . . . i thought of them in ranks, down on all fours, having their breasts milked into pails of shining steel. . . ." "was he ever jealous of the other young men-the way you felt about them?" "oh. it was still very physical for me then. but he had already moved past that part of it. no. no, i don't think he minded.... i loved him then. i could not see into him, or the things he believed in, but i wanted to. if the rocket was his life, then i would belong to the rocket." "and you never doubted him? he certainly hadn't the most ordered personality-" "listen-i don't know how to say this ... have you ever been a christian?" "well ... at one time." "did you ever, in the street, see a man that you knew, in the instant, must be jesus christ-not hoped he was, or caught some resemblance -but knew. the deliverer, returned and walking among the people, just the way the old stories promised ... as you approached you grew more and more certain-you could see nothing at all to contradict that first amazement . . . you drew near and passed, terrified that he would speak to you . .'. your eyes grappled . . . it was confirmed. and most terrible of all, he knew. he saw into your soul: all your make-believe ceased to matter.... " "then ... what's happened, since your first days in europe, could be described, in max weber's phrase, almost as a 'routinization of char­ isma.' " "outase," sez enzian, which is one of many herero words for shit, in this case a large, newly laid cow turd. andreas orukambe sits in front of an army-green, wrinkle-finished transmitter i receiver rig, off in a rock alcove of the room. a pair of rub­ ber headphones covers his ears. the schwarzkommando use the 50 em band-the one the rocket's hawaii ii guidance operated on. who but rocket-maniacs would listen in at 53 cm? schwarzkommando can be sure, at least, that they're being monitored by every competitor in the zone. transmissions from the erdschweinhohle begin around 0300 and run till dawn. other schwarzkommando stations broadcast on their own 325 ��_ i ___. t""'"'-:::·:···'· . '. .._ " .. """'f:!'''''''.•. ',,_,': c. ,.... schedules. traffic is in herero, with a german loan-word now and then (which is too bad, since these are usually technical words, and valuable clues for whoever's listening). andreas is on the second dog watch, now, copying mostly, answering when he has to. keying any transmitter is an invitation to instant para­ noia. there springs into being an antenna pattern, thousands of square kilometers full of enemies out in their own night encampments in the zone, faceless, monitoring. though they are in contact with one an­ other-the schwarzkommando try to listen in to as much as they can­ though there can be no illusion about their plans for the schwarzkom­ mando, still they are holding off, waiting for the optimum time to move in and destroy without a trace. . . . enzian believes they will wait for the first african rocket to be fully assembled and ready for firing: it will look better if they move against a real threat, real hardware. meantime enzian tries to keep security tight. here at the home base it's no prob­lem: penetration by less than a regiment would be impossible. but far­ ther out in the zone, rocket-towns like celie, enschede, hachenburg­ they can pick us off out there one by one, first a campaign of attrition, then a coordinated raid . . . leaving then only this metropolis, under siege, to strangle. . . . perhaps it's theater, but they seem no longer to be allies ... thoughthe history they have invented for themselves conditions us to expect "postwar rivalries," when in fact it may all be a giant cartel includingwinners and losers both, in an amiable agreement to share what is there to be shared. . . . still, enzian has played them off, the quarreling scav­ engers, one against the other . . . it looks genuine enough. . . . marvymust be together with the russians by now, and with general electric too-throwing him off the train the other night bought us-what? a day or two, and how well have we used the time? it comes down to this day-to-day knitting and unraveling, minor suc­ cesses, minor defeats. thousands of details, anyone of which carries the chance of a fatal mistake. enzian would like to be more out of the proc­ ess than he is-to be able to see where it's going, to know, in real time, at each splitting of the pathway of decision, which would have been right and which wrong. but it is their time, their space, and he still ex­ pects, naively, outcomes the white continuum grew past hoping for cen­turies ago. the details-valves, special tools that mayor may not exist,erdschweinhohle jealousies and plots, lost operating manuals, techni­cians on the run from both east and west, food shortages, sick children-swirl like fog, each particle with its own array of forces and directions . he can't handle them all at the same time, if he stays too much with 326 anyh �� ill �eaki mleve �umme �eld in ",de mull fa !�r a 01 �e nods \. �------:-----�� � � __�:=a�_ :�!��� 'and ilien d valuabl1 any he's in danger of losing others. . . . but it's not only the details. he has the odd feeling, in moments of reverie or honest despair, that he is speaking lines prepared somewhere far away (not far away in space, but in levels of power), and that his decisions are not his own at all, but the flummeries of an actor impersonating a leader. he has dreamed of being held in the pitiless emprise of something from which he cannot wake ... he is often aboard a ship on a broad river, leading a rebellion which must fail. for reasons of policy, the rebellion is being allowed to go on for a bit. he is being hunted, his days are full of narrow escapes which he finds exciting, physically graceful . . . and the plot itself! it has a stern, an intense beauty, it is music, a symphony of the north, of an arctic voyage, past headlands of very green ice, to the feet of icebergs, kneeling in the grip of this incredible music, washed in seas blue as blue dye, an endless north, vast country settled by people whose old culture and history are walled off by a great silence from the rest of the world ... the names of their peninsulas and seas, their long and powerful riv­ ers are unknown down in the temperate world . . . it is a return, this voyage: he has grown old inside his name, the sweeping music of the voyage is music he wrote himself, so long ago that he has forgotten it completely . . . but now it is finding him again. . . . "trouble in hamburg-" andreas is scribbling away, lifting one ear­ piece back smock damp with sweat so that he can be on both ends of the link at once. "sounds like it might be the dps again. got a bad sig­ nal. keeps fading-" since the surrender there have been these constant skirmishes be­ tween the german civilians and foreign prisoners freed from the camps. towns in the north have been taken over by displaced poles, czechs, russians who've looted the arsenals and granaries and mean to hold what they've taken. but nobody knows how to feel about the local schwarzkommando. some see only the ragged pieces of ss uniform, and respond to that one way or another-others take them for moroccans or indians drifted somehow over the mountains from italy. germans still remember the occupation of the rhineland 20 years ago by french co­ lonial units, and the posters screaming schwarze besatzung am rhein! another stress in the pattern. last week in hamburg, two schwarzkom­ mando were shot. others were badly beaten. the british military gov­ ernment sent in some troops, but only after the killing was over. their main interest seemed to be in enforcing a curfew. "it's onguruve." andreas hands over the earphones and swivels to roll out of enzian's way. " ... can't tell if it's us they want, or the oil refinery ... " the voice __ � • / i '-"",,!,. _ -----------;_ / \t�' 4.:.�." '. . ., .. �.. . . ....!i.. :-:�.. " � .#• goes crackling in and out, ". . . hundred, maybe two hundred . . . so many . . . -res, clubs, handguns-" bl-bleep and a burst of hissing, then in laps a familiar voice. "i can bring a dozen men." "hannover's answering," enzian murmurs, trying to sound amused. "you mean josef ombindi." andreas is not amused. now onguruve, calling for help, is neutral on the empty ones ques­ tion, or tries to be. but if ombindi can bring a relief force to hamburg, he may decide to stay. hannover, even with the volkswagen plant there, is only a stepping-stone for him. hamburg would give the empty ones a stronger power base, and this could be the opportunity. the north ought to be their native element, anyway . . . "i'll have to go," handing the phones back to andreas. "what's wrong?" "could be the russians, trying to draw you out." "it's all right. stop worrying about tchitcherine. i don't think he's up there." "but your european said-" "him? i don't know how far to trust him. remember, i did hear him talking with marvy on the train. now he's with tchitcherine's girl in nordhausen. i mean, would you trust him?" "but if marvy's chasing him now, it might mean he's worth some­ thing." "if he is, we're sure to see him again." enzian grabs his kit, swallows two pervitins for the road, reminds an­ dreas of a business detail or two for tomorrow, and climbs the long salt and stone ramps to the surface. outside, he breathes the evergreen air of the harz. in the old villages, it would be the time of evening for the milking. the first star is out, ok­ anumaihi, the little drinker of sweet milk. . . . but this must be a different star, a northern star. there is no comfort. what has happened to us? if choices have never been our own, if the zonehereros are meant to live in the bosom of the angel who tried to destroy us in siidwest . . . then: have we been passed over, or have we been chosen for something even more terrible? enzian has to be in hamburg before another spearing of the sun. se­ curity on the trains is troublesome, but the sentries know him. the long freights are rolling out from the mittelwerke day and night, carrying at hardware west to the americans, north to the english . . . and soon, when the new map of the occupation goes into effect, east to the rus­ sians too. . . . nordhausen will be under russian administration and we �noujd eriner �eilier, hiss m�alo ichwein hl�nrd ill� star ju�t nelo lurtcnin �rrnuce \,1�'rlex tllwerk \. ,,--____...,--:_---_-',.....--._--� .. ----_ :.� _ _ __ --�.,,-...,_. .... , ... ..,""' ••••• �............. 4"........... !'l'.... , ...:r.!":-...�! , , , so should have some action then . . . will it give him a chance at tchitch­ erine? enzian has never seen the man, but they are meant to come to­ gether. enzian is his half-brother. they are the same flesh. his sciatic nerve is throbbing now. too much sitting. he goes limp­ ing, alone, head still down for the low clearances back down in the erd­ schweinhohlc=-who knows what waits out here for the head held too high? down the road to the railway overpass, tall and gray in the grow­ ing starlight, enzian is heading into the north.... d d d d d d d "\\baf just before dawn. a hundred feet below flows a pallid sheet of cloud, stretching west as far as they can see. here are slothrop and the ap­ prentice witch geli tripping, standing up on top of the brocken, the very plexus of german evil, twenty miles north by northwest of the mit­ telwerke, waiting for the sun to rise. though may day eve's come and gone and this frolicking twosome are nearly a month late, relics of the latest black sabbath still remain: kriegsbier empties, lace undergar­ ments, spent rifle cartridges, swastika-banners of ripped red satin, tat­ tooing-needles and splashes of blue ink"what the heck was that for?" slothrop wondered. "for the devil's kiss, of course," geli snuggling oh-you-old-silly up to his armpit there, and slothrop feeling a little icky and square for not knowing. but then he knows next to nothing about witches, even though there was, in his ancestry, one genuine salem witch, one of the last to join the sus. per coli. crowd dangling, several of them back through the centuries' couplings, off of the slothrop family tree. her name was amy sprue, a family renegade turned antinomian at age 23 and running mad over the berkshire countryside, ahead of crazy sue dunham by 200 years, stealing babies, riding cows in the twilight, sacrificing chickens up on snodd's mountain. lot of ill will about those chickens, as you can imagine. the cows and babies always, somehow, came back all right. amy sprue was not, like young skipping dorothy's antagonist, a mean witch. she headed for rhode island, seeking some of that asylum, and she thought she'd stop by salem on her way, but they didn't like her style, and they didn't like her smile, 329 ... ....__�-. i ...".. -_ ��.:.; .. ,-.. . . .. . . . . .,.� = .. _ _ ..• so she never saw that narragansett bay.... they busted her for witchery and she got death. another of slo­ throp's crazy kinfolks. when she was mentioned aloud at all it was with a shrug, too far away really to be a family disgrace-more of a curios­ ity. slothrop grew up not quite knowing what to think about her. witches were certainly not getting a fair shake in the thirties. they were depicted as hags who called you dearie, not exactly a wholesome lot. the movies had not prepared him for this teutonic version here. your kraut witch, for example, has six toes on each foot and no hair at all on her cunt. that is how the witches look, anyhow, in the stairway murals inside the one-time nazi transmitter tower up on the brocken here, and government murals are hardly places to go looking for irre­ sponsible fantasy, right? but geli thinks the hairless cunt derives from the women von bayros drew. "aw, you just don't wanna shave yours," crows slothrop. "hal ha! some witch!" "i'll show you something," she sez, which is why they are now awake at this ungodly hour, side by side, holding hands, very still as the sun be­ gins to clear the horizon. "now watch," geli whispers: "out there." as the sunlight strikes their backs, coming in nearly flat on, it begins developing on the pearl cloudbank: two gigantic shadows, thrown miles overland, past clausthal-zelterfeld, past seesen and goslar, across where the river leine would be, and reaching toward weser.... "by golly," slothrop a little bit nervous, "it's the specter." you got it up around greylock in the berkshires too. around these parts it is known as the brockengespenst. god-shadows. slothrop raises an arm. his fingers are cities, his biceps is a province-of course he raises an arm. isn't it expected of him? the arm-shadow trails rainbows behind as it moves reaching eastward for a grab at cottingen. not ordinary shadows, either-three-dimensional ones, cast out on the german dawn, yes and titans had to live in these mountains, or under them.... impossibly out of scale. never to be car­ ried by a river. never to look to a horizon and think that it might go on forever. notrees to climb, no long journeys to take . . . only their deep images are left, haloed shells lying prone above the fogs men move in.... geli kicks a leg out straight as a dancer, and tilts her head to the side. slothrop raises his middle finger to the west, the headlong finger dark­ ening three miles of cloud per second. geli grabs for slothrop's cock. slothrop leans to bite cell's tit. they are enormous, dancing the floor of the whole visible sky. he reaches underneath her dress. she twines a leg 330 of slo­ as willi crosl , • , lobi' his bice� him. the men more to�e joe, ' nger dark­ op' cock he booro! rjoe5 a le� around one of his. the spectra wash red to indigo, tidal, immense, at all their edges. under the clouds out there it's as still, and lost, as atlantis. but the brockengespenstphanomen is confined to dawn's slender in­ terface, and soon the shadows have come shrinking back to their own­ ers. "say, did that tchitcherine ever-" "tchitcherine's too busy for this." "oh, and i'm some kind of a drone or something." "you're different." "we-e-e-ll ... he ought to see it." she looks at him curiously, but doesn't ask why-her teeth halt on her lower lip, and the warum (varoom, a plasticman sound) hovers trapped in her mouth. just as well. slothrop doesn't know why. he's no help to anybody who's fixing to interrogate. last night he and celi blun­ dered onto a schwarzkommando picket outside one of the old mine en­ trances. the hereros threw questions at him for an hour. oh, just wan­ dering about you know, looking for a bit of the odd, what we call "human interest," fascinating of course, we're always interested in what you chaps are up to. . . . celi snickering in the darkness. they must have known her. they didn't ask her anything. when he brought it up later, she wasn't sure just what this is between tchitcherine and the africans, but whatever it is it's being carried on with high passion. "it's hate, all right," she said. "stupid, stupid. the war's over. it isn't politics or fuck-your-buddy, it's old-time, pure, personal hate." "enzian?" "i think so." they found the brocken occupied both by american and by russian troops. the mountain lay on what was to be the border of the soviet zone of occupation. the brick and stucco ruins of the radio transmitter and a tourist hotel loomed up just outside the firelight. only a couple of platoons here. nobody higher than noncoms. the officers were all down in bad harzburg, halberstadt, someplace comfortable, getting drunk or laid. there is a certain air of resentment up on the brocken all right, but the boys like celi and tolerate slothrop, and luckiest of all, nobody seems to be connected with that ordnance. it's only a moment's safety, though. major marvy is gnashing about the harz, sending thousands of canaries into cardiac episodes, dropping in yellow droves belly-up out of the trees as he marauds on by hollering cit that limey 'sucker i don't care how many men it takes i want a fuck­ ing division you hear me boy? only a matter of time before he picks up 331 the trail again. he's out of his mind. slothrop's a little daffy, but not like �utof this-this is really unhealthy, this marvy persecution. is it possible . . . mtoili yup, the thought has certainly occurred to him-that marvy's in tight with those rolls roycers who were after him in zurich? there may be no limit to their connections. marvy is buddies with ce, that's morgan money, there's morgan money in harvard, and surely an interlock someplace with lyle bland . . . who are they, hey? why do they want slothrop? he knows now for sure that zwitter the mad nazi scientist is one of them. and that kindly old professor climpf was only waiting down in the mittelwerke to pick up slothrop if he showed. jesus. if slo­ throp hadn't snuck out after dark back down into nordhausen to cell's place, they'd have him locked up by now for sure, maybe beaten up, maybe dead. before they head back down the mountain, they manage to chisel six cigarettes and some k-rations off of the sentries. celi knows a friend of a friend who stays out on a farm in the coldene aue, a ballooning enthusiast named schnorp, who is heading toward berlin. �nno "but i don't want to go to berlin." \�!ollo"you want to go where marvy isn't, liebchen." \i�j)schnorp is beaming, eager enough for company, just back from a �4ijorolocal px with an armload of flat white boxes: merchandise he plans to "i'm move in berlin. "no trouble," he tells slothrop, "don't worry. i've done .�orcothis trip hundreds of times. nobody bothers a balloon." lei cohe takes slothrop out in back of the house, and here in the middle of imoat a sloping green field is a wicker gondola beside a great heap of bright �t, youyellow and scarlet silk. w�e,""real unobtrusive getaway," slothrop mutters. a gang of kids have appeared running out of an apple orchard to help them carry tin jerri­ cans of grain alcohol out to the gondola. all shadows are being thrown uphill by the afternoon sun. wind blows from the west. slothrop gives schnorp a light from his zippo to get the burner going while kids straighten out the folds in the gasbag. schnorp turns up the flame till it's shooting sideways and with a steady roar into the opening of the great silk bag. children visible through the gap break up into wiggly heat waves. slowly the balloon begins to expand. "remember me," celi calls above the rumbling of the burner. "till i see you again ... " slothrop climbs in the gondola with schnorp. the balloon rises a little off the ground and is caught by the wind. they start to move. celi and the kids have taken hold of the gondola all around its gunwales, the bag still notall the way up but gathering speed, dragging them all as fast as their feet can move, giggling and cheering, uphill. slothrop keeps as much 332 out of the way as he can, letting schnorp see that the flame's pointed into the bag and that lines to the basket are clear. at last the bag swings vertical, across the sun, the inside of it going a riotous wreathing of yel­ low and scarlet heat. one by one the ground crew fall away, waving good-by. the last to go is geli in her white dress, hair brushed back over her ears into pigtails, her soft chin and mouth and big serious eyes looking into slothrop's for as long as she can before she has to let go. she kneels in the grass, blows a kiss. slothrop feels his heart, out of con­ trol, inflate with love and rise quick as a balloon. it is taking him longer, the longer he's in the zone, to remember to say aw quit being a sap. what is this place doing to his brain? they soar up over a stand of firs. geli and the children go dwindling to shadow-strokes on the green lawn. the hills fall away, flatten out. soon, looking back, slothrop can see nordhausen: cathedral, rathaus, church of st. blasius . . . the roofless quarter where he found celio ... schnorp nudges and points. after a while slothrop makes out a con­ voy of four olive-drab vehicles dusting along toward the farm in a hurry. marvy's mothers, by the looks of things. and slothrop hanging from this gaudy beach ball. well, all right"i'm bad luck," slothrop hollers over a little later. they've found a steady course now northeastward, and are huddling close to the alcohol flame, collars turned up, with a gradient of must be 500 between the wind at their backs and the warmth in front. "i should've mentioned that. you don't even know me, and here we're flying into that russian zone." schnorp, his hair blown like holidays of hay, does a wistful german thing with his upper lip: "there are no zones," he sez, which is also a line of cell's. "no zones but the zone." before too long slothrop has begun checking out these boxes here that schnorp brought along. there are a dozen of them, and each con­ tains a deep, golden custard pie, which will fetch a fantastic price in berlin. "wow," cries slothrop, "holy shit. surely i hallucinate," and other such eager junior sidekick talk. "you ought to have a px card." a sales pitch. "right now i can't afford a ration stamp for an ant's jockstrap," re­ plies slothrop, forthrightly. "well, i'll split this one pie here with you," schnorp reckons after a time, "because i'm getting kind of hungry." "oboy,oboy." well, slothrop is just chowing on that pie! enjoying himself, licking 333 �-� i ...--/ f�,·,·,·t _ � custard off of his hands, when he happens to notice off in the sky, back toward nordhausen, this funny dark object, the size of a dot. "uh-" schnorp looks around, "kot!" comes up with a brass telescope and braces it blazing on the gunwale. "kot, kot-no markings." "i wonder . . ." out of air so blue you can take it between your fingers, rub, and bring them back blue, they watch the dot slowly grow into a rusty old recon­ naissance plane. presently they can hear its engine, snarling and sput­ tering. then, as they watch, it banks and starts a pass. along the wind between them, faintly, comes the singing of furies: ah �oints di�wh iliesee there was a young man named mcguire, who was fond of the pitch amplifier. but a number of shorts left him covered with warts, and set half the bedroom on fire. ja, [a, ja, [a! in prussia they never eat pussythe plane buzzes by a yard or two away, showing its underbelly. it is a monster, about to give birth. out of a little access opening peers a red face in leather helmet and goggles. "you limey 'sucker," going past, "we fixin' to hand your ass to you." without planning to, slothrop has picked up a pie. "fuck you." he flings it, perfect shot, the plane peeling slowly past and blop gets marvy right in the face. yeah. gloved hands paw at the mess. the major's pink tongue appears. custard drips into the wind, yellow droplets fall in long arcs toward earth. the hatch closes as the recon plane slides away, slow-rolls, circles and heads back. schnorp and slothrop heft pies and wait. "there's no cowling around that engine," schnorp has noticed, "so we'll aim for that." now they can see the dorsal side of the plane, its cockpit jammed to capacity with beer-sodden americans, singing: there once was a fellow named ritter, who slept with a guidance transmitter. it shriveled his cock, which fell off in his sock, and made him exceedingly bitter. 334 a hundred yards and closing fast. schnorp grabs slothrop's arm and points off to starboard. providence has contrived to put in their way a ope ana big white slope of cloud, and the wind is bringing them swiftly into it: the seething critter puts out white tentacles, beckoning hurry . . . hurry . . . and they are inside then, inside its wet and icy reprieve. . . . andorin1 "now they'll wait." oldremn. "no," schnorp cupping an ear, "they've cut the motor. they're in ands]lut. here with us." the swaddled silence goes on for a minute or two, but sure enough: there once was a fellow named schroeder, who buggered the vane servomotor. he soon grew a prong on the end of his schlong, and hired himself a promoter. schnorp is fiddling with the flame, a rose-gray nimbus, trying for less visibility, but not too much loss of altitude. they float in their own wan sphere of light, without coordinates. outcrops of granite smash blindly upward like fists into the cloud, trying to find the balloon. the plane is somewhere, with its own course and speed. there is no action the bal­ loon can take. binary decisions have lost meaning in here. the cloud presses in, suffocating. it condenses in fat drops on top of the pies. sud­ denly, raucous and hungover: there was a young man from decatur, who slept with a lox generator. his balls and his prick froze solid real quick, and his asshole a little bit later. curtains of vapor drift back to reveal the americans, volplaning along well inside ten meters and only a little faster than the balloon. "now!" schnorp yells, heaving a pie at the exposed engine. slothrop's misses and splatters all over the windscreen in front of the pilot. by which time schnorp has commenced flinging ballast bags at the engine, leaving one stuck between two of the cylinders. the americans, taken by surprise, reach in confusion for sidearms, grenades, machine guns, whatever it is your ordnance types carry around in the way of light ar­ mament. but they have glided on past, and now the fog closes in again. there are a few shots. 335 -_ -___ i ....... -----_ / f�'· ".... . ,,. . �," .','"' ._", '. "shit, man, if they hit that bag-" "shh, i think we got the wire from the booster magneto." off in the middle of the cloud can be heard the nagging whicker of an engine re­ fusing to start. linkage squeaks desperately. "oh, fuck!" a muffled scream, far away. the intermittent whining grows fainter until there is silence. schnorp is lying on his back, slurping pie, laughing bitterly. half of his inventory's been thrown away, and slothrop feels a little guilty. "no, no. stop worrying. this is like the very earliest days of the mer­ cantile system. we're back to that again. a second chance. passages are long and hazardous. loss in transit is a part of life. you have had a glimpse of the ur-markt." when the clouds fall away a few minutes later, they find themselves floating quietly under the sun, shrouds dripping, gasbag still shiny with the moist cloud. no sign at all of marvy's plane. schnorp adjusts the flame. they begin to rise. toward sundown, schnorp gets thoughtful. "look. you can see the edge of it. at this latitude the earth's shadow races across germany at 650 miles an hour, the speed of a jet aircraft." the cloud-sheet has bro­ ken up into little fog-banklets the color of boiled shrimp. the balloon goes drifting, over countryside whose green patchwork the twilight is now urging toward black: the thread of a little river flaming in the late sun, the intricate-angled pattern of another roofless town. the sunset is red and yellow, like the balloon. on the horizon the mild sphere goes warping down, a peach on a china plate. "the farther south you go," schnorp continues, "the faster the shadow sweeps, till you reach the equator: a thousand miles an hour. fantastic. it breaks through the speed of sound somewhere over southern france-around the latitude of carcassonne." the wind is bundling them on, north by east. "southern france," slo­ throp remembers then. "yeah. that's where i broke through the speed of sound.... " o 0 0 0 0 0 0 the zone is in full summer: souls are found quiescent behind the pieces of wall, fast asleep down curled in shell-craters, out screwing under the culverts with gray shirttails hoisted, adrift dreaming in the middles of fields. dreaming of food, oblivion, alternate histories. . . . the silences here are retreats of sound, like the retreat of the surf before to � max cause 5trai� �oda\ �ur�e �uiet germ in the we piecfl cunderilie �idill60f fore a tidal wave: sound draining away, down slopes of acoustic passage, to gather, someplace else, to a great surge of noise. cows-big lum­ moxes splotched black and white, harnessed now for the plowing be­ cause german horses in the zone are all but extinct-will drudge with straight faces right on into minefields, sown back in the winter. the godawful blasts go drumming over the farmland, horns, hide and ham­ burger come showering down all over the place, and the dented bells lie quiet in the clover. horses might have known to keep clear-but the germans wasted their horses, squandered the race, herding them into the worst of it, the swarms of steel, the rheumatic marshes, the unblank­ eted winter chills of our late fronts. a few might have found safety with the russians, who still care for horses. you hear them often in the evenings. their campfires send up rays for miles from behind the stands of beech, through northern-summer haze that's almost dry, only enough of it to give a knife's edge to the firelight, a dozen accordions and con­ certinas all going at once in shaggy chords with a reed-ringing to it, and the songs full of plaintive stvyehs and znyis with voices of the girl auxili­ aries clearest of all. the horses whicker and move in the rustling grass. the men and women are kind, resourceful, fanatical-they are the most joyous of the zone's survivors. in and out of all the vibrant flesh moves the mad scavenger tchitch­ erine, who is more metal than anything else. steel teeth wink as he talks. under his pompadour is a silver plate. gold wirework threads in three-dimensional tattoo among the fine wreckage of cartilage and bone inside his right knee joint, the shape of it always felt, pain's hand-fash­ ioned seal, and his proudest battle decoration, because it is invisible, and only he can feel it. a four-hour operation, and in the dark. it was the eastern front: there were no sulfa drugs, no anaesthesia. of course he's proud. he has marched here, with his limp as permanent as gold, out of cold­ ness, meadows, mystery. officially he reports to tsagi, which is the central aero and hydrodynamics institute in moscow. his orders men­ tion technical intelligence. but his real mission in the zone is private, obsessive, and not-so his superiors have let him know, in a number of delicate ways-in the people's interest. tchitcherine guesses that this, taken literally, may be true enough. but he is not sure about the inter­ ests of those who warned him. they could have their own reasons for wanting enzian liquidated in spite of what they say. their differences with tchitcherine may be over the timing, or the motives. tchitcher­ ine's motives are not political. the little state he is building in the ger­ man vacuum is founded on a compulsive need he has given up trying to 337 understand, a need to annihilate the schwarzkommando and his mythi­ cal half-brother, enzian. he comes from nihilist stock: there are in his ancestry any number of bomb throwers and jubilant assassins. he is no relation at all to the tchitcherine who dealt the rapallo treaty with ilier� walter rathenau. there was a long-term operator, a menshevik turned iynoa bolshevik, in his exile and his return believing in a state that would out­ live them all, where someone would come to sit in his seat at the table just as he had slipped into trotsky's-sitters would come and go but the seats would remain . . . well, fine. there is that kind of state. but then again, there is this other tchitcherine's kind, a mortal state that will persist no longer than the individuals in it. he is bound, in love and in bodily fear, to students who have died under the wheels of carriages, to eyes betrayed by nights without sleep and arms that have opened mani­ acally to death by absolute power. he envies their loneliness, their will­ ingness to go it alone, outside even a military structure, often without support or love from anyone. his own faithful network of frauleins around the zone is a compromise: he knows there's too much comfort in it, even when the intelligence inputs are good. but the perceptible hazards of love, of attachment, are still light enough for him to accept, id�ffiory when balanced against what he has to do. �\ilder ��t, , , during the early stalin days, tchitcherine was stationed in a remote �ertai "bear's corner" (medvezhy ugolok), out in seven rivers country. in the summer, irrigation canals sweated a blurry fretwork across the green oasis. in the winter, sticky teaglasses ranked the windowsills, soldiers played preference and stepped outside only to piss, or to shoot down the street at surprised wolves with a lately retooled version of the moisin. it was a land of drunken nostalgia for the cities, silent kirghiz riding, endless tremors in the earth ... because of the earthquakes, nobody built �frerhigher than one story and so the town looked like a wild west movie: a r��lowbrown dirt street, lined with grandiose twoand three-story false fronts. he had come to give the tribesmen out here, this far out, an alphabet: it was purely speech, gesture, touch among them, not even an arabic script to replace. tchitcherine coordinated with the local likbez cen­ ter, one of a string known back in moscow as the "red dzurts." youngand old kirghiz came in from the plain, smelling of horses, sour milk and weed-smoke, inside to stare at slates filled with chalk marks. the stiff latin symbols were almost as strange to the russian cadre-tall galina in her cast-off army trousers and gray cossack shirts ... mar­ celled and soft-faced luba, her dear friend ... vaslav tchitcherine, the political eye . . . all agents-though none thought of it this way338 i )'thi. n his representing the nta (new turkic alphabet) in uncommonly alien country. in the mornings after mess, tchitcherine will usually mosey down to the red dzurt there, fixing to look in on that galina the schoolmarm­ who appeals to what must be a feminine linkage or two in his personal­ ity ... well ... often he'll come outside to find his morning skies full of sheet-lightning: gusting, glaring. awful. the ground shudders just below his hearing. it might be the end of the world, except that it is a fairly average day, for central asia. pulse after heavenwide pulse. clouds, some in very clear profile, black and jagged, sail in armadas to­ ward the asian arctic, above the sweeping dessiatinas of grasses, of mul­ lein stalks, rippling out of sight, green and gray in the wind. an amazing wind. but he stands in the street, out in it, hitching his pants, lapel­ points whipped rattling against his chest, cursing army, party, his­ tory-whatever has put him here. he will not come to love this sky or plain, these people, their animals. nor look back, no not even in the worst marsh-bivouacs of his soul, in naked leningrad encounters with the certainty of his death, of the deaths of comrades, never keep any memory of seven rivers to shelter with. no music heard, no summer journey taken . . . no horse seen against the steppe in the last day­ light.... certainly not galina. galina won't even be a proper "memory." al­ ready she is more like the shape of an alphabet, the procedure for field­ stripping a moisin-yes, like remembering to hold back trigger with forefinger of left hand as you remove bolt with right, a set of interlock­ ing precautions, part of a process among the three exiles galina/lu­ ba/tchitcherine which is working out its changes, its little dialectic, until it ends, with nothing past the structure to remember.... her eyes hide in iron shadows, the orbits darkened as if by very pre­ cise blows. her jaw is small, square, levered forward, the lower teeth more apt to show when she speaks. . . . hardly ever a smile. bones in her face strongly curved and welded. her aura is chalkdust, laundry soap, sweat. with desperate luba about the edges, always, of her room, at her window, a pretty hawk. galina has trained her-but it's only luba who flies, who knows the verst-long dive, the talon-shock and the blood, while her lean owner must stay below in the schoolroom, shut in by words, drifts and frost-patterns of white words. light pulses behind the clouds. tchitcherine tracks mud off the street into the center, gets a blush from luba, a kind of kowtow and mopflourish from the comical chinese swamper chu piang, unreadable stares from an early pupil or two. the traveling "native" schoolteacher 339 ._� i -"!"'! --_ ��:.'f•• " " ...., • __ � _ _ 't;" _ � �_;' w��.�· "j< ......� ,.� dzaqyp qulan looks up from a clutter of pastel survey maps, black the­ odolites, bootlaces, tractor gaskets, plugs, greasy tierod ends, steel map­ cases, 7.62 mm rounds, crumbs and chunks of lepeshka, about to ask for a cigarette which is already out of tchitcherine's pocket and on route. he smiles thank you. he'd better. he's not sure of tohitcherine's in­ tentions, much less the russian's friendship. dzaqyp qulan's father was killed during the 1916 rising, trying to get away from kuropatkin's troops and over the border into china-one of about 100 fleeing kirghiz massacred one evening beside a drying trickle of river that might be traceable somehow north to the zero at the top of the world. russian settlers, in full vigilante panic, surrounded and killed the darker ref­ ugees with shovels, pitchforks, old rifles, any weapon to hand. a com­ mon occurrence in semirechie then, even that far from the railroad. they hunted sarts, kazakhs, kirghiz, and dungans that terrible summer like wild game. daily scores were kept. it was a competition, good-na­ tured but mo�e than play. thousands of restless natives bit the dust. their names, even their numbers, lost forever. colors of skin, ways of dressing became reasonable cause to jail, or beat and kill. even speak­ ing-voices-because rumors of german and turkish agents swept along these plains, not without help from petrograd. this native uprising was supposed to be the doing of foreigners, an international conspiracy to open a new front in the war. more western paranoia, based solidly on the european balance of power. how could there be kazakh, kirghiz­ eastern-reasons? hadn't the nationalities been happy? hadn't fifty years of russian rule brought progress? enrichment? well, for now, under the current dispensation in moscow, dzaqyp qulan is the son of a national martyr. the georgian has come to power, power in russia, ancient and absolute, proclaiming be kind to the na­ tionalities. but though the lovable old tyrant does what he can, dzaqyp qulan remains somehow as much a "native" as before, gauged day-to­ day by these russians as to his degree of restlessness. his sorrel face, his long narrow eyes and dusty boots, where he goes on his travels and what really transpires inside the lonely hide tents out there, among the auls, out in that wind, these are mysteries they don't care to enter or touch. they throw amiable cigarettes, construct him paper existences, use him as an educated native speaker. he's allowed his function and that's as far as it goes . . . except, now and then, a look from luba sug­ gesting falconhood-jesses, sky and earth, voyages. . . . or from galina a silence where there might have been words. . . . here she has become a connoisseuse of silences. the great silences of seven rivers have not yet been alphabetized, and perhaps never will 340 �e, th tochal iliel� �rnens toalar rne\� be. they are apt at any time to come into a room, into a heart, returning to chalk and paper the sensible soviet alternatives brought out here by the likbez agents. they are silences nta cannot fill, cannot liquidate, immense and frightening as the elements in this bear's corner-scaled to a larger earth, a planet wilder and more distant from the sun. . . . the winds, the city snows and heat waves of calina's childhood were never so vast, so pitiless. she had to come out here to learn what an earthquake felt like, and how to wait out a sandstorm. what would it be like to go back now, back to a city? often she will dream some dainty pasteboard model, a city-planner's city, perfectly detailed, so tiny her bootsoles could wipe out neighborhoods at a step--at the same time, she is also a dweller, down inside the little city, coming awake in the very late night, blinking up into painful daylight, waiting for the annihi­ lation, the blows from the sky, drawn terribly tense with the waiting, unable to name whatever it is approaching, knowing-too awful to say -it is herself, her central asian giantess self, that is the nameless thing she fears.... these tall, these star-blotting moslem angels . . . 0, wie spurlos zer­ trdte ein engel den trostmarkt. . . . he is constant back there, west­ ward, the african half-brother and his poetry books furrowed and sown with teutonic lettering burntwood-black-he waits, smudging the pages one by one, out across the unnumbered versts of lowland and of zonal light that slants as their autumns come around again each year, that leans along the planet's withers like an old circus rider, tries to catch their attention with nothing more than its public face, and con­ tinues to fail at each slick, perfect pass around the ring. but didn't dzaqyp qulan, now and then-not often-across the paper schoolroom, or by surprise in front of windows into the green deep open, give tchitcherine a certain look? didn't the look say, "noth­ ing you do, nothing he does, will help you in your mortality"? and, "you are brothers. together, apart, why let it matter this much? live. die someday, honorably, meanly-but not by the other's hand.... " the light of each common autumn keeps bringing the same free advice, each time a little less hopefully. but neither brother can listen. the black must have found, somewhere in germany, his own version of dzaqyp qulan, some childish native to stare him out of german dreams of the tenth-elegy angel coming, wingbeats already at the edges of waking, coming to trample spoorless the white marketplace of his own exile. . . . facing east, the black face keeping watch from some winter embankment or earth-colored wall of a fine-grained stone into low wastes of prussia, of poland, the leagues of meadow waiting, just as 341 tchitcherine grows each month now more taut and windsmooth at his westward flank, seeing history arid geopolitics move them surely into confrontation as the radios go screaming higher, new penstocks in the night shudder to the touch with hydroelectric rage, mounting, across the empty canyons and passes, skies in the day go thick with miles of falling canopies, white as visions of rich men's heavenly dzurts, gaming now and still awkward, but growing, each strewn pattern, less and less at play.... out into the bones of the backlands ride tchitcherine and his faithful kirghiz companion dzaqyp qulan. tchitcherine's horse is a version of himself-an appaloosa from the united states named snake. snake used to be some kind of remittance horse. year before last he was in saudi arabia, being sent a check each month by a zany (or, if you enjoy paranoid systems, a horribly rational) midland, texas oil man to stay off of the u.s. rodeo circuits, where in those days the famous bucking bronco midnight was flinging young men right and left into the sun-beat fences. but snake here is not so much midnight-wild as methodically homicidal. worse, he's unpredictable. when you go to ride him he may be indifferent, or docile as a maiden. but then again, with no warning, seized out of the last rufhing of a great sigh, he could manage to kill you simply as the gesture of a hoof, the serpent tuck of a head toward the exact moment and spot on the ground that you'll cease to live. no way to tell: for months he can be no trouble at all. so far he's ignored tchitcherine. but he's tried for dzaqyp qulan three times. twice dumb luck preserved the kirghiz, and the third time he actually hung on and rode the colt a long time down to a fair kind of obedience. but each time tchitcherine goes up to snake's jingling picket on the hillside, he carries, with his leather gear and his bit of scarred tapestry for the horse's back, the doubt, the inconsolable chance that the kirghiz didn't really break him last time. that snake is only waiting his moment. . . . they're riding away from the railroad: farther away from the kinder zones of earth. black and white stars explode down the appaloosa's croup and haunch. at the center of each of these novae is a stark circle of vacuum, of no color, into which midday kirghiz at the roadsides have taken looks, and grinned away with a turn of the head to the horizon be­ hind. strange, strange are the dynamics of oil and the ways of oilmen. snake has seen a lot of changes since arabia, on route to tchitcherine, who may be his other half-lot of horse thieves, hard riding, confisca­ tion by this government and that, escapes into ever more remote coun342 rwatur try. this time, the kirghiz pheasants scattering now at the sound of hooves, birds big as turkeys, black and white with splashes of blood-red all around the eyes, lumbering for the uplands, snake is going out into what could be the last adventure of all, hardly remembering now the water-pipes at the oases crawling with smoke, the bearded men, the carved, nacred and lacquered saddles, the neck-reins of twisted goat­ hide, the women pillioned and wailing with delight up into caucasian foothills in the dark, carried by lust, by storm along streaks of faintest trail . . . only traces spread back in a wake now over these terminal grasslands: shadows damping and passing to rest among the rout of pheasants. momentum builds as the two riders plunge ahead. the smell of forests on the night slowly disappears. waiting, out in sunlight which is not theirs yet, is the . . . the . . . waiting for them, the unimagined creature of height, and burning . . . . . . even now in her grownup dreams, to anxious calina comes the winged rider, red sagittarius off the childhood placards of the revolu­ tion. far from rag, snow, lacerated streets she huddles here in the asian dust with her buttocks arched skyward, awaiting the first touch of him -of it. . . . steel hooves, teeth, some whistling sweep of quills across her spine . . . the ringing bronze of an equestrian statue in a square, and her face, pressed into the seismic earth.... "he's a soldier," luba simply meaning tchitcherine, "and far away from home." posted out to the wild east, and carrying on quiet, expres­ sionless, and clearly under some official curse. the rumors are as extrav­ agant as this country is listless. in the dayroom the corporals talk about a woman: an amazing soviet courtesan who wore camisoles of white kid and shaved her perfect legs every morning all the way to the groin. horse-fucking catherine, ermined and brilliant, brought up to date. her lovers ran from ministers down to the likes of captain tchitcherine, naturally her truest. while neopotemkins ranged the deep arctic for her, skilled and technocratic wolves erecting settlements out of tundra, entire urban abstractions out of the ice and snow, bold tchitcherine was back at the capital, snuggled away in her dacha, where they played at fisherman and fish, terrorist and state, explorer and edge of the wave­ green world. when official attention was finally directed their way, it did not mean death for tchitcherine, not even exile-but a thinning out of career possibilities: that happened to be how the vectors ran, in those days. central asia for a good part of his prime years, or attache some­ place like costa rica (well-he wishes it could be costa rica, someday -a release from this purgatory, into shufhing surf, green nights-how 343 . i $ ,� -c-, 7/ '/ ; �� he misses the sea, how he dreams of eyes dark and liquid as his own, co­ lonial eyes, gazing down from balconies of rotting stone . . .). meanwhile, another rumor tells of his connection with the legendary wimpe, the head salesman for ostarzneikunde gmbh, a subsidiary of the ig. because it is common knowledge that ig representatives abroad are actually german spies, reporting back to an office in berlin known as "nw7," this story about tchitcherine is not so easy to believe. if it were literally true, tchitcherine wouldn't be here-there's no possible way his life could have been spared in favor of this somnambulism among the eastern garrison towns. certainly he could have known wimpe. their lives, for a while, ran close enough in space and time. wimpe was a verbindungsman in the classic style, with a streak of unhealthy enthusiasm: charming, hand­ some in a way that came at you in shelves or terraces of strength: amia­ ble gray eyes, vertical granite nose, mouth that never quivered, chin in­ capable of fantasies ... dark suits, immaculate leather belts and silver studs, horsehide shoes that gleamed under the skylights in the czarist entrance-halls and across the soviet concrete, always dapper, usually correct, informed and passionate about organic chemistry, his specialty and, it's been suggested, his faith. "think of chess," in his early days around the capital, looking for a comparison that russians might take to, "an extravagant game of chess." going on to show, if his audience was receptive (he had sales­ man reflexes, knew to steer automatically along lines of least indif­ ference) how each molecule had so many possibilities open to it, possi­ bilities for bonding, bonds of different strengths, from carbon the most versatile, the queen, "the great catherine of the periodic table," down to the little hydrogens numerous and single-moving as pawns . . . and the brute opposition of the chessboard yielding, in this chemical game, to dance-figures in three dimensions, "four, if you like," and a radically different idea of what winning and losing meant. . . . schwarmerei, his colleagues back home had muttered, finding excuses to drift away into other conversations. but tchitcherine would have stayed. foolish and romantic, he would have kept listening, even egged the german on. how could they have failed to be observed? by and by, as the affair in its repressed and bloodless way proceeded, the soviet chain of com­ mand, solicitous as any 19th-century family, would begin to take simple steps to keep the two apart. conservative therapy. central asia. but in the weeks of vague and soft intelligence, before the watchers quite caught the drift of things . . . what heads and tails went jingling inside the dark pockets of that indeterminacy? since his earliest days as a de344 ml, cotail man, wimpe's expertise had been focused in cyclized benzyliso­ quinolines. those of major interest being the opium alkaloids and their many variations. right. the inner rooms of wimpe's office-a suite at an older hotel-were full of samples, german dope in amazing profu­ sion, wimpe the jinni of the west holding them up, vial after vial, for little tchitcherine's face to wonder at: "eumecon, a 2% solution of morphine dionine (we add on an ethyl group, here, to the morphine, as you see) holopon and nealpon, pantopon and omnopon, all mixtures of opium alkaloids as the soluble hydrochlorides . . . and glyco­ pon, as glycero-phosphates .... here is eucodal-a codeine with two hydrogens, a hydroxyl, a hydrochloride" -gesturing in the air around his basic fist-"hanging off different parts of the molecule." among these patent medicines, trappings and detailing were half the game­ "as the french do with their dresses, nicht wahr? a ribbon here, a pretty buckle there, to help sell a sparer design. . . . ah, this? trivalin!" one of the jewels of his line. "morphine, and caffeine, and cocaine, all in solution, as the valerates. valerian, ja-root and rhizome: you may have older relatives who took it years ago as a nerve tonic . . . a bit of passementerie, you might say-some trimming over these bare mole­ cules." what did tchitcherine have to say? was tchitcherine there at all? sitting back in the dingy room while the lift cables slapped and creaked through the walls, and down in the street, rarely enough to matter, a droshky rattled whip-snapping over these black old cobbles? or while snow beat at the grimy windows? how far, in the eyes of those who would send him to central asia, was too far: would his simple presence in these rooms have gotten him death automatically . . . or was there still, even at this stage of things, enough slack to let him reply? "but once the pain has been taken care of . . . the simple pain . . . beyond. . . below that zero level of feeling. . . i have heard . . ." he has heard. not the subtlest way to get into it, and wimpe must have known every standard opener there is. some military men are only blunt, while others are of such reckless blood there is never a question of "holding back"-it's a positive insanity, they not only will commit horse against cannon, they will lead the charge themselves. it's magni­ ficent, but it's not war. wait until the eastern front. by his first action, tchitcherine will have gained his reputation as a suicidal maniac. ger­ man field commanders from finland to the black sea will develop for him a gentlemanly distaste. it will be seriously wondered if the man has any sense of military decency at all. they will capture him and lose him, wound him, take him for killed in action, and he will go on, headlong, a 345 raving snowman over the winter marshes-there'll be no wind adjust­ ment, no field-change to the bottleneck fairing or deadly ogive of their parabellum rounds that can ever bring him down. he is fond, as was lenin, of napoleon's on s'engage, et puis, on vait, and as for plunging ahead, well, that ig man's hotel room may have been one of his earlier rehearsals. tchitcherine has a way of getting together with undesirables, sub rosa enemies of order, counterrevolutionary odds and ends of hu­ manity: he doesn't plan it, it just happens, he is a giant supermolecule with so many open bonds available at any given time, and in the drift of things . . . in the dance of things . . . howsoever . . . others latch on, and the pharmacology of the tchitcherine thus modified, its on­ wardly revealed side-effects, can't necessarily be calculated ahead of time. chu piang, the chinese factotum in the red dzurt, knows some­ thing of this. the first day tchitcherine came to report in to the place, chu piang knew-and tripped over his mop, not so much to divert at­ tention as to celebrate the meeting. chu piang has a bond or two availa­ ble himself. he is a living monument to the success of british trade pol­ icy back during the last century. this classic hustle is still famous, even today, for the cold purity of its execution: bring opium from india, in­ troduce it into china-howdy fong, this here's opium, opium, this is fong-ah, so, me eatee!-no-ho-ho, fong, you smokee, smokee, see? pretty soon fong's coming back for more and more, so you create an in­ elastic demand for the shit, get china to make it illegal, then sucker china into a couple-three disastrous wars over the right of your mer­ chants to sell opium, which by now you are describing as sacred. you win, china loses. fantastic. chu piang being a monument to all this, nowadays whole tourist caravans come through to look at him, usually while he's under the influence . . . "here ladies and gentlemen, as you may have observed, the characteristic sooty-gray complexion. . . ." they all stand peering into his dreamstruck facies, attentive men with mutton-chop sideburns, holding pearl-gray morning hats in their hands, the women lifting their skirts away from where horrid asian critters are seething microscopically across the old floorboards, while their tour leader indicates items of interest with his metal pointer, an instrument remarkably thin, thinner than a rapier in fact, often flashing along much faster than eyes can really follow-"his need, you will notice, retains its shape under all manner of stresses. no bodily illness, no scarcity of supply seems to affect it a whit ... " all their mild, their shallow eyes following gently as piano chords from a suburban parlor . . . the inelas­ tic need turns luminous this stagnant air: it is an ingot beyond price, from which sovereigns yet may be struck, and faces of great administra346 adjust­ of thea tors engraved and run off to signify. it was worth the trip, just to see this shining, worth the long passage by sleigh, over the frozen steppe in an enormous closed sleigh, big as a ferryboat, bedizened all over with vic­ torian gingerbread-inside are decks and levels for each class of passen­ ger, velvet saloons, well-stocked galleys, a young dr. maledetto whom the ladies love, an elegant menu including everything from mille­ feuilles it la fondue de la cervelle to la surprise du vesuve, lounges amply fitted out with stereopticons and a library of slides, oak toilets rubbed to a deep red and hand-carved into mermaid faces, acanthus leaves, afternoon and garden shapes to remind the sitter of home when he needs it most, hot insides poised here so terribly above the breakneck passage of crystalline ice and snow, which may be seen also from the observation deck, the passing vistas of horizontal pallor, the wheeling snowfields of asia, beneath skies of metal baser by far than this we have come to watch. . . . chu piang is also watching them, as they come, and stare, and go. they are figures in dreams. they amuse him. they belong to the opium: they never come if it's anything else. he tries not to smoke the hashish out here, actually, any more than courtesy demands. that chunky, res­ inous turkestan phantasmagoric is fine for russian, kirghiz, and other barbaric tastes, but give chu the tears of the poppy any time. the dreams are better, not so geometrical, so apt to turn everything-the air, the sky-to persian rugs. chu prefers situations, journeys, comedy. finding the same appetite in tchitcherine, this stocky, latin-eyed emis­ sary from moscow, this soviet remittance man, is enough to make any­ body trip over his mop, suds hissing along the floor and the bucket gong-crashing in astonishment. in delight! before long these two wretched delinquents are skulking out to the edges of town to meet. it is a local scandal. chu, from some recess within the filthy rags and shreds that hang from his unwholesome yellow body, produces a repulsive black gob of the foul-smelling substance, wrapped in a scrap torn from an old enbekii qazaq for 17 august of last year. tchitcherine brings the pipe-being from the west he's in charge of the technology of the thing-a charred, nasty little implement in red and yellow repetitions over britannia metal, bought used for a handful of kopecks in the lepers' quarter of bukhara, and yes, nicely broken in too by that time. reckless captain tchitcherine. the two opiomaniacs crouch behind a bit of wall wrecked and tilted from the last earthquake. occasional riders pass by, some noting them and some not, but all in si­ lence. stars overhead crowd the sky. far into the country, grasses blow, and the waves move on through, slow as sheep. it's a mild wind, 347 carrying the last smoke of the day, the odors of herds and jasmine, of standing water, settling dust ... a wind tchitcherine will never re­ member. any more than he can now connect this raw jumble of forty alkaloids with the cut, faceted, polished, and foiled molecules that sales­ man wimpe showed him once upon a time, one by one, and told the histories of. . . . "oneirine, and methoneirine. variations reported by laszlo jamf in the acs journal, year before last. jamf was on loan again, this time as a chemist, to the americans, whose national research council had begun a massive program to explore the morphine molecule and its possibili­ ties-a ten-year plan, coinciding, most oddly, with the classic study of large molecules being carried on by carothers of du pont, the great synthesist. connection? of course there's one. but we don't talk about it. nrc is synthesizing new molecules every day, most of them from pieces of the morphine molecule. du pont is stringing together groups such as amides into long chains. the two programs seem to be comple­ mentary, don't they? the american vice of modular repetition, com­ bined with what is perhaps our basic search: to find something that can kill intense pain without causing addiction. "results have not been encouraging. we seem up against a dilemma built into nature, much like the heisenberg situation. there is nearly complete parallelism between analgesia and addiction. the more pain it takes away, the more we desire it. it appears we can't have one prop­ erty without the other, any more than a particle physicist can specify position without suffering an uncertainty as to the particle's velocity-" "i could have told you that. but why-" "why. my dear captain. why?" "the money, wimpe. to pour funds down the latrine on such a hopeless search-" a man-to-man touch then on his buttoned epaulet. a middle-aged smile full of weltschmerz. "trade-off, tchitcherine," whispers the salesman. "a question of balancing priorities. research people come cheap enough, and even an ig may be allowed to dream, to hope against hope. . . . think of what it would mean to find such a drug-to abolish pain rationally, without the extra cost of addiction. a surplus cost-surely there is something in marx and engels," soothe the cus­ tomer, "to cover this. a demand like 'addiction,' having nothing to do with real pain, real economic needs, unrelated to production or labor . . . we need fewer of these unknowns, not more. we know how to pro­ duce real pain. wars, obviously . . . machines in the factories, indus­ trial accidents, automobiles built to be unsafe, poisons in food, water, 348 and even air-these are quantities tied directly to the economy. we know them, and we can control them. but 'addiction'? what do we know of that? fog and phantoms. no two experts will even agree on how to define the word. 'compulsion'? who is not compelled? 'toler­ ance? 'dependence'? what do they mean? all we have are the thou­ sand dim, academic theories. a rational economy cannot depend on psychological quirks. we could not plan. . . ." what premonition has begun to throb in tchitcherine's right knee? what direct conversion between pain and gold? "are you really this evil, or is it just an act? are you really trafficking in pain?" "doctors traffick in pain and no one would dream of criticizing their noble calling. yet let the verbindungsman but reach for the latch on his case, and you all start to scream and run. well-you won't find many addicts among us. the medical profession is full of them, but we sales­ men believe in real pain, real deliverance-we are knights in the service of that ideal. it must all be real, for the purposes of our market. other­ wise my employer-and our little chemical cartel is the model for the very structure of nations-becomes lost in illusion and dream, and one day vanishes into chaos. your own employer as well." "my 'employer' is the soviet state." "yes?" wimpe did say "is the model," not "will be." surprising they could have got this far, if indeed they did-being of such different per­ suasions and all. wimpe, however, being far more cynical, would have been able to admit more of the truth before starting to feel uncomforta­ ble. his patience with tchitcherine's red army version of economics may have been wide enough. they did part amiably. wimpe was re­ assigned to the united states (chemnyco of new york) shortly after hitler became chancellor. tchitcherine's connection, according to the garrison gossip, ceased then, forever. but these are rumors. their chronology can't be trusted. contra­ dictions creep in. perfect for passing a winter in central asia, if you happen not to be tchitcherine. if you are tchitcherine, though, well, that puts you in more of a peculiar position. doesn't it. you have to get through the winter on nothing but paranoid suspicions about why you're here. . . . it's because of enzian, it's got to be damned enzian. tchitcherine has been to the krasnyy arkhiv, has seen the records, the diaries and logs from the epical, doomed voyage of admiral rozhdestvenski, some still classified even after 20 years. and now he knows. and if it's all in the archives, then they know, too. nubile young ladies and german dope 349 salesmen are reason enough to send a man east in any period of history. but they would not be who or where they are without a touch of dante to their notions of reprisal. simple talion may be fine for war­ time, but politics between wars demands symmetry and a more elegant idea of justice, even to the point of masquerading, a bit decadently, as mercy. it is more complicated than mass execution, more difficult and less satisfying, but there are arrangements tchitcherine can't see, wide as europe, perhaps as the world, that can't be disturbed very much, be­ tween wars.... it seems that in december, 1904, admiral rozhdestvenski, com­ manding a fleet of 42 russian men-o' -war, steamed into the south-west african port of liideritzbucht. this was at the height of the russo-japa­ nese war. rozhdestvenski was on route to the pacific, to relieve the other russian fleet, which had been bottled up for months in port ar­ thur by the japanese. out of the baltic, around europe and africa, bound across the whole indian ocean and then north along the final coast of asia, it was to be among the most spectacular sea voyages of history: seven months and 18,000 miles to an early summer day in the waters between japan and korea, where one admiral togo, who'd been lying in wait, would come sailing out from behind the island of tsu­ shima and before nightfall hand rozhdestvenski's ass to him. only four russian ships would make it in to vladivostok-nearly all the rest would be sunk by the wily jap. tchitcherine's father was a gunner on the admiral's flagship, the suvorov. the fleet paused in liideritzbucht for a week, trying to take on coal. storms lashed through the crowded little harbor. the suvorov kept smashing up against her colliers, tearing holes in the sides, wrecking many of her own 12-pound guns. squalls blew in, clammy coal dust swirled and stuck to everything, human and steel. sailors worked around the clock, with searchlights set up on deck at night, hauling coal sacks, half blind in the glare, shoveling, sweating, coughing, bitching. some went crazy, a few tried suicide. old tchitcherine, after two days of it, went awol, and stayed away till it was over. he found a herero girl who'd lost her husband in the uprising against the germans. it was nothing he had planned or even dreamed about before going ashore. what did he know of africa? he had a wife back in saint petersburg, and a child hardly able to roll over. up till then kronstadt was the far­ thest he'd been from home. he only wanted a rest from the working parties, and from the way it looked . . . from what the black and white of coal and arc-light were about to say ... no color, and the unreality to go with it-but a familiar unreality, that warns this is all being 350 it 001\ history, staged to see what i'll do so i mustn't make one wrong move . . . touch of on the last day of his life, with japanese iron whistling down on him for w�. from ships that are too far off in the haze for him even to see, he will e el�ant think of the slowly carbonizing faces of men he thought he knew, men dentirl� turning to coal, ancient coal that glistened, each crystal, in the hoarse cult am sputter of the jablochkov candles, each flake struck perfect . . . a contseol0f spiracy of carbon, though he never phrased it as "carbon," it was power 'muc�,�, he walked away from, the feeling of too much meaningless power, flowing wrong . . . he could smell death in it. so he waited till the mas­ ter-at-arms turned to light a cigarette, and then just walked away-they were all too black, artificially black, for it to be easily noticed-and found ashore the honest blackness of the solemn herero girl, which seemed to him a breath of life after long confinement, and stayed with her at the edge of the flat sorrowful little town, near the railroad, in a one-room house built of saplings, packing-cases, reeds, mud. the rain blew. the trains cried and puffed. the man and woman stayed in bed and drank kari, which is brewed from potatoes, peas, and sugar, and in herero means "the drink of death." it was nearly christmas, and he gave her a medal he had won in some gunnery exercise long ago on the baltic. by the time he left, they had learned each other's names and a few words in the respective languages-afraid, happy, sleep, love . . . the beginnings of a new tongue, a pidgin which they were perhaps the only two speakers of in the world. but he went back. his future was with the baltic fleet, it was some­ thing neither he nor the girl questioned. the storm blew out, fog cov­ ered the sea. tchitcherine steamed away, shut back down in a dark and stinking compartment below the suvorov's waterline, drinking his christmas vodka and yarning about his good times in a space that didn't rock, back at the edge of the dry veld with something warm and kind around his penis besides his lonely fist. he was already describing her as a sultry native wench. it is the oldest sea story. as he told it he was no longer tchitcherine, but a single-faced crowd before and after, all lost but not all unlucky. the girl may have stood on some promontory watching the gray ironclads dissolve one by one in the south atlantic mist, but even if you'd like a few bars of madame butterfly about here, she was more probably out hustling, or asleep. she was not going to have an easy time. tchitcherine had left her with a child, born a few months after the gunner went down in sight of the steep cliffs and green forests of tsushima, early in the evening of 27 may. the germans recorded the birth and the father's name (he had writ­ ten it down for her, as sailors do-he had given her his name) in their 351 i __ � f�' ..� ' � �.............. .. �. -,... . � / . central files at windhoek. a travel pass was issued for mother and child to return to her tribal village, shortly after. a census by the colonial gov­ ernment to see how many natives they'd killed, taken just after enzian was returned by bushmen to the same village, lists the mother as de­ ceased, but her name is in the records. a visa dated december 1926 for enzian to enter germany, and later an application for german citizen­ ship, are both on file in berlin. it took no small amount of legwork to assemble all these pieces of paper. tchitcherine had nothing to start with but a brief word or two in the admiralty papers. but this was in the era of feodora alexandrevna, she of the kidskin underwear, and the access situation was a little better for tchitcherine than it is now. the rapallo treaty was also in force, so there were any number of lines open to berlin. that weird piece of paper . . . in his moments of sickest personal grandeur it is quite clear to him how his own namesake and the murdered jew put together an elaborate piece of theatre at rapallo, and that the real and only purpose was to reveal to vaslav tchitcherine the existence of enzian ... the garrison life out east, like certain drugs, makes these things amazingly clear. ... but alas, seems like the obsessive is his own undoing. the dossier that tchitcherine put together on enzian (he'd even got to see what soviet intelligence had on then lieutenant weissmann and his political adven­ tures in siidwest) was reproduced by some eager apparatchik and stashed in tchitcherine's own dossier. and so it transpired, no more than a month or two later, that somebody equally anonymous had cut tchitcherine's orders for baku, and he was grimly off to attend the first plenary session of the vtsk nta (vsesoynznyy tsentral'nyy komitet novogo tyurkskogo alfavita), where he was promptly assigned to the '1 committee. '1 seems to be a kind of g, a voiced uvular plosive. the distinction between it and your ordinary g is one tchitcherine will never learn to appreciate. come to find out, all the weird letter assignments have been reserved for ne'er-do-wells like himself. shatsk, the notorious len­ ingrad nose-fetishist, who carries a black satin handkerchief to party congresses and yes, more than once has been unable to refrain from reaching out and actually stroking the noses of powerful officials, is here-banished to the 8 committee, where he keeps forgetting that 8, in the nta, is (e, not russian f, thus retarding progress and sowing confusion at every working session. most of his time is taken up with trying to hustle himself a transfer to the � committee, "or actually," si­ dling closer, breathing heavily, "just a plain, n, or even an m, will, 352 " �, ' ' . �eoilie �i out on j�tral asi ufuiliese xllonation !rricrtohi �1�cated 0 \�turally 'jflon�ij ���5e '�� of ilie ci il'ofilie � �frealc� :u,orfeno' mrealitj1 j\oilluein :lneaa, iioliootr ;bt�ou5 g 'iitom ie :1 no men 'jlwu�, there is a ��," lnere i 'mlrnerine i;fidilterio .i!�'seont :�rdorm tn �,�lodaaiiar 'oonierence. :� �ureaucra : minutes. 1 �ilietal �oo over ao !�ie a�ent: �must 0 iffiaoipulati '000, tehl andc�1 onial�o\', er enti� do. . . ." the impetuous and unstable practical joker radnichny has pulled the o committee, o being a schwa or neutral uh, where he has set out on a megalomaniac project to replace every spoken vowel in central asia-and why stop there, why not even a consonant or two? with these schwas here . . . not unusual considering his record of im­ personations and dummy resolutions, and a brilliant but doomed con­ spiracy to hit stalin in the face with a grape chiffon pie, in which he was implicated only enough to get him baku instead of worse. naturally tchitcherine gravitates into this crew of irredeemables. be­ fore long, if it isn't some scheme of radnichny's to infiltrate an oil-field and disguise a derrick as a giant penis, it's lurking down in arab quar­ ters of the city, waiting with the infamous ukrainian doper bugnogor­ kov of the glottal k committee (ordinary k being represented by q, whereas c is pronounced with a sort of tch sound) for a hashish connec­ tion, or fending off the nasal advances of shatsk. it occurs to him that he is, in reality, locked up in some military nut ward back in moscow, and only hallucinating this plenary session. noone here seems quite right in the head. most distressing of all is the power struggle he has somehow been suckered into with one igor blobadjian, a party representative on the prestigious g committee. blobadjian is fanatically attempting to steal ojs from tchitcherine's committee, and change them to gs, using loan-words as an entering wedge. in the sunlit, sweltering commissary the two men sneer at each other across trays of zapekanka and georgian fruit soup. there is a crisis over which kind of g to use in the word "stenogra­ phy." -there is a lot of emotional attachment to the word around here. tchitcherine one morning finds all the pencils in his conference room have mysteriously vanished. in revenge, he and radnichny sneak in blo­ badjian's conference room next night with hacksaws, files and torches, and reform the alphabet on his typewriter. it is some fun in the morn­ ing. blobadjian runs around in a prolonged screaming fit. tchitcherine's in conference, meeting's called to order, crash! two dozen linguists and bureaucrats go toppling over on their ass. noise echoes for a full two minutes. tchitcherine, on his ass, notes that pieces of chair leg all around the table have been sawed off, reattached with wax and var­ nished over again. a professional job, all right. could radnichny be a double agent? the time for lighthearted practical jokes is past. tchitch­ erine must go it alone. painstakingly, by midwatch lantern light, when the manipulations of letters are most apt to produce other kinds of illu­ mination, tchitcherine transliterates the opening sura of the holy koran 353 __ � j • ....-. � ,,": '. .. ;,..,....",.. .. "... \ into the proposed nta, and causes it to be circulated among the ar­ abists at the session, over the name of igor blobadjian. this is asking for trouble, all right. these arabists are truly a frenzied bunch. they have been lobbying passionately for a new turkic alpha­ bet made up of arabic letters. there are fistfights in the hallways with unreconstructed cyrillicists, and whispers of a campaign to boycott, throughout the islamic world, any latin alphabet. (actually nobody is really too keen on a cyrillic nta. old czarist albatrosses still hang around the soviet neck. there is strong native resistance in central asia these days to anything suggesting russification, and that goes even for the look of a printed language. the objections to an arabic alphabet have to do with the absence of vowel symbols, and no strict one-to-one relation between sounds and characters. so this has left latin, by de­ fault. but the arabists aren't giving up. they keep proposing reformed arabic scripts-mostly on the model of one ratified at bukhara in 1923 and used successfully among the uzbeks. palatal and velar vocalics of spoken kazakh can be got round by using diacritical marks.) and there is a strong religious angle in all this. using a non-arabic alphabet is felt to be a sin against god-most of the turkic peoples are, after all, is­ lamic, and arabic script is the script of islam, it is the script in which the word of allah came down on the night of power, the script of the koranof the what? does tchitcherine know what he's doing with this for­ gery of his? it is more than blasphemy, it is an invitation to holy war. blobadjian, accordingly, is pursued through the black end of baku by a passel of screaming arabists waving scimitars and grinning horribly. the oil towers stand sentinel, bone-empty, in the dark. hunchbacks, lepers, hebephrenics and amputees of all descriptions have come pop­ ping out of their secret spaces to watch the fun. they loll back against the rusting metal flanks of refinery hardware, their whole common sky in a tessellation of primary colors. they occupy the chambers and bins and pockets of administrative emptiness left after the revolution, when the emissaries from dutch shell were asked to leave, and the english and swedish engineers all went home. it is a period now in baku of lull, of retrenchment. all the oil money taken out of these fields by the no­ bels has gone into nobel prizes. new wells are going down elsewhere, between the volga and the urals. time for retrospection here, for re­ fining the recent history that's being pumped up fetid and black from other strata of earth's mind.... "in here, blobadjian-quickly." close behind, arabists are ululating, shrill, merciless, among the red-orange stars over the crowds of derricks. :(nj1lentin� "'it)uitl yo "�o,1 wan 100 late, "�utne-" 'w)aol :hlenout :ool�ma i�11r wnere i �l u�)tream �knlrine de ��rint jus �llie row j1��et cra '�lliatxn �ij\eme �ii ans'l ��·ilie. 354 " -; .. _______:;d------� ._ �=>. __ _ •• __ • • _ •• '" w,.. •• <-·_�_-__ w -_ "f���p�' 355 slam. the last hatch is dogged. "wait-what is this?" "come. time for your journey now." "but i don't want-" "you don't want to be another slaughtered infidel. too late, blobad­ jian. here we go. . . ." the first thing he learns is how to vary his index of refraction. he can choose anything between transparent and opaque. after the thrill of ex­ perimenting has worn off, he settles on a pale, banded onyx effect. "it suits you," murmur his guides. "now hurry." "no. i want to pay tchitcherine what he's got coming." "too late. you're no part of what he's got coming. not any more." "but he-" "he's a blasphemer. islam has its own machineries for that. angels and sanctions, and careful interrogating. leave him. he has a different way to go." how alphabetic is the nature of molecules. one grows aware of it down here: one finds committees on molecular structure which are very similar to those back at the nta plenary session. "see: how they are taken out from the coarse flow-shaped, cleaned, rectified, just as you once redeemed your letters from the lawless, the mortal streaming of human speech. . . . these are our letters, our words: they too can be modulated, broken, recoupled, redefined, co-polymerized one to the other in worldwide chains that will surface now and then over long mo­ lecular silences, like the seen parts of a tapestry." blobadjian comes to see that the new turkic alphabet is only one version of a process really much older-and less unaware of itself-than he has ever had cause to dream. by and by, the frantic competition be­ tween 0} and g has faded away to trivial childhood memories. dim an­ ecdotes. he has gone beyond-once a sour bureaucrat with an upper lip as clearly demarcated as a chimpanzee's, now he is an adventurer, well off on a passage of his own, by underground current, without any anxi­ ety over where it may be taking him. he has even lost, an indefinite dis­ tance upstream, his pride in feeling once a little sorry for vaslav tchitcherine, destined never to see the things blobadjian is seeing.... and print just goes marching on without him. copy boys go running down the rows of desks trailing smeared galleys in the air. native printers get crash courses from experts airlifted in from tiflis on how to set up that nta. printed posters go up in the cities, in samarkand and pishpek, verney and tashkent. on sidewalks and walls the very first printed slogans start to show up, the first central asian fuck you signs, the first kill-the-police-commissioner signs (and somebody does! this al. i $ ," � . v i � __ .. �i --_ �.� •• '.'�'.. '. • ., ,. • • ...:� __ r-",.-""",, _. � 7.� phabet is really something!) and so the magic that the shamans, out in the wind, have always known, begins to operate now in a political way, and dzaqyp qulan hears the ghost of his own lynched father with a scratchy pen in the night, practicing as and bs.... willi ad ao on :druptly, ilie�e do �now lli now a oc �leepi !inode�s, �lowly, mi�nt nay 1ranod,a iliem�elve 1i'0ro, but right about now, here come tchitcherine and dzaqyp qulan rid­ ing up over some low hills and down into the village they've been looking for. the people are gathered in a circle: there's been a feast all day. fires are smoldering. in the middle of the crowd a small space has been cleared, and two young voices can be heard even at this distance. it is an ajtys-a singing-duel. the boy and girl stand in the eye of the village carrying on a mocking well-i-sort-of-like-you-even-if-there's-one­ or-two-weird-things-about-you-for-instance-kind of game while the tune darts in and out of qobyz and dombra strummed and plucked. the people laugh at the good lines. you have to be on your toes for this: you trade four-line stanzas, first, second, and last lines all have to rhyme though the lines don't have to be any special length, just breathable. still, it's tricky. it gets insulting too. there are villages where some part­ ners haven't spoken to each other for years after an ajtys. as tchitcher­ ine and dzaqyp qulan ride in, the girl is making fun of her opponent's horse, who is just a little-nothing serious, but kind of heavy-set . . . well, fat, really. really fat. and it's getting to the kid. he's annoyed. he zips back a fast one about bringing all his friends around and demol­ ishing her and her family too. everybody sort of goes hmm. no laughs. she smiles, tightly, and sings: anollik llie fea�t � �ille �d� t ¥oo,th ,\iianlilen "ale)'o "in �ten i you've been drinking a lot of qumys, i must be hearing the words of qumys­ for where were you the night my brother came looking for his stolen qumys? oh-oh. the brother she mentioned is laughing fit to bust. the kid singing is not so happy. "this could go on for a while." dzaqyp qulan dismounts, and sets about straightening his knee joints. "that's him, over there." a very old aqyn-a wandering kazakh singer-sits with a cup of qumys, dozing near the fire. "are you sure he'll-" "he'll sing about it. he's ridden right through that country. he'd be­ tray his profession if he didn't." they sit down and are passed cups of the fermented mare's milk, 356 i,helak with a bit of lamb, lepeshka, a few strawberries. . . . the boy and girl go on battling with their voices-and tchitcherine understands, abruptly, that soon someone will come out and begin to write some of these down in the new turkic alphabet he helped frame . . . and this is how they will be lost. now and then he glances over at the old aqyn, who only appears to be sleeping. in fact he radiates for the singers a sort of guidance. it is kindness. it can be felt as unmistakably as the heat from the embers. slowly, turn by turn, the couple's insults get gentler, funnier. what might have been a village apocalypse has gone on now into comic coop­ eration, as between a pair of vaudeville comedians. they are out of themselves, playing it all for the listeners to enjoy. the girl has the last word. did i hear you mention a marriage? here there has been a marriage­ this warm circle of song, boisterous, loud as any marriage. . and i like you, even if there are one or two thingsfor a little while the feast gathers momentum. drunks holler and women talk, and the little kids totter in and out of the huts, and the wind has picked up some speed. then the wandering singer begins to tune his dombra, and the asian silence comes back. "are you going to get it all?" asks dzaqyp qulan. "in stenography," replies tchitcherine, his g a little glottal. the aqyn's song i have come from the edge of the world. i have come from the lungs of the wind, with a thing i have seen so awesome even dzambul could not sing it. with a fear in my heart so sharp it will cut the strongest of metals. in the ancient tales it is told in a time that is older than qorqyt, who took from the wood of syrghaj the first qobyz, and the first song­ it is told that a land far distant is the place of the kirghiz light. 357 iff" � v 'ii � -� , � ��.� _ •.•.. ". ..' . . .. l � --in a place where words are unknown, and eyes shine like candles at night, and the face of god is a presence behind the mask of the skyat the tall black rock in the desert, hgoin the time of the final days. a�n�if the place were not so distant, rre)enif words were known, and spoken, and then the god might be a gold ikon, wink)i or a page in a paper book. teni but it comes as the kirghiz lightaoj1l,athere is no other way to know it. will )p the roar of its voice is deafness, �eater the flash of its light is blindness. �aek, as the floor of the desert rumbles, and its face cannot be borne. and a man cannot be the same, wnl, after seeing the kirghiz light. renee o� for i tell you that i have seen it a rur�e, \villnarin a place which is older than darkness, butiwhere even allah cannot reach. m�, he1as you see, my beard is an ice-field, i walk with a stick to support me, but this light must change us to children. and now i cannot walk far, for a baby must learn to walk. and my words are reaching your ears as the meaningless sounds of a baby. for the kirghiz light took my eyes, now i sense all earth like a baby. it is north, for a six-day ride, �tman, athrough the steep and death-gray canyons, then across the stony desert �n�lill to the mountain whose peak is a white dzurt. �e�)o ( and if you have passed without danger, �run: fie the place of the black rock will find you. mllilie, i �ili!but if you would not be born, iliem hi:then stay with your warm red fire, dnille p 358 and stay with your wife, in your tent, and the light will never find you, and your heart will grow heavy with age, and your eyes will shut only to sleep. "got it," sez tchitcherine. "let's ride, comrade." off again, the fires dying at their backs, the sounds of string music, of village carousing, presently swallowed behind the wind. and on into the canyons. far away to the north, a white mountaintop winks in the last sunlight. down here, it is already shadowed evening. tchitcherine will reach the kirghiz light, but not his birth. he is no aqyn, and his heart was never ready. he will see it just before dawn. he will spend 12 hours then, face-up on the desert, a prehistoric city greater than babylon lying in stifled mineral sleep a kilometer below his back, as the shadow of the tall rock, rising to a point, dances west to east and dzaqyp qulan tends him, anxious as child and doll, and drying foam laces the necks of the two horses. but someday, like the moun­ tains, like the young exiled women in their certain love, in their inno­ cence of him, like the morning earthquakes and the cloud-driving wind, a purge, a war, and millions after millions of souls gone behind him, he will hardly be able to remember it. but in the zone, hidden inside the summer zone, the rocket is wait­ ing. he will be drawn the same way again. . . . d d d d d d d last week, in the british sector someplace, slothrop, having been ass­ hole enough to drink out of an ornamental pond in the tiergarten, took sick. any berliner these days knows enough to boil water before drink­ ing, though some then proceed to brew it with various things for tea, such as tulip bulbs, which is not good. word is out that the center of the bulb is deadly poison. but they keep doing it. once slothrop-or rock­ etman, as he is soon to be known-thought he might warn them about things like tulip bulbs. bring in a little american enlightenment. but he gets so desperate with them, moving behind their scrims of european pain: he keeps pushing aside gauze after wavy gauze but there's always still the one, the impenetrable. . . . so there he is, under the trees in summer leaf, in flower, many of them blasted horizontal or into chips and splinters-fine dust from the bridle paths rising in the sunrays by itself, ghosts of horses still taking 359 i � [ r1. 7' . iii. , their early-morning turns through the peacetime park. up all night and thirsty, slothrop lies on his stomach and slurps up water, just an old sad­ dle tramp at the water hole here. . . . fool. vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, and who's he to lecture about tulip bulbs? he manages to crawl as far as an empty cellar, across the street from a wrecked church, curls up and spends the next days feverish, shivering, oozing shit that burns like acid -lost, alone with that sovereign nazi movie-villain fist clamping in his bowels ja-you vill shit now, ja? wondering if he'll ever see berkshire again. mommy, mommy! the war's over, why can't i go home now? nalline, the reflection from her gold star brightening her chins like a buttercup, smirks by the window and won't answer.... a terrible time. hallucinating rolls royces and bootheels in the night, coming to get him. out in the street women in babushkas are lackadaisically digging trenches for the black iron water pipe that's stacked along the curbside. all day long they talk, shift after shift, into evening. slothrop lies in the space where sunlight visits his cellar for half an hour before going on to others with mean puddles of warmth­ sorry, got to go now, schedule to keep, see you tomorrow if it doesn't rain, heh heh. . . . once slothrop wakes to the sound of an american work detail march­ ing down the street, cadence being counted by a negro voice-yo lep, yo lep, yo lep 0 right 0 lep . . . kind of little german folk tune with some sliding up-scale on the word "right"-slothrop can imagine his mannered jog of arm and head to the left as he comes down hard on that heel, the way they teach it in basic . . . can see the man's smile. for a minute he has the truly unbalanced idea of running out in the street and asking them to take him back, requesting political asylum in america. but he's too weak. in his stomach, in his heart. he lies, listen­ ing the tramping and the voice out of earshot, the sound of his country fading away. . . . fading like the wasp ghosts, the old-time dps trail­ ing rootless now down the roads out of his memory, crowding the roof­ tops of the freights of forgetfulness, knapsacks and poor refugee pockets stuffed with tracts nobody'd read, looking for another host: given up for good on rocketman here. somewhere between the burning in his head and the burning in his asshole, if the two can be conveniently separated, and paced to that dying cadence, he elaborates a fantasy in which en­ zian, the african, finds him again-comes to offer him a way out. because it seems a while back that they did meet again, by the reedy edge of a marsh south of the capital. unshaven, sweating, stinking rock­ etman restlessly tripping out to the suburbs, among his people: there is haze over the sun, and a rotting swamp odor worse than slothrop's own. 360 oni on ill lions look: civilia inow, acapt woen rin un �com tnou� ltule, cantlo toe winte� meaoo and sad· rhea, far as p ano only two or three hours' sleep in the last couple of days. he stumbles on the schwarzkommando, busy dredging for pieces of rocket. forma­ tions of dark birds are cruising in the sky. the africans have a partisan look: pieces here and there of old wehrmacht and ss uniform, tattered civilian clothes, only one insigne in common, worn wherever it will show, a painted steel device in red, white and blue, thus: adapted from insignia the german troopers wore in south-west africa when they came in 1904 to crush the herero rebellion-it was used to pin up half the brim of a wide-awake hat. for the zone-hereros it has become something deep, slothrop gathers, maybe a little mystical. though he recognizes the letters-klar, enthiftung, ziindung, vor­ stufe, hauptstufe, the five positions of the launching switch in the a4 control car-he doesn't let on to enzian. they sit on a hillside eating bread and sausages. children from the town move by in every direction. someone has set up an army tent, someone has brought beer in kegs. a scratch band, a dozen brasses in tasseled, frayed gold and red uniforms play selections from der meist­ ersinger. fat-smoke drifts in the air. choruses of drinkers in the distance break from time to time into laughter or a song. it's a rocket-raising: a festival new to this country. soon it will come to the folk-attention how close wernher von braun's birthday is to the spring equinox, and the same german impulse that once rolled flower-boats through the towns and staged mock battles between young spring and deathwhite old winter will be erecting strange floral towers out in the clearings and meadows, and the young scientist-surrogate will be going round and round with old gravity or some such buffoon, and the children will be tickled, and laugh. . . . schwarzkommando struggle knee-deep in mud, engaged entirely with the salvage, with the moment. the a4 they're about to uncover was used in the last desperate battle for berlin-an abortive firing, a warhead that didn't explode. around its grave they're driving in planks for shoring, sending back mud in buckets and wood casks along a human chain to be dumped on shore, near where their rifles and kits are stacked. "so marvy was right. they didn't disarm you guys." "they didn't know where to find us. we were a surprise. there are even now powerful factions in paris who don't believe we exist. and most of the time i'm not so sure myself." " i / ��--' i�;-'''''''' · " -.-.-.-..... -......... .. .. .. : '":":::t' '-.-_. ,� "how's that?" "well, 1 think we're here, but only in a statistical way. something likethat rock over there is just about 100% certain-it knows it's there, so does everybody else. but our own chances of being right here right now are only a little better than even-the slightest shift in the probabilitiesand we're gone-schnapp! like that." "peculiar talk, oberst." "not if you've been where we have. forty years ago, in siidwest, we were nearly exterminated. there was no reason. can you understand that? no reason. we couldn't even find comfort in the will of god theory. these were germans with names and service records, men in blue uniforms who killed clumsily and not without guilt. search-and-de­ stroy missions, every day. it went on for two years. the orders came down from a human being, a scrupulous butcher named von trotha. the thumb of mercy never touched his scales. "we have a word that we whisper, a mantra for times that threaten to be bad. mba-kayere. you may find that it will work for you. mba­ kayere. it means 'i am passed over.' to those of us who survived von trotha, it also means that we have learned to stand outside our historyand watch it, without feeling too much. a little schizoid. a sense for the statistics of our being. one reason we grew so close to the rocket, 1 think, was this sharp awareness of how contingent, like ourselves, the aggregat 4 could be-how at the mercy of small things ... dust that gets in a timer and breaks electrical contact ... a film of grease youcan't even see, oil from a touch of human fingers, left inside a liquid­ oxygen valve, flaring up soon as the stuff hits and setting the whole thingoff-i've seen that happen ... rain that swells the bushings in the ser­ vos or leaks into a switch: corrosion, a short, a signal grounded out,brennschluss too soon, and what was alive is only an aggregat again, anaggregat of pieces of dead matter, no longer anything that can move, orthat has a destiny with a shape-stop doing that with your eyebrows,scuffling. 1 may have gone a bit native out here, that's all. stay in thezone long enough and you'll start getting ideas about destiny yourself."a cry from down in the marsh. birds swirl upward, round and black, grains of coarse-cut pepper on this bouillabaisse sky. little kids come skidding to a halt, and the brass band fall silent in mid-bar. enzian is on his feet and loping down to where the others are gathering."was ist los, meinen sumpfmenschen?" the others, laughing, scoopup fistfuls of mud and start throwing them at their nguarorerue, whoducks, dodges, grabs him some of that mud and starts flinging it back. 362 � fuere ��illanj! them \��ove '�a� m( �nzian @uer n� 110,[ \ i �rrq looki i'!'!naili ��! til �nec! ne t�m�n� \1dlv)'j�( ii .�ce b like e, so now ilities the germans on shore stand blinking, politely aghast at this lack of dis­ cipline. down in the plank enclosure, a couple of muddy trim-tabs poke up now out of the marsh, with twelve feet of mud between them. enzian, spattered and dripping, his white grin preceding him by several meters, vaults over the shoring and into the hole, and grabs a. shovel. the mo­ ment has become roughly ceremonial: andreas and christian have moved up to either side to help him scrape and dig till about a foot of one fin-surface is exposed. the determination of the number. the ngu­ arorerue crouches and brushes away mud, revealing part of a slash­ mark, a white 2, and a 7. "outase." and glum faces on the others. slothrop's got a hunch. "you expected der fiinffachnullpunkt," he proposes to enzian a little later, "the quintuple zero, right? haa-aaahl" gotcha, gotchathrowing up his hands, "it's insane. 1 don't believe there is one." "zero probability?" "i think it will depend on the number of searchers. are your people after it?" "i don't know. 1 only heard by accident. 1 don't have any people." "schwarzgerat, schwarzkommando. scuffling: suppose somewhere there were an alphabetical list, someone's list, an input to some intelli­ gence arm, say. some country, doesn't matter. but suppose that on this list, the two names, blackinstrument, blackcommand, just happened to be there, juxtaposed. that's all, an alphabetical coincidence. we wouldn't have to be real, and neither would it, correct?" the marshes streak away, patched with light under the milk overcast. negative shadows flicker white behind the edges of everything. "well, this is all creepy enough here, oberst," sez slothrop. "you're not help­ ing." enzian is staring into slothrop's face, with something like a smile under his beard. "o.k. who is after it, then?" being enigmatic, won't answer-is this bird looking to be needled? "that major marvy," opines slothrop, "a-and that tchitcherine, too!" ha! that did it. like a salute, a boot-click, enzian's face snaps into perfect neutrality. "you would oblige me," he begins, then settles for changing the subject. "you were down in the mittelwerke. how did marvy's people seem to be getting along with the russians?" "ace buddies, seemed like." "i have the feeling that the occupying powers have just aboutreached agreement on a popular front against the schwarzkommando. idon't know who you are, or how your lines are drawn. but they'retrying to shut us down. i'm just back from hamburg. we had trouble. itwas made to look like a dp raid, but the british military governmentwas behind it, and they had russian cooperation."''i'm sorry. can i help?" "don't be reckless. let's all wait and see. all anyone knows about you is that you keep showing up." toward dusk, the black birds descend, millions of them, to sit in thebranches of trees nearby. the trees grow heavy with black birds,branches like dendrites of the nervous system fattening, deep in twit­tering nerve-dusk, in preparation for some important message. . . .later in berlin, down in the cellar among fever-dreams with shit leak­ing out of him at gallons per hour, too weak to aim more than tokenkicks at the rats running by with eyes fixed earnestly noplace, trying tomake believe they don't have a newer and dearer status among the ber­liners, at minimum points on his mental health chart, when the sun is gone so totally it might as well be for good, slothrop's dumb idling heartsez: the schwarzgerat is no grail, ace, that's not what the g in imipo­lex g stands for. and you are no knightly hero. the best you can com­pare with is tannhauser, the singing nincompoop--you've been underone mountain at nordhausen, been known to sing a song or two withuke accompaniment, and don'tcha feel you're in a sucking marshland ofsin out here, slothrop? maybe not the same thing william slothrop,vomiting a good part of 1630 away over the side of that arbella, meantwhen he said "sin." ... but what you've done is put yourself on some­body else's voyage-some frau holda, some venus in some mountain­playing her, its, game ... you know that in some irreducible way it's anevil game. you play because you have nothing better to do, but thatdoesn't make it right. and where is the pope whose staff's gonna bloomfor you? as a matter of fact, he is also just about to run into his lisaura: some­one he will be with for a while and then leave again. the minnesingerabandoned his poor woman to suicide. what slothrop will be leavinggreta erdmann to is not so clear. along the havel in neubabelsberg shewaits, less than the images of herself that survive in an indeterminatenumber of release prints here and there about the zone, and even acrossthe sea. . . . every kind technician who ever threw a magenta gelacross her key light for her has gone to war or death, and she is leftnothing but god's indifferent sunlight in all its bleaching and terror. 364 (�me� au )i��a�'s � lruru, �r lootin �1lmel wi ��, · .. eyebrows plucked to pen-strokes, long hair streaked with gray, hands heavy with rings of all colors, opacities and uglinesses, wearing her dark prewar chanel suits, no hat, scarves, always a flower, she is haunted by central european night-whispers that blow, like the skin curtains of berlin, more ghostly around her fattening, wrecked beauty the closer she and slothrop draw. . . . this is how they meet. one night slothrop is out raiding a vegetable garden in the park. thousands of people living in the open. he skirts their fires, stealthyall he wants is a handful of greens here, a carrot or mangel-wurzel there, just to keep him going. when they see him they throw rocks, lumber, once not long ago an old hand-grenade that didn't go off but made him shit where he stood. this evening he is orbiting someplace near the grosser stern. it is long after curfew. odors of woodsmoke and decay hang over the city. among pulverized heads of stone margraves and electors, reconnoi­ tering a likely-looking cabbage patch, all of a sudden slothrop picks up the scent of an unmistakable no it can't be yes it is it's a reefer! a-and it's burning someplace close by. goldshot green of the rif's slant fields here, vapor-blossoms resinous and summery, charm his snoot on through bushes and matted grass, under the blasted trees and whatever sits in their branches. sure enough, in the hollow of an upended trunk, long roots fringing the scene like a leprechaun outpost, slothrop finds one emil ("saure") bummer, once the weimar republic's most notorious cat burglar and doper, flanked by two beautiful girls, handing around a cheerful little orange star. the depraved old man. slothrop's on top of them before they notice. bummer smiles, reaches up an arm, offering the remainder of what they've been smoking to slothrop, who receives it in long dirty fingernails. oboy. he hunkers down. "was ist los?" sez saure. "we've had a windfall of kif. allah has smiled on us, well actually he was smiling at everybody, we just hap­ pened to be in his direct line of sight.... " his nickname, which means "acid" in german, developed back in the twenties, when he was carrying around a little bottle of schnapps which, if he got in a tight spot, he would bluff people into thinking was fuming nitric acid. he comes out now with another fat moroccan reefer. they light up off of slothrop's faithful zippo. trudi, the blonde, and magda, the sultry bavarian, have spent the day looting a stash of wagnerian opera costumes. there is a pointed helmet with horns, a full cape of green velvet, a pair of buckskin trouand terror. sers. -..:..::._ .�!, ,��--f�' ..�.' " , ". r .'��'7;� ''''''. . _�.�. --�/. "saaaay," sez slothrop, "that rig looks pretty sharp!" "they're for you," magda smiles. "aw ... no. you'd get a better deal at the tauschzentrale. but saure insists. "haven't you ever noticed, when you're this blitzedand you want somebody to show up, they always do?" the girls are moving the coal of the reefer about, watching its reflec­ tion in the shiny helmet changing shapes, depths, grades of color . . .hmm. it occurs to slothrop here that without those horns on it, why thishelmet would look just like the nose assembly of the rocket. and if he could find a few triangular scraps of leather, figure a way to sew them on to tchitcherine's boots ... yeah, a-and on the back of the cape puta big, scarlet, capital rit is as pregnant a moment as when tonto,after the legendary ambush, attempts to"raketemensch!" screams saure, grabbing the helmet and unscrew­ ing the horns off of it. names by themselves may be empty, but the actof naming.... "you had the same idea?" oh, strange. saure carefully reaches upand places the helmet on slothrop's head. ceremonially the girls drapethe cape around his shoulders. troll scouting parties have already sent runners back to inform their people. "good. now listen, rocketman, i'm in a bit of trouble." "hah?" slothrop has been imagining a full-scale rocketman hype, inwhich the people bring him food, wine and maidens in a four-color dis­ pensation in which there is a lot of skipping and singing "la, la, la, la,"and beefsteaks blossoming from these strafed lindens, and roast turkeysthudding down like soft hail on berlin, sweet potatoes a-and meltedmarshmallows, bubbling up out of the ground. . . ."do you have any armies?" trudi wants to know. slothrop, or rock­etman, hands over half a withered pack. the reefer keeps coming around: darts and stabs through this rootshelter. everybody forgets what it is they've been talking about. there'sthe smell of earth. bugs rush through, aerating. magda has lit one of slo­throp's cigarettes for him and he tastes raspberry lipstick. lipstick?who's got lipstick these days? what are all these people here into, any­way? berlin is dark enough for stars, the accustomed stars but never so clearly arranged. it is possible also to make up your own constellations."oh," saure recalls, "i had this problem ... " "i'm really hungry," it occurs to slothrop.trudi is telling magda about her boy friend gustav, who wants to liveinside the piano. "all you could see was his feet sticking out, he kept 366 i 1'1' min a �a)t �h id� for inlo,an)'· nel'er � teljatio� n�to�\,1 t. he ker' saying, 'you all hate me, you hate this piano!' " they're giggling now. "plucking on the strings," sez magda, "right? he's so paranoid." trudi has these big, blonde prussian legs. tiny blonde hairs dance up and down in the starlight, up under her skirt and back, all through the shadows of her knees, around under the hollows behind them, this starry jittering. . . . the stump towers above and cups them all, a giant nerve cell, dendrites extended into the city, the night. signals coming in from all directions, and from back in time too, probably, if not indeed forward .... saure, who is never able entirely to layoff business, rolls, flows to his feet, clutching on to a root till his head decides where it is going to come to rest. magda, her ear at its entrance, is banging on rocketman's helmet with a stick. it gongs in chords. the separate notes aren't right on pitch, either: they sound very odd together. . . . "i don't know what time it is," saure bummer gazing around. "weren't we supposed to be at the chicago bar? or was that last night?" "i forget," trudi giggles. "listen, kerl, i really have to talk to that american." "dear emil," trudi whispers, "don't worry. he'll be at the chicago." they decide on an intricate system of disguise. saure gives slothrop his jacket. trudi wears the green cape. magda puts on slothrop's boots, and he goes in his socks, carrying her own tiny shoes in his pockets. they spend some time gathering plausible items, kindling and greens, to fill the helmet with, and saure carries that. magda and trudi help stuff slothrop into the buckskin pants, both girls down on pretty knees, hands caressing his legs and ass. like the ballroom in st. patrick's ca­ thedral, there is none in these trousers here, and slothrop's hardon, en­ larging, aches like thunder. "fine for you folks." the girls are laughing. grandiose slothrop limps along after everybody, a network of clear interweaving ripples now like rain all through his vision, hands turning to stone, out of the tiergarten, past shellstruck lime and chestnut trees, into the streets, or what is serv­ ing for them. patrols of all nations keep coming by, and this mindless quartet have to hit the dirt often, trying not to laugh too much. slo­ throp's sox are sodden with dew. tanks manoeuvre in the street, chew­ ing parallel ridges of asphalt and stonedust. trolls and dryads play in the open spaces. they were blasted back in may out of bridges, out of trees into liberation, and are now long citified. "oh, that drip," say the subdeb trolls about those who are not as hep, "he just isn't out-of-the­ tree about anything." mutilated statues lie under mineral sedation: ��.:..t i / i -====-.-�---f � ... i. ,... • ". • •••••••••••• •••• .. -.-....... • • ... • �, �;":�':3 --.-. .• � __ ." . ,� frock-coated marble torsos of bureaucrats fallen pale in the gutters. yes,hmm, here we are in the heart of downtown berlin, really, uh, a little, jesus christ what's that"better watch it," advises saure, "it's kind of rubbery through here.""what is that?" well, what it is-is? what's "is"?-is that king kong, or some crea­ ture closely allied, squatting down, evidently just, taking a shit, right inthe street! and everything! a-and being ignored, by truckload aftertruckload of russian enlisted men in pisscutter caps and dazed smiles, grinding right on by-"hey!" slothrop wants to shout, "hey lookit that giant ape! or whatever it is. you guys? hey ... " but he doesn't, luck­ ily. on closer inspection, the crouching monster turns out to be the reichstag building, shelled out, airbrushed, fire-brushed powdery blackon all blastward curves and projections, chalked over its hard-echoingcarbon insides with cyrillic initials, and many names of comrades killed in may. berlin proves to be full of these tricks. there's a big chromo of stalinthat slothrop could swear is a girl he used to date at harvard, the mus­tache and hair only incidental as makeup, damn if that isn't what's her name . . . but before he can quite hear the gibbering score of littlevoices-hurry, hurry, get it in place, he's almost around the corner­here, laid side by side on the pavement, are these enormous loaves ofbread dough left to rise under clean white cloths-boy, is everybodyhungry: the same thought hits them all at once, wow! raw dough!loaves of bread for that monster back there . . . oh, no that's right, thatwas a building, the reichstag, so these aren't bread ... by now it'sclear that they're human bodies, dug from beneath today's rubble, eachinside its carefully tagged gi fartsack. but it was more than an opticalmistake. they are rising, they are transubstantiated, and who knows,with summer over and hungry winter coming down, what we'll be feed­ ing on by xmas? what the notorious femina is to cigarette-jobbing circles in berlin,the chicago is to dopers. but while dealing at the femina usually getsunder way around noon, the chicago here only starts jiving after the10:00 curfew. slothrop, saure, trudi and magda come in a back en­trance, out of a great massif of ruins and darkness lit only here andthere, like the open country. inside, m.o.s and corpsmen run hither andthither clutching bottles of fluffy white crystalline substances, smallpink pills, clear ampoules the size of pureys. occupation and reichs­marks ruffle and flap across the room. some dealers are all chemical en­thusiasm, others all business. oversize photos of john dillinger, alone or 368 " � �'---'_-=-� "._�-'\..,,� � .. <.-�-.......--........" ..•!�!���'" •• ��-:"7:_ >' -,.�;:,. ".,.�__-_-_" � e crea. right in dafter the doper's dream here," posed with his mother, his pals, his tommygun, decorate the walls. lights and arguing are kept low, should the military police happen by. on a wire-backed chair, blunt hair hands picking quietly at a guitar, sits an american sailor with an orangutan look to him. in 314 time and shit-kicking style, he is singing: last night i dreamed i was plugged right in to a bubblin' hookah so high, when all of a sudden some arab jinni jump up just a-winkin' his eye. "i'm here to obey all your wishes," he told me, as for words i was trying to grope. "good buddy," i cried, "you could surely oblige me by turnin' me on to some dope!" with a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand, and we flew down the sky in a flash, and the first thing i saw in the land where he took me was a whole solid mountain of hash! all the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills, whur the romilar river flowed by, to the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow, so pretty that i wanted to cry. all the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion, morning glories woven into their hair, bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine, all their dope they were eager to share. well we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin', in the flowering panama red, just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea, and those brownies so kind to your head. now i could've passed that good time forever, and i really was fixing to stay, but you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man, and he busted me right whur i lay. and he took me back, to this cold, cold world, 'n' now m' prison's whurever i be ... and i dream of the days back in doperland and i wonder, will i ever go free? kalen· lone or the singer is seaman bodine, of the u.s. destroyer fohn e. badass,and he's the contact saure is here to see. the badass is docked in cux­haven and bodine is semi-awol, having hit berlin night before last forthe first time since the early weeks of american occupation. "things areso tight, man," he's groaning, "potsdam, i couldn't believe it over there.remember how the wilhelmplatz used to be? watches, wine, jewels,cameras, heroin, fur coats, everything in the world. nobody gave a shit,right? you ought to see it now. russian security all over the place. bigmean customers. you couldn't get near it." "isn't there supposed to be something going on over there?" sez slo­throp. he's heard scuttlebutt. "a conference or some shit?" "they're deciding how to cut up germany," sez saure, "all the pow­ers. they should call in the germans, kerl, we've been doing that forcenturies. " "you couldn't get a gnat in there now, man," seaman bodine shakinghis head, dexterously rolling a reefer one-handed on a cigarette paper hehas first torn, with straightfaced bravura, in half. "ah," smiles saure, flinging an arm over slothrop, "but what if rock­etman can?" bodine looks over, skeptical. "that's rocketman?" "more or less," sez slothrop, "but i'm not sure i want to go into thatpotsdam, right now. . . ." "if you only knew!" cries bodine. "listen, ace, right this minute,hardly 15 miles away, there is six kilos! of pure, top-grade nepalesehashish! scored it from my buddy in the cbi, government seals 'n' ev­erything, buried it myself back in may, so safe nobody'il ever find itwithout a map. all you got to do is fly over there or whatever it is youdo, just go in and get it." "that's all." "a kilo for you," offers saure. "they can cremate it with me. all those russians can stand aroundthe furnace and get loaded." "perhaps," the most decadent young woman slothrop has ever seenin his life, wearing fluorescent indigo eye-shadow and a black leathersnood, comes slithering past, "the pretty american is not a devotee ofthe green hershey bar, mm? ha-ha-ha. " "a million marks," saure sighs. "where are you going to get_" holding up an elfin finger, leaning close, "i print it."sure enough, he does. they all' troop out of the chicago, half a mile 370 �ure ilofur� saure to and fro, bloodshot and nagging, with a wreathing pot of tea. slothrop's alone in bed. the rocketman costume waits on a table, along arouna with seaman bodine's treasure map-oh. oh, boy. is slothrop really going to have to go through with this? r seen outside, birds whistle arpeggios up the steps, along the morning. leailier trucks and jeeps sputter in the distances. slothrop sits drinking tea and tee of trying to scrape dried sperm off of his trousers while saure explains the layout. the package is stashed under an ornamental bush outside a villa at 2 kaiserstrasse, in neubabelsberg, the old movie capital of germany. that's across the havel from potsdam. it seems prudent to stay off the avus autobahn. "try to get past the checkpoint just after zehlendorf a mue instead. come up on neubabelsberg by canal." tfred· ,)iliat minute, e�ele nero finalt i ilrou down through rubble piles, over pathways twisting invisible in the dark to all but saure, down at last into a houseless cellar with filing cabinets, a bed, an oil-lamp, a printing-press. magda cuddles close to slothrop, her hands dancing over his erection. trudi has formed an inexplicable attachment to bodine. saure begins to crank his clattering wheel, and sheets of reichsmarks do indeed come fluttering off into the holder, thousands on thousands. "all authentic plates and paper, too. the only detail missing is a slight ripple along the margins. there was a special stamp-press nobody managed to loot." "uh," slothrop sez. "aw, come on," sez bodine. "rocketman, jeepers. you don't want to do nothing no more." they help jog and square the sheets while saure chops them up with a long glittering cutter blade. holding out a fat roll of 100s, "you could be back tomorrow . no job is too tough for rocketman." a day or two later, it will occur to slothrop that what he should have said at that point was, "but i wasn't rocketman, until just a couple hours ago." but right now he is beguiled at the prospect of 2.2 pounds of hashish and a million nearly-real marks. nothing to walk away from, or fly or whatever it is, right? so he takes a couple thousand in front and spends the rest of the night with round and moaning magda on saure's bed, while trudi and bodine lark in the bathtub, and saure slips back on some other mission, out into the three-o'clock waste that presses, oceanic, against their buoyed inner space. . . . d d d d d d d 371 "how come?" "no civilians allowed on vip road-here, this one, that runs on across the river to potsdam." "come on. i'll need a boat, then." "hal you expect improvisation from a german? no, no, that's-that's rocketman's problem! ha-ha!" "unnhh." seems the villa fronts on the griebnitz see. "why don't ihit it from that side?" "you'll have to go under a couple of bridges first, if you do. heavilyguarded. plunging fire. maybe-maybe even mortars. it gets very nar­row opposite potsdam. you won't have a chance." oh, german humor's a fine way to start the morning. saure hands slothrop an ago card, a trip ticket, and a pass printed in english and russian. "the man who forged these has been in and out of potsdam on them a dozen times since the conference began. that's how much faith he has in them. the bilingual pass is special, just for the conference. but you mustn't spendtime gawking like a tourist, asking celebrities for autographs-""well say look emil, if you've got one of these and they're so good,why don't you go?" "it's not my specialty. i stick to dealing. just an old bottle of acid­and even that's make-believe. buccaneering is for rocketmen." "bodine, then." "he's already on his way back to cuxhaven. won't he be upset, whenhe comes back next week, only to find that rocketman, of all people,has shown the white feather." "oh." shit. slothrop stares awhile at that map, then tries to memorizeit. he puts on his boots, groaning. he bundles his helmet in that cape,and the two, conner and connee, set out through the american sector.mare's-tails are out seething across the blue sky, but down here theberliner luft hangs still, with the odor of death inescapable. thousandsof corpses fallen back in the spring still lie underneath these mountainsof debris, yellow mountains, red and yellow and pale.where's the city slothrop used to see back in those newsreels andthat national geographic? parabolas weren't all that new german ar­chitecture went in for-there were the spaces-the necropolism ofblank alabaster in the staring sun, meant to be filled with human har­vests rippling out of sight, making no sense without them. if there issuch a thing as the city sacramental, the city as outward and visiblesign of inward and spiritual illness or health, then there may have been,even here, some continuity of sacrament, through the terrible surface ofmay. the emptiness of berlin this morning is an inverse mapping of the 372 �oo �i �io �n �ro . �a [me tn ij� m�l 000: "i' "\ linen �rofe -that' y don't i , heavu\' \'e�'nar, numor'l rara,d gooj, ellana nan,k u,mof annar­ lliere!l r!l!ole' been, ace of oftne white and geometric capital before the destruction-the fallow and long-strewn fields of rubble, the same weight of too much featureless concrete . . . except that here everything's been turned inside out. the straight-ruled boulevards built to be marched along are now winding pathways through the waste-piles, their shapes organic now, re­ sponding, like goat trails, to laws of least discomfort. the civilians are outside now, the uniforms inside. smooth facets of buildings have given way to cobbly insides of concrete blasted apart, all the endless-pebbled rococo just behind the shuttering. inside is outside. ceilingless rooms open to the sky, wall-less rooms pitched out over the sea of ruins in prows, in crew's-nests. . . . old men with their tins searching the ground for cigarette butts wear their lungs on their breasts. advertise­ ments for shelter, clothing, the lost, the taken, once classified, folded biirgerlich inside newspapers to be read at one's ease in the lacquered and graceful parlors are now stuck with hitler-head stamps of blue, or­ ange, and yellow, out in the wind, when the wind comes, stuck to trees, door-frames, planking, pieces of wall-white and fading scraps, writing spidery, trembling, smudged, thousands unseen, thousands unread or blown away. at the winterhilfe one-course sundays you sat outside at long tables under the swastika-draped winter trees, but outside has been brought inside and that kind of sunday lasts all week long. winter is coming again. all berlin spends the daylight trying to make believe it isn't. scarred trees are back in leaf, baby birds hatched and learning to fly, but winter's here behind the look of summer-earth has turned over in its sleep, and the tropics are reversed.... like the walls of the chicago bar brought outside, giant photographs are posted out in the friedrichstrasse-faces higher than a man. slo­ throp recognizes churchill and stalin all right, but isn't sure about the other one. "emil, who's that guy in the glasses?" "the american president. mister truman." "quit fooling. truman is vice-president. roosevelt is president." saure raises an eyebrow. "roosevelt died back in the spring. just before the surrender." they get tangled in a bread queue. women in worn plush coats, little kids holding on to frayed hems, men in caps and dark double-breasted suits, unshaven old faces, foreheads white as a nurse's leg. . . . some­ body tries to grab slothrop's cape, and there's a brief tugging match. "i'm sorry," sauro offers, when they're clear again. "why didn't anybody tell me?" slothrop was going into high school when fdr was starting out in the white house. broderick slothrop professed to hate the man, but young tyrone thought he was brave, 373 with that polio and all. liked his voice on the radio. almost saw him once too, in pittsfield, but lloyd nipple, the fattest kid in minge­borough, was standing in the way, and all slothrop got to see was a cou­ ple wheels and the feet of some guys in suits on a running-board. hoo­ ver he'd heard of, dimly-something to do with shack towns or vacuum cleaners-but roosevelt was his president, the only one he'd known. it seemed he'd just keep getting elected, term after term, forever. but somebody had decided to change that. so he was put to sleep, slo­throp's president, quiet and neat, while the kid who once imaged hisface on lloyd's t-shirted shoulderblades was jiving on the riviera, or in switzerland someplace, only half aware of being extinguished him­self.... "they said it was a stroke," saure sez. his voice is arriving from some quite peculiar direction, let us say from directly underneath, as the wide necropolis begins now to draw inward, to neck down and stretch out into a corridor, one known to slothrop though not by name, a deforma­tion of space that lurks inside his life, latent as a hereditary disease. aband of doctors in white masks that cover everything but eyes, bleakand grown-up eyes, move in step down the passage toward where roo­sevelt is lying. they carry shiny black kits. metal rings inside the blackleather, rings as if to speak, as if a ventriloquist were playing a trick,help-let-me-out-of-here.... whoever it was, posing in the black capeat yalta with the other leaders, conveyed beautifully the sense ofdeath's wings, rich, soft and black as the winter cape, prepared a nationof starers for the passing of roosevelt, a being they assembled, a beingthey would dismantle. . . . someone here is cleverly allowing for parallax, scaling, shadows allgoing the right way and lengthening with the day-but no, saure can'tbe real, no more than these dark-clothed extras waiting in queues forsome hypothetical tram, some two slices of sausage (sure, sure), thedozen half-naked kids racing in and out of this burned tenement soamazingly detailed-they sure must have the budget, all right. look atthis desolation, all built then hammered back into pieces, ranging body­size down to powder (please order by gauge number), as that well-re­membered fragrance noon in berlin, essence of human decay, is puffedon the set by a hand, lying big as a flabby horse up some alley, pumpingits giant atomizer. . . . (by saute's black-market watch, it's nearly noon. from 11 to 12 inthe morning is the evil hour, when the white woman with the ring ofkeys comes out of her mountain and may appear to you. be careful,then. if you can't free her from a spell she never specifies, you'll be pun374 sa cou. d, h()(). vacuulj] nown,]t 'ier� ori� nea nim. !o12in• ring 01 carem be pun· ished. she is the beautiful maiden offering the wonderflower, and the ugly old woman with long teeth who found you in that dream and said nothing. the hour is hers.) black p-38s fly racketing in formation, in moving openwork against the pale sky. slothrop and saure find a cafe on the sidewalk, drink wa­ tered pink wine, eat bread and some cheese. that crafty old doper breaks out a "stick" of "tea" and they sit in the sun handing it back and forth, offering the waiter a hit, who can tell? that's how you have to smoke armies too, these days. jeeps, personnel carriers, and bicycles go streaming by. girls in fresh summer frocks, orange and green as fruit ices, drift in to sit at tables, smiling, smiling, checking the area continu­ ously for early business. somehow saure has got slothrop to talking about the rocket. not at all saute's specialty, of course, though he's been keeping an ear tuned. if it's wanted, then it has a price. "i could never see the fascination. we kept hearing so much about it on the radio. it was our captain midnight show. but we grew disillusioned. wanting to believe, but nothing we saw giving us that much faith. less and less toward the end. all i know is it brought disaster down on the cocaine market, kerl." "how's that?" "something in that rocket needed potassium permanganate, right?" "turbopump. " "well, without that purpurstoff you can't deal cocaine honestly. for­ get honesty, there just wasn't any reality. last winter you couldn't find a cc of permanganate in the whole fucking reich, kerl. oh you should've seen the burning that was going on. friends, understand. but what friend hasn't wanted to-in terms you can recognize-push a pie in your face? eh?" "thank you." wait a minute. is he talking about us? is he getting ready to"so," having continued, "there crept over berlin a gigantic laurel and hardy film, silent, silent . . . because of the permanganate short­ age. i don't know what other economies may have been affected by the a4. this was not just pie-throwing, not just anarchy on a market, this was chemical irresponsibility! clay, talcum, cement, even, it got this perverse, flour! powdered milk, diverted from the stomachs of little sucklings! look-alikes that were worth even more than cocaine-but the idea was that someone should get a sudden noseful of milk, hahaha­ hah!" breaking up here for a minute, "and that was worth the loss! without the permanganate there was no way to tell anything for sure. a little novocain to numb the tongue, something bitter for the taste, and 375 ii! / e: "-/ ii! � __ you could be making enormous profits off of sodium bicarbonate. per­ manganate is the touchstone. under a microscope, you drop some onthe substance in question, which dissolves-then you watch how it comes out of solution, how it recrystallizes: the cocaine will appear first,at the edges, then the vegetable cut, the procaine, the lactose at otherwell-known positions-a purple target, with the outer ring worth themost, and the bull's-eye worth nothing. an anti-target. certainly not thea4's idea of one, eh, rocketman. that machinery of yours was not ex­actly the doper's friend. what do you want it for? will your country useit against russia?" "i don't want it. what do you mean, 'my country'?""j'm sorry. i only meant that it looks like the russians want it badlyenough. i've had connections all over the city taken away. interrogated.none of them know any more about rockets than i do. but tchitcherinethinks we do." "oboy. him again?" "yes he's in potsdam right now. supposed to be. set up a headquar-ters in one of the old film studios." "swell news, emil. with my luck ... " "you don't look too good, rocketman." "think that's horrible? try this!" and slothrop proceeds to ask ifsaure has heard anything about the schwarzgerat,saure does not exactly scream aiyee! and run off down the street oranything, but squeeeak goes a certain valve all right, and something isrouted another way. "i'll tell you what," nodding and shifting in hisseat, "you talk to der springer. ja, you two would get on fine. i am onlya retired cat burglar, looking to spend my last several decades as thesublime rossini did his: comfortable. just don't mention me at all, o.k.,joe?" "well, who is that der springer, and where do i find him, emil?""he is the knight who leaps perpetually-""wow." "-across the chessboard of the zone, is who he is. just as rocketmanflies over obstacles today." he laughs nastily. "a fine pair. how do iknow where he is? he could be anyplace. he is everywhere.""zorro? the creen hornet?" "last i heard, a week or two ago, he was up north on the hanseaticrun. you will meet. don't worry." abruptly saure stands up to go,shaking hands, slipping rocketman another reefer for later, or for luck."i have medical officers to see. the happiness of a thousand customersis on your shoulders, young man. meet me at my place. chick." 376 \\� erroaat�, nitcherinr heao�uar. ketman 011'001 anseatic to �o, , or luck. tamers so the evil hour has worked its sorcery. the wrong word was schwarzgerat. now the mountain has closed again thundering behind slothrop, damn near like to crush his heel, and it might just be centuries before that white woman appears again. shit. the name on the special pass is "max schlepzig." slothrop, feeling full of pep, decides to pose as a vaudeville entertainer. an illusionist. he has had a good apprenticeship with katje, her damask tablecloth and magical body, a bed for her salon, a hundred soirees fantastiques. . . . he's through zehlendorf by midafternoon, inside his rocketman rig and ready to cross. the russian sentries wait under a wood archway painted red, toting suomis or degtyarovs, oversize submachine guns with drum magazines. here comes also a stalin tank now, lumbering in low, soldier in earflapped helmet standing up in the 76 mm mount yell­ ing into walkie-talkie . . . uh, well. . . . on the other side of the arch is a russian jeep with a couple officers, one talking earnestly into the mike of his radio set, and the air between quickens with spoken russian at the speed of light weaving a net to catch slothrop. who else? he sweeps his cape back with a wink, tips his helmet and smiles. in a conju­ ror's flourish he's out with card, ticket 'n' bilingual pass, giving them some line about a command performance in that potsdam. one of the sentries takes the pass and nips into his kiosk to make a phone call. the others stand staring at tchitcherine's boots. no one speaks. the call is taking a while. scarred leather, day-old beards, cheekbones in the sun. slothrop's trying to think of a few card tricks he can do, sort of break the ice, when the sentry sticks his head out. "stie­ feln, bitte." boots? what would they want with-yaaahhh! boots, indeed, yes. we know beyond peradventure who has to be on the other end, don't we. slothrop can hear all the man's metal parts jingling with glee. in the smoky berlin sky, somewhere to the left of the funkturm in its steel­ wool distance, appears a full-page photo in life magazine: it is of slo­ throp, he is in full rocketman attire, with what appears to be a long, stiff sausage of very large diameter being stuffed into his mouth, so forci­ bly that his eyes are slightly crossed, though the hand or agency actually holding the stupendous wiener is not visible in the photo. a snafu for rocketman, reads the caption-"barely off the ground, the zone's new­ est celebrity 'fucks up.' " we-e-e-ll, slothrop slides off the boots, the sentry takes them inside to the telephone-the others lean slothrop up against the arch and shake him down, finding nothing but the reefer saure gave him, which they expropriate. slothrop waits in his socks, trying not to think ahead. 377 glancing around for cover, maybe. nothing. clear field of fire for 360 degrees. smells of fresh asphalt patch and gun oil. the jeep, crystal ver­digris, waiting: the road back to berlin, for the moment, deserted. . . . providence, hey providence, what'd you do, step out for a beer or some­ thing? not at all. the boots reappear, smiling sentry right behind them. "stimmt, herr schlepzig." what does irony sound like in russian? these birds are too inscrutable for slothrop. tchitcherine would've known enough not to arouse any suspicion by asking to see those boots. nah, it couldri't've been him on the phone. this was probably some rou­tine search for that contraband, was all. slothrop is being seized rightnow by what the book of changes calls youthful folly. he swirls his green cape a few more times, chisels a stubby balkan army off of one ofthe tommyguns, and moseys away, southward. the officers' jeep stays ronwhere it is. the tank has vanished. lli�i rnovjubilee jim, just a-peddlin' through the country, id�winkin' at the ladies from stockbridge up to lee�buy your gal a brooch for a fancy gown, buggy-whip rigs for just a dollar down, hey come along ev'rybody, headin' for the jubi-lee! two miles down the road, slothrop hits that canal saure mentioned: idm�takes a footpath down under the bridge where it's wet and cool for aminute. he sets off along the bank, looking for a boat to hijack. girls in lom�halters and shorts lie sunning, brown and gold, all along this dreaming 11m�grass slope. the clouded afternoon is mellowed to wind softened edges, ��jchildren kneeling beside the water with fishing lines, two birds in a llit\�chase across the canal soaring down and up in a loop into the suspended oilliestorm of a green treetop, where they sit and begin to sing. with disit'latance the light gathers a slow ecru haze, girls' flesh no longer bleached itall�by the zenith sun now in gentler light reawakening to warmer colors, �in�1faint shadows of thigh-muscles, stretched filaments of skin cells saying l�mictouch ... stay.... slothrop walks on-past eyes opening, smiles therbreaking like kind dawns. what's wrong with him? stay, sure. but whatkeeps him passing by? there are a few boats, moored to railings, but always somebody withan eye out. he finally comes on a narrow flat-bottomed little rig, oars inthe locks and ready to go, nothing but a blanket upslope, a pair of highheels, man's jacket, stand of trees nearby. so slothrop climbs right in, 378 some· toem, uslian� oula're oojtl, erou· d ri��t 1rls �� one of p sta),1 bon�: i fora gir�in eamin� , ��5, dsida nuro iilirul· leacflro colo�, r sa:in� 5mil5 t \l'fl�t and casts off. have fun-a little nasty here-i can't, but i can steal your boat! hal he hauls till sundown, resting for long stretches, really out of condi­ tion, cape smothering him in a cone of sweat so bad he has to take it off finally. ducks drift at a wary distance, water dripping off of bright or­ ange beaks. surface of the canal ripples with evening wind, sunset in his eyes streaking the water red and gold: royal colors. wrecks poke up out of the water, red lead and rust ripening in this light, bashed gray hull­ plates, flaking rivets, unlaid cable pointing hysterical strands to all points of the compass, vibrating below any hearing in the breeze. empty barges drift by, loose and forlorn. a stork flies over, going home, below him suddenly the pallid arch of the avus overpass ahead. any farther and slothrop's back in the american sector. he angles across the canal, debarking on the opposite bank, and heads south, trying to skirt the soviet control point the map puts someplace to his right. massive movement in the dusk: russian guardsmen, green-capped elite, march­ ing and riding, pokerfaced, in trucks, on horseback. you can feel the im­ pedance in the fading day, the crowding, jittering wire loops, potsdam warning stay away . . . stay away. . .. the closer it comes, the denser the field around that cloaked international gathering across the havel. bodine's right: a gnat can't get in. slothrop knows it, but just keeps on skulking along, seeking less sensitive axes of suspicion, running zigzags, aimed innocuously south. invisible. it becomes easier to believe in the longer he can keep going. sometime back on midsummer eve, between midnight and one, fern seed fell in his shoes. he is the invisible youth, the armored change­ ling. providence's little pal. their preoccupation is with forms of danger the war has taught them-phantoms they may be doomed now, some of them, to carry for the rest of their lives. fine for slothrop, though­ it's a set of threats he doesn't belong to. they are still back in geograph­ ical space, drawing deadlines and authorizing personnel, and the only beings who can violate their space are safely caught and paralyzed in comic books. they think. they don't know about rocketman here. they keep passing him and he remains alone, blotted to evening by vel­ vet and buckskin-if they do see him his image is shunted immediately out to the boondocks of the brain where it remains in exile with other critters of the night. . . . presently he cuts right again, toward the sunset. there's still that big superhighway to get across. some germans haven't been able to get home for 10, 20 years because they were caught on the wrong side of 379 some autobahn when it went through. nervous and leadfooted now, slothrop comes creeping up to the avus embankment, listening to traffic vacuuming by above. each driver thinks he's in control of his vehicle, each thinks he has a separate destination, but slothrop knows better. the drivers are out tonight because they need them where they are, forming a deadly barrier. amateur fritz von opels all over the place here, promising a lively sprint for slothrop-snarling inward to­ ward that famous s-curve where maniacs in white helmets and dark goggles once witched their wind-faired machinery around the banked brick in shrieking drifts (admiring eyes of colonels in dress uniforms, colonels' ladies in garbo fedoras, all safe up in their white towers yet belonging to the day's adventure, each waiting for his own surfacing of the same mother-violence underneath ... ). slothrop frees his arms from the cape, lets a lean gray porsche whir by, then charges out, the red of its taillights flashing along his down­ stream leg, headlights of a fast-coming army truck now hitting the up­ stream one and touching the grotto of one eyeball to blue jigsaw. he swings sideways as he runs, screaming, "hauptstufe!" which is the rocketman war-cry, raises both arms and the sea-green fan of the cape's silk lining, hears brakes go on, keeps running, hits the center mall in a roll, scampering into the bushes as the truck skids past and stops. voices for a while. gives slothrop a chance to catch his breath and get the cape unwound from around his neck. the truck finally starts off again. the southbound half of the avus is slower tonight, and he can jog across easy, down the bank and uphill again into trees. hey! leaps broad high­ ways in a single bound! well, bodine, your map is perfect here, except for one trivial detail you sort of, uh, forgot to mention, wonder why that was. . . . it turns out something like 150 houses in neubabelsberg have been comman­ deered and sealed off as a compound for the allied delegates to the potsdam conference, and jolly jack tar has stashed that dope right in the middle of it. barbed wire, searchlights, sirens, security who've for­ gotten how to smile. thank goodness, which is to say saure bummer, for this special pass here. stenciled signs with arrows read admiralty, f.o., state department, chiefs of staff.... the whole joint is lit up like a hollywood premiere. great coming and going of civilians in suits, gowns, tuxedos, getting in and out of bmw limousines with flags of all nations next to the windscreens. mimeographed handouts clog the stones and gutters. inside the sentry boxes are piles of confiscated cam­ eras. they must deal here with a strange collection of those showbiz types. 380 �obo �ous ilad ma c i�er � ifleo / ]oetw lttuffil millan· to wi '�i11 in 'relo!· ummel. ir�ln', �]itu� nobody seems too upset at the helmet, cape, or mask. there are ambig­ uous shrugging phone calls and the odd feeble question, but they do let max schlepzig pass. a gang of american newspapermen comes through in a charabanc, clutching on to bottles of liberated moselle, and they offer him a lift part way. soon they have fallen to arguing about which celebrity he is. some think he is don ameche, others oliver hardy. ce­ lebrity? what is this? "come on," sez slothrop, "you just don't know me in this getup. i'm that errol flynn." not everybody believes him, but he manages to hand out a few autographs anyhow. when they part com­ pany, the newshounds are discussing the candidates for miss rheingold 1946. dorothy hart's advocates are the loudest, but jill darnley has a majority on her side. it's all gibberish to slothrop-it will be months yet before he runs into a beer advertisement featuring the six beauties, and find himself rooting for a girl named helen riickert: a blonde with a dutch surname who will remind him dimly of someone. . . . the house at 2 kaiserstrasse is styled in high prussian boorish and painted a kind of barf brown, a color the ice-cold lighting doesn't im­ prove. it is more heavily guarded than any other in the compound. gee, slothrop wonders why. then he sees the sign with the place's stenciled alias on it. "oh, no. no. quit fooling." for a while he stands in the street shiver­ ing and cursing that seaman bodine for a bungler, villain, and agent of death. sign sez the white house. bodine has brought him straight to the dapper, bespectacled stranger who gazed down the morning friedrichstrasse-to the face that has silently dissolved in to replace the one slothrop never saw and now never will. the sentries with slung rifles are still as himself. the folds of his cape are gone to corroded bronze under the arc-lighting. behind the villa water rushes. music strikes up inside and obliterates the sound. an en­ tertainment. no wonder he got in so easy. are they expecting this magi­ cian, this late guest? glamour, fame. he could run in and throw himself at somebody's feet, beg for amnesty. end up getting a contract for the rest of his life with a radio network, o-or even a movie studio! that's what mercy is, isn't it? he turns, trying to be casual about it, and goes moseying out of the light, looking for a way down to that water. the shore of the griebnitz see is dark, starlit, strung with wire, alive with roving sentries. potsdam's lights, piled and scattered, twinkle across the black water. slothrop has to go in up to his ass a few times to get past that wire, and wait for the sentries to gather around a cigarette at one end of their beat before he can make a dash, cape-flapping and soggy, up to the villa. bodine's hashish is buried along one side of the 381 i / ff "�" r ;/ '/", house, under a certain juniper bush. slothrop squats down and starts scooping up dirt with his hands. inside it is some do. girls are singing "don't sit under the appletree," and if it ain't the andrews sisters it may as well be. they are ac­companied by a dance band with a mammoth reed section. laughing,sounds of glassware, multilingual chitchat, your average weekday nighthere at the great conference. the hash is wrapped in tinfoil inside a moldering ditty bag. it smells really good. aw, jeepers-why'd he forgetto bring a pipe? actually, it's just as well. above slothrop, at eye level, is a terrace,and espaliered peach trees in milky blossom. as he crouches, hefting thebag, french windows open and someone steps out on this terrace for some air. slothrop freezes, thinking invisible, invisible. . . . footstepsapproach, and over the railing leans-well, this may sound odd, but it'smickey rooney. slothrop recognizes him on sight, judge hardy's freck­led madcap son, three-dimensional, flesh, in a tux and am-i-iosing-my­mind face. mickey rooney stares at rocketman holding a bag of hash­ish, a wet apparition in helmet and cape. nose level with mickey roo­ney's shiny black shoes, slothrop looks up into the lit room behind-seessomebody looks a bit like churchill, lotta dames in evening gowns cutso low that even from this angle you can see more tits than they got atminsky's . . . and maybe, maybe he even gets a glimpse of that presi­dent truman. he knows he is seeing mickey rooney, though mickeyrooney, wherever he may go, will repress the fact that he ever saw slo­throp. it is an extraordinary moment. slothrop feels he ought to saysomething, but his speech centers have failed him in a drastic way.somehow, "hey, you're mickey rooney," seems inadequate. so theystay absolutely still, victory's night blowing by around them, and thegreat in the yellow electric room scheming on oblivious. slothrop breaks it first: puts a finger to his mouth and scuttles away,back around the villa and down to the shore, leaving mickey rooneywith his elbows on that railing, still watching.back around the wire, avoiding sentries, close to the water's edge,swinging the ditty bag by its drawstring, some vague idea in his headnow of finding another boat and just rowing back up that havel-sure!why not? it isn't till he hears distant conversation from another villathat it occurs to him he might be straying into the russian part of thecompound. "hmm," opines slothrop, "well in that case i had better-"here comes that wiener again. shapes only a foot away-they mighthave risen up out of the water. he spins around, catches sight of a 382 :� st "ye, )ilie ,fee a soft night, smeared full of golden stars, the kind of night back on the pampas that leopoldo lugones liked to write about. the u-boat rocks quietly on the surface. the only sounds are the chug of the "billy-goat," �utting in now and then below decks, pumping out the bilges, and el nato back on the fantail with his guitar, playing buenos aires tristes ey roo· and milongas. belaustegui is down working on the generator. luz and o-leel felipe are asleep. \\]lcut by the 20 mm mounts, graciela imago portales lounges wistfully. in y�otat her day she was the urban idiot of b.a., threatening nobody, friends t prell· ' with everybody across the spectrum, from cipriano reyes, who inter�licke,v vened for her once, to accion argentina, which she worked for before it \i'�h got busted. she was a particular favorite of the literati. borges is said to have dedicated a poem to her cellaberinto de tu incertidumbrel me trama con la disquietante luna ... "). the crew that hijacked this u-boat are here out of all kinds of argen­ tine manias. el nato goes around talking in rqth-century gaucho slang -cigarettes are "pitos," butts are "puchos," it isn't cafia he drinks but "la tacuara," and when he's drunk he's "mamao." sometimes felipe has to translate for him. felipe is a difficult young poet with any number of unpleasant enthusiams, among them romantic and unreal notions about the gauchos. he is always sucking up to el nato. belaustegui, acting ship's engineer, is from entre rios, and a positivist in the regional tradisure! tion. a pretty good knife-hand for a prophet of science too, which is one eni�a reason el nato hasn't made a try yet for the godless mesopotamian bolofilie shevik. it is a strain on their solidarity, but then it's only one of several. luz is currently with felipe, though she's supposed to be squalidozzi's girl-after squalidozzi disappeared on his trip to zurich she took up mi�nt with the poet on the basis of a poignant recitation of lugones's "pavos t of a reales," one balmy night lying to off matosinhos. for this crew, nostal383 star� apple are ac· ughin& y ni�nt insioea e for�et broad, clean-shaven face, hair combed lionlike straight back, glimmer­ ing steel teeth, eyes black and soft as that carmen miranda's-> "yes," no least accent to his english whispering, "you were followed all the way." others have grabbed slothrop's arms. high in the left one he feels something sharp, almost painless, very familiar. before his throat can stir, he's away, on the wheel, clutching in terror to the dwin­ dling white point of himself, in the first windrush of anaesthesia, hov­ ering coyly over the pit of death.... o 0 0 0 0 0 0 gia is like seasickness: only the hope of dying from it is keeping them alive. squalidozzi did show up again though, in bremerhaven. he had just been chased across what was left of germany by british military intelli­ gence, with no idea why. "why didn't you go to geneva, and try to get through to us?" "i didn't want to lead them to ibargiiengoitia. i sent someone else." "who?" belaustegui wanted to know. "i never got his name." squalidozzi scratched his shaggy head. "maybe it was a stupid thing to do." "no further contact with him?" "none at all." "they'll be watching us, then," belaustegui sullen. "whoever he is, he's hot. you're a fine judge of character." "what did you want me to do: take him to a psychiatrist first? weigh options? sit around _for a few weeks and think about it?" "he's right," ei nato raising a large fist. "let women do their think­ ing, their analyzing. a man must always go forward, looking life di­ rectly in the face." "you're disgusting," said graciela imago portales. "you're not a man, you're a sweaty horse." "thank you," ei nato bowing, in all gaucho dignity. nobody was yelling. the conversation in the steel space that nightwas full of quiet damped ss and palatal ys, the peculiar, reluctant poign­ ancy of argentine spanish, brought along through years of frustrations, self-censorship, long roundabout evasions of political truth-of bringingthe state to live in the muscles of your tongue, in the humid intimacyjust inside your lips . . . pero che, no sos argentino. . . .in bavaria, squalidozzi was stumbling through the outskirts of a town, only minutes ahead of a rolls royce with a sinister dome in the roof, green perspex you couldn't see through. it was just after sunset.all at once he heard gunshots, hoofbeats, nasal and metallic voices in english. but the quaint little town seemed deserted. how could this be? he entered a brick labyrinth that had been a harmonica factory.splashes of bell-metal lay forever unrung in the foundry dirt. against ahigh wall that had recently been painted white, the shadows of horsesand their riders drummed. sitting watching, from workbenches and crates, were a dozen individuals squalidozzi recognized right away asgangsters. cigar-ends glowed, and molls whispered back and forth ingerman. the men ate sausages, ripping away the casings with whiteteeth, well cared for, that flashed in the light from the movie. they 384 / were sporting the caligari gloves which now enjoy a summer vogue in the zone: bone white, except for the four lines in deep violet fanning up each gloveback from wrist to knuckles. all wore suits nearly as light-col­ ored as the teeth. it seemed extravagant to squalidozzi, after buenos aires and zurich. the women crossed their legs often: they were tense as vipers. in the air was a grassy smell, a smell of leaves burning, that was strange to the argentine who, terminally homesick, had only the smell of freshly brewed mate after a bitter day at the racetrack to con­ nect it with. crowned window frames gave out on the brick factory courtyard where summer air moved softly. the filmlight flickered blue across empty windows as if it were breath trying to produce a note. the images grew blunt with vengeance. "yay!" screamed all the zootsters, white gloves bouncing up and down. their mouths and eyes were as wide as children's. the reel ended, but the space stayed dark. an enormous figure in a white zoot suit stood, stretched, and ambled right over to where squali­ dozzi was crouching, terrified. 'they after you, amigo?" "please-" amm, "no, no. come on. watch with us. it's a bob steele. he's a good old boy. you're safe in here." for days, as it turned out, the gangsters had known squalidozzi was in the neighborhood: they could infer to his ni�nt path, though he himself was invisible to them, by the movements of the �i�· police, which were not. blodgett waxwing-for it was he-used the analogy of a cloud chamber, and the vapor trail a high-speed particle leaves.... "i don't understand." them heaa, r he� trunk· "fern· "not sure i do either, pal. but we have to keep an eye on everything, and right now all the hepcats are going goofy over something called 'nu­ clear physics.' " after the movie, squalidozzi was introduced to gerhardt von coll, also known by his nom de pegre, "der springer." seems von coll's peo­ ple and waxwing's were in the course of a traveling business confer­ ence, rumbling the roads of the zone in convoy, changing trucks and busses so often there was no time for real sleep, only cat-naps-in the middle of the night, the middle of a field, no telling when, you'd have to pile out, switch vehicles and take off again along another road. no destii'a)'� nations, no fixed itinerary. most of the transportation was furnished rtll in through the expertise of veteran automotive jobber edouard sankwhite twolke, who could hot-wire anything on wheels or caterpillar trackstner ., even packed around a custom-built ebony case full of the rotor arms, 385 each in its velvet recess, to every known make, model, and year, in case the target's owner had removed that vital part. squalidozzi and von coll hit it off right away. this film director turned marketeer had decided to finance all his future movies out of his own exorbitant profits. "only way to be sure of having final cuts, �verdad? tell me, squalidozzi, are you too pure for this? or could your anarchist project use a little help?" "it would depend what you wanted from us." "a film, of course. what would you like to do? how about martin fierro?" keep the customer happy. martin fierro is not just the gaucho hero of a great argentine epic poem. on the u-boat he is considered an anar­ chist saint. hernandez's poem has figured in argentine political think­ ing for years now-everybody's had his own interpretation, quotingfrom it often as vehemently as politicians in rqth-century italy used to from i promessi sposi. it goes back to the old basic polarity in argen­ tina: buenos aires vs. the provinces, or, as felipe sees it, central govern­ ment vs. gaucho anarchism, of which he has become the leading theore­ tician. he has one of these round-brim hats with balls hanging from it,he has taken to lounging in the hatchways, waiting for graciela-"good evening, my dove. haven't you got a kiss for the gaucho bakunin?" "you look more like a gaucho marx," graciela drawls, and leaves felipe to _go back to the treatment he's working on for von coll, using el nato's copy of martin fierro, which has long been thumbed i!lto separate loose pages, and smells of horses, each of whose names el nato, tearfully rnamao, can tell you.... a shadowed plain at sundown. an enormous flatness. camera angle iskept low. people coming in, slowly, singly or in small groups, workingtheir way across the plain, in to a settlement at the edge of a little river. horses, cattle, fires against the growing darkness. far away, at the hori­ zon, a solitary figure on horseback appears, and rides in, all the way in,as the credits come on. at some point we see the guitar slung on hisback: he is a payador, a wandering singer. at last he dismounts and goesto sit with the people at the fire. after the meal and a round of cafia he reaches for his guitar and begins to strum his three lowest strings, thebordona, and sing: .fu !t ,\ll \\'� aqui me pongo a cantar al com pas de la viguela, que el hombre que 10 desvela una pena estrordinaria, i nc� irector tofnb i cu� id }'our .\farll� romil. "gooj n�le� orb�� rirer. • e �on· 'ar i�, onm o�f*1 na �e ,ilie. como la ave solitaria con el cantar se consuela. so, as the gaucho sings, his story unfolds-a montage of his early life on the estancia. then the army comes and conscripts him. takes him out to the frontier to kill indians. it is the period of general boca's cam­ paign to open the pampas by exterminating the people who live there: turning the villages into labor camps, bringing more of the country under the control of buenos aires. martin fierro is soon sick of it. it's against everything he knows is right. he deserts. they send out a posse, and he talks the sergeant in command over to his side. together they flee across the frontier, to live in the wilderness, to live with the indians. that's part i. seven years later, hernandez wrote a return of martin fierro, in which the gaucho sells out: assimilates back into christian so­ ciety, gives up his freedom for the kind of constitutional gesellschaft being pushed in those days by buenos aires. a very moral ending, but completely opposite to the first. "what should i do?" von coll seems to want to know. "both parts, or just part i?" "well," begins squalidozzi. "i know what you want. but i might get better mileage out of two movies, if the first does well at the box office. but will it?" "of course it will." "something that anti-social?" "but it's everything we believe in," squalidozzi protests. "but even the freest of gauchos end up selling out, you know. that's how things are." that's how gerhardt von coll is, anyway. graciela knows the man: there are lines of liaison, sinister connections of blood and of wintering at punta del este, through anilinas alemanas, the ig branch in buenos aires, on through spottbilligfilm ag in berlin (another ig outlet) from whom von coll used to get cut rates on most of his film stock, especially on the peculiar and slow-moving "emulsion j," invented by laszlo jamf, which somehow was able, even under ordinary daylight, to render the human skin transparent to a depth of half a millimeter, revealing the face just beneath the surface. this emulsion was used extensively in von coll's immortal alpdriicken, and may even come to figure in martin fierro. the only part of the epic that really has von coll fascinated is a singing-duel between the white gaucho and the dark ei moreno. it seems like an interesting framing device. with emulsion j he could dig beneath the skin colors of the contestants, dissolve back and forth between j and ordinary stock, like sliding in and out of focus, or wipe­how he loved wipes! from one to the other in any number of clever ways. since discovering that schwarzkommando are really in the zone, leading real, paracinematic lives that have nothing to do with him or the phony schwarzkommando footage he shot last winter in england for operation black wing, springer has been zooming around in a con­ trolled ecstasy of megalomania. he is convinced that his film has some­ how brought them into being. "it is my mission," he announces to squalidozzi, with the profound humility that only a german movie di­ rector can summon, "to sow in the zone seeds of reality. the historical moment demands this, and i can only be its servant. my images, some­how, have been chosen for incarnation. what i can do for the schwarz­ kommando i can do for your dream of pampas and sky. . . . i can takedown your fences and your labyrinth walls, i can lead you back to thegarden you hardly remember.... " his madness clearly infected squalidozzi, who then eventually re­turned to the u-boat and infected the others. it seemed what they hadbeen waiting for. "africans!" daydreamed the usually all-business be­ laustegui at a staff meeting. "what if it's true? what if we've reallycome back, back to the way it was before the continents drifted apart?""back to gondwanaland," whispered felipe. "when rio de la plata was just opposite south-west africa . . . and the mesozoic refugeestook the ferry not to montevideo, but to liideritzbucht.... " the plan is to get somehow to the liineburg heath and set up a smallestancia. von coll is to meet them there. by the gun-mounts tonight,graciela imago portales dreams. is von coll a compromise they can tol­erate? there are worse foundations than a film. did prince potemkin'sfake villages survive catherine's royal progress? will the soul of thegaucho survive the mechanics of putting him into light and sound? orwill someone ultimately come by, von coll or another, to make a partii, and dismantle the dream? above and beyond her the zodiac glides, a north-hemisphere arrayshe never saw in argentina, smooth as an hour-hand.... suddenly �there's a long smash of static out of the p.a., and belaustegui is screami<i�ing, "der aal! der aal!" the eel, wonders graciela, the eel? oh, yes, mlthe torpedo. ah, belaustegui is as bad as el nato, he feels his own weird i�ajobligation to carry on in german submariner slang, it is just precisa­mente a seagoing tower of babel here-the torpedo? why is he scream­ing about the torpedo? for the good reason that the u-boat has just appeared on the radarscreen of the u.s.s. fohn e. badass (smile, u-boat!), as a "skunk" or un388 i aeon· alm� oni�n!. antol· mhn') oftne na:or i a part arra,v ddenl,v ream· n,}e), • werra reella· ream· radar or un· identified pip, and the badass, in muscular postwar reflex, is now lunging in at flank speed. reception tonight is perfect, the green return "fine-grained as a baby's skin," confirms spyros ("spider") telangiec­ stasis, radarman znd class. you can see clear out to the azores. it is a mild, fluorescent summer evening on the sea. but what's this on the screen now, moving fast, sweep by sweep, broken as a drop of light from the original pip, tiny but unmistakable, in toward the unmoving center of the sweep, closer now"bakerbakerbaker!" hollers somebody down in sonar, loud and scared, over the phones. it means hostile torpedo on the way. coffee messes go crashing, parallel rulers and dividers sliding across the glass top of the dead-reckoning tracer as the old tin can goes heeling over around onto an evasion pattern that was already obsolete during the coolidge administration. der aal's pale tunnel of wake is set to intersect the badass's desper­ ate sea-squirm about midships. what intervenes is the drug oneirine, as the hydrochloride. the machine from which it has emerged is the coffee urn in the mess hall of the john e. badass. playful seaman bodine­ none other-has seeded tonight's grounds with a massive dose of laszlo jamf's celebrated intoxicant, scored on bodine's most recent trip to ber­ lin. the property of time-modulation peculiar to oneirine was one of the first to be discovered by investigators. "it is experienced," writes shetz­ line in his classic study, "in a subjective sense . . . uh ... well. put it this way. it's like stuffing wedges of silver sponge, right, into, your brain!" so, out in the mellow sea-return tonight, the two fatal courses do intersect in space, but not in time. not nearly in time, heh heh. what behiustegui fired his torpedo at was a darkrust old derelict, carried pas­ sively by currents and wind, but bringing to the night something of the skull: an announcement of metal emptiness, of shadow, that has spooked even stronger positivists than belaustegui. and what passed into visual recognition from the small speeding pip on the badass's radar screen proved to be a corpse, dark in color, perhaps a north afri­ can, which the crew on the destroyer's aft 3-inch gun mount spent half an hour blowing to pieces as the gray warship slid by at a safe distance, fearful of plague. now what sea is this you have crossed, exactly, and what sea is it you have plunged more than once to the bottom of, alerted, full of adren­ alin, but caught really, buffaloed under the epistemologies of these threats that paranoid you so down and out, caught in this steel pot, soft­ ening to devitaminized mush inside the soup-stock of your own words, your waste submarine breath? it took the dreyfus affair to get the zion­ ists out and doing" finally: what will drive you out of your soup-kettle? has it already happened? was it tonight's attack and deliverance? will you go to the heath, and begin your settlement, and wait there for your director to come? under a tall willow tree beside a canal, in a jeep, in the shade, sit tchitcherine and his driver dzabajev, a teenage kazakh dope fiend with pimples and a permanently surly look, who combs his hair like the american crooner frank sinatra, and who is, at the moment, frowning at a slice of hashish and telling tchitcherine, "well, you should have taken more than this, you know." "i only took what his freedom is worth to him," explains tchitcher­ ine. "where's that pipe, now?" "how do you know what his freedom is worth to him? you know what i think? i think you're going a little zone-happy out here." this dzabajev is more of a sidekick, really, than a driver, so he enjoys immu­ nity, up to a point, in questioning tchitcherine's wisdom. "look, peasant, you read the transcript in there. that man is one un­ happy loner. he's got problems. he's more useful running around the zone thinking he's free, but he'd be better off locked up somewhere. he doesn't even know what his freedom is, much less what it's worth. so i get to fix the price, which doesn't matter to begin with." "pretty authoritarian," sneers young dzabajev. "whore's the matches?" it's sad, though. tchitcherine likes slothrop. he feels that, in any nor­ mal period of history, they could easily be friends. people who dress up in bizarre costumes have a savoir-vivre-not to mention the sort of per­ sonality disorder-that he admires. when he was a little boy, back in leningrad, tchitcherine's mother sewed by hand a costume for him to .'�i wear in a school entertainment. tchitcherine was the wolf. the minute he put on the head, in front of the mirror by the ikon, he knew himself. ';\1 he was the wolf. :;] the sodium amytal session nags at the linings of tchitcherine's brain � as if the hangover were his own. deep, deep--further than politics, ']1than sex or infantile terrors . . . a plunge into the nuclear blackness. i�1 . black runs all through the transcript: the recurring color black. 390 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 or your slothrop never mentioned enzian by name, nor the schwarzkom­ mando. but he did talk about the schwarzgerat. and he also coupled "schwarz-" with some strange nouns, in the german fragments that came through. blackwoman, blackrocket, blackdream. . . . the new coinages seem to be made unconsciously. is there a single root, deeper than anyone has probed, from which slothrop's blackwords only appear to flower separately? or has he by way of the language caught the ger­ man mania for name-giving, dividing the creation finer and finer, ana­ lyzing, setting namer more hopelessly apart from named, even to bring­ ing in the mathematics of combination, tacking together established nouns to get new ones, the insanely, endlessly diddling play of a chemist whose molecules are words. . . . well, the man is a puzzle. when geli tripping first sent word of his presence in the zone, tchitcherine was only interested enough to keep a routine eye on him, along with the scores of others. the only strange item, which grew stranger as surveillance developed, was that he seemed to be alone. to date slothrop has still not recorded, tagged, dis­ covered, or liberated a single scrap of a4 hardware or intelligence. he reports neither to spog, cios, bafo, ti, nor any american counter­ part-indeed, to no known allied office. yet he is one of the faithful: the scavengers now following industriously the fallback routes of a4 batteries from the hook of holland all across lower saxony. pilgrims along the roads of miracle, every bit and piece a sacred relic, every scrap of manual a verse of scripture. but the ordinary hardware doesn't interest slothrop. he is holding out, saving himself for something absolutely unique. is it the black­ rocket? is it the ooooo? enzian is looking for it, and for the mysterious schwarzgerat. there is a very good chance that slothrop, driven by his blackphenomenon, responding to its needs though they be hidden from him, will keep returning, cycle after cycle, to enzian, until the mission is resolved, the parties secured, the hardware found. it's a strong hunch: nothing tchitcherine will ever put into writing. operationally he's alone as slothrop is out here-reporting, if and when, direct to malen­ kov's special committee under the council of people's commissars (the tsagi assignment being more or less a cover). but slothrop is his boy. he'll be followed, all right. if they lose him why they'll find him again. too bad he can't be motivated personally to go get enzian. but tchitcherine is hardly fool enough to think that all americans are as easy to exploit as major marvy, with his reflexes about blackness. . . . it's a shame. tchitcherine and slothrop could have smoked hashish ade, �it enena like the hitcher· brain litic�, knesl, black 391 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 together, compared notes on geli and other girls of the ruins. he could �i'�r have sung to the american songs his mother taught him, kiev lullabies, ('rno tarlight, lovers, white blossoms, nightingales. . . . ,\ "next time we run across that englishman," dzabajev looking curim�t ously at his hands on the steering-wheel, "or american, or whatever he �rr� is, find out, will you, where he got this shit?" it'la "make a note of that," orders tchitcherine. they both start cackling 11re insanely there, under the tree. �eaa, llie� wn slothrop comes to in episodes that fade in and out of sleep, measured and serene exchanges in russian, hands at his pulse, the broad green back of someone just leaving the room .... it's a white room, a perfect cube, though for a while he can't recognize cubes, walls, lying horizon­ tal, anything too spatial. only the certainty that he's been shot up yet again with that sodium amytal. that feeling he knows. he's on a cot, still in rocketman garb, helmet on the floor down next to the ditty bag of hash-oh-oh. though it requires superhuman cou­ rage in the face of doubts about whether or not he can really even move, he manages to flop over and check out that dope. one of the tin­ foil packages looks smaller. he spends an anxious hour or two undoing the top to reveal, sure enough, a fresh cut, raw green against the muddy brown of the great chunk. footsteps ring down metal stairs outside, and a heavy door slides to below. shit. he lies in the white cube, feeling groggy, feet crossed hands behind head, doesn't care especially to go anyplace.... he dozes off and dreams about birds, a close flock of snow buntings, blown in a falling-leaf of birds, among the thickly falling snow. it's back in berkshire. slothrop is little, and holding his father's hand. the raft of birds swings, buffeted, up, sideways through the storm, down again, looking for food. "poor little guys," sez slothrop, and feels his father squeeze his hand through its wool mitten. broderick smiles. "they're all right. their hearts beat very, very fast. their blood and their feathers keep them warm. don't worry, son. don't worry.... " slothrop wakes again to the white room. the quiet. raises his ass and does a few feeble bicycle exercises, then lies slapping on new flab that must've collected on his stomach while he was out. there is an invisible kingdom of flab, a million cells-at-iarge, and they all know who he is-soon as he's unconscious, they start up, every one, piping in high horrible little mickey mouse voices, hey fellas! hey c'mon, let's all go 392 'ng tun. teverlli over to slothrop's, the big sap ain't doing anything but laying on his ass, c'rnon, oboy! "take that," slothrop mutters, "a-and that!" arms and legs apparently working, he gets up groaning, puts his hel­ met on his head, grabs the ditty bag and leaves by the door, which shud­ ders all over, along with the walls, when he opens it. aha! canvas flats. it's a movie set. slothrop finds himself in a dilapidated old studio, dark except where yellow sunlight comes through small holes in the over­ head. rusted catwalks, creaking under his weight, black burned-out klieg lights, the fine netting of spider webs struck to graphwork by the thin beams of sun. . . . dust has drifted into corners, and over the re­ mains of other sets: phony-gemiitlich love nests, slant-walled and palm­ crowded nightclubs, papier-rnache wagnerian battlements, tenement courtyards in stark expressionist white/black, built to no human scale, all tapered away in perspective for the rigid lenses that stared here once. highlights are painted on to the sets, which is disturbing to slo­ throp, who keeps finding these feeble yellow streaks, looking up sharply, then all around, for sources of light that were never there, getting more agitated as he prowls the old shell, the girders 50 feet overhead almost lost in shadows, tripping over his own echoes, sneezing from the dust he stirs. the russians have pulled out all right, but slothrop isn't alone in here. he comes down a metal staircase through shredded webs, angry spiders and their dried prey, rust crunching under his soles, and at the bottom feels a sudden tug at his cape. being still a little foggy from that injection, he only flinches violently. he is held by a gloved hand, the shiny kid stretched over precise little knuckles. a woman in a black pa­ risian frock, with a purple-and-yellow iris at her breast. even damped by the velvet, slothrop can feel the shaking of her hand. he stares into eyes rimmed soft as black ash, separate grains of powder on her face clear as pores the powder missed or was taken from by tears. this is how he comes to meet margherita erdmann, his lightless summer hearth, his safe-passage into memories of the inflationszeit stained with dread-his child and his helpless lisaura. she's passing through: another of the million rootless. looking for her daughter, bianca, bound east for swinemiinde, if the russians and poles will let her. she's in neubabelsberg on a sentimental side-trip-hasn't seen the old studios in years. through the twenties and thirties she worked as a movie actress, at templehof and staaken too, but this place was always her favorite. here she was directed by the great gerhardt von coll through dozens of vaguely pornographic horror movies. "i knew he was a genius from the beginning. 1 was only his creature." never star material, she admits freely, no dietrich, nor vamp it la bri393 gitte helm. a touch of whatever it was they wanted, though-they (slo­ throp: "they?" erdmann: "i don't know.... ") nicknamed her the anti-dietrich: not destroyer of men but doll-languid, exhausted. "i watched all our films," she recalls, "some of them six or seven times. i never seemed to move. not even my face. ach, those long, long gauze close-ups . . . it could have been the same frame, over and over. even running away-i always had to be chased, by monsters, madmen, crimi­ nals-still 1 was so-" bracelets flashing-"stolid, so ... monumental. when 1 wasn't running 1 was usually strapped or chained to something. come. i'll show you." leading slothrop now to what's left of a torture chamber, wooden teeth snapped from its rack wheel, plaster masonry peeling and chipped, dust rising, dead torches cold and lopsided in their sconces. she lets wood chains, most of the silver paint worn away now, slither clattering through her kid fingers. "this was a set for alpdriicken. gerhardt in those days was still all for exaggerated lighting." silver-gray collects in the fine wrinkles of her gloves as she dusts off the rack, and lies down on it. "like this," raising her arms, insisting he fasten the tin manacles to her wrists and ankles. "the light came from above and below at the same time, so that everyone had two shadows: cain's and abel's, gerhardt told us. it was at the height of his symbolist period. later on he began to use more natural light, to shoot more on location." they went to paris, vienna. to herrenchiemsee, in the bavarian alps. von coll had dreamed of making a film about ludwig ii. it nearly gothim blacklisted. the rage then was all for frederick. it was considered unpatriotic to say that a german ruler could also be a madman. but the gold, the mirrors, the miles of baroque ornament drove von gall himself a little daft. especially those long corridors.... "corridor metaphys­ics," is what the french call this condition. oldtime corridor hepcatswill chuckle fondly at descriptions of von gall, long after running out offilm, still dollying with a boobish smile on his face down the golden vis­tas. even on orthochromatic stock, the warmth of it survived in black and white, though the film was never released, of course. vas wiitend reich, how could they sit still for that? endless negotiating, natty little men with nazi lapel pins trooping through, interrupting the shooting,walking facefirst into the glass walls. they would have accepted any­thing for "reich," even "konigreich," but von gall stood fast. he walked a tightrope. to compensate he started immediately on good so­ciety, which it's said delighted goebbels so much he saw it three times, giggling and punching in the arm the fellow sitting next to him, who may have been adolf hitler. margherita played the lesbian in the cafe,"the one with the monocle, who's whipped to death at the end by the 394 tra a h me tau tet. �oo wa) wer we wo (ne wor� �o�lkn llie woll \v �ur worl !orr' fuer j transvestite, remember?" heavy legs in silk stockings shining now with a hard, machined look, slick knees sliding against each other as the memory moves in, exciting her. slothrop too. she smiles up at his tautening deerskin crotch. "he was beautiful. both ways, it didn't mat­ ter. you remind me of him a little. especially . . . those boots. . . . good society was our second film, but this one," this one? "alpdrucken, was our first. i think bianca is his child. she was conceived while we were filming this. he played the grand inquisitor who tortured me. ah, we were the reich's sweethearts-greta erdmann and max schlepzig, wonderfully together-" "max schlepzig," repeats slothrop, goggling, "quit fooling. max schlepzigj" "it wasn't his real name. erdmann wasn't mine. but anything with earth in it was politically safe-earth, soil, folk . . . a code. which they, staring, knew how to decipher.... max had a very jewish name, something-sky, and gerhardt thought it more prudent to give him a new one." "greta, somebody also thought it prudent to name me max schlepzig." he shows her the pass he got from saure bummer. she gazes at it, then at slothrop briefly. she's begun to tremble again. some mixture of desire and fear. "i knew it." "knew what?" looking away, submissive. "knew he was dead. he disappeared in '38. they've been busy, haven't they?" slothrop has picked up, in the zone, enough about european pass�l port-psychoses to want to comfort her. "this is forged. the name's just tar�!} a random alias. the guy who made it probably remembered schlepzig he��� from one of his movies." �out:. "random." a tragic, actressy smile, beginnings of a double chin, one oenl1 knee drawn up as far as these leg irons will let her. "another fairy-tale d�(� word. the signature on your card is max's. somewhere in stefania's house on the vistula i have a steel box full of his letters. don't you think i know that latin z, crossed engineer-style, the flower he made out of the g at the end? you could hunt all the zone for your 'forger.' they wouldn't let you find him. they want you right here, right now." well. what happens when paranoid meets paranoid? a crossing of solipsisms. clearly. the two patterns create a third: a moire, a new world of flowing shadows, interferences. . . . "'want me here'? what . \l't� for?" ecrur "for me." whispering out of scarlet lips, open, wet.... hmm. well, oj'tit there's this hardon, here. he sits on the rack, leans, kisses her, presently n,r' umen� me� atort\! malow, in� 395 unlacing his trousers and peeling them down far enough to release his cock bounding up with a slight wobble into the cool studio. "put your helmet on." "o.k." (( are you very cruel?" "don't know." "could you be? please. find something to whip me with. just a little. just for the warmth." nostalgia. the pain of a return home. he rum­ mages around through inquisitional props, gyves, thumbscrews, leather harness, before coming up with a miniature cat-o'<nine-tails, a black forest elves' whip, its lacquered black handle carved in a bas-relief orgy, the lashes padded with velvet to hurt but not to draw blood. "yes, that's perfect. now on the insides of my thighs .... " but somebody has already educated him. something . . . that dreams prussian and wintering among their meadows, in whatever cursive lash­ marks wait across the flesh of their sky so bleak, so incapable of any sheltering, wait to be summoned. . . . no. no-he still says "their," but he knows better. his meadows now, his sky ... his own cruelty. all margherita's chains and fetters are chiming, black skirt furled back to her waist, stockings pulled up tight in classic cusps by the sus­ penders of the boned black rig she's wearing underneath. how the pe­ nises of western men have leapt, for a century, to the sight of this singu­ lar point at the top of a lady's stocking, this transition from silk to bare skin and suspender! it's easy for non-fetishists to sneer about pavlovian conditioning and let it go at that, but any underwear enthusiast worth his unwholesome giggle can tell you there is much more here-there is a cosmology: of nodes and cusps and points of osculation, mathematical kisses ... singularities! consider cathedral spires, holy minarets, the crunch of trainwheels over the points as you watch peeling away thetrack you didn't take ... mountain peaks rising sharply to heaven, such as those to be noted at scenic berchtesgaden ... the edges of steel ra­ zors, always holding potent mystery ... rose thorns that prick us by surprise . . . even, according to the russian mathematician friedmann,the infinitely dense point from which the present universe expanded . . . . in each case, the change from point to no-point carries a luminosityand enigma at which something in us must leap and sing, or withdraw infright. watching the a4 pointed at the sky-just before the last firing­switch closes-watching that singular point at the very top of therocket, where the fuze is. . . . do all these points imply, like the rock­et's, an annihilation? what is that, detonating in the sky above the ca­thedral? beneath the edge of the razor, under the rose? 396 rna i your little, rum· allier blad -re�ef "y� furlea elul· eca· and what's waiting for slothrop, what unpleasant surprise, past the tops of greta's stockings here? laddering suddenly, the pallid streak flowing downthigh, over intricacies of knee and out of sight. . . . what waits past this whine and crack of velvet lashes against her skin, long red stripes on the white ground, her moans, the bruise-colored flower that cries at her breast, the jingling of the hardware holding her down? he tries not to tear his victim's stockings, or whip too close to her stretched vulva, which shivers, unprotected, between thighs agape and straining, amid movements of muscle erotic, subdued, "monumental" as any silver memory of her body on film. she comes once, then perhaps again before slothrop puts the whip down and climbs on top, covering her with the wings of his cape, her schlepzig-surrogate, his latest re­ minder of katje . . . and they commence fucking, the old phony rack groaning beneath them, margherita whispering god how you hurt me and ah, max . . . and just as slothrop's about to come, the name of her child: strained through her perfect teeth, a clear extrusion of pain that is not in play, she cries, bianca.... o 0 0 0 0 0 0 ... yes, bitch-yes, little bitch-poor helpless bitch you're coming can't stop yourself now i'll whip you again whip till you bleed. . . . thus pokler's whole front surface, eyes to knees: flooded with tonight's image of the delicious victim bound on her dungeon rack, filling the movie screen-close-ups of her twisting face, nipples under the silk gown amazingly erect, making lies of her announcments of pain-bitch! she loves it ... and leni no longer solemn wife, embittered source of strength, but margherita erdmann underneath him, on the bottom for a change, as pokler drives in again, into her again, yes, bitch, yes. . . . only later did he try to pin down the time. perverse curiosity. two weeks since her last period. he had come out of the ufa theatre on the friedrichstrasse that night with an erection, thinking like everybody else only about getting home, fucking somebody, fucking her into some submission.. . god, erdmann was beautiful. how many other men, shuffling out again into depression berlin, carried the same image back from alpdrucken to some drab fat excuse for a bride? how many shadow-children would be fathered on erdmann that night? it was never a real possibility for pokler that leni might get pregnant. but looking back, he knew that had to be the night, alpdriicken night, that ilse was conceived. they fucked so seldom any more. it was not 397 hard to pinpoint. that's how it happened. a film. how else? isn't that what they made of my child, a film? he sits tonight by his driftwood fire in the cellar of the onion-topped n ikolaikirche, listening to the sea. stars hang among the spaces of the great wheel, precarious to him as candles and good-night cigarettes. cold gathers along the strand. child phantoms-white whistling, tears never to come, range the wind behind the wall. twists of faded crepe paper blow along the ground, scuttling over his old shoes. dust, under a moon newly calved, twinkles like snow, and the baltic crawls like its mother-glacier. his heart shrugs in its scarlet net, elastic, full of expecta­ tion. he's waiting for lise, for his movie-child, to return to zwolfkinder, as she has every summer at this time. storks are asleep among twoand three-legged horses, rusted gear­ work and splintered roof of the carousel, their heads jittering with air­ currents and yellow africa, dainty black snakes a hundred feet below meandering in the sunlight across the rocks and dry pans. oversize crys­ tals of salt lie graying, drifted in the cracks of the pavement, in the wrinkles of the dog with saucer eyes in front of the town hall, the beard of the goat on the bridge, the mouth of the troll below. frieda the pig hunts a new place to nestle and snooze out of the wind. the plaster witch, wire mesh visible at her breasts and haunches, leans near the oven, her poke at corroded hansel in perpetual arrest. gretel's eyes lock wide open, never a blink, crystal-heavy lashes batting at the land­ ings of guerrilla winds from the sea. if there is music for this it's windy strings and reed sections standing in bright shirt fronts and black ties all along the beach, a robed organist by the breakwater-itself broken, crusted with tides-whose languets and flues gather and shape the resonant spooks here, the candleflame memories, all trace, particle and wave, of the sixty thousand who passed, already listed for taking, once or twice this way. did you ever go on holiday to zwolfkinder? did you hold your father's hand as you rodethe train up from lubeck, gaze at your knees or at the other children like you braided, ironed, smelling of bleach, boot-wax, caramel? did small-change jingle in your purse as you swung around the wheel, did you hide your face in his wool lapels or did you kneel up in the seat, looking over the water, trying to see denmark? were you frightenedwhen the dwarf tried to hug you, was your frock scratchy in the warm­ ing afternoon, what did you say, what did you feel when boys ran bysnatching each other's caps and too busy for you? she must have always been a child on somebody's list. he onlyavoided thinking about it. but all the time she was carrying her disap398 thai �ear· 'tnair· below e cry�· inilie bearo llie �i� plaster arilie 's eje� elano· amlin� r�anist ngue� le�ame ever�o our�e hildren el� dio eel, dio e onlj r disap' pearance in her drawn face, her reluctant walk, and if he hadn't needed her protection so much he might have seen in time how little she could protect anything, even their mean nest. he couldn't talk to her-it was arguing with his own ghost from ten years ago, the same idealism, the adolescent fury-items that had charmed him once-a woman with spirit!-but which he came to see as evidence of her single-mindedness, even, he could swear, some desire to be actually destroyed.... she went out to her street-theatre each time expecting not to come back, but he never really knew that. leftists and jews in the streets, all right, noisy, unpleasant to look at, but the police will keep them chan­ neled, she's in no danger unless she wants to be .... later, after she left, he got a little drunk one forenoon, a little sentimental, and went out at last, his first and last time, hoping that somehow the pressures of fate or crowd hydrodynamics might bring them together again. he found a street full of tan and green uniforms, truncheons, leather, pla­ cards fluttering unstable in all modes but longitudinal, scores of pan­ icked civilians. a policeman aimed a blow at him, but pokler dodged, and it hit an old man instead, some bearded old unreconstructed geezer of a trotskyite . . . he saw the strands of steel cable under black rubber skin, a finicky smile on the policeman's face as he swung, his free hand grasping his opposite lapel in some feminine way, the leather glove of the hand with the truncheon unbuttoned at the wrist, and his eyes flinching at the last possible moment, as if the truncheon shared his nerves and might get hurt against the old man's skull. pokler made it to a doorway, sick with fear. other police came running as some dancers run, elbows close to sides, forearms thrusting out at an angle. they used firehoses to break up the crowd, finally. women slid like dolls along the slick cobbles and on tram rails, the thick gush catching them by belly and head, its brute white vector dominating them. any of them might have been leni. pokler shivered in his doorway and watched it. he couldn't go out in the street. later he thought about its texture, the net­ work of grooves between the paving stones. the only safety there was ant-scaled, down and running the streets of ant city, bootsoles crashing overhead like black thunder, you and your crawling neighbors in traffic all silent, jostling, heading down the gray darkening streets. . . . pokler knew how to find safety among the indoor abscissas and ordinates of graphs: finding the points he needed not by running the curve itself, not up on high stone and vulnerability, but instead tracing patiently the xs and ys, p (atii), w (m/sec), t, (0 k), moving always by safe right angles along the faint lines. . . . when he began to dream about the rocket with some frequency, it 399 would sometimes not be a literal rocket at all, but a street he knew was in a certain district of the city, a street in a certain small area of the grid that held something he thought he needed. the coordinates were clear in his mind, but the street eluded him. over the years, as the rocket neared its fullness, about to go operational, the coordinates switched from the cartesian x and y of the laboratory to the polar azimuth and range of the weapon as deployed: once he knelt on the lavatory floor of his old rooming house in munich, understanding that if he faced exactly along a certain compass-bearing his prayer would be heard: he'd be safe. he wore a robe of gold and orange brocade. it was the only light in the room. afterward he ventured out into the house, knowing people slept in all the rooms, but feeling a sense of desertion. he went to switch on a light-but in the act of throwing the switch he knew the room had really been lit to begin with, and he had just turned every­ thing out, everything. . . . the a4 operational-at-last hadn't crept up on him. its coming true was no climax. that hadn't ever been the point. "they're using you to kill people," leni told him, as clearly as shecould. «that's their only job, and you're helping them." "we'll all use it, someday, to leave the earth. to transcend." she laughed. <transcend," from pokler? "someday," honestly trying, "they won't have to kill. borders won't mean anything. we'll have all outer space.... " "oli you're blind," spitting it as she spat his blindness at him everyday, that and "kadavergehorsamkeit," a beautiful word he can no longer imagine in any voice but hers. . . . but really he did not obey like a corpse. he was political, up to apoint-there was politics enough out at the rocket field. the armyweapons department was showing an ever-quickening interest in theamateur rocketeers of the verein fur raumschiffahrt, and the vfr had recently begun making available to the army records of their experi­ments. the corporations and the universities-the army said-didn'twant to risk capital or manpower on developing anything as fantastic asa rocket. the army had nowhere to turn but to private inventors andclubs like the vfr. "shit," said leni. <they're all in on it together. you really can't seethat, can you." within the society, the lines were drawn clear enough. withoutmoney the vfr was suffocating-the army had the money, and was al­ready financing them in roundabout ways. the choice was between 400 e went [ kne\\'tri neo el'en'· 0," oer� won't nim eve�' he can n� l, u� tod me ann,! rest in �1 e vffi n�� eirex�n· io-dian't antastic� entor� an� can'tlff . witnou! jd wasal· between building what the army wanted-practical hardware-or pushing on in chronic poverty, dreaming of expeditions to venus. "where do you think the army's getting the money?" leni asked. "what does it matter? money is money." "nor' major weissmann was one of several gray eminences around the rocket field, able to talk, with every appearance of sympathy and rea­ son, to organized thinker and maniac idealist alike. all things to all men, a brand-new military type, part salesman, part scientist. pokler, the all­ seeing, the unmoving, must have known that what went on in the vfr committee meetings was the same game being played in leni's violent and shelterless street. all his training had encouraged an eye for analo­ gies-in equations, in theoretical models-yet he persisted in thinking the vfr was special, preserved against the time. and he also knew at first hand what happens to dreams with no money to support them. so, presently, pokler found that by refusing to take sides, he'd become weissmann's best ally. the major's eyes always changed when he looked at pokler: his slightly prissy face to relax into what pokler had noticed, in random mirrors and display windows, on his own face when he was with leni. the blank look of one who is taking another for granted. weissmann was as sure of pokier's role as pokler was of leni's. but leni left at last. pokler might not have had the will. he thought of himself as a practical man. at the rocket field they talked continents, encirclements-seeing years before the general staff the need for a weapon to break ententes, to leap like a chess knight over panzers, infantry, even the luftwaffe. plutocratic nations to the west, communists to the east. spaces, models, game-strategies. not much pas­ sion or ideology. practical men. while the military wallowed in victories not yet won, the rocket engineers had to think non-fanatically, about german reverses, german defeat-the attrition of the luftwaffe and its decline in power, the withdrawals of fronts, the need for weapons with longer ranges. . . . but others had the money, others gave the orders­ trying to superimpose their lusts and bickerings on something that had its own vitality, on a technologique they'd never begin to understand. as long as the rocket was in research and development, there was no need for them to believe in it. later, as the a4 was going operational, as they found themselves with a real rocket-in-being, the struggles for power would begin in earnest. pokler could see that. they were athletic, brain­ less men without vision, without imagination. but they had power, and it was hard for him not to think of them as superior, even while holding them in a certain contempt. 401 i i , •. � ", 1/ but leni was wrong: no one was using him. pokler was an extensionof the rocket, long before it was ever built. she'd seen to that. whenshe left him, he fell apart. pieces spilled into the hinterhof, down thedrains, away in the wind. he couldn't even go to the movies. onlyrarely did he go out after work and try to fish lumps of coal from thespree. he drank beer and sat in the cold room, autumn light reachinghim after impoverishments and fadings, from gray clouds, off courtyardwalls and drainpipes, through grease-darkened curtains, bled of all hopeby the time it reached where he sat shivering and crying. he cried everyday, some hour of the day, for a month, till a sinus got infected. he wentto bed and sweated the fever out. then he moved to kummersdorf, out­side berlin, to help his friend mondaugen at the rocket field. temperatures, velocities, pressures, fin and body configurations, sta­bilities and turbulences began to slip in, to replace what leni had runaway from. there were pine and fir forests out the windows in themorning, instead of a sorrowful city courtyard. was he giving up theworld, entering a monastic order? one night he set fire to twenty pages of calculations. integral signsweaved like charmed cobras, comical curly ds marched along likehunchbacks through the fire-edge into billows of lace ash. but that washis only relapse. at first he helped out in the propulsion group. no one was specializ­ing yet. that came later, when the bureaus and paranoias moved in, andthe organization charts became plan-views of prison cells. kurtmondaugen, whose field was radio electronics, could come up with so­lutions to cooling problems. pokler found himself redesigning instru­mentation for measuring local pressures. that came in handy later atpeenemiinde, when they often had to lead over a hundred measuringtubes from a model no more than 4 or 5 centimeters' diameter. poklerhelped in working out the halbmodelle solution: bisecting the modellengthwise and mounting it flat-side to the wall of the test chamber,bringing the tubes through that way to all the manometers outside. aberlin slum-dweller, he thought, knew how to think in half-rations . . .but it was a rare moment of pride. no one could really claim credit100% for any idea, it was a corporate intelligence at work, specializationhardly mattered, class lines even less. the social spectrum ran from vonbraun, the pruss ian aristocrat, down to the likes of pokler, who wouldeat an apple in the street-yet they were all equally at the rocket's 1�mercy: not only danger from explosions or falling hardware, but also itsdumbness, its dead weight, its obstinate and palpable mystery. . . . itin those days, most of the funding and attention went to the propul�qe402 as an extemi l to that. \� �rhof) down � le movies, q jf coal fromij in light reacl ld ) off courh'2 �\ bledof�i�: cr. hecneaer; nfected, he lit ummersaorr,oo et field, , integralli� 'hed alon� � h. but iliatwi sion group. problem was just to get something off the ground without having it blow up. there were minor disasters-aluminum motor cas­ ings would burn through, some injector designs would set up resonant combustion, in which the burning motor would try to shriek itself to pieces-and then, in '34, a major one. dr. wahmke decided to mix per­ oxide and alcohol together before injection into the thrust chamber, to see what would happen. the ignition flame backed up through the con­ duit into the tank. the blast demolished the test stand, killing dr. wahmke and two others. first blood, first sacrifice. kurt mondaugen took it as a sign. one of these german mystics who grew up reading hesse, stefan george, and richard wilhelm, ready to accept hitler on the basis of demian-metaphysics, he seemed to look at fuel and oxidizer as paired opposites, male and female principles uniting in the mystical egg of the combustion chamber: creation and destruc­ tion, fire and water, chemical plus and chemical minus"valency," pokler protested, "a condition of the outer shells, that's all." "think about it," said mondaugen. there was also fahringer, an aerodynamics man, who went out in the pine woods at peenemiinde with his zen bow and roll of pressed straw to practice breathing, draw and loosing, over and over. it seemed rather rude at a time when his colleagues were being driven insane by what they called "folgsamkeitfaktor," a problem with getting the rocket's long axis to follow the tangent, at all points, to its trajectory. the rocket for this fahringer was a fat japanese arrow. it was necessary in some way to become one with rocket, trajectory, and target-"not to will it, but to surrender, to step out of the role of firer. the act is undi­ vided. you are both aggressor and victim, rocket and parabolic path and ... " pokler never knew what the man was talking about. but mondaugen understood. mondaugen was the bodhisattva here, re­ turned from exile in the kalahari and whatever light had found him there, returned to the world of men and nations to carryon in a role he'd chosen deliberately, but without ever explaining why. in siidwest he had kept no journals, written no letters home. there had been an uprising by the bondelswaartz in 1922, and general turmoil in the coun­ try. his radio experiments interrupted, he sought refuge, along with a few score other whites, in the villa of a local landowner named foppl. the place was a stronghold, cut off on all sides by deep ravines. after a few months of siege and debauchery, "haunted by a profound disgust for everything european," mondaugen went out alone into the bush, ended up living with the ovatjimba, the aardvark people, who are the e was�eci�, movedinj� n celis, kw me up\\iilil! igning illllm handy later!! ed measuri!� meter. po�fl 'ng the moo te t cham�r. ecializau�� n from v�� who wow� e rocket'l but alsoitl ry, , " be propul· .. i , poorest of the hereros. they accepted him with no questions. hethought of himself, there and here, as a radio transmitter of some kind,and believed that whatever he was broadcasting at the time was at least no threat to them. in his electro-mysticism, the triode was as basic as the cross in christianity. think of the ego, the self that suffers a personalhistory bound to time, as the grid. the deeper and true self is the flow between cathode and plate. the constant, pure flow. signals-sense­data, feelings, memories relocating-are put onto the grid, and modu­late the flow. we live lives that are waveforms constantly changing withtime, now positive, now negative. only at moments of great serenity isit possible to find the pure, the informationless state of signal zero."in the name of the cathode, the anode, and the holy grid?" said pok­ler. "yes, that's good," mondaugen smiled. closest to the zero among them all, perhaps, was the african enzian,the protege of major weissmann. at the versuchsanstalt, behind hisback, he was known as weissmann's monster, probably less out of rac­ism than at the picture the two of them made, enzian towering a footover weissmann, who was balding, scholarly, peering up at the africanthrough eyeglass lenses thick as bottles, skipping now and then to keepup as they stalked over the asphalt and through the labs and offices, en­zian dominating every room and landscape of those early rocket days.. . . pokier's clearest memory of him is his first, in the testing room atkummersdorf, surrounded by electric colors-green nitrogen bottles, athick tangle of red, yellow and blue plumbing, enzian's own copperface with the same kind of serenity that now and then drifted intomondaugen's-watching in one of the mirrors the image of a rocket en­gine beyond the safety partition: in the stale air of that room snappingwith last-minute anxieties, nicotine craving, unreasonable prayer, en­zian was at peace.... pokler moved to peenemiinde in 1937, along with some 90 others.they were invading gravity itself, and a beachhead had to be laiddown. never in his life, not even as a laborer in berlin, did pokier workso hard. the vanguard spent the spring and summer converting a littleisland, the greifswalder oie, into a testing station: resurfacing road,stringing cable and telephone line, putting up living quarters, latrinesand storage sheds, excavating bunkers, mixing concrete, endlessly steve­doring in crates of tools, bags of cement, drums of fuel. they used anancient ferryboat for cargo runs between the mainland and the oie.pokler remembers the worn red plush and scratched lacquer inside thedim cabins, the neglected brightwork, the asthmatic cry of her steam404 wasatl� as basic, rs a perw� eli is toe �� ignalher� 'd, anam� changin�\\lu eat ereniryl i211alzero. d," saiarit. fricanentiar. it. behinak e go othe� to be lru� p6hlerll'orl rting a lit�f facing roaq ers,latrinel esslystew· ey used a� d the oie, inside we er steam· whistle, odors of sweat, cigarette smoke and diesel fuel, the trembling of arm and leg muscles, the tired joking, the exhaustion toward the end of each day, his own new calluses struck to gold by the late sun.... the sea was mostly calm and blue that summer, but in the autumn the weather turned. rain swept in from the north, the temperature plunged, wind tore into storage tents, giant waves boomed all night long. the water was white for fifty meters out from shore. spray feath­ ered landward off the curls of the big breakers. pokier, billeted at a fisherman's cottage, came in from his evening walks behind a fine mask of salt. lot's wife. what disaster had he dared to look back on? he knew. he reverted that season to childhood, to the wounded dog. during those wet and solitary walks he brooded about leni: he concocted sce­ narios in which they would meet again, in some elegant or dramatic set­ ting-ministry' theatre lobby-two or three jeweled and beautiful women hanging to him, generals and industrialists springing to light his american cigarettes and listening to his offhand solutions to problems leni would only vaguely understand. the most satisfying of these fan­ tasies would come while pokler was on the toilet-he'd tap his feet, fan­ fares would whisper through his lips as he felt that pleasant anticipa­ tion.... but the burden of his poor berlin self lingered. he had spoken to it, listened, probed, and yet it would not dissolve or flee, it persisted, beg­ gar in all the doorways of his life, beseeching silently with eyes, with hands quite sure of their guiltmaking craft. busywork at peenemiinde and good company at herr halliger's inn on the oie-all marking time till good firing weather-and pokler more vulnerable than he'd ever been. his cold and womanless nights, the card and chess games, the all­ male beer-drinking sessions, the nightmares he had to find his own way up out of because there was no other hand now to shake him awake, no­ body to hold him when the shadows came on the window shade-all caught up with him that november, and maybe he allowed it to. a pro­ tective reflex. because something scary was happening. because once or twice, deep in the ephedrine pre-dawns nodding [a, ja, stimmt, ja, for some design you were carrying not in but on your head and could feel bobbing, out past your side-vision, bobbing and balanced almost-he would become aware of a drifting-away . . . some assumption of pokler into the calculations, drawings, graphs, and even what raw hardware there was . . . each time, soon as it happened, he would panic, and draw back into the redoubt of waking pokler, heart pounding, hands and feet aching, his breath catching in a small voiced hunhsomei . -_ r ./ ii; ( _ thing was out to get him, something here, among the paper. the fear of extinction named pokler knew it was the rocket, beckoning him in. if he also knew that in something like this extinction he could be free of his loneliness and his failure, still he wasn't quite convinced.... so he hunted, as a servo valve with a noisy input will, across the zero, be­ tween the two desires, personal identity and impersonal salvation. mondaugen saw it all. he could see into pokier's heart. in his compas­ sion, not surprisingly, he had no free advice for his friend. pokler would have to find his own way to his zero signal, his true course. by '38 the peenemunde facility was taking shape, and pokler moved over to the mainland. with hardly more to go on than stodda's treatise on steam turbines, and helpful data now and then frorr universities at hannover, darmstadt, leipzig and dresden, the propulsion group were testing a rocket engine of 1 h tons' thrust, 10 atmospheres' combustion pressure, and 60 seconds' duration. they were getting exhaust velocities of 1800 meters per second, but the value they were aiming for was 2000. they called it the magic number, and they meant it literally. as some gamblers on the stock market know when to place stop orders, feeling by instinct not the printed numbers but the rates of change, knowing from first and second derivatives in their skin when to come in, stay or go, so there are engineering reflexes tuned always to know, at any moment, what, given the resources, can be embodied in workinghardware-what is «feasible." on the day that a 2000 m/ sec exhaust became feasible, the a4 itself suddenly came in reach. the danger thenlay in being seduced by approaches that were too sophisticated. no one was immune. hardly a designer there, including pokler, didn't come upwith at least one monster rig, some gorgon's head writhing with pipes,tubes, complicated folderol for controlling pressures, solenoids on top ofpilot valves on auxiliary valves on backup valves-hundreds of pages onvalve nomenclature were printed as appendices to these weird propos-als, all promising huge pressure differences between the inside of the chamber and the nozzle exit-beautiful, as long as you didn't care muchabout those millions of moving parts behaving together too reliably. but .jillto get a dependable working motor, one the military could use in the 100field to kill people, the real engineering problem now was to keep thingsas simple as possible. :�the model currently being fired was the a3, christened not with l�!champagne, but with flasks of liquid oxygen by the playful technicians. '�temphasis had begun to shift from propulsion to guidance. telemetry onthe flight tests was still primitive. thermometers and barometers were ���sealed in a watertight compartment with a movie camera. during flights ij�\ 406 i hefear him in" befree , , '�i zero, � the camera photographed the needles swinging on the gauges. after the flight the film was recovered, and the data played back. engineers sat around looking at movies of dials. meantime heinkels were also drop­ ping iron models of the rocket from 20,000 feet. the fall was photo­ graphed by askania cinetheodolite rigs on the ground. in the daily rushes you would watch the frames at around 3000 feet, where the model broke through the speed of sound. there has been this strange connection between the german mind and the rapid flashing of succes­ sive stills to counterfeit movement, for at least two centuries-since leibniz, in the process of inventing calculus, used the same approach to break up the trajectories of cannonballs through the air. and now pok­ ler was about to be given proof that these techniques had been ex­ tended past images on film, to human lives. he had returned to his quarters about sundown, too tired or preoccu­ pied to be much affected by the furnace of colors in the flower gardens, the daily changes to the skyline of the station, even the absence of noise today from the testing stands. he smelled the ocean, and could almost imagine himself as someone who lives year-round at a seaside resort, but seldom gets to the beach. now and then, over in peenemiinde-west, a fighter plane took off or landed, the motors softened by distance to tran­ quil purring. a late sea-breeze flickered. he had no warning other than a smile from a colleague who lived a few cubicles away and was coming down the barracks stairs as pokler was going up. he entered his own cu­ bicle and saw her sitting on the bed, her toes pointed in next to a flow­ ered carpetbag, skirt pulled over her knees and eyes anxiously, fatally, looking into his. "herr pokler? i am your-" "ilse, ilse. . . ." he must have picked her up, kissed her, drawn the curtain. some reflex. she was wearing in her hair a ribbon of brown velvet. he remem­ bered her hair as lighter, shorter-but then it does grow, and darken. he looked slantwise into her face, all his emptiness echoing. the vac­ uum of his life threatened to be broken in one strong inrush of love. he tried to maintain it with seals of suspicion, looking for resemblances to the face he'd last seen years ago over her mother's shoulder, eyes still puffy from sleep angled down across leni's raincoated back, going out a door he'd thought closed for good-pretending not to find resem­ blances. perhaps pretending. was it really the same face? he'd lost so much of it over the years, that fat, featureless child's face. . . . he was afraid now even to hold her, afraid his heart would burst. he said, "how long have you been waiting?" "since lunchtime." she'd eaten in the canteen. major weissmann had brought her up on the train from stettin, and they had played che s. major weissmann was a slow player, and they hadn't finished the game. major weissmann had bought her sweets, and had asked her to ay hello and sorry he couldn't stay long enough to see pokler­ weissmann? what was this? a blinking, tentative fury grew in pok­ ler. they must have known everything-all this time. his life was se­ cretless as this mean cubicle, with its bed, commode and reading-light. so, to stand between him and this impossible return, he had his anger-to preserve him from love he couldn't really risk. he could set­ tle for interrogating his daughter. the shame he felt was acceptable, the shame and coldness. but she must have picked it up, for she sat now very still, except for nervous feet, her voice so subdued he missed parts of her answers. they had sent her here from a place in the mountains, where it was chilly even in summer-surrounded by barbed wire and bright hooded lights that burned all night long. there were no boys-only girls, moth­ ers, old ladies living in barracks, stacked up in bunks, often two to a pal­ let. leni was well. sometimes a man in a black uniform came into the barracks and mutti would go away with him, and stay away for several days. when she came back she didn't want to talk, or even to hug use the way she usually did. sometimes she cried, and asked use to leave her alone. ilse would go off and play with johanna and lilli underneath the barracks next door. they had scooped a hideout there in the dirt, furnished with dolls, hats, dresses, shoes, old bottles, magazines with pictures, all found out near the barbed wire, the treasure pile, they called it, a huge refuse dump that always smoldered, day and night: you could see its red glow out the window from the top bunk where she slept with lilli, nights when leni was away.... but pokler was hardly listening, he had the only datum with any value: that she was somewhere definite, with a location on the map and authorities who might be contacted. could he find her again? fool. could he somehow negotiate her release? some man, some red, must have got her into this. . . . kurt mondaugen was the only one he could trust, though pokierknew before they spoke that the role mondaugen had chosen would keep him from helping. "they call them re-education camps. they're run by the ss. i could talk to weissmann, but it might not work." he had known weissmann in siidwest. they had shared the months of siege inside foppl's villa: weissmann was one of the people who haddriven mondaugen, finally, away to live in the bush. but they had found 408 a rapprochement here, among the rockets, either for sunblasted holy­ man reasons it was not for pokler to understand or because of some deeper connection which had always been there. . . . they stood on the roof of one of the assembly buildings, the oie across the water six miles away clearly visible, which meant a change in the weather tomorrow. steel was being hammered somewhere out in the sunlight, hammered in cadences, purified as the song of some bird. blue peenemiinde shivered around them in all directions, a dream of concrete and steel masses reflecting the noon heat. the air rippled like camouflage. behind it something else seemed to carryon in secret. at any moment the illusion they stood on would dissolve and they would fall to earth. pokler stared across the marshes, feeling helpless. "i have to do something. don't i?" "no. you have to wait." "it's not right, mondaugen." "no." "wh'at about ilse? will she have to go back?" "i don't know. but she's here now." so, as usual, pokler chose silence. had he chosen something else, back while there was time, they all might have saved themselves. even left the country. now, too late, when at last he wanted to act, there was nothing to act on. well, to be honest, he didn't spend much time brooding about past neutralities. he wasn't that sure he'd outgrown them, anyway. they took walks, he and ilse, by the stormy shore-fed ducks, ex­ plored the pine forests. they even allowed her to watch a launching. it was a message to him, but he didn't understand till later what it meant. it meant that there was no violation of security: there was no one she could tell who mattered. the noise of the rocket ripped at them. for the first time then she moved close, and held him. he felt that he was holding on to her. the motor cut off too soon, and the rocket crashed somewhere over in peenemiinde-west, in luftwaffe territory. the dirty pillar of smoke drew the screaming fire engines and truckloads of work­ ers by in a wild parade. she took in a deep breath, and squeezed his hand. "did you make it do that, papi?" "no, it wasn't supposed to. it's supposed to fly in a big curve," mo­ tioning with his hand, the parabola trailing behind encompassing testing stands, assembly buildings, drawing them together as the crosses priests make in the air quarter and divide the staring congregations behind them.... "where does it go?" ���/ •• , ••••,--:-• • _.a. �� / "wherever we tell it to." "may i fly in it someday? i'd fit inside, wouldn't i?" she asked impossible questions. "someday," pokler told her. "per­ haps someday to the moon." "the moon ... " as if he were going to tell her a story. when none followed she made up her own. the engineer in the next cubicle had a map of the moon tacked to his fiberboard wall, and she spent hours studying it, deciding where she wanted to live. passing over the bright rays of kepler, the rugged solitude of the southern highlands, the spec­tacular views at copernicus and eratosthenes, she chose a small prettycrater in the sea of tranquillity called maskelyne b. they would build a house right on the rim, mutti and she and pokler, gold mountains out one window and the wide sea out the other. and earth green and blue in the sky.... should he have told her what the "seas" of the moon really were? told her there was nothing to breathe? his ignorance frightened him, his ineptitude as a father. ... nights in the cubicle, with ilse curled a few feet away in a canvas army cot, a little gray squirrel under her blan­ ket, he'd wonder if she wasn't really better off as ward of the reich. he'd heard there were camps, but saw nothing sinister in it: he took the government at their word, "re-education." i've made such a mess of ev­ erything . . . they have qualified people there . . . trained personnel . . . they know what a child needs . . . staring up at the electric scatter from this part of peenemiinde mapping across his piece of ceiling priorities, abandoned dreams, favor in the eyes of the master fantasists in berlin, while sometimes ilse whispered to him bedtime stories about the moon she would live on, till he had transferred silently to a world that wasn't this one after all: a map without any national borders, inse­ cure and exhilarating, in which flight was as natural as breathing-buti'll fall . . . no, rising, look down, nothing to be afraid of, this time it's good . . . yes, firmly in flight, it's working . . . yes. . . . pokler may be only witnessing tonight-or he may really be part of it. he hasn't been shown which it is. look at this. there is about to be ex­ pedited, for friedrich august kekule von stradonitz, his dream of 1865, the great dream that revolutionized chemistry and made the ig possi­ble. so that the right material may find its way to the right dreamer, ev­ eryone, everything involved must be exactly in place in the pattern. it was nice of jung to give us the idea of an ancestral pool in which every­ body shares the same dream material. but how is it we are each visited as individuals, each by exactly and only what he needs? doesn't that imply a switching-path of some kind? a bureaucracy? why shouldn't the 410 cne len enl ke \va a � wei tool na� hi ilie � ca 10 �o� m be fl � of fo '"':':_-' .-.:_ _--:-_ , " ".�� ig go to seances? they ought to be quite at home with the bureaucra­ cies of the other side. kekule's dream here's being routed now past points which may arc through the silence, in bright reluctance to live in­ side the moving moment, an imperfect, a human light, over here inter­ fering with the solemn binary decisions of these agents, who are now al­ lowing the cosmic serpent, in the violet splendor of its scales, shining that is definitely not human, to pass-without feeling, without wonder (after you get a little time in-whatever that means over here-one of these archetypes gets to look pretty much like any other, oh you hear some of these new hires, the seersucker crowd come in the first day, "wow! hey-that's th-th' tree 0' creation! huh? ain't it! je-eepers!" but they calm down fast enough, pick up the reflexes for intent to gawk, you know self-criticism's an amazing technique, it shouldn't work but it does. . . . here, here's the rundown on kekule's problem. started out to become an architect, turned out instead to be one of the atlantes of chemistry, most of the organic wing of that useful edifice bearing down on top of his head forever-not just under the aspect of ig, but of world, assuming that's a distinction you observe, heh, heh. . . . once again it was the influence of liebig, the great professor of chemistry on whose name-street in munich pokler lived while he at­ tended the t.h. liebig was at the university of giessen when kekule entered as a student. he inspired the young man to change his field. so kekule brought the mind's eye of an architect over into chemistry. it was a critical switch. liebig himself seems to have occupied the role of a gate, or sorting-demon such as his younger contemporary clerk max­ well once proposed, helping to concentrate energy into one favored room of the creation at the expense of everything else (later witnesses have suggested that clerk maxwell intended his demon not so much as a convenience in discussing a thermodynamic idea as a parable about the actual existence of personnel like liebig ... we may gain an indi­ cation of how far the repression had grown by that time, in the degree to which clerk maxwell felt obliged to code his warnings . . . indeed some theorists, usually the ones who find sinister meaning behind even mrs. clerk maxwell's notorious "it is time to go home, james, you are beginning to enjoy yourself," have made the extreme suggestion that the field equations themselves contain an ominous forewarning-they cite as evidence the disturbing intimacy of the equations with the behavior of the double-integrating circuit in the guidance system of the a4 rocket, the same double-summing of current densities that led architect etzelolsch to design for architect albert speer an underground factory at nordhausen with just that symbolic shape . . . ). young ex-architect 411 kekule went looking among the molecules of the time for the hiddenshapes he knew were there, shapes he did not like to think of as realphysical structures, but as "rational formulas," showing the relation­ships that went on in "metamorphoses," his quaint 19th-century way ofsaying "chemical reactions." but he could visualize. he saw the fourbonds of carbon, lying in a tetrahedron-he showed how carbon atomscould link up, one to another, into long chains. . . . but he was stumpedwhen he got to benzene. he knew there were six carbon atoms with ahydrogen attached to each one-but he could not see the shape. notuntil the dream: until he was made to see it, so that others might be se­duced by its physical beauty, and begin to think of it as a blueprint, abasis for new compounds, new arrangements, so that there would be afield of aromatic chemistry to ally itself with secular power, and findnew methods of synthesis, so there would be a german dye industry tobecome the 1 g. . . . kekule dreams the great serpent holding its own tail in its mouth,the dreaming serpent which surrounds the world. but the meanness,the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. the serpent that an­nounces, "the world is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-re­turning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violatethe cycle. taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity"and" earnings" keep on increasing with time, the system removing fromthe rest of the world these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tinydesperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity­most of the world, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. the system mayor may not understand that it's only buyingtime. and that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the system, which sooner or later must crash toits death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest ofthe world can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along thechain of life. living inside the system is like riding across the country ina bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiableenough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker, "goodmorning folks, this is heidelberg here we're coming into now, you knowthe old refrain, 'i lost my heart in heidelberg,' well 1 have a friend wholost both his ears here! don't get me wrong, it's really a nice town, thepeople are warm and wonderful-when they're not dueling. seriouslythough, they treat you just fine, they don't just give you the key to thecity, they give you the bung-starter!" u.s.w. on you roll, across a coun­tryside whose light is forever changing-castles, heaps of rock, moons ofdifferent shapes and colors come and go. there are stops at odd hours of the mornings, for reasons that are not announced: you get out to stretch in lime-lit courtyards where the old men sit around the table under enormous eucalyptus trees you can smell in the night, shuffling the an­ cient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major in the tremor of light while behind them the bus is idling, wait­ ing-passengers will now reclaim their seats and much as you'd like to stay, right here, learn the game, find your old age around this quiet table, it's no use: he is waiting beside the door of the bus in his pressed uniform, lord of the night he is checking your tickets, your id and travel papers, and it's the wands of enterprise that dominate tonight ... as he nods you by, you catch a glimpse of his face, his insane, com­ mitted eyes, and you remember then, for a terrible few heartbeats, that of course it will end for you all in blood, in shock, without dignity-but there is meanwhile this trip to be on ... over your own seat, where there ought to be an advertising plaque, is instead a quote from rilke: "once, only once ... " one of their favorite slogans. no return, no salvation, no cycle-that's not what they, nor their brilliant employee kckule, have taken the serpent to mean. no: what the serpent means is-how's this-that the six carbon atoms of benzene are in fact curled around into a closed ring, just like that snake with its tail in its mouth, get it? "the aromatic ring we know today," pokler's old prof, laszlo jamf, at this point in the spiel removing from his fob a gold hexagon with the german forrnee cross in the center, a medal of honor from ig farben, joking, in his lovable-old-fart manner, that he likes to think of the cross not as german so much as standing for the tetravalency of carf bon-"but who," lifting his open hands on each beat, like a bandleader, "who, sent, the dream?" it is never clear how rhetorical any of jamf' s questions are. "who sent this new serpent to our ruinous garden, al­ ready too fouled, too crowded to qualify as any locus of innocence­ unless innocence be our age's neutral, our silent passing into the machineries of indifference-something that kekule's serpent had come to-not to destroy, but to define to us the loss of . . . we had been given certain molecules, certain combinations and not others . . . we used what we found in nature, unquestioning, shamefully perhaps-but the serpent whispered, 'they can be changed, and new molecules as­ sembled from the debris of the given. . . .' can anyone tell me what else he whispered to us? come-who knows? you. tell me, pokler-" his name fell on him like a thunderclap, and of course it wasn't prof.­ dr. jamf after all, but a colleague from down the hall who had pulled reveille duty that morning. ilse was brushing her hair, and smiling at him. 413 his daytime work had started to go better. others were not so dis­tant, and more apt to look in his eyes. they'd met use, and beencharmed. if he saw anything else in their faces, he ignored it.then one evening he returned from the oie, a little drunk, a littleanxious-elated over a firing the next day, and found his cubicle empty.isle, her flowered bag, the clothing she usually left strewn on the cot,had all vanished. nothing left but a wretched sheet of log paper (whichpokler found so useful for taming the terror of exponential curves intothe linear, the safe), the same kind she'd drawn pictures of her moon­house on. "papi, they want me back. maybe they'll let me see youagain. i hope so. i love you. use." kurt mondaugen found pokler lying on her cot breathing what heimagined were odors of her hair on the pillow. for a while then he wenta little insane, talked of killing weissmann, sabotaging the rocket pro­gram, quitting his job and seeking asylum in england. . . . mondaugensat, and listened to all of it, touched pokler once or twice, smoked hispipe, till at last, at two or three in the morning, pokler had talkedthrough a number of unreal options, cried, cursed, punched a hole intohis neighbor's cubicle, through which he heard the man snoring on obli­vious. cooled by then to a vexed engineer-elitism-"they are fools,they don't even know what sine and cosine are and they're trying to tellme"-he agreed that yes, he must wait, and let them do what theywould do.... "if i set up a meeting with weissmann," mondaugen did suggest,"could you be graceful? calm?" "no. not with him. . . . not yet." "when you think you are ready, let me know. when you're ready,you'll know how to handle it." had he allowed himself a tone of com­mand? he must have seen how much pokler needed to be at someone'scommand. leni had learned to subdue her husband with her face, knewwhat cruel lines he expected of her mouth, what tones of voice heneeded . . . when she left him she left an unemployed servant who'd gowith the first master that called, just a victim in a vacuum! nur ... ein ... op-fer! sehr ins vakuum, ("won't somebody take advantage of me?")wird niemand ausnut-zen mich, auch? ("just a slave with nobody to slave for,") pi w� or ) ab rod qe� jo� so pial lonl her slo wh� un ilie tos irutl 1\ t so mi. nd been nur ein sklave, ohne her-rin, (ya-ta ta-ta) ("a-and who th' heck wants ta be, free?") wer zum teufel die freiheit, braucht? (all together now, all you masochists out there, specially those of you don't have a partner tonight, alone with those fantasies that don't look like they'll ever come true-want you just to join in here with your brothers and sisters, let each other know you're alive and sincere, try to break through the silences, try to reach through and con­ nect....) aw, the sodium lights-aren't, so bright in berlin, i go to the bars dear, but nobody's in! oh, i'd much rather bee in a greek trage-dee, than be a victim in a vacuum to-nite! days passed, much like one another to pokler. identical morning plunges into a routine dreary as winter now. he learned to keep an out­ ward calm, at least. learned to feel the gathering, the moving toward war that is unique to weapons programs. at first it simulates depression or non-specific anxiety. there may be esophagal spasms and unrecover­ able dreams. you find you are writing notes to yourself, first thing in the morning: calm, reasoned assurances to the screaming mental case in­ side-i. it is a combination. 1.1 it is a scalar quantity. 1.2. its negative aspects are distributed isotropically. 2. it is not a conspiracy. 2.1 it is not a vector. 2.11 it is not aimed at anybody. 2.12 it is not aimed at me ... u.s.w. the coffee begins to taste more and more metallic. each deadline is now a crisis, each is more intense than the last. behind this job-like-any-other-job seems to lie something void, something terminal, something growing closer, each day, to manifestation.... ("the new planet pluto," she had whispered long ago, lying in the smelly dark, her long asta nielsen upper lip gibbous that night as the moon that ruled her, "pluto is in my sign now, held tight in its claws. it moves slowly, so slowly and so far away . . . but it will burst out. it is the grim phoenix which creates its own holocaust . . . deliberate resurrection. staged. under control. no grace, no interventions by god. some are calling it the planet of national socialism, brunhiibner and that crowd, all trying to suck up to hitler now. they don't know they are telling the literal truth.... are you awake? franz. . . .") as war drew closer, the game of priorities and politicking grew more ��--l__/ --/,�.,.. earnest, army vs. luftwaffe, the weapons department vs. the ministryof munitions, the ss, given their aspirations, vs. everybody else, and even a simmering discontent that was to grow over the next few yearsinto a palace revolt against von braun, because of his youth and a num­ber of test failures-though heaven knew, there were always enough ofthose, they were the raw material of all testing-station politics. . . . in ojgeneral, though, the test results grew more and more hopeful. it was im­ possible not to think of the rocket without thinking of shicksal, of growing toward a shape predestined and perhaps a little otherworldly.the crews launched an uncontrolled series of ass, bringing some ofthem down by parachute, reaching a height of five miles and nearly tothe speed of sound. though the guidance people had still a long way to u go, they had by this point switched over to vanes made of graphite, 10brought the yaw oscillations down to five degrees or so, and grown 0measurably happier about the rocket's stability. at some point during the winter, pokler came to feel that he could h handle a meeting with weissmann. he found the ss man on guard behihind eyeglasses like wagnerian shields, ready for unacceptable maxima o� -anger, accusation, a moment of office-violence. it was like meeting a stranger. they had not spoken since the days at kummersdorf, at the old raketenflugplatz. in this quarter-hour at peenemiinde, pokler smiled more than he had in the year previous: spoke of his admiration for poehlmann's work in devising a cooling system for the propulsion."what about the hot spots?" weissmann asked. it was a reasonable question, but also an intirnacy. nilit came to pokler that the man didn't give a damn about heating hproblems. this was a game, as mondaugen had warned-ritualized as rojiu-jitsu. "we've got heat-flow densities," pokler feeling as he usuallydid when he sang, "on the order of three million kcal/rn-h °c. regener-ative cooling is the best interim solution right now, but poehlmann has a till new approach"-showing him with chalk and slate, trying for the pro-fessional manner-"he feels that if we use a film of alcohol on the inside of the chamber, we can reduce the heat transfer by a considerableamount." "you'll be injecting it." "correct." "how much fuel is that going to reroute? how's it going to affect the engine efficiency?" pokler had the figures. "right now injection is a plumber's nightmare,but with the delivery schedules as they are-" "what about the two-stage combustion process?" 416 ••••••• '"' • ill! •••••••• _.---.......................• ,. • �'---ii��/--_. . �� ---i �/' . __ll11 "gives us more volume, better turbulence, but there's also a non-iso­ tropic pressure drop, which cuts into our efficiency.... we're trying any number of approaches. if we could depend on better funding-" "ah, not my department. we could do with a more generous budget ourselves." they both laughed then, gentleman scientists under a stingy bureaucracy, suffering together. pokler understood that he had been negotiating for his child and for leni: that the questions and answers were not exactly code for some­ thing else, but in the way of an evaluation of pokler personally. he was expected to behave a certain way-not just to playa role, but to live it. any deviations into jealousy, metaphysics, vagueness would be picked up immediately: he would either be corrected back on course, or al­ lowed to fall. through winter and spring the sessions with weissmann became routine. pokler grew into his new disguise-prematurely aged adolescent whiz-often finding that it could indeed take him over, keeping him longer at reference books and firing data, speaking lines for him he could never have planned in advance: gentle, scholarly, rocket­ obsessed language that surprised him. in late august he had his second visit. it should have been "ilse re­ turned," but pokler wasn't sure. as before, she showed up alone, unan­ nounced-ran to him, kissed him, called him papi. but . . . but her hair, for one thing, was definitely dark brown, and cut dif­ ferently. her eyes were longer, set differently, her complexion less fair. it seemed she'd grown a foot taller. but at that age, they shoot up over­ night, don't they? if it was "that age.... " even as pokler embraced her, the perverse whispering began. is it the same one? have they sent you a different child? why didn't you look closer last time, pokler? this time he asked how long they were going to let her stay. "they'll tell me. and i'll try to let you know." and would there be time for him to recalibrate from his little squirrel who dreamed of living on the moon to this dark, long-legged, southern creature, whose awkwardness and need of a father were so touching, so clear even to pokler, at this their second (or was it first, or third?) meeting? hardly any news of leni. they had been separated, ilse said, during the winter. she'd heard a rumor that her mother had been moved to a different camp. so, so. present a pawn, withdraw the queen: weiss­ mann, waiting to see how pokler would react. this time he had gone too far: pokler laced up his shoes and calmly enough went out looking for htmare, the ss man, cornered him in his office, denounced him before a panel of kindly, dim governmental figures, the speech eloquently climaxing as he threw chessboard and pieces all into weissmann's arrogantly blinking "�---�t�/ / --/, .. .,. .... face. . . . pokler's impetuous, yes, a rebel-but generaldirektor it's his kind of fire and honesty we needthe child had suddenly come into his arms, to kiss him again. forfree. pokler forgot his troubles and held her to his heart for a long time,without speaking. . . . but that night in the cubicle, only breathing-no moon-wishes this year-from her cot, he was awake wondering, one daughter one impos­tor? same daughter twice? two impostors? beginning to work out the combinations for a third visit, a fourth. . . . weissmann, those behind him, had thousands of these children available. as the years passed, as they grew more nubile, would pokler even come to fall in love with one -would she reach the king's row that way and become a queen-substi­tute for lost, for forgotten leni? the opponent knew that pokler's sus­ picion would always be stronger than any fears about real incest. . . . they could make up new rules, to complicate the game indefinitely. chow could any man as empty as pokler felt that night ever be flexible cl enough for that? p.kat-it was ridiculous-hadn't he seen her go by from every angle in �ltheir old city rooms? carried, asleep, crying, crawling, laughing, huntl gry. often he had come home too tired to make it to the bed, and had e\ lain on the floor with his head under the one wood table, curled, beaten, wondering if he could even sleep. the first time ilse noticed, she crawled over and sat staring at him for a long time. she had never seen him still, horizontal, with his eyes shut.... he drifted toward sleep.ilse leaned over and bit him in the leg, as she bit crusts of bread, cigarettes, shoes, anything that might be food. -i'm your father. -you're ci inert and edible. pokler screamed and rolled out of the way. ilse began hito cry. he was too tired to want to think about discipline. it was leni hi finally who calmed her down. hi he knew all ilse's cryings, her first attempts at words, the colors of iv her shit, the sounds and shapes that brought her tranquillity. he oughtto know if this child was his own or not. but he didn't. too much had happened between. too much history and dream. . . . next morning his group leader handed pokler a furlough chit, and a paycheck with a vacation bonus. no travel restrictions, but a time limit of two weeks. translation: will you come back? he packed some things, and they got on the train for stettin. the sheds and assemblybuildings, the concrete monoliths and steel gantries that were the mapof his life flared backward, shadowing into great purplish chunks, iso­lated across the marshland one from another, in parallax away. wouldhe dare not to come back? could he think so far ahead? .. '::._" " : ..• _., .,. ��� it's h� ain. pm he'd left their destination up to ilse. she chose zwolfkinder, it was the end of summer, nearly the end of peacetime. the children knew what was coming. playing refugee, they crowded the railway carriages, quieter, more solemn than pokler had expected. he had to keep fighting an urge to start babbling each time ilse's eyes turned from the window toward his own. he saw the same thing in all their eyes: he was strange to them, to her, and growing stranger, and he knew of no way to reverse it. . .. in a corporate state, a place must be made for innocence, and its many uses. in developing an official version of innocence, the culture of childhood has proven invaluable. games, fairy-tales, legends from his­ tory, all the paraphernalia of make-believe can be adapted and even embodied in a physical place, such as at zwolfkinder, over the years it had become a children's resort, almost a spa. if you were an adult, you couldn't get inside the city limits without a child escort. there was a child mayor, a child city council of twelve. children picked up the pa­ pers, fruit peelings and bottles you left in the street, children gave you guided tours through the tierpark, the hoard of the nibelungen, cau­ tioning you to silence during the impressive re-enactment of bismarck's elevation, at the spring equinox of 1871, to prince and imperial chancel­ lor . . . child police reprimanded you if you were caught alone, without your child accompanying. whoever carried on the real business of the town-it could not have been children-they were well hidden. a late summer, a late, retrospective blooming.... birds flew every­ where, the sea warmed, the sun shone on into the evenings. random children took your shirt cuff by mistake, and trudged along for minutes before discovering you were not their adult, and then wandered off with backward smiles. the glass mountain twinkled rose and white in the hot sun, the elf king and his queen made a royal progress every noon with a splendid retinue of dwarves and sprites, handing out cakes, ices and candies. at each intersection or square, bands played-marches, folk-dances, hot jazz, hugo wolf. children went streaming like confetti. at the drinking fountains, where soda water sparkled deep inside the fanged mouths of dragons, of wild lions and tigers, the queues of chil­ dren waited, each for his moment of danger, leaning halfway into the shadow, into the smell of wet cement and old water, into the mouth of the beast, to drink. in the sky, the tall ferris wheel spun. from peene­ mimde they had come 280 kilometers, which was to be, coincidentally, the operational range of the ai. among all there was to choose from, wheel, myths, jungle animals, clowns, ilse found her way to the antarctic panorama. two or three ��/ � ....""" _/ boys hardly older than she wandered through the imitation wilderness, bundled up in sealskins, constructing cairns and planting flags in the august humidity. watching them made pokler sweat. a few "sled dogs" lay suffering in the shade of the dirty papier-mache sastrugi, on plaster snow that had begun to crack. a hidden projector threw images of the aurora on a white scrim. half a dozen stuffed penguins also dotted the landscape. "so-you want to live at the south pole. have you given up so easily on"-kot-idiot, that was a slip-"on the moon?" he'd been good up till then about cross-examining. he couldn't afford to know who she was. in the false antarctic, in ignorance of what had attracted her there, uneasy and dripping sweat, he waited for her answer. she, or they, let him off. "oh," with a shrug, "who wants to live on the moon?" they never brought it up again. back at their hotel, they were handed the key by an eight-year-old desk clerk, rose in a whining elevator run by a uniformed child, to a room still warm from the day's heat. she closed the door, took off her hat and scaled it over to her bed. pokler collapsed on his own bed. she came over to take off his shoes. "papi," gravely unlacing, "may i sleep next to you tonight?" one of her hands had come lightly to rest on the beginning of his bare calf. their eyes met for half a second. a number of uncertainties shifted then for pokler and locked into sense. to his shame, his first feeling was pride. he hadn't known he was so vital to the program. even in this ini­ tial moment, he was seeing it from their side-every quirk goes in the dossier, gambler, foot-fetishist or soccer fan, it's all important, it can all be used. right now we have to keep them happy, or at least neutralize the foci of their unhappiness. you may not understand what their work really is, not at the level of the data, but you're an administrator after all, a leader, your job is to get results ... pokler, now, has mentioned a "daughter." yes, yes we know it's disgusting, one never can tell what they have locked up in there with those equations, but we must all put off our judgments for now, there'll be time after the war to get back to the poklers and their dirty little secrets. . . . he hit her upside the head with his open hand, a loud and terrible blow. that took care of his anger. then, before she could cry or speak, he had dragged her up on the bed next to him, her dazed little hands al­ ready at the buttons of his trousers, her white frock already pulled above her waist. she had been wearing nothing at all underneath, noth­ ing all day ... how i've wanted you, she whispered as paternal plow found its way into filial furrow ... and after hours of amazing incest 420 tli fl ba an fal ad b po ne ili, ili nii ili� an lie ha� his w he �e 1 wa he do be� ..... ::.:_••••••••••• :_ --, ••• ,�y / � iil____l__� i ureon they dressed in silence, and crept out into the leading edge of faintest flesh dawn, everything they would ever need packed inside her flowered bag, past sleeping children doomed to the end of summer, past monitors and railway guards, down at last to the water and the fishing boats, to a fatherly old sea-dog in a braided captain's hat, who welcomed them aboard and stashed them below decks, where she snuggled down in the bunk as they got under way and sucked him for hours while the engine pounded, till the captain called, "come on up, and take a look at your new home!" gray and green, through the mist, it was denmark. "yes, they're a free people here. good luck to both of you!" the three of them, there on deck, stood hugging.... no. what pokler did was choose to believe she wanted comfort that night, wanted not to be alone. despite their game, their palpable evil, though he had no more reason to trust "ilse" than he trusted them, by an act not of faith, not of courage but of conservation, he chose to be­ lieve that. even in peacetime, with unlimited resources, he couldn't have proven her identity, not beyond the knife-edge of zero tolerance his precision eye needed. the years ilse would have spent between ber­ lin and peenemiinde were so hopelessly tangled, for all of germany, that no real chain of events could have been established for sure, not even pokler's hunch that somewhere in the state's oversize paper brain a specific perversity had been assigned him and dutifully stored. for every government agency, the nazi party set up a duplicate. commit­ tees fissioned, merged, generated spontaneously, disappeared. no one would show a man his dossierit was not, in fact, even clear to him that he had made a choice. but it was in those humming moments in the room smelling of a summer day, whose light no one had lit yet, with her round straw hat a frail moon on the bedspread, lights of the wheel slowly pouring red and green over and over outside in the dark, and a group of schoolboys singing in the street a refrain from before their time, their sold-out and cruelly han­ dled time-juch-heierasas-sa! 0 tempo-tempo-ra!-that board and pieces and patterns at least all did come clear for him, and pokier knew that while he played, this would have to be ilse-truly his child, truly as he could make her. it was the real moment of conception, in which, years too late, he became her father. through the rest of the furlough, they strolled about zwolfkinder, al­ ways hand in hand. lanterns swaying from the trunks of elephants' heads on top of tall pillars lit their way . . . over spidery bridges looking down at snow-leopards, apes, hyenas ... along the miniature railway, between the corrugated pipe legs of steel-mesh dinosaurs, down to the 421 "··1. i / ��---__-' -. /........ patch of african desert where every two hours exactly the treacherous natives attacked an encampment of general von trotha's brave men in blue, all the parts played by exuberant boys, and a great patriotic fa­ vorite with children of all ages ... up on the giant wheel so naked, so void of grace, there for only the clear mission: to lift and to frighten.... on their last night-though he didn't know it, for they would take her as abruptly and invisibly as before-they stood looking in again at stuffed penguins and false snow, and around them the artificial aurora flickered. "next year," squeezing her hand, "we'll come back here, if you like." "oh yes. every year, papi." next day she was gone, taken back into the coming war, leaving po­ kler alone in a country of children, to go back to peenemiinde after all, alone.... so it has gone for the six years since. a daughter a year, each one about a year older, each time taking up nearly from scratch. the only continuity has been her name, and zwolfkinder, and polder's love-love something like the persistence of vision, for they have used it to create for him the moving image of a daughter, flashing him only these sum­ mertime frames of her, leaving it to him to build the illusion of a singlechild ... what would the time scale matter, a 24th of a second or a year (no more, the engineer thought, than in a wind-tunnel, or an oscil­ lograph whose turning drum you could speed or slow at will ... )? outside the peenemiinde wind-tunnel, pokler has come to stand at night, next to the great sphere, 40 feet high, listening to the laboring pumps as they evacuate the air from the white sphere, five minutes of growing void-then one terrific gasp: 20 seconds of supersonic flow ...then the fall of the shutter, and the pumps starting up again . . . he has listened, and taken it to imply his own cycle of shuttered love, growing empty over the year for two weeks in august, engineered with the same care. he has smiled, and drunk toasts, and traded barracks humor with major weissmann, while all the time, behind the music and the gig­ gling, he could hear the flesh of pieces moved in darkness and winter across the marshes and mountain chains of the board . . . watched run after run the halbmodelle results out of the wind tunnel, showing howthe net normal force would be distributed over the rocket's length, forhundreds of different mach numbers-seen the true profile of therocket warped and travestied, a rocket of wax, humped like a dolphinat around caliber 2, necking down toward the tail which was then stretched up, impossibly, in a high point with a lower shoulder aft of it 422 -a lorci mov lion, in airr �i�ht �masl be�a �ome brili tradil tect! raran felt in�, bum out. oulo "i "dl "h ''1' wale moli willi they mon ••• :::_ •• " ••.••• :. .. <_•• -: ��",' -and seen how his own face might be plotted, not in light but in net forces acting upon it from the flow of reich and coercion and love it moved through . . . and known that it must suffer the same degrada­ tion, as death will warp face to skull. . . . in '43, because he was away at zwolfkinder, pokler missed the british air raid on peenemiinde. returning to the station, as soon as he came in sight of the "foreign workers'" quarters at trassenheide razed and smashed, bodies still being dug from the wreckage, a terrible suspicion began, and would not be put down. weissmann was saving him for something: some unique destiny. somehow the man had known the british would bomb that night, known even in '39, and so arranged the tradition of an august furlough, year after year but all toward pro­ tecting pokler from the one bad night. not quite balanced ... a bit paranoid, yes, yes . . . but the thought purred on in his brain, and he felt himself turning to stone. smoke seeped from the earth, charred trees fell, as he watched, at no more than a breath from the direction of the sea. powdered dust rose up at every footfall, turning clothes white, faces to masks of dust. the far­ ther up the peninsula, the less damage. a strange gradient of death and wreckage, south to north, in which the poorest and most helpless got it worst-as, indeed, the gradient was to run east to west, in london a year later when the rockets began to fall. most of the casualties had been among "foreign workers," a euphemism for civilian prisoners brought in from countries under german occupation. the wind tunnel and the measuring house were untouched, the pre-production works only slightly damaged. pokler's colleagues were outside scientist hous­ ing, which had been hit-phantoms moving in morning fog still not burned off, washing up in buckets of beer because the water was still out. they stared at pokler, failing, enough of them, to keep accusation out of their faces. "i wish i could have missed this." "dr. thiel is dead." "how was fairyland, pokler?" ''i'm sorry," he said. it wasn't his fault. the others were silent: some watching, some still in shock from the night. mondaugen showed up then. "we're exhausted. could you come with me to pre-production? a lot has to be sorted out, we need a hand." they shufhed along, each in his own dust-cloud. "it was terrible," mondaugen said. "all of us have been under some strain." "they sounded like i'd done it." "you feeling guilty because you weren't here?" 423 ''i'm wondering why i wasn't here. that's all." "because you were in zwolfkinder," replied the enlightened one. "don't invent complications." he tried not to. that was weissmann's job, wasn't it, weissmann was the sadist, he had responsibility for coming up with new game-varia­ tions, building toward a maximum cruelty in which pokler would be un­ laid to nerves vessels and tendons, every last convolution of brain flat­ tened out in the radiance of the black candles, nowhere to shelter, entirely his master's possession ... the moment in which he is defined to himself at last. . . . this is what pokler could feel waiting now, a room he'd never seen, a ceremony he couldn't memorize in ad­ vance.... there were false alarms. pokler was almost sure once during the winter, during the test series at blizna. they had moved east into po­ land, to fire over land. the shots from peenemiinde were all out to sea, and there'd been no way to observe the re-entry of the at. blizna was almost exclusively an ss project: part of maj.-gen. kamrnler's empire­ building. the rocket at that point was plagued by an airburst problem in its terminal phase-the vehicle blew apart before reaching the target. everyone had an idea. it might be an overpressure in the liquid-oxygen tank. perhaps, because the rocket coming down was lighter by 10 tons of fuel and oxidizer, the shift in the center of gravity was making it un­ stable. or perhaps the insulation on the alcohol tank was at fault, some­ how allowing residual fuel to be burned on re-entry. this was pokler's reason for being there. by then he was no longer in the propulsion group, or even working as a designer-he was in the materials office, ex­ pediting the procurement of various plastics for insulation, shock ab­ sorption, gasketry-exciting stuff. the orders to blizna were strange enough to be weissmann's work: the day pokler went out to sit in the polish meadows at the exact spot where the rocket was supposed to come down, he was certain. green rye and low hills for miles all around: pokler was by a small trench, in the sarnaki target area, pointing his binoculars south toward blizna like everybody else: waiting. erwartung in the crosshairs, with the just-sprung rye blowing, its gentler nap being brushed up by the wind ... look down at this countryside, down through rocket-miles of morning space: the many shades of forest green, polish farmhouses white and brown, dark eels of rivers catching the sun at their curves . . . and at the very center down there, in the holy x, pokler, crucified, invisible at first look, but in a moment . . . now beginning to resolve as the fall gathers momentumwinte� 01 bun �ailier no, �o ilier c� enou�� �el , the mooe! loran lere �loom trona iliece' �hells, urseo tist in rerso zero, numb were the el ... ::: � : _ .. " --.�"" d ont but how can he believe in its reality up there? insects whine, the sun is almost warm, he can gaze off at the red earth and millions of blowing stalks, and fall nearly into a light trance: in shirtsleeves, with his bony knees pointing up, the gray suit jacket wrinkled years beyond last pressing bundled under his ass to soak up the dew. the others he came out with are dotted here about ground zero, blithe nazi buttercups­ binoculars sway from slate-colored horsehide straps around their necks, the askania crew fuss with their equipment, and one of the ss liaison men (weissmann isn't here) keeps looking at his watch, then at the sky, then the watch, the crystal becoming, in brief flashes onloff, a nacreous circle binding together the hour and the fleecy sky. pokler scratches at a graying 48-hour beard, bites at lips very chapped, as if he has spent most of the late winter outside: he has a winter look. around his eyes, over the years, has grown a ruinous system of burst capillaries, shadows, folds, crowsfeet, a ground that by now has gathered in the simple, direct eyes of his younger and poorer days . . . no. something was in them, even then, something others saw and knew they could use, and found how to. something pokler missed. he's spent enough of his life looking into mirrors. he really ought to remem­ ber.... the airburst, if it happens, will be in visual range. abstractions, math, models are fine, but when you're down to it and everybody's hollering for a fix, this is what you do: you go and sit exactly on the target with in­ different shallow trenches for shelter, and you watch it in the silent fire­ bloom of its last few seconds, and see what you will see. chances are as­ tronomically against a perfect hit, of course, that is why one is safest at the center of the target area. rockets are supposed to be like artillery shells, they disperse about the aiming point in a giant ellipse-the el­ lipse of uncertainty. but pokler, though trusting as much as any scien­ tist in uncertainty, is not feeling too secure here. it is after all his own personal ass whose quivering sphincter is centered right on ground zero. and there is more to this than ballistics. there is weissmann. any number of chemists and materials people know as much about insula­ tion as pokler . . . why should he have been picked, unless . . . some­ where in his brain now two foci sweep together and become one . . . zero ellipse. . . a single point. . . a live warhead, secretly loaded, spe­ cial bunkers for everyone else. . . yes that's what he wants. . . all tol­ erances in the guidance cooperating toward a perfect shot, right on top of pokler ... ah, weissmann, your end game lacks finesse-but there were never spectators and judges not in all this time, and who ever said the end could not be this brutal? paranoia has rushed pokler, drowned �ll i / =-------.::b�__ --/..... him to the temples and scalp. he may have shit, he can't tell. his pulsethuds in his neck. his hands and feet ache. the black-suited blond en­ forcers look on. their metal insignia twinkle. low hillsides lie under early sun. all the field glasses stare south. the aggregat is on route, nothing can be changed. noone else here cares for the penetralia of the moment, or last mysteries: there have been too many rational years. the paper has piled too thick and far. pokler cannot reconcile, not really, hisdream of the perfectly victimized with the need bred into him to take care of business-nor see how these may be one and the same. the a4 must, after all, go out in the field very soon, this failure rate must be brought down, and so those who've come are here, and if there is a mas­ sive failure of vision this morning in the polish meadow, if no one, not even the most paranoid, can see anything at all beyond the stated re­ quirements, certainly it's not unique to this time, this place, where the eyes cupped against the black binoculars are looking only for the day's"reluctant virgin"-as the witty rocketeers have dubbed their problemrockets-to announce herself . . . to note where, forward to aft, the trouble may be, the shape of a vapor trail, the sound of the burst, any­ thing that might help. . . . at sarnaki, as the records tell it, the rocket came down that day withthe usual double-blast, a streak of white condensation in the blue sky:another premature airburst. steel fragments fell, a hundred feet awayfrom the zero point, slashing into the rye like hail. pokler saw the explo­ sion, no more than anyone else. he was never sent out again. the ss people watched him get to his feet, and stretch, and slowly move offwith the others. weissmann would get his report. new varieties of tor­ ture would be coming. but inside pokler's life, on no record but his soul, his poor harassedgerman soul, the time base has lengthened, and slowed: the perfect rocket is still up there, still descending. he still waits-even now, alone at zwolfkinder waiting for "use," for this summer's return, and with it an explosion that will take him by surprise. . . . in the spring, when the winds at peenemiinde had shifted around to the southwest, and the first birds were back, pokler was transferred to the underground factory at nordhausen, in the harz. work at peene­ miinde, after the british raid, had begun to fall off. the plan-againkammler's=-was now to disperse testing and production around ger­ many, to prevent another and possibly fatal allied attack. pokler's du­ ties at the mittelwerke were routine: materials, procurement. he sleptin a bunk next to a wall of dynamited stone painted white, with a bulb over his head burning all night long. he dreamed that the bulb was a 426 rep soul nev saw des] representative of weissmann, a creature whose bright filament was its soul. they held long dream-dialogues whose substance pokler could never remember. the bulb was explaining the plot to him in detail-it was more grand and sweeping than pokler could ever have imagined, it seemed many nights to be purely music, his consciousness moving through the soundscape at bay, observing, compliant, still precariously safe, but not for long. at the time there were rumors of an estrangement growing between weissmann and his "monster," enzian. the schwarzkommando by then had grown away from the ss structure, much as the ss itself had from the german army. their power now lay not in absolute weaponry but in information and expertise. pokler was happy to hear that weiss­ mann was having his troubles, but at a loss how to use it to any advan­ tage. when his orders to nordhausen had come through, he'd had a flash of despair. was the game adjourned then? he might never see use again. but a memo had come, telling him to report to weissmann in his office. the hair at weissmann's temples was graying and disarranged. pokler saw that one earpiece of his glasses was held on with a paper clip. his desk was a litter of documents, reports, reference books. it was a sur­ prise to see him looking less diabolical than harassed as any civil servant under pressure. his eyes were aimed in pokler's direction, but the lenses distorted them. "you understand that this transfer to nordhausen is voluntary." pokler understood, with relief and two seconds of actual love for his protector, that the game was still on. "it will be something new." "yes?" partly a challenge, but partly interested too. "production. we've been so involved here with the research-and-de­ velopment end. it's not a weapon for us so much as a 'flying laboratory,' as dr. thiel said once-" "do you miss dr. thiel?" "yes. he wasn't in my section. i didn't know him well." "a shame he got caught in the raid. we all move in an ellipse of un­ certainty, don't we?" pokier allowed himself a look at the cluttered desk, quick enough to be taken either for nervousness or as a comeback-weissmann, looks like you have your own ellipse all right-"oh, i don't have the time usually to worry. at least the mittelwerke is underground." "the tactical sites won't be." "do you think i might be sent-" weissmann shrugged and favored pokler with a big fake smile. "my -. i, i /, ��� --/...... dear pokler, how can anyone predict where you'll go? we'll see how itall develops." later, in the zone, with his guilt become a sensual thing, prickling athis eyes and membranes like an allergy, it would seem to pokler that he could not, even by that day in weissmann's office, have been ignorantof the truth. that he had known the truth with his senses, but allowed all the evidence to be misfiled where it wouldn't upset him. known ev­ erything, but refrained from the only act that could have redeemed him. he should have throttled weissmann where he sat, corrugations of skinny throat and adam's apple sliding under pokler's palms, thick eye­glasses sliding off as the weak little eyes go blearing helplessly after their final darkener. ... pokler helped with his own blindness. he knew about nordhausen, and the dora camp: he could see-the starved bodies, the eyes of the foreign prisoners being marched to work at four in the morning in the freezing cold and darkness, the shuffling thousands in their striped uni­forms. he had known too, all along, that ilse was living in a re-educa­ tion camp. but it wasn't till august, when the furlough arrived as usual in its blank kraft envelope, and pokler rode northward through the graykilometers of a germany he no longer recognized, bombed and burned, the wartime villages and rainy purple heath, and found her at last wait­ ing in the hotel lobby at zwolfkinder with the same darkness in her eyes(how had he missed it till now? such swimming orbits of pain) that hecould finally put the two data together. for months, while her father across the wire or walls did his dutiful hackwork, she had been prisoneronly a few meters away from him, beaten, perhaps violated. . . . if he must curse weissmann, then he must also curse himself. weissmann's cruelty was no less resourceful than pokler's own engineering skill, the gift of daedalus that allowed him to put as much labyrinth as requiredbetween himself and the inconveniences of caring. they had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now they were collecting. trying, a bit late for it, to open himself to the pain he should havebeen feeling, he questioned her now. did she know the name of her movi camp? yes, ilse confirmed-or was told to answer-that it was dora. tlee 0 the night before she left to come here she'd seen a hanging. evening waswas the hour for the hangings. did he want to hear about it? did he seh� want to hear about it. . . . she was very hungry. they spent the first few days eating, whateverzwolfkinder had to sell. there was less than the year before, and it wasmuch more expensive. but the enclave of innocence still enjoyed a highpriority, so there was something. 428 n �iac stoo waffe and i i and worle east ) as ili� i \ i saw wi!! d i .. :::__. :. _ .. -: -.... ..�< o\\'il not so many children this year, though. the engineer and girl had the place practically to themselves. the wheel and most of the other rides stood motionless. petrol shortage, a child guard informed them. luft­ waffe flights roared overhead. nearly every night the sirens cried out, and they watched the searchlights come on in wismar and in lubeck, and sometimes heard the bombs. what was pokler doing in this dream world, this lie? his country waited to be crushed between invaders from east and west: back at nordhausen the hysteria had risen to epic scale, as the first rockets were about to go out into the field, about to fulfill en­ gineering prophecies old as peacetime. why, at this critical moment, had they let pokler off? who else these days was getting furloughs? and what was "ilse" doing here, wasn't she supposed to be too old by now for fairy tales? her new breasts so visible now beneath her frock, her eyes so nearly empty drifting without real interest toward random boys destined for the volkssturm, older boys, no more interested in her. they dreamed of their orders, of colossal explosions and death-if they even saw her it was sidewise, sly . . . her father will tame her . . . her teeth will bite the pole ... someday i will have a herd 'of them for myself ... but first i must find my captain ... somewhere out in the war . . . first they must deliver me from this little place. . . . who was that, going by just then-who was the slender boy who flickered across her path, so blond, so white he was nearly invisible in the hot haze that had come to settle over zwolfkinder? did she see him, and did she know him for her own second shadow? she was conceived because her father saw a movie called alpdriicken one night and got a hardon. pokler in his horny staring had missed the director's clever gnostic symbolism in the lighting scheme of the two shadows, cain's and abel's. but ilse, some ilse, has persisted beyond her cinema mother, beyond film's end, and so have the shadows of shadows. in the zone, all will be moving under the old dispensation, inside the cainists' light and space: not out of any precious collerei, but because the double light was always there, outside all film, and that shucking and jiving moviemaker was the only one around at the time who happened to no­ tice it and use it, although in deep ignorance, then and now, of what he was showing the nation of starers. . . . so that summer ilse passed her­ self by, too fixed at some shadowless interior noon to mark the intersec­ tion, or to care. she and pokler hardly talked this time: it was their mutest holiday to­ gether. she walked broodful, her head down, her hair hooding her face, brown legs kicking at refuse the undermanned garbage detail hadn't picked up. was it her time of life, or did she resent being under orders ateler jtw� a fu�� ��--_/ ..... to spend time with a dull and aging engineer at a place she'd outgrown years ago? "you don't really want to be here, do you?" they sat by a pollutedstream, throwing bread to ducks. pokier's stomach was upset from er­satz coffee and tainted meat. his head ached. "it's here or the camp," her face stubbornly aside. "1 don't reallywant to be anywhere. 1 don't care." "ilse." "do you like it here? do you want to be back under your mountain?do you talk to the elves, franz?" "no, 1 don't enjoy it where 1 am"-franz?-"but 1 have, 1 have myjob. . . ." "yes. so do 1. my job is being a prisoner. i'm a professional inmate. 1know how to get favors, who to steal from, how to inform, how to-" any minute she'd say it . . . "please-stop it ilse-" this time pokler got hysterical and did slap her. ducks surprised at the sharp reportabout-faced and waddled away. ilse gazed back at him, no tears, eyesroom after room strung into the shadows of an old prewar house hecould wander for years, hearing voices and finding doors, hunting him­self, his life as it might have been. . . . he could not bear indifferencefrom her. close to losing control, pokler committed then his act of courage. he quit the game. "if you don't want to come back next year," even though "next year"meant so little by that point in germany, "you don't have to. it wouldbe better if you didn't." she knew immediately what he'd done. she pulled one knee up, andrested her forehead there, and thought. ''i'll come back," she said veryquietly. "you?" "yes. really." he did, then, let everything go, every control. he veered into thewind of his long isolation, shuddering terribly. he cried. she took hishands. the floating ducks watched. the sea cooled under the hazy sun.an accordion played somewhere back in the town. from behind the decaying mythical statues, sentenced children shouted to each other.summer ended. back at the mittelwerke he tried, and kept trying, to get into thedora camp and find ilse. it didn't matter any more about weissmann.the ss guards each time were courteous, understanding, impossible toget past. the work load now was incredible. pokler was getting less than two 430 fiours' rumor iliree �endi woich towar� locally, \%e weiss i went 0 tail, 101 more ii lon�er , lianh� i faber over,ll ana no lome, leu to 1 !lie, so. but aream �roau ea�e 01 rahler "th, the mann i�aces, "we'v laio, " i numb media� was to ve\op i ties, fo .• :�:. -. �.-:"'-.---.-_""-' _e· •. •. . ��;-==--�./ _ ___jj'1 ' grolll hours' sleep a day. news of the war reached under the mountain only as rumors and shortages. procurement philosophy had been "triangular"­ three possible sources for the same part, in case one was destroyed. de­ pending what didn't come from where, or how late it was, you knew which factories had been bombed, which rail connections taken out. toward the end you had to try and fabricate many of the components locally. when pokler had time to think, he was met by the growing enigma of weissmann's silence. to provoke him, or the memory of him, pokler went out of his way to talk to officers in major forschner's security de­ tail, looking for news. none of them responded to pokler as anything more than a nuisance. they'd heard rumors that weissmann was no longer here but in holland, in command of his own rocket battery. en­ zian had dropped out of sight, along with many key schwarzkommando. pokler grew more and more certain that this time the game was really over, that the war had caught them all, given new life-death priorities and no more leisure for torturing a minor engineer. he was able to relax some, move through the day's routine, wait for the end, even allow him­ self to hope that the thousands in dora would soon be free, among them ilse, some acceptable ilse. . . . but in the spring, he did see weissmann again. he woke from a dream of a gentle zwolfkinder that was also nordhausen, a city of elves producing toy moon-rockets, and there was weissmann's face at the edge of his bunk, watching him. he seemed to have aged ten years, and pokler hardly recognized him. "there isn't much time," weissmann whispered. "come with me." they moved through the white, sleepless bustle of the tunnels, weiss­ mann walking slowly and stiffly, both men silent. in one of the office spaces, half a dozen others were waiting, along with some ss and sd. "we've already obtained permission from your groups," weissmann said, "to release you for work on a special project. this will be the high­ est possible security. you'll be billeted separately, eat separately, and speak to no one who is not present in this room." they all looked around to see who that might be. no one they knew. they looked back at weissmann. he wanted a modification worked into one rocket, only one. its serial number had been removed, and five zeros painted in. pokler knew im­ mediately that this was what weissmann had been saving him for: this was to be his "special destiny." it made no sense to him: he had to de­ velop a plastic fairing, of a certain size, with certain insulating proper­ ties, for the propulsion section of the rocket. the propulsion engineer ollut� rolllf', 't ret nto� !x)'m 'lud oo� otner to� mann, ole to two 431 was the busiest on the project, rerouting steam and fuel lines, relocatinghardware. whatever the new device was, nobody saw it. according tothe rumor, it was being produced elsewhere, and was nicknamed the schwarzgerat, because of the high secrecy surrounding it. even the weight was classified. they were through inside of two weeks, andthe "vorrichtung fur die isolierung" was on its way to the field. pokler reported back to his regular supervisor, and the routine went on as be­ fore. he never saw weissmann again. the first week in april, with american units supposed to be arrivingat any moment, most of the engineers were packing, collecting ad­dresses of co-workers, drinking farewell toasts, drifting through theemptying bays. there was a graduation feeling in the air. it was hard not to whistle "gaudeamus igitur." suddenly the cloistered life was about to come to an end. a young ss guard, one of the last to leave, found pokler in the dustycafeteria, handed him an envelope, and left without a word. it was the usual furlough form, superseded now by the imminent death of the government-and a travel permit to zwolfkinder. where the dates should have been, someone had written, almost illegibly, "after hostili­ties end." on the back, in the same hand (weissmann's?) a note to po­kler. she has been released. she will meet you there. he understood that this was payment for the retrofit work he'd done on the 00000. how long had weissmann been keeping him deliberately on ice, all so he'dhave a plastics man he could depend on, when the time came? on the last day, pokler walked out the south end of the main tunnels. lorries were everywhere, all engines idling, farewell in the spring air,tall trees sunlit green on the mountainsides. the obersturmbannfuhrer was not at his post when pokler went into dora. he was not looking forilse, or not exactly. he may have felt that he ought to look, finally. hewas not prepared. he did not know. had the data, yes, but did notknow, with senses or heart. . . . the odors of shit, death, sweat, sickness, mildew, piss, the breathingof dora, wrapped him as he crept in staring at the naked corpses beingcarried out now that america was so close, to be stacked in front of the crematoriums, the men's penises hanging, their toes clustering whiteand round as pearls . . . each face so perfect, so individual, the lipsstretched back into death-grins, a whole silent audience caught at thepunch line of the joke . . . and the living, stacked ten to a straw mat­ tress, the weakly crying, coughing, losers. . . . all his vacuums, his laby­rinths, had been the other side of this. while he lived, and drew marks on paper, this invisible kingdom had kept on, in the darkness outside 432 all ", �ot diss \tnce" iliemr1n l\va� he, or for tw where �in�, a inewas �utit on m�off, i �et, or a �lck to \ �nerita n ilieruss itsraint i�aeaa iriculea insiae ime�, b ooaraea . ner'sao itom so �lashes rainting� mffiishea •••••••• � . -.••• �-.-----."" •• '--•• -< •..� /. . / _ _hl______l_� oca� ••• all this time. . . . pokler vomited. he cried some. the walls did tdin�' d i. not isso ve-no prison wall ever did, not from tears, not at this finding, m� t on every pallet, in every cell, that the faces are ones he knows after all, \'en: and holds dear as himself, and cannot, then, let them return to that si­ eh, lence. . . . but what can he ever do about it? how can he ever keep them? impotence, mirror-rotation of sorrow, works him terribly as run­ away heartbeating, and with hardly any chances left him for good rage, or for turning. . . . where it was darkest and smelled the worst, pokler found a woman lying, a random woman. he sat for half an hour holding her bone hand. she was breathing. before he left, he took off his gold wedding ring and put it on the woman's thin finger, curling her hand to keep it from slid­ ing off. if she lived, the ring would be good for a few meals, or a blan­ ket, or a night indoors, or a ride home. . . . d d d d d d d back to berlin, with a terrific thunderstorm blowing over the city. mar­ gherita has brought slothrop to a rickety wood house near the spree, in the russian sector. a burned-out konigstiger tank guards the entrance, its paint scorched, treads mangled and blasted off of the drive sprocket, its dead monster 88 angled down to point at the gray river, hissing and spiculed with the rain. inside are bats nesting in the rafters, remains of beds with a moldy smell, broken glass and bat shit on the bare wood floor, windows boarded up except where the stove is vented through because the chim­ ney's down. on a rocking chair lies a moleskin coat, a taupe cloud. paint from some long-ago artist is still visible over the floor in wrinkled splashes of aged magenta, saffron, steel blue, reverse deformations of paintings whose whereabouts are unknown. back in a corner hangs a tarnished mirror, birds and flowers painted in white all around its frame, reflecting margherita and slothrop and the rain out the open door. part of the ceiling, blown away when the king tiger died, is covered now with soggy and stained cardboard posters all of the same cloaked figure in the broad-brimmed hat, with its legend der feind hort zu. water drips through in half a dozen places. greta lights a kerosene lamp. it warms the rainlight with a handful of yellow. slothrop builds a fire in the stove while margherita ducks down under the house, where it turns out there's a great stash of potatoes. outsio! jeepers, slothrop hasn't seen a potato for months. there's onions in a 433 i / ���--,..". .. �umn llone itlrel wlltlti in� 0 our,! th\'lull, �o\v other �iur fuelr "di "e! "h, �lvell kld,\ while �loili \ lud)� oer,hl lumoe he �ee�) wire � �ltted lcre � " �olntil junkr� iliatili ilie � sack too, and even wine. she cooks, and they both sit there just piggingon those spuds. later, without paraphernalia or talk, they fuck eachother to sleep. but a few hours later slothrop wakes up, and lies there wondering where he's going. well, to find that saure bummer, soon as this rain lets up, give theman his hashish. but what then? slothrop and the s-gerat and the [amf/imipolex mystery have grown to be strangers. he hasn't reallythought about them for a while. hmm, when was that? the day he satwith saure in the cafe, smoking that reefer ... oh, that was day beforeyesterday, wasn't it? rain drips, soaking into the floor, and slothrop per­ceives that he is losing his mind. if there is something comforting-reli­gious, if you want-about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia,where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us canbear for long. well right now slothrop feels himself sliding onto theanti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him goingback roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard im­ ages now of the listening enemy left between him and the wet sky.either they have put him here for a reason, or he's just here. he isn't sure that he wouldn't, actually, rather have that reason.... the rain lets up at midnight. he leaves margherita to creep out in thecold city with his five kilos, having kept for himself the one tchitcherine plundered from. russian troops are singing in their billets. the salt acheof accordion music cries on in back of them. drunks materialize, merryand pissing in the center grooves of cobbled alleys. mud occupies somestreets like flesh. shell craters brim with rainwater, gleaming in thelights of midwatch work crews clearing debris. shattered biedermeier chair, mateless boot, steel eyeglass frame, dog collar (eyes at the edgesof the twisting trail watching for sign, for blazing), wine cork, splinteredbroom, bicycle with one wheel missing, discarded copies of tiiglichebundschau, chalcedony doorknob dyed blue long ago with ferrous fer­ rocyanide, scattered piano keys (all white, an octave on b to be exact­ or h, in the german nomenclature-the notes of the rejected locrianmode), the black and amber eye from some stuffed animal. ... the strewn night. dogs, spooked and shivering, run behind walls whose topsare broken like fever charts. somewhere a gas leak warps for a minuteinto the death and after-rain smells. ranks of blackened window-sock­ ets run high up the sides of gutted apartment buildings. chunks of con­crete are held aloft by iron reinforcing rod that curls like black spa­ghetti, whole enormous heaps wiggling ominously overhead at yourleast passing brush by.... the smooth-faced custodian of the nighthovers behind neutral eyes and smile, coiled and pale over the city, me))el berh ame� out i out a it 1 �\�th� \ �nntli )tran wlck� 434 .... ::: : _.-.-.................. .�� humming its hoarse lullabies. young men spent the inflation like this, alone in the street, no place to go into out of the black winters. girls stayed up late on stoops or sitting on benches in lamplight by the rivers, waiting for business, but the young men had to walk by, ignored, hunch­ ing overpadded shoulders, money with no relation to anything it could buy, swelling, paper cancer in their billfolds. . . . the chicago bar is being guarded outside by two of their descend­ ants, kids in george raft suits, many sizes too big, too many ever to grow into. one keeps coughing, in uncontrolled dying spasms. the other licks his lips and stares at slothrop. gunsels. when he mentions saure bummer's name, they move together in front of the door, shaking their heads. "look, i'm supposed to deliver him a package." "don't know him." "can i leave a message?" "he's not here." the cougher makes a lunge. slothrop sweeps aside, gives him a quick veronica with his cape, sticks his foot out and trips the kid, who lies on the ground cursing, all tangled up in his long keychain, while his pardner goes pawing inside of his flapping suitcoat for what slothrop surmises to be a sidearm, so him slothrop kicks in the balls, and screaming "fickt nicht mit der raketemensch!" so they'll remem­ ber, kind of a hiyo silver here, he flees into shadows, among the heaps of lumber, stone and earth. he takes a trail he thinks saure led them along the other night­ keeps losing it, wandering into windowless mazes, tangles of barbed wire holidayed by the deathstorms of last may, then into a strafed and pitted lorry-park he can't find his way out of for half an hour, a rolling acre of rubber, grease, steel, and spilled petrol, pieces of vehicles pointing at sky or earth no differently than in a peacetime american junkyard, fused into odd, brown saturday' evening post faces, except that they are not folksy so much as downright sinister . . . yes it's really the saturday evening post, all right: they are the faces of the tricorned messengers coming in from out of the long pikes, down past the elms, berkshire legends, travelers lost at the edge of the evening. come with a message. they unwrinkle, though, if you keep looking. they smooth out into timeless masks that speak their entire meaning, all of it right out on the surface. it takes an hour to find saure's cellar. but it's dark, and it's empty. slothrop goes in, lights the light. looks like either a bust or a gang war: printing press vanished, clothes tossed all around, and some very strange clothes at that, there is, for example, a wickerware suit, a yellow wickerware suit actually, articulating along armpit, elbow, knee and re,hrc poutillt ditctt� 435 " i � i / �� # ..... groinlines . . . oh, hmm, well, slothrop runs a quick search of his ownhere, looking inside shoes, not really shoes, some of them, but footgloveswith individual toes, not, however, sewn but cast from some unpleasantvariegated resin such as bowling balls are made of . . . behind the peel­ing scraps of wallpaper, up in the rolled-up windowshade, among thehatchings of one or two phony reichsmarks let spill by the looters­fifteen minutes of this, finding nothing . . . and the white object on thetable watching him out of its staring shadows the whole time. he feels its stare before he spots it finally: a chesspiece two inches high. a whiteknight, molded out of plastic-a-and wait'll slothrop finds out whatkind of plastic, boy! it's a horse's skull: the eye-sockets are hollow far down into the base.inside one of them is a tightly rolled cigarette paper with a messagefrom saure. "haketemenschl der springer asks me to give you this, hissymbol. keep it-by it shall he know you. i am at j acobistrasse 12, 3erhof, number 7. as b/4, me. i?" now "as b/4" was john dillinger's oldsignoff. everybody in the zone this summer is using it. it indicates to people how you feel about certain things. . . . saure has included a map showing how to get to where he is. it'sclear back in the british sector. groaning, slothrop pushes on back outin the mud and early morning. around the brandenburg gate, a slightdrizzle starts up again. chunks of the gate still lie around in the street -leaning shell-spalled up in the rainy sky, its silence is colossal, haggardas he pads by flanking it, the chariot gleaming like coal, driven and still,it is the 30th century and swashbuckling rocketman has just landedhere to tour the ruins, the high-desert traces of an ancient europeanorder.... the jacobistrasse and most of its quarter, slums, survived the street­ fighting intact, along with its interior darkness, a masonry of shadowsthat will persist whether the sun is up or down. number 12 is an entireblock of tenements dating from before the inflation, five or six storiesand a mansarde, five or six hinterhofe nested one inside the other­boxes of a practical joker's gift, nothing in the center but a last hollow courtyard smelling of the same cooking and garbage and piss decadesold. ha, hal slothrop moseys toward the first archway. streetlight throws hiscaped shadow forward into a succession of these arches, each labeledwith a faded paint name, erster-hof, zweiter-hof, dritter-hof u.s.w.,shaped like the entrance to the mittelwerke, parabolic, but more like an open mouth and gullet, joints of cartilage receding waiting, waiting toswallow . . . above the mouth two squared eyes, organdy whites, irises ritch rtowi dum� omet twent 0100 \vaiti ! in�an mlea iuch �tuqi� \ ni�nt:lolita i in� a ��ul fu°c�'� vau loon,' )aure leapl worna 'i �����liane, dar i �inf exalta '\ aoand hill ni�hl� �\veet iolr keep ilvop, "ii ,_ ' .::_' o. • • •• : ••• _o __ o., ••• 0" ••••• '.,.. ��;-=""'� pitch black, stare him down . . . it laughs as it has for years without stopping, a blubbery and percussive laugh, like heavy china rolling or bumping under the water in the sink. a brainless giggle, just big old ge­ ometric me, nothin' t' be nervous about, c'mon in.... but the pain, the twenty, twentyfive years of pain paralyzed back in that long throat . . . old outcast, passive, addicted to survival now, waiting the years out, waiting for vulnerable saps like slothrop here to expose itself to, laugh­ ing and crying and all in silence . . . paint peels from the face, burned, diseased, long time dying and how can slothrop just walk down into such a schizoid throat? why, because it is what the guardian and potent studio wants from him, natiirlich: slothrop is the character juvenile to­ night: what's kept him moving the whole night, him and the others, the solitary berliners who come out only in these evacuated hours, belong­ ing and going noplace, is their unexplained need to keep some marginal population in these wan and preterite places, certainly for economic though, who knows, maybe emotional reasons too. . . . saute's on the move too, though inside, prowling his dreams. it looks like one big room, dark, full of tobacco and kif smoke, crumbled ridges of plaster where walls have been knocked out, straw pallets all over the floor, a couple on one sharing a late, quiet cigarette, somebody snoring on another . . . glossy bosendorfer imperial concert grand piano over which trudi, wearing only an army shirt, leans, a desperate muse, bare legs long and stretching, "please come to bed gustav, it'll be light soon." the only answer is a peevish strumming among the lower strings. saure is on his side, quite still, a shrunken child, face long worked at by leaps from second-story windows, "first rubdowns" under gloved and womanish sergeants' fists in the precinct stations, golden light in the aft­ ernoons over the racetrack at karlshorst, black light from the pave­ ments of boulevards at night finely wrinkled like leather stretched over stone, white light from satin dresses, glasses stacked shining in front of bar mirrors, sans-serif us at the entrances to underground stations pointing in smooth magnetism at the sky to bring down steel angels of exaltation, of languid surrender-a face that in sleep is awesomely old, abandoned to its city's history. . . . his eyes open-for an instant slothrop is only shadowed green folds, highlighted helmet, light-values still to be put together. then comes the sweet nodding smile, everything's o.k., ja, howdy rocketman, was ist los? though the unregenerate old doper is not quite kindly enough to keep from opening the ditty bag right away and peering in, eyes like two pissholes in a snowbank, to see what he has. "i thought you'd be in the slam or something." euro�. of u,l,i re�e� �tin�1 e5,� 437 �l!�/ , --/. ., .... out with a little moroccan pipe and saure sets to flattening a fatcrumb of that hashish, humming the popular rumba "oh. well, springer blew the whistle on our counterfeiting operation.kind of a little temporary hitch, you understand." "i don't. you're supposed to be ace buddies." "not nearly. and he moves in higher orbits." it is something verycomplicated having to do with american yellow-seal scrip being discon­tinued in the mediterranean theatre, with the reluctance of alliedforces here to accept reichsmarks. springer has a balance-of-paymentsproblem too, and he's been speculating heavily in sterling, and . . ."but," sez slothrop, "but, uh, where's my million marks, then, emil?" saure sucks yellow flame flowing over the edge of the bowl. "it is gone where the woodbine twineth." exactly what jubilee jim fisk toldthe congressional committee investigating his and jay gould's schemeto corner gold in 1869. the words are a reminder of berkshire. with nothing more than that to go on, it occurs to slothrop that saure can't possibly be on the bad guys' side. whoever they are, their game hasbeen to extinguish, not remind. "well, 1 can sell by the ounce from what 1 have," slothrop reckons."for occupation scrip. that's stable, isn't it?" "you aren't angry . you really aren't." "rocketman is above all that shit, emil." "i have a surprise for you. 1 can get you the schwarzgerat you askedabout." "you?" m�or 1\\1ne i "onl �oit "�o �ook, � uou�h, "us , �als h "ya iliil lit , �� abl nercn �rin� lome � )lofuro �ttles truilil \vanoe tort,it at �la� odli�e to de emdan mucus notice i ilieili 1 trus, �ullin nean, i �ullln, � able lit, no , suella! the] out of outsine truei me wntte a little something from moroc-co, with just a lit-tle bit of sock-o, "springer. 1 asked him for you." "quit fooling. really? jeepers, that's so swell of you! how can 1-""ten thousand pounds sterling." slothrop loses a whole lungful of smoke. "thanks emil. . . ." hetells saure about the run-in with tchitcherine, and also about how he saw that mickey rooney. "rocketman! spaceman! welcome to our virgin planet. we onlywant to be left in some kind of peace here, o.k.? if you kill us, don't eat us. if you eat, don't digest. let us come out the other end again, likediamonds in the shit of smugglers. . . ." "look"-remembering now the tip that that geli gave him long ago 438 '.-'-' -.-_ .. �". . / � __ lli_____l_�' in nordhausen-" did your pal springer mention he was hanging out in swinemiinde these days, anyplace like that?" "only the price of your instrument, rak. half the money in front. he said it would cost him at least that much to track it down." "so he doesn't know where it is. shit, he could have us all on' the hook, bidding us up, hoping somebody's fool enough to front him some dough." "usually he delivers. you didn't have any trouble, did you, with that pass he forged?" "yaaahhh-" oh. oh, wow, aha, yes been meaning to ask you about this little max schlepzig item here"now then." but meantime trudi has abandoned gustav in the piano and comes over now to sit and rub her cheeks against the nap of slothrop's trousers, dear naked legs whis­ pering together, hair spilling, shirt half unbuttoned, and same has at some point rolled over and gone groaning back into sleep. trudi and slothrop retire to a mattress well away from the bosendorfer. slothrop settles back sighing, takes his helmet off and lets big sweet and saftig trudi have her way with him. his joints are aching with rain and city wandering, he's half blitzed, trudi is kissing him into an amazing com­ fort, it's an open house here, no favored senses or organs, all are equally at play . . . for possibly the first time in his life slothrop does not feel obliged to have a hardon, which is just as well, because it does not seem to be happening with his penis so much as with . . . oh mercy, this is embarrassing but ... well his nose actually seems to be erecting, the mucus beginning to flow yes a nasal hardon here and trudi has certainly noticed all right, how could she help but . . . as she slides her lips over the throbbing snoot and sends a yard of torrid tongue up one of his nos­ trils . . . he can feel each pink taste-bud as she penetrates even farther, pulling aside the vestibule walls and nose-hair now to accommodate her head, then shoulders and . . . well she's halfway in, might as well­ pulling up her knees, crawling using the hair for hand and footholds she is able to stand at last inside the great red hall which is quite pleasantly lit, no walls or ceiling she can really discern but rather a fading to sea­ shell and springtime grades of pink in all directions. . . . they fall asleep in the roomful of snoring, with low-pitched twangs out of the piano, and the rain's million-legged scuttle in the courtyards outside. when slothrop wakes up it's at the height of the evil hour, trudi is in some other room with gustav rattling coffee cups, a tortoise­ shell cat chases flies by the dirty window. back beside the spree, the white woman is waiting for slothrop. he isn't especially disposed to can 1on�� 0' 439 � i',� ........ leave. trudi and gustav come in with coffee and half a reefer, and everybody sits around gabbing. gustav is a composer. for months he has been carrying on a ragingdebate with saure over who is better, beethoven or rossini. saure is for rossini. "i'rn not so much for beethoven qua beethoven," gustav ar­ gues, "but as he represents the german dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic de­ mocracy, where all notes get an equal hearing. beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom-he submitted to the demands of his­ tory, despite his deafness. while rossini was retiring at the age of 36, womanizing and getting fat, beethoven was living a life filled with trag­edy and grandeur." "so?" is saute's customary answer to that one. "which would yourather do? the point is," cutting off gustav's usually indignant scream,c c a person feels good listening to rossini. all you feel like listening tobeethoven is going out and invading poland. ode to joy indeed. the man didn't even have a sense of humor. i tell you," shaking his skinnyold fist, "there is more of the sublime in the snare-drum part to lagazza ladra than in the whole ninth symphony. with rossini, thewhole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, andlike it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the world. through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power,love occurs. all the shit is transmuted to gold. the walls are breached,the balconies are scaled-listen!" it was a night in early may, and thefinal bombardment of berlin was in progress. saure had to shout his head off. "the italian girl is in algiers, the barber's in the crockery, themagpie's stealing everything in sight! the world is rushing to­gether. ... " this rainy morning, in the quiet, it seems that gustav's german dia­ lectic has come to its end. he has just had the word, all the way fromvienna along some musicians' grapevine, that anton webern is dead. "shot in may, by the americans. senseless, accidental if you believe inaccidents-some mess cook from north carolina, some late drafteewith a .45 he hardly knew how to use, too late for ww ii, but not forwebern. the excuse for raiding the house was that weberri's brother was in the black market. who isn't? do you know what kind of myththat's going to make in a thousand years? the young barbarians comingin to murder the last european, standing at the far end of what'd been going on since bach, an expansion of music's polymorphous perversitytill all notes were truly equal at last. . . . where was there to go after webe �o\vn • ily lenin� i m�a\� �\v� g rreten lunesf one �it fueir f� an! iha lilt' � ]'� iu�� to ma�da !oreve at it foj 440 ........... -..... -.---� .... ..... ---.-_.� ". . / _ _j_[l______l_�' webern? it was the moment of maximum freedom. it all had to come down. another cotterdammerung-c-' "young fool," saure now comes cackling in from out in berlin, trail­ ing a pillowcase full of flowering tops just in from that north africa. he's a mess-ted-drenched eyes, fatbaby arms completely hairless, fly open and half the buttons gone, white hair and blue shirt both streaked with some green horrible scum. "fell in a shell-hole. here, quick, roll up some of this." "what do you mean, 'young fool,' " inquires gustav. "i mean you and your musical mainstreams," cries saure. "is it finally over? or do we have to start da capo with carl orff?" "i never thought of that," sez gustav, and for a moment it is clear that saure has heard about webern too, and trying in his underhanded way to cheer gustav up. "what's wrong with rossini?" hollers saure, lighting up. "eh?" "ugh," screams gustav, "ugh, ugh, rossini," and they're at it again, "you wretched antique. why doesn't anybody go to concerts any more? you think it's because of the war? oh no, i'll tell you why, old man-be­ cause the halls are full of people like you! stuffed full! half asleep, nod­ ding and smiling, farting through their dentures, hawking and spitting into paper bags, dreaming up ever more ingenious plots against their children-not just their own, but other people's children too! just sitting around, at the concert with all these other snow-topped old rascals, just a nice background murmur of wheezing, belching, intestinal gurgles, scratching, sucking, croaking, an entire opera house crammed full of them right up to standing room, they're doddering in the aisles, hanging off the tops of the highest balconies, and you know what they're all lis­ tening to, saure? eh? they're all listening to rossini! sitting there drool­ ing away to some medley of predictable little tunes, leaning forward el­ bows on knees muttering, 'c'rnon, c'mon then rossini, let's get all this pretentious fanfare stuff out of the way, let's get on to the real good tunes!' behavior as shameless as eating a whole jar of peanut butter at one sitting. on comes the sprightly tancredi tarantella, and they stamp their feet in delight, they pop their teeth and pound their canes-'ah, ah! that's more like it!' " "it's a great tune," yells saure back. "smoke another one of these and i'll just play it for you here on the bosendorfer." to the accompaniment of this tarantella, which really is a good tune, magda has come in out of the morning rain, and is now rolling reefers for everybody. she hands saure one to light. he stops playing and peers at it for a long time. nodding now and then, smiling or frowning. 441 -. .!. i /, �� .#·,-f· gustav tends to sneer, but saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papyromancy, the ability to prophesy through contem­ plating the way people roll reefers-the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof in the paper. "you will soon be in love," sez saure, "see, this line here." "it's long, isn't it? does that mean-" "length is usually intensity. not time." "short but sweet," magda sighs. "fabelhaft, was?" trudi comes over to hug her. they are a mutt and jeff routine, trudi in heels is a foot or so taller. they know how it looks, and travel around in the city togetherwhenever they can, by way of intervening, if only for a minute, in peo­ pie's minds. "how do you like this shit?" sez saure, "hubsch,' allows gustav. "a trifle stahlig, and perhaps the infinitesi­ mal hint of a bodengeschmack behind its korper, which is admittedly siiffig· " "i would rather have said spritzig," saure disagrees, if that indeed is what it is. "generally more bukettreich than last year's harvests, wouldn't you say?" "oh, for an haut atlas herbage it does have its art. certainly it canbe described as kemig, even-as can often be said of that sauber quality prevailing in the oued nfis region-authentically pikant." "actually i would tend to suspect an origin somewhere along thesouthern slope of jebel sarho," same sez-"note the spiel, rather glattand blumig, even the suggestion of a fulle in its wiirzig audacity-""no no no, fulle is overstating it, the el abid emerald we had last month had fulle. but this is obviously more zart than that." the truth is they are both so blitzed that neither one knows what he's talking about, which is just as well, for at this point comes a godawfulhammering at the door and a lot of achtungs from the other side. slo­ throp screams and heads for the window, out onto the roof and over, scrambling down a galvanized pipe to the next streetward courtyard.back in saure's room the heat come busting in. berlin police supportedby american mps in an adviser status, "you will show me your papers!" hollers the leader of the raid. saure smiles and holds up a pack of zig-zags, just in from paris. twenty minutes later, somewhere in the american sector, slothrop is ambling past a cabaret where blank-faced snowdrops are lounging infront and inside, and a radio or phonograph somewhere is playing an irving berlin medley. slothrop goes hunching paranoiacally along the 442 a fw an co �o � no co �i wi me em �to i i i fie we de, ............... � .. �-.�.. '.� ". . / ' _iil________l_� pt at� street, here's "god bless america," a-and "this is the army, mister jones," and they are his country's versions of the horst wessel song, al­ though it is gustav back at the jacobistrasse who raves (nobody gonna pull an anton webern on him) to a blinking american lieutenant-colo­ nel, "a parabola! a trap! you were never immune over there from the simple-minded german symphonic arc, tonic to dominant, back again to tonic. grandeur! gesellschaft!" "teutonic?" sez the colonel. "dominant? the war's over, fella. what kind of talk is that?" in from the soggy fields of the mark comes a cold drizzle blowing. russian cavalry are crossing the kurfiirstendamm, driving a herd of cows to slaughter lowing and muddy, eyelashes beaded with the fine rain. in the soviet sector, girls with rifles slung across bouncing wool­ covered breasts are waving the traffic around with bright orange pen­ nants. bulldozers growling, trucks straining push over teetering walls, and little kids cheer at each wet crash. silver tea-services ring on fronded terraces where water drips, waiters in lean black coats wheel and tilt their heads. an open victoria splashes by, two russian officers covered with medals sitting with their ladies in silk frocks and great floppy-brimmed hats trailing ribbons in the breeze. on the river, ducks with green heads glittering drift among shock-waves of one another's passage. woodsmoke scatters out the dented pipe of margherita's house. inside the door, the first thing slothrop sees is a high-heeled shoe come flying straight at his head. he twitches out of the way in time. margherita is kneeling on the bed, breathing rapidly, staring. "you left me." "had some chores." he rummages in covered cans on a shelf over the stove, finds dried clover tops for tea. "but you left me alone." her hair blows in a gray-black cloud around her face. she is prey to interior winds he never felt. "only for a little while. do you want tea?" starting outside with an empty can. "what's a little while? for god's sake, haven't you been alone?" "sure." dipping up water from a rain barrel outside the door. she lies, shaking, her face working, helpless. slothrop puts the can on to boil. "you were sleeping pretty soundly. isn't it safe here? is that what you mean?" "safe." a terrible laughter. he wishes she wouldn't. the water has begun to creak. "do you know what they were doing to me? what they were piling on my breasts? the names they were calling me?" 443 -, i � i /,����-.• #.,.••. "who, greta?" "when you left i woke up. i called to you but you didn't come back.when they were sure you'd left, they came in. . . ." "why didn't you try to stay awake?" "i was awake!" sunlight, switched on, breaks through. at the harshlighting she turns her face away. while he makes tea, she sits on the bed, cursing him in german anditalian, in a voice always just at the edge of falling apart. he hands her a cup. she knocks it out of his hand. "look, take it easy, all right?" he sits down next to her and blows onhis tea. the cup she refused stays on its side where it is. the dark stain steams into the wood planks. faraway clover rises, disperses: a ghost. . . after a while she takes his hand. ''i'm sorry i left you alone." she starts to cry. and cries all day. slothrop falls asleep, keeps drifting up to her sobs,and to feel her, always in touch, some part of her, some part of him. . . .in a dream from this time, his father has come to find him. slothrop hasbeen wandering at sundown by the mungahannock, near a rotting oldpaper mill, abandoned back in the nineties. a heron rises in silhouette against luminous and dying orange. "son," a falling tower of words tum­ bling over and over themselves, "the president died three months ago."slothrop stands and curses him. "why didn't you tell me? pop, i lovedhim. you only wanted to sell me to the ig. you sold me out." the oldman's eyes fill with tears. "oh son ... " trying to take his hand. but thesky is dark, the heron gone, the empty skeleton of the mill and the darkincrease of the river saying it is time to go . . . then his father is gonetoo, no time to say good-by, though his face stays, broderick who soldhim out, long after waking, and the sadness slothrop brought into it,fool loudmouth kid. margherita is leaning over him, brushing tears fromhis face with the tips of her nails. the nails are very sharp, and pauseoften when they approach his eyes. "i'rn afraid," she whispers. "everything. my face in the mirror­when i was a child, they said not to look in the mirror too often or i'd see the devil behind the glass . . . and . . ." glancing back at thewhite-flowered mirror behind them, "we have to cover it, please, can'twe cover it . . . that's where they . . . especially at night-""easy." he moves to put as much of their bodies in touch as he can.he holds her. the tremor is strong, and maybe uncalmable: after awhile slothrop has started to tremble too, in phase. "please, take iteasy." whatever possesses her needs touch, to drink touch insatiably. i � i m �el lio �l ua \ llil (444 •••• -.:_'.' � ••• -_: ••••••• -: __ ••••• eo' ••••••• • • ���'\./ _ ___jj'l ner the depth of this frightens him. he feels responsible for her safety, and often trapped. at first they stay together days at a clip, till he has to go out dealing, or foraging. he doesn't sleep much. he finds himself by reflex telling lies-"it's all right," "there's nothing to worry about." sometimes he manages to be alone out by the river, fishing with a piece of string and one of her hairpins. they manage a fish a day, on lucky days two. they are goofy fish, anything swimming in berlin waters these days has to be everybody's last choice. when greta cries in her sleep for longer than he can listen to, he has to wake her. they will try to talk, or to screw, though he's less and less often in the mood, and that makes her worse because she feels he's rejecting her, which indeed he is. whippings seem to comfort her, and they let him off the hook. some­ times he's too tired even for that. she keeps provoking him. one night he puts in front of her a broiled fish, an unwholesome yellow loach with brain damage. she can't eat it, she'll get sick. "you have to eat." she moves her head aside, first one side, then the other. "oh boy, what a sad story, listen cunt, you ain't the only one's ever suffered-you been out there lately?" "of course. i keep forgetting how you must have suffered." "shit you germans are crazy, you all think the world's against you." "i'm not german," just remembering, "i'rn a lombard." "close enough, sweetheart." with a hiss, nostrils wide, she grabs the little table and wrenches it away, plates, silverware, fish flying splot against the wall where it com­ mences to drip down toward the woodwork, still, even in death, getting all the lousy breaks. they sit in their two straight chairs, a meter and a half of perilously empty space between. it is the warm, romantic sum­ mer of '45, and surrender or not, the culture of death still prevails: what grandmother called "a crime of passion" has become, in the absence of much passion over anything today, the technique of preference in re­ solving interpersonal disputes. "clean it up." she flicks a pale bitten thumbnail from one of her top teeth and laughs, that delightful erdmann laugh. slothrop, shaking, is about to say, "you don't know how close you are-" then, by chance, he hap­ pens to get a look at her face. of course she knows how close she is. "o.k., o.k." he throws her underwear around the room till he finds the black girdle he's looking for. the metal clips of the suspenders raise dark little curved welts over fading earlier bruises on her buttocks and thighs. he has to draw blood before she cleans up the fish. when she's 445 ",.__�j • i /, ��---..:::tt._ ....,.f· finished she kneels and kisses his boots. not exactly the scenario she wanted but close enough, sweetheart. getting closer every day, and he's afraid. he's never seen anythinglike it. when he goes out to the city she begs to be tied with her stock­ ings, star-fashion, to the bedposts. sometimes she'll leave the house, and stay away for days, coming home with stories about negro mps beatingher with nightsticks, screwing her in the asshole, how much she loved it, hoping to trigger some race/sex reaction, something a little bizarre, alittle different. . . . whatever it is with her, he's catching it. out in the ruins he sees darkness now at the edges of all the broken shapes, showing from be­hind them. light nests in margherita's hair like black doves. he will look at his chalk hands, and along the borders of each finger, darknesswill gutter and leap. in the sky over the alexanderplatz he has seenoberst enzian's kezvh mandala, and the face of tchitcherine on more than one random snowdrop. across the facade of the titania­ palast, in red neon through a mist one night he saw die, slothrop. one sunday out at wannsee, an armada of sails all bent the same way, pa­tiently, dreamlike into the wind, passing forever against the other shore, a crowd of little kids in soldier hats folded from old army maps plottedto drown and sacrifice him. he escaped only by murmuring hauptstufethree times. the house by the river is an enclosure that acts as a spring-suspensionfor the day and the weather, allowing only mild cycling of light andheat, down into evening, up again into morning to the midday peak butall damped to a gentle sway from the earthquake of the day outside.when greta hears shots out in the increasingly distant streets, shewill think of the sound stages of her early career, and will take the ex­ plosions as cue calls for the titanic sets of her dreams to be smoothlyclogged with a thousand extras: meek, herded by rifle shots, ascendingand descending, arranged into patterns that will suit the director's ideas of the picturesque-a river of faces, made up yellow and white­lipped for the limitations of the film stock of the time, sweating yellowmigrations taken over and over again, fleeing nothing, escaping no­where.... it's early morning now. slothrop's breath is white on the air. he is just up from a dream. part i of a poem, with woodcuts accompanyingthe text-a woman is attending a dog show which is also, in some way, astud service. she has brought her pekingese, a female with a sickeninglycute name, mimsy or goo-goo or something, here to be serviced. she is passing the time in a garden setting, with some other middle-class ladies 446 to i iv �o .'. • • •••• • •• • ••• e" • •••••••• ". :. /.---�� like herself, when from some enclosure nearby she hears the sound of her bitch, coming. the sound goes on and on for much longer than seems appropriate, and she suddenly realizes that the sound is her own voice, this interminable cry of dog-pleasure. the others, politely, are pretending not to notice. she feels shame, but is helpless, driven now by a need to go out and find other animal species to fuck. she sucks the penis of a multicolored mongrel who has tried to mount her in the street. out in a barren field near a barbed-wire fence, winter fires across the clouds, a tall horse compels her to kneel, passively, and kiss his hooves. cats and minks, hyenas and rabbits, fuck her inside automo­ biles, lost at night in the forests, out beside a waterhole in the desert. as part ii begins, she has discovered she's pregnant. her husband, a dumb, easygoing screen door salesman, makes an agreement with her: her own promise is never stated, but in return, nine months from now, he will take her where she wants to go. so it is that close to the end of her term he is out on the river, an american river, in a rowboat, hauling on the oars, carrying her on a journey. the key color in this section is vi­ olet. part iii finds her at the bottom of the river. she has drowned. but all forms of life fill her womb. "using her as mermaid" (line 7), they trans­ port her down through these green river-depths. "it was down, and out again.! old squalidozzi, ploughman of the deep,! at the end of his day's sowing! sees her verdigris belly among the weeds" (lines 10-13), and brings her back up. he is a classically-bearded neptune figure with an old serene face. from out of her body streams a hood now of dif­ ferent creatures, octopuses, reindeer, kangaroos, "who can say all the life! that left her womb that day?" squalidozzi can only catch a glimpse of the amazing spill as he bears her back toward the surface. above, it is a mild and sunlit green lake or pond, grassy at the banks, shaded by willows. insects whine and hover. the key color now is green. "and there as it broke to sun! her corpse found sleep in the water! and in the summer depths! the creatures took their way! each to its proper love! in the height of afternoon! as the peaceful river went.... " this dream will not leave him. he baits his hook, hunkers by the bank, drops his line into the spree. presently he lights up an army ciga­ rette, and stays still then for a long while, as the fog moves white through the riverbank houses, and up above the warplanes go droning somewhere invisible, and the dogs run barking in the back-streets. 447 ��' -"",_. /......... d d d d d d d when emptied of people, the interior is steel gray. when crowded, it's green, a comfortable acid green. sunlight comes in through portholes inthe higher of the bulkheads (the riicksichtslos here lists at a permanentangle of 23°27'), and steel washbowls line the lower bulkheads. at the end of each sub-latrine are coffee messes and hand-cranked peep shows.you'll find all the older, less glamorous, un-teutonic-looking women inthe enlisted men's machines. the real stacked and more racially goldentomatoes go to the officers, natiirlich. this is some of that nazi fanati­ cism. the riicksichtslos itself is the issue of another kind of fanaticism: that of the specialist. this vessel here is a toiletship, a triumph of the ger­ man mania for subdividing. "if the house is organic," argued the craftyearly toiletship advocates, "family lives in the house, family's organic,house is outward-and-visible sign, you see," behind their smoked glassesand under their gray crewcuts not believing a word of it, machiavellian and youthful, not quite ripe yet for paranoia, "and if the bathroom's part of the house-house-is-organic! ha-hah," singing, chiding, pointingout the broad blond-faced engineer, hair parted in the middle and slicked back, actually blushing and looking at his knees among the good­natured smiling teeth of his fellow technologists because he'd been about to forget that point (albert speer, himself, in a gray suit with a smudge of chalk on the sleeve, all the way in the back leaning akimbothe wall and looking remarkably like american cowboy actor henryfonda, has already forgotten about the house being organic, and no­body points at him, rhip). "then the toiletship is to the kriegsmarineas the bathroom is to the house. because the navy is organic, we allknow that, ha-hah!" [general, or maybe admiral, laughter.] therucksichtslos was intended to be the flagship of a whole geschwader of toiletships. but the steel quotas were diverted clear out of the navyover to the a4 rocket program. yes, that does seem unusual, but degen­kolb was heading up the rocket committee by then, remember, andhad both power and will to cut across all branches of the service. so the riicksichtslos is one-of-a-kind, old warship collectors, and if you're inthe market you better hurry 'cause ge's already been by to have a look. lucky the bolshies didn't get it, huh, charles? charles, meantime, is making on his clipboard what look like studious notes, but are really ob­servations of the passing scene such as they are all looking at me, or 448 lieutenant rinso is plotting to murder me, and of course the ever-relia­ ble he's one of them too and i'm going to get him some night, well by now charles's colleague here, steve, has forgotten about the russians, and discontinued his inspection of a hushing valve to take a really close look at that charles, you can't pick your search team, not if you're just out of school and here i am, in the asshole of nowhere, not much more than a gofer to this-what is he, a fag? what am i? what does ge want me to be? is this some obscure form of company punishment, even, good god, permanent exile? i'm a career man, they can keep me out here 20 years if they want, 'n' nobody'll ever know, they'll just keep writing it off to overhead. sheila! how'm i gonna tell sheila? we're en­ gaged. this is her picture (hair waved like choppy seas falling down rita hayworth style, eyes that if it were a color snap would have yellow lids with pink rims, and a mouth like a hot dog bun on a billboard). took her out to buf-falo bayou, lookin' for a little funbig old bayou mosquito, oh my you shoulda seen what he done! poked his head up, under her dress, give a little grin and, well i guess, things got rough on buf-falo bayou, skeeter turn yer meter, down, all-right-now! ya ta, ta-ta, ya-ta-ta, ta-ta lookin' for a little fun, ev-rybody! oh ya know, when you're young and wholesome ["ev'rybody," in this case a toiletshipload of bright hornrimmed shoe-pac'd young fellas from schenectady, are singin' along behind this recitative here] and a good church­ goin' kid, it's sure a mournful thing to get suddenly ganged by a pack of those texas mosquitoes, it can set you back 20 years. why, there's boys just like you wanderin' around, you may've seen one in the street today and never known it, with the mind of a infant, just because those mosquitoes got to him and did their unspeakable thing. and we've laid down insecticides, a-and bombed the bayous with citronella, and it's no good, folks. they breed faster'n we can kill 'em, and are we just gonna tuck tail and let them be there out in buffalo bayou where my gal sheila had to look at the loathsome behavior of those-things, we gonna allow them even to exist? -and, things got rough on, buf-falo bayou, skeeter turn yer meter, down, 449 ���--' t / .. ".,_f· hubba hubbaskeeter turn yer meter, down! well, you can't help but wonder who's really the more paranoidof the two here. steve's sure got a lot of gall badmouthing charlesthat way. among the hilarious graffiti of visiting mathematicians, j __1_.d (cabin) = log cabin + c = houseboat,(cabin) that sort of thing, they go poking away down the narrow sausage-shapedlatrine now, two young/ old men, their feet fade and cease to ring on thesloping steel deck, their forms grow more transparent with distanceuntil it's impossible to see them any more. only the empty compart­ment here, the s-curved spokes on the peep-show machines, the rows of mirrors directly facing, reflecting each other, frame after frame, back in a curve of very great radius. out to the end of this segment of curve isconsidered part of the space of the riicksichtslos. making it a rather fatship. carrying its right-of-way along with it. "crew morale," whisperedthe foxes at the ministry meetings, "sailors' superstitions. mirrors athigh midnight. we know, don't we?" the officers' latrines, by contrast, are done in red velvet. the decor is 1930s safety manual. that is, all over the walls, photograffiti, are pic­tures of horrible disasters in german naval history. collisions, maga­zine explosions, u-boat sinkings, just the thing if you're an officer tryingto take a shit. the foxes have been busy. commanding officers getwhole suites, private shower or sunken bathtub, manicurist (bdm vol­unteers, mostly), steam room, massage table. to compensate though, allthe bulkheads, and the overhead, are occupied by enormous photo­graphs of hitler at various forms of play. the toilet paper! the toilet paper is covered square after square with caricatures of churchill, ei­senhower, roosevelt, chiang kai-shek, there was even a staff caricatur­ist always on duty to custom-illustrate blank paper for those connois­ seurs who are ever in search of the unusual. wagner and hugo wolfwere patched into speakers from up in the radio shack. cigarettes werefree. it was a good life on board the toiletship riicksichtslos, as it pliedits way from swinemiinde to helgoland, anyplace it was needed, cam­ouflaged in shades of gray, turn-of-the-century style with sharp-shad­owed prows coming at you from midships so you couldn't tell which way she was headed. ship's company actually lived each man inside his stall, each with his own key and locker, pin-ups and library shelves dec­orating the partitions ... and there were even one-way mirrors so youcould sit at your ease, penis dangling toward the ice-cold seawater in 450 ... :_: : . ..� .. -...... . r----i� -i� -, ranoil cnarl� ticia/ji i'ou rill your bowl, listen to your ve-301 people's receiver, and watch the aft­ ernoon rush, the busy ringing of feet and talk, card games inside the group toilets, dealers enthroned on real porcelain receiving visitors, some of them lined up back outside the compartment (quiet queues, all business, something like the queues in banks), toilet-lawyers dispensing advice, all kinds of visitor coming and going, the u-boat crews hunching in, twitching eyes nervously every second or two at the overhead, de­ stroyer sailors larking at the troughs (gigantic troughs! running the whole beam of the ship, even, legend has it, off into mirror-space, big enough to seat 40 or 50 aching assholes side by side, while a constant river of salt flushing water roared by underneath), lighting wads of toilet paper, is what they especially liked to do, setting them flaming yellow in the water upstream and cackling with glee as one by one down the line the sitters leaped off the holes screaming and clutching their blistered asses and inhaling the smell of singed pubic hair. not that the crew of the toiletship itself were above a practical joke now and then. who can ever forget the time shipfitters hopmann and kreuss, at the height of the ptomaine epidemic of 1943, routed those waste lines into the venti­ lation system of the executive officer's stateroom? the exec, being an old toiletship hand, laughed good-naturedly at the clever prank and transferred hopmann and kreuss to icebreaker duty, where the two scatotechnic snipes went on to erect vaguely turd-shaped monoliths of ice and snow all across the arctic. now and then one shows up on an ice floe drifting south in ghostly grandeur, exciting the admiration of all. a good ship, a good crew, merry xmas and turn to. horst achtfaden, late of the elektromechanische werke, karlshagen (another cover name for the testing station at peenemiinde), has really no time for naval nos­ talgia. with the technical spies of three or four nations after him, he has had the disastrous luck to've been picked up by the schwarzkommando, who for all he knows now constitute a nation of their own. they have interned him in the chiefs' head. he has watched voluptuous gerda and her fur boa go through the same number 178 times (he has jimmied the coin box and figured a way to override it) since they put him in here, and the thrill is gone. what do they want? why are they occupying a derelict in the middle of the kiel canal? why don't the british do some­ thing about this? look at it this way, achtfaden. this toiletship here's a wind tunnel's all it is. if tensor analysis is good enough for turbulence, it ought to be good enough for history. there ought to be nodes, critical points ... there ought to be super-derivatives of the crowded and insatiate flow that can be set equal to zero and these critical points found.... 1904 451 was one of them-1g04 was when admiral rozhdestvenski sailed hisfleet halfway around the world to relieve port arthur, which put yourpresent captor enzian on the planet, it was the year the germans all but wiped out the hereros, which gave enzian some peculiar ideas aboutsurvival, it was the year the american food and drug people took thecocaine out of coca-cola, which gave us an alcoholic and death­oriented generation of yanks ideally equipped to fight ww ii, and it was the year ludwig prandtl proposed the boundary layer, which reallygot aerodynamics into business and put you right here, right now. 1904,achtfaden. ha, hal that's a better joke on you than any singed asshole,all right. lotta good it does you. you can't swim upstream, not underthe present dispensation anyhow, all you can do is attach the number toit and suffer, horst, fella. or, if you can tear yourself away from gerdaand her fur boa, here's a thought-find a non-dimensional coefficientfor yourself. this is a wind-tunnel you're in, remember? you're an aero­ dynamics man. socoefficients, ja, [a, . . . achtfaden flings himself disconsolately on thescarlet vd toilet way down at the very end of the row. he knows aboutcoefficients. in aachen once, for a while, he and his colleagues couldstand in the forward watchtower: look out into the country of the bar­barians through hermann and wieselsberger's tiny window. terrific compressions, diamond shadows writhing like snakes. often the stingwas bigger than the model itself-the very need to measure interferedwith the observations. that should have been a clue right there. no onewrote then about supersonic flow. it was surrounded by myth, and by apure, primitive terror. professor wagner of darmstadt predicted that atspeeds above mach 5, air would liquefy. should pitch and roll frequen­cies happen to be equal, the resonance would throw the projectile intoviolent oscillations. it would corkscrew to destruction. "lunar motion,"we called it. "bingen pencils" we would call the helical contrails in thesky. terrified. the schlieren shadows danced. at peenemiinde the testsection measured 40 x 40 em, about the size of a tabloid page. "theypray not only for their daily bread," stresemann had said, "but also fortheir daily illusion." we, staring through the thick glass, had our dailyshock-the only paper many of us read. you come in-just hit town, here in the heart of downtown peene­miinde, hey, whatcha do for fun around here? hauling your provincialvalise with a few shirts, a copy of the handbuch, perhaps cranz'slehrbuch der ballistik. you have memorized ackeret, busemann, vonkarman and moore, some volta congress papers. but the terror will not go away. this is faster than sound, than the words she spoke across the 452 ... :.:_.... : . ..: .-_ ' .. . r-=i�� � room so full of sunlight, the jazz band on the radio when you could not sleep, the hoarse heils among the pale generators and from the execu­ tive-crammed galleries overhead . . . the comerians whistling from the high ravines (terrific falls, steepness, whistling straight down the preci­ pice to a toy village lying centuries, miles below . . .) as you sat out on the counter of the kdf ship alone, apart from the maypole dancing on , anq! the white deck, the tanned bodies full of beer and song, paunches in 'hr� sunsuits, and you listened to ur-spanish, whistled not voiced, from the mountains around chipuda . . . comera was the last piece of land co­ lumbus touched before america. did he hear them too, that last night? did they have a message for him? a warning? could he understand the prescient goatherds in the dark, up in the canarian holly and the faya, gone dead green in the last sunset of europe? in aerodynamics, because you've only got the thing on paper at first, you use dimensionless coefficients: ratios of this to that-centimeters, grams, seconds neatly all canceling out above and below. this allows you to use models, arrange an airflow to measure what you're interested in, and scale the wind-tunnel results all the way up to reality, without running into too many unknowns, because these coefficients are good for all dimensions. traditionally they are named after people-reyn­ olds, prandtl, peclet, nusselt, mach-and the question here is, how about an achtfaden number? how's chances for that? not good. the parameters breed like mosquitoes in the bayou, faster than he can knock them off. hunger, compromise, money, paranoia, memory, comfort, guilt. cuilt gets a minus sign around achtfaden though, even if it is becoming quite a commodity in the zone. remit­ tance men from all over the world will come to heidelberg before long, to major in guilt. there will be bars and nightclubs catering especially to guilt enthusiasts. extermination camps will be turned into tourist at­ tractions, foreigners with cameras will come piling through in droves, tickled and shivering with guilt. sorry-not for achtfaden here, shrug­ ging at all his mirror-to-mirror replications chaining out to port and star­ board-he only worked with it up to the point where the air was too thin to make a difference. what it did after that was none of his respon­ sibility. ask weichensteller, ask flaum, and fibel-they were the re­ entry people. ask the guidance section, they pointed it where it was going.... "do you find it a little schizoid," aloud now to all the achtfaden fronts and backs, "breaking a flight profile up into segments of responsi­ bility? it was half bullet, half arrow. it demanded this, we didn't. so. perhaps you used a rifle, a radio, a typewriter. some typewriters in 453 ��' / ......•. whitehall, in the pentagon, killed more civilians than our little a4 could have ever hoped to. you are either alone absolutely, alone with your own death, or you take part in the larger enterprise, and you share inthe deaths of others. are we not all one? which is your choice," fahrin­ ger now, buzzing and flat through the filters of memory, "the little cart, or the great one?" mad fahringer, the only one of the peenemiinde club who refused to wear the exclusive pheasant-feather badge in his hat­band because he couldn't bring himself to kill, who could be seen eve­ nings on the beach sitting in full lotos position staring into the settingsun, and who was first at peenemiinde to fall to the ss, taken away one noon into the fog, his lab coat a flag of surrender, presently obscured bythe black uniforms, leather and metal of his escort. leaving behind afew joss sticks, a copy of the chinesische blatter fur wissenschaft undkunst, pictures of a wife and children no one had known about . . . was peenemiinde his mountain, his cell and fasting? had he found his wayfree of guilt, fashionable guilt? "atmen . . . atman . . . not only to breathe, but also the soul, thebreath of god . . " one of the few times achtfaden can remember talking with him alone, directly, "atmen is a genuinely aryan verb. nowtell me about the speed of the exhaust jet." "what do you want to know? 6500 feet per second." "tell me how it changes." "it remains nearly constant, through the burning.""and yet the relative airpseed changes drastically, doesn't it? zero upto mach 6. can't you see what's happening?" "no, fahringer." "the rocket creating its own great wind . . . no wind without both,rocket and atmosphere . . . but inside the venturi, breath-furious and blazing breath-always flows at the same unchanging speed . . . can't you really see?" gibberish. or else a koan that achtfaden isn't equipped to master, atranscendent puzzle that could lead him to some moment of lightalmost as good as: -what is it that flies? -los! rising from the wasserkuppe, rivers ullster and haune tilting aroundinto map-shapes, green valleys and mountains, the four he has leftbelow gathering up the white shock cords, only one looking up, shadinghis eyes-bert fibel? but what does the name matter, from this van­ tage? achtfaden goes looking for the thunderstorm-under, through the 454 fue 1 110 of 1 f�c wa� " i usa lvar unn anr 1 cna �le \ :: i aev' 110m "� \ thunder playing to a martial tune inside his head-crowding soon in gray cliffs to the right, the strokes of lightning banging all the mountains blue, the cockpit briefly filled with the light . . . right at the edge. right here, at the interface, the air will be rising. you follow the edge of the storm, with another sense-the flight-sense, located nowhere, filling all your nerves . . . as long as you stay always right at the edge between fair lowlands and the madness of donar it does not fail you, whatever it is that flies, this carrying drive toward-is it freedom? does no one rec­ ognize what enslavement gravity is till he reaches the interface of the thunder? no time to work out puzzles. here come the schwarzkommando. achtfaden has wasted too much time with luscious gerda, with memo­ ries. here they come clattering down the ladders, fast oogabooga talk he can't even guess at, it's a linguistic wilderness here, and he's afraid. what do they want? why won't they leave him in peace-they have their victory, what do they want with poor achtfaden? they want the schwarzgerat. when enzian actually pronounces the word aloud, it's already redundant. it was there in his bearing, the line of his mouth. the others back him, rifles slung, half a dozen african faces, mobbing the mirrors with their darkness, their vein-heavy red­ white-and-blue eyes. "i only was assigned to part of it. it was trivial. really." "aerodynamics isn't trivial," enzian calm, unsmiling. "there were others from gessner's section. mechanical design. i al­ ways worked out of prof.-dr. kurzweg's shop." "who were the others?" "i don't remember." ro� "so." "don't hit me. why should i hide anything? it's the truth. they kept us cut off. i didn't know anybody at nordhausen. just a few in my own work section. i swear it. the s-gerat people were all strangers to me. until that first day we all met with major weissmann, i'd never seen any of them. no one used real names. we were given code-names. characters from a movie, somebody said. the other aerodynamics peo­ ple were 'sporri' and 'hawasch.' i was called 'wenk.' " "what was your job?" "weight control. all they wanted from me was the shift in cg for a device of a given weight. the weight was classified top secret. forty­ something kilos. 45? 46?" "station numbers," raps andreas from over enzian's shoulder. eu 455 ���' -/ ......... "i can't remember. it was in the tail section. i do remember the load was assymmetrical about the longitudinal axis. toward vane iii. that was the vane used for yaw control-" "we know that." "you'd have to talk to 'sporri' or 'hawasch.' they'd be the ones who worked that problem out. talk to guidance." why did i say"why did you say that?" "no, no, it wasn't my job, that's all, guidance, warhead, propulsion .. ask them. ask the others." "you meant something else. who worked on guidance?""i told you, i didn't know any of their names." the dust-covered caf­ eteria in the last days. the machinery in the adjoining halls, that oncebattered eardrums pitiless as a cold-chisel day and night, is silenced.the roman numerals on the time clocks stare from the walls of the bays, among the glass windowpanes. telephone jacks on black rubber cords dangle from brackets overhead, each connection hanging over its own desk, all the desks perfectly empty, covered with salt-dust sifted from the ceiling, no phones to plug in, no more words to be said. . . . the face of his friend across the table, the drawn and sleepless face nowtoo pointed, too lipless, that once vomited beer on achtfaden's hikingboots, whispering now, "i couldn't go with von braun ... not to the americans, it would only just keep on the same way . . . i want it reallyto be over, that's all ... good-by, 'wenk.' " "stuff him down the waste lines," andreas suggests. they are all soblack, so sure. . . . i must be the last one . . . somebody's sure to have him by now . . .what can these africans do with a name . . . they could have got itfrom anybody. . . . "he was a friend. we knew each other before the war, at darm­stadt." "we're not going to hurt him. we're not going to hurt you. we wantthe s-gerat." "narrisch. klaus narrisch." a new parameter for his self-coefficient now: betrayal. as he leaves the riicksichtslos, achtfaden can hear behind him,metallic, broadcasting from another world, ripped by static, a radiovoice. "oberst enzian. m' okamanga. m' okamanga. m' okamanga."there is urgency and gravity in the word. he stands by the canalside, among steel wreckage and old men in the dusk, waiting for a directionto go. but where is the electric voice now that will ever call forhim? i to �\o i are �\an \ilir im' d d d d d d d oci they have set out by barge along the spree-oder canal, headed at last for swinemiinde, slothrop to see what geli tripping's clew will lead him to in the way of a schwarzgerat, margherita to rendezvous with a yachtful of refugees from the lublin regime, among whom ought to be her daughter bianca. stretches of the canal are still blocked-in the night russian demolition crews can be heard blasting away the wrecks with tnt-but slothrop and greta can summon, like dreamers, draft shallow enough to clear whatever the war has left in their way. off and on it rains. the sky will begin to cloud up about noon, turning the color of wet cement-then wind, sharpening, colder, then rain that must be often at the edge of sleet, blowing at them head-on up the canal. they shelter under tarps, among bales and barrels, tar, wood and straw smells. when the nights are clear, peepers-and-frogs nights, star-streaks and shadows at canalside will set travelers' eyes to jittering. willows line the banks. at midnight coils of fog rise to dim out even the glow of the bargee's pipe, far away up, or down, the dreaming convoy. these nights, fragrant and grained as pipesmoke, are tranquil and good for sleep. the berlin madness is behind, greta seems less afraid, perhaps all they needed was to be on the move. . . . but one afternoon, sliding down the long mild slope of the oder to­ ward the baltic sea, they catch sight of a little red and white resort town, wiped through in broad smudges by the war, and she clutches to slothrop's arm. ''i've been here ... " "yeah?" "just before the polish invasion . . . 1 was here with sigmund . . . at the spa.... " on shore, behind cranes and steel railings, rise fronts of what were restaurants, small factories, hotels, burned now, windowless, powdered with their own substance. the name of the town is bad karma. rain from earlier in the day has streaked the walls, the pinnacles of waste and the coarse-cobbled lanes. children and old men stand on shore waiting to take lines and warp the barges in. black dumplings of smoke are floating up out of the stack of a white river steamer. shipfitters are slamming inside its hull. greta stares at it. a pulse is visible in her throat. she shakes her head. "i thought it was bianca's ship, but it isn't." i11 457 in close to the quay, they swing ashore, grabbing on to an iron ladder held in the old stone by rusted bolts, each one staining the wall down­ ward in a wet sienna fan. on margherita's jacket a pink gardenia has begun to shake. it isn't the wind. she keeps saying, "i have to see.... " old men are leaning on railings, smoking pipes, watching greta or looking out at the river. they wear gray clothes, wide-bottom trousers, wide-brim hats with rounded crowns. the market square is busy and neat: tram tracks gleam, there's a smell of fresh hosing down. in the ruins lilacs bleed their color, their surplus life out over the broken stone and brick. except for a few figures in black, sitting out in the sun, the spa itself is deserted. margherita by now is spooked as badly as she ever was in berlin. slothrop tags along, in his rocketman turnout, feeling burdened.the sprudelhof is bounded on one side by a sand-colored arcade: sand columns and brown shadows. a strip just in front is planted to cy­ presses. fountains in massive stone bowls are leaping: jets 20 feet high,whose shadows across the smooth paving of the courtyard are thick and nervous. but who's that, standing so rigid by the central spring? and why has margherita turned to stone? the sun is out, there are others watching,but even slothrop now is bristling along his back and flanks, chills flung one on the fading cluster of another, up under each side of his jaw ...the woman is wearing a black coat, a crepe scarf covering her hair, theflesh of thick calves showing through her black stockings as nearly pur­ple, she is only leaning over the waters in a very fixed way and watchingthem as they try to approach . . . but the smile . . . across ten meters of swept courtyard, the smile growing confident in the very white face,all the malaise of a europe dead and gone gathered here in the eyesblack as her clothing, black and lightless. she knows them. greta has turned, and tries to hide her face in slothrop's shoulder. "by the well,"is she whispering this? "at sundown, that woman in black. ... " "come on. it's all right." back to berlin talk. "she's just a patienthere." idiot, idiot-before he can stop her she's pulled away, some quiet, awful cry in the back of her throat, and turned and begun to run,a desperate tattoo of high heels across the stone, into the shadowed arches of the kurhaus. "hey," slothrop, feeling queasy, accosts the woman in black. "what's the big idea, lady?" but her face has changed by now, it is only the face of another woman of the ruins, one he would have ignored, passed over. shesmiles, all right, but in the forced and business way he knows. "zigaret458 , t \ [ i i i d \ "... . . _. -... -... ..., -_ . ,-' , . ���--" ten, bitte?" he gives her a long stub he's been saving, and goes looking for margherita. he finds the arcade empty. all the doors of the kurhaus are locked. overhead passes a skylight of yellow panes, many of them fallen out. down the corridor, fuzzy patches of afternoon sun stagger along, full of mortar dust. he climbs a broken flight of steps that end in the sky. odd chunks of stone clutter the way. from the landing at the top, the spa stretches to country distances: handsome trees, graveyard clouds, the blue river. greta is nowhere in sight. later he will figure out where it was she went. by then they will be well on board the anubis, and it will only make him feel more helpless. he keeps looking for her till the darkness is down and he's come back by the river again. he sits at an open-air cafe strung with yellow lights, drinking beer, eating spaetzle and soup, waiting. when she materializes it is a shy fade-in, as gerhardt von coll must have brought her on a time or two, not moving so much as slothrop's own vantage swooping to her silent closeup stabilized presently across from him, finishing his beer, bumming a cigarette. not only does she avoid the subject of the woman by the spring, she may have lost the memory already. "i went up in the observatory," is what she has to say finally, "to look down the river. she's coming. i saw the boat she's on. it's only a kilome­ ter away." "the what now?" "bianca, my child, and my friends. i thought they'd have been in swinemiinde long ago. but then nobody's on timetables any more.... " sure enough, after two more bitter cups of acorn coffee and another cigarette, here comes a cheerful array of lights, red, green, and white, down the river, with the faint wheeze of an accordion, the thump of a string bass, and the sound of women laughing. slothrop and greta walk down to the quay, and through mist now beginning to seep up off the river they can make out an ocean-going yacht, nearly the color of the mist, a gilded winged jackal under the bowsprit, the weather-decks crowded with chattering affluent in evening dress. several people have spotted margherita. she waves, and they point or wave back, and call her name. it is a moving village: all summer it has been sailing these lowlands just as viking ships did a thousand years ago, though passively, not marauding: seeking an escape it has not yet defined clearly. the boat comes in to the quay, the crew lower an access ladder. smil­ ing passengers halfway down are already stretching out gloved and ringed hands to margherita. reb o�: 459 "are you coming?" "uh . . . well, should i?" she shrugs and turns her back, steps gingerly off the landing and onboard, skirt straining and glossy a moment in the yellow light from thecafe. slothrop dithers, goes to follow her-at the last moment some joker pulls the ladder up and the boat moves away, slothrop screams, i �loses his balance and falls in the river. head first: the rocketman helmet is pulling him straight down. he tugs it off and comes up, sinuses burning and vision blurred, the white vessel sliding away, though the churning screws are moving his direction, beginning to suck at the cape, so hehas to get rid of that, too. he backstrokes away and then cautiouslyaround the counter, lettered in black: anubis swinoujscie, trying tokeep away from those screws. down the other side he spots a piece ofline hanging, and manages to get over there and grab hold. the band upon deck is playing polkas. three drunken ladies in tiaras and pearl chok­ers are lounging at the lifelines, watching slothrop struggle up the rope."let's cut it," yells one of them, "and see him fall in again!" "yes,let's!" agree her companions. jesus christ. one of them has produced ahuge meat cleaver, and is winding up all right, amid much vivacious laughing, at about which point somebody grabs hold of slothrop's ankle.he looks down, observes sticking out a porthole two slender wrists insilver and sapphires, lighted from inside like ice, and the oily riverrushing by underneath. "in here." a girl's voice. he slides back down while she tugs on his i ufeet, till he's sitting in the porthole. from above comes a heavy thump,the rope goes falling and the ladies into hysterics. slothrop squirms oninside, water squeegeeing off, falls into an upper bunk next to a girlmaybe 18 in a long sequined gown, with hair blonde to the point of purewhiteness, and the first cheekbones slothrop can recall getting a hardonlooking at. something has definitely been happening to his brain outhere, all right. . . . "uh-" "mmm." they look at each other while he continues to drip water allover. her name, it turns out, is stefania procalowska. her husband an­toni is owner of the anubis here. well, husband, all right. "look at this," sez slothrop, "i'm soakingwet." "i noticed. somebody's evening clothes ought to fit you. dry off, i'llgo see what i can promote. you can use the head if you want, every­thing's there." he strips off the rest of the rocketman rig, takes a shower, using 460 .. � ._:_ ..... -. .�--.---.. _.. ._.... . �:�� lemon verbena soap in which he finds a couple of stefania's white pubic hairs, and is shaving when she gets back with dry clothes for him. "so you're with margherita." "not sure about that 'with.' she find that kid of hers?" "oh indeed-they're already deep into it with karel. this month he's posing as a film producer. you know karel. and of course she wants to get bianca into the films worse than anything." "uh ... " stefania shrugs a lot, and every sequin dances. "margherita wants her to have a legitimate career. it's guilt. she never felt her own career was anything more than a string of dirty movies. i suppose you heard about how she got pregnant with bianca." "max schlepzig, or something." "or something, right. you never saw alpdriicken? in that one scene, after the grand inquisitor gets through, the jackal men come in to rav­ ish and dismember the captive baroness. von coll let the cameras run right on. the footage got cut out for the release prints of course, but found its way into coebbels's private collection. i've seen it-it's fright­ ening. every man in the scene wears a black hood, or an animal mask . . . back at bydgoszcz it became an amusing party game to speculate on who the child's father was. one has to pass the time. they'd run the film and ask bianca questions, and she had to answer yes or no." "yup." slothrop goes on dousing his face with bay rum. "oh, margherita had her corrupted long before she came to stay with us. i wouldn't be surprised if little bianca sleeps with karel tonight. part of breaking into the business, isn't it? of course it will have to be all business-that's the least a mother can do. margherita's problem was that she always enjoyed it too much, chained up in those torture rooms. she couldn't enjoy it any other way. you'll see. she and thanatz. and whatever thanatz brought in his valise." "thanatz. " "ah, she didn't tell you." laughing. "miklos thanatz, her husband. they get together off and on. toward the end of the war they had a lit­ tle touring show for the boys at the front-a lesbian couple, a dog, a trunk of leather costumes and implements, a small band. they enter­ tained the ss troops. concentration camps . . . the barbed-wire circuit, you know. and then later, in holland, out at the rocket sites. this is the first time since the surrender they've been together, so i wouldn't actu­ ally expect to see too much of her. . . ." "oh, yeah, well, i didn't know that." rocket sites? the hand of provi­ dence creeps among the stars, giving slothrop the finger. ��' / ......... "while they were away, they left bianca with us, at bydgoszcz. shehas her bitchy moments but she's really a charming child. i never played the father game with her. i doubt she had a father. it was par­ thenogenesis, she's pure margherita, if pure is the word i want." the evening clothes fit perfectly. stefania leads slothrop up a com­ panionway and out on deck. the anubis moves now through starlit countryside, the horizon broken now and then by silhouettes of a wind­ mill, haycocks, a row of pig arks, some line of trees set on a low hill for the wind. . . . there are ships we can dream across terrible rapids, against currents . . . our desire is wind and motor. . . . "antoni." she has brought slothrop to an enormous figure in polish cavalry fatigues and with a lot of maniacal teeth. "american?" pumping slothrop's hand. "bravo. you nearly completethe set. we are the ship of all nations now. we've even got a japanese on board. an ex-liaison man from berlin who didn't quite get out by way of russia. you'll find a bar on the next deck. anything wanderingaround"-hugging stefania to him-" except this one, is fair game." slothrop salutes, gathers they would like to be alone, and finds the ladder to the bar. the bar is hung with festive garlands of flowers and light bulbs, and crowded with dozens of elegantly-decked guests, whohave just now, with the band accompanying, broken into this up-tempo song: welcome aboard! welcome aboard, gee, it's a fabulous or-gy that you just dropped in on, my friend­ we can't recall just how it star-ted, but there's only one way it can end! the behavior is bestial, hardly marie-celestial, but you'll fit right in with the crowd, if you jettison all of those prob-lems, and keep it hysterically loud! there are mo-thers, with their lo-vers, stealing rot-ters, from their daught-ers, big erec-tions, predilec-tions that you wouldn't believe, so put your brain on your sleeve, and come aboard the titanic, things'll really be manic, iou �e i tve ! �l � i ttn, i", re�iq tune i �ere, "�ij tonn i ij�nt \ me� tloua ••••••••••• _ • _ _ ... __ ..... _._ .......... _z_ -... ......._,,-.... < . ��-�-(--"" folks'll panic the second that sunken iceberg is knocked, naughty 'n' noisy, and very walpurgisnacht, that's how the party will end, so-welcome aboard, welcome aboard, my friend! well here's couples moaning together in the lifeboats, a drunk's gone to sleep in the awning over slothrop's head, fat fellows in white gloves with pink magnolias in their hair are dancing tummy-to-tummy and murmuring together in wendish. hands grope down inside satin gowns. waiters with brown skins and doe eyes circulate with trays on which you are likely to find any number of substances and paraphernalia. the band is playing a medley of american fox-trots. the baron de mallakas­ tra sifts a sinister white powder into the highball of mme. sztup. it is the same old shit that was going on back at raoul de la perlimpinpin's place, and for all slothrop knows it's the same party. he gets a glimpse of margherita and her daughter, but there is a den­ sity of orgy-goers around them that keeps him at a distance. he knows he's vulnerable, more than he should be, to pretty little girls, so he reck­ ons it's just as well, because that bianca's a knockout, all right: 11 or 12, dark and lovely, wearing a red chiffon gown, silk stockings and high­ heeled slippers, her hair swept up elaborate and flawless and interwo­ ven with a string of pearls to show pendant earrings of crystal twinkling from her tiny lobes . . . help, help. why do these things have to keep coming down on him? he can see the obit now in time magazine­ died, rocketman, pushing 30, in the zone, of lust. the woman who tried to chop slothrop down with the cleaver is now seated on a bitt, holding a half-liter of some liquid which has already seeped into and begun to darken the orchid garnishing it. she is telling everybody a story about margherita. her hair has been combed or styled in a way that makes it look like a certain cut of meat. slothrop's drink, nominally irish whisky and water, arrives and he moves in to lis­ ten. " ... her neptune is afflicted. whose isn't? some will ask. ah. but as residents on this planet, usually. greta lived, most of the time, on nep­ tune-her affliction was more direct, purer, clearer than we know it here. "she found oneirine on a day when her outpost in england, the usual connection for chlordyne, failed. beside the thames, as geraniums of light floated in the sky too slow to tell-brass light, tanned-skin and mellow peach light, stylized blooms being drafted on and on among the clouds, to fade here, to regenerate there-as this happened to the day's 463 it( light, he fell. a fall of hours, less extravagant than lucifer's, but in the same way part of a deliberate pattern. greta was meant to find oneir­ ine. each plot carries its signature. some are god's, some masquerade as god's. this is a very advanced kind of forgery. but still there's the same meanness and mortality to it as a falsely made check. it is only more complex. the members have names, like the archangels. more or less common, humanly-given names whose security can be broken, and the names learned. but those names are not magic. that's the key, that's the difference. spoken aloud, even with the purest magical intention, they do not work. "so he fell from their grace. so there was no chlordyne. so she hap­ pened to meet v-mann wimpe in the street, in berlin, under a theatre marquee whose sentient bulbs may have looked on, a picturesque arrayof extras, witnesses to grave and historic encounters. so she had come to oneirine, and the face of her afflicted home planet was rearranged inthe instant." oneirine j amf imipolex a4. -. . . "that silly bitch," observes a voice at slothrop's elbow, "tells it worse every time." "beg pardon?" slothrop looks around and finds miklos thanatz, full beard, eyebrows feathering out like trailing edges of hawks' wings, drinking absinthe out of a souvenir stein on which, in colors made ghastly by the carnival lights on deck, bony and giggling death is about to surprise two lovers in bed. there is no problem steering him onto the subject of the rocket-"i think of the a4," sez he, "as a baby jesus, with endless committees of herods out to destroy it in infancy-prussians, some of whom in their innermost hearts still felt artillery to be a dangerous innovation. if you'dbeen out there ... inside the first minute, you saw, you grew docileunder its . . . it really did possess a max weber charisma . . . some joy­ful-and deeply irrational-force the state bureaucracy could never routinize, against which it could not prevail . . . they did resist it, but they also allowed it to happen. we can't imagine anyone choosing a rolelike that. but every year, somehow, their numbers grow."but the tour with general kammler's rocketeers is what slothrop,perversely, wants-wants?-to know about, "well i've been to that nordhausen, sure, seen the bits and pieces. but never a fully-assembleda4. that must really be something, huh?" thanatz is holding out his stein for a refill. the waiter, deadpan, drib­bles water down a spoon to turn the absinthe milky green while tha464 natz caresses his buttocks, then moves away. it is not clear if thanatz has been thinking about his answer. "yes, fueled, alive, ready for firing ... fifty feet high, trembling ... and then the fantastic, virile roar. your ears nearly burst. cruel, hard, thrusting into the virgin-blue robes of the sky, my friend. oh, so phallic. wouldn't you say?" "vh ... " "hmm, ja, you would have got on with them out at the batteries, they were sedate, like you. more studious than your infantry or panzer types, attentive to the point of fanaticism. oh, with notable exceptions of course. one lives for notable exceptions. . . . there was a boy." drunk reminiscence? is he faking this? "his name was gottfried. god's peace, which i trust he's found. for us i hold no such hope. we are weighed in the balance and found wanting, and the butcher has had his thumb in the scales ... you think i'm jaded. so did i, until that terrible week. it was a time of dissolution, falling back across the niedersachsisch oil fields. then i understood i was but a dewy child. the battery com­ mander had become a screaming maniac. he called himself 'blicero.' he'd begun to talk the way the captain in wozzeck sings, his voice breaking suddenly up into the higher registers of hysteria. things were falling apart, and he reverted to some ancestral version of himself, screamed at the sky, sat hours in a rigid trance, with his eyes rolled clear up into his head. breaking without warning into that ungodly colora­ tura. white blank ovals, the eyes of a statue, with the gray rain behind them. he had left 1945, wired his nerves back into the pre-christian earth we fled across, into the vrstoff of the primitive german, god's poorest and most panicked creature. you and i perhaps have become over the generations so christianized, so enfeebled by gesellschaft and our obligation to its celebrated 'contract,' which never did exist, that we, even we, are appalled by reversions like that. but deep, out of its si­ lence, the urstoff wakes, and sings ... and on the last day ... it is shameful ... through that whole terrible day, i had an erection ... don't judge me . . . it was out of my control . . . everything was out of control-" about here they are interrupted by margherita and bianca, playing stage mother and reluctant child. whispers to the bandleader, funseek­ ers crowding eagerly around a cleared space where bianca now stands pouting, her little red frock halfway up her slender thighs, with black lace petticoats peeping from beneath the hem, surely it's going to be something sophisticated, bigcity, and wicked, but what's she doing with her finger posed aside of one dimpled cheek like this-at which point 465 comes the band's intro, and pre-vomit saliva begins to gush into slo­ throp's mouth, along with a horrible doubt into his brain about how he is going to make it through the next few minutes. not only is her song "on the good ship lollipop," but she is also now commencing, without a trace of shame, to grunt her way throughit, in perfect mimickry of young shirley temple-each straining baby­ pig inflection, each curl-toss, unmotivated smile, and stumbling toe-tap . . . her delicate bare arms have begun to grow fatter, her frock shorter -is somebody fooling with the lights? but the billowings of asexual child-fat have not changed her eyes: they remain as they were, mock­ ing, dark, her own. . . . much applause and alcoholic bravo-ing when it's finally over. tha­ natz abstains, fatherly head wagging, great eyebrows in a frown. "she's never going to be a woman if this goes on. . . ." "and now, liebling," margherita with a rare, and somewhat phony,smile, "let's hear 'animal crackers in my soup'!"" 'super animals in my crack,' " hollers a humorist from the crowd. "no," groans the child. "bianca-" "you bitch," spike heel ringing on the steel deck. it's an act. "haven't you humiliated me enough?" "not nearly enough," pouncing on her daughter, grabbing her by thehair and shaking her. the little girl has fallen to her knees, struggling,trying to get away. "oh, delightful," cries the meat-cleaver lady, "greta's going to pun­ish her." "how i'd like to," murmurs a striking mulatto girl in a strapless gown,pushing forward to watch, tapping slothrop's cheek with her jeweledcigarette holder as satin haunches whisper across his thigh. someone has provided margherita with a steel ruler and an ebony empire chair. shedrags bianca across her lap, pushing up frock and petticoats, yankingdown white lace knickers. beautiful little-girl buttocks rise like moons.the tender crevice tightens and relaxes, suspender straps shift andstretch as bianca kicks her legs, silk stockings squeak together, eroticand audible now that the group have fallen silent and found the me­ dium of touch, hands reaching out to breasts and crotches, adam's ap­ples bobbing, tongues licking lips . . . where's the old masochist and monument slothrop knew back in berlin? it's as if greta is now re­ leasing all the pain she's stored up over the past weeks onto her child'snaked bottom, the skin so finely grained that white centimeter markingsand numerals are being left in mirror-image against the red stripes with 466 ........... ----_ .. -,. _.. ,. . �:�� each blow, crisscrossing, building up a skew matrix of pain on bianca's flesh. tears go streaming down her inverted and reddening face, mixing with mascara, dripping onto the pale lizard surfaces of her mother's shoes . . . her hair has loosened and spills to the deck, dark, salted with the string of little seed pearls. the mulatto girl has backed up against slothrop, reaching behind to fondle his erection, which has nothing be­ tween it and the outside but somebody's loosely-pleated tuxedo trou­ sers. everyone is kind of aroused, thanatz is sitting up on the bar hav­ ing his own as yet unsheathed penis mouthed by one of the white-gloved wends. two of the waiters kneel on deck lapping at the juicy genitals of a blonde in a wine velvet frock, who meantime is lick­ ing ardently the tall and shiny french heels of an elderly lady in lemon organza busy fastening felt-lined silver manacles to the wrists of her es­ cort, a major of the yugoslav artillery in dress uniform, who kneels with nose and tongue well between the bruised buttocks of a long-legged ballerina from paris, holding up her silk skirt for him with docile finger­ tips while her companion, a tall swiss divorcee in tight-laced leather corselette and black russian boots, undoes the top of her friend's gown and skillfully begins to lash at her bared breasts with the stems of half a dozen roses, red as the beads of blood which spring up and soon are shaking off the ends of her stiff nipples to splash into the eager mouth of another wend who's being jerked off by a retired dutch banker sitting on the deck, shoes and socks just removed by two adorable schoolgirls, twin sisters in fact, in identical dresses of flowered voile, with each of the banker's big toes inserted now into a downy little furrow as they lie forward along his legs kissing his shaggy stomach, pretty twin bottoms arched to receive in their anal openings the cocks of the two waiters who have but lately been, if you recall, eating that juicy blonde in that velvet dress back down the oder river a ways. . . . as for slothrop, he ends up coming between the round shuddering tits of a viennese girl with hair the color of a lioness's pelt and emerald eyes with lashes thick as fur, his sperm surging out into the hollow of her arched throat and among all the diamonds of her necklace, burning agelessly through the haze of his seed-and it feels, at least, like every­ body came together, though how could that be? he does notice that the only person not connected, aside from antoni and stefania, seems to be the jap liaison man, who's been sitting alone, one deck up, watching. not masturbating or anything, just watching, watching the river, the night ... well, they're pretty inscrutable, you know, those japs. there is a general withdrawing from orifices after a while, drinking, doping and gabbing resume, and many begin to drift away to catch 467 some sleep. here and there a couple or threesome linger. a c-melodysaxophone player has the bell of his instrument snuggled between the widespread thighs of a pretty matron in sunglasses, yes sunglasses atnight, this is some degenerate company slothrop has fallen in with all right-the saxman is playing "chattanooga choo choo," and those vi­ brations are just driving her wild. a girl with an enormous glass dildo in­side which baby piranhas are swimming in some kind of decadent laven­ der medium amuses herself between the buttocks of a stout transvestite in lace stockings and a dyed sable coat. a montenegran countess is being fucked simultaneously in her chignon and her navel by a pair ofoctogenarians who wear only jackboots and are carrying on some sort oftechnical discussion in what seems to be ecclesiatical latin. the sun is still hours away, down the vast unreadable underslope ofrussia. fog closes in, and the engines slow. wrecks slide away underthe keel of the white ship. springtime corpses caught in the wreckagetwist and flow as the anubis moves by overhead. under the bowsprit,the golden jackal, the only being aboard that can see through the fog,stares ahead, down the river, toward swinemiinde. d d d d d d d slothrop here's been dreaming about llandudno, where he spent arainy furlough once drinking bitter in bed with a tug skipper's daughter.also where lewis carroll wrote that alice in wonderland. so, they put up a statue of the white rabbit in llandudno. white rabbit's been talking to slothrop, serious and crucial talk, but on the way up to wak­ing he loses it all, as usual. he lies staring at ducts and raceways over­head, asbestos-covered elbows, pipes, gages, tanks, switchboards,flanges, unions, valve-wheels and all their thickets of shadow. it's noisyas hell. sunlight filters down the hatches, so that must mean it's morn­ ing. in a corner of his vision now, he catches a flutter of red. "you mustn't tell margherita. please." that bianca. hair down to her hips, cheeks smudged, eyes hot. "she'll kill me." "what time is it?" "the sun's been up for hours. why do you want to know?" why does he want to know. hmm. maybe he'll go back to sleep,here. "your mother upset with you, or something?""oh, she's gone out of her mind, she just accused me of having anaffair with thanatz. madness, of course we're good friends, but that's all . if she paid any attention to me she'd know that." 468 "she sure was paying attention to your ass there, kid." "oh, dear," lifting her dress, turning so she can also watch slothrop back over a shoulder. "i can still feel that. did she leave marks?" "well, you'll have to come closer." she moves toward him, smiling, pointing toes each step. "i watched you sleep. you're very pretty, you know. mother also said you're cruel." "watch this." he leans to bite her gently on one cheek of her ass. she squirms, but doesn't move away. "mm, there's a zipper there, could you ... " she shrugs, twists as he unzips her, red taffeta slides down and off and sure enough there's one or two lavender bruises starting to show up on her bottom, which is perfectly shaped, smooth as cream. small as she is, she's been further laced into a tiny black corset, which compresses her waist now to the di­ ameter of a brandy bottle and pushes pre-subdeb breasts up into little white crescents. satin straps, adorned with intricately pornographic needlework, run down each thigh to hold up stockings with tops of dark alencon lace. the bare backs of her legs come brushing softly across slothrop's face. he starts taking giant, ass-enthusiast bites now, mean­ time reaching around to play with cuntlips and clit, bianca's little feet shifting in a nervous dance and scarlet nails digging sharp as needles un­ derneath her stocking tops and into her legs as he goes planting hickeys, red nebulae across her sensitive spaces. she smells like soap, flowers, sweat, cunt. her long hair falls to the level of slothrop's eyes, fine and black, the split ends whispering across the small of her white back in and out of invisibility, like rain ... she has turned, and sinks to her knees to undo his pleated trousers. leaning, brushing hair back behind her ears, the little girl takes the head of slothrop's cock into her rouged mouth. her eyes glitter through fern lashes, baby rodent hands race his body unbuttoning, caressing. such a slender child: her throat swallow­ ing, strummed to a moan as he grabs her hair, twists it . . . she has him all figured out. knows exactly when to take her mouth away and stand up, high-heeled parisian slippers planted to either side of him, swaying, hair softly waving forward to frame her face, repeated by the corset darkly framing her pubic mound and belly. raising bare arms, little bianca lifts her long hair, tosses her little head to let the mane shiver down her back, needle-tipped fingers drifting then down slowly, making him wait, down over the satin, all the shiny hooks and laces, to her thighs. then her face, round with baby-fat, enormous night-shadowed eyes comes swooping in as she kneels, guides his penis into her and set­ tles slow, excruciating till he fills her, stuffs her full. . . . now something, oh, kind of funny happens here. not that slothrop is 469 ��'_'---:ft___ i /� --l . really aware of it now, while it's going on-but later on, it will occur tohim that he was-this may sound odd, but he was somehow, actually,well, inside his own cock. if you can imagine such a thing. yes, insidethe metropolitan organ entirely, all other colonial tissue forgotten andleft to fend for itself, his arms and legs it seems woven among vesselsand ducts, his sperm roaring louder and louder, getting ready to erupt,somewhere below his feet ... maroon and evening cuntlight reacheshim in a single ray through the opening at the top, refracted through theclear juices flowing up around him. he is enclosed. everything is aboutto come, come incredibly, and he's helpless here in this exploding em­prise . . . red flesh echoing . . . an extraordinary sense of waiting torise.... she posts, his pretty horsewoman, face to the overhead, quivering upand down, thightop muscles strung hard as cable, baby breasts workingout the top of her garment . . . slothrop pulls bianca to him by her nip­ples and bites each one very hard. sliding her arms around his neck,hugging him, she starts to come, and so does he, their own flood takinghim up then out of his expectancy, out the eye at tower's summit and into her with a singular detonation of touch. announcing the void, whatcould it be but the kingly voice of the aggregat itself? somewhere in their lying-still are her heart, buffeting, a chickadee inthe snow, her hair, draping and sheltering both their faces, little tongueat his temples and eyes on and on, silk legs rubbing his flanks, coolleather of her shoes against his legs and ankles, shoulderblades risinglike wings whenever she hugs him. what happened back there? slo­throp thinks he might cry. they have been holding each other. she's been talking about hidingout. "sure. but we'll have to get off sometime, swinemiinde, someplace.""no. we can get away. i'm a child, i know how to hide. i can hide you too." he knows she can. he knows. right here, right now, under the make­ up and the fancy underwear, she exists, love, invisibility.... for slo­throp this is some discovery. but her arms about his neck are shifting now, apprehensive. for goodreason. sure he'll stay for a while, but eventually he'll go, and for this heis to be counted, after all, among the zone's lost. the pope's staff is al­ ways going to remain barren, like slothrop's own unflowering cock.so when he disentangles himself, it is extravagantly. he creates abureaucracy of departure, inoculations against forgetting, exit visasstamped with love-bites . . . but coming back is something he's already 470 forgotten about. straightening his bow tie, brushing off the satin lapels of his jacket, buttoning up his pants, back in uniform of the day, he turns his back on her, and up the ladder he goes. the last instant their eyes were in touch is already behind him. . . . alone, kneeling on the painted steel, like her mother she knows how horror will come when the afternoon is brightest. and like margherita, she has her worst visions in black and white. each day she feels closer to the edge of something. she dreams often of the same journey: a passage by train, between two well-known cities, lit by that same nacreous wrin­ kling the films use to suggest rain out a window. in a pullman, dictating her story. she feels able at last to tell of a personal horror, tell it clearly in a way others can share. that may keep it from taking her past the edge, into the silver-salt dark closing ponderably slow at her mind's flank . . . when she was growing out her fringes, in dark rooms her own unaccustomed hair, beside her eyes, would loom like a presence.... in her ruined towers now the bells gong back and forth in the wind. frayed ropes dangle or slap where her brown hoods no longer glide above the stone. her wind keeps even dust away. it is old daylight: late, and cold. horror in the brightest hour of afternoon . . . sails on the sea too small and distant to matter ... water too steel and cold.... her look now-this deepening arrest-has already broken slothrop's seeing heart: has broken and broken, that same look swung as he drove by, thrust away into twilights of moss and crumbling colony, of skinny clouded-cylinder gas pumps, of tin moxie signs gentian and bittersweet as the taste they were there to hustle on the weathered sides of barns, looked for how many last times up in the rearview mirror, all of them too far inside metal and combustion, allowing the days' targets more re­ ality than anything that might come up by surprise, by murphy's law, where the salvation could be. . . . lost, again and again, past poor dam­ busted and drowned becket, up and down the rut-brown slopes, the hayrakes rusting in the afternoon, the sky purple-gray, dark as chewed gum, the mist starting to make white dashes in the air, aimed earthward a quarter, a half inch . . . she looked at him once, of course he still re­ members, from down at the end of a lunchwagon counter, grill smoke working onto the windows patient as shoe grease against the rain for the plaid, hunched-up leaky handful inside, off the jukebox a quick twinkle in the bleat of a trombone, a reed section, planting swing notes pre­ cisely into the groove between silent midpoint and next beat, jumping it pah (hm) pah (hm) pah so exactly in the groove that you knew it was ahead but felt it was behind, both of you, at both ends of the counter, could feel it, feel your age delivered into a new kind of time that may 471 " ,... .1. i i ��--/. . �.,/it . have allowed you to miss the rest, the graceless expectations of old men who watched, in bifocal and mucus indifference, watched you lindy-hop into the pit by millions, as many millions as necessary. . . . of course slothrop lost her, and kept losing her-it was an american requirement -out the windows of the greyhound, passing into beveled stonery, green and elm-folded on into a failure of perception, or, in a more sinis­ ter sense, of will (you used to know what these words mean), she has moved on, untroubled, too much theirs, no chance of a beige summer spook at her roadside. . . . leaving slothrop in his city-reflexes and harvard crew sox-both happening to be red-ring manacles, comicbook irons (though the comic book was virtually uncirculated, found by chance near nightfall by a hopper at a berkshire sandbank. the name of the hero-or being-wassundial. the frames never enclosed him-or it-for long enough to tell. sundial, hashing in, hashing out again, came from "across the wind," bywhich readers understood "across some how, more or less sheet and ver­ tical: a wall in constant motion"-over there was a different world, where sundial took care of business they would never understand). distant, yes these are pretty distant. sure they are. too much closer and it begins to hurt to bring her back. but there is this eurydice-obses­ sion, this bringing back out of . . . though how much easier just to leave her there, in fetid carbide and dead-canary soups of breath and come out and have comfort enough to try only for a reasonable fascimile­ "why bring her back? why try? it's only the difference between the real boxtop and the one you draw for them." no. how can he believe that? it's what they want him to believe, but how can he? no dif­ ference between a boxtop and its image, all right, their whole econ­ omy's based on that . . . but she must be more than an image, a product, a promise to pay. . . . of all her putative fathers-max schlepzig and masked extras on one side of the moving film, franz pokler and certainly other pairs of hands busy through trouser cloth, that alpdrucken night, on the other­ bianca is closest, this last possible moment below decks here behind the ravening jackal, closest to you who came in blinding color, slouchedalone in your own seat, never threatened along any rookwise row or di­ agonal all night, you whose interdiction from her mother's water-white love is absolute, you, alone, saying sure i know them, omitted, chuckling count me in, unable, thinking probably some hooker . . . she favors you,most of all. you'll never get to see her. so somebody has to tell you. 472 �. ..... • .... i / �:t-�=--r-�� \ o 0 0 0 0 0 0 halfway up the ladder, slothrop is startled by a bright set of teeth, beaming out of a dark hatchway. "i was watching. i hope you don't mind." seems to be that nip again, who introduces himself now as en­ sign morituri, of the imperial japanese navy. "yeah, i ... " why is slothrop drawling this way? "saw ya watching . . . last night too, mister. . . ." "you think i am a voyeur. yes you do. but it isn't that. there is no thrill, i mean. but when i watch people, i feel less alone." "w'l hell, ensign ... why don'tcha just ... join in? they're always lookin' fer ... company." "oh, my goodness," grinning one of them big polyhedral jap grins, like they do, "then i would feel more alone." tables and chairs have been set out under orange-and-red-stripe awnings on the fantail. slothrop and morituri have got the place almost to themselves, except for some girls in two-piece swimsuits out to catch some sun before it goes away. cumulonimbus are building up dead ahead. you can hear thunder in the distance. the air is coming awake. a steward brings coffee, cream, porridge and fresh oranges. slothrop looks at the porridge, doubtful. ''i'll take it," ensign morituri grabbing the bowl. "oh, sure." slothrop notices now how this nip also has this wide han­ dle-bar mustache. "aha, aha. i'm hep to you. a porridge fan! shameful. a latent anglophile-yeah, you're blushing." pointing and hollering ha, ha, ha. "you've found me out. yes, yes. i've been on the wrong side for six years." "ever try to get away?" "and find out what you people are really like? oh, my golly. what if phile changes then to phobe? where would i be?" he giggles, spits an orange pit over the side. seems he put in a few weeks' training on that formosa, in kamikaze school, but they washed him out. no one ever told him why, exactly. something to do with his attitude. "i just didn't have a good attitude," he sighs. "so they sent me back here again, by way of russia and switzerland. this time with the propaganda minis­ try." he would sit most of the day watching allied footage for what could be pulled and worked into newsreels to make the axis look good 473 ",._ .1; i i �!-�--/� r '4.. ••• ;. •• and the other side look bad. "all i know about great britain comes from that raw material." "looks like german movies have warped other outlooks around here too." "you mean margherita's. did you know, that's how we met! a mu­ tual friend at ufa. i was on holiday at bad karma-just before the pol­ ish invasion. the little town where you joined us. it was a spa. i watched you fall in the water. then you climbed aboard. i also watched margherita watching you. please don't be offended, slothrop, but it might be better to stay away from her right now." "not at all. i know something creepy is going on." he tells morituri about the incident in the sprudelhof, and margherita's flight from the apparition in black. the ensign nods, grim, twisting half his mustache up so it points in a saber at one eye. "she didn't tell you what happened there? golly, jack, you had better know. . . " ensign morituri's story wars have a way of overriding the days just before them. in the looking back, there is such noise and gravity. but we are conditioned to forget. so that the war may have more importance, yes, but still . . . isn't the hidden machinery easier to see in the days leading up to the event? there are arrangements, things to be expedited . . . and often the edges are apt to lift, briefly, and we see things we were not meant to.... they'd tried to talk margherita out of going to hollywood. she went, and she failed. rollo was there when she returned, to keep the worst from happening. for a month he impounded sharp objects, kept her at ground level and away from chemicals, which meant she didn't sleep much. she would drop off and wake up hysterical. afraid to go to sleep.afraid she wouldn't know how to get back. rollo did not have a keen mind. he meant well, but after a month of her he found he couldn't take any more. actually it surprised everyonethat he'd lasted so long. greta was handed over to sigmund, hardly im­ proved, but perhaps no worse. the trouble with sigmund was the place he happened to be living in, a drafty, crenelated deformity overlooking a cold little lake in the ba­ varian alps. parts of it must have dated back to the fall of rome. that was where sigmund brought her. she had got the idea somewhere that she was part jewish. things in 474 _ � , / �7 �-it--� germany by then, as everyone knows, were very bad. margherita was terrified of being "found out." she heard gestapo in every puff of air that slipped in, among any of a thousand windways of dilapidation. sig­ mund spent whole nights trying to talk it away. he was no better at it than rollo. it was around this time that her symptoms began. however psychogenic these pains, tics, hives and nauseas, her suffer­ ing was real. acupuncturists came down by zeppelin from berlin, show­ ing up in the middle of the night with little velvet cases full of gold needles. viennese analysts, indian holy men, baptists from america trooped in and out of sigmund's castle, stage-hypnotists and colombian curanderos slept on the rug in front of the fireplace. nothing worked. sigmund grew alarmed, and before long as ready as margherita to hallu­ cinate. probably it was she who suggested bad karma. it had a reputa­ tion that summer for its mud, hot and greasy mud with traces of radium, jet black, softly bubbling. ah. anyone who's been sick in that way can imagine her hope. that mud would cure anything. where was anybody that summer before the war? dreaming. the spas that summer, the summer ensign morituri came to bad karma, were crowded with sleepwalkers. nothing for him to do at the embassy. they suggested a holiday till september. he should have known some­ thing was up, but he only went on holiday to bad karma-spent the days drinking pilsener urquelle in the cafe by the lake in the pavilion park. he was a stranger, half the time drunk, silly beer-drunk, and he hardly spoke their language. but what he saw must have been going on all over germany. a premeditated frenzy. margherita and sigmund moved along the same magnolia-shaded paths, sat out in rolling-chairs to hear concerts of patriotic music . . . when it rained they fidgeted over card games in one of the public rooms of their kurhaus. at night they watched the fireworks-fountains, spark-foaming rockets, yellow starbursts high over poland. that oneiric season. . . . there was no one in all the spas to read anything in the pat­ terns the fires made. they were only gay lights, nervous as the fantasies that flickered from eye to eye, trailing the skin like the ostrich fans of 50 years ago. when did sigmund first notice her absences, or when did they be­ come for him more than routine? always she gave him plausible stories: a medical appointment, a chance meeting with an old friend, drowsi­ ness in the mud-baths, while time raced by. it may have been this unac­ customed sleep that got him suspicious at last, because of what her wakefulness had put him through in the south. the stories about the children in the local newspapers could have made no impression, not 475 then. sigmund only read headlines, and rarely at that, to fill up a dead moment. morituri saw them often. they would meet and bow, exchange heil hitlers, and the ensign would be permitted a few minutes to practicehis german. except for waiters and barmen, they were the only peoplehe spoke with. out at the tennis courts, waiting in line at the pump room under the cool colonnade, at an aquatic corso, a battle of flowers, a venetian fete, sigmund and margherita hardly changed, he with his­ morituri thought of it as his american smile, around the amber stem of his dead pipe . . . his head like a flesh christmas ornament . . . how long ago it was . . . she with her yellow sunglasses and garbo hats. the flowers were all that changed about her day to day: morning glory, al­mond blossom, foxglove. morituri grew to look forward so to these daily meetings. his wife and daughters clear on the other side of the world,himself exiled in a country that bewildered and oppressed him. he needed the passing zoogoers' civility, the guidebook words. he knows he stared back, every bit as curious. in their european slickness, they allfascinated him: the white-plumed old ladies in the lying-out chairs, the veterans of the great war like serene hippopotamuses soaking in thesteel baths, their effeminate secretaries chattering shrill as monkeys across the sprudelstrasse, while far down the arches of lindens and chestnuts you could hear the endless roar of carbon dioxide at the bub­ bling spring, coming out of solution in great shuddering spheres . . . but sigmund and margherita fascinated him most of all. «they seemed asalien here as i was. we each have antennas, don't we, tuned to recog­nize our own. . . ." one forenoon, by accident, he met sigmund, alone, a tweed statue on his walking stick in front of the inhalatorium, looking as if he'd lost his way, no real place to go, no desire. without premeditation, then, theybegan to talk. the time was right. they moved off presently, strollingthrough the crowds of sick foreigners, while sigmund told of histroubles with greta, her jewish fantasy, her absences. the day before,he had caught her out in a lie. she'd come in very late. her hands hadtaken a fine tremor that wouldn't stop. he'd begun to notice things. hershoes, beaded with drying black mud. a seam in her dress widened, nearly ripped, though she'd been losing weight. but he hadn't the courage to have it out with her. morituri, who had been reading the papers, for whom the connectionhad sprung up like a monster from the tamed effervescences of the trinkhalle, but who did not have the words, german or otherwise, totell sigmund, morituri, the beer ensign, began to follow her then. she 476 .... .... . ... ---.�'):�_ 17--� never looked back, but she knew he was there. at the weekly ball in the kursaal he felt, for the first time, a reticence among them all. margher­ ita, eyes he was accustomed to seeing covered with sunglasses naked now, burning terribly, never took her gaze from him. the kur-orches­ tra played selections from the merry widow and secrets of suzanne, out-of-date music, and yet, when bits of it found morituri years later in the street, over the radio, they never failed to bring back the unwritten taste of that night, the three of them at the edge of a deepness none could sound . . . some last reprise of the european thirties he had never known . . . which are also for him a particular room, a salon in the aft­ ernoon: lean girls in gowns, mascara all around their eyes, the men with faces shaven very smooth, film-star polished . . . not operetta but dance music here, sophisticated, soothing, a bit "modern," dipping elegantly in the up-to-date melodic lines . . . an upstairs room, with late sunlight coming in, deep carpets, voices saying nothing heavy or complex, smiles informed and condescending. he has awakened that morning in a soft bed, he looks forward to an evening at a cabaret dancing to popular love songs played in just such a mannered and polished style. his after­ noon salon with its held tears, its smoke, its careful passion has been a way-station between the comfortable morning and the comfortable night: it was europe, it was the smoky, citied fear of death, and most perilous it was margherita's scrutable eyes, that lost encounter in the kursaal, black eyes among those huddled jewels and nodding old gener­ als, in the roar from the brodelbrunnen outside, filling the quiet spaces in the music as machinery was soon to fill the sky. next evening, morituri followed her out for the last time. down the worn paths, under the accustomed trees, past the german goldfish pool that reminded him of home, across the golf links, the day's last white­ mustached men struggling up out of traps and hazards, their caddies standing at allegorical attention in the glow of the sunset, the bundled clubs in fascist silhouette.... twilight came down on bad karma that night pallid and violent: the horizon was a biblical disaster. greta had dressed all in black, a hat with a veil covering most of her hair, purse slung by a long strap over one shoulder. as choices of a destination nar­ rowed to one, as morituri ran into snares the night began to layout for him, prophecy filled him like the river wind: where she had been on her absences, how the children in those headlines hadthey had arrived at the edge of the black mud pool: that under­ ground presence, old as earth, partly enclosed back at the spa and a name given to.... the offering was to be a boy, lingering after all the others had gone. his hair was cold snow. morituri could only hear frag477 �b� i ---�� ;/'4 .. ments of what they said. the boy wasn't afraid of her at first. he might not have recognized her from his dreams. it would have been his only hope. but they had made that impossible, his german overseers. mor­ ituri stood by in his uniform, waiting, unbuttoning the jacket so that he could move, though he didn't want to. certainly they were all repeatingthis broken act from an earlier time. . . . her voice began its rise, and the boy his trembling. "you have been in exile too long." it was a loud clap in the dusk. "come home, with me," she cried, "back to your people." now he was trying to break away, but her hand, her gloved hand, her claw had flown out and seized his arm. "little piece of jewish shit. don't try to run away from me." "no ... " but at the very end rising, in a provocative question. "you know who i am, too. my home is the form of light," burlesqu­ ing it now, in heavy yiddish dialect, actressy and false, "i wander all the diaspora looking for strayed children. i am israel. i am the shekhinah, queen, daughter, bride, and mother of god. and i will take you back, you fragment of smashed vessel, even if i must pull you by your nastylittle circumcised penis-" "no ... " so ensign morituri committed then the only known act of heroism in his career. it's not even in his folder. she had gathered the boy strug­ gling, one glove busy between his legs. morituri rushed forward. for a moment the three of them swayed, locked together. gray nazi statuary:its name may have been "the family." none of the greek stillness: no, they moved. immortality was not the issue. that's what made them different. no survival, beyond the senses' taking of it-no handing­down. doomed as d'annunzio' s adventure at fiume, as the reich itself, as the poor creatures from whom the boy now tore loose and ran off into the evening. margherita collapsed by the edge of the great lightless pool. morituriknelt beside her while she cried. it was terrible. "what had brought himthere, what had understood and moved in so automatically, fell back now to sleep. his conditioning, his verbal, ranked and uniformed self took over again. he knelt shivering, more afraid than he'd ever been in his life. it was she who led their way back to the spa.she and sigmund left bad karma that night. the boy may have beentoo frightened, the light too faint, morituri himself may have had strong protectors, for god knows he was visible enough there-but no policecame. "it never occurred to me to go to them. in my heart, i knew shehad murdered. you may condemn me for it. but i saw what i'd be handing her over to, and it came to the same thing, in official custody or 478 ..................... " . ��1--�, not, you see." the next day was 1 september. there was no longer any way for children to vanish mysteriously. the forenoon has gone dark. rain spits in under the awning. the bowl of porridge has stayed after all untouched in front of morituri. slo­ throp is sweating, staring at the bright remains of an orange. "listen," it has occurred to his agile brain, "what about bianca, then? is she going to be safe with that greta, do you think?" frisking his great mustache, "what do you mean? are you asking, 'can she be saved?' " "oh, pip, pip, old jap, come off it-" "look, what can you save her from?" his eyes are prying slothrop away from his comfort. rain is drumming now on the awnings, spilling in clear lacework from the edges. "but wait a minute. oh, shit, that woman yesterday, in that sprudel­ hof-" "yes. remember greta also saw you coming up out of the river. now think of all the folklore among these people about radioactivity-these travelers from spa to spa, season after season. it's grace. it's the holy wa­ ters of lourdes. this mysterious radiation that can cure so much­ might it be the ultimate cure?" "uh ... " "i watched her face as you came aboard. i was with her at the edge of one radioactive night. i know what she saw this time. one of those children-preserved, nourished by the mud, the radium, growing taller and stronger while slowly, viscous and slow, the currents bore him along underground, year by year, until at last, grown to manhood, he came to the river, came up out of the black radiance of herself to find her again, shekhinah, bride, queen, daughter. and mother. motherly as sheltering mud and glowing pitchblende-" almost directly overhead, thunder suddenly breaks in a blinding egg of sound. somewhere inside the blast, slothrop has murmured, "quit fooling." "are you going to risk finding out?" who is this, oh sure it's a jap ensign, looking at me like this. but e�� where are bianca's arms, her defenseless mouth.... "well in a day or ru�� two we'll be in swinemiinde, right?" talking to keep from-get up from ��� the table then, you assholed "we'll all just keep moving, that's all. in the end it doesn't matter." m "look, you've got kids, how can you say that? is that all you want, (0)'& just to 'keep moving'?" 479 "�_.j��___ i ,_ � -,/ �, .. , ...,. "i want to see the war over in the pacific so that i can go home. since you ask. it's the season of the plum rains now, the bai-u, when all the plums are ripening. i want only to be with michiko and our girls, and once i'm there, never to leave hiroshima again. i think you'd like it there. it's a city on honshu, on the inland sea, very pretty, a perfect size, big enough for city excitement, small enough for the serenity a man needs. but these people are not returning, they are leaving theirhomes you see-" but one of the knots securing the rain-heavy awning to its frame has given way, white small-stuff unlacing rapidly, whipping around in the rain. the awning sags, funneling rainwater at slothrop and morituri,and they flee below decks. they get separated in a crowd of newly-risen roisterers. there is hardly a thing now in slothrop's head but getting to bianca. at the end of the passageway, across -a score of empty faces, he spots stefania inwhite cardigan and slacks, beckoning. it takes him five minutes to thread his way to her, by which time he's picked up a brandy alexan­der, a party hat, a sign taped to his back urging whoever reads it, in low pomeranian, to kick slothrop, lipstick smudges in three shades of magenta, and a black italian maduro someone has thoughtfully alreadylit. "you may look like the soul of conviviality," stefania greets him, "butit doesn't fool me. under that cheerful mask is the face of a jonah.""you mean, uh, the, uh-" "i mean margherita. she's locked herself in the head. hysterical. no-body can bring her out." "so you're looking at me. how about thanatz?" "thanatz has disappeared, and so has bianca." "oh, shit." "margherita thinks you've done away with her." "not me." he gives her a quick rundown of ensign morituri's tale.some of her elan, her resilience, go away. she bites a fingernail."yes, there were rumors. sigmund, before he vanished, leaked justenough to titillate people, but never got specific. that was his style. lis­ten, slothrop. do you think bianca's in any danger?""i'll try to find out." he is interrupted here by a swift kick in the ass. "unlucky you," crows a voice behind them. "i'm the only one onboard who reads low pomeranian." "unlucky you," stefania nods. "all i wanted was a free ride to swinemiinde." ....... ............. ------'" i . ��---'<� but like stefania sez, "there's only one free ride. meantime, start working off the fare for this one. go see margherita." "you want me to-come on." "we don't want anything to happen." one of the general orders aboard this vessel. nothing shall happen. well, slothrop politely sticks the rest of his cigar between mme. pro­ calowska's teeth and leaves her puffing on it, fists jammed in her sweater pockets. bianca isn't in the engine room. he moves around in pulsing bulb­ light, among asbestos-packed masses, burning himself once or twice where insulation's missing, looking into pale recesses, shadows, wonder­ ing about his own insulation here. nothing but machinery, noise. he heads for the ladder. a scrap of red is waiting for him . . . no, only her frock, with a damp trace of his own semen still at the hem . . . this loud humidity has kept it there. he crouches, holding the garment, smelling her smell. i'm a child, i know how to hide, and i can hide you. "bianca," he calls, "bianca, come out." gathered about the door to the head, he finds an assortment of upper-class layabouts and drunks blocking the passageway along with a litter of bottles and glassware, and a seated circle of cocaine habitues, crystal birds hying up into forests of nose hair off the point of a gold and ruby dagger. slothrop pushes through, leans on the door and calls mar­ gherita's name. "go away." "you don't have to come out. just let me in." "i know who you are." "please." "they were very clever, sending you as poor max. but it won't work now." "i'm through with them. i swear it. i need you, greta." bullshit. for what? "they'll kill you, then. go away." "i know where bianca is." "what have you done with her?" "just-will you let me in?" after a full minute's silence, she does. a funseeker or two tries to push in, but he slams the door and locks it again. greta is wearing nothing but a black chemise. strokes of black hair curl high on her thighs. her face is white, old, strained. "where is she?" "hiding." "",� .ti i i ��--/-�,� � "from me?" "from them." a quick look at him. too many mirrors, razors, scissors, lights. too white. "but you're one of them." "quit it, you know i'm not." "you are. you came up out of the river." "well, that's cause i fell in, greta." "then they made you." he watches her playing, nervous, with strands of her hair. the anu­ bis has begun to rock some, but the sickness rising in him is for his head, not his stomach. as she begins to talk, nausea begins to fill him: a glow­ ing black mudslide of nausea. . . . d d d d d d d it was always easy for men to come and tell her who to be. other girlsof her generation grew up asking, "who am i?" for them it was a ques­tion full of pain and struggle. for gretel it was hardly even a question.she had more identities than she knew what to do with. some of these gretels have been only the sketchiest of surfaces-others are deeper. many have incredible gifts, antigravity, dreams of prophecy ... co­ matic images surround their faces, glowing in the air: the light itself is actually crying tears, weeping in this stylized way, as she is borne along through the mechanical cities, the meteorite walls draped in midair, every hollow and socket empty as a bone, and the failing shadow thatshines black all around it . . . or is held in staring postures, long gowns,fringe and alchemical symbol, veils flowing from leather skullcaps pad­ded concentric as a bike-racer's helmet, with crackling-tower and obsid­ian helix, with drive belts and rollers, with strange airship passages thatthread underneath arches, solemnly, past louvers and giant fins in the city mist.... in weisse sandwiiste von neumexiko she played a cowgirl. firstthing, they'd asked, "can you ride?" "of course," she'd answered. never been closer than roadside ditches in time of war to any horse inher life, but she needed the work. when the moment came to saddle up, it never occurred to her to be afraid of the beast pressing up be­tween her thighs. it was an american horse named snake. trained or not, it could have run away with her, even killed her. but they pranced 482 the screen full of the sagittarian fire, gretel and that colt, and her smile never drew back. here is one of the veils she has shed, a thin white scum, a caustic resi­ due from one recent night in berlin. "while you were asleep, i left the house. i went out in the street, without my shoes. i found a corpse. a man. a week's gray beard and old gray suit. . . ." it was lying still and very white behind a wall. she lay down beside it and put her arms around it. there was frost. the body rolled toward her and the wrinkles stayed frozen in the cloth. she felt its bristled face rub her own cheek. the smell was no worse than cold meat from the icebox. she lay, hold­ ing it, till morning. "tell me how it is in your land." what woke her? boots in the street, an early steamshovel. she can hardly hear her tired whispering. corpse answers: "we live very far beneath the black mud. days of traveling." though she couldn't move its limbs easily as a doll's, she could make it say and think exactly what she wished. for an instant too she did wonder-not quite in words-if that's how her own soft mind might feel, under the fingers of those who . . . "mm, it's snug down here. now and then you can pick up something from them-a distant rumbling, the implied silhouette of some explo­ sion, conducted here through the earth overhead ... but nothing, ever, too close. it's so dark that things glow. we have flight. there's no sex. but there are fantasies, even many of those we used to attach to sex­ that we once modulated its energy with. . . ." as the dizzy debutante lotte lustig, she found herself during a flood, disguised as a scrubwoman, proceeding downriver in a bathtub with rich playboy max schlepzig. every girl's dream. name of the movie was lugend herauf! (a lighthearted pun, of course, on the then popular phrase "juden heraus!"). actually, all the bathtub scenes were process shots-she never did get to go out on the river in the bathtub with max, all that was done with doubles, and in the final print it survives only as a very murky long shot. the figures are darkened and deformed, resem­ bling apes, and the quality of the light is peculiar, as if the whole scene were engraved on a dark metal such as lead. greta's double was actually an italian stunt man named blazzo in a long blonde wig. they carried on a romance for a while. but greta wouldn't go to bed with him, unless he wore that wig! out on the river the rain lashes: the rapids can now be heard ap483 or c� "�� j ----,/� .....�.. bianca is usually silver, or of no color at all: thousands of times taken, strained through glass, warped in and out the violet-bleeding interfaces of double and triple protars, schneider angulons, voigtlander collin­ ears, steinheil orthostigmats, the gundlach turner-reichs of 1895. for greta it is her daughter's soul each time, an inexhaustible soul. . . . this scarf of an only child, tucked in waist-high, always out vulnerable to the wind. to call her an extension of her mother's ego is of course to invite the bitterest sarcasm. but it's possible, now and then, for greta to see bianca in other children, ghostly as a double exposure . . . clearly yes very clearly in gottfried, the young pet and protege of captain blicero. proaching, still impossible to see, but real, and inevitable. and the dou­ bles both experience an odd, ticklish fear now that perhaps they are re­ ally lost, and that there is really no camera on shore behind the fine gray scribbling of willows . . . all the crew, sound-men, grips, gaffers have left . . . or never even arrived . . . and what was that the currents just brought to knock against our snow-white cockle shell? and what was that thud, so stiffened and so mute? "pull down my straps for a moment. is it dark enough? look. tha­ natz said they were luminous. that he knew each one by heart. they're very white today; aren't they? hmm. long and white, like cobwebs. they're on my ass too. around the insides of my thighs.... " many times, afterward, after the blood had stopped and he had put on the al­ cohol, thanatz would sit with her lying across his knees, and read the scars down her back, as a gypsy reads a palm. life-scar, heart-scar. croix mystique. what fortunes and fantasies! he was so exalted, after the whippings. so taken away by the idea that they would win out, es­ cape. he'd fall asleep before the wildness and hope had quite left him. she loved him most at those moments, just before sleep, her own dorsal side aflame, his little head heavy on her breast, while scar-tissue formed silently on her, cell by cell, in the night. she felt almost safe.... each time the lash struck, each attack, in her helplessness to escape,there would come to her a single vision, only one, for each peak of pain.the eye at the top of the pyramid. the sacrificial city, with figures inrust-colored robes. the dark woman waiting at the end of the street. the hooded face of sorrowing denmark, leaning out over germany.the cherry-red coals falling through the night. bianca in a spanishdancer's costume, stroking the barrel of a gun. 484 -. .. . �-�;--� out by one rocket site, in the pine woods, thanatz and gretel found an old road that no one used any more. pieces of pavement were visible here and there among the green underbrush. it seemed that if they fol­ lowed the road they would come to a town, a station or outpost . . . it wasn't at all clear what they would find. but the place would be long deserted. they held hands. thanatz wore an old jacket of green suede, with patches on the sleeves. gretel wore her camel's-hair coat and a white kerchief. in places, pine needles were drifted across the old roadway, so deep as to silence their footsteps. they came to a slide where years ago the road had been washed away. gravel spilled salt-and-pepper downhill toward a river they heard but couldn't see. an old automobile, a hannomag storm, hung there, nose-down, one door smashed open. the lavender-gray metal shell had been picked clean as the skeleton of a deer. somewhere in these woods was the presence that had done this. they skirted the wreck, afraid to come too near the spidered glass, the hard mortality in the shadows of the front seat. remains of houses could be glimpsed, back in the trees. there was now a retreat of the light, though it was still before noon, and the forest grew no thicker here. in the middle of the road, giant turds showed up, fresh, laid in twists like strands of rope-dark and knotted. what could have left them? at the same instant, she and thanatz both realized that for hours now they must have been walking through the ruin of a great city, not an an­ cient ruin, but brought down inside their lifetime. ahead of them, the path curved on, into trees. but something stood now between them and whatever lay around the curve: invisible, impalpable . . . some monitor. saying, "not one step farther. that's all. not one. go back now." it was impossible to move any farther into it. they were both ter­ rified. they turned, feeling it at their backs, and moved away quickly. back at the schubstelle they found blicero in his final madness. the trunks in the cold little clearing were stripped of bark, bleeding with beads of gum from the rocket blasts. "he could have banished us. blicero was a local deity. he wouldn't even have needed a piece of paper. but he wanted us all to stay. he gave us the best there was, beds, food, liquor, drugs. something was being planned, it involved the boy gottfried, that was as unmistakable as the smell of resin, first thing those blue hazy mornings. but blicero would tell us nothing. / i "��--/ "'" � _ "we moved into the heath. there were oilfields, and blackened earth. [abos flew over in diamond shapes, hunting us. blicero had grown on, into another animal . . . a werewolf . . . but with no humanity left in its eyes: that had faded out, day after day, and been replaced by gray furrows, red veins in patterns that weren't human. islands: clotted islands in the sea. sometimes even the topographic lines, nested on a common point. 'it is the map of my ur-heimat,' imagine a shriek so quiet it's almost a whisper, 'the kingdom of lord blicero. a white land.' i had a sudden understanding: he was seeing the world now in mythical regions: they had their maps, real mountains, rivers, and colors. it was not germany he moved through. it was his own space. but he was tak­ ing us along with him! my cunt swelled with blood at the danger, the chances for our annihilation, delicious never knowing when it would come down because the space and time were blicero's own. . . . he did not fall back along roads, he did not cross bridges or lowlands. we sailed lower saxony, island to island. each firing-site was another island, in a white sea. each island had its peak in the center ... was it the position of the rocket itself? the moment of liftoff? a german odys­ sey. which one would be the last, the home island? "i keep forgetting to ask thanatz whatever became of gottfried. thanatz was allowed to stay with the battery. but i was taken away:driven in a hispano-suiza with blicero himself, out through the grayweather to a petrochemical plant that for days had stalked us in a wheel at our horizon, black and broken towers in the distance, clustered to­ gether, a flame that always burned at the top of one stack. it was the castle: blicero looked over, about to speak, and i said, 'the castle.' the mouth smiled quickly, but absent: the wrinkled wolf-eyes had gone even beyond these domestic moments of telepathy, on into its animal north, to a persistence on the hard edge of death i can't imagine, toughcells with the smallest possible flicker inside, running on nothing but ice, or less. he called me katje. 'you'll see that your little trick won't work again. not now, katje.' i wasn't frightened. it was madness i could understand, or else the hallucinating of the very old. the silverstork flew wings-down into our wind, brow low and legs back, prussian occipital knot behind: on its shiny surfaces now appeared black swirls oflimousines and staff cars in the driveway of the main office. i saw a light plane, a two-seater, at the edge of the parking lot. the faces of the men inside seemed familiar. i knew them from films, the power and the grav­ ity were there-they were important men, but i only recognized one:generaldirektor smaragd, from leverkusen. an elderly man who used a cane, a notorious spiritualist before the war, and, it seemed, even now. _. ..... ...... .. r------=-:'" _=e : . / � -�-i � 'greta,' he smiled, groping for my hand. 'ah, we're all here.' but his charm was shared by none of the others. they'd all been waiting for bli­ cero. a meeting of nobles in the castle. they went into the board room. 1 was left with an assistant named drohne, high forehead, graying hair, always fussing with his necktie. he'd seen every one of my films. we moved off into the machinery. through the windows of the board room 1 saw them at a round conference table, with something in the center. it was gray, plastic, shining, light moving on its surfaces. 'what is it?' 1 asked, vamping drohne. he took me out of earshot of the others. 'i think it's for the f-gerat,' he whispered." "f?" sez slothrop, "f-gerat, you sure of that?" "some letter." "s?" "all right, s. they are children at the threshold of language with these words they make up. it looked to me like an ectoplasm-some­ thing they had forced, by their joint will, to materialize on the table. no one's lips were moving. it was a seance. i understood then that blicero had brought me across a frontier. had injected me at last into his native space without a tremor of pain. i was free. men crowded behind me in the corridor, blocking the way back. drohne's hand was sweating on my sleeve. he was a plastics connoisseur. flipping his fingernail against a large clear african mask, cocking his ear-'can you hear it? the true ring of polystyrene . . .' and going into raptures for me over a heavy chalice of methyl methacrylate, a replica of the sangraal. . . . we were by a tower reactor. a strong paint-thinner smell was in the air. clear rods of some plastic came hissing out through an extruder at the bottom of the tower, into cooling channels, or into a chopper. the heat was heavy in the room. i thought of something very deep, black and viscous, feeding this factory. from outside i heard motors. were they all leaving? why was i here? plastic serpents crawled endlessly to left and right. the erections of my escort tried to crawl out the openings in their clothes. i could do whatever i wanted. black radiant and deep. 1 knelt and began unbuttoning drone's trousers. but two others took me by the arms and dragged me off into a warehouse area. others followed, or en­ tered from other doors. great curtains of styrene or vinyl, in all colors, opaque and transparent, hung row after row from overhead. they flared like the northern lights. i felt that somewhere beyond them was an au­ dience, waiting for something to begin. drohne and the men stretched me out on an inflatable plastic mattress. all around, 1 watched a clear crumbling of the air, or of the light. someone said 'butadiene,' and 1 heard beauty dying. . . . plastic rustled and snapped around us, closing 487 ",�__.....}.t�___ i ". ,/-,� ...... ,. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 us in, in ghost white. they took away my clothes and dressed me in an exotic costume of some black polymer, very tight at the waist, open at the crotch. it felt alive on me. 'forget leather, forget satin,' shivered drohne. 'this is imipolex, the material of the future.' 1 can't describe its perfume, or how it felt-the luxury. the moment it touched them it brought my nipples up swollen and begging to be bitten. 1 wanted to feel it against my cunt. nothing 1 ever wore, before or since, aroused me quite as much as imipolex. they promised me brassieres, chemises, stockings, gowns of the same material. drohne had strapped on a gigan­ tic imipolex penis over his own. 1 rubbed my face against it, it was so delicious. . . . there was an abyss between my feet. things, memories, no way to distinguish them any more, went tumbling downward through my head. a torrent. 1 was evacuating all these, out into some void . . . from my vertex, curling, bright-colored hallucinations went streaming . . . baubles, amusing lines of dialogue, objets d'art . . . i was letting them all go. holding none. was this 'submission,' then-let­ ting all these go? "i don't know how long they kept me there. 1 slept, 1 woke. men ap­ peared and vanished. time had lost meaning. one morning 1 was out­ side the factory, naked, in the rain. nothing grew there. something hadbeen deposited in a great fan that went on for miles. some tarry kind of waste. 1 had to walk all the way back to the firing site. they were all gone. thanatz had left a note, asking me to try to get to swinemiinde, something must have happened at the site. there was a silence in that clearing i'd felt only once before. once, in mexico. the year 1 was in america. we were very deep in the jungle. we came on a flight of stone steps, covered with vines, fungus, centuries of decay. the others climbed to the top, but 1 couldn't. it was the same as the day with thanatz, in the pine forest. 1 felt a silence waiting for me up there. notfor them, but for me alone . . . my own personal silence. . . ." up on the bridge of the anubis, the storm paws loudly on the glass, great wet flippers falling at random in out of the night whapf the livingshape visible just for the rainbow edge of the sound-it takes a certain kind of maniac, at least a polish cavalry officer, to stand in this pose be­hind such brittle thin separation, and stare each blow full in its muscu­ larity. behind procalowski the clinometer bob goes to and fro with his ship's rolling: a pendulum in a dream. stormlight has turned the lines of 488 his face black, black as his eyes, black as the watchcap cocked so tough and salty aslant the furrows of his forehead. light clusters, clear, deep, on the face of the radio gear . . . fans up softly off the dial of the pelo­ rus ... spills out portholes onto the white river. inexplicably, the after­ noon has been going on for longer than it should. daylight has been de­ clining for too many hours. corposants have begun to flicker now in the rigging. the storm yanks at rope and cable, the cloudy night goes white and loud, in huge spasms. procalowski smokes a cigar and studies charts of the oder haff. all this light. are the russian lookouts watching from shore, waiting in the rain? is this arm of the passage being kept in grease-pencil, x by dutiful x, across some field of russian plastic, inside where cobwebs whiten the german windows nobody needs to stand at, where phosphor grass ripples across the a-scopes and the play you feel through the hand-crank in the invisible teeth is the difference between hit and miss. . . . vaslav-is the pip you see there even a ship? in the zone, in these days, there is endless simulation-standing waves in the water, large drone-birds, so well-known as to have nicknames among the operators, wayward balloons, flotsam from other theatres of war (brazilian oil­ drums, whisky cases stenciled for fort-lamy), observers from other gal­ axies, episodes of smoke, moments of high albedo-your real targets are hard to come by. too much confusion out here for most replacements and late draftees. only the older scope hands can still maintain a sense of the appropriate: over the watches of their durations, jittering electric green for what must have seemed, at first, forever, they have come to understand distribution . . . they have learned a visual mercy. how probable is the anubis in this estuary tonight? its schedule has lapsed, fashionably, unavoidably: it should have been through swinem­ iinde weeks ago, but the vistula was under soviet interdiction to the white ship. the russians even had a guard posted on board for a while, till the anubian ladies vamped them off long enough to single up all lines-and so the last long reprise of polish homeland was on, across these water-meadows of the north, radio messages following them in clear one day and code the next, an early and shapeless situation, dith­ ering between executioner's silence and the big time. there are inter­ national reasons for an anubis affair right now, and also reasons against, and the arguments go on, too remote to gather, and orders are changed hour to hour. pitching and rolling furiously, the anubis drives northward. light­ ning flickers all around the horizon, and thunder that reminds the mili­ tary men on board of drumfire announcing battles they're not sure now '��_"__ � " i =;;_. _-_. -_ ,/'7t . 490 if they survived or still dream, still can wake up into and die. . . . weather decks shine slick and bare. party litter clogs the drains. stale fat-smoke goes oozing out the galley porthole into the rain. the saloon's been set up for baccarat, and filthy movies are showing in the boiler room. the second dog watch is about to come on. the white ship settles, like the soul of a kerosene lamp just lit, into its evening routine. partygoers stagger fore and aft, evening clothes decorated with sun­ bursts of vomit. ladies lie out in the rain, nipples erect and heavingunder drenched silk. stewards skid along the decks with salvers of dramamine and bicarbonate. barfing aristocracy sag all down the life­ lines. here comes slothrop now, down a ladder to the main deck, bounced by the rolling off of alternate manropes, feeling none too keen. he's lost bianca. gone fussing through the ship doubling back again and again, can't find her any more than his reason for leaving her this morn­ ing. it matters, but how much? now that margherita has wept to him, across the stringless lyre and bitter chasm of a ship's toilet, of her last days with blicero, he knows as well as he has to that it's the s-gerat after all that's following him, it and the pale plastic ubiquity of laszlo j amf. that if he's been seeker and sought, well, he's also baited, and bait. the imipolex question was planted for him by somebody, back at the casino hermann goering, with hopes it would flower into a full imipolectique with its own potency in the zone-but they knew slo­ throp would jump for it. looks like there are sub-slothrop needs theyknow about, and he doesn't: this is humilating on the face of it, but now there's also the even more annoying question, what do i need that badly? even a month ago, given a day or two of peace, he might have foundhis way back to the september afternoon, to the stiff cock in his pants sprung fine as a dowser's wand trying to point up at what was hangingthere in the sky for everybody. dowsing rockets is a gift, and he had it,suffered from it, trying to fill his body to the pores and follicles with ringing prurience ... to enter, to be filled ... to go hunting after ...to be shown. . . to begin to scream . . . to open arms legs mouth ass­hole eyes nostrils without a hope of mercy to its intention waiting in thesky paler than dim commercial jesus. . . . but nowadays, some kind of space he cannot go against has openedbehind slothrop, bridges that might have led back are down now for good. he is growing less anxious about betraying those who trust him. he feels obligations less immediately. there is, in fact, a general loss of � .' ..... . . . , /:____,____-�;� / ... --�i � , emotion, a numbness he ought to be alarmed at, but can't quite . . . can't ... russian transmissions come crackling out of ship's radio, and the static blows like sheets of rain. lights have begun to appear on shore. procalowski throws a master switch and cuts off all the lights of the anubis. st. elmo's fire will be seen spurting at moments from cross­ ends, from sharp points, fluttering white as telltales about the antennas and stays. the white ship, camouflaged in the storm, will slip by stettin's great ruin in silence. rain will slacken for a moment to port and reveal a few last broken derricks and charred warehouses so wet and gleaming you can almost smell them, and a beginning of marshland you can smell, where no one lives. and then the shore again will be invisible as the open sea's. the oder haff will grow wider around the anubis. no pa­ trol boats will be out tonight. whitecaps will come slamming in out of the darkness, and break high over the bow, and brine stream from the golden jackal mouth . . . count wafna lurch aft in nothing but his white bow tie, hands full of red, white, and blue chips that spill and clatter on deck, and he'll never cash them in . . . the countess bibes­ cue dreaming by the fo'c'sle of bucharest four years ago, the january terror, the iron guard on the radio screaming long live death, and the bodies of jews and leftists hung on the hooks of the city slaughter­ houses, dripping on the boards smelling of meat and hide, having her breasts sucked by a boy of 6 or 7 in a velvet fauntleroy suit, their wet hair flowing together indistinguishable as their moans now, will vanish inside sudden whiteness exploding over the bow . . . and stockings lad­ der, and silk frocks over rayon slips make swarming moires ... hardons go limp without warning, bone buttons shake in terror . . . lights be thrown on again and the deck become a blinding mirror . . . and not too long after this, slothrop will think he sees her, think he has found bianca again-dark eyelashes plastered shut and face running with rain, he will see her lose her footing on the slimy deck, just as the anubis starts a hard roll to port, and even at this stage of things--even in his distance-he will lunge after her without thinking much, slip himself as she vanishes under the chalky lifelines and gone, stagger trying to get back but be hit too soon in the kidneys and be flipped that easy over the side and it's adios to the anubis and all its screaming fascist cargo, al­ ready no more ship, not even black sky as the rain drives down his fall­ ing eyes now in quick needlestrokes, and he hits, without a call for help, just a meek tearful oh fuck, tears that will add nothing to the whipped white desolation that passes for the oder haff tonight.... 491 "" '"" .j. i i ��--:;;". ---,/ .� ......,. d d d d d d d the voices are german. looks like a fishing smack here, stripped for some reason of nets and booms. cargo piled on deck. a pink-faced youth is peering down at slothrop from midships, rocking in, rearing back. "he's wearing evening clothes," calling in to the pilot house. "is that good or bad? you're not with the military government, are you?" "jesus, kid, i'm drowning. i'll sign a form if you want." well, that's howdy podner in german. the youth reaches out a pink hand whose palm is crusted with barnacles, and hauls him on up, ears freezing, salty snot pouring out his nose, hopping onto a wood deck that reeks with generations of fish and is scarred bright from more solid cargo. the boat gets under way again with this tremendous surge of acceleration. slo­ throp is sent rolling wetly aft. behind them a great roostertail foams erect against the rain. maniacal laughter blows aft from the pilot house. "hey who, or what, is in command of this vessel, here?" "my mother," the pink boy crouching beside him with an apologetic and helpless look. "the terror of the high seas." this apple-cheeked lady is frau gnahb, and her kid's name is otto. when she's feeling affectionate she calls him "the silent ouo," which she thinks is very funny, but it dates her. while slothrop gets out of the tuxedo and hangs it up inside to dry, wrapping himself in an old army blanket, mother and son tell him how they run black market items all along the baltic coast. who else would be out tonight, during a storm? he has a trustworthy face, slothrop does, people will tell him anything. right now seems they're headed for swinemiinde to take on cargo for a run tomorrow up the coast of usedom. "do you know a man in a white suit," quoting geli tripping from afew eras back, "who's supposed to be on the strand-promenade in that swinemiinde every day around noon?" frau gnahb takes a pinch of snuff, and beams. "everybody does.he's the white knight of the black market, as i am queen of the coastal trade." "der springer, right?" "nobody else." nobody else. up in his pants pocket slothrop is still packing aroundthat chesspiece old saure bummer gave him. by it shall springer knowhim. slothrop falls asleep in the pilot house, gets in two or three hours, during which bianca comes to snuggle in under his blanket with him. 492 t . -; .... r�( --� , "you're really in that europe now," she grins, hugging him. "oh my goo'ness," slothrop keeps saying, his voice exactly like shirley temple's, out of his control. it sure is embarrassing. he wakes to sunlight, gulls squealing, smell of number 2 fuel oil, the booming of wine barrels down racketing planks to shore. they are docked in swinemiinde, by the sag­ ging long ash remains of warehouses. frau gnahb is supervising some ofhoading. otto has a tin can of honest-to-god bohnenkaffee sim­ mering. "first i've had in a while," slothrop scorching his mouth. "black market," purrs the silent otto. "good business to be in." "i was in it for a while. . . ." oh, yes, and he's left the last of that bodine hashish, hasn't he, several fucking ounces in fact, back on the anubis, wasn't that clever. see the sugar bowl do the tootsie roll with the big, bad, devil's food cake"nice morning," otto remarks. slothrop puts his tux back on, wrinkled and shrunken and almost dry, and debarks with otto to find der springer. it seems to be springer who's chartered today's trip up the coast. slothrop keeps looking around for the anubis, but she's nowhere in sight. in the distances, gantries huddle together, skeletal, presiding over the waste that came upon this port so sudden. the russian assault in the spring has compli­ cated the layout here. the white ship could be hiding behind any of these heaps of dockyard wreckage. come out, come out. . . . the storm has blown away, the breeze is mild today and the sky lies overhead in a perfect interference-pattern, mackerel gray and blue. someplace military machines are rooting and clanking. men and women are hollering near and far in russian. otto and slothrop dodge them down alleys flanked by the remains of half-timbered houses, stepped out story by story, about to meet overhead after centuries of imperceptible toppling. men in black-billed caps sit on stoops, watching hands for cig­ arettes. in a little square, market stalls are set up, wood frames and old, stained canvas shimmering when the breeze passes through. russian sol­ diers lean against posts or benches talking to girls in dirndls and white knee-socks, all nearly still as statues. market wagons stand unhitched with tongues tilted to the ground and floors covered with burlap and straw and traces of produce. dogs sniff among the mud negatives of tank treads. two men in dark old blue uniforms work their way along with hose and broom, cleaning away garbage and stone-dust with salt water pumped up from the harbor. two little girls chase round and round a gaudy red kiosk plastered with chromos of stalin. workers in leather caps, blinking, morning-faced, pedal down to the docks with lunchboxes slung on handle bars. pigeons and seagulls feint for scraps in 493 �� i ;;;;. --�,/ r� .....,. 494 the gutters. women with empty string bags hurry by light as ghosts. alone sapling in the street sings with a blockful of birds you can't see. just as geli said, out on the steel-littered promenade, kicking stones, watching the water, eyes idly combing the beach for the odd watch or gold eyeglass frame, waiting for whoever will show up, is the man. about 50, bleak and neutral-colored eyes, hair thick at the sides of his head and brushed back. slothrop flashes the plastic knight. der springer smiles and bows. "gerhardt von coll, at your service." they shake hands, though slo­ throp's is prickling in an unpleasant way. gulls cry, waves flatten on the strand. "uh," slothrop sez, "i havethis kind of trick ear, you'll have to-you say gerhardt von what now?" this mackerel sky has begun to look less like a moire, and more like a chessboard. "i guess we have a friend in common. well, that margher­ita erdmann. saw her last night. yup.... " "she's supposed to be dead." he takes slothrop's arm, and they allbegin to stroll along the promenade. "w-well you're supposed to be a movie director." "same thing," lighting american cigarettes for everybody. "same problems of control. but more intense. as to some musical ears, disso­ nance is really a higher form of consonance. you've heard about anton webern? very sad." "it was a mistake. he was innocent." "ha, of course he was. but mistakes are part of it too--everythingfits. one sees how it fits, ja? learns patterns, adjusts to rhythms, one day you are no longer an actor, but free now, over on the other side of the camera. no dramatic call to the front office-just waking up one day,and knowing that queen, bishop, and king are only splendid cripples,and pawns, even those that reach the final row, are condemned to creepin two dimensions, and no tower will ever rise or descend-no: flighthas been given only to the springer!" "right, springer," sez otto. four russian privates come wandering out of a bank of ruined hotel­ fronts, laughing across the promenade, over the wall down to the water where they stand throwing smooth stones, kicking waves, singing toeach other. not much of a liberty town, swinemiinde. slothrop fills voncoll in on margherita, trying not to get personal. but some of his anxi­ ety over bianca must be coming through. von goll shakes his arm, akindly uncle. "there now. i wouldn't worry. bianca's a clever child, andher mother is hardly a destroying goddess.» "you're a comfort, springer." the baltic, restless wehrmacht gray, whispers along the beach. von coll tips an invisible tyrolean to old ladies in black who've come out in pairs to get some sun. otto goes chasing seagulls, hands out in front of him silent-movie style looking to strangle, but always missing his bird. presently they are joined by a party with a lumpy nose, stoop, week's growth of orange and gray whiskers, and oversize leather trenchcoat with no trousers on underneath. his name is narrisch-r-the same klaus narrisch that aerodynamics man horst achtfaden fingered for the schwarzkommando, the very same. he is carrying by the neck an un­ plucked dead turkey. as they thread their way among chunks big and little of swinemiinde and the battle for it last spring, townspeople begin to appear out of the ruins, and to straggle close on von cell's landward flank, all eying this dead bird. springer reaches inside his white suit jacket, comes out with a u.s. army .45, and makes a casual show of checking its action. his following promptly dwindles by a half. "they're hungrier today," observes narrisch, "true," replies the springer, "but today there are fewer of them." "wow," it occurs to slothrop, "that's a shitty thing to say." springer shrugs. "be compassionate. but don't make up fantasies about them. despise me, exalt them, but remember, we define each other. elite and preterite, we move through a cosmic design of darkness and light, and in all humility, i am one of the very few who can compre­ hend it in toto. consider honestly therefore, young man, which side you would rather be on. while they suffer in perpetual shadows, it's . . . al­ ways-" bright days (fox-trot) -bright days for the black mar-ket, that silver 'n' gold makes-it shine! from the cor-al sea to, the sky, blue, baltic, money's the mainspring, that makes it all tick-like a blinkin' beacon, there's a pricetag peekin' from each decolletage dee-vinebe she green or scar-let, even mom's a har-lot, it's the good lord's grand design . . . a-and it's sunny days-for, the black, black ma(a)rket, cause silver and gold makes it shii-iine! narrisch and otto joining in here on three-part harmony, while the idle and hungry of swinemiinde look on, whitefaced as patient live495 '�� / i ;;;:., --�,/ r7t .. ...... stock. but their bodies are only implied: wire racks for prewar suits and frocks, too ancient, too glossy with dirt, with passage. leaving the promenade, they pause at a street corner while a detach­ ment of russian infantry and horsemen marches by. "gee, they're pour­ ing in," notes otto. 'whore's the circus?" "up the coast, kid," sez narrisch. "what's up the coast," inquires slothrop. "look out," warns narrisch, "he's a spy." "don't call me 'kid,' " otto snarls. "spy's ass," sez slothrop. "he's all right," springer pats them all on the shoulders, herr cemut­ lich here, "the word's been out on him for a while. he isn't even armed." to slothrop: "you're welcome to come along with us, up the coast. it might be interesting for you." but slothrop is no dummy. he notices how he is getting funny looks from everybody now, including that springer. among the cargo headed up the coast are six chorus girls, wearing feathers and spangles under old cloth coats to save trunk space, a small pit band at different levels of alcoholic slumber, manymany cases of vodka, and a troupe of performing chimpanzees. otto's nautical-pirati­ cal mother has one of these chimps cornered inside the pilot house, where they are going at it, the frau with her insults, the chimp reaching now and then trying to slap her with this floppy banana peel. ulcerous impresario g. m. b. haftung is trying to get otto's attention. he has a record of always making his appeals to the wrong personnel. "that's wolfgang in there! he'll murder her!" wolfgang's his prize chimp, somewhat unstable, does a fair hitler imitation but has this short atten­ tion span. "well," vaguely, "he'd better watch out for my mom." framed here in her lozenge of hatchway, it's much clearer just how extensively this old woman has been around: she is leaning, lilting, big s�ee�,smi!e just as toothy,�s can be, right into that wolfgang, cooing athim: deme mutter ... "say, she's never seen one of those critters before," slothrop turning to otto, surprising the youth with a faceful of, call it amiable homicide, "has she-" "ach, she's fantastic. she knows by instinct-exactly how to insult anybody. doesn't matter, animal, vegetable-i even saw her insult a rock once." "aw, now-" fit,.· ...... /':'�---� / --� � "really! ja. a gigantic clummmp of felsitic debris, last year, off the coast of denmark, she criticized its," just about to fall into one of those mirthless laughs we edge away from, "its crystalline structure, for twenty minutes. incredible." chorus girls have already pried open a case of vodka. raftung, brush­ ing hair that grows only in memory across the top of his head, rushes over to scream at them. boys and girls, all ages, tattered and thin, trail across the brow, stevedoring. against the fair sky, chimps swing from spars and antenna, above them seagulls glide by and stare. wind rises, soon a whitecap here and there will start to flicker out in the harbor. each child carries a bale or box of a different shape, color, and size. springer stands by, pince-nez clipped in front of agate eyes, checking off his inventory in a green morocco book, snails in garlic sauce, one gross . . . three cases cognac . . . tennis balls, two dozen . . . one victrola film, lucky pierre runs amok, three reels ... binoculars, sixty wrist-watches ... u.s.w., a check-mark for each child. presently all has been stowed below decks, chimps fall asleep, musi­ cians wake up, girls surround raftung and call him names, and pinch his cheeks. otto makes his way along the side, hauling in lines as the children cast them off. as the last one is flung away, its eye-splice still in midair framing a teardrop vista of gutted swinemiinde, frau gnahb, sensing the release from land through her feet, gets under way in the usual manner, nearly losing a chimp over the fantail and sending haftung's half-dozen lovelies sprawling in a winsome tangle of legs, bot­ toms and breasts. crosscurrents tug at the boat as it moves out the widening funnel of the swine, toward the sea. just inside the breakwaters, where it foams through breaches bombed underwater in the spring look out, frau gnahb, with no change of expression, swings her wheel full over, goes barreling straight at the sassnitz ferry whoosh veers away just in time, cackling at passengers staggering back from the rail, gaping after her. "please, mother," silent otto plaintive in the window of the pilot house. in reply the good woman commences bellowing a bloodthirsty sea chanty i'm the pirate queen of the baltic run, and nobody fucks with meand those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath the sea. 497 '" ,__ .� , i ��--",_,/ l-� . and the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes, singing, "fuck ye not with gory gnahb and her desperate enterprise! " i'll tangle with a battleship, i'll massacre a sloop, i've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoopi've seen the flying dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries, "oh, steer me clear of gory gnahb, and her desperate enterprise!' , whereupon she grips her wheel and accelerates. they find them­ selves now leaping toward the side of a half-sunken merchantman: black concave iron splashed with red-lead, each crusted rivet and pitted plate closing in, looming overthe woman is clearly unbalanced. slo­ throp shuts his eyes and hangs on to a chorus girl. with a whoop from the pilot house, the little boat is put over hard to port, missing collision by maybe a few coats of paint. otto, caught daydreaming of death, stag­ gers wildly by heading over the side. "it's her sense of humor," he points out, on the way past. slothrop reaches out grabs him by the sweater, and the girl grabs slothrop by the tail of his tuxedo. "she gets into something a little illegal," otto a moment later catch­ ing his breath, "you see what happens. i don't know what to do with her." "poor kid," the girl smiles. "aw," sez otto. slothrop leaves them, always happy to see young people get together, and joins von coll and narrisch on the fantail. frau gnahb has angled, wallowing, around to the northwest. presently they are heading up the coast, through white-streaked, salt-smelling baltic. "well. where we going, fellas?" jovial slothrop wants to know. narrisch stares. "that is the isle of usedom," von coll explains, gently. "it is bounded on one side by the baltic sea. it is also bounded by two rivers. their names are the swine, and the peene. we were just on the swine river . we were in swinemiinde. swinemiinde means 'mouth of the swine river.' " "all right, all right." "we are headed around the island of u sedom, to a place that is at the mouth of the peene river." "let's see, so that would be called . . . wait . . . peenemiinde, right?" "very good." 498 ,. . .... / / =_ t -�� "so?" there is a pause. "oh, oh, that peenemiinde." narrisch, as it turns out, used to work up there. he's apt to brood some at the idea of russians occupying the place. "there was a liquid-oxygen plant i had my eye on, too," springer a little down with it himself, "i wanted to start a chain-we're still an­ gling for the one in volkenrode, at the old goering institute." "there's a bunch of those lox generators under nordhausen," slo­ throp trying to be helpful. "thanks. the russians have that too, you'll recall. that's a problem: if it weren't so against nature i'd say they don't know what they want. the roads heading east are jammed day and night with russian lorries, full of materiel. all kinds of loot. but no clear pattern to it yet, beyond strip-it-and-pack-it-home." "jeepers," clever slothrop here, "do you reckon they've found that s-geriit yet, huh, mr. von coll?" "ah, cute," beams the springer. "he's an oss man," groans narrisch, "tell you, we ought to rub him out." "s-gerat's going for £10,000 these days, half of that in front. you interested?" "nope. but i did hear at nordhausen that you already have it." "wrong." "gerhardt-" "he's all right, klaus." the look is one slothrop's had before, from auto salesmen signaling their partners got a real idiot here, leonard, now don't spook him please? "we planted the story deliberately in stet­ tin. wanted to see how a colonel tchitcherine will respond." "fuck. him again? he'll respond, all right." "well, that's what we're going up to peenemiinde today to find out." "oh, boy." slothrop goes on to tell about the run-in at potsdam, and how geli thought tchitcherine didn't care about rocket hardware nearly so much as working out some plot against that oberst enzian. if the two marketeers are interested, they don't show it. the talk has drifted on into that kind of slack, nameful recapitulating that slothrop's mother nalline loved to float away on in the afternoons -helen trent, stella dallas, mary noble backstage wife.... "tchitcherine is a complex man. it's almost as if ... he thinks of en­ zian as . . . another part of him-a black version of something inside himself. a something he needs to . . . liquidate." narrisch: do you think there might be some ... some political rea­ son? 499 "��� i /""" -,.---�, �� . 500 von gall (shaking his head): i just don't know, klaus. ever since what happened in central asianarrisch: you meanvon gall: yes ... the kirghiz light. you know, it's funny-he's never wanted to be thought of as an imperialist­ narrisch: none of them do. but there's the girl. ... von gall: little geli tripping. the one who thinks she's a witch. narrisch: but do you really think she means to go through with this -this plan of hers, to find tchitcherine? von gall: i think . . . they . . . do. . . . narrisch: but gerhardt, she is in love with him­ von gall: he hasn't been dating her, has he? narrisch: you can't be implying"say," splutters slothrop, "what th' heck're you guys talkin' about, anyway?" "paranoia," springer snaps reproachfully (as folks will snap when in­ terrupted at a game they enjoy). "you wouldn't understand that." "well excuse me, got to go vomit now," a klassic komeback among charm-school washouts like our tactful tyrone here, and pretty ad­ vanced stuff on dry land, but not out here, where the baltic is making it impossible not to be seasick. chimps are all doing their vomiting hud­ dled under a tarp. slothrop joins at the rail a miserable lot of musicians and girls. they instruct him in fine points such as not vomiting into the wind, and timing it for when the ship rolls toward the sea, frau gnahb having expressed the hope that no one would get any vomit on her ship with the kind of glacial smile dr. mabuse used to get, especially on a good day ... she can be heard in the pilot house now, bellowing her sea chanty. "000000," goes slothrop over the side. and this is how their desperate enterprise goes a-rollicking up the coast of u sedom, under a hazy summer sky. on shore, the green downs roll up in two gentle steps: above them is a chain of hills thick with pines and oaks. little resort towns with white beaches and forlorn jetties wheel abeam rheumatically slow. military-looking craft, probably russian pt boats, will be seen now and then lying dead in the water. n one challenge the frau's passage. the sun is in and out, turning the decks a stark moment's yellow around everyone's shadow. there's a late time of day when all shadows are thrown along the same east-northeast bearing as the test rockets were always fired out to sea from peene­ miinde. the exact clock time, which varies through the year, is known as rocket noon . . . and the sound that must at that moment fill the air for its devout can only be compared with a noontime siren the whole town believes in . . . and guts resonate, hard as stone. . . . before you sight it, you can feel the place. even draped over a gun­ wale, cheek against a fender smelling of tar, eyes tearing and insides sloshing as the sea. even barren and scorched as rossokovsky and the white russian army left it in the spring. it's a face. on the maps, it's a skull or a corroded face in profile, facing southwest: a small marshy lake for the eye-socket, nose-and-mouth cavity cutting in at the entrance to the peene, just below the power station . . . the draftsmanship is a little like a wilhelm busch cartoon face, some old fool for mischievous boys to play tricks on. tapping his tanks for grain alcohol, scratching great naughty words across fields of his fresh cement, or even sneaking in to set off a rocket in the middle of the night.... low, burned-out buildings now, ash images of camouflage nets burned onto the concrete (they had only a minute to glow, like a burg­ er's silk mantle-to light this coastal indoors, this engineers' parlor full of stodgy shapes and neutral tones . . . didn't it only flare? no need to put right, nothing monitory, no new levels to be reached ... but who would that be, watching so civil and mild over the modeltop? face all in these chromo sunset colors, eyes inside blackrim lenses which, like the haring nets, now are seen to have served as camouflage for who but the bicycle rider in the sky, the black and fatal edwardian silhouette on the luminous breast of sky, of today's rocket noon, two circular explo­ sions inside the rush hour, in the death-scene of the sky's light. how the rider twirls up there, terminal and serene. in the tarot he is known as the fool, but around the zone here they call him slick. it's 1945. still early, still innocent. some of it is). charred helpless latticework: what was wooden now only settles, without strength. green human shapes flash in the ruins. the scale is very confusing, along here. the troops look larger than they should. a zoo? a shooting gallery? why, some of both. frau gnahb wallows in closer to land, proceeds up the marshy shoreline at half speed. signs of occupation increase: lorry-parks, tents, a corral teeming with horses pied, sorrel, snow-white, red as blood. wild summer ducks up explod­ ing, wet and showery, out of green reeds-they swing aft over the boat and descend in its wake, where they bob quacking in two-foot excur­ sions. high in the sunlight, a white-tailed eagle is soaring. smooth­ lipped bomb and shell craters hold blue sea water. barracks have had their roofs blown away: spinal and ribwise and sunwhite the bones of these creatures that must have held in their time half the jonahs of fall501 ing europe. but trees, beech and pine, have begun to grow in again where spaces were cleared and leveled for housing or offices-up through cracks in the pavement, everywhere life may gain purchase, up rushes green summer '45, and the forests are still growing dense on the upland. passing now the great blackened remains of the development works, most of it strewn at ground level. in series, some ripped and broken, others largely hidden by the dunes, narrisch reverently telling them one by one, come the concrete masses of the test stands, stations of the cross, vi, v, iii, iv, ii, ix, viii, i, finally the rocket's own, from which it stood and flew at last, vii and x. trees that once screened these from the sea now are only stalks of charcoal. pulling around the northern curve of the peninsula, test-stand wall and earthworks receding-moving now past peenemiinde-west, the luftwaffe's old territory. far away to starboard, the cliffs of the greifswalder oie shimmer through the blue haze. concrete launching­ ramps used to test the v-lor buzzbomb point at the sea. runways pocked with craters, heaped with rubble and wrecked messerschmitts swing by, down the peninsula: over the skull's arc, south again toward the peene, there-above the rolling hills, miles off the port bow, the red brick tower of the cathedral in wolgast, and closer in the half-dozen stacks of the power station, smokeless over peenemiinde, have survived the lethal compression-loads of march.... white swans drift in the reeds, and pheasants fly over the tall pines inland. a truck motor snarls somewhere into life. frau gnahb brings her boat around in a tight turn, through an inlet, to the dock. the summer calm lies over everything: rolling-stock inert on its tracks, one soldier sitting against an orange-topped oil drum trying to play an accordion. maybe only fooling around. otto lets go of his chorus girl's hand. his mother cuts the engines, and he steps broadly to the dock and jogs along, making fast. then there's a brief pause: die­ sel fumes, marsh birds, quiet idleness. . . . somebody's staff car, racketing around the corner of a cargo shed, slides to a stop, bouncing forth out of its rear door a major even fatter than duane marvy, but with a kindlier and dimly oriental face. gray hair like sheep's wool comes twisting down all around his head. "ah! von coll!" arms outstretched, wrinkled eyes shiny with-is it real tears? "von coll, my dear friend!" "major zhdaev," springer nods ambling over the brow, as behind the major now this truckload of troops in fatigues seems to be pulling up 502 here, kind of odd they should be toting those submachine guns and car­ bines just for some stevedoring. . . . right. before anyone can move, they've leaped out and made a cor­ don around zhdaev and the springer, pieces at the ready. "do not be alarmed," zhdaev waving and beaming, strolling backward to the car with his arm around the springer, "we are detaining your friend for a bit. you may proceed with your work and go. we'll see that he gets safely back to swinemiinde." "what the devil," frau gnahb comes growling out of the pilot house. haftung shows up, twitching, putting hands in various pockets and tak­ ing them out again: "who are they arresting? what about my contract? will anything happen to us?" the staff car pulls away. enlisted men begin filing on board. "shit," ponders narrisch. "you think it's a bust?" "i think tchitcherine is responding with interest. just as you said." "aw, now-" "no, no," hand on sleeve, "he's right. you're harmless." "thanks." "i warned him, but he laughed. 'another leap, narrisch. i have to keep leaping, don't i?' " "well what do you want to do now, cut him loose?" there is some excitement amidships. the russians have thrown back a tarp to reveal the chimps, who are covered with vomit, and have also broken into the vodka. haftung blinks and shudders. wolfgang is on his back, sucking at a gurgling bottle he is clutching with his feet. some of the chimps are docile, others are looking for a fight. "somehow ... " slothrop does wish the man would quit talking this way, "i owe him-that much." "well i don't," slothrop dodging a sudden plume of yellow chimpan­ zee vomit. "he ought to be able to take care of himself." "his talk's grandiose enough. but he's not paranoid in his heart-in this line of work, that's a disaster." one of the chimps now bites a soviet corporal in the leg. the corporal screams, unslinging his tokarev and firing from the hip, by which time the chimp has leaped for a halyard. a dozen more of the critters, many carrying vodka bottles, head en masse for the gangplank. "don't let them get away," haftung hollers. the trombone player sticks his head sleepily out a hatch to ask what's happening and has his face � walked over by three sets of pink-soled feet before grasping the situa503 �l� //-", -��, .... r tion. girls, spangles aflame in the afternoon sun, feathers all quivering,are being chased forward and aft by drooling red army personnel. fraugnahb pulls on her steam whistle, thereby spooking the rest of the chimps, who join the stampede to shore. "catch them," haftung pleads,"somebody." slothrop finds himself between otto and narrisch, beingpushed ashore over the brow by soldiers chasing after chimps or girls, ortrying to wrangle the cargo ashore. among splashes, cursing, and girlishshrieks from the other side of the boat, chorus girls and musicians keepappearing and wandering back and forth. it is difficult to perceive justwhat the fuck is happening here. "listen." frau gnahb leaning over the side. slothrop notices a canny squint. "you have a plan.""you want to pull a diversionary feint." "what? what?" "chimps, musicians, dancing girls. decoys all over. while the threeof you sneak in and grab der springer." "we can hide," narrisch looking around gangster-eyed. "nobody'llnotice. j a, ja! the boat can take off, as if we were on board!" "not me," sez slothrop. "hal hal" sez frau gnahb. "hal hal" sez narrisch, 'tlllie to at the northeast corner," this madmother continues, "in thechannel between the little island and that triangular part that's built upon the foreshore." "test stand x." "catchy name. i think there'll be enough of a tide by then. light afire. otto i cast me off now." "zu befehl, mutti!" slothrop and n arrisch go dash behind a cargo shed, find a boxcar, andhide inside. nobody notices. chimps are running by in several direc­tions. the soldiers chasing them seem by now to be really pissed off.someplace the clarinet player is blowing scales on his instrument. the boat's motor sputters up into a growl, and screws go churning away. awhile later, otto and his girl come climb in the boxcar, out of breath. "well, narrisch," slothrop might as well ask, "where'd they takehim, do you think? eh?" "from what i could see, block four and that whole complex to thesouth were deserted. my guess is the assembly building near test standvii. under that big ellipse. there are underground tunnels and rooms­ideal for a headquarters. looks like most of it survived pretty well, eventhough rossokovsky had orders to level the place." w po the "you got a piece?" narrisch shakes his head no. "me neither. what kind of a black-market operator are you, anyway? no piece." "i used to be in inertial guidance. you expect me to revert?" "w-well what are we supposed to use, then? our wits?" out the slats of the car, the sky is darkening, the clouds turning or­ ange, tangerine, tropical. otto and his girl are murmuring in one corner. "scrub that one," narrisch with sour mouth. "five minutes away from his mother, he's a casanova." otto is earnestly explaining his views on the mother conspiracy. it's not often a sympathetic girl will listen. the mothers get together once a year, in secret, at these giant conventions, and exchange information. recipes, games, key phrases to use on their children. "what did yours use to say when she wanted to make you feel guilty?" " 'i've worked my fingers to the bone!' " sez the girl. "right! and she used to cook those horrible casseroles, w-with the potatoes, and onions-" "and ham! little pieces of ham-" "you see, you see? that can't be accidental! they have a contest, for mother of the year, breast-feeding, diaper-changing, they time them, casserole competitions, ja-then, toward the end, they actually begin to use the children. the state prosecutor comes out on stage. 'in a mo­ ment, albrecht, we are going to bring your mother on. here is a luger, fully loaded. the state will guarantee you absolute immunity from pros­ ecution. do whatever you wish to do-anything at all. good luck, my boy.' the pistols are loaded with blanks, natiirlich, but the unfortunate child does not know this. only the mothers who get shot at qualify for the finals. here they bring in psychiatrists, and judges sit with stop­ watches to see how quickly the children will crack. 'now then, olga, wasn't it nice of mutti to break up your affair with that long-haired poet?' 'we understand your mother and you are, ah, quite close, her­ mann. remember the time she caught you masturbating into her glove? eh?' hospital attendants stand by to drag the children off, drooling, screaming, having clonic convulsions. finally there is only one mother left on stage. they put the traditional flowered hat on her head, and hand her the orb and scepter, which in this case are a gilded pot roast and a whip, and the orchestra plays tristan und isolde." d d d d d d d they come out into the last of the twilight. just a sleepy summer eve505 ning in peenerniinde. a hight of ducks passes overhead, going west. norussians around. a single bulb burns over the entrance to the cargoshed. otto and his girl wander hand in hand along the dock. an apecomes scampering up to take otto's free hand. to north and south thebaltic keeps unrolling low white waves. "what's happening," asks theclarinet player. "have a banana," tuba player with his mouth full has agood-sized bunch stowed in the bell of his ax. night is down by the time they get started. they head inland, spring­er's crashout party, along the railroad tracks. pine trees tower to eitherside of the cinder embankment. ahead fat pinto rabbits scurry, onlytheir white patches visible, no reason to suppose rabbits is what theyare. otto's friend hilde comes gracefully down out of the woods withhis cap that she's filled to the brim with round berries, dusty blue,sweet. the musicians are packing vodka bottles in every availablepocket. that's tonight's meal, and hilde kneeling alone at the berrybushes has whispered grace for them all. in the marshes now you canhear the first peepers start up, and the high-frequency squeals of a batout hunting, and some wind in the upper trees. also, from farther away,a shot or two. "are they firing at my apes?" haftung chatters. "that's 2000 marksapiece. how am i ever going to get that back?" a family of mice go dashing across the tracks, and right over slo­throp's feet. "i was expecting just a big cemetery. i guess not.""when we came we only cleared out what we needed to," narrischrecalls. "most of it stayed-the forest, the life . . . there are probablystill deer up in there, someplace. big fellows with dark antlers. and thebirds-snipes, coots, wild geese-the noise from the testing drove themout to sea, but they'd always come back in when it was quiet again."before they reach even the airfield they have to scatter twice into thewoods, first for a security patrol, then for a steam-engine come puffingup from peenemiindeeast, its headlight cutting through a fine night­haze, some troops with automatics hanging on to steps and ladders.steel grinding and creaking by in the night, the men shooting the breezeas they pass, no feeling of tension to it. "they might be after us any­way," narrisch whispers. "come on." through a patch of woods, and then cautiously out onto the open air­field. a sharp sickle of moon has risen. apes scuttle along in the bone­light, arms dangling. it's a nervous passage. everybody's a perfect tar­get, there's no cover except for airplanes strafed where they stood intorelics-rusted stringers, burned paint, gullwings driven back into the 506 1 alto co up ln� , te sme li�h co hl� 000 arm seal 100 deal earth. lights from the old luftwaffe complex glow to the south. trucks purr now and then along the road at the far edge of the airfield. there's singing from the barracks, and someplace a radio. the evening news from somewhere. too far to hear the words or even the language, only the studious monotone: the news, slothrop, going on without you. . . . they make it across the tarmac to the road, and crouch in a drainage ditch, listening for traffic. suddenly, to their left, yellow runway lights come on, a double row of them chaining to the sea, brightness bouncing up and down a couple-three times before it settles in. "somebody com­ ing in," slothrop guesses. "more likely going out," snaps narrisch. "we'd better hurry." back in the pine woods now, heading up a road of packed dirt toward test stand vii, they start to pick up stray girls and chimpanzees. pine smells wrap them: old needles lie at the margins of the road. downhill, lights appear as the trees begin thinning out, then the test-stand area comes in view. the assembly building is something like a hundred feet high-it blocks out the stars. there's a tall bright band where sliding doors are open, and light scatters outside. narrisch grabs slothrop's arm. "it looks like the major's car. and the motor's running." lotta searchlights, too, set up on fences topped with barbed wire-also what look like a division of security roaming around. "guess this is it," slothrop a little nervous. "ssh." sound of a plane, a single-engine fighter, circling to make its approach low over the pines. "not much time." narrisch gathers the others around and issues his orders. girls are to go in from the front, singing, dancing, vamping the woman-hungry barbarians. otto will try to knock out the car, haftung will get everybody rounded up and ready to rendezvous with the boat. "tits 'n' ass," mutter the girls, "tits 'n' ass. that's all we are around here." "ah, shaddap," snarls g. m. b. haftung, which is his usual way of dealing with the help. "meanwhile," continues narrisch, "slothrop and i will go in after springer. when we have him, we'll try to get them to shoot. that will be your signal to run like hell." "oh, definitely some shooting," sez slothrop, "a-and how about this?" he has just had a brilliant idea: fake molotov cocktails, a switch on saute bummer's old routine. he holds up a vodka bottle, pointing and grinning. "but that stuff won't even hardly burn." "but they'll think it's gasoline," beginning to pluck ostrich feathersfrom the costume of the nearest girl. "and just imagine how secure itwill make us feel." "felix," the clarinet player asks the tuba player, "what have wefallen among?" felix is eating a banana, and living for the moment.presently he has wandered off in the woods with the rest of the band,where they can be heard moving around in circles, tootling and blattingat each other. hilde and slothrop are making phony phirebombs, theother girls have taken off, zitz und arsch, downslope."so we'll present a plausible threat," narrisch whispers, "we'll needmatches. who's got matches?" "not me." "me either." "gee, my lighter's out of flints." "kot," narrisch throwing up his hands, "kot," walking off into thetrees, where he collides with felix and his tuba. "you don't have anymatches either." "i have a zippo," replies felix, "and two corona coronas, from theamerican officers' club in-" a minute later, narrisch and slothrop, hands each cupped around thecoal of one of havana's finest, are sneakypeteing like two cats in a car­toon off toward test stand vii, with vodka-bottle bombs stuck in theirbelts and ostrich-feather wicks trailing behind in the sea breeze. theplan is to climb the pine-topped sand-and-scrub embankment aroundthe test stand, and come in on the assembly building from behind.now narrisch here's a guidance man, a guidance man is he. and ev'ryday at rocket noon, there's death, and revelry.... but narrisch hasmanaged, in his time, to avoid nearly all of it.in fact, no two people have been so ill-equipped to approach a holycenter since the days of tchitcherine and dzaqyp qulan, hauling assover the steppe, into the north, to find their kirghiz light. that's aboutten years' gap. giving this pastime about the same vulnerability to rec­ord-breakers as baseball, a sport also well-spidered with white sugges­tions of the sinister. holy-center-approaching is soon to be the number one zonal pas­time. its balmy heyday is nearly on it. soon more champions, adepts,magicians of all ranks and orders will be in the field than ever before inthe history of the game. the sun will rule all enterprise, if it be honestand sporting. the gauss curve will herniate toward the excellent. andtankers the likes of narrisch and slothrop here will have already beenweeded out. 508 111 wli ba ilie dw 1110 ten be no ban �re� rna actl no )he ali �1i �et abo and� weal into any'! spo plosi n lobe· one slothrop, as noted, at least as early as the anubis era, has begun to thin, to scatter. "personal density," kurt mondaugen in his peene­ miinde office not too many steps away from here, enunciating the law which will one day bear his name, "is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth. " "temporal bandwidth" is the width of your present, your now. it is the familiar "ut" considered as a dependent variable. the more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. but the narrower your sense of now, the more tenuous you are. it may get to where you're having trouble remem­ bering what you were doing five minutes ago, or even-as slothrop now-what you're doing here, at the base of this colossal curved em­ bankment.... "uh," he turns slackmouth to narrisch, "what are we "what are we what?" "what?" "you said, 'what are we ... " then you stopped." "oh. gee, that was a funny thing to say." as for narrisch, he's too locked in to business. he has never seen this great ellipse any other way but the way he was meant to. greta erd­ mann, on the contrary, saw the rust-colored eminences here bow, ex­ actly as they did once, in expectancy, faces hooded, smooth cowlings of nothing . . . each time thanatz brought the whip down on her skin, she was taken, off on another penetration toward the center: each lash, a little farther in . . . till someday, she knows, she will have that first glimpse of it, and from then on it will be an absolute need, a ruling tar­ get . . . wh-wh-wh-whack the boneblack trestling of water towers above, bent to the great rim, visible above the trees in light that's bleak and bruise-purple as peenemiinde sunsets in the chill slow firing­ weather . . . a long look from the top of some known low country dike into a sky flowing so even and yellowed a brown that the sun could be anywhere behind it, and the crosses of the turning windmills could be spoke-blurs of the terrible rider himself, slothrop's rider, his two ex­ plosions up there, his celestial cyclistno, but even that only flickers now briefly across a bit of slothropian lobe-terrain, and melts into its surface, vanishing. so here passes for him one more negligence . . . and likewise groweth his preterition sure. . . . there is no good reason to hope for any turn, any surprise i-see-it, not from slothrop. here he is, scaling the walls of an honest ceremonial plexus, set down on a good enough vision of what's shadowless noon and what isn't. but oh, egg the flying rocket hatched from, navel of the 509 50-meter radio sky, all proper ghosts of place-forgive him his numb­ness, his glozing neutrality. forgive the fist that doesn't tighten in hischest, the heart that can't stiffen in any greeting.... forgive him asyou forgave tchitcherine at the kirghiz light. . . . better days arecoming. slothrop is listening to faraway peripatetic tuba and clarinet beingjoined in on now by trombone and tenor sax, trying to pick up a tune. . . and to the bursts of laughter from soldiers and girls . . . soundslike a party down there ... maybe even some stag dames ... "say,why don't we, uh . . . what was your-" narrisch, leather scarecrow,trying to ignore slothrop's behavior, has decided to dismantle his fire­bomb: he uncorks the vodka and waves it under his nose before taking abelt. he beams, cynical, salesmanwise, up at slothrop. "here." a si­lence under the white wall. "oh, yes i was thinking it was gasoline, but then it's fake, so it's reallyvodka, right?" but just over the embankment, down in the arena, what might thathave been just now, waiting in this broken moonlight, camouflage paintfrom fins to point crazed into jigsaw . . . is it, then, really never to findyou again? not even in your worst times of night, with pencil words onyour page only m from the things they stand for? and inside the victimis twitching, fingering beads, touching wood, avoiding any operationalword. will it really never come to take you, now?near the water towers, they have started to climb, up toward the rim.sand leaks into their shoes and hisses away down the slope. at the top,back through the trees, they get a quick look at the lighted runway, thefighter now landed, surrounded by groundcrew shadows fueling, serv­icing, turning her around. down the peninsula lights glow in patches,curves, zigzags, but over on this side, from the old development workssouth, it's pitch black. they push through pine branches and down again, into the egg,sacked of its german hardware, long converted to a russian motor pool.the corner of the huge assembly building, as they come down, rises toface them across a hundred yards of jeeps and lorries. down to the rightis a threeor four-level test frame with a round, kind of quonset top,and underneath the frame is a long pit shaped like a shallow v."cooling duct," according to narrisch. "they're probably under there.we have to go in through here." they have come halfway down the slope to a pump house, built intothe earthworks, for the cold water that used to carry off the tremendousheat from the test firings. it is stripped now, hollow and dark inside. slo510 �', m ra ill on nas �rab slop to a like i ap hng spri fe�� i zhd throp isn't two steps over the doorsill when he walks into somebody. "beg your pardon," though it comes out less than calmly. "oh, that's all right." russian accent. "i don't mind at all." he backs slothrop outside again, oh, a mean looking junior sergeant here about 8 or 9 feet high. "well, now-" at which point narrisch comes walking into them. "oh." narrisch blinks at the sentry. "sergeant, don't you hear that music? why aren't you back at the assembly building, with your com­ rades? there are, i understand, a number of eager frauleins entertaining them," nudge nudge, "in a most enchanting state of deshabille, too." "i suppose that's all perfectly divine," replies the sentry, "for some people." "kat . . ." so much for tactics. "and besides, this is out of bounds, you big sillies." sighing, narrisch raises his bottle aloft, brings it down, or up, thunk on the sentry's nape, dislodging the man's helmet liner, is what happens. "naughty," the russian, somewhat nettled, stoops to retrieve his head­ gear. "really i ought to put you both under apprehension." "enough chit-chat," snarls slothrop, brandishing his glowing cigar and "molotov cocktail." "hand over that gun there, ivan, or i turn you into a human flare!" "you're mean," sulks the sentry, unslinging his degtyarov a little too quickly-slothrop dodges aside, aims his usual swift kick to the groin, which misses, but does knock loose the weapon, which narrisch is thoughtful enough to dive for. "beasts," whimpers the russian, "oh, nasty, awful . . ." scampering off into the night. "two minutes," narrisch already inside the pump house. slothrop grabs the automatic from him and follows at a run, accelerating down a sloping corridor. their feet ring faster, sharper, on the concrete, down to a metal door: behind it they can hear springer singing and babbling like a drunk. slothrop pushes off his safety and narrisch goes busting in. a pretty blonde auxiliary in black boots and steel-rimmed glasses is sit­ ting here taking down shorthand notes of everything she hears from springer, who leans happily grandiose against a cold-water pipe four feet high that runs the length of the room. "drop that pencil," orders slothrop. "all right, where's that major zhdaev?" "he's in conference. if you'd care to leave your name-" "dope," narrisch screams, "they have given him some kind of dope! gerhardt, gerhardt, speak to me!" 511 slothrop recognizes the symptoms. "it's that sodium amytal. it'so.k. let's go." "i expect the major to be back any moment. they're upstairs in theguardroom, smoking. is there a number where he can reach you?"slothrop has slid under one of springer's arms, n arrisch under theother, when there's this loud hammering on the door. "smoking? smoking what?" "this way, slothrop." "oh." they hustle springer out another door, which slothrop boltsand wrassles a heavy filing cabinet up against, then they drag springerup a flight of steps into a long, straight corridor, lit by six or seven bulbs,the spaces between which are very dark. along either side, floor to ceil­ing, run thick bundles of measurement cabling."we're done for," narrisch wheezes. it's 150 yards to the measure­ment bunker, and no cover but the shadows between the bulbs. allthese birds gotta do is spray a pattern. "she baffs at nothing, the heterospeed," cries gerhardt von coll."try to walk," slothrop scared shit, "come on, man, it's our ass!"smashing echoes after them down the tunnel. a muffled burst of auto­matic fire. and another. all at once, two faint pools of light ahead,zhdaev materializes, on the way back to his office. he has a friend withhim, who smiles when he sees slothrop 40 yards away, a big steel smile.slothrop lets go of springer and runs up into the next light, piece at theready. the russians are blinking at him in a puzzled way. "tchitcher­ine! hey." they stand facing, each at his lit circle. slothrop recalls that he hasthe drop on them. he smiles in half-apology, tips the muzzle at them,moves closer. zhdaev and tchitcherine, after a discussion which seemsunnecessarily long, decide they will raise their hands. "bocketman] " "howdy." "what are you doing in a fascist uniform like that?""you're right. think i'll join that red army, instead." narrisch leavesspringer sagging against a row of sleek rubber and silver-mesh cables,and comes up to help disarm the two russians. troops back down thetunnel are still busy busting the door down. "you guys want to undress, here? say tchitcherine, how'd you likethat hashish, by the way?" "well," taking off his trousers, "we were all up there in the budkajust now smoking some . . . rocketman, your timing is fantastic.zhdaev, isn't he something?" 512 no t0� ion 1 �ol wh �p iliel "be ilie ope ge ten ho� "� ther talk ilie � "1 , did nom dow!fuou, b able camo all 0 that, and aren it \mytal.l' the hi/db fantastic slothrop slides out of his tux. "just see you don't get a hardon here now, fella." "i'm serious. it's your schwarzphanomen." "quit fooling." "you don't even know about it. it choreographs you. mine's always trying to destroy me. we should be exchanging those, instead of uni­ forms." the disguise business grows complicated. zhdaev's jacket with the gold-starred pagani on the shoulders gets draped around the springer, who is now humming everyone a kurt weill medley. zhdaev puts on springer's white suit, and then him and tchitcherine get tied up with their own belts, a-and neckties. "now-the idea," slothrop explains, "being that you, tchitcherine, will be posing as me, and the major there-" at which point the door back down the tunnel comes blasting open, two figures with wicked suomi subs, drums on them as big as that gene krupa's, come flying through. slothrop stands in the light in tchitcherine's uniform, and waves dramatically, pointing at the two hogtied officers. "make it good," he mutters to tchitcherine, "i'm trust­ ing you now, but look out i have a great passive vocabulary, i'll know what you're saying." it's o.k. with tchitcherine, but confusing. ''i'm supposed to be who, now?" "oh, shit . . . look, just tell them to go check out the pump house up there, it's urgent." slothrop gestures and lip-synchs while tchitcherine talks. it seems to work. the two actually salute, and go back through the door they just shot down. "those apes," tchitcherine shakes his head. "those black apes! how did you know, rocketman? of course you didn't, but the schwarzpha­ nomen did. a great touch. two of them, looking at me through the win­ dow. and i thought-well, you know: i thought just about what you thought i'd think. ... " but by this time slothrop is way out of earshot. springer by now is able to stumble at a fast walk. they get as far as the measurement bun­ ker without running into anybody. out a door of bulletproof glass, be­ hind their own reflections, is the old test frame, windows broken out, camouflage in german expressionist ripples streaming gray and black all over it. the two soldiers are sure enough up there poking around that pump house, finding nothing. presently they disappear inside again, and narrisch opens the door. "hurry." they edge outside, into the arena. it takes a while to get back up the slope and into the woods. otto and 513 hilde show up. they've finessed zhdaev's car and driver out of a rotorarm. so there are four of them now to try and lift warbling payload ger­hardt von coll up these few crummy feet of sand embankment here,gotta be the most ill-designed propulsion system this test stand has seenin a while. otto and hilde tug at springer's arms, narrisch and slothroppush from the ass end. about halfway up springer blows a tremendousfart that echoes for minutes across the historic ellipse, like now to do foryou folks my anal impression of the at. . . . "oh, fuck you," slothrop snarls. "an erect green steed of planetoid and bone," nods the springer inreply. music and chatter back by the assembly building have all died awaynow, and an unpleasant calm has replaced them. up over the top at lastand into the woods, where springer rests his forehead against a treetrunk and commences vomiting violently. "narrisch, we're risking our ass for this slob?" but narrisch is busy helping squeeze his friend's stomach. "gerhardt,are you all right? what can i do?" "beautiful," chokes springer, vomit trickling down his chin. "ahh.feels great!" along come chimps, musicians, dancing girls. drifting in to rendez­vous. over the last dune and down to the packed cinder triangle of teststand x, and the sea. the musicians for a while playa kind of marchtune. past the foreshore, the tide has left them a strip of sand. but fraugnahb is nowhere in sight. haftung is holding hands with an ape. felixshakes spit out of his tuba. a honey-haired chorus girl, whose name henever does get, puts her arms around slothrop. "i'rn scared.""me too." he hugs her. all hell breaks loose-sirens whoop-whooping, searchlights starting toprobe the woods up above, truck motors and shouted commands. thecrashout party move off the cinders, and crouch in marsh grass."we've collected one automatic and two sidearms," narrisch whis­pers. "they'll be coming at us from the south. it'll only take one of us togo back up and hold them." he nods and begins checking his hardware."you're crazy," hisses slothrop, "they'll kill you." commotion nowfrom over by test stand vii. headlights are appearing, one after an­other, along the road up there. narrisch taps springer on the chin. it isn't clear if springer knowswho he is. "lebe wohl," anyway, springer. ... nagants stuck in over­coat pockets, automatic cradled in his arms, narrisch takes off at acrouching run along the beach, and doesn't look back. to co ii�n ute blin an ilie in�. " h�\i rno r gn �l\ to a stea ott cur spil att "rl bles -n "} last the final last "whore's the boat?" haftung in a white panic. ducks, alarmed, are quacking at each other down here. wind moves in the grass. when searchlights move by, pine trunks uphill flare, deeply shining, terrible ... and at everyone's back, the baltic shakes and streams. shots from uphill-then, maybe from narrisch in reply, a burst of au­ tomatic fire. otto is holding his hilde close. "anybody read morse code?" the girl next to slothrop wants to know, "because there's been a light going over there, see, at the tip of that little island? for a few min­ utes now." it's three dots, dot, dot, three more dots. over and over. "hmm, sees," ponders felix. "maybe they're not dots," sez the tenor-sax player, "maybe they're dashes." "that's funny," sez otto, "that would spell otto." "that's your name," sez hilde. "mother!" screams otto, running out in the water and waving at the blinking light. felix commences booming tuba notes across the water, and the rest of the band joins in. reed shadows come stabbing across the sand, as the spotlights swoop down. a boat engine roars into hear­ ing. "here she comes," otto jumping up and down in the marsh. "hey, narrisch," slothrop squinting, trying to find him back there in light that was always too weak, "come on. fall back." no answer. but more shooting. running-lights off, the boat comes barreling in at flank speed, frau gnahb has decided to ram peenemiinde? no, now she puts everything full astern-bearings shriek, screw-foam geysers, the boat slews around to a stop. "get on board," she bellows. slothrop's been hollering for narrisch. frau gnahb leans on her steam-whistle. but no answer. "shit, i've got to get him-" felix and otto grab slothrop from behind, drag him back to the boat kicking and cursing. "they'll kill him, you assholes, lemme go-" dark shapes come spilling over the dune between here and test stand vii, orange flickers at their midsections, the sound of rifle fire following a second later. "they will kill us." otto heaves slothrop up over the side, and tum­ bles in after. spotlights find and skewer them now. the firing is louder -nipples and spatters in the water, slugs hammering into the boat. "everybody here?" the frau's fangs bared in a grin. "fine, fine!" a last ape reaches up, haftung catches his hand, and he dangles, feet in the water, for several yards as they light out, all ahead full, till he can finally clamber up and over. gunfire follows out to sea, out of range, at last out of earshot. "hey felix," sez the tenor sax player, "you think there's any gigs inswinernunde?" john dillinger, at the end, found a few seconds' strange mercy in themovie images that hadn't quite yet faded from his eyeballs-clarkgable going off unregenerate to fry in the chair, voices gentle out of thedeathrow steel so long, blackie . . . turning down a reprieve from hislongtime friend now governor of new york william powell, skinnychinless condescending jerk, gable just wanting to get it over with,"die like ya live-all of a sudden, don't drag it out-" even as bitchylittle melvin purvis, staked outside the biograph theatre, lit up the fatalcigar and felt already between his lips the penis of official commenda­tion-and federal cowards at the signal took dillinger with theirfaggots' precision . . . there was still for the doomed man some shift ofpersonality in effect-the way you've felt for a little while afterward inthe real muscles of your face and voice, that you were gable, the ironiceyebrows, the proud, shining, snakelike head-to help dillinger throughthe bushwhacking, and a little easier into death. narrisch now, huddled inside a broken few meters of concrete drain­age pipe, after doubling back under the wall of test stand vii, bracingcurled now in the smell of old storm water, trying not to breathe loudenough to smack echoes into any betrayal-s-narrisch hasn't been to amovie since der miide tad. that's so long ago he's forgotten its ending,the last rilke-elegiac shot of weary death leading the two lovers awayhand in hand through the forget-me-nots. no help at all from that quar­ter. tonight narrisch is down to the last tommygun of his career, for­eign and overheated . . . and blisters on his hands he won't have toworry about tomorrow. no sources of mercy available beyond the hardweapon, the burning fingers-a cruel way to go out for a good guidanceman who always put in fair time for fair wages. . . . he had other offers. . . could've gone east with the institute rabe, or west to america and$6 a day-but gerhardt von coll promised him glamour, jackpots, aflashy dame on his arm, say, why not on both arms?-after poor linearpeenemiinde, who could blame him? it wasn't ever necessary to see around the entire plan ... reallythat's asking too much of anyone . . . not true? this s-gerat strategyhe's going out of his way to die for tonight, what does he know of thespringer's full intentions in the affair? it is reasonable to narrisch thathe, being smaller, he should be the sacrifice, if it helps springer survive,even survive another day . . . wartime thinking, [a, [a . . . but too lateto change. 516 m aft on ili an ree in arel � c 'j bre thisj grod tric rou rou' cau� ro ilie pab and elec the did the s-gerat program at nordhausen in its time ever hint that so many individuals, nations, firms, communities of interest would come after the fact? of course he was flattered then at being chosen to work on the modification to the guidance, minor as it was . . . hardly worth the special treatment ... still, it was his first high historical moment and he sourly figured it to be his last, up until meeting with springer's recruiting team, back during the rainier part of june. . . . conferences in cafes and entrances to churchyards around braunschweig (stucco arches, vines dripping onto thin collars) without an umbrella but with that light, belled hope inside-a field, crowded with lines of force, to expand, to fill, to keep him in good health and spirits ... berlin! the chicago cabaret! "cocaine-or cards?" (an old movie line the gunsels loved to use that summer) . . . the big time! but the ringing bright thing inside brought him here, instead: here, down in a pipe, to only a handful more of minutes.... the idea was always to carry along a fixed quantity, a. sometimes you'd use a wien bridge, tuned to a certain frequency �, whistling, heavy with omen, inside the electric corridors . . . while outside, ac­ cording to the tradition in these matters, somewhere a quantity b would be gathering, building, as the rocket gathered speed. so, up till assigned brennschluss velocity, "vl." electric-shocked as any rat into following this very narrow mazeway of clear space-yes, radio signals from the ground would enter the rocket body, and by reflex-literally by elec­ tric signal traveling a reflex arc-the control surfaces twitch, to steer you back on course the instant you'd begin to wander off (how could you've kept from lapsing, up here, into that radiant inattention, so caught up in the wind, the sheer altitude . . . the unimaginable fires at your feet?) ... so, for that tightly steered passage, all was carried on in the sharpest, most painful anticipation, with b always growing, as pal­ pably cresting as the assault of tidal wave that stills every small creature and hones the air down to a cold stir. . . . your quantity a-shining, constant a, carried as they must have once packed far overland at night the grail, in their oldtime and military bleakness of humor . . . and one morning a wide upper lip steelwool gray with the one day's growth, the fatal, the terrible sign, he shaved smooth every day, it meant that this was the last day-and, too, with only the grim sixth sense, as much faith as clear reception, that the b of many subscripts just over the electric horizon was really growing closer, perhaps this time as "biw," the precession angle of the gyro, moving invisibly but felt, terrifically arousing, over the metal frame toward angle �w (which is how they have set you the contacts: to close, you must see, at that exact angle). or as "bil'" another integrating, not of gyro rate but of the raw currentflow itself, bled from the moving coil inside the poles, the "fettered"pendulum ... they thought this way, design group, in terms of captiv­ity, prohibition ... there was an attitude toward one's hardware morebrutal and soldierly than most engineers' got the chance to be. . . .they felt quite the roughshod elite, driwelling, and schmeil, with thefluorescent lights shining on his bared forehead night after night....inside their brains they shared an old, old elctro-decor-variable capac­itors of glass, kerosene for a dielectric, brass plates and ebonite covers,zeiss galvanometers with thousands of fine-threaded adjusting screws,siemens milliammeters set on slate surfaces, terminals designated byroman numerals, standard ohms of manganese wire in oil, the oldgiilcher thermosaule that operated on heating gas, put out 4 volts,nickel and antimony, asbestos funnels on top, mica tubing. . . .wasn't that life more decent than gangstering? a cleaner sort offriendship. . . less devious, anyway.. . . there we saw how we had tofit in . . . the machinery itself determined that . . . everything was soclear then, paranoia was all for the enemy, and never for one'sown.... -what about the ss? -oh, they were the enemy, i'd say.... [laughter.]no, klaus, don't drift away, please, not onto dreams of kindly sovietinterrogation that will end in some ermine bed, some vodka-perfumedstupor, you know that's foolish.... b, b-sub-n-for-narrisch, is nearly here-nearly about to burnthrough the last whispering veil to equal "a"-to equal the only frag­ment of himself left by them to go through the moment, the irreducibledoll of german styrene, shabbier, less authentic than any earlier self. . . a negligible quantity in this last light . . . this tattoo of hunters'boots, and rifle bolts in oiled keyways.... d d d d d d d here come enzian, andreas, and christian, coming on like smith,klein, 'n' french, crashing into the basement room-field-gray kit,newspaper shoes, rolled trouser-cuffs, hands and bare forearms shiningwith motor oil and gear grease, toting carbines in a show of force. butno empty ones here to see them. it's too late. just the mute bed, andthe brown ellipse her blood made on the torn ticking. and washing-blue518 �sw terl her i �eo� ilie bea iwoo arlen "1 about their rlous toni�l �e� alltll each once obse sin�le brand a wordl pears t and i in grainy splashes in the corners, under the bed . . . their signature, their challenge. "where is she-" christian is just this side of berserk. one word astray and he'll be off to kill the first empty one he finds. maria, his sis­ ter, is, was, may be"we'd better," enzian already back out the door, "where's, uh . her husband, you know.... " "pavel." christian wants to see his eyes, but enzian won't tum. pavel and maria meant to have the child. then josef ombindi and his people started their visiting. they have learned their vulturehood from the christian missionaries. they keep lists of all the women of child­ bearing age. any pregnancy is an invitation to hover, to tune in, to swoop. they will use threats, casuistry, physical seduction-there's an arsenal of techniques. washing-blue is the abortifacient of choice. "the refinery," suggests andreas orukambe. "really? i thought he'd sworn off that." "maybe not now." the girl's brother stares him hard as fists. enzian, old bastard, you really are out of touch. . . . they remount their motorcycles and head off again. blasted dry­ docks, charcoal ribs of warehouses, cylindrical chunks of submarine that never got assembled, go ripping by in the darkness. british security are about, but that's another, encapsulated world. the british g-s occupy their own space and zone congruent but not identical to what these se­ rious schwarzkommando astride bikes unmufhed go blasting on through tonight. separations are proceeding. each alternative zone speeds away from all the others, in fated acceleration, red-shifting, fleeing the center. each day the mythical return enzian dreamed of seems less possible. once it was necessary to know uniforms, insignia, airplane markings, to observe boundaries. but by now too many choices have been made. the single root lost, way back there in the may desolation. each bird has his branch now, and each one is the zone. a crowd of dps is milling by the ruin of an ornamental fountain, a score of them, eyes of ash, smudged into faces white as salt. the her­ eros go swerving by them, halfway up a shallow flight of long steps dovetailing into the grade of the street, teeth slamming together upper and lower, cycle frames squeaking shrill, up and down the steps past wordless plosions of slavic breath. ashes and salt. a sound-truck ap­ pears around a wall a hundred meters away: the voice, university-bred inu-blue and long tired of the message, recites, "clear the streets. go to your 519 homes." clear the-go to your what? there must be a mistake, it mustbe for some other town. . . . whir underneath an oil pipeline up on trestles running down left­ward to the water now, huge bolted flanges overhead softened by rustand oily dirt. far out in the harbor rides an oil tanker, rocking serene asa web of stars.... zoom uphill slantwise toward a rampart of wasted,knotted, fused, and scorched girderwork, stacks, pipes, ducting, wind­ings, fairings, insulators reconfigured by all the bombing, grease-stainedpebblery on the ground rushing by a mile a minute and wait, wait, saywhat, say "reconfigured," now?" there doesn't exactly dawn, no but there breaks, as that light you'reafraid will break some night at too deep an hour to explain away-therefloods on enzian what seems to him an extraordinary understanding.this serpentine slag-heap he is just about to ride into now, this ex-refin­ery, jamf olfabriken werke ag, is not a ruin at all. it is in perfect work­ing order. only waiting for the right connections to be set up, to beswitched on . . . modified, precisely, deliberately by bombing that wasnever hostile, but part of a plan both sides"sidesr-had alwaysagreed on ... yes and now what if we-all right, say we are supposedto be the kabbalists out here, say that's our real destiny, to be thescholar-magicians of the zone, with somewhere in it a text, to bepicked to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it's allsqueezed limp of its last drop . . . well we assumed-natiirlich!-thatthis holy text had to be the rocket, orururumo orunene the high, rising,dead, the blazing, the great one ("orunene" is already being modified bythe zoneherero children to "omunene," the eldest brother) . . . ourtorah. what else? its symmetries, its latencies, the cuteness of it en­chanted and seduced us while the real text persisted, somewhere else,in its darkness, our darkness ... even this far from siidwest we are notto be spared the ancient tragedy of lost messages, a curse that will neverleave us.... but, if i'm riding through it, the real text, right now, if this is it ...or if i passed it today somewhere in the devastation of hamburg,breathing the ash-dust, missing it completely . . . if what the ig builton this site were not at all the final shape of it, but only an arrangementof fetishes, come-ons to call down special tools in the form of 8th afbombers yes the "allied" planes all would have been, ultimately, ig­built, by way of director krupp, through his english interlocks-thebombing was the exact industrial process of conversion, each release ofenergy placed exactly in space and time, each shockwave plotted in ad­vance to bring precisely tonight's wreck into being thus decoding the 520 tre, tate num durs �ati nee real was �ies, stoog y itera roun navin some wan civiu rouf inwil and jg oewft we wew were unkno maki tars, h hide t1 ing, to disc and works other yam wel text, thus coding, recoding, redecoding the holy text ... if it is in working order, what is it meant to do? the engineers who built it as a refinery never knew there were any further steps to be taken. their de­ sign was "finalized," and they could forget it. lt means this war was never political at all, the politics was all thea­ tre, all just to keep the people distracted ... secretly, it was being dic­ tated instead by the needs of technology . . . by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy­ burst of war, crying, "money be damned, the very life of [insert name of nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, i need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more. . . . the real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms-it was only staged to look that way-but among the different technolo­ gies, plastics, electronics, aircraft, and their needs which are under­ stood only by the ruling elite . . . yes but technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a gaussian reduction, among the younger schwarzkommando especially), "all very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to chuck a ton of amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? go ahead, capitalize the t on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less responsible-but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are-" we have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid . . . we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function . . . zeroing in on what incalculable plot? up here, on the surface, coal­ tars, hydrogenation, synthesis were always phony, dummy functions to hide the real, the planetary mission yes perhaps centuries in the unroll­ ing . . . this ruinous plant, waiting for its kabbalists and new alchemists to discover the key, teach the mysteries to others ... and if it isn't exactly jamf olfabriken werke? what if it's the krupp works in essen, what if it's blohm & voss right here in hamburg or an­ other make-believe "ruin," in another city? another country? yaaagggghhhhh! well, this is stimulant talk here, yes enzian's been stuffing down nazi 521 surplus pervitins these days like popcorn at the movies, and by now thebulk of the refinery-named, incidentally, for the famous discoverer ofoneirine-is behind them, and enzian is on into some other paranoidterror, talking, talking, though each man's wind and motor cuts him offfrom conversation. sort of a just a daredevil desox-yephedrine daddyhoagy carmichael with m'pockets full 0' happee daze,piano can be heard , , h 'ld d in behind zoomm through the zone, where t e wi ogs roam,this, here givin' all m'dreams away . . . took the tubes outa my radi-yo,don't mean a thing to mewouldn't spend a nickel on the stars 'n' stripes, causei'm doin' my own fer free. . . . mouth keeps goin', nobody listenin', gabbin' at a terrible paceaw, you're so sly, but i wave good-by,with a shit-eatin' grin on m'face! don'tcha ephedrine of me, my honey,swoon just to hear my namein the curfew cells when all the lights are gone, oh,ev'ry thing'll be the same (just light the candles) ev-rything'll be the same. last night in his journal, enzian wrote: "the mouth lately has beentoo much in service. too little coming out of use to anybody. a defense.oh god, oh god. then they really are getting to me. please i don'twant to pontificate this way . . . i know what my voice sounds like­heard it at peenemiinde years ago on weissmann's dictaphone .chrome and bakelite . . . too high, obnoxious, berliner schnauze . . .how they must wince inside whenever i begin to speak. . . ."i could go tomorrow. i know how to be alone. it doesn't frighten meas much as they do. they take endlessly-but they never use what theytake. what do they think they can take from me? they don't want mypatriarchy, they don't want my love, they don't want my information, ormy work, or my energy, or what i own . . . i don't own anything.there's no money any more=-nobody's seen any out here for months,no it can't be money ... cigarettes? i never have enough ciga­rettes.... so dl h, ba w si ollgh cj�( "if i left them, where could i go?" back among the reservoir tanks now, into the evening wind, skidding on this synthetic wastefield, all of it ungraded blackness . . . christian's motor seems to be missing now and then, dithering toward a stall. spot decision: if he breaks down let him walk. that way less trouble if pa­ vel's there, if he's not there pick up christian on the way back and see about getting a truck out to repair it . . . keep it simple, that's the mark of a great leader, enzian. christian doesn't break down, though, and pavel turns out to be there, sort of. well, not "there" the way enzian in his current state of mind would consider for very long. but present, all right, along with an amazing collection of friends who always seem to show up whenever he comes to sniff leunagasolin, such as, oh, the moss creature here, brightest green you can imagine, more burning than fluorescent, lurking over in a corner of the field tonight, shy, stirring like an infant now and then ... or how about the water giant, a mile-high visitor made all of flowing water who likes to dance, twisting from the waist, arms blowing loosely along the sky. when the ombindi people took maria off to find their doctor in hamburg, voices began calling-voices of the fungus pygmies who breed in the tanks at the interface between fuel and water-bottom began to call to him. "pavel! omunene! why don't you come back, to see us? we miss you. why have you stayed away?" not much fun for them down here at the interface, competing with the bac­ teria who cruise by in their country of light, these cellular aristocracy, approaching the wall of hydrocarbons each for his share of god's abun­ dance-leaving their wastes, a green murmur, a divergently unstable gabbling, a slime that grows with the days thicker, more poisonous. it is a depressing thing indeed to be a pygmy clustered together with thou­ sands of others, hundreds of thousands, and have to live on the other side of all this. you say other side? what do you mean? what other side? you mean in the gasoline? (clustered pygmies, playfully and to some well-known swing riff:) no-no, no, no! -you mean in the water, then? (c.p.:) no-no, no, no! -well you gotta tell me please, 'fore i drop my bvds! we mean, explain the pygmies, gathering their little heads into a symmetrical cauliflower pattern, and settling into a soft, wistful a cappella like kids around the campfire with bing crosby in a baseball cap (yes these leunahalluziationen have been known to get weird all right, weirder than cultural shock, even, this here is meta­ shock's what it is, 3-sigma white faces in a ritual whose mystery is deeper than north light over the kalahari . . .) we mean on the other side of the whole thing, the whole bacteria-hydrocarbon-waste cycle. 523 we can see the interface from here. it's a long rainbow, mostly indigo,if that's any help-indigo and kelly green (bing, directing, raises up allthese brainwashed little irish faces in a moving firelit crescendo) green... gasoline ... between ... submarine ... fading, because by thenpavel was on his way out to the refinery, forget this 2� weeks of self-im­posed torture, ombindi's men after him down by the glasswool boilerpipes, men and women both trying to caress him, pressure from bothsides of the tribal suicide question, enzian complaining, too entangledwith the rocket, too encrimsoned in his feud with the russian, to caremuch about anyone outside himself . . . and here pavel was trying tostay away from this, from the breath of mukuru, only trying to be agood manthe moss creature stirs. it has crept an alarming distance closersince pavel last looked. a sudden overflow of smooth cherry-red downthe mountainside to his right (were there mountains? where did themountains come from?) and at once he knows, beyond deception orhope, that he has slipped into the north, that inhaling the breath of thefirst ancestor has taken him over into the terrible land, as he must haveknown it would, step by step over these last years, impossible to turn(what is turn? don't know which way to begin to move ... don't knowhow to move . . .) too late, miles and changes too late.and now his head in christian's steel notch at 300 yards. suddenly,this awful branching: the two possibilities already beginning to fly apartat the speed of thought-a new zone in any case, now, whether chris­tian fires or refrains-jump, chooseenzian tries his best-knocks the barrel aside, has a few unpleasantwords for the young revenger. but both men saw the new branches. thezone, again, has just changed, and they are already on, into the newone.... they ride on up to where pavel's sniffing synthetic gasoline on theside of the lampless beige hill, under the tanks snailing whitely toheaven, here he is, one of the ig's happiest customers....does pavel know something the rest of us don't? if the ig wantedthis to be a cover-up for something else, why not the breath of mukuru?enzian can project himself back in the erdschweinhohle starting anew file on the ig-see it getting fatter and fatter as the interlocks de­velop, the books are audited, the witnesses come-not forward but side­ways at least, always in shadows. . . . and if it should prove not to bethe rocket, not the ig? why then he'll have to go on won't he, on tosomething else-the volkswagen factory, the pharmaceutical compa­nies ... and if it isn't even in germany then he'll have to start in cl of america, or in russia, and if he dies before they find the true text to study, then there'll have to be machinery for others to carry it on. . . . say, that's a swell idea-call the whole erdschweinhohle together, get up there say, my people, i have had a vision ... no no but there will need to be more staff, if it's to be that big a search, quiet shifting of re­ sources away from the rocket, diversifying while making it look like an organic growth . . . and who to bring in on it? christian-can he use the boy now, christian's anger, will it use christian regardless to help suppress ornbindi . . . because if the schwarzkommando mission in the zone has been truly revealed just now, then there'll have to be some­ thing done about ombindi, empty ones, doctrine of the final zero. more staff will mean more zone-hereros, not fewer-more information coming in about the enemy, more connections made will mean a greater threat to the people, will mean the tribal numbers will have to increase. is there an alternative? no . . . he would rather ignore ombindi but the needs of this new search will not allow him that comfort now . . . the search will rule.... somewhere, among the wastes of the worid, is the key that will bring us back, restore us to our earth and to our freedom. andreas has been talking with pavel, who is still out with his strangely lighted companions, playing at this and that. presently, with love and subterfuge, he gets the address of ombindi's medical connec­ tion. enzian knows who he is. "saint pauli. let's go. your machine run­ ning a little rough, christian?" "don't sweet-talk me," christian explodes, "you don't care about me, you don't care about my sister, she's dying out there and you just keep plugging her into your equations-you-play this holy-father routine and inside that ego you don't even hate us, you don't care, you're not even connected any more-" he swings his fist at enzian's face. he's crying. enzian stands there and lets him. it hurts. he lets it. his meekness isn't all politics, either. he can feel enough of the bone truth in what christian said-maybe not all of it, not all at once, but enough. "you just connected. can we go after her, now?" o dod dod here is the good frau, leaning over slothrop from way down at the foot start in of the bed: her eye bright and cocky as a parrot's, a big white boss of 525 eye cantilevered on old prickly arms and legs, a black kerchief abovethe roll of her pompadour in mourning for all her hanseatic dead, un­derneath heaving iron fleets, under waves of the baltic keel-edged andgray, dead under the fleets of waves, the prairies of the sea. . . .n ext thing is gerhardt von coll's foot nudging slothrop in a less thantender way. the sun is up, and all the girls have gone. otto grouchesaround deck with a broom and swab, removing yesterday's chimpanzeeshit. swinemiinde, the springer is his old chipper self: "fresh eggs and coffee in thepilot house-fall to. we're due out of here in 15 minutes.""well just belay that 'we,' ace." "but i need your help." springer's wearing a suit of fine tweed thismorning, very savile row, fits perfectly-"narrisch needed your help." "you don't know what you're talking about." his eyes are steeliesthat never lose. his laugh, subtitled humoring the fools, is mitteleuro­paisch and mirthless. "all right, all right. how much do you want?""everything's got a price, right?" but he's not being noble here, no,what it is is that his own price has just occurred to him, and he needs toshim the talk here, give it a second to breathe and develop."everything. " "what's the deal?" "a minor piracy. pick up one package for me while i cover you." helooks at his watch, hamming it up. "o.k., get me a discharge, i'll come with you.""a what? a discharge? for you? hal hal hal""you ought to laugh more, springer. it makes you look really cute.""what kind of a discharge, slothrop? honorable, perhaps? ah, ah-halhal hal" like adolf hitler, springer is easily tickled by what the ger­mans call schadenfreude, the feeling of joy at another's misfortune."quit fooling, i'm serious." "of course you are, slothrop!" more giggling.slothrop waits, watches, sucking on an egg though he feels anythingbut sly this morning. "narrisch, you see, was supposed to go with me today. now i'm stuckwith you. hal hal where do you want it delivered, this-ha-this dis­charge?" "cuxhaven." slothrop has been having lately this dim fantasy abouttrying to contact the operation backfire people in cuxhaven, to see ifthey'll help get him out. they seem to be the only english connection to 526 arr! will � tic, joll \vo )qui �e ilie v he than offe, him he u �oo "] �om burd nee rtlg the drih o ' .. i fm tud -�jl&i· the rocket any more. he knows already it won't work. he and springer arrange a date anyhow. "be at a place called putzi's. it's down the dorum road. local dealers will be able to tell you where." so it's out once again-out past the moles' wet embrace, into the bal­ tic, crest to crest, and into nimbus piling sheet on sheet bounces the jolly pirate bark, into a day already squally and bitter, and getting worse. springer stands outside the pilot house hollering in above the sound of heavy seas that splash back over the bow and down the decks. "where do you make her?" "if it's copenhagen she's bound for," frau cnahb's windburned face, permanent smile-creases all around her eyes and mouth, beaming like the sun, "can't have more than an hour on us .... " visibility this morning is too low to see the coast of usedom. springer joins slothrop at the rail looking at nothing, breathing the closing smell of gray weather. "he's all right, slothrop. he's seen worse. two months ago in berlin we got ambushed, right outside the chicago. he walked through crossfire from three schmeissers to offer our competitors a deal. not a scratch." "springer, he was going round and round with half the russian army up there." "they won't kill him. they know who he is. he worked in guidance, he was schilling's best man, he knows more about integrating circuits than anybody they'll find outside of garmisch now. the russians are offering fantastic salaries-better than the americans-and they'll let him stay in germany, work at peenemiinde or the mittelwerke, just like he used to. he can even escape, if that's what he wants, we have very good connections for that-" "but what if they did shoot him?" "no. they weren't supposed to." "springer, this ain't the fuckin' movies now, come on." "not yet. maybe not quite yet. you'd better enjoy it while you can. someday, when the film is fast enough, the equipment pocket-size and burdenless and selling at people's prices, the lights and booms no longer necessary, then ... then ... " we now come in sight of mythical rugen off our starboard bow. its chalk cliffs are brighter than the sky. there is mist in the firths, and among the green oaks. along the beaches drift pearl patches of fog. our captain, frau gnahb, heads into the greifswalder bodden, to comb the long firths for her quarry. after an. hour (comical bassoon solosover close-ups of the old recreant guzzling some horrible fermented po­tato-mash lobotomy out of a jerrican, wiping her mouth on her sleeve,belching) of fruitless search, our modem-day pirates head out to seaagain, and up the eastern coast of the island. light rain has been falling. otto breaks out slickers, and a thermos ofhot soup. clouds, a dozen shades of gray, go scudding along the sky.great misty heaps of rock, steep cliffs, streams in deep gorges, gray andgreen and spires of white chalk in the rain, go passing-the stubben­kammer, the king's seat, and presently, off to port, cape arkona wherewaves crash at the base of the cliffs and on top the groves of white­trunked trees are blowing. . . . the ancient slavs put up a temple here,to svetovid, their god of fertility and war. old svetovid did businessunder quite a number of aliases! three-headed triglav, five-headed po­revit, seven-faced rugevit! tell that to your boss next time he talksabout "wearing two hatsl" now, as arkona slides away off our portquarter"there she is," otto calls from the top of the pilot house. far faraway, hauling out to sea from behind the wissow klinken (the palelimestone latchkey with which providence today is probing the wards ofslothrop's heart), barely visible in the rain, dips a tiny white ghost of aship.... "get a bearing," frau gnahb grabbing the wheel and bracing herfeet. "we want a collision course!" otto crouches by the pelorus, shiv­ering. "here, slothrop." luger? box of rounds? "what "came this morning with the egg delivery.""you didn't mention-" "he may be a little exercised. but he's a realist. your friend gretaand i knew him in warsaw, in the old days.""springer-tell me springer, now, what ship is that?" springer handshim some binoculars. in fine gold lettering, behind the golden jackal onthe wraith-white bow, is the name he already knows. "0. . .. k.,"trying to see through the rain into springer's eyes, "you knew i wasaboard. you're setting me up, now, right?""when were you on board?" "come on-" "look=-narrisch was going after the package today. not you. wedidn't even know you. do you have to see conspiracies in everything? idon't control the russians, and i didn't deliver him-" cia and �a� �alle ilies tato; �ain )ink, her 1 com 0' otto "9 incre starb hoo� mutt on ili their guy ul his g up, bassoon� ermenteor on her sb! rad aul toi "you're really pushing that innocence today, ain't you?" "quit bickering, idiots," hollers frau gnahb, "and clear-for action!" lazy and spectral pitches the anubis, growing no clearer as they close with her. springer reaches a megaphone out of the pilot house, and bawls, "good day, procalowski-permission to come aboard." the answer is a gunshot. springer hits the deck, slicker in rattling yel­ low flow, lies on his back with the megaphone pointing up funneling rain in his mouth: "we'll have to without permission, then-" mo­ tioning slothrop over, "get ready to board." to frau gnahb, "we'll want to lash on." "fine but," one look at the evil leer now lighting up otto's mother's face and it's clear that she didn't come out today for money, "when do i get to, to ram her?" alone on the sea with the anubis. slothrop has begun to sweat, un­ pleasantly. the green rocky coast of rugen backdrops them, rising and falling through the squall. zonggg another shot rattlesnaking off of a bulkhead. "ram," orders the springer. the storm comes down in ear­ nest. gleeful frau gnahb, humming through her teeth, spins the wheel, spokes blurring, prow swinging over aiming for midships. the blank side of the anubis rushes in-is the frau gonna bust on through it like a paper hoop? faces behind portholes, cook peeling potatoes outside the galley, drunk in a frock coat sleeping on the rainy deck and sliding as the ship rolls . . . ah-ja, ja, a huge blue-flowered bowl of shredded po­ tatoes at her elbow, a window, cast-iron flowers on spiral vine all painted white, a mild smell of cabbage and dishrags from under the sink, an apron bow snug and tight above her kidneys and lambs about her legs and [a little, oh, ja, here comes little-ah-here comes here­ comes little-ahhotto! slams her boat into the anubis, a most godawful earsplitting otto.... "stand by." springer's on his feet. procalowski is turning away and increasing engine speed. frau gnahb moves up again on the yacht's starboard quarter, wallowing in her wake. otto passes out grappling hooks, long in hanseatic service, iron, pitted, functional-looking, as mutti puts it all ahead full. couples have wandered out under awnings on the anubis to watch the fun, pointing, laughing, gaily waving. girls, their nude breasts beaded with rain, blow kisses while the band plays a guy lombardo arrangement of "running between the raindrops." up the slippery ladder goes salty and buccaneering slothrop, hefting his grappling hook, letting out line, keeping an eye on that otto-wind up, spin like a lasso, wheeee-clank. springer and otto at bow and stern are grappling on at the same time, hauling in as the vessels hit,bounce, hit . . . but the anubis, softwhite, has slowed, sprawled, al­lowed . . . otto gets line around chocks forward and up around thescrimshawed railing of the yacht-then dashes aft, sneakers splashing,ribbed footprints left behind then rained out, to repeat the lashingthere. a newly-arranged river roars, white and violent, backward be­tween the two ships. springer is already up on the yacht's main deck.slothrop tucks luger in belt and follows. springer with the classic gangster head-move gestures him up to thebridge. slothrop moves through groping hands, greetings in broken rus­sian, puffs of alcoholic breath, around to the ladder on the port side­climbing, edging quietly onto the bridge. but procalowski is only sittingin the captain's chair smoking one of springer's amis with his cap tiltedback, and springer's just at the punch line to one of his giant repertoireof german toilet jokes. "what the devil, gerhardt," procalowski waving a thumb. "the redarmy's working for you too?" "hello again, antoni." the three silver stars on each of his epauletstwinkle howdy, but it's no good. "i don't know you." to the springer: "all right. it's in the engineroom. starboard side, down behind the generator," which is slothrop'scue to leave. at the bottom of the ladder he meets stefania coming along the pas­sageway. "hi. sorry we have to meet again this way.""hello, i'm stefania," shuttering a fast smile as she passes, "there'sliquor next deck up, enjoy yourself," already gone, out in the rain.what? slothrop steps down through a hatchway, starts to climb down to­ward the engineering spaces. somewhere above him three bells strike,slowly, a little hollow, with a slight echo. it's late ... late. he remem­bers where he is. just as he touches the deck, all the lights go out. air blowers whinedown to stillness. the engine room is down one more deck. will he haveto do this in the dark? "i can't," out loud. "you can," replies a voice close to his ear. he can feel its breath. heis smashed expertly at the base of the neck. light loops through thepitch dark. his left arm has gone numb. "i'll leave you the other one,"the voice whispers, "for climbing down to the engine room.""wait-" it feels like the pointed toe of a dancing-pump, in out of 530 kic �\otl onh me i und �1 do\ try i "1 �lle a! into cent) mov �roje brea , and �ene jerks direo �w but ti each ingf they by 10 nippl sme nowhere to hover a second and stroke the soft underside of his chin­ then it flicks up, slamming his teeth shut on his tongue. the pain is awful. he tastes blood. sweat gathers next to his eyes. "move, now." when he hesitates he is pinched on the back of the neck. oh, it hurts ... he holds to the ladder, night-blind, starting to cry · . . then he thinks of the luger, but before he can get to it he's been kicked viciously between hip and groin. the gun falls to the steel deck. slothrop is down on one knee, groping, when the shoe descends lightly on his fingers. "you will need this hand for holding on to the ladder, re­ member? remember?" then the shoe is lifted, but only to kick him under the armpit. "up, up." slothrop gropes to the next ladder, makes his stiff one-armed way down onto it. he feels the steel hatch-opening rise around him. "don't try to come back up till you've done what you have to do." "thanatz?" slothrop's tongue hurts. the name comes out clumsily. silence. "morituri?" no answer. slothrop moves one foot up one rung. "no, no. i'm still here." as he edges downward, shaking, rung by rung, feeling prickles back into his arm. how can he go down? how can he go up? he tries to con­ centrate on the pain. his feet strike steel plate finally. blindness. he moves to starboard, colliding at every step with shin-high edges, sharp projections ... i don't want to ... how can i ... reach down behind · . . bare hands . . . what if . . . a sudden whine to his right-something mechanical-he jumps, breath sucking very cold between teeth, nerves in back and arms off and on, skittering. . . he reaches a cylindrical barrier. . . might be the generator . . . stoops and begins tohis hand closes on stiff taffeta. he jerks it away, tries to get up, slams his head against something sharp · .. he wants to crawl back toward the ladder, but has lost all sense of direction now . . . he squats, turning in a circle, slowly . . . let it end letitend. . . . but his hands, pawing the deck, return to slippery satin. "no." yes: hooks and eyes. he breaks a fingernail, trying to lose them but they follow ... lacing that moves, snake-sure, entangling, binding each finger. . . . 'woo . . ." he rises to a crouch, moves forward into something hang­ ing from the overhead. icy little thighs in wet silk swing against his face. they smell of the sea. he turns away, only to be lashed across the cheek by long wet hair. no matter which way he tries to move now ... cold nipples . . . the deep cleft of her buttocks, perfume and shit and the smell of brine . . . and the smell of . . . of . . . 531 when the lights come back on, slothrop is on his knees, breathingcarefully. he knows he will have to open his eyes. the compartmentreeks now with suppressed light-with mortal possibilities for light-asthe body, in times of great sadness, will feel its real chances for pain:real and terrible and only just under the threshold. . . . the brownpaper bundle is two inches from his knee, wedged behind the generator.but it's what's dancing dead-white and scarlet at the edges of his sight. . . and are the ladders back up and out really as empty as they look? back on the frau's boat, springer is out with a bottle of champagnecourtesy of the anubis, untwisting the bright wires and firing the corkin a farewell salvo. slothrop's hands are shaking and he spils most ofhis. antoni and stefania watch from the bridge as the two vessels pullapart, baltic sky visible through the backs of their eyes. her white hairin filaments of foam, her cheeks sculptured fog ... cloud-man, fog­wife, they dwindle, aloof, silent, back into the heart of the storm.the frau heads south, along the other coast of rugen, into the straitsby way of the bug. the storm keeps pace, as night comes down. "we'llput in at stralsund," her scrawled face streaming with lube-greenshadow, yellow light, as the oil-lantern sways in the pilot house.slothrop reckons he'll get off there. head for that cuxhaven."springer, you think you'll have those papers for me on time?""i can't guarantee anything," sez gerhardt von coll.at stralsund, on the quai, in the lamplight and the rain, they saygood-by. frau gnahb kisses slothrop, and otto gives him a pack oflucky strikes. the springer looks up from his green notebook and nodsauf wiedersehen over his pince-nez. slothrop walks away, over thebrow, into the wet hafenplatz, sea-legs trying to balance rolling he's leftbehind, past booms and masts and strung tackle of derricks, past a crewon the night shift ofhoading the creaking lighters into wood wagons,bowed gray horses kissing the grassless stones ... good-bys in hispockets warming his empty hands. . . . d d d d d d d where is the pope whose staff will bloom for me?her mountain vamps me back, with silks and scents,her oiled, athletic slaves, her languid hintsof tortures transubstantiate to sky,to purity of light-of bonds that sing, 532 coli avel wh! ana her) m�1 vern �rat' )ha wea iliat alcon herr o� vl)lt1 on a willi prenl llie w1 mu) pre-p lliat grigg scree date, sp scre impr and whips that trail their spectra as they fall. at weather's mercy now, i find her call at every turn, at night's foregathering. i've left no sick lisaura's fate behind. i made my last confession as i knelt, agnostic, in the radiance of his jewel . here, underneath my last and splintering wind, no song, no lust, no memory, no guilt: no pentacles, no cups, no holy fool. ... brigadier pudding died back in the middle of june of a massive e. coli infection, whining, at the end, "me little mary hurts ... " over and over. it was just before dawn, as he had wished. katje stayed on at "the white visitation" for a while, roaming the demobbed corridors, smoky and still at the ends of all the emptied lattices of cages in the laboratory, herself part of the ash-colored web, the thickening dust and fly-pocked windows. one day she found the cans of film, stacked carelessly by webley sil­ vernail in what had been a music room, occupied now only by a disinte­ grating wittmaier harpsichord no one played, quills and stops broken shamefully, strings left to sharp, flat, or corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing relentlessly into all the rooms. pointsman happened that day to be up in london, working out of twelfth house, lingering at alcoholic luncheons with his various industrialists. was he forgetting her? would she be free? was she, already? out of apparently nothing more than the emptiness of "the white visitation," she finds a projector, threads a reel and focuses the image on a water-stained wall, next to a landscape of some northern coomb, with daft aristocrats larking about. she sees a white-haired girl in pirate prentice's chelsea maisonette, a face so strange that she has recognized the mediaeval rooms before she does herself. when did they-ah, the day osbie feel was processing the amanita mushrooms. . . . fascinated, she stares at twenty minutes of herself in pre-piscean fugue. what on earth did they use it for? the answer to that one's in the can too, and it isn't long before she finds it-octopus grigori in his tank, watching the katje footage. clip after clip: flickering screen and cutaways to octopus g., staring-each with its typewritten date, showing the improvement in the creature's conditioned reflex. spliced on at the end of all this, inexplicably, is what seems to be a screen test of osbie feel, of all people. there is a sound track. osbie is improvising a scenario for a movie he's written, entitled: 533 doper's greed "we open with nelson eddy in the background, singing: doper's greed, oh, doper's greed! it's the most disgustin' thing i ever seed!when you're out there feelin' fine,it'll turn you into swine, if you ever get a taste of doper's greed! "now into town ride two trail-weary cowboys, basil rathbone ands. z. ('cuddles') sakall. at the entrance to town, barring t' ieir way,stands the midget who played the lead in freaks. the one with the ger­man accent. he is the town sheriff. he is wearing an enormous gold starthat nearly covers his chest. rathbone and sakall rein up, with uneasysmiles on their faces. "rathbone: that can't possibly be real, can it?"sakall: hoo, hoo! of course that's real, you wretched eddiet, youvent 'n' chewed too much 0' that veird eeetus, beck down the trail. youshould hev smucked that nice veed i had, i tuld you-"rathbone (with his nervous sickly smile): please-i don't need ajewish mother. i know what's real, and what isn't real."(the midget, meanwhile, is posturing in different tough-hombre at­titudes, and waving a brace of gigantic colts about.)"sakall: vhen you been out on the trail-and you know vhieh trailtoo, don't you you sniveling punk-for as long as i have, you know ahreal midget sheriff from ah hallucinated vun."rathbone: i hadn't known either class existed. you must obviouslyhave seen midget sheriffs all over this territory, else you would hardlyhave invented the category. o-or would you? you know, you're justdodgy enough to try anything."sakall: you forgot 'you old reseal.' "rathbone : you old rascal. "they laugh, draw their guns, and exchange a few playful shots. themidget is rushing back and forth, furious, emitting high-pitched ger­man-accented westernisms like 'this town ain't big enough for both ofus!' "sakall: veil, ve're both seeing him. that means he's real."rathbone: joint hallucination is not unknown in our world, podner."sakall: who sez it's joint hallucination? hoo, hoo! if it vas any kind 534 arb icr� lut hll cou line, i(uh ihes haps man wher osbi idle � sage, basil point wrap] gues � stagm dust. lewd the u�time's venin new shutt of hallucination-i'm not saying it is, now-it vould be peyote. or jim­ son veed, mebbe. . . . "this interesting conversation goes on for an hour and a half. there are no cuts. the midget is active the whole time, reacting to the many subtle and now and then dazzling points presented. occasionally the horses will shit in the dust. it is not clear if the midget knows that his reality is being discussed. another of this film's artful ambiguities. fi­ nally, rathbone and sakall agree that the only way to settle the argu­ ment is to kill the midget, who gathers their intention and runs off screaming down the street. sakall laughs so hard he falls off his horse into the horse trough, and we get a final closeup of rathbone smiling, in his uncertain way. fade up song: when you're out there feelin' fine, it'll turn you into swine, if you ever get a taste of doper's greed!" there is a brief epilogue to this, with osbie trying to point out that of course the element of greed must be worked somehow into the plot line, in order to justify the title, but the film runs out in the middle of an "uh ... ". boli, cned�' fur oo�[ katje by now is in a bewildered state, but she knows a message when she sees it. someone, a hidden friend at "the white visitation"-per­ haps silvernail himself, who's been less than fanatically loyal to points­ man and his lot-has planted osbie feel's screen test deliberately here, where they knew she'd find it. she rewinds and runs the film again. osbie is looking straight into the camera: straight at her, none of your idle doper's foolery here, he's acting. there's no mistake. it is a mes­ sage, in code, which after not too long she busts as follows. say that basil rathbone stands for young osbie himself. s. z. sakall may be mr. pointsman, and the midget sheriff the whole dark grandiose scheme, wrapped in one small package, diminished, a clear target. pointsman ar­ gues that it's real, but osbie knows better. pointsman ends up in the stagnant trough, and the plot/midget vanishes, frightened, into the dust. a prophecy. a kindness. she returns to her open cell, gathers a few belongings in a bag, and walks out of "the white visitation," past the unclipped topiary hedges, growing back into reality, past peace­ time's returned madmen sitting gently in the sun. once, outside sche­ veningen, she walked the dunes, past the waterworks, past the blocks of new flats replacing the torn-down slums, concrete still wet inside its shuttering, with the same hope of escape in her heart-moved, a vulner-.jxxinej any kinl 535 able shadow, so long ago, toward her rendezvous with pirate by thewindmill called "the angel." where is he now? is he still living inchelsea? is he even alive? osbie is at home, anyway, chewing spices, smoking reefers, andshooting cocaine. the last of his wartime stash. one grand eruption.he's been up for three days. he beams at katje, a sunburst in primarycolors spiking out from his head, waves the needle he's just taken out ofhis vein, clamps between his teeth a pipe as big as a saxophone and putson a deerstalker cap, which does not affect the sunburst a bit."sherlock holmes. basil rathbone. i was right," out of breath, lettingher bag fall with a thump. the aura pulses, bows modestly. he is also steel, he is rawhide andsweat. "good, good. there's the son of frankenstein in it, too. i wish wecould have been more direct, but-" "where's prentice?" "out scouting up some transportation." he leads her to a back roomfitted out with telephones, a cork board with notes pinned all over,desks littered with maps, schedules, an introduction to modem herero,corporate histories, spools of recording wire. "not very organizedaround here yet. but it's coming along, love, it's coming."is this what she thinks it is? wakened from how many times andpushed away because it won't do to hope, not this much? dialectically,sooner or later, some counterforce would have had to arise ... shemust not have been political enough: never enough to keep faith that itwould . . . even with all the power on the other side, that it reallywould.... osbie has pulled up -folding chairs: hands her now a mimeographedsheaf, rather fat it is, "one or two things, here, you should know. wehate to rush you. but the horse trough is waiting."and presently, his modulations having flowed through the rooms insplendid (and for a while distracting) displays of bougainvillea red andpeach, it seems he has stabilized for the moment into the not-quite­worldly hero of a lost victorian children's book, for he answers, afterher hundredth version of the same question, "in the parliament of life,the time comes, simply, for a division. we are now in the corridors wehave chosen, moving toward the floor. . . ." iv ro� e� no teo ve� leel erel ene and nell ( llial cor �ou· lull oili 110m well, lliro\ fues devil o 0 0 0 0 0 0 dear mom, i put a couple of people in hell today. -fragment, thought to be from the gospel of thomas (oxyrhynchus papyrus number classified) who would have thought so many would be here? they keep appear­ ing, all through this disquieting structure, gathered in groups, pacing alone in meditation, or studying the paintings, the books, the exhibits. it seems to be some very extensive museum, a place of many levels, and new wings that generate like living tissue-though if it all does grow to­ ward some end shape, those who are here inside can't see it. some of the halls are to be entered at one's peril, and monitors are standing at all the approaches to make this clear. movement among these passages is without friction, skimming and rapid, often headlong, as on perfect roller skates. parts of the long galleries are open to the sea. there are cafes to sit in and watch the sunsets-or sunrises, depending on the hours of shifts and symposia. fantastic pastry carts come by, big as pan­ technicons: one has to go inside, search the numberless shelves, each re­ vealing treats gooier and sweeter than the last . . . chefs stand by with ice-cream scoops at the ready, awaiting only a word from the saccharo­ maniac client to swiftly mold and rush baked alaskas of any size and flavor to the ovens . . . there are boats of baklava stuffed with bavarian cream, topped with curls of bittersweet chocolate, broken almonds, cherries as big as ping-pong balls, and popcorn in melted marshmallows and butter, and thousands of kinds of fudge, from liquorice to divinity, being slapped out on the flat stone tables, and taffy-pulling, all by hand, that sometimes extends around corners, out windows, back in another corridor-er, excuse me, sir, could you hold this for a moment? thank you-the joker is gone, leaving pirate prentice here, newly arrived and still a bit puzzled with it all, holding one end of a candy clew whose other end could be anywhere at all . . . well, he might as well follow it ... prowling along looking quite wry, reeling in taffy by the yard, occa­ sionally stuffing a bit in his mouth-mm, peanut butter and molasses­ well, its labyrinthine path turns out, like route one where it passes through the heart of providence, to've been set up deliberately to give the stranger a tour of the city. this taffy trick is a standard orientation device here it seems, for pirate now and then will cross the path of some 537 other novice . . . often they'll have a time getting their strands of taffydisentangled, which has also been planned as a good, spontaneous wayfor the newcomers to meet. the tour now takes pirate out into an opencourtyard, where a small crowd has formed around one of the erd­schweinhohle delegates in a rip-roaring argument with some advertisingexecutive over what else but the heresy question, already a pebble inthe shoe of this convention, and perhaps to be the rock on which it willfounder. street-entertainers go by: self-taught tumblers doing amazinghandsprings on pavement that seems dangerously hard and slippery,choirs of kazoos playing gilbert & sullivan medleys, a boy and girl whodance not along the level street but up and down, usually at the majorflights of steps, whenever there's a queue to be waited through. . ..gathering up his ball of taffy, which by now is growing quite cumber1some, pirate passes beaverboard row, as it is known: comprising the 'offices of all the committees, with the name of each stenciled above thedoorway=-aa ... ig ... oil firms ... lobotomy ... self­defense . . . heresy . . . "naturally you're seeing this all through a soldier's eyes," she's veryyoung, insouciant, wearing a silly small young-woman's hat of the pe­riod, her face clean and steady enough for the broad-shouldered, high­waisted, no-neck profile they're all affecting these days. she movesalong beside him taking long and graceful steps, swings her arms, tossesher head-reaches over to grab some of his taffy, and touching his handas she does so. "for you it's all a garden," he suggests."yes. perhaps you're not such a stick after all."ah, they do bother him, these free women in their teens, their spiritsare so contagious, i'll tell you it's just -out, -ray, -juss,spirit is so -con, -tay, -juss,nobody knows their a-ges ... walkin' through bees of hon -ney,throwin' away -that -mon, -ney,laughin' at things so -fun -ny,spirit's comin' through -to, -you! nev -ver, -mind, whatcha hear from your car,take a lookit just -how -keen -they are,nev -ver, -mind, -what, your calendar say,ev'rybody's nine months old today! hey, where did the swing band come from? she's bouncing up and down, she wants to be jitterbugged, he sees she wants to lose her gravityc� pe ex \v th 10 de lee wh ,. the are laitl ands of� ntaneo\ls\ t into an� e of iliei me ad\'e� uy a peo� on \\hicflil uoinu arr� d and .u� � no �u; � t �e pages are turnin' pages, nobody's in -their, -ca, -ges, spirit's just so -con, -ta, -gious­ just let the spirit -move, -for, -you! the only office not physically touching the others on beaverboard row, intentionally set apart, is a little corrugated shack, stovepipe com­ ing out the top, pieces of automobile lying around rusted solid in the yard, piles of wood under rain-colored and failing canvas, a house trailer with its tires and one wheel tilted forlorn in the spanging of the cold rain at its weathered outsides ... devil's advocate's what the shingle sez, yes inside is a jesuit here to act in that capacity, here to preach, like his colleague teilhard de chardin, against return. here to say that criti­ cal mass cannot be ignored. once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected one to an­ other, the chances for freedom are over for good. the word has ceased to have meaning. it's a potent case father rapier makes here, not with­ out great moments of eloquence, moments when he himself is clearly moved ... no need even to be there, at the office, for visitors may tune in from anywhere in the convention to his passionate demonstrations, which often come in the midst of celebrating what hep humorists here are already calling "critical mass" (get it? not too many did in 1945, the cosmic bomb was still trembling in its earliness, not yet revealed to the people, so you heard the term only in the very superhepcat-to-hepcat exchanges). "i think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the world. we may not brush it away, we must look at it. it is possible that they will not die. that it is now within the state of their art to go on forever-though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have. death has been the source of their power. it was easy enough for us to see that. if we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take what we can while we may. if they have taken much more, and taken not only from earth but also from us-well, why begrudge them, when they're just as doomed to die as we are? all in the same boat, all under the same shadow . . . yes . . . yes. but is that really true? or is it the best, and the most carefully propagated, of all their lies, known and un­ known? "we have to carryon under the possibility that we die only because they want us to: because they need our terror for their survival. we are their harvests. . . . "it must change radically the nature of our faith. to ask that we keep faith in their mortality, faith that they also cry, and have fear, and feel 539 pain, faith they are only pretending death is their servant-faith indeath as the master of us all-is to ask for an order of courage that iknow is beyond my own humanity, though i cannot speak for others.. . . but rather than make that leap of faith, perhaps we will choose in­stead to turn, to fight: to demand, from those for whom we die, our ownimmortality. they may not be dying in bed any more, but maybe theycan still die from violence. if not, at least we can learn to withhold fromthem our fear of death. for every kind of vampire, there is a kind ofcross. and at least the physical things they have taken, from earth andfrom us, can be dismantled, demolished-returned to where it all camefrom. "to believe that each of them will personally die is also to believethat their system will die-that some chance of renewal, some dialec­tic, is still operating in history. to affirm their mortality is to affirm re­turn. i have been pointing out certain obstacles in the way of affirmingreturn.... " it sounds like a disclaimer, and the priest sounds afraid.pirate and the girl have been listening to him as they linger outside ahall pirate would enter. it isn't clear if she will come in with him. no,he rather thinks not. it is exactly the sort of room he was afraid it wouldbe. jagged holes in the walls, evidently where fixtures have been re­moved, are roughly plastered over. the others, waiting for him it seems,have been passing the time with games in which pain is the overt com­modity, such as charley-charley, hits 'n' cuts, and rock-scissors-and­paper. from next door comes a sound of splashing water and all-malegiggling that echoes a bit off of the tiles. "and now," a fluent wirelessannouncer can be heard, "it's time for? drop-the soap!" applauseand shrieks of laughter, which 'go on for a disagreeably long time."drop the soap?" sammy hilbert-spaess ambles over to the thin di­viding wall, puts his nose around the end of it to have a look."noisy neighbors," remarks german film director gerhardt von coll,"doesn't this sort of thing ever stop?""hullo, prentice," nods a black man pirate doesn't recognize, "weseem to be old school tie." what is this, who are all thesehis name isst.-just grossout. "for most of the duration, the firm had me trying toinfiltrate the schwarzkommando. i never saw anyone else trying to. itsounds a bit paranoiac, but i think i was the only one. . . ." this forth­right breach of security, if that's what it is, takes pirate a little aback."do you think you could-well, give me a sort of sitrep on all this?""oh, geoffrey. oh, my." here comes sammy hilbert-spaess backfrom watching the shower-room frolic, shaking his head, pouched andlevantine eyes continuing to stare straight down his nose, "geoffrey, by540 ili ili, ant-faiij ourage fu ak for o� willchoo� 'e die, our' utmayoer \\ithhola= re i a� fromeanl h reit� the time you get any summary, the whole thing will have changed. we could shorten them for you as much as you like, but you'd be losing so much resolution it wouldn't be worth it, really it wouldn't. just look around you, geoffrey. have a nice look, and see who's here." pirate is surprised to find sir stephen dodson-truck more fit than he ever looked in his life. the man is actively at peace, in the way of a good samurai-each time he engages them fully expecting to die, without apprehension or remorse. it is an amazing change. pirate begins to feel hope for himself. "when did you turn?" he knows sir stephen won't be offended at his asking. "how did it happen?" "oh, no, don't let this one fool you?" who in the world is this, with this greasy pompadour combed nearly as high again as his face, through which shows the peened, the tenderized soul of a fighter who's not only taken dives, but also thought heavily about them all the way down. it is jeremiah ("merciful") evans, the well-known political informer from pembroke. "no, our little stevie's not ready for sainthood quite yet, are we my fine chap?" slapping him, playful, clubbing slaps on the cheek: "eh? eh? eh?" "not if they've thrown me in wiv v' likes 0' you," replies the knight, churlishly. but it's hard to say really who's provoking whom, for merci­ ful evans now bursts into song, and a terrible singer he is, a discredit to his people, in factsay a prayer for the common informer, he came out of a quim, just like yoooou­ yes be kind what you chortle, for narks are as mortal as any, kilkenny to kew . . . and the next time you sigh in your comfort, ask yourself how he's doing, todayis it worse being sold, for those handfuls of gold, than to sigh all your real-life, away? "i don't know that i'm going to like it in here," pirate, an unpleasant suspicion growing on him, looking about nervously. "the worst part's the shame," sir stephen tells him. "getting through that. then your next step-well, i talk like an old hand, but that's really only as far as i've come, up through the shame. at the mo­ ment i'm involved with the 'nature of freedom' drill you know, won­ dering if any action of mine is truly my own, or if i always do only what they want me to do . . . regardless of what i believe, you see . . . i've 541 been given the old radio-control-implanted-in-the-head-at-birthproblem to mull over-as a kind of koan, 1 suppose. it's driving me re­ally, clinically insane. 1 rather imagine that's the whole point of it. andwho knows what comes next? good god. 1 don't find out, of course,till 1 break through this one.... 1 don't mean to discourage you sosoon-" "no, no, i've been wondering something else-are all you lot mygroup or something? have 1 been assigned here?""yes. are you beginning to see why?""i'm afraid 1 am." with everything else, these are, after all, peoplewho kill each other: and pirate has always been one of them. "i'd beenhoping for-oh, it's foolish, a bit of mercy . . . but 1 was at the all-nightcinema, around the corner from gallaho mews, the intersection withthe extra street, the one you can't always see because it comes in at sucha strange angle . . . 1 had a bad stretch of time to get through, poison,metallic time . . . it smelled as sour as a burned pot . . . all 1 wantedwas a place to sit for a while, and they don't care who you are really,what you eat or how long you sleep or who-whom you get togetherwith.... " "prentice, really it's all right," it' s st.-just grossout, whom the otherscall "sam juiced" when they want to shout him down, during the pas­sages in here when there is nothing for it but a spot of rowdyism."i . . . just can't . . . 1 mean if it is true, then," a laugh it hurts him,deep in his windpipe, to make, "then 1 defected for nothing, didn't i? imean, if 1 haven't really defected at all.... " the word reached him during a government newsreel. fromcloak-and-dagger to croak-and-stagger, the sequintitle twinkled to all the convalescent souls gathered for another longnight of cinema without schedule-shot of a little street-crowd staringin a dusty show-window, someplace so far into the east end that no oneexcept those who lived there had ever heard of it . . . bomb-tilted ball­room floor of the ruin slipping uphill behind like a mountain meadow,but dodgy as a trampoline to walk upon, conch-twisting stucco columnstilted inward, brass elevator cage drooping from the overhead. rightout in front was a half-naked, verminous and hairy creature, approxi­mately human, terribly pale, writhing behind the crumbled remains ofplate glass, tearing at sores on his face and abdomen, drawing blood,scratching and picking with dirt-black fingernails. "every day insmithfield market, lucifer amp makes a spectacle of himself. that'snot so surprising. many a demobilized soldier and sailor has turned to �u bi 542 public service as a means of keeping at least body and soul together, if nothing else. what is unusual is that mr. amp used to work for the spe­ cial operations executive.... " "it's quite good fun, actually," as the camera moves in for a close-up of this individual, "only took me a week to pick up the knack of it. . . ." "do you feel a sense of belonging now, that you hadn't when you came, or-have they still not accepted you out here?" "they-oh the people, the people have been just wonderful. just grand. no, no problems there at all." at which point, from the bishopwise seat behind pirate, came an al­ cohol smell, and warm breath, and a pat on the shoulder. "you hear? 'used to work.' that's rich, that is. no one has ever left the firm alive, no one in history-and no one ever will." it was an upper-class accent, one pirate might have aspired to once in his rambling youth. by the time he decided to look back, though, his visitor was gone. "think of it as a handicap, prentice, like any other, like missing a limb or having malaria ... one can still live ... one learns to get round it, it becomes part of the day-" "being a d-" "it's all right. 'being a-'?" "being a double agent? 'got round'?" he looks at the others, comput­ ing. everyone here seems to be at least a double agent. "yes . . . you're down here now, down here with us," whispers sammy. "get your shame and your sniffles all out of the way, young fel­ low, because we don't make a practice of indulging that for too long." "it's a shadow," cries pirate, "it's working under a shadow, forever." "but think of the free-dom?" sez merciful evans. "i can't even trust myself? can i. how much freer than that can a man be? if he's to be sold out by anyone? even by himself you see?" "1 don't want that-" "you don't have a choice," dodson-truck replies. "the firm know perfectly well that you've come here. they'll expect a full report from you now. either voluntary or some other way." "but 1 wouldn't . . . i'd never tell them-" the smiles they are remaim putting on for him now are deliberately cruel, to help him through it a wg ole« bit. "you don't, you really don't trust me?" 0' day [ "of course not," sammy sez. "would you-really-trust any of us?" if. thatl "oh, no," pirate whispers. this is one of his own in progress. nobody turnedtj else's. but it's still a passage they can touch quite as easily as that of ad-at-b� vingme: t of it..t it) of cow uraoe :'�j ii you lot, 543 any client. without expecting to, it seems pirate has begun to cry. odd.he has never cried in public like this before. but he understands wherehe is, now. it will be possible, after all, to die in obscurity, without hav­ing helped a soul: without love, despised, never trusted, never vindi­cated-to stay down among the preterite, his poor honor lost, impossi­ble to locate or to redeem. he is crying for persons, places, and things left behind: for scorpiamossmoon, living in st. john's wood among sheet-music, new recipes, asmall kennel of weimaraners whose racial purity she will go to extrava­gant lengths to preserve, and husband clive who shows up now andthen, scorpia living only a few minutes away by underground but lostto pirate now for good, no chance for either of them to turn again . . .for people he had to betray in the course of business for the firm, eng­lishmen and foreigners, for ion so naive, for gongylakis, for the monkeygirl and the pimps in rome, for bruce who got burned . . . for nightsup in partisan mountains when he was one with the smell of living trees,in full love with the at last undeniable beauty of the night . . . for a girlback in the midlands named virginia, and for their child who nevercame to pass ... for his dead mother, and his dying father, for the in­nocent and the fools who are going to trust him, poor faces doomed asdogs who have watched us so amiably from behind the wire fences atthe city pounds ... cries for the future he can see, because it makeshim feel so desperate and cold. he is to be taken from high moment tohigh moment, standing by at meetings of the elect, witnessing a test ofthe new cosmic bomb-"well," a wise old face, handing him theblack-lensed glasses, "there's your bomb ... " turning then to see itsthick yellow exploding down the beach, across the leagues of pacificwaves ... touching famous assassins, yes actually touching their humanhands and faces . . . finding out one day how long ago, how early in thegame the contract on his own life was let. no one knows exactly whenthe hit will come-every morning, before the markets open, out beforethe milkmen, they make their new update, and decide on what's goingto be sufficient unto the day. every morning pirate's name will be on alist, and one morning it will be close enough to the top. he tries to faceit, though it fills him with a terror so pure, so cold, he thinks for a min­ute he'll pass out. later, having drawn back a bit, gathering heart forthe next sortie, it seems to him he's done with the shame, just as sir ste­phen said, yes past the old shame and scared now, full of worry fornothing but his own ass, his precious, condemned, personal ass. . . ."is there room here for the dead?" he hears the question before hecan see her asking it. he isn't sure how she came into this room. from )01 of iva cou � are \ )0 all the others now flow impressions of male jealousy, a gruff sort of women-on-ships-is-bad-luck chill and withdrawal. and here's pirate left alone with her and her question. he holds out to her the ball of taffy he's been carrying, boobish as young porky pig holding out the anar­ chist's ticking bomb to him. but there's to be no sweetness. they are here instead to trade some pain and a few truths, but all in the dis­ tracted style of the period: "come now," what sort of idiotic trouble does she think she's in now? "you're not dead. i'll wager not even figuratively so." "i meant, would i be allowed to bring my dead in with me," katje ex­ plains. "they are my credentials, after all." "i rather liked frans van der groov. your ancestor. the dodo chap." it's not quite what she meant by her dead. "i mean the ones who owe their deadness directly to me. besides, if frans were ever to walk in here you'd only stand around, all of you, making sure he understood just how guilty he was. the poor man's world held an inexhaustible supply of dodoes-why teach him about genocide?" "you could tell him a thing or two about that, couldn't you, girly?" sneers evans, the tone-deaf welsh stoolie. pirate is moving against evans, forearms out from his sides saloon­ fighter-style, when sir stephen intervenes: "there'll be talk like this all the time, prentice, we're a case-hardened lot. you'd better start learn­ ing to make it work for you here. no telling how long we're in for, is there? the young woman has grown herself all the protection she needs, it seems to me. she doesn't want you to fight for her." well, he's right. she's put her warm hand on pirate's arm, shaking her head twice with embarrassed small laughs, "i'm glad to see you anyway, captain prentice." "no one else is. think about it." she only raises her eyebrows. it was a shitty thing to say. remorse, or some late desire to be pure, rush into his blood like dope. "but-" astonished to feel himself beginning to collapse, like a stack of rifles, around her feet, caught in her gravitation, distances abolished, waveforms unmeasurable, "katje . . . if i could never betray you-" he has fallen: she has lost her surface. she is staring at him amazed. "even if the price for that were. . . betraying others, hurting. . . or killing others-then it wouldn't matter who, or how many, no, not if i could be your safety, katje, your perfect-" "but those, those are the sins that might never happen." here they are bargaining like a couple of pimps. do they have any idea what they . from sound like? "that's easy enough to pledge, doesn't cost you a thing." 545 «then even the sins 1 did commit," he protests, «yes i'd do themover-" «but you can't do that, either-so you get off just as cheap. hm?"«i can repeat patterns," more grim than she really wants him to be."oh, think ... " her fingers are lightly in his hair, «think of thethings you've done. think of all your 'credentials,' and all of mine-"«but that's the only medium we've got now," he cries, «our gift forbad faith. we'll have to build everything with it . . . deal it, as the pros­ecutors deal you your freedom." «philosopher." she is smiling. «you were never like that."«it must have come from always being in motion. i've never felt thisstillness. . . ." they are touching now, without urgency, still, neitherof them, quite over the surprise.... «my little brother" (pirate under­stands the connection she has made) «left home at 18. 1 liked to watchhim sleeping at night. his long eyelashes . . . so innocent . . . 1watched for hours. . . . he got as far as antwerp. before long he wasloitering around parish churches with the rest of them. do you knowwhat i mean? young, catholic males. camp followers. they got to de­pend on 'alcohol, many of them, at an early age. they would choose aparticular priest, and become his faithful dog-literally wait all night athis doorstep in order to talk to him fresh from his bed, his linen, the inti­mate smells that had not yet escaped the folds of his garment . . . in­sane jealousies, daily jostling for position, for the favors of this father orthat. louis began to attend rexist meetings. he went out to a soccerfield and heard degrelle tell the crowd that they must let themselves beswept away by the flood, they must act, act, and let the rest take care ofitself. soon my brother was out in the street with his broom, along withthe other guilty sarcastic young men with their brooms in their hands... and then he had joined rex, the 'realm of total souls,' and the last 1heard he was in antwerp living with an older man named philippe. ilost track of him. we were very close at one time. people took us fortwins. when the heavy rocket attacks began against antwerp i knew itcould not be an accident. . . ." yes well pirate's chapel himself. «but i've wondered about the soli­darity of your church . . . you kneel, and she takes care of you . . .when you are acting politically, to have all that common momentum,taking you upward-" «you never had that either, did you." she's been looking really athim«none of the marvelous excuses. we did everything ourselves."no, there's no leaving shame after all-not down here-it has to beswallowed sharp-edged and ugly, and lived with in pain, every day. 546 w! ( an iv� we all m� lel� ual wnc bon �tri ap, hm� without considering, he is in her arms. it isn't for comfort. but if he is to keep dragging himself up the ratchet's teeth one by one he does need to pause in human touch for a bit. "what did it look like out there, katje? i saw an organized convention. someone else saw it as a gar­ den.... " but he knows what she'll say. "there was nothing out there. it was a barren place. i'd been most of the day looking for a sign of life. then at last i heard you all in here." so they have wandered to a balcony, a graceful railing, no one can see them from inside or �ut: and below them in the streets, streets they have both lost now, are the people. there passes for pirate and katje a brief segment of a much longer chronicle, the anonymous how i came to love the people. "her name was brenda, her face was the bird under the protecting grin of the car in the rain that morning, she knelt and performed fellatio on me, and i ejaculated on her breasts. her name was lily, she was 67 last. august, she reads off the labels of beer bottles to herself out loud, we coupled in the standard english position, and she patted me on the back and whispered, 'good friend.' his name was frank, his hair curled away from his face, his eyes were rather sharp but pleasant, he stole from american army depots, he bum-fucked me and when he came inside me, so did i. her name was frangibella, she was black, her face was broken out, she wanted money for dope, her open­ ness was a viper writhing in my heart, i performed cunnilingus upon her. his name was allan, his buttocks were tanned, i said, where did you find the sun, he answered, the sun is just around the corner, i held him over the pillow and buggered him and he cried with love till i, my piston pungently greased, exploded at last. her name was nancy, she was six, we went behind a wall near a crater full of ruins, she rubbed and rubbed against me, her milky little thighs reaching in and out of my own, her eyes were closed, her fair little nostrils moved upward, back­ ward forever, the slope of debris rushed down, steeply, just beside us, we teetered at the edge, on and on, exquisitely. her name was-" well, all these and many more pass for our young couple here, enough to make them understand that horny anonymous's intentions are nothing less than a megalomaniac master plan of sexual love with every individ­ ual one of the people in the world-and that when every one, some­ what miraculously, is accounted for at last, that will be a rough defini­ tion of "loving the people." "take that, you frauds out there in the branches," pirate wants to strike a humorous note, but doesn't. he is holding katje now as if, in a moment, music will start, and they would dance. "but the people will never love you," she whispers, "or me. however tw," tode y. 547 bad and good are arranged for them, we will always be bad. do youknow where that puts us?" he does smile, crookedly as a man being theatrical about somethingfor the very first time. knowing it for a move there's to be no going backfrom, in the same terminal class as reaching for a gun, he turns his faceupward, and looks up through all the faintly superimposed levels above,the milieux of every sort of criminal soul, every unpleasant commercialcolor from aquamarine to beige, desolate as sunlight on a day whenyou'd rather have rain, all the clanging enterprise and bustle of all thoselevels, extending further than pirate or katje can see for the moment,he lifts his long, his guilty, his permanently enslaved face to the illusionof sky, to the reality of pressure and weight from overhead, the hardnessand absolute cruelty of it, while she presses her own face into the easylowland between his shoulder and pectoral, a look on her face of truce,of horror come to a detente with, and as a sunset proceeds, the kind thatchanges the faces of buildings to light gray for a while, to an ashy softchaff of light bleating over their outward curves, in the strangely forge­like glow in the west, the anxiety of pedestrians staring in the tiny store­front window at the dim goldsmith behind his fire at his work andpaying them no attention, afraid because the light looks like it's going togo away forever this time, and more afraid because the failure of light isnot a private thing, everyone else in the street has seen it too . . . as itgrows darker, the orchestra inside this room does, as a matter of fact,strike up a tune, dry and astringent ... and candelabra have beenlighted after all . . . there is veal florentine ripening in the ovens to­night, there are drinks on the house, and drunks in the hammocks, and all the world's busy, this twi-light!who knows what morning-streets, our shoes have known?who knows, how many friends, we've left, to cry alone?we have a moment together, we'll hum this tune for a day ... ev'ryone's dancing, in twi-light, dancing the bad dream a-way. . . . �ln un �el \ �� leauill ilie and they do dance: though pirate never could before, very wellthey feel quite in touch with all the others as they move, and if they arenever to be at full ease, still it's not parade rest any longer . . . so theydissolve now, into the race and swarm of this dancing preterition, andtheir faces, the dear, comical faces they have put on for this ball, fade,as innocence fades, grimly flirtatious, and striving to be kind. as lal� d. dol t some�l goin�� rns�k le\'eha� d d d d d d d fog thickens down the throats of the narrow gassen. in the air is a smell of salt water. the cobbled streets are wet with last night's rain. slothrop wakes up in a burned-out locksmith's shop, under racks of sooty keys whose locks have all been lost. he stumbles out, finds a pump in a courtyard between brick walls and casement windows nobody stares out of, puts his head under the spout and pumps the pump, soaking his head for as long as he thinks he needs to. a ginger cat, meowing for breakfast, comes stalking him, doorway to doorway. "sorry, ace." doesn't look like breakfast for either of them. he hitches up tchitcherine's pants and heads out of town, leaving the blunt towers, the domes of copper corroded green swimming up in the mist, the high gables and red tiles, gets a ride with a woman driving an empty farm wagon. the horse's sandy forelock bobs and blows, and the fog settles in behind. this morning it looks like what vikings must have seen, sailing this great water-meadow south, clear to byzantium, all eastern europe their open sea: the farmland rolls gray and green as waves . . . ponds and lakes seem to have no clear boundaries . . . the sight of other people against this ocean sky, even the military, comes welcome as sails after long days of passage. . . . the nationalities are on the move. it is a great frontierless streaming out here. volksdeutsch from across the oder, moved out by the poles and headed for the camp at rostock, poles fleeing the lublin regime, others going back home, the eyes of both parties, when they do meet, hooded behind cheekbones, eyes much older than what's forced them into moving, estonians, letts, and lithuanians trekking north again, all their wintry wool in dark bundles, shoes in tatters, songs too hard to sing, talk pointless, sudetens and east prussians shuttling between ber­ lin and the dp camps in mecklenburg, czechs and slovaks, croats and serbs, tosks and ghegs, macedonians, magyars, vlachs, circassians, spaniols, bulgars stirred and streaming over the surface of the imperial cauldron, colliding, shearing alongside for miles, sliding away, numb, in­ different to all momenta but the deepest, the instability too far below their itchy feet to give a shape to, white wrists and ankles incredibly wasted poking from their striped prison-camp pajamas, footsteps light as waterfowl's in this inland dust, caravans of cypsies, axles or linchpins failing, horses dying, families leaving the vehicles beside the roads for 549 others to come live in a night, a day, over the white hot autobahns,trains full of their own hanging off the cars that lumber overhead,squeezing aside for army convoys when they come through, white rus­sians sour with pain on the way west, kazakh ex-p /ws marching east,wehrmacht veterans from other parts of old germany, foreigners toprussia as any gypsies, carrying their old packs, wrapped in the armyblankets they kept, pale green farmworker triangles sewn chest-high oneach blouse bobbing, drifting, at a certain hour of the dusk, like can­dleflames in religious procession-supposed to be heading today forhannover, supposed to pick potatoes along the way, they've been chas­ing these nonexistent potato fields now for a month-"plundered," aone-time bugler limps along with a long splinter of railroad tie for acane, his instrument, implausibly un dented and shiny, swinging fromone shoulder, "stripped by the ss, bruder, ja, every fucking potato field,and what for? alcohol. not to drink, no, alcohol for the rockets. pota­toes we could have been eating, alcohol we could have been drinking.it's unbelievable." "what, the rockets?" "no! the ss, picking pota­toes!" looking around for his laugh. but there are none here to followthe brass and flourish of his less solemn heart. they were infantrymen,and know how to snooze between footfalls-at some hour of the morn­ing they will fall out by the side of the road, a moment's precipitate outof the road chemurgy of these busy nights, while the invisible boilinggoes on by, the long strewn vortices-pinstripe suits with crossespainted on the back, ragged navy and army uniforms, white turbans,mismatched socks or none, tattersall dresses, thick-knitted shawls withbabies inside, women in army trousers split at the knees, flea-bitten andbarking dogs that run in packs, prams piled high with light furnishingsin scarred veneer, hand-mortised drawers that will never fit into any­thing again, looted chickens alive and dead, horns and violins in weath­ered black cases, bedspreads, harmoniums, grandfather clocks, kits fullof tools for carpentry, watchmaking, leatherwork, surgery, paintings ofpink daughters in white frocks, of saints bleeding, of salmon and purplesunsets over the sea, packs stuffed with beady-eyed boas, dolls smilingout of violently red lips, allgeyer soldiers an inch and a quarter to theman painted cream, gold and blue, handfuls of hundred-year-old agates necsoaked in honey that sweetened greatgrandfather tongues long gone to \ ili� dust, then into sulfuric acid to char the sugar in bands, brown to black, fallacross the stone, deathless piano performances punched on vorsetzer derolls, ribboned black lingerie, flowered and grape-crested silverware, i arefaceted lead-glass decanters, tulip-shaped jugendstil cups, strings of evej550 utob�, over01; �vhite�: rchin�1( rei�ei! in toe �� he l·rna �: hl/� � looa\1 'e�n;� unqer�' q be i� amber beads ... so the populations move, across the open meadow, limping, marching, shuffiing, carried, hauling along the detritus of an order, a european and bourgeois order they don't yet know is destroyed forever. when slothrop has cigarettes he's an easy mark, when somebody has food they share it-sometimes a batch of vodka if there's an army con­ centration nearby, the gi cans can be looted for all kinds of useful pro­ duce, potato peels, melon rinds, pieces of candy bars for sugar, no tell­ ing what's going to go into these dp stills, what you end up drinking is the throwaway fraction of some occupying power. slothrop drifts in and out of dozens of these quiet, hungry, scuffiing migrations, each time get­ ting hard benzedrine jitters off of the faces-there aren't any he can re­ ally ignore, is the problem, they're all too strong, like faces of a race­ track crowd, each one urging no, me-look at me, be touched, reach for your camera, your weapon, your cock. . . . he's stripped all the insignia off tchitcherine's uniform, trying for less visibility, but very few people seem to care much about insignia. . . . much of the time he's alone. he'll come on farmhouses, deserted in the night, and will sleep in the hay, or if there's a mattress (not often) in a bed. wake to sun glittering off some small lake surrounded by green salted with blossoms of thyme or mustard, a salad hillside, sweeping up to pines in the mist. sapling tomato-frames and purple foxgloves in the yards, huge birds' nests built up under the eaves of the thatched roofs, bird-choruses in the morning, and soon, one day, as the summer turns ponderously in the sky, the clang of cranes, on the move. at a farmhouse in a river valley far south of rostock, he comes in to shelter out of the midday rain, falls asleep in a rocking-chair on the porch, and dreams about tantivy mucker-maffick, his friend from long ago. he has come back, after all and against the odds. it's somewhere out in the country, english country, quilted in darkened green and amazingly bright straw-yellow, of very old standing rocks on high places, of early indenture to death and taxes, of country girls who walk out at night to stand naked on the tor and sing. members of tantivy's family and many friends have come, all in a mood of quiet celebrating, because of tantivy's return. everybody understands it's only a visit: that he will be "here" only in a conditional way. at some point it will fall apart, from thinking about it too much. there is a space of lawn cleared for dancing, with a village band and many of the women dressed in white. after a spell of confusion about the day's schedule of events, the meeting takes place-it seems to be underground, not ex551 actly a grave or crypt, nothing sinister, crowded with relatives andfriends around tantivy who looks so real, so untouched by time, veryclear and full of color ... "why, slothrop." "oh-where've you been, gate?" "'here.' " " c "here" , ?" "yes, like that, you've got it-once or twice removed like that, but iwalked in the same streets as you, read the same news, was narrowed tothe same spectrum of colors.... " "then didn't you-" "i didn't do anything. there was a change." the colors in here-stone facing, flowers worn by guests, the strangechalices on the tables-carry an underbreath of blood spilled andturned black, of gentle carbonizing in the blank parts of the cities atfour o'clock on sunday afternoon . . . it makes crisper the outlines oftantivy's suit, rather a gigolo suit of unspeakably foreign cut, certainlynothing he ever would have thought of wearing. . . ."i guess we don't have much time 1 know this is shitty, and re-ally selfish but i'm so alone now, and 1 heard that just after it hap-pens, sometimes, you'll sort of hang around for a while, sort of look after a friend who's 'here.' .. ." "sometimes." he is smiling: but his serenity and distance are thestretch of an impotent cry past slothrop's reach. "are you looking after me?" "no, slothrop. not you.... " slothrop sits in the old weathered rocker looking out at a rolling lineof hills and the sun just come down out of the last of the rainclouds,turning the wet fields and the haycocks to gold. who passed by and sawhim sleeping, his face white and troubled nodded on the breast of hismuddy uniform? as he moves on he finds these farms haunted, but amiably. the oak­work creaks in the night, honest and wooden. u nmilked cows low pain­fully in distant fields, others come in and get drunk on fermented silage,barging around into the fences and piles of hay where slothrop dreams,uttering moos with drunken umlauts on them. up on the rooftops theblack and white storks, long throats curved to the sky, heads upsidedown and looking backwards, clatter their beaks in greeting and love.rabbits come scurrying at night to eat whatever's good in the yards.trees, now-slothrop's intensely alert to trees, finally. when he comesin among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sittingvery quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, ative� ( time,\. carrying on its individual life, aware of what's happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down. slothrop's family actually made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper. "that's really insane." he shakes his head. "there's insanity in my family." he looks up. the trees are still. they know he's there. they probably also know what he's thinking. "i'm sorry," he tells them. "i can't do anything about those people, they're all out of my reach. what can 1 do?" a medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, "next time you come across a logging opera­ tion out here, find one of their tractors that isn't being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. that's what you can do."iliel1r(. ipilloo( e ciu� ouilin� t.ce� partial list of wishes on evening stars for this period: let me find that chicken coop the old lady told me about. let tantivy really be alive. let this fucking zit on my back go away. let me go to hollywood when this is over so that rita hayworth can see me and fall in love with me. let the peace of this day be here tomorrow when 1 wake up. let that discharge be waiting for me in cuxhaven. let bianca be all right, a-andlet me be able to take a shit soon. let that only be a meteor falling. let these boots hold out at least to lubeck. let that ludwig find his lemming and be happy and leave me in peace. well, ludwig. slothrop finds him one morning by the shore of some blue anonymous lake, a surprisingly fat kid of eight or nine, gazing into the water, crying, shuddering all over in rippling fat-waves. his lem­ ming's name is ursula, and she has run away from home. ludwig's been chasing her all the way north from pritzwalk. he's pretty sure she's heading for the baltic, but he's afraid she'll mistake one of these inland lakes for the sea, and jump into that instead"one lemming, kid?" "i've had her for two years," he sobs, "she's been fine, she's never tried to1 don't know. something just came over her." "quit fooling. lemmings never do anything alone. they need a crowd. it gets contagious. you see, ludwig, they overbreed, it goes in cycles, when there are too many of them they panic and run off looking cearn ollin�t �nclool ranqil all ol� 553 for food. i learned that in college, so i know what i'm talking about.harvard. maybe that ursula's just out after a boy friend or something.""she would have let me know." "i'm sorry." "russians aren't sorry about anything.""i'm not a russian." "is that why you took off all your insignia?"they look at each other. "uh, well, you need a hand finding that lem­ming?" this ludwig, now, may not be completely right in the head. he isapt to drag slothrop up out of sleep in the middle of the night, wakinghalf the dp encampment, spooking the dogs and babies, absolutely surethat ursula is out there, just beyond the circle of the fire, looking in athim, seeing him but not the way she used to. he leads slothrop into de­tachments of soviet tankers, into heaps of ruins high-crested as the sea,that collapse around and, given a chance, on top of you the minute youstep in, also into sucking marshes where the reeds pull away in yourfingers when you try to grab them, and the smell is of protein disaster.this is either maniac faith, or something a little darker: it does dawn onslothrop at last that if there's any impulse to suicide around here it ain'tursula's, it's that ludwig's-why, the lemming may not even exist!still . . . hasn't slothrop, once or twice, seen something? scootingalong ahead down gray narrow streets lined with token saplings in oneor another of these pruss ian garrison-towns, places whose whole indus­try and meaning was soldiering, their barracks and stone walls desertednow-or-or crouching by the edge of some little lake, watching clouds,white sails of gaff-riggers against the other shore so green, foggy, and faraway, getting secret instruction from waters whose movements in lem­ming-time are oceanic, irresistible, and slow enough, solid-lookingenough at least to walk out on safely...."that's what jesus meant," whispers the ghost of slothrop's firstamerican ancestor william, "venturing out on the sea of galilee. hesaw it from the lemming point of view. without the millions who hadplunged and drowned, there could have been no miracle. the successfulloner was only the other part of it: the last piece to the jigsaw puzzle,whose shape had already been created by the preterite, like the lastblank space on the table." "wait a minute. you people didn't have jigsaw puzzles.""aw, shit." william slothrop was a peculiar bird. he took off from boston, head­ing west in true imperial style, in 1634 or -5, sick and tired of the win554 on,neji the \r� throp machine, convinced he could preach as well as anybody in the hierarchy even if he hadn't been officially ordained. the ramparts of the berkshires stopped everybody else at the time, but not william. he just started climbing. he was one of the very first europeans in. after they settled in berkshire, he and his son john got a pig operation going­ used to drive hogs right back down the great escarpment, back over the long pike to boston, drive them just like sheep or cows. by the time they got to market those hogs were so skinny it was hardly worth it, but wil­ liam wasn't really in it so much for the money as just for the trip itself. he enjoyed the road, the mobility, the chance encounters of the day­ indians, trappers, wenches, hill people-and most of all just being with those pigs. they were good company. despite the folklore and the in­ junctions in his own bible, william came to love their nobility and per­ sonal freedom, their gift for finding comfort in the mud on a hot day­ pigs out on the road, in company together, were everything boston wasn't, and you can imagine what the end of the journey, the weighing, slaughter and dreary pigless return back up into the hills must've been like for william. of course he took it as a parable-knew that the squealing bloody horror at the end of the pike was in exact balance to all their happy sounds, their untroubled pink eyelashes and kind eyes, their smiles, their grace in cross-country movement. it was a little early for isaac newton, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air. william must've been waiting for the one pig that wouldn't die, that would validate all the ones who'd had to, all his gadarene swine who'd rushed into extinction like lemmings, possessed not by demons but by trust for men, which the men kept betraying . . . possessed by inno­ cence they couldn't lose ... by faith in william as another variety of pig, at home with the earth, sharing the same gift of life. . . . he wrote a long tract about it presently, called on preterition. it had to be published in england, and is among the first books to've been not only banned but also ceremonially burned in boston. nobody wanted to hear about all the preterite, the many god passes over when he chooses a few for salvation. william argued holiness for these "second sheep," without whom there'd be no elect. you can bet the elect in boston were pissed off about that. and it got worse. william felt that what jesus was for the elect, judas iscariot was for the preterite. everything in the creation has its equal and opposite counterpart. how can jesus be an exception? could we feel for him anything but horror in the face of the unnatural, the extracreational? well, if he is the son of man, and if what we feel is not horror but love, then we have to love judas too. right? how william avoided being burned for heresy, nobody knows. 555 he must've had connections. they did finally 86 him out of massachu­setts bay colony-he thought about rhode island for a while but de­cided he wasn't that keen on antinomians either. so finally he sailedback to old england, not in disgrace so much as despondency, andthat's where he died, among memories of the blue hills, greenmaizefields, get-togethers over hemp and tobacco with the indians,young women in upper rooms with their aprons lifted, pretty faces, hairspilling on the wood floors while underneath in the stables horses kickedand drunks hollered, the starts in the very early mornings when thebacks of his herd glowed like pearl, the long, stony and surprising roadto boston, the rain on the connecticut river, the snuffling good-nightsof a hundred pigs among the new stars and long grass still warm fromthe sun, settling down to sleep. . . . could he have been the fork in the road america never took, the sin­gular point she jumped the wrong way from? suppose the slothropiteheresy had had the time to consolidate and prosper? might there havebeen fewer crimes in the name of jesus, and more mercy in the name ofjudas iscariot? it seems to tyrone slothrop that there might be a routeback-maybe that anarchist he met in zurich was right, maybe for a lit­tle while all the fences are down, one road as good as another, the wholespace of the zone cleared, depolarized, and somewhere inside the wasteof it a single set of coordinates from which to proceed, without elect,without preterite, without even nationality to fuck it up. . . . such arethe vistas of thought that open up in slothrop's head as he tags alongafter ludwig. is he drifting, or being led? the only control in the pic­ture right now is the damned lemming. if she exists. the kid shows slo­throp photos he's packing in his wallet: ursula, eyes bright and shy,peeking out from under a pile of cabbage leaves . . . ursula in a cagedecked with a giant ribbon and swastika'd seal, first prize in a hitleryouth pet show . . . ursula and the family cat, watching each othercarefully across a tiled stretch of floor . . . ursula, front paws danglingand eyes drowsy, hanging out the pocket of ludwig's nazi cub-scoutuniform. some part of her is always blurred, too quick for the shutter.even knowing when she was a baby what they'd be in for someday, stillludwig has always loved her. he may be thinking that love can stop itfrom happening. slothrop will never find out. he loses the fat young lunatic in a villagenear the sea. girls in full skirts and flowered kerchiefs are out in thewoods gathering mushrooms, and red squirrels flash through thebeeches. streets curve on into town, foreshortening too fast-it'swideangle, smalltown space here. lamps are clustered up on the poles. 556 /� �-�. __-street cobbles are heavy and sand-colored. drayhorses stand in the sun flourishing their tails. down an alleyway near the michaeliskirche, a little girl comes totter­ ing under an enormous pile of contraband fur coats, only her brown legs visible. ludwig lets out a scream, pointing at the coat on top. some­ thing small and gray is worked into its collar. artificial yellow eyes gleam unwholesomely. ludwig runs hollering ursula, ursula, grabbing for the coat. the little girl lets out a flurry of curses. "you killed my lemming!" "let go, idiot." a tug-of-war among the blurry patches of sun and shadow in the alley. "it isn't a lemming, it's a gray fox." ludwig stops yelling long enough to look. "she's right," slothrop points out. ''i'm sorry," ludwig snivels. "i'm a little upset." "well, could you help me carry these as far as the church?" "sure." they each take an armful of furs and follow her through the bumpy gassen of the town, in a side entrance, down several flights to a sub­ basement of the michaeliskirche. there in the lamplight, the first face slothrop sees, inclined over a sterno fire tending a simmering pot, is that of major duane marvy. d d d d d d d yaaagggghhhhslothrop hefts his armload of coats, ready to throw them and flee, but the major's just all smiles. "hi there, comrade. you're just in time for some 0' duane marvy's atomic chili! whyntcha pull up a pew 'n' sit down? yaah-ha-ha-ha! little what's-her-name here," chuckling and copping a feel as the girl deposits her delivery with the enormous stash of furs that occupies most of this room, "she's kind of indiscreet sometimes. i hope you don't feel like that we're doing anything illegal, i mean in your zone and everything." "not at all, major," trying for a russian accent, which comes out like bela lugosi. marvy is out with his pass anyhow, most of which is hand­ written, with here and there a seal stamped onto it. slothrop squints at the cyrillic handwriting at the bottom and makes out tchitcherine's signature. "ah. i have coordinated with colonel tchitcherine on one or two occasions." "hey'd ya hear what happened up in peenymunde? buncha 'suckers just come in hijacked der springer right out fm under the colonel's 557 nose. yeah. you know der springer? bad ass, comrade. that 'sucker gotso many arns in the far don't leave much for free-enterprisers like me 'n'old bloody chiclitz." old bloody chiclitz, whose mother, mrs. chiclitz, named him clay­ton, has been lurking behind a stack of mink capes with a .45 aimed atslothrop's stomach. "say he's o.k., buddy," marvy calls. "y'all bring uss'more that champagne why don'tcha." chiclitz is about as fat as marvyand wears hornrimmed glasses, and the top of his head's as shiny as hisface. they stand there with their arms around each other's shoulders,two smiling fat men. "ivan, you're lookin' at 10,000 calories a day, righthere," indicating the two paunches with his thumb, and winking."chiclitz here goam be the royal baby," and they both collapse withlaughter. but it is true. chiclitz has actually figured out a way to cash inon redeployment. he is about to wangle with special services the exclu­sive contract for staging the equator-crossing festivities for every troopship that changes hemispheres. and chiclitz himself will be the royalbaby on as many as he can, that's been written in. he dreams of thegenerations of cannon fodder, struggling forward on their knees, one byone, to kiss his stomach while he gobbles turkey legs and ice-creamcones and wipes his fingers off in the polliwogs' hair. officially he is oneof the american industrialists out here with the t-force, scouting ger­man engineering, secret weaponry in particular. back home he owns atoy factory in nutley, new jersey. who can ever forget the enormouslysuccessful juicy jap, the doll that you fill with ketchup then bayonetthrough any of several access slots, whereupon it flies to pieces, 82 ofthem, realistically squishy plastic, all over the room? or-or shufhin' sam,the game of skill where you have to shoot the negro before he gets backover the fence with the watermelon, a challenge to the reflexes of boysand girls of all ages? right now business is taking care of itself, but chic­litz has his eyes on the future. that's why he's running this fur opera­tion, with the michaeliskirche serving as a depot for the whole region."retrenchment. got to get capitalized, enough to see me through,"splashing champagne into gold communion chalices, "till we see whichway it's gonna go. myself, i think there's a great future in these v-weap­ons. they're gonna be really big."the old church smells of spilled wine, american sweat, and recentlyburned cordite, but these are raw newer intrusions that haven't doneaway with the prevailing catholic odor-incense, wax, centuries of mildbleating from the lips of the flock. children come in and go out, bring­ing furs and taking them away, chatting with ludwig and presently inticker �ol ike ine'rl . brin�' ntlyin· viting him along to check out the freight cars down at the marshaling yards. there are about 30 kids on chiclitzs payroll. "my dream," he admits, "is to bring all these kids back to america, out to hollywood. i think there's a future for them in pictures. you heard of cecil b. de mille, the producer? my brother-in-law's pretty close to him. i think i can teach them to sing or something, a children's chorus, negotiate a package deal with de mille. he can use them for the real big numbers, religious scenes, orgy scenes-" "ha!" cries marvy, dribbling champagne, eyeballs bulging. "you're dreaming all right, old buddy! you sell those kids to cecil b. de mille it's f'damn sure they ain't goam be singin'. he'll use them little 'suckers for galley slaves! yaah-ha-ha-yeah they'll be chained to th' oars, just haulin' ass, rowin' old henry wilcoxon away into th' sunset to fight them greeks or persians or somebody." "galley slaves?" chiclitz roars. "never, by god. for de mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing!" out at the edge of town are the remains of an a4 battery, left where it stood as the troops fled south, trying to escape british and russian pincers. marvy and chiclitz are going to have a look, and slothrop is welcome to come along. but first there is the matter of duane marvy's atomic chili, which turns out to be a test of manhood. the champagne bottle is there within easy reach, but drinking from it will be taken as a sign of weakness. once slothrop would have been suckered in, but now he doesn't even have to think it over. while the two americans, blinded, noses on fire and leaking incredible quantities of snot, undergo what the authoritative a cheapskate's guide to the zone aptly de­ scribes as "a gotterdammerung of the mucous membranes," slothrop sits guzzling champagne like soda pop, nodding, smiling, and mumbling da, da now and then for authenticity's sake. they ride out to the site in a green, grinning ford staff car. marvy soon as he slides behind the wheel turns into a fanged dipsomaniac­ eeeeerrrrr leaving rubber enough to condom a division, zero to 70 before the echo's died, trying to run down bicyclists right 'n' left, stampeding the livestock, whilst bloody chiclitz, whooping happily, a champagne bottle in each fist, urges him on-marvy bellowing "san antonya rose," his iav'rite song, chiclitz screaming out the window admonitions like "fuck not with the kid, lest instead of fucker thou become fuckee," which takes a while and draws only a few bewildered fascist salutes from old ladies and little children at the roadside. 559 the site is a charred patch becoming green with new weeds, inside a copse of beech and some alder. camouflaged metal stands silent acrossa ghostly crowd of late dandelions, gray heads nodding together waitingfor the luminous wind that will break them toward the sea, over to den­mark, out to all points of the zone. everything's been stripped. thevehicles are back to the hollow design envelopes of their earliest specs,though there's still a faint odor of petrol and grease. forget-me-nots aregrowing violent blue violent yellow among the snarl of cables and hoses.swallows have built a nest inside the control car, and a spider has begunfilling in the web of the meillerwagen boom with her own. "shit," sezmajor marvy. "fuckin' rooskies done stole everthing, no offense, com­rade." they go kicking through green and purple weeds, rusted foodtins, old sawdust and chips of wood. surveying stakes, each with a tatterof white nailed on top, still chain away toward the guide-beam transmit­ter 12 kilometers away. eastward. so it must've been the russians theywere trying to stop. . . . red, white, and blue winks from the dusty deck of the control car.slothrop drops to one knee. the schwarzkommando mandala: kezvh.he looks up to see marvy giving him a sly fat smile. "why shore. i shoulda known. you don't have no insignia on.sheeeee ... you're-you're like th' soviet cic! ain'tcha." slothropstares back. "hey. hey, who're you tryin' to git? huh?" the smile van­ishes. "sa-a-a-y, i shore hope it ain't colonel tchitcherine, now. he's agood rooskie, you know." "i assure you," holding up the mandala, cross to vampire, "my onlyinterest is in dealing with the problem of these black devils."back comes the smile, along with a fat hand on slothrop's arm. "youall set to go round 'n' round with thim, whin y'r comrades git here?""round, and round? i am not sure that 1-" "you know. come on. why all thim boogies't's camped outside 0'town! hey, ivan, god-damn 'at's goam be fun. i spint all day todaycleanin' my colt's," caressing the sidearm in its holster. "coam makeme a coonskin cap out a one 0' thim 'suckers, 'n' i don't have to tell youwhat part's go am be danglin' down there in back, do vh? hah?" whichtickles bloody chiclitz so much he like to chokes laughing."actually," slothrop making it up as he goes along, "my mission is co­ordinating intelligence," whatever that means, "in operations such asthis. i am down here, in fact, to reconnoiter the enemy position.""enemy's right," chiclitz nods. "they got guns and everything. onlything a coon ought to have in his hands is a broom!" marvy is frowning. "you, you ain't expecting us to go out there with 560 you, now . we can tell you how to git there, comrade, but you're crazy to go out there alone. why don'tcha wait'il tonight? scheduled to stort about midnight, ain't it? you can wait till then." "it is essential that i gather certain information in advance," poker­ face, pokerface, good, good . . . "i do not have to tell you how impor­ tant this is ... " a pregnant lugosi pause, "to all of us." well, that gets him directions out to the schwarzkommando and a lift back into town, where the businessmen pick up a couple of those eager frauleins and go roistering off into the sunset. slothrop stands in their exhaust, muttering. next time it won't be any custard pie, you asshole .... takes him an hour to get out to the camp on foot across a wide meadow whose color is deepening now as if green dye flowed and seeped into its nap ... he is aware of each single grassblade's shadow reaching into the shadows east of it ... pure milk-colored light sweeps up in a bell-curve above the sun nearly down, transparent white flesh, fading up through many blues, powdery to dark steel at the zenith . . . why is he out here, doing this? is this ursula the lemming's idea too, get­ ting mixed up in other people's private feuds when he was supposed to be . . . whatever it was . . . uh. . . . yeah! yeah what happened to imipolex g, all that jamf a-and that s­ cerat, s'posed to be a hardboiled private eye here, gonna go out all alone and beat the odds, avenge my friend that they killed, get my id back and find that piece of mystery hardware but now aw it's just likelook-in' fawr a needle in a haaaay-stack! sssss-searchinfrasomethin' fulla moon-beams, (something) got ta have yoooou! feet whispering through weeds and meadow grass, humming along ex­ actly the breathless, chin-up way fred astaire did, reflecting on his chances of ever finding ginger rogers again this side of their graceful mortality.... then, snapping back-no no, wait, you're supposed to be planning soberly now, weighing your options, determining your goals at this criti­ cal turning point in your ... ya-ta-ta, lookin' f'r a needle in anonono come on, jackson, quit fooling, you got to concentrate. the s-gerat now-o.k. if i can find that s-gerat 'n' how jamf was hooked in, if i can find that out, yeah yeah imipolex now . -searchin' for a (hmm) cellar full 0' saffron aw ... at about which point, as if someone's simple longing has made it ap­pear, comes a single needle-stroke through the sky: the first star.let me be able to warn them in time. they jump slothrop among the trees, lean, bearded, black-theybring him in to the fires where someone is playing a thumb-harp whosesoundbox is carved from a piece of german pine, whose reeds are cutfrom springs of a wrecked volkswagen. women in white cotton skirtsprinted with dark blue flowers, white blouses, braided aprons, and blackkerchiefs are busy with pots and tinware. some are wearing ostrich-egg­shell necklaces knife-hatched in red and blue. a great cut of beef dripsfrom a wooden spit over a fire. enzian isn't there, but andreas orukambe is, nervous as wire, wear­ing a navy pullover and army fatigue trousers. he remembers slothrop."was ist los?" slothrop tells him. "supposed to be here at midnight. don't knowhow many there are, but maybe you'd better clear out." "maybe." andreas is smiling. "have you eaten?"the argument, go or stay, proceeds over supper. it is not the tacticaldecision-making slothrop was taught in officer school. there seem to beother considerations, something the zone-hereros know about and slo­throp doesn't. "we have to go where we go," andreas explains to him later. "wheremukuru wants us to go." "oh. oh, 1 thought you were out here looking for something, likeeverybody else. the 00000, what about that?" "that is mukuru's, he hides it where he wants us to seek.""look, 1 have a line on that s-gerat." he gives them greta erd­mann's story-the heath, the gasoline works, the name blicero-that rings a bell. a gong, in fact. everybody looks at everybody else."now," andreas very careful, "that was the name of the german whocommanded the battery that used the s-gerat?" "i don't know if they used it. blicero took the woman to a factorywhere it was either put together, or a part of it was made, from someplastic called imipolex g." "and she didn't say where." "only 'the heath.' see if you can find her husband, miklos thanatz.he may have seen the actual firing, if there was one. something out ofthe ordinary went on about then, but 1 never got to find out what." 562 "thank you." "it's o.k. maybe you can tell me something now." he brings out the mandala he found. "what's it mean?" andreas sets it on the ground, turns it till the k points northwest. "klar," touching each letter, "enthiftung, these are the female letters. north letters. in our villages the women lived in huts on the northern half of the circle, the men on the south. the village itself was a mandala. klar is fertilization and birth, enthiftung is the breath, the soul. ziindung and vorstufe are the male signs, the activities, fire and preparation or building. and in the center, here, hauptstufe. it is the pen where we kept the sacred cattle. the souls of the ancestors. all the same here. birth, soul, fire, building. male and female, together. "the four fins of the rocket made a cross, another mandala. number one pointed the way it would fly. two for pitch, three for yaw and roll, four for pitch. each opposite pair of vanes worked together, and moved in opposite senses. opposites together. you can see how we might feel it speak to us, even if we don't set one up on its fins and worship it. but it was waiting for us when we came north to germany so long ago . . . even confused and uprooted as we were then, we knew that our destiny was tied up with its own. that we had been passed over by von trotha's army so that we would find the aggregat." slothrop gives him the mandala. he hopes it will work like the man­ tra that enzian told him once, mba-kayere (i am passed over), mba­ kayere ... a spell against marvy tonight, against tchitcherine. a mezuzah. safe passage through a bad night. . . . o 0 ·0 0 0 0 0 the schwarzkommando have got to achtfaden, but tchitcherine has been to narrisch. it cost him der springer and three enlisted men in sick bay with deep bites. one severed artery. narrisch trying to go out audie murphy style. a knight for a bishop=-namsch under narcohyp­ nosis raved about the holy circle and the rocketfin cross. but the toafac!w blacks don't know what else narrisch knew: . fromlo� (a) there was a radio link from the ground to the s-gerat but not the other way round, (b) there was an interference problem between a servo-actuator and a thamu special oxygen line running aft to the device from the main tank, ing o�,t� (c) weissmann not only coordinated the s-gerat project at nordhauirhat. sen, but also commanded the battery that fired rocket 00000. t' __ ' � _ / ___ -total espionage. bit by bit this mosaic is growing. tchitcherine, bu­reauless, carries it around in his brain. every chip and scrap belongs.more precious than ravenna, something goes erecting against thisstarch-colored sky. . . . radio link + oxygen = afterburner of some kind. ordinarily itwould. but narrisch also spoke of an asymmetry, a load inside near vane 3 that complicated roll and yaw control almost impossibly.now wouldn't an afterburner there also give an asymmetrical burn­ing pattern, and heat fluxes greater than the structure could take?damn, why hasn't he picked up any of the propulsion people? do theamericans have them all? major marvy, bowie knife in his teeth and two thompsons proppedon either hip, as dumbfounded in the clearing as the rest of the attackparty, is in no mood to talk. instead he is sulking, and drinking vodkaout of dzabajev's bottomless canteen. but had any propulsion engineersassigned to the s-gerat showed up at garmisch, marvy would have lethim know. that's the arrangement. western intelligence, russiantrigger fingers. oh, he smells enzian . . . even now the black may be looking in outof the night. tchitcherine lights a cigarette, greenbluelavender flare set­tling to yellow . . . he holds the flame longer than necessary, thinkinglet him. he won't. i wouldn't. well ... maybe i would....but it's come a quantum-jump closer tonight. they are going to meet.it will be over the s-gerat, real or fantasized, working or wasted-theywill meet face to face. then ... meantime, who's the mysterious soviet intelligence agent that marvytalked to? paranoia for you here, tchitcherine. maybe moscow's beentipped to your vendetta. if they are gathering evidence for a court-mar­tial, it won't be any central asia this time. it'll be last secretary to theembassy in atlantis. you can negotiate narcotics arrests for all thedrowned russian sailors, expedite your own father's visas to far lemu­ria, to the sun-resorts of sargasso where the bones come up to lie andbleach and mock the passing ships. and just before he rides out on thenoon current, brochures tucked between ribs, traveler's checks waddedin a skull-socket, tell him of his black son-tell him about the day withenzian in the creeping edge of autumn, cold as the mortal cold of an or­ange kept under shaved ice on the terrace of the hotel in barcelona, sime quieres escribir you already know where i'll be staying . . . cold atthe tip of your peeling-thumb, terminally-approaching cold. . . ."listen," marvy by now a little drunk and peevish, "when we gonnagit those 'suckers?" /;;:--'�-,-_--: --barcelona i . .. color "it's coming, you can be sure." "butchyew don't know the kinda pressure i'm gettin' fm paris! f'm headquarters! it's fantastic! there's people in high places wanna wipe thim 'suckers out, now. all's they got to do's mash on a button 'n' i never git to see no mexican whores again's long's i live. now you can see what these coons're try'n' t'do, somebody got to stop them 'fore they do, shit-" "this intelligence man you saw-both our governments easily could have the same policy-" "you ain't got general electric breathin' over your shoulder, fella. dillon, reed ... standard awl ... shit .... " "but that's just what you folks need," bloody chiclitz interjects. "get some business people in there to run it right, instead of having the gov­ ernment run everything. your left hand doesn't know what your right hand's doing! you know that?" what's this? a political debate now? not enough humiliation missing the schwarzkommando, no, you didn't think you were going to get off that easy.... "a-and what about herbert hoover?" chiclitz is screaming. "he came over and fed you people, when you were starving! they love hoo­ ver over here-" "yes-" tchitcherine breaks in: "what is general electric doing out here, by the way?" a friendly wink from major marvy. "mister swope was ace buddies with old fdr, you see. electric charlie's in there now, but swope, he was one-thim brain trusters. jews, most ofm. but swope's o.k. now ge has connections with siemens over here, they worked on the v-2 guidance, remember-" «swope's a jew," sez chiclitz. "naahh-bloody, yew don' know whatcher talkin' about-" "i'm telling you-" they fall into a drawling juicers' argument over the ethnic background of the ex-chairman of ge, full of poison and sluggish hate. tchitcherine listens with only one ear. an episode of ver­ tigo is creeping on him. didn't narrisch, under the drug, mention a sie­ mens representative at the s-gerat meetings in nordhausen? yes. and an ig man, too. didn't carl schmitz of the ig sit on siemens's board of directors? no use asking marvy. he is too drunk by now to stay on any subject . "ya know i was purty ignorant whin uh come out here. sheeit, i used t'think i. g. farben was somebody's name, you know, a fella-hello, this i. g. farben? no, this is his wife, mizzus farben! yaaah-ha-ha-ha!" n wegof/ll bloody chiclitz is off on his eleanor roosevelt routine. "the othuhday, my son idiot-uh, elliot-and i, were baking cookies. cookies tosend to the boys overseas. when the boys received the cookies we sentthem, they would bake cookies, and send some back to us. that way,everybody gets his cookies!" oh, wimpe. old v-mann, were you right? is your ig to be the verymodel of nations? so it comes to tchitcherine here in the clearing with these two foolson either side of him, among the debris of some numberless battery'slast stand, cables paralyzed where winch-operators levered them tostillness, beer bottles lying exactly where they were thrown by the lastmen on the last night, everything testifying so purely to the shape of de­feat, of operational death. "say, there." it appears to be a very large white finger, addressinghim. its fingernail is beautifully manicured: as it rotates for him, itslowly reveals a fingerprint that might well be an aerial view of thecity dactylic, that city of the future where every soul is known, andthere is noplace to hide. right now, joints moving with soft, hydraulicsounds, the finger is calling tchitcherine's attention to-� a rocket-cartel. a structure cutting across every agency humanand paper that ever touched it. even to russia. . russia bought fromkrupp, didn't she, from siemens, the ig.... are there arrangements stalin won't admit ... doesn't even knowabout? oh, a state begins to take form in the stateless german night, astate that spans oceans and surface politics, sovereign as the interna­tional or the church of rome, and the rocket is its soul. ig raketen.circus-bright, poster reds and yellows, rings beyond counting, all goingat once. the stately finger twirls among them all. tchitcherine is cer­tain. not so much on outward evidence he has found moving throughthe zone as out of a personal doom he carries with him-always to beheld at the edges of revelations. it happened first with the kirghizlight, and his only illumination then was that fear would always keephim from going all the way in. he will never get further than the edgeof this meta-cartel which has made itself known tonight, this rocket­state whose borders he cannot cross. . . . he will miss the light, but not the finger. sadly, most sadly, every­one else seems to be in on it. every scavenger out here is in ig rake­ten's employ. all except for himself, and enzian. his brother, enzian.no wonder they're after the schwarzkommando ... and....and when they find out i'm not what they think ... and why ismarvy looking at me like this now, his eyes bulging oh, don't panic,don't feed his insanity, he's just this side of ... of . m ivl 566 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 to cuxhaven, the summer in deceleration, floating on to cuxhaven. to be inl the meadows hum. rain clatters in crescent swoops through the reeds. sheep, and rarely a few dark northern deer, will come down to browse for seaweed at the shore which is never quite sea nor quite sand, but held in misty ambivalence by the sun.... so slothrop is borne, afloat on the water-leas. like signals set out for lost travelers, shapes keep re­ peating for him, zonal shapes he will allow to enter but won't interpret, not any more. just as well, probably. the most persistent of these, which seem to show up at the least real times of day, are the stairstep gables that front so many of these ancient north-german buildings, ris­ ing, backlit, a strangely wet gray as if risen out of the sea, over these straight and very low horizons. they hold shape, they endure, like monuments to analysis. three hundred years ago mathematicians were learning to break the cannonball's rise and fall into stairsteps of range and height, �x and �y, allowing them to grow smaller and smaller, ap­ proaching zero as armies of eternally shrinking midgets galloped up­ stairs and down again, the patter of their diminishing feet growing finer, smoothing out into continuous sound. this analytic legacy has been handed down intact-it brought the technicians at peenemiinde to peer at the askania films of rocket flights, frame by frame, �x by �y, flight­ less themselves . . . film and calculus, both pornographies of flight. re­ minders of impotence and abstraction, the stone treppengiebel shapes, whole and shattered, appear now over the green plains, and last a while, and go away: in their shadows children with hair like hay are playing himmel and holle, jumping village pavements from heaven to hell to heaven by increments, sometimes letting slothrop have a turn, some­ times vanishing back into their dark gassen where elder houses, many�\\al'llr. windowed and sorrowing, bow perpetually to the neighbor across the n�er, way, nearly touching overhead, only a thin lead of milk sky between. at nightfall the children roam the streets carrying round paper lan­ terns, singing laterne, laterne, sonne, mond und sterne . . . spheres in country evenings, pale as souls, singing good-by to another summer. in a coastal town, near wismar, as he's falling to sleep in a little park, they surround slothrop and tell him the story of plechazunga, the pig-hero who, sometime back in the loth century, routed a viking invasion, ap­ pearing suddenly out of a thunderbolt and chasing a score of screaming norsemen back into the sea. every summer since then, a thursday has been set aside to celebrate the town' s deliverance-thursday being named after donar or thor, the thunder-god, who sent down the giantpig. the old gods, even by the loth century, still had some pull with thepeople. donar hadn't quite been tamed into saint peter or roland,though the ceremony did come to be held at the town's roland-statuenear the peterskirche. this year, though, it's in jeopardy. schraub the shoemaker, who hastaken the role of plechazunga for the past 30 years, got drafted lastwinter into the volksgrenadier and never came back. now the whitelanterns come crowding around tyrone slothrop, bobbing in the dark.tiny fingers prod his stomach. "you're the fattest man in the world." "he's fatter than anyone in the village.""would you? would you?" "i'm not that fat-" "told you somebody would come." "and taller, too." "-waitaminute, would i what?" "be plechazunga tomorrow." "please. " being a soft touch these days, slothrop gives in. they roust him upout of his grass bed and down to the city hall. in the basement are cos­tumes and props for the schweinheldfest-shields, spears, horned hel­mets, shaggy animal skins, wooden thor's hammers and ten-foot light­ning bolts covered with gold leaf. the pig costume is a littlestartling-pink, blue, yellow, bright sour colors, a german expressionistpig, plush outside, padded with straw inside. it seems to fit perfectly.hmm. the crowd next morning is sparse and placid: old people and chil­dren, and a few silent veterans. the viking invaders are all kids, hel­mets sloping down over their eyes, capes dragging the ground, shields asbig as they are and weaponry twice as high. giant plechazunga imageswith white stock and red and blue cornflowers woven onto the wire­mesh frames, line the square. slothrop waits hidden behind the roland,a particularly humorless, goggle-eyed, curly-headed, pinch-waistedspecimen. with slothrop is an arsenal of fireworks and his assistantfritz, who's about 8, and a wilhelm busch original. slothrop is a littlenervous, unaccustomed as he is to pigherofestivals. but fritz is an oldhand, and has thoughtfully brought along a glazed jug of some liquidbrain damage flavored with dill and coriander and distilled, unless ha­ferschleim means something else, from oatmeal. "haferschleim, fritz?" he takes another belt, sorry he asked. 01,. "haferschleim, ja." "well, haferschleim is better than none, ho, ho. . . ." whatever it is, it seems to work swiftly on the nerve centers. by the time all the vi­ kings, to a solemn brass chorale from the local band, have puffed and struggled up to the statue, formed ranks, and demanded the town's sur­ render, slothrop finds his brain working with less than the usual keen­ ness. at which point fritz strikes his match, and all hell breaks loose, rockets, roman candles, pinwheels and-pleccchhazunngga! an enormous charge of black powder blasts him out in the open, singe­ ing his ass, taking the curl right out of his tail. "oh, yes, that's right, uh ... " wobbling, grinning hugely, slothrop hollers his line: "i am the wrath of donar-and this day you shall be my anvil!" away they all go in a good roaring chase through the streets, in a shower of white blos­ soms, little kids squealing, down to the water, where everybody starts splashing and ducking everybody else. townspeople break out beer, wine, bread, quark, sausages. gold-brown kartoffelpuffer are lifted dripping hot from oil smoking in black skillets over little peat fires. girls commence stroking slothrop's snout and velvet flanks. the town is saved for another year. a peaceful, drunken day, full of music, the smell of salt water, marsh, flowers, frying onions, spilled beer and fresh fish, overhead little frost­ colored clouds blowing along the blue sky. the breeze is cool enough to keep slothrop from sweating inside this pig suit. all along the shoreline, blue-gray woods breathe and shimmer. white sails move out in the sea. slothrop returns from the brown back room of a pipesmoke-and-cab­ bage cafe, and an hour's game of hammer-and-forge with-every boy's dream-two healthy young ladies in summer dresses and woodsoled shoes to find the crowd begun to coagulate into clumps of three and four. oh, shit. not now, come on.... tight aching across his asshole, head and stomach inflated with oat mash and summer beer, slothrop sits on a pile of nets and tries, fat chance, to will himself alert. these little vortices appearing in a crowd out here usually mean black market. weeds of paranoia begin to bloom, army-green, among the garden and midday tranquillities. last of his line, and how far­ fallen-no other slothrop ever felt such fear in the presence of com­ merce. newspapers already lie spread out on the cobbles for buyers to dump out cans of coffee on, make sure it's all bohnenkaffee, and not just a thin layer on top of ersatz. gold watches and rings appear abruptly sunlit out of dusty pockets. cigarettes go flashing hand to hand among the limp and filthy and soundless reichsmarks. kids play underfoot while the grownups deal, in polish, russian, north-baltic, plattdeutsch. 569 d. some of the dp style here, a little impersonal, just passing through,dealing on route, in motion, almost as an afterthought . . . where'd theyall come from, these gray hustlers, what shadows in the gemutlichkeitof the day were harboring them? materializing from their own weird office silence, the coppers show up now, two black 'n' white charabancs full of bluegreen uniforms,white armbands, little bucket hats with starburst insignia, truncheonsalready unsheathed, black dildos in nervous hands, wobbling, ready foraction. the eddies in the crowd break up fast, jewelry ringing to thepavement, cigarettes scattered and squashed under the feet of stam­ peding civilians, among the instant litter of watches, war medals, silk­stuffs, rolls of bills, pinkskinned potatoes all their eyes staring in alarm,elbow-length kid gloves twisted up fingers clutching at sky, smashedlight bulbs, parisian slippers, gold picture-frames around still-lifes ofcobbles, rings, brooches, nobody gonna claim any of it, everybodyscared now. no wonder. the cops go at busting these proceedings the way theymust've handled anti-nazi street actions before the war, moving in,mmm [a, with these flexible clubs, eyes tuned to the finest possibilities ofthreat, smelling of leather, of the wool-armpit rankness of their ownfear, jumping little kids three-on-one, shaking down girls, old people,making them take off and shake out even boots and underwear, jabbingand battering in with tireless truncheonwork among the crying kids andscreaming women. beneath the efliciency and glee is nostalgia for theold days. the war must've been lean times for crowd control, murder wand mopery was the best you could do, one suspect at a time. but now, n�with the white market to be protected, here again are whole streets fullof bodies eager for that erste abreibung, and you can bet the heat arehappy with it. presently they have russian reinforcements, three truckloads of young asiatics in fatigues who don't seem to know where they are ex­actly, just shipped in from someplace very cold and far to the east. outof their slatsided rigs like soccer players coming on field, they form aline and start to clear the street by compressing the crowd toward the wwater. slothrop is right in the middle of all this, shoved stumbling backitoward, pig mask cutting off half his vision, trying to shield whom he can i all-a few kids, an old lady who was busy earlier moving cotton yardage. \ evethe first billy-clubs catch him in the straw padding over his stomach, ruand don't feel like much. civilians are going down right and left, but hllplechazunga's holding his own. has the morning been only a dress reterhearsal? is slothrop expected to repel real foreign invaders now? a tiny jus, girl is clutching to his leg, crying the schweinheld's name in a confident voice. a grizzled old cop, years of home-front high living and bribes in his face, comes swinging a club at slothrop's head. the swine-hero dodges and kicks with his free leg. as the cop doubles over, half a dozen yelling civilians jump on, relieving him of hat and truncheon. tears, caught by the sun, leak out of his withered eyes. then gunfire has started somewhere, panicking everybody, carrying slothrop half off his feet, the kid around his leg torn loose and lost in the rush forever. out of the street onto the quai. the police have quit hitting people and begun picking up loot off of the street, but now the russians are moving in, and enough of them are looking straight at slothrop. provi­ dentially, one of the girls from the cafe shows up about now, takes his hand and tugs him along. "there's a warrant out for you." ele��. "a what? they're doing pretty good without any paperwork." "the russians found your uniform. they think you're a deserter." liar "they're right." she takes slothrop home with her, in his pig suit. he never hears her name. she is about seventeen, fair, a young face, easy to hurt. they lie behind a sperm-yellowed bedsheet tacked to the ceiling, very close on a narrow bed with lacquered posts. her mother is carving turnips in the kitchen. their two hearts pound, his for his danger, hers for slothrop. she tells how her parents lived, her father a printer, married during his '3 for� journeymanship, his wanderyears now stretched out to ten, no word i.l1lill� where he's been since '42, when they had a note from neukolln, where butr�� he had dossed down the night with a friend. always a friend, god trretl� knows how many back rooms, roundhouses, print shops he slept single neat�' nights in, shivering wrapped in back numbers of die welt am montag, sure of at least shelter, like everybody in the buchdrucherverband, 'load, often a meal, almost certainly some kind of police trouble if the stay lasted too long-it was a good union. they kept the german wobbly traditions, they didn't go along with hitler though all the other unions were falling into line. it touches slothrop's own puritan hopes for the word, the word made printer's ink, dwelling along with antibodies and iron-bound breath in a good man's blood, though the world for him be always the world on monday, with its cold cutting edge, slicing away every poor illusion of comfort the bourgeois takes for real . . . did he run off leaflets against his country's insanity? was he busted, beaten, killed? she has a snapshot of him on holiday, someplace bavarian, wa­ terfalled, white-peaked, a tanned and ageless face, tyrolean hat, gal­ luses, feet planted perpetually set to break into a run: the image 571 stopped, preserved here, the only way they could keep him, runningroom to room down all his cold red suburbs, freemason's night to night. . . their aproned and kitchen way of going evening or empty after­noon in to study the llx's and lly's of his drifter's spirit, on the run­study how he was changing inside the knife-fall of the shutter, what hemight've been hearing in the water, flowing like himself forever, in lostsilence, behind him, already behind him. even now, lying beside a stranger in a pig disguise, her father is theflying element of slothrop, of whoever else has lain here before, flight­less, and heard the same promise: ''i'd go anywhere with you." he seesthem walking a railroad trestle, pines on long slanted mountains allaround, autumn sunlight and cold, purple rainclouds, mid-afternoon,her face against some tall concrete structure, the light of the concretecoming down oblique both sides of her cheekbones, blending into herskin, blending with its own light. her motionless figure above him in ablack greatcoat, blonde hair against the sky, himself at the top of ametal ladder in a trainyard, gazing up at her, all their shining steel roadsbelow crisscrossing and peeling off to all parts of the zone. both of themon the run. that's what she wants. but slothrop only wants to lie stillwith her heartbeat awhile ... isn't that every paranoid's wish? to per­fect methods of immobility? but they're coming, house to house, lookingfor their deserter, and it's slothrop who has to go, she who has to stay.in the streets loudspeakers, buzzing metal throats, are proclaiming anearly curfew tonight. through some window of the town, lying in somebed, already browsing at the edges of the fields of sleep, is a kid forwhom the metal voice with its foreign accent is a sign of nightly secu­rity, to be part of the wild fields, the rain on the sea, dogs, smells ofcooking from strange windows, dirt roads ... part of this unrecover­able summer. . . . "there's no moon," she whispers, her eyes flinching but not lookingaway. "what's the best way out of town?" she knows a hundred. his heart, his fingertips hurt with shame. "i'llshow you." "you don't have to." "i want to." her mother gives slothrop a couple of hard rolls to stash inside his pigsuit. she'd find him something else to wear, but all her husband'sclothes have been traded for food at the tauschzentrale. his last pictureof her is framed in the light of her kitchen, through the window, a fad­ing golden woman, head in a nod over a stove with a single pot siml \ o �i ill an \0 a \og i �n \ mil 01 ta be! ro 572 mering, flowered wallpaper deep-orange and red behind her averted face. the daughter leads him over low stone walls, along drainage ditches and into culverts, southwesterly to the outskirts of the town. far behind them the clock in the peterskirche strikes nine, the sightless roland below continuing to gaze across the square. white flowers fall one by one from the images of plechazunga. stacks of a power station rise, ghostly, smokeless, painted on the sky. a windmill creaks out in the countryside. the city gate is high and skinny, with stairsteps to nowhere on top. the road away goes curving through the ogival opening, out into the night meadows. "i want to go with you." but she makes no move to step through the arch with him. "maybe i'll be back." it's no drifter's lie, both of them are sure that someone will be, next year at about this time, maybe next year's schweinheld, someone close enough . . . and if the name, the dossier are not exactly the same, well, who believes in those? she's a printer's kid, she knows the medium, she even learned from him how to handle a winkelhaken pretty good, how to set up a line and take it down, "you're a may bug," she whispers, and kisses him good-by, and stands watching him go, a sniffling still girl in pinafore and army boots by the isolated gate. "good night. . . ." docile girl, good night. what does he have for her but a last snapshot of a trudging pig in motley, merging with the stars and woodpiles, some­ thing to put beside that childhood still of her father? he impersonates flight though his heart isn't in it and yet he's lost all knowledge of staying.... good night, it's curfew, get back inside, back in your room ... good night.... loom he keeps to open country, sleeping when he's too tired to walk, straw and velvet insulating him from the cold. one morning he wakes in a hol­ low between a stand of beech and a stream. it is sunrise and bitter cold, e "l and there seems to be a warm tongue licking roughly at his face. he is looking here into the snout of another pig, very fat and pink pig. she grunts and smiles amiably, blinking long eyelashes. "wait. how about this?" he puts on the pig mask. she stares for a hilfi; minute, then moves up to slothrop and kisses him, snout-to-snout. both dana'i of them are dripping with dew. he follows her on down to the stream, ictuit takes off the mask again and throws water at his face while she drinks a faa, beside him, slurping, placid. the water is clear, running lively, cold. t 5�' round rocks knock together under the stream. a resonant sound, a 573 music. it would be worth something to sit day and night, in and out, lis­tening to these sounds of water and cobbles unfold. . . . slothrop is hungry. "come on. we got to find breakfast." beside asmall pond near a farmhouse, the pig discovers a wood stake driven intothe ground. she begins snuffling around it. slothrop kicks aside looseearth and finds a brick cairn, stuffed with potatoes ensiled last year."fine for you," as she falls to eagerly, "but i can't eat that stuff." sky isshining in the calm surface of the water. nobody seems to be around.slothrop wanders off to check the farmhouse. tall white daisies grow allover the yard. thatch-hooded windows upstairs are dark, no smokecomes from the chimneys. but the chicken-house in back is occupied.he eases a big fat white hen up off of her nest, reaches gingerly for theeggs-pkaww she flies into a dither, tries to peck slothrop's arm off,friends come shooting in from outside raising a godawful commotion, atwhich point the hen has worked her wings through the wood slats so shecan't get back in and is too fat below the wingpits to get the rest of theway out. so, there she hangs, flapping and screaming, while slothropgrabs three eggs then tries to push her wings back inside for her. it is afrustrating job, especially trying to keep the eggs balanced. the roosteris in the doorway hollering achtung, achtung, discipline in his harem isshot to hell, noisy white tumbleweed hens are barrelassing all over theinside of the coop, and blood is flowing from slothrop in half a dozenplaces. then he hears a dog barking-time to give up on this hen-comesoutside sees a lady in her wehrmacht auxiliary outfit 30 meters awayleveling a shotgun and the dog charging in growling, teeth bared, eyeson slothrop's throat. slothrop goes scrambling around the henhouse justas the gun kicks off a good-morning blast. about then the pig shows upand chases off the dog. away they go, eggs cradled in pig mask, ladyyelling, hens raising hell, pig galloping along beside. there's a final shot­gun blast, but by then they're out of range.about a mile farther on they pause, for slothrop's breakfast. "goodshow," thumping the pig affectionately. she crouches, catching herbreath, gazing at him while he eats raw eggs and smokes half a ciga­rette. then they set off again. soon they have begun to angle toward the sea. the pig seems toknow where she's going. far away on another road, a great cloud ofdust hangs, crawling southward, maybe a russian horse convoy. fledg­ling storks are trying out their wings over the haystacks and fields. topsof solitary trees are blurred green, as if smudged accidentally by a 574 in atl at sleeve. brown windmills turn at the horizon, across miles of straw-sprin­ kled red earth. a pig is a jolly companion, boar, sow, barrow, or gilta pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, though mountains may topple and tilt. when they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, when they've turned on you, tory and whig, though you may be thrown over by tabby or rover, you'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, you'll never go wrong with a pig! by nightfall they have entered a wooded stretch. fog drifts in the hollows. a lost unmilked cow complains somewhere in the darkness. the pig and slothrop settled down to sleep among pines thick with shreds of tinfoil, a cloud of british window dumped to fox the german radars in some long-ago raid, a whole forest of christmas trees, tinsel rippling in the wind, catching the starlight, silent, ice-cold crownfire acres wild over their heads all night. slothrop keeps waking to find the pig snuggled in a bed of pine needles, watching over him. it's not for danger, or out of restlessness. maybe she's decided slothrop needs looking after. in the tinfoil light she's very sleek and convex, her bristles look smooth as down. lustful thoughts come filtering into slothrop's mind, little peculiarity here you know, hehheh, nothing he can't handle. . . . they fall asleep under the decorated trees, the pig a wandering eastern magus, slothrop in his costume a gaudy present waiting for morning and a child to claim him. next day, about noon, they enter a slow-withering city, alone on the baltic coast, and perishing from an absence of children. the sign over the city gate, in burned bulbs and empty sockets, reads zwolfkinder. the great wheel, dominating the skyline for miles out of town, leans a little askew, grim old governess, sun catching long streaks of rust, sky pale through the iron lattice that droops its long twisted shadow across the sand and into the plum sea. wind cat-howls in and out the doorless halls and houses. "frieda." a voice calling from the blue shadow behind a wall. grunt­ ing, smiling, the pig stands her ground-look who i brought home. soon a thin freckled man, blond, nearly bald, steps out into the sun. glancing at slothrop, nervous, he reaches to scratch frieda between the ears. "i am pokier. thank you for bringing her back." 5 75 "no, no-she brought me." "yes." pokier is living in the basement of the town hall. he has some coffeeheating on a driftwood fire in the stove. "do you play chess?" frieda kibitzes. slothrop, who tends to play more by superstition thanstrategy, is obsessed with protecting his knights, springer and springer-willing to lose anything else, thinking no more than a move or twoahead if that, he alternates long lethargic backing and filling with burstsof idiot razzle-dazzle that have pokler frowning, but not with worry.about the time slothrop loses his queen, "sa-a-a-y, waitaminute, didyou say pokler?" zip the man is out with a luger as big as a house-really fast guy­with the muzzle pointing right at slothrop's head. for a moment slo­throp, in his pig suit, thinks that pokler thinks that he, slothrop, hasbeen fooling around with frieda the pig, and that there is about to be ashotgun, or luger, wedding here-in fact the phrase unto thee i pledgemy trough has just arrived in his brain when he realizes that what po­kler's actually saying is, "you'd better leave. only two more moves andi'd've had you anyway." "lemme at least tell you my story," blithering fast as he can the zu­rich information with pokler's name on it, the russian-american-hererosearch for the s-gerat, wondering meantime, in parallel sort of, if thatoberst enzian wasn't right about going native in the zone-beginningto get ideas, fixed and slightly, ah, erotic notions about destiny are youslothrop? eh? tracing back the route frieda the pig brought him along,trying to remember forks where they might have turned anotherway.... "the schwarzgerat." pokler shakes his head. "i don't know what itwas. i was never that interested. is that really all you're after?"slothrop thinks that over. their coffee cups take sunlight from thewindow and bounce it back up to the ceiling, bobbing ellipses of bluelight. "don't know. except for this kind of personal tie-in with imipolexg .... " "it's an aromatic polyimide," pokler putting the gun back in his shirt."tell me about it," sez slothrop.well, but not before he has told something of his ilse and her summerreturns, enough for slothrop to be taken again by the nape and pushedagainst bianca's dead flesh. . . . ilse, fathered on greta erdmann's sil­ver and passive image, bianca, conceived during the filming of the very scene that was in his thoughts as pokler pumped in the fatal charge of sperm-how could they not be the same child? she's still with you, though harder to see these days, nearly invisible as a glass of gray lemonade in a twilit room . . . still she is there, cool and acid and sweet, waiting to be swallowed down to touch your deep­ est cells, to work among your saddest dreams. d d d d d d d pokler does manage to tell a little about laszlo jamf, but keeps getting sidetracked off into talking about the movies, german movies slothrop has never heard of, much less seen . . . yes here's some kind of fanatical movie hound all right"on d-day," he confesses, "when i heard gen­ eral eisenhower on the radio announcing the invasion of normandy, i thought it was really clark gable, have you ever noticed? the voices are identical. . . . " in the last third of his life, there came over laszlo jamf-so it seemed to those who from out in the wood lecture halls watched his eyelids slowly granulate, spots and wrinkles grow across his image, disintegrat­ ing it toward old age-a hostility, a strangely personal hatred, for the covalent bond. a conviction that, for synthetics to have a future at all, the bond must be improved on-some students even read "tran­ scended." that something so mutable, so soft, as a sharing of electrons by atoms of carbon should lie at the core of life, his life, struck jamf as a cosmic humiliation. sharing? how much stronger, how everlasting was the ionic bond-where electrons are not shared, but captured. seized! and held! polarized plus and minus, these atoms, no ambiguities . . . how he came to love that clarity: how stable it was, such mineral stub­ bornness! "whatever lip-service we may pay to reason," he told pokler's class back at the t.h., "to moderation and compromise, nevertheless there remains the lion. a lion in each one of you. he is either tamed-by too much mathematics, by details of design, by corporate procedures-or he stays wild, an eternal predator. "the lion does not know subtleties and half-solutions. he does not ac­ cept sharing as a basis for anything! he takes, he holds! he is not a bol­ shevik or a jew. you will never hear relativity from the lion. he wants the absolute. life and death. win and lose. not truces or arrangements, ere� but the joy of the leap, the roar, the blood." 577 if this be national socialist chemistry, blame that something-in-the­air, the zeitgeist. sure, blame it. prof.-dr. jamf was not immune. nei­ther was his student pokler. but through inflation and depression, po­kler's idea of "the lion" came to have a human face attached to it, amovie face natiirlich, that of the actor rudolf klein-rogge, whom po­kler idolized, and wanted to be like. klein-rogge was carrying nubile actresses off to rooftops when kingkong was still on the tit with no motor skills to speak of. well, one nu­bile actress anyway, brigitte helm in metropolis. great movie. exactlythe world pokler and evidently quite a few others were dreaming aboutthose days, a corporate city-state where technology was the source of power, the engineer worked closely with the administrator, the masseslabored unseen far underground, and ultimate power lay with a singleleader at the top, fatherly and benevolent and just, who wore magni­ficent-looking suits and whose name pokler couldn't remember, beingtoo taken with klein-rogge playing the mad inventor that pokler andhis codisciples under j amf longed to be-indispensable to those who ranthe metropolis, yet, at the end, the untamable lion who could let it allcrash, girl, state, masses, himself, asserting his reality against them all inone last roaring plunge from rooftop to street. . . .a curious potency. whatever it was the real visionaries were pickingup out of the hard tessitura of those days and city streets, whateverkathe kollwitz saw that brought her lean death down to hump itswomen from behind, and they to love it so, seemed now and then tohave touched pokler too, in his deeper excursions into the mare noctur­num. he found delight not unlike a razor sweeping his skin and nerves,scalp to soles, in ritual submissions to the master of this night space andof himself, the male embodiment of a technologique that embracedpower not for its social uses but for just those chances of surrender, per­sonal and dark surrender, to the void, to delicious and screaming col­lapse .... to attila the hun, as a matter of fact, come west out of thesteppes to smash the precious structure of magic and incest that held to­gether the kingdom of the burgundians. pokler was tired that night, allday out scavenging for coal. he kept falling asleep, waking to imagesthat for a half a minute he could make no sense of at all-a close-up of aface? a forest? the scales of the dragon? a battle-scene? often enough,it would resolve into rudolf klein-rogge, ancient oriental thanatoma­niac attila, head shaved except for a topknot, bead-strung, raving withgrandiloquent gestures and those enormous bleak eyes. . . . poklerwould nod back into sleep with bursts of destroying beauty there for hisdreams to work on, speaking barbaric gutturals for the silent mouths, i \ 10 \ no i \\'hen� ell,onefi; 'ie, ewt rninaa� esouire �e m�1' � aliu� ore ma� �r!�;: pokler�; \\floft lei il� smoothing the burgundiaus into something of the meekness, the gray­ ness of certain crowds in the beerhalls back at the t.h. . . . and wake again-it went on for hours-into some further progression of carnage, of fire and smashing. . . . on the way home, by tram and foot, his wife bitched at pokler for dozing off, ridiculed his engineer's devotion to cause-and-effect. how could he tell her that the dramatic connections were really all there, in his dreams? how could he tell her anything? klein-rogge is remembered most of all for his role as dr. mabuse. you were meant to think of hugo stinnes, the tireless operator behind the scenes of apparent inflation, apparent history: gambler, financial wizard, archgangster . . . a fussy biirgerlich mouth, jowls, graceless moves, a first impression of comic technocracy . . . and yet, when the rages came over him, breaking through from beneath the rationalized look, with his glacial eyes become windows into the bare savanna, then the real mabuse surfaced, vital and proud against the gray forces sur­ rounding him, edging him toward the doom he must've known he couldn't escape, the silent inferno of guns, grenades, streets full of troops attacking his headquarters, and his own madness at the end of the secret tunnel. ... and who brought him down but matinee idol bernhardt goetzke as state prosecutor von wenk, goetzke who played tender, wistful bureaucratic death in der miide tod, here too running true to form, too tame, too gentle for the jaded countess he coveted­ but klein-rogge jumped in, with all claws out, drove her effeminate husband to suicide, seized her, threw her on his bed, the languid bitch -took her! while gentle goetzke sat in his office, among his papers and sybarites-mabuse trying to hypnotize him, drug him, bomb him to death in his own office-nothing worked, each time the great weimar inertia, files, hierarchies, routines, kept saving him. mabuse was the sav­ age throwback, the charismatic flash no sunday-afternoon agfa plate could ever bear, the print through the rippling solution each time flaring up to the same annihilating white (piscean depths pokler has cruised dream and waking, beneath him images of everyday inflation dreari­ ness, queues, stockbrokers, boiled potatoes in a dish, searching with only gills and gut-some nervous drive toward myth he doesn't even know if he believes in-for the white light, ruins of atlantis, intimations of a truer kingdom). . . . metropolitan inventor rothwang, king attila, mabuse der spieler, prof.-dr. laszlo jamf, all their yearnings aimed the same way, toward a form of death that could be demonstrated to hold joy and defiance, nothing of bourgeois goetzkian death, of self-deluding, mature accepte pidil, \\flatelf nump j� llienl 579 ance, relatives in the parlor, knowing faces the children can alwaysread.... "you have the two choices," jamf cried, his last lecture of the year:outside were the flowery strokings of wind, girls in pale-colored dresses,oceans of beer, male choruses intensely, movingly lifted as they sangsemper sit in flores/ semper sit in flo-ho-res ... "stay behind with car­bon and hydrogen, take your lunch-bucket in to the works every morn­ing with the faceless droves who can't wait to get in out of the sunlight-or move beyond. silicon, boron, phosphorus-these can replace car­bon, and can bond to nitrogen instead of hydrogen-" a few snickershere, not unanticipated by the playful old pedagogue, be he always inflower: his involvement in getting weimar to subsidize the ig's stick­stoff syndikat was well known-"move beyond life, toward the inor­ganic. here is no frailty, no mortality-here is strength, and the time­less." then his well-known finale, as he wiped away the scrawled c-hon his chalkboard and wrote, in enormous letters, si-n.the wave of the future. but jamf himself, oddly, did not move on. henever synthesized those new inorganic rings or chains he had prophe­sied so dramatically. had he only remained behind in the trough, aca­demic generations swelling away just ahead, or had he known some­thing pokler and the others didn't? were his exhortations in the lecturehall some kind of eccentric joke? he stayed with c-h, and took hislunchbucket to america. pokler lost touch with him after the tech­nische hochschule-so did all his old pupils. he was now under the sin­ister influence of lyle bland, and if he was still seeking to escape themortality of the covalent bond, jamf was doing it in the least obvious way there was. d d d d d d d if that lyle bland hadn't joined the masons, he'd still probably be up tothose nefarious tricks of his. just as there are, in the world, machineries ilicommitted to injustice as an enterprise, so too there seem to be provi-sions active for balancing things out once in a while. not as an enter-prise, exactly, but at least in the dance of things. the masons, in the illdance of things, turned out to be one of these where bland was conwicerned. imagine the fellow's plight-got so much money he don't know whatto do with it all. don't go screaming, "give it to me!" either. he's givenit to you, though in roundabout ways you might need a good system of 580 f there" edili� thev� d \\it��' ve�'m� llie )unu� eplace� ewlru('[' search to unsnarl. oh, has he given it to you. by way of the bland insti­ tute and the bland foundation, the man has had his meathooks well into the american day-to-day since 1919. who do you think sat on top of the patent for that 100-miles-per-gallon carburetor, eh? sure you've heard that story-maybe even snickered along with paid anthropolo­ gists who called it automotive age myth or some shit-well, turns out the item was real, all right, and it was lyle bland who sprang for those academic hookers doing the snickering and the credentialed lying. or how about the great killer weed advertising campaign of the thirties, who do you think worked hand-in-glove (or, as grosser individuals have put it, penis-in-mouth) with the fbi on that one? and remember all those guy-goes-to-the-doctor-can't-get-a-hardon jokes? planted by bland, yup-half a dozen basic variations, after having done depth' studies for the national research council that indicated an unaccept­ able 36% of the male work force weren't paying enough attention to their cocks-not enough genital obsession there, and it was undermin­ ing the efficiency of the organs doing the real work. psychological studies became, in fact, a bland specialty. his probe into the subconscious of early-depression america is considered a classic, and widely credited with improving the plausibility of roose­ velt's "election" in 1932. though many of his colleagues found a pos­ ture of hatred for fdr useful, bland was too delighted to go through the motions. for him, fdr was exactly the man: harvard, beholden to all kinds of money old and new, commodity and retail, harriman and weinberg: an american synthesis which had never occurred before, and which opened the way to certain grand possibilities-all grouped under the term "control," which seemed to be a private code-word­ more in line with the aspirations of bland and others. a year later bland joined the business advisory council set up under swope of general electric, whose ideas on matters of "control" ran close to those of wal­ ter rathenau, of german ge. whatever swope's outfit did, it did in se­ cret. nobody got to see its files. bland wasn't about to tell anybody, ei­ ther. he had gotten to be buddies, after world war i, with the office of the alien property custodian. their job was to dispose of confiscated ger­ man interests in the u.s. a lot of midwestern money was involved here, which is what got bland embroiled in the great pinball difficulty, and so into the masons. seems that through something called the chemical foundation-cover names in those days had no style to them-the apc had sold bland a few of laszlo jamf's early patents, along with the u.s. agency of glitherius paint & dye, a berlin firm. a few years later, in 581 �url ninen� prol} nenler' ,inilil 'as co� i\, wn�1 �m temol 1925, in the course of being put together, the ig bought back 50% ofamerican glitherius from bland, who was using his end of it as a pat­ent-holding company. bland got cash, securities, and controlling inter­est in a glitherius subsidiary in berlin being run by a jew namedpflaumbaum, yesyes, the same praumbaum franz pokler worked for tillthe place burned down and pokler went back out on the streets. (in­deed, there were those who could see bland's hand in that disaster,though the jew got blamed, fucked under by the courts, attached till hewas bankrupt, and, in the fullness of time, sent east along with manyothers of his race. we would also have to show some interlock betweenbland and the ufa movie-distribution people who sent pokler out withhis advertising bills to reinickendorf that night, to his fateful meetingwith kurt mondaugen and the verein fur raumschiffahrt-not to men­tion separate connections for achtfaden, narrisch, and the other s­cerat people-before we'd have a paranoid structure worthy of thename. alas, the state of the art by 1945 was nowhere near adequate tothat kind of data retrieval. even if it had been, bland, or his successorsand assigns, could've bought programmers by the truckload to come inand make sure all the information fed out was harmless. those like slo­throp, with the greatest interest in discovering the truth, were thrownback on dreams, psychic rashes, omens, cryptographies, drug-epistem­ologies, all dancing on a ground of terror, contradiction, absurdity.)after the pflaumbaum fire, lines of power among bland and his ger­man colleagues had to be renegotiated. it dragged on for a few years.bland found himself in depression st. louis, talking with one alfonsotracy, princeton '06, st. louis country club, moving into petrochemi­cals in a big way, mrs. tracy dithering in and out of the house withyardage and armloads of rowers, preparing for the annual veiledprophet ball, tracy himself preoccupied with the appearance of someindividuals down from chicago in rashy pinstripe suits, two-tone shoesand snap-brim fedoras, all talking in accents staccato as a thompson."oh, do i need a good electronics man," tracy moaned. «what doyou do with these wops? the whole shipment was bad, and now theywon't take it back. if i step out of line, they'll murder me. they'll rapemabel, they'll go back to princeton some dark night a-and castrate mykid! you know what i think it is, lyle? a plot!"vendettas, jeweled gauntlets, subtle poisons come infiltrating thiswell-mannered parlor with the picture of herbert hoover on the piano,the pinks in the nieman-marcus bowl, the bauhaus-style furniture likealabaster slabs of a model city (you expect little ho trains to comewhirring out from under the davenport, cans 'n' reefers on and on 1u it'! ra "�i , ni�1 kno lee \ :: i i til] �m uttl� 1 rae!l , e�\ ] a�ail � �-------; __-k 50% as a �' ling inle \\' narr� kedforu treell,t t di��t' 'nea�� willi m 'k�!i\� across the carpet's ash-colored lowland ... ). alfonso tracy's long face, creased either side of the nose and on around the mustache line, dragged down by worries, thirty years without a genuine smile ("even laurel & hardy doesn't work for me any more!"), morose with fright in his easy chair. how could lyle bland not be touched? "got just the fella," sez he, touching tracy's arm, compassionate. al­ ways good to have an engineer on tap. this one did some just top-notch electronic-surveillance designs once for the then-fledgling fbi, on a contract the bland institute landed a few years ago and subbed part of out to siemens over there in germany. "have him in tomorrow on the silver streak. no problem, ai." "come on out and have a look," sighs tracy. they hop in the pack­ ard and drive out to the green little river town of mouthorgan, missouri, which is a railroad station, a tanning factory, a few frame houses, and dominating the area a gigantic masonic hall, not a window on the whole massive monolith. after a lot of rigmarole at the door, bland is finally allowed in and led through velvet poolrooms, elaborate polished-wood gambling setups, chrome bars, soft bedrooms, on to a large warehouse section in back, which is crammed ten high with more pinball machines than bland's ever seen in one place in his life, oh boys, grand slams, world serieses, lucky lindies as far as the eye can reach. "and everyone is fucked up," sez melancholy tracy. "look at this." it's a folies-bergeres: four-color lovelies doing the cancan all over it, zeros happening to coincide with eyes, nipples, and cunts, one of your racy-type games here, a little hostile toward the ladies but all in fun! "you got a nickel?" chungg, boing there goes the ball just missing a high-scoring hole, hmm looks like a permanent warp there ahnnnggghk knocks a flasher worth 1000 but only 50 lights up on the board-"you see?" tracy screams as the ball heads like a rock for the bottom, outside . chance get it with a flipper zong flipper flips the other fucking way, and the board lights up tilt. "tilt?" bland scratching his head. "you didn't even-" "they're all like that," tracy watering with frustration. "you try it." the second ball isn't even out of the chute before bland gets another tilt, again without having applied any english. third ball gets stuck somehow against a solenoid and (helphelp, it's hollering, wounded high little voice, oh i'm being electrocuted ... ) dingdingding, gongs and racing numbers up on the board, 400,000, 675,000 bong a million! great­ est folies-bergeres score in history and climbing, the poor spherical soul against the solenoid thrashing, clonic, horrible (yes they're sentient all 583 camf a o� right, beings from the planetoid katspiel, of veryvery elliptical orbit­which is to say it passed by earth only once, a long time ago, nearlyback at the grainy crepuscular edge, and nobody knows where katspielis now or when, or if, it'll be back. it's that familiar division between re­turn and one-shot visitation. if katspiel had enough energy to leave thesun's field forever, then it has left these kind round beings in eternalexile, with no chance of ever being gathered back home, doomed tomasquerade as ball bearings, as steelies in a thousand marble games-toknow the great thumbs of keokuk and puyallup, oyster bay, ingle­wood-danny d' allesandro and elmer ferguson, peewee brennan andflash womack . . . where are they now? where do you think? they allgot drafted, some are dead on i wo, some gangrenous in the snow in theforest of arden, and their thumbs, first rifle inspection in basic, gi'd,driven deep back into childhood as little finger sweat-cams off m-1 op­erating handle, thumb pushing down follower still deep in breech, boltsshhock! whacks thumb oh shit yes it hurts and good-by to another un­beatable and legendary thumb, gone for good back to the summer dust,bags of chuckling glass, bigfooted basset hounds, smell of steel play­ground slides heating in the sun), well here come these cancan girlsnow, folies-bergeres maenads, moving in for the kill, big lipstick smilesaround blazing choppers, some offenbach galop come jigging in nowout of the loudspeakers that are implicit in this machine's design, longgartered legs kicking out over the agony of this sad spherical permanenta wol, all his companions in the chute vibrating their concern andlove, feeling his pain but helpless, inert without the spring, the hustler'shand, the drunk's masculinity problems, the vacuum hours of a gray capand an empty lunchbox, needing these to run their own patterns downthe towering coils, the deep holes with their promises of rest that onlykick you wobbling out again, always at the mercy of gravity, findingnow and then the infinitesimally shallow grooves of other runs, greatruns (twelve heroic minutes in virginia beach, fourth of july, 1927, adrunken sailor whose ship went down at leyte gulf . . . flipped up offthe board, your first three-dimensional trip is always your best, whenyou came down again it wasn't the same, and every time you'd pass any­where near the micro-dimple you made when you fell, you'd get a rush... sobered, a few, having looked into the heart of the solenoid, seenthe magnetic serpent and energy in its nakedness, long enough to bechanged, to bring back from the writhing lines of force down in that pitan intimacy with power, with glazed badlands of soul, that set themapart forever-check out the portrait of michael faraday in the tategallery in london, tantivy mucker-maffick did once, to fill up a 584 an � �-,------; __-caloroi womanless and dreary afternoon, and wondered then how eyes of men could grow so lambent, sinister, so educated among the halls of dread and the invisible . . . ) but now the voices of the murder-witness co­ quettes grow shrill, with more of a blade's edge, the music changes key, pitching higher and higher, the ruffled buttocks bumping backward more violently, the skirts flipping redder and deeper each time, covering more of the field, eddying to blood, to furnace finale, and how's the kat­ spiel kid gonna get out of this one? well, wouldn't you know it, just as things look worst, providence plants a short-statatatah! the lights go out leaving a diminishing red glow on the shaven cheeks and chins of the two operators cringing be­ fore the girls' destroying kooch-dance, the solenoid jitters to silence, the chrome ball, released, rolls traumatized back to the comfort of its friends. "they're all like this?" "oh, was i took," groans alfonso tracy. "it comes and goes," consoles bland, and here we get a reprise of gerhardt von coll's "bright days for the black market," with allow­ ances made for time, place and color: in ell: , doornt� e gamt).. bal', l�� brenna� 'nk ilie nowm' ba�c, �: off\!.] dreec�, [ anoili1r there'll al-ways-be another dollar, any way it hap-pens! if they catch ya nap-pin', wake up-with, the dew on the grass 'n' you can hand 'em their ass­ you can make another dollar, third eye up on that py-ra-mid, oh give a listen kid, it's just winkin' at you, singin', "piss on throughl" there's a will, there's a way, doesn't happen, ev'ry day, but if ya got-the-brains, those mid-night-trains '11 never whistle your dreams away, heyjust flip another dollar, heads or tails it'll be all right, you can lose the fight, but that ever-levin' war goes on and on, ya know, just follow that dollar and vo-dee, o-do-dol nwn eh�t all the baggy-pants outfielders, doughboys in khaki, cancan girls nowsedate, bathing beauties even more so, cowboys and cigar-store indians,google-eyed negroes, apple-cart urchins, lounge lizards and movie queens, cardsharps, clowns, crosseyed lamppost drunks, flying aces, mo­torboat captains, white hunters on safari and negroid apes, fat men,chefs in chefs' hats, jewish usurers, xxx jug-clutching hillbillies, comic­book cats dogs and mice, prizefighters and mountaineers, radio stars,midgets, ten-in-one freaks, railroad hobos, marathon dancers, swingbands, high-society partygoers, racehorses and jockeys, taxidancers, in­dianapolis drivers, sailors ashore and wahines in hula skirts, sinewedolympic runners, tycoons holding big round bags with dollar signs, alljoin in on a second grand chorus of the song, all the boards of the pin­ball machines flashing on and off, primary colors with a touch of acid tothem, flippers flipping, bells ringing, nickels pouring out of thecoinboxes of the more enthusiastic, each sound and move exactly in itsplace in the complex ensemble. outside the temple, the organization reps from chicago lurk, playmorra, drink canadian blends out of silver hip-flasks, oil and clean .38sand generally carryon in their loathsome ethnic way, popish inscrutabi­lity in every sharp crease and shadowy jowl. no way to tell if someplacein the wood file cabinets exists a set of real blueprints telling exactlyhow all these pinball machines were rewired-a randomness deliber­ately simulated-or if it has happened at real random, preserving atleast our faith in malfunction as still something beyond their grasp . . .a faith that each machine, individually, has simply, in innocence, goneon the blink, after the thousands of roadhouse nights, end-of-the-worldwyoming thunderstorms that come straight down on your hatless head,truckstop amphetamines, tobacco smoke clawing at insides of eyelids,homicidal grabs after some way out of the year's never-slackening shit... have players forever strangers brought about, separately, alone,each of these bum machines? believe it: they've sweated, kicked, cried,smashed, lost their balance forever-a single mobility you never heard,a unity unaware of itself, a silence the encyclopedia histories haveblandly filled up with agencies, initials, spokesmen and deficits enoughto keep us from finding them again . . . but for the moment, throughthe elaborate theatrical foofooraw of mob 'n' masons, it has concen­trated here, in the back of the mouthorgan temple, an elegant chaos tobend the ingenuity of bland's bought expert, silver-streaking bertfibel. last we saw of fibel he was hooking, stretching, and running shockcord for that horst achtfaden back in his gliding days, fibel who stayed 586 \ i 10 10 no 1 illl �to �ra l er� �on i of ohl the for, the niz on the ground, and saw his friend on to peenemiinde-saw him on? isn't that a slice of surplus paranoia there, not quite justified is it-well, call it toward a case for bland's involvement with achtfaden too, if you want. fibel worked for siemens back when it was still part of the stinnes trust. along with his design work he also put in some time as a stinnes intelligence agent. there are also still loyalties to vereinigte stahlwerke in effect, though fibel happens to be working now at the general electric plant in pittsfield, massachusetts. it's in bland's inter­ est to have an agent in the berkshires, can you guess why? yup! to keep an eye on adolescent tyrone slothrop, is why. nearly ten years after the original deal was closed, ig farben is still finding it easier to subcon­ tract the surveillance of young tyrone back to lyle bland. this stonefaced kraut fibel is a genius with solenoids and switches. how all this machinery got "out of the glue," as they say over there, is a sinful waste of time even to think about-he dives into topologies and color-codes, the odor of rosin flux goes seeping into the poolrooms and saloons, a schnipsel here and there, a muttered also or two, and before you know it he's got most of them working again. you can bet there's a lotta happy masons in mouthorgan, missouri. in return for his good deed, lyle bland, who couldn't care less, is made a mason. he finds good fellowship, all kinds of comforts designed to remind him of his virility, and even a number of useful business con­ tacts. beyond this, all is just as tight as that business advisory council. non-masons stay pretty much in the dark about what goes on, though now and then something jumps out, exposes itself, jumps giggling back again, leaving you with few details but a lot of awful suspicions. some of the american founding fathers were masons, for instance. there is a theory going around that the u.s.a. was and still is a gigantic masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the illuminati. it is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyra­ mid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. too many anarchists in rqth-century europe-bakunin, proudhon, salverio friscia-were masons for it to be pure chance. lov­ ers of global conspiracy, not all of them catholic, can count on the ma­ sons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails. one of the best of the classic weird mason stories has doctor livingstone (living stone? oh, yes) come wandering into a native village in, not even the heart, but the subconscious of darkest africa, a place, a tribe he's never seen be­ fore: fires in the silence, unfathomable stares, livingstone ambles up to the village chief and flashes him a masonic high sign-the chief recog­ nizes it, returns it, all smiles, and orders every fraternal hospitality laid utol acu,\[ lull � clean , ('fi�, on for the white stranger. but recall that dr. livingstone, like wernhervon braun, was born close to the spring equinox, and so had to con­front the world from that most singular of the zodiac's singularpoints. . . . well, and keep in mind where those masonic mysteriescame from in the first place. (check out ishmael reed. he knows moreabout it than you'll ever find here.) we must also never forget famous missouri mason harry truman:sitting by virtue of death in office, this very august 1945, with his con­trol-finger poised right on miss enola gay's atomic clit, making ready totickle 100,000 little yellow folks into what will come down as a finevapor-deposit of fat-cracklings wrinkled into the fused rubble of theircity on the inland sea. . . . by the time bland joined up, the masons had long, long degeneratedinto just another businessmen's club. a real shame. business of all kinds,over the centuries, had atrophied certain sense-receptors and areas ofthe human brain, so that for most of the fellows taking part, the present­day rituals were no more, and even maybe a little less, than hollow mummery. not for all of them, though. now and then you found athrowback. lyle bland happened to be one. the magic in these masonic rituals is very, very old. and way back inthose days, it worked. as time went on, and it started being used forspectacle, to consolidate what were only secular appearances of power,it began to lose its zip. but the words, moves, and machinery have beenmore or less faithfully carried down over the millennia, through thegrim rationalizing of the world, and so the magic is still there, thoughlatent, needing only to touch the right sensitive head to reassert itself.bland found himself coming home to beacon hill after meetings lateat night, unable to sleep. he would lie down in his study on the daven­port, not thinking about anything in particular, and come back with ajolt, his heart pounding terribly, knowing he'd just been somewhere, butunable to account for the passage of time. the old american empireclock beat in the resonant hallway. the girandole mirror, passed on bygenerations of blands, gathered images in its quicksilver pool that lylecouldn't bring himself to face. in another room his wife, varicose and rei cligious, groaned in her sleep. what was happening to him? 0next meeting night, home on his back on the accustomed davenport, n'wall street journal with nothing in it he didn't already know, lyle . nbland rose up out of his body, about a foot, face-up, realized where hewas and gaahh! whoosh back in again. he lay there, more terrified thanhe'd ever been, even at belleau wood-not so much because he'd lefthis body, but because he knew that this was only a first step. the next co wernnt d to c� step would be to roll over in mid-air and look back. old magic had found him. he was off on a journey. he knew he couldn't keep from going on with it. it took him a month or two before he could make the turn. when it happened, he felt it as a turn not so much in space as in his own history. irreversible. the bland who came back to rejoin the inert white con­ tainer he'd seen belly-up on the sofa, thousands of years beneath him, had changed forever. before very long, he was spending most of his time on that davenport, and hardly any at all down on state street. his wife, who never ques­ tioned anything, moved vaguely through the rooms, discussing only household affairs, sometimes getting an answer if bland happened to be inside his body, but most often not. odd-looking people began to show up at the door, without phoning. creeps, foreigners with tinted, oily skin, wens, sties, cysts, wheezes, bad teeth, limps, staring or-worse­ with strange faraway smiles. she let them in the house, all of them, and the study doors were closed gently behind them, in her face. she could hear nothing but a murmur of voices, in what she guessed to be some foreign tongue. they were instructing her husband in techniques of voyage. there have happened, though rarely, in geographical space, journeys taken northward on very blue, fire-blue seas, chilled, crowded by floes, to the final walls of ice. our judgment lapsed, fatally: we paid more at­ tention to the pearys and nansens who returned-and worse, we named what they did "success," though they failed. because they came back, back to fame, to praise, they failed. we only wept for sir john franklin and salomon andree: mourned their cairns and bones, and missed among the poor frozen rubbish the announcements of their vic­ tory. by the time we had the technology to make such voyages easy, we had long worded over all ability to know victory or defeat. what did andree find in the polar silence: what should we have heard? bland, still an apprentice, hadn't yet shaken off his fondness for hallu­ cinating. he knows where he is when he's there, but when he comes back, he imagines that he has been journeying underneath history: that history is earth's mind, and that there are layers, set very deep, layers of history analogous to layers of coal and oil in earth's body. the foreign­ ers sit in his parlor, hissing over him, leaving offensive films of sebum on everything they touch, trying to see him through this phase, clearly im­ patient with what they feel are the tastes of a loafer and vulgarian. he comes back raving about the presences he has found out there, mem),oa(h ulegfm of�\i� a\'e�� nexl s89 bers of an astral ig, whose mlssion-as indeed rathenau impliedthrough the medium of peter sachsa-is past secular good and evil: dis­tinctions like that are meaningless out there. . . . "yess, yess," all staring at him, "but then why keep saying 'mind andbody'? why make that distinction?" because it's hard to get over the wonder of finding that earth is a liv­ing critter, after all these years of thinking about a big dumb rock to finda body and psyche, he feels like a child again, he knows that in theoryhe must not attach himself, but still he is in love with his sense of won­der, with having found it again, even this late, even knowing he mustsoon let it go. . . . to find that gravity, taken so for granted, is reallysomething eerie, messianic, extrasensory in earth's mindbody . . . hav­ing hugged to its holy center the wastes of dead species, gathered,packed, transmuted, realigned, and rewoven molecules to be taken upagain by the coal-tar kabbalists of the other side, the ones bland on hisvoyages has noted, taken boiled off, teased apart, explicated to everylast permutation of useful magic, centuries past exhaustion still findingnew molecular pieces, combining and recombining them into new syn­thetics"forget them, they are no better than the qlippoth, the shellsof the dead, you must not waste your time with them. . . ."the rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside ofearth, at the mercy of a gravity we have only begun to learn how to de­tect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith inkute korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken fromearth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary andnamed, over here-kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding ineach deeper significance and trying to string them all together liketerms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secretfunction whose name, like the permuted names of god, cannot be spo­ken . . . plastic saxophone reed sounds of unnatural timbre, shampoobottle ego-image, cracker jack prize one-shot amusement, home appli­ance casing fairing for winds of cognition, baby bottles tranquilization,meat packages disguise of slaughter, dry-cleaning bags infant strangula­tion, garden hoses feeding endlessly the desert . . . but to bring themtogether, in their slick persistence and our preterition ... to makesense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replica­tion, so much waste. . . . lucky bland, to be free of it. one night he called his whole family to­gether around the davenport in the study. lyle, [r, came in from hous­ton, shivering with first-stage grippe from contact with a world whereair-conditioning is not so essential to life. clara drove down from beni i �� �o • fue �ro i rno \ ��a 11001 fuel c wei men la�e ! mgl �na� app impllt evil: � nington and buddy rode the mta in from cambridge. "as you know," bland announced, "i have been taking these little trips lately." he was wearing a simple white smock, and holding a red rose. he looked un­ earthly, all were later to agree: his skin and eyes had a clarity which is seldom encountered, except on certain spring days, at certain latitudes, just before sunrise. "i have found," he continued, "that each time out, 1 have been traveling farther and farther. tonight, 1 am going out for good. that is, 1 am not coming back. so 1 wanted to say good-by to you all, and let you know that you'll be provided for." he'd been to see his friend coolidge ("hot") short, of the state street law firm of salitieri, poore, nash, de brutus, and short, and made sure all the family fi­ nances were in perfect order. "i want you to know that 1 love you all. i'd stay here if 1 could, but 1 have to go. 1 hope you can understand." one by one, his family came up to say good-by. hugs, kisses, hand­ shakes done, bland sank back into that davenport's last embrace, closed his eyes with a dim smile. . . . after a bit he felt himself beginning to rise. those watching disagreed about the exact moment. around 9:30 buddy left to see the bride of frankenstein, and mrs. bland covered the serene face with a dusty chintz drape she'd received from a cousin who had never understood her taste. 'minq� d d d d d d d a windy night. the lids of gi cans blow clanging across the parade ground. sentries in their idleness are practicing queen anne salutes. sometimes gusts of wind come that rock the jeeps on their springs, even the empty deuce 'n' a halfs and civilian bobtail rigs-shock absorbers groan, deeply, in discomfort ... in the peaks of wind, living pine trees move, lined above the last sand dropoff into the north sea.... walking at a brisk pace, but out of step, across the lorry-scarred vlkll spaces of the old krupp works here, doctors muffage and spontoon �/lw· look anything but conspiratorial. you take them immediately for what �em they seem: a tiny beachhead of london respectability here in benighted cuxhaven-tourists in this semicivilized colony of sulfa shaken into the wells of blood, syrettes and tourniquets, junkie m.o.s and sadistic corps­ men, a colony they were spared for the duration, thank heaven, muf­ fage's brother being highly placed in a certain ministry, spontoon hav­ ing been technically disqualified because of a strange hysterical stigma, shaped like the ace of spades and nearly the same color, which would appear on his left cheek at moments of high stress, accompanied by se591 vere migraine. only a few months ago they felt themselves as fully mo­bilized as any british civilian, and thus amenable to most government requests. about the present mission, though, both now are deep inpeacetime second thoughts. how quickly history passes these days."i can't think why he asked us," muffage stroking his full imperial (agesture that manages only to look compulsive), speaking in a voice per­haps too melodious for a man of his mass, "he must know i haven't done one of these since '27." "i assisted at a few whilst i was interning," spontoon recalls. "that was during the great vogue they had at mental institutions, you know.""i can name you a few national institutions where it's still in vogue."the medicos share a chuckle, full of that british weltschmerz that looks so uncomfortable on the faces of the afflicted. "see here, then, spon­toon, you'd rather assist me, is that it?" "oh, either way you know. i mean it's not as if there'll be some chapwith a book standing there, you know, writing it all down.""i wouldn't be too sure. weren't you listening? didn't you noticeanything ... " "enthusiastic." "obsessional. i wonder if pointsman isn't losing his grip," soundinghere remarkably like james mason: "l(h)oo-ssing(?) hiss khrip."they are looking at each other now, separate night scapes of marstonshelters and parked vehicles flowing darkly by together behind eachface. the wind carries smells of brine, of beach, of petrol. a distantradio tuned to the general forces programme features sandy macpher­son at the organ. "oh, all of us . . ." spontoon begins, but lets it lapse."here we are." the bright office is hung with crimson-lipped, sausage-limbed pettygirl pin-ups. a coffee mess hisses in the corner. there's also a smell ofrancid shoe-dubbing. a corporal sits with his feet on a desk, absorbed inan american bugs bunny comic book. "slothrop," in answer to muffage's inquiry, "yes yes the yank in the,the pig suit. well, he's in and out all the time. completely dotty. whatare you lot then, m.l. 6 or something?""can't discuss it," raps spontoon. fancies himself a bit of a naylandsmith, spontoon does. "d'you know where we might find a generalwivern?" "this time of night? down at the alcohol dump, most likely. followth� tr��ks, head for all the noise. if i weren't on duty, i'd be therem self. .m fr �ex forti 592 "pig suit," frowns muffage. "big bloody pig suit, yellow, pink, and blue, on my oath," replies the corporal. "you'll know him when you see him. you wouldn't have a cig­ arette, one of you gentlemen, by any chance." sounds of carousing reach them as they trudge along the tracks, past empty triple flats and tank cars. "alcohol dump." "fuel for their nazi rockets, i'm told. if they ever get one in working order." under a cold umbrella of naked light bulbs are gathered a crowd of army personnel, american sailors, naafi girls, and german frauleins, fraternizing, every last one of them, shamefully, amid noise which be­ comes, as muffage and spontoon reach the edge of the gathering, a song, at whose center, with a good snootful, each arm circling a smiling and disheveled young tootsie, ruddy face under these lights gone an ap­ oplectic mauve, and leading the glee, is the same general wivern they last saw in pointsman's office back at twelfth house. from a tank car whose contents, ethanol, 75% solution, are announced in stark white stenciling along the side, spigots protrude here and there, under which an incredible number of mess cups, china mugs, coffeepots, wastebas­ kets, and other containers are being advanced and withdrawn. ukuleles, kazoos, harmonicas, and any number of makeshift metal noisemakers accompany the song, which is an innocent salute to postwar, a hope that the end of shortages, the end of austerity, is near: it's­ mouthtrip-ping time! mouthtrip-ping time! time to open up that icebox door­ oh yes it's mouthtrip-ping time, mouthtrip-ping time, and once you've eaten some, you'll come, for more! ah, mouthtrip-ping time, mouthtrip-ping time! it's something old, but also very new-w-w­ life's so sublime, in mouthtrip-ping timewe hope you're all mouthtrip-ping, toooooo! fo�� wi): next chorus is soldiers 'n' sailors all together for the first eight bars, girls for the second, general wivern singing the next eight solo, and tutti to 593 finish it up. then comes a chorus for ukuleles and kazoos and so onwhile everyone dances, black neckerchiefs whipping about like themustaches of epileptic villains, delicate snoods unloosening to allowstray locks of hair to escape their tight rolls, skirt-hems raised to expose£lashing knees and slips edged in prewar cluny lace a frail right ofsmoky bat-wings here under the white electricity ... on the final cho­rus the boys circle clockwise, girls anticlockwise, the ensemble openingout into a rose-pattern, from the middle of which dissipatedly leeringtosspot general wivern, tankard aloft, is hoisted briefly, like an erectstamen. about the only one not participating here, aside from the two prowl­ing surgeons, is seaman bodine, whom we left, you recall, carrying on inthe bathtub at same bummer's place back in berlin. impeccable to­night in dress whites, straight-faced a .. �j sober, he trudges among themerrymakers, thickly sprouting hair from jumper sleeves and v -neck, somuch of it that last week he spooked and lost a connection just in fromthe cbi theatre with close to a ton of bhang, who mistook him for aseagoing version of the legendary yeti or abominable snowman. tomake up some of what he blew on that one, bodine is tonight promotingthe first international runcible spoon fight, between his shipmateavery purre and an english commando named st. john bladdery."place yer bets, yes yes the odds are even, 50/50," announces suavecroupier bodine, pushing through the gathered bodies, many of themfar from upright, one shaggy hand clutching a wad of occupation scrip.with the other, from time to time, he will tug the big collar of hisjumper around and blow his nose on it, grommets on the hem of his t­shirt blinking, light bulbs dancing overhead in the wind he's raised, hisown several shadows thrashing in all directions and merg{ng with oth­ers. "greetings, gate, need an opiate?" tiny red eyes in a vast pink [ell-oof a face, and an avaricious smile. it is albert krypton, corpsman strikerof the u.s.s. john e. badass, who now produces from inside a secretjumper pocket a glass vial full of white tablets. "codeine, jackson, it'sbeautiful-here. " bodine sneezes violently and wipes the snot away with his sleeve."not for any fucking cold, krypton. thanks. you seen avery?""he's in great shape. he was getting in some last-minute practicedown the goat hole when i came over." "listen, old buddy," begins the enterprising tar. this decrypts into 3ounces of cocaine. bodine comes up with a few squashed notes. "mid��ao "i \jlin� i "g "in i "fi where tne rn�nt) "lo morne fureeo �la n �ottles ij�nt. i lone "�ea 594 nd � night, if you can. told him i'd see him out at putzi's after the fight." lfre' "solid. hey, you checked under the barracks lately?" seems the cbi to � returnees get together to play marbles with opium balls. you can pick toelp up hundreds if you're any good. corpsman krypton pockets his moneyi �iaiji and leaves bodine flexing his thumb and thinking about it, moves on nn�� copping feels, pausing to drink from a shell case of grain alcohol and eo�lli grapefruit juice, whilst dealing the odd tablet of codeine. he has a brief 1:'lef� paranoid episode as two red-hatted mps show up, stroking their billy ane, clubs and giving him, he fancies, pregnant looks. he slides into the night, peeling away, banking through dark sky. he is coming on to a \o�r. proprietary mixture known as the krypton blue, and so it is a giddy pas­ fu�ix sage to the dispensary, not without moments of deep inattention. caole' inside, his connection, pharmacist birdbury, is conducting the last act of la forza del destino crackling in from radio luxembourg, and singing along. his mouth snaps shut as krypton comes taxiing in. with him is what appears to be a gigantic, multicolored pig, the plush nap of its coat reversed here and there, which widens the possible range of col­ ors. "micrograms," krypton striking his head dramatically, "that's right, micrograms, not milligrams. birdbury, gimme something, i've od'd." "ssh. » the dispenser's high forehead wrinkling in and out of operati­ cal cross-furrows. krypton goes back in among the shelves, and watches the lighted room through a bottle of paregoric till the opera's over. comes back in time to hear the pig asking, "well where else would he head for?" "i got it third-hand," birdbury laying down the hypodermic he's been using as a baton. "ask krypton here, he gets around a bit." "greetings, gate," sez albert, "let's inoculate." "i hear springer is supposed to be coming in tonight." "first i've heard. but go on out to putzi's, why don't you. that's where all that sort of thing goes on." the pig looks up at a clock on the wall. "got a funny schedule to­ night, is all." "look here, krypton, there's a bigwig from spog due in here any moment, so whatever it was, you know.... " they haggle over the three ounces of cocaine, the pig politely withdrawing to leaf through an old news of the world. presently, taping the last of the crystal-stuffed bottles to his bare leg, krypton invites everyone to the runcible spoon fight. "bodine's holding some big money, folks in from all over the rei, zone-" "seaman bodine?" inquires the amazed plush pig. 595 "the king of cuxhaven, porky." "well i ran him an errand once in berlin. tell him rocketman sezhowdy." krypton, bellbottom pulled up, opening one bottle just to see what hehas, pauses, goggling. "you mean that hash?" "yup." krypton snuffs a big fingerful of the flaky white into nostrils right 'n'left. the world goes clarifying. bitter snot begins to form in a stubbornfist at the back of his throat. already the potsdam pickup is part of thefolklore of the zone. would this pig here be trying to cash in on theglory of rocketman (whose existence krypton has never been that sureof)? cocaine suspicions, cringing and mean as rats . . . shining bottlesof a thousand colors, voices from the radio, the drape ar.d hand of thepig's shag coat as krypton reaches out to stroke . . . no, it's clear thatthe pig isn't looking for anything, isn't a cop, isn't dealing, or about tohustle anybody. . . . "just wanted to see how it felt, you know," sezkrypton. "sure." now the doorway is suddenly full of red hats, leather andbrass. krypton stands very still, the top to the open cocaine bottle inone hand. "slothrop?" sergeant in command comes edging into the room, handresting on his sidearm. the pig looks over at birdbury, who's shaking hishead no, not me, as if he means it. "wasn't me, either," krypton feels he ought to mention."well somebody blew the whistle," the pig mutters, looking really id�hurt. . 1"stand by," whispers albert. to the mp: "excuse me," moseyingstraight over to the wall switch, which he flicks off, slothrop at once �ndashing through all the shouting past birdbury's desk wham into a tall torrack of medicines his straw stomach bounces him off of, but which thenfalls over on somebody else with a stupendous glass crash and scream�r,on down a pitchblack aisle, arms out to guide him, to the back exit,where he meets krypton. "i"thanks." "quick." nere,outside they cut eastward, toward the elbe and the docks, pounding palong, skidding in mudpuddles, stumbling over lorry-ruts, wind sweepm�ing among the quonsets to bat them in the face, cocaine falling in little 1 ue�'white splashes from underneath krypton's left bellbottom. behind them ownthe posse are hollering and shining flashlights, but don't seem to know reeowhere they've gone. good. "follow the yellow-brick road," hums aineso596 cketmau bert krypton, on pitch, "follow the yellow-brick road," what's this, is he actually, yes he's skipping. . . . . presently, out of breath, they arrive at the pier where the badass and its division, four haze-gray piglets, are tied up, to find the runcible spoon fight just under way at the center of a weaving, cheering crowd of civilian and military drunks. stringy avery purfle, sideburns slick as seal's fur in the pallid light, adam's apple working in and out at a nerv­ ous four or five cycles a minute, shuffles around his opponent, the serene and oxlike st. john bladdery, both with runcible spoons in the on-guard position, filed edges bright. krypton stashes slothrop in a garbage bin and goes looking for sea­ man bodine. after a number of short, glittering feints, purfle dodges in, quick as a fighting-cock. with a high slash that bladdery tries to parry in third, purfle rips through the commando's blouse and draws blood . but when he goes to jump back, it seems thoughtful bladdery has brought his combat boot down on the american's low dress shoe, nail­ ing him where he stands. promotor bodine and his two combatants are burning crystals of awareness in this poisoned gray gathering: a good half of the crowd are out in the foothills of unconsciousness, and the rest are not exactly sure what's going on. some think that purfle and bladdery are really mad at each other. others feel that it is meant to be comedy, and they will laugh at inappropriate moments. now and then the odd beady eyes will appear up in the night superstructures of the warships, staring, star­ ing.... purfle and bladdery have made simultaneous thrusts and are now corps d corps-with a scrape and clank the runcible spoons are locked, and elbows tense and set. the outcome rests with scrawny purfle's gift for trickery, since bladdery appears ready to hold the position all night. "rocketman's here," krypton tugging at bodine's damp wrinkled collar, "in a pig suit." "not now, man. you got the, ah-" "but but the heat's after him, bodine, where can we hide him?" "who cares, it's some asshole, is all. a fake. rocketman wouldn't be here." purfle yanks his runcible-spoon hand back, leaning to the side, twist­ ing his own weapon to keep its tines interlocked with those of blad­ dery's, pulling the commando off-balance long enough to release his own foot, then deftly unlinking the spoons and dancing away. bladdery recovers his footing and moves heavily in pursuit, probing in with a se­ ries of jabs then shifting the spoon to his other hand and surprising . or aoo� �ow," mo�\; �re,. acklf 597 purfle with a slash that grazes the sailor's neck, missing the jugular, butnot by much. blood drips into the white jumper, black under these arc­lights. sweat and cold shadows lie darkly in the men's armpits. purtle,made reckless by the pain, goes flying at bladdery, a flurry of blind wildpokes and hackings, bladdery hardly needing to move his feet, weavingfrom the knees up like a great assured pudding, finally able to grabpurtle's spoon hand at the wrist and twirl him about, like jitterbugging agirl, around in front of him, his own knife-edge now up and bisectingpurfle's adam's apple, ready to slice in. he looks up, around, wheezing,sweaty, seeking some locus of power that will thumb-signal him what todo. nothing: only sleep, vomiting, shivering, a ghost and flowered odor ofethanol, solid bodine counting his money. nobody really watching. itthen comes to bladdery and purfle at once, tuned tv one another at thefiled edge of this runcible spoon and the negligible effort it will take tofill their common world with death, that nobody said anything about afight to the finish, right? that each will get part of the purse whoeverwins, and so the sensible course is to break it up now, jointly to go hasslebodine, and find some band-aids and iodine. and still they linger intheir embrace, death in all its potency humming them romantic tunes,chiding them for moderate little men . . . so far and no farther, is thatit? you call that living? an mp car, horn and siren and lights all going, approaches. reluc­tantly, purfle and bladdery do relax, and, sighing out of puffed cheeks,part. bodine, ten feet away, tosses over the heads of the awakeningcrowd a fat packet of scrip which the commando catches, riffle-splits,and gives half of to purfle, who's already on route to the gangplank ofhis gray mother the fohn e. badass, where the quarterdeck watch arelooking more lively, and even a card game in the ship's laundry breakingup so everybody can go watch the big bust. drunkards ashore begin tomill, sluggish and with no sense of direction. from beyond the pale of riielectric light comes a rush of girls, shivering, aroused, berufhed, towitch st. john bladdery away under cover of pretty-pastel synthetics illand amorous squeals. bodine and krypton, hipwriggling and cursing cotheir way through the crowd, stumbling over wakers and sleepers, stop �ruby the dumpster to collect slothrop, who rises from a pile of eggshells, crbeer cans, horrible chicken parts in yellow gravy, coffee grounds and �iowaste paper spilling or clattering off of him, raises his mask, and smiles • nulhowdy at bodine. "rocketman, holy shit, it really is. what's happening, 01' buddy?" al�"been double-crossed, need a ride to putzi' s." lorries have been 598 showing up, into whose canvas shadows mps are beginning to load everybody slower-moving than they are. now two civilians, one with a beard, come charging down the pier, hollering, "a pig suit, a pig suit, there, look," and, "you-slothrop-stay where you are." not about to, slothrop with a great clank and crunch rolls out of the garbage and at a dead run follows bodine and krypton, chickenfat flowing away, eggshells flying off behind him. a red cross clubmobile or canteen truck is parked down at the next nest of destroyers, its light spilling neatly square on the asphalt, a pretty girl with a deanna durbin hairdo framed inside against stacks of candy bars, cigarettes, chock­ shaped sandwiches in waxed paper. "coffee, boys?" she smiles, "how about some sandwiches? we're sold out of everything tonight but ham," then seeing slothrop, "oh, dear, i'm sorry.... " "keys to the truck," bodine coming up with a cagney sneer and nickel-plated handgun, "c'mon," cocking the hammer. tough frown, shoulderpadded shrug. "in the ignition, jackson." al­ bert krypton climbs in the back to keep her company while slothrop and bodine jump in front and get under way in a tight, screeching u­ turn just as the two civilians come running up. "now who th' hell's zat," slothrop looking back out the window at their shouting shapes diminishing, "did you check that one bird with the ace of spades on his cheek?" bodine swerves past the disturbance around the john e. badass and aw�f� gives everybody the obligatory finger. slothrop slouches back in the rime,�: seat, putting the pig mask up like a knight's beaver, reaching over to pry an�la!i a pack of cigarettes out of bodine's jumper pocket, lighting one up, 'walt!, weary, wishing he could just sleep.... in back of him suddenly the 'dr�t red cross girl shrieks, "my god, what's that?" "look," krypton patiently, "you get some on the end of your finger, right, then you close off one half of your nose, a-and-" "it's cocaine!" the girl's voice rising to an alarming intensity, "is what it is! it's heroin! you're dope fiends! and you've kidnapped me! oh, my god! this is a, don't you realize, it's a red cross clubmobile! it's the property of the red cross! oh, you can't do this! i'm with the red cross! oh, help me, somebody! they're dope fiends! oh, please! help! stop and let me out! take the truck if you want, take everything in it, but oh please don't-" "steer a minute," bodine turning around and pointing his shiny pistol at the girl. l'e!t "you can't shoot me," she screams, "you hoodlum, who do you think 599 you are, hijacking red cross property! why don't you just-go some­where and-sniff your dope and-leave us alone!" "cunt," advises seaman bodine, in a calm and reasonable tone, "youare wrong. i can shoot you. right? now, you happen to be working forthe same warm and wonderful organization that was charging fifteencents for coffee and doughnuts, at the battle of the fucking bulge, if youreally wanna get into who is stealing what from who." "whom," she replies in a much smaller voice, lower lip quiveringkind of cute and bitchy it seems to slothrop, checking it out in the rear­view mirror as bodine takes over the wheel again."oho, what's this," krypton watching her ass, "what have we here,"shifting under its khaki skirt as she stands with long legs braced for theirrattling creaking 60 or 70 miles an hour and bodine's strange corneringtechniques, which look to be some stylized form of suicide."what's your name?" slothrop smiling, an avuncular pig."shirley." "tyrone. howdy." "tra-la-la," krypton now looting the cash register, gobbling hersheybars and stuffing his socks with packs of smokes, "love in bloom." aboutthen bodine slams on the brakes and goes into a great skid, ass end oftheir truck slewing toward an icy-lit tableau of sentries in white-sten­ciled helmet liners, white belts, white holsters, a barricade across theroad, an officer running toward a jeep hunched up and hollering into awalkietalkie. "roadblock? what the shit," bodine grinding it into reverse, variousgoodies for the troops crashing off of their shelves as the truck lurchesaround. shirley loses her footing and staggers forward, krypton grab­bing for her as slothrop leans to take the handgun off the dashboard,finding her half-draped over the front seat when he gets back around tothe window. "where the fuck is low now? what is it, a red crossgearbox, you got to put a nickel in someplace to get it in gear, hey shir­ley?" "oh, goodness," shirley squirming over into the front between them,grabbing the shift, "like this, you drip." gunshots behind them."thank you," sez bodine, and, leaving rubber in a pungent smokingshriek, they're off again. "you're really hot, rocketman, wow," krypton lying in back offeringankle and taped cocaine bottle to shirley with a smile."do tell." "no thanks," sez shirley. "i'd really better not.""c'rnon . . . aw . . ." 600 � � . __--go� "were those snowdrops back there?" slothrop squinting into the lampshine ahead, "gis? what're gis doing here in the british sector, do you know?" "maybe not," bodine guesses, "maybe only shore patrol, c'mon, let's not get any more paranoid than we have to.... " "look, see, i'm doing (snuff) it and i'm not growing (snuff) fangs or anything.... " "well, i just don't know," shirley kneeling backwards, breasts propped on the back of the seat, one big smooth country-girl hand on slothrop's shoulder for balance. "look," bodine sez, "is it currency, or dope, or what? i just like to know what to expect, cause if the heat's on-" "only on me, far as i know. this is nothing to do with dealing, it's a whole different drill." "she's the rose of no-man's laaaand," sings albert krypton, coaxing. "why you going to putzi's?" "got to see that springer." "didn't know he was coming in." "why does everybody keep saying that?" "rebebber, dow," shirley talking with only one nostril here, "dot too buch, albert, just a teensy bit." "just that nobody's seen him for a while." "be inhaling now, good, good, o.k., now. umm, there's a little still, uh, kind of a booger that's blocking it . . . do it again, right. now the other one." "albert, you said only one." "look, rocky, if you do get busted-" "don't want to think." "[eepers," sez shirley. "you like that? here, just do a little more." "what'd you do?" "nothing. wanted to talk to somebody at that spog. find out what was happening. we were just supposed to talk, you know, off the rec­ ord, tonight in the dispensary. neutral ground. instead the man shows up. now there are also these other two creeps in civvies." "you a spy, or something?" "wish i was even that. oh boy. i should've known better." "well it sounds pretty bad." and seaman bodine drives along not lik­ ing it much, brooding, growing sentimental. "say," presently, "if they do, well, catch up with you, i could get in touch with your mom, or something. " a('f�t nn�lli: 601 "my-" a sharp look. "no, no, no "well, somebody." "can't think of a soul." "wow, rocketman.... " putzi's turns out to be a sprawling, half-fortified manor house datingfrom the last century, off the dorum road and seaward down a sandypair of wheel-tracks with reeds and tough dune grass growing in be­tween, the house perched like a raft atop a giant comber of a sandhillthat sweeps upward from a beach whose grade is so subtle that it be­comes water only by surprise, tranquil, salt-pale, stretching miles intothe north sea like clouds, here and there more silver, long cell or skinshapes, tissue-thin, stilled under the moon, reaching out toward helgo­land. the place never got requisitioned. nobody has ever seen the owner,or even knows if "putzi" is anybody real. bodine drives the truck righton into what used to be the stable and they all get out, shirley hoorah­ing in the moonlight, krypton mumbling oboy, oboy through bigmouthfuls of that frau bait. there is some password and security hassleat the door, on account of the pig getup, but slothrop flashes his whiteplastic knight and that works. inside they find a brightly lit and busycombination bar, opium den, cabaret, casino and house of ill repute, allits rooms swarming with soldiers, sailors, dames, tricks, winners, losers,conjurors, dealers, dopers, voyeurs, homosexuals, fetishists, spies andfolks just looking for company, all talking, singing or raising hell at anoise level the house's silent walls seal off completely from the outside.perfume, smoke, alcohol, and sweat glide through the house in turbu­lences too gentle to feel or see. it's a floating celebration no one'sthought to adjourn: a victory party so permanent, so easy at gatheringnewcomer and old regular to itself, that who can say for sure which vic-tory? which war? ie�springer is nowhere in sight, and from what slothrop can gather from a�(random questioning won't be by till later, if at all. now this happens to · fu�be the very delivery date for that discharge they arranged sailing in with ianfrau gnahb to stralsund. and tonight, of all nights, after a week of not �ibothering him, the police decide to come after slothrop. oh yes, yes iniondeed nnnnnnnn good evening tyrone slothrop we have been uriwaiting for you. of course we are here. you didn't think we had \alljust faded away, no, no tyrone, we must hurt you again if you are t fugoing to be that stupid, hurt you again and again yes tyrone you de'are so hopeless so stupid and doomed. are you really supposed to �isfind anything? what if it is death tyrone? what if we don't want knl 602 you to find anything? if we don't want to give you your discharge you'll just go on like this forever won't you? maybe we want you only to keep on. you don't know do you tyrone. what makes you think you can play as well as we can? you can't. you think you're good but you're really shit and we all know it. that is in your dos­ sier. (laughter. humming.) bodine finds him sitting inside a coat closet, chewing on a velvet ear of his mask. "you look bad, rocky. this is solange. she's a masseuse." she is smiling, quizzical, a child brought to visit the weird pig in his cave. "i'm sorry. i'm sorry." "let me take you down to the baths," the woman's voice a soapy sponge already caressing at his troubles, "it's very quiet, restful. . . ." "i'll be around all night," bodine sez. "i'll tell you if springer shows." "this is some kind of a plot, right?" slothrop sucking saliva from vel­ vet pile. "everything is some kind of a plot, man," bodine laughing. "and yes but, the arrows are pointing all different ways," solange il­ lustrating with a dance of hands, red-pointed fingervectors. which is slothrop's first news, out loud, that the zone can sustain many other plots besides those polarized upon himself . . . that these are the els and busses of an enormous transit system here in the raketenstadt, more tangled even than boston's-and that by riding each branch the proper distance, knowing when to transfer, keeping some state of mini­ mum grace though it might often look like he's headed the wrong way, this network of all plots may yet carry him to freedom. he understands that he should not be so paranoid of either bodine or solange, but ride instead their kind underground awhile, see where it takes him.... solange leads slothrop off to the baths, and bodine continues to search for his customer, 2% bottles of cocaine clinking and clammy against his bare stomach under his skivvy shirt. the major isn't at any of the poker or crap games, nor attending the floor show wherein one y0lande, blonde and shining all over with baby oil, dances table to table picking up florin pieces and sovereigns, often hot from the flame of some joker's zippo, between the prehensile lips of her cunt-nor is he drinking, nor, according to monika, putzi's genial, cigar-smoking, mate­ lasse-suited madame, is he screwing. he hasn't even been by to hassle the piano player for "san antonio rose." it takes bodine half an hour before colliding with the man finally, reeling out the swinging doors of a pissoir, groggy from a confrontation with the notorious eisenkrote, known throughout the zone as the ultimate test of manhood, before 603 which bemedaled and brevetted krautkillers, as well as the baddest shit-on-my-dick-or-blood-on-my-blade escapees from the grossest ofzonal stockades, all have been known to shrink, swoon, chicken out,and on occasion vomit, yes right where they stood. for it is indeed aniron toad, faithfully rendered, thousand-warted and some say faintlysmiling, a foot long at its longest, lurking at the bottom of a rank shit­stained toilet and hooked up to the european grid through a rheostatcontrol rigged to deliver varying though not lethal surges of voltage andcurrent. no one knows who sits behind the secret rheostat (some say it'sthe half-mythical putzi himself), or if it isn't in fact hooked up to an au­tomatic timer, for not everybody gets caught, really-you can piss onthe toad without anything at all happening. but you just never know.often enough to matter, the current will be there-piranha-raid andsalmon-climb up the gold glittering fall of piss, your treacherous ladderof salts and acids, bringing you back into touch with mother ground,the great, the planetary pool of electrons making you one with your pro­totype, the legendary poor drunk, too drunk to know anything, pissingon some long-ago third rail and fulminated to charcoal, to epilepticnight, his scream not even his own but the electricity's, the amps speak­ing through his already shattering vessel, shattered too soon for themeven to begin to say it, voice their terrible release from silence, nobodylistening anyhow, some watchman poking down the track, some oldman unable to sleep out for a walk, some city drifter on a bench under amillion june bugs in green nimbus around the streetlight, his neck relax­ing and tightening in and out of dreams and maybe it was only a catscrewing, a church bell in a high wind, a window being broken, no di­rection to it, not even alarming, replaced swiftly by the old, the coal-gasand lysol, silence. and somebody else finds him next morning. or youcan find him any night at putzi's if you're man enough to go in piss onthat toad. the major has got off this time with only a mild jolt, and is ina self-congratulating mood. "ugly 'sucker tried his best," wrapping an arm about bodine's neck,"but got his warty 01' ass handed to him tonight, damn 'f he didn't.""got your 'snow,' major marvy. half a bottle shy, sorry, it's the best icould do." "that's all reet, sailor. i know so many nose habits between here 'n'wiesbaden you'd need three ton 'n' that wouldn't last the 'suckers aday." he pays off bodine, full price, overriding bodine's offer to proratefor what's missing. "call it a little lagniappe, goodbuddy, that's duanemarvy's way 0' doin' thangs. damn that 01' toad's got my peeker tofeelin' pretty good now. damn 'f i wouldn't like to stick it inside one 604 for wa ilia �u\ �ri� in' alv� fue b)) neel r luc 51 nea nai ossel! icken inoeee them little whores. hey! boats, where can i find me some pussy around here?" the sailor shows him how to get downstairs to the whorehouse. they take you into a kind of private steam bath first, you can screw right there if you want, doesn't cost any extra. the madame-hey! ha, hal looks like some kind of a dyke with that stogie in her face! raises an eye­ brow at marvy when he tells her he wants a nigger, but thinks she can get hold of one. "it isn't the house of all nations, but we do aim for variety," running the tortoise end of her cigar-holder down a call-sheet, "sandra is en­ gaged for the moment. an exhibition. in the meantime, here is our de­ lightful manuela, to keep you company." manuela is wearing only a high comb and black-lace mantilla, shadow-flowers falling to her hips, a professional smile for the fat amer­ ican, who is already fumbling with uniform buttons. "hubba, hubba! hey, she's pretty sunburned herself. ain'tcha? you got a leetle mulatto in there, a leetle mayheecano, honey? you sabe es­ pafiol? you sabe fucky-fucky?" "si," deciding tonight to be from the levante, "i am spanish. i from valencia. " "va-len-cia-a-a," sings major marvy, to the well-known tune of the same name, "senorita, fucky-fucky, sucky-sucky sixty-ni-i-ine, la-lalala la-ia la-ia laaa ... " dancing her in a brief two-step about the grave center of the waiting madame. manuela doesn't feel obliged to join in. valencia was one of the last cities to fall to franco. she herself is really from the asturias, which knew him first, felt his cruelty two years before the civil war even began for the rest of spain. she watches marvy's face as he pays monika, watches him in this primal american act, paying, more deeply himself than when coming, or asleep, or maybe even dying. marvy isn't her first, but almost her first, american. the clientele here at putzi's is mostly british. during the war-how many camps and cities since her capture in '38?-it was german. she missed the international brigades, shut away up in her cold green mountains and fighting hit-and-run long after the fascists had occupied all the north-missed the flowers, children, kisses, and many tongues of barcelona, of valencia where she's never been, valencia, this evening's home. . . . ya salimos de espana. . . . pa' luchar en otros frentes, ay, manuela, ay, manuela. . . . she hangs his uniform neatly in a closet and follows her trick into heat, bright steam, the walls of the seething room invisible, feathered hairs along his legs, enormous buttocks and back beginning to come up 605 �j lati dark with the dampness. other souls move, sigh, groan unseen amongthe sheets of fog, dimensions in here under the earth meaningless-theroom could be any size, an entire city's breadth, paved with birds notentirely gentle in twofold rotational symmetry, a foot-darkened yellowand blue, the only colors to its watery twilight. "aaahhh, hot damn," marvy slithering fatly down, sleek with sweat,over the tiled edge into the scented water. his toenails, cut army­square, slide under last. "come on, everybody in the pool," a greathappy bellow, seizing manuela's ankle and tugging. having taken a fallor two on these tiles, and seen a girl friend go into traction, manuela comes along gracefully, falling hard enough astraddle, bottom hittinghis stomach a loud smack, to hurt him, she hopes. but he only laughsagain, loudly abandoned to the warmth and buoyancy and sounds en­ compassing-anonymous fucking, drowsiness, ease. finds himself with a thick red hardon, and slips it without ado into the solemn girl half-hid­den inside her cloud of damp black spanish lace, eyes anyplace but onhis, aswing now through the interior fog, dreaming of home.well, that's all reet. he isn't fucking her eyes, is he? he'd rather nothave to look at her face anyhow, all he wants is the brown skin, the shutmouth, that sweet and nigger submissiveness. she'll do anything he or­ders, yeah he can hold her head under the water till she drowns, he canbend her hand back, yeah, break her fingers like that cunt in frankfurtthe other week. pistol-whip, bite till blood comes ... visions go swarm­ing, violent, less erotic than you think-more occupied with thrust, im­pact, penetration, and such other military values. which is not to say heisn't enjoying himself innocently as you do. or that manuela doesn'tfind herself too, in some casual athletic way, liking the ride up anddown the stubborn red shaft of major marvy, though her mind is on athousand other things now, a frock of sandra's that she covets, words tovarious songs, an itch below her left shoulderblade, a tall english soldiershe saw as she came through the bar around suppertime, his brown fore­arm, shirt rolled to the elbow, against the zinc top of the table. . . .voices in the steam. alarms, many feet clopping in shower shoes, sil­houettes moving by, a gray cloudy evacuation. "what in thee hell,"major marvy about to come, rising on his elbows distracted, squintingin several directions, rapidly getting a softoff. "raid," a voice going past. "mps," shivers somebody else."caaahh!" screams major marvy, who has just recalled the presenceof 2 yz ounces of cocaine in his uniform pockets. he rolls, walrus-heavy,manuela sliding away and off his limpening nervous penis, hardlyaroused but enough of a professional to feel the price includes a token 606 ed ro _--y. �--;._-----• / puto and sinvergiienza now. scrambling up out of the water, skidding on the tiles, duane marvy, bringing up the rear, emerges into an ice­ cold changing-room to find the last of the bathers fled, the closets stone­ empty except for one multicolored velvet something or other. "hey where's my uniform!" stomping on the floor, fists at his sides, face very red. "oh you motherless bastards," thereupon throwing several bottles and ashtrays, breaking two windows, attacking the wall with an ornate umbrella stand, feeling better for it in his mind. he hears combat boots crashing overhead and in rooms nearby, girls screaming, a phonograph record knocked screeching into silence. he checks out this plush or velvet rig, finds it to be a pig costume complete with mask, considers slyly that no mp would bother an inno­ cent funseeking pig. as humorless limey voices move closer through the rooms of putzi's, he rips frantically at silk lining and straw padding to make room for his own fat. and, struggled at last inside, whew, zipped up, mask hiding face, safe, clownish-anonymous, pushes out through bead curtains, then upstairs to the bar, only to run spang into a full divi­ sion of the red-hatted 'suckers coming his way, all in step, swear to god. "here's our elusive swine, gentlemen," pocked face, blunt and ragged mustache, pointing a pistol right at his head, others moving up quickly. a civilian comes pushing through, spade-shape blazing dark on his smooth cheek. "right. dr. muffage is outside with the ambulance, and we'd like two of your chaps for a moment, sergeant, till we're all secure." "certainly, sir." wrists weak from steam and comfort gathered skill­ fully behind his back before he can even get mad enough to start yelling at them-cold steel, ratcheting like a phone number being dialed late at night, with no hope in hell of any answer ever. . . . "goddamn," he finally gets out, mask muffling his voice, giving it an echo that hurts his ears, "what'n thee hell's wrong with you, boy? don't you know who i am?" but oh-oh, waitaminute-if they've found the uniform, marvy id and cocaine in the same set of pockets, maybe it isn't such a hot idea to tell them his name just yet. . . . "leftenant slothrop, we presume. come along, now." he keeps silent. slothrop, o.k., we'll just wait, see what the score is, square the dope thing later, play dumb, say it must've been planted. maybe even find him a jewish lawyer good enough to nail the 'suckers for false arrest. he's escorted out the door and into the idling ambulance. the bearded driver gives him only a quick over-the-shoulder glance, then 607 lets in the clutch. before he can think to struggle, the other civilian andthe mps have quickly strapped marvy at knees and chest to a stretcher.a pause by an army lorry to let the mps off again. then they con­tinue on. toward cuxhaven. marvy thinks. nothing but night, moon­softened blackness out the window. can't tell.... "sedation now?" ace of spades crouches beside him, shining apocket flashlight over ampoules in his kit, rattling syringes and points."mm. yes, we're almost there." "i don't see why they couldn't have given us hospital space for this."the driver laughs. "oh yes, 1 can just see that." filling the hypodermic slowly, "well we are under orders ... 1 mean there's nothing-" "dear chap, it's not the most respectable operation.""hey," major marvy tries to raise his head. "operation? what's this,boy?" "ssh," ripping away part of one pigsuit sleeve, baring marvy's arm."i don't want no needle-" but it's already in the vein and dis­harging as the other man seeks to calm him. "i mean you really got thewrong fella, you know?" "of course, leftenant." "hey, hey, hey. no. not me, i'm a major." he should be more em­phatic about this, more convincing. maybe it's the' sucking pig mask inthe way. only he can hear his voice, now given back entirely to himself,flatter, metallic ... they can't hear him. "major duane marvy." theydon't believe him, don't believe his name. not even his name....panic strikes him, deeper than the sedative has reached, and he beginsto buck truly in terror against the straps, feeling small muscles along hischest stretch into useless twinges of pain, oh god, beginning to screamnow with all his might, no words, only cries, as loud as the strap acrosshis chest will let him. "for pity's sake," the driver sighs. "can't you shut him up, spon­toon?" spontoon has already ripped the pig mask away, and replaces it nowwith one of gauze, which he holds on with one hand while drippingether with the other-whenever the thrashing head comes within range."pointsman has taken leave of his senses," he feels obliged to say, irri­tated out of all patience, "if he calls this a 'calm imperturbable.' " "all right, we're on the strand now. no one in sight." muffage drivesdown toward the water, the sand just solid enough to hold the ambu­lance, everything very white in the small moon, which is at its zenith . perfect ice. 608 ilu �\\'l itl wi i�i ilie oac • b lan and he'si / -��.-inina � "oh," marvy moans. "oh fuck. oh no. oh jesus," the words in long drugged diminuendo, struggles against his bonds weakening as muffage parks them at last, an olive-drab derelict tiny on this broad beach, the enormous slick stretching away moonward, to the threshold of the north wind. "plenty of time," muffage looking at his watch. "we're catching the c-47 at one. they said they could hold up for a bit." sighs of comfort before turning to their task. "that man's connections," spontoon shaking his head, removing the instruments from their disinfectant solution and laying them on a sterile cloth beside the stretcher. "my, my. let's hope he never turns to a life of crime, eh?" "fuck," groans major marvy softly, "oh, fuck me, will you?" both men have scrubbed, and donned masks and rubber gloves. m uffage has switched on a dome light which stares down, a soft radiant eye. the two work quickly, in silence, two wartime pros used to field expediency, with only an occasional word from the patient, a whisper, a white pathetic grope in his ether-darkness after the receding point of light that's all he has left of himself. it's a simple procedure. the crotch of the velvet costume is torn away. muffage decides to dispense with shaving the scrotum. he douses it first with iodine, then squeezes in turn each testicle against the red­ veined and hairy bag, makes the incision quickly and cleanly through skin and surrounding membranes, popping the testicle itself out through the wound and welling blood, pulling it out with the left hand till the cords hard and soft are strung visible under the light. as if they are mu­ sical strings he might, a trifle moon-mad, strum here on the empty beach into appropriate music, his hand hesitates: but then, reluctantly bowing to duty, he severs them at the proper distances from the slip­ pery stone, each incision then being bathed in disinfectant, and the two neat slits, side by side, finally sutured up again. the testicles are plopped into a bottle of alcohol. "souvenirs for pointsman," muffage sighs, stripping off the surgical gloves. "give that one another shot. it might be better if he sleeps through, and someone back in london explains this to him." muffage starts up the motor, backs in a half-circle and slowly heads back up toward the road, the vast sea lying still behind. back at putzi's, slothrop curls in a wide crisp-sheeted bed beside so­ lange, asleep and dreaming about zw6lfkinder, and bianca smiling, he and she riding on the wheel, their compartment become a room, one he's never seen, a room in a great complex of apartments big as a city, r� am 609 whose corridors can be driven or bicycled along like streets: trees liningthem, and birds singing in the trees. and "solange," oddly enough, is dreaming of bianca too, thoughunder a different aspect: it's of her own child, ilse, riding lost throughthe zone on a long freight train that never seems to come to rest. sheisn't unhappy, nor is she searching, exactly, for her father. but leni's early dream for her is coming true. she will not be used. there is change, and departure: but there is also help when least looked for fromthe strangers of the day, and hiding, out among the accidents of this drifting humility, never quite to be extinguished, a few small chancesfor mercy.... upstairs, one mollner, valise full of his night's treasures-an ameri­ can major's uniform and papers, and 2 yz ounces of cocaine-explains tothe shaggy american sailor that herr von coll is a very busy man, at­tending to business in the north, as far as he knows, and has not com­missioned him to bring to cuxhaven any kind of papers, no military dis­charges, passports-nothing. he's sorry. perhaps the sailor's friend ismistaken. perhaps, again, it's only a temporary delay. one appreciatesthat forgeries take time. bodine watches him leave, unaware of what's inside that valise. al­bert krypton has drunken himself unconscious. shirley comes wander­ing in, bright-eyed and restless, wearing a black garter belt and stock­ings. "hmrn," she sez, with a certain look. "hmm," sez seaman bodine. "and anyway, it was only ten cents at the battle of the bulge." o 0 0 0 dod so: he has traced weissmann's battery from holland, across the saltmarshes and lupine and bones of cows, to find this. lucky he's not su­perstitious. he'd be taking it for a prophetic vision. there is of course aperfectly rational explanation, but tchitcherine has never read martinfierro. he watches from his temporary command post in a copse of juniperson a low hill. through the binoculars he sees two men, one white, oneblack, holding guitars. townspeople are gathered in a circle, but thesetchitcherine can crop out, leaving in his elliptical field a scene with thesame structure as the male-female singing contest in the middle of a flatgrassland in central asia well over a decade ago-a coming-together of 610 but rou tos "1 teng was lini� opposites that signaled then his own approach to the kirghiz light. what does it signal this time? over his head, the sky is streaked and hard as marble. he knows. weissmann installed the s-gerat and fired the 00000 somewhere close by. enzian can't be far behind. it will be here. but he has to wait. once that would have been unbearable. but since major marvy dropped out of sight, tchitcherine has been a little more cautious. marvy was a key man. there is a counterforce in the zone. who was the soviet intelligence man who showed up just before the fiasco in the clearing? who tipped the schwarzkommando off to the raid? who got rid of marvy? he's been trying hard not to believe too much in the rocket-cartel. since his illumination that night, marvy drunk, bloody chiclitz de­ claiming on the virtues of herbert hoover, tchitcherine has been watching for evidence. gerhardt von coll, with his corporate octopus wrapping every last negotiable item in the zone, must be in it, con­ sciously or otherwise. tchitcherine last week was on the point of flying back to moscow. he'd seen mravenko, one of the viam people, briefly in berlin. they met in the tiergarten, two officers ostensibly strolling in the sun. work crews shoveled cold patch into holes in the pavement, banging it flat with shovels. bicycle riders ratcheted by, skeleton-func­ tional as their machines. small clusters of civilians and military were back under the trees, sitting on fallen trunks or lorry wheels, stirring through bags and valises, dealing. "you're in trouble," mravenko said. he'd been a remittance man too, back in the thirties, and the most maniacal, systemless chess player in central asia. his tastes ran low enough to include even blindfold chess, which russian sensibilities find unutterably gross. tchitcherine sat down at the board each time more upset than the last, trying to be amiable, to jolly the madman into some kind of rational play. most often he'd lose. but it was either mravenko or the semirechie winter. "do you have any idea what's going on?" mravenko laughed. "does anybody? molotov isn't telling vishinsky. but they know things about you. remember the kirghiz light? sure you do. well, they found out about that. i didn't tell them, but they got to somebody." "it's ancient history. why bring it up now?" "you're regarded as 'useful,' " mravenko said. they looked at each other, then, for a long time. it was a death sen­ tence. usefulness out here ends as quickly as a communique. mravenko was afraid, and not entirely for tchitcherine, either. iliou� 611 "what will you do, mravenko?" "try not to be very useful. they're not perfect, though." both menknew this was meant to be comfort, and isn't working too well. "theydon't really know what makes you useful. they go on statistics. i don'tthink you were supposed to survive the war. when you did, they had tolook at you more closely." "maybe i'll survive this, too." and that was when he got the idea offlying to moscow. but just about then word came in that weissmann'sbattery couldn't be traced any further than the heath. and the re­newed hope of meeting enzian stopped him from going-the seductivehope that's leading him further each day from any chance of continuingon past the other side of that meeting. he never supposed he would.the real question is: will they get him before he gets enzian? all heneeds is a little more time . . . his only hope is if they're looking for en­zian too, or the s-gerat, and using him the same way he thinks he'susing slothrop.... the horizon is still clear: has been all day. cypress-shaped junipersstand in the rust and hazy distances, still as monuments. the first purpleflowers are showing on the heather. it is not the busy peace of late sum­mer, but the peace of a burial ground. among the prehistoric germantribes, that's what this country was: the territory of the dead.a dozen nationalities, dressed as argentine estancieros, crowd aroundthe soup-kitchen commissary. ei nato is standing on the saddle of hishorse, gaucho style, looking off into the german pampas. felipe iskneeling out in the sun, making his noontime devotionals to the livingpresence of a certain rock back in the wasteland of la rioja, on theeastern slopes of the andes. according to an argentine legend from thelast century, maria antonia correa followed her lover into that aridland, carrying their newborn child. herders found her a week later,dead. but the infant had survived, by nursing from her corpse. rocksnear the site of the miracle have since been the objects of yearly pil­grimages. but felipe's particular rock embodies also an intellectual sys­tem, for he believes (as do m. f. beal and others) in a form of mineralconsciousness not too much different from that of plants and animals,except for the time scale. rock's time scale is a lot more stretched out."we're talking frames per century," felipe like everybody else herelately has been using a bit of movie language, "per millennium!" colos­sal. but felipe has come to see, as those who are not sentient rockstersseldom do, that history as it's been laid on the world is only a fraction,an outward-and-visible fraction. that we must also look to the untold,to the silence around us, to the passage of the next rock we notice-to 612 /� -____"_�i' _-, its aeons of history under the long and female persistence of water and air (who'll be there, once or twice per century, to trip the shutter?), down to the lowland where your paths, human and mineral, are most likely to cross. . . . graciela imago portales, dark hair parted in the middle and drawn back from her forehead, wearing a long black riding skirt and black boots, sits shuffling cards, stacking herself flushes, full houses, four of a kind, just for her own amusement. the supernumeraries have brought next to nothing to play with. she knew it would come to this: she'd thought once that by using it only in games, money would lose its real­ ity. wither away. has it, or is she playing a game with herself? it seems belaustegui has been watching her more closely since they got here. she doesn't want to threaten his project. she's been to bed with the solemn engineer a few times (though at first, back in b.a., she'd have sworn to you she couldn't have drunk him even with a silver straw), and she knows he's a gambler too. a good pair, wired front-to-front: she picked it up the first time he touched her. the man knows his odds, the shapes of risk are intimate to him as loved bodies. each moment has its value, its probable success against other moments in other hands, and the shuffle for him is always moment-to-moment. he can't afford to remem­ ber other permutations, might-have-beens-only what's present, dealt him by something he calls chance and graciela calls god. he will stake everything on this anarchist experiment, and if he loses, he'll go on to something else. but he won't hold back. she's glad of that. he's a source of strength. she doesn't know, if the moment came, how strong she'd be. often at night she'll break through a fine membrane of alcohol and optimism to see really how much she needs the others, how little use, unsupported, she could ever be. the sets for the movie-to-be help some. the buildings are real, not a false front in sight. the boliche is stocked with real liquor, the pulperia with real food. the sheep, cattle, horses, and corrals are real. the huts are weatherproof and are being slept in. when von coll leaves-if he ever comes-nothing will be struck. any of the extras who want to stay are welcome. many of them only want to rest up awhile for more dp trains, more fantasies of what home was like before the destruction, and some dream of getting somewhere. they'll move on. but will others come? and what will the military government think of a community like this in the middle of their garrison state? it isn't the strangest village in the zone. squalidozzi has come in out of his wanderings with tales of palestinian units strayed all the way from italy, who've settled down farther east and started up hasidic com613 en on munes, on the pattern of a century and a half ago. there are onetime company towns come under the fleet and jittery rule of mercury, dedi­cated now to a single industry, mail delivery, eastward and back, in among the soviets and out, 100 marks a letter. one village in mecklen­burg has been taken over by army dogs, dobermans and shepherds,each one conditioned to kill on sight any human except the one whotrained him. but the trainers are dead men now, or lost. the dogs havegone out in packs, ganged cows in the fields and brought the carcassesmiles overland, back to the others. they've broken into supply depotsrin-tin-tin style and looted k-rations, frozen hamburger, cartons ofcandy bars. bodies of neighboring villagers and eager sociologists litterall the approaches to the hund-stadt. nobody can get near it. one ex-"peditionary force came armed with rifles and grenades, but the dogs allscattered in the night, slender as wolves, and no one could bring himselfto destroy the houses and shops. noone wanted to occupy the village,either. so they went away. and the dogs came back. if there are lines of power among themselves, loves, loyalties, jealousies, no one knows.someday g-5 might send in troops. but the dogs may not know of this, may have no german anxieties about encirclement-may be living en­tirely in the light of the one man-installed reflex: kill the stranger.there may be no way of distinguishing it from the other given quan­tities of their lives-from hunger or thirst or sex. for all they know, kill­the-stranger was born in them. if any have remembered the blows, theelectric shocks, the rolled-up newspapers no one read, the boots andprods, their pain is knotted in now with the stranger, the hated. if thereare heresiarchs among the dogs, they are careful about suggesting outloud any extra-canine source for these sudden eruptions of lust to kill railthat take them over, even the pensive heretics themselves, at any first fullscent of the stranger. but in private they point to the remembered gwimage of one human, who has visited only at intervals, but in whose presence they were tranquil and affectionate-from whom came nour-ishment, kind scratches and strokings, games of fetch-the-stick. where ver�is he now? why is he different for some and not for others?there is a possibility, among the dogs, latent so far because it's neverbeen seriously tested, of a crystallizing into sects, each around the imageof its trainer. a feasibility study, in fact, is going on even now at stafflevel in g-5, to see whether original trainers might not be located, andthis crystallizing begun. one sect might try to protect its trainer againstattacks from others. given the right combinations and an acceptabletrainer-loss figure, it might be cheaper to let the dogs finish themselvesoff than to send in combat troops. the study has been contracted to, of 614 -_/:::---��l· i'tf all people, mr. pointsman, who is now restricted to one small office at twelfth house, the rest of the space having been taken over by an agency studying options for nationalizing coal and steel-given him more out of sympathy than anything else. since the castrating of major marvy, pointsman has been officially in disgrace. clive mossmoon and sir marcus scammony sit in their club, among discarded back copies of british plastics, drinking the knight's favorite, quimporto-a weird pre­ war mixture of quinine, beef-tea and port-with a dash of coca-cola and a peeled onion. ostensibly the meeting is to finalize plans for the postwar polyvinyl chloride raincoat, a source of great corporate fun these days ("imagine the look on some poor bastard's face when the whole sleeve simply falls out of the shoulder-" "o-or how about mixing in something that will actually dissolve in the rain?"). but mossmoon really wants to discuss pointsman: "what shall we do with pointsman?" "i found the most darling boots in portobello road," pipes sir mar­ cus, whom it's always hard to get around to talking business. "they'll look stunning on you. blood-red cordovan and halfway up your thighs. your naked thighs." "we'll give it a go," replies clive, neutral as can be (though it's a thought, old scorpia's been so damned bitchy lately). "i could use a spot of relaxation after trying to explain pointsman away to the higher levels." "oh, the dog chap. i say, have you ever thought about a saint bernard? big, shaggy darlings." "on occasion," clive keeps at it, "but mostly i think about pointsman." "not your sort, darling. not at all. and he is getting on, poor chap." "sir marcus," last resort, usually the willowy knight demands to be called angelique, and there seems no other way to get his attention, "if this show prangs, we're going to see a national crisis. i've got ginger groupers jamming my switchboard and my mailbox day and night-" "mm, i'd like to jam your male box, clivey-" "-and 1922 committee coming in the windows. bracken and bea­ verbrook go on, you know, it isn't as if the election put them out of a job or something-" . "dear chap," smiling angelically, "there isn't going to be any crisis. labour wants the american found as much as we do. we sent him out to destroy the blacks, and it's obvious now he won't do the job. what harm can he cause, roaming around germany? for all we know he's taken ship for south america and all those adorable little mustachios. let it be for a while. we've got the army, when the time is right. slo­ throp was a good try at a moderate solution, but in the end it's always the army, isn't it?" dill· �iri "how can you be so sure the americans will ever condone that?" a long disagreeable giggle. "clive, you're such a little boy. you don'tknow the americans. i do. i deal with them. they'll want to see how we do with our lovely black animals-oh dear, ex africa semper aliquidnovi, they're just so big, so strong-before they try it on their own, ah, target groups. they may say a good many harsh things if we fail, butthere'll be no sanctions." "are we going to fail?" "we're all going to fail," sir marcus primping his curls, "but the op­eration won't." yes. clive mossmoon feels himself rising, as from a bog of trivial frus­ trations, political fears, money problems: delivered onto the sober shore of the operation, where all is firm underfoot, where the self is a pettyindulgent animal that once cried in its mired darkness. but here there is no whining, here inside the operation. there is no lower self. the issues are too momentous for the lower self to interfere. even in the chastise­ ment room at sir marcus's estate, "the birches," the foreplay is a gameabout who has the real power, who's had it all along, chained and cor­seted though he be, outside these shackled walls. the humiliations of pretty "angelique" are calibrated against their degree of fantasy. nojoy, no real surrender. only the demands of the operation. each of ushas his place, and the tenants come and go, but the places remain. . . .it wasn't always so. in the trenches of the first world war, englishmen came to love one another decently, without shame or make-be­lieve, under the easy likelihoods of their sudden deaths, and to find inthe faces of other young men evidence of otherworldly visits, some poorhope that may have helped redeem even mud, shit, the decaying piecesof human meat. . . . it was the end of the world, it was total revolution (though not quite in the way walter rathenau had announced): everyday thousands of the aristocracy new and old, still haloed in their ideasof right and wrong, went to the loud guillotine of flanders, run day inand out, on and on, by no visible hands, certainly not those of the peo­ple-an english class was being decimated, the ones who'd volunteered were dying for those who'd known something and hadn't, and despite itall, despite knowing, some of them, of the betrayal, while europe diedmeanly in its own wastes, men loved. but the life-cry of that love haslong since hissed away into no more than this idle and bitchy faggotry.in this latest war, death was no enemy, but a collaborator. homosexual­ ity in high places is just a carnal afterthought now, and the real and onlyfucking is done on paper. o\\].� fail,h t tne� the counterforce -richard m. nixon d d d d d d d bette davis and margaret dumont are in the curly-cuvillies drawing­ room of somebody's palatial home. from outside the window, at some point, comes the sound of a kazoo, playing a tune of astounding taste­ lessness, probably "who dat man?" from a day at the races (in more ways than one). it is one of groucho marx's vulgar friends. the sound is low, buzzing, and guttural. bette davis freezes, tosses her head, flicks her cigarette. "what," she inquires, "is that?" margaret dumont smiles, throws out her chest, looks down her nose. "well it sounds," she replies, "like a kazoo." for all slothrop knows, it was a kazoo. by the time he's awake, the racket has faded in the morning. whatever it was, it woke him up. what it was, or is, is pirate prentice, in a more or less hijacked p-47, on route to berlin. his orders are terse and clear, like those of the others, agents of the pope, pope got religion, go out 'n' find that minnesinger, he's a good guy after all. . . . well, it's an older jug, one with a greenhouse canopy. the barred field of sight gives pirate twinges of memory in his neck muscles. the plane seems permanently out of trim to him, though he still fiddles now and then with different tabs. right now he's trying the war emergency power to see how it works, even though there seems to be no war, no emergency, keeping an eye on the panel, where rpms, manifold pres­ sure, and cylinder-head temperature are all nudging their red lines. he eases it down and flies on, and presently is trying a slow roll over celle, then a loop over brunswick, then, what the hell, an immelmann over magdeburg. on his back, molars aching in a grin, he starts his roll a hair too slow, just this side of one-thirty, and nearly stalls it, jolts over a set of surprise points-finish it as an ordinary loop or go for the immel­ mann?-already reaching for ailerons, forget the damn rudder, a spin isn't worth worrying about . . . but at the last second does give the pedal just a touch anyway, a minor compromise (i'm nearly forty, good god, is it happening to me too?) and rolls himself upright again. it had to be the immelmann. oh i'm the eagle of tooting, bombing and shooting, and nobodee can bring me down! old kaiser bill, you're over the hill, cause i'm comin' into your home town! tell all the irauleins and mademoiselles to keep a light in the window for me . . cause i'm the eagle of tooting, just rooty-toot-tooting.and flyin' on to victo-ree! by now, osbie feel ought to be in marseilles, already trying to con­tact blodgett waxwing. webley silvernail is on route to zurich. katjewill be going to nordhausen . . . katje. . . . no, no, she hasn't told him everything she's been up to. it's none ofhis business. however much she told him, there'd always be the bit of mystery to her. because of what he is, because of directions he can't move in. but how is it both of them kept from vanishing from eachother, into the paper cities and afternoons of this strange peace, and thecoming austerity? could it be there's something about ad hoc arrange­ments, like the present mission, that must bring you in touch with the people you need to be with? that more formal adventures tend, by theirnature, to separation, to loneliness? ah, prentice. . . . what's this, a runaway prop? no, no, check the fuel-pressure-here's the gauge needlewobbling, rather low, tank's run drylittle in-flight annoyance for pirate here, nothing serious. . . . out ofhis earphones now and then, ghost-voices will challenge or reprimandhim: air traffic people down in their own kingdom, one more overlay onthe zone, antennas strung in the wilderness like redoubts, radiatinghalf-spheres of influence, defining invisible corridors-in-the-sky that arereal only for them. the thunderbolt is painted kelly green. hard tomiss. pirate's idea. gray was for the war. let them chase. catch me if you can. gray was for the war. so, it seems, was pirate's odd talent for livingthe fantasies of others. since v-e day, nothing. but it's not the end ofhis psychic difficulties. he is still being "haunted," in the same marginaland uncertain way, by katje's ancestor frans van der groov, dodo killerand soldier of fortune. the man never quite arrives, nor quite leaves. pi­rate is taking it personally. he is the dutchman's compatible host, de­spite himself. what does frans see in him? has it to do-of course itdoes-with the firm? he has warped a skein of his dreams into pirate's own, hereticaldreams, exegeses of windmills that turned in shadow at the edges ofdark fields, each arm pointing at a spot on the rim of a giant wheel thatturned through the sky, stop and go, always exactly with the spinningcross: "wind" was a middle term, a convention to express what really wn �r� fe ur ln�! ilie i two moved the cross . . . and this applied to all wind, everywhere on earth, shrieking between the confectionery pink and yellow mountains of mauritius or stirring the tulips at home, red cups in the rain filling bead by clear bead with water, each wind had its own cross-in-motion, mate­ rially there or implied, each cross a unique mandala, bringing opposites together in the spin (and tell me now, frans, what's this wind i'm in, this 25,ooo-foot wind? what mill's that, grinding there below? what does it grind, frans, who tends the stone?). far beneath the belly of the thunderbolt, brushed on the green countryside, pass the time-softened outlines of ancient earthworks, vil­ lages abandoned during the great dying, fields behind cottages whose dwellers were scythed down without mercy by the northward march of black plague. behind a scrim, cold as sheets over furniture in a forbid­ den wing of the house, a soprano voice sings notes that never arrange themselves into a melody, that fall apart in the same way as dead pro­ teins. . . . "it's as clear as the air," rants gustav the composer, "if you weren't an old fool you'd see it-i know, i know, there's an old fools' benevo­ lent association, you all know each other, you vote censures against the most troublesome under-cos and my name's at the head of the list. do you think i care? you're all on a different frequency. there's no way you'll get interference from us. we're too far separated. we have our own problems." cryptozoa of many kinds scurry through crumbs, pubic hairs, wine­ splashes, tobacco ash and shreds, a litter of dram cocaine vials, each with a red bakelite top bearing the seal of merck of darmstadt. the bugs' atmosphere ends about an inch from the floor, an ideal humidity, darkness, stability of temperature. nobody bothers them. there is an unspoken agreement about not stomping on bugs in sauro's place. "you're caught in tonality," screams gustav. "trapped. tonality is a game. all of them are. you're too old. you'll never move beyond the game, to the row. the row is enlightenment." "the row is a game too." saure sits grinning with an ivory spoon, shoveling incredible piles of cocaine into his nose, going through his whole repertoire: arm straight out swinging in in a giant curve zoom precisely to the nostril he's aiming at, then flicking in the lot from two feet away without losing a crystal . . . then a whole bunch gets tossed up in the air like a piece of popcorn and nose-gobbled ngkok on target, inside where it's smooth as a j0 block, not a cilium in sight there since the liebknecht funeral, if not before ... hand-to-hand shifts of spoon two or three times, faster than ivory ever moved in air . . . rails disap621 pearing in a wink without benefit of a tube to guide them. "sound is a game, if you're capable of moving that far, you adenoidal closet-vision­ ary. that's why i listen to spohr, rossini, spontini, i'm choosing mygame, one full of light and kindness. you're stuck with that stratospherestuff and rationalize its dullness away by calling it 'enlightenment.' youdon't know what enlightenment is, kerl, you're blinder than i am." slothrop moseys down the trail to a mountain stream where he's lefthis harp to soak all night, wedged between a couple of rocks in a quietpool. "your 'light and kindness' are the jigging of the doomed," sez gustav."you can smell mortality in everyone of those bouncy little tunes."surly, he decapitates a vial of cocaine with his teeth, and spits the reddebris in among the shimmering bugs. through the flowing water, the holes of the old hohner slothropfound are warped one by one, squares being bent like notes, a visualblues being played by the clear stream. there are harpmen and dulci­mer players in all the rivers, wherever water moves. like that rilke prophesied, and though earthliness forget you, to the stilled earth say: i flow. to the rushing water speak: i am. it is still possible, even this far out of it, to find and make audible the spirits of lost harpmen. whacking the water out of his harmonica, reedssinging against his leg, picking up the single blues at bar 1 of this morn­ing's segment, slothrop, just suckin' on his harp, is closer to being a spir­itual medium than he's been yet, and he doesn't even know it.the harp didn't show up right away. his first days in these mountains,he came across a set of bagpipes, left behind in april by some highlandunit. slothrop has a knack for doping things out. the imperial instru­ment was a cinch. in a week he mastered that dreamy tune dick powell sang in the movies, "in the shadows let me come and sing to you,"and spent most of his time playing that, whangdediddle de-dee, �whang de dum-de-doooooo . . . over and over, on the bagpipes. byand by he began to notice that offerings of food were being left near thelean-to he'd put up. mangel-wurzels, a basket of cherries, even freshfish. he never saw who was leaving them. either he was supposed to bea bagpiper's ghost, or just purely sound itself, and he knew enoughabout solitudes and night-voices to figure what was going on. he quitplaying the bagpipes, and next day he found the harp. it happens to be �no622 the same one he lost in 1938 or -9 down the toilet at the roseland ball­ room, but that's too long ago for him to remember. he's kept alone. if others have seen him or his fire, they haven't tried to approach. he's letting hair and beard grow, wearing a dungaree shirt and trousers bodine liberated for him from the laundry of the fohn e. badass. but he likes to spend whole days naked, ants crawling up his legs, butterflies lighting on his shoulders, watching the life on the moun­ tain, getting to know shrikes and capercaillie, badgers and marmots. any number of directions he ought to be moving in, but he'd rather stay right here for now. everyplace he's been, cuxhaven, berlin, nice, zu­ rich, must be watched now. he could still make a try at finding springer, or blodgett waxwing. why does he have this obsession with getting papers? what th' fuck are papers, anyhow? he could try one of the baltic ports, wait around for frau gnahb to put in, and get over to that denmark or that sweden. dps, offices burned, records lost forever -papers might not mean so much in europe . . . waitaminute, so much as where, slothrop? huh? america? shit. c'monyup, still thinking there's a way to get back. he's been changing, sure, changing, plucking the albatross of self now and then, idly, half­ conscious as picking his nose-but the one ghost-feather his fingers al­ ways brush by is america. poor asshole, he can't let her go. she's whis­ pered love me too often to him in his sleep, vamped insatiably his wak­ ing attention with come-hitherings, incredible promises. one day-he can see a day-he might be able finally to say sorry, sure and leave her ... but not just yet. one more try, one more chance, one more deal, one more transfer to a hopeful line. maybe it's just pride. what if there's no place for him in her stable any more? if she has turned him out, she'll never explain. her "stallions" have no rights. she is immune to their small, stupid questions. she is exactly the amazon bitch your fantasies have called her to be. then there's jamf, the coupling of "[amf" and ''i'' in the primal dream. who can he go to with it? it will not bear that much looking into, will it? if he gets too close, there will be revenge. they might warn him first, they might not. omens grow clearer, more specific. he watches flights of birds and patterns in the ashes of his fire, he reads the guts of trout he's caught and cleaned, scraps of lost paper, graffiti on the broken walls where fac­ ing has been shot away to reveal the brick underneath-broken in spe­ cific shapes that may also be read.... one night, on the wall of a public shithouse stinking and ripe with ty­ phoid, he finds among initials, dates, hasty pictures of penises and 623 om mouths open to receive them, werewolf stencils of the dark man withthe high shoulders and the homburg hat, an official slogan: willst duv -2, dann arbeite. if you want the v -2, then work. good evening ty­rone slothrop ... no, no, wait, it's o.k., over on the other wall they'vealso painted willst du v-4, dann arbeite. lucky. the brimmingvoices recede, the joke clarifies, he is only back with goebbels and theman's inability to let a good thing be. but it had taken an effort to walkaround and look at that other wall. anything could've been back there.it was dusk. plowed fields, power lines, ditches and distant windbreakswent for miles. he felt brave and in control. but then another messagecaught his eye: rocketman was here sign: his first thought was that he'd written it himself and forgot. odd thatthat should've been his first thought, but it was. might be he was start­ing to implicate himself, some yesterday version of himself, in the com­bination against who he was right then. in its sluggish coma, the alba­tross stirred. past slothrops, say averaging one a day, ten thousand of them, somemore powerful than others, had been going over every sundown to thefurious host. they were the fifth-columnists, well inside his head, wait­ing the moment to deliver him to the four other divisions outside, clos­ing in.... so, next to the other graffiti, with a piece of rock, he scratches this slothrop besieged. only after he'd left it half a dozen more places didit dawn on him that what he was really drawing was the a4 rocket, seenfrom below. by which time he had become tuned to other fourfold ex­ pressions-variations on frans van der croov's cosmic windmill-swas­tikas, gymnastic symbols ffff in a circle symmetrically upside downand backward, frisch fromm frolich frei over neat doorways in quietstreets, and crossroads, where you can sit and listen in to traffic from theother side, hearing about the future (no serial time over there: eventsare all there in the same eternal moment and so certain messages don'talways "make sense" back here: they lack historical structure, theysound fanciful, or insane). the sand-colored churchtops rear up on slothrop's horizons, apsesout to four sides like rocket fins guiding the streamlined spires ... chis624 j �rlae eled in the sandstone he finds waiting the mark of consecration, a cross in a circle. at last, lying one afternoon spread-eagled at his ease in the sun, at the edge of one of the ancient plague towns he becomes a cross himself, a crossroads, a living intersection where the judges have come to set up a gibbet for a common criminal who is to be hanged at noon. black hounds and fanged little hunters slick as weasels, dogs whose breeds have been lost for 700 years, chase a female in heat as the spec­ tators gather, it's the fourth hanging this spring and not much spectacle here except that this one, dreaming at the last instant of who can say what lifted smock, what fat-haunched gnadige frau death may have come sashaying in as, gets an erection, a tremendous darkpurple swell­ ing, and just as his neck breaks, he actually comes in his ragged loin­ wrapping creamy as the skin of a saint under the purple cloak of lent, and one drop of sperm succeeds in rolling, dripping hair to hair down the dead leg, all the way down, off the edge of the crusted bare foot, drips to earth at the exact center of the crossroad where, in the work­ ings of the night, it changes into a mandrake root. next friday, at dawn, the magician, his own moving heiligenschein rippling infrared to ultra­ violet in spectral rings around his shadow over the dewy grass, comes with his dog, a coal-black dog who hasn't been fed for a few days. the magician digs carefully all around the precious root till it's held only by the finest root-hairs-ties it to the tail of his black dog, stops his own ears with wax then comes out with a piece of bread to lure the unfed dog rrrowf! dog lunges for bread, root is torn up and lets loose its pierc­ ing and fatal scream. the dog drops dead before he's halfway to break­ fast, his holylight freezes and fades in the million dewdrops. magician takes the root tenderly home, dresses it in a little white outfit and leaves money with it overnight: in the morning the cash has multiplied tenfold. a delegate from the committee on idiopathic archetypes comes to visit. "inflation?" the magician tries to cover up with some flowing hand-moves. " 'capital'? never heard of that." "no, no," replies the vis­ itor, "not at the moment. we're trying to think ahead. we'd like very much to hear about the basic structure of this. how bad was the scream, for instance?" "had m'ears plugged up, couldn't hear it." the delegate flashes a fraternal business smile. "can't say as i blame you.... " crosses, swastikas, zone-mandalas, how can they not speak to slo­ throp? he's sat in saure bummer's kitchen, the air streaming with kif moires, reading soup recipes and finding in every bone and cabbage leaf paraphrases of himself . . . news flashes, names of wheelhorses that will pay him off enough for a certain getaway. . . . he used to pick and 625 shovel at the spring roads of berkshire, april afternoons he's lost,"chapter 81 work," they called it, following the scraper that clears thewinter's crystal attack-from-within, its white necropoli zing ... pickingup rusted beer cans, rubbers yellow with preterite seed, kleenex wad­ded to brain shapes hiding preterite snot, preterite tears, newspapers,broken glass, pieces of automobile, days when in superstition and frighthe could make it all fit, seeing clearly in each an entry in a record, a his­ tory: his own, his winter's, his country's . . . instructing him, dunce anddrifter, in ways deeper than he can explain, have been faces of childrenout the train windows, two bars of dance music somewhere, in someother street at night, needles and branches of a pine tree shaken clearand luminous against night clouds, one circuit diagram out of hundredsin a smudged yellowing sheaf, laughter out of a cornfield in the earlymorning as he was walking to school, the idling of a motorcycle at onedusk-heavy hour of the summer ... and now, in the zone, later in theday he became a crossroad, after a heavy rain he doesn't recall, slothropsees a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into earth, green wet valleyed earth, and his chest fillsand he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural. . . . d d d d d d d double-declutchingly, heel-and-toe, away goes roger mexico. downthe summer autobahn, expansion joints booming rhythmic under hiswheels, he highballs a pre-hitler horch 870b through the burnt-purplerolling of the liineburg heath. over the windscreen mild winds blowdown on him, smelling of junipers. heidschnucken sheep out there restas still as fallen clouds. the bogs and broom go speeding by. overheadthe sky is busy, streaming, a living plasma.the horch, army-green with one discreet daffodil painted halfway upits bonnet, was lurking inside a lorry at the elbeward edge of the bri­gade pool at hamburg, shadowed except for its headlamps, stalked eyesof a friendly alien smiling at roger . welcome there, earthman. onceunder way, he discovered the floor strewn with rolling unlabeled glassjars of what seems to be baby food, weird unhealthy-colored stuff nohuman baby could possibly eat and survive, green marbled with pink,vomit-beige with magenta inclusions, all impossible to identify, eachcap adorned with a smiling, fat, cherubic baby, seething under thebright glass with horrible botulism toxins 'n' ptomaines ... now andthen a new jar will be produced, spontaneously, under the seat, and roll 626 he'� � out, against all laws of acceleration, among the pedals for his feet to get clem' confused by. he knows he ought to look back underneath there to find out what's going on, but can't quite bring himself to. bottles roll clanking on the floor, under the bonnet a hung-up tappet or two chatters its story of discomfort. wild mustard whips past down the center of the autobahn, perfectly two-tone, just yellow and green, a fateful river seen only by the two kinds of rippling light. roger sings to a girl in cuxhaven who still carries jessica's name: i dream that i have found us both again, with spring so many strangers' lives away, and we, so free, out walking by the sea, with someone else's paper words to say. they took us at the gates of green return, too lost by then to stop, and ask them why­ do children meet again? does any trace remain, along the superhighways of july? ,� aert driving now suddenly into such a bright gold bearding of slope and field that he nearly forgets to steer around the banked curve. . . . a week before she left, she came out to "the white visitation" for the last time. except for the negligible rump of pisces, the place was a loony bin again. the barrage-balloon cables lay rusting across the sod­ den meadows, going to flakes, to ions and earth-tendons that sang in the violent nights, among the sirens wailing in thirds smooth as distant wind, among the drumbeats of bombs, now lying slack, old, in hard twists of metal ash. forget-me-nots boil everywhere underfoot, and ants crowd, bustling with a sense of kingdom. commas, brimstones, painted ladies coast on the thermoclines along the cliffs. jessica has cut fringes since roger saw her last, and is going through the usual anxiety-"it looks utterly horrible, you don't have to say it. "it's utterly swoony," sez roger, "i love it." "you' re making fun." "jess, why are we talking about haircuts for god's sake?" while somewhere, out beyond the channel, a barrier difficult as the wall of death to a novice medium, leftenant slothrop, corrupted, given up on, creeps over the face of the zone. roger doesn't want to give him up: roger wants to do what's right. "i just can't leave the poor twit out there, can i? they're trying to destroy him-" but, "roger," she'd smile, "it's spring. we're at peace."no, we're not. it's another bit of propaganda. something the p.w.e.planted. now gentlemen as you've seen from the studies our optimumtime is 8 may, just before the traditional whitsun exodus, schools lettingout, weather projections for an excellent growing season, coal require­ments beginning their seasonal decline, giving us a few months' grace toget our ruhr interests back on their feetno, he sees only the sameflows of power, the same impoverishments he's been thrashing aroundin since '39. his girl is about to be taken away to germany, when sheought to be demobbed like everyone else. no channel upward that willshow either of them any hope of escape. there's something still on,don't call it a "war" if it makes you nervous, maybe the death rate's gone down a point or two, beer in cans is back at last and there were alot of people in trafalgar square one night not so long ago . . . buttheir enterprise goes on. the sad fact, lacerating his heart, laying open his emptiness, is thatjessica believes them. "the war" was the condition she needed forbeing with roger. "peace" allows her to leave him. his resources, nextto theirs, are too meager. he has no words, no technically splendid em­brace, no screaming fit that can ever hold her. old beaver, not surpris­ingly, will be doing air-defense liaison over there, so they'll be togetherin romantic cuxhaven. ta-ta mad roger, it's been grand, a wartimefling, when we came it was utterly incendiary, your arms open wide as afortress's wings, we had our military secrets, we fooled the fat old colo­nels right and left but stand-down time must come to all, yikes! i mustrun sweet roger really it's been dreamy....he would fall at her knees smelling of glycerine and rose-water, hewould lick sand and salt from her a ts brogans, offer her his freedom,his next 50 years' pay from a good steady job, his poor throbbing brain.but it's too late. we're at peace. the paranoia, the danger, the tunelesswhistling of busy death next door, are all put to sleep, back in the war,back with her roger mexico years. the day the rockets stopped falling,it began to end for roger and jessica. as it grew clear, day after safeday, that no more would fall ever again, the new world crept into andover her like spring-not so much the changes she felt in air and light,in the crowds at woolworth's, as a bad cinema spring, full of paperleaves and cotton-wool blossoms and phony lighting . . . no, neveragain will she stand at their kitchen sink with a china cup squeaking inher fingers, its small crying-child sound defenseless, meekly resonatingblown out of attention as the rocket fell smashingto a clatter of points white and blue across the floor. 628 tu nit those death-rockets now are in the past. this time she'll be on the the�j firing end, she and jeremy-isn't that how it was always meant to be? firing them out to sea: no death, only the spectacle, fire and roar, the ex­ citement without the killing, isn't that what she prayed for? back in the fading house, derequisitioned now, occupied again by human extensions of ball-fringe, dog pictures, victorian chairs, secret piles of news of the world in the upstairs closet. she's meant to go. the orders come from higher than she can reach. her future is with the world's own, and roger's only with this strange version of the war he still carries with him. he can't move, poor dear, it won't let him go. still passive as he'd been under the rockets. roger the victim. jeremy the firer. "the war's my mother," he said the first day, and jessica has wondered what ladies in black appeared in his dreams, what ash-white smiles, what shears to come snapping through the room, through their winter ... so much of him she never got to know ... so much unfit for peace. already she's beginning to think of their time as a chain of explosions, craziness ganged to the rhythms of the war. now he wants to go rescue slothrop, another rocket-creature, a vampire whose sex life actually fed on the terror of that rocket blitz-ugh, creepy, creepy. they ought to lock him up, not set him free. roger must care more about slothrop than about her, they're two of a kind, aren't they, well-she hopes they'll be happy together. they can sit and drink beer, tell rocket stories, scribble equations for each other. how jolly. at least she won't be leaving him in a vacuum. he won't be lonely, he'll have something to occupy the time. . . . she has wandered away from him, down the beach. the sun is so bright today that the shadows by her achilles tendon are drawn sharp and black as seams up the heel of a silk stocking. her head, as always, is bent forward, away, the bare nape he's never stopped loving, will never see again, unprotected as her beauty, her innocence of how forever in peril it moves through the world. she may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as "pretty" . . . but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him. was. he is losing more than single jessica: he's losing a full range of life, of being for the first time at ease in the creation. going back to winter now, drawing back into his single envelope. the effort it takes to extend any further is more than he can make alone. he hadn't thought he'd cry when she left. but he cried. snot by the cubic yard, eyes like red carnations. presently, every time his left foot hit the ground walking he'd get a jolt of pain through half his skull. ah, this must be what they mean by the "pain of separation!" pointsmankept showing up with armloads of work. roger found himself unable to forget jessica, and caring less about slothrop. but one day milton gloaming popped in to deliver him from his un­ moving. gloaming was just back from a jaunt through the zone. he'dfound himself on a task force with one josef schleim, a defector of sec­ ondary brilliance, who had once worked for the ig out of dr. reith­ inger's office, yowl-the statistical department of nw7. there,schleim had been assigned to the american desk, gathering for the igeconomic intelligence, through subsidiaries and licensees like chemnyco, general aniline and film, ansco, winthrop. in '36 he cameto england to work for imperial chemicals, in a status that was never tobe free from ambiguities. he'd heard of slothrop, yes indeed ... re­called him from the old days. when lyle bland went out on his lasttransmural journey, there'd been green reports flapping through theig offices for weeks, geheime kommandosache, rumors coupling anduncoupling like coal-tar molecules under pressure, all to do with who was likely to take over the slothrop surveillance, now that bland was gone. this was toward the beginning of the great struggle for the ig's intel­ligence machinery. the economic department of the foreign office andthe foreign department of the economic office were both after it. so were the military, in particular the wehrwirtschaftstab, a section of thegeneral staff that maintained okw's liaison with industry. the ig'sown liaison with okw was handled by vermittlungsstelle w, underdrs. dieckmann and gorr. the picture was further confused by theusual duplicate nazi party offices, abwehr-organizations, set upthroughout german industry after 1933. the nazis' watchdog over theig was called "abteilung a" and was set up in the same office buildingas-in fact, it appeared perfectly congruent with-the ig's own armyliaison group, yermittlungsstelle w. but technology, alas, braid­crowned and gold-thighed maiden, always comes up for grabs like this.most likely the bitching and bickering of army vs. party was whatfinally drove schleim over the hill, more than any moral feelings abouthitler. in any case, he remembers the slothrop surveillance being as­signed to a newly created "sparte iy" under vermittlungsstelle w.sparte i was handling nitrogen and gasoline, ii dyes, chemicals, bunarubber, pharmaceuticals, iii film and fibers. iy handled slothrop andnothing else, except-schleim had heard tell-one or two miscellaneous patents acquired through some dealings with ig chemie in switzer630 a!\\�[: 'noeeq, out o� ng �r� mu�� o 00 �j� nat m�: land. an analgesic whose name he couldn't recall, and a new plastic, some name like mipolam . . . "polimex," or something. . . . "sounds like that would've come under sparte ii," was gloaming's only comment at the time. "a few directors were upset," schleim agreed. "ter meer was a draufganger-he and horlein both, go-ahead fellows. they might have got it back." "did the party assign an abwehr man to this sparte iv?" "they must have, but i don't know if he was sd or ss. there were so many of them around. i can remember some sort of rather thin chap with thick eyeglasses coming out of the office there once or twice. but he wore civilian clothes. couldn't tell you his name." well now what'n the bloody 'ell.... "surveillance?" roger is fidgeting heavily, with his hair, his necktie, ears, nose, knuckles, "ig farben had slothrop under surveillance? be­ fore the war? what for, gloaming." "odd, isn't it?" cheerio baing out the door without another word, leaving roger alone with a most disagreeable light beginning to grow, the leading edge of a revelation, blinding, crescent, at the periphery of his brain. ig farben, eh? mr. pointsman has been chumming, almost exclusively these days, with upper echelon from ici. ici has cartel ar­ rangements with farben. the bastard. why, he must have known about slothrop all along. the jamf business was only a front for . . . well say what the hell is going on here? halfway up to london (pointsman has repossessed the jaguar, so roger's on a motorcycle from the pisces pool, which consists now only of the cycle and one morris with virtually no clutch) it occurs to him that gloaming was sent around deliberately by pointsman, as some obscure tactic in this nayland smith campaign he seems to be into (pointsman owns a matched set of all the books in sax rohmer's great manichaean saga, and is apt these days to pop in at any time, usually while roger is sleeping or trying to take a quiet shit, and actually stand there, in front of the toilet, reading aloud a pertinent text). nothing is beyond pointsman, he's worse than old pudding was, no shame at all. he would use anyone-gloaming, katje borgesius, pirate prentice, no one is (jessica) exempt from his (jessica?) machiavellian[essica, oh. yes ofcourseofcourse mexico you fucking idiot ... no wonder the 137th gave him the runaround. no wonder her orders came from too high. he had even, lamb frolicking about the spit, asked pointsman to see what he could do.... fool. fool. he arrives at twelfth house on callaho mews in a homicidal state of mind. bicycle thieves run down the back streets, old pros wheelingthem three abreast at a good pace. young men with natty mustaches preen in the windows. children loot the dustbins. courtyard corners aredrifted with official papers, the shed skin of a beast at large. a tree has inexplicably withered in the street to a shingly black corpse. a fly lands belly-up on the front fender of roger's motorcycle, thrashes ten sec­ onds, folds its veined and sensitive wings, and dies. quick as that. first one roger has ever seen. p-47s fly over in squadron box formations, four checkmarks apiece redwhiteblueyellow on the unamended form of the whitish sky, squadron after squadron: it is either some military re­view, or another war. a plasterer is busy around the corner, smoothingover a bomb-scarred wall, plaster heaped on his hawk luscious as cream cheese, using an unfamiliar trowel inherited from a dead friend, still,these first days, digging holes like an apprentice, the shiny knife-edgenot yet broken to his hand, the curl of it a bit more than his own strength could have ever brought it to ... henry was a larger bloke. . . . the fly, who was not dead, unfolds its wings and zooms off to fool somebody else. all right pointsman stomping into twelfth house, rattling the cork­boards down the seven hallways and flights, receptionists making longarms for the telephone dammit now where are you-not in his office. but ceza bozsavolgyi is, and tries to give roger ahard time. "you are rna-king a spec-tacle of your-self, young man.""shurrup you transylvanian twit," snarls roger, "i'm looking for theboss, see, one funny move out of you and it's your last taste of o-nega­tive, jackson, those fangs won't even be able to gum oatmeal when i'm through wiv you-" alarmed rozsavolgyi, retreating around the watercooler, tries to pick up a swivel chair to defend himself with. the seatfalls off, and rozsavolgyi is left with only the base, which happens, em­barra ingly, to be shaped like a cross. "where is he," mexican standoff, roger gritting his teeth do not suc­cumb to hysteria, it is a counter-productive luxury you cannot, in yourpresent great vulnerability, afford. . . . "come on you sod, tell me oryou'll never see the inside of a coffin again-"in runs a short but spunky secretary, bit of a chubbette here, and commences belting roger in the shins with the excess-profits tax recordsfrom 1940 to '44 of an english steel firm which happened to share a pat­ent with vereinigte stahlwerke for an alloy used in the liquid-oxygencouplings for the line running aft to the s-cerat in a4 number 00000.but roger's shins are not set up for this kind of information. the 632 e,t roj/, secretary's glasses fall off. "miss miiller-hochleben," reading her name­ tag, "you look beastly without your glasses. put ssem back on, at vunce!" this comic nazi routine being inspired by her surname. "i can't find them," german accent all right, "i don't see too well." "well, we'll see if we can't help you here-ah! what's this? miss miiller-hochleben!" "ja.... " "what do they look like, these eyeglasses?" "they are white-" "with clever little rhinestones all around the rims, fraulein? eh?" "[a, ja, und mit-" "and running down all the earpieces too, a-and feathers?" "ostrich feathers.... " "male ostrich feathers, dyed a stunning peacock blue, sprouting off the edges?" "that is my eyeglasses, ja," sez the groping secretary, "where are they, please?" "right here!" bringing his foot down crunch, smashing them to bright arctic gatherings all over pointsman's rug. "i-say," offers rozsavolgyi from a far corner: the one corner of the room, by the way, which is not brightly lit, yes kind of an optic anomaly here, just a straight, square room, no odd-shaped polyhedrons in twelfth house . . . and still, this strange, unaccountable prism of shadow in the corner . . . more than one visitor has popped in to find mr. pointsman not at his desk where he ought to be but standing in the shadow-comer-most disturbingly facing into it.... rozsavolgyi is not himself that fond of the corner, he's tried it a few times but only came out shaking his head: "mis-ter pointsman, l-don't like it in there, at all. what poss-ible kind, of a thrill can an-yone get, from such an unwhole­ some experience. eh?" raising one crookedly wistful eyebrow. points­ man had only looked apologetic, not for himself but to something for hozsavolgyi, and said gently, "this is one spot in the room where i feel alive," well bet your ass one or two memos went up toward ministerial level over that one. if they reached the minister himself, it was prob­ ably as office entertainment. "oh yes, yes," shaking his wise old head of sheep's wool, high, almost slavic cheekbones crinkling his eyes up into an inattentive but polite laughter, "yes pointsman's famous corner, yes ... wouldn't be surprised if it was haunted, eh?" reflex laughs from the underlings present, though only grim smiles from the overlings. "get the s.p.r. in, to have a look," giggles someone with a cigar. 'the poor bloke will think he's back in the war again." "hear, hear," and,, n� "that's a good one, all right," ring through the layering smoke. practical jokes are all the rage among these particular underlings, a kind of class tradition. "you say what," roger has been screaming for a while. "l-sau," sez bozsavolgyi, again. "you say, 'i say'? is that it? then you should have said, 'i say, "isay." , " "i did." "no, no-you said, 'i say,' once, is what you-" "a-hal but i said it again. i-said it ... twice." "but that was after i asked you the question-you can't tell me the two 'i say's were both part of the same statement," unless, "that's ask­ ing me to be unreasonably," unless it's really true that, "credulous, and around you that's a form of," that we're the same person, and that thewhole exchange was one single thought yaaaggghhh and that means, "insanity, rozsavolgyi->-" "my glasses," snivels fraulein mi.iller-hochleben, now crawlingaround the room, mexico scattering the glass splinters with his shoe sothat now and then the unfortunate girl will cut a hand or a knee, begin­ning to trail dark little feathers of blood for inches at a time, eventually-assuming she were to last long enough-dotting in pointsrnan's ruglike the train of a beardsley gown. "you're doing fine, miss miiller-hochlebenl" cries roger encourag­ingly, "and as for you, you-" but is stopped on noticing how hozsavol­ gyi now is nearly invisible in the shadow, and how the whites of his eyesare actually glowing white, jittering around in the air, winking-out-com­ing-back ... it is costing hozsavolgyi an effort to stay in this shadow­ corner. it is not, at all, his sort of place. for one thing, the rest of the room seems to be at more of a distance, as through the view-finder on a camera. and the walls-they don't appear to be ... well, solid, actu­ ally. they flow: a coarse, a viscous passage, rippling like a standingpiece of silk or nylon, the color watery gray but now and then with a surprise island in the flow, some color absolutely foreign to this room:saffron spindles, palm-green ovals, magenta firths running comblike intojagged comicbook-orange chunks of island as the wounded fighter-planecircles, jettisons the tanks, then the silver canopy, sets the flaps to justabove a stall, wheels up as the blue (suddenly, such a violent blue!) , wrushes in just before impact throttle closed uhhnnhhl oh shit the reef,we're going to smash up on the-oh. oh, there's no reef? we-we're of) safe? we are! mangoes, i see mangoes on that tree over there! a-and � there's a girl-there's a lotta girls! lookit, they're all gorgeous, their tits � 634 · point straight out, and they're all swingin' those grass skirts, playin' uku­ leles and singing (though why are the voices so hard and tough, so na­ sally like the voices of an american chorus line?)white man welcome ta puke-a-hook-a-look-i i-i-i-island! 'i £\ one taste 0' my pa-paya and y'll never wanna go a-waaaay! moon like a yel-low ba-na-na, hangin' over, my ca-ba-na, and lotsa hula, hula games to playoh the stars are fallin' over puke-a-hook-a-look-i island, and the lava down the mountain's runnin' scrump-shus as a cherry pieeven sweet leilani in the little grass shack loves a coconut monkey and a missionary snack, looky-looky, sugar cookie, you're on puke-a-hook-a-iook-i i-i-i-island! o-boy, o-boy-go-ing to nail me, one, of those lit-tie is-land love-lies, spend, the rest . . . of my life, eat-ing pa-pay-as, fra-grant as the cunt, of young paradisewhen paradise was young. the pilot is turning to rozsavolgyi, who is still strapped in safety harness behind him. the face is covered with hel­ met, goggles that reflect too much light, oxygen mask-a face of metal, leather, isinglass. but now the pilot is raising the goggles, slowly, and whose eyes are these, so familiar, smiling hello, i know you, don't you know me? don't you really know me? hozsavolgyi screams and backs out of the corner, shivering, blinded now in the overhead lights. fraulein miiller-hochleben is crawling around and around in the same circle, faster and faster, nearly a blur, croaking hysterically. both have reached the exact level roger's subtle psychological campaign here was intended to work them up to. quietly but firmly: "right. now for the last time, where is mr. pointsman?" "mossmoon's office," they reply, in unison. mossmoon's office is a roller-skate ride away from whitehall, and guarded by room after room of sentinel girls, each of them wearing a frock of a radically different color from the others (and this goes on for a while, so you can imagine what 3-sigma colors these are to begin with, if that many can be so "radically different," you know, like that-oh, col­ ors such as lizard, evening star, pale atlantis to name a few), and whom roger romances, bribes, threatens, double-talks and (sigh) yes punches his way through till finally "mossmoon," pounding on this gigantic oak door, carved like the stone doorways of certain temples, "pointsman,the jig's up! in the name of whatever marginal decency enables you to get through the day without being shot dead by the odd armed stranger, open this door." this is quite a long speech, and the door actually openshalfway through, but roger finishes it up anyhow. he's looking into a room of incandescent lemon-lime subdued drastically, almost to the milky point of absinthe-and-water, a room warmer than this tableful of faces really deserves, but perhaps it's roger's entrance that deepens thecolor a bit now as he runs and jumps up on the polished table, over the polished head of a director of a steel company, skidding 20 feet downthe waxed surface to confront the man at the end, who sits with a debo­ nair (well, snotty) smile on his face. "mossmoon, i'm on to you." has heactually come inside, in among the hoods, eye-slits, gold paraphernalia,the incense and the thighbone scepter? "that's not mossmoon," mr. pointsman clearing his throat as he speaks, "mexico do come down off the table won't you . . . gentlemen,one of myoid pisces colleagues, brilliant but rather unstable, as youmay've noted-oh, mexico, really-" roger has unbuttoned his fly, taken his cock out, and is now busypissing on the shiny table, the papers, in the ashtrays and pretty soon onthese poker-faced men themselves, who, although executive material all right, men of hair-trigger minds, are still not quite willing to admit thatthis is happening, you know, in any world that really touches, at too many points, the one they're accustomed to ... and actually the fall ofwarm piss is quite pleasant as it sweeps by, across ten-guinea cravats,creative-looking little beards, up into a liver-spotted nostril, across a pair of army-issue steel-rim eyeglasses, slashing up and down starchedfronts, phi beta kappa keys, legions of honour, orders of lenin, ironcrosses, v.c.s, retirement watchchains, dewey-for-president lapel pins,half-exposed service revolvers, and even a sawed-off shotgun under theshoulder there. . . . "pointsman," the cock, stubborn, annoyed, bucks like an airship among purple clouds (very dense purple, as pile velvet that color) atnightfall when the sea-breeze promises a difficult landing, "i've saved you for last. but-goodness, i don't seem to have any urine left, here.not even a drop. i'm so sorry. nothing left for you at all. do you under­stand? if it means giving my life," the words have just come out, andmaybe roger's exaggerating, but maybe not, "there will be nothing any­where for you. what you get, i'll take. if you go higher in this, i'll comeand get you, and take you back down. wherever you go. even should you find a spare moment of rest, with an understanding woman in a ow �i quiet room, i'll be at the window. i'll always be just outside. you will never cancel me. if you come out, i'll go in, and the room will be defiled for you, haunted, and you'll have to find another. if you stay inside i'll come in anyway-i'll stalk you room to room till i corner you in the last. you'll have the last room, pointsman, and you'll have to live in it the rest of your scum, prostituted life." pointsman won't look at him. won't meet his eyes. that's what roger wanted. the security police show up as an anticlimax, although aficio­ nados of the chase scene, those who cannot look at the taj mahal, the uffizi, the statue of liberty without thinking chase scene, chase scene, wow yeah douglas fairbanks scampering across that moon minaret there-these enthusiasts may find interest in the following: roger dives under the table to button his fly and the zealous flatties leap at each other over the top of the table, colliding and cursing, but roger has gone scuttling down the horsehide, hobnailed, pinstriped, morn's-argyle-socked sublevel of these conspirators above, a precarious passage, anyone foot could kick untelegraphed and wipe him out-till he arrives back at the bald steel-magnate, reaches up, grabs him by the necktie or the cock, whichever it's easiest to get a hold on, and drags the man down under the table. "right. now, we're going to get out of here, and you're my hostage, get it?" he emerges dragging the livid executive by his necktie or cock, pulling him like a child's sleigh strangling and apoplectic out the door, past the modally unusual rainbow of sentinel-ladies now intimidated­ looking at least, sirens already wailing in the street maniac assaults oil parley ousted after --ing on conferees and he's out of the elevator by now running down a back corridor to a central-heating complex zoom! over the heads of a couple of black custodians who are passing back and forth a cigarette rolled from some west african narcotic herb, stuffs his hostage into a gigantic furnace which is banked for the spring (too bad), and flees out the back way down an aisle of plane trees into a small park, over a fence, zippety zop, fastfoot roger and the london cops. there's nothing back at "the white visitation" he really needs. nothing he can't let go. clothes on his back and the pool motorcycle, a pocket full of spare change and anger unlimited, what more does a 30year-old innocent need to make his way in the city? "i'm fucking dick whittington!" it occurs to him zooming down kings road, "i've come to london! i'm your lord mayor.... " pirate is at home, and apparently expecting roger. pieces of his faith­ ful mendoza lie about the refectory table, shining with oil or bluing, cro�1 arr�: ==-----:!o ' -_ / � :",. wads, patches, rods.ibottles occupy his hands, but his eyes are on roger. "no," cutting into a denunciation of pointsman when milton gloam­ ing's name comes up, "it's a minor item, but stop right there. pointsman didn't send him. we sent him." "we." "you're a novice paranoid, roger," first time prentice has ever used his christian name and it touches roger enough to check his tirade. "of course a well-developed they-system is necessary-but it's only half the story. for every they there ought to be a we. in our case there is. creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a we-system as a they-system-" "wait, wait, first where's the haig and haig, be a gracious host, sec­ ond what is a 'they-system,' i don't pull chebychev's theorem on you, do i?" "i mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call 'delusional sys­ tems.' needless to say, 'delusions' are always officially defined. we don't have to worry about questions of real or unreal. they only talk out of expediency. it's the system that matters. how the data arrange them­ selves inside it. some are consistent, others fall apart. your idea that pointsman sent gloaming takes a wrong fork. without any contrary set of delusions-delusions about ourselves, which i'm calling awe-system-the gloaming idea might have been all right-" "delusions about ourselves?" "not real ones." "but officially defined." "out of expediency, yes." "well, you're playing their game, then." "don't let it bother you. you'll find you can operate quite well. seeing as we haven't won yet, it isn't really much of a problem." roger is totally confused. at this point, in wanders who but milton gloaming with a black man roger recognizes now as one of the two herb-smokers in the furnace room under clive mossmoon's office. his name is jan otyiyumbu, and he's a schwarzkommando liaison man. one of blodgett waxwing's apache lieutenants shows up with his girl,who's not walking so much as dancing, very fluid and slow, a dance in which osbie feel, popping out of the kitchen now with his shirt off (and a porky pig tattoo on his stomach? how long has feel had that?) cor­ rectly identifies the influence of heroin. it's a little bewildering-if this is a "we-system," why isn't it at least thoughtful enough to interlock in a reasonable way, like they-systemsdo? "t �[1noe \�r�el)t �1rtex} �ill �o fuere}n �nantt jllicjel non)h, lnoilie ilin�, , in p in� )0 curse arose \l'e�, \i�ton etll'o thil man, 's�l, cein \ano cor· least tems "that's exactly it," osbie screams, belly-dancing porky into a wide, alarming grin, "they 're the rational ones. we piss on their rational ar­ rangements. don't we ... mexico?" "hoorah!" cry the others. well taken, osbie. sir stephen dodson-truck sits by the window, cleaning a sten. out­ side, blowing over its dorsal and summer stillness, london today can feel advance chills of austerity. there isn't a word in sir stephen's head right now. he is completely involved with the weapon. he no longer thinks about his wife, nora, although she's out there, in some room, still surrounded by her planetary psychics, and aimed herself now toward a peculiar fate. in recent weeks, in true messianic style, it has come clear to her that her real identity is, literally, the force of gravity. i am grav­ ity, i am that against which the rocket must struggle, to which the pre­ historic wastes submit and are transmuted to the very substance of his­ tory.... her wheeling freaks, her seers, teleporters, astral travelers and tragic human interfaces all know of her visitation, but none see any way for her to turn. she must prove herself now-find deeper forms of renunciation, deeper than sabbatai zvi's apostasy before the sublime porte. it is a situation not without its chances for a good practical joke now and then-poor nora will be suckered into seances that wouldn't fool your great-aunt, visits from the likes of ronald cherrycoke in a jesus christ getup, whistling down the wires into a hidden ultraviolet baby spot where he will start fluorescing in most questionable taste, blithering odd bits of gospel together, reaching down from his crucified altitudes to actually cop feels of nora's girdled behind . . . highly offended, she will flee into hallways full of clammy invisible hands-pol­ tergeists will back toilets up on her, ladylike turds will bob at her virgin vertex, and screaming ugh, ass dripping, girdle around her knees, she will go staggering into her own drawing-room to find no refuge even there, no, someone will have caused to materialize for her a lesbian ele­ phant soixante-neuf, slimy trunks pistoning symmetrically in and out of juicy elephant vulvas, and when she turns to escape this horrid exhibi­ tion she'll find some playful ghost has latched the door behind her, and another's just about to sock her in the face with a cold yorkshire pud­ ding.... in pirate's maisonette, everyone is singing now a counterforce travel­ ing song, with thomas gwenhidwy, who has not fallen to the dialectic curse of pointsman's book after all, accompanying on what seems to be a rosewood crwth: they've been sleeping on your shoulder, they've been crying in your beer, �, /' -� ��, j'l� ',\ ' ',' r .',., "._ •• " "'�<""'.�--'-�.. ._-= _"" .': .. ,�,·ltk .\ i i i " these pine limbs, crackling so blue and watery, don't seem to put out �ow,an' "ahh,any heat at all. confiscated weapons and ammo lie around half-crated or piled loose inside the c-company perimeter. for days the u.s. army �a�and \ has been out sweeping thuringia, busting into houses in the middle of �anrbar the night. a certain lycanthropophobia or fear of werewolves occupies ate1r ree minds at higher levels. winter is coming. soon there won't be enough ��·nalrsifood or coal in germany. potato crops toward the end of the war, for i tneeol example, all went to make alcohol for the rockets. but there are still small-arms aplenty, and ammunition to fit them. where you cannot feed, you take away weapons. weapons and food have been firmlylinked in the governmental mind for as long as either has been around. on the mountainsides, patches will flash up now and then, bright as ie�yo dittany in july at the zippo's ceremonial touch. pfc. eddie pensiero, a i unes,ge replacement here in the 89th division, also an amphetamine enthusiast, just don sits huddling nearly on top of the fire, shivering and watching the divia crool sional patch on his arm, which ordinarily resembles a cluster of rocket indudi noses seen out of a dilating asshole, all in black and olive-drab, but here y 640 and they've sung you all their sad lullabies, and you thought they wanted sympathy and didn't care for souls, and they never were about to put you wise. but i'm telling you today, that it ain't the only way, and there's shit you won't be eating any more­ they've been paying you to love it, but the time has come to shove it, and it isn't a resistance, it's a war. "it's a war," roger sings, driving into cuxhaven, wondering offhand how jessica has cut her hair for jeremy, and how that insufferable prig would look with a thrust chamber wrapped around his head, "it's a war. light one up before you mosey out that door, once you cuddled 'em and kissed 'em, but we're bringin' down their system, and it isn't a resistance, it's a war. ... d d d d d d d which will thi shive lniver n loiverin connoiss iliell1,like icars,but �lllerpeo illto�eth rriminato �[iliese s non to ilie wated kin ilieoilier wavefoffi1 to de fo inereiso leveh-ro "he� p "getcher iiaww, wawffi," ii�oick _1---/r: -�;!_:__________j ,,\ which now looks like something even stranger than that, which eddie will think of in a minute. shivering is one of eddie pensiero's favorite pastimes. not the kind of shiver normal people get, the goose-on-the-grave passover and gone, but shivering that doesn't stop. very hard to get used to at first. eddie is a connoisseur of shivers. he is even able, in some strange way, to read them, like saure bummer reads reefers, like miklos thanatz reads whip­ scars. but the gift isn't limited just to eddie's own shivers, oh no, they're other peoples' shivers, too! yeah they come in one by one, they come in all together in groups (lately he's been growing in his brain a kind of dis­ criminator circuit, learning how to separate them out). least interesting o�ana of these shivers are the ones with a perfectly steady frequency, no varia�e�ri� tion to them at all. the next-to-least interesting are the frequency-mod"11'1; ulated kind, now faster now slower depending on information put in at the other end, wherever that might be. then you have the irregular waveforms that change both in frequency and in amplitude. they have to be fourier-analyzed into their harmonics, which is a little tougher. there is often coding involved, certain subfrequencies, certain power­ levels-you have to be pretty good to get the hang of these. "hey pensiero." it is eddie's sergeant, howard ("slow") lerner. "getcher ass offa dat fire." "aww, sarge," chatters eddie, "c'mon. i wuz just tryin' ta get wawm." "no ick-skew-siz, pensiero! one 0' th' koinels wants his hair cut, right now, an' yer it!" "ahh, youse guys," mutters pensiero, crawling over to his sleeping bag and looking through his pack for comb and scissors. he is the com­ pany barber. his haircuts, which take hours and often days, are immedi­ ately recognizable throughout the zone, revealing as they do the hair­ by-hair singlemindedness of the "benny" habitue. the colonel is sitting, waiting, under an electric bulb. the bulb is re­ ceiving its power from another enlisted man, who sits back in the shad­ ows hand-pedaling the twin generator cranks. it is eddie's friend pri­ vate paddy ("electro") mcgonigle, an irish lad from new jersey, one of those million virtuous and adjusted city poor you know from the mov­ ies-you've seen them dancing, singing, hanging out the washing on the lines, getting drunk at wakes, worrying about their children going bad, i just don't know any more faather, he's a good b'y but he's runnin' with a crool crowd, on through every wretched hollywood lie down to and including this year's big hit, a tree grows in brooklyn. with his crank here young paddy is practicing another form of eddie's gift, though he's 641 transmitting not receiving. the bulb appears to burn steadily, but this is really a succession of electric peaks and valleys, passing by at a speed that depends on how fast paddy is cranking. it's only that the wire in­ side the bulb unbrightens slow enough before the next peak shows up that fools us into seeing a steady light. it's really a train of imperceptible light and dark. usually imperceptible. the message is never conscious on paddy's part. it is sent by muscles and skeleton, by that circuit of his body which has learned to work as a source of electrical power. right now eddie pensiero is shivering and not paying much attention to that light bulb. his own message is interesting enough. somebody close by, out in the night, is playing a blues on a mouth harp. "whut's dat?" eddie wants to know, standing under the white light behind the silent colonel in his dress uniform, "hey, mcgonigle-you hear sump'n?" "yeah," jeers paddy from behind the generator, "i hear yer dis­ chodge, hyin' away, wit' big wings comin' outa th' ass end. dat's whut i hear! yuk, yuk!" "aw, it's th' bunk!" replies eddie pensiero. "y-you don't hear no dis­ chodge, ya big dumbheaded mick." "hey, pensiero, ya know whut a eye-talian submarine sounds like, on dat new sonar? huh?" "vh . . . whut?" "pinnnggguinea-guinea-guinea wopwopwop] dat's whut! yuk, yuk, yuk!" "fuck youse," sez eddie, and commences combing the colonel's sil­ ver-black hair. the moment the comb contacts his head, the colonel begins to speak. "ordinarily, we'd spend no more than 24 hours on a house-to-house sweep. sundown to sundown, house to house. there's a quality of black and gold to either end of it, that way, silhouettes, shaken skies pure as a focenave cyclorama. but these sunsets, out here, i don't know. do you suppose t tffiotlon, something has exploded somewhere? really-somewhere in the east? �ffuat. n another krakatoa? another name at least that exotic . . . the colors are iou, , , , so different now. volcanic ash, or any finely-divided substance, sus")did pended in the atmosphere, can diffract the colors strangely. did you qownwar know that, son? hard to believe, isn't it? rather a long taper if you m�roddon't mind, and just short of combable on top. yes, private, the colors � inilieai change, and how! the question is, are they changing according to someluo�tanc thing? is the sun's everyday spectrum being modulated? not at random, one-ev but systematically, by this unknown debris in the prevailing winds? is a city bthere information for us? deep questions, and disturbing ones. chicken "wh, nave a 1 cnicago. �i� white wilconsi "hen, "hey p "yeah �ie n�rs, mda�ain �r.atro� �fect of fenlierot ") �ot rlorinet!" mlo enbon elxx!r foli· ihuu "where are you from, son? i'm from kenosha, wisconsin. my folks have a little farm back there. snowfields and fenceposts all the way to chicago. the snow covers the old cars up on blocks in the yards . . . big white bundles . . . it looks like graves registration back there in wisconsin. "heh, heh. . . ." "hey pensiero," calls paddy mcgonigle, "ya still hearin' dat sound?" "yeah uh i t'ink it's a mouth-organ," pensiero busily combing up single hairs, cutting each one a slightly different length, going back again and again to touch up here and there . . . god is who knows their num­ ber. atropos is who severs them to different lengths. so, god under the aspect of atropos, she who cannot be turned, is in possession of eddie pensiero tonight. "i got your mouth organ," jeers paddy, "right here! look! a wop clarinet! " each long haircut is a passage. hair is yet another kind of modulated frequency. assume a state of grace in which all hairs were once distrib­ uted perfectly even, a time of innocence when they fell perfectly straight, all over the colonel's head. winds of the day, gestures of dis­ traction, sweat, itchings, sudden surprises, three-foot falls at the edge of sleep, watched skies, remembered shames, all have since written on that perfect grating. passing through it tonight, restructuring it, eddie pensi­ ero is an agent of history. along with the reworking of the colonel's head runs the shiver-borne blues-long runs in number 2 and 3 hole correspond, tonight anyway, to passages in the deep reaches of hair, birch trunks in a very humid summer night, approaches to a stone house in a wooded park, stags paralyzed beside the high flagged walks. . . . blues is a matter of lower sidebands-you suck a clear note, on pitch, and then bend it lower with the muscles of your face. muscles of your face have been laughing, tight with pain, often trying not to betray any emotion, all your life. where you send the pure note is partly a function of that. there's that secular basis for blues, if the spiritual angle bothers you.... "i didn't know where i was," relates the colonel. "i kept climbing downward, along these big sheared chunks of concrete. black reinforc­ ing rod poking out . . . black rust. there were touches of royal purple in the air, not bright enough to blur out over their edges, or change the substance of the night. they dribbled down, lengthening out, one by one-ever seen a chicken fetus, just beginning? oh of course not, you're a city boy. there's a lot to learn, out on the farm. teaches you what a chicken fetus looks like, so that if you happen to be climbing around a 643 concrete mountain in the dark, and see one, or several, up in the sky re­ produced in purple, you'll know what they look like-that's a heap bet­ ter than the city, son, there you just move from crisis to crisis, each one brand-new, nothing to couple it back onto.... " well, there he is, cautiously edging along the enormous ruin, his hair at the moment looking very odd-brushed forward from one occipital spot, forward and up in great long points, forming a black sunflower or sunbonnet around his face, in which the prominent feature is the colo­ nel's long, crawling magenta lips. things grab up for him out of crevices among the debris, sort of fast happy lunge out and back in, thin pincer arms, nothing personal, just thought i'd grab a little night air, ha, hal when they miss the colonel-as they always seem to do-why they just zip back in with a gambler's ho-hum, well, maybe next time. . . . dammit, cut off from my regiment here, gonna be captured and cre­ mated by dacoits! oh jesus there they are now, unthinkable animals running low in the light from the g-5 version of the city, red and yellow turbans, scarred dope-fiend faces, faired as the front end of a '37 ford, same undirected eyes, same exemption from the karmic hammera '37 ford, exempt from the k.h.? c'mon quit fooling. they'll all end up in junkyards same as th' rest! oh, will they, skippy? why are there so many on the roads, then? w-well gee, uh, mister information, th-th' war, i mean there's no new cars being built right now so we all have to keep our old reliable in tiptop shape cause there's not too many mechanics left here on the home front, a-and we shouldn't hoard gas, and we should keep that a­ sticker prominently displayed in the lower rightskippy, you little fool, you are off on another of your senseless and retrograde journeys. come back, here, to the points. here is where the paths divided. see the man back there. he is wearing a white hood. his shoes are brown. he has a nice smile, but nobody sees it. nobody sees it because his face is always in the dark. but he is a nice man. he is the pointsman. he is called that because he throws the lever that changes the points. and we go to happyville, instead of to pain city. or "der leid-stadt," that's what the germans call it. there is a mean poem about the leid-stadt, by a german man named mr. rilke. but we will not read it, because we are going to happyville. the pointsman has made sure we'll go there. he hardly has to work at all. the lever is very smooth, and easy to push. even you could push it, skippy. if you knew where it was. but look what a lot of work he has done, with just one lit­ tle push. he has sent us all the way to happyville, instead of to pain 644 city. th he is th iliings h trip back �robabjy �in a kin minilingy !oaas� youj wrong trac1 truiliisili �ne or ilie �ucyersio �rloffno\ �rurright m�nt's wea muloilie� ilier have ilierqo.� . iliem com rnatwoul lee�ers, �a���ill ha��ur \ea�in� wi �eenh� �air 01 ar i iliecolon one-line city. that is because he knows just where the points and the lever are. he is the only kind of man who puts in very little work and makes big things happen, all over the world. he could have sent you on the right trip back there, skippy. you can have your fantasy if you want, you probably don't deserve anything better, but mister information tonight is in a kind mood. he will show you happyville. he will begin by re­ minding you of the 1937 ford. why is that dacoit-faced auto still on the roads? you said "the war," just as you rattled over the points onto the wrong track. the war was the set of points. eh? yesyes, skippy, the truth is that the war is keeping things alive. things. the ford is only one of them. the germans-and-japs story was only one, rather surreal­ istic version of the real war. the real war is always there. the dying ta­ pers off now and then, but the war is still killing lots and lots of people. only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways. often in ways that are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace. but the right people are dying, just as they do when armies fight. the ones who stand up, in basic, in the middle of the machine-gun pattern. the ones who do not have faith in their sergeants. the ones who slip and show a mo­ ment's weakness to the enemy. these are the ones the war cannot use, and so they die. the right ones survive. the others, it's said, even know they have a short life expectancy. but they persist in acting the way they do. nobody knows why. wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate them completely? then no one would have to be killed in the war. that would be fun, wouldn't it, skippy? jeepers, it sure would, mister information! wow, i-i can't wait to see happyville! happily, he doesn't have to wait at all. one of the dacoits comes leaping with a whistling sound, ecru silk cord strung buzzing tight be­ tween his fists, eager let's-get-to-it grin, and just at the same moment a pair of arms comes pincering up out of a fissure in the ruins, and gathers the colonel down to safety just in time. the dacoit falls on his ass, and sits there trying to pull the cord apart, muttering oh shit, which even dacoits do too. "you are under the mountain," a voice announces. stony cave-acous­ tics in here. "please remember from this point on to obey all pertinent regulations. " his guide is a kind of squat robot, dark gray plastic with rolling head­ lamp eyes. it is shaped something like a crab. "that's cancer in latin," sez the robot, "and in kenosha, too!" it will prove to be addicted to o pain one-liners that never quite come off for anyone but it. and squashable out on the bare boards, rushing, reliving the terror of some sudden blast of current out of nowhere and high overhead the lambent, all-seeing bulb. in their innocence, the baby bulbs don't know what to make of this roach's abreaction-they feel his fright, but don't know what it is. they just want to be his friend. he's interesting and has good moves. everybody's excited except for byron, who considers the other bulb babies a bunch of saps. it is a constant struggle to tum their thoughts on anything meaningful. hi there babies, i'm byron-the-bulb! here to sing a little song to you, that goeslight-up, and-shine, you-in-cande-scent bulb ba-bies! looks-like ya got ra-bies just lay there foamin' and a-screamin' like a buncha little demons, i'm deliv'rin' unto you a king-dom of roa-ches, and no-thin' ap-proaches that joyful feelin' when-you're up-on the ceilin' lookin' down-night and day-on the king-dom you sur-vey, they'll come out 'n' love ya till the break of dawn, but they run like hell when that light comes on! so shine on, baby bulbs, you're the wave of the fu-ture, and i'm here to recruit ya, in m'great crusade, just sing along babies-come-on-and-join-the-big-pa-rade! trouble with byron's he's an old, old soul, trapped inside the glass prison of a baby bulb. he hates this place, lying on his back waiting to get manufactured, nothing to listen to on the speakers but charleston music, now and then an address to the nation, what kind of a setup's that? byron wants to get out of here and into it, needless to say he's been developing all kinds of nervous ailments, baby bulb diaper rash, which is a sort of corrosion on his screw threads, bulb baby colic, a tight spasm of high resistance someplace among the deep loops of tung­ sten wire, bulb baby hyperventilation, where it actually feels like his vacuum's been broken though there is no organic basis. . . . when m-day finally does roll around, you can bet byron's elated. he has passed the time hatching some really insane grandiose plans-he's gonna organize all the bulbs, see, get him a power base in berlin, he's already hep to the strobing tactic, all you do is develop the knack (yogic, almost) of shutting off and on at a rate close to the human brain's alpha rhythm, and you can actually trigger an epileptic fit! true. byron 648 nas had �ver eu manr ag numans t �f rerfect \�xt time w;c ��llg �f a nreb llihh,\ �m numb .. �1aaof pa �fhll cue iln,aliof ii brron nlli1lanon n1aq�uart . �irarn, an rurnoll'ne [�mranr ' au�nhlllv �no(hlilio llin� to eu , �ij�n iliis �mbabr �ut ph llicareer hl�nt 01 ili amon�ma �ltaqence �ier in ili r llienalli mofuer b n�eq to womb, pr llietrue, oar� willi one by thenrst "er .' of tun�' \ilke� •. has had a vision against the rafters of his ward, of 20 million bulbs, all over europe, at a given synchronizing pulse arranged by one of his many agents in the grid, all these bulbs beginning to strobe together, humans thrashing around the 20 million rooms like fish on the beaches of perfect energyattention, humans, this has been a warning to you. n ext time, a few of us will explode. ha-ha, yes we'll unleash our kami­ kaze squads! you've heard of the kirghiz light? well that's the ass end of a firefly compared to what we're gonna-oh, you haven't heard of the-oh, well, too bad. cause a few bulbs, say a million, a mere 5% of our number, are more than willing to flame out in one grand burst in­ stead of patiently waiting out their design hours.... so byron dreams of his guerrilla strike force, gonna get herbert hoover, stanley bald­ win, all of them, right in the face with one coordinated blast. . . . is byron in for a rude awakening! there is already an organization, a human one, known as "phoebus," the international light-bulb cartel, headquartered in switzerland. run pretty much by international ge, osram, and associated electrical industries of britain, which are in turn owned 100%, 29% and 46%, respectively, by the general electric company in america. phoebus fixes the prices and determines the oper­ ationallives of all the bulbs in the world, from brazil to japan to hol­ land (although philips in holland is the mad dog of the cartel, apt at any time to cut loose and sow disaster throughout the great combination). given this state of general repression, there seems noplace for a new­ born baby bulb to start but at the bottom. but phoebus doesn't know yet that byron is immortal. he starts out his career at an all-girl opium den in charlottenburg, almost within sight of the statue of wernher siemens, burning up in a sconce, one among many bulbs witnessing the more languorous forms of republican decadence. he gets to know all the bulbs in the place, benito the bulb over in the next sconce who's always planning an escape, bernie down the hall in the toilet, who has all kinds of urolagnia jokes to tell, his mother brenda in the kitchen who talks of hashish hush puppies, dildos rigged to pump floods of paregoric orgasm to the capillaries of the womb, prayers to astarte and lilith, queen of the night, reaches into the true night of the other, cold and naked on linoleum floors after days without sleep, the dreams and tears become a natural state. . . . one by one, over the months, the other bulbs burn out, and are gone. the first few of these hit byron hard. he's still a new arrival, still hasn't accepted his immortality. but on through the burning hours he starts to learn about the transience of others: learns that loving them while they're here becomes easier, and also more intense-to love as if each design-hour will be the last. byron soon enough becomes a permanent old-timer. others can recognize his immortality on sight, but it's never discussed except in a general way, when folklore comes flickering in from other parts of the grid, tales of the immortals, one in a kabbalist's study in lyons who's supposed to know magic, another in norway out­ side a warehouse facing arctic whiteness with a stoicism more southerly bulbs begin strobing faintly just at the thought of. if other immortals are out there, they remain silent. but it is a silence with much, perhaps, ev­ erything, in it. after love, then, byron's next lesson is silence. as his burning lengthens toward 600 hours, the monitors in switzer­ land begin to keep more of an eye on byron. the phoebus surveillance room is located under a little-known alp, a chilly room crammed full of german electro hardware, glass, brass, ebonite, and silver, massive ter­ minal blocks shaggy with copper clips and screws, and a cadre of super­ clean white-robed watchers who wander meter to meter, light as snow­ devils, making sure that nothing's going wrong, that through no bulb shall the mean operating life be extended. you can imagine what it would do to the market if that started happening. byron passes surveillance's red-line at 600 hours, and immediately, as a matter of routine, he is checked out for filament resistance, burning temperature, vacuum, power consumption. everything's normal. now byron is to be checked out every 50 hours hereafter. a soft chime will go off in the monitoring station whenever it's time. at 800 hours-another routine precaution-a berlin agent is sent out to the opium den to transfer byron. she is wearing asbestos-lined kid gloves and seven-inch spike heels, no not so she can fit in with the crowd, but so that she can reach that sconce to unscrew byron. the other bulbs watch, in barely subdued terror. the word goes out along the grid. at something close to the speed of light, every bulb, azos looking down the empty black bakelite streets, nitralampen and wotan gs at night soccer matches, just-wolframs, monowatts and siriuses, every bulb in europe knows what's happened. they are silent with im­ potence, with surrender in the face of struggles they thought were all myth. we can't help, this common thought humming through pastures of sleeping sheep, down autobahns and to the bitter ends of coaling piers in the north, there's never been anything we could do. . . . any­ one shows us the meanest hope of transcending and the committee on incandescent anomalies comes in and takes him away. some do protest, maybe, here and there, but it's only information, glow-modulated, harmless, nothing close to the explosions in the faces of the powerful 650 iliat] cenee. he i olower onwat mid-lea c�led ( a in ie oorlof � imalh u oatchilie �las ilie top ��on rum,hel ilintru andwo karmic " noelca oulbma cnin-t ilchhlili �lallblo air, an no�: turmt 'who? phoe there' '1 employ along want move look. byron' ought sectio nmitteeo� do protei!. llodulat�, � powerfw that byron once envisioned, back there in his baby ward, in his inno­ cence. he is taken to neukolln, to a basement room, the home of a glass­ blower who is afraid of the night and who will keep byron glowing and on watch over all the flint bowls, the griffins and flower-ships, ibexes in mid-leap, green spider-webs, somber ice-deities. this is one of many so­ called "control points," where suspicious bulbs can be monitored easily. in less than a fortnight, a gong sounds along the ice and stone corri­ dors of the phoebus headquarters, and faces swivel over briefly from their meters. not too many gongs around here. gongs are special. byron has passed 1000 hours, and the procedure now is standard: the commit­ tee on incandescent anomalies sends a hit man to berlin. but here something odd happens. yes, damned odd. the plan is to smash up byron and send him back right there in the shop to cullet and batch-salvage the tungsten, of course-and let him be reincarnated in the glassblower's next project (a balloon setting out on a journey from the top of a white skyscraper). this wouldn't be too bad a deal for byron-he knows as well as phoebus does how many hours he has on him. here in the shop he's watched enough glass being melted back into the structureless pool from which all glass forms spring and re-spring, and wouldn't mind going through it himself. but he is trapped on the karmic wheel. the glowing orange batch is a taunt, a cruelty. there's no escape for byron, he's doomed to an infinite regress of sockets and bulbsnatchers. in zips young hansel geschwindig, a weimar street ur­ chin-twirls byron out of the ceiling into a careful pocket and gess­ sschhhhwindig! out the door again. darkness invades the dreams of the glassblower. of all the unpleasantries his dreams grab in out of the night air, an extinguished light is the worst. light, in his dreams, was always hope: the basic, mortal hope. as the contacts break helically away, hope turns to darkness, and the glassblower wakes sharply tonight crying, "who? who?" phoebus isn't exactly thrown into a frenzy. it's happened before. there is still a procedure to follow. it means more overtime for some employees, so there's that vague, full-boweled pleasure at the windfall, along with an equally vague excitement at the break in routine. you want high emotion, forget phoebus. their stonefaced search parties move out into the streets. they know more or less where in the city to look. they are assuming that no one among their consumers knows of byron's immortality. so the data for non-immortal bulbsnatchings ought to apply also to byron. and the data happen to hump up in poor sections, jewish sections, drug, homosexual, prostitute, and magic sec651 tions of the capital. here are the most logical bulbsnatchers, in terms of what the crime is. look at all the propaganda. it's a moral crime. phoe­ bus discovered-one of the great undiscovered discoveries of our time -that consumers need to feel a sense of sin. that guilt, in proper invisi­ ble hands, is a most powerful weapon. in america, lyle bland and his psychologists had figures, expert testimony and money (money in the puritan sense-an outward and visible o.k. on their intentions) enough to tip the discovery of guilt at the cusp between scientific theory and fact. growth rates in later years were to bear bland out (actually what bore bland out was an honorary pallbearer sextet of all the senior mem­ bers of salitieri, poore, nash, de brutus and short, plus lyle, jr., who was sneezing. buddy at the last minute decided to go see dracula. he was better off). of all the legacies bland left around, the bulbsnatching heresy was perhaps his grandest. it doesn't just mean that somebody isn't buying a bulb. it also means that same somebody is not putting any power in that socket! it is a sin both against phoebus and against the grid. neither one is about to let that get out of hand. so, out go the phoebus flatfoots, looking for the snatched byron. but the urchin has already left town, gone to hamburg, traded byron to a reeperbahn prostitute so he can shoot up some morphine-the young woman's customer tonight is a cost-accountant who likes to have light bulbs screwed into his asshole, and this john has also brought a little hashish to smoke, so by the time he leaves he's forgotten about byron still there in his asshole-doesn't ever, in fact, find out, because when he finally gets around to sitting down (having stood up in trolleys all the way home) it's on his own home toilet and plop! there goes byron in the water and flusssshhhh! away down the waste lines to the elbe estuary. he is just round enough to get through smoothly all the way. for dayshe floats over the north sea, till he reaches helgoland, that red-and­ white napoleon pastry tipped in the sea. he stays there for a while at a hotel between the hengst and the monch, till being brought back one day to the mainland by a very old priest who's been put hep to byron's immortality in the course of a routine dream about the taste of a certain 1911 hochheimer ... suddenly here's the great berlin eispalast, a booming, dim iron-trussed cavern, the smell of women in the blue shad­ ows-perfumes, leathers, fur skating-costumes, ice-dust in the air, flashing legs, jutting haunches, desire in grippelike flashes, helplessnessat the end of a crack-the-whip, rocketing through beams of sunlightchoked with the powdered ice, and a voice in the blurred mirror under­ foot saying, "find the one who has performed this miracle. he is a saint. expose him. expedite his canonization.... " the name is on a list the oldm and ou oegins each of where h transsec roman r hlsown �ick to g lnowa& �vast�as 'n' a§es, �lch riff, "die f mtment fuousand he � sea ilre�ed �oedsw on into fnoebu5, !emale ron's cas � loc�et on ilie bulb, �art�, throu �en as if nearb� i .'( , a�alllst role as iliisone �sible rmsof phoeold man presently draws up of about a thousand tourists who've been in and out of helgoland since byron was found on the beach. the priest begins a search by train, footpath, and hispano-suiza, checking out each of the tourists on his list. but he gets no farther than niimberg, where his valise, with byron wrapped inside in an alb, is ripped off by a transsectite, a lutheran named mausmacher who likes to dress up in roman regalia. this mausmacher, not content with standing in front of his own mirror making papal crosses, thinks it will be a really bizarre kick to go out to the zeppelin field to a nazi torchlight rally in full drag, and walk around blessing people at random. green torches flaring, red swastikas, twinkling brasses and father mausmacher, checking out tits 'n' asses, waistlines 'n' baskets, humming a clerical little tune, some bach riff, smiling as he moves through the sieg heils and choruses of "die fahne hoch." unknown to him, byron slides out of the stolen vestments onto the ground. he is then walked past by several hundred thousand boots and shoes, and not one so much as brushes him, natch. he is scavenged next day (the field now deathempty, columned, pale, streaked with long mudpuddles, morning clouds lengthening behind the gilded swastika and wreath) by a poor jewish ragpicker, and taken on, on into another 15 years of preservation against chance and against phoebus. he will be screwed into mother (mutter) after mother, as the female threads of german light-bulb sockets are known, for some rea­ son that escapes everybody. the cartel have already gone over to contingency plan b, which as­ sumes a seven-year statute of limitations, after which byron will be con­ sidered legally burned out. meanwhile, the personnel taken off of by­ ron's case are busy tracking a long-lived bulb that once occupied a socket on the porch of an army outpost in the amazon jungle, beatriz the bulb, who has just been stolen, mysteriously, by an indian raiding party. through his years of survival, all these various rescues of byron hap­ pen as if by accident. whenever he can, he tries to instruct any bulbs nearby in the evil nature of phoebus, and in the need for solidarity against the cartel. he has come to see how bulb must move beyond its role as conveyor of light-energy alone. phoebus has restricted bulb to this one identity. "but there are other frequencies, above and below the visible band. bulb can give heat. bulb can provide energy for plants to grow, illegal plants, inside closets, for example. bulb can penetrate the sleeping eye, and operate among the dreams of men." some bulbs lis­ tened attentively-others thought of ways to fink to phoebus. some of the older anti-byronists were able to fool with their parameters in systematic ways that would show up on the ebonite meters under the swiss mountain: there were even a few self-immolations, hoping to draw the hit men down. any talk of bulb's transcendence, of course, was clear subversion. phoebus based everything on bulb efficiency-the ratio of the usable power coming out, to the power put in. the grid demanded that this ratio stay as small as possible. that way they got to sell more juice. on the other hand, low efficiency meant longer burning hours, and that cut into bulb sales for phoebus. in the beginning phoebus tried increasing filament resistance, reducing the hours of life on the sly and gradually­ till the grid noticed a fall-off in revenues, and started screaming. the two parties by and by reached an accord on a compromise bulb-life figure that would bring in enough money for both of them, and to go fifty-fifty on the costs of the antibulbsnatching campaign. along with a more subtle attack against those criminal souls who forswear bulbs en­ tirely and use candles. phoebus's long-standing arrangement with the meat cartel was to restrict the amount of tallow in circulation by keep­ ing more fat in meat to be sold regardless of cardiac problems that might arise, and redirecting most of what was trimmed off into soap production. soap in those days was a booming concern. among the con­ sumers, the bland institute had discovered deep feelings about shit. even at that, meat and soap were minor interlocks to phoebus. more important were items like tungsten. another reason why phoebus couldn't cut down bulb life too far. too many tungsten filaments would eat into available stockpiles of the metal-china being the major world source, this also brought in very delicate questions of eastern policy­ and disturb the arrangement between general electric and krupp about how much tungsten carbide would be produced, where and when and what the prices would be. the guidelines settled on were $37-$90 a pound in germany, $200-$400 a pound in the u.s. this directly gov­ erned the production of machine tools, and thus all areas of light and heavy industry. when the war came, some people thought it unpa­ triotic of ge to have given germany an edge like that. but nobody with any power. don't worry. byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern. he learns how to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in homes, in factories and out in the streets. each has something to tell him. the pattern gathers in his soul (seele, as the core of the earlier carbon fila­ ment was known in germany), and the grander and clearer it grows, the more desperate byron gets. someday he wi1l know everything, and still be as impotent as before. his youthful dreams of organizing all the 654 oulbs in messages �n we lin �utri�ht, 0 iliink, and weven b truili and ��ilie whe \\illnnd h' l4nlee,ilie • fu�llttlew' ��� no rna fn�,and j .• ,,, the pi molvind. rum,iliee\' . m�ill 01 f!tntolver �illmove wnereare tnere� 'ijrelnave �oat�o �illr oilier bulbs in the world seem impossible now-the grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the line. prophets traditionally don't last long-they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. but on byron has been visited an even better fate. he is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything. no longer will he seek to get off the wheel. his anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it. . . . laszlo jamf walks away down the canal, where dogs are swimming now, dogs in packs, dogs heads bobbing down the scummy canals ... dogs' heads, chess knights, also may be found invisible in the air over se­ cret airbases, in the thickest fogs, conditions of temperature, pressure and humidity form springer-shapes the tuned flyer can feel, the radars can see, the helpless passengers can almost glimpse, now and then, out the little window, as through sheets of vapor . . . it is the kind dog, the dog no man ever conditioned, who is there for us at beginnings and ends, and journeys we have to take, helpless, but not quite unwilling . . . . the pleats in jamf's suit go weaving away like iris leaves in a back­ yard wind. the colonel is left alone in happyville. the steel city waits him, the even cloud-light raising a white streak down each great build­ ing, all of them set up as modulations on the perfect grid of the streets, each tower cut off at a different height-and where is the comb that will move through this and restore the old perfect cartesian harmony? where are the great shears from the sky that will readjust happyville? there is no need to bring in blood or violence here. but the colonel does have his head tilted back now in what may truly be surrender: his throat is open to the pain-radiance of the bulb. paddy mcgonigle is the only other witness, and he, a one-man power system with dreams of his own, wants the colonel out of the way as much as anyone. eddie pensi­ ero, with the blues flooding his shaking muscles, the down, mortal blues, is holding his scissors in a way barbers aren't supposed to. the points, shuddering in the electric cone, are aiming downward. eddie pensiero's fist tightens around the steel loops his fingers have slid out of. the colo­ nel, with a last tilt of his head, exposes his jugular, clearly impatient with the655 o 0 0 0 0 0 0 she comes riding into town on a stolen bicycle: a white kerchief at her crown, fluttering behind in points, a distinguished emissary from a drained and captured land, herself full of ancient title, but nothing in the way of usable power, not even a fantasy of it. she's wearing a lean white dress, a tennis dress from prewar summers, falling now not in knife-edge pleats but softer, more accidental, half-crisp, touches of blue in its deeper folds, a dress for changes in the weather, a dress to be flowed upon by shadows of leaves, by a crumble of brown and sun-yel­ low moving across it and on as she coasts preoccupied but without pri­ vate smiles, under the leafy trees that line the road of hard-packed dirt. her hair is wound, in braids, up on her head, which she holds not too high nor what used to be called "gravely," but toward (say against) a particular future, for the first time since the casino hermann goering . . . and she's not of our moment, our time, at all. the outermost sentry peers from his rusty-boned cement ruin, and for two full pedal-swings they are both, he and katje, out in the daylight, blending with packed earth, rust, blobbing perforations of sunlight cold gold and slick as glass, the fresh wind in the trees. hyperthyroidal afri­ can eyes, their irises besieged as early cornflowers by the crowding fields of white ... ooga-booga! gwine jump on dis drum hyah! tell de res' ob de trahb back in de village, yowzah! so, dumdumdumdum, dumdumdumdum, o.k., but still there's no room in her demeanor for even curiosity (of course weren't there going to be drums, a chance for violence? a snake jumping off of a limb, a very large presence ahead among the thousand bowing treetops, a scream inside herself, a leap upward into primal terror, surrendering to it and so-she has dreamt-regaining her soul, her long-lost self ... ). nor will she waste more than token glances now on the german lawns rushing so deeply away into green hazes or hills, the pale limbs of mar­ ble balusters beside sanitarium walks that curve restlessly, in a fever, a stifling, into thickets of penis-budded sprig and thorn so old, so without comfort that eyes are drawn, seized by the tear-glands and dragged to find, to find at all cost, the path that has disappeared so suddenly . . . or to look behind to hold on to some trace of the spa, a corner of the spru­ delhof, the highest peak of the white-sugar bandstand, something to counteract pan's whisper inside the dark grove come in . . . forgetthem. come in here.... no. not katje. she has been into the groves 656 and tbi �rove-d i taken its today, i oilier. what �an, as tnen, rallier ins ilioleltac well,ka olonne ." unewiili alle�oric neart),s gistressi tine, cla drieled .. ness,w she pas , ,or the pro­ tmoulo � . fo�el e grove and thickets. she has danced naked and spread her cunt to the horns of grove-dwelling beasts. she has felt the moon in the soles of her feet, taken its tides with the surfaces of her brain. pan was a lousy lover. today, in public, they have no more than nervous glances for each other. what does happen now, and this is quite alarming, is that out of no­ where suddenly appear a full dancing-chorus of herero men. they are dressed in white sailor suits designed to show off asses, crotches, slim waists and shapely pectorals, and they are carrying a girl all in silver lame, a loud brassy dame after the style of diamond lil or texas gui­ nan. as they set her down, everyone begins to dance and sing: pa-ra-nooooiiiia, pa-ra-noia! ain't it grand ta see, that good-time face, again! pa-ra-noi-ya, boy oh boy, yer just a bit of you-know-what from way back when! even coya, couldn't draw ya, not the way you looked, just kickin' in that door­ call a lawyer, paranoia, lemme will my ass to you, for-ever-more! then andreas and pavel come out in tap shoes (liberated from a rather insolent ensa show that came through in july) to do one of those staccato tap-and-sing numbers: paranoi(clippety-clippety-clippety cl[ya,]op!) paranoi(shufhestomp! shufhestomp! shufhestomp! [and] cl[ya,]op! clickety cl[ain't]ick) it grand (clop) ta (clop) see (clippyclop) yer good-time face again! etc. well, katje realizes long before the first 8 bars of all this that the brazen blonde bombshell is none other than herself: she is doing a dance rou­ tine with these black sailors-ashore. having gathered also that she is the allegorical figure of paranoia (a grand old dame, a little wacky but pure heart), she must say that she finds the jazzy vulgarity of this music a bit distressing. what she had in mind was more of an isadora duncan rou­ tine, classical and full of gauzes, and-well, white. what pirate prentice briefed her on was folklore, politics, zonal strategies-but not black­ ness. when that was what she most needed to know about. how can she pass now through so much blackness to redeem herself? how can -�-/ �-'" she expect to find slothrop? among such blackness (subvocalizing the word as an old man might speak the name of a base public figure, letting it gutter out into real blackness: into being spoken no more). there is that stubborn, repressive heat to her thoughts. it is none of your heavy racist skin-prickling, no, but a feeling of one more burden, along with the scarcity of food in the zone, the chicken-coop, cave or basement lodgings at sunfall, the armed-occupation phobias and skulkings as bad as holland last year, comfortable in here at least, lotos-snuggly, but dis­ astrous out in the world of reality she still believes in and will never give up hoping to rejoin someday. all that's not bad enough, no, now she must also endure blackness. her ignorance of it must see her through. with andreas she is charming, she radiates that sensuality peculiar to women who are concerned with an absent lover's safety. but then she must see enzian. their first meeting. each in a way has been loved by captain blicero. each had to arrive at some way of making it bearable, just bearable, for just long enough, one day by one. . . . "oberst. i am happy-" her voice breaks. genuinely. her head in­ clines across his desk no longer than is necessary to thank, to declare her passivity. the hell she's happy. he nods, angles his beard at a chair. this, then, is the golden bitch of blicero's last letters from holland. enzian formed no image of her then, too taken up, too gagged with sorrow at what was happening to weiss­ mann. she seemed then only one of the expected forms of horror that must be populating his world. but, ethnic when he least wants to be, enzian came after a while to think of her as the great kalahari rock painting of the white woman, white from the waist down, carrying bow and arrows, trailed by her black handmaiden through an erratic space, stone and deep, figures of all sizes moving to and fro. . . . but here is the true golden bitch. he's surprised at how young and slender she is-a paleness as of having begun to leak away from this world, likely to vanish entirely at any too-reckless grab. she knows her own precarious thinness, her leukemia of soul, and she teases with it. you must want her, but never indicate it-not by eyes or move-or she will clarify, dead gone as smoke above a trail moving into the desert, and you'll never have the chance again. "you must have seen him more recently than i." he speaks quietly. she is surprised at his politeness. disappointed: she was expecting more force. her lip has begun to lift. "how did he seem?" "alone." her brusque and sideways nod. gazing back at him with 658 ilie best n ootwith h . "rewa �ne und t1nq, the \�1, out onl wt, tllere's �k\vnenev �illbe� for 5 1�, �hall 5 rountedon 100 much? " 111nmow' "he-"a (o)forr ioove,,, .. i�ffin: "he �u�nt to," "tou've b iite�, �o r , �!t." "�iothrop • mllm �urfa �milinp ��w, i don't m�rt who � 11'1 ill �oin � lt�n't re t�·u�tap �m!lun�� t "reall( 11�u·�hahl �ilin�of i ojrhhe �reoicame �rur \au�h' hennann �o �he's nolviliev � "�\othr �ndn\ �------�/ \ the best neutrality she can be sure of in the circs. she means, you were not with him, when he needed you. "he was always alone." she understands then that it isn't timidity, she was wrong. it is de­ cency. the man wants to be decent. he leaves himself open. (so does she, but only because everything that might hurt has long been numbed out. there's small risk for katje.) but enzian risks what former lovers risk whenever the beloved is present, in fact or in word: deepest possi­ bilities for shame, for sense of loss renewed, for humiliation and mock­ ery. shall she mock? has he made that too easy-and then, turning, counted on her for fair play? can she be as honest as he, without risking too much? "he was dying," she tells him, "he looked very old. i don't even know if he left holland alive." "he-" and this hesitation may be (a) in consideration of her feelings, or (b) for reasons of schwarzkommando security, or (c) both of the above . . . but then, hell, the principle of maximizing risk takes over again: "he got as far as the liineberg heath. if you didn't know, you ought to." "you've been looking for him." "yes. so has slothrop been, though i don't think slothrop knows that." "slothrop and 1-" she looks around the room, her eyes skitter off metal surfaces, papers, facets of salt, cannot come to rest anywhere. as if making a desperate surprise confession: "everything is so remote now. i don't really know why they sent me out here. i don't know any more who slothrop really was. there's a failure in the light. i can't see. it's all going away from me. . . ." it isn't yet time to touch her, but enzian reaches out gives a friendly chin-up tap on the back of her hand, a military now-see-here. "there are things to hold to. none of it may look real, but some of it is. really." "really." they both start laughing. hers is weary-european, slow, head-shaking. once she would have been assessing as she laughed, speaking of edges, deeps, profit and loss, h -hours and points of no re­ turn-she would have been laughing politically, in response to a power­ predicament, because there might be nothing else to do. but now she's only laughing. as she once laughed with slothrop, back at the casino hermann goering. so she's only been talking with enzian about a common friend. is this how the vacuum feels? "slothrop and i" didn't work too well. should she have said "blicero and i"? what would that have got her into with the african? "blicero and i," he begins softly, watching her over burnished cheek­ bones, cigarette smoldering in his curled right hand, "we were only close in certain ways. there were doors i did not open. could not. around here, i play an omniscient. i'd say don't give me away, but it wouldn't matter. their minds are made up. i am the berlin snoot su­ preme, oberhauptberlinerschnauze enzian. i know it all, and they don't trust me. they gossip in a general way about me and blicero, as yarns to be spun-the truth wouldn't change either their distrust or my unlimited access. they'd only be passing a story along, another story. but the truth must mean something to you. "the blicero i loved was a very young man, in love with =mpire, po­ etry, his own arrogance. those all must have been important to me once. what i am now grew from that. a former self is a fool, an insuffer­ able ass, but he's still human, you'd no more turn him out than you'd turn out any other kind of cripple, would you?" he seems to be asking her for real advice. are these the sorts of prob­ lems that occupy his time? what about the rocket, the empty ones, the perilous infancy of his nation? "what can blicero matter to you?" is what she finally asks. he doesn't have to think for long. he has often imagined the coming of a questioner. "at this point, i would take you to a balcony. an obser­ vation deck. i would show you the raketen-stadt. plexiglass maps of the webs we maintain across the zone. underground schools, systems for distributing food and medicine. . . . we would gaze down on staff­ rooms, communications centers, laboratories, clinics. i would say-" "all this will i give you, if you will but-" "negative. wrong story. i would say: this is what i have become. an estranged figure at a certain elevation and distance . . ." who looks out over the raketen-stadt in the amber evenings, with washed and darken­ ing cloud sheets behind him-"who has lost everything else but this vantage. there is no heart, anywhere now, no human heart left in which i exist. do you know what that feels like?" he is a lion, this man, ego-mad-but despite everything, katje likeshim. "but if he were still alive-" "no way to know. i have letters he wrote after he left your city. he was changing. terribly. you ask what he could matter to me. my slen­der white adventurer, grown twenty years sick and old-the last heart in which i might have been granted some being-was changing, toad to prince, prince to fabulous monster. . . . 'if he is alive,' he may have changed by now past our recognition. we could have driven under him in the sky today and never seen. whatever happened at the end, he has 660 transcen i _.oriven rorther th �erall, "i �em�ty as �\,�omeone '''1e�he m :wnotlet g "ana me, inn�o�, " i�el�hlm, h�ou, poo ��ttlr how .11�orunnjn i�ite ilien mu:rouar "holvcan ,m�nn� hun, 11��·raper �mna�ng !��, �ut he �� mamen ��ie, me whltnilie �ooto�o lliltweiss �do iliat ili �·lurrows milin�uni �rath !ows�o in lline pass �iomness, " "flirt i! 'but exp fo&s, 'ere oull' auld no; 'ay, butil transcended. even if he's only dead. he's gone beyond his pain, his sin -driven deep into their province, into control, synthesis and control, further than-" well, he was about to say "we" but ''i'' seems better after all, "i haven't transcended. i've only been elevated. that must be as empty as things get: it's worse than being told you won't have to die by someone you can't believe in.... "yes he matters to me, very much. he is an old self, a dear albatross 1 cannot let go." "and me?" she gathers that he expects her to sound like a woman of the 1940s. "and me," indeed. but she can think of no other way offhand to help him, to allow him a moment of comfort. . . . "you, poor katje. your story is the saddest of all." she looks up to see exactly how his face will be mocking her. she is stunned to see tears in­ stead running, running over his cheeks. "you 've only been set free, " his voice then breaking on the last word, his face brushing forward a mo­ ment into a cage of hands, then uncaging again for a try at her own gay waltztime gallows laugh. oh, no, is he about to go goofy on her too? what she needs right now in her life, from some man in her life, is sta­ bility, mental health and strength of character. not this. "i told slothrop he was free, too. 1 tell anybody who might listen. 1 will tell them as 1 tell you: you are free. you are free. you are free. . . ." "how can my story be sadder that that?" shameless girl, she isn't hu­ moring him, she's actually flirting with him now, any technique her crepe-paper and spider-italics young ladyhood ever taught her, to keep from having to move into his blackness. understand it isn't his black­ ness, but her own-an inadmissible darkness she is making believe for the moment is enzian's, something beyond even the center of pan's grove, something not pastoral at all, but of the city, a set of ways in which the natural forces are turned aside, stepped down, rectified or bled to ground and come out very like the malignant dead: the qlippoth that weissmann has "transcended," souls whose journey across was so bad that they lost all their kindness back in the blue lightning (the long sea-furrows of it rippling), and turned to imbecile killers and jokers, making unintelligible honks in the emptiness, sinewed and stripped thin as rats-a city-darkness that is her own, a textured darkness in which flows go in all directions, and nothing begins, and nothing ends. but as time passes things get louder there. it is shaking itself into her con­ sciousness. "flirt if you want," enzian now just as smooth as that cary grant, "but expect to be taken seriously." oh, ho. here's whatcha came for, folks. 661 -_ / / ,� not necessarily. his bitterness (all properly receipted in german ar­ chives which may, however, be destroyed now) runs too deep for her, really. he must have learned a thousand masks (as the city will con­ tinue to mask itself against invasions we often do not see, whose out­ comes we never learn, silent and unnoticed revolutions in the ware­ house districts where the walls are blank, in the lots where the weeds grow thick), and this, no doubt, this suave older exotic, is one of them. "i don't know what to do." she gets up in a long, long shrug and be­ gins to stalk gracefully in the room. her old style: a girl about 16 who thinks everyone is staring at her. her hair falls like a hood. her arms often touch. "you don't have to come into this any further than locating slo­ throp," he finally gets around to telling her. "all you have to do is tag along with us, and wait till he shows up again. why bother yourself with the rest?" "because 1 feel," her voice, perhaps by design, very small, "that 'the rest' is exactly what 1 ought to be doing. 1 don't want to get away with some shallow win. 1 don't just want to-i don't know, pay him back for the octopus, or something. don't 1 have to know why he's out here, what 1 did to him, for them? how can they be stopped? how long can 1 get away with easy work, cheap exits? shouldn't 1 be going all the wayin?" her masochism [weissmann wrote from the hague] is reassurance for her. that she can still be hurt, that she is human and can cry at pain. because, often, she will forget. i can only try to guess how terrible that must be. . . . so, she needs the whip. she raises her ass not in surrender, but in despair­like your fears of impotence, and mine: can it still . . . will it fail. . . . but of true submission, of letting go the self and passing into the all, there is noth­ ing, not with katje. she is not the victim i would have chosen to end this with. perhaps, before the end, there will be another. perhaps i dream.... i am not here, am i, to devote myself to her fantasies! "you are meant to survive. yes, probably. no matter how painful you want to make it for yourself, still you're always going to come through.you're free to choose exactly how pleasant each passage will be. usuallyit's given as a reward. 1 won't ask for what. i'm sorry, but you seem re­ ally not to know. that's why your story is saddest of all." "reward-" she's getting mad. "it's a life-sentence. if you call that a reward, then what are you calling me?" "nothing political." "you black bastard." 662 "exa ilieston defore "com i� � we �ien 10 �llcon faraw! � i�re inap \!noloun (i�are\le ilieoar, there rmanar· for her, will can. 'ho e au!. the wat1. the \\'eeci ie of iliem g ana�. ut jowt all�ala i "exactly." he has allowed her to speak the truth. a clock chimes in the stone corner. "we have someone who was with blicero in may. just before the end. you don't have to-" "come and listen, yes, oberst. but i will." he rises, crooks her his official and gentlemanly arm, smiling sideways and feeling like a clown. her own smiling is upward like mischievous ophelia just having glimpsed the country of the mad and itching now to get away from court. feedback, smile-to-smile, adjustments, waverings: what it damps out to is we will never know each other. beaming, strangers, la-ia-ia, off to listen to the end of a man we both loved and we're strangers at the films, condemned to separate rows, aisles, exits, homegoings. far away in another corridor a loud drill-bit strains, smokes, just be­ fore snapping. cafeteria trays and steelware rattle, an innocent and kind sound behind familiar regions of steam, fat at the edge of souring, cigarette smoke, washwater, disinfectant-a cafeteria in the middle of the day. there are things to hold on to. . . . o 0 dod 0 0 you will want cause and effect. all right. thanatz was washed over­ board in the same storm that took slothrop from the anubis. he was rescued by a polish undertaker in a rowboat, out in the storm tonight to see if he can get struck by lightning. the undertaker is wearing, in hopes it will draw electricity, a complicated metal suit, something like a deep-sea diver's, and a wehrmacht helmet through which he has drilled a couple of hundred holes and inserted nuts, bolts, springs and con­ ductive wands of many shapes so that he jingles whenever he nods or shakes his head, which is often. he's a digital companion all right, ev­ erything gets either a yes or a no, and two-tone checkerboards of odd shape and texture indeed bloom in the rainy night around him and thanatz. ever since reading about benjamin franklin in an american propaganda leaflet, kite, thunder and key, the undertaker has been ob­ sessed with this business of getting hit in the head by a lightning bolt. all over europe, it came to him one night in a flash (though not the kind he wanted), at this very moment, are hundreds, who knows maybe thou­ sands, of people walking around, who have been struck by lightning and survived. what stories they could tell! what the leaflet neglected to mention was that benjamin franklin -_-"" -_ / � � '. was also a mason, and given to cosmic forms of practical jokesterism, of which the united states of america may well have been one. well, it's a matter of continuity. most people's lives have ups and downs that are relatively gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at every point. they're the ones who never get struck by lightning. no real idea of cataclysm at all. but the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life-do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp? infinity, that's what! a-and right across the point, it's minus infinity! how's that for sudden change, eh? infinite miles per hour changing to the same speed in reverse, all in the gnat's-ass or red cunt hair of the at across the point. that's getting hit by lightning, folks. you're way up there on the needle-peak of a moun­ tain, and don't think there aren't lammergeiers cruising there in the lurid red altitudes around, waiting for a chance to snatch you off. oh yes. they are piloted by bareback dwarves with little plastic masks around their eyes that happen to be shaped just like the infinity sym­ bol: 00. little men with wicked eyebrows, pointed ears and bald heads, although some of them are wearing outlandish headgear, not at all the usual robin hood green fedoras, no these are carmen miranda hats, for example, bananas, papayas, bunches of grapes, pears, pineapples, mangoes, jeepers even watermelons-and there are world war i spike­ top wilhelmets, and baby bonnets and crosswise napoleon hats with and without n s on them, not to mention little red suits and green capes, well here they are leaning forward into their cruel birds' ears, whispering like jockeys, out to nab you, buster, just like that sacrificial ape off of the empire state building, except that they won't let you fall, they'll carry you away, to the places they are agents of. it will look like the world you left, but it'll be different. between congruent and identi­ cal there seems to be another class oflook-alike that only finds the light­ ning-heads. another world laid down on the previous one and to all ap­ pearances no different. ha-ha! but the lightning-struck know, all right! even if they may not know they know. and that's what this undertaker tonight has set out into the storm to find. is he interested in all those other worlds who send their dwarf reps out on the backs of eagles? nope. nor does he want to write a classic of anthropology, with the lightning-struck grouped into a subculture, even secretly organized, handshakes with sharp cusp-flicks of fingernails, pri­ vate monthly magazine a nickel saved (which looks perfectly innocent, old ben franklin after inflation, unless you know the other half of the proverb: " ... is a stockpile of nickel." making the real quote nickel­ magnate mark hanna's: "you have been in politics long enough to know utleis �iue of m�mess l�o plun ,\rril,he ��!tbarb _ t�r 1.193) '(ahlornia l�t. but � 'rro§eo! ' �" , �n, ) �an� fail o ,uaceonn wal'e,")e �lac� b �olv u jo but 00 roo�, abo , • �oemtt. �illnelp �rlebe ,tonanole "�ou tnarcoal \�itors, ther north fro nave set tua�, iliat no "fuepr new 10 no ion know that no man in public office owes the public anything." so the real title is long enough, which those who know, know. the text of each issue of the magazine, when transformed this way, yields many interest­ ing messages). to outsiders it's just a pleasant little club newsletter­ jed plunkitt held a barbecue for the iowa chapter the last weekend in april. heard about the amperage contest, jed. tough luck! but come next barbecue, you'll be back good as new.... minnie calkins (chap­ ter 1. 793) got married easter sunday to a screen-door salesman from california. sorry to say he's not eligible for membership--at least not yet. but with all those screen doors around, we'll sure keep our fingers crossed! ... your editor has been receiving many, many "wha hop­ pen?" 's concerning the spring convention in decatur when all the lights failed during the blessing. glad to report now that trouble was traced finally to a giant transient in the line, "kind of an electrical tidal wave," sez hank faffner, our engineer-on-the-scene. "every bulb in the place burned out, a ceilingful of sooty, sterile eggs." quite a poet, hank! now if you can only find out where that spike came frombut does the polish undertaker in the rowboat care about busting this code, about secret organizations or recognizable subcultures? no, he doesn't. the reason he is seeking these people out is that he thinks it will help him in his job. can you dig that, gates? he wants to know how people behave before and after lightning bolts, so he'll know better how to handle bereaved families. "you are perverting a great discovery to the uses of commerce," sez thanatz, stepping ashore. "you ought to be ashamed of yourself." he is no more than five minutes into the empty town at the edge of the marsh when nockle kkahh-uhnn! nocklenockle nockle an enormous blast of light and sound hits the water back where the undertaker, peeved at what he takes to be no gratitude, is hauling away. "oh," comes his faint voice. "oh, ho. oh-ho-ho-hof" "nobody lives here but us." a solid figure, a whispering silhouette, charcoal-colored, has materialized in thanatz's path. "we do not harm visitors. but it would be better if you took another way." they are 175s-homosexual prison-camp inmates. they have come north from the dora camp at nordhausen, north till the land ended, and have set up an all-male community between this marsh and the oder es­ tuary. ordinarily, this would be thanatz's notion of paradise, except that none of the men can bear to be out of dora-dora was home, and they are homesick. their "liberation" was a banishment. so here in a new location they have made up a hypothetical ss chain of command­ no longer restricted to what destiny allotted then for jailers, they have �--u __ / -------------------���.. now managed to come up with some really mean ass imaginary nazi playmates, schutzhaftlingsfiihrer to blockfiihrer, and chosen an internal hierarchy for themselves too: lager and blockaltester, kapo, vorar­ beiter, stubendienst, laufer (who is a runner or messenger, but also happens to be the german name for a chess bishop . . . if you have seen him, running across the wet meadows in very early morning, with his red vestments furling and fluttering darkened almost to tree-bark color among the watery downs, you will have some notion of his real purpose here inside the community-he is carrier of holy strategies, memoranda of conscience, and when he approaches over the reedy flats of morning you are taken by your bowed nape and brushed with the sidebands of a great moment-for the laufer is the most sacred here, it is he who takes messages out to the ruinous interface between the visible lager and the invisible ss). at the top of the complex is schutzhaftlingsfiihrer blicero. the name has found its way this far east, as if carrying on the man's retreat for him, past the last stand in the liineburg heath. he is the zone's worst specter. he is malignant, he pervades the lengthening summer nights. like a cankered root he is changing, growing toward winter, growing whiter, toward the idleness and the famine. who else could the 175s have chosen for their very highest oppressor? his power is absolute. and don't think he isn't really waiting, out by the shelled and rusty gas­ works, under the winding staircases, behind the tanks and towers, wait­ ing for the dawn's first carmine-skirted runner with news of how the night went. the night is his dearest interest, so he must be told. this phantom ss command here is based not so much on the one the prisoners knew at dora as on what they inferred to be the rocket-struc­ ture next door at the mittelwerke. the a4, in its way, was also con­ cealed behind an uncrossable wall that separated real pain and terror from summoned deliverer. weissmanu/blicero's presence crossed the wall, warping, shivering into the fetid bunkrooms, with the same reach toward another shape as words trying to make their way through dreams. what the 175s heard from their real ss guards there was enough to elevate weissmann on the spot-they, his own brother-elite, didn't know what this man was up to. when prisoners came in earshot, the guards stopped whispering. but their fear kept echoing: fear not of weissmann personally, but of the time itself, a time so desperate that he could now move through the mittlewerke as if he owned it, a time which was granting him a power different from that of auschwitz or buchenwald, a power they couldn't have borne themselves. . . . on hearing the name of blicero now, thanatz's asshole tightens a 666 notch. ... , �ream, t�l lilloltm dna�ill �aall 0 loohngf m� and lnanat ne kno\ , �--�",/\ ...,. notch. not that he thinks the name was planted here or anything. para­ noia is not a major problem for thanatz. what does bother him is being reminded at all-reminded that he's had no word, since the noon on the heath when 00000 was fired, of blicero's status-alive or dead, power­ lord or fugitive. he isn't sure which he prefers. as long as the anubis kept moving, there was no need to choose: the memory could have been left so far behind that one day its "reality" wouldn't matter any more. of course it happened. of course it didn't happen. "we think he's out there," the town spokesman is telling thanatz, "alive and on the run. now and then we hear something-it could fit blicero easily enough. so we wait. he will find us. he has a prefabri­ cated power base here, waiting for him." "what if he doesn't stay?" pure meanness, "what if he laughs at you, and passes by?" "then i can't explain," the other beginning to step backward, back out into the rain, "it's a matter of faith." thanatz, who has sworn that he will never seek out blicero again, not after the 00000, feels the flat of terror's blade. "who is your runner?" he cries. "go yourself," a filtered whisper. "where?" "the gasworks." "but i have a message for-" "take it yourself.... " the white anubis, gone on to salvation. back here, in her wake, are the preterite, swimming and drowning, mired and afoot, poor passen­ gers at sundown who've lost the way, blundering across one another's flotsam, the scrapings, the dreary junking of memories-all they have to hold to-churning, mixing, rising, falling. men overboard and our com­ mon debris.... thanatz remains shaking and furious in the well-established rain, under the sandstone arcade. i should have sailed on, he wants to scream, and presently does. "i wasn't supposed to be left with you dis­ cards.... " where's the court of appeals that will hear his sad story? "i lost my footing!" some mess cook slipped in a puddle of elite vomit and spilled a whole galvanized can full of creamed yellow chicken nau­ sea all over that starboard weather deck, thanatz didn't see it, he was looking for margherita.... too bad, les jeux sont faits, nobody's listen­ ing and the anubis is gone. better here with the swimming debris, thanatz, no telling what'll come sunfishing by, ask that oberst enzian, he knows (there is a key, among the wastes of the world ... and it -�-/ , """ /. � ���-:c " '. won't be found on board the white anubis because they throw every­ thing of value over the side). so-thanatz is out by the gasworks, up against a tar wall, mackerel eyes bulging out of wet wool collar-shadows, all black and white, really scared, breath smoking out corners of his mouth as green dawn begins to grow back among the gassen. he won't be here, he's only dead only dead? isn't this an "interface" here? a meeting surface for two worlds . . . sure, but which two? there's no counting on any positivism to save him, that didn't even work back in berlin, before the war, at peter sachsa's sittings ... it only got in the way, made others impatient with him. a screen of words between himself and the numinous was always just a tactic ... it never let him feel any freer. these days there's even less point to it. he knows blicero exists. it wasn't a dream. don't you wish it could be. another fever that sooner or later will break, releasing you into the cool reality of a room ... you don't have to perform that long and complicated mission after all, no, you see it was only the fever . . . it wasn't real. . . . this time it is real, blicero, alive or dead, is real. thanatz, a little crazy now with fear, wants to go provoke him, he can't wait any more, he has to see what it will take to get blicero across the interface. what screaming ass-wiggling surrender might bring him back. ... all it brings is the russian police. there's a working agreement about staying inside the limits of the 175-stadt that of course no one told thanatz about. the gasworks used, to be a notorious hustling spot till the russians made a series of mass busts. a last fading echo of the 175stadt chorale goes skipping away down the road singing some horrible salute to faggotry such as noiliing, f uownwi yumsy-numsy 'n' poopsie-poo, tomes to if i'm a degenerate, so are you" tnarge, "nowadays all we get are you tourists," sez the natty civilian with the white handkerchief in his breast-pocket, snickering in the shadow of his �oeatehat brim. "and, of course, the odd spy." "not me," thanatz sez. "not you, eh? tell me about it." dwa�b)something of a quandary, all right. in less than half a day, thanatz toit,alhas moved from no need to worry or even think about blicero, to always �oafterneeding some formulation of him at hand to please any stray curious nead, cop. this is one of his earlier lessons in being preterite: he won't escape ... thana 668 every. ackerel e, reaijv 'n be�� lead o�i '0 \\'orl� mto\a11 a petti utui \liiliilie i , wofm thanatz any of the consequences he sets up for himself now, not unless it's by accident. for example, at the outskirts of stettin, by accident, a polish guerrilla group, just arrived back from london, mistakes the police car for one transporting an anti-lublin journalist to prison, shoots out the tires, roars in, kills the driver, wounds the civilian interrogator, and escapes lugging thanatz like a sack of potatoes. "not me," thanatz sez. "shit. he's right." they roll him out the car door into a dp encampment a few miles farther on. he is herded into a wire enclosure along with 1,999 others being sent west to berlin. for weeks he rides the freights, hanging in shifts to the outside of his assigned car while inside someone else sleeps on the straw space he va­ cated. later they change places. it helps to stay awake. every day thanatz sees half a dozen dps go on the nod and fall off the train, and sometimes it's funny to watch, but too often it's not, though dp humor is a very dependent thing. he is rubber-stamped on hands, forehead, and ass, deloused, poked, palpated, named, numbered, consigned, in­ voiced, misrouted, detained, ignored. he passes in and out the paper grasp of russian, british, american and french body-jobbers, round and round the occupation circuit, getting to recognize faces, coughs, pairs of boots on new owners. without a ration card or soldbuch, you are doomed to be moved, in lots of 2,000, center to center, about the zone, possibly forever. so, out among the ponds and fenceposts of mecklenburg somewhere, thanatz discovers that he is exempt from nothing. his second night on the rails his shoes are stolen. he comes down with a deep bronchial cough and a high fever. for a week no one comes to look at him. for two aspirins he has to suck off the orderly in charge, who has grown to enjoy rough-bearded cheeks flaming at 1030 against his thighs, the furnace breath under his balls. in mecklenburg thanatz steals a cigarette butt from a sleeping one-armed veteran, and is beaten and kicked for half an hour by people whose language he has never heard before, whose faces he never gets a look at. bugs crawl over him only slightly irritated that he's in their way. his daily bread is taken away by another dp smaller than he is, but with the look of some right to it, a look thanatz at best can only impersonate-and so he's afraid to go after the little rag-coated liver-colored back, the munching haystack head . . . and others are watching: the woman who tells everyone that thanatz molests her little girl at night (thanatz can never meet her eyes 669 because yes he wants to, pull down the slender pretty pubescent's over­size gi trousers stuff penis between pale little buttocks reminding him so of bianca take bites of soft-as-bread insides of thighs pull long hairthroatback bianca make her moan move her head how she loves it) and a beetlebrowed slav too, who has forced thanatz to go hunting ciga­ rette butts for him after lights out, to give up his sleep not so much tothe chance of finding a real butt as to the slav's right to demand it-the slav is watching too-in fact, a circle of enemies have all observed the taking of the bread and thanatz's failure to go after it. their judgmentis clear, a clarity in their eyes thanatz never saw back on the anubis, an honesty he can't avoid, can't shrug off . . . finally, finally he has to face, literally with his own real face, the transparency, the real light of ... little by little his memory of that last rocket-firing on the heath grows clearer. the fevers fire-polish, the pain removes impurities. an image keeps recurring-a muddy brown almost black eyeball reflecting a windmill and a jagged reticule of tree-branches in silhouette . . . doors at the sides of the windmill open and shut quickly, like loose shut­ ters in a storm . . . in the iris sky one cloud, the shape of a clamshell, rises very purple around the edges, the puff from an explosion, some­ thing light ocher at the horizon . . . closer in it seems snarling purplearound a yellow that's brightening, intestines of yellow shadowed in vio­ let spilling outward, outward in a bellying curve toward us. there are, oddly (not to cut this picturesque scene off, but) oddly enough, get this, no windmills on the liineburg heath! thanatz even checked around real fast just to make sure, nope, no windmills, o.k., so, how come bli­ cere's eye, looking out on the heath, is reflecting a windmill, huh? well, to be honest, now it isn't reflecting a windmill, it's reflecting a bottle of gin. no bottle of gin out here on the heath either. but it was reflecting a windmill. what's this? could it be that blicero's eyes, in which gretaerdmann saw maps of his kingdom, are for thanatz reflecting the past?that would be strange. whatever went on on those eyeballs when youweren't looking would just be lost. you'd only have fragments, now andthen. katje, looking back over her shoulder at fresh whip-marks. gott­fried in the morning lineup, body all wandervogel-limp, wind blowinghis uniform in great ripples back from the bough-curves of his thighs,hair flying in the wind, saucy sideways smile, mouth a little open, jawforward, eyelids down. blicero's own reflection in the oval mirror, an old face-he is about to don a wig, a dragon lady pageboy with bangs,and he pauses, looking in, face asking what? what did you say? wig heldto the side and slightly lower so as to be another face in heavy wig-shad­ ows nearly invisible . . . but looking closer you can see bone-ridges and 670 natz, li�h of jo�ll atiliel m�ea ill? til \011, lo� waat r [acei' lruefac he i) a week �yer a � �an� rum: h ..( fasra) �rteq wnere 1 �rel ri nonsto �ory, he 10 it,to largo or ev nam fat-fields begin to emerge now, an ice-glaze white bobbing, a mask hand-held, over the shadows in the hollow hood-space-two faces looking back now, and thanatz, are you going to judge this man? tha­ natz, haven't you loved the whip? haven't you longed for the brush and sigh of ladies' clothes? haven't you wanted to murder a child you loved, joyfully kill something so helpless and innocent? as he looks up at you, at the last possible minute, trusting you, and smiles, purses his lips to make a kiss just as the blow falls across his skull ... isn't that best of all? the cry that breaks in your chest then, the sudden, solid arrival of loss, loss forever, the irreversible end of love, of hope ... no denying what you finally are . . . (but so much fear at taking it in, the serpent face-at opening your arms and legs and letting it enter you, into your true face it'll kill you if it-) he is telling the schwarzkommando this now, all this and more. after a week of shouting i know, of crying i've seen the schwarzgeriit when­ ever a black face appears behind the flowing wire fences, at the cinder­ banks or the crossings, word has got around. one day they come for him: he is lifted from the straw as black with coal-dust as they-lifted easy as an infant, a roach flicked in kindness off of his face-and trans­ ported shivering, gathered moaning south to the erdschweinhohle where now they are all sitting around a fire, smoking and munching, eyes riveted on blue thanatz, who has been gabbing for seven hours nonstop. he is the only one privileged, in a way, to tell this much of the story, he's the fella who lost out, the loser, just a fool-who-never-wins, at love, though-he-plays, most-ev', ry night a loser-to-the-ones, above, who stack-the-cards, of wrong, and right. oh the loser never bets-it-all, and-he never-plays, to win, he knows if-once, you don't-succeed, you can al-ways lose-again! just a loser at-the-game, of love ... spending night after night a-lo-o-o-one! he lost gottfried, he lost bianca, and he is only beginning, this late into it, to see that they are the same loss, to the same winner. by now he's forgotten the sequence in time. doesn't know which child he lost first, or even-hornet clouds of memory welling up--even if they aren't two names, different names, for the same child . . . but then in the crash of 671 -----",!__ / .." / 2� '. others' flotsam, sharp edges, and high-spin velocities you understand, he finds he can't hold on to this thought for long: soon he's floundering in the open water again. but he'll remember that he held it for a little, saw its texture and color, felt it against the side of his face as he woke from a space of sleeping near it-that the two children, gottfried and bianca, are the same. . . . he lost blicero, but it wasn't quite as real. after the last firing, the unremembered night-hours to hamburg, the hop from hamburg to bydgoszcz in a purloined p-51 mustang was so clearly procalowski­ down-out-of-the-sky-in-a-machine, that thanatz came to imagine he had disposed of blicero too only in that same very conditional, metallic way. and sure enough, the metal has given way to flesh, and sweat, and long chattering night encounters, blicero cross-legged stammering down at his crotch i cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-"can't," blicero? "couldn't"? "care"? "cry"? blicero that night was offering all his weapons, laying down all maps of his revetments and labyrinths. thanatz was really asking: when mortal faces go by, sure, self-consist­ ent and never seeing me, are they real? are they souls, really? or only attractive sculpture, the sunlit faces of clouds? and: "how can i love them?" but there's no answer from blicero. his eyes go casting runes with the windmill silhouettes. a number of contributed scenes do now flash by for thanatz. from ensign morituri, a banana-leaf floor somewhere near malabacat in the philippines, late '44, a baby squirms, rolls, kicks in drops of sunlight, raising dust off the drying leaves, and the special­attack units roar away overhead, zeros bearing comrades away, finally as fallen cherry-blossoms-that favorite kamikaze image-in the spring ... from greta erdmann, a world below the surface of earth or mud­ it crawls like mud, but cries like earth, with layer-pressed generationsof gravities and losses thereto-losses, failures, last moments followed by voids stringing back, a series of hermetic caves caught in the suffo­ cated layers, those forever lost . . . from someone, who'll ever know who? a flash of bianca in a thin cotton shift, one arm back, the smooth powdery hollow under the arm and the leaping bow of one small breast, her lowered face, all but forehead and cheekbone in shadow, turningthis way, the lashes now whose lifting you pray for . . . will she see you? a suspension forever at the hinge of doubt, this perpetuate doubting ofher lovethey'll help him through it. the erdschweinhohlers will sit up all night with this nonstop intelligence briefing. he is the angel they've hoped for, and it's logical he should come now, on the day when they 672 have wrn coun� rolitic ricion, ilie ro trruand �\'ent � knows, . marbe nd, he have their rocket all assembled at last, their single a4 scavenged all ring in summer piece by piece clear across the zone from poland to the low le, saw countries. whether you believed or not, empty or green, cunt-crazy or from a politically celibate, power-playing or neutral, you had a feeling-a susbianca, picion, a latent wish, some hidden tithe out of your soul, something-for the rocket. it is that "something" that the angel thanatz now illumi­ nates, each in a different way, for everybody listening. by the time he's done, they will all know what the schwarzgerat was, how it was used, where the 00000 was fired from, and which way it was pointed. enzian will smile grimly, and groan to his feet, the decision al­ ready made for him hours ago, and say, "well, let's have a look at the timetables now." his erdschweinhohle rival, empty one josef om­ bindi, grips him by the forearm-"if there's anything . . ." enzian nods. "see if you can work us out a tight security watch, 'kurandye." he hasn't called ombindi that for a while. nor is it a small concession to give the empty ones control of the watch lists, at least for the duration of this journey ... . . . which has already begun, as one and a half levels below, men �. and women are busy with tackle, lines, and harness easing rocket sec­ tions each onto its dolly, more schwarzkommando waiting in leather and blueflowered files up the ramps to the outside, along the present and future vectors strung between wood rails and grooves, empty, neu­ tral and green all together now, waiting or hauling or supervising, some talking for the first time since the dividing along lines of racial life and racial death began, how many years ago, reconciled for now in the only event that could have brought them together (1 couldn't, enzian knows, and shudders at what's going to happen after it's over-but maybe it's only meant to last its fraction of a day, and why can't that be enough? try to let it be enough ... ). christian comes past, downhill adjusting a web belt, not quite swaggering-night before last his sister maria visited him in a dream to tell him she wished no revenge against anyone, and wanted him to trust and love the nguarorerue-so their eyes now meet not quite amused nor quite yet in a challenge, but knowing more together than they ever have so far, and christian's hand at the moment of passing cocks out half in salute, half in celebration, aimed toward the heath, northwest­ erly' kingdom-of-deathward, and enzian's goes out the same way, iya, 'kurandye! as, at some point, the two palms do slide and brush, do touch, and it is touch and trust enough, for this moment. . . . -� / .. d d d d d d d unexpectedly, this country is pleasant, yes, once inside it, quite pleasantafter all. even though there is a villain here, serious as death. it is this typical american teenager's own father, trying episode after episode tokill his son. and the kid knows it. imagine that. so far he's managed to escape his father's daily little death-plots-but nobody has said he has to keep escaping. he's a cheerful and a plucky enough lad, and doesn't hold any of this against his father particularly. that 01' broderick's just a murderin' fool, golly what'll he come up with nextit's a giant factory-state here, a city of the future full of extrapolated 1930s swoop-facaded and balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatidswith bobbed hairdos, classy airships of all descriptions drifting in the boom and hush of the city abysses, golden lovelies sunning in roof-gar­dens and turning to wave as you pass. it is the raketen-stadt. down below, thousands of kids are running in windy courtyards and areaways, up and down rights of steps, skullcaps on their heads with plastic propellers spinning in the wind rattling and blurred, kids running messages among the plastic herbage in and out of the different soft-plas­tic offices-here's a memo for you tyrone, go and find the radiant hour (weepers! didn't know it was lost! sounds like 01' pop's up to somma those tricks again!), so it's out into the swarming corridors, full of larking dogs, bicycles, pretty sub deb secretaries on roller skates, pro­duce carts, beanies whirling forever in the lights, cap-gun or water-pis­tol duels at each corner, kids dodging behind the sparkling fountainswait that's a real gun, this is a real bullet zinnnggg! good try, pop, but you're not quite as keen as the kid today! onward to rescue the radiant hour, which has been abstracted from the day's 24 by colleagues of the father, for sinister reasons of their own. travel here gets complicated-a system of buildings that move, byright angles, along the grooves of the raketen-stadt's street-grid. you can also raise or lower the building itself, a dozen floors per second, todesired heights or levels underground, like a submarine skipper with his periscope-although certain paths aren't available to you. they areavailable to others, but not to you. chess. your objective is not the king-there is no king-but momentary targets such as the radiant hour. bing in pops a kid with beanie spinning, hands slothrop another mes674 �age want addre dr, h a lure roana�� �\dow� neili • roh neren re)it'l �ou� �\arer !orllie �ate but ali�ei reall� touch � lame racul ,. ole! fail, sage and spins off again. "the radiant hour is being held captive, if you want to see her on display to all interested customers be present at this address 11 :30 a.m."-in the sky a white clockface drifts conveniently by, hmm only half an hour to gather together my rescue team. rescue team will consist of myrtle miraculous hyin' in here in a shoulderpad­ ded maroon dress, the curlers still up in her hair and a tough frown fer draggin' her outa slumberland ... next a negro in a pearl-gray zoot and inverness cape name of maximilian, high square pomaded head and a superthin mustache come zooming here out of his "front" job, suave manager of the club oogabooga where beacon street aristocracy rubs elbows ev'ry night with roxbury winos 'n' dopefiends, yeah hi tyrone, heah ah is! h'lo moitle baby, hyeah, hyeah, hyeah! whut's de big rush, mah man? adjusting his carnation, lookin' round th' room, everybody's here now except for that mar-eel but hark the familiar music-box theme yes it's that old-timery sweet stephen foster music and sure enough in through the balcony window now comes marcel, a mechanical chess­ player dating back to the second empire, actually built a century ago for the great conjuror robert-houdin, very serious-looking french ref­ ugee kid, funny haircut with the ears perfectly outlined in hair that starts abruptly a quarter-inch strip of bare plastic skin away, black pat­ ent-shiny hair, hornrim glasses, a rather remote manner, unfortunately much too literal with humans (imagine what happened the first time maximilian come hi-de-hoing in the door with one finger [ivin' in the air sees metal-ebonite-and-plastic young marcel sitting there and say, "hey man gimme some skin, man!" well not only does marcel give him a heavy time about skin, skin in all its implications, oh no that's only at the superficial level, next we get a long discourse on the concept of "give," that goes on for a while, then, then he starts in on "man." that's really an exhaustive one. in fact marcel isn't anywhere near finished with it yet). still, his exquisite 19th-century brainwork-the human art it took to build which has been flat lost, lost as the dodo bird-has stood the floundering four in good stead on many, many go-rounds with the paternal peril. but where inside marcel is the midget grandmaster, the little johann allgeier? where's the pantograph, and the magnets? nowhere. marcel really is a mechanical chessplayer. no fakery inside to give him any touch of humanity at all. each of the ff is, in fact, gifted while at the same time flawed by his gift-unfit by it for human living. myrtle mi­ raculous specializes in performing miracles. stupendous feats, impossi­ ble for humans. she has lost respect for humans, they are clumsy, they fail, she does want to love them but love is the only miracle that's 675 beyond her. love is denied her forever. the others of her class are ei­ ther homosexuals, fanatics about law 'n' order, off on strange religious excursions, or as intolerant of failure as herself, and though friends such as mary marvel and wonder woman keep inviting her to parties to meet eligible men, myrtle knows it's no use. . . . as for maximilian, he has a natural sense of rhythm, which means all rhythms, up to and in! cluding the cosmic. so he will never be where the fathomless manhole awaits, where the safe falls from the high window shrieking like a bomb -he is a pilot through earth's baddest minefields, if we only stay close to him, be where he is as much as we can-yet maximilian's doom is never to go any further into danger than its dapperness, its skin-exciting first feel. . . . fine crew this is, getting set to go off after the radiant-say what? what's slothrop's own gift and fatal flaw? aw, c'mon-uh, the radiant hour, collecting their equipment, myrtle zooming to and fro material­ izing this and that: the golden gate bridge ("how about that one?" "uh, let's see the other one, again? with the, you know, uh ... " "the brooklyn?" "-kind of old-fashioned looking-" "the brooklyn bridge?" "yeah, that's it, with the pointed ... whatever they are ... "). the brooklyn bridge ("see, for a chase-scene, myrtle, we ought to observe proportions-" "do tell." "now if we were gonna be in high­ speed automobiles, well, sure, we might use the golden gate . . . but for zooming through the air now, we need something older, more inti­ mate, human-"). a pair of superlatively elegant rolls royces ("quit fooling, myrtle, we already agreed, didn't we? no automobiles ... "), a small plastic baby's steering wheel ("aw all right, i know you don't respect me as a leader but listen can't we be reasonable ... "). any wonder it's hard to feel much confidence in these idiots as they go up against pernicious pop each day? there's no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. decisions are never really made -at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallu­ cinations and all-round assholery. this is less a fighting team than nest full of snits, blues, crotchets and grudges, not a rare or fabled bird in the lot. its survival seems, after all, only a mutter of blind fortune groping through the heavy marbling of skies one titanic-night at a time. which is why slothrop now observes his coalition with hopes for success and hopes for disaster about equally high (and no, that doesn't cancel out to apathy-it makes a loud dissonance that dovetails inside you sharp as knives). it does annoy him that he can be so divided, so perfectly unable to co mons road aoesn anolo rensel \�lain mer? meed �eutei iult, fouse ]elul' turni � tnuo, ucc! oeart now i itom leet, ( ltuml roo load �ret -.��-----/�t:l�� 14 �' to come down on one side or another. those whom the old puritan ser­ mons denounced as "the glozing neuters of the world" have no easy road to haul down, wear-the-pantsers, just cause you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there! energy inside is just as real, just as binding and inescapable, as energy that shows. when's the last time you felt in­ tensely lukewarm? eh? glozing neuters are just as human as heroes and villains. in many ways they have the most grief to put up with, don't they? why don't you, right now, wherever you are, city folks or out in the country, snuggled in quilts or riding the bus, just turn to the glozing neuter nearest you, even your own reflection in the mirror, and just ... sing, how-dy neighbor, how-dy pard! ain't it lone-ly, say ain't it hard, passin' by so silent, day-after-day, with-out, even a smile-or, a friendly word to say? oh, let me tell ya bud-dy, tell ya ace, things're fal-lin', on their facemaybe we should stick together part 0' the way, and skies'll be bright-er some day! now ev'rybodyas the 4 suit up, voices continue singing for a while, depending how much each one happens to care-myrtle displaying generous expanses of nifty gam, and maximilian leering up beneath the fast-talking young tomato's skirts, drawing bewildered giggles from adolescent marcel, who may be a bit repressed. "now," slothrop with a boobish, eager-to-please smile, "time for that pause that refreshes!" and he's into the icebox before myrtle's "oh, jesus" has quite finished echoing . . . the light from the cold wee bulb turning his face to summernight blue, broderick and nalline's shadow­ child, their unconfessed, their monster son, who was born with hydrau­ lic clamps for hands that know only how to reach and grab . . . and a heart that gurgles audibly, like a funny fatrnan's stomach ... but look how lost, how unarrested his face is, was, that i yz seconds in the glow from the folksy old icebox humming along in kelvinator-bostonian dia­ lect, "why cummawn in, t'rone, it's nice and friendly heeah in my stummick, gawt lawtsa nice things, like mawxies, 'n' big baby rooths.... " walking now in among miles-down-the-sky shelves and food-mountains or food-cities of iceboxland (but look out, it can get pretty fascist in here, behind the candy-colored sweet stuff is thermodynamic elitism at its clearest-bulbs can be replaced with candles and the radios fall silent, but the grid's big function in this system is icebox­ ery: freezing back the tumultuous cycles of the day to preserve thisodorless small world, this cube of changelessness), climbing over the cel­ ery ridges where the lettered cheese glasses loom high and glossy in the middle distance, slippin' on the butter dish, piggin' on the watermelon down to the rind, feelin' yellow and bright as you skirt the bananas, gaz­ ing down at verdigris reaches of mold across the crusted terrain of an old, no longer identifiable casserole-bananas! who-who's been putting bananasin-the-re-frig er a-tor! o no-no-no, no-no-no! chiquita banana sez we shouldn't! somethin' awful'll happen! who would do that? it couldn't be mom, and hogan's in love with chiquita banana, tyrone's come in the room plenty of times found his brother with banana label glued on his erect cock for ready reference, lost in masturbatory fantasies of nailing this cute but older latin lady while she's wearing her hat, gigantic fruit-market hat and a big saucy smile iay, ay, how passionate you yankees are! ... a-and it couldn't've been pop, no pop wouldn't, but if it (is it getting cold in here?) wasn't any of us, then (what's happening to the spike jones record of "right in the fuhrer's face" playing back out in the living room, why's the sound fading?) . . . unless i did it without knowing (look around, something's squeaking on its hinges) and maybe that means i'm going crazy (what's this brightening the bulblight, what's-) slam well whoever it is that's been wantonly disregarding united fruit's radio commercials has also just closed young tyrone in that icebox, and now he'll have to count on myrtle to get him out. embarrassing as heck. "good thinking, boss man." "gee, m.m., i don't know what happened. "do you ever? grab on to my cape." whoosh"whew. well," sez slothrop, "uh, are we all ?" "that radiant hour's probably light-years away by now," sez myrt, "and you have a snot icicle hanging outa your nose." marcel springs to the controls of the mobile building, keys in to central control a request for omnidirectional top-speed clearance, which sometimes comes through and sometimes not, depending on a secret process among the granters of permission, a process it is one of the 4' s ongoing mandates to �eroutinee cut iliil in.'by rette,le�'t , �ir and ighs . � and [1js� ili itree�of ilie , hruooll up h orirrin� ton i fueairy railid molliter. the� � �meofiliem oluecnecked 1aor under g aoledatafnr forilien ue,�atafter to ilie great ilopel up hl \�ili �een where seat and a bed 0 • • "" ii ">" , ��n-------�'------: discover and impart to me world. this time they get slow crawl, sub­ urban vectors, lowest traffic status in the raketen-stadt, invoked only once in recorded history, against a homosexual child-murdering indian liked to wipe off his organ afterwards on the flag and so on-"shit!" hollers maximilian at slothrop, "slow crawl, suburban vectors! whut th' fuck we s'posed to do man, swim or some shit?" "uh, myrtle ... " slothrop approaches gold-snooded m.m. a little deferent, "uh, do you think you could . . ." jesus they run through this same routine every time-doesn't myrtle wish sniveling slothrop would cut this wishy-washy malarkey 'n' be a man fer once! she lights a ciga­ rette, lets it droop from one corner of her mouth, juts out the opposite hip and sighs, "on the beam," exasperated already with this cree_irand los! the miracle is done, they're now zipping along the corridor­ streets of the raketen-stadt like some long-necked sea monster. little kids boil up like ants on the webby arches of viaducts high over the city dripping stone like spanish moss petrified in mid-collapse, kids up over the airy railings and onto the friendly back of the sleek city-cruising monster. they climb window to window, too full of grace ever to fall. some of them, naturally, are spies: that honey-curled little cutie in the blue checked pinafore and blue knee-socks, up there under the gargoyle at the window listening in to maximilian, who began drinking heavily as soon as the building started to move, and is now carrying on a long de­ nunciation of marcel under the thin scholarly disguise of trying to de­ termine if the gallic genius can truly be said to have any "soul." young lady under gargoyle is taking it all down in shorthand. these are valu­ able data for the psychological warfare effort. for the first time now it becomes apparent that the 4 and the father­ conspiracy do not entirely fill their world. their struggle is not the only, or even the ultimate one. indeed, not only are there many other strug­ gles, but there are also spectators, watching, as spectators will do, hun­ dreds of thousands of them, sitting around this dingy yellow amphithea­ tre, seat after seat plunging down in rows and tiers endless miles, down to the great arena, brown-yellow lights, food scattered on the stone slopes up higher, broken buns, peanut shells, bones, bottles half-filled with green or orange sweet, fires in small wind-refuges, set in angles where seats have been chiseled away, shallow depressions in the stone and a bed of cherry embers where old women are cooking hashes of the scavenged bits and crumbles and gristly lumps of food, heating them in thin frying pans of gray oil-water bubbling, as the faces of children gather around to wait for food, and in the wind the dark young man, the slippery young knife who waits for your maid outside the iron gate each 679 sunday, who takes her away to a park, a stranger's automobile and a shape of love you can never imagine, stands now with his hair untended in the wind, his head averted from the fire, feeling the cold, the moun­ tain cold, at his temples and high under his jaw ... while beside other fires the women gossip, one craning over pow and then to look miles downward at the stage, to see if a new episode's come on yet-crowds of students running by dark as ravens, coats draped around shoulders, back out into a murky sector of seats which traditionally are never en­ tered (being reserved for the ancestors), their voices fading still very in­ tense, dramatic, trying to sound good or at least acceptable. the women go on, playing cards, smoking, eating. see if you can borrow a blanket from rose's fire over there, it's gonna be cold tonight. hey-and a pack of armies while you're out-and come right back, hear me? of course the cigarette machine turns out to be marcel, who else, in another of his clever mechanical disguises, and inside one pack is a message for one of the spectators. "i'm sure you wouldn't want them to know about the summer of 1945. meet me in the male transvestites' toilet, level li6/39c, station metatron, quadrant fire, stall malkuth. you know what time. the usual hour. don't be late." what's this? what're the antagonists doing here-infiltrating their own audience? well, they're not, really. it's somebody else's audience at the moment, and these nightly spectacles are an appreciable part of the darkside-hours life of the rocket-capital. the chances for any para­ dox here, really, are less than you think. maximilian is way down in the bottom of the orchestra pit posing as the c-melody saxophone player, complete with closet intellectual book, the wisdom of the great kamikaze pilots, with illustrations by walt disney-screaming, hairy-nosed, front teeth in white dihedral, slant-eyed (long, elaborate curlicued shapes) round black licorice dog­ nosed laps, zoomin' through ev'ry page! and any time he's not playing that saxophone, you can be sure maximilian will be, to the casual ob­ server, immersed in this diffuse, though rewarding, work. myrtle mean­ time is back in the candycane control room, manning the switchboard and ready to swoop in at any time to save the others, who are sure (through their own folly if nothing else) to be in deep trouble soon. and slothrop himself lurks in the transvestites' toilet, in the smoke, the crowds, the buzzing fluorescent lights, piss hot as melted butter, making notes of all the dealing going on among the stalls, bowls 'n' urinals (you've got to look butch but not that butch and another thing no metal showing at any vital spots, she'll knock off ten marks for everyone she sees, and the only bonuses she gives are spelled out here: blood drawn 680 � on first t sage got / to try for well, th iliere in th ana enterp anomert much hege, • in� and ml ." ters, which i ��mile antenna, it i man branch in� to �et t} \\'ater, the __. a�runln sam oj accident ilirou�h poe �een edue knowsi ilid the kee nerewhich a war crill llstened to marine h , ilie reich. on to liste . '"", v • 'i ) \.� on first try, that's an extra 20-) wondering if the cigarette-pack mes­ sage got through and if they'll come in person or if pop'll send a hit man to try for a first-round ko. well, there is the heart of it: the monumental yellow structure, out there in the slum-suburban night, the never-sleeping percolation of life and enterprise through its shell, outside and inside interpiercing one another too fast, too finely labyrinthine, for either category to have much hegemony any more. the nonstop revue crosses its stage, crowd­ ing and thinning, surprising and jerking tears in an endless ratchet: the low-frequency listener the german u-boats communicated on a wave length of 28,000 me­ ters, which is down around 10 kc. a half-wave antenna for that'd halfta be 9 miles high, or long, and even folded here and there it is still some antenna. it is located at magdeburg. so is the headquarters of the ger­ man branch of jehovah's witnesses. so, for a time, is slothrop, attempt­ ing to get through to the argentine anarchist u-boat, now in unknown waters. the reason why is no longer clear to him. he was either visited again in some way by squalidozzi, or he came upon squalidozzi one day by accident, or he found, in some lint-picking attentionless search through pockets, rags or bedroll, the message he was given, back at the green edge of aries, at the cafe l'eclipse long ago in geneva. all he knows is that finding squalidozzi, right now, is his overriding need. the keeper of the antenna is a jehovah's witness named rohr. he's just out of the ravensbriick camp after being in since '36 (or '37, he can't remember). with that much camp time in, he's politically reliable enough for the local g-s to put him, nights, in control of the network of longest wavelength in the zone. although this could be accidental, more likely there is some eccentric justice lately begun to operate out here which it would behoove slothrop to look into. there are rumors of a war crimes tribunal under way in niirnberg. no one slothrop has listened to is clear who's trying whom for what, but remember that these are mostly brains ravaged by antisocial and mindless pleasures. but the only people-if any-apt to be communicating these days on 28,000 meters (the distance from test stand vii at peenemiinde to the hafenstrabe in greifswald, where slothrop in early august may see a particular newspaper photo), except for freak argentine anarchists, are the undenazified nazis still wandering around in unaccounted-for sub­ marines holding their own secret shipboard tribunals against enemies of the reich. so the closest thing in the zone to an early christian is put on to listen for news of unauthorized crucifixions. 681 "someone the other night was dying," rohr tells him, "i don't know if he was inside the zone or out at sea. he wanted a priest. should i have got on and told him about priests? would he've found any comfort in that? it's so painful sometimes. we're really trying to be chris­ tians. . . ." "my folks were congregationalist," slothrop offers, "i think." it's getting harder to remember either of them, as broderick progresses into pernicious pop and nalline into ssshhhghhh ... (into what? what was that word? whatever it is, the harder he chases, the faster it goes away). mom slothrop's letter to ambassador kennedy well hi joe how've ya been. listen: [ew-zeppy=-we're getting edgy about our youngest again. would you try bothering a few of those jolly old london connections just once more? (promise!!) even if it's old news it'll be good news for poppy and i. i still remember what you said when the awful word about the pt boat came in, before you knew how jack was. i'll never forget your words then. it's every parent's dream, joe, that it is. oh, and hozay (whoops, don't mind that, the pen just skidded as you can see! naughty nalline's on her third martini, we'll have you know). poppy and i heard your wonderful speech at the ge plant over in pittsfield the other week. you're in the groove, mister k! how true! we've got to modernize in massachusetts, or it'll just keep getting worse and worse. they're supposed to be taking a strike vote here next week. wasn't the wlb set up to prevent just that? it isn't starting to break down, is it, joe? sometimes, you know these fine boston sundays, when the sky over the hill is broken into clouds, the way white bread appears through a crust you hold at your thumbs and split apart.... you know, don't you? golden clouds? sometimes i think-ah, joe, i think they're pieces of the heavenly city falling down. i'm sorry-didn't mean this to get so gloomy all so sudden, it's just ... but it isn't beginning to fall apart, is it, myoid fellow harvard-parent? sometimes things aren't very clear, that's all. things look like they're going against us, and though it always turns out fine at the end, and we can always look back and say oh of course it had to happen that way, otherwise so-and-so wouldn't have happened-still, while it's happening, in my heart i keep getting this terrible fear, this empty place, and it's very hard at such times re­ ally to believe in a plan with a shape bigger than i can see. . oh, anyway. grumpy old thoughts away! shoo! martini number four, comin' up! jack's a fine boy. really i love jack like hogan and tyrone, just like a 682 come helleo know on the phrase "ass backwards" son, my own son. 1 even love him like i don't love my sons, ha-ha! (she croaks) but then i'm a wicked old babe, you know that. no hope for the likes of me.... "something i have never understood about your language, yankee pig." saure has been calling him "yankee pig" all day now, a hilarious joke he will not leave alone, often getting no further than "yank-" be­ fore collapsing into some horrible twanging phthisic wheeze of a laugh, coughing up alarming ropy lungers of many colors and marbling effects -green, for example, old-statue green at leafy dusk. "sure," replies slothrop, "you wanna learn english, me teachee you english. ask me anything, kraut." it is exactly the kind of blanket offer that's always getting slothrop in trouble. "why do you speak of certain reversals-machinery connected wrong, for instance, as being 'ass backwards'? i can't understand that. ass usually is backwards, right? you ought to be saying 'ass forwards,' if backwards is what you mean." "uh," sez slothrop. "this is only one of many american mysteries," saure sighs, "i wish somebody could clear up for me. not you, obviously." saure got a lotta gall picking on other people's language like this. one night, back when he was a second-story man, he had the incredible luck to break into the affluent home of minne khlaetsch, an astrologer of the hamburg school, who was, congenitally it seems, unable to pronounce, even perceive, umlauts over vowels. that night she was just coming on to what would prove to be an overdose of hieropon, when saure, who back in those days was a curly-haired and good-looking kid, surprised her in her own bedroom with his hand around an ivory chess laufer with a sarcastic smile on its face, and filled with good raw peruvian co­ caine still full of the earth-"don't call for help," advises saure flashing his phony acid bottle, "or that pretty face goes flowing off of its bones like vanilla pudding." but minne calls his bluff, starts hollering for help to all the ladies of the same age in her building who feel that same motherly help-help-but-make-sure-there's-time-for-him-to-rape-me am­ bivalence about nubile cat burglars. what she means to scream is "hiibsch rauber! hiibsch rauber!" which means "cute-looking rob­ ber! cute-looking robber!" but she can't pronounce those umlauts. so it comes out "hubschrauber! hubschrauber!" which means "helicopter! helicopter!" well, it's 192o-something, and nobody in earshot even knows what the word means, liftscrewer, what's that?-nobody except one finger-biting paranoid aerodynamics student in a tenement court­ yard far away, who heard the scream late in berlin night, over tram­ clashing, rifle shots in another quarter, a harmonica novice who has been trying to play "deutschland, deutschland uber alles" for the past four hours, over and over missing notes, fucking up the time, the breath­ ing ii . . . berall . . . es . . . indie . . . ie . . . then longlong pause, oh come on asshole, you can find it-welt sour, ach, immediately cor­ rected ... through all this to him comes the cry hubschrauber, lift­ screwer, a helix through cork air over wine of earth falling bright, yes he knows exactly-and can this cry be a prophecy? a warning (the sky full of them, gray police in the hatchways with ray-guns cradled like codpieces beneath each whirling screw we see you from above there is nowhere to go it's your last alley, your last stormcellar) to stay inside and not interfere? he stays inside and does not interfere. he goes on to be­ come "sporri" of horst achtfaden's confession to the schwarzkom­ mando. but he didn't go to see what minne was hollering about that night. she would've od'd except for her boy friend wimpe, an up-and­ coming ig salesman covering the eastern territory, who'd blown into town after unexpectedly dumping all of his oneirine samples on a party of american tourists back in hilltop transylvania looking for a new kind of thrills-it's me liebchen, didn't expect to be back so-but then he saw the sprawled satin creature, read pupil-size and skin-tint, swiftly went to his leather case for stimulant and syringe. that and an ice-filled bathtub got her back o.k. " 'ass' is an intensifier," seaman bodine now offers, "as in 'mean ass,' 'stupid ass'-well, when something is very backwards, by analogy you'd say 'backwards ass.' " "but 'ass backwards' is 'backwards ass' backwards," same objects. "but gee that don't make it mean forwards," blinks bodine with a sincere little break in his voice as if somebody's just about to hit him­ actually this is a bit of private fun for the spirited salt, it is a william bendix imitation. let the others do cagney and cary grant, bodine specializes in supporting roles, he can do a perfect arthur kennedy-as­ cagney's-kid-brother, how about that? o-or cary grant's faithful indian water-bearer, sam jaffe. he is a white-hat in the navy of life, and that extends to vocal impressions of the fake film-lives of strangers. saure meantime is into something like this with instrumental soloists, or trying, teaching himself kind of by trial and error, currently ee-ee­ aw-aw-ing his way through some hypothetical joachim playing his own cadenza from the long-suppressed rossini violin concerto (op. posth.), and in the process driving the household mad. one morning trudi just one more ask agalll , , , but be we la\ \\l�ling t1esexcn or: where'd �·ha it' th�1s the "ca· den:a"i'j . /�> �i�� h� " '( 685 goes stomping away into an sznd airborne mass jump over the con­ quered city, a million fleecy canopies in the sky, falling slow as white ash behind around the silhouette of her good-by stomp. "he's driving me crazy." "hi trudi, where you going?" "i just told you-crazy!" and don't think this wretched old horny dopefiend doesn't love her, because he does, and don't think he isn't praying, writing down his wishes care­ fully on cigarette papers, rolling up in them his finest sacramental kif and smoking them down to a blister on the lip, which is the dopefiend's version of wishing on an evening star, hoping in his heart she's just off on another stomp, please only a stomp, let it be over inside the day just one more time, he writes on each good-night's reefer, that's all, i won't ask again, i'll try not to, you know me, don't judge me too hard, please ... but how many more of these stomps can there be? one's going to be the last. still he keeps on ee-ee-aw-aw-ing with the rossini, radiating his mean, lean, living-at-the-edge street-longevity, no he can't seem to stop it, it's an old man's habit, he hates himself but it just comes on him, no matter what attention he brings to the problem, he can't stop drift­ ing back into the catchy cadenza.... seaman bodine understands, and is trying to help. to set up a useful interference, he has composed his own counter-cadenza, along the lines of those other pop tunes with clas­ sical names big around 1945 ("my prelude to a kiss," "tenement sym­ phony")-every chance he gets, bodine will croon it to the new weekly arrivals, lalli just in from lubeck, sandra who's run away from the kleinbiirgerstrasse, here's vile bodine with his guitar ambling pelvis­ wiggling down the hallway after each naughty defector, each choice lit­ tle sexcrime fantasy made flesh, singing and picking a moving rendition of: my doper's cadenza if you hear, a "box" so sweet, play-in' tunes-with, a peppy beat, that's just my doper's, caden-za-a-a-a! mel-o-dees, that getcha so, where'd they come from? i don't know! (h-ha) it's just my doper's caden-za(a)a-a-a! this is the «ca­ denza" partnow 1 know it's not as keen as old rossini [snatch of la gazza ladra herej, nor as grand as bach, or beethoven-or-brahms (bubububoo[ooj 00 [sung to opening of beethoven 5th, with full band)), but i'd give away the fames, of a hundred harry james ... wait, fame? of a hundred lame? jameses ... uh ... fameses? hmm ... [scherzoso] i-hi-hif this little-song, can-bring, you-to-my arms! dum de dum, de-dum de dee, oh, it's better than a symphoneeit's my doper's cadenza, to yoooouuu! these days, the tenement is known as "der platz," and is nearly filled up, all the way in to the last central courtyard, with friends of saute's. the change is unexpected-a lot more vegetation seems to be growing now in the tenement dirt, an ingenious system of home-carpentered light ducts and mirrors adjusted throughout the day send sunlight, for the first time, down into these back courts, revealing colors never seen before . . . there's also a rain-structure, to route the rain among flumes, funnels, splash-reflectors, waterwheels, nozzles, and weirs to make a system of rivers and waterfalls to play in this summer . . . the only rooms that can still be locked from the inside are reserved for isolates, fetishists, lost stumblers-in out of the occupation who need loneliness like the dopefiend needs his dope . . . speaking of which, everywhere in the complex now you can find army dope of all kinds stashed, from cel­ lars to mansarde floors are littered with wire loops and plastic covers from yz-grain syrettes of morphine tartrate squeezed toothpaste-tube empty, broken amyl nitrite containers looted from anti-gas kits, olive­ drab tins of benzedrine ... work is proceeding on an anti-police moat around the entire tenement: to keep from drawing attention, this moat here is the first in history being dug from inside out, the space directly below the jacobistrasse, slowly, paranoiacally, is hollowed, sculpted, carefully shored up under the thin crust of street so the odd tram won't find itself in unscheduled plunge-though it has been known to happen, out in the late night with interior tram-lights warm-colored as clear broth, out on the peripheral runs through long stretches of unlighted park or along singing fences of storage depots all at once like a mouth pursing mf the blacktop buckles and you're down in some dripping paranoids' moat, the night-shift staring in with huge denizen-of-the­ underground eyes, faced not with you so much as with the agonizing problem of deciding is this a real bus, or are these "passengers" really police agents in disguise well it's a touchy business, touchy. somewhere in der platz now, early morning, somebody's two-year­ old, a baby as fat as a suckling pig, has just learned the word "sonnen­ schein." "sunshine," sez the baby, pointing. "sunshine, h running into the other room. "sunshine," croaks some grownup morning-voice. 686 "suns "suns iisunsh , else who'll worse, one cate�orie-, ferent-no itran�er to notknowm a lawyer in t case might rourcell. loon guillo , nill,ilne t, iliou�ht ye ja! as for mondau e • ./ f,-� i )'''-�� ;� -. tf "sunshine!" hollers the baby, tottering off. "sunshine," a smiling-girl voice, maybe his mother. "sunshine!" the baby at the window, showing her, showing anybody else who'll look, exactly. shit 'n' shinola r "noio," saure wants to know, "you will tell me about the american expression 'shit from shinola.' " "what is this," screams seaman bodine, ''i'm being set tasks now? this is some continuing study of american slang or some shit? tell me you old fool," grabbing saure by throat and lapel and shaking him asymmetrically, "you're one of them too, right? come on," the old man raggedy andy in his hands, a bad morning of suspicion here for the usu­ ally mellow bodine, "stop, stop," snivels the amazed saure, amazement giving way, that is, to a sniveling conviction that the hairy american gob has lost his mind.... well. you've heard the expression "shit from shinola." as in, "aw, he don't know shit from shinola! 'bout that." or, "marine-you don't know shit from shinolal" and you get sent to the onion room, or worse. one implication is that shit and shinola are in wildly different categories. you would envision-maybe just because they smell dif­ ferent-no way for shit and shinola to coexist. simply impossible. a stranger to the english language, a german dopefiend such as saure, not knowing either word, might see "shit" as a comical interjection, one a lawyer in a bowler hat, folding up papers tucking them in a tan brief­ case might smiling use, "schitt, herr bummer," and he walks out of your cell, the oily bastard, forever . . . or scchhit! down comes a car­ toon guillotine on one black & white politician, head bouncing down­ hill, lines to indicate amusing little spherical vortex patterns, and you thought yes, like to see that all right, yes cut it off, one less rodent, schitt fa! as for shinola, we pass to universitarians franz pokler, kurt mondaugen, bert fibel, horst achtfaden and others, their schein-aula is a shimmering, albert speer-style alabaster open-air stadium with giant cement birds of prey up at each corner, wings shrugged forward, sheltering under each wing-shadow a hooded german face ... from the outside, the hall is golden, the white gold precisely of one lily-of­ the-valley petal in 4 o'clock sunlight, serene, at the top of a small, arti­ ficially-graded hill. it has a talent, this seeming-hall, for posing up there in attractive profiles, in front of noble clouds, to suggest persistence, through returns of spring, hopes for love, meltings of snow and ice, aca687 demic sunday tranquillities, smells of grass just crushed or cut or later turning to hay ... but inside the schein-aula all is blue and cold as the sky overhead, blue as a blueprint or a planetarium. noone in here knows which way to look. will it begin above us? down there? behind us? in the middle of the air? and how soon. . . . well there's one place where shit 'n' shinola do come together, and that's in the men's toilet at the roseland ballroom, the place slothrop departed from on his trip down the toilet, as revealed in the st. veron­ ica papers (preserved, mysteriously, from that hospital's great holo­ caust). shit, now, is the color white folks are afraid of. shit is the pres­ ence of death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but the stiff and rotting corpse itself inside the whiteman's warm and private own asshole, which is getting pretty intimate. that's what that white toilet's for. you see many brown toilets? nope, toilet's the color of gravestones, classical columns of mausoleums, that white porcelain's the very emblem of odorless and official death. shinola shoeshine polish happens to be the color of shit. shoeshine boy malcolm's in the toilet slappin' on the shinola, working off whiteman's penance on his sin of being born the color of shit' n' shinola. it is nice to think that one satur­ day night, one floor-shaking lindyhopping roseland night, malcolm looked up from some harvard kid's shoes and caught the eye of jack kennedy (the ambassador's son), then a senior. nice to think that young jack may have had one of them immortal lightbulbs then go on over­ head-did red suspend his ragpopping just the shadow of a beat, just enough gap in the moire there to let white jack see through, not through to but through through the shine on his classmate tyrone slo­ throp's shoes? were the three ever lined up that way-sitting, squat­ ting, passing through? eventually jack and malcolm both got murdered. slothrop's fate is not so clear. it may be that they have something dif­ ferent in mind for slothrop. an incident in the transvestites' toilet a small ape or orangutan, holding something behind his back, comes sidling unobserved among net-stockinged legs, bobby sox rolled down to loop under ankle bones, subdeb beanies tucked into rayon aquamarine waist-sashes, finally he reaches slothrop, who is wearing a blonde wig and the same long flowing white cross-banded number fay wray wears in her screentest scene with robert armstrong on the boat (considering his history in the roseland toilet, slothrop may have chosen this gown not only out of some repressed desire to be sodomized, unimaginably, by a gigantic black ape, but also because of an athletic innocence to fay 688 ,.( around. ,\il fuefuse ou uhl but wo ceelsomet somebodv reftexe l're � rei re that he s never spoken or except to point and whisper, "oh, look ... " -some honesty, pluck, a cleanness to the garment itself, its enormous sleeves so that wherever you pass is visibly where you've been ... ). at that first moment, long before our flight: ravine, tyrannosaurus (flying-mares and jaws cracked out of joint), the buzzing serpent that jumped you in your own stone living space, the pterodactyl or the fall, no-just . . . while i first hung there, forest and night at one, hung waiting with the torches on the wall. and waiting for the night's one shape to come, i prayed then, not for jack, still mooning sappy along the weather-decks-no. i was thinking of denham-only him, with gun and camera wisecracking in his best bum actor's way through darkest earth, making the unreal reel by shooting at it, one way or the othercarl denham, my director, my undying, carl ... ah, show me the key light, whisper me a line. we've seen them under a thousand names ... "greta erdmann" is only one, these dames whose job it is always to cringe from the terror ... well, home from work they fall asleep just like us and dream of as­ sassinations, of plots against good and decent men. . . . the ape reaches up taps slothrop on the ass, hands him what he's been carrying yaahhgghh it's a round black iron anarchist bomb's what it is, with lit fuse too. . . . ape goes scampering away. slothrop just stands there, in the glassed and humid rooms, his makeup starting to run, consternation in his eyes clear as marbles and lips pressed into a bee-stung well-what-th' -heck-im-l-s'posed-t'-do-now? he can't say any­ thing, the contact still hasn't showed and his voice would blow his dis­ guise. . . . the fuse is burning shorter and shorter. slothrop looks around. all the washbowls and urinals are occupied. should he just put the fuse out in front of sornebody's cock, right in the stream of piss . . . uh, but wouldn't that look like i was propositioning them or something? gee, sometimes i wish i wasn't so indecisive . . . m-maybe if i picked somebody weaker than me . . . but then it's the little guys got the reflexes, rememberhe is rescued from his indecision by a very tall, fat, somewhat orien689 tal-looking transvestite, whose ideal, screen and personal, seems to be little margaret o'brien. somehow this asiatic here is managing to look pigtailed and wistful even as he snatches the sputtering bomb away from slothrop, runs heaves it into an empty toiletbowl and flushes it, turning back to slothrop and the others with an air of civic duty well done when suddenlykruppalooma comes this giant explosion: water leaps in a sur­ prised blue-green tongue (ever seen a toilet hollering, "yikes!"?) out of every single black-lidded bowl, pipes wrench and scream, walls and floor shudder, plaster begins to fall in crescents and powder-sheets as all the chattering transvestites fall silent, reach out to touch anyone nearby as a gesture of preparation for the voice out of the loudspeaker, saying: "that was a sodium bomb. sodium explodes when it touches water." so the fuse was a dummy, the dirty rat. . . . "you saw who threw it in the toilet. he is a dangerous maniac. apprehend him, and there'll be a large reward. your closet could make norma shearer's look like the wastebasket in gimbel's basement." so they all leap on the poor protesting margaret o'brien devotee, while slothrop, for whom the humiliation and (presently, as the arrival of the police grows later and later) the sexual abuse and torture were re­ ally intended (gotta hand it to ya, pop!) slips away, loosening as he nears the outside the satin ties of his gown, dragging reluctantly, off of his grease-chevroned head, the shining wig of innocence.... a moment of fun with takeshi and ichizo, the komical kamikazes takeshi is tall and fat (but doesn't braid his hair like that margaret o'brien), ichizo is short and skinny. takeshi flies a zero, while ichizo flies an ohka device, which is a long bomb, actually, with a cockpit for ichizo to sit in, stub wings, rocket propulsion and a few control surfaces back aft. takeshi only had to go to kamikaze school for two weeks, on formosa. ichizo had to go to ohka school for six months, in tokyo. they are as different as peanut butter and jelly, these two. no fair ask­ ing which is which. they are the only two kamikazes out here at this air base, which is rather remote actually, on an island that nobody, well, really cares much about, any more. the fighting is going on at leyte . . . then on to iwo jima, moving toward okinawa, but always too far away for any sortie from here to reach. but they have their orders, and their exile. not much to do for kicks but go wandering on the beaches looking for dead cypridinae. these are crustaceans with three eyes, shaped like a potato 690 tree�, every rno cidebck� rno , any america radiu�, but it uarman who' _, mitterroorn. giln·nip wa� llili drunken f touay! so soli, i m�)llent ro in� out surfa mand�a boili , alilietwopu zleu old rada • wa)n't elijerc, « iomethin nt7 tain esberg f �asps and a i , noid", fo an� other ui ant is hterall " m,e, with tl with catwhiskers at one end. dned and powdered, cypridinae are also a great source of light. to make the stuff glow in the dark, all you do is add water. the light is blue, weird multishaded blue-some green in it, and some indigo-amazingly cool and nocturnal blue. on moonless or overcast nights, takeshi and ichizo take off all their clothes and splash each other with cypridina light, running and giggling under the palm trees. every morning, and sometimes evening too, the scatterbrained sui­ cidekicks mosey down to the palm-thatched radar shack to see if there's any american targets worth a crash-dive, anywhere inside their flying radius. but it's the same story every time. old kenosho the loony ra­ darman who's always brewing up a batch of that sake back in the trans­ mitter room, in a still he's hooked up to a magnetron tube in some fien­ dish-nip way that defies western science, every time the fellas show up this drunken old reprobate starts cackling, "no dying today! no dying today! so solly!" pointing at all the blank ppi scopes, green radii sweep­ ing silent round and round trailing clear webs of green shampoo, noth­ ing but surface return for more miles than you can fly, and of the fatal mandala both hearts would leap to, green carrier-blob screened eight­ fold in a circle of destroyer-strokes, nothing ... no, each morning's the same-only the odd whitecap and old hysterical kenosho, who by now is on the floor gagging on saliva and tongue, having his seizure, an ea­ gerly awaited part of each daily visit, each fit trying to top the one be­ fore, or at least bring in a new twist-a back-flip in the air, a gnaw or two after takeshi's blue-and-yellow patent wingtips, an improvised haiku: the lover leaps in the volcano! it's ten feet deep, and inactiveas the two pilots mug, giggle, and jump around trying to avoid the griz­ zled old radarman's thrashings-what? you didn't like the haiku. it wasn't ethereal enough? not japanese at all? in fact it sounded like something right outa hollywood? well, captain-yes you, marine cap­ tain esberg from pasadena-you, have just had, the mystery insight! (gasps and a burst of premonitory applause) and so you-are our para­ noid ... for the day! (band burst into "button up your overcoat," or any other suitably paranoid up-tempo tune, as the bewildered contest­ ant is literally yanked to his feet and dragged out in the aisle by this m.c. with the gleaming face and rippling jaw). yes, it is a movie! an691 other world war ii situation comedy, and your chance, to find out what it's really like, because you-have won (drumroll, more gasps, more applauding and whistling) an all-expense, one-way trip for one, to the movie's actual location, exotic puke-a-hook-a-look-i island! (the or­ chestra's ukulele section taking up now a tinkling reprise of that "white man welcome" tune we last heard in london being directed at ceza rozsavolgyi) on a giant twa constellation! you'll while your nights away chasing vampire mosquitoes away from your own throat! getting blind lost, out in the middle of torrential tropical downpours! scooping rat turds out of the enlisted men's water barrel! but it won't be all nighttime giddiness and excitement, captain, because daytimes, up at five a.m. sharp, you'll be out making the acquaintance of the kamikaze zero you'll be flying! getting all checked out on those controls, making sure you know just where that bomb-safety-release is! a-ha-hand of course, trying to stay out of the way, of those two nonsensical nips, takeshi and ichizo! as they go about their uproarious weekly adven­ tures, seemingly oblivious to your presence, and the frankly ominous im­ plications of your day's routine. . . . streets strips of insulation hang up in the morning fog, after a night of moon brightening and darkening as if by itself, because the blowing fog was so smooth, so hard to see. now, when the wind blows, yellow sparks will spill away with a rattlesnake buzz from the black old fraying wires, against a sky gray as a hat. green glass insulators go cloudy and blind in the day. wood poles lean and smell old: thirty-year-old wood. tarry transformers hum aloft. as if it will really be a busy day. in the middle distance poplars just emerge out of the haze. it could have been the semlower strasse, in stralsund. the windows have the same ravaged look: the insides of all the rooms seem to've been gutted black. perhaps there is a new bomb that can destroy only the in­ sides of structures ... no ... it was in greifswald. across some wet railroad tracks were derricks, superstructure, tackle, smells of canalside ... hafenstrasse in greifswald, down over his back fell the cold shadow of some massive church. but isn't that the petritor, that stunted brick tower-arch straddling the alleyway ahead . . . it could be the slii­ terstrasse in the old part of rostock . . . or the wandfarberstrasse in liineburg, with pulleys high up on the brick gables, openwork weather­ cocks up at the very peaks . . . why was he looking upward? upward from any of a score of those northern streets, one morning, in the fog. the farther north, the plainer things grow. there's one gutter, down the 692 i middle of and there wiw starling , narbor, from but in each toremain'\o i u)ed for. ' ' , there were ofiliese buildl t itood, and li te and )ome die cler�en,\i .' were �oing to it reilly haw even in a. t �emoon co� oronedav of r i i lrhock circlir. chewed, , . aoorned horemauser at lino or )hadow but who)soff�ut\,! 1 throu�h ilieli �ast ilie row oacco·stmed, � fuerr n]uht·pa hurt"" at least one , found for eier, { \�ili repre.� mi�htn)t we lit .. in one 0 rery cobble 01 a �ant whi , white pubic middle of the alley, where the rain runs off. cobbles are laid straighter and there aren't as many cigarettes to be had. garrison-churches echo with starlings. to come into a northern zone town is to enter a strange harbor, from the sea, on a foggy day. but in each of these streets, some vestige of humanity, of earth, has to remain. no matter what has been done to it, no matter what it's been used for. ... there were men called "army chaplains." they preached inside some of these buildings. there were actually soldiers, dead now, who sat or stood, and listened. holding on to what they could. then they went out, and some died before they got back inside a garrison-church again. clergymen, working for the army, stood up and talked to the men who were going to die about god, death, nothingness, redemption, salvation. it really happened. it was quite common. even in a street used for that, still there will be one time, one dyed afternoon (coaltar-impossible orange-brown, clear all the way through), or one day of rain and clearing before bedtime, and in the yard one hol­ lyhock, circling in the wind, fresh with raindrops fat enough to be chewed . . . one face by a long sandstone wall and the scuffle of all the doomed horses on the other side, one hair-part thrown into blue shad­ ows at a turn of her head-one busful of faces passing through in the middle of the night, no one awake in the quiet square but the driver, the ortsschutz sentry in some kind of brown, official-looking uniform, old mauser at sling arms, dreaming not of the enemy outside in the swamp or shadow but of home and bed, strolling now with his civilian friend who's off-duty, can't sleep, under the trees full of road-dust and night, through their shadows on the sidewalks, playing a harmonica . . . down past the row of faces in the bus, drowned-man green, insomniac, to­ bacco-starved, scared, not of tomorrow, not yet, but of this pause in their night-passage, of how easy it will be to lose, and how much it will hurt.... at least one moment of passage, one it will hurt to lose, ought to be found for every street now indifferently gray with commerce, with war, with repression ... finding it, learning to cherish what was lost, mightn't we find some way back? in one of these streets, in the morning fog, plastered over two slip­ pery cobblestones, is a scrap of newspaper headline, with a wirephoto of a giant white cock, dangling in the sky straight downward out of a white pubic bush. the letters mbdro roshi appear above with the logo of some occupation newspaper, a grinning glamour girl riding astraddle the cannon <of a tank, steel penis with slot­ ted serpent head, 3rd armored treads 'n' triangle on a sweater rippling across her tits. the white image has the same coherence, the hey-iookit­ me smugness, as the cross does. it is not only a sudden white genital onset in the sky-it is also, perhaps, a tree. . . . slothrop sits on a curbstone watching it, and the letters, and girl with steel cock waving hi fellas, as the fog whitens into morning, and figures with carts, or dogs, or bicycles go by in brown-gray outlines, wheezing, greeting briefly in fog-flattened voices, passing. he doesn't remember sitting on the curb for so long staring at the picture. but he did. at the instant it happened, the pale virgin was rising in the east, head, shoulders, breasts, 17° 36' down to her maidenhead at the hori­ zon. a few doomed japanese knew of her as some western deity. she loomed in the eastern sky gazing down at the city about to be sacrificed. the sun was in leo. the fireburst came roaring and sovereign. listening to the toilet the basic idea is that they will come and shut off the water first. the cryptozoa who live around the meter will be paralyzed by the great in­ break of light from overhead ... then scatter like hell for lower" darker, wetter. shutting the water off interdicts the toilet: with only one tankful left, you really can't get rid of much of anything any more, dope, shit, documents, they've stopped the inflow/outflow and here you are trapped inside their frame with your wastes piling up, ass hang­ ing out all over their movieola viewer, waiting for their editorial blade. reminded, too late, of how dependent you are on them, for neglect if not good will: their neglect is your freedom. but when they do come on it's like society-gig apollos, striking the lyre zonggg everything freezes. the sweet, icky chord hangs in the air . . . there is no way to be at ease with it. if you try the "are you quite finished, su­ perintendent?" gambit, the man will answer, "no, as a matter of fact ... no, you nasty little wet-mouthed prig, i'm not half finished, not with you.... " so it's good policy always to have the toilet valve cracked a bit, to maintain some flow through the toilet so when it stops you'll have that extra minute or two. which is not the usual paranoia of waiting for a knock, or a phone to ring: no, it takes a particular kind of mental illness to sit and listen for a cessation of noise. butimagine ilirough out us to know , which can c aeilier, for �j millionmu deen bam into ie)) it chan except iliat r ��here, becau �as� a ve0' � lar �iace, near rrom ou�ide ilieroint of �rt, between t �ted ind!\id �iaceout at;) e nvetedsolid in uc.. ,soon. on ,es, ah yes out� at which ins �und·�hadow imagine this very elaborate scientific lie: that sound cannot travel through outer space. well, but suppose it can. suppose they don't want us to know there is a medium there, what used to be called an "aether," which can carry sound to every part of the earth. the soniferous aether. for millions of years, the sun has been roaring, a giant, furnace, 93 millionmile roar, so perfectly steady that generations of men have been born into it and passed out of it again, without ever hearing it. un­ less it changed, how would anybody know? except that at night now and then, in some part of the dark hemi­ sphere, because of eddies in the soniferous aether, there will come to pass a very shallow pocket of no-sound. for a few seconds, in a particu­ lar place, nearly every night somewhere in the world, sound-energy from outside is shut off. the roaring of the sun stops. for its brief life, the point of sound-shadow may come to rest a thousand feet above a de­ sert, between floors in an empty office building, or exactly around a seated individual in a working-class restaurant where they hose the place out at 3 every morning . . . it's all white tile, the chairs and tables riveted solid into the floor, food covered with rigid shrouds of clear plas­ tic . . . soon, from outside, rrrnnn! clank, drag, squeak of valve opening oh yes, ah yes, here are the men with the hoses to hose the place outat which instant, with no warning, the arousing feather-point of the sound-shadow has touched you, enveloping you in sun-silence for oh, let us say 2:36: 18 to 2:36:24, central war time, unless the location is dungannon, virginia, bristol, tennessee, asheville or franklin, north carolina, apalachicola, florida, or conceivably in murdo mackenzie, south dakota, or phillipsburg, kansas, or stockton, plainville, or ellis, kansas-yes sounds like a roll of honor don't it, being read off some­ place out on the prairie, foundry colors down the sky in long troughs, red and purple, darkening crowd of. civilians erect and nearly-touching as wheat stalks, and the one old man in black up at the microphone, reading off the towns of the war dead, dungannon . . . bristol . . . murdo mackenzie ... his white hair blown back by a sculpting thine­ alabaster-cities wind into leonine wreathing, his stained pored old face polished by wind, sandy with light, earnest outboard corners of his eye­ lids folding down as one by one, echoing out over the anvil prairie, the names of death-towns unreel, and surely bleicherode or blicero will be spoken any minute now.... well, you're wrong, champ-these happen to be towns all located on the borders of time zones, is all. ha, hal caught you with your hand in 695 your pants! go on, show us all what you were doing or leave the area, we don't need your kind around. there's nothing so loathsome as a sen­ timental surrealist. "now-the eastern towns we've listed are on eastern war time. all the other towns along the interface are on central. the western towns just read off are on central, while the other towns along that interface are on mountain. . . ." which is all our sentimental surrealist, leaving the area, gets to hear. just as well. he is more involved, or "unhealthily obsessed," if you like, with the moment of sun-silence inside the white tile greasy-spoon. it seems like a place he has been (kenosha, wisconsin?) already, though he can't remember in what connection. they called him "the kenosha kid," though this may be apocryphal. by now, the only other room he can remember being in was a two-color room, nothing but the two exact colors, for all the lamps, furniture, drapes, walls, ceiling, rug, radio, even book jackets in the shelves-everything was either (1) deep cheap-per­ fume aquamarine, or (2) creamy chocolate fbi-shoe brown. that may've been in kenosha, may not. if he tries he will remember, in a minute, how he got to the white tiled room half an hour before hose-out time. he is sitting with a coffee cup half full, heavy sugar and cream, crumbs of a pineapple danish under the saucer where his fingers can't reach. sooner or later he'll have to move the saucer to get them. he's just holding off. but it isn't sooner and it isn't later, because the sound-shadow comes down on him, settles around his table, with the invisible long vortex surfaces that brought it here swooping up away like whorls of an aetheric danish, audible only by virtue of accidental bits of sound-debris that may hap­ pen to be caught in the eddying, voices far away out at sea our position is two seven degrees two six minutes north, a woman crying in some high-pitched language, ocean waves in gale winds, a voice reciting in japanese, hi wa ri ni katazu, ri wa ho ni katazu, ho wa ken ni katazu, ken wa ten ni katazu, which is the slogan of a kamikaze unit, an ohka outfit-it means injustice cannot conquer principle, principle cannot conquer law, law cannot conquer power, power cannot conquer heaven. 696 hi,ri, and leave th sun has stop � olood, the t1 come into small public i underilie ha oul-betlerili inilies�' ilie� r 10 near, whalililier on rou� \\nat rounded b� a \' life in lime. \\ ilieticdrug in tnerr 5kljll�. 0, .. �1!1 willi lpe eres., , the, dream," the; �amin� catch dream," r hi ich�ocom leaves tabna c tune, twan�na emer�n \ilili settin� it up \\ time he's �o tm h;: \\' !chizo' 0 rowboat: hi, hi, ho, ken, 1 en go j ap-gibbering away on the long solar eddy and leave the kenosha kid at the riveted table, where the roaring of the sun has stopped. he is hearing, for the first time, the mighty river of his blood, the titan's drum of his heart. come into the bulbshine and sit with him, with the stranger at the small public table. it's almost hosing-out time. see if you can sneak in under the shadow too. even a partial eclipse is better than never finding out-better than cringing the rest of your life under the great vacuum in the sky they have taught you, and a sun whose silence you never get to hear. what if there is no vacuum? or if there is-what if they're using it on you? what if they find it convenient to preach an island of life sur­ rounded by a void? not just the earth in space, but your own individual life in time? what if it's in their interest to have you believing that? "he won't bother us for a while," they tell each other. "i just put him on the dark dream." they drink together, shoot very very syn­ thetic drugs into skin or blood, run incredible electronic waveforms into their skulls, directly into the brainstem, and backhand each other, play­ fully, with openmouth laugh-you know, don't you is in those ageless eyes ... they speak of taking so-and-so and "putting him on the dream." they use the phrase for each other too, in sterile tenderness, when bad news is passed, at the annual roasts, when the endless mind­ gaming catches a colleague unprepared-"boy, did we put him on the dream." you know, don't you? witty repartee ichizo comes out of the hut, sees takeshi in a barrel under some palm leaves taking a bath and singing "doo-doo-doo, doo-doo," some koto tune, twanging through his nose-ichizo screams runs back inside re­ emerging with a japanese hotchkiss machine gun, a model 92, begins setting it up with a lot of jujitsu grunting and eyepopping. about the time he's got the ammo belt poised, ready to riddle takeshi in the tub, takeshi: wait a minute, wait a minute! what's all this? ichizo: oh, it's you! i-thought it was general macarthur, in his­ rowboat! interesting weapon, the hotchkiss. comes in many nationalities, and manages to fit in ethnically wherever it goes. american hotchkisses are the guns that raked through the unarmed indians at wounded knee. on the lighter side, the racy 8 mm french hotchkiss when fired goes haw-haw-haw-haw, just as nasal and debonair as a movie star. as for our cousin john bull, a lot of british hotchkiss heavies were either resold 697 privately after world war i, or blowtorched. these melted machine guns will show up now and then in the strangest places. pirate prentice saw one in 1936, during his excursion with scorpia mossmoon, at the chelsea home of james jello, that year's king of bohemian clowns-but a minor king, from a branch prone to those loathsome inbred diseases, idiocy in the family, sexual peculiarities surfacing into public view at most inappropriate times (a bare penis dangling out of a dumpster one razor-clear and rainwashed morning, in an industrial back-street about to be swarmed up by a crowd of angry workers in buttontop baggy caps carrying spanners three feet long, kelly crowbars, lengths of chain, here's bareass crown prince porfirio with a giant halo of aluminum­ shaving curls on his head, his mouth made up with black grease, his soft buttocks squirming against the cold refuse picking up steel splinters that sting deliciously, his eyes sultry and black as his lips, but oh dear what's this, oh how embarrassing here they come around the corner he can smell the rabble from here, though they are not too sure about porfirio -the march pauses in some confusion as these most inept revolutionar­ ies fall to arguing whether the apparition is a diversionary nuisance planted here by the management, or whether he's real decadent aris­ tocracy to be held for real ransom and if so how much . . . while up on the rooftops, out from the brick and corrugated doorways begin to ap­ pear brown government troops manning british hotchkisses which were not melted down, but bought up by machinegun jobbers and sold to a number of minor governments around the world). it may have been in memory of crown prince porfirio that day of massacre that james jello kept a melted hotchkiss in his rooms-or it may've been only an­ other flight of grotesquerie on dear james's part you know, he's so un­ aware.... heart-to-heart, man-to-man -son, been wondering about this, ah, "screwing in" you kids are doing. this matter of the, shooting electricity into head, ha-ha? waves, pop. not just raw electricity. that's fer drips! -yes, ah, waves. "keying waves," right? ha-hah. vh, tell me, son, what's it like? you know toe been something of a doper all m'life, a-and-oh pop. cripes. it isn't like dope at all! -well we got off on some pretty good "vacations" we called them then, some pretty "weird" areas they got us into's a matter of fact­ -but you always came back, didn't you. -what? 698 _li�en rose somed -ho, hoi about� you nuh? �1·ma� us complete into ilie �fa stored iliere. rstood that this would still be here when you got back, just the same, exactly the same, right? -well ha-ha guess that's why we called 'em vacations, son! cause you always do come back to old realityland, don't you. -you always did. -listen tyrone, you don't know how dangerous that stuff is. suppose someday you just plug in and go away and never come back? eh? -ho, hot don't i wish! what do you think every electrofreak dreams about? you're such an old fuddyduddy! a-and who sez it's a dream, huh? m-maybe it exists. maybe there is a machine to take us away, take us completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of the skull 'n' into the machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's got stored there. it could decide who it would suck out, a-and when. dope never gave you immortality. you hadda come back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! but we can live forever, in a clean, honest, purified electroworld-shit that's what i get, havin' a double virgo fer a son. some characteristics of imipolex g imipolex g is the first plastic that is actually erectile. under suitable stimuli, the chains grow cross-links, which stiffen the molecule and in­ crease intermolecular attraction so that this peculiar polymer runs far outside the known phase diagrams, from limp rubbery amorphous to amazing perfect tessellation, hardness, brilliant transparency, high re­ sistance to temperature, weather, vacuum, shock of any kind (slowly gleaming in the void. silver and black. curvewarped reflections of stars flowing across, down the full length of, round and round in meridians exact as the meridians of acupuncture. what are the stars but points in the body of god where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing? shadows of the creature's bones and ducts-leaky, wounded, irradiated white-mingling in with its own. it is entangled with the bones and ducts, its own shape determined by how the erection of the plastic shall proceed: where fast and where slow, where painful and where slithery-cool ... whether areas shall exchange characteristics of hardness and brilliance, whether some areas should be allowed to flow over the surface so that the passage will be a caress, where to orches­ trate sudden discontinuities-blows, wrenchings-in among these more caressive moments). evidently the stimulus would have had to be electronic. alternatives for signaling to the plastic surface were limited: (a) a thin matrix of wires, forming a rather close-set coordinate system 699 , ." �.,_ ... f' -----......,.,_,:�." ..... � .. _�:'.:_ "'_'�-j.",_ ... :::=:..:..._�.. r-��.�"i.; / 1f'� • .-i i j: "' ------._ over the imipolectic surface, whereby erecrue ana otner collllllauus could be sent to an area quite specific, say on the order of % em", (b) a beam-scanning system-or several-analogous to the well­ known video electron stream, modulated with grids and deflection plates located as needed on the surface (or even below the outer layer of imipolex, down at the interface with what lies just beneath: with what has been inserted or what has actually grown itself a skin of imi­ polex g, depending which heresy you embrace. we need not dwell here on the primary problem, namely that everything below the plastic film does after all lie in the region of uncertainty, except to emphasize to beginning students who may be prone to schwarrnerei, that terms refer­ ring to the subimipolexity such as "core" and "center of internal en­ ergy" possess, outside the theoretical, no more reality than do terms such as "supersonic region" or "center of gravity" in other areas of science), (c) alternatively, the projection, onto the surface, of an electronic "image," analogous to a motion picture. this would require a minimum of three projectors, and perhaps more. exactly how many is shrouded in another order of uncertainty: the so-called otyiyumbu indeterminacy relation ("probable functional derangement yr resulting from physical modification � (x,y,z) is directly proportional to a higher power p of sub-imipolectic derangement yb' p being not necessarily an integer and determined empirically"), in which subscript r is for rakete, and b for blicero. d d d d d d d meantime, tchitcherine has found it necessary to abandon his smegma­ gathering stake-out on the argentine anarchists. the heat, alias nikolai ripov of the commissariat for intelligence activities, is in town and closing in. the faithful dzabajev, in terror or disgust, has gone off across the cranberry bogs on a long wine binge with two local derelicts, and may never be back. rumor sez he is cutting a swath these days across the zone in a stolen american special services getup, posing as frank sinatra. comes into town finds a tavern and starts crooning out on the sidewalk, pretty soon there's a crowd, subdeb cuties each a $65 fine and worth every penny dropping in epileptiform seizures into selfless heaps of cable-stitching, rayon pleats and xmastree applique. it works. it's al­ ways good for free wine, an embarrassment of wine, rolling fuder and fass in a rumbling country procession through the sandy streets, wher700 matter�" "but \)u "if i �\'er "you don "that d "i don' ever me urui1kal u� � 111 t;;t;; lulu themselves. never occurs to anybody to ask what frank sinatra's doing flanked by this pair of wasted rumdums. nobody doubts for a minute that it is sinatra. town hepcats usually take the other two for a comedy team. while nobles are crying in their nights' chains, the squires sing. the terrible politics of the grail can never touch them. song is the magic cape. tchitcherine understands that he is finally alone now. whatever is to find him will find him alone. he feels obliged to be on the move, though there's noplace for him to go. now, too late, the memory of wimpe, longago ig farben v-mann, finds him. tags along for the run. tchitcherine was hoping he might find a dog. a dog would have been ideal, a perfect honesty to calibrate his own against, day to day, till the end. a dog would have been good to have along. but maybe the next best thing is an albatross with no curse attached: an amiable memory. young tchitcherine was the one who brought up political narcotics. opiates of the people. wimpe smiled back. an old, old smile to chill even the living fire in earth's core. "marxist dialectics? that's not an opiate, eh?" "it's the antidote." "no." it can go either way. the dope salesman may know everything that's ever going to happen to tchitcherine, and decide it's no use-or, out of the moment's velleity, lay it right out for the young fool. "the basic problem," he proposes, "has always been getting other people to die for you. what's worth enough for a man to give up his life? that's where religion had the edge, for centuries. religion was al­ ways about death. it was used not as an opiate so much as a technique -it got people to die for one particular set of beliefs about death. per­ verse, natiirlich, but who are you to judge? it was a good pitch while it worked. but ever since it became impossible to die for death, we have had a secular version-yours. die to help history grow to its predes­ tined shape. die knowing your act will bring a good end a bit closer. revolutionary suicide, fine. but look: if history's changes are inevitable, why not not die? vaslav? if it's going to happen anyway, what does it matter?" "but you haven't ever had the choice to make, have you." "if i ever did, you can be sure-" "you don't know. not till you're there, wimpe. you can't say." "that doesn't sound very dialectical." "i don't know what it is." 701 -/ .� -, /' "then, right up till the point of decision," wimpe curious but care­ ful, "a man could still be perfectly pure ... " "he could be anything. i don't care. but he's only real at the points of decision. the time between doesn't matter." "real to a marxist." "no. real to himself." wimpe looks doubtful. "i've been there. you haven't." shh, shh. a syringe, a number z6 point. bloods stifling in the brown­ wood hotel suite. to chase or worry this argument is to become word­ enemies, and neither man really wants to. oneirine theophosphate is one way around the problem. (tchitcherine: "you mean thiophosphate, don't you?" thinks indicating the presence of sulfur.... wimpe: "i mean theophosphate, vaslav," indicating the presence of god.) they shoot up: wimpe eying the water-tap nervously, recalling tchaikovsky, salmonella, a fast medley of whistlable tunes from the pathetique. but tchitcherine has eyes only for the point, its german precision, its fine steel grain. soon he will come to know a circuit of aid stations and field hospitals, as good for postwar nostalgia as a circuit of peacetime spas­ army surgeons and dentists will bond and hammer patent steel for life into his suffering flesh, and pick out what has entered it by violence with an electromagnetic device bought between the wars from schu­ mann of dusseldorf, with a light bulb and adjustable reflector, z-axis locking handles and a complete set of weird-shaped polschuhen, iron pieces to modify the shape of the magnetic field . . . but there in rus­ sia, that night with wimpe, was his first taste-his initiation into the bodyhood of steel . . . no way to separate this from the theophosphate, to separate vessels of steel from the ungodly insane rush. . . . for 15 minutes the two of them run screaming all over the suite, stag­ gering around in circles, lined up with the rooms' diagonals. there is in laszlo jamf' s celebrated molecule a particular twist, the so-called "po­ kler singularity," occurring in a certain crippled indole ring, which later oneirinists, academician and working professional alike, are generally agreed is responsible for the hallucinations which are unique to this drug. not only audiovisual, they touch all senses, equally. and they recur. certain themes, "mantic archetypes" (as jollifox of the cam­ bridge school has named them), will find certain individuals again and again, with a consistency which has been well demonstrated in the labo­ ratory (see wobb and whoaton, "mantic archetype distribution among middle-class university students," j. oneir. psy. pharm., xxiii, pg. 406--453). because analogies with the ghost-life exist, this recurrence 702 phenome sorts ofh accessible definite n �est article iliem lime d ilier are ani rlausible do iliesarne rou earuer, a prin " ,onr ruatelv into" jee! t� subjet lubeu!. \liil oerre��t about �l marhble, uk ( ilie leadin� ed iliin� in ilie one, but at phenomenon l!� jii..lllliu!'if\y titi, .. l_ _ jargon, as "haunting." whereas other sorts of hallucinations tend to flow by, related in deep ways that aren't accessible to the casual dopefiend, these oneirine hauntings show a definite narrative continuity, as clearly as, say, the average reader's di­ gest article. often they are so ordinary, so conventional-jeaach calls them "the dullest hallucinations known to psychopharmacology"-that they are only recognized as hauntings through some radical though plausible violation of possibility: the presence of the dead, journeys by the same route and means where one person will set out later but arrive earlier, a printed diagram which no amount of light will make readable . . . . on recognizing that he is being haunted, the subject enters imme­ diately into "phase two," which, though varying in intensity from sub­ ject to subject, is always disagreeable: often sedation (0.6 mg atropine subcut.) will be necessary, even though oneirine is classified as a cns depressant. about the paranoia often noted under the drug, there is nothing re­ markable. like other sorts of paranoia, it is nothing less than the onset, the leading edge, of the discovery that everything is connected, every­ thing in the creation, a secondary illumination-not yet blindingly one, but at least connected, and perhaps a route in for those like tchitcherine who are held at the edge. . . . tchitcherine's haunting as to whether the man is or isn't nikolai ripov: he does arrive the way ripov is said to: heavy and inescapable. he wants to talk, only to talk. but somehow, as they progress, into the indoor corridor-confusions of words, again and again he will trick tchitcherine into uttering her­ esy, into damning himself. "i'm here to help you see clearly. if you have doubts, we should air them, honestly, man to man. no reprisals. hell, don't you think i've had doubts? even stalin's had them. we all have." "it's all right though. it isn't anything i can't handle." "but you're not handling it, or they wouldn't have sent me out here. don't you think they know when someone they care for is in trouble?" tchitcherine doesn't want to ask. he strains against it with the mus­ cles of his heart-cage. the pain of cardiac neurosis goes throbbing down his left arm. but he asks, feeling his breath shift a little, "was i sup­ posed to die?" "when, vaslav?" "in the war." "oh, vaslav." 703 -� _..-/ .f,\ "'---/ "you wanted to hear what was troubling me. "but don't you see how they'll take that? come, bring it all the way out. we lost twenty million souls, vaslav. it's not an accusation you can make lightly. they'd want documentation. even your life might be in danger-" "i'm not accusing anyone ... please don't ... i only want to know if i am supposed to die for them." "no one wants you to die." soothing. "why do you think that?" so it is coaxed out of him by the patient emissary, whining, desperate, too many words-paranoid suspicions, unappeasable fears, damning himself, growing the capsule around his person that will isolate him from the community forever. . . . "yet that's the very heart of history," the gentle voice talking across twilight, neither man having risen to light a lamp. "the inmost heart. how could everything you know, all you've seen and touched of it, be fed by a lie?" "but life after death . . ." "there is no life after death." tchitcherine means he's had to fight to believe in his mortality. as his body fought to accept its steel. fight down all his hopes, fight his way into that bitterest of freedoms. not till recently did he come to look for comfort in the dialectical ballet of force, counterforce, collision, and new order-not till the war came and death appeared across the ring, tchitcherine's first glimpse after the years of training: taller, more beau­ tifully muscled, less waste motion than he'd ever expected--only in the ring, feeling the terrible cold each blow brought with it, only then did he turn to a theory of history-of all pathetic cold comforts-to try and make sense of it. "the americans say, 'there are no atheists in foxholes.' you were never of the faith, vaslav. you had a deathbed conversion, out of fear." "is that why you want me dead now?" "not dead. you're not much use dead." two more olive-drab agents have come in, and stand watching tchitcherine. they have regular, un­ remarkable faces. this is, after all, an oneirine haunting. mellow, ordi­ nary. the only tipoff to its unreality isthe radical-though-plausible-violation-of-realityall three men are smiling at him now. there is no violation. it's a scream, but it comes out as a roar. he leaps at ripov, nearly nails him with his fist too, but the others, with faster reflexes than he counted on, have come up either side to hold him. he can't believe their strength. through the nerves of hip and ass he feels his nagant beingsll' man girl ber, in � "you're ideas whjc hth!g �lil!.lul lilil!jlllllll )ll\;:)) jullu))l0)lclgjl? ,vljui\j feels his own cock sliding out of a ger­ man girl he can't remember now, oil the last sweetwine morning he saw her, in the last warm bed of the last morning departure. . . . "you're a child, vaslav. only making believe that you understand ideas which are really beyond you. we have to speak very simply for you." in central asia he was told of the functions of moslem angels. one is to examine the recently dead. after the last mourner has gone, angels come to the grave and interrogate the dead one in his faith. . . . there is another figure now, at the edge of the room. she is tchitch­ erine's age, and in uniform. her eyes don't want to say anything to tchitcherine. she only watches. no music heard, no summer journey taken . . . no horse seen against the steppe in the last daylight. . . . he doesn't recognize her. not that it matters. not at this level of things. but it's galina, come back to the cities, out of the silences after all, in again to the chain-link fields of the word, shining, running secure and always close enough, always tangible.... "why were you hunting your black brother?" ripov manages to make the question sound courteous. oh. nice of you to ask, ripov. why was i? "when it began . . . a long time ago-at first . . . i thought i was being punished. passed over. i blamed him." "now?" "i don't know." "what made you think he was your target?" "who else's would he be?" "vaslav. will you never rise above? these are old barbarisms. blood lines, personal revenge. you think this has all been arranged for you, to ease your little, stupid lusts." all right. all right. "yes. probably. what of it?" "he isn't your target. others want him." "so you've been letting me-" "so far. yes." dzabajev could have told you. that sodden asiatic is first and last an enlisted man. he knew. officers. fucking officer mentality. you do all the work, then they come in, to wrap it up, to get the glory. "you're taking it away from me." "you can go home." tchitcherine has been watching the other two. he sees now that they are in american uniform, and probably haven't understood a word. he holds out his empty hands, his sunburned wrists, for a last application of steel. ripov, in the act of turning to leave, c:1'p'pv(ll� �ul pll�t;u. vll. l�u, no. you have thirty days' survivor's leave. you have survived, vaslav. you're to report to tsagi when you get back to moscow, that's all. there'll be another assignment. we'll be taking german rocket person­ nel out to the desert. to central asia. i imagine they'll need an old central asia hand out there." tchitcherine understands that in his dialectic, his own life's unfold­ ing, to return to central asia is, operationally, to die. they have gone. the woman's iron face, at the very last, did not turn back. he is alone in a gutted room, with the plastic family toothbrushes still in their holders on the wall, melted, strung downward in tendrils of many colors, bristles pointing to every black plane and corner and soot­ blinded window. o 0 0 0 0 0 0 the dearest nation of all is one that will survive no longer than you and i, a common movement at the mercy of death and time: the ad hoc adventure. -resolutions of the gross suckling conference north? what searcher has ever been directed north? what you're sup­ posed to be looking for lies south-those dusky natives, right? for dan­ ger and enterprise they send you west, for visions, east. but what's north? the escape route of the anubis. the kirghiz light. the herero country of death. ensign morituri, carroll eventyr, thomas gwenhidwy, and roger mexico are sitting at a table on the redbrick terrace of der grob sau­ gling, an inn by the edge of a little blue holstein lake. the sun makes the water sparkle. the housetops are red, the steeples are white. every­ thing is miniature, neat, gently pastoral, locked into the rise and fall of seasons. contrasting wood x s on closed doors. the brink of autumn. a cow sez moo. the milkmaid farts at the milk pail, which echoes with a very slight clang, and the geese honk or hiss. the four envoys drink wa­ tered moselle and talk mandalas. the rocket was fired southward, westward, eastward. but not north­ ward-not so far. fired south, at antwerp, the bearing was about 1730• 706 want, "i would be lo�cof m �o we e come to be and specula men�in� temtomake �on� each 0 �aphical into account. evenclosert w�cheren ! e"",��, -":iuu:""o :""'';:���b :"� "'''��'-'�'-''''iinde, 0720. fired west, at london, about 2600. working it out with the parallel rulers, the missing (or, if you want, "resultant") bearing comes out to something like 3540. this would be the firing implied by all the others, a ghost-firing which, in the logic of mandalas, either has occurred, most-secretly, or will occur. so the conferees at the gross suckling conference here, as it will come to be known, sit around a map with their instruments, cigarettes and speculations. sneer not. here is one of the great deductive mo­ ments in postwar intelligence. mexico is holding out for a weighting sys­ tem to make vector lengths proportional to the actual number of firings along each one. thomas gwenhidwy, ever sensitive to events in geo­ graphical space, wants to take the 1944 blizna firings (also eastward) into account, which would pull the arrow northward from 3540-and even closer to true north if the firings at london and norwich from walcheren and staveren are also included. evidence and intuition-and maybe a residue of uncivilizable terror that lies inside us, every one-point to 0000: true north. what better direction to fire the ooooo? trouble is, what good's a bearing, even a mythic-symmetric bearing, without knowing where the rocket was fired from to begin with? you have a razor-edge, 280 km long, sweeping east/west across the zone's pocked face, endlessly sweeping, obsessive, dithering, glittering, un­ bearable, never corning to rest. . . . well, under the sign of the gross suckling. swaying full-color pic­ ture of a loathsomely fat drooling infant. in one puddinglike fist the gross suckling clutches a dripping hamhock (sorry pigs, nothing per­ sonal), with the other he reaches out for a human mother's nipple that emerges out into the picture from the left-hand side, his gaze arrested by the approaching tit, his mouth open-a gleeful look, teeth pointed and itching, a glaze of foodmunchmunchyesgobblemmm over his eyes. der grob saugling, 23rd card of the zone's trumps major.... roger likes to think of it as a snap of jeremy as a child. jeremy, who knows all, has forgiven jessica her time with roger. he's had an outing or two himself, and can understand, he's of liberal mind, the war after all has taken down certain barriers, victorianisms you might say (a tale brought to you by the same jokers who invented the famous polyvinyl chloride raincoat) ... and what's this, roger, he's trying to impress you? his eyelids make high, amiable crescents as he leans forward (smaller chap than roger thought) clutching his glass, sucking on the most tasteless pipe roger has ever seen, a reproduction in brier of win­ ston churchill's head for a bowl, no detail is spared, even a cigar in its ---� / �, _./ . mouth with a little hole drilled down it so that some of the smoke can actually seep out the end . . . it is a servicemen's pub in cuxhaven here, the place used to be a marine salvage yard, so the lonesome sol­ diers sit dreaming and drinking among all that nautical junk, not at the same level as in one's usual outdoor cafe, no, some are up in tilted hatchways, or dangling in boatswain's chairs, crow's-nests, sitting over their bitter among the chain, tackle, strakework, black iron fittings. it's night. lanterns have been brought out to the tables. soft little nocturnal waves hush on the shingle. late waterfowl cry out over the lake. "but will it ever get us, jeremy, you and me, that's the ques­ shun. . . " mexico has been uttering these oracular-often, as at the club today for lunch, quite embarrassing-bits of his ever since he showed up. "er, will what ever get me, old chap?" it's been old chap all day. "havcn't=-ch'ever felt something wanted to gesh you, jeremy?" "get me." he's drunk. he's insane. i obviously can't let him near jessica these math chaps they're like oboe players it affects the brain or something.... aha, but, once a month, jeremy, even jeremy, dreams: about a gam­ bling debt . . . different sorts of collectors keep arriving . . . he can­ not remember the debt, the opponent he lost to, even the game. he senses a great organization behind these emissaries. its threats are al­ ways left open, left for jeremy to complete . . . each time, terror has come welling up through the gap, crystal terror. . . . good, good. the other sure-fire calibration test has already been sprung on jeremy-at a prearranged spot in a park, two unemployed . augustes leap out in whiteface and working-clothes, and commence belting each other with gigantic (7 or 8 feet long) foam rubber penises, cunningly detailed, all in natural color. these phancy phalli have proven to be a good investment. roger and seaman bodine (when he's in town) have outdrawn the ensa shows. it is a fine source of spare change-multitudes will gather at the edges of these north german vil­ lages to watch the two zanies whack away. granaries, mostly empty, poke up above the rooftops now and then, stretching a wood gallows­ arm against the afternoon sky. soldiers, civilians, and children. there is a lot of laughter. seems people can be reminded of titans and fathers, and laugh. it isn't as funny as a pie in the face, but it's at least as pure. yes, giant rubber cocks are here to stay as part of the arsenal. . . . what jessica said-hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of 708 want to pu "\\'e\'e rocket." "but \\t "'\11\'� "you're . ,i �,," \ ,.� --= ---:;4'---� i l,,/..//f:: . ..� i ,,", � leuer§ 1be1lwceeldl m®llid!�= 'we're going to be married. we're trying very hard to have a baby." all at once there is nothing but his asshole between gravity and roger. "i don't care. have his baby. i'll love you both-just come with me jess, please . . . i need you. . . ." she flips a red lever on her intercom. far away a buzzer goes off. "se­ curity." her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the quonset office with a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. security. her magic word, her spell against demons. "jess-" shit is he going to cry? he can feel it building like an or­ gasmwho saves him (or interferes with his orgasm)? why, jeremy himself. old beaver shows up and waves off the heat, who go surly, fangflashing back to masturbating into crime does not pay comics, gazing dreamy at guardroom pinups of j. edgar hoover or whatever it was they were up to, and the romantic triangle are suddenly all to have lunch together at the club. lunch together? is this noel coward or some shit? jessica at the last minute is overcome by some fictitious female syndrome which both men guess to be morning-sickness, roger figuring she'll do the most spiteful thing she can think of, jeremy seeing it as a cute little private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo. so that leaves the fellas alone, to talk briskly about operation backfire, which is the british program to assemble some a4s and fire them out into the north sea. what else are they going to talk about? "why?" roger keeps asking, trying to piss jeremy off. "why do you want to put them together and fire them?" "we've captured them, haven't we? what does one do with a rocket?" "but why?" "why? damn it, to see, obviously. jessica tells me you're-ah-a math chap?" "little sigma, times p of s-over-little-sigma, equals one over the square root of two pi, times e to the minus s squared over two little­ sigma squared." "good lord." laughing, hastily checking out the room. "it is an old saying among my people." jeremy knows how to handle this. roger is invited to dinner in the evening, an intimate informal party at the home of stefan utgarthaloki, an ex-member of management at the krupp works here in cuxhaven. "you're welcome to bring a guest, of course," gnaws the eager beaver, j ' "there're a lot of snazzy naafis about, it woman t de too olidcult ror you to-" "informal means lounge suit, eh?" interrupts roger. too bad, he hasn't got one. the prospects of being nabbed tonight are good. a party that includes (a) an operation backfire figure, (b) a krupp executive, must necessarily then include (c) at least one ear to the corporate grape­ vine that's heard of the urinating incident in clive mossmoon's office. if roger only knew what beaver and his friends really have in mind! he does take a guest: seaman bodine, who has caused to be brought him from the panama canal zone (where the lock workers wear them as a uniform, in amazing tropical-parrot combinations of yellow, green, lavender, vermilion) a zoot suit of unbelievable proportions-the pointed lapels have to be reinforced with coat-hanger stays because they extend so far outboard of the rest of the suit-underneath his purple­ on-purple satin shirt the natty tar is actually wearing a corset, squeezing his waist in to a sylphlike 42 inches to allow for the drastic suppression of the jacket, which then falls to bodine's knees quintuple-vented in yards of kilt-style pleats that run clear back up over his ass. the pants are belted under his armpits and pegged down to something like ten inches, so he has to use hidden zippers to get his feet through. the whole suit is blue, not suit-blue, no-really blue: paint-blue. it is im­ mediately noticed everywhere it goes. at gatherings it haunts the pe­ ripheral vision, making decent small-talk impossible. it is a suit that forces you either to reflect on matters as primary as its color, or feel su­ perficial. a subversive garment, all right. "just you and me, podner?" sez bodine. "ain't that kind of cutting it a little close?" "listen," roger chuckling unhealthily at what's also just occurred to him, "we can't even bring those big rubber cocks along. tonite, we're going to have to use our wits!" "tell you what, i'll just send a motorcycle out to putzi's, round us up a goon squad, and-" "you know what? you've lost your sense of adventure. yeh. you didn't use to be like this, you know." "look old buddy," pronouncing it in navy dialect: buddih, "c'mon, buddih. putcherself in my shoes." "i might, if they weren't ... that ... shade of yellow-" "just a humble guy," the swarthy doughboy of the deep scratching in his groin after an elusive crab with a horn finger, rippling the ballooning pleats and fabric of his trousers, "just a freckleface kid from albert lea, minnesota, down there on route 69 where the speed limit's lickety-split 710 ever recomn rou're still �an��ter hit. ili� iliat stoll 'n' iliat'� a g! "bodine. di i "�hit. i can evefjihing. a� . ana assay it. i j f�e-ilief"f luclanl varnplf eary�,� 10 zone.i all .lut;j.h. .lv.l.l5' j�"'''' ... � j �&& j it in the zone here, kind of a freckleface kid used a safety pin through a cork for a catwhisker and stayed up listened to the voices coast to coast before i was 10 and none of them ever recommended gettin' into any of them gang wars, buddih. be glad you're still so fuckin' naive, rog, wait'll you see your first european­ gangster hit, they like to use 3 rounds: head, stomach, and heart. you dig that stomach? over here stomach's no second-class organ, podner 'n' that's a good autumn kind of thought to keep in mind." "bodine, didn't you desert? that's a death-sentence, isn't it?" "shit, i can square that. but i'm only a cog. don't go thinking i know everything. all i know is my trade. i can show you how to wash coke and assay it, i can feel a gem and tell you from the temperature if it's a fake-the fake won't suck as much heat from your body, 'glass is a re­ luctant vampire,' ancient dealers' saying, a-and i can spot funnymoney easy as e on an eye chart, i got one of the best visual memories in the zone-" so, roger drags him off, monologuing, in his zoot suit, to the krupp wingding. coming in the door, first thing bodine notices is this string quartet that's playing tonight. the second violin happens to be gustav schla­ bone, saure bummer's frequent unwelcome doping partner, "captain horror," as he is affectionately but not inaccurately known around der platz-and playing viola is gustav's accomplice in suicidally depressing everybody inside 100 meters' radius wherever they drop in (who's that tapping and giggling at your door, fred and phyllis?), andre omnopon, of the feathery rilke mustaches and porky pig tattoo on stomach (which is becoming the "hep" thing lately: even back in the zone of the inte­ rior the american subdebs all think it's swoony). gustav and andre are the inner voices tonight. which is especially odd because on the pro­ gram is the suppressed quartet from the haydn op. 76, the so-called "kazoo" quartet in g-flat minor, which gets its name from the largo, cantabile e mesto movement, in which the inner voices are called to play kazoos instead of their usual instruments, creating problems of dy­ namics for cello and first violin that are unique in the literature. "you actually need to shift in places from a spiccato to a detache," bodine rapidly talking a corporate wife of some sort across the room toward the free-lunch table piled with lobster hors d'oeuvres and capon sand­ wiches-"less bow, higher up you understand, soften it-then there's also about a thousand ppp-to-hf blasts, but only the one, the notorious one, going the other way.... " indeed, one reason for the work's sup­ pression is this subversive use of sudden hf quieting to ppp. it's the touch of the wandering sound-shadow, the brennschluss of the sun. 711 they don't want you listening to too much or tnat scurr-c-at least nor tne way haydn presents it (a strange lapse in the revered composer's behav­ ior): cello, violin, alto and treble kazoos all rollicking along in a tune sounds like a song from the movie dr. jekyll and mr. hyde, "you should see me dance the polka," when suddenly in the middle of an odd bar the kazoos just stop completely, and the outer voices fall to plucking a non-melody that tradition sez represents two t sth-century village idi­ ots vibrating their lower lips. at each other. it goes on for 20, 40 bars, this feeb's pizzicato, middle-line kruppsters creak in the bowlegged vel­ vet chairs, bibuhbuhbibuhbuh this does not sound like haydn, mutti! reps from ici and ge angle their heads trying to read in the candle­ light the little programs lovingly hand-lettered by utgarthaloki's partner in life, frau utgarthaloki, nobody is certain what her first name is (which is ever so much help to stefan because it keeps them all on the defensive with her). she is a blonde image of your mother dead: if you have ever seen her travestied in beaten gold, the cheeks curving too far, deformed, the eyebrows too dark and whites too white, some zero in­ difference that in the end is truly evil in the way they've distorted her face, then you know the look: nalline slothrop just before her first mar­ tini is right here, in spirit, at this kruppfest. so is her son tyrone, but only because by now-early virgo-he has become one plucked alba­ tross. plucked, hell-stripped. scattered all over the zone. it's doubtful if he can ever be "found" again, in the conventional sense of "positively identified and detained." only feathers . . . redundant or regenerable organs, "which we would be tempted to classify under the 'hydra-pha­ nomen' were it not for the complete absence of hostility...."-na­ tasha raum, "regions of indeterminacy in albatross anatomy," pro­ ceedings of the international society of confessors to an enthusiasm for albatross nosology, winter 1936, great little magazine, they actually sent a correspondent to spain that winter, to cover that, there are issues devoted entirely to analyses of world economics, all clearly relevant to problems of albatross nosology-does so-called "night worm" belong among the pseudo-goldstrassian group, or is it properly considered­ indications being almost identical-a more insidious form of mopp's hebdomeriasis? well, if the counterforce knew better what those categories con­ cealed, they might be in a better position to disarm, de-penis and dis­ mantle the man. but they don't. actually they do, but they don't admit it. sad but true. they are as schizoid, as double-minded in the massive presence of money, as any of the rest of us, and that's the hard fact. the man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a 712 i toonin not german cal nl�ht it i du ll�tener tart �ets tickled crater fup i !old to valle lence dane that' th roger ha \ rune is an � � cession, hi meal ac whr.; :.����� ���, ':':'::':_:.. ::_'_ _a. las a cover known as the ego, and their mission in this world is bad shit. we do know what's going on, and we let it go on. as long as we can see them, stare at them, those massively moneyed, once in a while. as long as they allow us a glimpse, however rarely. we need that. and how they know it-how often, under what conditions. . . . we ought to be seeing much popular-magazine cover­ age on the order of the night rog and beaver fought over jessica while she cried in krupp's arms, and drool over every blurry photoroger must have been dreaming for a minute here of the sweaty eve­ nings of thermidor: the failed counterforce, the glamorous ex-rebels, half-suspected but still enjoying official immunity and sly love, camera­ worthy wherever they carry on . . . doomed pet freaks. they will use us. we will help legitimize them, though they don't need it really, it's another dividend for them, nice but not critical. . . . oh yes, isn't that exactly what they'll do. bringing roger now, at a less than appropriate time and place here in the bosom of the opposi­ tion, while his life's first authentic love is squirming only to get home and take another wad of jeremy's sperm so they'll make their day's quota-in the middle of all that he has to walk (ow, fuck) right into the interesting question, which is worse: living on as their pet, or death? it is not a question he has ever imagined himself asking seriously. it has come by surprise, but there's no sending it away now, he really does have to decide, and soon enough, plausibly soon, to feel the terror in his bowels. terror he cannot think away. he has to choose between his life and his death. letting it sit for a while is no compromise, but a decision to live, on their terms. . . . the viola is a ghost, grainy-brown, translucent, sighing in and out of the other voices. dynamic shifts abound. imperceptible lifts, pla­ tooning notes together or preparing for changes in loudness, what the germans call "breath-pauses," skitter among the phrases. perhaps to­ night it is due to the playing of gustav and andre, but after a while the listener starts actually hearing the pauses instead of the notes-his ear gets tickled the way your eye does staring at a recco map until bomb craters flip inside out to become muffins risen above the tin, or ridges fold to valleys, sea and land flicker across quicksilver edges-so the si­ lences dance in this quartet. a-and wait'll those kazoos come on! that's the background music for what is to transpire. the plot against roger has been formulated with shivering and giddy glee. seaman bo­ dine is an unexpected bonus. going in to dinner becomes a priestly pro­ cession, full of secret gestures and understandings. it is a very elaborate meal, according to the menu, full of releves, poissons, entremets. 713 "what's this 'uberraschungbraten' herer oearuan duume a:sk:s llt;l1t­ hand dinner companion constance flamp, loose-khakied newshound and toughtalkin' sweetheart of ev'ry gi from iwo to saint-lo. "why, just what it sez, boats," replies "commando connie," "that's german for 'surprise roast.' " "i'm hep," sez bodine. she has-maybe not meaning to-gestured with her eyes-perhaps, pointsman, there is such a thing as the kind­ ness-reflex (how many young men has she seen go down since'42?) that now and then, also beyond the zero, survives extinction. . . . bodine looks down at the far end of the table, past corporate teeth and polished fingernails, past heavy monogrammed eating-tools, and for the first time notices a stone barbecue pit, with two black iron hand-operated spits. servants in their prewar livery are busy layering scrap paper (old shaef directives, mostly), kindling, quartered pine logs, and coal, lus­ cious fist-sized raven chunks of the kind that once left bodies up and down the sides of the canals, once, during the inflation, when it was ac­ tually held that mortally dear, imagine. . . . at the edge of the pit, with justus about to light the taper, as gretchen daintily laces the fuel with gi xylene from down in the dockyards, seaman bodine observes rog­ er's head, being held by four or six hands upside down, the lips being torn away from the teeth and the high gums already draining white as a skull, while one of the maids, a classic satin-and-lace, impish, torturable young maid, brushes the teeth with american toothpaste, carefully scrubbing away the nicotine stains and tartar. roger's eyes are so hurt and pleading. . . . all around, guests are whispering. "how quaint, ste­ fan's even thought of head cheese!" "oh, no, it's another part i'm wait­ ing to get my teeth in . . ." giggles, heavy breathing, and what's that pair of very blue peg pants all ripped . . . and what's this staining the jacket, and what, up on the spit, reddening to a fat-glazed crust, is turn­ ing, whose face is about to come rotating around, why it's"no ketchup, no ketchup," the hirsute bluejacket searching agitat­ edly among the cruets and salvers, "seems to be no . . . what th' fuck kind of a place is this, rog," yelling down slantwise across seven enemy faces, "hey, buddih you find any ketchup down there?" ketchup's a code word, okay"odd," replies roger, who clearly has seen exactly the same thing down at the pit, "i was just about to ask you the same question!" they are grinning at each other like fools. their auras, for the record, are green. no shit. not since winter of '42, in convoy in a north atlantic gale, with accidental tons of loose 5-inch ammo rolling all over the ship, 714 jokes, rea hysteric� high in the "some }a fillen near}) 'i thel arrl. , now 10 del ofilie coui i ance \l'l� c nack al "the nim ilian h 10 le rid 0 c'-' '-"v ....... u......... ��� .l���' ���. � ly knocking off sister ships right and left, at battle stations inside mount 51 listening to pappy hod tell disaster jokes, really funny ones, the whole gun crew clutching their stomachs hysterically, gasping for air-not since then has seaman bodine felt so high in the good chances of death. "some layout, huh?" he calls. "pretty good food!" conversation has fallen nearly silent. politely curious faces are turning. flames leap in the pit. they are not "sensitive flames," but if they were they might be able now to detect the presence of brigadier pudding. he is now a member of the counterforce, courtesy of carroll eventyr. courtesy is right. se­ ances with pudding are at least as trying as the old weekly briefings back at "the white visitation." pudding has even more of a mouth on him than he did alive. the sitters have begun to whine: "aren't we ever to be rid of him?" but is is through pudding's devotion to culinary pranksterism that the repulsive stratagem that follows was devised. "oh, i don't know," roger elaborately casual, "i can't seem to find any snot soup on the menu. . . ." "yeah, i could've done with some of that pus pudding, myself. think there'll be any of that?" "no, but there might be a scum souffle!" cries roger, "with a side of -menstrual marmalade!" "well i've got eyes for some of that rich, meaty smegma stew!" suggests bodine. "or howbout a clot casserole?" "i say," murmurs a voice, indeterminate as to sex, down the table. "we could plan a better meal than this," roger waving the menu. "start off with afterbirth appetizers, perhaps some clever little scab sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off of course . . . o-or booger bis­ cuits! mmm, yes, spread with mucus mayonnaise? and topped with a succulent bit of slime sausage. . . ." "oh i see," sez commando connie, "it has to be alliterative. how about ... um ... discharge dumplings?" "we're doing the soup course, babe," sez cool seaman bodine, "so let me just suggest a canker consomme, or perhaps a barf bouillon." "vomit vichysoisse," sez connie. "you got it." "cyst salad," roger continues, "with little cheery-red squares of abortion aspic, tossed in a subtle dandruff dressing." there is a sound of well-bred gagging, and a regional sales manager for ici leaves hurriedly, spewing a long crescent of lumpy beige vomit that splatters across the parquetry. napkins are being raised to faces all 715 down the table. silverware is being laid down, silver rmgmg the neios or white, a puzzling indecision here again, the same as at clive moss­ moon's office. . . . on we go, through fart fondue (skillfully placed bubbles of anal gas rising slowly through a rich cheese viscosity, yummm), boil blintzes, vegetables venereal in slobber sauce. . . . a kazoo stops playing. "wart waffles!" gustav screams. "puke pancakes, with sweat syrup," adds andre omnopon, as gustav resumes playing, the outer voices meantime having broken off in con­ fusion. "and spread with pinworm preserves," murmurs the cellist, who is not above a bit of fun. "hemorrhoid hash," connie banging her spoon in delight, "bowel burgers!" frau utgarthaloki jumps to her feet, upsetting a platter of stuffed sores-beg pardon, no they're deviled eggs-and runs from the room, sobbing tragically. her suave metal husband also rises and follows, casting back at the troublemakers virile stares that promise certain death. a discreet smell of vomit has begun to rise through the hanging tablecloth. nervous laughter has long embrittled to badmouth whis­ pering. "a choice of gangrene goulash, or some scrumptious creamy-white leprosy loaf," bodine in a light singsong "le-pro-sy [down a third to] loaf," playfully hounding the holdouts, shaking a finger, c'mon ya little rascals, vomit for the nice zootster. . . . "fungus fricassee!" screams roger the rowdy. jessica is weeping on the arm of jeremy her gentleman, who is escorting her, stiff-armed, shaking his head at roger's folly, away forever. does roger have a sec­ ond of pain right here? yes. sure. you would too. you might even ques­ tion the worth of your cause. but there are nosepick noodles to be served up buttery and steaming, grime gruel and pustule porridge to be ladled into the bowls of a sniveling generation of future executives, pubic popovers to be wheeled out onto the terraces stained by holo­ caust sky or growing rigid with autumn. "carbuncle cutlets!" "with groin gravy!" "and ringworm relish!" lady mnemosyne gloobe is having a seizure of some kind, so violent that her pearls break and go rattling down the silk tablecloth. a general loss of appetite reigns, not to mention overt nausea. the flames in the pit have dwindled. no fat to feed them tonight. sir hannibal grunt716 man," in her pac' i clipping. , . alltiedln loaf of br ( a��n t the \ hillside. a off to und n gvu�m:ic·\.\.'c �lj u... v .... .c�-----b' _ � .ween spasms of yellow bile foaming out his nose, to bring the matter up in parliament. ''i'll see you two in the scrubs if it kills me!" well ... a gentle, precarious soft-shoe out the door, bodine waving his wide­ brim gangster hat. ta-ta, foax. the only guest still seated is constance flamp, who is still roaring out dessert possibilities: "crotch custard! phlegm fudge! mold muffins!" will she catch hell tomorrow. pools of this and that glitter across the floor like water-mirages at the sixth ante­ chamber to the throne. gustav and the rest of the quartet have aban­ doned haydn and are all following roger and bodine out the door, ka­ zoos and strings accompanying the disgusting duo: oh gimme some 0' that acne, a-la-mode, eat so much-that ah, jes' ex-plode! say there buddih you can chow all nite, on toe-jam tarts 'n' diarrhea dee-lite. . .. "i have to tell you," gustav whispering speedily, "i feel so awful about it, but perhaps you don't want people like me. you see ... i was a storm trooper. a long time ago. you know, like horst wessel." "so?" bodine's laughing. "maybe i was a melvin purvis junior gman." "a what?" "for post toasties." "for whom?" the german actually thinks post toasties is the name of some american fuhrer, looking vaguely like tom mix or some other such longlip bridlejaw cowboy. the last black butler opens the last door to the outside, and escape. escape tonight. "pimple pie with filth frosting, gentlemen," he nods. and just at the other side of dawning, you can see a smile. d d d d d d d in her pack, geli tripping brings along a few of tchitcherine's toenail clippings, a graying hair, a piece of bedsheet with a trace of his sperm, all tied in a white silk kerchief, next to a bit of adam and eve root and a loaf of bread baked from wheat she has rolled naked in and ground against the sun. she has left off tending her herd of toads on the witches' hillsides, and has passed her white wand to another apprentice. she is off to find her gallant attila. now there are a good few hundred of these 717 young women in the zone who're smitten with love tor tchitcherine, all of them sharp as foxes, but none quite as stubborn as geli-and none are witches. at noon she comes to a farmhouse with a floor of blue and white tiles in the kitchen, elaborate old china plates hung like pictures, and a rock­ ing-chair. "do you have a photo of him?" the old woman handing her a tin army plate with the remains of her morning's bauernfriihstuck. "i can give you a spell." "sometimes 1 can call up his face in a cup of tea. but the herbs have to be gathered carefully. i'm not that good at it yet." "but you're in love. technique is just a substitute for when you get older." "why not stay in love always?" the two women watch each other across the sunny kitchen. cabinets with glass panes shine from the walls. bees buzz outside the windows. geli goes and pumps water from the well, and they brew some straw­ berry-leaf tea. but tchitcherine's face doesn't appear. the night the blacks started off on their great trek, nordhausen felt like a city in a myth, under the threat of some special destruction-en­ gulfment by a crystal lake, lava from the sky . . . for an evening, the sense of preservation there was lost. the blacks, like the rockets in the mittelwerke, had given nordhausen continuity. now the blacks are gone: geli knows they are on collision course with tchitcherine. she doesn't want duels. let the university boys duel. she wants her graying steel barbarian alive. she can't bear to think that she may al­ ready have touched him, felt his scarred and historied hands, for the last time. behind, pushing her, is the town's somnolence, and at night-the strange canaried nights of the harz (where canary hustlers are busy shooting up female birds with male hormones so they'll sing long enough to be sold to the foreign suckers who occupy the zone)-full of too many spells, witch-rivalries, coven politics . . . she knows that's not what magic is about. the hexes-stadt, with its holy mountains cropped in pale circles all up and down their green faces by the little tethered goats, has turned into just another capital, where the only enterprise is administrating-the feeling there is of upstairs at the musicians' union -no music, just glass-brick partitions, spittoons, indoor plants-no practicing witches left. you either come to the brocken-complex with a bureaucratic career in mind, or you leave it, and choose the world. there are the two distinct sorts of witch, and geli is the world-choos­ ing sort. 718 here is knee that fl i ing, with he loldiers com jne, of the ii . alk about tch illeon1¥ one ii' aamiring. un e , tomrletely, tc aooutto be pur �inilter \. ripo ; bul!lnit. tchi • �ou�h\'e�" rle� i'ellled in ) �tmt lot� 0 m�can�s, n i , mite, i 1i\\'e� � /1 lithe roc' i iii \\'o�dn' cron the er a�eo road, on � 000, a bit ap � ann out r �intedhand • and have learn touch makin� watches the i \ ilieman na in mandala, , h..n.v .l� u.lv � •• '-'-l-l�' .... ££'-' £� •• �_ring gray men's trousers rolled to the knee that flap around her thighs as she walks by the rye fields. . . walk­ ing, with her head down, pushing hair out of her eyes often. sometimes soldiers come by, and give her rides. she listens for news of tchitcher­ ine, of the trekking schwarzkommando. if it feels right, she will even ask about tchitcherine. the variety of the rumors surprises her. i'm not the only one who loves him ... though theirlove of course is friendly, admiring, unsexual . . . cell's the only one in the zone who loves him completely. tchitcherine, known in some circles as "the red doper," is about to be purged: the emissary is none other than beria's top man, the sinister n. ripov himself. bullshit, tchitcherine's already dead, didn't you hear, he's been dead for months ... · . . they've had somebody impersonating him till all the others in his bloc are taken care of . . . · . . no, he came into liineburg last weekend, my mate's seen him before, no mistake, it's him . . . · . . he's lost a lot of weight and takes a heavy bodyguard every­ where he goes. at least a dozen. orientals mostly . . . · .. fully equipped with judas iscariot no doubt. that one's hard to believe. a dozen? where does anybody find that many people he can trust? especially out at the edge like he is"what edge?" they're rattling along in the back of a 2 yz-ton lorry through very green rolling country . . . a storm is blowing up mute pur­ ple, veined in yellow, behind them. cell's been drinking wine with this scurvy lot of tommies, a demolition squad who've been out all day clear­ ing canals. they smell of creosote, marsh-mud, ammonia from the dyna­ mite. "well you know what he's doing." "the rockets?" "i wouldn't want to be in his place, that's all." up on the crest of a hill, an army surveying party is restoring a dam­ aged road. one silhouette leans peering through a transit, one holds a bob. a bit apart from the instrument man another engineer stands with his arms out straight to the sides, his head moves sighting along either pointed hand, then the arms swoop together . . . if you close your eyes, and have learned to let your arms move by themselves, your fingers will touch making a perfect right angle from where they were . . . celi watches the tiny act: it is devotional, graceful, and she feels the cross the man has made on his own circle of visible earth . . . unconsciously a mandala ... it is a sign for her. he is pointing her on her way. later 719 that evening she sees an eagle flying across me marsnes, iii me same di­ rection. it's golden-dark, almost night. the region is lonely and pan is very close. geli has been to enough sabbaths to handle it-she thinks. but what is a devil's blue bite on the ass to the shrieking-outward, into stone resonance, where there is no good or evil, out in the luminous spaces pan will carry her to? is she ready yet for anything so real? the moon has risen. she sits now, at the same spot where she saw the eagle, waiting, waiting for something to come and take her. have you ever waited for it? wondering whether it will come from outside or inside? finally past the futile guesses at what might happen . . . now and then re-erasing brain to keep it clean for the visit ... yes wasn't it close to here? remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with what you felt stirring across the land ... it was the equinox . . . green spring equal nights . . . canyons are opening up, at the bot­ toms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell ... human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. this is the world just before men. too violently pitched alive in con­ stant flow ever to be seen by men directly. they are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. alive, it was a threat: it was titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about earth's body that some spoiler had to be brought in before it blew the creation apart. so we, the crippled keep­ ers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. god's spoilers. us. counter-revolutionaries. it is our mission to promote death. the way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the creatures. it was some­ thing we had to work on, historically and personally. to build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, hold­ ing down the green uprising. but only nearly as strong. only nearly, because of the defection rate. a few keep going over to the titans every day, in their striving subcreation (how can flesh tumble and flow so, and never be any less beautiful?), into the rests of the folk­ song death (empty stone rooms), out, and through, and down under the net, down down to the uprising. in harsh-edged echo, titans stir far below. they are all the presences we are not supposed to be seeing-wind gods, hilltop gods, sunset gods -that we train ourselves away from to keep from looking further even though enough of us do, leave their electric voices behind in the twi­ light at the edge of the town and move into the constantly parted cloak of our nightwalk till suddenly, pan-leaping-its face too beautiful to bear, beautiful 720 rommand, i �eat fio\\ 0 \ ner) but the n , nemu t ke'p oecome pr i wiiliout ex \ iliat he exi ilienew klno( serpc.u, ';"\.:; ��:;. .. '-' .1.£ .. :.-�:.:.:.:.:;'� .: ::�.:.::::ings in the sky-into the sure bones of frightdon't walk home at night through the empty country. don't go into the forest when the light is too low, even too late in the afternoon-it will get you. don't sit by the tree like this, with your cheek against the bark. it is impossible in this moonlight to see if you are male or female now. your hair spills, silver white. your body under the gray cloth is so exactly vulnerable, so fated to degradation time and again. what if he wakes and finds you've gone? he is now always the same, awake or asleep-he never leaves the single dream, there are no more differences between the worlds: they have become one for him. thanatz and mar­ gherita may have been his last ties with the old. that may be why they stayed so long, it was his desperation, he wanted to hold on, he needed them ... but when he looks at them now he doesn't see them as often any more. they are also losing what reality they brought here, as gott­ fried lost all of his to blicero long ago. now the boy moves image to image, room to room, sometimes out of the action, sometimes part of it . . . whatever he has to do, he does. the day has its logic, its needs, no way for him to change it, leave it, or live outside it. he is helpless, he is sheltered secure. it's only a matter of weeks, and everything will be over, germany will have lost the war. the routines go on. the boy cannot imagine any­ thing past the last surrender. if he and blicero are separated, what will happen to the flow of days? will blicero die no please don't let him die.... (but he will.) "you're going to survive me," he whispers. gottfried kneels at his feet, wearing the dog collar. both are in army clothes. it's a long time since either of them dressed as a woman. it is important tonight that they both be men. "ah, you're so smug, you little bastard.... " it is only another game isn't it, another excuse for a whipping? gott­ fried keeps silent. when blicero wants an answer, he says so. it happens often that he only wants to talk, and that may go on for hours. no one has ever talked to gottfried before, not like this. his father uttered only commands, sentences, flat judgments. his mother was emotional, a great flow of love, frustration and secret terror passed into him from her, but they never really talked. this is so more-than-real . . . he feels he must keep every word, that none must be lost. blicero's words have become precious to him. he understands that blicero wants to give, without expecting anything back, give away what he loves. he believes that he exists for blicero, even if the others have all ceased to, that in the new kingdom they pass through now, he is the only other living in721 habitant. was it this he expected to be taxen 0y, taken mtor rsuceros seed, sputtering into the poisoned manure of his bowels . . . it is waste, yes, futility . . . but . . . as man and woman, coupled, are shaken to the teeth at their approaches to the gates of life, hasn't he also felt more, worshipfully more past these arrangements for penetration, the style, garments of haying without passion, sheer hosiery perishable as the skin of a snake, custom manacles and chains to stand for the bondage he feels in his heart . . . all become theatre as he approached the gates of that other kingdom, felt the white gigantic muzzles somewhere inside, expressionless beasts frozen white, pushing him away, the crust and mantle hum of mystery so beyond his poor hearing . . . there have to be these too, lovers whose genitals are consecrated to shit, to endings, to the desperate nights in the streets when connection proceeds out of all personal control, proceeds or fails, a gathering of fallen-as many in acts of death as in acts of life-or a sentence to be alone for another night.... are they to be denied, passed over, all of them? on his approaches to it, taken inward again and again, gottfried can only try to keep himself open, to loosen the sphincter of his soul. . . . "and sometimes i dream of discovering the edge of the world. find­ ing that there is an end. my mountain gentian always knew. but it has cost me so much. "america was the edge of the world. a message for europe, conti­ nent-sized, inescapable. europe had found the site for its kingdom of death, that special death the west had invented. savages had their waste regions, kalaharis, lakes so misty they could not see the other side. but europe had gone deeper-into obsession, addiction, away from all the savage innocences. america was a gift from the invisible powers, a way of returning. but europe refused it. it wasn't europe's original sin-the latest name for that is modern analysis-but it hap­ pens that subsequent sin is harder to atone for. "in africa, asia, amerindia, oceania, europe came and established its order of analysis and death. what it could not use, it killed or al­ tered. in time the death-colonies grew strong enough to break away. but the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death, the structure of it, kept on. now we are in the last phase. american death has come to occupy europe. it has learned empire from its old metropolis. but now we have only the structure left us, none of the great rainbow plumes, no fittings of gold, no epic marches over alkali seas. the savages of other continents, corrupted but still resisting in the name of life, have gone on despite everything . . . while death and europe are separate 722 edge, our n sphere, hall _ learned to d stood ilie men for �ettin(1 ba , rresence back ��es out iliere e ", grarity jan�eroflalljl �arance.nar&.. ,., onl� ilieu oroken)'ear ony \\iilionh/' . "i ��n i • .. -if i ,,"'"" \ /......" : �_j -----.� i (�'.�.,_�-_ ,4 "'� as ever, ':...���� ::.::"�":: '��""" '"'''''''''' ''''''",,''""omated. death only rules here. it has never, in love, become one with.... "is the cycle over now, and a new one ready to begin? will our new edge, our new deathkingdom, be the moon? i dream of a great glass sphere, hollow and very high and far away . . . the colonists have learned to do without air, it's vacuum inside and out ... it's under­ stood the men won't ever return ... they are all men. there are ways for getting back, but so complicated, so at the mercy of language, that presence back on earth is only temporary, and never 'real' . . . pas­ sages out there are dangerous, chances of falling so shining and deep. . . . gravity rules all the way out to the cold sphere, there is always the danger offalling. inside the colony, the handful of men have a frosty ap­ pearance, hardly solid, no more alive than memories, nothing to touch ... only their remote images, black and white film-images, grained, broken year after hoarfrost year out in the white latitudes, in empty col­ ony, with only infrequent visits from the accidental, like me. . . . "i wish i could recover it all. those men had once been through a tragic day-ascent, fire, failure, blood. the events of that day, so long ago, had put them into exile forever . . . no, they weren't really space­ men. out here, they wanted to dive between the worlds, to fall, turn, reach and swing on journeys curved through the shining, through the winter nights of space-their dreams were of rendezvous, of cosmic tra­ peze acts carried on in loneliness, in sterile grace, in certain knowledge that no one would ever be watching, that loved ones had been lost for­ ever. ... "the connections they hoped for would always miss by trillions of dark miles, by years of frozen silence. but i wanted to bring you back the story. i remember that you used to whisper me to sleep with stories of us one day living on the moon ... are you beyond that by now? you've got much older. can you feel in your body how strongly i have infected you with my dying? i was meant to: when a certain time has come, i think that we are all meant to. fathers are carriers of the virus of death, and sons are the infected . . . and, so that the infection may be more certain, death in its ingenuity has contrived to make the father and son beautiful to each other as life has made male and female . . . oh gottfried of course yes you are beautiful to me but i'm dying ... i want to get through it as honestly as i can, and your immortality rips at my heart-can't you see why i might want to destroy that, oh that stu­ pid clarity in your eyes . . . when i see you in morning and evening ranks, so open, so ready to take my sickness in and shelter it, shelter it inside your own little ignorant love. . . . "your love." he nods several times. bul ills eyes are too uallgeruusly spaced beyond the words, stunned irreversibly away from real gott­ fried, away from the weak, the failed smells of real breath, by barriers stern and clear as ice, and hopeless as the one-way flow of european time.... "i want to break out-to leave this cycle of infection and death. i want to be taken in love: so taken that you and i, and death, and life, will be gathered, inseparable, into the radiance of what we would be­ come.... " gottfried kneels, numb, waiting. blicero is looking at him. t)eeply: his face whiter than the boy has ever seen it. a raw spring wind beats the canvas of their tent. it's near sunset. in a moment blicero must go out to take evening reports. his hands rest near a mound of cigarette butts in a mess tray. his myopic witch's eyes, through the thick lenses, may be looking into gottfried's for the first time. gottfried cannot look away. he knows, somehow, incompletely, that he has a decision to make ... that blicero expects something from him . . . but blicero has always made the decisions. why is he suddenly asking . . . it all poises here. passageways of routine, still cogent enough, still herding us through time . . . the iron rockets waiting outside . . . the birth-scream of the latest spring torn across rainy miles of saxony, route-sides littered with last envelopes, stripped gears, seized bearings, rotted socks and skivvies fragrant now with fungus and mud. if there is still hope for gottfried here in this wind-beat moment, then there is hope elsewhere. the scene itself must be read as a card: what is to come. whatever has happened since to the figures in it (roughly drawn in soiled white, army gray, spare as a sketch on a ruined wall) it is pre­ served, though it has no name, and, like the fool, no agreed assignment in the deck. d d d d d d d here's enzian ramrodding his brand-new rocket through the night. when it rains, when the mist is heavy, before the watch can quite get tarps over, the glossy skin of the rocket is seen to've turned to dark slate. perhaps, after all, just before the firing, it will be painted black. it is the 00001, the second in its series. russian loudspeakers across the elbe have called to you. american rumors have come jiving in to the fires at night and summoned, against the ground of your hopes, the yellow american deserts, red indians, morning, a � its inertia, ' , moires of per more out of f, ill love, wiped i \\�nter berm. oreailis in \\hl ", where\\lil itl dod.", brute. inameor reti n ( • dnotreenemun i�o .. ,00: id �acn,acnud rna)' account f ��i�nt that i (itr,!ourfold cnitectural nd ol'erheadam andcande ' n( war in variou can see the \\' , struggle down and its epa! blue cjft}, g:.:vv:,: .. �"'-' .. �� . .;._�.� .. ---.i ou feel about the old rocket? not now that it's giving you job security, but back then-do you remember any more what it was like wheeling them out by hand, a dozen of you that morning, a guard of honor in the simple encounter of your bodies with its inertia . . . all your faces drowning in the same selfless look-the moires of personality softening, softening, each sweep of surf a little more out of focus till all has become subtle grades of cloud-all hatred, all love, wiped away for the short distance you had to push it over the winter berm, aging men in coatskirts flapping below your boottops, breaths in white spouts breaking turbulent as the waves behind you . . . . where will you all go? what empires, what deserts? you caressed its body, brute, freezing through your gloves, here together without shame or reticence you twelve struggled, in love, on this baltic shore­ not peenemiinde perhaps, not official peenemiinde . . . but once, years ago . . . boys in white shirts and dark vests and caps . . . on some beach, a children's resort, when we were younger ... at test stand vii the image, at last, you couldn't leave-the way the wind smelled salt and dying, the sound of winter surf, the premonition of rain you could feel at the back of your neck, stirring in the clipped hairs.... at test stand vii, the holy place. but young men have all grown older, and there's little color in the scene ... they are pushing into the sun, the glare strikes them squint­ ing and grinning, bright here as the morning shift at siemens with the centaurs struggling high on the wall, the clock without numerals, bicy­ cles squeaking, lunchpails and lunchbags and the lowered faces of the trudging dutiful streams of men and women into the dark openings . . . it resembles a daguerreotype taken of the early raketen-stadt by a for­ gotten photographer in 1856: this is the picture, in fact, that killed him -he died a week later from mercury poisoning after inhaling fumes of the heated metal in his studio . . . well, he was a habitue of mercury fumes in moderate doses, he felt it did his brain some good, and that may account for pictures like "der raketen-stadt": it shows, from a height that is topographically impossible in germany, the ceremonial city, fourfold as expected, an eerie precision to all lines and shadings ar­ chitectural and human, built in mandalic form like a herero village, overhead a magnificent sky, marble carried to a wildness of white billow and candescence . . . there seems to be building, or demolition, under way in various parts of the city, for nothing here remains the same, we can see the sweat in individual drops on the workers' dark necks as they struggle down in the bonedamp cellars . . . a bag of cement has broken, and its separate motes hang in the light . . . the city will always be 725 changing, new tire-treads in the dust, new cigarette wrappers m me garbage . . . engineering changes to the rocket create new routes of supply, new living arrangements, reflected in traffic densities as viewed from this unusual height-there are indeed tables of functions to get from such city-changes to rocket-modifications: no more than an ex­ tension, really, of the techniques by which constance babington-smith and her colleagues at r. a. f. medmenham discovered the rocket back in 1943 in recco photographs of peenemiinde. but remember if you loved it. if you did, how you loved it. and how much-after all you're used to asking "how much," used to measuring, to comparing measurements, putting them into equations to find out how much more, how much of, how much when . . . and here in your common drive to the sea feel as much as you wish of that dark double­ minded love which is also shame, bravado, engineers' geopolitics­ "spheres of influence" modified to toruses of rocket range that are par­ abolic in section . . . . . . not, as we might imagine, bounded below by the line of the earth it "rises from" and the earth it "strikes" no but then you never really thought it was did you of course it begins infinitely below the earth and goes on infinitely back into the earth it's only the peak that we are allowed to see, the break up through the surface, out of the other silent world, violently (a jet airplane crashing into faster­ than-sound, some years later a spaceship crashing into faster-than-light) remember the password in the zone this week is faster-than, the-speedoflight speeding up your voice exponentially­ linear exceptions made only in case of upper respiratory com­ plaints, at each "end," understand, a very large transfer of energy: breaking upward into this world, a controlled burning-breaking down­ ward again, an uncontrolled explosion . . . this lack of symmetry leads to speculating that a presence, analogous to the aether, flows through time, as the aether flows through space. the assumption of a vacuum in time tended to cut us off one from another. but an aether sea to bear us world-to-world might bring us back a continuity, show us a kinder uni­ verse, more easygoing. . . . so, yes yes this is a scholasticism here, rocket state-cosmology . . . the rocket does lead that way-among others-past these visible ser­ pent coils that lash up above the surface of earth in rainbow light, in steel tetany . . . these storms, these things of earth's deep breast we were never told . . . past them, through the violence, to a numbered cosmos, a quaint brownwood-paneled, victorian kind of brain war, as between quaternions and vector analysis in the 188os-the nostalgia of 726 aether, th elegantly here, certai a number of combat, in tu . 10undabje . taken in a ro�h �addalist5 \\ho i durnercup and newrevelatioll\ etl) �ood and e\ mru twiil. 'om ( �ocket to take hro�rpetualh i buttnelf h rt lar�ealead narelllsr:r • ltg.ilie� �rlonal infr noelllma� anor°intedm ndlin�clascr here are ili , lorurtl!'atm �reoalterna .\merican !roo hnallm now with ('dug ovmize unifo whi�un ro cillin. to avoid crowns aaain b . under hay t c rainy \\1\\0\\ otten at rando up the ra\'in (official pau\. aethel, uie 5i1,,61 , pb:,,�u.uiu.iii�u, �tone-anchored, knurled-brass, filigreed elegantly functional shapes of your grandfathers. these sepia tones are here, certainly. but the rocket has to be many things, it must answer to a number of different shapes in the dreams of those who touch it-in combat, in tunnel, on paper-it must survive heresies shining, uncon­ foundable . . . and heretics there will be: gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire to chambers of the rocket-throne ... kabbalists who study the rocket as torah, letter by letter-rivets, burner cup and brass rose, its text is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding . . . manichaeans who see two rock­ ets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the pri­ mal twins (some say their names are enzian and blicero) of a good rocket to take us to the stars, an evil rocket for the world's suicide, the two perpetually in struggle. but these heretics will be sought and the dominion of silence will en­ large as each one goes down ... they will all be sought out. each will have his personal rocket. stored in its target-seeker will be the heretic's eeg, the spikes and susurrations of heartbeat, the ghost-blossomings of personal infrared, each rocket will know its intended and hunt him, ride him a green-doped and silent hound, through our world, shining and pointed in the sky at his back, his guardian executioner rushing in, rushing closer. . . . here are the objectives. to make the run over tracks that may end abruptly at riverside or in carbonized trainyard, over roads even the un­ paved alternates to which are patrolled now by russian and british and american troops in a hardening occupation, a fear of winter bleaching the men all more formal, into braces of attention they ignored during the summer, closer adherence now to the paperwork as colors of trees and brush begin their change, as purple blurs out over miles of heath, and nights come sooner. to have to stay out in the rains of early virgo: the children who stowed away on the trek against all orders are down now with coughs and fevers, sniffling at night, hoarse little voices inside oversize uniform jackets. to brew tea for them from fennel, betony, whitsun roses, sunflowers, mallow leaves-to loot sulfa drugs and peni­ cillin. to avoid raising road-dust when the sun has dried the ruts and crowns again by noon. to sleep in the fields. to hide the rocket sections under haystacks, behind the single wall of a gutted railroad shed, among rainy willows down beside the river beds. to disperse at any alarm, or often at random, just for drill-to flow like a net, down out of the harz, up the ravines, sleeping in the dry glazed spaces of deserted spas (official pain, official death watching all night from the porcelain eyes of 727 statues), digging in nights' perimeters, smelling pine needles boots and trench-shovels have crushed. . . . to keep faith that it is not trek this time, nor struggle, but truly destiny, the 00001 sliding like an oiled bolt into the receivership of the railway system prepared for it last spring, a route only apparently in ruins, carefully crafted by the war, by special techniques of bombardment, to take this most immachinate of tech­ niques, the rocket-the rocket, this most terribly potential of bom­ bardments.... the 00001 goes disassembled, in sections-warhead, guidance, fuel and oxidizer tanks, tail section. if they all make it to the firing site, it will have to be put back together there. "show me the society that never said, 'i am created among men,' " christian walks with enzian in the fields above the encampment, " 'to protect you each from violence, to give shelter in time of disaster'-but enzian, what protection is there? what can protect us from that," ges­ turing down the valley at the yellow-gray camouflage netting they can both, x-ray eyed for this one journey, see through. . . . enzian and the younger man somehow have drifted into these long walks. nothing deliberate on either side. is this how successions occur? each man is suspicious. but there are no more of the old uncomfortable silences. no competing. "it comes as the revealer. showing that no society can protect, never could-they are as foolish as shields of paper. . . ." he must tell chris­ tian everything he knows, everything he suspects or has dreamed. pro­ claiming none of it for truth. but he must keep nothing back for himself. nothing is his to keep. "they have lied to us. they can't keep us from dying, so they lie to us about death. a cooperative structure of lies. what have they ever given us in return for the trust, the love-they actually say 'love'-we're supposed to owe them? can they keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from anything? before the rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to. but the rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point. nowhere is safe. we can't believe them any more. not if we are still sane, and love the truth." "we are," nods christian. "we do." he isn't looking at enzian to confirm it, either. "yes." "then ... in the absence of faith one night, in the rain, their laager stops for the night at a deserted re­ search station, where the germans, close to the end of the war, were developing a sonic death-mirror. tall paraboloids of concrete are stag728 gered, w explosion crete mim anything j perimental� compiled. b rou rapjd�' needed might �)idle ripple donl, could ru worlethan d iliec\iff, and n olrrofit. to ex term of the when enzi whether the d coarse enoucr in the face, i lances like t'n upward � gertu, '\iv hne aho hhyhvuu1:i.l(." ci'u. oss the plain. the idea was to set off an explosion in front of the paraboloid, at the exact focal point. the con­ crete mirror would then throw back a perfect shock wave to destroy anything in its path. thousands of guinea pigs, dogs and cows were ex­ perimentally blasted to death here-reams of death-curve data were compiled. but the project was a lemon. only good at short range, and you rapidly came to a falloff point where the amount of explosives needed might as well be deployed some other way. fog, wind, hardly visible ripples or snags in the terrain, anything less than perfect condi­ tions, could ruin the shock wave's deadly shape. still, enzian can envi­ sion a war, a place for them, "a desert. lure your enemy to a desert. the kalahari. wait for the wind to die." "who would fight for a desert?" katje wants to know. she's wearing a hooded green slicker looks even too big for enzian. "in, " christian squatting down, looking up at the pale curve of reflec­ tor they've come to the base of and have gathered at in the rain, sharing a smoke, taking a moment away from the rest of the trek, "not 'for.' what he's saying is 'in.' " saves trouble later if you can get the texts straight soon as they're spoken. "thank you," sez oberst enzian. a hundred meters away, huddled into another white paraboloid, watching them, is a fat kid in a gray tanker jacket. out of its pocket peer two furry little bright eyes. it is fat ludwig and his lost lemming ursula-he has found her at last and after all and despite everything. for a week they have been drifting alongside the trek, just past visibil­ ity, pacing the africans day by day ... among trees at the tops of es­ carpments, at the fires' edges at night ludwig is there, watching . . . accumulating evidence, or terms of an equation . . . a boy and his lem­ ming, out to see the zone. mostly what he's seen is a lot of chewing gum and a lot of foreign cock. how else does a foot-loose kid get by in the zone these days? ursula is preserved. ludwig has fallen into a fate worse than death and found it's negotiable. so not all lemmings go over the cliff, and not all children are preserved against snuggling into the sin of profit. to expect any more, or less, of the zone is to disagree with the terms of the creation. when enzian rides point he has the habit of falling into reveries, whether the driver is talking or not. in night without headlamps, a mist coarse enough to be falling, or now and then blown like a wet silk scarf in the face, inside and outside the same temperature and darkness, bal­ ances like these allow him to float just under waking, feet and arms bug­ upwards pushing at the rubbery glass surface-tension between the two 729 --�� / �\ /' levels, sticking in it, dream-caressed at hands and teet become super­ sensitive, a good home-style horizontalless drowse. the engine of the stolen truck is muffled in old mattresses tied over the hood. henryk the hare, driving, keeps a leery eye on the temperature gauge. he's called "the hare" because he can never get messages right, as in the old her­ ero story. so reverences are dying. a figure slips into the road, flashlight circling slowly. enzian unsnaps the isinglass window, leans out into the heavy mist, and calls "faster than the speed of light." the figure waves him on. but in the last edge of enzian's glance back, in the light from the flash rain is sticking to the black face in big fat globules, sticking as water does to black grease­ paint, but not to herero skin"think we can make a u-turn here?" the shoulders are treacherous, and both men know it. back in the direction of camp the line of slow­ rolling lowlands is lit up by a thud of apricot light. "shit," henryk the hare jamming it in reverse, waiting for orders from enzian as they grind slowly backwards. the one with the flashlight may have been the only lookout, there may be no enemy concentration for miles. but"there." beside the road, a prone body. it's mieczislav omuzire, with a bad head wound. "get him in, come on." they load him into the back of the idling truck, and cover him with a shelter half. no time to find out how bad it is. the blackface sentry has vanished for good. from the direction they're backing in comes the stick-rattle of rifle fire. "we're going into this backwards?" "have you heard any mortar fire?" "since the one? no." "andreas must have knocked it out then." "oh, they'll be all right, nguarorerue. i'm worrying about us." orutyene dead. okandio, ekori, omuzire wounded, ekori critically. the hostiles were white. "how many?" "dozen maybe." "we can't count on a safe perimeter-" blue-white flashlight blob­ bing ellipse-to-parabola across the shaking map, "till braunschweig. if it's still there." rain hits the map in loud spatters. "whore's the railroad?" puts in christian. he gets an interested look from andreas. it's mutual. there's a good deal of interest here lately. the railroad is 6 or 7 miles northwest. the people come empty their belongings next to the rocket's trailer rigs. saplings are being axed down, each blow loud and carrying . . . a 730 frame is l here and t simulate pi cook wagon will move 0 angle east, b ilie british an �o))ible to nd , , ' all the \i' andreas 11 oon� , , , lolle to�y somethl1 j(ye)�" bli i" andreas," "we�� the 'look !� o�nt. hi elbq\ oiliers have \\r' �u! habit per [n� the dead ilirough at eac heswallow a �,speed i chewing on lvomen to ke tion, he \\ ant to happen to his people a chomp l there l\ubi frar..'; _� _ :"---b � _ _ j lles of clothing, pots and kettles stuffed here and there under the long tarpaulin between bent-sapling hoops, to simulate pieces of rocket. andreas is calling, "all decoys muster by the cook wagon," fishing in his pockets for the list he keeps. the decoy trek will move on northward, no violent shift in direction-the rest will angle east, back toward the russian army. if they get just close enough, the british and american armies may move more cautiously. it may be possible to ride the interface, like gliding at the edge of a thunderstorm . . . all the way to the end between armies east and west. andreas sits dangling feet kicking heels against tailgate bong ... bong . . . tolling departure. enzian looks up, quizzical. andreas wants to say something. finally: "christian goes with you, then?" "yes?" blinking under rain-beaded eyebrows. "oh, for god's sake, andreas." "well? the decoys are supposed to make it too, right?" "look, take him with you, if you want." "i only wanted to find out," andreas shrugs, "what's been settled." "you could have asked me. nothing's been 'settled.' " "maybe not by you. that's your game. you think it'll preserve you. but it doesn't work for us. we have to know what's really going to hap­ pen." enzian kneels and begins to lift the heavy iron tailgate. he knows how phony it looks. who will believe that in his heart he wants to be­ long to them out there, the vast humility sleepless, dying, in pain to­ night across the zone? the preterite he loves, knowing he's always to be a stranger. ... chains rattle above him. when the edge of the gate is level with his chin, he looks up, into andreas's eyes. his arms are braced tight. his elbows ache. it is an offering. he wants to ask, how many others have written me off? is there a fate only i've been kept blind to? but habits persist, in their own life. he struggles to his feet, silently, lift­ ing the dead weight, slamming it into place. together they slip bolts through at each corner. "see you there," enzian waves, and turns away. he swallows a tablet of german desoxyephedrine then pops in a stick of gum. speed makes teeth grind, gum gets chewed by grinding teeth, chewing on gum is a technique, developed during the late war by women, to keep from crying. not that he wants to cry for the separa­ tion. he wants to cry for himself: for what they all must believe is going to happen to him. the more they believe it, the better chance there is. his people are going to demolish him if they can. . . . chomp, chomp, hmm good evening ladies, nice job on the lashings there ljubica, chomp, how's the head mieczislav, bet they were sur731 prised when the bullets bounced off! he'il-ilell cnomp, cnomp, evenmg "sparks" (ozohande), anything from hamburg yet on the liquid oxygen, damned oururu better come through-ru, or we gonna have a bad-ass time trying to lay low till he do-ru-oh shit who's thatit's josef ombindi's who it is, leader of the empty ones. but till he stopped smiling, for a few seconds there, enzian thought it was or­ utyene's ghost. "the word is that the okandio child was killed too." "not so." chomp. "she was my first try at preventing a birth." "so you maintain a deadly interest in her," chomp, chomp. he knows that's not it, but the man annoys him. "suicide is a freedom even the lowest enjoy. but you would deny that freedom to a people." "no ideology. tell me if your friend oururu is going to have the lox generator ready to roll. or if there is a funny surprise, instead, waiting for me in hamburg." "all right, no ideology. you would deny your people a freedom even you enjoy, oberst nguarorerue." smiling again like the ghost of the man who fell tonight. probing for the spot, jabbing what? what? want to say what, oberst? till he sees the tiredness in enzian's face, and under­ stands it is not a trick. "a freedom," whispering smiling, a love song under black skies edged all around in acid orange, a commercial full of cathar horror at the practice of imprisoning souls in the bodies of new­ borns, "a freedom you may exercise soon. i hear your soul talking in its sleep. i know you better than anyone." chomp, chomp, oh i had to give him the watch lists didn't i. oh, am i a fool. yes, he can choose the night.... "you're a hallucination, om­ bindi," putting just enough panic into his voice so that if it doesn't work it'll still be a good insult, "i'm projecting my own death-wish, and it comes out looking like you. uglier then i ever dreamed." giving him the spaceman smile for a full 30 seconds, after only 10 seconds of which ombindi has already begun to shift his eyes, sweat, press his lips to­ gether, look at the ground, turn away, look back, but enzian prolongs it, no mercy tonight my people, spaceman smile turning everything inside a mile radius to frozen ice-cream colors now that we're all in the mood, how about installing the battery covers anyway, djuro? that's right, x-ray vision, saw right through the tarp, write it down as another miracle . . . you there vlasta, take the next radio watch, forget what it says on the list, there's never been any more than routine traffic logged with hamburg and i wanna know why, wanna know what does come through when ombindi's people are on watch . . . communication on 732 to move oil ne's li'alkjil� nis forage ca et1r, without �eeping their tnere's no re was, woico 1\ tne fat 00,1 iliatoe's " �ml\'ritten 0 �ou. �'othina ilonly sleep,' arawin .in �ower, in the or some kind the middle dl ayoun if\. totally at p , ten, in eno\ hand, it l you u)elc the trek coiiliilauu uey_ uellcy l� by cw dots and dashes-no voices to betray. but operators swear they can tell the individual sending-hands. vlasta is one of his best operators, and she can do good hand-imitations of most of ombindi's people. been practicing up, just in case. the others, who've been all along wondering if enzian was ever going to move on ombindi, can tell now by the look on his face and the way he's walking throughso, with little more than touches to the brim of his forage cap, signaling plan so-and-so, the ombindi people are qui­ etly, without violence, relieved of all watch duties tonight, though still keeping their weapons and ammo. no one has ever taken those away. there's no reason to. enzian is no more vulnerable now than he ever was, which was plenty. the fat boy ludwig is a white glowworm in the mist. the game is that he's scouting for a vast white army, always at his other flank, ready to come down off of the high ground at a word from ludwig, and smear the blacks into the earth. but he would never call them down. he would rather go with the trek, invisible. there is no hustling for him down there. their journey doesn't include him. they have somewhere to go. he feels he must go with them, but separate, a stranger, no more or less at the mercy of the zone. . . . o 0 0 0 0 0 0 it's a bridge over a stream. very seldom will traffic come by overhead. you can look up and see a whole slope of cone-bearing trees rushing up darkly away from one side of the road. trees creak in sorrow for the en­ gineered wound through their terrain, their terrenity or earthhood. brown trout flick by in the stream. inside the culvert, other shelterers have written on the damp arch of wall. take me, stretchfoot, what keeps you? nothing worse than these days. you will be like gentle sleep. isn't it only sleep? please. come soonprivate rudolf effig, 12.iv·45· a drawing, in commando blackface-grease, of a man looking closely at a flower. in the distance, or smaller, appears to be a woman, approaching. or some kind of elf, or something. the man isn't looking at her (or it). in the middle distance are haystacks. the flower is shaped like the cunt of a young girl. there is a luminary looking down from the sky, a face on it totally at peace, like the buddha's. underneath, someone else has writ­ ten, in english: good drawing! finish! and underneath that, in another hand, it is finished, you nit. and so are you. nearby, in german, i loved you lisele with all my heart-no name, rank, unit or serial number. 733 · .. initials, tic-tac-toe games you can tell were playea atone, a game of hangman in which the mystery word was never filled in: ge __ rat __ and the hanged body visible almost at the other end of the cul­ vert, even this early in the day, because it's a narrow road, and no real gradient of shadow. a bicycle is incompletely hidden in the weeds at the side of the road. a late butterfly pale as an eyelid winks aimlessly out over the stalks of new hay. high up on the slope, someone is swing­ ing an ax-blade into a living tree ... and here is where and when the young witch finds vaslav tchitcherine at last. he's sitting by the stream, not dejected, nor tranquil, just waiting. a passive solenoid waiting to be sprung. at her step, his head lifts, and he sees her. she is the first presence since last night he's looked at and seen. which is her doing. the charm she recited then, fastening the silk crotch torn from her best underpants across the eyes of the doll, his eyes, eastern and liquid, though they'd been only sketched in clay with her long fingernail, was this: may he be blind now to all but me. may the burning sun of love shine in his eyes forever. may this, my own darkness, shelter him. by all the holy names of god, by the angels melchidael, yahoel, anafiel, and the great metatron, i conjure you, and all who are with you, to go and do my will. the secret is in the concentrating. she inhibits everything else: the moon, the wind in the junipers, the wild dogs out ranging in the middle of the night. she fixes on tchitcherine's memory and his wayward eyes, and lets it build, pacing her orgasm to the incantation, so that by the end, naming the last names of power, she's screaming, coming, without help from her fingers, which are raised to the sky. later she breaks a piece of the magic bread in half, and eats one part. the other is for tchitcherine. he takes the bread now. the stream rushes. a bird sings. toward nightfall, the lovers lying naked on a cold grass bank, the sound of a convoy approaches on the little road. tchitcherine pulls on his trousers and climbs up to see if he can beg some food, or cigarettes. the black faces pass by, mba-kayere, some glancing at him curiously, others too involved with their own exhaustion, or with keeping a tight guard on a covered wagon containing the warhead section of the 00001. enzian on his motorcycle stops for a moment, mba-kayere, to talk to the scarred, unshaven white. they're in the middle of the bridge. they talk broken german. tchitcherine manages to hustle half a pack of ameri­ can cigarettes and three raw potatoes. the two men nod, not quite for­ mally, not quite smiling, enzian puts his bike in gear and returns to his 734 journey. shivering stream. � gone. this i n cubic enyirol rising throug\ ning.l pa t \ sperm and � how \m\)luut the war aa o 0 0 0 0 0 0 joui uey . .1 cihlchvl111c; 115.l.ll.':) a. vj.garette, watching them down the road, � shivering in the dusk. then he goes back to his young girl beside the l stream. they will have to locate some firewood before all the light is ) gone. � this is magic. sure-but not necessarily fantasy. certainly not the first time a man has passed his brother by, at the edge of the evening, often forever, without knowing it. by now the city is grown so tall that elevators are long-haul affairs, with lounges inside: padded seats and benches, snack bars, newsstands where you can browse through a whole issue of life between stops. for those faint hearts who first thing on entering seek out the certificate of in­ spection on the elevator wall, there are young women in green overseas caps, green velvet basques, and tapered yellowstripe trousers-a femi­ nine zootsuit effect-who've been well-tutored in all kinds of elevator lore, and whose job it is to set you at ease. "in the early days," pipes young mindy bloth of carbon city, illinois, smiling vacantly away in profile, close by the brass moire of diamond-blurs passing, passing in vertical thousands-her growing-up face, dreamy and practical as the queen of cups, never quite looks for you, is always refracted away some set angle in the gold-brown medium between you . . . it's morn­ ing, and the flower man at the rear of the elevator, down a step or two, behind the little fountain, has brought lilacs and irises fresh and early"before the vertical solution, all transport was, in effect, two-dimen� sional-ah, i can guess your question-" as a smile, familiar and unrei fracted for this old elevator regular, passes between girl and heckler� " 'what about airplane flight, eh?' that's what you were going to ask � wasn't it!" as a matter of fact he was going to ask about the rocket and ' everyone knows it, but the subject is under a curious taboo, and polite mindy has brought in now a chance for actual violence, the violence of repression-the bleached colors of a september morning sky opposite the sunrise, and the filing-edge of a morning wind-into this intimate cubic environment moving so smoothly upward through space (a bubble rising through castile soap where all around it's green lit by slow lightning), past levels already a-bustle with heads seething brighter than sperm and eggs in the sea, past some levels left dark, unheated, somehow forbidden, looking oddly wasted, levels where nobodv's been since the war aaaaa-ahhh! howling past, "a common aerodynamic effect," ex735 plains patient mindy, "involving our own boundary layer and the shape of the orifice as we pass it-" "oh you mean that before we get to it," hollers another heckler, "it's a different shape?" "yup, and after we go by it too, mac," mindy brushes him off, broadly mugging the same thing with her mouth, purse-relax-smile-these jagged openings howling, hauling forlorn and downward, already stories gone beneath the soles of your shoes, a howl bent downward like a harmonica note-but why don't any of the busy floors make a sound going by? where the lights are shining warm as xmas-week parties, floors that beckon you into densi­ ties of glass faceting or screening, good-natured coffee-urn grousing, well golly, here goes another day, howdy marie, where you ladies hiding the drawings on the sg-l . . . what do you mean field service has them ... again? doesn't engineering design have any rights, it's like watch­ ing your child run away, to see a piece of equipment get set out to the field (der veld). that it is. a broken heart, a mother's prayer. ... slowly, the voices of the lubeck hitler youth glee club fade in behind (nowadays the boys sing at officers' clubs all across the zone under their road name, "the lederhoseners." they are dressed appropriately, and sing-when the house feels right-with their backs turned to the audi­ ences, their sly little faces turned over shoulders to flirt with the fighting men: but sharper than a mother's tears are the beatings mutti gave to me with a beautifully coordinated wiggle then to each pair of buttocks gleaming through leather so tight that the clenching of gluteal muscles is plainly visible, and you can bet there isn't a cock in the room doesn't stir at the sight, and scarcely an eye that can't hallucinate that maternal birch smacking down across each naked ass, the delicious red lines, the stern and beautiful female face, smiling down through lowered lashes, only a glint of light off of each eye-when you were first learning to crawl, it was her calves and feet you saw the most of-they replaced her breasts as sources of strength, as you learned the smell of her leather shoes, and the sovereign smell rose as far as you could see-to her knees, perhaps-depending on fashion that year-to her thighs. you were infant in the presence of leather legs, leather feet ... ). "isn't it possible," thanatz whispers, "that we all learned that classi­ cal fantasy at mother's knees? that somewhere tucked in the brain's plush album is always a child in fauntleroy clothes, a pretty french maid begging to be whipped?" ludwig shifts his rather fat ass under thanatz's hand. both have per736 imeters how, to imeters mey are llul �uppu�vu to cross. but they have crept away any­ how, to a piece of the interface, a cold thicket they've pounded down a space in the middle of, to lie on. "ludwig, a little sand m never hurt anybody." "who said that?" "sigmund freud. how do i know? but why are we taught to feel reflexive shame whenever the subject comes up? why will the structure allow every other kind of sexual behavior but that one? because submis­ sion and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival. they cannot be wasted in private sex. in any kind of sex. it needs our submis­ sion so that it may remain in power. it needs our lusts after dominance so that it can co-opt us into its own power game. there is no joy in it, only power. i tell you, if sand m could be established universally, at the family level, the state would wither away." this is sado-anarchism and thanatz is its leading theoretician in the zone these days. it is the liineburg heath, at last. rendezvous was made last night with the groups carrying fuel and oxidizer tanks. the tail-section group has been on the radio all morning, trying to get a position fix, if the skies will only clear. so the assembly of the 00001 is occurring also in a geo­ graphical way, a diaspora running backwards, seeds of exile flying in­ ward in a modest preview of gravitational collapse, of the messiah gath­ ering in the fallen sparks.... remember the story about the kid who hates kreplach? hates and fears the dish, breaks out in these horrible green hives that shift in relief maps all across his body, in the mere pres­ ence of kreplach. kid's mother takes him to the psychiatrist. "fear of the unknown," diagnoses this gray eminence, "let him watch you making the kreplach, that'll ease him into it." home to mother's kitchen. "now," sez mother, "i'm going to make us a delicious sur­ prise!" "oh, boy!" cries the kid, "that's keen, morn!" "see, now i'm sift­ ing the flour and salt into a nice little pile." "what's that, mom, ham­ burger? oh, boy!" "hamburger, and onions. i'm frying them here, see, in this frying pan." "gee, i can hardly wait! this is exciting] what're ya doin' now?" "making a little volcano in the flour here, and breaking these eggs into it." "can i help ya mix it up? oh, boy!" "now, i'm going to roll the dough out, see? into a nice flat sheet, now i'm cutting it up into squares-" "this is terrif, mom!" "now i spoon some of the ham­ burger into this little square, and now i fold it over into a tri-" "gaahhhh!" screams the kid, in absolute terror"kreplach!" as some secrets were given to the gypsies to preserve against centrif­ ugal history, and some to the kabbalists, the templars, the rosicru737 -_ �-........ / �\� /' cians, so have this secret of the fearful j-\ssemoly, and others, round their ways inside the weatherless spaces of this or that ethnic joke. there is also the story about tyrone slothrop, who was sent into the zone to be present at his own assembly-perhaps, heavily paranoid voices have whispered, his time's assembly-and there ought to be a punch line to it, but there isn't. the plan went wrong. he is being bro­ ken down instead, and scattered. his cards have been laid down, celtic style, in the order suggested by mr. a. e. waite, laid out and read, but they are the cards of a tanker and feeb: they point only to a long and scuffling future, to mediocrity (not only in his life but also, heh, heh, in his chroniclers too, yes yes nothing like getting the 3 of pentacles upside down covering the significator on the second try to send you to the tube to watch a seventh rerun of the takeshi and ichizo show, light a ciga­ rette and try to forget the whole thing)-to no clear happiness or re­ deeming cataclysm. all his hopeful cards are reversed, most unhappily of all the hanged man, who is supposed to be upside down to begin with, telling of his secret hopes and fears.... "there never was a dr. jamf," opines world-renowned analyst mickey wuxtry-wuxtry-"jamf was only a fiction, to help him explain what he felt so terribly, so immediately in his genitals for those rockets each time exploding in the sky . . . to help him deny what he could not possibly admit: that he might be in love, in sexual love, with his, and his race's, death. "these early americans, in their way, were a fascinating combination of crude poet and psychic cripple. . . ." "we were never that concerned with slothrop qua slothrop," a spokesman for the counterforce admitted recently in an interview with the wall street journal. interviewer: you mean, then, that he was more a rallying-point. spokesman: no, not even that. opinion even at the start was divided. it was one of our fatal weaknesses. [i'm sure you want to hear about fatal weaknesses.] some called him a "pretext." others felt that he was a genuine, point-for-point microcosm. the microcosmists, as you must know from the standard histories, leaped off to an early start. we-it was a very odd form of heretic-chasing, really. across the low countries, in the summer. it went on in fields of windmills, marshlands where it was almost too dark to get a decent sight. i recall the time christian found an old alarm clock, and we salvaged the radium, to coat our plumb-bob strings with. they shone in the twilight. you've seen them holding bobs, hands characteristically gathered near the crotch. a 738 dark fig meters a on theap [yes. a ell it is that i traitor. i ca marys, cn/lsi lome of thtm ole. �1r firl! " \\'eco�ld feel cago ��l.\ da.. � .l16uj. v vv hu u. ju v ....... u �� ��£ninescent piss falling to the ground fifty meters away ... "the presence, pissing," that became a standard joke on the apprentices. a raketen-stadt charlie noble, you might say. . . . [yes. a cute way of putting it. i am betraying them all . . . the worst of it is that i know what your editors want, exactly what they want. i am a traitor. i carry it with me. your virus. spread by your tireless typhoid marys, cruising the markets and the stations. we did manage to ambush some of them. once we caught some in the underground. it was terri­ ble. my first action, my initiation. we chased them down the tunnels. we could feel their fright. when the tunnels branched, we had only the treacherous acoustics of the underground to go on. chances were good for getting lost. there was almost no light. the rails gleamed, as they do aboveground on a rainy night. and the whispers then-the shadows who waited, hunched in angles at the maintenance stations, lying against the tunnel walls, watching the chase. "the end is too far," they whispered. "go back. there are no stops on this branch. the trains run and the passengers ride miles of blank mustard walls, but there are no stops. it's a long afternoon run .... " two of them got away. but we took the rest. between two station-marks, yellow crayon through the years of grease and passag , 1966 and 1971, i tast d my first blood. do you want to put this part in?] we drank the blood of our enemies. that's why you see gnostics so hunted. the sacrament of the eucharist is really drinking the blood of the enemy. th grail, the sangraal, is the bloody vehicle. why else guard it so sacredly? why should the black honor-guard ride half a continent, half a splintering empire, stone night and winter day, if it's only for the touch of sweet lips on a humble bowl? no, it's mortal sin they're carrying: to swallow the enemy, down into the slick juicery to be taken in by all the cells. your officially defined "mortal sin," that is. a sin against you. a section of your penal code, that's all. [the true sin was yours: to interdict that union. to draw that line. to keep us worse than enemies, who are after all caught in the same fields of shit-to keep us strangers. we drank the blood of our enemies. the blood of our friends, we cherished. ] item s-1706.31, fragment of undershirt, u.s. navy issue, with brown stain assumed to be blood in shape of sword running lower left to upper right. not included in the book of memorabilia is this footnote. the piece of cloth was given to slothrop by seaman bodine, one night in the chi­ cago bar. in a way, the evening was a reprise of their first meeting. bo739 dine, smoldering fat reefer stuck in under the strings at the neck ot his guitar, singing mournfully a song that's part roger mexico's and part some nameless sailor stuck in wartime san diego: last week i threw a pie at someone's momma, last night i threw a party for my mind, last thing i knew that 6:02 was screamin' over my head, or it might've been th' 11:59 [refrain]: too many chain-link fences in the evening, too many people shiverin' in the rain, they tell me that you finally got around to have your baby, and it don't look like i'll see your face again. sometimes i wanna go back north, to humboldt county­ sometimes i think i'll go back east, to see my kin there's times i think i almost could be happy, if i knew you thought about me, now and then. . bodine has a siren-ring, the kind kids send away cereal boxtops for, cleverly arranged in his asshole so it can be operated at any time by blowing a fart of a certain magnitude. he's gotten pretty good at punc­ tuating his music with these farted wheeeeeeee's, working now at getting them in the right key, a brand-new reflex arc, ear-brain-hands­ asshole, and a return toward innocence too. the merchants tonight are all dealing a bit slower. sentimental bodine thinks it's because they're listening to his song. maybe they are. bales of fresh coca leaves just in from the andes transform the place into some resonant latin ware­ house, on the eve of a revolution that never will come closer than smoke dirtying the sky above the cane, sometimes, in the long lace afternoons at the window. . . . street urchins are into a busy elf routine, wrap­ ping each leaf around a betel nut, into a neat little packet for chewing. their reddened fingers are living embers in the shadow. seaman bodine looks up suddenly, canny, unshaven face stung by all the smoke and unawareness in the room. he's looking straight at slothrop (being one of the few who can still see slothrop as any sort of integral creature any more. most of the others gave up long ago trying to hold him together, even as a concept-"it's just got too remote" 's what they usually say). does bodine now feel his own strength may someday soon not be 740 enough somebo( much .. "here. does he "look, i depression, \i iliere'loailill.' loe lame hed rockmark • �iol'e, old i dl \\iiliiliei\\ii toer were off piece joondill1 ilood\\i�1 out it. but \0 it wa n't around, dol then, a nc' slotnrop 1). cast all ult· of pal\\ ot enough eitner: tnat sooil, llke all the others, he'll have to let go? but " somebody's got to hold on, it can't happen to all of us-no, that'd be too �i much . . . rocketman, rocketman. you poor fucker. 0 "here. listen. i want you to have it. understand? it's yours." � does he even hear any more? can he see this cloth, this stain? "look, i was there, in chicago, when they ambushed him. i was there that night, right down the street from the biograph, i heard the gunfire, everything. shit, i was just a boot, i thought this was what lib­ erty was all about, so i went running. me and half chicago. out of the bars, the toilets, the alleys, dames holding their skirts up so they could run faster, missus krodobbly who's drinking her way through the big depression, waitin' till the sun shines thru, and whatta you know, there' half my graduating class from great lakes, in dress blues with the same bedspring marks as mine, and there's longtime hookers and pockmark fags with breath smelling like the inside of a motorman's glove, old ladies from back of the yards, subdebs just out the movies with the sweat still cold on their thighs, gate, everybody was there. they were taking off clothes, tearing checks out of checkbooks, ripping off pieces of each others' newspaper, just so they could soak up some of john dillinger's blood. we went crazy. the agents didn't stop us. just stood with smoke still curling out of their muzzles while the people all went down on that blood in the street. maybe i went along without thinking. but there was something else. something i must've needed ... if you can hear me ... that's why i'm giving this to you. o.k.? that's dillinger's blood there. still warm when i got to it. they wouldn't want you thinking he was anything but a 'common criminal'but their head's so far up their ass-he still did what he did. he went � out socked them right in the toilet privacy of their banks. who cares � what he was thinking about, long as it didn't get in the way? a-and it l doesn't even matter why we're doing this, either. rocky? yeah, what we � need isn't right reasons, but just that grace. the physical grace to keep it working. courage, brains, sure, o.k., but without that grace? forget it. do you-please, are you listening? this thing here works. really does. it worked for me, but i'm out of the dumbo stage now, i can fly without it. but you. rocky. you.... " it wasn't their last meeting, but later on there were always others around, doper-crises, resentments about burns real or intended, and by then, as he'd feared, bodine was beginning, helpless, in shame, to let slothrop go. in certain rushes now, when he sees white network being cast all directions on his field of vision, he understands it as an emblem of pain or death. he's begun to spend more of his time with trudi. 741 / r\ t, / their friend magda was picked up on first-degree mopery and taken back to leverkusen, and an overgrown back court where electric lines spit overhead, the dusty bricks sprout weeds from the cracks, shutters are always closed, grass and weeds turn to bitterest autumn floor. on certain days the wind brings aspirin-dust from the bayer factory. the people inhale it, and grow more tranquil. they both feel her absence. bodine finds presently that his character­ istic gross laugh, hyeugh, hyeugh, has grown more german, tiachz, tiachx. he's also taking on some of magda's old disguises. good-natured and penetrable disguises, as at a masked ball. it is a transvestism of car­ ing, and the first time in his life it's happened. though nobody asks, being too busy dealing, he reckons it's all right. light in the sky is stretched and clear, exactly like taffy after no more than the first two pulls. "dying a weird death," slothrop's visitor by this time may be scrawled lines of carbon on a wall, voices down a chimney, some human being out on the road, "the object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. to make sure that however it finds you, it will find you under very weird circumstances. to live that kind of life. . . ." item s-1729.06, bottle containing 7 cc. of may wine. analysis indicates pres­ ence of woodruff herb, lemon and orange peel. sprigs of woodruff, also known as master of the woods, were carried by the early teutonic warriors. it gives success in battle. it appears that some part of slothrop ran into the awol dzabajev one night in the heart of downtown niederschaumdorf. (some believe that fragments of slothrop have grown into consistent personae of their own. if so, there's no telling which of the zone's present-day population are offshoots of his original scattering. there's supposed to be a last photograph of him on the only record album ever put out by the fool, an english rock group-seven musicians posed, in the arrogant style of the early stones, near an old rocket-bomb site, out in the east end, or south of the river. it is spring, and french thyme blossoms in amazing white lacework across the cape of green that now hides and softens the true shape of the old rubble. there is no way to tell which of the faces is slothrop's: the only printed credit that might apply to him is "harmonica, kazoo­ a friend." but knowing his tarot, we would expect to look among the humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea....) now there's only a long cat's-eye of bleak sunset left over the plain tonight, bright gray against a purple ceiling of clouds, with an iris of 742 �meterl, i�, \[ tlnn�, the ap\)t :rrtie, the will tunnd a knife in �rabout to in �na capmaned n dno wake a�ain rreezing your dr golvn the k\,:l. a wine ru' h evator ceilin� a rate in two, t\,. darker gray. it is ulsplayeu auuve, more than looking down on, this " gathering of dzabajev and his friends. inside the town, a strange con�,1 vention is under way. village idiots from villages throughout germany � are streaming in (streaming from mouth as well as leaving behind high� pitched trails of color for the folks to point at in their absence). they are expected to pass a resolution tonight asking great britain for commonwealth status, and perhaps even to apply for membership in the uno. children in the parish schools are being asked to pray for their success. can 13 years of vatican collaboration have clarified the difference between what's holy and what is not? another state is forming in the night, not without theatre and festivity. so tonight's prevalence of maitrinke, which dzabajev has managed to score several liters of. let the village idiots celebrate. let their holiness ripple into interference-patterns till it clog the lantern-light of the meeting hall. let the chorus line perform heroically: 16 ragged staring oldtimers who shuffle aimlessly about the stage, jerking off in unison, waggling penises in mock quarterstaffing, brandishing in twos and threes their green-leaved poles, exposing amazing chancres and lesions, going off in fountains of sperm strung with blood that splash over glazed trouser-pleats, dirt-colored jackets with pockets dangling like go-year-old breasts, sockless ankles pennanently stained with the dust of the little squares and the depopulated streets. let them cheer and pound their seats, let the brotherly spit flow. tonight the dzabajev circle have acquired, through an ill-coordinated smash-and-grab at the home of niederschaumdorf's only doctor, a gigantic hypodermic syringe and needle. tonight they will shoot wine. if the police are on the way, if far down the road certain savage ears can already pick up the rumble of an occupation convoy across the night kil­ ometers, signaling past sight, past the first headlamp's faintest scat­ tering, the approach of danger, still no one here is likely to break the circle. the wine will operate on whatever happens. didn't you wake up to find a knife in your hand, your head down a toilet, the blur of a long sap about to smash your upper lip, and sink back down to the old red and capillaried nap where none of this could possibly be happening? and wake again to a woman screaming, again to the water of the canal freezing your drowned eye and ear, again to too many fortresses diving down the sky, again, again.... but no, never real. a wine rush: a wine rush is defying gravity, finding yourself on the el­ evator ceiling as it rockets upward, and no way to get down. you sepa­ rate in two, the basic two, and each self is aware of the other. 743 the occupation of mingeborough the trucks come rolling down the hill, where the state highway nar­ rows, at about three in the afternoon. all their headlights are on. elec­ tric stare after stare topping the crest of the hill, between the maple trees. the noise is terrific. gearboxes chatter as each truck hits the end of the grade, weary cries of "double-clutch it, idiot!" come from under the canvas. an apple tree by the road is in blossom. the limbs are wet with this morning's rain, dark and wet. sitting under it, with anyone else but slothrop, is a barelegged girl, blonde and brown as honey. her name is marjorie. hogan will come home from the pacific and court her, but he'll lose out to pete dufay. she and dufay will have a daugh­ ter named kim, and kim will have her braids dipped in the school ink­ wells by young hogan, j r. it will all go on, occupation or not, with or without uncle tyrone. there's more rain in the air. the soldiers are mustering by hicks's garage. in the back lot is a greasy dump, a pit, full of ball-bearings, clutch plates, and pieces of transmission. in the parking lot below­ shared with the green-trimmed candy store, where he waited for the first slice of very yellow schoolbus to appear each 3: 15 around the cor­ ner, and knew which high-school kids were easy marks for pennies-are six or seven old cord automobiles, in different stages of dustiness and breakdown. souvenirs of young empire, they shine like hearses now in the premonition of rain. work details are already putting up barricades, and a scavenging party has invaded the gray clapboards of pizzini's store, standing big as a barn on the corner. kids hanging around the loading platform, eating sunflower seeds out of burlap sacks, listen to the soldiers liberating sides of beef from pizzini's freezer. if slothrop wants to get home from here, he has to slide into a pathway next to the two-story brick wall of hicks's garage, a green path whose entrance is concealed behind the trash-fire of the store, and the frame shed where pizzini keeps his delivery truck. you cut through two lots which aren't platted exactly back to back, so that actually you're skirting one fence and using a driveway. they are both amber and black old ladies' houses, full of cats alive or stuffed, stained lampshades, antimacassars and doilies on all the chairs and tables, and a terminal gloom. you have to cross a street then, go down mrs. snodd's driveway beside the holly­ hocks, through a wire gate and santora's back yard, over the rail fence where the hedge stops, across your own street, and home. . . . but there is the occupation. they may already have interdicted the kids' short cuts along with the grown-up routes. it may be too late to get home. 744 gustava holder and r punched hole kazoo, finger-i turns out s{1' ,1 �opje, workj/)� mess what-ill t j mtio, the perfecl yeah, another fue reed there i gustav, good did 1�\i' en�ljlh \hoo ill ��e5 to proclaim ili1kazooil �wo on hi daih furooc cope minute vou ta' \ �'nat if' like. or �n)bodv. all \ou itt of t�kin� l 11 finds you, appdr with gun whid1 lile-pun the tri dead into the h the corpse �()\\\ (�ou can \n\a�h sound euihn\!, .lj1\..\._,.l"-. j.l'j der platz gustav and andre, back from cuxhaven, have unscrewed the reed­ holder and reed from andre's kazoo and replaced them with tinfoil­ punched holes in the tinfoil, and are now smoking hashish out of the kazoo, finger-valving the small end pa-pa-pah to carburete the smoke­ turns out sly saure has had ex-peenemunde engineers, propulsion-group people, working on a long-term study of optimum hashpipe design, and guess what-in terms of flow rate, heat-transfer, control of air-to-smoke ratio, the perfect shape turns out to be that of the classical kazoo! yeah, another odd thing about the kazoo: the knuckle-thread above the reed there is exactly the same as a thread in a light-bulb socket. gustav, good old captain horror, wearing a liberated pair of very yel­ low english shooting-glasses ("helps you find the vein easier, i guess"), likes to proclaim this as the clear signature of phoebus. "you fools think the kazoo is a subversive instrument? here-" he always packs a light bulb on his daily rounds, no use passing up an opportunity to depress the odd dopefiend . . . deftly screwing the light bulb flush against the reed, muting it out, "you s e? phoebus is even behind the kazoo. hal hal hal" schadenfreude, wors than a prolonged onion fart, seeps through the ro m. but what gustav's light bulb-none other than our friend byron­ wants to say is no, it's not that way at all, it's a declaration of brother­ hood by th kazoo for all th captive and oppr ssed light bulbs. . . . there is a movie going on, und r the rug. on the floor, 24 hours a day, pull back the rug sure enough there's that damn movie! a really offensive and tast less film by gerhardt von coll, daily rushes in fact from a project which will never be completed. springer just plans to keep it going indefinitely there, under the rug. the title is new dope, and that's what it's about, a brand new kind of dope that nobody's ever heard of. one of the most annoying characteristics of the shit is that the minute you take it you are rendered incapable of ever telling anybody what it's like, or worse, where to get any. dealers are as in the dark as anybody. all you can hope is that you'll come across somebody in the act of taking (shooting? smoking? swallowing?) some. it is the dope that finds you, apparently. part of a reverse world whose agents run around with guns which are like vacuum cleaners operating in the direction of life-pull the trigger and bullets are sucked back out of the recently dead into the barrel, and the great irreversible is actually reversed as the corpse comes to life to the accompaniment of a backwards gunshot (you can imagine what drug-ravaged and mindless idea of fun the daily sound editing on this turns out to be). titles flash on such as 745 and here he is himself, the big ham, sitting on the toilet, a . . . well what appears to be an unusually large infant's training toilet, up be­ tween the sitter's legs rises the porcelain head of a jackal with what, em­ barrassingly, proves to be a reefer, in its rather loosely smiling mouth­ "through evil and eagles," blithers the springer, "the climate blondes its way, for they are no strength under the coarse war. no not for ro­ guery until the monitors are there in blashing sheets of earth to mate and say medoshnicka bleelar medoometnozz in bergamot and playful fantasy under the throne and nose of the least merciful king. . . ." well, there is a good deal of this sort of thing, and a good time to nip out for popcorn, which in the platz turn out to be morning-glory seeds popped into little stilled brown explosions. none of the regular company here actually watch the movie under the rug much-only visitors passing through: friends of magda, defectors from the great aspirin factory in leverkusen, over in the corner there dribbling liberated cornstarch and water on each other's naked bodies, giggling unhealthily . . . devotees of the i ching who have a favorite hexagram tattooed on each toe, who can never stay in one place for long, can you guess why? because they always have i ching feet! also stumblebum magicians who can't help leaving themselves wide open for disastrous visits from qlippoth, ouija­ board jokesters, poltergeists, all kinds of astral-plane tankers and feebs -yeah they're all showing up at der platz these days. but the alterna­ tive is to start keeping some out and not others, and nobody's ready for that. . . . decisions like that are for some angel stationed very high, watching us at our many perversities, crawling across black satin, gag­ ging on whip-handles, licking the blood from a lover's vein-hit, all of it, every lost giggle or sigh, being carried on under a sentence of death whose deep beauty the angel has never been close to. weissmann's tarot weissmann's tarot is better than slothrop's. here are the real cards, exactly as they came up. significator: knight of swords covered by: the tower crossed by: queen of swords crowning: king of cups beneath: ace of swords before: 4 of cups behind: 4 of pentacles heapj horse, chi heath ore) while dark path jll a p over the �re and at last th ilie sunlj�ht �oor, heil ttlt � toilieco 01 n eard ilnis pre ev and eyer\,\ itrikin a t\\\\ falling from i gnostic or ..l u5� of pentacles house: 8 of cups hopes and fears: 2 of swords what will come: the world he appears first with boots and insignia shining as the rider on a black horse, charging in a gallop neither he nor horse can control, across the heath over the giant grave-mounds, scattering the black-faced sheep, while dark stands of juniper move dreamily, death-loving, across his path in a parallax of unhurrying fatality, presiding as monuments do over the green and tan departure of summer, the dust-colored lowlands and at last the field-gray sea, a prairie of sea darkening to purple where the sunlight comes through, in great circles, spotlights on a dancing­ floor. he is the father you will never quite manage to kill. the oedipal situ­ ation in the zone these days is terrible. there is no dignity. the mothers have been masculinized to old worn moneybags of no sexual interest to anyone, and yet here are their sons, still trapped inside inertias of lust that are 40 years out of date. the fathers have no power today and never did, but because 40 years ago we could not kill them, we are con­ demned now to the same passivity, the same masochist fantasies they cherished in secret, and worse, we are condemned in our weakness to impersonate men of power our own infant children must hate, and wish to usurp the place of, and fail. . . . so generation after generation of men in love with pain and passivity serve out their time in the zone, si­ lent, redolent of faded sperm, terrified of dying, desperately addicted to the comforts others sell them, however useless, ugly or shallow, will­ ing to have life defined for them by men whose only talent is for death. of 77 cards that could have come up, weissmann is "covered," that is his present condition is set forth, by the tower. it is a puzzling card, and everybody has a different story on it. it shows a bolt of lightning striking a tall phallic structure, and two figures, one wearing a crown, falling from it. some read ejaculation, and leave it at that. others see a gnostic or cathar symbol for the church of rome, and this is general­ ized to mean any system which cannot tolerate heresy: a system which, by its nature, must sooner or later fall. we know by now that it is also the rocket. members of the order of the golden dawn believe the tower represents victory over splendor, and avenging force. as goebbels, beyond all his professional verbalizing, believed in the rocket as an avenger. on the kabbalist tree of life, the path of the tower connects the 747 sephira netzach, victory, with hod, glory or splendor. hence the golden dawn interpretation. netzach is fiery and emotional, hod is wa­ tery and logical. on the body of god, these two sephiroth are the thighs, the pillars of the temple, resolving together in yesod, the sex and excretory organs. but each of the sephiroth is also haunted by its proper demons or qlippoth. netzach by the ghorab tzerek, the ravens of death, and hod by the samael, the poison of god. noone has asked the demons at either level, but there may be just the wee vulnerability here to a sensa­ tion of falling, the kind of very steep and out-of-scale fall we find in dreams, a falling more through space than among objects. though the different qlippoth can only work each his own sort of evil, activity on the path of the tower, from netzach to hod, seems to've resulted in the emergence of a new kind of demon (what, a dialectical tarot? yes indeedyfoax! a-and if you don't think there are marxist-leninist magi­ cians around, well you better think again.0. the ravens of death have now tasted of the poison of god . . . but in doses small enough not to sicken but to bring on, like the amanita muscaria, a very peculiar state of mind. . . . they have no official name, but they are the rocket's guardian demons. weissmann is crossed by the queen of his suit. perhaps himself, in drag. she is the chief obstacle in his way. at his foundation is the single sword flaming inside the crown: again, netzach, victory. in the ameri­ can deck this card has come down to us as the ace of spades, which is a bit more sinister: you know the silence that falls on the room when it comes up, whatever the game. behind him, moving out of his life as an influence, is the 4 or four of pentacles, which shows a figure of modest property desperately clutching on to what he owns, four gold coins­ this feeb is holding two of them down with his feet, balancing another on his head and holding the fourth tightly against his stomach, which is ulcerous. it is the stationary witch trying to hold her candy house against the host of nibblers out there in the dark. moving in, before him, comes a feast of cups, a satiety. lotta booze and broads for weissmann coming soon. good for him-although in his house he is seen walking away, renouncing eight stacked gold chalices. perhaps he is to be given only what he must walk away from. perhaps it is because in the lees of the night's last cup is the bitter presence of a woman sitting by a rocky shore, the two of swords, alone at the baltic edge, blindfolded in the moonlight, holding the two blades crossed upon her breasts . . . the meaning is usually taken as "concord in a state of arms," a good enough 748 descrip fears. himse des, medl to stand h comple,\ioj) and wej�sj come what h beginning. there i. an at the mom' antechanl\) '1 and \)a))\n\!_ descnpuon or me z.one nowauays, and it describes his deepest hopes, or 1j fears. w. himself, as the world sees him: the scholarly young page of penta� cles, meditating on his magic gold talisman. the page may also be used � to stand for a young girl. but pentacles describe people of very dark complexion, and so the card almost certainly is enzian as a young man. and weissmann may at last, in this limited pasteboard way, have become what he first loved. the king of cups, crowning his hopes, is the fair intellectual-king. if you're wondering where he's gone, look among the successful academ­ ics, the presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of directors. he is almost surely there. look high, not low. his future card, the card of what will come, is the world. the last green and magenta the heath grows green and magenta in all directions, earth and heather, coming of ageno. it was spring. the horse in a field, beyond the clearing and the trees, the last horse is standing, tarnished silver-gray, hardly more than an assembling of shadows. the heathen germans who lived h re sacrificed horses once, in their old ceremonies. later the hors 's role changed from holy offering to servant of power. by then a great change was working on the heath, kneading, turning, stirring with fingers strong as wind. now that sacrifice has become a political act, an act of caesar, the last horse cares only about how the wind starts up this afternoon: rises at first, and tries to stick, to catch, but fails . . . each time, the horse feels a similar rising in his heart, at the edges of eye, ear, brain.... fi­ nally, at the sure catching of the wind, which is also a turning in the day, his head rises, and a shiver comes over him-possesses him. his tail lashes at the clear elusive flesh of the wind. the sacrifice in the grove is beginning. isaac there is an aggadic tradition from around the 4th century that isaac, at the moment abraham was about to sacrifice him on moriah, saw the antechambers of the throne. for the working mystic, having the vision and passing through the chambers one by one, is terrible and complex. 749 -�// '_',,, -, ,( you must have not only the schooling in countersizns and seals, not omy the physical readiness through exercise and abstinence, but also a hardon of resolution that will never go limp on you. the angels at the doorways will try to con you, threaten you, play all manner of cruel practical jokes, to turn you aside. the qlippoth, shells of the dead, will use all your love for friends who have passed across against you. you have chosen the active way, and there is no faltering without finding the most mortal danger. the other way is dark and female, passive, self-abandoning. isaac under the blade. the glittering edge widening to a hallway, down, up which the soul is borne by an irresistible aether. gerhardt von coll on his camera dolly, whooping with joy, barrel-assing down the long corri­ dors at nymphenburg. (let us leave him here, in his transport, in his in­ nocence. . . .) the numinous light grows ahead, almost blue among all this gilt and glass. the gilders worked naked and had their heads shaved bald-to get a static charge to hold the fluttering leaf they had first to run the brush through their pubic hair: genital electricity would shine forever down these gold vistas. but we have long left mad ludwig and his spanish dancer guttering, fading scarlet across the marble, shining so treacherously like sweet water . . . already that lies behind. the ascent to the merkabah, despite his last feeble vestiges of manhood, last ges­ tures toward the possibility of magic, is irreversibly on route. pre-launch a giant white fly: an erect penis buzzing in white lace, clotted with blood or sperm. deathlace is the boy's bridal costume. his smooth feet, bound side by side, are in white satin slippers with white bows. his red nipples are erect. the golden hairs on his back, alloyed german gold, pale yellow to white, run symmetric about his spine, run in arches fine and whirled as the arches of a fingerprint, as filings along magnetic lines of force. each freckle or mole is a dark, precisely-set anomaly in the field. sweat gathers at his nape. he is gagged with a white kid glove. weissmann has engineered all the symbolism today. the glove is the fe­ male equivalent of the hand of glory, which second-story men use to light their way into your home: a candle in a dead man's hand, erect as all your tissue will grow at the first delicious tongue-flick of your mis­ tress death. the glove is the cavity into which the hand fits, as the 00000 is the womb into which gottfried returns. stuff him in. not a procrustean bed, but modified to take him. the two, boy and rocket, concurrently designed. its steel hindquarters bent 750 so beaut gerat an writhe a pressed a , ' , and 0 right one, 00000, she love, lick and li�uid oxygen you past fee/in rouforwijl �/ rotechnic era. lieochen, he's been �\ �rown by ilie ig �aaeo to gi\'e it viliole frequenci rleasantly. hke \\inooll'·ias, " part of ilie r ,\t long la t. d toolate�" alwa\ �cause of cot; miltake bv one due to be fot �mith wi!! arri superman \ erector si hin ditter manna wilt in tbe so beautilully ... he tits well. they are mated to each other, schwarz­ gerat and next higher assembly. his bare limbs in their metal bondage writhe among the fuel, oxidizer, live-steam lines, thrust frame, com­ pressed air battery, exhaust elbow, decomposer, tanks, vents, valves ... and one of these valves, one test-point, one pressure-switch is the right one, the true clitoris, routed directly into the nervous system of the 00000. she should not be a mystery to you, gottfried. find the zone of love, lick and kiss . . . you have time-there are still a few minutes. the liquid oxygen runs freezing so close to your cheek, bones of frost to burn you past feeling. soon there will be the fires, too. the oven we fattened you for will glow. here is the sergeant, bringing the ziindkreuz. the py­ rotechnic cross to light you off. the men are at attention. get ready, liebchen. hardware he's been given a window of artificial sapphire, four inches across, grown by the ig in 1942 as a mushroom-shaped boule, a touch of cobalt added to give it a greenish tint-very heat-resistant, transparent to most visible frequencies-it warps the images of sky and clouds outside, but pleasantly, like ochsen-augen in grandmother's day, the days before window-glass. . . . part of the vaporized oxygen is routed through gottfried's imipolex shroud. in one of his ears, a tiny speaker has been surgically implanted. it shines like a pretty earring. the data link runs through the radio-guid­ ance system, and the words of weissmann are to be, for a while, multi­ plexed with the error-corrections sent out to the rocket. but there's no return channel from gottfried to the ground. the exact moment of his death will never be known. chase music at long last, after a distinguished career of uttering, "my god, we are too late!" always with the trace of a sneer, a pro-forma condescension­ because of course he never arrives too late, there's always a reprieve, a mistake by one of the yellow adversary's hired bunglers, at worst a vital clue to be found next to the body-now, finally, sir denis nayland smith will arrive, my god, too late. superman will swoop boots-first into a deserted clearing, a launcher­ erector sighing oil through a slow seal-leak, gum evoked from the trees, bitter manna for this bitterest of passages. the colors of his cape will wilt in the afternoon sun, curls on his head begin to show their first 751 threads of gray. philip marlowe will suffer a horrible migraine and reach by reflex for the pint of rye in his suit pocket, and feel homesick for the lacework balconies of the bradbury building. submariner and his multilingual gang will run into battery trouble. plasticman will lose his way among the imipolex chains, and topologists all over the zone will run out and stop payments on his honorarium checks ("perfectly deformable," indeed!) the lone ranger will storm in at the head of a posse, rowels tearing blood from the stallion's white hide, to find his young friend, innocent dan, swinging from a tree limb by a broken neck. (tonto, god willing, will put on the ghost shirt and find some cold fire to hunker down by to sharpen his knife.) "too late" was never in their programming. they find instead a mo­ ment's suspending of their sanity-but then it's over with, whew, and it's back to the trail, back to the daily planet. yes jimmy, it must've been the day i ran into that singularity, those few seconds of absolute mystery . . . you know jimmy, time-time is a funny thing. . . . there'll be a thousand ways to forget. the heroes will go on, kicked up­ stairs to oversee the development of bright new middle-line personnel, and they will watch their system falling apart, watch those singularities begin to come more and more often, proclaiming another dispensation out of the tissue of old-fashioned time, and they'll call it cancer, and just won't know what things are coming to, or what's the meaning of it all, jimmy.... these days, he finds he actually misses the dogs. who would have thought he'd ever feel sentimental over a pack of slobbering curs? but here in the sub-ministry all is so odorless, touchless. the sensory depri­ vation, for a while, did stimulate his curiosity. for a while he kept a faithful daily record of his physiological changes. but this was mostly re­ membering about pavlov on his own deathbed, recording himself till the end. with pointsman it's only habit, retro-scientism: a last look back at the door to stockholm, closing behind him forever. the entries began to fall off, and presently stopped. he signed reports, he supervised. he traveled to other parts of england, later to other countries, to scout for fresh talent. in the faces of mossmoon and the others, at odd moments, he could detect a reflex he'd never allowed himself to dream of: the tol­ erance of men in power for one who never made his move, or made it wrong. of course there are still moments of creative challengeyes, well, he's an ex-scientist now, one who'll never get into it far enough to start talking about god, apple-cheeked lovable white-haired eccentric gabbing from the vantage of his laureate-no he'll be left only with cause and effect, and the rest of his sterile armamentarium 752 mult negotiate e mauicand faith. k b �aobalist 'ecret "\oiv the tilt life, it i alo tt raili�, each path ilia to one of th 111itor, "what h "the sign tl jar of thorazin m� drug that h itmake him a around suntan man's children wafer capacito to his inatten edelman tnou nad crept into a jet plane ru ered the pra scrutinize ea i /1 anum . . . ills mmerai cornaors uu llul shine. they will stay the same neutral nameless tone from here in to the central chamber, and the perfectly re­ hearsed scene he is to play there, after all. countdown the countdown as we know it, 10-9-8-u.s.w., was invented by fritz lang in 1929 for the ufa film die frau in mond. he put it into the launch scene to heighten the suspense. "it is another of my damned 'touches,' " fritz lang said. "at the creation," explains kabbalist spokesman steve edelman, "god sent out a pulse of energy into the void. it presently branched and sorted into ten distinct spheres or aspects, corresponding to the num­ bers 1-10. these are known as the sephiroth. to return to god, the soul must negotiate each of the sephiroth, from ten back to one. armed with magic and faith, kabbalists have set out to conquer the sephiroth. many kabbalist secrets have to do with making the trip successfully. "now the sephiroth fall into a pattern, which is called the tree of life. it is also the body of god. drawn among the ten spheres are 22 paths. each path corresponds to a letter of the hebrew alphabet, and also to one of the cards called 'major arcana' in the tarot. so although the rocket countdown appears to be serial, it actually conceals the tree of life, which must be apprehended all at once, together, in parallel. "some sephiroth are active or masculine, others passive or feminine. but the tree itself is a unity, rooted exactly at the bodenplatte. it is the axis of a particular earth, a new dispensation, brought into being by the great firing." "but but with a new axis, a newly spinning earth," it occurs to the visitor, "what happens to astrology?" "the signs change, idiot," snaps edelman, reaching for his family-size jar of thorazine. he has become such a habitual user of this tranquiliz­ ing drug that his complexion has deepened to an alarming slate-purple. it makes him an oddity on the street here, where everybody else walks around suntanned, and red-eyed from one irritant or another. edel­ man's children, mischievous little devils, have lately taken to slipping wafer capacitors from junked transistor radios into pop's thorazine jar. to his inattentive eye there was hardly any difference: so, for a while, edelman thought he must be developing a tolerance, and that the abyss had crept intolerably close, only an accident away-a siren in the street, a jet plane rumbling in a holding pattern-but luckily his wife discov­ ered the prank in time, and now, before he swallows, he is careful to scrutinize each thorazine for leads, mu's, numbering. 753 "here-" hefting a fat xeroxed sheaf, "the ephemeris. based on the new rotation." "you mean someone's actually found the bodenplatte? the pole?" "the delta-t itself. it wasn't made public, naturally. the 'kaisersbart expedition' found it." a pseudonym, evidently. everyone knows the kaiser has no beard. strung into the apollonian dream . . . when something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bi­ sects both your ears, making eyes very alert. the light bends toward chalky blue. your skin aches. at last: something real. here in the tail section of the 00000, gottfried has found this clear surface before him in fact, literal: the imipolex shroud. flotsam from his childhood are rising through his attention. he's remembering the skin of an apple, bursting with nebulae, a look into curved reddening space. his eyes taken on and on, and further. . . . the plastic surface flutters minutely: gray-white, mocking, an enemy of color. the day outside is raw and the victim lightly dressed, but he feels warm in here. his white stockings stretch nicely from his suspender­ tabs. he has found a shallow bend in a pipe where he can rest his cheek as he gazes into the shroud. he feels his hair tickling his back, his bared shoulders. it's a dim, whited room. a room for lying in, bridal and open to the pallid spaces of the evening, waiting for whatever will fall on him. phone traffic drones into his wired ear. the voices are metal and dras­ tically filtered. they buzz like the voices of surgeons, heard as you're going under ether. though they now only speak the ritual words, he can still tell them apart. the soft smell of imipolex, wrapping him absolutely, is a smell he knows. it doesn't frighten him. it was in the room when he fell asleep so long ago, so deep in sweet paralyzed childhood . . . it was there as he began to dream. now it is time to wake, into the breath of what was al­ ways real. come, wake. all is well. orpheus puts down harp los angeles (pns)-richard m. zhlubb, night manager of the orpheus theatre on melrose, has come out against what he calls "irresponsible use of the harmonica." or, actually, "harbodica," since manager zhlubb suffers from a chronic adenoidal condition, which affects his speech. friends and detractors alike think of him as "the adenoid." anyway, zhlubb states that his queues, especially for midnight show754 ings, have strument. "it's been ilie act uncal/n "here, richa �ere," meamrhil mrulating hi far �� ra�e. �janager zhlul �ennitelv." he coil �at )te;'e edelm, n &oeaabes," ittention center� traditionally th \t is not white engineered as tl �o, one hesitat and they are a\\ ager's enterta\ taste, alma t a come gibberi on the ings, have lc:lllel1 llllu c:l �ldle uj. ih::;af anarchy because of the musical in­ strument. "it's been going on ever since our bengt ekerot / maria casares film festival," complains zhlubb, who is fiftyish and jowled, with a perma­ nent five-o'clock shadow (the worst by far of all the hourly shadows), and a habit of throwing his arms up into an inverted "peace sign," which also happens to be semaphore code for the letter u, exposing in the act uncounted yards of white french cuff. "here, richard," jeers a passerby, "i got your french cuff, right here," meanwhile exposing himself in the grossest possible way and ma­ nipulating his foreskin in a manner your correspondent cannot set upon his page. manager zhlubb winces slightly. "that's one of the ringleaders, definitely," he confides. "i've had a lot of trouble with him. him and that steve edelman." he pronounces it "edelbid." "i'b dot afraid to dabe dabes." the case he refers to is still pending. steve edelman, a hollywood businessman, accused last year of an 11569 (attempted mopery with a subversive instrument), is currently in atascadero under indefinite ob­ servation. it is alleged that edelman, in an unauthorized state of mind, attempted to playa chord progression on the department of justice list, out in the street and in the presence of a whole movie-queue of wit­ nesses. "a-and now they're all doing it. well, not 'all,' let me just clarify that, of course the actual lawbreakers are only a small but loud minority, what i meant to say was, all those like edelman. certainly not all those good folks in the queue. a-ha-ha. here, let me show you something." he ushers you into the black managerial volkswagen, and before you know it, you're on the freeways. near the interchange of the san diego and the santa monica, zhlubb points to a stretch of pavement: "here's where i got my first glimpse of one. driving a vw, just like mine. imag­ ine. i couldn't believe my eyes." but it is difficult to keep one's whole attention centered on manager zhlubb. the santa monica freeway is traditionally the scene of every form of automotive folly known to man. it is not white and well-bred like the san diego, nor as treacherously engineered as the pasadena, nor quite as ghetto-suicidal as the harbor. no, one hesitates to say it, but the santa monica is a freeway for freaks, and they are all out today, making it difficult for you to follow the man­ ager's entertaining story. you cannot repress a certain shudder of dis­ taste, almost a reflexive consciousness of kind, in their presence. they come gibbering in at you from all sides, swarming in, rolling their eyes 755 through the side windows, playing harmonicas and even kazoos, in tull disrespect for the prohibitions. "relax," the manager's eyes characteristically aglitter. "there'll be a nice secure home for them all, down in orange county. right next to disneyland," pausing then exactly like a nightclub comic, alone in his tar circle, his chalk terror. laughter surrounds you. full, faithful-audience laughter, coming from the four points of the padded interior. you realize, with a vague sense of dismay, that this is some kind of a stereo rig here, and a glance inside the glove compartment reveals an entire library of similar tapes: cheering (affectionate), cheering (aroused), hostile mob in an as­ sortment of 22 languages, yeses, noes, negro supporters, women supporters, athletic-oh, come now-fire-fight (conventional), fire-fight (nuclear), fire-fight (urban), cathedral acoustics .... "we have to talk in some kind of code, naturally," continues the manager. "we always have. but none of the codes is that hard to break. opponents have accused us, for just that reason, of contempt for the people. but really we do it all in the spirit of fair play. we're not mon­ sters. we know we have to give them some chance. we can't take hope away from them, can we?" the volkswagen is now over downtown l.a., where the stream of traffic edges aside for a convoy of dark lincolns, some fords, even gmcs, but not a pontiac in the lot. stuck on each windshield and rear window is a fluorescent orange strip that reads funeral. the manager's snifhing now. "he was one of the best. 1 couldn't go myself, but 1 did send a high-level assistant. who'll ever replace him, 1 wonder," punching a sly button under the dash. the laughter this time is sparse male oh-hoho's with an edge of cigar smoke and aged bourbon. sparse but loud. phrases like "dick, you character!" and "listen to him," can also be made out. "i have a fantasy about how i'll die. i suppose you're on their payroll, but that's all right. listen to this. it's 3 a.m., on the santa monica free­ way, a warm night. all my windows are open. i'm doing about 70, 75. the wind blows in, and from the floor in back lifts a thin plastic bag, a common dry-cleaning bag: it comes floating in the air, moving from be­ hind, the mercury lights turning it white as a ghost . . . it wraps around my head, so superfine and transparent i don't know it's there really until too late. a plastic shroud, smothering me to my death. . . ." heading up the hollywood freeway, between a mysteriously-can­ vased trailer rig and a liquid-hydrogen tanker sleek as a torpedo, we come upon a veritable caravan of harmonica players. "at least it's not those tam bourines as quilted-st shine like a 1 tion day, an ventura free terings, return vessels, , , ' the sound 0 ilia�ly into hi i but the ound imo�, it fills the btl move, , , could i 'l aon't think th lor ilie knob of th in full those tamnounnes, lllludd muu.ers. "there aren't as many tam­ bourines as last year, thank god." quilted-steel catering trucks crisscross in the afternoon. their ripples shine like a lake of potable water after hard desert passage. it's a collec­ tion day, and the garbage trucks are all heading north toward the ventura freeway, a catharsis of dumpsters, all hues, shapes and bat­ terings. returning to the center, with all the gathered fragments of the vessels.... the sound of a siren takes you both unaware. zhlubb looks up sharply into his mirror. "you're not holding, are you?" but the sound is greater than police. it wraps the concrete and the smog, it fills the basin and mountains further than any mortal could ever move . . . could move in time. . . . "i don't think that's a police siren." your guts in a spasm, you reach for the knob of the am radio. "1 don't think-" 11 �a the clearing "raumen," cries captain blicero. peroxide and permanganate tanks have been serviced. the gyros are run up. observers crouch down in the slit trenches. tools and fittings are stashed rattling in the back of an idling lorry. the battery-loading crew and the sergeant who screwed in the percussion pin climb in after, and the truck hauls away down the fresh brown ruts of earth, into the trees. blicero remains for a few sec­ onds at launch position, looking around to see that all is in order. then he turns away and walks, with deliberate speed, to the fire-control car. "steuerung klar?" he asks the boy at the steering panel. "ist klar." in the lights from the panel, max's face is hard, stubborn gold. "treibwerk klar?" "ist klar," from moritz at the rocket motor panel. into the phone dangling at his neck, he tells the operations room, "luftlage klar." "schliissel auf schiessen," orders blicero. moritz turns the main key to fire. "schliissel steht auf schiessen." klar. there ought to be big dramatic pauses here. weissmann's head ought to be teeming with last images of creamy buttocks knotted together in fear (not one trickle of shit, liebchen?) the last curtain of gold lashes over young eyes pleading, gagged throat trying to say too late what he should have said in the tent last night . . . deep in the throat, the gullet, where bliceros own cock's head has burst for the last time (but what's this just past the spasming cervix, past the curve into the darkness 757 the stink the .... the white ... the corner ... waiting. waiting for-). but no, the ritual has its velvet grip on them all. so strong, so warm.... "durchschalten." blicero's voice is calm and steady. "luftlage klar," max calls from the steering panel. moritz presses the button marked vorstufe. "ist durchgeschaltet." a pause of 15 seconds while the oxygen tank comes up to pressure. a light blazes up on moritz's panel. enthiftung. "beluftung klar." the ignition lamp lights: zundung. "zundung klar." then, "vorstufe klar." vorstufe is the last position from which moritz can still switch backward. the flame grows at the base of the rocket. colors develop. there is a period of four seconds here, four seconds of indeterminacy. the ritual even has a place for that. the difference be­ tween a top-grade launch officer and one doomed to mediocrity is in knowing exactly when, inside this chiming and fable-crowded passage, to order hauptstufe. blicero is a master. he learned quite early to fall into a trance, to wait for the illumination, which always comes. it is nothing he's ever spoken of aloud. "hauptstufe." "hauptstufe ist gegeben." the panel is latched forever. two lights wink out. "stecker 1 und 2 gefallen," moritz reports. the stotz plugs lie blasted on the ground, tossing in the splash of flame. on gravity feed, the flame is bright yellow. then the turbine begins to roar. the flame suddenly turns blue. the sound of it grows to full cry. the rocket stays a moment longer on the steel table, then slowly, trembling, furiously muscular, it begins to rise. four seconds later it begins to pitch over. but the flame is too bright for anyone to see gottfried inside, ex­ cept now as an erotic category, hallucinated out of that blue violence, for purposes of self-arousal. ascent this ascent will be betrayed to gravity. but the rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. the victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of escape. . . . moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is apple­ colored. the knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple. everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but certainly more present. so much has to be left behind now, so quickly. pressed down758 and-aft i inner thig where his in the rain, hear him, b was done as try to hold 0 he think �uttering cia . micero's hair j an adolescent . oiling the child now oe is far a �oin� out of foe ��tween nim and �nnina to slidt b b lilep-toey begm arul�ender.bel fuele�l of a f \in l'ou\'eletannid ii'nitenin .at m �eter�ent , o\\d�l oo!'i tormented erooe, bleach r aooution of pia )nade to hade, lalt dog's head, rea meant, the now beside th lose that niohl houses are hi, waving is tu\ "the edge 01 first star. .. and-all 10 ms eiasuc uul1u�, pi essed painfully (his pectorals ache, an " inner thigh has frozen numb) till his forehead is bent to touch one knee, q' where his hair rubs in a touch crying or submissive as a balcony empty � in the rain, gottfried does not wish to cry out ... he knows they can't � hear him, but still he prefers not to . . . no radio back to them . . . it was done as a favor, blicero wanted to make it easier for me, he knew i'd try to hold on-hold each voice, each hum or cracklehe thinks of their love in illustrations for children, in last thin pages fluttering closed, a line gently, passively unfinished, a pastel hesitancy: blicerc's hair is darker, shoulder-length and permanently waved, he is an adolescent squire or page looking into an optical device and beck­ oning the child gottfried with a motherly or eager-to-educate look ... now he is far away, seated, at the end of an olive room, past shapes going out of focus, shapes gottfried can't identify as friend or enemy, between him and-where did he-it's already gone, no ... they're be­ ginning to slide away now faster than he can hold, it's like falling to sleep-they begin to blur catch you can hold it steady enough to see a suspender-belt straining down your thighs, white straps as slender as the legs of a fawn and the points of the black . . . the black catch you've let a number of them go by, gottfried, important ones you didn't want to miss . . . you know this is the last time . . . catch when did the roaring stop? brennschluss, when was brennschluss it can't be this soon ... but the burnt-out tail-opening is swinging across the sun and through the blonde hair of the victim here's a brocken-specter, some­ one's, something's shadow projected from out here in the bright sun and darkening sky into the regions of gold, of whitening, of growing still as underwater as gravity dips away briefly . . . what is this death but a whitening, a carrying of whiteness to ultrawhite, what is it but bleaches, detergents, oxidizers, abrasivesstreckefuss he's been today to the boy's tormented muscles, but more appropriately is he blicker, bleich­ erode, bleacher, blicero, extending, rarefying the caucasian pallor to an abolition of pigment, of melanin, of spectrum, of separateness from shade to shade, it is so white that catch the dog was a red setter, the last dog's head, the kind dog come to see him off can't remember what red meant, the pigeon he chased was slateblue, but they're both white now beside the canal that night the smell of trees oh i didn't want to lose that night catch a wave between houses, across a street, both houses are ships, one's going off on a long, an important journey, and the waving is full of ease and affection catch last word from blicero: "the edge of evening . . . the long curve of people all wishing on the first star. . . . always remember those men and women along the thou759 / �.� /' /' sands of miles of land and sea. the true moment of shadow is the mo­ ment in which you see the point of light in the sky. the single point, and the shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep " always remember. the first star hangs between his feet. nowdescent the rhythmic clapping resonates inside these walls, which are hard and glossy as coal: come-on! start-the-show! come-on! start-the-show! the screen is a dim page spread before us, white and silent. the film has broken, or a projector bulb has burned out. it was difficult even for us, old fans who've always been at the movies (haven't we?) to tell which before the darkness swept in. the last image was too immediate for any eye to register. it may have been a human figure, dreaming of an early evening in each great capital luminous enough to tell him he will never die, coming outside to wish on the first star. but it was not a star, it was falling, a bright angel of death. and in the darkening and awful expanse of screen something has kept on, a film we have not learned to see ... it is now a closeup of the face, a face we all knowand it is just here, just at this dark and silent frame, that the pointed tip of the rocket, falling nearly a mile per second, absolutely and for­ ever without sound, reaches its last unmeasurable gap above the roof of this old theatre, the last delta-t. there is time, if you need the comfort, to touch the person next to you, or to reach between your own cold legs ... or, if song must find you, here's one they never taught anyone to sing, a hymn by william slothrop, centuries forgotten and out of print, sung to a simple and pleasant air of the period. follow the bouncing ball: there is a hand to turn the time, though thy glass today be run, till the light that hath brought the towers low find the last poor pret'rite one ... till the riders sleep by ev'ry road, all through our crippl'd zone, with a face on ev'ry mountainside, and a soul in ev'ry stone. now everybody / ". . -, .,/ . libraries libraries · :1��\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\�(\�i\�"�����\��\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ 3 2754 061153 734 v�ao"" � �� _,� � �� -...,)j "0 .. �') l ies t q oi!mco